This is anarchive of past discussions aboutWikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos.Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on thecurrent talk page.

Threetimesnow, AWB has "corrected" "the cruse of oil" to "cruise". The first instance was in February. Can this be a little more careful about correcting actual words? Thanks.Elizium23 (talk)02:04, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

@Elizium23: Unfortunately, editors using AWB are not always as careful as they should be. I have protected the word inHoly anointing oil from further accidents by adding the{{Not a typo}} template around it, so that AWB will no longer suggest making this change here. I think that overall the "cruse > cruise" rule is a good one, as "cruise" is a difficult word for people to spell correctly. --John of Reading (talk)06:39, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

Can I suggest AWB not autocorrect Lowlines cattle. Thanks! --Breno^talk10:59, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

@Breno: I have added{{Not a typo}} toLowline cattle so that AWB will not suggest this change in future. That's the only article mentioning these cattle. --John of Reading (talk)19:15, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

AWB corrects beneficient → beneficent. However,beneficient isn't really a typo. Whilesome sources consider the spelling obsolete,others donot. --Cpt.a.haddock (talk)09:03, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

The link you've labelled"others" is a page for "beneficent" not "beneficient". My Concise Oxford lists only "beneficent". --John of Reading (talk)11:27, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

My bad. I actually can't find an entry for it in the current editions of any mainstream dictionaries. However, itis marked as obsolete usage in certainolder editions. It is therefore not exactly a typo. And a brief analysis of results onGoogle Books,Google Scholar, andGoogle Trends suggests that it is not all that obsolete either. There are also 5 hits in the COCA corpus (post 2000) … I leave it up to you guys. Thanks. --Cpt.a.haddock (talk)18:02, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

FYI, new typo lists are available atWikipedia talk:WikiProject TypoScan#Manual typo lists - September 2014, courtesy ofBreno.GoingBatty (talk)13:48, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Could someone please add Ukelele -> UkuleleJamesmcmahon0 (talk)14:20, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

@Jamesmcmahon0: Not doneDictionary.com seems to indicate that "ukelele" is an acceptable variant. Thanks!GoingBatty (talk)14:36, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

@Jamesmcmahon0:@GoingBatty: Going even further, macmillandictionary.com (a major dictionary, very respected) has "ukelele" only, no "ukulele". It would be wrong for AWB Typos or any human editor to change "ukelele".— Precedingunsigned comment added byChris the speller (talk •contribs)13:27, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

@GoingBatty: Thanks for that! I found this onWikipedia:Database reports/Linked misspellings on closer inspection it seems that a number of the paged only apear on that list because the redirects have been incorectly tagged as mispellings rather than alternate spellings or otherwise. I will try and work through a few of the them to improve the catorgarisation and thus the usefulness of the report however I think there are some instance of genuine spelling mistakes on there that possibly aren't picked up by AWB yet, I would recommend you cast an experience eye over it! Thanks againJamesmcmahon0 (talk)16:00, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

I started fixing Viginia but I think they are all typos of Virginia. One for AWB?ϢereSpielChequers13:50, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

It appears that the existing "Virginia_" rule should fix "Viginia", but it doesn't on25th Antisubmarine Wing. Can anyone figure out why?GoingBatty (talk)17:23, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

The typo-fixer skips indented paragraphs in case they are quotations. --John of Reading (talk)17:46, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Oh, just like I should have seen inthe instructions: "Typo fixing is prevented within: image names, templates names and parameters, wikilink targets, quotations,and any text that follows a colon or asterisk." (emphasis added) Thanks!GoingBatty (talk)02:20, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Here's another typo I see in sports articles, with 'series' and 'lead' as follow-on words.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}18:56, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Back in 2012, there was a brief discussion of humourous => humorous which referenced theOED. Onmy talk page,CaesarsPalaceDude has informed me that the preferredAustralian spelling is "humourous". Thought we should have some discussion before changing the rule. Thanks!GoingBatty (talk)13:47, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

AfterCaesarsPalaceDude pointed me toThe Free Dictionary, I updated the "-orous" rule so it will not change "humourous". Discussion still appreciated if you find thisbold move is not "humourous" (or "humorous").  :-)GoingBatty (talk)19:17, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

One might therefore expect to find 'humourous' athttp://www.australiannationaldictionary.com.au, which specialises in Australianisms, but it doesn't seem to be there.Rothorpe (talk)23:56, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Amakuru (talk ·contribs) hasremoved the fixes "targetted > targeted" and "targetting" > "targeting", with the edit summary "These are legitimate British English spellings". But my paper copy of theCOD only lists the -t- forms, and the results at Onelook.com fortargetted andtargetting show that no major dictionaries allow the -tt- forms. --John of Reading (talk)16:27, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Hi@John of Reading:, I do apologise for the above change, and any inconvenience caused by my bold change. I've done some more research and I see that you're absolutely correct in this matter. "Targetting" does not appear in either the Oxford or the Collins dictionaries as a present participle for "target". I was misled because instinctively (for some reason) I thought that the two-t version should be correct in British English, and when I found that AWB was removing it, I also went over to Wiktionary to "verify" my instinct, and found athttps://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/targetting that our sister project does indeed list is as a British variant. But of course, Wiktionary is not a verifiable published dictionary! I will also have to go back to my articles and change my usage of this word accordingly. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk)22:51, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

This has come up in the past. There is no variant of English in which "targetted" is an accepted spelling, and my challenge to find any non user-generated dictionary listing it as such remains open. Mogism (talk)23:02, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Possibly just one dictionary and variant of English: the spellingdoes appear in the OED, though only in a cite from Scottish English in 1651:" The preachers spake freelie against thetargetting of weomen's tailes, and the rest of their vanitie." ("targets" were "trimmings" in case anyone is puzzled). That doesn't change the (non-)validity of the spelling in modern English, and the Wiktionary enry has now been adjusted. There's something odd in British English, because the (mis-)spelling reached more than 5% of usage in the 1980sif this is accurate.Dbfirs08:15, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Could consideration be given to removing the hyphenation "fix" of "one night stand" to "one-night stand"? While this does indeed change it to Wikipedia's current article title's format, a glance at every single entry onOne-night stand (disambiguation) - orjust googling the term - shows that the Wikipedia article is virtually alone in hyphenating the phrase in this way. It seems unnecessarilyWP:BITE-y to be tagging edits using a perfectly valid form of the phrase as "typos" and "fixing" them.

On a more general note, I'm getting quite uncomfortable with the number of dubious hyphenation "fixes" which have crept into the list recently, to the extent that I find manually skipping hyphenation false-positives takes up well over half the time of any AWB run with typo fixing enabled. How feasible would it be to have the hyphenation "fixes" as a separate list which could be disabled, or a "Skip if only hyphenation fixed" check-box? Mogism (talk)18:49, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

The phrase "one-night stand" is so hyphenated by Oxford, Cambridge, American Heritage, Macmillan and Merriam-Webster dictionaries. "Googling the term" will, of course, only show that the web is seething with people who can barely write, can't spell or capitalize properly, and do not have a decent grasp of punctuation beyond usually putting a full stop at the end of a sentence. You seem to be implying that Wikipedia should be dumbed down to match that lack of writing ability. I totally disagree. If you find a huge number of hyphenation false positives, please share them on this forum; that way they can be explained or fixed.  21:26, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

The pageOne-night stand (disambiguation) is basically a list of titles. The Typo rule does not change these titles. The people who crank out movies, recorded songs and breakfast cereal boxes are notoriously oblivious to proper hyphenation and other punctuation. They do not set any standard for the English language; dictionaries do.  21:35, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, the OED (Third Edition updated 2004) has seven cites from 1878 to 2001 and none omits the hyphen. Omission is common in casual usage, but Wikipedia uses formal English in its main text.Dbfirs08:30, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm seeing the typo "back and fourth" (or "back-and-fourth"). If there's hyphens in it, those are accepted as an alternative use, so keeping the hyphens in a typo correction is a must. Also, only change if it's lower case. On search, it's not a common misspelling -- just a few. Any objections to a fix for this? Is it worth it?Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}18:34, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

@Stevietheman: When I search for "back and fourth", I only see two that need to be changed, which doesn't seem to me to be enough for a rule. However, if you've just manually fixed hundreds of them, then a rule would be appropriate. Thanks!GoingBatty (talk)18:46, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, there's just a few. I brought this up because I just saw one case fixed for an article in a project I watch changes for.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}18:48, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

@Stevietheman: I just fixed the two others I saw.GoingBatty (talk)20:12, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

While working through some Philosophy related pages today I ran across this book title several times,Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms. A Google search confirmed that this is the correct spelling for this title, but of course AWB script wants to change it to "Commons". I have no idea how to work this into the typo rules, so I thought I would mention it here. Anyone able to assist with this?—    Bill W.    (Talk)  (Contrib)  (User:Wtwilson3)  —14:13, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

 Done. The rule will now not try to change "Commens" (capitalized). The proper name shows up in other places besides the dictionary name.  15:42, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

@Wtwilson3: Italicizing the book title would also protect the dictionary title from being changed (but not the other proper names).GoingBatty (talk)03:00, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

$1$2ely

This rule gives false positives when it comes to the last nameDensley.(t) Josve05a (c)18:42, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

$1ight$2

This rule gives false positives when it comes to the last nameSligting, like inDouglas Sligting.(t) Josve05a (c)18:53, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

 Done. Both surnames have been given a free pass.  19:51, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Not a very common typo, but one that does appear, and there is no other possible explanation for "moive". I was going to add it myself, but after a couple of failed tries, I decided to stop before I blew something up. --AmaryllisGardener^talk21:43, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

@AmaryllisGardener: I fixed the only instance of "moive" I could find to "movie". However, it could hypothetically also be "move", with someone accidentally pressing "oi" together since they're next to each other.GoingBatty (talk)03:50, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

In some sports articles, I'm seeing things like "40 point game" and "50 point performance". Would it make sense to have a typo rule that places a hyphen between the number and 'point'? Perhaps there's other follow-on words other than 'game' and 'performance' to consider as well.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}18:24, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

• 'spread' is another follow-on word for this typo correction.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}18:34, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
• Another thought: Perhaps this could accommodate spelled-out numbers as well.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}18:53, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stevietheman: I see units of measure that I believe should be hyphenated too (e.g. "one-mile track", "10-inch record", "two-liter bottle")GoingBatty (talk)03:18, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Those are good ideas for typo fixing as well. It would seem we would need to have a discussion for a period of time to make a full list of these kind of corrections before committing them to the typo list. Does that sound good?Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}13:51, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Periods of time would be good as well (e.g. "two-day meeting", "four-year degree").GoingBatty (talk)13:31, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm still interested in doing something with this. If nobody beats me to it, soon I'll come up with a draft typo fix to fix all of these permutations.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}16:13, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Actually, it won't be soon, as I'm having technical difficulties with my laptop, and will likely have to replace the hard drive soon. If anyone else wants to tackle this, please proceed.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}21:24, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

@Stevietheman: See the discussion below – Expand "n-year" rule? – it touches on this topic and much more.  21:54, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Please change the rule for anal so it does not change the personal name Analy to Anal or anal. --DThomsen8 (talk)21:15, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

 Done.  01:14, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Hello fellow spell checkers? How about a rule to change "split between" → "split among" when the number following is greater than two? Something likefind="\bsplit\s+between\s+([3-9]|\d{2,3}|three|four|five|six|seven|eight|nine|ten|eleven|twelve|thirteen|fourteen|fifteen|sixteen|seventeen|eighteen|nineteen|twenty|thirty|forty|fifty|sixty|seventy|eighty|ninety)\s+" replace="split among $1 " to start? Thanks!GoingBatty (talk)23:09, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

How about another rule for "least" → "fewest" when followed by a plural word, such as "goals"?GoingBatty (talk)23:26, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Could someone please check the "A n-something" rule? On theMahalia Jackson, I believe it's changing "Her Aunt Bell told her one day she would sing" to "Her Aunt Bell told her one-day she would sing". Thanks!GoingBatty (talk)04:03, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

 Done I'm not sure my fix is the most optimal, but I tested it and it seems to work. There should be no cases that use trigger words other than 'her' and 'one' in the phrase, and I'm unsure if there could be something other than 'day' in a phrase like that.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}16:56, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Could someone write a rule to fix misspellings of Belarusian, particularly Belarussian as there are quite a lot of instances of it.Jamesmcmahon0 (talk)13:09, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Collins Dictionary lists "Belarussian" as the primary spelling, along with three variations. If a major dictionary even allows a spelling as a variant, WP usually allows it, so there would have to be consensus established somewhere, and this page is not the proper forum. This is sort of in the same boat as "publically", which a lot of editors would like to stamp out, but we can't do that, for the same reason.  14:12, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Seehttp://www.onelook.com/?w=Belarusian&ls=a andhttp://www.onelook.com/?w=Belarussian&ls=a andhttp://www.onelook.com/?w=Byelorussian&ls=a.

—Wavelength (talk)15:57, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, glad I posted here first! I really need to get into the habit of doing a dictionary search...Jamesmcmahon0 (talk)19:02, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

I've created abot request for harmonising the abbreviations of Creative Commons licenses used throughout Wikipedia.

Basically there are a lot of common misspellings of these abbreviations:

Next to a bot to fix these typos, shall we add them to WT:AWB/T?

--Martsniez (talk)10:38, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi, I am no expert in RegExp. But I believe this should do it, right?

<Typoword="CC BY"find="\b(cc|CC)(-by|BY)\b"replace="CC BY"/><Typoword="CC BY-NC"find="\b(cc|CC)(-by-nc|BY-NC)\b"replace="CC BY-NC"/><Typoword="CC BY-SA"find="\b(cc|CC)(-by-sa|BY-SA)\b"replace="CC BY-SA"/><Typoword="CC BY-ND"find="\b(cc|CC)(-by-nd|BY-ND)\b"replace="CC BY-ND"/><Typoword="CC BY-NC-SA"find="\b(cc|CC)(-by-nc-sa|BY-NC-SA)\b"replace="CC BY-NC-SA"/><Typoword="CC BY-NC-ND"find="\b(cc|CC)(-by-nc-nd|BY-NC-ND)\b"replace="CC BY-NC-ND"/>

--Martsniez (talk)09:09, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Also no expert but I think;

<Typoword="CC BY"find="\b(cc|CC)-?\s*(by|BY)\b"replace="CC BY"/><Typoword="CC BY-NC"find="\b(cc|CC)-?\s*(by-nc|BY-NC)\b"replace="CC BY-NC"/><Typoword="CC BY-SA"find="\b(cc|CC)-?\s*(by-sa|BY-SA)\b"replace="CC BY-SA"/><Typoword="CC BY-ND"find="\b(cc|CC)-?\s*(by-nd|BY-ND)\b"replace="CC BY-ND"/><Typoword="CC BY-NC-SA"find="\b(cc|CC)-?\s*(by-nc-sa|BY-NC-SA)\b"replace="CC BY-NC-SA"/><Typoword="CC BY-NC-ND"find="\b(cc|CC)-?\s*(by-nc-nd|BY-NC-ND)\b"replace="CC BY-NC-ND"/>

to find CC by-nc-sa etc. though this would also find CCby-nc-sa which is maybe not desirable?Jamesmcmahon0 (talk)14:36, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

this should fix that, right:

<Typoword="CC BY"find="\b(cc|CC)[-\s](by|BY)\b"replace="CC BY"/><Typoword="CC BY-NC"find="\b(cc|CC)[-\s](by-nc|BY-NC)\b"replace="CC BY-NC"/><Typoword="CC BY-SA"find="\b(cc|CC)[-\s](by-sa|BY-SA)\b"replace="CC BY-SA"/><Typoword="CC BY-ND"find="\b(cc|CC)[-\s](by-nd|BY-ND)\b"replace="CC BY-ND"/><Typoword="CC BY-NC-SA"find="\b(cc|CC)[-\s](by-nc-sa|BY-NC-SA)\b"replace="CC BY-NC-SA"/><Typoword="CC BY-NC-ND"find="\b(cc|CC)[-\s](by-nc-nd|BY-NC-ND)\b"replace="CC BY-NC-ND"/>

--Martsniez (talk)22:40, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Although I now see that this also matches al correctly typed abbreviations --Martsniez (talk)09:32, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

AWB will only fix typos that are in prose (that is, not in tables, infoboxes and such). Are any of these appearing in prose and do you have example articles?Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}14:40, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

On asimilar bot request pageUser:Jamesmcmahon0 found over 30.000 articles affected. He produced a long list (long load) onhere User:Jamesmcmahon0/CC abbreviation typos this includes a lot of references toCC-BY-SA instead ofCC BY-SA, however you also see this in a lot prose like onBooks_LLC. It is difficult to use the site search for this, as that does not distinguish between prose and infoboxes, and dashes and spaces. --Martsniez (talk)22:37, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

There aremany (I'm sure there's a simple way to filtermy long list to find the occurances in prose only and thus find the actual number) where it is written in a note in the references section[1]— Precedingunsigned comment added byJamesmcmahon0 (talk •contribs) 08:04, 1 May 2015‎ UTC

Could we expand the new "n-year" rule to other time periods (e.g. n-month, n-week)? Also, how about a "n-year-old" rule?GoingBatty (talk)18:46, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

It would be possible to expand it to cover second, minute, hour, day, night, week, month, year, and season. In fact, I run such a F&R rule quite often, but I'm not sure it is ready for prime time as a Typo rule. Note that "second" and "minute" cause some false positives because they have other meanings as adjectives; we might want to go slow on those. It would also be possible to fix spelled-out numbers ("five-year contract" in addition to "5-year contract"). Again, I run such a F&R rule. One trouble with adding other units of time is that the list of modified nouns would also need to be expanded: a 3-year contract is common, but not a 3-hour contract; a 4-hour baseball game is common, but not a 4-year baseball game. I build the list of modified nouns by sampling hundreds or thousands of articles to see what nouns are frequently modified; I've done that for 'year' but not for the other time units. The list of modified nouns will get pretty long, but probably not as long as the existing "Self-" rule. I have also tackled compound modifiers with numbers and units that are not related to time: a 3-point game, a 4-page report, a 5-game series, a 6-item list, a 20-yard pass, a 55-gallon drum, a 32-acre lot, a 6-room house, a 2-cylinder engine, a 4-door sedan. As for "n-year-old", we would have to fix "4 year old boy", "4-year old boy" and "4 year-old boy". I avoid messing with "1 year old" as it could be "... he was 1 year old when he wrote his first novel". Should I work on expanding the rule to handle "month" next?  04:49, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Sounds like a lot of work to be done that will lead to loads of new typos to fix haha! I'm not too sure how the rules work, but would it be possible to add the modified noun to the edit summary, i.e. replaced 1 year contract -> 1-year contract instead of 1 year -> 1-yearJamesmcmahon0 (talk)14:10, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it would be easy to include the modified noun in the edit summary, but at the cost of more lengthy summaries; I am often running hundreds of my own F&R rules along with Typo rules, and some edit summaries are getting truncated already. Also, the modified noun will not be completely helpful if the rule fixes more than one case: if "5 year veteran" and "20 year sentence" are fixed in the same article, the edit summary will show "5 year veteran → 5-year veteran (2)". Let's get comments from other users about whether adding 16 characters to the summary is adding any value for the editors and readers.  14:46, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

@Chris the speller: Since you are already running this as F&R rules, I am happy to defer to your experience as to what's reasonable to make a typo rule for all of us to use. Thanks!GoingBatty (talk)00:38, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

OK, my next step is to add n-month and see how it goes from there.  01:19, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

I have expanded it to also fix 'n-month', to also fix spelled-out numbers ("three-month ban"), and greatly expanded the list of modified nouns. Maybe in a few days, after we see what kind of cheers or boos it inspires, I'll add 'n-week'.  03:01, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

I've found one instance of a correction I expected but didn't happen. InMadison-Model High School, "twenty-five year existence" didn't correct to "twenty-five-year existence". On the typos page, apparently compound spelled-out numbers aren't covered (yet).Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}15:36, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

@Stevietheman: I skipped these on purpose. I manually change "its twenty-five year existence" to "its 25-year existence" when I find these, or I switch to using the Age template. It's much easier to read, better than a group of 3 words hyphenated.  21:16, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

OK, that makes perfect sense. Thanks!Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}21:28, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Does the rule account for "n" in "an" before "eight" and "eleven" and "eighteen" and "eighty"?

—Wavelength (talk)20:57, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

@Wavelength: No, it doesn't look for or correct preceding "a"/"an", but the new rule below uses "a" or "an" (doesn't care which). There is another rule that fixes "a eight" and "an seven", I think.  21:06, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Does the rule account for proper names? Some examples areFive Acre Grove andFive Dollar Bill andFive Foot Thick andFive Island Harbour andFive Mile River andTen Dollar Dinners andTen Foot Pole andTen Inch Hero andTen Inch Men andTen Mile Creek andTen Pound Hammer andTen Yard Fight andTen Year Crusade andTen Year Night andTen Year Rule.

—Wavelength (talk)16:42, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

@Wavelength: The current version of the rule only works when the number and the noun are both lowercase. So none of your examples will be affected. --John of Reading (talk)17:02, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

I have encountered a few challenging expressions in articles about racehorses and horse races. I discussed the challengeson my talk page. I am watching this talk page for any reply from editors ofWP:AWB/T.

—Wavelength (talk)19:34, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Another kind of false positive: atDwight Helminen we have "a 2004 second round draft choice". I fixed this one by adding an HTML comment to the article, but there are a few dozen "2004 second" false positives out there; multiply that by 20 or 30 different years and that's too many, I think. Examples for "2004 second" or "2005 second" have "second" followed by: album/and third/behind/compilation/count/deputy/edition/inauguration/place/release/semi-final/series/studio album/team/vice-deputy. I haven't tried to fix the rule.--John of Reading (talk)08:09, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

@John of Reading: You are completely correct; that is way too many false positives, and I have tweaked the rule "A n-something" to fix it. Please see the next subsection, "Other number phrases", which deals specifically with that rule. Thanks for catching and reporting that.  04:32, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

I was invited to join other number phrases to this, so let's build a list of them and determine whether they are worthy for AWB typo correction. (I meant to do this earlier but got caught up with other things.) I'm assuming that time period phrases using -week and -day will be covered under the above strategy.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}15:55, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Please add to this list or adjust items as you like:

• {number}-point (game|performance|spread)
• {number}-mile track
• {number}-inch record
• {number}-liter bottle
• {number}-game series
• {number}-round decision
• {number}-decade hiatus

I have added a rule ( "A n-something") to handle these and many others; however, it only fixes those that are preceded by 'a' or 'an': a seven-point lead, a two-mile rack, a 7-inch record, a 2-liter bottle, a five-game series, an eight-round decision. It also fixes "n-month" and "n-year" things that are not caught by the earlier rule, such as "a three-month religious retreat". A different rule will still be needed to fix things like "their earlier 8 point lead evaporated". I think this is a pretty healthy start.  20:56, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Kewl. I'll go test this on a couple wikiprojects' articles. Thanks here too!Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}21:30, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

It looks like we'll have to prevent fixes for phrases with particular secondary words, or bypass where the number is likely a year. InBear Bryant, the phrase "a 1935 game against" gets snagged.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}23:58, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Found another one: "a {year} game between". I've run into "a {year} game against/between" in three articles so far.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}00:53, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

And another: "a {year} game with".Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}01:02, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

@Stevietheman: OK, no more messing with "a {year} game". Refresh status/typos, and enjoy!  02:22, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks again. By the way, there's no need to ping me, as I watch this page.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}04:35, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

I have also exempted "a {year} second" and expanded both that and "a {year} game" to avoid anything that might be a 4-digit year, not just the 19th to 21st centuries.  04:24, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

I have an idea for expansion of this rule as I just ran into an example ("another 45-day suspension"). So, I would suggest 'another', 'an additional', 'a second' and 'a third' (it's unusual to have more than a third something, I think) in addition to 'a' and 'an'.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}16:17, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

And here's another example I just ran into: "an astounding 25-second lead". Perhaps also look for "a(n) {word ending in 'ing'}" before the number phrase?Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}18:04, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that would probably fix a few more without risking many false positives. Other possibilities are fixing "her 30 year news career", "their 25 year reunion", and, really, many adjectives, as in "controversial one point defeat". But we'll need to choose carefully to avoid runaway bloat ("controversial" would probably not make the cut).  18:19, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

'her', 'his', 'their' sound workable too. Also I want to note that I posted ideas directly above "a(n) {word ending in 'ing'}" in case you didn't eyeball them. :) Other adjectives could probably wait for us to see which ones are common and safe.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}18:33, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Also it has occurred to me that there could be a few -ing words we would want to avoid, such as 'landing' (as in "a landing one mile away").Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}18:45, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

I ran a test yesterday across all articles in WP Louisville and WP Kentucky (with all above new ideas except words ending in -ing), and his/her/their got significant hits, while the others got no hits. 'his' got the most hits by far. A downside is that I also got a few false positives ("his one year of", "his one game for", "his one game at"). So, it would be useful to test for his/her/their, but I need a suggestion for dealing with the false positives. I imagine we could either check for the 'one' in these cases, or more generally look at the words after year/game/etc. to avoid prepositions.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}18:35, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Here are some possible phrases withcardinal numbers.

• "n-stor(e)y (office, commercial, residential) building, tower, skyscraper"
• "n-page {book, report}"
• "n-act play"
• "n-degree {angle, weather, heat}"
• "n-acre {lot, property, farm, park}"
• "n-watt light bulb"
• "n-string {guitar, (musical) instrument}"
• "n-(bed, bath)room {suite, apartment, building, school(house), dormitory, hotel, hostel, motel, cruiser, (ocean) liner}"
• "n-course meal"
• "n-pin bowling (alley)"
• "n-hole golf (course)"
• "n-horsepower {motor, engine, vehicle}"
• "n-door {car, auto(mobile), vehicle, sedan"
• "n-yard line"
• "n-seater" [word]
• "n-wheeler" [word]
• "n-star {hotel, restaurant, officer, general}"
• "n-lane {road, street, highway, route, thoroughfare, swimming pool}"
• "n-member {association, audience, band, board, clan, class, club, committee, congregation, crew, faculty, family, orchestra, panel, squad, staff, team, tribe}"
• "n-line {verse, stanza, poem}"
• "n-{verse, stanza} poem"
• "n-seat {car, auto(mobile), vehicle, sedan, bus, helicopter, (aero, air)plane, bobsleigh, boat, canoe, kayak}"
• "n-car {train, accident, garage}"
• "n-time {candidate, champion, (prize) winner, loser, president}"
• "n-{carat, karat} gold (Seewikt:carat andwikt:karat and "Carat (mass)" and "Carat (purity)".)
• "n-carat diamond
• "ten-gallon hat"
• "three-ring {binder, circus}"
• "one-way {mirror, street, window}"
• "two-decker"
• "two-edged sword"
• "two-minute silence"
• "n-stroke engine"
• "two-way {mirror, street, window}"
• "seven-second delay"

—Wavelength (talk)17:43, 27 March 2015 (UTC) and 18:41, 27 March 2015 (UTC) and 02:55, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Here are some possible phrases withordinal numbers.

• "nth-{grade, year} {pupil, student, teacher, instructor, professor, exam(ination), course, test}"
• "nth-stor(e)y {suite, apartment, office, balcony, window}"
• "nth-class {ticket, lever, travel}"
• "nth-century {writer, author, poet, painter, artist, sculptor, composer, musician, book, painting, sculpture, composition, poem, discovery, invention, style, custom, ruler, leader, trip, voyage, journey, expedition, (postage) stamp, coin, medallion}"

—Wavelength (talk)17:43, 27 March 2015 (UTC) and 18:41, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

I have expanded it (before the number) to also accept "first, second, third, additional, his, her, their, its". After the number, I have added "goal, page, member, decker, horsepower". Restrictions after the three-word phrase now include prepositions and verbs and anything else that is not a noun or adjective – "of, for, at, as, in, with, by, is, was" – as Stevie suggested above. Some of the items listed by Wavelength were already covered, or were in my list of things to investigate. I'll keep adding words as the investigation proceeds. Did I just say "three-word phrase? There's another one we all missed.  16:31, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

I just had to correct the associated rule to avoid correcting phrases like "1973 stage adaption" or "1982 stage play" or "2007 stage show". Another one I've run into while running AWB is "Of its 10 member schools...", but I'm not sure yet how we should proceed on avoiding that "fix" to "10-member".Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}13:44, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Here's a similar phrase I just ran into: "in which its fifteen member universities".Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}14:23, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Similarly, I've just run into "between its 157 member countries" --John of Reading (talk)10:29, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

OK. Plugged it for "n member schools", universities, countries, nations, states.  16:09, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Reworked it to avoid "n member xxxxxxs", any word that ends with 's', including "organizations" and anything else we might run across.  16:24, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

"A 300 game" is a technical term in bowling; seePerfect game (bowling). That's an exception, isn't it, that shouldn't be hyphenated? --John of Reading (talk)15:36, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

See also "3,000 hit club", with a recentpicture of the day.—Wavelength (talk)05:47, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Editors might consider making a rule for replacing "aka" and "a.k.a." with "also known as". It occurs in "Fort Abraham Lincoln".
—Wavelength (talk)00:11, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

I would definitely oppose that. While it may have originated as an initialism, "aka" is a perfectly acceptable word in British English (complete with OED entry and so forth). People misusing AWB to impose their personal preferences on articles under the guise of "fixes" generate enough problems as it is; if a rule like this is added to the mainWP:AWB/T regex the backlash will be very noisy and bad-tempered. – iridescent10:12, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

We should be basing the typo fixes on what a preponderance of English dictionaries say. If there's any rule that goes against this, let us know and it will be examined.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}19:13, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

WP:ABBR says of "a.k.a." and "AKA" that they "Should only be used in small spaces, otherwise use the full phrase. It does not need to be linked. Never use aka." Never mind that OED explains what the meaning of "aka" is; that dictionary is, to its credit, helping readers who look that up, but that doesn't mean that "aka" is formal enough to use in an encyclopedia entry. Let's test a rule that expands all three abbreviations to find out whether it affects "small spaces" such as tables and infoboxes.  05:13, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

WP:ABBR is not and never has been any kind of policy, it's the personal opinions of the two editors who wrote it, and as with almost all the MOS, compliance with it has never been compulsory; the wave of disdain for the MOS shownhere seems to me to be a fairly accurate reflection of the active editor base's attitude towards the small handful of people who want to give the MOS some kind of official status. (Whatis policy is "Where Wikipedia does not mandate a specific style, editors should not attempt to convert Wikipedia to their own preferred style, nor should they edit articles for the sole purpose of converting them to their preferred style, or removing examples of, or references to, styles which they dislike".) Most editors see AWB as a minor irritant at the best of times; every time an AWB user "corrects" someone's perfectly acceptable grammar, punctuation or hyphenation (particularly if they use an edit summary of "typo fixing" or similar), it just hastens the day when someone loses patience, goes to Arbcom and gets the typo-fixing function of AWB shut down altogether.

(That sounds like hyperbole, but speaking as both a former Arb and as someone with over 60,000 AWB edits, I can say with a reasonable degree of confidence that ifWP:AWB/T were hauled before Arbcom in its current state, it would be shut down. Anyone around long enough to rememberDate delinking and thehuge stack of bans resulting from it—or rememberswhat happened to Betacommand—will know how easily Arbcom can go into wrath-of-god mode when it comes to complaints about script-assisted editing. Every edit likethis has the potential to convince another editor that the bathwater is so irritating, it justifies throwing out the baby.) – iridescent10:57, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

I am unable to participate in a discussion with editors who don't feel that WP should employ reasonably formal language and widely accepted standards of punctuation, such as hyphenation of compound modifiers. There are a few editors who object to the actions of other editors who follow the policies and guidelines that WP provides. The former can, of course, contribute to WP, and the latter will clean up afterwards. This is how things have gone for the entire history of WP. I am dropping out of this discussion.  14:59, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

I totally agree with you. Iridescent's complaint is meritless in my judgment (unless a much better example can be found, as hyphenation of a compound modifier is the way it's supposed to be, not according to me, but according to the rules of English grammar itself which we must enforce). We should be using only formal English supported by a preponderance of dictionaries here. And we should correct articles without any fear. If people don't agree with the typo corrections, they can discuss here. As for guidelines, they should be regarded as the usual way to write an article with very few exceptions. If anyone disagrees with a guideline, they need to take the effort to formally change it, or at least have a public discussion about it. If anyone truly dislikes AWB edits, I realize there are a few cranks out there, but most editors seem to accept their cleanups, which are reasonable the vast majority of the time.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}15:57, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

It is my understanding that AWB doesn't correct typos within tables, infoboxes, etc., so in that respect, it's a go. The only aspect I'm unsure of is whether "a.k.a." isn't considered formal enough in most writings. "aka" surely is too informal. But it seems like "a.k.a." is in common enough use that maybe we shouldn't correct it. *But* maybe let's correct "aka" to "a.k.a.".Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}16:02, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

I see a new rule was created to add a comma after "However" in some circumstances. Commas also belong after "Subsequently" and "Consequently" when they lead a sentence. Can anyone think of instances where they would NOT be followed by commas? Thanks!GoingBatty (talk)17:36, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

I added a rule to handle "Consequently" and some other transitional words. I held off for "Subsequently" because of uses other than as a transitional word: "Subsequently filed reports corroborated his claim that the light had turned red for the garbage truck." "As a result" needed special treatment to avoid "As a result of ...".  22:33, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Editors might wish to make a rule to correct misspellings ofEncyclopædia Britannica. Sometimes "e" occurs instead of "æ", and sometimes "ttan" occurs instead of "tann".
—Wavelength (talk)01:30, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

@Wavelength: There are already rules inWikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos#New additions that cover those scenarios. Do you see places where the typo rules aren't making those corrections but should be? Thanks!GoingBatty (talk)

GoingBatty, many instances of "encyclopedia brittanica" are listed athttps://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=%22encyclopedia+brittanica%22&fulltext=Search.

—Wavelength (talk)02:02, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

@Wavelength: AWB and WPCleaner don't apply the typo rules within citation templates, so these will need to be fixed manually. SeeWikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos#Usage for more information.GoingBatty (talk)02:12, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

GoingBatty, thank you. I have now read that section, and I hope that I understand it correctly. I edited "Dordrecht".

—Wavelength (talk)02:54, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

@Wavelength: Great - together we've fixed all the articles with "Encyclopedia Brittanica".GoingBatty (talk)03:50, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi !
I don't know if this is the good place to ask this question. If not, can you please say to me where to ask it ?
I have a problem withthis regex. I only want it to detect the second "[[" and not the first. In the example, I only want the regex to detect "[[Krishna (fleuve)]]" and not "[[Nâgârjuna Sâgar]] on the [[Krishna (fleuve)]]".
Do you know where the problem is ? I think it's a question of cupidity, but I don't know where/if I must put the "?,$" symbols.
Thank you !Simon Villeneuve (talk)10:36, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

@Simon Villeneuve: Presuming you want to detect the wikilinks with the parentheses, try\[\[([\w\s]+) \(([\w\s]+)\)\]\] instead. Good luck!GoingBatty (talk)04:14, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes !! Thank you very much !Simon Villeneuve (talk)10:44, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

We have a rule that changes "Degree" to "degree" whenever the apostrophe is missing or misplaced in "Master's Degree" or "Bachelor's Degree". But there are many hundreds of articles that are something like "He got his Bachelor's Degree at ..." or "She got her Master's degree in ..."; shouldn't "Master's" and "Bachelor's" be in lower case (when they are not the first word of a sentence, as in "Master's degrees have been awarded since 1952")? It seems safe enough to change "his/her/a Master's degree". Can anyone think of situations where a capital letter is appropriate? I guess "Associate degree" needs the same treatment, too. We would have to split the "Bachelor's/Master's degree" rule into two to effect the capitalization change.  00:59, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

I have no objection. I was wondering why our typo rules were leaving them capitalized anyway.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}10:21, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

I have created the three new rules. The existing rule "Bachelor's/Master's degree" is still effective for cases where those begin a sentence. I expect such cases to be rather rare, but I am not anxious to yank that rule yet.  21:23, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

@I dream of horses,Anomie, andReguyla:(t) Josve05a (c)19:56, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Could someone add[Aa]rounf to this rule?(t) Josve05a (c)13:56, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

@Josve05a: Done inthis edit.GoingBatty (talk)15:09, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

Ty!(t) Josve05a (c)15:25, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

"Therefore" was removed from the rule "Furthermore," and the edit summary quoted the Chicago Manual of Style 5.69: "When [transitional adverbs] are used in such a way that there is no real break in continuity and no call for any pause in reading, commas should be omitted." However, CMOS uses the example "I therefore urge you all to remain loyal;" In that case, there is no reason for any pause in reading (and the rule would not try to change it, being in lower case), but when "Therefore" begins a sentence, there would be a pause: "Therefore, viruses in the microbial food web act to reduce the population of bacteria." I therefore suggest that "Therefore" be put back into the rule. How do others feel?  13:57, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

I concur with your position. The typo removal was incorrect.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}16:34, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Also, I find the change to be on the disruptive side, with the changer deciding this on his own, without discussing here first.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}17:05, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Many online punctuation guides specify a comma after transitional words and phrases (such as "therefore") when they begin a sentence.byu.edu •purdue.edu •wheaton.edu. It seems pretty clear that the CMOS 5.69 example was meant to discourage a comma after "therefore" only in the middle of a sentence. I will restore the rule. I think it was removed in good faith. If someone decides to remove it again, it would be nice to point out an example or two where it is thought that AWB is suggesting "many bad changes".  02:55, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

@Chris the speller: How about adding something like(?!.{1,30},) to these rules? For example, atDesignated Targets a sentence begins "Meanwhile in the Pacific, the Japanese...", and adding yet another comma makes a choppy sentence. --John of Reading (talk)06:15, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

@John of Reading:In that example, the comma after the three-word prepositional phrase is superfluous. Only prepositional phrases longer than four words need a comma. Better would be "Meanwhile, in the Pacific the Japanese ..."  13:58, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm confused. It seems that it can or needn't have a comma. Therefore no rule should be applied. All the best:Rich Farmbrough,22:07, 19 July 2015 (UTC).

I find lots of instructions to use a comma when "Therefore" begins a sentence:

byu.edu

"James is not feeling well. Therefore, he will not be here today."

owl.english.purdue.edu

"Use a comma after a transitional element (however, therefore, nonetheless, also, otherwise, finally, instead, thus, of course, above all, for example, in other words, as a result, on the other hand, in conclusion, in addition)"

wheaton.edu

"Many adverbs that end in –ly and transitions at the beginning of a sentence need to be followed by a comma, too." ... "therefore"

zencomma.wordpress.com

"She left early. Therefore, he was lonely." ... "When the conjunctive adverb is at the beginning of the first example, it needs to be followed by a comma to separate it from the rest of the sentence"

I find no instructions to omit the comma when "Therefore" begins a sentence. The only instruction to omit the comma was the snippet from CMOS above, but "therefore" in that case does not begin the sentence, and there is no pause when saying "I therefore urge you all to remain loyal". However, there is a pause when saying "Therefore, he will not be here today." There have been hundreds of these changes made, and not one case has been shown to be wrong.  04:50, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

I recently had "a 18th century" correct to "a 18th-century" and I wondered if the 'a' should also be corrected to 'an'. I don't believe we have a rule for these cases, as I tested AWB on an article with the typo (Santa Maria Annunziata di Fossolo, Bologna). There are apparently many articles with this typo. This would also apply to "a 8th", "a 11th", "a 8[0-9]th", etc. Does anyone see an issue with doing a correction like this?Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}16:30, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

These should be fine. I have rules that look for "a" plus a relevant number plus anoptional st/nd/rd/th. There are plenty of false matches where the ordinal suffix is missing, such as "Missa a 8", but I can't remember seeing any false matches where the suffix was present. --John of Reading (talk)16:52, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

OK, I put in a correction for "a 8th", "a 11th" and "a 18th". The regex logic gets hairier with higher numbers but higher numbers seem to be much less common anyway.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}18:18, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Sometimes an article uses the informal expression "phenom" in reference to a person of phenomenal performance. Here aresearch results forphenom. One example is the article "Klaas-Erik Zwering" (version of19:00, 11 August 2014). I propose a rule for changing "phenom" to "phenomenon" in each of those instances, and providing a justification in the edit summaries. However,WP:PEACOCK might take precedence.
—Wavelength (talk)23:02, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

I agree that "phenom" is not formal enough for an encyclopedia. But AWB Typos have no way to provide a justification in the edit summary.  04:05, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

My understanding is that "hung" is the proper past tense word, unless you're referring to ahanging, in which case "hanged" is appropriate. Using that thought process, I'm thinking of adding a rule to change "hung himself/herself" to "hanged himself/herself". Any objections or expansions?GoingBatty (talk)02:40, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

The rules for months of the year seem quite complicated but the rule for January does not catch the misspelling "Janury". This is a reasonably common error due to phonetic transcription and it's not in Wiktionary as a word in any language. Could somebody add a rule for it, please?BethNaught (talk)09:11, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

@BethNaught:Added inthis edit. I also fixed each misspelling. Thanks for the suggestion!GoingBatty (talk)10:18, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Many thanks!BethNaught (talk)10:35, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Moved toWikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser § minor issue with .7B.7BCommons.7D.7D .E2.86.92 .7B.7BCommons category.7D.7D conversion

 –GoingBatty (talk) 14:50, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

This isn't that big of a deal, but whenever the 1st unnamed parameter intemplate:commons begins with the "category:" prefix, AWB converts{{Commons}} to{{Commons category}}. In most cases, this isn't an issue, but when an article topic has both a commons gallery and category with the same name, using both templates yields link boxes that appear identical, but link to different pages. E.g., if you run the current version of AWB on the amphetamine article, it will attempt to convert the 2 commons boxes that link toCommons:Amphetamine andCommons:Category:Amphetamine in theAmphetamine#External links section (shown below to the left) to the set of boxes below to the right. Might be worth disabling this fix or preventing the change when a commons gallery and commons category with the same names are linked to via the{{commons}} template. (Insert 2¢)13:36, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Left column: original; Right column: after AWB fix

Wikimedia Commons has media related toAmphetamine. Wikimedia Commons has media related toCategory:Amphetamine.

Wikimedia Commons has media related toAmphetamine. Wikimedia Commons has media related toAmphetamine.

Edit: I replaced{{Commons|Category:Amphetamine}} with{{Commons category|Amphetamine|Category:Amphetamine}} to circumvent the problem in this example; the general issue still remains though. (Insert 2¢)13:57, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

This isn't AWB/Typos related. Please move discussion to thegeneral discussion area.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}14:14, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Due to an actual error made by an editor, I've discovered that there's some typo correction going on to say "bachelor's" and "master's" instead of "Bachelor's" and "Master's" when referring to academic degrees being gone through via listification through AWB by@The Quixotic Potato:. The rationale by the editor seems to be that "other sources don't say they have to be capped", but I don't know what our MOS says, never mind the fact that they should be proper nouns as titles, just like "Doctor of Medicine", etc. I don't believe that uncapping is correct, because they are not being referred to in general when relating to a person who has one; in that case they are a specific degree asnoted here.MSJapan (talk)19:47, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

@MSJapan: I don't think we have a typo correction that changes specific degrees. The corrections here only go after the generic usages ("bachelor's degree"), as far as I know. It's possible an AWB user was correcting something else by their own volition. Could you give us a link to an errant change?Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}19:54, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

I am only using the default AWB typolist, no custom rules.The Quixotic Potato (talk)20:17, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Then explain this, where it's not academic, or what looks likespecific usage here, unless specific usage doesn't apply to particular people getting particular degrees in particular subjects? Also, that fact that it hit and changed three non-academic usages tells me there's a problem somewhere.MSJapan (talk)22:25, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

The first one shouldn't have been accepted (apparently part of a proper name), while the second bunch of changes looks correct. The second bunch is referring to a kind of degree in a subject or at a school - they read like generic non-proper usages.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}23:14, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

@MSJapan:Thanks, I think I understand your confusion now.

I already explained three times that the freemason-related edits are my fault, mea culpa, I don't know anything about freemasons, so I thanked you for letting me know. The regexps don't take into account that there are freemasons on this planet. You linked one example, and there are 2 more. I can make AWB skip articles that contain the word "mason". Problem solved.

The edit in thesecond link you posted is completely correct, and there is consensus for that edit. You misunderstand the Manual of Style, and your edits on my talkpage contain many misconceptions.

Maybe this helps:

The Associated Press Stylebook (AP) recommends no capitals when referring to degrees ingeneral terms (bachelor’s, master’s, doctorate, associate degree) but always capitalizingspecific degrees (Bachelor of Arts, Master of Science), whether or not they directly precede or follow a name. The Associated Press Stylebook (AP) recommends no capitals when referring to degrees in general terms (bachelor’s, master’s, doctorate, associate degree) but always capitalizing specific degrees (Bachelor of Arts, Master of Science), whether or not they directly precede or follow a name.

and

"Academic degrees are capitalized only when thefull name of the degree is used, such as Bachelor of Arts or Master of Social Work.General references, such as bachelor’s, master’s or doctoral degree, are not capitalized."

You seem to think that "specific usage" means: when used in relation to one specific person. In reality specific usage means when referring to one specific degree (you know, when the full name of the degree is used), like "Master of Social Work".

"General" in this context means stuff like "bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, associate degree", because this is a category of degrees, and not a specific degree.

I will now continue with my work, I have waited a long time and I have over 70.000 articles on my todo-list, and it is clear that there is consensus for my edits and that the various manuals of style I could find[2][3] say that "bachelor’s degree" & "master’s degree" should not be capitalized.The Quixotic Potato (talk)00:53, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

I see, so grammarbook isn't OK for support when I have a concern, but it is OK for you to refute me. I get it. Moreover, in that second edit, there are multiple changes, and two instances that specifically say "Bachelor's degree in English" and "Master's degree in English" would seem to fall under your "needs to be capitalized as full names" rule, but they are not. so I would like you to take a look at that again and read thecontext, which is what I think you arenot seeing via this "preparsed list of changes."MSJapan (talk)01:07, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

So you mean to tell me "So-and-so, who received a Masters' in English" is not supposed to be capitalized, despite it being a "specific" reference to a specific degree? I may not get it, but you clearly can't explain it, yet you want to make thousands of changes to the encyclopedia because of it.MSJapan (talk)01:17, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Sigh. It is quite difficult to have a debate with someone who responds this slowly. Now you've finally explained what you mean after 2 days of waiting. Thank you. "Bachelor of Arts in English" and "Master of Arts in English" would be the full, specific, names. But, to be honest, I am bored and I understand why you are confused and I don't want to debate this bullshit anymore so I'm gonna be bold and remove the typofixes so I can move on.The Quixotic Potato (talk)01:12, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Like I expected my edit has been reverted. Now I don't have to debate this anymore (it is impossible to blame me for the existence of those regexptypofixes now) and I can continue with my work. The regexptypofixes were written by someone else and there is clear consensus to keep them, and you shouldn't blame me for following consensus, even if you disagree with everyone else. I hope you understand that it is up to you to create a new consensus if you want to change the regexptypofixes. I wish I had (even) more patience but I don't want to have to explain this again and again.The Quixotic Potato (talk)01:37, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

To be blunt, the opinions of a poster at "grammarbook.com blogs" mean precisely zero on Wikipedia. Can you point to a single genuine style guide that recommends the use of "Bachelor's Degree" and "Master's Degree" in an academic context other than immediately following a name ("John Smith, Bachelor of Arts")? I have never seen one, and I can point you to plenty which say the opposite. I'm one of the most vocal opponents of people using AWB to make inappropriate changes because "it's what the MOS says" (the recent habit of adding gratuitous hyphens after "newly" is one which particularly grates), but as far as I can seeThe Quixotic Potato is acting entirely correctly here. ‑ iridescent20:06, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

AWB/Typos removes the hyphen after "newly".Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}20:14, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Relax guys, I think MSJapan made a simple mistake (see also my talkpage). Regexps can be quite confusing. So far we have at least 4 Wikipedians and 3 Manuals of Style that support the current regexps.The Quixotic Potato (talk)20:09, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Now I can see the regexp, I think we can word round the problem to avoid future confusion.Fiddlersmouth (talk)22:53, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Well, we still gotta explain it to MSJapan. I will try again (see above, my comment dated 00:53, 14 September 2015).The Quixotic Potato (talk)00:53, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

@MSJapan:Alice Jackson Stuart earned aBachelor of Arts and aMaster of Arts in English, which are capitalized perthis University of Virginia web page. However, when we use the genericbachelor's degree andmaster's degree, they would not be capitalized, perThe Journal of Blacks in Higher Education article and thisUniversity of Virginia web page and thisLibrary of Virginia web page. These are used references for the Wikipedia article on Stuart. Hope this helps!GoingBatty (talk)01:34, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

I don't think it is very complicated, but I seem to be unable to explain this to MSJapan. I will use my own username as an example:

• The Quixotic Potato graduated with a bachelor's degree in English.
• The Quixotic Potato graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English.

The words "bachelor's degree" are not capitalized because they are referring to a category of degrees. The wordcombo "bachelor's degree in English" is not the specific name of a degree, because the degree is called "Bachelor of Arts".

But "Bachelor of Arts" in the second example is capitalized because this is the name of a specific degree.The Quixotic Potato (talk)

They're both "specific degrees" - one can't get a B.S. in English, for example, Therefore, a bachelor's in a field is the same as as bachelor's in <X> in a field.MSJapan (talk)21:07, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Like I explained before, in this context "specific degree" means "the name of a specific degree". You seem to think that just because the wordcombo "bachelor's degree in English" can only refer to 1 specific degree (called Bachelor of Arts in English) it therefore must also be capitalized as if it is the name of a degree. We capitalize "Eiffel Tower", but that doesn't mean that the words "the most famous tower in Paris" should therefore also be capitalized, even though it is clear that they can only refer to the Eiffel Tower...

When the name of the specific degree is written in full (e.g. Bachelor of Arts in English) then we should use capitalization. The generic "bachelor's degree" should not be capitalized. Do you honestly believe that there is a chance that you are correct and that we are all wrong (all the Wikipedians, the writers of the manuals of style and even the authors of the pages GoingBatty linked to)?

According to your userpage you are a native speaker of English, you claim you attend or have attended Harvard and have a BA, MBA and MA and you have 10yrs of experience on Wikipedia.According to my userpage I am a potato. I assume you are capable of finding someone who can explain to you why you are wrong (IRL or on Wikipedia). Please stop wasting my time.The Quixotic Potato (talk)21:51, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

I think the problem is thatyou do not understand what you are doing, and if you did, you could explain it. Let me break it down differently, and maybe you'll see where the issue is.

1. . "Jane Doe has a bachelor's degree" - refers to a class of degrees - we don't know in what field the degree is in, period. "Dingbat College offers bachelor's degrees" is also a nonspecific reference with the same meaning - they offer multiple degrees in the same class. This is what the "nonspecific wording" is above.
2. . "Jane Doe has a Bachelor of Science in Physics" - that is a specific degree, and should also be clear.
3. . "Jane Doe has a Bachelor's degree in Physics" - this isalso a specific degree, and in factthe same as in #2. It does not list "of Science", but a degree is offered either one way or the other, so omission makes no difference to the specificity of a degree. It is a particular degree class (bachelor's), in a particular field (Physics) just like in #2. These references are what you are changing, thereby claiming that this construction is the same as #1, and it is not. Jane Doe has a degree of a specific class in a specific field; just because the full title is not specified does not change the caps, because the capsaren't tied to the full title, but thespecificity of the degree.MSJapan (talk)01:21, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Why do you claim that it matters if we know what field the degree is in? You call this "specificity".

You claim that "the caps aren't tied to the full title, but the specificity of the degree"....

I have already explained why you are confused. I don't have to explain stuff to you. If you want me to explain stuff to you then you should pay me. I will simply keep following the consensus. The fact that you disagree with everyone else is irrelevant. Feel free to write your own manual of style. You can probably (ask someone to) write a Javascript that ensures that you see the capitalization you want to see.

Associated Press Style Guide "bachelor’s degree in English"

Santa Barbara City College Manual of Style "master’s degree in comparative literature"

Yale Style Guide:Should be capitalized when theformal title is used; lowercased when used informally (Bachelor of Arts degree/bachelor’s degree; Master of Arts degree/master’s degree).

Western Michigan University Manual of StyleAcademic degrees are capitalizedonly when the full name of the degree is used, such as Bachelor of Arts or Master of Social Work. -- "master's degree in English"

Dixie State University AP Style Quick Reference:Capitalize, however,when the formal name of the degree is used

Michigan Technological University Editorial GuideCapitalize academic degrees and disciplines infull, complete use.

LinguisTech (reference website for language professionals)Degrees should only be capitalizedwhen they are written in full and not when mentioned informally.

It seems like you claim that we should write: "Jane Doe has a bachelor of science degree." (nota bene: according to you this is not specific, we do not know what field the degree is in).

In reality we should write "Jane Doe has a Bachelor of Science degree." because "Bachelor of Science" is a specific degree, it is the full formal name of a degree, and the field it is in is irrelevant.

Here are some more examples:

Colby-Sawyer College Style GuideCapitalize full and formal names of specific degrees: Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of Arts, Doctor of Philosophy.

Ferris State University - Marketing and Communications Style Guide:"Use uppercase forspecific degrees, such as Master of Science or Bachelor of Arts, lowercase for non-specific degrees, such as bachelor’s degree.".

We don't have to know what field a degree is in, that is irrelevant, "Master of Science" or "Bachelor of Arts" are bothspecific degrees and should be capitalized.

Again, please stop wasting my time.The Quixotic Potato (talk)02:21, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

@MSJapan: I didn't see you respond to my post above, so I'll ask again in case you missed it - you don't agree with the capitalization used byThe Journal of Blacks in Higher Education article and thisUniversity of Virginia web page and thisLibrary of Virginia web page?GoingBatty (talk)02:44, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

• The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education "bachelor's degree in English"
• University of Virginia web page "bachelor's degrees in political science and law"
• Library of Virginia web page "bachelor's degree in English" - "master's degree in French"

The Quixotic Potato (talk)03:52, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

@Going Batty: I did miss it, actually. I don't disagree with it, because my question is "what does the MOS say?", not "what website's usage are we following?" Clearly, this is a big question.

I'm also going to point out that a Bachelor's of Science itself is not a specific degree but a class, and I've got a problem with Quixotic Potato not seeing that, especially if he wants to run a script on thousands of "typos". The further question nobody's asking and should is "why, in an encyclopedia, are wenot referring to degrees formally in keeping with the overall tone, as we discourage informal usage?"MSJapan (talk)01:35, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

I was thinking about our conversation and the fact that there are many HFA people on Wikipedia. If I would've thought about this sooner I wouldn't have used such imprecise language. I know quite a few, many are colleagues, some are friends, and there is even one that I love, and I've noticed that it is a good idea to communicate slightly differently than I would otherwise do. If you want me to I can try to explain this in a different way that is less ambiguous (I hope). Or we can simply stop talking about this subject; our conversation so far hasn't been very productive.The Quixotic Potato (talk)22:29, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

@MSJapan: You make an excellent point about referring to degrees formally, so I have madethis edit to theAlice Jackson Stuart, which I believe has capitalization we all agree upon. Thanks for this creative solution!GoingBatty (talk)23:58, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

@The Quixotic Potato: I think implementing GoingBatty's format would solve the problem entirely. Therefore, to@GoingBatty: that being the case, is there any chance of getting consensus to make that the accepted form for referring to degrees in both the correction of existing usages as well as for usage in new articles going forward in cases where it is appropriate (mainly for degrees earned by article subjects)? Obviously, references in general terms (such as university offerings or the top-level articles about the degrees in general) are fine, as they do conform to appropriate capitalization and usage already.MSJapan (talk)05:16, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

@MSJapan: I'm struggling to think of a typo rule we could use that would reliably know how to change "bachelor's degree" to either "Bachelor of Arts" or "Bachelor of Science" (or anything else), but please suggest something here if you can think of something. As far as getting consensus on what format to use on all articles, you might want to start by posting a suggestion atWikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biographies. Good luck!GoingBatty (talk)20:41, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

I am glad to see that the topic has changed to something more constructive.

Both "master's degree in English" and "Master of Arts in English" areaccepted forms, that is unlikely to change, I think you want to make "Master of Arts in English" thepreferred form.

I am neutral, because I do not really care.

If you want to you can edit pages that contain something like:

"Jane Doe earned her master's degree in English in 1997."

and change it to:

"Jane Doe earned her Master of Arts in English in 1997."

Of course there are many pages that contain something like:

"Jane Doe earned her master's degree in 1997."

In that case you will have to find a source that says that it is (for example) a Master of Arts degree. If you are lucky it will state what field the degree is in (e.g. Master of Arts in English).

AutoWikiBrowser is not (yet) able to help with this task, I think you will have to make edits like this manually. If you want to get consensus to make "Master of Arts" the preferred form then maybe you can propose adding a couple of sentences to the Manual of Style.The Quixotic Potato (talk)21:55, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

PerWikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Dates_and_numbers#Time_of_day I do not see capital A.M. Should we add a typo rule for that? --Magioladitis (talk)08:43, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

I don't have a hard objection to this, but aren't guidelines/MOS issues usually fixed via General Fixes? Some editors may object to something like this being called a typo, but if we say it's MOS, we're on more solid ground.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}13:10, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Stevietheman I think it's better of capitalisation issues are left to typo fixing instead of hard-coded. Especially, after the objections stated below. --Magioladitis (talk)14:03, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Better not: if you look atAM you see there are several legitimate uses of "A.M." in other contexts. See alsowikt:A.M.. It is a Jewish calendar epoch.BethNaught (talk)13:13, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

@Magioladitis andBethNaught: If we were to have a rule, it would have to be sure "A.M." was proceeded by #:## or ##:##.GoingBatty (talk)14:01, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

OK, that makes sense. Thanks.BethNaught (talk)09:10, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Sounds good, but perhaps we could handle top-of-the-hour times by looking for "at #" before "A.M.". Also, "P.M" could be handled in a wider variety of cases.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}14:13, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

While testing the previous discussed typo correction, I ran into four additional correction ideas, one I've already implemented because it seemed straightforward enough. Here's the other34:

• "an nth generation something" → "an nth-generation something"
• Partly done "an nth-placed finish" or "an nth placed finish" → "an nth-place finish" (I'm not sure if using 'placed' here is disallowed in formal English)
•  Done "an nth minute opener/substitute" → "an nth-minute opener/substitute" (sports-related; possibly other following words)
• "a/some/the left over" → "a/some/the leftover" ("left over" is incorrect in this context according to Wiktionary, although "left-over" is considered an alternative (but maybe change for consistency?); possibly other preceding words)

Thoughts, yeas/nays on these?Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}21:09, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

I just added another idea to the list.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}22:41, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

After some research and testing, I implemented "nth-minute something". "nth-generation something" seems a little hairy to me at the moment but if someone else would like to take that on, be my guest. The remaining ones need grammar review, and I'm not sure exactly where to turn yet.@Chris the speller: do you have any thoughts about these suggestions, or where I may look to research the grammar aspects?Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}16:57, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

For "nth-place finish", it continues to be unclear whether "placed" instead of "place" is incorrect grammar, but I added a seek for the "placed" possibility in "nth-place something" to fix more typos while preserving "placed".Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}14:11, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

These are some typos I found just by doing a search. I already fixed most of them manually but it's good to be proactive I think and include them in AWB in case they pop up again. These are just suggestions though, I won't be offended if anyone opposes any of these.

• bradcast --> broadcast (EXCEPT "The BradCast" capitalized, which appears to be the title of a radio show, but thereareother legit spelling errors for this one, surprisingly)

• suprass/ed/ing --> surpass/ed/ing

• inpending --> impending

• inpenetrable --> impenetrable

Thanks. --œ^™04:39, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

@OlEnglish: If you fixed most of them, how many of these errors were there? We generally don't add a Typo rule unless a couple of dozen or more instances of a misspelling have been seen. A quick look at your contributions did not turn up any large-scale correction of these goofs.  13:36, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

@OlEnglish: If "Bradcast*" (capital B, lowercase c, any suffix) should always have an "o" added, the existing "broadcast" rule could be tweaked. It appears the "Imp-" rule would already fix "inpenetrable".GoingBatty (talk)14:13, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

@Chris the speller: Hmm. Yes, there were less than a dozen of the above mentioned errors, but considering how few spelling errors are left to fix in Wikipedia, I would think that any spelling error occurring even twice, made by different users, would be common enough and good enough reason to add a rule, so as to prevent any future occurrences. But perhaps there is a technical reason I'm not aware of, oh well.@GoingBatty: Ah that's good. Thank you. --œ^™20:22, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

And voila, a quick peek at the talk archives uncovereda discussion mentioning just such a technical reason. So Ianswered my own question :) --œ^™20:32, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

@OlEnglish: I updated the "Broadcast" rule to also fix "Bradcast" (but not "BradCast") and fixed all the articles.GoingBatty (talk)21:17, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Please include the following commonly misspelt Indian states:

• Jharkand (Jharkhand)
• Chattisgarh, Chhatisgarh (Chhattisgarh)
• Chattisgarhi, Chhatisgarhi (Chhattisgarhi, the language)
• Telengana (Telangana)

I had a round cleaning these up a few months ago. But more appear to have cropped up. Thanks.--Cpt.a.haddock (talk)17:39, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

I added a rule for Chhattisgarh and Chhattisgarhi, and it also fixes lower case.  16:05, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

@Chris the speller: Thanks. Are the others not notable enough?--Cpt.a.haddock (talk)(pleaseping when replying)12:46, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

@Cpt.a.haddock: I have not investigated the "Jharkand" and "Telengana" misspellings yet; I haven't given up on them, just stepped away for a while. But "Jharkand" only pops up in 12 articles, and we usually only add a rule if a couple of dozen are found. I plan to do something for "Telengana" soon.  14:12, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

@Chris the speller: Ah. Those 12 have cropped up in thelast couple of months. Cheers.--Cpt.a.haddock (talk)(pleaseping when replying)15:28, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

@Cpt.a.haddock: I added a rule to fix "Telengana", and it also capitalizes "telangana". Also, three sections below this one is a section "Please add", where the topic of adding rules for a small number of misspellings is discussed.  19:54, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

AWB just offered to "correct"Prince-elector inAlbert of Mainz to Prince-elect.

Before:Cardinal '''Albert of Brandenburg''' ({{lang-de|Albrecht von Brandenburg}}; 28 June 1490 – 24 September 1545) was [[Prince-elector|Elector]] and [[Archbishop of Mainz]] from 1514 to 1545, and [[Archbishop of Magdeburg]] from 1513 to 1545.

After:Cardinal '''Albert of Brandenburg''' ({{lang-de|Albrecht von Brandenburg}}; 28 June 1490 – 24 September 1545) was [[Prince-elect|Elect]] and [[Archbishop of Mainz]] from 1514 to 1545, and [[Archbishop of Magdeburg]] from 1513 to 1545.

Regards,Bazj (talk)11:20, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

@Bazj: I can't reproduce this, and cannot see anything inWP:AWB/T that would do it. Also, AWB's built-in typo fixer never adjusts the left hand side of a piped link. Can you post your settings file somewhere so that someone can try it using exactly the same settings as you are using? --John of Reading (talk)11:58, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Please add a rule to correct "toponomy" to "toponymy", in harmony withwikt:toponymy.
—Wavelength (talk)02:33, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

toponomy redirects totoponymy, and the latter article doesn't mention "toponomy" as an alternate spelling. However,wikt:toponomy says it's an "Alternative spelling of toponymy".GoingBatty (talk)03:15, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

The word "toponymy" means "the study of place names", but "toponomy" has other definitions (sometimes in addition to "toponymy") according tohttp://www.onelook.com/?w=toponomy (#6, 7, 8, 10, 11). Therefore, the spelling "toponomy" is ambiguous, but the spelling "toponymy" is unambiguous. The combining form "‑onymy" means "name" (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=toponymy&searchmode=none), but the combining form "‑nomy" means "arranging, regulating" (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=astronomy&searchmode=none).

—Wavelength (talk)20:10, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

@Wavelength: Based on your most recent post, it seems that this would not be a good candidate for a typo rule.GoingBatty (talk)23:24, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

@GoingBatty: Thank you for your consideration of my request.—Wavelength (talk)23:34, 1 October 2015 (UTC) and 00:03, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

W. K. Sullivan used the spellingtoponomy in the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1876 (he was writing about poems), but it seems clear that the normal modern spelling istoponymy for the place-name sense. We have over 100 instances oftoponomy, lots of them as section headings. I'd be inclined to change them to the usual spelling, but perhaps by hand?Dbfirs17:54, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm going through all the articles that contain "team work" and letting the typo rule change it to "teamwork" where appropriate. However, there are many false positives, such as "he and his team work on...." Anyone want to see if they can tweak the rule to ignore some of these false positives? Thanks!GoingBatty (talk)14:24, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

I added that one, and I'll be happy to fix the false positives. Could you list the articles that have them so I can test a new rule?Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}15:26, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't understand why you want to impose concatenation. I agree that the concatenated form is becoming more common under American influence, but why are we imposing a rule at all?Dbfirs16:04, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Webster, Oxford and Wiktionary don't show an alternative of "team work". If anyone can show "team work" is a valid alternative in today's use of English, then this should be removed.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}16:15, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

The big Oxford (Second Edition) has bothteam work andteam-work with just one cite forteamwork as a concatenation. I agree that usage has changed considerably over the past fifty years, and that entry has not yet been updated for the Third Edition. Perhaps I'm just out of date? Does Wikipedia have a policy of preference for concatenated forms?Dbfirs16:47, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't have answers for those questions (maybe someone else does). We're just in the business of correcting typos. So, perhaps it should be determined if "team work" is a typo in the sense that this isn't the common contemporary usage. Based on my lookups when I created the rule, I couldn't find "team work". I don't see how this correction could be controversial; however,if anyone wants to start a process for determining consensus on keeping it or not, that would be perfectly fine. I'm not married to the idea of keeping it.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}17:18, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Well obviously you won't find an entry forteam work in most dictionaries because it consists of two words. The OED has it underteam. The two-word term would merit an entry in Wiktionary since it satisfies the three cites rule, but you will not find an entry because the expression is just the sum of the two parts. If you want some cites, here are three:The efforts undertaken by every team member for the achievement of the teams objective is known as team work. from managementstudyguide.com;Good understanding of team work and team building are critical for your business success or corporate office career from time-management-guide.com; andEveryone agrees team work is (like apple pie) a good thing from the UK National Health Employers' website. There are many more.Dbfirs17:41, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Also obvious is that teamwork as one word is extremely common (type 'teamwork' on Google). I will abide by a consensus decision either way, but it seems to me that 'teamwork' is by far the prevalent usage, and so that's my stance. I don't see harm from this correction at any rate.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}00:37, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

@Stevietheman: Here's the list of articles where I thought it was NOT appropriate to change "team work" to "teamwork":

Thanks!GoingBatty (talk)02:33, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

You'd also have to consider "team work" as opposed to "individual work" (e.g. a cart being pulled by two oxen instead of one), with "team work" referring to the work performed by the group of individuals, not necessarily referring to active cooperation. Consider alsoTeam#Interdependent teams versusTeam#Independent teams; you could talk about "team work" on the part of the latter, even though they're just individuals whose successes get amalgamated.Nyttend (talk)22:38, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Honestly, I am having trouble wrapping my head around this. Perhaps a link to a source that expands upon this would help.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}17:17, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for the list. I could probably work around most of these easily.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}17:17, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

This agglutination has been a problem with AWB typos for years. It needs very careful and informed consideration before such rules are added. All the best:Rich Farmbrough,01:33, 1 January 2016 (UTC).

We're always happy to deal with false positives, or re-consider entries. But we can't do that unless someone brings up a specific issue.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}17:17, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Well thank you for that. I have been offering specific issues since the day this talk page was started in August 2006, but since I no longer use AWB for typo fixing, I don't come across many specific issues. I am still happy to provide some shreds of institutional memory when I can. All the best:Rich Farmbrough,00:42, 2 January 2016 (UTC).

Removed - this is just too complicated. Thanks to everyone who tried to explain that, but it took looking at the various examples deeply to realize how complicated a working rule would have to be. Therefore, I conclude it's not worth it to have the rule.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}22:40, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Hey there. I was doing some typo correction and when I got toChalco de Díaz Covarrubias AWB wanted to correct "native americans" to "native Americans". I'm thinking "Native Americans" is the correct capitalization. If that sounds reasonable, would someone mind adding a new rule? I would do it myself but I don't know how. Cheers.Braincricket (talk)21:28, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

@Braincricket:Added inthis edit.GoingBatty (talk)01:56, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

@GoingBatty:Thanks!Braincricket (talk)19:52, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

@Braincricket andGoingBatty: Just so you know, I processed nearly 10,000 pages over the past two days with AWB and → Native American was among the top suggestions. Cheers!{{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk}07:59, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

In a situation like this: [[Pressman Toy Corporation|Pressman company]]'s, I consider putting the 's outside the brackets to be a typo. It iscrufty and ugly, and should be like this: [[Pressman Toy Corporation|Pressman company's]]

Can somebody create a typo fix rule to scan for those and fix them? The regex search would be for wikilinks that are piped and contain a ]]'s instead of a 's]] and the replacement would be to replace the ]]'s right-hand portion of the wikilink with a 's]] Cheers!{{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk}09:18, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

As far as I know, we don't do MOS-related fixes as typos - we only look at misspellings and limited grammar misuses. Also, I'm not sure where in the MOS there is a preference for one approach over the other. If you can point that out in the MOS, that would be something the AWB developers could look at.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}12:02, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

@Checkingfax: Interesting how [[toy]]s and [[toys]] look the same to the reader (toys andtoys), but links followed by an apostrophe do not (Pressman company's vs.Pressman company's) perMOS:PIPE. Since AWB ignores the typo rules within wikilinks, I don't know if the AWB typo rules could technically support your request. Instead, you could try a find and replace rule, such as:\[\[(.*?)\|(.*?)\]\]'s →[[$1|$2's]] (which I have not tested). Hope this helps!GoingBatty (talk)17:05, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

There are many instances of "people that" which should be changed to "people who", but quite a few false positives. I'm thinking that "people thatverb" are those to be changed, but it's hard to create a regex for that. Maybe\bpeople\s+that\s+([a-z]+ed|had|went|were)\b would catch many past tense verbs. Any other suggestions?GoingBatty (talk)19:33, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Trying out this rule - feedback is appreciated, as always.GoingBatty (talk)19:13, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Two of my edits were reverted, so I did more research, and not everyone agrees that "people that" is wrong. For example, see10 Grammar Mistakes People Love To Correct (That Aren't Actually Wrong).GoingBatty (talk)20:29, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Hello; the construction "people that" (or "man that", "person that", etc.) is in fact recommended by certain style guides (especially in the social sciences) for restrictive clauses. The change to "who" (which is also common and acceptable) is unnecessary. Thanks.Doremo (talk)21:53, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

<Typo word="well received" find="\b([Ww])ell-received\b(?=\.| by\b| in\b| at\b)" replace="$1ell received"/>

• [4]

"Well-received" is a not a mistake. It's an attested variant of "well received", as with many other compound adjectives beginning with "well-".[5][6]Deryck C.21:52, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

The existing rule only changes "well-received" when the compound modifier is postpositive. This is in agreement with collinsdictionary.com, macmillandictionary.com and dictionary.com. No action is needed here.  23:29, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

I've noticed that a new feature of AWB's typo correcting actions is adding a comma to the following words:

Accordingly, Consequently, Furthermore, Indeed, Meanwhile, Moreover, Nevertheless, Therefore, etc.

I have recently received amessage on my talk page informing me thatmy AWB edit changingTherefore toTherefore, was 'not good style' according to the Chicago Manual of Style 5.69

I'm not sure if there has already been a discussion about this somewhere.

Could someone please look into this as it could potentially affect 100's of AWB edits.

Kind RegardsMarek.69^talk22:19, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

This was indeeddiscussed recently.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}23:02, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm going to post over there. I still think it's not warranted. -Eponymous-Archon (talk)23:33, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the linkStevietheman. Best Regards --Marek.69^talk

Sorry to raise this agin, but I still think these "corrections" are unwarranted (agreeing withRich). The Chicago Manual of Style indeed lacks a direct example of an initial "therefore" in the section cited above, but at several points it gives examples for other items that use such an initial "therefore" without a comma. For example, at "6.55 Semicolons with “however,” “therefore,” “indeed,” and the like" it provides an example with a clause-initial "therefore" that lacks a comma:The trumpet player developed a painful cold sore;therefore plans for a third show were scrapped.; or 5.199he had betrayed the king;therefore he was banished. In contrast Appendix A of the same work provides an example with a comma in its text (that is, not in an example), so the manual is not even consistent (my point). Clearly other style guides disagree, but many will also say that short initial phrases shouldn't get a comma. My point simply is that this is a matter of preference and not at all a settled "rule", and so should be left alone. -Eponymous-Archon (talk) 6:50 pm, Yesterday (UTC−5)

@Eponymous-Archon: I'm not a punctuation expert, so I won't try to express an opinion on your general point. But your examples with lowercase "therefore" won't be changed by the AWB rule as it stands, because the rule is only written to add a comma after uppercase "Therefore". --John of Reading (talk)16:14, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

There is a place called"Meanwhile Gardens".AWB inserts a comma after Meanwhile. Can someone update this regex to exclude "Meanwhile gardens" please?The Quixotic Potato (talk)12:03, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

 Done --John of Reading (talk)15:25, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

At least 3 times now, AWB has hitSpanish conquest of Yucatán with "Franciscans-based" in the phraseprobably the majority of the Franciscans based there at the time. This is not a typo.Simon Burchell (talk)12:11, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

@Simon Burchell: I've added{{Not a typo}} to the article so that AWB users won't be prompted to make this mistake again. --John of Reading (talk)12:22, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

That's great - thanks.Simon Burchell (talk)12:29, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure of all the ins and outs of this, but generally phrases like this ("something-based") use singular nouns followed by "-based", so no final s on the noun. The exception of course is for place names that end in s, but those should be capitalized, so that could help with the rule that the bot is using. "Franciscans-based", for example, wouldn't be good usage anyway. The rule then is "X based" should be hyphenated, except when X begins with a lower-case letter and ends in a single s. This won't always works since some words end in s in the singular, but not many and a number of those end in two s's (e.g., business). -Eponymous-Archon (talk)14:12, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

This seems like another non-ENGVAR neutral change. Americans, perhaps because of their large German heritage, seem to prefer more agglutinative styles, hyphenating (sometimes optionally) where the rest of the world would leave a space, and joining (sometimes optionally) where the rest of the world would use a hyphen. AWB should not be enforcing a national preference, unless it can be demonstrated to comply withWP:COMMON. In general the more separated style makes sense to everyone, the more agglutinative style jars badly for some readers. All the best:Rich Farmbrough,19:02, 31 March 2016 (UTC).

I'm OK with an evidence-based discussion of this, including specific examples where typo fixes are unnecessary. We don't want to be correcting something where a correction isn't called for.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}20:17, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Many pages have"for" after "accused", instead of the correct preposition "of". Apparently, some people are confusing "accused of" with "punished for" and "forgiven for".
—Wavelength (talk)02:50, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

@Wavelength: There seem to be some false positives. Maybe limiting it to "(is|was) accused for" would work?GoingBatty (talk)14:08, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

GoingBatty, thank you for your reply. This now seems to me to be an area of too much uncertainty for editors who do not have a knowledge of the subject matter. Even when I know that "accused for" is incorrect, I do not know whether the author intended "accused of" [a wrong that might not have happened] or "blamed for" [a wrong that definitely happened] or something else. Instead of other editors trying to acquire knowledge of the subject matter, it might be better if one or more editors focus on helping writers of incorrect English to improve their use of English.

—Wavelength (talk)01:14, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

@Wavelength: That's a good reason to not have a type rule for this - thanks for the explanation.GoingBatty (talk)01:57, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Can anyone see a potential problem with or source of false positives for

<Typoword="between ... and"find="\b([Bb]etween (?:[0-9,.]+|zero|one|two|three|four|five|six|seven|eight|nine|ten|eleven|twelve|(?:twen|thir|four|for|fif|six|seven|eigh|nine)(?:teen|ty)) )to\b"replace="$1and"/>

? I'm not very experienced with regex, so I may have made some mistakes.

Additionally, what am I doing wrong with the search

insource:/([Bb]etween ([0-9,.]+|zero|one|two|three|four|five|six|seven|eight|nine|ten|eleven|twelve|(twen|thir|four|for|fif|six|seven|eigh|nine)(teen|ty)) )to /?

When I use the search box I get the expected results, but when I put it in AWB using "Wiki search (text)", I get a very large number of anomalous results. — crh ₂₃  (Talk)13:52, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

The list returned from that search in AWB appears to be searching for zero in article body and sorting by relevance — crh ₂₃  (Talk)20:21, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

I've gone through about 100 edits using a database dump with the above regex, and I have found no false positives, so I'm adding the regex to the list. —  crh ₂₃  (Talk)16:12, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi, I seem to be getting a lot of false positives on Regex typo fixing mali → Mali. I edit a lot of Eastern European articles in which these false positives are quite frequent (I believe 'mali' means 'little' in Slavic). Is there a way to modify the Regex to overcome this problem? --Marek.69^talk21:20, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

@Marek69: could you give a couple of examples where mali should not be corrected to Mali? —  crh ₂₃  (Talk)11:13, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Could The code be changed as to not try and "fix the "Indeed[comma]" issue withOscar Brand discography (§ I Love Cats (1994/5-Alcazar/Alacazam!))?(t) Josve05a (c)17:36, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

It looks to me that the problem in the rule causing this,

<Typoword="Furthermore,"find="\b(Accordingly|Consequently|Even\s+so|Furthermore|In\s+other\s+words|Indeed|Meanwhile(?!\s+Gardens)|Moreover|Nevertheless|On\s+the\s+other\s+hand|Therefore|For\s+example)(?=\s)"replace="$1,"/>

would be fixed by replacing the lookahead(?=\s) with(?= ). However, it looks like a vast majority of the rules on this page use\s over[ ]: anyone know why newlines and tabs need to be matched in all those cases? I've not fixed it for now, as I feel like there's something going on that I don't understand. —  crh ₂₃  (Talk)08:52, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

I've gone through "They where" a couple of times now changing them to "They were", including another twenty from the last month. I think this would be worth adding to AWB for the future.ϢereSpielChequers08:56, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

The mistake is possibly caused by thewine–whine merger, which can also lead to "were is/are/was/were" instead of "where is/are/was/were".

—Wavelength (talk)18:42, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

The new "High-profile" rule begins "At every word break, look back at the previous text to see whether..." Is this as inefficient as it looks? --John of Reading (talk)10:57, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

@John of Reading: Hmm, not sure. The current regex is

\b(?<!(?:[Bb]ecause\s+of\s+(?:his|her|its|their)|(?:achiev(?:es?|ed|ing)|creat(?:es?|ed|ing)|display(?:s?|ed|ing)|has|have|keep(?:s?|ing)|kept|(?:main|re)tain(?:s?|ed|ing)|with)\s+a)\s+)([Hh])igh(?<!(?:[A-Z][A-Za-z]+|specified|the)\s+High)[-\s]+profile(?!,|\s+(?:and|as|in|of))\b

which without the lookbehinds and lookaheads becomes\b([Hh])igh[-\s]+profile\b which is a pretty normal regex. I think the order of execution depends on the regex engine, it could be that it does the lookbehinds last. As a side note, not sure why it matches "high-profile" and replace it with itself? PingingStevietheman —  crh ₂₃  (Talk)11:30, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

This regex finds instances of "high profile" as an adjective and replaces it with "high-profile". The "inefficiency" is avoiding uses where "high profile" isn't an adjective. I suppose it doesn't have to seek "high-profile" but when it "replaces" it, there's no change. At any rate, I tested this across all pages of the English Wikipedia that contain this word. Let me know if it incorrectly corrects something.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}12:10, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Also, as far as I know, it processes the lookaheads/lookbehinds after it finds the core text, and in the vast majority of articles, this core text won't be there. Therefore, I don't believe there is an efficiency issue.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}12:14, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

If that is indeed the case, then it's perfectly fine. It would only be a problem if the regex is strictly matched left to right, as it would match every word boundary, check the exclusions with the negative lookbehind, and only then attempt to match "[hH]igh profile". I'm going to stop it from matching "high-profile", as that increases the frequency of testing the negative lookbehinds for no benefit (that I can see). Otherwise, I think this looks good. —  crh ₂₃  (Talk)13:42, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

I just wanted to report afalse positive for the subject typo fix, in case anyone thinks there's a way to fix it. For now, I've just applied the{{not a typo}} template.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}19:39, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

I keep having to revert "corrections" that change theRomansh digraph "ie" to "i.e.":[7],[8],[9]. Might be an issue in other articles too that deal with other languages. --Terfili (talk)23:37, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

SeeTemplate:Not a typo andwikt:ie.—Wavelength (talk)23:59, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

@GoingBatty: let's have a discussion about whether the recent correction toNate Thayer was incorrect or not, and whether we should revert the entire rule based on that. I reviewed the change in the article, and as far as I know, the correction looked, well, correct. My experience with the rule is that I've done a lot of seemingly correct corrections with no complaints whatsoever.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work} 21:23, 18 August 2016 (UTC)Also callingChris the speller.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}21:26, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

@Cmacauley: Could you please join this conversation, since you reverted my correction on theNate Thayer article? Thanks!GoingBatty (talk)02:28, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

@GoingBatty:@Stevietheman:@Cmacauley: Have you looked atMacmillan dictionary? Macmillan is very dependable for hyphenation issues, and they make a point of specifying whether compound modifiers are hyphenated only when they appear before the noun.  02:38, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

It's clearly hyphenated no matter what. Also per[10],[11],[12] and[13], applicable in both British and American English.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}14:34, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Recently, I ran into a clause "modeled after it's" that wasn't corrected. Given that Wikipedia frowns upon using contractions in non-quoted prose, does anyone see a problem with fixing "after it's"?Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}19:52, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

I explored creating a rule (rather, expanding a current rule) for this but it looked to be overly complicated. Instead, I just went through all the cases and corrected them via Find/Replace.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}11:02, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

There are a large number of instances of people typing "scretary" when they mean "secretary" - too many to fix by hand and the number and variety of articles suggests that it will be repeatedly made. It's probably worth doing a run through to fix all the current ones and then adding it to the general fixes list.Thryduulf (talk)12:27, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

I went through and manually fixed all of them a few days after leaving the above comment. Today, I've just fixed another few including one "scretaries" → "secretaries". There is definitely scope therefore for this to be added to the list by someone who understands how (I don't).Thryduulf (talk)22:02, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

@Thryduulf: Done inthis edit.GoingBatty (talk)15:33, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

1993 World Championships in Athletics – Men's 10,000 metres includes the text "Tanui sprinted out to a quick 5 meter lead, expanding to a 10 meter lead". Why does AWB change this to "10-meter lead", but doesn't change the "5 meter lead"? Thanks!GoingBatty (talk)15:30, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Because "5 meter lead" is preceded by a word we don't check for: 'quick'.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}15:41, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

This seems to be a somewhat common misspelling, using a space instead of a hyphen. However, I'm wondering this word's use inpuffery should mean we shouldn't correct it. Any thoughts?Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}20:21, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

There aremany instances where the expression seems to be substantiated.

—Wavelength (talk)20:49, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. I can see that in my testing, although there does seem to be some puffery uses too. I went ahead and added it. I guess we don't have to be puffery police when we're just correcting typos.  :)Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}15:07, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

There's a rule which replacesgrat withgreat (named "_Great" in the typo list). However,instant grat (short for instant gratification) is a real concept, referring to songs released on iTunes during the pre-order phase of an album. Could the rule be modified to put ininstant grat as an exclusion?Harryboyles13:36, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

 Done --John of Reading (talk)14:07, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

A very quick test shows that the exception forinstant grat works. Thanks!Harryboyles16:04, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

What on earth is going on with AWB enforcing "halfway" over "half way"? Both spellings are usually considered acceptable, and the choice is stylistic. It is a bit much having AWB enforce an arbitrarily preferred spelling where no error exists.Simon Burchell (talk)11:40, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

@Simon Burchell: more appropriate arena for this question isWT:AWB/T. But this specific change was addedhere byChris the speller. --Edgars2007(talk/contribs)12:27, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

@Simon Burchell:@Edgars2007: Dictionaries determine what is acceptable, and I found none that accept "half way". While digging through them again, I see that Collins says "also half-way", so I have changed the rule accordingly. It will still change "half way" to "halfway".  14:46, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

A Google search for"half way" site:theguardian.com finds about 13,700 results, from that one source alone. Please remove this rule ASAP.Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing);Talk to Andy;Andy's edits18:50, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

General question: Should the Wikipedia be endorsing the misspelling of a word, even if by a mass media outlet?Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}18:59, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

From the Grauniad'sown style guide, halfway, halfwit.Mr Stephen (talk)23:20, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

The 13,700 hits is a crock. Some are movie titles, and the first one I examined, "Which plays should you leave halfway through?", has it spelled correctly, and nowhere does it have the wrong spelling. Maybe Google search equates "halfway" and "half way" in some cases. A search for"halfway through" site:theguardian.com gives twice as many hits as"half way through" site:theguardian.com, so apparently most of the contributors to that site get it right. The AWB rule requires "half way" to be followed by a qualifying word such as "across" or "through", and the Google search does not; this is definitely apples and oranges. At any rate, the Gaurnida doesn't outrank a good dictionary. If the rule were removed, it would do nothing to help the many WP articles that have both "halfway" and "half way".  18:22, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Chaucer used"half way" (but spelt it"half wey");Shakespeare used"half way" inThe Taming of the Shrew (but spelt it"halfe way"); California had a place calledHalf Way; more recentlyHarold Pinter used"half way" inThe Caretaker (1960); various books use"half way" such asHalf Way House (Maurice Hewlett),Half Way Home (C. W. Gill - 2011);Half Way to 1983: Governor Tatari's 24 Months in Office : Oct. 1979 - 1981;Half Way Between Everything (Marilyn Dennes, Susan Gilchrist, 2005);" Many inns like this were called “Half Way House” because they were half way between one town or village and the next." (Dolls In Canada by Marion E. Hislop - 1997 - Page 14). I could go on and on ... I agree that we should manually check consistency within one article, buthalf way,half-way andhalfway are all acceptable. Why are we even considering this hypercorrection by bot?Dbfirs21:11, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Our concern is with contemporary English. Also, there is creative license for how language is used in titles. Our concern is what up-to-date reliable English dictionaries recommend. Halfway isn't spelled "half way" in any of them, apparently. Unless anyone can find "half way" as a legitimate spelling, I support the correction.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}21:22, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Bothhalf andway are found in all dictionaries (two-word terms are not listed of course, but they are cited), along withhalf-way andhalfway. We had this argument in 2012. I cited Harold Pinter and a few recent books. I could find lots more.Could we please also removemidway from the bot? I'd support the correction if it could be limited to articles written in American English where concatenation is the current fashion.Dbfirs21:28, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Oxford andCambridge (U.S. and British) dictionaries don't agree with your position. If they did, they would show "half way" as an alternative. As for arguments, I'm only willing to see cites from dictionaries as arguments.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}21:50, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

The OED under the entryhalf- says:"The two elements are often written separately when the adj. is in the predicate (see half adv. 1); the use of the hyphen mostly implies a feeling of closer unity of notion in the compound attribute, as in half-blind, half-dressed, half-raw, viewed as definite states; but it is often merely for greater syntactical perspicuity, on which ground it is regularly used when the adjective is attributive, thus I am half dead (or half-dead) with cold; a half-dead dog.". I quoted three examples where the OED citeshalf way (Chaucer, Shakespeare and Pinter; I missed the fourth one by Goldsmith) though I agree that only Pinter is modern. The OED puts the hyphenated form first with the concatenated form as an alternative.Dbfirs22:04, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

As you have shown, it's either "half-way" or "halfway" per a dictionary entry (what AWB tolerates at this point). I don't think we should be concerned about a particular writer's (external to Wikipedia) usage.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}22:21, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

You are, of course, entitled to your opinion, but I have provided numerous examples ofhalf way as two words in common usage, and you have not established that this usage is proscribed.Dbfirs00:02, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

My position is based on dictionary entries, not my feelings. "Common usage" does not bound English writing in an encyclopedia as there is all kinds of incorrect, but common usages. We are going for the correct here. As is usual, please feel free to start an RfC if you would like to establish a consensus decision on this matter.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}00:19, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

No dictionary proscribes the adjacent use of two words that appear in the dictionary. Dictionaries do not make rules about style. The Oxford English Dictionary has several cites forhalf way. I can see that we are not going to agree, so may we compromise by keepinghalfway for all articles in American English, andhalf-way for all articles in British English (since the OED puts the hyphenated form first)?Dbfirs00:30, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

I agree with the above. Looking at my previous sentence, I doubt any dictionary contains most of the two-word combinations there, yet they are correct as written. Hyphenated "half-way" is an acceptable compromise, but honestly, "half way" isnot wrong.Simon Burchell (talk)10:16, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

I am not in agreement per my earlier statements. Dictionaries ordinarily say if separated word usages ("half way") are an alternative. In this case, no dictionaries appear to do that. I side with correct uses only. As for leaving "half-way"as is (btw, two-word term), the current typo rule does this. Also, technically speaking, there is no way to split typo corrections for U.S./British English. If "common use" is going to be forced here, IMHO, this requires a community consensus to go against the dictionaries.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}15:12, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Also I will reiterate that two UK-based dictionaries (Cambridge/Oxford), in theirentries for this word, say it's 'halfway' with no alternatives.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}15:20, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Sorry to butt in, but the above is just not true. The OEDspecifically gives "half-way" as the primary form, with "halfway" relegated to "accepted variant" and numerous examples of the unhyphenated "half way" form in the usage examples. ‑ Iridescent15:28, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

@Iridescent:, I don't have access to the link you used, but I will take your word for it. The current typo fix doesn't correct half-way or halfway. I don't know why examples of "half way" are provided but not shown as an alternative in the entry itself. Note that my position is not controlling on this typo fix, as others add/update these things, and this typo fix was not created by me, but I frankly don't think there's a strong reason to change my position. If the dictionary thought that "half way" was common enough, it would have noted that as an alternative. I would prefer a community consensus to decide this.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}15:38, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Also it might help to see examples of the OED examples of "half way". That might illuminate things.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}15:40, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

These are the examples the OED uses of the unhyphenated form. Bear in mind that the OED focuses primarily on earliest usage of a form, so most of them are 17th-century, but there's no suggestion that "half way" isn't still an acceptable usage and it isn't marked as archaic:

Adv

• c1405 (▸c1390) Chaucer Reeve's Tale (Hengwrt) (2003) Prol. l. 52 Lo Depeford and it is half wey pryme.
• 1530 J. Palsgrave Lesclarcissement 861/2 Halfe waye, au milieu du chemyn, or a my chemyn.
• a1616 Shakespeare Taming of Shrew (1623) i. i. 62 I-wis it is not halfe way to her heart.
• 1717 tr. A. F. Frézier Voy. South-Sea 106 A little above half way up a high mountain.
• 1757 G. Shelvocke, Jr. Shelvocke's Voy. round World (ed. 2) vi. 198 Before I had got half way off.
• 1766 O. Goldsmith Vicar of Wakefield I. x. 96 About half way home.
• 1960 H. Pinter Caretaker iii. 77 He's nutty, he's half way gone.

Noun

• 1634 T. Herbert Relation Some Yeares Trauaile 13 Cape of good Hope..being the halfe way into India.
• c1665 L. Hutchinson Mem. Col. Hutchinson (1973) 20 In the halfe way betweene Owthorpe and Nottingham.

Prep

• 1613 S. Purchas Pilgrimage 488 A cloth..which reacheth halfe way the thigh.
• 1706 I. Watts Devotion & Muse in Horæ Lyricæ i. iii, Faint devotion panting lies Half way th' ethereal hill.

 ‑ Iridescent15:56, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. It should be noted that we don't fix typos in quotes of any text or in titles. Typo fixing is strictly done in encyclopedic prose. Also, I assume that the English Wikipedia is effectively based on Modern English (assumed further to be based on contemporary English dictionary entries), but I don't know where this is stated (we might have to get a ruling on that by itself). In any of the Modern English examples, I don't think the current rule would change them (per the regex, a space followed by across/around/round/between/down/from/into/line/out/point/through/up must follow).Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}16:08, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

In addition to those cites from the OED, I can find dozens of examples ofhalf way followed by "across/around/round/between/down/from/into/line/out/point/through/up" etc. in modern English. I suggested the compromise because I discovered that the use ofhalf way as two words in British English, though very common in British English when I learnt to read, is becoming less common in the twenty-first century, and is rare in American English. I do admire and approve the excellent work of Chris and Stevie in correcting typos and spellings, but the theory that the use of two words instead of a concatenated form is an incorrect spelling, just because some dictionaries omit to mention the alternative, seems likeWP:OR to me.Dbfirs09:42, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

I would say the reverse, that I (and I'm only speaking for myself) am going byWP:RS, that is, dictionary entries by widely agreed official sources. Doing research to find examples of different uses or misuses would seem to be leaning toWP:OR.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}12:53, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

By your own criterion, theOxford English Dictionary would not include recent citations (such as Pinter) that contained spelling errors. The interpretation of lack of entries in some dictionaries is what I consider original research. Anyway, if we go with the compromise, there is no original research or loss of honour (or even honor) on either side.Dbfirs13:22, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

There is a family of moths calledOpostegidae. AWB regex typo fixing has been changing it automatically to Oppostegidae (note the second p), but it shouldn't. If someone could fix that I would appreciate it. Thank you, SchreiberBike| ⌨ 01:07, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

@SchreiberBike: Done. This is another rule that matches[a-z]+. I'm not keen on those, as they so often end up damaging unusual or foreign words that the rule-writer never thought of. --John of Reading (talk)07:09, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Can someone add this to the typo list? I'm not really confident in doing it. Comercial → Commercial. Appreciated! --Jennica✿ / ^talk01:41, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

It's probably not feasible to have an AWB correction for this.Comercial is a proper noun in several names, so we would be safe to only look for lower-case uses. 'comercial' is the Spanish/Portuguese word for 'commercial', even though that shouldn't ordinarily be seen in prose. However, it still shows up in spots that AWB will try to "correct", such as lists of titles that aren't properly formatted. Another thing is that this typo appears very infrequently, as I found only 6 articles in the whole of Wikipedia with this typo that could be legitimately corrected. I just corrected most of those.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}13:16, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Oops, I assumed we didn't have this already, but the typo fix is there that avoids it when capitalized. It will still (apparently) fix the lower-case word, and that may be iffy per my previous review.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}13:32, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

During some typo scanning I found out a couple of non typos which maybe are easy to fix, in order to avoid problems:

• niger → Niger creates problem with scientific binomial names, whereniger is rather common as species name, like inBlack duikerCephalophus Niger seediff.
• Sark based → Sark-based creates an error when changingthe Sark based publishing company intothe Sark-based publishing companydiff
• team mate → teammate, according toUser:MilborneOne:common usage is still team mate in Br Englishdiff
• Ganes → Games, became error forGanes Creek named after Thomas Gane,a very uncommon error I guess and should be easy to see and avoid, I should have identified that one.diff

Dan Koehl (talk)19:19, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

I created the teammate typo fix. All the dictionaries I saw, including British ones Cambridge and Oxford, show it without the space. I need more than a user disagreeing with it to change it. I need reliable sources (dictionaries) that show "team mate" is an alternative spelling. I will review the others.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}19:37, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

This is what I thought was interesting, because in that case I trusted AWB.Dan Koehl (talk)19:43, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

My review so far:

1. niger→Niger looks like a tough one. Not sure where to go with that yet.
2. Sark based→Sark-based in the diff given actually looks correct. The publishing company is based on Sark (island), therefore it is Sark-based.
3. Ganes→Games with 'Creek' following it affects four articles, so I added regex code to avoid it.

Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}20:05, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

@Stevietheman:

1. Id say niger in a scientific name in most cases comes like (Somegenus niger) which means italic, and within parenthesis.
2. Regarding Sark-based, please see discussion onmy talk page.

Thanks so far for your kind assistance.Dan Koehl (talk)20:35, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

I have responded to #2 in your user talk. #1 is not quite as simple as it seems. False positive testing for text being inside of italics is not very simple using regex. It can be done, and I've done it in my own Find&Replace's,but it's not reliable enough to replicate for AWB Typos, which needs to avoid an editor's second-guessing as much as possible.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}20:47, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Edit conflictI was responsible for "Sark based"; and I'm definitely not versatile enough to be able to decide when to use proper nouns asnoun adjuncts or not. (I now noticed that OED lists ten "London-based" to one "London based"; I did not look for "Sark-based".)

I suppose that that "niger" invariably should occur as the second part of a speciesbinomen; and these should always be italicised. The first part of the binom should be a capitalised word or an abbreviation "capital"+"full stop" (likeTyrannosaurus rex orT. rex). Is it possible to make the bot avoid a combination like [''][A-Z][[a-z]+|.][ ][niger''] (where the ' and the space perhaps should be quoted; I do not know your regexp conventions)?JoergenB (talk)20:57, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestion@JoergenB:.@Stevietheman:, if JoergenBs suggestion doesnt work, maybe an alternative could be to run a search, and put {{Not a typo|niger}} on the instances that can be found on enwiki? Would such operations in general make sense, or it is meant just for a couple of handpicked cases?Dan Koehl (talk)21:02, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

The niger→Niger "fix" is odd, because we already have regex that avoids two single quotes after 'niger', and when I run this in my Find&Replace typo test, it doesn't do the "fix" onList of mammals of Ghana. So, the regex works technically, but somehow fails when run as a typo fix.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}12:45, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

I have created a phab ticket for this issue.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}13:39, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Per the ticket, it turns out another entry onList of mammals of Ghana had its italics off-balance, and this affected how typos were processed.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}21:22, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Sameproblem at Wikipsecoes, I removed it, while we are waiting for a result from the Phab ticket.Dan Koehl (talk)18:06, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

@Dan Koehl: the phab ticket was closed as invalid. As I said above, the italics used in the article were off-balance. Apparently, the typo fixing software needs italics (two single quotes, or '') to be in total balance for the typo fixes to work properly. I think this has to do with words inside italics being off-limits to such fixes. So, to fix any false-positive you run into, you will need to inspect the article and balance the italics. This shouldn't happen very often.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}21:35, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Dear@Stevietheman:, According to user@Struway2:, in British English, arch rivals is either spaced or hyphenated, please see hisrevert of my edit.I think I have changed that word on at least 20 other occasions though, without any objections from other users.Dan Koehl (talk)08:40, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Neither OED nor Chambers includearchrival as a single word.OED hyphenates it. SearchingChambers for both words gives a list of entries related toarch. It doesn't include rival specifically, but does list the similararch enemy, spaced. I think the reason you've had no objections is that, even if anyone's watching the articles you've made this change in, many (most?) people ignore typo-fixer edits on the not unreasonable assumption that those who specialise in this field generally get it right. cheers,Struway2 (talk)10:36, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

@Dan Koehl,Struway2, andChris the speller: This one looks shaky indeed. While the typo fix doesn't change the hyphenated version to a non-hyphenated version, it changes those with a space to an unspaced, non-hyphenated version. Even without evidence of "arch rival" being allowed as two separate words, our changing "arch rival" to "archrival" does seem biased to U.S. English. Any thoughts, Chris?Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}21:14, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Note that the link above does not lead to OED but to oxforddictionaries.com, which is quite another thing. Changing "arch rival" or "arch-rival" to "archrival" is completely defensible in American English, according to any dictionaries I can find. I am not surprised to find that some version of OED (full, short or compact) can be found that shows it as two words, so perhaps the rule should be retired.  23:27, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

@Chris the speller: oxforddictionaries.com is by Oxford University Press and the website is connected to OED -- thus, I think anyone looking up the spelling of the word would have a case for saying "arch-rival" is a viable alternative spelling. Since AWB typo fixers have to work across articles where either U.S. or UK English could be in force, I think it would be safest to retire the rule.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}23:44, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Agree.Dan Koehl (talk)23:45, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

OK, I see that the rule is gone. Fine work!  14:26, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

@Stevietheman andChris the speller:, According to user@Scope creep:, in British English, honorary is spelled honourary, seethis diff.Dan Koehl (talk)02:13, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

I just did aGoogle Ngram and it looks like "honourary" is almost never used in British books. Seengram. A couple of web discussions and dictionaries support that. SchreiberBike| ⌨ 03:36, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

@Dan Koehl,SchreiberBike, andScope creep: An interesting web source isthis page, which explains that "honourary" is a common misspelling. It's understandable that someone might believe that "honourary" is an extension of "honour" and should therefore be spelled with a "u", but I have seen sources that say "honorary" is derived from the French word "honoraire", not the English word "honour". So "honorary" is the correct spelling on either side of the Atlantic. British dictionaries such as collinsdictionary.com and oxforddictionaries.com agree. Wikipedia's style is to use a form that is understandable to all readers.  05:12, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks,@SchreiberBike andChris the speller:.Dan Koehl (talk)07:59, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Coolio.scope_creep (talk)12:07, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

The latest cite for the spellinghonourary in the OED is from 1825, and that dictionary (in it's draft Third Edition, March 2014) tags the spelling as"now nonstandard".Dbfirs12:48, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

It looks likeMerriam-Webster is showing 'honourary' as legitimate in British English. The question for me, like in the previous "archrival" matter, is whether we should correct a word when a major dictionary anyone can look up says the pre-corrected spelling is accepted.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}15:40, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

There is also a suggestion in a comment at the webpage linked byChris the speller that Australia's Macquarie Dictionary shows 'honourary' as acceptable. I don't have a subscription to it to verify, however.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}15:57, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

I think that the spelling 'honourary' should not be corrected, if its accepted. Its a type of word which may be cited from an older book or manuscript, and a correction will in such a case not benefit the text. If seldom used, but still accepted, I think we should let it remain unchanged.Dan Koehl (talk)16:03, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

@Dan Koehl: AWB doesn't correct any words in quotations. Also, I don't think we should decide what common usage is, as that tends to be original research and opinion-oriented. I think we need to make this decision strictly on what major dictionaries say. And as long as someone can look up Merriam-Webster and see that 'honourary' is a valid form, our rule needs adjustment or removal.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}16:10, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Agree, please adjust or remove. (I guess I expressed myself confusing above, what I meant with "let it remain unchanged" is to accept the use of 'honourary', instead of correcting it with AWB.)Dan Koehl (talk)16:15, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Whoa! Merriam-Webster is an American dictionary, and should not be considered an authority on British English. If dictionaries of British English don't count "honourary" as a standard spelling, then WP should not.  16:34, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

I am in no hurry to actually adjust or remove the rule in this case. M-W may not be an authority on British English, but general readers will see it as a reliable source because it's a major dictionary. Also, like I said above, I'm not sure if Australia agrees with the UK on this. At any rate, I'm willing to accept this as a bit too fuzzy to change right now.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}16:49, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Dictionaries published a century ago should not be considered authorities on current English. If a current dictionary of Australian English considers the spelling valid, then it could be retained in articles written in Australian English, but not in current British English (per the most recent OED).Dbfirs16:54, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

M-W is a current major dictionary. Also, we're talking about universal typo correction, where the AWB user, although responsible for their edits, will nevertheless be presented with this correction no matter what article they are working on. AWB Typos doesn't know what variant of English is being used in any particular article, and thus it will try to correct this in any Australia-oriented article.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}16:58, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't have access to the full current M-W dictionary. Does it really think that "honourary" is current British English? The on-line link was obviously just an extract, possibly outdated.Dbfirs17:43, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

I don't have full access,but without any additional information, since M-W is presenting that publicly, I think face value is a stronger aspect than what is possibly under the covers. Now, whether we accept M-W's apparent conclusion can be a different matter. Like I said above, I have concern that what will be normally seen as a RS will continually give us reasonable questioning over this correction by well-meaning wiki editors.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}17:56, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

The problem with these simplified websites is that they don't explain what they mean. Perhaps the full dictionary records the historic occasional spelling, and the web developer just copied the word.Merriam-Webster's Learner's Dictionary regards"honourary" as a misspelling.Dbfirs18:14, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Everyone also please note thisprevious meaty discussion from 2013 on this subject. It seemed to be strongly in favor of 'honorary' being correct no matter what, although it didn't go without any objection.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}17:03, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for finding the "previous meaty discussion", which is one of the places where I saw the source as the French word "honoraire". Note at the end of that discussion the reference toWP:COMMONALITY. Though "honourary" might be tolerated by a few people in the UK this month, in Australia next month, and in Canada the month after that, "honorary" is the much better choice in any country at any time. Even the editor who originally objected said "Coolio".  19:16, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

It's useful that the plaintiff (for loss of a better word) thinks it's OK, although that was said before further discussion appeared. I'm concerned about future plaintiffs bringing to us an entry from a major dictionary that contradicts our position. If we are going to say that OED (and other UK English dictionaries) overrule major U.S. dictionaries on British English, maybe we should state that somewhere. Without additional hard info, I am sanguine about the current rule as long we also have a consensus about UK dictionaries overriding U.S. ones on British English. Re:WP:COMMONALITY, "Insisting on a single term..." seems to oppose universal typo correction if there are regional varieties, but given we don't accept M-W's entry, this doesn't figure in here. If an insistent plaintiff from Australia shows us a hard dictionary entry per my earlier wondering, that may open this up again.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}19:46, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

(driveby comment) The OED—who, despite their occasional eccentricities like refusing to acknowledge the "-ise" suffix, are usually the final arbiter when it comes to BrEng usage, only accepts the no-u "honorary" as a legitimate current usage. Their etymology is from the Latinhonararius, not the Frenchhonoraire, but the basic point (that its etymology is from a word that has never included the letter u, and not from "honour") remains valid. (In modern British English the spelling of derivative formations and other related words varies between honour- and honor-, with spellings in honor- generally being used for those words where the connection with a Latin etymon or model is more evident, and spellings in honour- for those words where the derivative relationship with honour is most obvious; compare e.g. honoured, honourable, honourless, beside e.g. honorary, honorific, honorand. Johnson 1755 likewise has honourable beside honorary, but there is much more variation among his contemporaries. if you really want OED chapter-and-verse.) I agree strongly that perWP:COMMONALITY, since there's nowhere on Earth where "honorary" is aninvalid spelling, we should only ever be using that other than in direct quotations. (I also agree with the point made at the "meaty discussion" that most of the sources claimed to accept "honourary" as an acceptable spelling turn out to be apocryphal when one actually checks, and that the relevant style guides for Canadian military ranks, Australian academic degrees, etc, actually say nothing of the kind.) ‑ Iridescent19:56, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

I've reverted this error twice.This is the more recent: "Several years as party leader earned Salmond an unusually high-profile for an SNP politician". This should not be hyphenated.EddieHugh (talk)23:20, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

@EddieHugh: This is just a false positive. I will fix it shortly. I tested this typo fix extensively so there shouldn't be many of these.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}23:26, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

 Done.Atchom, please re-load typo fixes to avoid this false positive.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}23:38, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

The Regex typo fixing is making this correction (with the double "t"). But British and American dictionaries both tell me that the original spelling "targeted" was correct. --Gronk Oz (talk)13:17, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

@Gronk Oz: The rule is the other way round, I think, converting double-T into single-T. Here's atest diff. --John of Reading (talk)14:10, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

OOPS! You're rightJohn of Reading - I need a red-face icon. Another editor reverted that correction and I took their word for it. Sorry to bother you, and thank you so much for your assistance. --Gronk Oz (talk)15:09, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

@John of Reading: I need to ask for your guidance here. The other editor continues to insist that "targetted" is a national variant so it should not be changed. Is there something like a spelling help desk where we can come to a consensus about how to spell a word?--Gronk Oz (talk)08:37, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

@Gronk Oz: TryWikipedia talk:Typo Team. But comparingthis list of dictionaries withthis list, I would say the case is clear. --John of Reading (talk)08:46, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Brilliant - I gotta bookmark that site! Though I notice it omits Wiktionary. Wow, thanks for that. {{smiuley2)) --Gronk Oz (talk)09:39, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Thisedit request toWikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos has been answered. Set the|answered= parameter tono to reactivate your request.

metreWilliamLucking (talk)01:55, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. —IVORK_Discuss03:46, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Is this a request to changemetre tometer, or vice versa? We shouldn't ask AWB to do that, because either spelling can be correct, depending on context.Certes (talk)17:07, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, new to this... Three XML errors found with an XML parser-

• word=Milli- SI prefix - word boundary token outside of the quotes, should be inside
• word=Eur(asia/ope) - the attribute name replace needs a space before it
• word=Springfield - an errant backslash appears after the tag— Precedingunsigned comment added byWilliamLucking (talk •contribs)15:22, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

 Done Thanks for the great catches!Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}15:42, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Greetings again, I have compared the list fromhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lists_of_common_misspellings against this Typos project and the Typos regex entries will correct about 93 - 94% of misspellings appearing on the Common Misspellings entry. Do you have an interest in knowing the missing words or is the Common Misspellings entry considered non-authoritative?— Precedingunsigned comment added byWilliamLucking (talk •contribs)18:56, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

@WilliamLucking: Since you've done the work, it would be interesting to see howWP:LCMWP:AWB/T could be expanded. The two lists have different strengths and weaknesses; I wouldn't say that either is "authoritative". A typo can only be listed inWP:AWB/T if there are very few false positives and only one sensible fix; and these fixes are not run inside references or anywhere thatmight be a quotation. Whereas the searches inWP:LCM are used by editors who should be careful enough to skip the correct uses [proper names, foreign words, archaic or informal quotations, ...] or to choose the best fix depending on the context [beared > bared, bearded, bore, borne]. --John of Reading (talk) 20:33, 27 March 2017 (UTC)link correctedJohn of Reading (talk)06:16, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for the explanation as to the differences and the nuances of these correction techniques.

— Precedingunsigned comment added byWilliamLucking (talk •contribs)21:05, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

To add to JofR's answer, we have typos that are not just pure misspellings, such as comma spacing and adjective hyphenations, and normally when we add a fix of any kind, we check to see if there are actually a significant amount of the typos in the Wikipedia to correct. Also, not all misspellings are simple to fix, as many depend on context, like the "a part (not apart) of" fix I just added. LCM may give us some good ideas for expansion, but I think we would need to see which misspellings are actually very common, like if they appear 20 or more times (my rule of thumb). It's not the best use of development time to create a correction for a misspelling that only appears a few times at most. By the way, please sign your comments with ~~~~.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}22:00, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

So I use AWB for the Little Shop Of Horrors wiki, and It says: No Typos found for littleshop.wikia.com/wiki/Little Shop Of Horrors Wiki:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos. Should I make that a page so I can have specific Typos that pertain to my Wiki? And If so, how would I make said list (Like: Audrey 2 -> Audrey II, Mushnick -> Mushnik)FiveCraft (talk)20:59, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Sciurus niger should not be corrected toSciurusNiger. Any way to add this as an exception to the Niger-rule?(t) Josve05a (c)15:02, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

@Josve05a: there is already a false positive detection for this rule that deals with this situation, but occasionally it doesn't work because it depends on the scientific name being italicized and previous such italicizing being in balance. If you could give me a link to the article where this correction was attempted, I will try to fix it so it won't happen again.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}15:45, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

@Stevietheman: Please seeSpecial:Diff/775698089&oldid=775417128 (please disregard my misclick on the revert button on later edits, I ment to click "Thank")(t) Josve05a (c)16:03, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

@Josve05a: your putting the term in italics seems to have fixed it.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}21:01, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

"niger" is also used correctly in other cases, e.g. a caption inRYB color model. This may be so rare that we can ignore it.Certes (talk)14:19, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

I am running AWB on Norwegian WP, using the typo-list for Norwegian bokmål correcting errors. I also have a "private" list of typos in myFind and replace - Normal settings. My experience is that AWB will not stop, and do corrections from the common AWB-typo list unless it also finds a word to correct from my personal settings list. Is it possible to make AWB do corrections, even if the corrections are rules taken only from the AWB-typo list? To explain in a better way; Let's say I got a "personal list" in my personal settings that is set up to correct, hypotetically,Norvay toNorway andSveden toSweden, but I also have my AWB checked to make corrections from the common AWB-typo list, consisting of 300+ misspellings. My problem is... My AWB only makes a stop if it finds the word 'Norvay' or 'Sveden' in an article. If it then also finds any errors matching with the common typo list, it corrects those errors too. But let's say there's an article only containing an error from the common AWB typo list... then my AWB does not stop up to correct this, unless the article also includes an error to be corrected from my personal list of typos... in my exaple, this article also has to include the wordSveden orNorvay. --TorbjørnS-AWB (talk)17:34, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

@TorbjørnS-AWB: This is controlled by the tick boxes on the "Options" tab. You should un-tick "Skip if no replacement" and un-tick "Skip if no typo fixed". Then AWB will always try to run your Find+Replace rules AND the standard set of typo fixes. You may want to visit the "Skip" tab as well, and tick "Skip if no changes are made". Then if none of your rules make a change AND none of the typo fixes make a change, AWB will go straight on the next article. --John of Reading (talk)17:43, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your answer. I will try this, and see how it works out with this new settings. --TorbjørnS-AWB (talk)18:33, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

@John of Reading: Seems like it works just the way I wanted it to work when I changed those settings. --TorbjørnS-AWB (talk)18:40, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

Resolved

 –figures over 3 characters long will be avoided

.  16:23, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

@Chris the speller: The new rule wants to damage "in a 2012 story." atCato Institute. Perhaps add a test on the number of digits? --John of Reading (talk)08:55, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

You are absolutely right. That's what I'll do.  13:35, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

@Stevietheman: Thanks for adding stor(e)y to the general case, but doesn't the addition of "store?y" to the part of the expression without the four digit check catch "in a 2012 story"? My apologies if I missed a subtlety which cleverly avoids that problem.Certes (talk)18:53, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

@Certes: In my change, I added false-positive code to prevent correction of "in a 2012 story". "A n-something" already had constructs for making this easy to do. If this is failing, please let me know.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}19:01, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

(ec) Yes I just realised that, thanks and sorry for bothering you.Certes (talk)19:02, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Hello typo fixers! Would like some input on the "third season finale" rule. AWB's typo fixer will change it to "third-season finale" on theAgents of S.H.I.E.L.D. article, andAdamstom.97 reverted it inthis edit. Thanks!GoingBatty (talk)22:36, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

@GoingBatty: The typo fix you made appears correct to me (obvious compound adjective), and it appears another editor made the same fix and it's sticking so far.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}18:32, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

@GoingBatty: I'd actually read a difference in meaning there. "Third-season finale" means the finale of the third season but "third season finale" could have a different meaning (perhaps there was no finale for the first season, so the "third season finale" took place at the end of the fourth season). SchreiberBike| ⌨ 02:28, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

While the latter approach is possible, how frequent would it occur?{{Not a typo}} can be used for these instances.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}15:00, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

I just had AWB correct this wrong word to another wrong word. Qualitely isn't a word. --Jennica✿ / ^talk05:27, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

@Jennica: This incorrect fix has been fixed. Was it supposed to be 'quality'? (a link to the article in question would help) I might be able to add a fix that would cover it.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}16:15, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, it was supposed to be quality. It was so long ago I don't remember what article it was. --Jennica✿ / ^talk16:41, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I will indefinitely hold off working on a new fix since I can't see the context and a search for 'qualitly' currently turns up nothing.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}16:44, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

InHistory of the National Crime Syndicate, the typo rules want to change "welshing" to "Welshing" in the sentence "Underworld folklore states that he was shot for welshing on a gambling debt...". What's correct: lowercase or uppercase? Thanks!GoingBatty (talk)21:07, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

A quick look at on-line dictionaries and myMerriam Webster's shows lower case for that meaning. SchreiberBike| ⌨ 

Fiance -> Fiancé, as well as possiblyFiancee --> fiancée.

Would it make sense to add a rule for these rules with accent for this word? Including with the accent seems to be the generally accepted practice.Shaded0 (talk)18:35, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

• Also - I think this rule might get conflicts(?) with theFinance typo rule:

<Typo word="Fiancé" find="\b([Ff])iance(e?)\b(?![^\s\.]*\.\w)(?<!\.[^\s\.]{0,999})" replace="$1iancé$2"/>

<Typo word="Finance" find="\b([Ff])ia?(?:ni?an[ai]?n?|na?)c(e[ds]?|ing|ially|ials?)(?<!iance|inanc(?:e[ds]?|ing|ially|ials?))\b" replace="$1inanc$2"/>

Shaded0 (talk)20:59, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

AWB Typos automatically changes "year round" to "year-round". I found that Merriam-Webster says the phrase should be hyphenated, but in its entry for "all year round" it does not. Most other sources only use the hyphen when it is a compound adjective describing the noun it precedes: "It is a year-round school" but "The school is open year round". I think the rule should be removed from automatic typo fixes. Thanks, SchreiberBike| ⌨ 02:50, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Any thoughts? I could remove it from the list, but I don't know enough regex to be sure I'm not messing things up. SchreiberBike| ⌨ 05:02, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

The rules have inappropriately added a hyphen to the following sentences:

• "Adults have been recorded on wing nearly year-round in the southern part of the range."
• "Adults are on wing year-round in the southern part of the range."
• "Adults have been recorded on wing year-round."

If I remove the text below, will that solve the problem without messing anything up?

<Typo word="year-round" find="\byear\s+round\b(?<=\b(?:[Aa]|[Aa]ctive|[Aa]lmost|[Aa]nd|are|[Aa]vailable|[Ff]or|[Ff]ound|[Ll]ive[ds]?|[Mm]aintained|[Nn]early|[Oo]ccurs?|[Oo]f|[Oo]ffers|[Oo]pen|[Oo]perate[ds]?|[Pp]recipitation|[Pp]rovide[ds]?|[Pp]ublic|[Rr]ainfall|[Rr]esident|there|[Tt]o|[Uu]sed|[Ww]eather|wing|[Ww]ith)\s+year\s+round)" replace="year-round"/>

I'm not competent in regex, but it looks like I could also just remove|[Nn]early and|wing to solve those specific problems. I'm not sure which is better

Thank you. SchreiberBike| ⌨ 22:46, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

If there's no objection, after a couple of days I will remove the code above. As I amnot competent as a programmer, I hope someone will warn me if that will cause problems. Thank you. SchreiberBike| ⌨ 04:18, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

I took it out. SchreiberBike| ⌨ 21:49, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

I have restored the rule because there really hasn't been proper discussion leading to its wholesale removal (speaking for myself as a significant typos editor, I'm on a long break and didn't know this was being discussed). Do you have links to where this typo fix erred? We generally start from that in such discussions. At any rate, if the rule has caused an error, usually it can be fixed rather than removed.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}15:11, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

@SchreiberBike: (sorry I didn't ping above) Links where the errors occurred would help me better understand the context of sentences you show above.Stevie is the man!^{Talk •Work}16:18, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

@Stevietheman: Thanks for your attention to this. It is difficult to make a list of errors caused by the program, because generally I catch them and fix them before saving. Usually I also remember to remove the text from the edit summary, so I can only make a list of places where I failed to do those things. Based on an edit summary search for "year round", it tried to do ithere,here andhere, but I undid it and failed to remove the edit summary. It did ithere with the phrase "Adults have been recorded on wing nearly year-round in Florida",here with the phrase "Adults have been recorded nearly year-round in Florida",here with the phrase "Adults have been recorded on wing nearly year-round" andhere with the phrase "Adults have been recorded on wing year-round".

I ran AWB on the phrases below to test:

* 18 hits for "Adults are on wing nearly year round". AWB adds the hyphen in every case where it is not already there.

* 53 hits for "Adults have been recorded on wing year round". I checked a sample and AWB adds the hyphen in every case where it is not already there.

* 3 hits for "Adults are on wing year round in the southern part of the range". AWB adds the hyphen in every case.

I hope that makes sense. SchreiberBike| ⌨ 20:12, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

@Stevietheman andI dream of horses: Any other ideas here? Earlier today I saw and fixedthis change. Is there an existing consensus that this is a good idea? Should we seek other opinions as to whether or not the hyphen is appropriate? So far, no one has said that this rule is helpful, just that there's been little discussion about its removal. SchreiberBike| ⌨ 23:24, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

@SchreiberBike: I don't have an opinion one way or the other.

You could do like I've done in similar situations, and surround word(s) with{{not a typo}}, which is designed for this situation (that is, something that is a typo sometimes but not all the time). I dream of horses  If you reply here, pleaseping me by adding {{U|I dream of horses}} to your message (talk to me) (My edits) @01:19, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Is there any objection if I remove|[Nn]early and|wing to solve those specific problems? As I said above, I amnot competent as a programmer and I really don't understand regex enough to be editing it. Thanks, SchreiberBike| ⌨ 04:13, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

I just ran into this problem again and I removed|[Nn]early and|wing as described above. SchreiberBike| ⌨ 19:43, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

I'm trying to find this rule so that it can avoid "Isla Puting Bato". Can anyone help?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:05, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

@Tom.Reding: The rule is named "-tting". To find this, I got AWB to look at the few pages containing "Isla Puting Bato" and found that the typo-fixer wanted to changeArchaeology of the Philippines. Then at the bottom right I clicked on the "Typos" tab to see the "Find" and "Replace" regexes of the rule that fired. Then I searched for that "Find" string in the list of typo rules to find the name of the rule. --John of Reading (talk)15:13, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Oooh, I've never used that tab before! ThanksJohn of Reading!   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:37, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Should we also avoidTanjung Puting?Certes (talk)15:54, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Certes, yes; Done.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 15:59, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

I can't tell whether it's useful to report incorrect corrections (or if a failed correction is still a success because it brought the typo to a human AWB user's attention), but if it's worth reporting it, AWB has just suggested replacing the small typo "indiviluals" with the slightly more wrong "individualals". --Lord Belbury (talk)18:19, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Lord Belbury, on what page?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 18:34, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

@Tom.Reding: You can try this using the regex tester. The relevant rule is namedIndividual*, but I can't immediately see how to fix it without making it much less "fuzzy". --John of Reading (talk)18:42, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

It wasthis version of "Indian Students' Union and Hostel", I've since fixed it. --Lord Belbury (talk)18:43, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Fixed!   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 18:57, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

I think we should add Assesor as a typo for Assessor. I may fix the couple of dozen currently around, but for the future it would be worth adding.ϢereSpielChequers23:47, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

@WereSpielChequers: done.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 19:29, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Could someone please update the "A n-something" rule to also fix "n game suspension" (e.g.BALCO scandal has the phrase "4 game suspension") and "n game sweep" (e.g.Lou Piniella has the phrase "4 game sweep")? Thanks!GoingBatty (talk)02:26, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

GoingBatty, added, but to rule "n-something contract/deal/run/etc." instead, which was more appropriate.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 20:19, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

I have a minor improvement to the Coca-Cola regex, and would like some feedback if possible before implementing it:

Current Regex

<Typo word="Coca-Cola" find="\b[Cc]oca(\s|-)?[Cc]ola\b" replace="Coca-Cola"/>

Proposed New Regex

<Typo word="Coca-Cola" find="\b[Cc]o(ke|ca)(\s|-)?[Cc]ola\b" replace="Coca-Cola"/>

This would not only catch incorrect title-casing and a missing hyphen (current behavior), but also the somewhat infrequent misspelling of "Coke-Cola". As far as I can see, the only instance of a false positive that this would cause in the main article namespace would be onCompany Names Tribunal, where a company was previously named "Coke Cola Limited". This could easily be fixed with a {{Not a typo}} tag.Phuzion (talk)04:30, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Phuzion, done!   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 19:54, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm surely bringing this up in the wrong place, since it's not the sort of thing that can be set right just by changing regular expressions, but it does relate to typos, so here goes. I am getting tired of fixing AWB's wrongly inserted "i.e." and "e.g." in articles on individual languages which are trying to discuss the diphthongie or a spelling rule regarding the letterseg or whatnot. I'd love it if rules like these could be disabled in philological articles... (However you might detect that: being in a category whose name contains "language"?)4pq1injbok (talk)18:55, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

4pq1injbok, could you link any examples? Perhaps there is some common-ish surrounding text that can used to ignore these cases.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 19:41, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Currently:<Typo word="McDonald's" find="\bM[Cc][Dd]onalds\b" replace="McDonald's"/>.

1. this would appear to target the restaurant chain. However, it will generate false positives for couples named "McDonald" referred to in the plural: "The McDonalds moved to New York..."^[a]
2. if intended to target the restaurant chain, the typo name should be changed to make that clearer
3. The find "\bMa?[Cc][Dd]onalds" would match a common misspelling, but only with " restaurant\b" or " fries\b" or similar follow-up word(s), otherwise will have too many false positives.Mathglot (talk)01:59, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

Mathglot,added some; feel free to add more.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 19:48, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Ciruits seem popular with judges, racing drivers and electronics enthusiasts alike. Should they be added to the existing Circuit typo case?Certes (talk)16:12, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Certes, done!   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 16:24, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks! And yes, I thinkCiruit de la sarthe is a redirect from misspelling.Certes (talk)16:36, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Common misspellings of the words battalion (batallion, battallion, batalion) and gendarme (gendarm) keep popping up.--Catlemur (talk)10:26, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

@Catlemur: There is already a rule for "battalion" that seems to cover the misspellings you provided. Are you seeing articles where these are not being fixed?Also, I don't see any instances of "gendarm" in Wikipedia.GoingBatty (talk)16:46, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

@Catlemur: "Gendarm" seems to be an acceptable spelling, perWikitionary.GoingBatty (talk)16:50, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

I went over the "battalion" ones half a year ago fixing quite a few.--Catlemur (talk)16:51, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Gendarm might be okay in German but definitely not in English.Mathglot (talk)18:09, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Using the "Bandmate/Roommate/Teammate" rule, which has a comment stating "none of these spaced or hyphenated", I changed "band mates" to "bandmates" onGenesis (band).@Ritchie333: thenreverted my edit stating that "band mates" is not a typo. Should this rule be reviewed?

Also pinging@Stevietheman: who added the rule.GoingBatty (talk)16:43, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Pinging@Ritchie333: and@Stevietheman: again to discuss.GoingBatty (talk)03:29, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Which word do you think is misspelled?Ritchie333^(talk)(cont)08:50, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia mentions the Chinese names "Ni Mantian" and "Feng Mantian". Can these be exceptions to themantain typo fix?Certes (talk)00:30, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

An editor hasreported and fixed misspellings such as Lieutenatn, lieutennat, lieutennat, lietuenant and Luietenant. Can the existing pattern

<Typo word="Lieutenant" find="\b([Ll])[ieu]{2,3}t[ae]{1,2}nt?[ae]{1,2}(?<![Ll]ieutena)n(ts?|cy)\b" replace="$1ieutenan$2"/>

be expanded safely to include those?Certes (talk)11:07, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

I noticed a lot of the misspelling from all the list inWikipedia:Lists_of_common_misspellings (0–9,A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Y,Z,Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings/Repetitions andWikipedia:Lists of common misspellings/Grammar and miscellaneous) aren't listed. There's a lot of them and I'm not really good at adding misspelling so maybe something could be arrange to add them? –BrandonXLF^(t@lk)16:31, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

@BrandonXLF: Many of the entries atWikipedia:Lists of common misspellings are too subtle to be handled by regular expressions. Some of the words listed there are correct in some contexts and incorrect in others, or have more than one possible fix. --John of Reading (talk)06:43, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

@John of Reading: I'm just saying there's some good ones like underWikipedia:Lists of common misspellings/Grammar and miscellaneous there's a lot like switching an European to a European, I'm assuming those would be easy to add. –BrandonXLF^(t@lk)12:12, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

@BrandonXLF: The rule labelledword="A …" already corrects "an European". But yes, if a typo is common enough to be worth the extra overhead (20 or more occurrences, maybe?) and has no false positives, it can be added fairly easily. --John of Reading (talk)13:17, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

Using AWB it has tried to convertawhile in toa while, I can see that some awhiles may be typos, but probably not enough to justify having this in AWB.ϢereSpielChequers11:08, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

InNora Neset Gjøen,<Typo word="J (joule)" find="([\d\.]+(?:\s| |-)?[µmkMGT])j\b" replace="$1J"/> wants to capitalise the J inAt the end of 2013 Gjøen signed… I assume that the middle ofjø matches\b, because ø is the wrong sort of letter, and she seems to be generating 2,013 Gigajoules. It may be too rare an error to bother fixing, but something to beware of.Certes (talk)13:12, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

@Smasongarrison:This edit to the "apostrophe S" punctuation rule is correct according toMOS:PUNC. However, it may be counterproductive to include this fix inWP:AWB/T, as it operates so frequently that it makes diffs hard to check. I have the "regex typo fixing" checkbox unticked at present so that I can see and check the results of my own spelling rules. --John of Reading (talk)15:57, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I was worried about that too. Not sure what to do about it though.Smasongarrison (talk)17:58, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

Can we get an estimate of how many mainspace pages would cause this rule to fire? If many, I volunteer to help reduce that #, so we can get down to a more manageable count, as the rule appears useful.WP:TYPO would want to help too, I image.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 18:23, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

@Tom.Reding: I ran the first 1% of a database scan, and found 3,000. So something like 300,000 articles. <gulp> --John of Reading (talk)19:02, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

So, about one edit in 20 will have a 's correction. That may be a hit worth taking to fix such a widespread problem. Is it worth including theʻokina as an apostrophe-like character? I think (but I may be wrong) that it only appears legitimately before a vowel. It is abused in several articles, e.g.Halawa, Hawaii haswomenʻs temples. Is it also worth adding capital S to the search to fix articles such asThe Paz Show withLET`S CALL THE WHOLE THING OFF?Certes (talk)23:20, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

@John of Reading: time to put my money where my mouth is... I just finished downloading & unpacking the latest dump, and ran this myself to get a full list of pages. "Only" 30,085 pages found breaking that 1 rule (ignoring redirects and comments). Kind of reminds me of when Trappist uncoveredmany more pages with various citation maintenance required... Took a while to whittle down, but I'm glad he did!   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 02:34, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

@Tom.Reding: Just a thought: did you remember to increase the "Limit list to" figure on the "Searching" tab of the database scanner? --John of Reading (talk)06:56, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

Oh god...   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 12:19, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

I've just come across this same issue. Unless you guys have been extraordinarily productive it doesn't look that bad. Though I am using a slightly out of date dump, I'm seeing 9000 total typo issues in the first 30% of the dump. (And about 25% of these are fixed.) All the best:Rich Farmbrough,11:06, 6 December 2018 (UTC).

I fixed over 200 articles yesterday, using AWB. I think it should be monitored regularly. Thanks.Uziel302 (talk)06:39, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Added by myself based on collaspe-collapse that appeared.Uziel302 (talk)00:43, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Could someone please change the "-n't" rule in theContractions section so it will not try to change correct instances of "wont"? (e.g.A Day in the Life of a Tree) Thanks!GoingBatty (talk)14:05, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

@GoingBatty andSmasongarrison: I've tweaked the rule. It was also damaging "cant", a valid spelling sometimes. --John of Reading (talk)15:08, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks!Smasongarrison (talk)16:16, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

I've tried adding a new rule to changeUnited State's → United States', but can't get it to pick up typos inthese articles using AWB or WPCleaner. What am I doing wrong? Thanks!GoingBatty (talk)17:41, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

@GoingBatty:Fixed - you had a typo in "Typo"!Certes (talk)17:48, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

@Certes:Facepalm Thanks! Guess I need to lay off theegg nog!GoingBatty (talk)18:07, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

The following rule seems to have the effect of changing the perfectly proper french word 'parc' into the nonsense 'pharmac'...