I just received the latest edition of Guns Magazine. As usual, Mike "Duke" Venturino authored a couple of articles. One, which is titled, Confessions of a Cast Bullet Nerd! includes several references to bullet "obduration", which had me initially  and wondering if I've been spelling it incorrectly for years. So I quickly pulled up Wikipedia, my favorite on-line encyclopedia. Sur' 'nuf the correct spelling is obturation. You'd think the "Duke" would have this straight by now.

Here's some of what Wikipedia had to say: 

Obturate means to block or obstruct. 
In conventional English usage, obturation refers specifically to the condition of being obstructed or occluded or the action of blocking, stopping, or filling something up. The mechanism by which an undersized soft metal projectile enlarges to fill the barrel is, for hollow-base bullets, due to expansion from gas pressure within the base cavity and, for solid-base bullets, upsetting - the combined shortening and thickening that occurs when a malleable metal object (e.g. a rivet) is struck forcibly at one end. 

Wayne

I was wondering what my wife was calling me!

I'm slightly Dialecktic,  The Duke could be suffering from the same malady. Since he's twice as big as the rest of us, he's probly twice as Dialecktic. So give the big guy a break.

                                                                                    Joe.

I think that when it comes to spelling in a published work an author is innocent until proven guilty. It may very well be the case that MLV submitted a manuscript with the correct spelling and an error or carelessness on the part of an editor using any of the spell checking programs resulted in the malapropism. You'd be amazed at how dumb a competent author can look when seen through the prism of a careless or ignorant editor. Sometimes I think they get the job because they can't write (editors, that is).

I work at a K-8 school... Not a Teacher, just the lowly computer geek.
I'm constantly frustrated by Teachers when they come into the computer lab.... admonishing their students "don't bother trying to spell everything right, just use the spell checker".   I want to punch them...

I posted this in the Lab.  One or two teachers "got it".  Several others remain blissfully ignorant. 
(I didn't write it, I got it off the internet maybe 10 years ago...)


Eye halve a spelling chequer

It came with my pea sea

It plainly marques four my revue

Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word

And weight four it two say

Weather eye am wrong oar write

It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid

It nose bee fore two long

And eye can put the error rite

Its rare lea ever wrong

Eye have run this poem threw it

I am shore your pleased two no

Its letter perfect awl the weigh

My chequer tolled me sew. 



(and you'll notice that with the exception of "Chequer" in some spell checkers, that gets a clean bill of health!).

Paul F.

Quote:


Paul, I sympathize. The reason I'm not teachng today is the same reason many teachers and curricula these days are very much second-rate. Lack of money, lack of enough recompense for the employer to be able to demand excellence from the employee, lack of enough money to hire truly competent administrators instead of the ubiquitous and largely worthless and counterproductive 'educators' in charge of our schools today. As far as I can tell, there are only two kinds of teachers in US secondary education today: ~ 10% are relatively competent and dedicated professionals, but they are hampered by the 90% who are incompetent time-servers.

Sometimes the same can be said for editors and authors. If we the readers don't demand excellence (and reward it properly) then we'll be faced with misspellings, misusages, bad information and outright lies sometimes. I don't know whether Mike intended the misspelling but he needs to be informed that we know it's wrong and that such a simple mistake can't help but cast doubt upon the veracity of his other writings. If he's made aware of his readers' displeasure then he'll probably try to correct the problem wherever it may lie. If he doesn't or can't correct the problem, well then.....

Also, what oldbluelight said.
Regards, Joe

Heck, even if it's spelled correctly, you guys all use too many big words for me to understand!