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Archive 1

Using Google

Google can be a useful tool for finding simple errors of various sorts such as repeated words. For example, the following Google search string: 

"with with" site:en.wikipedia.org -"talk:" -"user:"

Will find duplicates of "with" while skipping talk and user pages.

A significant downside of using Google is that it searches a cached version of Wikipedia that is not up-to-date. None-the-less, I have been able to make good use of it. Gaius Cornelius 17:32, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Capitalizing web addresses

Please be careful when running your script (or whatever it is you are running) over URLs. Microsoft servers won't care if you capitalize a letter in the URL, but *nix servers (the majority) will care, and will send you to a possibly non-existant page. Please try not to edit URLs. Thanks. --Cantus…☎ 01:47, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

That is true for paths of URLs, but the hostname portion of a URL is case insensitive, according to internet protocols for hostnames. While hostnames are traditionally presented in lowercase, people will sometimes capitalize them for emphasis or readability, such as IMDb.com or ThinkGeek.com. However, it would be very difficult to automate capitalization checks on these strings because the words are all run together. Basically, I agree that you should probably not edit the capitalization of URLs, but your statement isn't quite accurate. Podkayne 14:47, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

{ednote}

For those of us who are tagging problem sections while reading, and dont want to switch to edit mode, but still want to correct an issue, use Template:Ednote, usage {{ednote|[[problem]]}}, where "problem" is anything like WP:SELF, etc. -Ste|vertigo 21:41, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 13:41, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 18:46, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

How about some fake words?

It's an intrical part of Wikipedia to reduce fake words. There is no such word as "intrical". It's in Wikipedia twice, so I'm guessing it's a rare one. I don't see any real list of "non-words" being scanned for, and while it's possible I missed it (there's way too much here), I tried my best not to. --TIB (talk) 06:34, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

PerfectIt (computer program for easier copyediting)

I have just discovered a computer program for easier copyediting. See Intelligent Editing - Cleaner, Smarter, Better Documents.
-- Wavelength (talk) 02:59, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Ideas for future checks

In this place, I would like to exchange ideas about possible error patterns to search for in the article space. I would like to check for patterns that:

  1. Are easy to search for using regular expression matching (e.g. with grep or something similar)
  2. Have a low false alarm rate
  3. Occur frequently in the article space

Sietse 13:50, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

These are the future ideas for the project that I have seen on related pages, or heard from other people. If you have any other ideas, please add them here:

  • Other repeated words:
    • 'a a'
    • 'an an'
    • 'by by'
    • 'it it'
    • 'of of'
    • 'to to'
    • 'is is', 'are are', 'was was', 'were were'
    • 'has has', 'have have'
  • Frequent misspellings, especially
    • recieve, recieved, recieves, recieving
    • percieve, percieved, percieves, percieving
    • acheive, acheived, acheives, acheiving, acheivement, acheivements
  • Multiple interwiki tags for the same language
  • Level three headings without preceding level two headings
How about articles that contain the same link more than once? I remember reading a style guide (can't find it now) that said you should only mark up a link on its first occurrence unless there's a good reason to repeat the markup for readability (for example after starting a new major section). For extra credit, find pages that link to both a disambiguation page and a specific page on the same topic (until yesterday, Thimerosal did that). I realize these would require some heavy SQL. DavidBrooks 23:04, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
BTW no relation to DavidWBrooks! DavidBrooks
Word misuses, such as 'comprised of' -- Smjg 17:44, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
There are some legitimate cases for repeating words, but I presume that for most words, this can NEVER be the case. Thus, we could make or obtain a list of words where this can be the case, and check for any word not on the list being repeated. Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 06:43, 2005 Mar 20 (UTC)
You won't find much. I've already done that at User:R3m0t/Reports2. r3m0t talk 11:19, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

FYI

Bot request submitted to assist this Wikiproject - Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Cookies52. Mdann52 (talk) 13:24, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

"Greater then" and "less then"

In the past there was a request to search for "greater then" and "less then". Maybe we should add them to the list of common mistakes. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:00, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

The National Archives

Three years ago, The National Archives was changed from a redirect to the The National Archives (United Kingdom) to a redirect to List of national archives. This was a reasonable change - we shouldn't be UK-centric - but it left around seven hundred pages linking to the wrong place. Almost all of them should link to The National Archives (United Kingdom). That's too many to fix by hand, even with AWB, but it can't be automated. Perhaps a focused mass effort could do the job? Colonies Chris (talk) 18:26, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Colonies Chris, actually, this is what AWB was designed for. Leave a message at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks and somebody with bot privileges can handle the task. Should take 30 minutes. With redirects, it's best if you goto TfD and get permission to remove the template first. Bgwhite (talk) 18:54, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you're referring to. What template do you mean? I wasn't proposing to change any template. And it can't be done by bot because not every one of those links needs to go to the UK version, just the vast majority, so only semi-automated handling could do it right. Colonies Chris (talk) 19:06, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
@Bgwhite: the understanding of bot policies which is implied by your comments is significantly different from what I believe to be the case. Something like this would, in my opinion, be a completely new task for a bot and would require running the bot through a separate approval process for this specific task. Bots are approved for specific tasks, not just generally for bot like actions for any task the bot operator chooses to implement without specific approval. This is all beside the point as this change does not appear to be appropriate for an AWB-bot.
Note that from a technical standpoint, this task might be at least partially automated. Any link which existed significantly prior to the redirect being changed away from The National Archives (United Kingdom) could be changed to point to that page with a low incidence of false positives. However, the number of changes is a bit low for the relative difference in effort required for bot approval vs. semi-automated, human reviewed edits. However, even those changes where the date of adding the link is checked, would probably be considered a context sensitive change which are explicitly not to be performed by bot.
The suggestion to post this at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks is a good one. This type of semi-automated, human-reviewed change is the type of edit at which AWB is quite good. Someone, or more than one person, watching that page should be able to run through these in a reasonable amount of time. — Makyen (talk) 21:40, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
@Makyen: Majority of AWB bots already do template substitution on every edit. It is part of "General fixes" and the majority of AWB bots have permission to do general fixes. However, having a substitution task be the primary reason is a trivial edit, thus needs permission. Going thru RfD, CSD or other venues is thus required. On my AWB bots, I add the following to the edit summary, "Do general fixes if a problem exists." Bgwhite (talk) 22:34, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
I'm still baffled about where this talk of templates has come from. At no point have I suggested I wanted to change, substitute or delete any template. I just want to correctly pipe a link that needs to be more specific. Colonies Chris (talk) 23:28, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

LanguageTool

I've been using LanguageTool to correct some common mistakes in the Spanish and English Wikipedia. You should take a look at it. Macofe (talk) 21:14, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal

Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

New Database Dumps?

Is it time for some fresh database dumps? --Guy Macon (talk) 08:11, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Suggested edit summary

This mechanical bug fixing and various robots itterfere with monitoring anon vandals. I suggest in the future to propose two suggestions for edit summary: one as usual, another with indication that the previous contributor was an anon. E.g.,

  1. fix miscapitalisation; please help us fix common mistakes in the article space
  2. fix miscapitalisation (after anon edit); please help us fix common mistakes in the article space

Mikkalai 03:12, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

How does it interfere? Doesn't the javascript-enhanced RC listing avoid this problem? The wikis are so awfully slow these days that I am a bit reluctant to spend even more time waiting for the history page to display. But if this is really a serious problem for you, I'm willing to make an effort. Sam Hocevar 00:31, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I have been doing it like this:
Fixed " a a " error.
( [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Fix common mistakes|Fixed " a a " error.]] )
--Guy Macon (talk) 05:12, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

an an

When I click on the link for "an an", I get some results like the following:

"The SEAL on the right is holding an AN/PAQ-1 LTD"

"On 19 August 2012, an An-26-100 flying for Alfa Airlines crashed"

"An AN/PVS-14 night vision device"

Is there a way to search for "an an " (added space at the end) instead on "an an"? --Guy Macon (talk) 23:45, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Guy Macon, in theory I searched for <space>an<space>an<space>, so there shouldn't be any examples that you describe. What articles are they are in? Maybe I forgot to add the last space and I can do a new search. Bgwhite (talk) 02:32, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
On Wikipedia:WikiProject Fix common mistakes#Duplicated words!, if you click on "an an" in the error column you get a Google search:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22an+an%22%3A+site%3Aen.wikipedia.org
The database dump column appears to be fine, except that it was not obvious to me that I needed to click on the date instead of on the more intuitive "an an".
That being said, is there a way to get either Wikipedia search or Google search to only return results with a trailing space? There is a benefit to checking the current version instead of a 7-month-old search.
Guy Macon, The database dump for "an an" is from August 2014. The column "Latest database dump". It is the most recent dump as there was no September's dump. Bgwhite (talk) 08:32, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
Ah. "7 months ago" is when it was last checked. I am going to go through the list and fix as appropriate. This seems like a nice, low-stress activity that will improve the encyclopedia without generating a bunch of drama. Thanks! --Guy Macon (talk) 08:40, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Time ago

  • There was a problem with the Time Ago column not reporting the correct amount of, well, 'time ago'. Needed to change 'time ago' to 'Time ago', and that corrected the problem.
  • Also, sorry I haven't paid too much attention to the Talk page until now. Thanks Guy Macon for your extensive work (!), and as always, thank you Bgwhite for the database dumps! Sct72 (talk) 21:24, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
(Smile) I have been struggling with some medical issues, and while recovering it has been rather relaxing to just sit at the keyboard making uncontroversial typo fixes. Plus, I end up reading pages about things and people I didn't even know existed. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:29, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
Ha, why do you think I'm here! And I agree with the finding out things part too! Sct72 (talk) 02:37, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

New tool and a Wiki-gnome makes the news

New tool for finding common mistakes:

http://corpus.byu.edu/wiki/

A Wiki-gnome makes the news:

--Guy Macon (talk) 01:10, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Bot Request

I have submitted a Bot Request for someone to write a bot to update the lists. Wikipedia:Bot requests#Bot to updated lists at WikiProject Fix common mistakes. Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 10:37, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Marked as resolved and archived at Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 63#Bot to updated lists at WikiProject Fix common mistakes, but I see eleven common mistakes that haven't had a database dump since November 12, 2014. So where is the once-a-month bot? --Guy Macon (talk) 07:18, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
As far as I know, it is still a manual update process. Sct72 (talk) 17:57, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Bot requests#Update the lists at WikiProject Fix common mistakes --Guy Macon (talk) 18:45, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Copyright Violation Detection - EranBot Project

A new copy-paste detection bot is now in general use on English Wikipedia. Come check it out at the EranBot reporting page. This bot utilizes the Turnitin software (ithenticate), unlike User:CorenSearchBot that relies on a web search API from Yahoo. It checks individual edits rather than just new articles. Please take 15 seconds to visit the EranBot reporting page and check a few of the flagged concerns. Comments welcome regarding potential improvements. These possible copyright violations can be searched by WikiProject categories. Use "control-f" to jump to your area of interest (if such a copyvio is present).

This is not the bot you requested above, but it is very useful. Keep up the good work of fixing common mistakes. --Lucas559 (talk) 19:31, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the input and help on WP:FIX! Sct72 (talk) 17:59, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
Related: There are some instructions for copyright cleanup at articles for creation here: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive274#Copyright cleanup help. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:26, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

WP Fix common mistakes - wikilinked in January 12 Tip-Of-The-Day

Greetings! FYI, the new TOTD for Tip of the day/January 12, Avoiding common mistakes mentions this WP and the WP:FIX shortcut.

This tip was recently added at the TOTD Schedule Queue and posted at the Tips library. Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 20:56, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

The the

Seems to me that the "the the" list includes a lot of false hits because the test doesn't do a whole word test -- in other words, it's getting things like "The then governor..." or "The theory" or "the thenar eminence". --jpgordon{gab} 18:45, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I've seen some pages like that, but if I continued searching there was an incidence of "the the" as well. If you didn't look further, you may wish to try that. If you did look, and didn't find it, perhaps the test should be updated. Examples would be nice.... --Brian A. Sayrs (talk) 18:52, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Jpgordon: I have replied on your talkpage. Everybody else: if you see any entries in which the version of November 26th (including comments!) did not contain 'the the', please notify me and tell me the title of the article. That should not happen. As Brian says, it it possible that an article also contains instances of 'the theory' or other similar patterns, or that entries have already been fixed by someone else. Sietse 21:00, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Sietse: Based on your last comment, "it it" may need to be checked, too!  :) Brian
;-) Oh irony! Well, I'll add it to the list, maybe I'm not the only one. Sietse 22:24, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

User:Doradus wrote in an edit summary of the project page: ETA contains two instances of "the then" but no "the the"

That is because the checks are against the database copy of November 26th. This instance of 'the the' was fixed on November 29th. Please see this diff. Sietse 22:52, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
As of November 2015 I am working on the the with 1300 done so far. There are 3741 of them and I do this in my spare time so it will take a few weeks. Medical issues slowed me down a bit, but I should be able to pick up the pace in the weeks ahead. I am finding about 30% to be already fixed, but it takes me almost no time to skip those so this is not an issue for me. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:48, 14 November 2015 (UTC)
BTW, did you know that there is a band called "The The" and a song by Elliot Ingber titled "The The The The"? The things you learn working on Wikipedia... --Guy Macon (talk) 20:56, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

and and

This is very often only ...land and. Can someone programm the searching bot to skip these? --U2fanboi (talk) 10:32, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

  • Hi! We only handle " and and " instances. So any instances of 'land and', 'band and', etc. would not be corrected. We have lists of articles to work off of with the grammar error in question, as opposed to a search bot within the project - the database dumps as far as I know do not pick up anything else. Additionally, if you find an error correction that was not valid, feel free to revert it. Thank you! Sct72 (talk) 22:24, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

The Spell-Checker Song


The Spell-Checker Song: Owed to a Spell Czech Her

Eye halve a spelling chequer.
It came with my pea sea.
It plane lee marks four my Rhea view,
Miss steaks aye Ken knot see.

Iran this Poe Em threw it.
Your shore lee glad two no.
It is core wrecked in every weigh,
My chequer tolled me sew.

A Czech her is a bless sing.
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right stiles ewe can reed,
And aides me when aye rime.

Eye strike a key and type a word.
And weight four it two say.
Weather eye am wrong oar write.
It shows me strait aweigh.

Each frays come posed up on my screen,
Is trussed two bee a Joule.
The check Ur pours o'er every word,
To Czech sum spelling rule.

As soon as a mist ache is maid.
It nose bee fore two long.
And eye can put the error rite.
Its rare lea ever wrong.

Bee fore a veiling cheque curs,
hour spelling mite decline.
If wee R. lacks oar have a laps,
We wood bee maid two wine.

Butt now bee cause my spelling,
Is checked with such grate flare,
There are know faults with in my cite,
Of nun eye am a wear.

Now spelling does knot phase me,
It does knot bring a tier.
My pay purrs awl due glad den,
With words sew fare too here.

2 rite with care is quite a fete,
Of witch won should bee proud;
and wee mussed dew the best week Anne,
Sew flaws argh[1] knot aloud.

Sow ewe can sea why aye dew prays.
Such soft wear four pea seize.
And why eye brake in 2 averse
With righting sure too please.

Attribution: I composed the above as a modification of various versions found on the web labeled "author unknown" or some such. Later I discovered this page, which appears to document the original sources, and my version is clearly a heavily modified derivative version of what is listed on that page. To whatever extent the above is my own work, I release it under the Creative Commons CC0 license. --Guy Macon
--Guy Macon (talk) 21:38, 14 November 2015 (UTC) [Citation Needed]

Correct Usage of "be be"

There are multiple articles that correctly use "be be" in context. What is the best way to flag these articles such that are not continually added to the list and then curated out again on a repetitive basis? Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Slanders13 (talk • contribs) 00:51, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

  • Hi Slanders13, with regard to your query, check out the link on the section directly above this one. There's some discussion about adding a blacklist to the database dump process there, and they could probably better assist with that than I could. Thank you for your assistance on WP:FIX! Sct72 (talk) 00:42, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Input requested in BRFA

Hi, per the request at Wikipedia:Bot requests#Update the lists at WikiProject Fix common mistakes (oh, and Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 63#Bot to updated lists at WikiProject Fix common mistakes), I've gone ahead and put together a script to update the lists. Your input on the bot request for approval should be valuable .  Hazard SJ  03:37, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

removed entries Feb 2017

I am going through and addressing the the entries and removing items from the list of duplicate the items....some of which were randomly cleanup and some I give credit to John of Reading. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Curdigirl (talk • contribs) 05:57, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Slight bug

As I was going through the dump, the tool flagged a certain article as having "is is". However, in that scenario, its usage was correct. Is there a way to mark such a page as "correct"? Blorper234 (talk) 01:44, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Another way of fixing.

I have been going through these links:

With these links you can search for articles with grammar mistakes and spelling mistakes. I suggest you put this on the main "Fix Common Mistakes" Page. I have finished many sections for Repetition and misspelling such as using 12nd instead of 12th. This would benefit the page a lot and right now is stuck at the "See also" page. This needs to shine more. AmericanAir88 (talk) 18:18, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

    • Hi! Yes I agree with this completely - in fact I did work on the Grammar and miscellaneous page. I have requested new database dumps, but in the interim I would totally recommend these links. Thank you! Sct72 (talk) 02:54, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

More Frequent Dump Updates

Hi everyone, I've just made a few changes that will hopefully update the dumps a lot more frequently (anticipated twice per month since that's how frequently dumps are made), and without needing to be manually started by me. Hopefully everything works out with that, but let me know if you see any issues (e.g. doesn't seem to be running).  Hazard SJ  17:16, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

List entries fixed from the 20170120 dump subsequently re-appearing on the 20170401 dump

The only anomaly I could find that may have caused this was that when Becky Sayles cleared the final list of entries on February 23 shown here she had not in fact altered the entries themselves, many of which weren't checked and changed until the next day, February 24. I don't know if this played a part, but when the next dump occurred on 20170401 almost all the entries that were cleared from the list by Becky Sayles on Feb 23 but weren't changed in the articles until Feb 24 were again present in the 20170401 dump, and as of September 21 are still present on the list even though all of them were corrected on Feb 24. My question is why do these corrected entries still persist in appearing on these data dumps after being corrected over seven months ago? SpintendoTalk 19:08, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

  • I'm looking at the version of the page dated 06:52 30 January 2017 (1472 entries) vs. 03:45 23 April 2017 (1117 entries) and I'm not seeing the issue you describe. If an entry reappears on the list, it may be a false positive and there is currently nothing in the database dumps that exclude those. Additionally, in the past I have been working a list only to find that someone has already done the entries without clearing them off the individual dump list. The dumps do not run automatically or monthly, I have to request them from Hazard-SJ. I'm not sure if those are archived or not, but you may want to ask them for further info. Thank you for your work on WP:FIX. Sct72 (talk) 20:23, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Watchers of this page may also be interested in Wikipedia:Typo Team/moss, a project to find misspellings and typos (including some that occur in dozens of articles). -sche (talk) 19:37, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

Spell checker bug

Your spell checker flagged Herosé, but it showed up in the misspellings list as simply "hero".

Thanks for the bug report. The problem seems to be that it doesn't handle special characters (like the acute accent) properly. I have removed these false positives from the list and will fix it with the next version of the spellchecker. Sietse 14:23, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Extra \

Page titles containing an apostrophe had extra backslash characters in the links. I removed them, and you should correct this in the future. Eric119 03:48, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, I didn't notice those entries; I have a greyscale monitor, so red links don't really stand out on my screen. I'll take care of this in the next listing. Sietse 08:52, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

One of the only...

I nominate "one of the only" as a common mistake [2]

This is acceptable if

  • followed by a number (though "one of the only three...' is often better put "one of only three...", I think)
  • legitimately found in a quote

Otherwise it should say "one of very few..." or "one of a small number...".

Reasoning: "one of" implies membership in a larger group. If there is no larger group, then it is "the only" without "one of"; but if there is a larger group, then it is "one of" but not "the only". -- Verbarson  talkedits 15:05, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

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