Carol C -

"dots" and "tadpoles" are terms that have been around in US country/western and bluegrass in the US for as long as I've had any awareness of these kinds of music. The "maggots" term dates back to at least the 1920's/30's and has been attributed to a Jazz player who was complaining about the leader's sloppily written scores as "full of maggots," or "maggoty." Sort of like the famous "too many notes" criticism of Mozart.

daylia -

See "arguments a and b." The usage of "DOTS" is as a generic term for "written music" or "stuff on paper." There is no reason to talk about "a dot," or to try to turn it into a technical definition. It's SLANG, used to "fuzz up" the subject to AVOID being technical. (Of course, you're just being cute... and nicely, too.)

One might refer to "that dot" if pointing out a particular mark on a score, but the term can be used for any mark that happens to be the subject at hand, be it "note," "rest," "splat" (#), "flat," or annotated comment such as "#$@^!%!!." As used in the US, by people I know, at least.

John