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Old October 17th 04, 11:16 PM
MCheu
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Default Disk or disc spelling for DVDs?

On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 19:17:32 +0100, Davis Rorgh wrote:

ISTR that a hard drive was loosely called a DISK (spelled with a K).

A CD-R was called a DISC - spelled with a C but more and more often
misspelled with a K.

Is a DVD called a DISC or a DISK?


DISC. For Compact Discs, and Digital Versatile/Video Discs, "disc" is
short for Discus, or flat round thingy (technical term). Check out
the discs that are marked with the official CD logo -- in small print,
it says "compact disc". The DVD logo doesn't spell it out in the same
way, as there's some dispute about what the V stands for.

For floppies, it's DISK because "disk" is short for "diskette". So
named because most people only saw them with the jackets on, and it
didn't really look terribly round that way. The disk term has been
used for harddisks as well, though I suspect that's more because
people got used to spelling it disk because of the early popularity of
floppies than anything else. I've also seen old references that use
spell it hard-disc, but I have to admit that looks weird to me, as
I've gotten used to the other spelling.

As with all computer and slang terms, it probably doesn't matter. If
the terms are used interchangeably enough for long enough, the
mainstream dictionaries will accept them as such.


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MCheu