Help:Mistakes

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(Those deadly homonymous contractions: - Added a "one's" example.)
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*''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'' 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 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.
+
*''One's'' can also be a contraction of "one is".  For instance, most of the goats died, but one's still alive.
  
 
'''Your and You're'''
 
'''Your and You're'''

Revision as of 14:16, 11 April 2009

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.

Contents

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 works the same way as his; you wouldn't write "this is hi's goat" - at least, we hope you wouldn't. (This confusion may arise because 's is used to indicate the possessive of proper nouns and of "one" as shown below.)
  • 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". For instance, most of the goats died, but one's still alive.

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.

Zpeelinge misteaks

  • When something is mislaid we lose it; when something is not secure it is loose.
  • The past-participle of to lead is indeed spelt led. This is due to confusion with to read and read (The infinitives rhyme with "bead", the past participles rhyme with "bed".)

Like/as if

You can:

"behave like a goat"

not:

"behave like you were a goat";

the correct way to say the latter is:

"behave as if you were a goat".

See the difference?
No?
Oh, well, I tried.

Affect/effect

If you affect something, you have an effect on it.

Affect is always a verb meaning: to modify something:

Hitting a goat will affect it negatively (and shortly thereafter, yourself).

Effect is usually a noun meaning: the result of some action:

The effect of hitting a goat can be painful for the hitter as well as for the goat.

Occasionally effect is a verb meaning: to succeed at some task:

The electorate were able to effect a change of policy.

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: The 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 (remember this by thinking how bizarre it would look to have about 5 reference numbers before the puctuation!).
  • Whether the final quote mark (") goes before or after the puctuation (. , ! ?) is dependent on American English or British English. Generally the best approach is to go with what ever version makes sense in terms of the quote's content: See Wikipedia's article on quotes (and WP's own style guide) here.
  • Put two spaces after periods. While it doesn't affect the look of the article (due to whitespace compression or whatever it's called), 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 'Firefox' and 'Opera' web browsers can be equipped with spellcheckers.
  • Even better, Safari also has a spellchecker, and doesn't need to load at all.

Italics

  • Book and more often than not movie 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.

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 (~~~~ on talk or debate pages), there is no need for other dating as the signature will automatically include the full date.)

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: <!-- comment -->) after the error to ensure that people get that it's a joke if they don't get it first time.

See also

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