Wikivoyage talk:List of common misspellings

Please use this page to discuss the way the spell checker (which is a "special" page that doesn't have its own talk page) works.

To discuss spellings, spelling policy, etc. please use Wikivoyage_talk:Spelling - thanks.

Discussion

several sections have been moved from here to Wikivoyage_talk:Spelling

Highlight/preview suggestion/question

Any way by which Wiki can highlight such common mistakes, by a diffrent color in the preview mode, so that it can be caught easily? (WT-en) Srijith 22:49, 9 Jan 2004 (EST)

Spelling Error Qualifiers (...)

I felt that the spelling list - as it stood - was rather uninformative about the reason for the mispelling appearing, so I added a note like: (american spelling). It appears to work only if the plain text is added, wikification does not appear to work. I hope this helps with spelling since I use New Zealand English and think the american spellings look wrong; so the explanatory note makes it clear why the spelling error has been detected. -- (WT-en) Huttite 05:35, 8 Apr 2004 (EDT)

Don't check construct

There are a number of places where a word appears to be misspelled but isn't e.g. the name of a hotel called Acomodation Inn. This is its actual name, not a misspelling. We need a construct e.g. <nospellcheck> ... </nospellcheck> which can be put around the words so they don't appear in the list. --(WT-en) Nzpcmad 13:54, 10 Mar 2005 (EST)

Is the construct suggested above possible?

There needs to be an option to either use or else to ignore the construct when requesting the "Pages with misspellings" maintenance page.

Perhaps a spelling checker option that checked only plain text vs checking all text? Thus you could do a check that ignored all highlighted, italic, bolded, or linked text. This option would allw you to screen out the formal names by highlighting them in some way. Just a thought as a feature request. - (WT-en) Huttite 01:53, 25 Dec 2005 (EST)

Spell checker - moved or broken?

The "See the spell checker for pages which contain the following misspellings:" link no longer works.

Spell checker is also missing from Special:Specialpages.

This was part of MediaWiki 1.4 (circa-2004) but was omitted from subsequent versions of the software. It hasn't worked for a decade or so. K7L (talk) 14:12, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Purpose

I had never seen this page until the latest edit to it. What's its purpose, and how can it be of any use if no-one sees it? Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:38, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Back before you first joined us, Ikan Kekek, (but after the great spelling debate where, in return for using what Evan described as a quirky, unusual but nevertheless valid US spelling of traveller and travelling rather than traveler and traveling together with a date format of dd Mmm yyyy throughout our guides, he announced that he had made the executive decision to stick with US spelling for all articles that did not have an obvious connection to another variety of English) there was a spell checker (that was always a bit clunky) and produced a list of "Pages with misspellings" so that these pages could then be edited by hand. I seem to recollect that it was just one of the pages that have disappeared over the years from the "Special pages" option in the left hand , but that may just be a false memory on my part.

Nurg will remember more since he's been editing even longer than me... --118.93nzp (talk) 21:24, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

On re-reading my answer, I see that I didn't answer the second part of your question. The original intention was that the project page was originally for machine use and, since the machine is either broken or no longer runs, then it's original purpose is currently in suspension. The edit history is amusing though. As far as discussions on this page go, then this edit is always interesting since it gives some flavour of the way that Evan, living in a Francophone area at the time, was perhaps more open to alternative spellings than we are now. It also reminds me that the choice between using US and Commonwealth English for the default was a very close run thing - unfortunately I can't find the page where the great debate took place. Perhaps it's like those secret "heretic" gospels that the Vatican keeps safely under lock and key somewhere... --118.93nzp (talk) 21:45, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

American spellings

While Wikivoyage uses American spelling, the basis of what I'm guessing on how this spell checker is now supposed to function does not work given you have to enter the spelling into the search bar, then look to see which variety that country uses, then change it, except they are not misspellings and they should be removed. Also I'm not sure what the function of this page is.