Talk:playright

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playright

This is not an acceptable alternate of playwright according to the OED, nor can it be found in any other dictionary source. Thanks. -Sketchmoose 15:43, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

• No - it is a totally different word. the OED has this (under "play") - playright n. Obs. an author's proprietary right of performance of a musical or dramatic composition. SemperBlotto 15:50, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

keep. At worst this entry needs the obsolete legal sense. The RfD once more raises the question of what makes a spelling a misspelling vs. an alternative spelling and may also raise the queston of what makes a misspelling a "common" one. There are many current uses of the term in edited works where "playwright" might be preferred by some (like me). In any event, no speedy deletion. DCDuring TALK 17:22, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

I have inserted "common" misspelling and given it an "rfd-sense" tag to take advantage of any attention this entry may have so far received to get more attention to the alternative/mis-spelling question. DCDuring TALK 17:30, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

This is fine with a proper definition. Before, all that was there was "alternate spelling of playwright" which is simply not correct, and I had never heard of it used in the "proprietary rights" sense so I didn't know to correct it to that (nor was it turned up in any of my dictionary searches, presumably due to its obsolescence). Thanks for looking in to it. -Sketchmoose 22:41, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

It may well go back to being an alternative spelling based on being fairly common in edited works. DCDuring TALK 23:02, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

This is weird... When I search for "a playright" to filter out most (but not all) of the legal uses, I get 0.5% of the hits for "a playwright" on the web (~548,000:~2,500). But when I switch to Google Books, "a playright" jumps to 9% (5,420:504). Forcing the issue [1] brings this down to 374, or 6.9%, which is still astronomical. Only a small fraction of those seem to be legal uses; scannos don't seem to be a factor. WTF? Is the web suddenly better-proofread than print? -- Visviva 02:29, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

I believe that all(?) Google searches for "playright" will count hits for "play right" and "playright", though only the latter are emboldened. I have taken to doing separate "playright -play-right" and "-playright play-right" searches to get what I thought I was getting with searches for "playright" and "play right" alone. I also get significantly different results for "playwright" and "playwright -play-wright". DCDuring TALK 12:28, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

The problem with that is that it also throws out any pages that have, for example, "play" and "right" in addition to "playright" (as will often be the case in a discussion of the legal concept).

Google's handling of quotes has been a little inconsistent lately, but the "+" operator seldom lets me down. If you're suspicious of the results from a simple quoted search, you can for example search for '+playright "a playright"' to make sure that all searched pages actually have the word in question, not just an approximation. (That search actually gives me the same results as above, at this writing.) -- Visviva 14:40, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Just to make clear the effect of the search methods as I understand it:

"AB" yields hits of "AB" and "ABs" (and includes "'A-B'" (and perhaps ""A-B"" etc)), but emboldens only "AB"

"ABs" yields hits of "ABs"

"A-B -AB" yields hits of "A-B" "A B" (as well as "A/B" "A>B", etc) without AB on the same page.

"AB -A-B" yields hits of "AB" without "A-B", "A B", and their fellow travelers on the same page.

I have not examined all of the possibilities raised.

Because I haven't yet found documentation of this, I suspect that Google is:

1. not committed to keeping it working just this way and in every search domain;
2. not desirous of providing much evidence to SEOers who game their system; or
3. not desirous of facilitating searches that are more resource-intensive. DCDuring TALK 12:21, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Also "a+playright" gives me many times more hits than "a-playright", which gives the same as ""a playright"". DCDuring TALK 12:32, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

On the digression which generated the methodological subdigression, I get 880K web hits and 5500 bgc hits for "a-playright"; 596K (66%) web hits and 536 (10%) bgc hits for "a-playwright", more in line with expectations. DCDuring TALK 12:32, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Kept.​—msh210℠ 00:46, 22 June 2009 (UTC)