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<title>UK TeX FAQ -- question label TeXpronounce</title>
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<h3>How should I pronounce &#8220;TeX&#8221;?</h3>
<p/>The &#8216;X&#8217; is &#8220;really&#8221; the Greek letter 
Chi, and is pronounced by
English-speakers either a bit like the &#8216;ch&#8217; in the Scots word &#8216;loch&#8217;
([x] in the IPA) or (at a pinch, if you can&#8217;t do the Greek sound) like
&#8216;k&#8217;.  It definitely is not pronounced &#8216;ks&#8217; (the Greek letter with that
sound doesn&#8217;t look remotely like the Latin alphabet &#8216;X&#8217;).
<p/>This curious usage derives from Knuth&#8217;s explanation in the TeXbook
that the name comes from the Greek word for &#8216;art&#8217; or &#8216;craft&#8217;
(&#8216;<em>techni</em>&#8217;),
which is the root of the English word &#8216;technology&#8217;.  Knuth&#8217;s logo for TeX is
merely the uppercase version of the first three (Greek) letters of the
word, jiggled about a bit; we don&#8217;t use that logo (and logos like it)
in this FAQ (see 
<a href="FAQ-logos.html">Typesetting TeX-related logos</a>).
<p/><p>This question on the Web: <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=TeXpronounce">http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=TeXpronounce</a>
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