Date   : Sun, 05 Feb 2006 18:22:02 GMT
From   : Pete Turnbull <pete@...>
Subject: Re: Grammar

On Feb 5 2006, 16:25, Colin wrote:

> Usage determines which words become part of the language.

Agreed.  Language and usage change over time.

> Programme is used because that is the spelling that the English
adopted as
> the correct spelling for that particular word.
> To adopt an American spelling (for whatever reason) follows that
method of
> incorporation into the language. Programme and program are two
variants of
> the same word and their meaning should the same. To say that one
means one
> thing and the other something different although similar is really
incorrect
> unless we accept that "foreign" words are acceptable but only if
their
> meaning is different from the one we are presently using. That's
confusing
> the language, not strengthening it.

Here is where we differ, I think.  And I certainly wouldn't rely on any
ordinary dictionary for the correct meaning or usage of technical
terms.  I can point to several entries in the OED for example, where
the dictionary entry is incorrect from a technical or scientific point
of view.  My pet gripe concerns "stress" and "strain" which the OED
insists both mean a force.  This is true in common usage, but is quite
wrong from a physicist's point of view; to him a stress is a force but
strain is a measure of length (elongation, normally).

I was taught, consistently, through the 1960s and 1970s when I was
learning about these things, that the common English word is programme,
for a theatre or football programme, a television programme, or w.h.y.,
but the technical term for instructions for a computer is a program.  I
have in front of me my first two programming textbooks, written in the
UK by British authors (one by Donald Michie, a stickler for
correctness,
and the other by Corlett and Tinsley from Oxford, but ironically
published by Cambridge University Press) and both explain that the list
of instructions to the computer is "a program".  Documents recording
the
earliest computers at the University of York also refer to "programs".
So do various textbooks in the classic UK School Mathematical Projects
Handbook series from the 1960s.

The introduction by Corlett and Tinsley begins,

    "The computer is a very new member of the family of
    calculating devices, but its development has been extremely
    rapid.  The abacus, logarithmic tables, slide rule and desk
    calculating machine all depend on the human operator for their
    manipulation.  The computer, however, is a calculating device
    which can be made to follow a sequence of instructions
    automatically, and at great speed.  This sequence of
    instructions is called a program (using the American spelling)
    and once the program has been prepared, it may be used either
    for a single calculation or for a series of similar
    calculations on different data."

Donald Alcock's well-known "Illustrating BASIC", written in Reigate in
1976, begins, "To make a computer do a calculation ~ however simple ~
you must first describe every step of that calculation in a LANGUAGE
the computer can understand: this description is called a PROGRAM.
 This book presents a popular and widely available language called
BASIC and explains how to write simple programs in it."

Of course, in case anyone thinks this settles the argument once and for
all, it's only fair that I point out that early British computer
developers such as Williams, Kilburn, Newman, and Turing, all wrote
"programme", at least until the 1950s, which is when the American
spelling seems to have become the norm.  I believe that the American
spelling has been the accepted-correct one in the five decades since.


-- 
Pete                                           Peter Turnbull
                                               Network Manager
                                               University of York