25 Jul
2005
25 Jul
'05
3:24 a.m.
CCN wrote...
Disc is incorrect unless we're talking about a
flying disc, in which case
it's slang for discus. (Although in eight years of competing in track and
field in high school and college, I never heard anyone say "my event is
the
disc".)
Wholly incorrect...
Disc/Disk is NOT a US/UK thing. Disc is perfectly acceptable. Nor does disc
and disk inherently refer to different types of media or drives (at least,
not until much later & modern MISuse bastardized it with the CD
connotation).
At one point (originally), BOTH versions were common. The greek origin is
diskos, the latin root is discus. Both are considered acceptable, however,
one or the other is generally chosen in a given field of study. HP (and
others) refer to disc, DEC (and others) refer to disk. Medical texts always
go with disc, as do most engineering texts I'm familiar with. I'm sure
there's other fields that standardized on "disk".
Mass media (printed) doesn't generally like two different spellings for the
same thing, and over time one becomes more common. Not because it's more
right, but it's just what the media feels they need to do.
Jay