What should we use to abbreviate sculptured primitive?

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Votes

Submitted by Domino Marama on 3 October, 2009 - 11:25

sculptie

46% (32 votes)

sculpty

54% (38 votes)

Total votes: 70

Comments

Submitted by gaia.clary on 9 October, 2009 - 00:31.

from google by number of hits:

sculpty -> 34200 Hits -> 38 %

sculptie -> 58200 Hits -> 62 %

I have no idea how relevant that is

Submitted by Manny on 9 October, 2009 - 01:33.

I actually got this results from google:

Sculpty: 115.000 results | "sculpty": 58.100 results

Sculptie: 34.200 results | "sculptie": 34.000 results

Are you sure your Hits are not upside down?

Submitted by gaia.clary on 31 October, 2009 - 10:21.

you are right i messed up the numbers.

Submitted by Domino Marama on 9 October, 2009 - 10:20.

Don't forget to filter "Sculpty modelling clay" out of those results. I'm not sure if those are a typo for sculpey modelling clay or if there actually is a brand called Sculpty.

Submitted by Manny on 4 October, 2009 - 13:01.

sculpty is faster to type, that was the main aspect of my vote. And the change from singular to plural makes more sense: sculpty == sculpties.

Submitted by Domino Marama on 4 October, 2009 - 12:56.

With 11 votes I'd have expected things to be closer. I guessed before posting the poll that about 55% would prefer sculptie and 45% would prefer sculpty. So 64% for sculptie is a bit more than I thought. I voted for sculptie for a couple of reasons

It seems easier to read. Something about sculpty causes me to pause when reading it, where I just flow past sculptie without a problem.
It seems more correct. With both -ie and -y being used for the same purposes I tried to find out why each was used in particular cases. It's an etymological mystery though and I couldn't find a clear answer. However -ie as a suffix seems to be exclusively used for this sort of colloquial term of endearment, where -y isn't so clear cut - baggy and baggie for example show a preference for -ie as the colloquialism.

Submitted by Domino Marama on 9 October, 2009 - 10:53.

Hey everyone, you don't have to choose your vote to make my guess right

Unless there's something like 70% on way or the other, my advice will be that both are right. In that case, as things are read more than written, I'll stick with sculptie in text. I've already started using sculpty on image descriptions and things like that to help search engines out