From Newsgroup: alt.english.usage


Steve Hayes <hayesstw@telkomsa.net> posted:

On 15 Sep 2025 01:56:16 GMT, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:

On Sun, 14 Sep 2025 23:06:44 +0200, Carlos E.R. wrote:

We used "disquete" in Spain. I am not sure what name we used while I was >> in Ottawa, probably floppy.

In my experience in the US 5.25s were floppies and 3.5s were diskettes >usually. I'm perpetually confused over whether it's disk or disc. I don't >think I'm alone.

My understanding was (is?) that if it's magnetic it's a disk and if
it's optical it's a disc.

Strictly speaking

8" = floppy
5-+" = mini-floppy
3-+" = micro-floppy

but in practice we (in South Africa) referred to the 5-+" ones as
floppies and the 3-+" ones as stiffies.

My South African colleague used that terminology. I have't come across
anyone else.

And anything smaller than 8" was a "diskette".

or disquette as we spell it in these parts

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_harrow

--
athel

Living in Marseilles for 38 years; mainly in England before that
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From Newsgroup: alt.english.usage

On Tue, 09 Dec 2025 15:56:32 GMT, athel.cb@gmail.com <user12588@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

Steve Hayes <hayesstw@telkomsa.net> posted:

On 15 Sep 2025 01:56:16 GMT, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:

On Sun, 14 Sep 2025 23:06:44 +0200, Carlos E.R. wrote:

We used "disquete" in Spain. I am not sure what name we used while I was >> >> in Ottawa, probably floppy.

In my experience in the US 5.25s were floppies and 3.5s were diskettes
usually. I'm perpetually confused over whether it's disk or disc. I don't >> >think I'm alone.

My understanding was (is?) that if it's magnetic it's a disk and if
it's optical it's a disc.

Strictly speaking

8" = floppy
5-+" = mini-floppy
3-+" = micro-floppy

but in practice we (in South Africa) referred to the 5-+" ones as
floppies and the 3-+" ones as stiffies.

My South African colleague used that terminology. I have't come across
anyone else.

Welcome back -- I was just asking about you.

And anything smaller than 8" was a "diskette".

or disquette as we spell it in these parts

And then there was disc for optical and disk for magnetic.
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.english.usage

In comp.os.linux.misc Stefan Ram <ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de> wrote:

"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote or quoted:

There is something weird with this PDF. Text looks fuzzy, as if the page >>was scanned or photocopied. But the text is selectable and searchable.
:-?

So you take a page or a book, snap a digital photo of it, and
then OCR layers in text you can copy or search while you still
see the original photo. People do this all the time now.

I think that function is built into occular now

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