[Rd] typo in `eurodist'
Tony Plate
tplate at acm.org
Thu Dec 8 21:12:58 CET 2005
I would be wary of taking frequency of misspelling as an indication of
"correctness".
Witness the following Google counts:
Amateur (correct): 52,300,000
Amature: 2,800,000
Amatuer: 2,660,000
Ameteur: 619,000
Ameture: 941,000
Ametuer: 574,000
Here's a common misspelling at > %10
Collectible (correct): 26,900,000
Collectable: 4,140,000
More targets at
http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/misspelled.html
(BTW, one can find a list of "commonly misspelt wods" using Google :-)
-- Tony Plate
(Ted Harding) wrote:
> On 08-Dec-05 Martin Maechler wrote:
>
>>>>>>>"Torsten" == Torsten Hothorn <torsten at hothorn.de>
>>>>>>> on Thu, 8 Dec 2005 08:51:57 +0100 (CET) writes:
>>
>> Torsten> On Wed, 7 Dec 2005, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
>> >> I've often wondered about that.
>> Torsten> and the copy editor did too :-)
>>
>> >> I've presumed that the names were
>> >> deliberate, so have you checked the stated source? It's not
>> >> readily available to me (as one would expect in Oxford)?
>>
>> Torsten> our library doesn't seems to have a copy of `The
>> Torsten> Cambridge Encyclopaedia', so I can't check
>> Torsten> either. Google has 74.900 hits for `Gibralta'
>> Torsten> (more than one would expect for a typo, I think)
>> Torsten> and 57.700.000 for `Gibraltar'.
>>
>> Torsten> So maybe both spellings are in use.
>>
>>Well, do you expect web authors to have a much lower rate of
>>typos than 1:770 ?
>>My limited experience on "google voting for spelling correction"
>>has rather lowered my expectation on webauthors' education in
>>orthography...
>>
>>Martin
>
>
> Hmmm ... Using my Google's "Results ... of about xxx":
>
>
> Gibraltar 50,700,000
> Gibralta 75,200
> Gibraltr 573
> Gibralar 836
> Gibratar 1,020
> Gibrltar 349
> Gibaltar 1,850
> Giraltar 530
> Gbraltar 352
> ibralter 576
>
> I'm not proposing to get exhaustive about this, but a few further
> experiments suggest that other specific typos are typically O(500)
> in frequency:
>
> Gibralatar 589
> Gibrlatar 618
> Gibrltar 349
> Gobraltar 652
>
>
> So -- if anyone can find a typo of "Gibraltar" which googles to
> more than 5000 hits (excepting "Gibralta")?
>
> Best wishes,
> Ted.
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk>
> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861
> Date: 08-Dec-05 Time: 18:58:04
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