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A baby wrapped in a blanket — This little guy is just an example of the typo that might find a place in your heart.

The Adopt-a-typo project aims to maintain the quality of Wikipedia by purging it of some of the most common typos. It is a focused effort of the Wikipedia:Typo Team.

Wikipedia is an evolving resource. Even if you completely correct Wikipedia of some typo today, they same typo will creep back in with time. "Typo adoption" is a defense against that by encouraging users to periodically check Wikipedia for particular typos using special searches on their user page.

If you do adopt a typo, please let us know and add it to the I Just Found A Home page.

Searching for typos

The first step in adopting a typo is knowing how to find your typo. One easy way to do this is by putting a link on your user page that searches for the item you want to "adopt". This is easily done via the {{Search link}} template. For example, to search for all occurrences of "privledge" (a misspelling of "privilege") on the English Wikipedia, you could use the following code:

{{search link|privledge|privledge/privledges/privledged|ns0|ns14|ns100}}

This searches for matches to "privledge" (search string shown in red above) but will also find "privledges" and "privledged" because they contain the search string as a substring. The red text is the query string, while the blue text is the link label. The blue text can be whatever you like but it is helpful to note the "additional" misspellings it can find beyond just the search term. The "ns0", "ns14", and "ns100" specify the namespaces (main, category, and portal, respectively) in which you would like to perform the search (see Wikipedia:Namespace for the other code numbers). You can should customize your search for only those namespaces you want. Keep in mind, however, that not all parts of Wikipedia should have spelling mistakes fixed. See TYPO:DONTFIX.

Here is an example of how the above code is rendered: privledge/privledges/privledged.

Adopting a typo

All you have to do to "adopt" a typo is put some links that search for the typo you want to adopt somewhere on your user page and occasionally fix them. The frequency of care that you give to your adopted typo is completely up to you. Some typos naturally require more attention than others. Adopting a typo suggests that you intend to provide your typo some attention but — unlike a real baby — you don't have to worry about negligence and nobody will get mad at you if you are a bad parent.

If you have adopted a typo, you are entitled to display one of these userboxes. To show this userbox just type {{adopt-a-typo}}

This user has adopted a typo
to nurture.

If you wish to give your gender, you can use {{adopt-a-typo|male}} or {{adopt-a-typo|female}} to produce

This user has adopted a typo
as his very own.

This user has adopted a typo
as her very own.

respectively. Clicking "adopted" will bring you back here, while clicking "his/her very own" will create a subpage for you entitled "My Typos". From then on, clicking "his/her very own" will bring you back to that subpage. "To nurture" works the same way "his/her very own" did.

You can adopt as many typos as you like. Please note that a given word has an infinite number of possible misspellings. Of course, only a handful occur in real writing. The point is that a given word may need multiple different typos to be adopted.

Multiple users may adopt the same typo. Some typos require extra care because they are so common and others get abandoned by their adopted parents. If you adopt a typo that has already been adopted, if you prefer, you can think of yourself as a Typo Nanny. Parents requesting nanny assistance can be found here.

Nursery

This section is intended to provide links to subpages that contain large collections of related typos that are common enough to require communal help.

MOS:APPENDIX headings

Adopt-a-typo Promo

A promotional post for Adopt-a-typo can be used by adding the template {{aatt}}. It can be found for modification under Template:Adopt-a-typo Talk. If you see someone who seems the type to adopt a typo, please post it to their talk page.

Lists of common misspellings

Need help to decide what typo to adopt? Finding the perfect little typo can be difficult. These links might help you decide upon the perfect typo for you.

@@ Line 20: / Line 20: @@
 All you have to do to "adopt" a typo is put some links that search for the typo you want to adopt somewhere on your user page and occasionally fix them. The frequency of care that you give to your adopted typo is completely up to you. Some typos naturally require more attention than others. Adopting a typo suggests that you intend to provide your typo some attention but &mdash; unlike a real baby &mdash; you don't have to worry about negligence and nobody will get mad at you if you are a bad parent.
-If you have adopted a typo, you are entitled to display one of these userboxes, each of which automatically adds you to the [[:Category:Wikipedians Who Have Adopted A Typo]]. If you would prefer not to show a userbox, but would still like to be listed in this category, you may add <nowiki>[[Category:Wikipedians Who Have Adopted Typos]]</nowiki> any place on your user page. To show this userbox just type <nowiki>{{adopt-a-typo}}</nowiki>:
+If you have adopted a typo, you are entitled to display one of these userboxes. To show this userbox just type <nowiki>{{adopt-a-typo}}</nowiki>
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