In my recent column on the expression "rock the mic," I wrote that "the M.C.'s of early hip-hop took the verb [rock] in a new direction, transforming the microphone (abbreviated in rap circles as mic, not mike) into an emblem of stylish display." Laurence Reich e-mails regarding mic: "I must confess I have never seen that word before. I've only seen mike for that usage." Ted Estersohn e-mails: "As far as I can tell mic the short form has always been spelled in audio and engineering circles with a 'c,' like an abbreviation and not like the boy's name."

The respondents on this one fell evenly into two camps: those like Reich who were unfamiliar with the shortening of microphone as mic and those like Estersohn who noted that mic is the prevailing form not just in rap circles but also among recording professionals more generally.

Mike came first, documented from the early days of radio. In the June 1923 issue of The Wireless Age, a photo caption of Samuel L. Rothafel (who was known as Roxy and who was broadcasting concert programs from New York's Capitol Theater) reads, "When you hear Roxy talk about 'Mike' he means the microphone." This suggests the abbreviation arose as a kind of nickname, playfully anthropomorphizing the microphone as Mike. But by 1926, when the pioneering broadcaster Graham McNamee published his book "You're on the Air," mike appeared in lowercase, not as a name. During broadcasts of baseball games, McNamee wrote, "the man at the 'mike' watches each play."

Mic didn't begin appearing in written works for another few decades, first recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary in Al Berkman's 1961 "Singers' Glossary of Show Business Jargon." Berkman offered both mike and mic as possible clippings of microphone. Since then, mic has grown in popularity among those who work with recording equipment. The preference for mic likely stems from the way the abbreviation is rendered on the equipment itself: a microphone might be labeled "Mic No. 1," for instance. And if you're in the market for a microphone preamplifier, you'll find it written as "mic preamp."