WikiPedia:Typo

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Welcome to the Wikipedia Typo Department. November 22, 2003 was our first typo correction day.

Contents

Typos that need to be corrected

Please list here any spellings or typos in need of correction. If only one or two articles exist with an incorrect spelling, please feel free to correct them yourself instead of listing the word here.

  • alternate (http://wikipedia.cas.ilstu.edu/wiki/Special:Search?search=alternate&fulltext=Search) when meaning alternative (note that there a proper usage for alternate that may not need altering) --postglock 05:16, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

Work in progress

  • I'm writing a spell checker. It's showing many made up words in prototyping. See my user page on Meta. -- Archivist 00:17, Nov 30, 2003 (UTC)
    • Wikitravel (http://www.wikitravel.org/en/wiki/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Maintenance&subfunction=mispeelings) has a spellchecker running somehow. Is this of any help? -- Kokiri 08:30, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)
      • It's the same one that was turned off in Wikipedia because it slowed down the database. -phma 13:59, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Checking spelling

The tools below can be used if you are unsure of how a word is spelled and do not have an actual dictionary handy.

Free internet dictionaries

Free online spell checkers

Lists of common misspellings

Miscellaneous

  • The latest version of Konqueror highlights misspelled words in text boxes.
  • Users of Mac OS X can spell-check an input box in Safari from the "Spelling" submenu in the context menu of the box (activated via Control-click or right-click). Spell-check-as-you-type can also be enabled there or alternatively in the application "Edit" menu.
  • Users of Mozilla Firefox can download the Spellbound extension to check spelling. See User:Omegatron#Spell checker.
    • I have been using the "SpellBound (http://spellbound.sourceforge.net/)" extension for my Firefox web browser to do my Wikipedia spell-checking and recommend it. It works much like any spell-checker in a word-processor, and does spell-checking inside any form. It comes with American English already installed, and you can add additional language-country variations such as British English. It is relatively slow on my 400 MHz computer, but that is only a problem on large articles. [[User:GK|gK ¿?]] 08:23, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • ieSpell (http://www.iespell.com) is a good spell-checker for Internet Explorer. Right-click in the edit box to check spelling. Miss Pippa 23:50, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Google spell checker

Latest google toolbar includes a spellchecker, which seems to work fine. Gzuckier 18:10, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Using online dictionaries

If a word does not exist, you often get this kind of result:

Did you mean exec rise?

Make sure to click the underlined word, then check if that word does exist, because the underlined word or words in the message do not always exist. But often when you get this message, it gives the correct spelling or it gives the word of which what you're trying to look up is derived of.

When you look up an entry, punctuation and capitalization do not make any difference. For example, looking up "etc", "etc.", "ETC", "et.c.", or "e-t-c" all yield the same results. Unfortunately, some entries that come up when using improper punctuation or capitalization suggest that the punctuation is right. When looking up "et.c.", for example, the top entry may punctuate it correctly with one full stop, but another entry may punctuate it incorrectly as "et.c." (i.e., the same punctuation you typed in the search box). With the American Heritage Dictionary, an entry is always properly punctuated and capitalized, but often some other entries are punctuated and capitalized just as you typed them.

Work completed

  • "bandwith" (1); "basicly" (7); "beutiful" (1); "buraucracy" (3); "becasue" (1); "befor" (2); "beggining" (2); "begining" (8) Tobycat 05:49, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • "seach" / "seached" / "seaches" (14 found) — Peter McGinley 22:36, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • "Untied States" (1 found) Martpol 08:53, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Members of the Typo Team

See also

Personal tools