Wikipedia talk:Typo Team/Archive 4

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Typos that may or may not need to be corrected

• sometimes a word is a misspelling of more than one word, and great care must be in choosing the correct correction. Such cases will be challenging for spellingbots. If it were possible to trawl through and summarize the "edit summaries" for a typo team member, it would be possible to give examples.

• • Proper names are often spelled differently to the ordinary word; eg.
    • John Hazzard, and hazard.
    • Helen Brach and brach => branch.
  • words in foreign languages
  • words in [[File:blah....svg]] and [[Image:blah....jpg]]

• • Valid anagrams
    • from & form

• • The wiki search function finds "-e, -ed-, -es, -ing, -or" words in the one search.

• • some words are hard to search for, such as
  • its & it's

• The wiki search function shows a misspelled word in the context of 2 or three lines, which is mostly enough to tell what correction is necessary. if any.
• However, if the say "File:" and/or ".svg" is off the page, then the error in that filename may be incorrectly corrected.
• If would help if keywords such as "File:" and ".svg" can be coloured, that would help, with a toggle to turn the colour on/off, since coloured text has less contrast that black/white text, and is harder to read. Tabletop (talk) 12:44, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

I notice you added some of the above into the project page. Thanks for the additions! I've edited them into the existing Typos that need to be corrected and Typos that do not need to be corrected sections. I felt "Typos that may or may not need to be corrected" was a rather ambiguous heading, though the content of the section was clearer, giving advice on what should and should not be corrected. As such, it fit better under the existing headings. I also removed some "would like to have" comments (such as colouring "File:"); saying what can't be done doesn't help people who want to correct typos. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 00:14, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

New way to find and sort Typos

I'm proposing a new way to find and sort typos.
Basics:Firstly a new maintenance tag should be created, something like {{Suspected typo(s)}} this would be placed on any article that has, or may have typo(s). This template would place the article in Category:Articles with suspected typos. This instantly provides a way for an editor to help out, they can go to that category and pick an article, fix any typos then remove the tag. The category could also be in AWB.
To improve upon this the template could have unlimited unnamed parameters that would list the suspected typos e.g. {{Suspected typo(s)|"Misisipi"|"the the"}} not only would these alter the text so an editor would know what to look for on the page but it would add the page to Category:Articles with suspected typos (Misisipi), Category:Articles with suspected typos (the the). This would mean if a user wanted to fix specific typos they could use these categories for that purpose.
Automation:This could potentially be added to AWBs general fixes, as it is already capable of finding suspected typos through RegExTypoScan, so AWB would add or remove templates and parameters as part of a page's general fixes.
At the least a bot could be used to initially tag existing pages then monitor the new pages and recent edits for typos.
I look forward to your thoughts... Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 15:09, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Category:Articles with suspected typos could be categorized in Category:Clean up categories. (Incidentally, "clean up" is a verb phrase, and the desired noun adjunct is "clean-up" or "cleanup". Please see wikt:clean-up and wikt:cleanup. More references are available from http://www.onelook.com.)

—Wavelength (talk) 16:24, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

WP:BACKLOG contains Category:Articles needing cleanup, which may be more appropriate than Category:Clean up categories.

—Wavelength (talk) 16:36, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

It was WP:BACKLOG that gave me the idea, it's crazy that typos are not reported there. All of the suggestions above have not been massively well thought out so there's loads of room for improvement! Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 17:51, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree with you on the naming of Category:Clean up categories, you could ask for a renaming at Categories for discussion, it possibly satisfies speedy renaming criteria C2A Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 17:51, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

I've just run 1000 articles through RegExTypoFix to get a feel for what an automated process might find: 8 genuine spelling errors; 4 errors involving only a change of case; 13 changes involving only hyphenation or spacing; 2 false positives (one in a quotation, one in the name of an image). Multiply those figures by 4000 if the automated process scans the entire encyclopedia. I think this would be seen as disruptive, too much tagging for too little benefit. -- John of Reading (talk) 18:59, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

That is a very good point, I had no real idea how many articles this would involve... potentially back to the drawing board then. I still think there is massive scope to both increase the number of editors fixing typos and to make the process of finding typos at all easier. Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 19:14, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Is there a way to get talk page alerts in response to typos?

Hi. I have been looking at an impressive number of typo-related bots and scripts but none of them seem to do what I want. Is there a way I could specify a typo (e.g. irregardless) and a whitelist (e.g. the 10 articles that currently contain irregardless as part of a quotation or a discussion on grammar) and then sign up to get alerts whenever the typo shows up in an article that is not in the whitelist? It would be great not having to remember how long it has been since I searched for an adopted typo. I could just wait for a notification to appear and then I would either correct the typo or add it to the whitelist. By the way, I am looking for something cross-platform (or Linux native) so no AWB. If such a thing does not exist, I would be interested in writing it. Connor Behan (talk) 19:01, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Barnstar 2.0

Currently, the project barnstar has a version 2.0 that looks nothing like the original. So, since I finally bit the bullet and learned how to use Inkscape, I've whipped up a version that looks more like the original I designed. Which would you all like better? Sophus Bie ^(talk) 18:20, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

I prefer yours. There's something about the shade of red in the old 2.0 image I don't like, and the mop behind the star is typically associated with with adminship. (I know it really refers to "cleaning up" typos, but adminship is the first thing I think of when I see that mop.) Thanks for taking the trouble to do this. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:16, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Glad you like it! I agree, the mop always puts me in mind of sysops too.

Since I'm biased, I don't want to switch out the stars without something resembling consensus, so once I hear another "yes", I'll change the template. Sophus Bie ^(talk) 21:57, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes! Nice crisp image, and I agree that the mop sends a misleading message. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:27, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Add me to the "yes" column. Thanks for taking the time to create the new version. JimVC3 (talk) 16:15, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

It looks great! Count me in for a 'yes' too. I somehow missed this discussion until now. Jason Quinn (talk) 02:30, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Cheers! I'm going to count three 'yeses' as concensus, considering the size of the project. I'll go switch it. Sophus Bie ^(talk) 10:13, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Not sure where else to ask this?

This seems like as good a place as any to ask about this - I've been going through some articles and trying to correct typos, but I've ran into a problem where the names of entire categories are spelled incorrectly. It's very difficult to move things over/redirect by hand, and I'm pretty new to Wikipedia editing so I know there must be an easier way to do this. Particularly what I'm working on is the following articles/categories: Category:Organisations based in Delhi - obviously misspelled, but when I put a redirect to Organizations_based_in_Delhi nothing followed it. There are several other related articles/categories I've also been working on, some of which have migrated correctly... others not so much. I just want to make this better, help! - Brainmurk Ⓧ (talk) 16:58, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Categories are tricky. To fix a typo in a category name, go to WP:CFDS and follow the instructions there. If no-one objects, the category will be renamed a couple of days later, and then all the affected articles will be fixed up by a bot. But the example you give here isn't likely to be accepted, as "organisations" is a valid spelling, and there are 1697 categories with the word as part of their names. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:10, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

I've undone your edit at Category:Organisations based in Delhi, because the issue would need wider discussion to be done properly. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:13, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Tyop Contest

Hey all,

I'm currently organizing a contest called the 'Tyop Contest'. If anyone is interested in joining, please check it out.

Good luck! Newyorkadam (talk) 18:32, 8 December 2013 (UTC)Newyorkadam

Tyop Contest Judging

Hey guys, the Tyop Contest has been underway for five days now and it's been great! The judges (me, Jeffrd10 and since today, Wizardman) have over 1,000 typos to confirm after only five days. If anyone is interested in helping to judge, even if for only a few minutes a day, respond here and I'll show you how to judge! Also, if anyone's interested in participating, signups are still open, and will be until the end of the contest!

See ya :)
Newyorkadam (talk) 03:47, 6 February 2014 (UTC)Newyorkadam

will likely > will probably

I've been reminded about the entry "will likely > will probably" at Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings/Grammar and Misc#W. There are about 3000 of these in mainspace. Is this a clear error, worth making an edit to fix, or just a style issue? -- John of Reading (talk) 09:46, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

[Disclaimer: I'm the original requestor.]

I admit that 'will likely' isn't an error - at least not in American English. However, in British English we always say 'will probably'. As the latter works fine in the US too, I believe, would it not be a change worth making, as the phrase won't then grate on this side of the pond? Thanks, Trafford09 (talk) 10:00, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

This is a very interesting question, I'm asking at an English grammar forum now. -Newyorkadam (talk) 20:35, 13 February 2014 (UTC)Newyorkadam

That looks an interesting site - cheers. Trafford09 (talk) 09:37, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

On that forum, WS2 cites the OED as saying "likely" is not grammatically correct in British English without a modifier such as "most" or "very". I don't have a paper copy of an Oxford dictionary to check, but the online version says it is rare outside of Scotland and North America, not that it's incorrect. (A subscription is required for that link; British users can log in with their library card number.) The note from the online version reads "Now chiefly most likely, very likely; otherwise rare exc. Sc. dial., or (freq.) N. Amer.". I can confirm I hear "will most likely" more often than "will likely", living in northern England. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 17:17, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm a Brit. I don't have a problem with either phrase, and perceive them to both have the same meaning. I've checked a couple of dictionaries (Collins and Chambers), and both define "likely" to mean "probably", with no note saying it's colloquial or region-specific. I admit I use "will probably" more often than "will likely", but if I catch myself using "probably" too much in a text I'll happily substitute "likely". I think this is just a style thing, and not something that needs "fixing". – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 21:05, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Capitalisation of portals names

There is an ongoing discussion about the capitalisation of portal titles. Please give your opinions on Portal talk:Molecular and Cellular Biology#Requested moves.
Coreyemotela (talk) 13:14, 16 May 2014 (UTC).

Errors in quoted text

There's a contradiction between

• This project (section WP:DONTFIX): In quotes, the material being quoted may contain a typo or have archaic spelling. Do not "fix" this. Instead, insert a code comment saying that it is a "sic" in the original material so that future editors do not change it.

and

• MOS:QUOTE: Trivial spelling and typographic errors should simply be corrected without comment, for example, correct basicly to basically and harasssment to harassment, unless the slip is textually important.

Perhaps this should be considered in the project page? Personally I agree with (and act on) MOS:QUOTE; it only seems to be desirable to leave errors in if the error itself has some significance. For example, archaic spellings should usually be preserved; errors that inform the reader that a quote was written by an uneducated writer or preserve a dialectal flavour make sense; but if someone writes "law 1234 was superceded by law 4321" I see no point at all in reproducing this exactly (with or without "sic") unless I want to point out that the writer or drafter couldn't spell. Nothing useful is lost by changing it to "law 1234 was superseded by la 4321"; the typo is only an unnecessary distraction. This wouldn't normally apply if there is a change of meaning, even if the writer obviously intended the corrected meaning; for example, care is needed with "it is now recommended that bleach be taken internally", where "not", rather than "now", was intended. Pol098 (talk) 13:39, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Leaflet For Typo At Wikimania 2014

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Adikhajuria (talk) 15:32, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

"sportscar" v "sports car"

I've just started work on Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings/S, which, among many other fixes, suggests that "sportscar" should be changed to "sports car". OneLook.com agrees that "sportscar" hasn't made it into any major dictionaries yet (sportscar v sports car)

Obviously this shouldn't happen in proper names (examples), so I made sure my list only included articles where the word is in lowercase.

But it quickly became clear that this will affect a large number of articles, so I'm posting here to check. Are there major dictionaries where "sportscar" is listed? Is there a shade of meaning that I'm not aware of?

There's a list at User:John of Reading/Sandbox (permalink). -- John of Reading (talk) 07:23, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

I think it's simply an alternative spelling that is equally as common as sports car. Sportscar does tend to feature more in proper names, such as the World Sportscar Championship (here is an official program with the "FIA Sportscar World Championship" logo), yet the FIA have regulations that use the term sports car in their definition of various categories (here). Sports car would appear to be correct, but I would equally state that sportscar is not inherently wrong. I have no problem with changing all lowercase usages to sports car though. The³5₉ (Talk) 08:40, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Oddly it can refer to two completely different classes of vehicle. Within the sport, "Sportscar" as the 359 points out, it is usually an at least semi-formal version of refering to the vehicles that race an the top of enclosed wheel racing - the front running cars in the World Endurance Championship, Le Mans 24 Hour and the United SportsCar Championship. They are also sometimes referred to as prototypes under the mis-understanding that they have a prototype relationship with road cars. Then there are what road car manufacturers refer to as sports cars. Cars specifically designed for sports performance primarily with practicality of the vehicle being compromised, but not the expensive sports cars refered to as GTs or Grand Tourers. Cars most typified by the Mazda MX-5.

The interpretation could be made the sportscars are the specialist motor racing vehicles and the small road cars are sports cars. --Falcadore (talk) 16:12, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

"Sportscar"

"Sports Car"

--Falcadore (talk) 16:17, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

To add to Falcadore's statement, "sportscar" as he sees it fits with our current article on sports prototype. The³5₉ (Talk) 20:38, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

To my mind, both forms mean a car that is optimised for sports (ie speed and/or handling) rather than luxury, comfort, economy, capacity, etc. So both of the above forms mean the same thing.  Stepho  talk  05:45, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

I've checked my back issues of Sportscar Quarterly and Classic and Sportscar magazine (interestingly they eventually changed their banner to Classic and Sports Car), and I also think it's an alternative spelling. Interesting to find it in this publication. [[1]]. Mighty Antar (talk) 08:19, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback everyone. It's clear that changing "sportscar" to "sports car" is outside the scope of "fixing typos", so I won't be making these edits. I've undone the 15 edits I made before starting this thread. -- John of Reading (talk) 10:35, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

I think we should use sports car because it's in the dictionary and it looks a lot better than sportscar. User:Qunty (talk) 7:28 PM, 25 June 2014 (GMT)

Leaflet For Typo Team At Wikimania 2014 (updated version)

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Adikhajuria (talk) 16:54, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Logo is weird

Something is wrong with our Team's logo. It's supposed to be a square but it is rendering now as a tall rectangle of about 2:1 ratio. I see it render incorrectly under multiple browsers so it's something with the wiki-markup. Perhaps a bug in the wiki-markup was exposed by fixes to browsers. I quickly glanced at the code but didn't see any problem. But I'm currently only editing in couple minute spurts and don't have time to debug it. Cheers, Jason Quinn (talk) 01:53, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

I've fixed it, I hope, with this edit. But the coding here hasn't changed for years, so the change in rendering must be caused by something in the software. No idea! -- John of Reading (talk) 05:59, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

@John of Reading. Good job. I don't know what happened either. It actually kind of makes more sense now than it did, so hopefully whatever change was responsible was a bug fix and not a regression. Cheers, Jason Quinn (talk) 01:06, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

need help in editing the page swati lakra

i am sakthi swaroop from hyderabad , i am creating a page called swathi lakra , acp of hyderabad police . she is a notable person  and she is leading she teams in hyderabad. as i am new to wikipedia i am facing issues , to make the page more reliable and editimg teh page according to wiki standards  ...do help
in the issue. the page address is  "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swathi_lakra"

Sakthi Swaroop, I've done some cleanup on the article for capitalization and punctuation. I've also made some suggestions on improving the article on its talk page at Talk:Swathi Lakra. 1bandsaw (talk) 19:57, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Typo in Article Heading

Professional Recruiter Associates The title of this page is under case. Can this be edited? Post the process to enhance the Typo Team capabilities please! Please edit this pages title and any others you come across.Donald Sonn (talk) 18:59, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

The process is described at Wikipedia:Moving a page. However, the page has been tagged for speedy deletion as advertising. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:22, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Who has the Burden of Proof When Typo is Propagated in Name?

I adopted the typo "ya'll", meant to be "y'all". This is used in a lot of names of songs, books, etc. The artist act of "Timbaland and Magoo" have a song with the typo listed on Wikipedia. The same typo is on Discogs, and maybe other places. BUT, when I look up an image of the rear cover of the album on any purchase site (or Discogs), they have the word listed correctly as "y'all". It seems like I wouldn't need a reference to change the Wikipedia entry for the track to match the correct word on the album cover, without providing an additional reference since there was no clear basis that it should have been listed that way in the first place. Is that true, or does the burden of proof rest with the me, the changer simply because I am changing the word in question? Spawn777 (talk) 23:45, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

I'd make the change, with an edit summary such as "per the album cover image at <this url>". I often correct book titles where someone at Amazon or Google Books has mis-keyed the title, but the correct spelling can be seen on the image of the book jacket: "per the book cover image at Amazon". -- John of Reading (talk) 06:11, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Spawn777. I'd make the change as well and give a decent edit summary as previously suggested. If there's pushback, take it to the talk page. Primary sources can be used on Wikipedia in certain situations and with good judgement as per WP:PRIMARY. Even if the misspelling of "ya'll" was heavily sourced, if the album itself used "y'all" and you couldn't find a non-primary source using the album's spelling, I'd say it would be a good instance where invoking Wikipedia:Ignore all rules is valid since it is a clear improvement that fixes a factual error. In a similar vein, I just had the reversed situation a few days ago where an album contributor's name was misspelled in the album notes itself and all secondary sources I could find were only propagating the misspelling. After some deliberation, the fix was made. By the way, you're among the few who care about policy enough to ask such questions. I salute you. See you around, Jason Quinn (talk) 12:17, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Adopting a word?

It might be helpful if people who feel so inclined "adopt" a particular typo. While not a member of the typo team, I've eliminated all incorrect "supercede"s, and correct new ones as they're added. (The word doesn't belong to me of course, feel free to correct any instances you find.) Pol098 (talk) 12:27, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Typos that do not need to be corrected

Would it be helpful in this section to mention the '{{not a typo}}' template, especially to differentiate from the 'sic' template? JennyOz 01:43, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes. Good idea. Go ahead and add it. Jason Quinn (talk) 02:46, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Done Pol098 (talk) 14:04, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Guerrila?

This edit summary states that "guerrila" is an Australian spelling. Onelook.com doesn't list any online dictionaries with this spelling. Does Coolmarc or anyone else have access to printed Australian dictionaries? -- John of Reading (talk) 16:47, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

The correct Australian spelling, per the printed Macquarie Dictionary, is "guerilla" (one 'r', two 'l's) - I've made the correction in the article. DH85868993 (talk) 09:35, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps it's time I bought myself some more dictionaries. -- John of Reading (talk) 14:59, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

A huge list of probable typos and misspellings

The list is generated using Wikipedia dumps from June 2015 (~7-8M): https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dennis714/yurichev.com/master/blog/fuzzy_string/files/enwiki2015.typos.txt

Here is also an article about hunting for typos and misspellings in Wikipedia: http://yurichev.com/blog/fuzzy_string/ --Yurichev (talk) 17:48, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Interesting, but Beasant, Clower, Halhed and Hicken are surnames, Farriers is the plural of Farrier, Mottingham exists, Pinions are the plural of Pinion, Querns exist, and is also a surname, Denzer is a place and a surname. I'm seeing too many false positives in this list to be useful for typo fixing. ϢereSpielChequers 21:20, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

@Yurichev: "Have lead to" is a misspelling that now appears in several Wikipedia articles. Can we add it to the list? Jarble (talk) 07:05, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Latest addition at WP:DONTFIX

@SMcCandlish: I'd like to suggest a few changes to the latest addition to WP:DONTFIX, the point added in Special:Diff/702416079.

• I think "Discuss a desired change..." should be "If challenged, discuss a desired change...". This point seems to be aimed at cases where an editor begins a bunch of corrections, perhaps having checked them in dictionaries A, B and C, only to be reverted or challenged by another editor who has access to dictionaries D and E. The first editor won't know that discussion is needed until after some edits have been made and challenged.
• I don't think a link to WP:COSMETICBOT is appropriate. Corrections to spelling and grammar are, I hope, never regarded as merely cosmetic, or I've been wasting my time making thousands of "cosmetic" edits over the past six years. Also, there is no need to mention bot edits, since the bot policy explicitly forbids spelling and grammar correction by bots. So my suggested wording for the last sentence would be "Especially, if challenged, do not continue to make the same correction to other articles, as this is liable to be deemed disruptive"

-- John of Reading (talk) 16:30, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

@John of Reading: Sure. That was the main idea, though more generally the point would really be "if people are up in arms about what you're doing, stop." This is the main reason anyone ever gets in WP:ANI or other trouble over typo-fixing sprees – the refusal to stop and discuss. Your rewrite of the 2nd point gets at that neatly. I tweaked the "if challenged" in that to "if such a challenge has not been resolved" (I always try to anticipate and forestall wikilawyering loopholes >;-) I'd added AWB because, while SPELLBOT doesn't cover it since it's not a bot, COSMETICBOT does – despite the shortcut name, it covers AWB's general-fixes tools specifically. On closer examination of the wording there, it doesn't say all AWB general fixes are covered, just "many" of them, without specifying which. So I agree that the Typo Team interpretation should be that typo fixes do not fall within that vague "many", because they are not actually cosmetic. When I was using AWB a lot, I certainly made such changes, and don't recall much push-back on it. That actually puts me in a position to argue against the COSMETICBOT rule applying to what this project does; it just didn't occur to me at that moment.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  17:02, 1 February 2016 (UTC)q

I've made a thousand or so typo fixes by AWB in the last couple of months with scarcely any issue. Typo fixes are not cosmetic changes, they are usually minor if people are reading EN wiki in English, but for those of our readers who read via Google translate they are far from minor changes. ϢereSpielChequers 12:06, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Search request is longer than the maximum allowed length

When I do searches for typos and also exclude things using -something in the search box, my searches often get quite long. There has been a change and searches with more than 300 characters are no longer allowed. This has broken a lot of my queries. Is this affecting anyone else? I've asked about it at Village pump (technical)#Search request is longer than the maximum allowed length and there doesn't seem to be a work around. Any other ideas?  SchreiberBike | ⌨  18:29, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

I use regular expressions several kilobytes long in the AWB database scanner, but that needs a big download and a lot of disc space, and then each search takes 30 minutes or more to run. Excessive detail here. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:43, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

I have a potential solution in Alpha test at User_talk:WereSpielChequers#Poop_patrol. It gets round the 300 byte limit by having tables of safe phrases and safe pages. It isn't Beta test yet, but additional eyes would be welcome. Those tables can be much bigger than 300 bytes. I also use AWB, both systems have particular easily confused words they handle well or badly. ϢereSpielChequers 12:10, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia Typo tool

Dear Typo Team

I am working on a tool that will apply a true spell checker to a Wikipedia page (the Hunspell spell checker). This came about as I was unhappy with the current spellcheckers that were (i) not aware of Wiki markup and (ii) had a very limited vocabulary and thus reported a lot of false positives. Both these limitations made it very challenging to apply a true rule-based "whitelist" based spell checker to Wikipedia articles, leaving most people with lists of typographical mistakes against which to check articles. This is to some degree not satisfying as it can only ever identify mistakes that were previously encountered before and not new ones only found in one place. I have thus created a tool that allows users to check articles (current German and English) against the hunspell spellchecker -- with a few enhancements. First, it is aware of Wiki Syntax (which means template, references etc can be excluded from the spellcheck) and secondly it uses a much larger vocabulary based on common words in Wikipedia and titles of Wikipedia articles. This allows user to fine-tune their search according to their needs and still get a reasonable result (balance of true and false positives).

An example of this is the article Bacteria, a featured article that I picked from the list of featured articles. I used the tool with the "Medium" heuristics, searching in regular text only. It reports 4 words one of which is a typo (microbiolology) and a rare spelling variant (undigestible instead if indigestible). This example highlights the utility of the tool to find misspellings that are probably not common typos and have been present for over 8 years even in highly vetted articles such as featured articles. Of course you cannot expect to find errors in all articles. Most queries are done within 10-15 seconds, but if you have many words for which hunspell must provide a suggestion, it can take longer.

If you are interested, here is a link to the tool: https://tools.wmflabs.org/hroest/cgi-bin/spell.py

Best regards --hroest 18:57, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Nice tool. It works for me, I've been testing it on groups of 60 random articles, it usually finds one or two typos per batch and the tool shows more real typos than false positives. ϢereSpielChequers 13:34, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Great to hear, I really appreciate the feedback. Let me know if there are any issues you run into. Best regards --hroest 17:12, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Quartzite and Quarzite

Hard to tell which spelling of the "Quarzites" is a correct usage as opposed to a misspelling of the genuine "Quartzite". Maybe someone here can sort it out. -- œ^™ 05:37, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

a misspelling of more than one word

In the Typos that need to be corrected section, it says "a misspelt word could be a misspelling of more than one word". This was added by User:Tabletop with this edit on 12:34, 16 May 2013. I think I kind of know what is meant here but I'm blanking on a good pedagogical example. Even better would be a few wiki diffs of actual examples found in practice. Tabletop, can you think of a good example we could give? Jason Quinn (talk) 07:46, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

@Jason Quinn: I tackled "beared" a while back, which had to be changed to bearded, bearer, bears, bore or borne. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:58, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, John of Reading. Perhaps we will use this as the example. Jason Quinn (talk) 17:13, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Misspelling of more than one word (ambiguous)

Here are some examples:

• achived (achieved, archived)
• ackward (awkward, backward)
• Tansania (Tanzania, Tasmania) (z & s; n & m; are pairs of similar letters) :-)
• Dakka (Dakar, Dacca, Dhaka) (Capital city of their respective country, plus one old spelling).

Care has to be taken to choose the correct correction. Since the first and last letters and most of the intermediate letters are the same, the wrong correction are probably more likely with

• Whole language which read the word in one go, as compared to
• Phonics which reads the word letter by letter, left to right.
• Example: "Bill and Melinda Gates donate $300m to Tasmania, where there is no malaria, instead of to Tanzania, where there is malaria."

Perhaps a separate list of ambiguous spelling errors could be derived from Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings? Tabletop (talk) 04:24, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Suggested title change: "Misspelt words with more than one plausible corrections". Tabletop (talk) 04:48, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Super, Tabletop! Those are all very good examples. We'll probably end up using one or two of those as the example. Perhaps headings like "Misspelt words requiring context to fix" or "Misspelt words for which the correction requires context" is even clearer? Jason Quinn (talk) 13:59, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Suggested title should start with "Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings", such as

• Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings requiring context to fix. Hence these titles are close together in alphabetical orders, such as in a Category Listing.

False friends are words, particularly of foreign languages, that have true meanings different from what one might expect.

Doppelgangers are lookalikes which can be used to throw you off the scent, a potential bodyguard.

Pairs such as Tanzania and Tasmania are a bit of a mixture of False friends and Doppelgangers. These words could reduce "Requiring context to fix" to a single word. :-)

Thus Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings (doppelgangers). Tabletop (talk) 10:06, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Related files

• Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings (Category:Wikipedia copy editing)
• Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings/A
• Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings/B
• Etc.,
• Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings/T
• Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings/Y
• Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings/Z
• Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings/Doppelgangers (suggest Category:Wikipedia copy editing)
• Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings/Misspellings requiring context to fix (Redirects to /Doppelgangers) (suggest Category:Wikipedia copy editing)
• Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings/Context needed (Redirects to /Doppelgangers) (suggest Category:Wikipedia copy editing)
• Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings/Ambiguous (Redirects to /Doppelgangers) (suggest Category:Wikipedia copy editing)
• Etc.,

As a general rule, pairs or groups of Doppelgänger words should all consist of correctly spelled words,

• NOT Tansania (Tanzania, Tasmania)
• BUT (Tanzania, Tasmania)

The Doppelgänger page does not yet mention Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings/Doppelgangers.

What does Jason Quinn think of this? Tabletop (talk) 11:02, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Tabletop. Sorry I haven't been responding. Real life has been too busy and I've barely been editing at all. Even right now I need to do something else so I can't spend much time on this at the moment. You are listing a bunch of interesting information and I like the idea of a list of these sorts of of words. Perhaps this could be WP:Adopt a typo could be a place to mention this stuff as well. Jason Quinn (talk) 16:48, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Rubric

It is sometimes said that so long as the first and last letter of a word are the same, it does not really matter what order the intermediate letters are, in order to understand that word. Well, this saying starts to fall flat with the pair of doppelganger words such as Tanzania and Tasmania). Here the letters "s" & "z" and "n" and "m" are False Friends. QED. Tabletop (talk) 04:02, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Examples

A

• Austria and Australia sometimes get mixed up, causing wrong National Anthem to be played at the Olympics.

B

• bite, bight - a "bight" is a landform that looks a bit like a "bite" has been bitten out of that landform; such as the Great Australian Bight.
  • in about 1980, a campaign was instituted in the computer press, to adopt the word and spelling byte for 8 bits.
• bite, bight, byte. Now there are three.
• Bellingen town on Bellinger River ; different spelling due to poor handwriting ; "n" and "r" are similar when scanned.

D

• Dakka (Dakar, Dacca, Dhaka) (Capital city of their respective country, plus one old spelling).
• (detective, defective) - "t" & "f" are false friends.

G

• Gaol, Jail - UK and US spelling
• Gaol, Goal - "A criminal's goal is gaol".

J

• Jail, Gaol - US and UK spelling

M

• Lowes Ltd, is a chain of stores that sells "mensware" (as in hardware), or is that "menswear" (clothing that men wear)? Tabletop (talk) 04:11, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

P

• pair, pear and pare are words with similar spelling and pronunciation, but quite different meanings.
  • countless spelling reformers would probably wish to have the three words pair, pear and pare spelled the same as they are pronounced the same. This would be counterproductive as it would be harder to distinguish their different meanings.
  • Consider "a triplet of pears pared to a pair of pears."
  • Reform it to "A triplet of pears peared to a pear of pears," is much harder to understand.
• person, poison ; mistake made by scanning software processing old newspapers.
  • "e" is round partially inked in.
  • "o" is round . . . not inked in.
  • "i" is short vertical line.
  • "r" is short vertical line with small tick mark.

R

• (Row, How) - "R" & "H" similar
• Row like "Cow" - an argument
• Row like "blow" - row a boat
• How like "Cow"

T

• (Two, To, Too)
  • If these words are not the names of articles, how does one link to Wikidictionary? Tabletop (talk) 07:35, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Tabletop. To merely link to Wictionary, use two, to, too. The template {{Interlanguage link multi}} can be add additional links to other projects in the event that the link to Wikipedia does not exist: shadow vs stupendous. I'm not sure off the top of my head how to have a single link choose between them depending on the existence of a Wikipedia article and I didn't find any template to do just that. Might still be one or perhaps the code to the previous template could be modified to do it. Jason Quinn (talk) 09:32, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

• • Think of a sentence that uses these three words.
  • Jack went to room two, and Jill went to two too. :-)

Scanning errors

The following pairs or groups of genuine words were encountered when editing scanning errors, particularly of old 19th-century newspapers.

B

• (bear, hear) - "b" and "h" similar

D

• (duel, dual) - a duel needs a dual or duo to play.
• (Days, Pays), Days) - "D", "P" and "R" are similar

F

• (fail, fall) - "i" and "l" are rather similar on old poor quality newsprint.
• (Fell, Pell) - "F" and "P" are rather similar too.

H

• (hear, bear)

N

• (number, member) - "n" & "m"; "u" & "e"; "m" & "n".

S

• (Slice, Shoe) - "li" and "h"; "c" and "o".
• (Spilt, Split) - "il" and "li" transposed; "i" and "l" also "false friends".
  • Milk was spilt when the container was split.
  • Spilt is a variant of spilled in the same way that spelt is a variant of spelled.

T

• (test, teat)

W

• ( Wind (weather) and Wind up a clock). Two valid words with same spelling; different pronunciation and meaning.

---

Miscellaneous

• The template on page "Dakar" {{Distinguish|Dhaka}} causes the warning message to appear usually at the top of a Wiki article, thus
  Not to be confused with Dhaka.
  .

I found more than 100 incorrectly capitalized proper names

I found over 100 capitalization errors in Wikipedia: see this link for the complete list. Perhaps Wikipedia could use a grammar checker to automatically detect other errors like this one. Jarble (talk) 02:34, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

They where

Here's another list of grammatical errors that still need to be corrected. Jarble (talk) 05:01, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Done ϢereSpielChequers 20:21, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

@WereSpielChequers: "They where" still appears in almost 20 Wikipedia articles. Are there any automated tools or WP:Database reports that can scan for these typos automatically? Jarble (talk) 23:17, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

I've done another batch, and tweaked my search to cover "They where" as well as "they where". Since there don't seem to be many false positives I have requested it be added to AWB typos. ϢereSpielChequers 08:58, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

@WereSpielChequers: More recently, I found more than 30 misspellings of "occurred" and "occurring", but they have not been corrected yet.

Moss, words used on WP but lacking Wiktionary entries

@Beland and John of Reading: (as the project's creator and the person who informed Wiktionary of it, respectively): is there any chance of updating Wikipedia:Typo Team/moss? It seems like a worthy endeavor that benefits both Wikipedia and Wiktionary. Incidentally, I'll also remention (for the Typo Team more generally) something I proposed earlier: someone could search a dump of en.WP for all ~2500 terms in wikt:Category:English misspellings, and make a (separate) list of articles that contain them, since they're known misspellings (although they include a few cases where the same spelling is also a correct spelling of a different word). -sche (talk) 20:11, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

I've been thinking about MOSS recently, it would be nice to update that. I'll see if I can find some time to do that. It may require some dusting off of things. -- Beland (talk) 22:30, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

@-sche: (and everyone else) Sorry for the long delay, but I've updated Wikipedia:Typo Team/moss with new batches of everything from April 2018 dumps. It was a bit rough and I had to do some manual cleanup, but I think I'll have a bit of time to iron out the kinks so I can more easily do frequent updates. That's an excellent suggestion to make use of known misspellings; I'm working on something that automatically suggests fixes to pages, and that seems very useful. It's a bit tricky if a thing is both a misspelling of one word and a correct spelling of a different word, but I'm also working on getting a grammar checker up and running which could help with distinguishing those situations. -- Beland (talk) 08:48, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

Excellent; thank you! I've already fixed a number of typos and created entries for the valid words wikt:dropsite and wikt:subcatastrophic.
For misspellings, I would say there's no shame in omitting 'hard' cases and e.g. pulling only entries in wikt:Category:English misspellings that have only one sense-like (# ) in their ==English== section. -sche (talk) 22:36, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Tyop Contest

I hesitate to make any changes to this article without seeking consensus, but has anyone noticed that the article needs to be updated? The Wikipedia:Tyop Contest ended about two and a half years ago. Is it being left in the article just in case the contest is brought back for another year, or should it be taken down until such time as the project is revived. Please reply with your vote to "keep" or "remove". I vote for the expired content to be "removed". User:SeaBeeDee^(talk) 11:16, 30 September 2016 (UTC) User:SeaBeeDee^(talk) 11:16, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Don't forget to WP:Be bold. I went and changed the tense to indicate it is over. Jason Quinn (talk) 18:53, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Keep--I agree with Jason Quinn to just change the tense--if it was deleted I wouldn't have known it had happened at all--Mcps39 (talk) 03:53, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Misspelling of common words

A list of common words variants that are suspected to be misspelling, including some context to easily judge whether it's a typo or not. What do you think? Is there any way to ask typo team for their help with the list? Uziel302 (talk) 20:35, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

I've added a few comments at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks#List of suspect typos but would welcome other opinions. Certes (talk) 22:08, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

[finished w/few exceptions] Big-Bik section, i will start in few minutes

there is no talk page on Wikipedia:Typo Team/moss/B, hence my announcement of intention. if i have stopped or abandoned i will update here. cheers. Leela52452 (talk) 09:53, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

finished most of it, i have not edited few, experienced editors will fix them. Leela52452 (talk) 16:04, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

[finished w/few exceptions] Bhu-Bif section, i will start in few minutes

there is no talk page on Wikipedia:Typo Team/moss/B, hence my announcement of intention. if i have stopped or abandoned i will update here. cheers.

Leela52452 (talk) 13:11, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

done around 60 - 70, another person is also working, hence abandon. Leela52452 (talk) 16:25, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

[finished w/few exceptions] section "Bhar-Bhr"

edit: completed most of them, i dont know few how to fix, hence they are on list — Preceding unsigned comment added by Leela52452 (talk • contribs) 05:08, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

i will start in few hours, if i abandon or complete, i will update here.

Leela52452 (talk) 16:34, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

[finished w/few exceptions] section "Bab-Bac"

edit: fixed most of them

i will update after i have completed section Leela52452 (talk) 06:20, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

[ finished w/few exceptions ] section Bad-Bag

edit: i dont know few, hence not fully cleared

after i finish, will change [ started ] -> [ finished ]

Leela52452 (talk) 12:48, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

[ finished w/few exceptions ] section "Bah-Bal"

edit: i dont know few, hence not fully cleared

after i finish, will change [ started ] -> [ finished ]

Leela52452 (talk) 04:36, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

[ finished w/few exceptions ] section "Bala-Balt"

edit: i dont know few, hence not fully cleared

after i finish, will change [ started ] -> [ finished ]

Leela52452 (talk) 07:41, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

[ finished w/few exceptions ] section "Balu-Bane"

edit: i dont know few, hence not fully cleared

after i finish, will change [ started ] -> [ finished ]

Leela52452 (talk) 12:46, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Led and Lead

If you properly understand the difference between "lead" and "led", you can help out here. DS (talk) 02:38, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

New script allows correcting typos in one click

Hi all, I created User:Uziel302/typo.js to enable correcting obvious typos in one click.

You can see an example of how it works in this video.

After adding: importScript('User:Uziel302/typo.js'); to User:NAME/common.js you will have "Replace" button on User:Uziel302/Typos.

Would appreciate any help correcting the lists of typos my program finds in Wikipedia. Uziel302 (talk) 17:18, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

Motto for this grotto?

Came back to fix a couple listed in the WP:Typo Team/moss pages, and while fixing some a phrase popped into my head. You very probably have heard one or more of the variations on Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?. How about this for an unofficial motto here:

"Who watches the botches?"

This is obviously modified from the more directly obtained "Who watches the botchers?" as, well, that would be prejudicial or sumtin. Shenme (talk) 03:40, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

---

Might I suggest an official poem?

A Misspelled Tail
by Elizabeth T. Corbett

A little buoy said: "Mother, deer,
May I go out too play?
The son is bright, the heir is clear;
Owe, mother, don't say neigh!"

"Go fourth, my sun," the mother said.
The ant said, "Take ewer slay,
Your gneiss knew sled awl painted read,
But dew not lose your weigh."

"Ah, know," he cried, and sought the street
With hart sew full of glee--
The weather changed--and snow and sleet
And reign, fell steadily.

Threw snowdrifts grate, threw watery pool,
He flue with mite and mane--
Said he, "Though I wood walk by rule,
I am not rite, 't is plane."

"I'd like to meat sum kindly sole,
For hear gnu dangers weight,
And yonder stairs a treacherous whole--
Two sloe has been my gate.

"A peace of bred, a nice hot stake,
I'd chews if I were home,
This crewel fete my hart will brake,
Eye love knot thus to roam.

"I'm week and pail, I've mist my rode,"
But here a carte came past,
He and his sled were safely toad
Back two his home at last.

Source: Elizabeth T. Corbett, originally published in the children's magazine St. Nicholas in 1893.
--Guy Macon (talk) 15:50, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

Suggestions

May I make a couple of suggestions?

• More often than not, a typo on the list is not an isolated case but is symptomatic of wider bad drafting of the article. Editors should be encouraged to review at least the whole paragraph or section in order to bring it up to an acceptable standard.

• Words in italics should not be included on the list of typos, because more often than not they are foreign words or perhaps technical expresions which one would not expect to find in the dictionary.----Ehrenkater (talk) 16:09, 9 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Editors are volunteers, some will take on extra tasks, some need to focus on the problem they are fixing. Because of the well known phenomena that vandals can't type, many typo fixers are also an important backstop for vandalism that gets past our main defences. In my experience things vary with the typo, some that I patrol for are very likely to be the result of vandalism, some of poor English and some are just isolated mistakes. That influences what I check for, but the most important thing for getting me to read through a lot more of an article is whether I find it interesting. ϢereSpielChequers 13:45, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

followup/follow-up/follow up

I'm currently working on Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings/F again, which suggests that "followup" is a common misspelling, with a comment that the correct forms are "follow up [verb], follow-up [adjective], followup [noun]". The page history tells me that the comment is the work of Fuhghettaboutit and Mild Bill Hiccup. I've only been searching for "followup" used as an adjective, adding a hyphen to phrases such as "a followup study".

First question: over at onelook.com, not many authoritative dictionaries list "followup" at all; in that list, the Cambridge Dictionary of American English looks impressive but the link is a 404 error - that dictionary only lists "follow-up". Does anyone have a reliable print dictionary that lists "followup" as a noun?

Second question: Does anyone have a reliable print dictionary that lists "followup" as an adjective? I'm asking this because Amaury reversed my edit at Lab Rats (American TV series). -- John of Reading (talk) 11:22, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Tools to generate / locate misspellings of a frequently occurring word?

I've been doggedly pursuing misspellings of the word 'encyclopedia'. (ironic being here?) Some of the below had/have more than 200 occurrences.

• ecyclopedia
• ency-clopedia
• encycloedia
• encyclopdia
• encyclopeda
• encyclopedi
• encyclopeia
• encyclopia
• encyclpedia
• encycopedia
• encylcopedia
• encylopaedia
• enyclopedia
• ncyclopedia

After becoming sensitised to variations (and for diversion) I speculatively played with word "MacMillan" (the publisher) and found these:

• maacmillan
• macmilan
• macmilla
• macmilland
• macmillen
• macmillian
• macmillin
• macmilln
• macmillon
• macnikkan (yay keyboard typos)
• mcmillan
• mcmillen
• mcmillian

And all this after working on the several misspellings of "Britannica".

Given one word likely having many occurrences here and thus likely having many and varied misspellings here, is there a tool to create and discover variations on that word? I find that even a warped imagination can't dream up the typos contributed by so many.

I like the moss project but this is a different thrust, starting from known likely lightning rods. And when the starting word really is frequent, guaranteed to find astonishingly widespread errors.

After all, would you have predicted 84 occurrences of "Uncloudy Days: The Gospel Music Encyclopdia", all copy-pasted by one editor, who left over 2 years ago? And presumably this is a reduced number given fixes since then. Shenme (talk) 00:05, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

Many regular expressions handle combinations of possible typos. The strings above are mainly missing one letter, a set which is easy to generate and limited to the length of the word. The same goes for the spurious hyphen (other horizontal characters are available). A few are vowel substitutions, again a limited set. Extra letters can occur in many ways but most of them may be too rare to look for. Each keyboard typo will also be rare, especially if inconsistent (why macnikkan rather than nucnukkan?)

It should be easy to produce a bit of JavaScript where you can type "encyclopedia" into the search box and have it changed to "ncyclopedia OR ecyclopedia OR enyclopedia ... OR encyclopedi" with any letter missing. Hyphens are harder: they would need an insource:/regex/ which is inefficient unless accompanied by a good search term to limit the number of pages scanned, but they don't seem to be common judging by your lists above. Certes (talk) 00:31, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

Hi Shenme, AWB is the tool to use for high volume typos that have been around a few months. Provided there are few or no false positives, just report it at Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos - if you come across something with lots of occurrences all of which are recent, you will ususally find that AWB already has it, it is just that the backlog there can run for months after an article goes live. ϢereSpielChequers 13:54, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

Shenme, my project User:Uziel302/Typos specifically tries to address this issue, and on Hebrew Wikipedia we fixed over 7000 typos using this tool. See my list of 200K variations, 7000 of them were found on English Wikipedia. The bottleneck isn't finding typos on Wikipedia but actually correcting them. Uziel302 (talk) 12:53, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Shenme, see my new tool in new passage here. Uziel302 (talk) 14:04, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Already corrected typos in list

I just joined the Typo Team, and have noticed in the "to be fixed lists", there are quite a few articles with typos listed - however, upon viewing the articles and searching for the misspelled words, they are already fixed. Am I reading the instructions wrong, or is this a problem?

Thanks, MrConorAE ( user | talk | contribs) 21:15, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

@MrConorAE: Sorry for the belated reply; I hadn't noticed your comment before. This can happen if 1.) someone else has already come through and worked on that list, or 2.) the list is old enough that editors looking at articles have randomly fixed the problems. Fresh database dumps are available twice a month, and I'm happy to update any stale lists from the latest. Just ping me if you happen to notice any particular list that needs a refresh. I think I've refreshed everything at least once since September, but it's probably time to do it again, so I'll try to do that within the next week or so. -- Beland (talk) 18:23, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

@Beland: OK, thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MrConorAE (talk • contribs) 01:50, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

typo words are missing in articles

for example: Baishya Saha - wikt:Sikder,Roy does not contain words "Sikder" or "Roy"

what should i do ? Leela52452 (talk) 05:54, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

@Leela52452: In cases like that, you can just delete the article from the todo list. (If you make a mistake, don't worry; the typo will appear again in a future report.) Due to the time it takes for dumps to get made, reports are always at least a few days behind the live site, and sometimes a few weeks. So it's always possible someone has read the article in the meantime and fixed the typo or reworded or deleted text for unrelated reasons. If you see a lot of articles on the todo list with already-fixed typos, it's possible another editor has already done that section (or part of it). I usually choose a random section in the middle of the todo list to try to avoid colliding with someone who hasn't declared their intention to work on a section. If the report is too old (like more than a month) that can sometimes result in an annoyingly high proportion of already-fixed typos, in which case you can ping me and I'll be happy to post a fresh report from a more recent dump. (Fresh reports can also save us from having to figure out which typos are fixed but the editor forgot to clear the todo list.) -- Beland (talk) 19:59, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Typo

Hi, I'm Caroline, an employee of Dish Network (as disclosed on my profile page as well as the article's talk page). I've been working with editors at Talk:Dish Network to suggest updates and other changes to the company's Wikipedia entry. Currently, the "Voom" section has a typo, in the fourth paragraph (starting with "According to Sanford C. Bernstein"). Can someone please change "cases involving spoilation" to "cases involving spoliation." You'll see "spoliation" used twice later in the section. I realize this is an easy fix but I'm not editing the page myself because I work for DISH. I submitted a request to fix this typo last month, but the error remains. Thanks for making this change on my behalf. CK-DISH (talk) 22:10, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

@CK-DISH: You'll see at Talk:Dish Network#Typo that an editor replied to your request, saying Typos are allowed to be changed by the COI editor, per #3 of WP:COIU. I suggest you review the guidance at the "WP:COIU" link and then make the edit yourself. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:14, 12 February 2020 (UTC)