Talk:goingover

RFV discussion: December 2016–May 2017

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goingover

Alt form of going over (noun); I think it's just a scanno. Equinox ◑ 10:24, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

You are right that in most cases, it's a scanno, but I did find the following:

also, another example, although it's a mention rather than a use, but we are trying to justify a spelling, not the fact that the term is a real term:

Kiwima (talk) 18:43, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

• How does one distinguish between a rare but legitimate spelling variant and a typo or spelling error? I can easily find examples of, say, "alot" in books, yet we would all (I very much hope) agree that "alot" is an error. How do we know that "goingover" isn't an error too? Mihia (talk) 12:22, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

  For English I use Garner's Modern American Usage, 3rd ed., 2009. They report stages 1-5 of usage: 1 - rejected; 2 - widely shunned; 3 - widespread but ...; 4 - ubiquitous but ...; 5 - fully accepted. Using the word stage implies that they expect a significant portion of the less accepted or rejected usages will become more accepted.

They put alot at stage 2 and don't discuss goingover.

As we are in the business of describing language behavior rather than making style recommendations, we need to accept usage for Wiktionary that we might not use ourselves.

One indication that going over may be increasing in acceptability is that there are some instances of the plural being goingovers, not the more common goingsover or much more common goings-over. DCDuring TALK 16:23, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

One can also find going-overs and going overs. This suggests that there is a great deal of uncertainty about the spelling, which seems to have put the expression in play, for change in acceptability among the forms. DCDuring TALK 16:30, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Isn't this why we use labels such as "rare", "proscribed", and "informal" ? Kiwima (talk) 18:16, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Going off at a slight tangent ... I see that alot is labelled "proscribed". I am not massively keen on "proscribed". It is a word that many readers -- certainly the type who might be at risk of writing "alot" -- would not understand. Fair enough, there is a link, but people might just gloss over "proscribed", thinking "some technical thing that I don't need to worry about". I would prefer a label whose meaning people could not miss, such as "widely considered incorrect". Mihia (talk) 18:39, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

I completely agree. It is too similar to prescribed which has essentially the opposite meaning. John Cross (talk) 04:49, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

RFV-passed. I have added a usage note to indicate that "going over" is the more accepted form. Kiwima (talk) 21:59, 4 May 2017 (UTC)