This is not the most earth-shaking of controversies, and many readers may wonder what the fuss is all about—if they wonder at all. The issue is important to both editor and readers because of the need for consistency; we’d like to use the same name for the same thing whenever it appears. But which name? In the case of the modulation technique that led to a new oversampling A/D conversion mechanism, we chose sigma-delta. Here’s why.

Ordinarily, when a new concept is named by its creators,...

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