An Analysis of Analogues

There's a lot of, uh, chatter out there about whether analog or digital musical recording is superior.

Check that.

There's a lot of chatter out there about whether analogue or digital musical recording is superior.

There is a difference. Certainly between digital and analog. And most certainly between analogue and analog.

Part of the trouble here lies in synonyms. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, analogue is a noun meaning "something having analogy to something else" Pretty straightforward. It comes from the same word from which we get the word analogy. Here comes the trouble: It's acceptable to spell this word as analog as well.

Now, analog, spelled this way, also means "of or pertaining to a mechanism that represents data by measurement of a continuous physical variable, as voltage or pressure." This word, used this way, is an adjective. In this sense, however, it makes no sense to use the "analogue" spelling, the noun. So DON'T DO IT.