Wikipedia talk:Lists of common misspellings

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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 Oct 22, 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 handly 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

[edit] 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

[edit] 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 Oct 22, 2002 (UTC)

[edit] '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 Dec 30, 2002 (UTC)

[edit] 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

[edit] wanna

Why is wanna a misspelling? Please reply on my discussion page

[edit] 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 Nov 2003 (UTC)

[edit] 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 Apr 5 (UTC)

[edit] publically/publicly

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)

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)

[edit] encypher/encipher

encypher may be British English - needs checking. Secretlondon 12:35, 26 Mar 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)

[edit] bot

Hi, I've made a list of articles with common misspellings as of the last ~~time Google updated its index~~ database dump. Perhaps checking these articles by hand isn't as easy as using an automated spelling bot, but I think this could be useful finding articles that need attention. If you agree, feel free to help. Any other suggestions are welcome. Wmahan 00:16, 2004 Apr 5 (UTC)

Update: I updated the list so that articles are sorted by the misspelled word; perhaps the new format will be more compatible with the work of people who go through this list when correcting articles. Wmahan . 01:17, 2004 Apr 20 (UTC)

[edit] androgenous/androgynous

Listing androgenous as an incorrect spelling of androgynous is risky. Both are valid words, and though closely related, have different meanings.

Thanks for pointing out the distinction; I have commented out androgenous. Wmahan . 18:36, 2004 May 6 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

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

[edit] Wired-in searches

I tried to wire in a search for a word, but only got the external link to work (clumsy). Is there some concern or evidence that if the whole list was wired, it actually slow Wiki down as hundreds of editors rush to search for thousands of misspellings? Am I treading a well-worn path? Hu 07:26, 2004 Nov 23 (UTC)

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

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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!! 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. 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 occurances of it. thanks Martin 18:59, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

2778 occurances! ...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)

[edit] 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 seraches 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

"Supercede" is actually an alternate spelling of "supersede" [1] and thus should follow the WP:MOS#National varieties of English. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 17:49, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
- Is that supposed to be a joke? The site you've linked is called 'Common Errors in English'! ColinFine 19:05, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
  - I think I misread what was currently on Wiktionary:supercede... sorry. Zzyzx11 (Talk) Zzyzx11 (Talk) 19:30, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

According to The Columbia Guide to Standard American English, both 'supersede' & 'supercede' are ~~correct~~ acceptable. --PFHLai 19:18, 17 September 2006 (UTC) --PFHLai 19:20, 17 September 2006 (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)

Agree. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 19:33, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

This larger issue may need to be raised on Wikipedia talk:Lists of common misspellings. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 19:35, 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)

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