A few months ago, I was having a conversation with my brother-in-law. Here is a simplified version of it:
Bill: Have you tried out Dishonored?
Me: What’s that?
Bill: A video game.
Me: No. What kind of game is it?
Bill: First person CCC.
Me: CCC?
Bill: Yeah. Close Quarters Combat.
Me: Shouldn’t that be CQC?
Bill: In the Army the word quarter is spelled with a “c”. Only civilians who don’t know what they are talking about abbreviate close quarters combat as CQC.
At that point he explained to me that the U.S. Treasury Department owned the word “quarter” therefore the U.S. military has to spell quarter as cuarter. I don’t believe he was joking with me. I’ve known him for years and this isn’t his type of humor.
Even though Bill was in the Army for eight years, I’m very skeptical of his claim. My suspicion is he was embarrassed about his misspelling and decided to make up something to hide his embarrassment. I posted on some websites (yahooanswers.com, allexperts.com) but I’ve been unable to find a satisfactory answer. Can someone help me out? Preferably somebody with military experience?
Note: I know how to spell “quarter”. My question is does the U.S. Army spell “quarter” differently.
I thought it was ridiculous too. Bill has been known to blatantly lie when someone shows him up. I would have ignored and forgotten about it but he basically called me a dumb civilian. Plus, it sounded so dumb that it just might be true. In this case, it’s just false (and dumb).
The US military spells the word “quarter” the same as everyone else, and uses the first “Q” in other abbreviations such as BOQ (Bachelor Officer Quarters).
This is an interesting strategy to cover up a simple mistake that’s really not that embarrassing in the first place. It would have been forgotten in a matter of minutes. The telling of a total lie, complete with absurd claim that the treasury owns the common word “quarter,” now that’s a way bigger deal…and I’d remember that for a long time. Dude must HATE to be wrong…see what happens when you call him on this one!
A little searching shows both Close Quarters Battle and Close Quarters Combat being used…maybe they switched terms at some point?
Interestingly, at one time, the US Army did spell “align” differently.
I don’t know if they still do so, but years ago, I worked for a company that made military radios. We printed two versions of the manuals – one for the Air Force, Navy, and Marines, and a separate version just for the Army. The ONLY reason for the army version being separate was their insistence on spelling the word “align” a-l-i-n-e…as in “aline the arrows in these two drawings to match up the schematics.”
I was told (no idea if it’s true) that the reasoning was that Army brass decided the average recruit would not be able to understand the apparently exotic spelling of “align.” Personally, I don’t see how it’s any more odd than the spelling of “schematic,” which was used in some of the same sentences, and I thought it was the dumbest thing in the world.
This is not something a friend of a friend told me – I was directed to print the manuals myself. Unbelievable.
I wonder if the friend temporarily confused the term with “CC” , which means Close Combat, and is the acronym more commonly used in the wargaming community compared to CQC, at least in the fantasy/sci fi realm.
At no point did I actually believe him. He was just so sincere and condescending in his tone that I couldn’t help but give him a very small benefit of doubt. I didn’t believe he would go to such lengths to hide a simple spelling mistake.
The US Treasury also owns the word “Penny” and has sued JC Pennys several times because of it.
They have also been sued by the Christian Coalition because they apparently own the rights to J.C.
