From tplate at acm.org  Thu Dec  8 21:12:58 2005
From: tplate at acm.org (Tony Plate)
Date: Thu, 08 Dec 2005 13:12:58 -0700
Subject: [Rd] typo in `eurodist'
In-Reply-To: <XFMail.051208185807.Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk>
References: <XFMail.051208185807.Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <439893CA.70809@acm.org>

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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[Rd] typo in `eurodist'
Tony Plate