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Depth of water - spelling?


magpie patrick

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They are wrong. You are right - unless they're Americans.

Luckily it isn't their final copy, just a draft.

 

To avoid confusion, weeping and gnashing of beaks, how about substituting "depth"?

Edited by Athy
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11 minutes ago, magnetman said:

Depth of boat is draught depth of water is depth. 

As I suggested, yes, so in this case "depth" is the more pertinent word.

 

"The boat has a draught of 30", so it needs a depth of more than 30" in which to float".

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5 minutes ago, magnetman said:

It's quite a feat to do that. 

Out of my league, plumb confused, wouldn't like to lead you astray. Of course Mark Twain would know. 

Edited by Jim Riley
More wit and jollity.
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6 minutes ago, Pluto said:

Both do seem to be acceptable, but draught tends to be more usual on this side of the Atlantic. The Wärtsilä Marine Encyclopedia https://www.wartsila.com/encyclopedia/term/draught-draft does seem to favour 'Draught' if you want to give a source.

Both are acceptable and both in use in the UK. I have an Admiralty Manual Of Seamanship (Royal Navy) which uses Draught throughout, yet my Merchant Navy ship stability text books use Draft. Other seamanship text books use either version so you can take your pick. 

 

Howard

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7 minutes ago, Athy said:

Eh? No it's not. Keg beer is draught beer. But in America if would be draft beer.

It may be that I am somewhat out of date - it's a long time since I was a CAMRA member. Perhaps it wasn't a true analogy, because I was talking about cask beer v keg beer. 

 

linky to blog about beer

 

As the man says, "Cask ale is, without exception, Britain’s finest ever invention. That’s not opinion, that’s fact. It’s better than penicillin, the Internet, the corkscrew, Marmite and Viagra put together".

 

 

36 minutes ago, Athy said:

Luckily it isn't their final copy, just a draft.

 

Even that used to be a draught copy - drawings were draughted by draughtsmen (not to be confused with chessmen) and written documents were draughted by clerks.

That ship has sailed though.

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22 minutes ago, Machpoint005 said:

"Cask ale is, without exception, Britain’s finest ever invention. That’s not opinion, that’s fact. It’s better than penicillin, the Internet, the corkscrew, Marmite and Viagra put together".

 

That doesn't sound like a good recipe for a party, but each to their own ...

 

Also, were you trying to split the difference between craft beer (which is usually keg or can or bottle) and real ales?

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I have a draft .gov petition asking the Government to set up a Commission to look at revising the spelling of the entire English Language and to report back in 5 years.  Did you know that "knight" used to be pronounced "cur-ni-g-t"? Our current spelling reflects the pronunciation of 400 years ago which was very different. I need 3 more Seconders before my petition can become active. If anybody feels they can oblige, please send me your email address privately via PM (not in a post, which is public) and I will send a .gov email which describes what to do.

As an old person, I am accustomed to what we currently use and will (if I live long enough) hate the resultant changes, but I think our children should no longer have to learn arcane spelling, even with spell-checkers available. Nor should certain strata of our society discriminate on the basis of whether somebody has learnt the full catalog of wierd spellings, eg job application letters.

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16 minutes ago, system 4-50 said:

As a programmer catalog is more natural to me than catalogue. And wierd is a typo. :D

Yes, I'd guessed!

As for that p-word, program is for computers and programme is for T.V., radio and events. Catalog, however, is an American spelling - or does it have a specific meaning in its shorter form?

 

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Thank you all, for the avoidance of doubt I referred to depth in the title because written questions along the lines of "how do you spell..." seem to me to have an element of the obtuse about them! 

For those questioning the derivation of our spelling, aside from it being part of our heritage (and I think this applies in other languages to) just reflect on the spelling of "phonetic..."

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57 minutes ago, magpie patrick said:

Thank you all, for the avoidance of doubt I referred to depth in the title because written questions along the lines of "how do you spell..." seem to me to have an element of the obtuse about them! 

For those questioning the derivation of our spelling, aside from it being part of our heritage (and I think this applies in other languages to) just reflect on the spelling of "phonetic..."

Your not going to say it's fonetic, surely.  My wife was a midwife and she said that it was silly to spell "feotus" that way.  It should be "fetus".  One of the few things about which we disagree

 

By the way there was an article in the New Scientist about miscarriages a few weeks ago and the closing remark was to the effect that fine baby boy was delivered.  "No it wasn't" quoth I.  "The mother was delivered of a fine baby boy".  But then I am one of life's pedants.

 

N

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