yeah it does.

i got one of those usb sticks with 2 gig on it, the thing is i find its quicker to format the stick instead of deleting everything off it.

is it bad for the stick that i format it 3 or 4 times per week or will it shorten its lifespan or anything?

If you do a quick format it's probably better for the life than deleting all the files. Not that it should really matter since it'll still last many, many years.

Deleting all the files is a lot of write operations, quick formatting just nukes the filesystem table or somesuch and doesn't actually touch the data.

ok ill quick format from now on, before i used to do a regular format.

Doing a regular format will certainly shorten the life of the stick; it's life is measured in writes, afterall. But you still won't notice a difference, it will last so long. Doing a quick format will save you time, though. Save you a lot of time.

ill try a quick format next time but i dunno if it will save a noticable amount of time because a regular format is done in about 10 seconds

If I remember correctly, quick format is only 'quick' because it does not check for damaged sectors.

quick format wipes the mft
regular format writes 0s to the full disk