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How would people pronounce "0day" in a way where the expression "an 0day" would flow naturally? I read it as "an zero day", and that feels wrong.
by itsnotlupus 10y ago
How would people pronounce "0day" in a way where the expression "an 0day" would flow naturally?
I read it as "an zero day", and that feels wrong.
- alexeldeib 10y agoMy best guess was "oh-day" but I agree with you that this sounds very uncomfortable.
- tetrep 10y agoWhen you say it frequently enough, you'll appreciate the one less syllable over "zero." edit: I even think it's more natural. "Zero day" are two real words that could be a sentence fragment, "oh-day" feels like a new word. Saying "that's a zero day" feels like an incorrect sentence to me (uncanny valley), whereas "that's an oh-day" only sounds weird if you don't accept "oh-day" as a word. To me, "oh-day" is similar to most slang, where it feels natural to say/hear even when you don't know what it means.
- ianai 10y ago"An ought day" would work.
- logfromblammo 10y agoWhich would more correctly be "a naught-day" anyway. "Aught" and "ought" are abbreviated, rebracketed forms of "naught" and "nought", respectively. But etymologically, their strict meanings may be interpreted as anything or everything. They are thus in the rare category of auto-antonyms or contronyms. As such, I would only use them to give elven advice (that is, intentionally ambiguous advice). In the context of software vulnerabilities, an aught-day would either be a 0-day, or one with an indeterminate nonzero number of days lead time to patch. So, maybe something the vendor knows about, but it would take rare expertise crossed with obscure motive to exploit?
- saganus 10y agoWhat about saying "a 0day" which I read as "a zero day <attack>". This same thing happens with "MVP" I think. "An MVP" sounds good, but "An Minimal Viable Product" doesn't. So I use a/an depending on whether using the abbreviation or not, but I have no idea if there's a rule for this or not.
- jdmichal 10y agoThat's because "an MVP" is "an em-pee-vee". It sounds natural because the "an" is preceding a vowel sound. That does not happen in "an 0-day".
- maket 10y agoAs far as I'm aware, the rule is if the first syllable starts with a vowel, phonetically. In your example "MVP", the first syllable starts with an "em", so a vowel. In "Minimal Viable Product" the first syllable starts with the consonant sound. I had a major pain with this rule when dealing with auto-generation of some API documentation. It ended up just being an issue of detecting/guessing if the text was an abbreviation or some weird CamelCase thing.
- saganus 10y agoYeah, that's the way I've always done it because otherwise it sounds wrong. I guess someone taught me the rule and I don't remember or something.
- daveloyall 10y agoThis! TIL some people pronounce 0 as "oh" and some people pronounce it as "zero". Take this fact with you as you read all the other comments about pronunciation on this page. ...See? :)
- daveloyall 10y agoor "ought", maybe?
- qbrass 10y agoYou should listen to people read phone numbers. "One oh four, zero one eighty"
- Taek 10y agoApparently it's not that common but I'm used to hearing it pronounced 'oh-day'. Zero is sort of an annoying sound to make if you are having a longer discussion where the word comes up frequently. 'oday' is really easy to say though.
- JoshTriplett 10y agoI've heard multiple security professionals use the pronunciation "oh-day".
- alanh 10y agoI asked my infosec friend today, and he said that “zero day” and “oh day” are interchangeable pronunciations.
- scarybeast 10y agoI more often say "oh-day", and less often, "zero day". This could be a generational thing. "oh-day" is preferred by many of the hackers I talk to who have been in the industry for a while.