What are the most common spelling errors on the Webmasters site?

Question

What are the most common spelling errors can be corrected across the site? How would one help edit spelling corrections?

Answer 1

I ran a spell checker across the entire site. Here are the all the words it found that were misspelled at least 100 times:

Count	Misspelling	Suggestion	Reason
4045	url	URL	Capitalization
2031	Wordpress	WordPress	Capitalization
1767	urls	URLs	Capitalization
1721	javascript	JavaScript	Capitalization
1661	https	HTTPS	Capitalization
1648	html	HTML	Capitalization
1294	htaccess	.htaccess	Punctuation
1282	wordpress	WordPress	Capitalization
1280	http	HTTP	Capitalization
1189	php	PHP	Capitalization
1149	apache	Apache	Capitalization
959	Adsense	AdSense	Capitalization
953	Javascript	JavaScript	Capitalization
872	css	CSS	Capitalization
843	URL's	URLs	Punctuation
759	seo	SEO	Capitalization
744	adsense	AdSense	Capitalization
698	ok	OK	Capitalization
695	CloudFlare	Cloudflare	Capitalization
677	ip	IP	Capitalization
605	facebook	Facebook	Capitalization
531	nginx	Nginx	Capitalization
521	Adwords	AdWords	Capitalization
441	dns	DNS	Capitalization
414	js	JS	Capitalization
395	dont	don't	Apostrophe
391	h1	H1	Capitalization
386	Godaddy	GoDaddy	Capitalization
367	cpanel	cPanel	Capitalization
339	googlebot	Googlebot	Capitalization
336	pagerank	PageRank	Capitalization
326	URLS	URLs	Capitalization
318	godaddy	GoDaddy	Capitalization
307	ajax	AJAX	Capitalization
292	i'm	I'm	Capitalization
291	StackOverflow	Stack Overflow	Spacing
267	Paypal	PayPal	Capitalization
265	english	English	Capitalization
255	xml	XML	Capitalization
251	linux	Linux	Capitalization
235	Youtube	YouTube	Capitalization
230	cloudflare	Cloudflare	Capitalization
225	youtube	YouTube	Capitalization
224	ssl	SSL	Capitalization
216	StackExchange	Stack Exchange	Spacing
216	mysql	MySQL	Capitalization
210	adwords	AdWords	Capitalization
206	IP's	IPs	Punctuation
205	Github	GitHub	Capitalization
203	404's	404s	Punctuation
189	api	API	Capitalization
187	GoogleBot	Googlebot	Capitalization
180	bing	Bing	Capitalization
178	CPanel	cPanel	Capitalization
176	Ok	OK	Capitalization
164	doesnt	doesn't	Apostrophe
163	thats	that's	Apostrophe
160	github	GitHub	Capitalization
158	SERPS	SERPs	Capitalization
158	jquery	jQuery	Capitalization
150	Pagerank	PageRank	Capitalization
149	seperate	separate	Spelling
140	Cloudfront	CloudFront	Capitalization
138	phpmyadmin	phpMyAdmin	Capitalization
138	paypal	PayPal	Capitalization
138	Hostgator	HostGator	Capitalization
136	pdf	PDF	Capitalization
136	de		Unknown
135	Cpanel	cPanel	Capitalization
130	301's	301s	Punctuation
129	h2	H2	Capitalization
127	joomla	Joomla	Capitalization
125	cms	CMS	Capitalization
124	url's	URLs	Punctuation
124	stackoverflow	Stack Overflow	Spacing
124	firefox	Firefox	Capitalization
122	Dreamhost	DreamHost	Capitalization
118	apache2	Apache2	Capitalization
117	drupal	Drupal	Capitalization
116	wikipedia	Wikipedia	Capitalization
115	i've	I've	Capitalization
113	png	PNG	Capitalization
107	se		Unknown
106	html5	HTML5	Capitalization
104	Mediawiki	MediaWiki	Capitalization
104	Im	I'm	Apostrophe
104	blogspot	Blogspot	Capitalization
100	vps	VPS	Capitalization
100	stackexchange	Stack Exchange	Spacing

Methodology

1. Download the entire Stack Exchange data dump which takes several hours using its torrent, even with a fast internet connection.

2. Run the spell checker against the entire archive. The way it works is:

   1. Parses rows out of the data dump that contain Title= and Body= XML elements.
   2. Parses the Markdown in the body and discards code blocks, HTML tags, URLs, and links.
   3. Breaks the title and the remaining text from the body into words.
   4. Compares the words to the aspell dictionary and discards any that are spelled correctly.
   5. Compares the words to a dictionary of technical terms, tech product names, and jargon that is used on the Stack Exchange network and discards any such words.
   6. Pipes the remaining misspellings to be counted.
   7. Adds spelling suggestions from a spelling corrections list
   8. Formats the output in a Markdown table

   The command for running it produce the table output above is: 7zcat /stackexchange/webmasters.stackexchange.com.7z | grep Body= | node editor.user.js stack-exchange-words | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -n 500 | node editor.user.js print-correction | grep -E '^[0-9]{3}' | sed -E 's/^([^\|]*\| )([^\|]*)( .*(Spelling|Apostrophe|Spacing|Unknown))$/\1[\2](https:\/\/webmasters.stackexchange.com\/search?tab=votes\&q=%22\2%22)\3/g;s/(.*)/| \1 |/g'

Editing to correct spelling

Any user to our site can edit submit edits to any post. Spelling corrections are welcome. Users with enough reputation can make edits without any review, however edits from low reputation users need to be approved.

I have written a user script that can correct many of these spelling errors (and correct other types of errors as well) with the touch of a button: Auto-Editor: a user script for automatically correcting common errors

As with all clean-up projects, don't just fix this one issue. More than likely there are other issues with the post that should be addressed. Edits should be rejected in the edit queue unless they attempt to fix all the major problems in a given post. That may include:

• Non-descriptive titles
• Capitalization
• Formatting
  • Paragraph breaks
  • Lists
  • Code blocks
• Other misspellings
• Grammar
• Tags (either inappropriate or missing)
• Remove "hi", "thanks", "please help", "here is my question", and signatures

Be aware of front-page flooding. Only fix a few posts at a time. It usually takes a while to edit each post properly, so you won't want to do to many of them at once anyway.

It is also common that posts that have spelling errors should be closed. If the post is:

• unclear
• duplicate
• a site review or other problem that no other webmaster will encounter
• asks for third party tools (or other off-site resources)

flag the post to be closed.