Wikipedia talk:Typo Team/Archive 1

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Queries

By the way, I have a page with the queries I have run on old dumps if anyone is interested: User:Dori/Queries. Cross out or delete any that you look at and fix or find out that are not a problem anymore. Dori 04:02, Nov 23, 2003 (UTC)

"Membership"

How would I go about joining the typo department? Can anyone just sign up for it? What kind of work does it entail? Muriel noticed I do a lot of cleaning up already a while ago and suggested I get involved. Sarge Baldy 09:37, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC)

It's perfectly informal. The typo page merely serves to coordinate activities. Yes, you can just sign up. --Naddy 22:04, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

So would I just edit the list of members and add mine in? Teapot 05:35, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Graham87 06:04, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Teapot 23:15, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Check / Recheck

Umm, you're going to have to do this all over again in a while to catch new typos, yes? Not that it's not worth doing it the first time, of course, but I was just stuck by the listing of typos that had been checked. Noel 17:45, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I just search this page before doing a check, if it's more than a week or two since it's been done I'll check again, because that gives google time to re-cache pages so you're not chasing you're own tail. Richard cocks 18:13, Mar 12, 2004 (UTC)

Work completed

Hi, I just used google to search for "feautres" I've corrected all the articles that I found is there a place I can add this word so that others can check upon it as well?--Drawde83 21:54, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

You add it at the end of the "work completed" heading, with the approximate number in brackets, and sign your name with "~~~~". Graham 08:51, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Redrwan awards

Dear Members of the Typo Team, tired of correcting typos and not having fun with it? Add the funniest typos to the Redrwan awards. (Kingturtle created this to award me for my silliest typo ever and gave me the penitence of three random page copyedits.) Cheers all, Muriel 09:59, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

This is a very cool idea :) If I bump into something truly incredible I'll have to be sure to make a nomination. Sarge Baldy 03:18, Mar 18, 2004 (UTC)

Wikitravel Misspellings

The spell checker mentioned seems Ameri-biased. Perfectly good British spellings are considered misspellings (e.g. centre, colour). Not very globally friendly. Brooklyn Nellie (Nricardo) 03:46, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)

Wikitravel prefers American spellings because "the founders of Wikitravel are Americans" and they want to be consistent. Wikipedia was initiated by an American and our policy seems much more fine-tuned. Maybe Wikitravel's policy will someday change. Could Wikitravel's spellchecker be perhaps modified to suit our needs? Chris Roy 04:05, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Googling for typos

Howdy from a wikinewbie. I was wondering if you guys made use of google when hunting for misspellings? Granted, google is normally a week or so out of date, but queries on words from Wikipedia:List_of_common_misspellings such as:

pick out nasties with a reasonably small amount of noise. TB 18:24, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I use google, but didn't think to use the intitle: bit, thank you very much for that, it'll make finding them a lot quicker. Richard cocks

Hey, the "intitle:" part removes the problem with talk pages in the results that has been annoying us! Thanks, TB. Chris Roy 05:03, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

Here is another one for your consideration, with an -inurl in addition to some more -intitles:
accross site:en.wikipedia.org -intitle:"user" -intitle:"talk" -intitle:"wikiproject" -intitle:"peer review" -intitle:"deletion" -inurl:"wiki/Wikipedia:"
--Lph 13:09, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Misspellings in links

Hi guys. I've recently been fiddling about with an offline copy of the database and was looking at ways of testing whether links to articles which do not exist can be 'converted' into links to articles that do exist by testing for common spelling errors. For example, if I detect an article that has a link to an article that doesn't exist - say Jeff Freisen. I might try removing the repeated f and checking if Jef Freisen exists or transposing the 'e' and the 'i' and checking if Jeff Friesen exists (the right thing to do in this case).

There's a preliminary sample of the sort of things the script picks out at User:Topbanana/Reports/This page contains a link that might be misspelled. Being more proficient with databases than spelling, I was hoping to draw upon the talents of the typo team to suggest common perturbations of words that it would be useful to test for. All feedback very welcome indeed. - TB 11:01, Jun 3, 2004 (UTC)

I don't know if it is technically a typo, but some people just forget to press the spacebar after a comma, semicolon or full stop, or they don't know that they should. These are just common examples, a space might be required yet missing between any letter and punctuation mark. Does anybody know of any way to check for such an error? The only search engines I know can only seem to be able to search for full words, and that doesn't help me in any way. Is there any search engine that allows you to search for groups of characters? If someone somewhere typed something like "old,however", you would have to guess what mistake he made to find it. But if you could just search for ",h", you could find this mistake and others that contain the character group. VoX, 23:32, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

This sort of search is easy enough to do directly agains a copy of the Wikipedia database. Have a look at the list available here. If this is a useful janitorial tool, I'll generate a fuller, more intelligent report about thissort of thing. - TB 01:16, Jun 5, 2004 (UTC)

spellchecking Special:Randompage

I've just put together a simple script which I've been running by hand from my Linux machine (should work on any unix-like system) to pull Special:Randompage and spell check it. Lots of false positives for words which are valid but not in my dictionary, but I have found and fixed more than a few legit errors already. 

#!/bin/sh

lynx -nolist -dump http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Randompage > /tmp/wiki.$$
TITLE=`head -4 /tmp/wiki.$$ | tail -1`
URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/`echo $TITLE | sed 's/ /_/g'`"
echo "Article: $TITLE"
echo "URL: $URL"
echo "Checking spelling: "
aspell --add-extra-dicts british -l < /tmp/wiki.$$ 2>/dev/null | grep -v Wiki
rm /tmp/wiki.$$

PxT 19:44, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Commonly mis-spelled words report

Guys - I've finally gotten around to writing a report that checks for mis-spelled words. There's a sample at User:Topbanana/Reports/This article may contain a mis-spelled word (geenrated from the 20th June database dump). If any of you have a moment or two to try it out and give feedback I'd be most grateful. Cheers. - TB 17:03, Jun 22, 2004 (UTC)

Did you add "mis-spelled" to your list? :) --BillFlis 13:03, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Arrrgh

Mediawiki's built-in spellchecker [1]was working for a couple of hours but isn't anymore. I'm sad now. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:44, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

OUP report

Oxford University Press has published a report of the most common misspellings, which (in these days of spellcheckers) seem mostly to be cases where two similarly spelt words are interchanged. The worst offender is "diffuse" (as in "gases diffuse") and "defuse" (as in "defuse the situation"). Ironically, all the diffuses/defuses in Wikipedia seem to be correct, but there are a few more of their findings listed on guardian.co.uk.

Thanks for this, this will be invaluable in detecting common typos.--Knucmo2 18:38, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Capitalization

"Prefecture" should be capitalized when it's part of a proper noun. (Also noted at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles).) I ran a scan on the 26 Nov 2004 database dump, and detected a number of errors. Matches are shown with an excerpt from the article in question. -- Beland 05:10, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

(list removed)

So after I ran my scan, I discovered I was working off an incomplete database. I also noticed that there were some other words that cause similar problems. So I ran a more sophisticated scan on "city", "county", "prefecture", "province", "subprefecture", "state", and "district". It had to be a little more intelligent because there are tens of thousands of potential problems, and a high false positive rate would waste a lot of time. In any case, I've posted a dump to Wikipedia:Typo/capitalization for people to work on. If you notice any other common mistakes that might benefit from an automated scan, it might be a good idea to post your observation to Wikipedia:Bot requests. -- Beland 05:43, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

(The capitalization list is now defunct. -- Beland 04:12, 9 August 2005 (UTC))

comming -> coming?

What queries should I run?

I have the 2005-02-09 database dump (direct download at [2]) and I wouldn't mind running some queries/searches. What do I do? r3m0t 17:33, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

ie eg

I see a good number of articles which have the (to me) extremely grating use of "ie" or "eg" where the proper spelling in my idiolect would be "i.e." or "e.g." and would always be followed by a comma. Is this just an error or is there a style which favors leaving out the periods from Latin abbreviations? 18.26.0.18 07:05, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Agreed - I fix these as I come across them. Dave.Dunford 11:57, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I fix these as well. Most print usage I see of thses isn't italicized (since they really have been assimilated into English). Would it be sensable to have a semi-automatic bot (or even just a search) that dragged up all usage that weren't "i.e.," or "e.g.,"? —BenFrantzDale 18:42, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

More irritating to me is people who use ie. when they mean eg. and vice versa. (Personally, I write them with just one dot but I recognise most would disagree.) -- RHaworth 07:13, 2005 Feb 18 (UTC)

I disagree. They really are abbreviations; they diserve two periods. (I have to wonder, what are you doing commenting on Wikipedia_talk:Typo but yet not being anal about the spelling of these? ;-) ) —BenFrantzDale 18:42, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
Personal feeling: ie. and eg. look fine to me, regardless of whether they're technically correct. Yes, I know they're id est, and exemplum gratia (sp?), but society has moved a LONG way from the time when they actually reminded the user of a meaningful latin phrase. Insisting on the dots (i.e. "e.g.") is just...anal and a waste of space, really. [Credibility grab: I've studied both latin and linguistics] --Stevage 03:06, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
If it's anal & a waste of space to put a full stop where it belongs, why bother about punctuation at all? As for me, I'd rather see these spelt out in English anyway. Jimp 06:53, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
British usage tends to drop the punctuation in these situations; see for example, usage in The Economist. --Xwu 14:44, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Signing up?

How does one go about signing up if they are interested in joining this department? (Typos are practically all I edit.)

Just add your name to the list and keep up correcting the tyops typos. - Marcika 23:02, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

alternate DNS root?

should alternate be changed in the above case? I believe not as it is part of the technological term, started incorrectly. Ytgy111 08:03, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Masterful

  • masterful. Masterful means 'domineering, imperious'. It is very frequently (perhaps nearly always) used in newspapers when masterly, meaning 'designed as if by a master, extremely skillful' is intended. Johnrayjr 07:54, 8 July 2005 (UTC)
    • That's a terrible definition of "Masterful". How did it come to be that way? --Locarno 15:27, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

According to www.m-w.com:

mas·ter·ful
1 a : inclined and usually competent to play the master b : suggestive of a domineering nature
2 : having or reflecting the power and skill of a master
.
.
.

Sense 2 of masterful, which is slightly older than the sense of masterly intended to replace it, has continued in reputable use all along; it cannot rationally be called an error.

It looks like both meanings are perfectly acceptable. Ken6en 10:03, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

American Heritage has a useful note on this very subject [3]. Particularly in a dynamic wikipedia, I certainly wouldn't view this "correction" as a high priority, though being married to a former newspaper copyeditor I fully understand grammatical pet peeves. -Jcbarr 21:57, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Structure of these pages

Hi. I've just learned of the existence of this page, and will now become a regular visitor. One thing that immediately struck me is that there is a lot of debate on the Typo page (eg. "considered"). Wouldn't it be better if all debate occurred on this Talk page, and the Typo page show only what has been agreed (subject to change of course), like every other subject on Wikipedia? The bulleted list of typos at the bottom of the Typo page needs to be restructured into alpha order to make it more helpful. Cheers JackofOz 03:18, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Bot?

Is it possible for a bot to fix the typos? It would seem like just a simple search and replace. I don't know. It just seems really tedious doing it manually. Gflores Talk 07:15, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Reason for reverting

I disagree with this edit and I want to revert it. Any comments? I don't see the problem with the question that was deleted. Also, is there a revert button somewhere or do I gave to cut and paste? -Barry- 03:36, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

It is the removal of someone's own comments that got no response. I think it's borderline acceptable on a talk page, but I don't feel strongly enough about it to revert it myself. For details on reverting (which can't be followed on this page because comments have been made!), see wikipedia:revert. Graham/pianoman87 talk 05:10, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks, I didn't notice that the author reverted his own comment. That's fine with me. -Barry- 05:40, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

cleanup of main page?

Do you guys mind if I do some clean-up on the Typo page, it seems cluttered and there's ancient information about a spell-checker and other stuff that can be organized. Gflores Talk 03:32, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind it, as there is some very old information on there. Graham/pianoman87 talk 06:16, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
Yes please, that would be good. CarolGray 10:33, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Done. I put some of the discussion here. If there's something I did wrong, just tell me about it and I'll fix it, or feel free to make any changes. Gflores Talk 18:37, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Incorrect uses

  • alternate when meaning alternative (note that there's a proper usage for alternate that may not need altering) --postglock 05:16, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
  • masterful. Masterful means 'domineering, imperious'. It is very frequently (perhaps nearly always) used in newspapers when masterly, meaning 'designed as if by a master, extremely skillful' is intended. I have corrected only one or two wikipedia pages, but watch out!
  • lead instead of led as the past participle or past tense of the verb to lead. The past participle cases shouldn't be too hard to find: has/have/having/was/were/been lead (although some of these are correct, as they refer to the metal or whatever). The past tense cases are generally harder to find, but include he/she/'it lead. --Zundark 19:48, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
  • All 16 applicable for "been lead" -> "been led" that google shows have been corrected. --MattWright (talk) 10:18, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
  • "with with" - I've done 20 but there are plenty more to go. Martpol 11:37, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
    • We just need to wait for Google to catch up with the changes (most should be fixed now). --Wdyoung 16:48, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
    • Just went through and fixed some more. ITOD 22:23, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
  • This Google search gives 577 hits in the article name space for versions of the typo "accomodate/accomodation". AxelBoldt 23:18, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
    • We just need to wait for Google to catch up with the changes (most should be fixed now). --Wdyoung 16:48, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Staring/starring and stared/starred. I've noticed a lot of articles using the single-R form when they should be using the double-R. Searching for the single-R form can also reveal cases where starting and started was meant instead. I've corrected a bunch of these. --Pelago 14:32, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

"Considered to be"

This is the most common mistake I've run into. According to google, there are 201,000 pages that use this phrase on English Wikipedia, and it is never correct. They should all be switched to "consider/considered" (or less often, "consider/considered as"). The term "considered" means "believed to be", so one is effectively saying "believed to be to be". — BRIAN0918 • 2005-10-22 20:19

As mentioned there are 203,000 (as of October 25th) google results. I corrected a number of them at an average rate of 1 every 15 seconds. A simple calculation indicates that correcting 203,000 entries would take 846 hours of work. That's not even considering the rate at which the error is continually made. A simple script for this particular task could correct every mistake in a matter of seconds. I'll look into this further, but I'm still quite new to 'wiki' --p6 15:48, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Are you sure this is the meaning? I don't know really, but my included Oxford American Dictionary on my computer gives the example of "considered to be" under the "consider" entry. -- postglock 09:14, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm not extremely knowledgeable of all English language grammar rules, but it's quite evident that in any use of "considered to be", "to be" is redundant. As an example, "What is considered to be just in western..." retains full meaning when written as "What is considered just in western...". At any rate, the more I think about it, the more it's moot. There are 45.5 million results on a google search for "considered to be", so it's not something that can be fixed. Much as I may hate to admit it, this battle over 'proper English', isn't worth fighting. --p6 11:47, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm all for fighting losing battles, but in this case I'm just not sure that redundant = incorrect. I'm also not sure that "considered" is identical to "believed to be" syntactically. For example modifying the (possibly extraneous) "to be" – "he was considered to have been a great man" doesn't work replacing with "believed to be to have been," and obviously the "to have been" in the original sentence is significant. -- postglock 05:32, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
In my experience, "considered as" is almost always wrong. Tweeq 04:37, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
While I realize asking someone to prove the opposite is the easy way out, I haven't found one instance where 'considered' ever needed to be 'considered to be', to be syntactically or grammatically correct. p6 08:39, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
I suspect intuitively that you're probably right, but I'm still not totally convinced that this means the usage is unequivocally incorrect either. - postglock 13:46, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
Why are you willing to accept "considered to be" but not "believed to be to be". They are exactly the same. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-21 14:25

It seems that "considered to be" is OK. According to the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary:

consider (OPINION)
verb [T often + object + (to be) + noun or adjective]
to believe someone or something to be, or think of them as:
He is currently considered (to be) the best British athlete.

We don't consider her suitable for the job.

Example sentences in the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary:

Henry Moore is considered to be the father of modern British sculpture.
Liquid crystals are considered to be intermediate between liquid and solid.

and several other examples like it...Ken6en 07:44, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Fwiw, I would find these examples very ugly without the 'to be': Henry Moore is considered the father of modern British sculpture. If I saw that, I would correct it! I don't think that relying on analogy or syntactic substitution to prove ungrammaticalness is sound. I could just as easily demonstrate that "You would come, wouldn't you?" is ungrammatical because "You would come, would not you?" is ungrammatical.
OTOH, "considered to be" is a weasel word. --Stevage 20:44, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

"Better then"

I spent about 30 minutes going through the first 100 Google results for the phrase "better then" on this website and changing it where appropriate to "better than" being careful not to change things like "If it's better then celebrate." There were a few hundred more. Then there's "more then" and all the rest.

Does this belong on the common misspellings page in the Other strange couples section? -Barry- 01:42, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

If you add "-intitle:talk", so that talk pages are excluded, you get only 142 results, many of which are repeated pages, deletion pages and user pages. I don't exclude wikipedia and user pages from the search, in case there are some policies or well-written user pages with just one misspelling that should be corrected. Therefore, I estimate that there are about 50 pages that can be corrected from that search, and I have corrected the other ones.

You can list any typo, grammar error or doubled word in the work completed section. I have sometimes listed mistakes like "of the of the" in that section. Graham/pianoman87 talk 09:53, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

fastest way to fix typos

IMO, the fastest way to fix typos is to use the Autowikibrowser by User:Bluemoose. Unfortunately, he has quit WP, but has left his program (and source code) with us. It can be downloaded here. Instructions are in the process of being set up. It really is very simple to use. Just enter the typo and it'll get the list of articles from google containing that typo and then it does a semi-automatic search and replace for each entry. If you've got questions, you can ask me or User:Mathwiz2020, who has taken up the program. Be sure to check what is being changed before hitting save. Gflores Talk 03:15, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Joining

You have a good project. My typo corrections tend to be done in passsing rather than as systematic searches. Sometimes non-native speakers ask me to proofread their new articles. I don't track minor edits so I doubt I'll be posting accomplishments to your project page. This post is to say I'm helping with your cause. Regards, Durova 18:16, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Welcome! I think any way we can fix typos is a good thing, regardless of whether or not we do it systematically or just as we come across them. I first started fixing typos when I was doing a little bit of Recent changes patrolling. Normally, I do systematic searches when I feel like I want to work on something related to Wikipedia, but I don't want to have to really think. There was one page where a systematic search turned up like 10-15 other spelling errors on the same page. Whee! Sue Anne 22:11, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Playwright or playright?

Unless some sources are cited to overturn the common spelling of the word playwright, particularly when Merriam-Webster says it is correct, these changes by Chris the speller should be undone. Thanks. Harro5 01:55, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

It is my understanding that Chris was replacing the misspelled word, playright with the correct word, playwright. See here [4] [5] Gflores Talk 04:46, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
This issue has been sorted out on my talk page. Thanks. Harro5 23:16, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Better way of organizing our work

I think there's a better way to organize our work - right now we just think up (or get one from the done list) of a typo and go search it with google - wouldn't it be better if we committed ourselves (as a whole) to have a list of google queries that we would run monthly or every two months?

A better way would be for a user to choose a pending item and incrementing the date that the query should be rerun on. For example:

  • excelent This query should be rerun on the 4th of March 2006.

Then, on the 5th of March (for example) a user would choose to run this query, and would change it to:

  • excelent This query should be rerun on the 5th of April 2006.

If everyone agrees, I think this should be explained on the project page. Rbarreira 20:42, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Common misspellings

Hi Typopedians! I'm just curious if something like this would be useful. I'm ok with the not commenting out part, but on rethink I wonder how useful it would be. I plan to have an example on the "A" page shortly. Sct72 01:42, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Often misspelled word, but also slang

If you google for wikipedia pages containing "diss" to take the place of "disrespect" you can find quite a few. I was wondering whether to go through and correct them (to "dis") or leave them since most people will know what it means all the same. I also considered the fact that "diss" and "dis" look unprofessional (to me, anyways); would it be better to simply replace them both with "disrespect" (unless the slang is relevant to the meaning of the idea, like a "dis rap")? KyleP 07:35, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I think it'd be best to replace them with "disrespect". I think slang is unprofessional and shouldn't be in wikipedia. Leave them if they are in quotes though. Graham talk 09:35, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Reverted you

Sorry, but the double is is on Disputed English Grammar was intentional.Bridesmill 17:03, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Articles with the most revisions

I've been spell checking the "Special pages" "Articles with the most revisions", that is, Special:Mostrevisions, because these are often among the most noticed pages. Art LaPella 04:21, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

a new member

I was convinced to join when I saw your first typo correction was on my birthday (the day and month that is, not year). that's pretty cool --Osbus 00:36, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Frequent offenders

Is there any solution to maintaining proper spelling, punctuation and grammar in the edits of users that make no attempt to spell correctly? I have been following and fixing the edits of one particular user who tends to have upwards of three misspellings per edit. He has been asked on more than one occasion to run a spell check on his edits before he submits them (twice by me). However, he responded to my requests by vandalizing my user page and has completely ignored the others. I have been trying to find a permanent solution to this problem, but in the meantime I have been doing my best to track and correct all his mistakes. If someone would be able to help with this, I would greatly appreciate it. Ryan 00:29, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Take it up with an admin. Although we like to say anyone is welcome, some people are more trouble than they are worth. --mboverload 02:47, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Javascript tool

I've made a tool that assists in correcting spelling, based on the last database dump. It uses a list of common misspellings but also checks the other words in a page.

Basically, you add a line to your user monobook.js, then follow a link to get an article with suggested spelling corrections. You don't have to install any special software, though you need a recent browser. Any comments are welcome. Wmahan. 16:02, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Great job! I've spent hours playing with my new toy. ςפקιДИτς ☺ ☻ 03:19, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm glad you like it. It's encouraging to know that others are helping. Wmahan. 16:23, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

"Humourous"

There are many instances (thousands, it seems) of the (mis)spelling 'humourous' in Wikipedia; unfortunately, it's not a word in English anywhere in the world (check the OED if I'm not to be believed), even though it seems many people seem to think it is. Is it advisable to correct, or will it spark unpleasantness? --Xwu 14:50, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't know about the OED but I found that spelling at http://www.dictionary.com among other places. Art LaPella 17:15, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Unfortunately, the same source at http://www.dictionary.com also considers 'publically' a word, among other egregious specimens... --Xwu 19:40, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Interesting! Humourous looked wrong to me. I'll go ahead and correct that. Sad that dictionary.com cannot be trusted. --Guinnog 11:11, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Searching within text window of Firefox

The project page suggests installing "the Findtextarea extension". It appears that that no longer exists, or has been re-named. Does anyone know of a replacement? The project page needs updating, anyway. --MichaelMaggs 12:35, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Oh! This bothers me too, but for some reason it didn't occur to me to look for an extension. I haven't used it yet (I'm *ahem* at work, using IE) but this should be it: Wikipedia:Tools/Browser tools/Mozilla Firefox/Search within Textarea Extension with regex. --Galaxiaad 14:33, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Hmm, all too tricky for me, I'm afraid. The quoted link seems to go to a bugfix page, with no obvious way to load the extension from there. I'm (naively) searching on the Firefox site for extensions that include the term Findtextarea, and am getting zero hits.--MichaelMaggs 15:11, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
The URL of the installer is http://wargers.org/mozilla/oldfindtexarea.xpi. Download it, then Open File it in Firefox, and it should install. Mine gave an error message after the install but seems to be working fine. :) Hope this helps. --Galaxiaad 02:02, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Dictionary.com

(copied over from User talk:Mboverload so that more may comment; trying to establish consensus) I was trying to clarify the correct spelling of "humorous" and I see this website lists "humourous", although my paper dictionary does not, and neither do most online refs. I also note that they list "publically", which I think is a clear error. Should we continue to regard this as a good source? See also [6]

I'll hold off for now, but I think humorous is the right spelling. --Guinnog 11:18, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

one's the British spelling (with the "ou"). The other is the American spelling (with the "o") alphaChimp laudare 13:05, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure it's that simple. --Guinnog 13:13, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
No British and Commonwealth standard spelling is humorous. People probably assume the 'u' was stolen from humourous by Americans just as they stole it from colour but it had been missing for a while before then. Jonathan Swift used humourous though and he was a very humourous man, while Shakespeare used humerous. MeltBanana 14:41, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes, my understanding is that "humorous" is the standard spelling everywhere, and "humourous" is an unusual variant, found predominantly on Wikipedia, and listed on Dictionary.com
MB, apologies for thrashing this out on your talk page. --Guinnog 14:57, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
Oh. It's not British? Methinks it should be corrected then. alphaChimp laudare 15:27, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

The News Limited style guide, Style: A Guide For Journalists, says correct spelling is "humorous". That would be Commonwealth spelling. Sarah Ewart (Talk) 15:32, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

And it lists "publicly" as the correct spelling. Sarah Ewart (Talk) 15:34, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Sarah, thanks for chipping in. On that basis, I think we should stop regarding dictionary.com as a valid source for spelling. I also think we should standardise our spelling on "humorous", unless there is any serious objection. --Guinnog 15:36, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
Dictionary.com is pulling the spelling from wordnet.princeton.edu, which seems to be the only online dictionary with that spelling. At least, it's the only one that comes up on a Google definition search [7]. Same with the spelling "publically" [8] Unless someone has another source for that spelling I think it would be better to standardise. Sarah Ewart (Talk) 15:43, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, that's what I wanted to point out: dictionary.com pulls up definitions from various sources (which are noted below each definition), including the American Heritage Dictionary, which is famously strict/prescriptivist (for American spelling and usage, of course), and sometimes has "usage notes" that tell how their panel voted on the usage's acceptability. This can be useful, as I think it makes sense to err on the side of more traditionally acceptable usages here on WP (the grammar freak and the descriptivist linguist in me are constantly at war). Dictionary.com also pulls up things like medical dictionaries, the Jargon File, etc., that can be useful. So maybe we should disregard just wordnet.princeton.edu. (I agree on "humorous" though.) --Galaxiaad 16:18, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks to you both. I already edited to change all instances I could find of "publically" to "publicly" and would be happy to do the same for "humourous", although it is a bigger task. I just know though that such changes are likely to be controversial with someone (although nobody objected to the demise of "publically") and didn't want to enact such a sweeping change unilaterally. Incidentally, in both cases I am so sensitive to the misspellings as they are mistakes I used to make at one time until I realised they were wrong. --Guinnog 16:25, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok. I'm going to standardise tomorrow, and ref this discussion as a consensus. What do you all think? --Guinnog 00:54, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Done. 577 edits! --Guinnog 14:43, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
mboverload's 4 inch dictionary > Your dictionary

Yes, Rockstar. That's how I stay up until 4 in the morning developing RETF and fixing typos. You should try it. --mboverload@ 23:26, 5 August 2006 (UTC)


Sarah Ewart asked me to chime in as a US journalist. Greetings all, hope I'm not overstepping. Dictionary.com is the on-deadline-desperate resource here. It's used for, pardon the insult, dumb spelling - like when you have a brain malfunction and can't remember if you should use "capital" or "capitol." Part of the problem with Dictionary.com, as noted previously, is the accessing of mutliple sources, including the Princeton bank. From what I gather, the Princeton word bank is provided as part as an ongoing linguistic study, so it's hardly a decent resource. The standard reference here, though, would be Webster's. An interesting note, the Scripps Howard Spelling Bee uses Webster's as well. Mirriam-Webster [9] can be accessed online and I vote for that as your primary spelling reference. Interestingly, when you look up "publically" it redirects you to "publicly" and then offers the "publically" as a variant. The extra "u's" in humourously, though, gets nixxed.

(By the way, the academic snob in me wants to scream, "Oxford-English Dictionary!")Congirl 15:01, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I'll get the appropriate volume... Rich Farmbrough 21:44 24 August 2006 (GMT).
It lists humerous, humurous and humourous (the last seventeenth - nineteenth century). Also states the English formations , humoured, ~less, ~some, are spelt like the sb. and vb.; but the derivatives formed on a Latin type and lists some of these "humor" words, going on to mention that the sounding of the initial "H" is of recent origin. Rich Farmbrough 22:36 24 August 2006 (GMT).
I'm certainly glad to hear that, as I did not relish having to revert all those edits! Safe to say consensus has truly been reached? --Guinnog 22:40, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
Except about the caption to Mboverload's picture! Rich Farmbrough 21:13 25 August 2006 (GMT).
My Collins Australian Pocket Dictionary (1988 edition) lists "humourous" as an acceptable variant. It's also on Wiktionary. Lankiveil 07:22, 31 August 2006 (UTC).

Yes it is on Wiktionary. I don't see why there needs to be an argument on this. People spell "potato" the same, but pronounce it differently. Do you have a problem with me saying potato and you saying potato?

But "publically" looks horrible to me. "Publicly" is the lesser of two evils. Oh, and I just looked up "publically" on Wiktionary, it wasn't in there; not even as an "Alternative spelling."

Hyphenated expressions

On the page Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings/Repetitions there is a list of "normally hyphenated expressions" (I don't know why it's on the repetitions page). I just added a few; before that the list was just the ones at the top that start with "out". I think it'd be most useful to only include ones that are always or almost always hyphenated (e.g. "full time" could be correct unhyphenated, as in... um... "He was a staff writer for the full time he was there", but it probably overwhelmingly should be "full-time"). I think some of the "out" ones are actually usually unhyphenated ("out-of-wedlock") but I didn't remove any yet. Anyone want to help me on adding/removing items and making the list useful? (Unrelated: I don't know how, but I think we should probably archive this page.) --Galaxiaad 17:58, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

On a very similar point, I started replacing "more well known" and "most well known" with "better known" and "best known" earlier (on my AWB account, as User:Spellmaster) and then stopped. Obviously it is context sensitive; you could have "More well known people liked white bread than brown" (though that is clumsy and ambiguous). What really stopped me was, should it actually be "better-known" and "best-known"? I've never been sure and I couldn't find a source. Anybody? --Guinnog 15:37, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
This excerpt from a message I once wrote to someone at my Talk page may be useful. The adjectival participle / participial adjective in that instance was known. Obviously, this whole blurb is about a specific sentence (which talked about "a well(-)known British public school"); but some of the concepts are equally applicable elsewhere.
There's no need for a hyphen between the adverb "well" and the adjective that it modifies, "known". Not all adverbs end in ly. A hyphen between the two could be seen as implying that the school is known by a well (e.g., a hole for extracting groundwater).
The mere question of whether something is a superlative isn't the point. For example, in "the most instantly visible cloud", there's no question that "cloud" is noun, "visible" is adjective, "instantly" is adverb modifying "visible", and "most" is adverb modifying "instantly".
The matter about "best known" / "best-known" is that the superlative form of the adjective (the unmodified adjective is good) is the same as the superlative form of the adverb (the unmodified adverb is well)—and, so, without the hyphen, "the best known school" could mean "the best school that is known" instead of "the school that is known best". This is why a hyphen between best (as a form of well) and its adjective is usually a good idea.
The time to put a hyphen between an adverb and an adjective is when the adverb could be mistaken as another adjective—and this doesn't happen with well in this sentence, though it would happen with best.
Something else to keep in mind is that, if one sticks to a quality/quantity distinction between less and fewer, then things like "These are less read books" are unambiguous (and so need no hyphen): less goes with read, because the ‘proper’ ‘form of less’ to go with books is fewer.
President Lethe 00:40, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
Some people are so stingy with hyphens! I'd put a hyphen in "less-read books" to help the reader. I had to read your example twice to understand it. That "read" can be read in two ways and that "less" can also be an adjective certainly contributed to my confusion. Also, even if I follow the traditional less/fewer rule, how do I know that you do? Give your readers a break: use more hyphens.--BillFlis 13:01, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
Maybe some more words might be useful.
In English, an adjective, depending on its location in the sentence, can be one of three kinds. Consider the sentence "All things green aren't red." "All" is an adjective appearing before the noun; it is an attributive adjective. The adjective "green" appears right after the noun, and so is a post-positive adjective. The adjective "red" appears in the sentence's predicate ("aren't red"), and is a predicate (or predicative) adjective.
The word well in English is always an adverb, never an adjective. It doesn't need hyphens. (Obviously, we're not talking about the other English word well, the noun.)
What about "All is well"? "He is not well"? "It is well that you brought this up"? There's also the verb: "Tears welled in his eyes"? I think your dictionary is short a few pages. :-)--BillFlis 13:23, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
The words better and best serve as both adverbs and adjectives. The same is true of less. In syntax in which the role of these would be ambiguous without a hyphen, a hyphen should be used. If there is no ambiguity without the hyphen, the hyphen shouldn't be used.
Above, I gave an example in which a hyphen with less was unnecessary. But, with non-count nouns, a hyphen means one thing while no hyphen means something else: e.g., "We saw less dirty water" should mean "We saw less water that was dirty", while "We saw water that was less dirty" should be written "We saw less-dirty water" (though, of course, cleaner may help us skirt the whole issue).
Usually, if the phrase is part of the predicate, hyphens become unnecessary: e.g., "A nine-year-old child is nine years old", "Shirley Temple is better known as one of the better-known child actresses of the early 20th century", "An out-of-wedlock pregnancy is one that occurs out of wedlock".
But, even in the predicate, if words that would normally count as an adverb and an adjective are kept, while the actual noun is omitted, a hyphen may be necessary: e.g., "Of U.S. presidents in the 21st century, George W. Bush is the longest-serving" without the hyphen could mean that Mr. Bush is a serving that is longer than any of the other servings. Another example: "Of all the TV shows, The Unnamed Show is the best liked" could mean that the show is the best one of the liked shows, while a hyphen in "best liked" would make it clear that best modified liked.
President Lethe 01:01, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

"Broadcasted"?

Is this a legitimate word? Shouldn't it be "broadcast"?
Anyway, my Google search just revealed "about 1,380" broadcasted 's on Wikipedia. I corrected one so there's only 1,379 left! Bot anyone? :) -- B33R 05:48, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Webster's Unabridged New Revised Edition lists "broadcasted" as a valid alternate to "broadcast". Firsfron of Ronchester 06:10, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
OK, thanks. I can honestly say I've never heard of that before. I was always taught "broadcast". B33R 06:14, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Userbox

I made a userbox for this project. It's at User:Galaxiaad/typo. :) --Galaxiaad 02:58, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 14:24, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

November 22, 2006?

Any plans to publicize another Typo Correction Day? I know it's the day before Thanksgiving and all, but it'd help get more publicity (and help to make Wikipedia cleaner.) Crystallina 19:29, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Guess there's not enough interest. Oh well. I'm going to go ahead and concentrate efforts on typo killing tomorrow. (Or, really, today according to Wikipedia time.) Feel free to join in. Crystallina 02:05, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Template

Should there be a template for those typos that an editor cannot correct himself, such as scanos from a old public domain source?


Columbia/Colombia

Any ideas for queries to find misspelled references to the country Colombia amid the tens of thousands of perfectly legitimate Columbias? I found about a dozen instances today searching for names of Colombian cities + Columbia (e.g., "Cali Columbia"). I'd welcome other recommendations! Kyriosity 06:49, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 19:36, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

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