Wikipedia talk:Lists of common misspellings/Archive 1

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Archive 1 Archive 2

Thanks and comments

Thanks to Magnus, Axelboldt & everybody who set this up!
  • Misc. Comments
    • We need to find a way to eliminate false positives on proper nouns, like the 1921 Battle of Anual in Morocco. The capitalized word Anual in the link is correctly spelled. --Ed Poor
    • Capitalization doesn't tell you much; beginnings of sentences and titles may or may not be misspellings. This is why we have human beings to look at things case-by-case. --Brion 22:30, 22 October 2002 (UTC)
    • I'm sure what you mean by "find a way", Ed. The way is just to leave them alone. This maintenance page is nothing but a handy way to find things--what you do when you find them requires human judgment. I'd personally appreciate it if you'd remove the contractions from the list--there's nothing at all wrong with contractions even in formal encyclopedic text. --LDC 22:38, 22 October 2002 (UTC)

Contractions

  • coudln (couldn't)
  • hasn (has not)
  • isn (is not, sin)
  • wasn (was not)
  • weren (were not)
  • wouldn (would not)

I am the one who had added most of the contractions that you have listed here. My sense is that they give a very colloquial tone to the articles, which somewhat could hurt the credibility of those articles (at least that is the way I perceive them when I read them). Do not we want the 'pedia to be considered as a "reference"? In addition to this, I have done quite a few edits of articles containing such contractions, and my sense is that they often were written in a very colloquial tone (same remark), plus they often contained several misspellings. -User:Olivier

Ed, I really disagree with your removing of the contractions from the list without even trying to generate a discussion around that. Has it been agreed by Wikipedians that contractions are OK? I believe that they are not, and will keep removing them from the articles were I find them (unless they are part of a quoted text). I would like to have them back in the list unless someone can give me good arguments for the contrary. -User:Olivier 04:33, 23 October 2002 (UTC)

Years

I tried adding the following:

  • 1920's (1920s)
  • 1930's (1930s)
  • 1940's (1940s)
  • 1950's (1950s)
  • 1960's (1960s)
  • 1970's (1970s)
  • 1980's (1980s)
  • 1990's (1990s)

But the SQL query for the maintenance page choked on it. I don't suppose there's some way to tweak it so that it will work with apostrophes? Bryan


Not sure, but you can use the regular page search on them. --Brion 22:30, 22 October 2002 (UTC)

'archeology'/'archaeology'

I've just added 'archeology' -> 'archaeology' etc to the list - which I did with confidence when I saw that there was already one variant there. Having done this, I see that there are an enormous number of 'archeology' spellings around - Is this then an acceptable US spelling? In which case they'll need removing from the list again. -- SGBailey 09:34 Dec 30, 2002 (UTC)

All dictionaries I've looked at (both American and British) give both spellings, but all seem to prefer archaeology. --Zundark 17:12, 30 December 2002 (UTC)

sic

Where a "misspelling" is intentional, is there any markup available in wiki to tell SQL to not add that one to the list? (Have to consider what happens if he word occurs twice, once intentionally misspelt and once in error). -- SGBailey 08:23 Jan 1, 2003 (UTC)


I don't think so. If we ever add one, I would vote for [sic] because of its standardized meaning. --Ellmist Wednesday January 1st, 2003

Beg to differ. A search for [sic] matches 2521 times, only some of which is a genuine [sic]. "Sic Temper tyrannis" and "baSICally"" are false matches. Can we think of a variation of "sic" or [sic] that makes fewer false matches? Tabletop 00:59, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
Two suggestions for words unlikely to be detected by normal searches, while making a minimum number of false matches could be:
[sicsic] - a familiar word doubled!
[ssiicc] - a familiar word doubled in an unfamiliar way.
See also User:Tabletop/sandbox
Tabletop 23:37, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
Having a more reliably searchable form of sic enables user to mark words that they are unsure of in the certain knowledge that other users can find those words and correct them Tabletop 00:31, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

false positives

I know there is the risk of false positives, but some words are more prone to be false positives than others. Why not create a "SpellBot" that will worm its way over all the articles in wikipedia and automatically correct for spelling mistakes? It's an idea at least. -- Ram-Man

Please, no! I respect your intention, but I would hate to see the 'pedia mangled by a well-meaning but clumsy spill chucker. What I would like, though, is a bot that looks for what it thinks are spelling mistakes in articles, then for each article pops up a page resembling the "differences from last version" page that exists now. It would show its proposed corrections in red in the right-hand column, so you could change any that it got wrong and then click "Save Page". A user could invoke this bot by clicking on a "Show me a random page that the bot thinks contains spelling mistakes" link on a maintenance page. This would require a lot of human intervention, but would be the only safe way to do it. -- Heron

Hi, I'd like to hear more about the Spell-bot. You've noted, I hope, the caveats on the "list of misspellings" page.  :-) Koyaanis Qatsi
I basically copied the list of mispellings into a file that the bot can use. I'll write it up so that when it finds an article with a potential mispelling it will prompt me with a subset of the string and ask if I should make the change. It will require intervention, but it will prevent a lot of problems. Since I don't have that many pressing issues with the rambot's geographical articles, I can do spelling if people would like that. I'll give it a test run in a few days to see what happens. -- Ram-Man
Sounds fine. I was concerned mostly about cases where there are several possible "correct" answers, as well as cases like the Tao Teh Ching, which will prompt you to rename the book.  ;-) Koyaanis Qatsi
I don't know about a spelling bot. How can it possibly work? What about intentional misspellings? How would it differentiate those? RickK 23:56, 22 November 2003 (UTC)

shorter list?

Does anyone have a shorter list of the really most common misspellings, say a top 100? Dori 03:57, Nov 23, 2003 (UTC)

I've made such a list of most common misspellings, although it is specific to Wikipedia and does not reflect recent changes. Wmahan 00:33, 2004 April 5 (UTC)

publically/publicly

As another data point, the OED lists both. Publicly is the primary entry, but no usage comment is made on either one. Both have a significant history of usage quoted, though publicly has an earlier first cited usage by some centuries (1500s versus 1920). --Delirium 07:06, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, "publically" is a misspelling (albeit a very common one) but it was recently removed from the list of common misspellings. Comments? Stewart Adcock 21:08, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

There was a bit of a discussion about it on User:Archivist's talk page in the aftermath of WikiTypo Day. Hideous as it appears to some of us, apparently it is recorded in some dictionaries. Usage guides tend to frown on it, however. –Hajor 21:19, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)
A quick Google on the popularity returned 216,000 hits for 'publically' vs. 5,160,000 hits for 'publicly'; thus, publicly is used 96% of the time online vs 4% for the variant spelling. A quick perusal of the top results for each seem to indicate that it's not a UK vs. US spelling issue; results for both are all over the place.
I believe it's Merriam-Webster that lists it; a variety of online dictionaries have it, but they all look like they're taking it from M-W. Do we have a policy to remove less common alternate spellings from Wikipedia?
While it's the spelling I've always used, I don't care enough to 'un-correct' it if people change it; however, the principle of correcting spellings listed as valid does concern me a little.
I could find only one reference online to the issue; the Columbia Guide to Standard American English says:
publicly, publically (advs.)
Publicly is the usual spelling; publically does occur, but rarely in Edited English.
By 'Edited English' they mean what, in their opinion, is appropriate for formal and semi-formal written use. No other source accessible online offers a usage opinion.
If it's consensus that we should correct rare spellings considered deprecated by some style guides, then go ahead; I am however unsure we have such a consensus, and would like to hear some opinions on the matter. —Morven 23:44, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I had been making "publically=>publicly" changes all over the place but I stopped when Morven, correctly, pointed out that some dictionaries consider "publically" to be valid. I am now very much undecided on whether the remaining examples should be "corrected". Stewart Adcock 00:29, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I had a look at the BBC News website and both spellings have wide use there, even in recent articles. This is the spelling we were taught at school too (I went to school in Britain), and I'm in my late 20s so the same teachers are likely to be still teaching it. I don't think this should be counted as wrong if it's so widely used by respectable sources, even if those sources are in a minority. There are much more clear cut spelling blunders to worry about that absolutely no one thinks correct, such as "book's for sale".

Nope. Results from All of the BBCHelp Page 0 of 0 pages for publically. It's an error. --Guinnog 00:19, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Oh man, next you're going to tell me it's realisticly, ironicly, enthusiasticly, emphaticly, accidently. Wait, is it accidently? Apparently people use that spelling. I think in that case accidentally is the correct one though, and accidently is a common misspelling. Why did they have to make English so hard! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.113.104.82 (talk • contribs) 22:39, 23 September 2009

encypher/encipher

encypher may be British English - needs checking. Secretlondon 12:35, 26 March 2004 (UTC)

Nope. It's just wrong, or at least a very unusual variant spelling. My theory is that people are confusing it with encrypt. It's a bit like the word rhyme, which started off as rime but then picked up a y by association with rhythm. -- Heron 13:05, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

This issue has returned in my list of common misspellings (see User talk:Wmahan/Articles with common misspellings). I notice that both dictionary.com and m-w.com have encipher but not encypher, but of course dictionaries aren't necessarily the final word. Does anyone have any evidence or arguments either way? I'm leaning towards removing encypher from my list of misspellings. Thanks. Wmahan. 21:35, 2004 May 3 (UTC)
Update: since there seems to be agreement on the issue, I've commented out encypher from the list. Wmahan. 17:40, 2004 May 4 (UTC)

Supercede/supersede

M-W lists supercede as a valid variant of supersede. Is there a particular reason it's listed as a misspelling (I notice dictionary.com doesn't have it), or is it an error? —Lady Lysiŋe Ikiŋsile | Talk 20:53, 2004 Jul 21 (UTC)

Bill Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words says that only supersede is appropriate. kmccoy (talk) 20:59, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
The Oxford English Dictionary lists supercede as an alternative, although it is annotated "disp." which indicates that, as you have discovered, this spelling/usage is disputed (NB as opposed to incorrect). Between Bill Bryson and the OED, I know which one I'm going to run with. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk
Supercede has occurred as a spelling variant of supersede since the 17th century, and it is common in current published writing. It continues, however, to be widely regarded as an error. --Guinnog 00:21, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
"Supersede" is the only valid form according to my reference books. However, the trend toward "supercede" is understandable because "supersede" is the only English word ending with "-sede." "Superseded" would probably have been superseded by "supercede" were it not for the very number of sources noting the common error. At some point, an "error" becomes common enough to overtake the "correct" form, but we're not there yet. (There is probably an interesting article in mainspace that could be linked here, but I don't know what it is.) Newyorkbrad 16:08, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Supersede comes from the Latin word 'sedo', which means 'sit'. To supersede, something literally 'sits' on that which came before it. 'Supercede' is not recognized by serious academics. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.39.138.94 (talk) 04:26, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
"'Supercede' is not recognized by serious academics." - Do you have a source for that? It is a sweeping generalisation, and also one implying that those who do not defer to your judgement are not 'serious'. Girabbit85 (talk) 08:54, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

  • Note that there's another thread on this same point below.

Query - are you saying that 'precede' and 'supercede' are not derived from the same root? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.155.179.172 (talk) 09:18, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Precede comes from the same root as accede, concede, intercede, and recede. Supersede comes from the same root as preside, reside and sedentary. Mild Bill Hiccup (talk) 14:47, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Links

Why are the misspelled words made as links? I clicked on one and it went nowhere! Jaberwocky6669 23:54, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

Doubled place name

There are a fair number of place names in Australia that used doubled names, such as Wagga Wagga, Vite Vite, Goonoo Goonoo, Nar Nar Goon which give spell checkers indigestion. Tabletop 02:09, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Woop Woop is an archetypal place name equivalent to whatshisname.

There is also a disease called beri beri.

And not forgetting Wiki Wiki —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.246.124.154 (talk) 10:03, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Bible: Book of "Revelations"

One of my pet peeves is people writing the name of the book of Revelation as "Revelations." It's colloquially common, but it's incorrect. I went on a little trip with google several months ago and corrected many occurrences. Is this considered a misspelling? Unfortunately it is hard to check for since there are many legitimate uses of the word "revelations." Jdavidb 23:03, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

The title is probably best rendered in english as "The Revelation", or "The Revelation of John". Even though "revelations" is not the strict title of the work, the term may not be completely innapropriate in that the book is a collection of things revealed. Alternate descriptive names for books do occur in this way, such as the legendary "Ugly Red Book that Won't Fit on a Shelf" (A published document of IEEE 1003.1 / ISO 9945-1) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.76.64.14 (talk • contribs) 22:47, 23 February 2007

Adding meanings

I think it would be useful, especially in cases such as collage and college (college is often misspelled 'collage'), and words like counsellor and councillor (counselor and councilor in American English) where they sound the same and have similar meanings, to add definitions to certain entries.

I also think it would be useful to note when words are actually British spellings.

What do you think?--Jcvamp 22:00, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

What about this type of error?

Using a instead of an, such as, "released a album". A google search revealed about 30 of these mistakes from that pair of words. I'm sure there are other combinations that should use 'an' instead. Gflores Talk 00:52, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Fix 'em! Chris the speller 19:04, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
I've also started to see some cases where a writer uses and instead of an, such as "with and area of 100 square miles" or "in and old house". Mild Bill Hiccup (talk) 07:51, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

victum

Victum can be a misspelling of victim, but it is also a valid Latin word. I'm not sure if it should be listed or not. RJFJR 14:40, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

I'd say it should be listed as this is the English, not Latin, Wikipedia – but include the information that it is a Latin word. Best wishes, David Kernow 11:58, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
Spelling correction by hand

A good feature of the Wikipedia search function is that it lists the matched words with a line of context, so that in the case of a search for victum, you can more or less tell if the Latin word is involved or not. In the case of victum the number of matches is small, it makes sense to clear up the erroneous ones, leaving a few (sicsic) examples so that this demonstration continues to function.

  • victum (victum) or (victim) (00012matches) Language dependent word - correct if Latin context, incorrect if English context.
—Preceding unsigned comment added by Tabletop (talk • contribs) 01:17, 17 August 2007

Update both pages?

I can see that we have misspellings in both human and a machine-readable formats, are we expected to provide entries for both lists? Or is one list derived from the other? Perhaps some guidance on this could be provided on the article page.--Hooperbloob 21:44, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Logging results

  • I am going to be doing Google searches to find out total results for each word on the list. I will list the results after the correct spellings. Yes, these totals will change, but this should be a good representation. For those that have zero results, should I keep them "as is", or comment them out? I'm leaning toward commenting them out & marking them "zero results". I will not update the "machine list" with the totals, just the specific letter pages. Sct72 04:52, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
  • They should not be commented out. Pages are not static and with new edits come new misspellings. These are supposed to be common misspellings (though not all are) which means they will be back quickly. These pages are not the pages for tracking progress on correcting them - that's what WP:Typo does. If your goal is to remove ones that really aren't common, then I'd recommend doing multiple searches spaced over a month or two to ensure it wasn't simply a case of someone correcting that word prior to Google's last indexing. -- JLaTondre 13:58, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
  • I did not plan on deleting them - just commenting them out, leaving the more common misspellings. I will, however, put the total results from my list within the parenthesis of the correct spelling. Thank you for the response! Sct72 01:16, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Typos

I'm at a loss as to the point of including blatant typos in this list, e.g. "htey" for "they". There's an enormous number of possible typos that can be made in every single word in English (transpositions, hitting an adjacent key etc) and clearly we don't intend to list them all. Perhaps a separate "List of common typos" is needed. Keeping this is list as a list of genuine misspellings makes for useful reference material in addition to a providing a method to track down such mistakes within Wikipedia. Or am I missing something? Soo 01:05, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

This page is in the Wikipedia project namespace and so is intended for use as part of the project. There is a List of common misspellings in English article, in the article namespace, which is intended for general reference – Gurch 17:30, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Supercede vs. Supersede

This discussion was moved here from Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors

'supersede' not 'supercede'. (It's correct in the article itself AFAIK). ColinFine 17:28, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

  • Odd. When I check your Columbia Guide reference listed above, PFHLai, it states Supersede is the overwhelming preference of Edited English, although supercede does occur in print. That's not exactly the same as both are acceptable. Of course, this is 2+ years later. Tim Ross (talk) 11:24, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

The spelling superceded is, I think, always incorrect. Read superseded. --MichaelMaggs 19:19, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

  • Merriam-Webster says that it is common in current published writing, but continues to be widely regarded as an error. [2] Zzyzx11 (Talk) 19:26, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Languages evolve over time. What can I say ? .... I'd say the 's' form is always correct, but the 'c' form is acceptable -- though not always, depending on who is reading it. As such, I'll opt for the "safe choice" and change it to 's'. -- PFHLai 19:31, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Funnily enough, I (who originally raised this) am not usually a prescriptivist: I hold that a language is what people use, not what some maven says it is; and I regard spelling as a branch of etiquette. But there are enough pedants around that putting a 'common misspelling' on the front page is probably a bad thing for Wikipedia's image. ColinFine 19:48, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

(crossposted from another thread on this issue, above on this page) "Supersede" is the only valid form according to my reference books. However, the trend toward "supercede" is understandable because "supersede" is the only English word ending with "-sede." "Superseded" would probably have been superseded by "supercede" were it not for the very number of sources noting the common error. At some point, an "error" becomes common enough to overtake the "correct" form, but we're not there yet. (There is probably an interesting article in mainspace that could be linked here, but I don't know what it is.) Newyorkbrad 16:11, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

My references give "supercede" as the correct spelling, with the British variant "supersede". Sensible, since it is a word combined from the Latin "super" (above, over) + Latin "cedere" (to move). Hence, supercede = "to move ahead of". --24.19.88.55

Your references are wrong. The word supersede is from Latin supersedere, and there is no British/American divide on the spelling of this word. --Zundark 11:51, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
this 'error' is an example of over-pedantry. latin etymology, sadly, doesn't always define correct english usage. both endings have been in common use since before the word was used in english. respelling when transliterating between languages is not an error, and failing to fix an 'error of transliteration' is also not an error, except on the planet Hyperpedantia. this discussion reminds me of my days arguing with benighted creationists who would insist they could 'prove' the meaning of an english word based on the latin components. 131.172.99.15 13:51, 1 October 2007 (UTC)snaxalotl

An idea

I was wondering if a page could be created to include non-words like 'octopi' that are often used. Words like this aren't misspellings, but they are commonly, mistakenly used, despite the fact that they aren't real words.--Jcvamp 22:23, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Technically, although a lot of schoolteachers might not care to admit it, a word that is used "all the time" is considered a word. According to Dictionary.com [3] and Merriam-Webster [4] "octopi" is considered a word. and On the other hand, a lot of those words ("ain't," "funner," and the like) are considered improper, among other things, to use in a respectable piece of writing (i.e. Wikipedia). I don't think there is a real chance of Wikipedia to be overrun with "ain't"s. Foxjwill 22:47, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
I disagree that "ain't" ain't a word, it was at one time considered 'classier' than "is not" by the gentry. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.149.41.98 (talk) 10:13, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Pluralized adverbs

Superscript text

Should "anyhows" and "anyways" be added to the list?--THobern 13:33, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

its / it's

Many people confuse 'its' and 'it's'. Something must be done about this! --iNkubusse? 21:18, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Amongst other things, the wiki search function doesn't search for "it's" properly, so you cannot search/check/fix em. Tabletop (talk) 07:34, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
Try enclosing your search string in quotes. For example:
"it's own" or "it's original"

Mild Bill Hiccup (talk) 13:41, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

JC Penny/JC Penney

I just fixed a long list of instances of this error. I didn't put it on your list because I'm new to this corner of Wikipedia, and because I don't see any other similarly commercial words on your list. JCPenney or J.C. Penney are debatable, but apparently Mr. Penney's name, or his company, is consistently spelled "Penney" not "Penny" in places like Penney's website. Art LaPella (talk) 01:37, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Effect and affect

A personal pet peeve of mine which will be difficult to hunt down since both have different uses. Can I get any volunteers on this?Avnas Ishtaroth (talk) 05:35, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I always remember this one this way: Affect is the Action, Effect is the result of the action. So the "A" helps me keep them straight. Hope this helps. Nvadnais (talk) 23:48, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

But only if you remember that when "effect" is used as a verb, it is also an action. More details here. Art LaPella (talk) 05:11, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Question About Misspelling Lists

I've posted this at Wikipedia talk:Typo Team but haven't received a response so thought I would try here. Is there a reason why dozens of the words in Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings are in the format [ misspelled word] (correct word) in plain text rather than linked text that allows a search (for example, see [ challanger] (challenger) )? The misspelled word almost always has a space in front of it as well. I realize that in some cases, the search may have resulted in many false positives, but not in all cases. As a newbie, I may be missing something obvious, but thought I would ask. If I don't hear any objections, I may start changing the plain text listings to searchable ones. Thanks. JimVC3 (talk) 18:16, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I can't speak for all of them, but I think at least some were ones I entered (more or less as "stubs") as a reminder to myself, but then forgot to go back and finish up. So by all means if you find any more feel free to fix them up so they become searchable links. Thanks. Mild Bill Hiccup (talk) 23:34, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the quick response. I'll probably wait another day or two and then start to make changes as I encounter them. JimVC3 (talk) 02:22, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Follow-Up on Lists

I'm not sure if many people use the lists on these pages (many editors seem to rely on bots and other automated processes). However I've found them very useful so I'm considering a major clean up of the lists and the pages. I've started with relatively minor changes to the lists: re-alphabetize the list if needed, make plain text links searchable links, add other misspellings. Please let me know if you have an issue with any of the changes. I'm thinking of other changes that are a bit more significant. For example, several of the lists include words (in plain text) that are acceptable British English spellings (e.g., enamoured > enamored). I can't really think of a reason to keep those words on the list. They're not misspellings. Does anyone have another perspective on this? Thanks. JimVC3 (talk) 18:30, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Your proposals sound good to me. -David Schaich Talk/Cont 01:52, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
The national variants aren't misspellings per se, but some editors might consider them out of place in a given article depending on the subject. I suspect someone put them in there as notes to prevent others from doing a mass search-and-replace. They probably could be marked better, perhaps "Amer" and "Brit". Mild Bill Hiccup (talk) 11:00, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Now that I think more about it though, that might not be a good idea either, because if you have for example British -ise words versus American -ize words it adds up to a lot of variants, which would probably clutter up the lists. Maybe hidden comments would be better. Mild Bill Hiccup (talk) 15:39, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks to David and Mild Bill for your comments and support. I'll take it a step at a time. I'm rotating through the lists every day and each time I'll (1) re-alphabetize any part of the list that is out of order (2) change plain text links to searchable links and (3) add new words I've collected from other lists. At least for now, I'll do nothing with the American/British issue. Nor am I going to do anything with a number of other words that are just listed as variant spellings. I should finish in a few weeks. I'll post when I'm done. JimVC3 (talk) 18:59, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
The review took longer than I expected, but I've just finished. See the section below for a detailed explanation of what I did and some other observations. JimVC3 (talk) 00:58, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Review of Lists of Misspellings

I've finished reviewing/editing the 26 pages that make up the Lists of Common Misspellings. Most of the changes were for consistency and readability; I did not research every word and assumed that most of the listings were correct. The pages don't seem to be used very much, but I thought I would provide documentation of what I did:

  1. I eliminated any duplicates in the lists.
  2. I eliminated a few words that my research (using Wiktionary, Merriam-Webster and Webster's) indicated were spelled correctly.
  3. I changed plain text listings to searchable links. If the editor did not provide and I could not discern an obvious correct spelling, I eliminated the item.
  4. If a word had an acceptable variant, I (usually) listed the variant and noted the more commonly accepted spelling in parentheses. I formatted these exactly like other items in the list, but in plain text rather than as searchable links.
  5. I deleted a few instances of lengthy commentary regarding grammar.
  6. If a listing used double parentheses, I replaced the internal parentheses with brackets per the MOS.
  7. I re-alphabetized the lists as needed.

I doubt I will do much more with the lists. This was mostly a way for me to learn more about editing in Wikipedia. But I'll make these observations in case anyone is interested:

  1. These were meant to be lists of common misspellings, but have become much too long. They were not meant to include every typo and transposition know to humankind (!).
  2. Some of the listings are extremely rare, including some of the medical terms. I would eliminate any words that consistently yield no or very low search results.
  3. A lot of the entries are grammar issues, not spelling issues. There should be a discussion about whether or not they should be included. (Granted, sometimes the distinction is hazy.)
  4. If a misspelled word forms other misspellings by the simple addition of "s", "ed", "ing", "ly", "ful", "ness", and others, it is not necessary to list all of the versions. The Wikipedia search engine, at least in my experience for the past three weeks, consistently finds all of the misspelled versions. I would only include one version of a misspelled word.
  5. The list of misspellings for "A" words includes the number of Google search results. This is the only page on which this is done and has not been updated for months. I would eliminate the numbers.
  6. I would eliminate a few examples of misspelled words that result in huge, unusable numbers of false positives, although there should probably be discussion of what that number should be. For example, the misspelling "u" for "you" results in over 300,000 results. I doubt this is useful (and it is the one listing that I commented out so that it doesn't appear on the page). However, others may feel differently.

I welcome your comments. JimVC3 (talk) 01:02, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

JimVC3: your edits are very welcome, but as you seem to be aware these lists have rather fallen into disuse - at least as far as I can tell. They are perhaps overshadowed by the typo fixes of [[Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser|AWB]: Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos. Gaius Cornelius (talk) 17:11, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
Absolutely. I figured as much. The pages may be of some small use to the occasional new visitor or someone who doesn't (or as a Mac user, can't) use some of the automated bots. JimVC3 (talk) 19:29, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Commonly misspelled words

There is another related file, Commonly misspelled words, which contains a lot of suggestions from someone who have fixed a lot of typos but who has not previously been noticed by the Typo Team. Tabletop (talk) 06:53, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Spelling errors in image files?

How does one correct spelling errors in .IMG files, since they do not appear to have a move command?

Tabletop (talk) 09:31, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

You have to request the file be moved using the appropriate template, then someone with image-move rights will move it for you. Plastikspork (talk) 19:12, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Secure version

The links don't appear to work from the secure wikipedia server. I found a hack to fix this, but I am wondering if there is a more elegant solution. See Wikipedia talk:Searching#Creating a generic search link, and let me know if you have a better idea. If a solution is found, changing them is easy using a regular expression script. Also, is the 'Machine Readable' page appears to be much sorter than the complete lists, which is probably due to the fact that they are not checked for consistency? Thanks! Plastikspork (talk) 14:46, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I received a response. I am going to replace all the '{{SERVER}}' keywords with '{{fullurl:Special:Search|..}}' templates unless there is some objection. I hope this doesn't mess up some bot, but it will shorten the links and allow them to be used on the secure wikipedia interface. Thanks! Plastikspork (talk) 19:11, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
No objection, but I use the pages frequently. Would it be possible to make the change on one of the "shorter" alphabetical lists and let us know? Users could try it out to see if there are any problems. Thanks. JimVC3 (talk) 18:40, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
I ran my script on letters 'K', 'Q', and 'Z'. I am also removing "quotes" around single, unhyphenated words as they do nothing. For example, searching for '"knive"' is the same as searching for 'knive'. In addition, I am changing '%20' in the URL to '+' as it is functionally the same, and in fact, the '+' is what the search box (and urlencode uses). The lists for 'K', 'Q', and 'Z' were relatively short but appear to cover all the interesting cases (spaces, hyphenated words, ...). If I don't hear any complaints, I will run it on the rest of the pages in about a day. If you do see a problem, feel free to revert my edit and I can address the issue. Running the script for me is literally pressing a single button on each page. Thanks! Plastikspork (talk) 22:55, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
I just checked and it turns out that the quotations around single words can matter, so I think it might be best to just add quotes around all of them, but that can wait. Plastikspork (talk) 23:16, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
I don't see a problem. The pages still seem to work as they have been. And yes, the quotes make an enormous difference in the search results (assuming that that's what the '%22' means). There is no consistency in the hundreds of words listed. But I don't think there's an easy answer to including the quotations on all words or not. Removing them sometimes results in too many false positives. But including them may result in needing to list each misspelled word and all its variant endings (e.g. --ed, --ly, --s, --ing). I don't have a strong feeling either way. In any case, thanks for researching this and your work in updating the pages. JimVC3 (talk) 21:50, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Searching the database directly for typos

If anyone want me to search the database dump for a particular typo(s) then I will be happy to do that on request. thanks Martin 11:08, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

What would the procedure be? One suggestions would be to search for "a" followed by a word that begins with a vowel, for example "released a album", as mentioned above. Of course, human checking would then be required. There must be others that are similarly hard to google for. Gaius Cornelius 18:20, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
Sure, it would be easy to do that, in fact I'll do it now....... I searched for " a a", I dont think you'll like the results though, as there don't seem to be many false positives (I couldn't find any) and it found 2778 occurances (should be spelled "occurrences")!! Do you want me to post the results? the datadump is a month old so the results will be more accurate if I wait for a new dump.
BTW, it's 'occurrences' - maybe that should be another candidate for common misspellings.Arabhorse (talk) 16:06, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
btw. google seaching is never as good as you think it would be, even after you exaust a typo on google, you can be sure there are plenty more occurrences of it. thanks Martin 18:59, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
2778 occurrences! ...and that is just for " a a". Perhaps the list can be broken down into manageable chunks and then ask for volunteers? (I thought "govener" was bad at a few hundred.)
I know Google is not ideal. I gave up on attempting perfection some time ago, but I do revisit some of the most common misspellings.
Another problem is duplicated words. I have seen articles that have been carefully spellchecked, but still have duplicates - they are so very hard to see! Can your bot do this? Gaius Cornelius 20:03, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
How about after the next data dump I'll find lots of errors (" a a" etc. although " a u" is sometimes correct) then post the results and see if we can get a fix-up project running to correct them? As for finding double words, searching for specific ones is easy (I'll run a search for "the the" now). Martin 20:14, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
2500 results for " the the " !!!! Athough quite a lot seem to be fixed, so maybe it wont be as many after the next dump (I hope!). Martin 20:23, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
Yes, some sort of fix-up project would seem to be in order.
I fixed quite a few examples of "the the" myself over the last few weeks and months, it is certainly a very common example. Is there a consensus as to whether it is correct to use "the" just before a title that begins with the word "The", as in: "Tolkien completed the The Lord of the Rings in 1948...". My instinct was to change them, but being unsure I left them alone.
Can your bot search for all instances of two consecutive words that are the same? Gaius Cornelius 21:20, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
I searched for only lower case "the", so that should at least partially eliminate the problem you highlight (although it would be nice if we had a policy on it). I probably could make the logic to find all duplicate consecutive words, however there would probably be 10s of thousands, and a lot of false positives, so if we eliminate the obvious ones first then see how we are getting on. (btw, I just found there are ~500 "and and" which isn't too bad). Martin 22:08, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
A couple of thoughts:
Firstly, specific duplicates can be found by Google - I have fixed thousands but it is like painting the Forth Bridge! So, I am inclined to think that it may be better to bot for "a/an" problem in the first instance because it cannot be easily done any other way.
Secondly, one of the major frustrations of these tasks is that one finds faults in very small articles and sometimes young articles that may well be work-in-progress and will be fixed by regular editing. Given that the number of hits on a search will very high, is it possible to select the acticles searched by some criteria thereby obtaining a more manageable number and more appropriately directing effort?
I don't know anything about bots, but I appreciate that searching for all duplicate words might be complex - the reason I ask is that there is no other way to do this. If it can be done, one benefit would be that the required edits would be a little more interesting! Gaius Cornelius 22:50, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
I can easily make it so it only finds articles with over a certain number of characters or links, if that would help? Martin 23:01, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
I will have to get back to you at a later date - it is past bedtime here and I have not yet had dinner! Gaius Cornelius 23:13, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
Also, unfortunately I dont think a bot could do the tasks, even the a/an one, because a good proportion of them were a duplication of the letter "a" rather than simple bad grammer. However, I have a semi-bot that makes these repetitive tasks much simpler, see WP:AWB. Have a nice dinner! Martin 23:16, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
I am back. WP:AWB looks interesting. Not much time tonight, I am off to a pub quiz. Gaius Cornelius 18:45, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

spellchecker in the wiki editor?

Are there any plans to have a spell-checker in the wiki editor? I looked for it but didn't find it.
For it to auto-correct would be dangerous, on the other hand to flag possible mistakes would be helpful, particularly in newly introduced text, though there would be some merit in flaging possible mistakes that existed before. Then if we really want to be sophisticated we could have a mechanism for words to be flagged as already checked, even if they have a non-standard spelling, to help ensure that future editors don't make a change.
Pnelnik (talk) 09:34, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

If it did exist it would be good if there was more than one option (ie british and other englishes)  rdunnalbatross  09:37, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
The best solution appears to be to use the spellchecker in the web browser? Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 16:47, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
not if the use of IE is restricted by the collage admins.  rdunnalbatross  09:27, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

thru

Before I wade in with AWB, can someone confirm that "thru" really is a typo and not an accepted American variant? Here are articles with typical examples: Burton C. Andrus, Lords of the Psychon, Switch statement. Of course, I won't be changing any song titles or compounds such as drive-thru. John of Reading (talk) 21:23, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

It is an informal form of "through" (and the correct form). it is used in tings like drive-thru to make it short and uncomplicated.  rdunnalbatross  10:26, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
I don't think it is strictly American (such as using "defense" instead of "defence"). It is more of a lazy spelling than a typo, similar to using "u" in place of "you". Mild Bill Hiccup (talk) 11:49, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
It's listed in several dictionaries, but usually labeled as "informal" and sometimes as U.S. It's also mentioned at English spelling reform#History.

Thanks, all. I'll put it on my to-do list. John of Reading (talk) 10:29, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Use of wildcards?

Greetings! I just added a search for "meeet*" to Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings/M so that it will find "meeet", "meeeting", and "meetings" in one shot, but now I'm second-guessing myself. I couldn't find any discussion on the use of wildcards when searching for typos, so is my use of the wildcard appropriate? (Pre-emptive apologies if it's not). Thanks and have a nice day! -- Bgpaulus (talk) 16:29, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

In some cases, just searching for "meeet" will do the same thing, but not always. In this particular case, it appears to be quite helpful, so thanks for adding the wildcard. Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 22:37, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

wanna

Why is wanna a misspelling? Please reply on my discussion page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alireza Hashemi (talk • contribs) 23:16, 27 March 2003

I dunno? AerobicFox (talk) 18:54, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Had had & that that

You can use "had had", although in most examples that use that combination of words, the second had is redundant, and could be removed. E.g., "He had had his appendix out" could just as easily be "He had his appendix out", and still carry the same meaning. Perhaps the bot could do this? The remainder can be easily rewritten. I think I'll do it ... wikipedia tells me there's 1380 or so pages with "had had" - I'll do em all!


"That that" isn't great either, and should be avoided via rewriting the sentence (e.g., "considering that that movie was a bestseller" could become "as that movie was a bestseller".) Personally, I'd really like to see it kill every "could of" (could have), "should of" (should have) and "would of" (would have). Proto t c 13:36, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

"had had" may be awkward, but it is correct in some cases, and not equivalent to "had". Wrong in this case: "On July 27, 1967, he had had his appendix taken out". Correct in this case: "By the age of 14, he had had his appendix taken out, and had been around the world twice". This is why humans need to look at all cases. Chris the speller 19:02, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
perhaps better: "when I met him he had his appendix out" sounds like it was a response to meeting me. ahAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaa!!!!! Just erased an essay on the importance of whether you specify a time. The important difference is in which of two idioms "had" is being used. The first sense is "had a wank"/"had his appendix out"/"had a bit of rumpy pumpy"; the second is "had a wooden leg" etc. (while "had an orange" could be either). In the first sense the difference between "had" and "had had" tends to be important because you are talking about a momentary action, whereas in the second (where it's an attribute despite the misleading subject-verb-object suggestion of action) it's essentially redundant (including, unfortunately, the 10-had construction below, making it less impressive than I had hoped). 131.172.99.15 12:52, 1 October 2007 (UTC)snaxalotl

Interestingly there is a sentance construction which utilises 10 sequential 'hads'!

"John, where Peter had had 'had', had had 'had had' had had had the examiners approval"

I think the above is punctuated wrongly. Continuing the awkward redundancy, might as well go to eleven: "John, where Peter had had 'had', had had 'had had'. 'Had had' had had the examiner's approval". I think only eight is reasonable: "John, where Peter had 'had', had 'had had'. 'Had had' had the examiner's approval". I think the reason the 10-had version seems intuitively correct is that "where Peter had put X" and "where Peter put X" are about equally valid, and it seems intuitively reasonable to replace the 'put' with 'had' in the former since it is in the latter. However it's not, because (unlike 'put') the replacement 'had' is being used in the attribute sense, not the action sense. 131.172.99.15 13:18, 1 October 2007 (UTC)snaxalotl

It's not redundant. In the same way that "I have had a wooden leg for 10 years" and "Jon has had 3 oranges" are perfectly correct, "had had" is correct when the first tense of the verb "to have" happens to also be "had". In the same way that "The examiner had looked at the paper" and "The examiner looked at the paper" are correct in different circumstances, "had had" is correct in different circumstances to "had". "Had had" is comparable to "had looked" except the verb "to look" is replaced with the verb "to have". Indraneelan (talk) 12:35, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

You and I may not like it, but Nabokov used "had had", so that's that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.215.114.215 (talk) 21:47, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Doubling-Up

In the Adopt a Typo Section, it says how to avoid doubling-up on a typo. If there were one user trying to correct every typo of that sort, they would never get it done. Maybe letting multiple people adopt one typo would help de-typo the entire encyclopedia! pluma (talk) 17:33, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Mini-essay in response to spelling question

(Discussion moved from Wikipedia talk:Lists of common misspellings/A)

"acquited > acquitted, annoint > anoint"

Both of these are listed as misspellings, and my COD doesn't list them, but Wiktionary says they are acceptable variants - wikt:acquit, wikt:annoint. Opinions, anyone? -- John of Reading (talk) 13:56, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

The easy answer is that Wiktionary is never to be accepted as being authoritative by itself, since it is no less "home-brewed" than is Wikipedia. This is the same reason Wikipedia cannot be considered an authoritative source for use elsewhere in Wikipedia. However, if an entry or assertion found in Wiktionary is sourced, then that source, if reliable by the same standards of WP:RS, may be accepted as authoritative.
The more extended answer is that unlike Wikipedia, where tens of thousands of editors have degrees of expertise ranging from none at all to professionally qualified, and is (gradually) self-correcting in the various subjects covered, lexicography is an immensely complex and erudite subject. On the whole, Wiktionary is built from either plagiarism or original research. I think it is generally considered, even by many of its own editors, to be primarily useful for translations given for other languages, for national varieties of English, slang, and for usages, forms, and spellings that are considered to be "non-standard", however that may be defined. Milkunderwood (talk) 06:01, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
I've gone to these two Wiktionary entries that you gave, and tagged them with {{fact}}. I also labeled them as "(non-standard)", but that latter is likely to be deleted by one of their regular editors, who don't like outsiders coming in and messing around with their rules and forms, such as they are. If you are a regular Wiktionarian you might as well clean up obvious crap like this as you go along. (I'm registered, but never look there. I see you are not registered there under your WP username.)
Take a look at http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Policies_and_guidelines, and its discussion page. Also try searching for WT:Original research and WT:Plagiarism. The place is a disaster. Milkunderwood (talk) 06:43, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


Here's a helpful recommendation for anything and everything to do with words or phrases: create a "favorite" or "bookmark", etc, to this link:

This website gives you easy access to all sorts of general and specialized dictionaries and encyclopedias for comparison. For instance, entering "annoint" in OneLook's searchbox returns a total of three sources: Wiktionary, as you found and I have now tagged; Wikipedia, as a misspelled redirect to anoint; and Wordnik, which asks "Did you mean anoint?", also giving a number of instances of the misspelling. In contrast, OneLook returns 42 different sources for "anoint". As an experiment, look up "acquited" there and see what you find: only Wordnik, which is an omnium-gatherum of misspellings and misusages that it finds anywhere in print - descriptivism carried to (and far beyond) its logical extreme. For this reason Wordnik should not be considered an authoritative source for Wikipedia. Milkunderwood (talk) 07:49, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, that's a very thorough answer. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:11, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Merge proposal

As a follow-up to writing the above mini-essay, I also find the article Commonly misspelled words which appears to do much the same as this present project page. I've now added a {{See also}} hatnote to that article directing here, but it seems to me it might be more useful to merge the two pages together. I have not posted a formal merge proposal at either page.

I am posting a note on both talkpages, requesting discussion here as apparently being the more active of the two. Milkunderwood (talk) 09:59, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't think they can be merged. The article is about misspellings generally and is subject to WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:INDISCRIMINATE. It can only say that "accomodate" is a common misspelling if it can quote a reliable source that says this. Whereas the project page is entirely original research, a complete list of the common misspellings at Wikipedia. -- John of Reading (talk) 10:50, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
I agree with John of Reading. As I recall, Commonly misspelled words was specifically created to be a much shorter and more "notable" collection of words. It exists appropriately in article space, whereas I see Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings as a tool for us wikignomes working in the background. I would oppose a merger. JimVC3 (talk) 18:09, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Theatre/Theater

Are Theatre/Theater different in other countries?--Mjs1991 (talk) 00:26, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Inclusion criteria and removing words from the lists

I can find no explanation of what the criteria are for a word being included in this list - what is the definition of a “common” misspelling?
Having adopted all of Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings/R I have run weekly searches on all these words for over 2 years.
Only 2 words, "Refered" and "Recieve", occurred every week. "Retreived" occurred every week except one, whilst "Refering" and "Refrences" missed 2 weeks.
Conversely, 22 words have not occurred at all, 14 words have only occurred once and 10 words have only occurred twice.
IMHO a word that does not occur more than once a year, over such a long trial period, is not a "common" misspelling and I propose removing these from the list.
I would welcome any comments before doing so. - Arjayay (talk) 10:18, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

I worked extensively with these lists back in 2008 and 2009, cleaning them up for consistency and organization. But I really couldn't find any criteria for adding or deleting words from the lists. The lists aren't used that frequently, although I still find them useful when I'm in WikiGnome mode. Given your very thorough work with the 'R' list, I'd say you should feel free to delete as you think appropriate. Thanks for what you're doing. JimVC3 (talk) 18:04, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
Excellent work, and excellent suggestion. I have added a paragraph to the introduction codifying your idea. Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (talk) 02:41, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
Keep in mind that misspellings can come in and out of fashion. Some misspellings may have been common in the 1960's, but the usage of the word in all cases is so rare now that it would no longer show up in searches for it. The fact would remain that the misspelling is common, as far as the usage of the word is concerned. Badon (talk) 14:09, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
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