Wikipedia:Typo Team

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  (Redirected from Wikipedia:Typo)
Jump to: navigation, search
tyop


typo

The Wikipedia Typo Team is dedicated to making Wikipedia look more professional by correcting typos and misspellings. This kind of editing is a never-ending job, so we could use your help! Please consider joining our team. All you need to do is start correcting typos. We have a userbox (add {{User typo team}} to your userpage) to proudly display your association. Also consider adding to our pledges page to announce your new enlistment. Our project was created on November 22, 2003 and the first corrections were fixes of "and and". What will your contributions be? Add some of them at the works completed page so we know what our members are doing.

Contents

[edit] Correcting spelling

If you see any typos (even minor ones), please correct them. This helps make Wikipedia look more professional.

Note that the English form of Wikipedia has no preference for American, British, or other forms of English as long as usage is consistent throughout the page. Check the rest of the page before assuming that flavor, color, meter, or defense (or, likewise, flavour, colour, metre, or defence) is a mistake. Note that the endings "-ize" and "-ization" are acceptable in both British and American English. The suffix -ise is more common in Commonwealth usage than -ize, but both spellings are correct. The use of -ize / -ise should remain consistent throughout a page.

More information can be found in the following links:

[edit] Edit summary

Shortcut:
WP:TYPO

Typo team members make lots of edits. It is always a good idea to give an edit summary after each one describing the change you made. If you made many fixes, you might say "spelling fixes" or "spelling cleanup". If the number of edits was small you might list the exact words you fixed, such as "spelling Mississippi". You can also specify the exact change you made as with "spelling lense ==> lens".

Additionally, you could simultaneously promote our project in the edit summary with a small reference like "typo corrections [[Wikipedia:Typo Team]]" or "sp Monday [[WP:TYPO]]". The shortcut WP:TYPO links to this project page.

The bottom line is that the edit summaries are important and other editors value them when scanning the article history. Having a near perfect edit summary may also help your request if you want to be a Wikipedia administrator.

[edit] Typos that need to be corrected

Common typos can be found and should be listed at Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings. More complicated cases in need of correction can be listed here. If only one or two articles exist with an incorrect spelling, please feel free to correct them yourself instead of listing the word here.

[edit] Methods for searching and correcting typos

Many users have found that using Google to search for misspelled words yields better results than Wikipedia, such as this Google search (replace "occured" with desired typo to search). However, the results may be out of date; the results are reindexed in a week or two.

Also, you may want to consider using AutoWikiBrowser to expedite the process by using its 'Make list from Google search' and find and replace features. However, all changes must be thoroughly checked. Make sure you read the AWB page thoroughly before using the software and please report any problems that you may come across. If many quick successive edits are made, please consider getting a bot account.

You can also use Lupin's Anti-vandal tool, which includes a live spell checker that checks for common typos in all newly updated articles.

[edit] Browser spell-checkers

  • Mozilla Firefox has a built-in spell-checker (version 2.0 and later).
    • Additional dictionaries, such as British, American, Canadian, and Australian English, are easily installed via "Add Ons" or via a right-click "Languages" in an HTML form. Switching back and forth between language variants is especially useful for editing Wikipedia. Remember, however, that the Firefox dictionaries are not gospel when it comes to defining a language so use common sense.
    • By default, Firefox's spellchecker stops after 500 flagged words. This is insufficient for some articles. You can increase the maximum number of misspellings by changing the extensions.spellcheck.inline.max-misspellings preference. Enter about:config in the URL bar then in the filter bar enter spell. This will show options related to the spell checker and you should see the one you want. Change its value to something like 1000, 1500, or more.
    • Users of older versions of Firefox can download the SpellBound extension to check spelling, which supports American English, and additional language-country variations such as British English.
    • Other plugins may be of use in aiding your editing too.
  • Users of Opera can visit Spell-checking With Opera for information on how to check spelling on Opera.
  • The latest version of Konqueror highlights misspelled words in text boxes.
  • The newest Google Toolbar includes a multilanguage spell-check feature for forms. However, some articles are longer than it is willing to check.
  • ieSpell is a spell-checker for Internet Explorer. Right-click in the edit box to check spelling.
  • Users of Safari on Mac OS X or a Windows Beta can spell-check an input box 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.
  • Camino 1.1a1 and later has automatic spell-checking in edit fields enabled by default.
  • Searching in the edit form can be done in Firefox using the Findtextarea extension or the Searchtextarea bookmarklet, or by using Firefox 2.0 Beta 1 (see Wikipedia:Tools/Browser tools/Mozilla Firefox/Search within Textarea Extension with regex). Most other browsers support searching in the text area of a page.
  • OmniWeb has automatic spell-checking in all text input fields.

[edit] Checking spelling

The following online tools can be used if you are unsure of how a word is spelled.

[edit] Free Internet dictionaries

[edit] Free online spell checkers

[edit] Lists of common misspellings

[edit] Utilities/scripts

[edit] 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. Often, when you get this message, it gives the correct spelling or it gives the word from which what you're trying to look up is derived.

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.

[edit] Members of the Typo Team

See Wikipedia:Typo Team/Members

[edit] Userbox

There is now a userbox to show that you are a member of the Typo Team:

tyop
typo		 This user is a member of the Wikipedia Typo Team.

Use {{User typo team}} to show the project userbox on your user page. If you wish to transclude the userbox, you may alternatively use {{subst:User typo team}}. Note the bold "Wikipedia Typo Team" in the userbox is a link to this project page. The original userbox was designed by Galaxiaad and may still be used using the old {{User:Galaxiaad/typo}}.

[edit] Pledges

If you want, you can make a typo correction pledge on the pledges page.

[edit] Adopt a typo

Wikipedia is an evolving resource. If you purge the Wikipedia of some typo today, it will slowly creep back in with time. The Typo Team invites you to "adopt a typo" by periodically re-checking Wikipedia for your favorite typos. One easy way to do this is by putting a link on your user page that searches for the item you want to "adopt". Currently you must use full URLs (that is, not wiki-style links) to do this. For example, to search for all occurrences of "privledge" on the English Wikipedia, you could use the code:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=privledge&fulltext=Search privledge/privledges/privledged]

This searches for matches to "privledge" (search word shown in red) and will also find "privledges" and "privledged" because they contain the search term as a substring. It is worthwhile to add these other matches to the link name (shown in blue). Note that there is a space after the word "Search" in the code above. You must include it. Here is the link in action, privledge/privledges/privledged.

[edit] Work completed

You can show your support by discussing your work completed at the works completed page.

[edit] Barnstars

If you feel someone has done exceptional work, you can reward them with one of these.

Image What to type
Image:Barnstar_Typo_Team.png
 {{subst:Typo Team Barnstar|message ~~~~}}.
Image:Barnstar_Typo_Team_Ribbon.png
 {{subst:Typo_Team_Medal|message ~~~~}}.

[edit] See also

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Typo_Team"
Personal tools