h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Rains, try Coldslaw and Leave Go... it drives me off the wall!
I think COLDslaw is worse. But transferring proper language into chils speak is so annoying- the child says it wrong already, it's your job to correct them.
Oh, and saying Haitch instead of Aitch. Grrrr...

It is haitch. (At least, it is in Ireland).

It is ? That's interesting, I'd never have guessed it.

Tut, tut, Gnommon. Your full stop should, here, be within the brackets.

I was told that the haitch/aitch distinction is one way of telling a Norn Ireland Protestant from a Norn Ireland Catholic.

TRiG.

Ooh, I forgot the coleslaw/coldslaw one - that's another.

I have to stick my hand up and say I'm guilty of saying haitch and not aitch - although I tend to vary it without really being sure why. I think it's because if I get paranoid about the h-, I'm more likely to pronounce it with an h- . But I'm an odd Yorkshire woman who's beginning to sound like a Brummie, so I'll stop commenting on accents now .

Just book marking, but afraid to say too much in case I make a mistake! My spelling is not great.

Just caught up with this thread before getting chance to chip in, if that's alright? I agree with Rains about the grocer's apostrophe, even more so when a major chain-store is offering CD's and DVD's for sale.

CD's and DVD's are not examples of the grocer's apostrophe. They are the application of a rule which says that the plural of a single letter is formed by adding apostrophe s. So, for example, if you wanted to buy the letter o a few times to make a sign for your house which said "Mon repos", you would need to buy some o's. Not os. You'll see this in minding your p's and q's.

It is a perfectly valid use of an apostrophe which is accepted by some and not by others.

Ah, now that implies only one grocer. Should you say grocers' to indicate more than one, or will that then imply all grocers?

I think I understand what you're saying regarding the o's issue. Surely if I have many CDs and DVDs in stock then I have CDs for sale, in the same way as one would refer to them as compact discs rather than compact disc's? If I got this rule incorrect then I apologise.

You can of course talk about CDs and DVDs, and many do. But others insist that it is correct to say CD's and DVD's. It is not clear-cut.

Then call them by full name -- Compact discs and digital video discs (this name in itself is subject to debate, though).

Traveller in Time against abbreviations
"They are Digital Versitile Disks."

...... See what I mean? =P

And what about the digital versatile disks ?

or even digital versatile discs?

All of the following have been proposed as the words behind the letters DVD.

Delayed, very delayed (referring to the many late releases of DVD formats)
Diversified, very diversified (referring to the proliferation of recordable formats and other spinoffs)
Digital venereal disease (referring to piracy and copying of DVDs)
Dead, very dead (from naysayers who predicted DVD would never take off)
Digital video disc (the original meaning proposed by some of DVD's creators)
Digital versatile disc (a meaning later proposed by some of DVD's creators)
Nothing

And the official answer is? "Nothing." The original acronym came from "digital video disc." Some members of the DVD Forum (see 6.1) tried to express that DVD goes far beyond video by retrofitting the painfully contorted phrase "digital versatile disc," but this has never been officially accepted by the DVD Forum as a whole. The DVD Forum decreed in 1999 that DVD, as an international standard, is simply three letters. After all, how many people ask what VHS stands for? (Guess what, no one agrees on that one either.)

http://dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#1.1

Gnomon, I looked up 'disk' , feeling it should be written like ou did, but I found that 'disk' is perfectly fine.http://www.onelook.com/?w=disk&ls=a



http://www.onelook.com/?w=disc&ls=a

Disk is the American spelling. Disc is the British spelling. Normally the two are pretty much interchangeable. I was offereing an alternative, not a correction.

In the case of CD, however, it is "Disc", as that is what it was defined as when the CD was created.

"innit"



That is just a shameful example of a woefully inadequate vocabulary.

Innit?