Talk:seismogramme

RFD discussion: March–August 2016

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seismogramme

A (correctly labelled as rare) rare misspelling; too rare for Ngram Viewer to plot. - -sche (discuss) 06:17, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Appears to be a variant, found 13,000 Google Books hits for the bare spelling, suggesting it's a regular spelling in German; and 18 GB hits for the English phrase "the seismogramme" suggesting it as a UK variant. P Aculeius (talk) 13:09, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

I find it counterintuitive, but we do have angiogramme. Renard Migrant (talk) 18:49, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I did wonder if this was not actually a misspelling but just a rare alternative, like gramme. - -sche (discuss) 00:56, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

@-sche: it’s kind of difficult to determine what is to be classified as a misspelling and what’s simply an alternative. I was thinking that these forms would be justified by analogy alone, but a lot of misspellings arise that way. I suppose that if you can find any academics discouraging it, then it’s definitely a misspelling. --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 01:03, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

I don't think that you can base whether something is a misspelling solely on whether any academics discourage it. Many alternative spellings are discouraged by academics (not necessarily by all academics), without being "wrong". Of course, I suppose you could make the argument that all alternative spellings can be considered misspellings, or that the difference is always a matter of opinion. But without going to that length, I'd say that perhaps "misspelling" is best applied to unintentional spellings (typos), common blunders (sherrif instead of sheriff), or the like. In this case, I think you can reasonably argue that -gram and -gramme are generally interchangable, and therefore this difference is purely a matter of style, at least in British English. P Aculeius (talk) 02:44, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

My understanding is that -gram(me) are interchangeable in BrE for units (e.g. kilogramme) but not necessarily for other things (*telegramme; yes we have an entry but it's as dubious as this one). Equinox ◑ 13:37, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

The fact that one variation comes to predominate (perhaps early on) doesn't make others incorrect. As for "other things", programme is actually the dominant spelling in UK English; telegramme occurs in English and in at least one company name, as well as in French (with or without acute accents on the first two e's); I find a number of English-language hits for audiogramme, cardiogramme, cryptogramme, encephalogramme, monogramme, phonogramme, sonogramme, and spectrogramme. There are certainly others, but these struck me as examples likely to be encountered. As a suffix, -gramme seems to be standard in French, so if Wiktionary is supposed to contain French words as well as English, then all these words and many others should still have entries. English usage varies from one word to the other, with some authors preferring the "French" spelling and others the "American" spelling. Obviously the "American" spelling is dominant now for most words, but it appears that a century ago the "French" spelling was more common in UK English; and some writers continue to use it even in cases where the "American" spelling is dominant. As a result, "misspelling" seems to be the wrong way to describe such words. P Aculeius (talk) 14:54, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

sugardaddie

As above. Two other words are labelled "rare misspelling of" but are homographic to valid words and thus impossible to search for, so I'm not RFDing them: ша/ša, aptotic. - -sche (discuss) 06:17, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

I'm not convinced it is a misspelling. If it isn't, then 'rare' but doesn't matter at all. See in particular daddie. Renard Migrant (talk) 19:31, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

No consensus to delete. bd2412 T 23:56, 29 August 2016 (UTC)