Getting with the Programme

Margie IMed me: “Spell check says programming and programing are both OK – which is more common?”

This looks like a job for … CAPTAIN PEDANT!

My initial thought was, “Huh?  Everyone knows it’s programming.”  Except that not everyone does.  A quick Google for each showed 115 million references to programming and about 12 million references to programing.

Which is lopsided, but not conclusive.

So I did a bit more screwing around research in dictionaries and web pages (especially these two, comments included), and here’s what I got:

1. The Brits use programme for any use of the term program except related to computers. In other words, “The UN announced a new development programme for Somalia” or “I watched the most spiffing programme on the telly the other fortnight.”  It appears that for computer coding, though, they use program.
2. In fact, they used to use program for all meanings, until the 19th Century, when they decided to become all Frenchified with their spellings.  That’s why in the US (and Canada, sorta-mostly) we don’t refer to programme.
3. Apparently in the US, both programing and programming are used (though the latter seems to be more common).  In the UK, perhaps because of the fancified programme, only programming is used. That’s what the OED says, at least.
4. There are other precedents — patrolling, controlling, preferring — where we clearly use a doubled consonant … but others — traveling, modeling, maddening — where we don’t. The difference seems to be in the pronunciation: in the doubled (“geminated”) cases, we have the emphasis on the second syllable, while in the singled cases the emphasis is on the first.  But programming doesn’t fit that, because we still have the emphasis on the first syllable, until we get to variations like programmable — which we can also turn those first two into, but not the second two (or, if we do, we’d still keep them emphasis on the first syllable.  So maybe we should pronounce it as proGRAMming, instead of PROgramming. (Though some claim that there remains a slight sub-emphasis on the second syllable, thus justifying the doubled “M”).
5. Apparently kidnap has the same confusing setup.
6. No matter how we try to set up rigid, orthodox rules for these sorts of thing, there seem to always be exceptions. It’s … maddening. CURSE YOU, MANY FORMS OF ENGLISH!

So that’s what I learned, which can be summarized as:

Use two M’s in “programming” and “programmer,” otherwise most people will think you’re misspelling it and consider you an idiot, even if it is a valid variant and is allowed by spell checkers and may, in fact, be more grammatically proper.

Now you know! And, as we know, knowing is half the battle!

(Next time: arguing whether it should be disk or disc!)