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Synching or sin sing?

I've been synchronizing my phone with my PC for a while, and because of repeated exposure to something I've concluded is counterintuitive, I feel I must cast my vote on the proper spelling of the abbreviated progressive tense: Synching.

Here are three reasons why we should be synching and not syncing:

1. The pronunciation of "syncing" would naturally be "sin-sing."

2. "Synching" has been in use in print and online in the "lip synching" sense for decades now.

3. "Synching" more closely points back to the word it's abbreviating.

And here's a bonus reason:

4. "Syncing" just looks retarded.

Now, I know people would be tempted to read it "sin-ching" like they're celebrating monetary success ("I just won ten bucks at slots! Sin ching!"). They may even start classifying it as a homonym to "cinching." But I think there are enough words in the English language that use "ch" for the "k" sound, like school, archive, echo, ache, chaos... We will be ok as long as we do something about it now.

Let's get synching.

Comments

Eric said…
Great logic if you're an English major. Us engineers use the word "sync" all the time. The natural extension is "syncing".
July 29, 2009 at 9:02 AM
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