{"id":31681,"date":"2012-12-10T14:14:54","date_gmt":"2012-12-10T21:14:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/?p=31681"},"modified":"2012-12-10T14:14:54","modified_gmt":"2012-12-10T21:14:54","slug":"getting-with-the-programme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/12\/10\/getting-with-the-programme.html","title":{"rendered":"Getting with the Programme"},"content":{"rendered":"

Margie IMed me: “Spell check says programming and programing are both OK – which is more common?”<\/p>\n

This looks like a job for … CAPTAIN PEDANT!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>My initial thought was, “Huh? \u00a0Everyone knows it’s programming.<\/em>” \u00a0Except that not everyone does. \u00a0A quick Google for each showed 115 million references to programming<\/em>\u00a0and about 12 million references to programing.<\/em><\/p>\n

Which is lopsided, but not conclusive.<\/p>\n

So I did a bit more screwing around<\/del> research in dictionaries and web pages (especially these<\/a>\u00a0two<\/a>, comments included), and here’s what I got:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The Brits use programme<\/em> for any use of the term program\u00a0<\/em>except<\/span>\u00a0related 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.” \u00a0It appears that for computer coding, though, they use program.<\/em><\/li>\n
  2. In fact, they used to use program<\/em>\u00a0for all meanings, until the 19th Century, when they decided to become all Frenchified with their spellings. \u00a0That’s why in the US (and Canada, sorta-mostly) we don’t refer to programme.<\/em><\/li>\n
  3. Apparently in the US, both programing<\/em>\u00a0and programming<\/em>\u00a0are used (though the latter seems to be more common). \u00a0In the UK, perhaps because of the fancified programme, <\/em>only programming<\/em>\u00a0is used. That’s what the OED says, at least.<\/li>\n
  4. There are other precedents — patrolling, controlling, preferring<\/em>\u00a0— where we clearly use a doubled\u00a0consonant\u00a0… but others — traveling, modeling, maddening<\/em>\u00a0— where we don’t. The difference seems to be in the\u00a0pronunciation: in the doubled (“geminated”) cases, we have the emphasis on the second syllable, while in the singled cases the emphasis is on the first. \u00a0But programming<\/em>\u00a0doesn’t fit that, because we still have the emphasis on the first syllable, until we get to variations like programmable —<\/em>\u00a0which 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. \u00a0So 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”).<\/li>\n
  5. Apparently kidnap<\/em>\u00a0has the same confusing setup.<\/li>\n
  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!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \"\"<\/a>So that’s what I learned, which can be summarized as:<\/p>\n

    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\u00a0grammatically\u00a0proper.<\/em><\/p>\n

    Now you know! And, as we know, knowing is half the battle!<\/p>\n

    (Next time: arguing whether it should be disk<\/em>\u00a0or disc!)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    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? \u00a0Everyone knows it’s programming.” \u00a0Except that not everyone does. \u00a0A quick Google for each showed 115 million references to programming\u00a0and about 12 million references … Continue reading “Getting with the Programme”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31684,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-writing-and-language"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/knowing-is-half-the-battle.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":39276,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/10\/21\/programming-language.html","url_meta":{"origin":31681,"position":0},"title":"Programming Language","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 21-Oct-13 7:21pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Heh.(h\/t +Doug Dunfee)Reshared post from +Nathanel Titane#funny #programming View this post on Google+","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":44055,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/08\/01\/grace-hopper-saaaaalute.html","url_meta":{"origin":31681,"position":1},"title":"Grace Hopper: Saaaaalute!","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 1-Aug-14 5:45pm","format":false,"excerpt":"A hell of a woman.Reshared post from +Brad AckerToday in History: Grace Hopper recalled to active duty to head COBOL programming effortOn August 1, 1967 \u2014 47 years ago today \u2014 Grace Murray Hopper, at age 61, was recalled by the U.S. Navy to help standardize the programming language COBOL\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Grace_Hopper.jpg.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":133245,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/04\/11\/the-exciting-world-of-cobol-programming.html","url_meta":{"origin":31681,"position":2},"title":"The Exciting World of COBOL Programming!","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 11-Apr-17 8:08am","format":false,"excerpt":"The funny thing about this story is, scrub off some of the dates mentioned and it's been the story of Big Iron systems I've known my entire professoinal life. I mean, when I was first starting off my thrilling career in Computer Science in the 80s, we were dealing with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":17011,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/04\/01\/programming-my-comcast-dvr-remote-to-skip-forward-30-seconds.html","url_meta":{"origin":31681,"position":3},"title":"Programming my Comcast DVR remote to skip forward 30 seconds","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 1-Apr-10 5:52pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I know that I tried this back in the day when I originally got our Comcast DVR and it didn't work ... largely because we had an AT&T 200 remote, I think ... but we've had the remote replaced \/ changed at least once since then, and, trying it again,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Hi-Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Hi-Tech","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/hi-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"comcast-remote","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/comcast-remote.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":668,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2001\/09\/04\/what_to_do_what.html","url_meta":{"origin":31681,"position":4},"title":"What to do, what to do?","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 4-Sep-01 12:18pm","format":false,"excerpt":"So mail is down at the office this morning. 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But ... what, no...","rel":"","context":"In "Potpourri"","block_context":{"text":"Potpourri","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/potpourri"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}