I mentioned nailing at the joists locations because there are so many different subfloors and underlayment systems out there. It wouldn't be necessary with a 3/4" plywood suybfloor and a 1/2" plywood underlayment, or a myriad of other, thicker wood subfloor and underlayments. But the 5/8" subflooring over joists 16" oc is the MINIMUM NOFMA accepts and for hand nailing, it is better to attempt to tag the joists, especially when face nailing. Since a #6 is 2" and a #8 is 2.25", both will go into the joist when driving them straight down. And hold better in the short and long term. As far as which nails are best, true flooring nails or cut nails hold the best but can be difficult to find. Casing's greater diameter will most definitely allow for driving without drilling but one does risk splitting near end butts. When making recommendations, I always consider who I'm speaking to. In this case, a novice DIYer. Sending him on a journey looking spiral shanked flooring nails would probably result in failure so I took the simplest route.
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