Talk:carkey

RFD discussion: July–September 2023

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carkey

Rare misspelling? PUC – 21:00, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

It looks strange, but it's really an alternative form, probably created to get around the SoP-ness of car key. And someone found some quotes. DonnanZ (talk) 12:59, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Keep, just an alternative spelling. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 13:01, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Keep unless there is a reason beyond "it's weird". Ioaxxere (talk) 20:08, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Keep, but change to "nonstandard spelling. Vininn126 (talk) 12:51, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Delete. This is far too rare to be considered an alternative spelling, I want to see evidence of this being used more than, say 1% of the time that the standard spelling is used. - TheDaveRoss 13:09, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Keep. Binarystep (talk) 00:37, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Keep. Implicit in the long-standing WT:COALMINE policy is that forms like this are not treated as misspellings, however rare they might be. This, that and the other (talk) 13:35, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Mh, no? PUC – 13:37, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

• Some data from Ngrams for 2015:

Term	Misspelling	Frequency of misspelling	Source
car key	carkey	0.13%	Ngrams
occurrence	occurence	0.66%	Ngrams
after all	afterall	0.08%	Ngrams

occurence is CFI's example of a common misspelling. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 23:35, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

A common misspelling can easily be more common relative to its main lemma than an uncommon legitimate alternative form, and as a straightforward noun compound carkey is qualitatively different from both occurence and afterall, so I don't personally find these data very relevant, although interesting. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:52, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

• Good point; misspellings are by nature considered incorrect and alt forms are not. OneLook gives zero results for carkey, suggesting other dictionaries consider it incorrect. — excarnateSojourner (talk ·&nbsp contrib) 00:13, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

  Well, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence unfortunately, and most dictionaries would probably reject the idea that absence is evidence of (their own) proscription. On the other hand, even when sources do explicitly proscribe a certain form we aren't obliged to treat it as a misspelling (as opposed to a nonstandard/proscribed form, like in this case at the moment). There are no results on OneLook for many things (e.g. punctualize). Ultimately despite some editors having strong feelings about it I don't think any of these quick-fix methods can be more than suggestive for whether to consider a variant spacing or variant capitalisation a misspelling, which IMO has to rely on intentionality and native-speaker response. On the latter point the opinion here seems, at best, divided. But it may be worth working out a more general guideline on the topic since it comes up repeatedly. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 08:46, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Don't forget that Carkey is a surname and carkey is an alternative form of carky, so the frequency may be smaller than it looks. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:10, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

• Keep. Based on its frequency I'm satisfied to accept it as a common misspelling. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 00:13, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Kept. I would like to point out however that @This, that and the other has got things backwards: it's not when a solid spelling could be used to invoke coalmine that it is an alternative spelling and not a rare misspelling; it's when a solid spelling is an alternative spelling and not a rare misspelling that it can be used to invoke coalmine.

In other words, if/when we decide a solid spelling is a rare misspelling (the criteria aren't clear, but anyway), then it ought to be deleted, even if that means that the entry can no longer be used to invoke coalmine. PUC – 14:05, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Having read the actual voted text of COALMINE, I see you are right. (WT:COALMINE just mentions attestability, not CFI more broadly.) So I would shift my position to argue that we should be exceedingly reluctant to delete single-word COALMINE-related forms on the grounds of being misspellings (assuming that the constituent words are spelled correctly). This, that and the other (talk) 22:14, 17 September 2023 (UTC)