Talk:Stop word

just an opinion, but i do not support the redirect from the phrase 'stop words', as this term is considered mainstream enough in the academic literature to be used as a single word and not two separate words. i think some editor was carried away and did not have the academic background to recognize just how common this is used as a single word. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jfroelich (talk • contribs) 00:39, November 17, 2006 (UTC)

The concept of "stop" words (and "stop" lists) seems to be commonly expressed in both ways depending on context and the domain in which it is used, so I think the redirect is valid (though I am not the individual who instituted the redirect, so I cannot speak for them). My wife is studying information retrieval at the graduate level, and the concept is expressed as separate terms (stop words vs. stopwords) in her textbooks.69.109.243.230 20:18, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've studied Natural Language Processing at a graduate level, and also found that textbooks, scientific papers, and codebases reference stopwords, rather than stop words. On the other hand, the term is certainly used both ways in the world at large.

My instinct would be to keep the redirect, but change the article itself to be titled "Stopword". Guess I should read the Wikipedia guidelines around these kinds of situations. (The article about email is titled Email, not E-mail) WittyQuote (talk) 19:19, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Etymology

I’d be interested in an explanation why stop words are called “stop words”, as these words are “ignored”, “skipped” etc., but neither stop the indexing of a document nor a search. They are not named after John Stop, are they? ;-) A safeword would be an example of a word that is actually supposed to stop something and hence a more plausible candidate for being called a “stop word” for a non-native English speaker like me. – Ocolon (talk) 09:28, 26 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]