Some people are sticklers for using the correct terminology.

It's not being a stickler as they are fundamentally different devices.  Like the difference between wheels and tires.

Although the definitions in the graphic aren't quite accurate.  A clip can be more than a loading aid.  Many older bolt guns, and more famously the M1 Garand, require the clip in order to function as a repeating arm.  Without a clip, they are reduced to single-shot arms.

Also, every repeating arm has a magazine.  The question is whether the magazine is detachable or not.  Again, using the M1 Garand as an example, it has a fixed box magazine which is fed by a clip.  A magazine is the portion of the gun that holds ammunition and houses the follower.

One does have to recognize the importance of brevity, though.  In an emergency, yelling "Throw me the clips" saves half-a-second over "Throw me the magazines."  I really can't imagine front-line soldiers bothering to differentiate between the terms.

^ An apt analogy, Tom_G:  wheel versus tire.

But, after sixty years of not differentiating between clip and magzine,  I guess I can be forgiven for sometimes using "clip," even though, yes, there is a technical difference --which I recognize.

Y'know, though, it wasn't even a year ago that I saw an ad from a major gun-related seller that used the term clip in an ad in the "American Rifleman."  So the two are still mixed up in common parlance.  And common parlance, for the most part, defines  word usage.  Like the words "loan" and "lend." Just about everybody mixes those up, and I expect future dictionaries to reflect this.

I appreciate the clip/magazine difference and will use the two terms correctly, but I am moderately amused when folks get all frothy-mouthed about it.  For a century or so, nobody seemd to care, and it seems like only the least couple of decades has it been a sore spot with some.

I guess somebody's Drill Instructor really pounded it into somebody's head and that person came away from the experience with a religious fervor about it or something.  And that person spread the message to the rest of the gun community.

Sorta like calling a rifle a gun.  Eeek!

Incidentally, didn't some models of the Italian Carcano need the clip for them to function as a repeater?  My memory fades on that one.

Terry, 230RN

A living language is a tricky thing.  Denotative meanings do shift in response to parlance.  And people in advertising value sales over correctness, saturating people's consciousness in an attempt to hegemonize customers. 

I believe in trying to hold the line, but since I'm in education, it's personal.  I have college upperclassmen who can't differentiate between common homonyms.  Their, there, and they're are interchangeable, as are then and than, its and it's, your and you're, guerrilla and gorilla (one of my favorites), and the list goes on.

Oh, and as a gentle poke as some of my gun buddies, the things you use instead of money are scrip, not script. 

I blame spell check.  It only looks for spelling errors, not word choice errors. 

As guns with clips disappear from the world, the need (if there is in fact a need) to have separate terms will disappear.  Is disappearing.  But I am stubborn, and I will hold the line until such time as the people who publish English grammar books and English dictionaries decide to step in and make a change. 

I will hold the line.

"A living language is a tricky thing."

Your write, of coarse.  Homonyms and homophones have been my own black bears and I've posted (not here) several times on that subject.  Breech and breach great on me a little, for example.

But I'm not really that much of a stickler on that kind of stuff.  A couple of the smartest people I know are pretty bad spellers.  "Love me, love my spelling," as one of them said once.   

I picked up a couple of hints on that over the years and I wish I could remember them all at once, but they seem to bubble to the surface of this wrinkled old cortex only when needed.

There is "a rat" in sepARATe, for one example which sticks in mind right now.

And "gauge" is spelled alphabetically.  That is, "a" comes before "u" in the vowel sequence a, e, i, o, u.  ('Course, there's alway the alternative, "gage," but if you wrote "12-gage shotgun" on a gun board, it would be a stumbling point in the readability.)

I myself will wander a bit from the proper King's English for the sake of readability on occasion.  I figure if it's an effort for me to write it out correctly, it's an effort for folks to read it, too, sometimes.  Convoluted construction can create confusion. So I'll sometimes deliberately drop down to simpler tenses on that account.  And also always avoid annoying alliteration.

Oh.

And then there's "its."  Always confusing because its is its own possessive form, without one uh them apostophes.

Spelling?  Heh.  So how's the blue-water ghotiing* out their in Havai?

Terry, 230RN

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*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti

That's funny, I was told about Ghoti earlier in life and thought it was something no one else knew about

I'm do loves fresh ghoti!  Strait ought of the chanel and unto my plait!  Mine favorites thing for eat wile cleaning magazines!

(See, I can for stay the topic!)

Bump for the new gun owners

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.

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.

this post made my head hurt

You want to see English get butchered, go look at some Craigslist ads from Hawaii. Doesn't get more real then that.

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.

 

You want to see English get butchered, go look at some Craigslist ads from Hawaii. Doesn't get more real then that.

 It drives me nuts when people mix up sell with sale.  For example, I have a tv for sell...  I need to sale my gun today. Come on man.

Oh, and as a gentle poke as some of my gun buddies, the things you use instead of money are scrip, not script. 

THANK YOU!  This drives me batty; I was at a carnival not too long ago and the actual booth selling the damn things was labeled a "Script Booth".  SMDH. 

"fo' sell" is pidgin

i don't think" to sale" is

It drives me nuts when people mix up sell with sale.  For example, I have a tv for sell...  I need to sale my gun today. Come on man.

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.

Eye yam sew steeling tis!

I was told by someone that if somebody came up to them and started talking about guns and mentions the word clip (referring to a magazine) he would avoid the conversation because that person don't know much about guns if he uses the word "clips" and refers the word to  a magazine.   

I was told by someone that if somebody came up to them and started talking about guns and mentions the word clip (referring to a magazine) he would avoid the conversation because that person don't know much about guns if he uses the word "clips" and refers the word to  a magazine.   

Im pretty sure almost everyone was once guilty of this, though now they know better. I exhumed this post to inform new people in the scene and to spare them from looking like ignorant people in gun shops and conversation with fellow enthusiast. 

I was told by someone that if somebody came up to them and started talking about guns and mentions the word clip (referring to a magazine) he would avoid the conversation because that person don't know much about guns if he uses the word "clips" and refers the word to  a magazine.   

Might have been me .  I use it as a gauge to judge their relative familiarization with firearms.   When "clips" are followed by "assault weapons" or, You know I support the Second Amendment, but..... Yeah we don't have much to discuss.

Moreover, it's a detrimental term for our cause.  If you are a gun owner, and you use the term, you are doing a disservice to our fight. 

One does have to recognize the importance of brevity, though.  In an emergency, yelling "Throw me the clips" saves half-a-second over "Throw me the magazines."  I really can't imagine front-line soldiers bothering to differentiate between the terms.

Why say either, "NEED MAGS" seems to be a more logically consistent term.  Honestly, I've never heard my military friends on the range say clip.  Grant it, the Navy doesn't shoot as often as infantry or anything :p but just saying.