Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 February 20

= February 20 =

between … to
Isn't it bad grammar to use ? If so, would it be possible to correct the ~450 hits from in a consistent way that allows using a bot? --Leyo 03:16, 20 February 2016 (UTC)


 * If you mean "between X to Y", yes, that's bad grammar. Try "from X to Y" or "between X and Y". StuRat (talk) 03:20, 20 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm sure most of those should be corrected, but with a bot you'd have to be careful to watch out for false positives. For example, "We were between a rock and a hard place, to use an old expression." Or "Between 9 to 5 and an evening shift, I prefer evenings." --Amble (talk) 04:33, 20 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Looking through the first 40 hits in your link, I don't find any false positives. Those all should be reworded.  Now I see that your search limits itself to "between (number) to ..." which probably won't get any false positives.  It does mean there are probably other examples that your search won't find that should also be corrected if possible.  Thanks. --Amble (talk) 04:41, 20 February 2016 (UTC)


 * It may be poor grammatically, but it's a common enough structure that you need to beware of 'correcting' quoted speech. Matt Deres (talk) 17:03, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for the answers. Any help to correct the errors (e.g. using AWB) is greatly appreciated. --Leyo 11:00, 20 February 2016 (UTC)
 * In my experience on Wikipedia, the most common occurrence is in the form between the years 1850-1985 or simply between 1850-1985. So you'd have to search for to written as "-" or as "–". Loraof (talk) 17:18, 20 February 2016 (UTC)
 * That's indeed quite common, see . :-(
 * Note there are false positives among these hits, e.g. the first 40 include "between 11-20-07 and 01-30-08" and "between 2004–05 and 2008–09" --My another account (talk) 09:44, 21 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Surely, there are some false-positives. That is what makes correcting efficiently quite difficult. --Leyo 19:05, 21 February 2016 (UTC)


 * If you would like to consider words instead of number, there are ~220 hits using . --Leyo 22:36, 20 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Most of these are false positives, too. --My another account (talk) 09:44, 21 February 2016 (UTC)


 * A related peeve is from 1910–1936 (to when?). —Tamfang (talk) 09:17, 21 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Isn't there a place, where such types of errors are being collected (and fixed by multiple users)? --Leyo 19:05, 21 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Why collect them rather than repair them ad hoc? —Tamfang (talk) 09:53, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, there are simply too many hits for me alone to fix. --Leyo 23:38, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Is it easier to gather them than to correct them? —Tamfang (talk) 04:20, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
 * If the search links above could be modified in a way that false-positives are excluded, an automated correction would be possible. --Leyo 11:45, 23 February 2016 (UTC)