Wikipedia:Adopt-a-typo

The Adopt-a-typo project aims to maintain the quality of Wikipedia by purging it of some of the most common typos. It is a focused effort of the Wikipedia Typo Team.

Wikipedia is an evolving resource. Even if you completely correct Wikipedia of some typo today, the same typo will creep back in with time. "Typo adoption" is a defense against that by encouraging users to periodically check Wikipedia for particular typos using special searches on their user page.

If you do adopt a typo, please let us know and add it to the I Just Found A Home page.

Searching for typos
The first step in adopting a typo is knowing how to find your typo. One easy way to do this is by putting a link on your user page that searches for the item you want to "adopt". This is easily done via the Search link template,

For example, to search for all occurrences of "privledge [sic]" (a misspelling of "privilege") on the English Wikipedia, you could use the following code:

This searches for matches to "privledge [sic]" (search string shown in red above) but will also find "privledges [sic]" and "privledged [sic]" because they contain the search string as a substring. The red text is the query string, while the blue text is the link label. Colors are used here just so you can easily see the parts of the template and have nothing to do with the template itself. The link label can be whatever you like but it is helpful to note the "additional" misspellings it can find beyond just the search term, which is why the link label in the example was chosen how it was. The "ns0", "ns14", and "ns100" specify the namespaces (main, category, and portal, respectively) in which you would like to perform the search (see Namespace for the other code numbers). You can customize your search for only those namespaces you want. Keep in mind, however, that not all parts of Wikipedia (like the talk and user namespaces) should have spelling mistakes fixed. See WP:DONTFIX.

Here is an example of how the above code is rendered:.

Typos and AutoWikiBrowser
If a typo has no or almost no false positives then it is usually more suitable for semi-automated fixing by AWB users. Sometimes there is a backlog of tens of thousands of articles with potential AWB fixes, but AWB users will get around to them eventually, and they can fix far more typos per hour than editors who don't use automation. So Adopt-a-typo is most useful if you adopt a typo that has too many false positives for AWB, or can only be partly done in AWB, or is embarrassing and should be prioritized. For example: "pubic" is commonly a typo for "public", but is also a word used in over 800 Wikipedia articles. "Pubication", "pubic school" and "pubic library" are all in AWB, but "pubic" itself has far too many false positives for AWB. Thus, "pubic" is a good candidate for the adopt-a-typo program as it has over 700 false positives screened out via the patrol process.

Varieties of English
Bear in mind that there are hundreds of American and British English spelling differences. Per MOS:RETAIN an article should not usually be edited simply to change from one variety of English to another, unless spelling is inconsistent within that article.

Adopting a typo
All you have to do to "adopt" a typo is decide upon some specific typo you want to adopt and occasionally search and fix instances you find. You can adopt as many typos as you wish. A big family is a happy family! It is helpful to put links somewhere on your user page to remind yourself to "nurture" your typos and to make searching for them easy. While some typos naturally require more attention than others, the frequency of care that you give to your adopted typos is completely up to you. Adopting a typo suggests that you intend to provide them with some attention but, unlike a real baby, you do not have to worry about negligence and nobody will be upset if you are a "bad" parent.

Userboxes are a good way to proudly proclaim that you have adopted a typo. They also allow for easy linking to your search term. You can even specify a color (pink, blue, or yellow) for your typo. Here are some ways the user box may be used and how it appears using "abbriviated" [sic] as an example:

Please note that a given word has many possible misspellings. You may wish to adopt its "brothers" and "sisters".

You do not need to specify the name of the adopted typo, or its gender. Just leave those parameters blank. See Template:Adopt-a-typo for full instructions on its use.

Multiple users may adopt the same typo. This is a good thing because some typos are common and require extra care while others are neglected by their other parents. If you adopt a typo that has already been adopted, if you prefer, you can think of yourself as a Typo Nanny. Parents requesting nanny assistance can be found here.

Nursery
This section is intended to provide links to subpages that contain large collections of related typos that are common enough to require communal help.


 * MOS:APPENDIX headings
 * Cite template parameters

Adopt-a-typo promo
A promotional post for Adopt-a-typo can be used by adding the template aatt. It can be found for modification under Template:Adopt-a-typo Talk. If you see someone who seems the type to adopt a typo, please post it to their talk page.

Lists of common misspellings
Need help to decide what typo to adopt? Many are available at Lists of common misspellings.