User talk:Wmahan/Articles with common misspellings

Note: if you want to discuss a particular correction I performed, please mention the article in question. Doing so will allow me to better address your concern, if necessary by reverting my change. Wmahan.

Spelling

Hi, thanks for providing those pages so I have some typos to look for ;) Maybe if I start from the other end (and of course strike out things I've corrected), we'll avoid overlap? Fredrik 08:47, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

By the way, I noticed that some of the listed misspellings are simply American/British variants and thus not really worth bothering with. And "independant" is valid according to both dictionary.com and m-w.com. I think that particular spelling looks ugly though (besides being inconsistent) and should be eliminated. Fredrik 15:51, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the help! Let me know what words you think are not worth correcting and I'll excise them from the list. Did you mean "dependant"? I agree that it should be changed if no one objects. Wmahan 17:02, 2004 Apr 5 (UTC)

dependant, dependant, etc.

Yeah, I meant "dependant". "Independant" is on the list too, but validly so. One of the words I noticed was "licence" (and other forms of it). Also, "gasses" (apparently, a valid alternate spelling), and "predominately" (I don't get this one, it's a real word). Fredrik 17:46, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Note that My dependant is dependent upon me is correctly spelled,

and My dependent is dependant upon me is incorrectly spelled.

This is true both for US and non-US spelling. -- Derek Ross 03:53, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Indeed. Unfortunately I can't detect the part of speech of a word automatically, so I can't include incorrect uses of dependant in my list.

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Would you mind if I removed "dependa*" forms from your personal most common list? They aren't misspellings, but British variants[1]. Dysprosia 06:53, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind at all, and thanks for the interesting reference. Wmahan. 07:11, 2004 Apr 10 (UTC)

predominantly, predominately, etc.

I've removed "licencing", "licenced", and "gasses" from the list and commented them out on the List of common misspellings. "Predominately" was a mistake on my part; I should've checked for "predominantly" instead. I think both are actually valid, though, so I've removed them from the list as well. Thanks! Wmahan 19:18, 2004 Apr 5 (UTC)

Predominate is a verb so predominately is incorrect. Adverbs are formed from adjectives, not from verbs. predominantly is definitely the only correct form. Please put predominately back in the list. -- Derek Ross 03:53, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

You raise a good point, but what about the fact that predominate is listed as an adjective (and hence predominately as an adverb) at Merriam-Webster online? Strictly speaking, I'm sure you're correct, but I'm willing to accept that language evolves; I'm not sure I want to keep changing supposedly incorrect words once they appear in a dictionary. Wmahan. 04:11, 2004 Apr 20 (UTC)

Understood but it's the job of dictionaries to describe language not to prescribe it, so if a usage becomes common they will rightly report it. There is no doubt that languages evolve. However when one decides to correct spellings, as you and I have done, one is no longer going with the flow of evolution. In fact one could say that we are actively trying to slow the proliferation of new (and in many cases more phonetic but less conventional) spellings. Why ? Well in my case it's to improve Wikipedia's image and credibility. That is why I would want to (and have in the past) changed predominately to predominantly throughout the Wikipedia despite its occurrence in some dictionaries. -- Derek Ross 04:41, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Well put. My view for now is that, in accordance with our goal of improving Wikipedia's image and credibility, I can better spend my time fixing the other mistakes that (to me) are much more flagrant. Maybe once we get a handle on the more egregious misspellings (granted, we probably can't fix everything), I'll start changing predominately to predominantly. Wmahan. 05:03, 2004 Apr 20 (UTC)

licencing, licenced, etc.

license is a noun or verb in the US but only a verb elsewhere whereas licence is a noun outside the US. Therefore licenses may be correct inside or outside the US depending on the noun/verb status of the word and licences is correct outside the US providing that it refers to nouns but licencing/licenced is a misspelling the world over. The correct spelling is licensing/licensed everywhere. You should reinstate the words on the list of common mispellings. -- Derek Ross 03:53, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Good catch. I must have been confused by the fact that Merriam-Webster online returns an entry when I type licenced or licencing into their form, even though neither word is actually listed as correct. I'll add the words back, thanks!

WHTA is not a mis-spelling

You have on your articles with mis-spellings List of radio stations in Georgia (U.S. state) with "whta" a mis-spelling, but this is not so. WHTA are the call letters of a radio station, not a mis-spelling. 66.245.72.59 18:49, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, I've removed it from the list. For future reference, anyone should feel free to edit the list with corrections or fixes. Wmahan. 21:30, 2004 Apr 8 (UTC)

barbeque

Barbeque is not an incorrect spelling. As is noted in the article it is an alternate spelling -there is no reason to go around changing it. Rmhermen 12:23, Apr 15, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. I changed three articles before realizing the error; see your talk page. Wmahan. 15:28, 2004 Apr 15 (UTC)

Cipher v cypher

Wmahan, I've noticed some of your corrections in some of the articles I've worked on and I think some of them were due to me. For which I apologize; my fingers and I have recurrent wrangles over digraphic swaps (and other adventures). So far, it's been something of a drwa. But English spelling is sufficiently insane that almost anything is possible; Shakespeare spelled his name something like 5 different ways. And then there's ghoti, my favorite.

But in the case of cypher and cipher (and decipher and decypher, and so on) there actually is a dual use. See Talk:Cryptography for a long running discussion. Is it possible to factor this into the 'spelling review crew' work?

ww 14:46, 1 May 2004 (UTC)

Hi ww, thank you for raising the issue. Right now, the only misspelling that my list detects automatically is encypher (encipher), taken straight from the list of common misspellings. That correction is legitimate as far as I can tell. If I changed another variant of the word, it was probably a mistake on my part.

What specific changes do you suggest? Were you requesting that I add another misspelling to my list, or did I make a mistake and correct an accepted usage? Wmahan. 16:02, 2004 May 1 (UTC)

W, If the list of misspellings still has encypher as wrong, then someone goofed. It should have been changed to indicate both encipher and encypher were acceptable.

I wasn't sure whether you were running automatic spelling correction or not and decided to assume not. I was merely trying to alert one of those who regularly correct WP spelling of the 'not a problem' status here. That's all.

Glad you like the crypto stuff. With digital rights management looming over us all, crypto is likely to become more than obscure stuff for the more than normally geeky. It's one of the reasons I've been putting in considerable time in crypto land here. If WP can contribute dispelling the mists of myth and nonsense, we may collectively do better than we have with this stuff. At least I have delusions...

ww 16:28, 1 May 2004 (UTC)

I use a list to find misspellings, but I review all my corrections before submitting them.

It appears that some people consider encypher an error, even though they accept both cipher and cypher. For example, dictionary.com and m-w.com both have encipher but not encypher. I don't feel strongly about the issue, but see Wikipedia talk:List of common misspellings for the discussion. Wmahan. 16:47, 2004 May 1 (UTC)

W, Well, we thus enter the realm of prescriptive v descriptive. I've observed elswhere in WP (in re this issue) that Nero Wolfe is surely dying the death of a thousand high speed revs.

Actual use by those active in the field includes both styles for all variants that I can think of. 'iph' is becoming (has become) more common, especially in AE, but 'yph' survives even in A. As for instance, my own writing on the subject which uses 'yph' exclusively. The history includes both styles, with 'yph' more common in BE apparently. The list of common should not take sides on this, in my view.

On another oddity of this odd and glorious language, try the talk page for National Security Agency. This one is quite subtle, I think, and I can almost feel something in my brain cooperating with other speakers in setting a new standard... Fascinating, as Spock would say. ww 17:56, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

I tend to fall on the "descriptive" side (like you, I think), and I'm leaning toward removing encypher from my list to avoid the debate altogether. I just want to make sure that encypher isn't widely viewed as obviously incorrect. The discussion regrading prepending the to NSA is indeed interesting. Wmahan. 22:05, 2004 May 3 (UTC)

Hi Wmahan, have you read the discussion at Talk:Cryptography#Cypher_vs_Cipher? Personally I prefer cipher, which to me looks more natural, over cypher, which to me looks archaic and pretentious. Fowler wrote in 1926 that only the British used cypher, while both the British and the Americans used cipher, but the situation has almost certainly changed since then. Both spellings have waxed and waned over the centuries, and the dominant one at any particular time is just a matter of fashion. I say that we should allow both, and not try to 'correct' to one or the other. -- Heron 08:42, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the link and your opinion. Since both spellings appear to be valid, I won't touch cipher, cypher or any of the related words. I also removed encypher from Wikipedia:List of common misspellings. Wmahan. 17:41, 2004 May 4 (UTC)

Partial words?

I recently added an article entitled Eblana (an ancient name for Dublin). Eblana is also the name of a company (with which I am intimately linked!). In this case Eblana is an acronym meaning European Business Language Agency. In order to illustrate that the lan part of Eblana stands for language, I've emphasised the first part of the word, which leaves the second part ('guage') apparently as a separate word. This was picked up as a misspelling. I've added Eblana to the exceptions list. Any other suggestions for a solution?--Pmaguire 17:52, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your note. I am aware of the problem, and I agree that it should be fixed. The challenge is that I still want to flag misspelled words that are surrounded by single quotes, and I don't want to make the script I use to generate the list more complex. My plan is to go through all the misspellings I found that have a quotation mark on either side and fix those myself, and then remove them from the list. I think the number of such misspellings should be small enough for this to be feasible. Wmahan. 03:05, 2004 May 3 (UTC)

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Quick note: Thanks for your spelling edits on Fred Lerdahl. Hyacinth 23:12, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Paid vs Payed

Was about to start editing these (well, I've already done a couple) when I thought to check. It seems that Payed is an allowed variant spelling for Paid. Looks weird to my eyes, but it's acceptable apparently. I'll just leave those, unless you really disagree.

See this link --Bwmodular 13:07, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Pr onwards struck out

On P-Z all the entries from pr onwards are struck out, but I think this is a typo, not deliberate. difficult to know what to do except 'unstrike' everything from pr onwards.

well, a random sampling of about 20 of these struck out entries found none that had not been fixed, so maybe they have all already been dealt with. If anyone knows more about this, let us know, otherwise, I'll just ignore everything from the start of PR to the end of the struck out section.--Bwmodular 16:26, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Looking at the page history, it seems as if someone just did a lot of work and struck it all out in one go. sorry for the confusion.--Bwmodular 16:40, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)