Talk:Phloeophagy

This is a work in progress. There is a problem. When Wikipedia publishes a definition it soon afterwards (sometimes within minutes) appears on Google. This happens whether it is nonsense or not. The term phloeophagy is derived from the Greek via the word phloem, which is pronounced "flow-em", not "fleem". Quite commonly in English, and increasingly so in recent years, words of Greek origin that originally were spelt in English with the (frequently ligatured) "oe" and the pronuniation "ee". Examples include oedema and oesophagus, which now increasingly are being spelt without the O as edema and esophagus. This is widely regarded as an acceptable and soon may be universal practice. However this does not apply, or should not, to words such as phloem in which the two letters are not ligatured and the oe amounts to a disyllable.

Phloeophagy is such a word, but whether from ignorance of the source or because of simple finger trouble, the word has been entered in Wikipedia in several places without the initial o, and now largely in reaction, it appears as such in hundreds of places in Google. Ironically, because the original word phloeophagy is rarely used (it is a comparatively recent construction in biology; this is understandable, because "bark eating" is hardly a term that most of us use on a daily basis) the error now actually occurs several times more often in Google than the correct spelling does. This is not just a matter of spelling preference, such as encyclopedia/encyclopaedia, but an actual error in form. It would be extremely embarrassing if such an illiteracy were shown to originate largely or completely from Wikipedia, and I am doing my best to cram the worms back into the can. Any assistance would be welcome. JonRichfield (talk) 12:44, 11 September 2012 (UTC)