Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Fun with Polls Donut vs. Doughnut

Which way would you spell it? Both are accepted by my spell checker.

Merriam-Webster says the original is "doughnut" (c. 1809) and "donut" is an acceptable (more recent) variant.

I use both, actually, but would use "doughnut" in formal writing.

as noted, both are accepted spellings, but in my experience "donut" is far more common. the simple reason? it's shorter. stores have fewer letters to buy and more room to play with, readers have less to process, and those just jotting the word down have less to write (good for both "lazy" and "efficient" writers! ).

Paul, who also supports getting rid of the useless and inefficient second half of the word "though" and the similarly useless and inefficient usage of capital letters in casual online interaction.

Paul, if you do that then why can't one also use u instea of you, or 4 instead of for, or r instead of are? you get the point. Lack of capitals doesn't usually bother that many people, but those will.

I use doughnut, because I am from Canada and I believe that is the Canadian spelling for it. I prefer the British and Canadian spellings in a lot of words, though there are ones I can't get used to (like sceptical and tyre).

Julie (who spent a whole afternoon once arguing over what the correct Canadian spelling is, honor or honour)

ah. the "slippery slope" argument. doesn't work, as far as i'm concerned. there are all sorts of decisions in life where you have to make a judgement based on common sense and "fuzzy logic" rather than on a simple, clearly definable cutoff point. if you tried applying the slippery slope argument to any of those decisions, you'd end up having to create hard-line cutoff points that would look rediculous and would be unnessarialy constraining. you just can't go around in life saying "well, if you can do ___, why not ___ as well, and while we're at it, ____ ...?" all the time.

there are specific arguments, however, for dropping capital letters but not going all the way over to chatspeak. for one thing, as you yourself said, far more people can deal with dropped caps than with super chatspeak shortcuts like "u" and "l8r" and "4get." they also take longer for most people to process (which may well be the reason they aren't so well tolerated). you have to stop and think "4get... that would be four-get... oh, forget!"

with dropped caps, however, there's no additional processing. you see the word the same as always, just with a lowercase letter in front.

you also save far more keystrokes. i save at least one keystroke per sentence (quite a bit per post, considering my rather verbose style ). with chatspeak, you save more keystrokes at a time, but you can only use shorthand for certain words. you could drop words, i suppose, but again, that interferes with reader comprehension.

so, i once again propose dropped caps as the sensible stopping point. more efficient, more casual, just as easy to read. i could start talking about carpal tunnel syndrome and keyboard wear, but i think that's going a bit far.

anyway, that's my little speech on the subject. we now return you to your regularly scheduled donut/doughnut thread. (sorry to hijack it, laura, but i've been itching to open this topic for a while. just haven't had a good enough excuse to put it in its own thread. fuzzy logic strikes again...)

Paul

Okay, so doughnut is the UK/Aussie/Canadian way, but I wonder what is the accepted American way. If you look at my favorite place to get coffee, Dunkin' Donuts, it spells it Donut. But I wonder if that is a little gimmick to get a cutesy name. Then again, Krispie Kreme spells it doughnut. Amy Joy spells it Donut.

Argh! I am so torn. I don't know why, but doughnut looks funny to me. Maybe it is because I drive past Dunkin Donuts every morning. I don't know!

(just to get my topic back on topic . . . Hey, this is important! I have the word in my story like 10 times!)

- Laura

Laura, Merriam-Webster primarily uses American spellings. So if it says both are used -- which is certainly what it implies -- then I'd guess both are commonly used in the US.

Given that, if it were me, I'd choose the spelling I felt most comfortable with. As long as you're consistent, I don't think it matters much.

And if you want another opinion, a Googlefight shows over 2x as many hits for donut.

I'm so glad to see someone is brave enough to ask the really important questions.<g>

I voted for donut.

And, seriously, Laura I would kill to have a Dunkin Donuts nearby! Their coffee!! Their cinnamon twists!!!

CC

Think I'd have to dispute this one, Paul, on a personal preference. There are few things which distract and irritate me to the point of not reading a post; I'm fairly laidback that way. But the two which do are dropped capitals and no returns between paragraphs.

I don't find it just as easy to read; in fact I find it extremely distracting and often just give up reading posts which don't use capital letters because it's just too much hard work trying to sort out paragraphs that look like a mishmash to me. Seems in this case I'm a tad old-fashioned and like to be prompted on where a sentence starts and ends.

So I've yet to be convinced of the good, 'sensible' reason to abandon them, I'm afraid and probably won't ever be.

But then I'm sure others find posts without capitals easy enough. Maybe you young things, who are more hip to the changing fashions and less set in your ways. <g>

LabRat

Well, although Laura has said she doesn't want to follow the UK spelling here, I will point out that 'donut' is not even listed in the Oxford English Dictionary. Entering it in the online version will give you a page saying 'See DOUGHNUT'.

As for US spelling, as Rivka says, Marriam-Webster cites doughnut as the official spelling, with donut as an alternative. I think the acceptance of 'donut' is down to so-called 'cool' spelling, which over time has changed the way some words are spelled.

Me? Doughnut every time. I even get distracted when I come across 'donut' in a story, in the same way I would with an inappropriate tense switch or misleading punctuation.

On the issue of capitals, apart from their use for proper nouns (and so many people capitalise nouns which are not proper - why capitalise 'manager' in an essay? ), capitals help to alert the reader to a new sentence - let's face it, full stops are pretty small and don't always jump out to the eye, whereas a capital letter will. So I do prefer capitalisation; just not to extremes! And I really don't see why, in the English language, we capitalise the first person pronoun. They don't in any other language I can think of, and it's always seemed just a little egotistical to me!


Wendy (GE and spelling/grammar stickler )

Two things:

One -- on topic -- I spell it donut. And not because it's 'cool' or 'easier,' but because I have worked at a cider mill for the past five seasons and we sell sooooo many of the blasted things (okay, so they're good...really good...I can-eat-a-dozen-at-a-sitting-good...lots of fat good...) and they're spelled 'donut' on our price board. That might be because of 'cool' factor, it might be because it's shorter and so takes less letters, I don't know. But I think because of Dunkin' Donuts and other places that sell 'donuts' in the United States, it has grown to be a fully functional, acceptable spelling. Not just lazy/cool.

Two -- off topic -- to Wendy. About that pesky capitalized I in English. It's not egotistical at all (although it may look like it). It started a looong time ago, with the printing press, I believe, because the lower case 'i' got lost with its small size and kept getting attached either to the word before it or the word after it. So it became a common practice to capitalize it in order to help it have enough significance on its own that it didn't get squished. I've seen some things now trying to lowercase it and they drive me batty -- it just looks wrong to have this lowercase 'i' standing all by itself in the middle of nowhere.

End of personal opinion rant. We now return you to your regularly scheduled poll. :p

Bethy

PS. Sorry, couldn't help it. The reason English is the only language that has the capitalized personal pronoun is that it is the only one of only one letter. And not just any letter, but a skinny, wimpy letter. So no other language, at least as far as I know, has needed to set theirs off with capitalization. Then again, German capitalizes every single noun, if we want to talk about weird.

I don't really type/write out the word much, so I chose doughnut. However, it really depends on the context. If I'm talking about the food, I might use either. It depends on how lazy I'm being. However, if I'm talking of something else that is the same shape (i.e. a small spare tire, meant for only driving short distances to get a new tire; making the car spin out in a snowy/icy parking lot) it's a donut. Why? Because it's not made out of dough! :p

I think the real reason "donut" is in use is marketing. When putting signs up, it's cheaper to use fewer letters. So, "doughnut" becomes "donut". The same way you see "tonite" instead of "tonight". That one or three letter change can make a world of difference when it comes down to sign costs and space. Just imagine how much 1 letter costs on a big neon sign: plastic, lights, gas for the lights, electricity, metal, labor, so on and so forth.

oh and paul
i dub thee e e cummings

I, too, went for "doughnut" ... to me, "donut" is something that was created for marketing purposes, as Karen mentions. For example, you make chocolate milk with Nestle's "Quik", but I certainly wouldn't want to see that spelling replace the real one.

Kathy (who remembers seeing a comic strip long ago about a little boy who failed his spelling test in school because it contained many words that had been changed into brand names of products.)

I'm a doughnut person, and not just because I'm English. To me, 'donut' screams fast food. I think it has connotations that the longer spelling does not. (Okay, so that's just my perception, but...)

Bethy, my very dusty and rusty memory of Russian lessons is that the Russian for 'I' is only one letter long, too. (I'm sure that, if I'm wrong, someone will correct me!) I won't try to reproduce the letter / word here, but it is the one that looks rather like a backwards capital 'R'. Of course, it's a different alphabet, but...

I do like the printing press explanation, though.

Oh, and for anyone who is interested, I'm also a fan of capital letters. I don't find sentences without them equally easy to read; in fact, I definitely find them more difficult. Okay, so it is nowhere near as bad as trying to decipher a 'txt' message, but what might save time for the writer costs time for this particular reader.

Chris

Can't keep my mouth shut today.

I was thinking more about this (donut vs doughnut, caps vs all lowercase, etc) and realized that I have different standards for myself depending on what I'm doing. In an email or a post, I always use capitalization and proper punctuation (as well as I know how to, at least). And I have to agree with what seems to be the majority here -- no caps at all is difficult to read for me.

However, when I'm on AIM or IRC, I have a tendency not to be quite as anal -- I'll let typos go and if I forget to capitalize something, oops, too late, gotta get my comment up there in order to keep up with the conversation. Because of the real time aspect of those conversations, I think that some laxness is allowable without detracting from understanding.

Chatspeak, however, is annoying as all get out. I loved it when I first discovered it, oh, so many moons ago, but it only took me about a month to outgrow it. I can understand if you're on a pager/cell phone that charges by the letter or something, but if not...don't even bother confusing me with it.

Shutting up for real this time...maybe.

Bethy

I think also, Bethy, that on irc there's no real problem of deciphering what's said if there are no capitals, because people rarely speak on irc in paragraphs. It's mostly short, one or two sentences. And that's much easier to read even if the punctuation isn't 100%.

LabRat (who definitely grinds her teeth reading textspeak. <G> )

i'm going to leave off about the capital letters for now. i've said my piece, and i've heard yours. i'll take it under consideration (more objectors than i'd realized), but it's been my style for so long now that i'm not sure how easy it would be to change, even if i wanted to.

i'm writing now because i'm a bit confused by wendy's assertation that capitalizing "i" is egostistical. i'll admit that it crossed my mind. i was also considering pointing out that dropping the caps for everyone was more egalitarian. i realized, though, that it's just as egalitarian to capitalize everyone's names. that, obviously, includes your own.

since it's generally considered obnoxious and pretentious to refer to onesself in the third person (unless it's done for humorous purposes), "i" is almost always used in place of one's own name. as such, it stands in place of your own name in a much fuller sense than third person pronouns. if you say "Chris, Bethy, LabRat, and i are the most recent posters to this thread," you are doing yourself a disservice. you are capitalizing everyone's name but your own. it's not egotistical to capitalize that i (assuming you capitalize the other names ). it's simply giving yourself as much respect as you'd give anyone else.

that's my take on it, anyway.

Paul (who, btw, only capitalizes his own name here as a "signature," and has put some thought into how doing so could appear unintentionally egotistical.)

Paul, Bethy... I did say 'just a little bit egotistical', you know. And I was (mostly) kidding - though, Bethy. I also like your printing explanation for the capitalised 'I'. I've been trying to think whether I remember how the first person pronoun was written/printed in very early printed books - the Incunabula.


Wendy

When I first studied that in school, my teacher said that 'I' should be capitalised because it is the only word in the English Language that is spelled with only one letter. Therefore we should respect that sole letter for standing bravely on it's own so often or something like that. But I was in grade 3, so I'm not sure how serious she was about that. Though I like that explanation better than any technical reasons.

As a Russian speaker, I can tell you that you are correct. But it's much easier to lose the little i than the backwards R, because it's smaller, if the printing press really was the reason. The alphabet, by the way, is 33 letters long and took me years to memorize. and by the way, here it is : &#1071;.

Julie

When I first met 'doughnut', I stopped reading, trying to understand what I was reading. In my mind I was pronouncing 'dafnat', which, of course, made no sense at all It took me a couple of minutes to realize it was 'donut'.

I usually stick to the first way I learn to write a word, so I spell donut. But when I see 'doughnut' written, now that I know what it is, I don't particularly care. After all, it's correct (and, as some people pointed out, maybe more than 'donut').

Just for the record, we use the word in Greek too, only it's spelled '&#957;&#964;&#972;&#957;&#945;&#964;'

AnnaBtG.

P.S.:
The brother of a friend of mine had a German teacher who hated England, English language etc.. Sometime, he said "English people are too selfish. They capitalize 'I'." The boy replied, "Then, German people are idolaters, because they capitalize all nouns."
(No offense anyone. Just found it a smart response.)