Questions for English Majors

[Anthony de Boer]

Jing Su wrote:
> I personally think (yeah, I know my personal opinion means nothing in
> the face of proper English) that "disk" should be used as the regular
> default unless the media being handled is discus shaped.  Hard-drives
> are enclosed in nice boxes, so they're "disk".  CDs and DVDs can be
> thrown, and to a degree fly well, so they get "disc".

You've never played with disassembled-hard-drive shuriken, then?

Back in the early 1980s the rule of thumb was that if it was writable
it was a disk, while nonwritable ones (like Frisbees) were discs.

Compact Discs (originally available only as factory-pressed prerecorded
media) got the "c" spelling, though the later writable ones stretched the
definition.  Nowadays one could use "disk" for magnetic media and "disc"
for anything else.

-- 
Anthony de Boer
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