We now return to our disk versus disc question from the 8/10/2000 issue of inSync. In that issue the question of which is the correct spelling was raised and partially answered. We opened the floor to the readers to see if anyone had anything additional to offer with the promise to follow up. So here’s the follow up.
The one thing that pretty much everyone agrees with is that the spelling of “compact disc” is with a “c” because that is how it is licensed to be used by the people who came up with it (Phillips). Why they chose a “c” instead of a “k” is still unclear, but you can see through the years that similarly shaped objects usually get the “c” instead of the “k.”
One reader who worked for IBM back in the early mainframe days says that the term “disk,” which comes from diskette in this case, was coined by IBM early on, and may only really apply to floppy type disks.
Finally, no one disagreed with my approach, which is to use disc when referring to optical media and disk when referring to magnetic media.
Bottom line: it probably doesn’t matter much. From everything we’ve been able to find, the terms are virtually interchangeable, except when referring to compact disc, where you should use the official term.
We will now consider the matter closed. (That’s a hint that you don’t need to send any more e-mail about it.)