Talk:Typographical error

I disagree with the last sentence in "'Intentional' Typos"

I believe the idea here was to convey the difference between deliberate, intentionally modified spellings as opposed to erroneous outputs. However, the usage of "p0rn" doesn't really qualify as obfuscation in my opinion, for the following reasons:

• The act of obfuscation implies the intent of reducing or restricting the communicative value of a message. This is true for both its disambiguated form in natural language, as well as its software-centric vernacular usage; however, in the case of the latter, there is an additional target attribution defined: human recipients.
• The usage of "p0rn" likely qualifies under systems of modified spellings in its use of a character replacement, but in this particular example the replacement character is selected purely for its glyph reflection characteristic and does not effectively diminish the actual communicative value of the word.
• The citation being referenced touches upon the intentional use of misspelling as a means of circumventing automated chat filters. While I'm not familiar with whether there is a more suitable vernacular in that particular use case (colloquially or nomenclaturally), the intent there is solely to mitigate programmatic or syntactic parsability; in other words, there is no implicit impact to the message's readability toward human recipients (if anything, the intent would arguably be to preserve the latter while achieving the former).
• The cited source does not actually mention the word "obfuscation" or its other forms.

Keeping in mind that the intended objective of edits being discussed here should be to contribute to the improvement of the respective article's content, I'm not sure whether it'd be more appropriate to: 1) choose a different example word, 2) choose a different derivative of the same example word (such as "pr0n"), or 3) change its classification to something else that it does appropriately qualify for, etc. Being that I'm a newcomer to the contributor mantle, I'd like to abstain from boldness and instead defer to the more experienced community members present. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rannison (talk • contribs) 09:55, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Comma before an 'and' or an 'or'

I reverted grammatical "corrections" by user:GrammarDamner, because I think that they have misunderstood two important principles.

Although it is usually an error to have a comma before sn 'and' or an 'or', this is not an invariable rule. First and foremost, clarity and comprehension trump blind application of a formula rule. It is for this reason, for example, that the serial comma exists. Second, an inline aside is typically parenthesised using commas, so the comma that ends that aside is exempt from the rule. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 15:40, 15 August 2025 (UTC)

Hello there. The first comma I removed is called a joining or conjunction comma. This comma should only be used to separate two independent clauses (subject and verb), which that sentence does not have. The second comma I removed was not a serial comma: changing and misuse of words such as "than" and "then" is the second and final item in that list. Perhaps it could be worded more clearly, but adding an erroneous comma does not fix any alleged issue. Then there were two extra spaces I removed; I'm not sure why they were put back in there. I'll go ahead and fix everything. Thank you. GrammarDamner how are things? 14:59, 25 August 2025 (UTC)

Clarity still trumps grammatical rules (though failure to respect those rules usually results in ambiguity or outright confusion, so judgement is required). So perhaps it would be better to rephrase when the objectives collide. If a sentence is so long as to need a comma just to advise the reader to breathe, then it is too long in any case.

You don't need to worry about correcting multiple spaces as "the system" corrects those automatically, no matter how many there are. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:11, 25 August 2025 (UTC)

Looking at it again, I concede that you were correct. Standing back a little, however, it became clear that the second phrase was just someone's opinion: not only was it not cited but also the citations do not consider it. Deleted, so the question no longer arises. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 20:28, 25 August 2025 (UTC)

Image

We should have an image of what a typo looks like WikiGrower1 (talk) 23:00, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

Do you mean like the two images in the Biblical errors section? Donald Albury 23:26, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

Showing what a typo look like. Like (the good perso stood up) WikiGrower1 (talk) 00:10, 19 December 2025 (UTC)

"Type-o" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Type-o has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 January 27 § Type-o until a consensus is reached. Sign² (talk) 02:33, 27 January 2026 (UTC)