Typo Repair in the WBC
We recently released a major update to one of our most popular commentary sets, the Word Biblical Commentary, adding several thousand new links and repairing many—but not all—of the user-reported typos. Here's a quick explanation of why we chose not to fix them all.
There are 22,165,650 words in the Word Biblical Commentary. Since we last updated WBC, we’ve received 11,243 typo reports. Of 11,243 typos reported, we fixed 9,939. In other words, the WBC went from a 99.955% accuracy rate to nearly 100%. (We’re hesitant to say we hit 100%, because with 22,165,650 words, it’s possible we still missed one.)
If you’re doing the math, it sounds like we left 1,304 typos. You’re probably wondering why, and the answer is a little complicated.
- A spellchecker would return too many false hits. There are lots of technical words unique to the field of biblical studies. Terms like “eisogesis,” “sitz im leben,” and “Johannine” would get flagged by your spellchecker.
- Many words are spelled different ways in different places. You’d be surprised how many typo reports we get from users in the U.K. who think we’ve misspelled “center.” The reverse is true, too—when a work is published in the U.K., our customers in the U.S. regularly report “centre” as a typo.
- There are lots of words that are homonyms with words in other languages. Is “die” the German article, the English verb, or a misspelling of “died”? Spellcheckers can’t solve this; humans can.
- In the Word Biblical Commentary, you’ll also find lots of transliterated words from the Greek and Hebrew, not to mention words in other languages. It sometimes takes a fair bit of expertise to evaluate a typo and determine a fix.
- Some typos are even carried over from the print edition. Sometimes, the correct spelling is obvious. But other times fixing a typo forces us to make a subjective editorial call. The line between fixing a typo and editing the text is often fuzzy. In general, we don’t fix typos where the meaning is ambiguous. We’d rather perpetuate the error in the print edition than risk saying something the author didn’t intend to say.
In other words, we left 1,304 reported typos in the text for one of the following two reasons:
- After some research, we discovered the typos weren’t typos after all; they were incorrectly reported to us as typos.
- The typo carried over from the print edition, and fixing it would have forced us to make an editorial decision.
Updating links and fixing typos represents a fraction of the work that goes into updating a resource, but this should illustrate a few of the things we look at when we’re working to improve your resources.
RD3
Logos Marketing | ray.deck@logos.com
Comments
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RayDeck3 said:
this should illustrate a few of the things we look at when we’re working to improve your resources.
Thank you for that information. Very impressive.
RayDeck3 said:You’d be surprised how many typo reports we get from users in the U.K. who think we’ve misspelled “center.”
Perhaps they need to learn American English [:D]
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I got this update, thank you! WBC is the commentary set I go to most often these days.
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Yes, thank you. This is much appreciated.
Using adventure and community to challenge young people to continually say "yes" to God
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Indeed it is appreciated, greatly[:D]
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Thanks for that explanation, Ray. It is very interesting to see that data to get an idea of how many typo reports you receive. And I'm very impressed with how many of them have been fixed for this commentary set. Great work, text editors!
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Way to go, Ray & team.
It's great seeing Logos responding to us users.
And your information re typos is good feedback for us too.0 -
Ray,
Thanks to the whole team that does this kind of work. And this write up really helps me understand the process.
Sarcasm is my love language. Obviously I love you. 0 -
thanks for this update
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Brother Mark said:
[Y]
And a big thanks to Logos for the update. I'm glad of the typo updates, but even more glad of the additional links. I can see that there are new links to JBL, for example. If you write this up as a blog post, I'd be interested in seeing some examples/stats of those extra links.
This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!
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thanks for this update
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I'd be happy to make those subjective editorial calls for you if you'd like. I'm really good at it. [:)]
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But there was more to the update than just typo repair. The whole write-up is on the blog.
RD3
Logos Marketing | ray.deck@logos.com
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[Y]
Gold package, and original language material and ancient text material, SIL and UBS books, discourse Hebrew OT and Greek NT. PC with Windows 11
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RayDeck3 said:
But there was more to the update than just typo repair. The whole write-up is on the blog.
Well-Done! Ray! Well-Done, indeed! Thanks to Logos! Thanks ultimately to the Lord of Grace!
*smile* Psalm 29:11
Philippians 4: 4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. 5 Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand..........
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Jack Caviness said:
Perhaps they need to learn American English
I've been learning American English on these forums and I'm getting better. It is certainly a strange dialect of English; but then so is Scots English and I've been writing and speaking it as my first language for years.
RayDeck3 said:this should illustrate a few of the things we look at when we’re working to improve your resources.
Thanks for the improved functionality, Ray.
Every blessing
Alan
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Alan Macgregor said:
I've been learning American English on these forums and I'm getting better.
We just kinda wear on people [:D] {kinda ORIGIN early 20th cent. originally US}
Alan Macgregor said:It is certainly a strange dialect of English
Then there is Southern American English—which is the most pure form. Then there is New England American English—especially that spoken in Maine, which is truly unique [8-|]
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Jack Caviness said:
Then there is Southern American English—which is the most pure form.
Ain't that the truth y'all. [:D]
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Jack Caviness said:
Then there is Southern American English—which is the most pure form. Then there is New England American English—especially that spoken in Maine, which is truly unique
And then there are those of us who read "Southern American English" to mean that spoken with an Latin American accent by those from south of Panama.... difficult to say that the English spoken by our neighbours in Maine is unique, did you mean southern Maine or northern Maine ? For a truly "unique" English try conversing with someone from Cape Breton..... [:)]
On a more serious note: given the practice of leaving the authors original "potential" typos to avoid removing a possibly intended ambiguity, what do you think might have been the impact of such "typos" in the original Greek ? Surely Greek in NT times was no more uniform than our English of today, and subsequent scribes copying the originals would have done what if they came across a spelling that seemed to them a little "odd" ? Perhaps a cause for some of the differences that exist between ancient manuscript copies, is the same as we experience today when dealing with real or apparent English "typos".
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David J. Wilson said:
On a more serious note: given the practice of leaving the authors original "potential" typos to avoid removing a possibly intended ambiguity, what do you think might have been the impact of such "typos" in the original Greek ? Surely Greek in NT times was no more uniform than our English of today, and subsequent scribes copying the originals would have done what if they came across a spelling that seemed to them a little "odd" ? Perhaps a cause for some of the differences that exist between ancient manuscript copies, is the same as we experience today when dealing with real or apparent English "typos"
Believe Metzger discusses some of these in A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament
David J. Wilson said:And then there are those of us who read "Southern American English" to mean that spoken with an Latin American accent by those from south of Panama....
True, but my Canadian friends also call the US American, so I gave up trying to tell people that we arrogant residents of the US are not the only people who can truly call themselves American.
David J. Wilson said:did you mean southern Maine or northern Maine ?
All my experiences with Mainers have been in the southern portions of the state, having lived in Kittery and then in Rochester, NH. Later, in the early 80's preached in York—still southern.
BTW: I was informed that Main-er was preferable to Main-iac [:D]
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I wish I had another lifetime to use Logos I'd be a much more informed preacher and teacher. I've been with you guys from the beginning you have sure blessed my life.
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Ayuh*, Johnnie, we sure have been gifted as blessings to each other.
*A conventional "spelling" of a Maine assent from one who grew up south of the Kennebec.
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Jack Caviness said:
RayDeck3 said:
You’d be surprised how many typo reports we get from users in the U.K. who think we’ve misspelled “center.”
Perhaps they need to learn American English
I'd like to say it's "our" language [:)] but we got it from the French/German/Nordic etc etc.So I guess we'll have to be good neighbours and not let the centre ground be coloured by our personal judgements [6]
PS Maybe we should send Logos this link? http://www.tysto.com/uk-us-spelling-list.html [:D]
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And vice versa Jack [:)]
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I spent two years in Jackson, MS for seminary and the most important thing I learned about Southern English is that y'all is the second person singular personal pronoun............all-y'all is the plural!
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Emlyn Williams said:
And vice versa Jack
You are assuming that I remember what I said previously. [:D]
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Thanks for your faithfulness and persistence in correcting and improving Logos.
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Phillip Kohlmeyer said:
Thanks for your faithfulness and persistence in correcting and improving Logos.
+1 [Y]
And welcome to the forums, by the way. [:)]
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