One of the things we looked forward to most when setting up PubhD was the interesting and surprising questions that people would ask our speakers. It’s why the Q&A is twice as long as the talk.
However, we didn’t expect to be asked “How do you say PubhD?” We like our puns and thought the pun was obvious.
It didn’t occur to us that some people are very literal and would try to actually read it. Which comes out as “Pub-hud”, or if you’re Irish “Puvud”, which makes no sense. No wonder people were asking us how to pronounce it!
This simple typo from Simon Singh will help us explain…
Even the scourge of Chiropractors can get confused by how you say PubhD
PubhD is a word merge or werge (if you want to be all QI about it, it’s a portmanteau). PubhD werges Pub and PhD to make. Pub…hD. You could also try thinking about it if the Pub was in High Definition. Pub HD. (But it’s definitely not written as PubHD. It’s definitely written PubhD.)
Regardless of how you say it, PubhD really is excellent and lots of fun, so if you’re lucky enough to have one in your town pop along. If not, start one! There is some very simple advice for creating you’re own PubhD here: https://pubhd.wordpress.com/2013/12/10/how-to-set-up-a-pubhd-and-get-some-speakers/
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