Talk:an ounce of prevention is worth an ounce of cure
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Is is okay to keep this article like that?--TNMPChannel (talk) 14:23, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
- It's just a matter of finding citations that support use as a proverb. I found four citations, now on the Citations page, but two of them seem to not be proverbial IMO. I'd like to hear the opinions of others. DCDuring (talk) 14:38, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
- Both of these and an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure are said to be alternative forms of prevention is better than cure ("PIBTC"). The collocations are roughly equal in Google N-Grams, but inspection of the actual examples shows that almost all of the ounce-pound form a used as proverbs, whereas a large fraction of the PIBTC seem to be simple comparisons. DCDuring (talk) 15:58, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
- The various alternative forms don't all seem like alternative forms to me. I've separated the 16-fold difference proverbs from the simple 1:1-equivalence or possibly-modest-difference proverbs. DCDuring (talk) 16:11, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
- Both of these and an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure are said to be alternative forms of prevention is better than cure ("PIBTC"). The collocations are roughly equal in Google N-Grams, but inspection of the actual examples shows that almost all of the ounce-pound form a used as proverbs, whereas a large fraction of the PIBTC seem to be simple comparisons. DCDuring (talk) 15:58, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
It looks like this one has been cited Kiwima (talk) 20:40, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
It really doesn't have any cites in neither Google Books nor Google News Search--TNMPChannel (talk) 09:18, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
- The first one on the citations page seems like a misquotation: [1] has the text as "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." (emphasis mine), as does the Google eBook. BigDom 11:26, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
I have removed the disputed citation, but that still leaves three. What is the problem with them? Kiwima (talk) 11:39, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
- They all appear on Google Books for me (from the UK), don't know why the user above is unable to see them. BigDom 11:40, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
It didn't appear in any cites in Google Book or Google News Search. So it should have failed RfV--TNMPChannel (talk) 12:26, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
- On the contrary, all the cites given appear in Google Books (just maybe not in your location). BigDom 13:41, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
These cites don't seem to support that this is an independent proverb, they all seem to be a play on words in the form of the pound proverb. - TheDaveRoss 12:26, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
- I agree. They're all either deliberate alterations of "pound of cure" or mistakes for it. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 12:49, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
Case closed--TNMPChannel (talk) 01:17, 20 August 2017 (UTC)