It should be noted that the above is a fairly parochial practice. Disk is the more common usage in the USA. Disc was more common in the UK, Australia, and perhaps elsewhere but is slowly falling to US usage. The above disk for magnetic, disc for optical is probably used somewhere, but i've never seen it before.


Disk is the more common usage in the USA Is it? Aren't you forgetting that all CD jewel boxes (whether they be music, data or games) have the following written in them twice over - "compact disc digital audio". And I always presumed 'disc' to be an Americanism and 'disk' - or 'diskette' to be more precise.


The CD was developed by Phillips which is based in the Netherlands. They chose British spelling. This may have slowed down the decline of "disc" a little.


Why this move? It seems to me that the text on /Talk is more relevant on the real page than the text there which seems pretty bogus to me. --Pinkunicorn


For the simple reason than it is written from one person's point of view, and does not pretend to be part of the article. /Talk pages are for talk about the article and what it should say, as you know, and that's what this is. Pink, if you think it needs to be included on the main page, then include it! --Larry Sanger


So do American's spell it disK for other uses apart from computing? Disk brakes? A pizza cutter consists of a metal disk that...?

I thought that compact disc and laser disc were spelt with a C because they are discs in shape.
Disk is a shortening of diskette, a plastic case enclosing a magnetic disc.

So to summarise, i think that everywhere, floppy disk and compact disc should always be spelt like i've written. Dunno. --Tristanb 06:34 14 Jul 2003 (UTC)