One great way to edit Wikipedia articles is to correct misspelled words. But wait, why is this a human task? Why not just use a spell-checker?
For some misspellings, a spell-checker would likely work just fine. Today while searching for the typo “mermorial” (for memorial), I found this descriptor of a reference in the article for Eleanor Fitchen:
The phrase “presented at her mermorial service” is just prose in the article, so we can fix the misspelling with no problem. But what about this one, from the 1930 Isle of Man TT:
In this case, the misspelling is in a proper noun, the name of a war memorial. The memorial’s official name could use the odd spelling, so I want to be confident before changing it. I searched a bit, and found the Braddan Parish War Memorial in Isle of Man, but is that what it’s referring to? I also found the same fact referenced in an article in TT Supporters Magazine, which doesn’t provide much more information, but does use the correct spelling of “Memorial”, so I am now confident in changing it. I also added the citation to the article I found (#1lib1ref).
While it was unlikely that a war memorial used a misspelling in its official name, cited sources (especially to web sites) sometimes do have misspellings, so it is worth checking before changing them. I found this in the references of the List of Stanford University people:
I was tempted to fix it, but it’s a citation — what if the original is spelled that way? I checked the archived copy of the PDF in the Wayback Machine, and confirmed that it was spelled correctly in the original:
so I was able to fix this one. However, I also found this citation in the references for the article about Gregg Easton:
That citation’s title misspells “veteran”, but clicking through to the radioinfo site reveals that the typo is also is also in the source:
So we should leave this title as is, but I’m adding a {{sic}} tag so that other editors will know that it is intentionally retained.
Current Stats
- Edit count: 16,365
- Days remaining: 220
- Edits/day needed: 16.5
- Typos chased:
- mermorial, memrorial, memroial, memoril -> memorial
- vetran, veteren -> veteran