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I've created a query to find posts that misspell Silmarillion or Silmaril. It seems we've corrected most of them now. (I think DavidW deserves a mention here, who has done a lot of these corrections.)

I'll add the query to our compendium of useful queries to keep an eye on any future misspellings, but I would like to expand it a little to include other common misspellings as well.

What other names from Tolkien's Legendarium are often misspelled?

Also, do we want to include missed accents? As wë all know, Tolkíen úses a lot.

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  • 2
    Tolkien habitually misspells dwarfs, does that count?
    – user14111
    Feb 19, 2022 at 13:02
  • 1
    Why focus on this specifically and not just common typos in English regardless of post contents? If you are looking for pointless busy-work there's plenty out there for sure.
    – Amarth
    Feb 26, 2022 at 18:18
  • @Amarth any user can fix typos, while fixing the spelling of proper nouns can only be done by a user having knowledge of that specific domain, so a typo is likely to be quickly rectified as soon as the question/answer gets some views, while a misspelled name could survive much longer. Moreover, if a name is "only" missing the proper accents even knowledgeable user could deem it "good enough", or they could be unsure of the right accents, or lacking an easy way to enter the proper characters (if they are reading from a mobile phone, for example).
    – lfurini
    Mar 1, 2022 at 19:47
  • @lfurini So what you are saying between the lines is that we should focus on name typos that only a few nerds actually care about before fixing English typos and grammar making a post hard to understand for everyone?
    – Amarth
    Mar 2, 2022 at 16:04
  • @Amarth not at all, and I apologize if my comment sounded elitist! My point is that this type of query can be useful to easily find and fix misspelling that could otherwise go unnoticed for a long time, so it has some merit; such an approach wouldn't help fixing recurring English errors (for example "it's" instead of "its" or viceversa), but for those there are many more eyes around (personally, I try to fix them whenever I see them, even when it's only a 1-character edit).
    – lfurini
    Mar 2, 2022 at 16:32

2 Answers 2

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Candidates so far (other then Silmaril / Silmarillion):

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  • 5
    Only 8 examples of Tolkein. I'm tempted to just fix them all
    – Valorum
    Feb 17, 2022 at 11:19
  • @Valorum The idea is to keep an eye on future misspellings as well.
    – SQB
    Feb 17, 2022 at 11:53
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    Fair enough. If there's a single search that can be done to find all of them in one go, that would seem worthwhile.
    – Valorum
    Feb 17, 2022 at 12:17
  • 17
    One Search to rule them all, One Search to find them, One Search to fix them all and in the edit history hide them.
    – lfurini
    Feb 18, 2022 at 8:08
  • 3
    "Middle Earth" is also one I see every now and then
    – fez
    Feb 18, 2022 at 8:26
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    I think "Middle Earth" is an acceptable spelling variation—Tolkien uses it in a footnote to letter 183. Also "Gilgalad" which Tolkien uses in letter 131.
    – Gareth Rees
    Feb 18, 2022 at 10:39
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    Even Tolkien wrote Baraddur in some manuscripts. I would guess he was being hasty in writing, as he was prone to do.
    – David Roberts
    Feb 21, 2022 at 2:11
  • @Valorum The digital Tolkien project has something like 980-ish named characters in it. Good luck with that single search...
    – David Roberts
    Feb 21, 2022 at 2:12
  • 1
    @DavidRoberts burárum
    – OrangeDog
    Feb 23, 2022 at 12:05
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I've just corrected, twice, (in comments; there aren't enough extra letters for the software to accept an edit) the misspelling entlings. Of course there's no letter "L". Their name is entings.

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