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Buss vs bus

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xprt

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I noticed that the MITs Altair documentation and some of the ads use the word buss instead of bus.

Did any other manufacturers use buss?

Or was this just the occasional odd spelling or maybe misuse of the word?

Then there's disk and disc...
 
"Bus" when used in the electrical sense, is short for "omnibus", from the Latin dative plural of "omnis" meaning "all". You can see a parallel usage in "omnibus appropriation bill", meaning that a bunch of items have been combined into one bill.

"Buss" refers to osculation only, as far as I know.

There are Buss fuses, but that simply refers to items made by the Bussman company. Perhaps that's where the confusion comes about.

It's generally not a good idea to buss a bus.

"Disk" and "disc" are both valid forms. "Disk" is older and is usually a US English spelling, where British English tends to prefer "disc". There are similar differences in other words; for example, British "sceptic" versus US "skepitc". However, in terms of art, it matters. Always "Compact Disc" when referring to the optical medium, whereas "Floppy Disk".

At least that's the way I learned it.
 
I was taught that a disk was when it's in a protective case that doesn't come off, where disc is the bare platter... Even the cheap plastic (and cloth lined) sleeves count as enough of a jacket for that in the case of 5.25" and 8".
 
For that matter, in Swedish computer terminology it probably would be spelled buss just like the vehicle is, even if the (omni)bus we are talking about is not a public transportation.
 
deathshadow said:
I was taught that a disk was when its in a protective case that doesn't come off, where disc is the bare platter... Even the cheap plastic (and cloth lined) sleeves count as enough of a jacket for that in the case of 5.25" and 8".
Click to expand...

The terminology was by no means set in stone by the early to mid '80s. Some manufacturers liked to spell it "floppy disc", and on the other hand, there was talk of "optical disk" storage media (perhaps in an effort to differentiate it from the Sony/Philips "Compact Disc" spelling).
 
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vwestlife said:
FTFY. :) And the terminology was by no means set in stone by the early to mid '80s. Some manufacturers liked to spell it "floppy disc", and on the other hand, there was talk of "optical disk" storage media (perhaps in an effort to differentiate it from the Sony/Philips "Compact Disc" spelling).
Click to expand...

Its vs it's?

IIRC, HP used to use disc for floppy disk and hard disk.

If you search the forum messages for buss, it still seems come up surprisingly often.
 
MikeS said:
Umm, no, that one is set in stone, i.e. they're two different meanings (possessive like his or hers vs. contraction of 'it is'.
Click to expand...

Surely he didn't mean that those could be exchanged! OTOH, I haven't the foggiest about what he could have meant. :)


MikeS said:
I vote for disk, since a little one is a diskette, not a discette.
Click to expand...

I'm with you on that. I note too that there is historical correctness there. From Wikipedia:
The term "floppy disk" appeared in print as early as 1970,[4] and although in 1973 IBM announced its first media as "Type 1 Diskette" . . .
Click to expand...
 
Ole Juul said:
Surely he didn't mean that those could be exchanged! OTOH, I haven't the foggiest about what he could have meant. :)
Click to expand...

Well, I was referring to vwestlife's post where he was correcting deathshadows use of it's (changing to its). Actually, I think deathshadow was right in the first place.

Ole Juul said:
The term "floppy disk" appeared in print as early as 1970,[4] and although in 1973 IBM announced its first media as "Type 1 Diskette" . . .
Click to expand...

I agree disk and diskette is the accepted term now.

Back in 1971,HP was using disc for hard disk: http://www.computerhistory.org/brochures/full_record.php?iid=doc-4372956dc3450

and later when they introduced one of the first 3.5" floppy drives (A disc drive using flexible discs): http://hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=288
 
xprt said:
Well, I was referring to vwestlife's post where he was correcting deathshadows use of it's (changing to its). Actually, I think deathshadow was right in the first place.
Click to expand...
Oops, I missed that little bit there. :) Indeed deathshadow was right. The apostrophe is used for the contraction of "it is", and without the apostrophe is for the possessive - meaning "belonging to it".
 
I defaulted to the disc spelling but constantly observed it spelled disk, and had about surmised a disc was merely a tool farmers use to plow the fields
 
MikeS said:
Umm, no, that one is set in stone, i.e. they're two different meanings (possessive like his or hers vs. contraction of 'it is'.
Click to expand...
I apologize for my false correction to deathshadow. I misread his sentence as "I was taught that a disk was when its protective case doesn't come off", not "...when it's in a protective case...", as he actually wrote.

I vote for disk, since a little one is a diskette, not a discette.
Click to expand...

"Diskette" was originally an IBM term. Other brands used "minidisk" (or "minidisc") for 5.25-inch floppies and "microfloppy" for 3.5-inch disks.
 
Le_Bear said:
I defaulted to the disc spelling but constantly observed it spelled disk, and had about surmised a disc was merely a tool farmers use to plow the fields
Click to expand...

I was about to mention the same thing as I too thought that the agricultural tool (it's not a plow!) was spelled disc. So I just now did a cursory Google search on that and some related terms.

The Massey Fergusun company certainly spells their product as "disc" although searching on "disk" brings up a number of apparent misspellings.

Disk sander, or disk sander, it looks like either way is common.

As for herniated disc (slipped disc), it looks like both ways again. Probably the "k" is used in US.

My take on all this is that it's simply a matter of usage. If it is a device patented, invented, or marketed by a certain company, then whatever they say is correct. For more generic things, then whatever is formal usage in your locale and/or profession.
 
Ole Juul said:
I was about to mention the same thing as I too thought that the agricultural tool (it's not a plow!) was spelled disc. So I just now did a cursory Google search on that and some related terms.

The Massey Fergusun company certainly spells their product as "disc" although searching on "disk" brings up a number of apparent misspellings.

Disk sander, or disk sander, it looks like either way is common.

As for herniated disc (slipped disc), it looks like both ways again. Probably the "k" is used in US.

My take on all this is that it's simply a matter of usage. If it is a device patented, invented, or marketed by a certain company, then whatever they say is correct. For more generic things, then whatever is formal usage in your locale and/or profession.
Click to expand...

So Ole, is it discotheque or diskotek? (lol)
 
Ole Juul said:
Discotheque is the lineup of diskoteks and discotekettes waiting to get into a disco.
Click to expand...

Actually, the popularity of the word "disco" clearly did have some influence; the first popular laser optical video medium was initially named "DiscoVision", around the same time in the late '70s as when Disco music was at the height of its popularity. As Disco music faded away in the early '80s, a name change was in order, but the c-spelling stuck, so they renamed it to "LaserDisc", and Sony & Philips followed suit with the Compact Disc.

As a result, "disc" became the standard spelling for optical media, while IBM's dominance in the computer field led to their spelling of "disk" becoming the standard for magnetic media.
 
The "c" or "k" issue is a cultural thing going back to the Renaissance. "K" is from Greek, "c" is from Latin. Greek diskos, Latin discus.

French-derived words normally go for "C" (eg discoteque descended from biblioteque), but German preference is for "k". Take your pick.

We anglophones are entitled to be confused and arbitrary, since we happily take words from everywhere and make up more words ("neologism" <- Greek) in a week than most languages add in a year.
 
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