User talk:SpNeo/Archive2

Defense Against the Dark Arts

In the Harry Potter books, Defense Against the Dark Arts is spelled with an "s", which I understand to be the correct British spelling. I have checked the books themselves, and they use s, as does the [Harry Potter Lexicon], just as one reference example. Please do not change the spelling to "Defence" in Harry Potter articles. Thank you. EvilPhoenix 15:37, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

Replied on user's page. SpNeo 16:29, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

Spelling

What is with this systematically changing US spellings to British spelling at articles like Romania? -- Jmabel | Talk 19:35, July 30, 2005 (UTC)

I've been copy-editing a large number of Britain- and Commonwealth-related articles that didn't have consistent spelling.

Romania is of course an exception, it is not a Britain-related topic. I've standardized the spelling in the article because it was a mix of BrE and AmE. I'm using a program that gives a very detailed overview of the spelling used in an article. For example, the output for London looks like this:

Analysing en_check.txt
Results: (text length 9144 words) 

UK total: 45 words:
organisations (2x) / centres (3x) / centre (22x) / neighbouring (1x) / characterised (1x) /    
organised (1x) / neighbourhood (1x) / labour (3x) / modernised (1x) / favourable (1x) / specialises  
(2x) / organisation (1x) / computerised (1x) / centred (2x) / specialise (1x) / flavour (1x) /  
subsidised (1x) /  

US total 0 words: 

UK spelling ratio: 4.92126 / 1000 words.
US spelling ratio: 0 / 1000 words.

Maybe standardizing spelling in "neutral" articles like Romania is a bit overambitious. If the edit really bothers you, please feel free to revert it. There is unfortunately no clear answer to the question which spelling to use in "neutral" articles (not related to any English-speaking country). Maybe we should accept mixed spelling in such articles. SpNeo 16:54, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Of course, the differences between British and American English are not confined to spellings. They embrace punctuation, grammar, choice of words and syntax. Should you not be looking at these aspects of articles too? jguk 17:16, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm not necessarily that uncomfortable with this, but being an American and having written a large portion of Romania, it surprises me to be told that its previous version was previously predominantly UK.

Question: if you are using automation to do this, how do you avoid rewording quotations or book titles? (You can reply here, I'll watchlist your page for a while.) -- Jmabel | Talk 17:39, July 31, 2005 (UTC)

Output for Romania was (before my standardization): recognised (4x) / emphasise (1x) / metres (1x) / privatisation (1x) / neighbouring (1x) / UK spelling: 8x

I changed five spellings to BrE to make the article consistent.

The articles are analysed automatically as explained above, but I do the spelling standardization myself using the Firefox Spellbound Extension + the output of my program. It's a very effective and fast way of standardizing spelling and at the same time correcting (lots of!) typos. I'm very careful not to change spellings in quotations, book titles, etc. SpNeo 18:06, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

• I believe "metres" shouldn't count because it is simply Wikipedia standard. And while "recognised" (4x!) is consistently used in UK, it is also a perfectly common U.S. spelling. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:59, July 31, 2005 (UTC)

SI units are Wikipedia standard, but I'm quite sure that both "meter" and "metre" are perfectly all right. As far as "recognised" is concerned, I don't think it can be called a "perfectly common U.S. spelling". As far as I know there is not a single American dictionary giving "recognised" in the main entry or as a variant. Do you know any American publishing house/newspaper or author that spells "recognise"? SpNeo 08:06, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Couldn't offhand say. I just know that I've seen it reasonably often in informal writing by Americans, and that it doesn't leap out at me the way "recognise" or "idealise" would. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:09, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

That's interesting. You're saying that "recognise" strikes you as unusual, but "recognised" doesn't? Maybe some Americans prefer "recognised" for aesthetic reasons (it looks "softer" than recognized)? SpNeo 13:50, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I've seen "-ised" more often from U.S. writers than just "-ise". No idea why. I suppose it is inconsistent, never gave it much thought. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:07, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

In a "neutral article" do you ever standardize to American English? Maurreen (talk) 18:40, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

The number of "neutral articles" I standardized is small, I usually stick to Britain-related topics. But let me reply to your question - yes, I've standardized "neutral articles" to American English. See, for example:

[1],

[2],

[3],

[4],

[5] among others.

Please note that I've discontinued using spelling tags.

What do you think about standardizing "neutral articles" Maurreen? Is is acceptable or should I rather stick to UK/US topics like Microsoft and Harry Potter (which I have both standardized)? SpNeo 02:03, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't object as long as you go both ways (as you are doing), you use a wide margin to determine which type is predominant, and you tread lightly. That is, if there are any objections by anyone who had added information to the article, I think it's best to let it go. Maurreen (talk) 02:29, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

Thank you for your copyedit to the Hungary article (and of course all the others). It's really great that you take the time to do this, and apparently in a quite efficient manner too. Keep it up. KissL 08:46, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Spelling

Hi. I encountered your series of spelling changes at Franz Kafka and commented thereupon at Talk:Franz Kafka. I think that your method for determining which way to standardize spelling needs to take into account an article's history. Instead of changing the spelling to conform to the majority of dialect-specific forms, you should check the article's history for the first use of a dialect-specific form and use that for standardizing the spelling. I understand the method you are using is trying to follow the policy that says "If an article is predominantly written in one type of English, aim to conform to that type...", but in cases where the minority national spelling is more than marginal, it's best to find out what the original usage was rather than rely on a strict mathematical calculation. Further, it may be that somewhere in the article's history a number of spellings were changed from one form to another, in violation of policy, and the correct thing to do would be to revert those changes. Finally, even if you decide to ignore my suggestions, I humbly request that at the very least you post on the talk page the output from your spelling overview program on each article whose spellings you normalize, so that we might know exactly why the spellings were changed the way they were. This way, future editors will understand that the particular spelling chosen was done so for a (presumably valid) reason, and will be less likely to change to the opposite forms.

I approve in general of the task you are undertaking, and only wish to help you refine it. Cheers! Nohat 08:48, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

PS I am curious about your program. Please tell me more or send me a copy. Thanks. Nohat 08:49, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Replied on user's talk page. SpNeo 12:33, 10 August 2005 (UTC)