Talk:Aluminium/Spelling/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Move now!!

I AM american i am the best lol just kidding i'm not american no this shouldn't be moved to the american spelling lol but why should i be commanded to tread lightly? its not fair perhaps i'm heavy huh did u consida dat? lol k cyaz peeps

I agree it also seems very POV to have that as a warning. --130.20.229.174 22:24, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I also agree and will remove this POV warning.--208.252.171.67 23:40, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Article changed over to new Wikipedia:WikiProject Elements format by maveric149. Elementbox converted 10:17, 23 Jun 2005 by Femto (previous revision was that of 02:33, 20 Jun 2005).

Final Solution

By the power vested in me by the state of Cincinatti, I have henceforth, soforth, and sidewise renamed the elements "Aluminum" and "Aluminium" to the Stately and Refined Term "Aluminuminum". ENGLAND PREVAILS. Ilurker 20:59, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Agree, partially. I cite the ignore all rules policy and suggest a move to bonkers argument. Anyone with me? --82.152.248.87 (talk) 01:43, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

it's obviously spelled alminumniumumumagnesiumite. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.4.190.194 (talk) 23:34, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

General spelling

Over the past few of days there have been a couple of edit and reverts changing the general spelling throughout the article between British English and U.S. English.

I hope this isn't going to continue — its enough trouble keeping a lid on the choice of IUPAC spelling of the article title. The Manual of Style at WP:MoS#Usage_and_spelling is quite clear on these issues. As far as I'm concerned, this is an international article with no prior preference for one version of English over another. As such the spelling should conform to whichever version of English was used when the article was created (I haven't checked but I would imagine that was U.S. English in this case). The choice of IUPAC spelling for the word 'aluminium' itself, is an independent decision and shouldn't be taken as an endorsement to convert to British English spelling for the rest of the article. -- Solipsist 17:33, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

The article was inconsistent in spelling, as the title of the article uses British English ()and indeed was begun using the British spelling the article should be consistent and follow with British English spelling. Jooler 22:06, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Asserting that title of the article is British English is misleading. It was chosen because it is the IUPAC preferred spelling, as otherwise discussed on this page. Use of the IUPAC spelling does not equate the article being written in British English. Your changes in spelling are not warranted. Dforest 00:51, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

It is not the strongest proof, but the original revision as of 15:09, 30 October 2001 uses the phrase 'silver-gray appearance', which if anything would be American English. -- Solipsist 05:42, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Since the original author of the article (User:Sodium) was an English medical student, I think it's unlikely that the first version[1] of the article was intended to be written in American English. Really not worth getting exercised about though, as the spelling of "aluminium" used throughout the article is the correct one. --Andrew Norman 07:35, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

I agree strongly with Dforest that if the spelling used in the title is bases on IUPAC recommended spelling, then it cannot determine whether the article should use British or U.S. or some other national variant of spelling. Furthermore, who the first contributor was is immaterial; it is the first use by a significant contributor (not a stub) that matters, and the "gray" spelling is as good a clue as any for determining this.

Check the link above - User:Sodium's initial article (which uses the spelling "gray" for some reason despite his being English) was not a stub. Regarding the variant spelling of the element name itself, it's a mistake to see "-ium" as the British form, it's the international form and historically the most common form (as the article explains). "-um" is parochial to North America in the last hundred years. The IUPAC recognises "aluminum" and "cesium" as optional alternative spellings, and I can't find either being used in a modern IUPAC document on their own, as opposed to in brackets after the preferred spelling. --Andrew Norman 13:31, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Google "aluminum" 15,200,000 hits; "aluminium" 6,420,000 hits. It's not just "parochial to North America"; if it were, you'd have more than a 1.7:1 ratio for aluminium to aluminum when you limit it to site:.uk (e.g., litre:liter is more than 12:1 on site:.uk). Some of that, of course, is North American usage, but you will also find lots of examples of native usage of "aluminum" there and around the world, Australia, New Zealand, wherever. Gene Nygaard 14:06, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Absolute Rubbish - No-one in Britain pronounces the word as "aluminum" let alone spells it that way. This is where the Internet throws things skew-whiff. A lot of pages that have a .uk suffix are simply cut and pasted by large American organisations from their international corporate site to the sites they use for marketing their products in the UK. This is why Google is a complete waste of time for making these kinds of decisions. Jooler 15:56, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Furthermore, IUPAC often uses both spellings, and sometimes only aluminum. Can anybody actually point us to a specific IUPAC rule actually prescribing a certain spelling? Is it like caesium/cesium, where the alternative spelling is officially recognized as well? Gene Nygaard 12:30, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

That latter question was answered in the article itself, with the 1993 official recognition of "aluminum" as a variant spelling by IUPAC. So it isn't quite true that IUPAC prescribes the "aluminium" spelling as is sometimes argued, nor as Andrew Norman claimed that it is the "correct" one in any absolute sense, though if we read his comment as "the correct choice for use in the Wikipedia article" it makes sense as a validly held opinion shared by others including some who'd spell it aluminum themselves. Note that a Google search for aluminum and not aluminium on site:iupac.org gets 171 hits. Gene Nygaard 12:37, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

The article title used British English, the reason, which is entreily irrelevant. The article itself contained inconsistent BE/AE usage. like the word "labourer" and the word "favor". I made it consistent with the BE used in the article title. Jooler 15:56, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

The title was not chosen because it is "British English", but because it was considered the dominant IUPAC spelling. You may not think it is relevant, but it does not make this a British English article nor justify your changes in spelling. The word labourer was perhaps the only CwE spelling in the article prior to your edits. Nowhere in the style guide does it state that the title should be the deciding factor in spelling disputes. Dforest 04:03, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

For Nth time spellings should be consistent that IS MoS policy. Jooler 08:11, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but what they should be consistent with is debatable. (And technically it's a guideline, not policy.) Better to stick with neutral English. Dforest 02:44, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Dforest. I think going with neutral English is probably the best compromise, and those wording changes look quite successful. -- Solipsist 06:15, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Dforest - please stop changing the the spelling of the only remaining word on this page which has a different spelling in BE and AE. The choice of spelling of the words within the article should be consistent with the article title -as per MoS. The reason for the choice of one spelling over the can be for numerous reasons. In this case it has been decided to use the BE spelling and therefore the choice of spelling and idiom within the article should reflect BE usage - You and others (to the detriment of the value of the article itself) - ) have taken it upon yourselves to rid this article of words which have different spellings in BE and AE. Please stop disrupting this page. Jooler 22:05, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Jooler, you took it upon yourself to change all the so-called AE spellings to BE. Others agreed that the choice of IUPAC spelling does not mean the article is British English. Following Darrien's lead, I tried to compromise by rewriting the contentious words in neutral English. Anyway, the spelling you edited is irrelevant as Kaopectate does not contain Al. [2]. Dforest 01:26, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

What is going on in this picture?

A piece of aluminium metal, approximately 15 centimetres long.

Alright, exactly why is there a size comparison for an arbitrarily-sized chunk of aluminium? Is this the standard size that the metal forms in? Maybe I'm missing something, but the picture and caption seem unintentionally humorous. --Poiuyt Man ^talk 14:00, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree. The caption is odd, and the penny doesn't add much to the reader's understanding of the subject (other than showing the scale is not microscopic, I suppose). Jonathunder 19:07, 2005 September 2 (UTC)

I've cropped the image, and made an alternate caption to rule out a microscopic scale. The size was roughly figured by comparing with the penny. --Poiuyt Man ^talk 19:49, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

It's on commons so please work there on it. --Saperaud 19:12, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

My opinion:

Hi,

Reading the discussion on this page, I just have to wonder one thing... Why is everyone arguing over aluminium? Not only have you stopped other people being able to access the edit function on the actual artical, but you're also wasting your breath trying to get your point across. So stop ruining it for everyone else & stop bickering so we can edit what ever page we want to...

Regards,

Spawn Man 01:57, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

I'll give you a hint. StuartH 00:09, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

I think you meant another hint.

I said a hint, that's cheating. StuartH 12:38, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Me again:

As I've said, this dispute over the spelling of things is getting out of hand! Instead making pages 'locked', we should just accept that not everyone is going to say everything or spell everything the same. For example, the word Herb. In most countries we pronounce it herb. But it seems in America they all pronounce it as 'Erb. What happened to the 'h'? Another example is Mom/mum. British spell it mum, Americans mom. Just because of that do we have to create a dispute & lock a page away so the public can't use it? If we do, I think we really have to ask ourselves if it's really worth it? Most people are going to notice the different spelling & alter the word when their making notes or printing it out etc. But then again, most people don't really care if one letter is missing! I personally spell it aluminium. But just because of this I'm not going to detract from other's fun & making this the best site ever. Honestly, if we spent half our time working on the dead ends & stubs on this site, this site would be better than ever before. But that's just my opinion. P.S: (I didn't find your comment about Adolf Hitler offensive, just highly irrelevant to the topic).

Spawn Man 11:42, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

I made zero comments about him. I did copy over an example of another Google keyword search. Wyss 12:00, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

??? (huh?) Spawn Man 12:51, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

I didn't make any comments about AH on this page. If you think I did, you really should re-read my "raw Google" post. I'm blown away that I even have to say this, much less repeat it. Wyss 14:38, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

My my, someone does have a case of aluminium-induced PMS don't they? I was just replying to your comment:"...I do apologise again to anyone who was actually upset by the AH example I used...". So I'm sorry if you had to type out a few extra words to actually make it legible English (or American if you prefer), but if you're going to start a sentence, "I made zero comments about him..." at least add a subject matter to the statement. But other than that, I'm fine. Spawn Man 03:06, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Sorry about the confusion, the PMS wasn't aluminium triggered, though :) Wyss 07:47, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Oh...sorry, I meant Aluminum triggered.....(hehehee)Spawn Man 07:59, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Regarding Spelling

I work for the UK Aerospace industry (what's left of it), and have worked with Aluminium every day for the past 10 years, and i can assure you that the card it comes wrapped in, is labelled Aluminium Alloy - and the metal itself (depending upon manufacturer) is often marked in the same manner. IUPAC states that the British spelling is official, with the US spelling as an acceptable alternative. Can we please have an end to this? Just accept the 'ium' and acknowledge the 'num'.

Grey Area 09:05, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I do think consensus has spoken on both the spelling and including raw Google keyword search data in an article. I do apologize again to anyone who was actually upset by the AH example I used. I'll make it up to anyone by doing some chore on an article if they like... leave a note on my talk page. Now, on the AH talk page, someone had brought up Google search results with a similarly mistaken notion, I did some comparative searches on that topic and thought to myself it was such a clear (general) example of the pitfalls, I copied it here too. Maybe my familiarity with 20th century western European history does desensitize me to some topics others find incendiary. Wyss 10:19, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Is there a consensus? There's still an ugly great lock on the front of this article, and the content seems perfectly fine...

And as for proof by Google, how can that be in the slightest bit accurate? (unless someone didn't tell me that Google looks at Libraries & other non-internet sources as well =P ) Anyway, i really can't see how this can be such a contentious issue, as there is an internationally recognised way of spelling the word in question and there is adequate information regarding the next most acceptable variant. Ah well.... Back to work i'm afraid :/ Grey Area 10:44, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

The real problems are that insistence of an "internationally recognized way of spelling the word" as if the spelling "aluminum" were not also recognized by the same body, and as if IUPAC has some general language-police authority over the English language like the French language police have.

Then there is the presentation of that in a way that implies that this so-called "internationally accepted spelling" is really and universally accepted, except for possibly some small and insignificant minority who don't follow the rules. In fact, the "aluminum" spelling is not only overwhelmingly the most common spelling in North America, but the most common spelling in actual use in the English language worldwide in almost any way you could possibly figure out to measure it. In North America, aluminum is also the preferred spelling by most professionals in any profession you choose (and, of course, the use of either the metal aluminum or the various names for it are not limited to any particular profession, and in fact is most often used by those outside what would normally be classified as a "profession", however broadly you define that, rather than whatever you call everything else).

It is that overreaching on the part of the "aluminium" advocates that causes most of the problems here. I don't much care which is used in the title here; I do object to misleading claims about usage, and to claims that whatever we use here determines what we use in the rest of Wikipedia. Gene Nygaard 12:53, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Yep! ...to all the above. (By the bye, the "clarify" remark in my last edit comment was only about clarifying something in my own edit- which I guess I should have clarified :) Wyss 11:01, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Remember to clarify your requests for clarification - for the sake of clarity =P

There also seems to be triple posting afoot as well. Some people are just too keen methinks...

The triple posting was a mistake....

Making a point

I can't believe the underlying argument has anything to do with helping readers learn about aluminium (which because of an historical fluke- likely a "typo"- is called aluminum by the general population in North America). If this has been about creating some sort of a precedent for using Google keyword searches as cites of word usage in future articles then...

• Such searches are meaningless as indicators of true usage unless they're scientifically designed and controlled. Such a linguistic search could only be cited from a peer-reviewed publication, according to WP policy.

• Editing Wikipedia to make a point is a violation of policy and this lock has gone on far too long to be anything else IMO. Thanks for listening (and I do understand I likely won't convince anyone who isn't already). Wyss 18:07, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Unprotected

Ten days should be enough. Be nice. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 09:57, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Thank gosh it's now unprotected!!! I was starting to get aluminium withdrawl symptoms!! The argument went on for far too long.... Spawn Man 07:45, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

raw Google

Here are three keyword searches... which do you think is the most true?

Hitler loved the jews - 241,000 hits [3]

Hitler hated the jews - 165,000 hits [4]

Hitler was a genocidal sociopath - 438 hits [5]

How does this reflect on the argument for including the raw results for similar searches on aluminium and aluminum in this article? Wyss 17:09, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

"Godwin" + "Law" 841,000 Google hits. Jonathunder 17:10, 2005 September 6 (UTC)

Doesn't apply, but funny. Wyss 10:10, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Jonathunder that Wyss has conceded the argument by involving Hitler and/or the Nazis. In case it wasn't clear, please see Godwin's law.Nohat 01:55, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

That is opportunistic sophistry, Nohat, I didn't involve AH in the argument at all and I doubt you're even offended. I used it as an example of the unreliability of Google keyword searches, which I copied directly from the AH talk page. I strongly suggest you know the difference between having used this example and calling someone a Nazi, and further suggest perhaps you have conceded the argument through your blatantly disingenuous and insincere tactic. Wyss 10:06, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

The point is not that anyone was offended, but that you regressed the conversation to a comparison using Hitler. If you actually read Godwin's law, you would have seen that it says "The law states that: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1. There is a tradition in many Usenet newsgroups that once such a comparison is made, the thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress." That's all I was referring to, and really only in jest. However, you should know better than to involve Nazis in a coversation that has nothing to do with them. Even if you didn't think it would actually offend anyone, it was certainly in poor taste. Furthermore, as was explained elsewhere, it's a disingenuous point to make: our proposal is not to use Google as a method of fact-verification, but as a method of revealing patterns of usage. There's a big difference, and the two are not comparable. Nohat 15:13, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

One way or another, you're wholly mistaken. As I've previously explained, I created the comparison earlier that same day on the AH talk page (see the page's history if you like), was struck by the similarity of issues and pasted it over. You then opportunistically attacked it as a debating point (which by the bye is a rather telling example of what I'd call sophistry but that's so wonted on WP, never mind), ignoring the content and intent. I did not involve Nazis in the conversation, I did not use the word, I did not compare them to any editors or aluminium or anything else (and I think you know that, although perhaps you don't, in which case I'm at a loss). As I have lengthily explained, your proposal to use Google as a method of revealing patterns of usage is deeply flawed and unscientific, aside from requiring original research. Wyss 16:05, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Actually, it is you who is mistaken. Your example was not only unnecessarily inflammatory, but it was completely inapplicable. Furthermore, saying that you did not involve Nazis is patently false. Adolf Hitler was a Nazi; indeed if there were one person to embody the idea of Nazis, Adolf Hitler would be it.

The Google results are not being used to measure truth, but to measure usage. They are completely different, and an example that shows that Google results contain false statements has no bearing at all on whether Google results contain valid information about usage. I don't see any point in your continuing to defend this farcical argument. Nohat 20:19, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

• IMHO if you think (or insist) I involved Nazis in this conversation you've rather proved, one way or another, all the points I've been making.

• I've repeatedly explained why your notion is flawed (and the difference between "usage" and "truth" searches is not relevant to that). Wyss 06:58, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Fallacy. When I search for those phrases I get a 20x relationship in favor of the latter.

Hitler loved... = 64 Hitler hated... = 1290

Surely you are aware that by conspicuous omission of quotation marks, you are not searching for the phrase, but for the relative frequency of the individual words. Similar to your queries, loved gets more hits than hated. (about 5x at present)

Further, it is completely different to search spelling variants to compare their relative use and to search phrases to compare their truthfulness. Google is not a measure of truthfulness, but it is a good measure of relative use. Dforest 00:33, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

That rather proves my point. Extensive qualification is involved, which quickly seeps into original research, never mind if there's any truth to its results. Wyss 00:34, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

I disagree that extensive qualification is involved. Comparing the relative use of spelling variants does not infer truthfulness. Dforest 00:45, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Hence, it is not helpful. Wyss 00:54, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

This line of reasoning is not only unnecessarily inflammatory by involving Hitler, but is also complete sophistry. The question is not "which is more true: aluminum or aluminium?". The question is "which spelling appears more frequently on the web?". Nohat 01:55, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Again, you're further proving my point: 1) How often either spelling appears on the web is irrelevant to either the naming of the article or its content, 2) raw data from a Google search doesn't tell us how frequently a spelling appears on the web, it tells us how many pages on the web it has indexed with one or more occurences of that word. Opportunities for skewed results and misinterpretive original research abound.

As for the example I used, I originally came up with it on the Adolf Hitler talk page and thought it would be helpful here since it so clearly shows the pitfalls of raw Google word counts, so I copied it over. If you think it's inflammatory I apologize. Most readers have at least a fuzzy idea who that person was, so the example is rather stark and plain to understand.

Lastly, please do try to be more polite. Luzzing around the word "sophistry" the way you wontedly do sounds more and more like a personal attack to me and truth be told, is not helpful towards swaying me. Wyss 02:28, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

You wrote "How often either spelling appears on the web is irrelevant to either the naming of the article or its content,"

This appears to contradict your user page: (emphasis mine)

I can learn from and be swayed by:

• Verifiable peer-review and scholarly references
• News reports and commentary on credible web sites
• A few dozen unique Google hits

Is there a reason this article is exempt from your philosophy? Dforest 08:50, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

In simple terms, you're comparing "apples and oranges" (so to speak), much as raw Google keyword searches might do. Wyss 11:32, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Seeing as the discussion has been Godwinned, can the article be unlocked? Seriously, though, I don't even see the point of including original research usage statistics - are we going to dedicate half of every article which has different spellings in US and Commonwealth English to mindless bickering about which version is more popular? Why not have different statistics for each relevant country, then adjusted for race, educational status and age? The very first link in the article is to North American English, hyperlinks are extensively used in Wikipedia for a reason - so that users can easily jump through to related topics without cluttering the main page with irrelevant information.

If someone is really insecure enough to think that the French have suppressed their word for a metal, they can just click through one or two pages and reassure themselves that the U.S. makes up the largest proportion of English speakers, and by extension, the U.S word for aluminium is more common. I wouldn't worry about Nohat's overuse of the word "sophistry", he probably just learnt what it means and thinks it's a general purpose "your argument is convincing, so you're trying to trick me and I'm still right". That and, ironically, to use smart words to distract from his argument (you can't really blame him for trying to distance himself from his argument, do you?). StuartH 06:46, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

It was Nohat who asked for article protection. So it's up to Nohat to be the big man and make an assurance that he doesn't go against the majority view and re-add the useless Google stats when the page is unprotected. Jooler 07:03, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

The majority view according to whom? I don't recall there being a vote. Dforest 07:35, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

You think you are in the majority then do you? Do you really believe that you are in the majority, when you look at the views expressed here? Do you want to have a vote to confirm it, or do you just want to scan the page and judge for yourself? Jooler 07:55, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

This isn't of much relevance to a U.S. vs. Commonwealth English discussion in other articles, and not just because Canada is part of the Commonwealth. It is because of the oft-repeated claims that this doesn't deal with U.S./Commonwealth differences, but rather with an "official" international spelling.

The Google statistics should be included in the spelling section, because of their highly probative value in explaining why the IUPAC isn't willing to hinge its reputation on its ability to enforce this spelling rule. That's a damn good indication why they have officially accepted the aluminum spelling, something which should also be included in the first paragraph in the spelling section.

I'd also like to note that there is a huge difference in single-word Google searches compared to the multiple word searches (with many possibilities in the Boolean operators and other limitations applied to them) which we saw in the Hitler nonsense on this talk page. Gene Nygaard 13:54, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

What? I wish I could understand what you are trying to say. You are saying the IUPAC doesn't enforce the spelling aluminium because of Google!? Not because most americans are not even aware of the spelling aluminium? Jooler 21:40, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Jooler—I wasn't making that assumption. But regardless, according to WP:NPOV we are not supposed to represent only the majority point of view:

Articles should be written without bias, representing all majority and significant minority views fairly. This is the neutral point of view policy.

The policy is easily misunderstood. It doesn't assume that writing an article from a single, unbiased, objective point of view is possible. Instead it says to fairly represent all sides of a dispute by not making articles state, imply, or insinuate that only one side is correct. Crucially, a great merit of Wikipedia is that Wikipedians work together to make articles unbiased.

So let's work together, shall we? I think it's time we stop bickering and settle on a compromise. Wiki-Ed's proposal sounds reasonable--what do you think about it? --Dforest 08:21, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

This isn't an NPOV issue about how to balance one opinion against another. This a matter of the inclusion or exclusion of unfiltered stastistics. In article disputes of this nature having a vote to decide on inclusion is far from uncommon. Wiki-Ed proposal is not acceptable. If any kind of reference to Internet search engine hit counts enteres this article it must be qualified by a great deal of text explaing the context and in all honesty I would rather not do this or I would be accused of disrupting wikipedia to make a point. Jooler 21:40, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

It is completely an NPOV issue. There is a dispute concerning whether this information is accurate. Furthermore, there is no information already existing in the article about the actual distribution of usage to explain and/or contrast with all the prescriptive information about who says which spelling is "preferred". We'd like to include the information; you'd like to not include the information. It seems like the compromise would be to include the information, but include any relevant and non-speculative caveats. This is what we have suggested from the beginning, but have been continually rebuffed. I still haven't seen a good reason why it is of paramount importance that this information be excluded from the article rather than included so that readers can decide for themselves whether or not it's valid or relevant. Obviously there are some people that think the information is interesting and relevant, and there are likely readers who would agree. We should have enough respect for our readers that we give them information that they may find useful. Nohat 23:36, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

My point, which some people got and had some fun with, and others didn't (or didn't want to or whatever) is that this would be "non-information." Why can't one mention that aluminum is a spelling widely used in North America and leave it at that? The rest of the world (and the professional community in the US for the most part) calls it aluminium. Wyss 07:53, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

It's not "non-information". The Google results are valid, verifiable facts. The facts are related to the topic in question, and inclusion of these facts is necessary to maintain a neutral balance in POV. Furthermore, given that the relevance of the facts is disputed, I have yet to see a good argument for why we should repress this information rather than give it and let readers decide for themselves if they think it's useful. Several people in this discussion have said that they think the information is useful. Why is it so important that we infantalize our readers and withhold the information on the mere possibility that they might be misled on the unproven speculation that the information is "biased" in some vague and unconvincing way? On the one hand, we have valid, verifiable facts. On the other hand, all you have is unproven speculation. I don't see that conjecture that there might be a problem with the information is a valid reason to suppress the inclusion of actual facts. Why can't we respect our readers enough to include the information and let them decide for themselves if they think it is interesting and relevant? Nohat 15:13, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

More Google raw-stats nonsense

What can we conclude from Google if no qualification is used

• "Americans are stupid" - 47,100
• "Americans are not stupid" - 508
• "Americans are clever" - 354
• "Americans are intelligent" - 510
  • conclusion according to Google - very many more people think Americans are stupid than don't
• "dog bites man" - 62,400
• "man bites dog" - 262,000
  • conclusion according to Google - men bite dogs more often than dogs bite man
• "Bush is hetrosexual" - 0 "Bush is heterosexual" - 6
• "Bush is not homosexual" - 30
• "Bush is homosexual" - 1,360
  • conclusion according to Google - according to those who have declared on the matter, an overwhelming number of people think that bush is homosexual
• "dolphins are more intelligent than humans" - 152
• "humans are more intelligent than dolphins" - 27
  • conclusion according to Google - Dolphins are more intelligent
• "the world is flat" - 953,000
• "the world is not flat" - 17,600
• "the world is a globe" - 234
• "the world is a sphere" - 906
• "the world is spherical" - 582
  • conclusion according to Google - most people think the world is flat
• "the capital of australia is sydney" - 401
• "the capital of australia is canberra" - 457
  • Conclusion accordign to Google - It's a close run thing...

Jooler

• "Bush is a heterosexual" - 6

There, fixed it for you. StuartH 07:27, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

These results only demonstrate that the citing of Google to verify the truth of statements is a false heuristic, for obvious reasons. No one was arguing Google should be used in this way. This does nothing to invalidate the use of Google to compare the usage of spelling variants in the searchable web. If you base your hypothesis on nonsense, it only follows you will get nonsensical results. Dforest 01:15, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Untrue, they could be quoting another person saying "The world is Flat". The Google search is only for sites which have that sentence (or part of it) in the web site. I'm pretty sure you're right bout the "Americans are stupid" tally though. I'm not going to argue with that. (he he he heheeeeeeeeeeeeeee). Spawn Man 07:13, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:No personal attacks. Dforest 01:20, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Google indexes public web pages on the Internet. This is an inherently limited and skewed sample (mirrors, no access to private sources, libraries, books, on and on and on). Reliable comparisons between usage of UK and US spellings are not possible with raw keyword searches. Finally, it's not relevant, since aluminium is the internationally recognized and professionally preferred term (even in the US). I'm gobsmacked you guys are hanging on to this argument. Wyss 01:27, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Got it in one (about "the world is flat")! You have had to qualify it, and give the context - that is precisely my point! Jooler 07:50, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Watever man....lolSpawn Man 09:55, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

I think we can agree that search engines are not reliable. This is not in dispute. However, someone using an unqualified search would find more "aluminums" than "aluminiums". This is not in dispute either. Given that this Wikipedia article asserts that the standard spelling has an 'i' we ought to acknowledge the discrepency or certain visitors will continually question whether the article is complete and accurate. Hence my suggestion for a short neutrally worded sentence. Wiki-Ed 08:45, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

I would probably be fine with a brief clarification sentence if it is from a citable source (i.e. not just a snapshot of Google results someone has taken), but there should be no question of the accuracy of the article if it is clearly stated that the word aluminum is more popular in North America (as it does now). StuartH 09:43, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Yep, with no mention of meaningless Google keyword searches. Wyss 09:02, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Well just cause I wanted to, I conducted my own Raw Google Experiment:

• Spawn Man= 3,500 hits.
• Jooler= 586 hits.
• Cheese= 43,800,000 hits.

From this we can assume that I'm more popular than Jooler & that Jooler is less popular than cheese?

• Arguing is stupid= 1,240 hits.
• Arguing is good= 2,070 hits.
• Arguing is not good= 269 hits.
• Arguing is bad= 708 hits.

From this we can judge that people want to have early heart predicaments in their life?

• My buttocks hurt= 291 hits.
• My buttocks don't hurt= 1 hit.

From this we can gather that more or less most of the world's population struggles with silent gluteus maximus maximus problimius?

• My dog ate my homework= 15,400 hits.
• My cat ate my homework= 206 hits.
• My fish ate my homework= 143 hits.
• My bird ate my homework= 70 hits.
• My ferret ate my homework= 11 hits.
• My chinchilla ate my homework= 35 hits.
• My bed ate my homework= 1 hit.
• My dad ate my homework= 13 hits.
• My grandma ate my homework= 14 hits.
• My grandfather ate my homework= 3 hits.
• My mom ate my homework= 134 hits.
• My mum ate my homework= 2 hits.
• I ate my homework= 625 hits.

From this we can verify many things; We could say that children should throw away the old "My dog ate it" excuse & instead turn to "My dad was hungry" or "My fish ate it over the weekend". Or in extreme cases, the student should simply eat the homework in front of the teacher. Another thing we can say is, that American mothers eat more homework than British mothers do? Or that only on very rare occasions has a bed actually eaten homework (I believe it was an essay on Hamlet).

And finally:

• Aluminum= 36,200,000 hits.
• Aluminium= 13,600,000 hits.

This is all very irrelavent, but if you guys can do it I wanted to do it to (with a splash more humour). Thanks for reading my results. Spawn Man 10:49, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

I can't hear anyone laughing....I found it funny....I guess I should stick to my day job?Spawn Man 13:33, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

• homework = 51,100,000 hits
• "home work" = 2,150,000 hits (many of them things like "Stay at Home, Work at Home")

Gene Nygaard 13:47, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I don't see your point gernard?Spawn Man 13:59, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

All of the examples given here are completely inapplicable. I guess this is difficult for some people to understand, but there is an essential difference between using search engine results to gather information about usage and using search engine results to evaluate the truth of various claims. Usage is by definition a descriptive measure. There is no such thing as a "false" or "true" spelling. So, making comparisons to searches for false statements are completely inapplicable, and a straw man for what is actually being proposed.

I ask again: please give a good reason, given that there is dispute as to whether this information is useful, why we shouldn't allow our readers to decide for themselves whether or not it is interesting or useful information. Nohat 19:46, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Cause you're boring with no sense of humour... Spawn Man

Spelling, con't.

Currently, there has still been no compelling proof or reasons to explain why information about web search results shouldn't be included in the spelling section.

• Where is the proof that Google statistics regarding English usage are in any way biased or false? I have seen a lot of irrelevant dithering about how Google shows that there are false statements on the web, but I have not seen even a scrap of hard evidence that Google statistics on usage are in any way necessarily flawed, false, or irrelevant.

• What is the compelling reason that, given that the relevance of this information is disputed, that it should therefore be excluded from the article? Don't we owe it to our readers to acknowledge that there is information, the information is disputed, but we respect them enough to make up their own minds about how useful is. Why do need to infantilize them by excluding verifiable, factual, and relevant information on the grounds that one can conjecture a situation in which this information might not be completely unbiased.

But yet, my latest attempt at a very weak statement about search engine results has been reverted under the guise that there is some kind of consensus that this information needs to be suppressed. I don't see any such consensus. Those of use who are in favor of including this information have been willing to compromise and alter the wording and add caveats, but those opposing it have been obstinate and completely unreasonable. Where is the spirit of compromise? What happened to the spirit of working together to find common ground? Blanket, instantaneous reverts are a violation of both the spirit and letter of Wikipedia policy. Please let's just try to work together to find a compromise solution that will satisfy everyone. Otherwise, we're just going to get into more revert wars and the page will get locked again. And nobody wants that. Nohat 19:57, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Shut up! Stop playing games. Nobody wants this crap on this page. Live with it. You are violating WP:POINT and we are all sick of it. Jooler 21:48, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

While I appreciate your civility and calmly reasoned argument, I'm not certain that I understand your point. However, thank you for your comments about my behavior. You can rest assured they will be given all the consideration they are due. Nohat 22:38, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

The main reason I oppose it, and it appears than many on this page oppose it, is that it is uncitable original research - explicitly banned under Wikipedia policy. I appreciate your removal of the offending sentence, but stop trying to pretend that it's an anti-Nohat conspiracy to censor anything you have to say. I'd say that the main culprit in getting a page locked completely rewriting the offending section, including comments that are clearly against wikipedia policy and the talk page goes against the spirit of Wikipedia. It wouldn't even have been locked in the first place if the said culprit hadn't violated the 3RR. StuartH 01:43, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

It's not original research. It's source-based research, and that's explicitly encouraged in WP:NOR. It would be original research if I tried myself to count all the occurrences. But Google has already done the counting, and we would just be citing the research that Google has already done for us. The argument that this constitutes original research is invalid, and no one has explained what part of the No Original Research policy forbids this information, whereas I have demonstrated, repeatedly, the part of the policy that explicit encourages research of this type. Nohat 02:48, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

The phrase "original research" in this context refers to untested theories; data, statements, concepts and ideas that have not been published in a reputable publication;. Google is not a reputable publication - it is a search engine. It is uncitable because it is completely dynamic, and you can only take a snapshot at a given instant and infer yourself that one is more popular than the other. You could say the tallies are 15,200,000 and 6,420,000 (as mentioned in this talk page), and cite Google. I could then check for myself and see that the results are 35,400,000 and 13,300,000 (as I just did). If no-one can even get the same results from the same source, the source is not a valid reference. I have no problems with including a valid reference (although I fail to see the relevance), but Google is not one. StuartH 03:14, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

The numbers change but the proportions do not. Search for "aluminium" and "aluminum" on any general web search engine and compare the results. You will invariably find that results for "aluminum" outnumber those for "aluminium" by at least 2 to 1. The idea that somehow this data is a fluke and does not represent the reality of proportion of usage on the web does not really have any evidence to support it. I would think that the fact that "aluminum" results outnumber "aluminium" results on the web would not be subject to debate on its factual accuracy at this point.

Furthermore, a popular search engine is by its very nature a reputable publication and a primary source. The fact that it's the most popular search engine in the world makes it reputable in the most basic way: it is held in high regard by a large number of people. If it weren't, it wouldn't be the most popular search engine in the world. And it's quite obviously a publication in the most essential meaning of the word: information disseminated to the public. The collection of search result quantities from Google quite clearly falls under the "research that consists of collecting and organizing information from existing primary and/or secondary sources" which is "strongly encouraged". Nohat 04:14, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

And you say sophistry is a bad thing...

If it's really that relevant to say that 'aluminium' is less popular than 'aluminum', it should be easy to find a citable reference for it. I have never seen, and do not ever expect to see "Google" appear in a list of citations, and any reputable publication which addresses usage would perform a much more scientific test than a simple Googling. It is clear from this article that 'aluminum' is the usage preferred in North America, and 'aluminium' is the usage preferred by IUPAC and most of the rest of the world. Anyone concerned about usage can just read about U.S. English or other topics on the English language, but a decision has been made to stick to IUPAC conventions so there is no reason to throw in half-arsed statistics on usage to prove a point. StuartH 05:58, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Google is a helpful search engine, an index of publicly viewable web pages. Google doesn't offer its keyword search service as a scientifically rigorous or linguistically helpful guide or reference to word usage patterns in any population and there is no evidence Google was ever designed to do this. Any similarity between two such services is at most a fleeting illusion. Relative to web pages with content containing keywords indexed by Google, it is not a primary source, but a secondary index. Its raw search data is not a peer-reviewed secondary source.

Since Google is neither offered nor designed as a usage reference or guide to comparative linguistics (it's a web keyword index), including any raw Google keyword "hit" data in a WP article's text about comparative, linguistic word usage requires original research, so it's not citable under WP policy.

On the other hand, a linguist's published (and perhaps peer-reviewed) commentary on specific Google keyword statistical output as it might relate to some particular usage would be an acceptable citation, whether or not that linguist's interpretation was meaningful. Finally, as most of us know, Google is invaluable as a pointer for finding citable sources and raw content for articles. Nohat's notions of encyclopedic sources along with scholarly methodologies for identifying and describing linguistic usage metrics, as he has expressed them on this talk page, are deeply flawed. Wyss 07:02, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

English language demographics

According to ethnologue there are 309,352,280 English speakers as a first language. Offline The World Almanac 2004 lists 341 million. The total for Canada and the US combined is 227 million. North America has a two-thirds majority then so on English language Wiki I'd think it should either be title "Aluminum or Aluminium" or even just "Aluminum." This is not an argument from Google or even solely the Internet really.

I did become aware of this through "stupid edit wars", but I find their characterization dismissive. Being annoyed by having to use a form of English that is not standard for the majority of the world's English speakers is not "silly" or "stupid." Wikipedia has articles for billionaires, or so I presume, yet most of the world I believe considers a billion to be 10 to the power of 12. Hence there are no billionaires and Wiki should never use the term again. However that's ridiculous. Because billionaire, rather than milliardaire, is a real word that's by most English speakers. Aluminum is also a real word used by most English speakers.(66.5% is dominant enough to be most. That said "aluminium" would likely be correct for Wiki outside English)--T. Anthony 13:31, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

"Being annoyed by having to use a form of English...." - perhaps you understand how most people outside of the USA feel now. Okay. Jooler 06:46, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Most people outside the US don't speak English. Also this case Canada and the Philippines were also relevant. Unless you can show me the Philippines, who was never ruled by Britain AFAIK, uses the British spelling. And as can be clearly shown in several ways the majority of English speakers use North American forms on this issue. The only way you defended otherwise was to say "200 million Indians" speak English, but this is not what most evidence indicates. Nor is "aluminium" universally used in Indian English I've found. Anyway Britain ruled India, but the vast majority of Asian Indians stuck with their own languages. Further as mentioned a search I did at IUPAC itself had "aluminum" as predominant. This was not Google, this was the site you were using as support. All that said I accept the ruling y'all made in this manner. I don't like it and I feel, for an English speaking article, it is a poorly conceived compromise. Still I recognize that calling it "Aluminium or Aluminum" is awkward or upsetting. Also that I just came here a couple days ago so have no right to judge....Now then to get to what matters can anyone find back up for Joseph Needham saying the early Chinese used aluminium? All I could find was that find article already linked to, but I know I've heard the story before. I can't find it anywhere though.--T. Anthony 11:19, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Gack. Sorry, but I think I've gotten into some weird trivia obsession deal. Anyway IUPAC's official table Here has it listed "Aluminium, Aluminum." So I guess I am more why that wasn't deemed acceptable as the compromise.(Instead of the compromise being "American's have everything, We need Aluminium dammit!")--T. Anthony 11:33, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

That said I won't make any changes. Although I don't see the harm in it being "Aluminium/Aluminum", but I imagine the community has already spoken on this.--T. Anthony 13:37, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Ethnologue listed 508 million English speakers overall when including second-language. This figure was for 1999. In that group it states that 52% of Philipinos know English as a second language and considering who ruled them that would likely be US English. Checking only Philippino news sites on Google News I find no entry mentioning "aluminium", but a few for "aluminum." So that plausibly adds in least 40 million, it would be more than that but I'll agree some Filippinos may use aluminium, to the 227 million. That totals 262 million and so remains a majority, albeit a radically reduced one. I hope this isn't too irritating or snotty. I did mostly try to use academic sources. Added to that I think sulfur really should be sulphur, as it's not unusual to see that spelling in North America, so I can be contrarian in everything:)--T. Anthony 13:54, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Leaving it at Sulfur makes it consistant with the other elements, which are all at the primary IUPAC spelling. Look at how long and silly this discussion became up above. Let's not open another article to that. CDThieme 14:43, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

I guess you're right. Many things at Wikipedia are always going to be biased or outright silly. It's a big community so that's unavoidable. I doubt I'll ever have need to look up aluminum here again so I can just chock this up to the "it's wrong, but the people have spoken so what can you do?" list and move on.--T. Anthony 15:08, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, but I couldn't resist. I tried to make sure to spell it the official IUPAC way in the article. Also on reading it it turned out there other issues I was interested in. Alas I couldn't find much on the discoveries in 1974 that Needham indicated were possibly linked to Chinese aluminum, but it was discussed in books I've read. Also I think Oersted was getting short shrift in this entry so played him up a bit. Even if it's false he is generally recognized as the discoverer of aluminum/aluminium/muinimula/munimula so it seemed worth mentioning.--T. Anthony 09:19, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

I still vote for 'Butts'

At this point I'm satisfied I guess. The changes I made with both spellings capitalized and the IUPAC table, which has both listed with neither in parenthesis or asterixes, didn't get reverted. Only thing I'd add is for it to be, or stay, "aluminum" in articles dealing with use in North American industry or fiction. (Like the recent edit with the Star Trek movie, Doohan played a Scottish character but he's Canadian, and maybe some others.) I doubt I'll see the word used much in articles I edit, but if I see it spelled "aluminium" in North-American articles I'll remember to correct it for appropriateness. Although I'll try to avoid any rancorousness about that as I'd imagine it's generally done in innocence. If it comes up in any British, French(or former colony of either) article I'll switch it to aluminium. Whichever switch is appropriate. I'm not expecting this to come up much though.--T. Anthony 07:09, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Since when do we capitalise words that are not proper nouns in the middle of a sentence? Jooler 07:47, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

If you're going to get that petty there's no point. Sure IUPAC doesn't capitalize it, but if you're going to get persnickety like that I'm perfectly willing to move the whole article to "Aluminium, aluminum" to meet IUPAC accuracy. However I've bended, and would rather not unbend, so do the same. Sheesh.--T. Anthony 08:08, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm getting pretty petty? You're the one who changed it to be grammatically incorrect, for no reason other than your petty insistence, that the American spelling deserves "equal billing" at the top of the article. Your arrogance is overwhelmingly distasteful. Jooler 08:17, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

I have no idea if you're "getting pretty." Still I did go too far. I wouldn't move the article and was going to erase the post that said I would. And I'm not some arrogant pro-American caricature. If this were an article about a British or Australian topic I wouldn't dream of changing it. I'll try to remember to spell it, or change it, to "aluminium" if the issue comes up in any Europe or Australasian related topic. I said I would not alter anything else at this point, even stating I was satisfied. However you can't handle that the majority of English speakers getting much of any recognition. (If you doubt that make the effort I did to prove the case) So you whine even though I've accepted a compromise I actually find slightly silly for the English language version. Because it came with even accepting I can't mention the Philippines where the majority speak English and it's an official. This compromise I've come to accept, but you can't. Yeah you're petty. All you've really accomplished is the ability to bully some people here into giving up, but I'm not such a person. However I'll change it again to how it's listed at IUPAC.--T. Anthony 08:38, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

"I'm not some arrogant pro-American caricature" you say. You are like someone who says "I'm not racist but..". It is arrogant in the extreme to assume that ONLY British and Australian articles should use that spelling and that all your base are belong to us because there a lots of Americans who speak English as a first language. Wikipedia is an International effort. Most of the people who speak English are not native speakers, and most of them speak British English. The International spelling is aluminium. IUPAC reluctantly allows "Alumminum" to satisfy Americans and those who follow their lead. You can mention the Philippines if I can mention - Australia, Guyana, Jamaica, New Zealand, Gibraltar, Antigua and Saint Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize, Cameroon, Dominica, St. Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Micronesia, Republic of Ireland, Singapore, South Africa, Fiji, Ghana, Gambia, Hong Kong, India, Kiribati, Lesotho, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, Malta Pakistan Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Sierra Leone Swaziland Tanzania, Zambia, Zambia, Zimbabwe and All of which use English as an offical language. In addition English is and official language of the EU, as they use British English conventions in official documents. But to mention all of that would be to break WP:Point Jooler 09:15, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

You have no idea what organization you likely don't belong to does reluctantly or not. I've been trying to change the spelling to "aluminium" in articles that are about Britain, Australia, etc. I will stop that now. Added to that your list of nations is absurd. It includes nations where barely anyone speaks English, even as a second language, and even includes Micronesia which was mostly US dependencies. (Exempting Nauru and Kiribati) You are a very arrogant or insecure person who needs their variant of English used at all moments. It's nonsense. Prove most en Wikipedians use British English or drop it.--T. Anthony 09:46, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

I never said those nations speak British English. I just listed as many coutries as I could find that use English as an official language. i'm not suprised some use American English, but most don't. As for IUPAC reluctantly allows "Alumminum" , I am inferring that from the fact that it took several years for them to decide to allow that spelling. Why didn't they allow it from the off? Jooler 09:59, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

"You can mention the Philippines if I can mention..." implies these would be on your list. I don't think that was unreasonable of me. However the last edit I saw of yours was fine. Unless you've mucked it up since then I'm more interested in the Needham theory that the ancient Chinese discovered Äŀ.

However on the other point "why didn't they allow it from the off" that's not especially surprising. It's not unusual for it to take years for all spelling issues to be resolved. Look how long it took, or will take if you get some actual Americanist, for this place to come to agreements? Even naming itself I believe can go back and forth for a long time. Look at Niobium or Dubnium.--T. Anthony 10:06, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

There it's like at the IUPAC chart now and there's no capitalization problems either. I also made sure to be consistent in calling them former US colonies or possessions. "Dependencies" was maybe too benign. It's not an entirely satisfying compromise, but it's okay. I know some are likely annoyed with me getting in on this or consider the whole thing silly. However it's not really. The compromise before I came was largely based on the idea North American English was bad or wrong and that's why it got so heated. Ultimately all English we speak is some descendant from the seventeenth century model. Still I learned some and toward the end I think I've tried to simply be factual and based on IUPAC procedures. I'm pretty glad if I made some alterations that improved matters. Especially on mentioning the story of the Chinese possibly having Aluminium,aluminum as I think no other Wiki has that. (Sadly no one could add anything on it) Hopefully nothing further will draw my attention here.--T. Anthony 08:58, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Sorry Jooler

I got overheated, I'm sorry. I have no problem with it right now. Also I am going to keep working on changing to "aluminium" for articles describing things in nations that prefer that spelling.--T. Anthony 12:01, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Butts

I still think the google search resulting in Butts ought to be used. That way no one would have cause to complain.

In the Icelandic version of the article it's just called Ál. I like that, simple and undebatable. There is also no article in Wiki for Ál. Unfortunately it hasn't caught on in English yet, but here's hoping it can. It's the most neutral spelling I can think of.--T. Anthony 08:15, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Unless we refer to every single other element by their symbols, I don't see the need for such an extreme approach. Ideally, the MediaWiki software could replace terms like Aluminium on-the-fly, dependent upon the user's profile settings (maybe even IP address), but until that happens there is no need to cut the baby in half. Outside of North America, gasoline is hardly used at all, but I would never suggest moving it to CH3(CH2)6CH3 or "Refined hydrocarbon fuel for general automotive use" or something equally silly. StuartH 12:02, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Actually I'm personally rather inconsistent on the spelling issue. There are times, like the case of aluminum, where the American useage somehow feels more "right" to me. Or in least I don't see how either is any more correct than the other. However in other things I think the British way does make more sense. For example "petrol" makes more sense to me as it is petroleum. "Gas" is something else entirely. Likewise "sulphur" looks more right to me than "sulfur." Likewise "humour" kind of fits to me. However I prefer the Americanized "gray" to "grey", even though many American writers prefer the British spelling.--T. Anthony 12:22, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Native American-English speakers

Sigh. This is getting very tiresome. If you insist on maintaining pointless statements then they will have to be qualified. English has many sub-dialects, all of which are different. In the US/Canada people are brought up with the American-English sub-dialect. This is different to other sub-dialects. People in the US/Canada are, therefore, native speakers of American-English, not some kind of unqualified "English". The only people who could possibly regard themselves as natively speaking "English" (without qualification) would be those brought up in England (NB, not Scotland or Wales) where you would have to say "English English" (which is clearly a nonsense) to describe their dialect. Personally I regard the whole concept of "native" speakers as contrived twaddle. However, the statement, as I put it, is accurate. Any other variation is not. Wiki-Ed 12:20, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Your edits were a non sequitur because Canadians do not speak American English. Furhermore, it is when you consider English as a whole that the combination of native speakers of English in the United States and Canada, excluding sizable portions whose native language is French or Spanish plus a whole lot of other languages, that form a majority of all the native speakers of English in all its varieties. Sure, lots of other people have English as a second language; they generally are not very influential in the development of the language, however.

The statement only needs to be there at all because of the "most English-speaking nations" statement in the same paragraph. That statement standing alone, without this counterbalance, provides a totally deceptive and misleading picture, especially since it is people who do the speaking, not nations. Gene Nygaard 12:43, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Even if you consider there to be a North American English which includes American English and Canadian English, a statement in this article that the "majority of native North American English speakers" are in the United States and Canada would not belong here; it is irrelevant and immaterial—it provides absolutely no information pertinent to the spelling of aluminum. Gene Nygaard 12:48, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Exactly, it shouldn't be there - any of it. You can't have your cake and eat it. As you have pointed out, different people in different parts of North America speak differently. There is no uniform "majority" of x million that somehow outnumbers any other uniform group in another part of the world. The phrase "wherein reside the majority native speakers of English" is contentious (and offensive to a certain extent) because the word "native" is impossible to qualify/quantify. The sentence would make sense without that contention and would still explain that there is a difference between certain versions of English. It has been reverted enough for now so I am not going to switch it back. I think we should see what other people think. Wiki-Ed 17:32, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

The statement is accurate as given. A native speaker of English is somone whose first language is English. This is standard linguistic terminology. A majority of native English speakers are Americans and Canadians. See Image:English dialects1997.png. Nohat 19:20, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

What is "English"? It is inaccurate to portray English as having an "average" or a "standard" form. All but one dialect of English has a qualifying adjective (eg. "American English", "Australian English" etc). You could perhaps say that American-English native speakers form the largest bloc of the English sub-dialects. But you cannot say that they are native speakers of (unqualified) "standard" English. Only English people can be native speakers of -English- (although that does not mean it is the "standard" form) and what they speak is different to the American variant. I've ignored the pie chart... the source itself discusses the fallibility of the method so it should not be referred to as gospel. Wiki-Ed 01:13, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

The variety of English spoken in England is called "British English", or when it is necessary to distinguish it from Welsh and Scottish English, "English English" or "English as spoken in England", or any of various admittedly awkward but specific terms. "English" without a qualifying adjective means any form of English—people who use the word "English" to mean only English English are being laughably provincial. Synchronically speaking, there is nothing special about English English: it is just a minority dialect of the language called English. The idea that that only people from England can be called native speakers of English is a ridiculous assertion that runs counter to both logic and the reality of how the term "native speaker of English" is used by both laypeople and experts in the field. I have never been to England but anyone who tries to tell me I a not a native speaker of English is mistaken. Nohat 02:04, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

This brings up another question. Which "pure" form of English english is the purest? English as spoken in London? What part of London? What's wrong with Liverpool? Is it Shakespearean English? If the answer is Shakespearean, the purest form of that English is undoubtedly spoken in the isolated communities on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, in the United States. As for me, I say the English that endures is the only true test--and as anyone who has ever watched the Star Trek movies knows, in the twenty-fifth century, the metal is pronounced "aluminum". Doovinator 03:30, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

There is no such thing as "English English", that is a completely absurd misnomer. You don't describe a red object as "red red" to distinguish it from a slightly orange-red object. Having to use the same adjective twice to describe something is illogical in any academic field. And I am afraid you are wrong to suggest that it runs counter to the reality of how the term is used, at least outside the US. As for what is "pure"... surely a form that could be understood by everyone else speaking various minority variants and one that encompassed the entire lexicon of all dialects put together? If so I would posit that only English spoken with received pronounciation and based on a full Oxford English dictionary would fit. Other variants often cannot be understood by other English speakers in other parts of the world. An (anecdotal) example of this problem is the US screening of the film Trainspotting which was edited because the American-English speaking audience could not understand the Scottish-English speaking actors. English of the type I speak is hardly "provincial" - to describe it as such is quite ignorant (look the word up in a dictionary). Wiki-Ed 12:16, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, since there are more movies seen in more places using American English, then British English is the "provincial" form, and I would posit that only English spoken as based on a complete American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language is the gold standard; anything else is British twaddle--so there! :-P Doovinator 15:02, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

See native speaker (a redirect to the quantity they possess) and English English and, as you said, any good dictionary for "provincial".

Since English standing alone is refers to the comprehensive language with all variants, the term English English is quite reaonable. Gene Nygaard 13:25, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps you don't have a good dictionary? :p "Provincial" means "of the province(s)", i.e. a part of a nation distant from the capital/homeland. As the source nation of the language the English cannot use a "provincial" variant of their own language (although they can/do have regional dialects of their own). Its secondary meaning of "unsophisticated" would apply to dialects which do not share a completely inclusive vocabulary (as per the Oxford English Dictionary) and have unusual pronounciation (eg. Southern US American English). What I think you mean is defined here: Standard English. Thus I think you could say "wherein reside the majority native speakers of Standard English" and still be reasonably accurate. It does need qualification. Wiki-Ed 18:43, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, "of the provinces" is open to interpretation, too. Who determines what is a province? The Romans considered England one of the provinces, and the babbling ("bar-bar-bar") of the natives ("barbarians") not even a language at all. Personally, using the same standards as the Romans, I think England is an American province, seeing as so many Americans have settled there, so "Standard English" is, therefore, what is spoken where I live, in the American South, where what I consider to be the first speakers of what is now my own Standard English settled. I therefore say that "English English" is an unusual pronunciation of my own Standard English, as witness the thousands more movies and TV programs which are in American English shown all over the world, and therefore English English, or British English, is variant. Please explain to me why I should think otherwise. Doovinator 02:08, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

There is no such thing as "English English", that is a completely absurd misnomer. You don't describe a red object as "red red" to distinguish it from a slightly orange-red object. Having to use the same adjective twice to describe something is illogical in any academic field. And I am afraid you are wrong to suggest that it runs counter to the reality of how the term is used, at least outside the US.

There is nothing illogical about "English English". There are two completely separate entries for the word "English" in a dictionary: one as a noun meaning the language and one as an adjective meaning of or related to England. It is true the two words are historically related, but that is no reason why one can't be used to modify the other, especially in a case such as the one at hand, where just "English" alone is clearly insufficient to disambiguate. The situation isn't unique to the word "English" either: one can easily imagine a situation where "orange orange" makes perfect sense. Nevertheless, the point is effectively mooted by the reality that "English English" is actually a term that is actually used by experts in the field. The term "English English" is used extensively by sociolinguists and dialectologists of all national stripes. For example, David Crystal, a British linguist, uses the term in his reference book The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language.

As for what is "pure"... surely a form that could be understood by everyone else speaking various minority variants and one that encompassed the entire lexicon of all dialects put together? If so I would posit that only English spoken with received pronounciation and based on a full Oxford English dictionary would fit.

I'm sorry you have been trolled into responding to claims about language "purity", but your reply is just is as nonsensical as the original claims. First of all, arguments about what is "pure" are completely nonsensical. There is nothing pure or impure about the English language: the unqualified characterization does not apply to languages. Second, your claims about received pronunciation are not based on any evidence. What's so special about received pronunciation? It doesn't maintain more distinctions than other dialects: indeed it certainly levels some distinctions that other dialects maintain: for example "court" and "caught" are homophones in RP, but not in American English. As for the Oxford English Dictionary, although it is respected for being encyclopedic, it is by no means an exhaustive list of the words of English. For example, page 119 of the aforementioned Cambridge Encyclopedia, lists 12 words between "saba" and "sabbaticalness" that Webster's Third New International Dictionary has that the OED lacks. Finally, ignoring the fact that RP and the OED do not meet your own crieteria of being understood by everyone else and encompassing the entire lexicon of all dialects put together, the proposition is a ridiculous one: no one knows all the words in a dictionary, and there are plenty of words used in other dialects that are not used in British English, including in English English. See for example List of American English words not used in British English.

Other variants often cannot be understood by other English speakers in other parts of the world.

This is completely false, as it is well-known that with the ubiquity of American cultural and media exports, American English is just as well understood around the world, if not more so, than any dialect of British English.

An (anecdotal) example of this problem is the US screening of the film Trainspotting which was edited because the American-English speaking audience could not understand the Scottish-English speaking actors.

I fail to see how inability of Americans to understand the basilectic Scottish patois of that film has anything to with anything. Anyone speaking in a regionally-specific basilect is going to be difficult to understand by people from outside of their region, especially by people who are from an area where the culture that spawned the basilect has very little contemporary cultural influence, such as that of Scottish culture upon the United States.

English of the type I speak is hardly "provincial" - to describe it as such is quite ignorant (look the word up in a dictionary).

I was not describing any particular dialect of English as "provincial", and the fact that this was unclear gives me grave doubt that you understood any of what I wrote. What I said what that the idea that "English" by itself only refers to "English English" is provincial. My dictionary gives several meanings for "provicial", one of which is "unsophisticated or narrow-minded", which describes exactly the attitude that a diachronic analysis of Engish has anything to do with the synchronic status of a particular dialect.

Moving on to your second comment:

Perhaps you don't have a good dictionary? :p "Provincial" means "of the province(s)", i.e. a part of a nation distant from the capital/homeland. As the source nation of the language the English cannot use a "provincial" variant of their own language (although they can/do have regional dialects of their own). Its secondary meaning of "unsophisticated" would apply to dialects which do not share a completely inclusive vocabulary (as per the Oxford English Dictionary) and have unusual pronounciation (eg. Southern US American English).

My previous comments apply equally to this. I did not say that any dialect was provincial; what I described as provincial was an idea about dialects. Please understand the distinction. However, given that, your comments here belie a misunderstanding about the nature of the dialect. The idea that English English is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary is laughable. Even the people who make it wouldn't argue that. English English is just as flawed, incomplete, illogical, and difficult to understand as any other dialect. The fact that England is the source nation of the English language does not bestow any special status on the English spoken there.

What I think you mean is defined here: Standard English. Thus I think you could say "wherein reside the majority native speakers of Standard English" and still be reasonably accurate. It does need qualification.

"English" by itself means any form of English, "Standard" or otherwise. Look it up in the dictionary. It does not need qualification. Nohat 20:05, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

WP:POINT. User:Noisy | Talk 23:05, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your very thoughtful and poignant comments, Noisy. Unfortunately, in your terseness, you have failed to clarify what exactly the WP:POINT policy has to do with my edits that are intended to balance and clarify the "Spelling" section of this article. Nohat 05:44, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

I explored both meanings of the word "provincial" because both could be applicable given your general derogatory tone. You may have meant only one, but I find your reasoning provincial in both respects. Eg. "...it is well-known that with the ubiquity of American cultural and media exports, American English is just as well understood around the world" Is that so?!

I am sure the term you use is very useful in the linguistic academic community. However, it is offensive to lay people in England. You are right that English is not "defined" or delimited by the OED. As you say language evolves and a dictionary cannot be synchronic when it has a policy of letting words "bed-down" for a time. (I imagine www.urbandictionary.com must be really depressing for dictionary compilers.) I do not think dictionaries are made with the intention that everyone will know all the words. However, they are supposed to be written in such a way that anyone speaking the basics of the language can learn other bits of the language. Without a baseline source we might as well be speaking babble.

The fact that England is the source nation of the English language does not bestow any special status on the English spoken there. And there I think we will have to agree to disagree. The roots are important to the branches for as long as the tree is alive.

Further, my use of the film Trainspotting as an anecdote was supposed to illustrate that the branches sometimes cannot understand one-another, but the root always can. Unfortunately I can only substantiate this with my own experience - I can understand both Scottish and American dialects and they can understand mine.

"English" by itself means any form of English, "Standard" or otherwise. In which case it would not just be "native speakers" - which is contrived (I think that's why WP:POINT was mentioned) - and would require qualification. Wiki-Ed 12:40, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Point of order re: the OED. The OED is descriptive, not prescriptive. It is also (and so many Americans seem unaware or this) NOT a 'British English' dictionary, it is a dictionary that encompasses all forms of English. It has a North American Editorial Unit. Jooler 19:05, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

"where a majority of all native speakers of English live"

I don't agree with including this statement as it seems to simply be an attempt to show that the AmE spelling is more important. The mention of "most English-speaking nations" is fine because it shows that such countries use that particular spelling. The number of different countries officially using a spelling is more important than the number of people. violet/riga (t) 22:10, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

The addition of the phrase, seems to be implying, that because there are more so-called "native" English speakers in the USA than elsewhere that it is more "correct" in a general sense. This is clearly nonsense, as there are very few places outside of the USA where it is more "correct". 22:22, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

"Nations" don't spell, people do. That statement is there to be intentionally misleading, to show that that spelling is more important, by acting as if correctness is determined by a vote among nations with one vote each..

Not more important; but even if it were, that would indeed be relevant to this article. Maybe more generally accepted by careful users of the language, not but really not even that. More just to balance out the fanatics on the other side.

There is, of course, an even bigger country besides the U.S.A. involved here. Maybe we should do the voting based on the number of square kilometers in each of those "English-speaking nations"?

Your argument isn't based on relevance. Like I said in my edit summary, there may well be good reasons for including both of those statements, but of the two of them, the native speakers one is clearly much more relevant than the most nations argument.

The majority of native speakers are not only relevant to this article in its own right, but also relevant to the fact the the IUPAP is not willing to hinge their reputation on a prescription of the "aluminium" spelling. Gene Nygaard 22:41, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

What is the point of this silly attempt to make a distincion between native speakers and non native. People either speak english or they don't.Geni 05:10, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

There are a greater number of people who spell it aluminum. There are a greater number of nations in which the spelling is aluminium. Both statements attempts to justify one spelling over the other. Both statements are quite irrelevant. The place for such discussions it on pages dealing with the differences between Commonwealth & U.S. English/spelling. Otherwise are we going to have these points brought up in every article about anything the name of which has different spellings in U.S. and Commonwealth English? That would obviously be absurd. These points are no more relevant than they are on Metre, Sulfur, Litre, Color, etc. All that is needed here (as on all those other pages) is a mention that one is the U.S. spelling/pronunciation and the other is the Commonwealth one (plus a mention of Canada's situation). Jimp 22Nov05

There are not a greater number of people who spell it "aluminum", not even in English. The statement that is being contested has been paraphrased in such a way as to make it partially accurate, but it implies more than it says, hence this discussion. I would agree that a simple note to the effect that there are different spellings in different places is the sensible solution... Which is what this article had until recently when someone came in and disrupted it again. Wiki-Ed 09:55, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the sensible solution Wiki-Ed suggests above: this is all that is needed here. Jimp 22Nov05

american spelling

I think this should be changed to the popularly used American spelling, i.e. Loomynum. Gzuckier 20:09, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Note that if you do a Google search for "loomynum", Google asks "Did you mean: aluminum?". Even if you do it on uk Google.[6] Gene Nygaard 22:51, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, and if you put "favrite" in to Google.co.uk, Google says "Did you mean: favorite" - which shows yet again just why trying to use Google to state something regarding UK/UK usage has not merit whatsoever. Google is American. Jooler 07:38, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

That would be, English Lite. Gzuckier 15:17, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Spelling in Canada?

"However, in Canada both spellings are common, due to the multiple influences on the language of its proximity to the United States, its British colonial past and the large number of native French speakers."

I'm not so sure of this. I grew up in Ontario and never once heard the world "aluminium". Does it vary from province to province?

This belongs in the spelling section, I've moved it there for you.--T. Anthony 05:53, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

I think the US spelling is probably much more common - in my experience, we use mainly US scientific texts at Canadian universities. In my 3 yrs of chemistry at the University of Victoria, it was only referred to as aluminum in spelling (although one British prof I had referred to it as aluminium in speech). None of the supplementary texts published by the university (lab texts, etc) used the spelling aluminum. My highschool science texts used "aluminum" although my Grade 12 chem teacher felt that the Brits used "aluminium" b/c the word "aluminum" is trade-marked in Britian (which I believe it is, by Alcan) - although the article would tend to indicate that is not the reason aluminium is used in Britain. So in my personal experience, I think it is safe to say Canadians spell it (and generally say it) as "aluminum."DonaNobisPacem 05:12, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

The canadian version of Webster's English Dictionary Concise Edition (1999) lists Aluminium first, then Aluminum (US) second. If this confuses you, this is exactly what is written. "Aluminium, Aluminum (US)". However, if i asked someone to spell it, it would be spelt Aluminium. I'm guessing (e.g. no verification) that the offical spellings has to do with british roots. I also think so close proximity, leading to products with american spellings being brought to canada, interaction with americans, etc. etc. has to do with making american spellings much more common.

Anyways, it doesn't matter because the canadian population is of fairly negligable size. But seriously, i'm not arguing one way or another, because i'm nearly throwing up reading this talk page.

Clone Articles?

What would the viability of creating a clone article at aluminum be? I don't forsee there being much change in this article, which means putting a modified version at the American spelling would be much more viable than creating a clone of some of the other articles on Wikipedia. BioTube 02:22, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Basically it would mean to concede that a collaborative encyclopedia is impossible due to irreconcilable differences. It would eventually result in a breakup of the en:Wiki, which has been suggested before. Doesn't make sense to me. Femto 11:24, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

We could also consider moving it to alumium. We add a simple note at the top that it was the original name and intersperse the various spellings within the article. This way we avoid fracturing and the silly edit wars over where to put the article. BioTube 23:04, 14 May 2006 (UTC) EDIT: I changed it so that Aluminium/Spelling redirects to the actual article. BioTube 01:40, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

This is weird...

See Talk:International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. Random the Scrambled 12:36, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

"Un-Fudgeable Google Results" and "Why Does It Matter?"

GoogleFight is a website that can be pretty useful in a discussion like this. I'm kind of surprised that no one's mentioned it up yet. This way, you can't just skew the numbers you report on the talk page to make your point. It kinda 'officializes' the Google results, perhaps? Regardless, enjoy.

As for the actual issue here... if there's a redirect page, then why does it matter which name the article is actually stored under? The spelling difference -- whichever side you're on -- isn't adversely affecting your Wikipedia usage. 16:15, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I think it's got more to do with people not wanting to deal with foreign spellings. BioTube 06:01, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism?

The article used to read, "Aluminum, or aluminium (A vulgar error which should not be perpetuated, see the spelling section)." I removed the bolded text. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.16.148.75 (talk • contribs) .

Yes, that was a vandal edit from another one of User:160.94.224.179/User:Nokhc's sock accounts. Thanks for removing the bad stuff; note however that a full revert to an earlier revision is usually preferable in order to also catch any other alterations. Femto 17:22, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

The Google Test

A few days ago I added this comment to the spelling section of the article:

"As of 2005, a Google search on the words shows a popular preference for the aluminum spelling, more than twice that of aluminium. However, such a test may be considered biased. See Google test."

Vsmith quickly reverted this, claiming it is irrelevant. Yet it keeps coming up on the talk page... I'd like to hear what other WPs think. Dforest 15:25, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

It's irrelevant to an encyclopaedia article on Aluminium. It is relvant to the naming of an article on Wikuipedia. so it should not be in the article, and it is no suprise that it comes up on the talk page. Jooler 15:48, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

IMO, a mention of the Google test is relevant as a footnote in the section of an article specifically concerning the spelling of "aluminium" vs. "aluminum". Dforest 02:36, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

As far as I can see, the only point in mentioning it is to establish the relative frequency of use of each spelling. In the past I've worked with someone developing word counting/indexing software for use by dictionary editors (I can't now remember whether it was the OED or Collins). They pay careful attention to source of text that would be considered relevant and I doubt Google would pass muster (for example you don't include data from the language used in the 1911EB to determine current usage). They were actually using vast collections of electronic texts - I have a vague impression that collections of newspapers were considered particularly fruitful, but I can't remember the reasoning - possibly because their daily timestamp was useful for tracking the historical variations in word usage.

So if we don't completely understand the biases of Google, it shouldn't be presented as fact in the article. However, I saw a news story suggesting that Google had started a project to put a large number of books online, so that might produce a dataset that could be used. -- Solipsist 05:40, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Actually, use of Google hits counts is a fast-growing area of real (albeit informal, but done by professionals, not just amateurs) linguistic research. Second, I don't see anything wrong with including the fact that Google has more hits for aluminum than aluminium. It's a verifiable fact, something that is perfectly acceptable for inclusion on Wikipedia. It would be a step too far to say that the Google results necessarily mean that aluminum is more common than aluminium in English usage overall, but there is nothing wrong with saying that Google has more hits for aluminum than aluminium, and in a section describing contention over the spelling of the word, such a fact is perfectly relevant and demonstrative. Nohat 06:37, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Google means nothing in terms of usage. Absolutely nothing. Usage on the Internet is dominated by American usage because American companies cut and past their pages to UK sites as described above. For example Look at http://www.pricerunner.co.uk/ a supposed UK site but on the front page we find "Find the best price on your favorite music". Google also provides very many false positives. For exampe go to Google and type in 'aluminum site:uk' look at the first site "Aluminum Packaging Recycling Organization&;;;quot; - alupro.co.uk if you click on the cached version, what do you find? "These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: aluminum" -the google test is bollox. Jooler 09:57, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

The points you bring up have no bearing in aggregate. Google indexes over 8 billion pages. The relative distribution of spellings may be biased;however, they make up for it in volume: the sheer vastness of the quantity of matches makes the results necessarily relevant. It is a fact that Google reports that more pages have the aluminum spelling. What purpose is there in suppressing the presentation of actual, verifiable facts on Wikipedia articles other than to further some hidden agenda? Since it's disputed, why don't we let the readers decide how to interpret the facts concerning the spelling of aluminum? Nohat 05:04, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

"It is a fact that Google reports that more pages have the aluminum spelling.' - No it is not. The very top hit for 'aluminum site:uk' does NOT contain the word 'aluminum'. In any case "pages cached by google" does not reflect International usage, it merely reflects the american domination of the Internet. how many exammples of American corporations using sites with a .uk suffix and cutting and pasting content from pages written with american English do you want me to provide? Jooler 08:01, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Nohat's comment. Jooler, you write "It is relvant to the naming of an article on Wikuipedia" but "Google means nothing in terms of usage." There appears to be a contradiction here. Google is not perfect as a method of determining popular usage, but it is a good rule of thumb, and often used as such. Note that Google News, which indexes many newspapers around the world, has a ratio of 4:1 of aluminum:aluminium. I suggest that if you have objections to Google's results, find a more accurate source of usage statistics and add it to the article as a rebuttal. Dforest 04:31, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

I have just demonstrated that the very first hit on google for 'aluminum site:uk' does not even contain the word 'aluminum'. What more evidence do you need to prove that Google provides false positives? Jooler 08:01, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, but your attacks against Google's relevance just don't hold up. If you search using "allintext: " at the beginning of the Google query, it ensures that the pages include the search terms. The results are unstartlingly parallel to the searches without "allintext". Nobody is claiming that Google is an exact mirror of all usage, but it does provide some data, and your minor complaints about possible problems do not stand up against the vast weight of millions of real examples of usage that it provides. Nohat 08:20, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

The Google comment amounts to original research in addition to being irrelevant and biased. It does not belong in the article. Vsmith 12:05, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Hear hear. I fail to see the relevance of this original research. — OwenBlacker 12:24, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. James F. (talk) 15:07, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

It is not original research, in fact it is mentioned on the Google test page. (see: Idiosyncratic usage). A link back to that page is perfectly reasonable. --Dforest 00:40, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

It is original research, and that page is not an article, it's in the wikipedia namespace. We should not use an article in the wikipedia namespace as a reference, nor should we link to articles in the Wikipedia namespace from the main namespace. -- Joolz 02:38, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Well, I recently excised a statement in the Spelling section of the main article which claimed that aluminium is the more widespread usage, with no source to back it up. The "Google test" gave me a good reason to delete that claim. That isn't original research; it merely checks out a suspicion about an unsourced statement in a WikiP article. (It was actually a "Yahoo" test, which found 72.5 million examples of the American version and 19.9 million for the British usage.)

Sincerely, your friend, GeorgeLouis 05:52, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Well that just shows you how meaningless and unreliable Google/Yahoo tests are in this kind of situation. All that tells you is that it is more common on the pages indexed by Google. And funnily enough the majority of those tend to be US. Secondly and more importantly Google indexes pages not by the content but by the links. So a page with the word "aluminium" in it but not "aluminum" will show up when you search for the later IF other pages link to it. For example 10th hit when I search for "aluminum" - [7]Jooler 07:18, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I restored the text. GeorgeLouis don't remove citation-needed tags without finding the required reference. And don't delete verified text without checking the cited references. I fear it's time for the bi-annual aluminium spelling argument to restart... *sigh* Wiki-Ed 09:48, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

More on spelling

Hello, everybody:

I have put quite a bit of care and attention in trying to simplify the following two sentences, sticking to the facts:

In the United States and English-speaking Canada, the spelling aluminium is largely unknown[citation needed], and the spelling aluminum predominates[citation needed]. Elsewhere in other English-speaking countries the spelling aluminium predominates.

The -ium spelling is the most widespread version around the world. The word is aluminium in French, Aluminium in German, and identical or similar forms are used in many other languages. Consequently it is the more common of the two spelling methods, as shown by the enclosed list of other-language Wikipedia articles.

This is what I came up with as a substitute:

In the United States and English-speaking Canada, the spelling aluminum predominates. The word is aluminium in British English and French and Aluminium in German.

My changes were reverted, so I'd like to find out why, since some of the statements in the longer excerpt above seem not to be valid or at least unsourced, or at least controversial.

Any comments?

Sincerely, your friend, GeorgeLouis 15:40, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

This section has been reworked several times so, like it says at the top of the page, tread lightly. In the first paragraph you removed the [citation needed] tag for an unproven statement, which you kept. You then deleted a statement which was sourced in the next paragraph, most of which you then went on to remove. Your substitute has two unsourced statements the second of which, by omission, is misleading. As I said in the edit comment, check the edit box when editing and look at the list of other-language versions of this article. Look at the proportion using the -ium ending. This is far more reliable than Google. Wiki-Ed 15:58, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

GeorgeLouis you've been given an answer to your question. Continued blanking of sections of the article is vandalism. Desist. Pfahlstrom the edit note was an instruction to you, not a citation. However, since you seem to be unable to do that, here's the complete list: af:Aluminium, ar:ألمنيوم, ast:Aluminiu, bn:অ্যালুমিনিয়াম, bs:Aluminijum, bg:Алуминий, ca:Alumini, cs:Hliník, cy:Alwminiwm, da:Aluminium, de:Aluminium, et:Alumiinium, el:Αργίλιο, es:Aluminio, eo:Aluminio, eu:Aluminio, fa:آلومینیوم, fr:Aluminium, gd:Almain, gl:Aluminio (elemento), ko:알루미늄, hr:Aluminij, io:Aluminio, id:Aluminium, is:Ál, it:Alluminio, he:אלומיניום, ku:Bafûn, la:Aluminium, lv:Alumīnijs, lb:Aluminium, lt:Aliuminis, hu:Alumínium, mk:Алуминиум, mi:Konumohe, nl:Aluminium, ja:アルミニウム, no:Aluminium, nn:Aluminium, ug:ئاليۇمىن, pl:Glin, pt:Alumínio, ru:Алюминий, simple:Aluminium, sl:Aluminij, sr:Алуминијум, sh:Aluminijum, fi:Alumiini, sv:Aluminium, ta:அலுமினியம், th:อะลูมิเนียม, vi:Nhôm, tr:Alüminyum, uk:Алюміній, zh-yue:鋁, zh:铝 I see no need for further debate about the spelling in other languages around the world. Since the only remaining unsourced comments relate to the spelling in the US/Canada I would suggest those with a problem direct their efforts to substantiating the following section: In the United States and English-speaking Canada, the spelling aluminium is largely unknown[citation needed], and the spelling aluminum predominates[citation needed]. Wiki-Ed 09:50, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I totally concur with Wiki-Ed. Pfahlstrom, if you want a citation for that remark, the explanation is in the next paragraph, so vide infra is enough. If you want that to be referenced, then every other fact in this article also need as {{reference needed}}. This is one of the points which is quite clear, unless you can find proof that it is otherwise. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:12, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Wiki-Ed seems to be confused about what statement I was saying was unreferenced. I’m not disputing use in other languages at all. I am only talking about use in International English, something which the above statement does not touch on. Beetstra on my talk page asked where I would suggest finding a citation for this. This claim is actually easy to substantiate for British English via the British National Corpus [8][9]. The other countries are less easy. Results from the International Corpus of English for Hong Kong, East Africa, India, and Singapore are slightly harder at [10]--they are downloadable but there is no on-web search interface. The New Zealand corpus is available only on CD-ROM and the ICE corpora for Australia, Canada, Fiji, Jamaica, Malaysia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, and the USA are not yet available. The American National Corpus is available only for a $75 fee. There may be easier ways to get a citation, but I haven't found one yet. I doubt there'd even be an entry in the English Usage book I have at work, but I'll check later in the day. —pfahlstrom 14:13, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Edgar181 added references, but his source does not address Canada and is not sufficient on the others—it just says 'aluminium' is "in use elsewhere in the world" and does not explain the usage in the U.S. other than by the American Chemical Society, information which was already included in the article (at one point if not now). —pfahlstrom 14:44, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you that it doesn't address Canada. But it does address usage in the rest of the world, and though it doesn't explicitly state the US usage (aside from the ACS) it's certainly implied. But anyway, I've added a separate reference that specifically addresses the US use. --Ed (Edgar181) 16:18, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I think a more specific reference would be preferable (also see below). —pfahlstrom 17:02, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I think I see where you have got confused. This is not about "international English"; at no point does the article say that it is. Your argument seems to be based on verification of usage in countries in which English is the first/official language. I think that is somewhat contrived and, as you will see from the discussions above (all 15 pages), this debate is not just about first-language English-speaking countries. In any case, Edgar181's source is quite unambiguous: "elsewhere" means everywhere. Wiki-Ed 15:22, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

"at no point does the article say that it is"...? But what the exact sentence I said was unsourced says is: "Elsewhere in other English-speaking countries the spelling 'aluminium' predominates." That sentence is talking about English-speaking countries, and that is the reference which was unsourced. (Though I see no reason to rule out other countries where English is widely spoken as an additional language or as a first language by a minority of the population.) The Los Alamos reference is not specific enough to use as primary evidence, because it would incorrectly imply that Canada also uses the aluminium spelling, and the World Wide Words article is itself unsourced. Now, the question is: Can the sentences in this paragraph be backed up with specific evidence? The answer: yes they can. I already did it for British English, and backing it up for the other countries only requires access to the right datasets. The above reference I provided also gives evidence for the sentence you deleted a month ago (or whenever it was) which you said was improve: that aluminum is almost unattested (in Great Britain, at least; I am unsure whether Northern Ireland is included in the corpus study).

Now, are the sentences in the paragraph phrased in the most suitable manner, and are corpora the best way to back up their statements? Perhaps not. It might be better to simply expand upon (and source) the previous paragraph to say something like that in dictionaries following American[11][12] or Canadian usage give only the spelling aluminum in the root entry and that aluminium is present only in a separate entry stating it is a "chiefly British" variant[13][14], and that dictionaries following non-U.S./Canadian usage similarly mark aluminum as "chiefly U.S."[15]. A statement such as that is quite easy to reference.

The only reason I see to offer corpora as evidence is that they would be a legitimate academic source that would fulfill the same role as the Google Test that has been so disparaged. And unless I am reading the history wrong, the desire to use the Google Test seems to be the only reason the statement about dictionaries isn't enough and why this paragraph is even in the article currently at all. —pfahlstrom 16:58, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I've added a couple more references. Greenwood (Greenwood, Norman N.; Earnshaw, Alan (1997). Chemistry of the Elements (2nd ed.). Butterworth-Heinemann. ISBN 978-0-08-037941-8.) refers to "aluminum" as being used in North America, indicating use in Canada. --Ed (Edgar181) 17:59, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I saw a reference like that elsewhere which was problematic—it said aluminium was "Brit/Cdn" and aluminum was "Nor Am." Confusion! I'm not an expert on Canadian English and don't have handy access to a Canadian English dictionary which is proven to be reliable; I see rather unofficial sites like [16][17]; comments from Canadians on this page indicate aluminum is favored, but it would be nice to have an official-ish source like the Oxford Dictionary of Canadian English--assuming it's correct; I've read criticisms by Canadians of Canadian dictionaries.—pfahlstrom 19:16, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Although I like the compromise you have suggested, there would still be a problem determining how many references to include for countries other than the US and Canada. Trying to differentiate between "English speaking countries" and countries in which English is spoken as an additional language is rather imprecise. Should we include countries where it is "official" but only spoken by a minority, like India? Or should we include countries where it is not official and there are a lot of second-language speakers, like the US? Up until now we were assuming Commonwealth English countries (aside from Canada) used the -ium spelling and other countries where English was spoken (one way or another) also used that spelling. This was illustrated by the prevalence of that spelling in the other languages spoken in those countries (as per the list above).

Not sure the spelling in the other languages is the best guideline—the country we're pretty sure about this on, Canada, has French speakers who use aluminium but not English speakers. So while I do believe most/all other Commonwealth countries use aluminium, the spelling in other local languages is weak evidence at best. —pfahlstrom 19:16, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I would tend to agree with your initial statement that it would be better to remove all the tags for this section - we all know the facts. However, it then opens the door to people who would delete things which conflict with their personal POV. Wiki-Ed 18:14, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I would indeed suggest to get it all referenced while we are at it, it would indeed keep people from having conflicts with what is written on the page. The only trouble is to find good references (is there a language-wikiproject that could help us here?). One would have to dig up 'official spellings' from all countries, and for what I know, there even might be internal differences (e.g. for NL see nl:groene boekje/en:Wordlist of the Dutch language vs. nl:witte boekje/en:White Booklet, I hope these do not disagree about nl:aluminium vs. nl:aluminum). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 18:34, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

The World Wide Words article seemed to use good sources, but didn't identify them all (such as when it says "a database of newspapers"—which database?). Anyway, it might work just to find US, Canadian, and UK sources (such as the corpora I linked above), and then link to some source which just generally says Commonwealth countries tend to follow UK spellings. —pfahlstrom 19:16, 22 August 2006 (UTC)