RationalWiki:Help/Mistakes

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Here at RationalWiki, we are not perfect. Well, I is perfect, but most of us are not. Very often new articles are created which feature the same mistakes. Be on the lookout for your own and other's mistakes.

1 Those deadly homonymous contractions
2 Zpeelinge misteaks
3 Riting gud Inglish
4 Relative time
5 Breaking Rules

[edit] Those deadly homonymous contractions

Their, There, and They're

Their is a possessive pronoun. For instance, this is their goat.
There is a location. For instance, put the goat there.
They're is a contraction of they are. For instance, they're obsessed with goats.

Its and It's

Its is a possessive pronoun. For instance, this is its goat.
It's is a contraction of it is. For instance, it's annoying hearing all these goat references.

Ones and One's

Ones is the plural of one. For instance; "Put the black goats over there, and the white ones over here." As another example, I have five "ones."
One's is the possessive form of one, when one is used as a vague generalization. For instance, one's user page is one's castle.
One's can also be part of one's self, a fancy way of saying oneself.
One's can also be a contraction of "one is", but no examples involving goats come to mind.

Your and You're

Your is a possessive pronoun. For instance, this is your goat.
You're is a contraction of you are. For instance, you're a goataholic.

[edit] Zpeelinge misteaks

when something is mislaid we lose it; when something is not secure it is loose.

[edit] Riting gud Inglish

Complete Sentences

Always write in complete sentences. Remember, a complete sentence must have a verb, and a prepositional phrase cannot be a sentence.
A common mistake is making the first sentence of articles a fragment. If your article is "Goat," don't start your article with the phrase: An awesome animal. Rather, start with the phrase: A goat is an awesome animal. ~~Even though it might not be true.~~ Which has the additional advantage of being absolutely true.
Lists and bullet points are an exception to the complete sentence rule, though it doesn't hurt.

Periods (Full stops to Brits)

End every sentence with a period (common sense, neh?).

(Unless a "?" or a "!" is appropriate of course. This is called punctuation.)

A frequent mistake is forgetting periods at the the end of paragraphs or sentences that end with references.
As a general rule, periods go before references.
Put two spaces after periods. While it doesn't affect the look of the article, it makes the source easier to read.

Spelling

Rationalwiki does not have a built in spell checker.
As such, proofread your own articles.
If you're not sure how to spell a certain word, look it up. Don't just insert it, hope you're right, and wait for another user to fix your mistake.
If you write your article or edit in a word processor or similar editor program, you can, and should, use the spellchecker before copy/pasting.
Alternatively, the browser 'Firefox' comes with an inbuilt spellcheck.
Even better, Safari also has a spellchecker, and doesn't need to load at all.

Italics

Book titles are normally italicized in most style guides. The double apostrophe will accomplish this. Hence, ''Crime and Punishment'' will appear as Crime and Punishment.

Capitalization

English is not German. You should not capitalize all N nouns and their M modifiers, even when Y you think Y you should. You should just capitalize P proper N nouns, such as j John s Smith.

[edit] Relative time

If you use a relative time reference, such as "recently", "yesterday" or "an hour from now" etc. then please insert the actual time and/or date. Remember your edit might still be there in a year & no-one will be able to reference the time. (If you're going to sign (~~~~), there is no need for other dating.)

[edit] Breaking Rules

The above are NOT hard and fast rules. There are occasions when you might want to break them for a particular effect. If you do you can put an invisible comment (using: ) after the error.

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