Thru

 ...a big steambat

*shudder* yuck *spit*. It makes the writer sound like they've been lobotomized, IMO. But it's your call, if you feel that strongly about it. I'm sticking with the correct spelling. Don't change mine and I won't change yours. Might not take it very seriously, though. - MoonShadow

Dare I ask why you are picking up these leetisms?  (And also, why only these particular ones?)  --Vitenka

I'd guess txtspk is taking its toll on him.. - MoonShadow

Oh, it's not txtspk.  I make a point of avoiding "2" and "u" in text messages whenever possible.  I'm as against "hey u guyz sup"-type writing as the next man - principally because of the laziness on the part of the author.  That's why I created this page - to let people know that in these cases, it's not l33tism nor laziness on my part.  If any ToothyWiki spelling-correcters object strongly enough that they really want to correct my spelling despite knowing this, I won't kick up a big fuss.  And as for [lobotomy], it wouldn't be the first time such references have been made about me, nor most of us here I suspect :)  --AC

So wherefor is it from?  --Vitenka (interested)

Whilst we're at it, "wherefor" is usually spelled "wherefore", and means "why", NOT "where" (despite all the Romeo and Juliet puns). If you're looking for an old-fashioned word, try "whence", meaning "from where". "Whence is it?" --M-A

It was one of my PartIIIMaths lecturers. A wacky but very well-educated man, who made a point of taking a certain few words and spelling them the way it'd be sensible to spell them. I liked it, thought it sensible, and adopted it.  --AC

Hmph.. I was deliberatly trying to find an expreshun you wouldn't think of as a compliment. Looks like I faild ;) - MoonShadow

Hehe. I don't exactly take it as a compliment - that much was clear from the "*shudder* yuck *spit*" ;) I gather you're trying to making another point by the other "mis"spellings in your comment, something like "it just looks wrong", or "it gives the impression of uneducatedness even if it's deliberate"?  That's interesting, because to me (even at the time) they were sufficiently different to the "commun mispellings" that they didn't give that impression.  If I become convinced that that is the way it comes across to a majority of my readers, I'll probably drop it.  It's not intended as an "affectation".  --AlexChurchill

I was thinking of making a point like "if you're going to reform 'through', you should also consider reforming other words ending in -ough, -sion, tion, -e, -ed and so on. I note you still spell "affectation" the old way rather than the phonetic "affectayshn" or some such. Why might that be, and what makes it different for thru? It can't be conciseness - it takes you *longer* to type the square brackets around it. - MoonShadow

It originally was conciseness, actually. Or rather, the fact that with those two (and some other -ough) words, you can save significant typing/writing time, without adding ambiguity, or significantly affecting readability (as wud ritin evri werd lik this, or as would using things like "affectayshn").  I adopted it well before I'd ever used a Wiki, and don't plan on typing [[thru]] every time I use the word.  I don't pay enough attention to it to do so - it's become a natural word to me now.  I might do the square brackets on a couple of AlexChurchill/ subpages, as I reckon that's a reasonable place for me to have more say than the general ToothyWiki hivemind over what goes on.  I use thru and altho all over the place, and only use the "ough" versions for formal documents.  --AC

"significantly affecting readability" - I beg to differ. I find this sort of thing niggles when I read it, like most spelling errors - even ones that people make consistently; in fact, I suspect, like certain turns of phrase I use in the BoyAndDarkness translation make you doubletake when you proofread them, or like SunKitten's reaction to americanisms; and it irritates me when I can't fix it if it's not there for a particular reason other than OP's "well, I want to spell it my way everywhere. Deal with it." Still, looks like no-one else cares much, so since I'm in the minority I'll just sit here and be bigoted :) - MoonShadow

This page has only existed for an hour and a half... give people a chance ;);)  If it turns out that the general opinion is that it does niggle or induce "yuk"s then people are welcome to correct "thru" to "through".  TBH I'm not hugely fussed; I've made the point that it's not a typo.  I haven't decided yet whether I'd object much if people want to correct "[[thru]]" to "through".  Part of my point was that it can happily just become natural and stop needing to draw attention to itself.  I don't know.  --AC

I'm sure it can become natural. A lot of things can. Americanisms, txtspeak, l33tspeak, the word "pidant", their/they're/there/their's, grocer's apostrophe and such do not draw attention of the people that type them to themselves, or of many of the readers. This is completely independent of whether it is a good thing for them to do so. - MoonShadow

(PeterTaylor) I hadn't jumped in yet, because I think my opinions on correct spelling are fairly well known. That said, thru is a) clearly intentional; and b) something I use myself when scribbling as high speed. It merits about as much correction as IMHO. altho?, on the other hand, looks like the writer was interrupted and, on returning to typing, forgot that they hadn't finished the word they were on.

FWIW, I'd rather that such words were always spelled the same by everyone. I've had lengthy "discussions" with a certain friend of mine who is very pro-alternative spellings, and the only fallback position I had was that words should be spelled in a certain way to make them easier for everyone to read and to avoid ambiguity; not just ambiguity of meaning, but ambiguity of intent, such as here - until Alex explained why he spelt "thru" that way, I assumed that he was using it as an Americanism, and shuddered but tried to ignore it. If you choose to spell one or more words in a non-standard way, then you're making a point, whether you like it or not, and people will judge you on it, like it or not. --M-A

It's not an Americanism - the American spelling is also through.  Another argument that you can use is that spelling revision discards semantic roots - and phonetically led spelling revision is only phonetic in some subset of dialects and accents.  In this case, the root is OE. thurgh, [thorn]urh, [thorn]uruh, [thorn]oruh, AS. [thorn]urh; akin to OS. thurh, thuru, OFries. thruch, D. door, OHG. durh, duruh, G. durch, Goth. [thorn]a['i]rh; cf. Ir. tri, tre, W. trwy.  And indeed, it's easy to hear the sound between the thorn and the r in some dialects.  I personally disapprove because fiddling with old organically developed paradigms is a bad idea. --Mjb67

Just on a quick point of practicality - every person with an urge to niggle and fix typos and stuff will need to know (and remember) that thru from you is intentional.  You've got today covered, by making this page, but I bet no-one remembers next week - and NewUsers? seem to be popping out of the WoodWork.  --Vitenka

I was assuming Alex was going to stick square brackets around the instances he especially wants to keep. - MoonShadow

Yes, that's right. I'm saying I don't mind people correcting it unless I sic it with square brackets.  I might even try to stop using the shorter forms based on this discussion, although it's so automatic that I probably wouldn't notice, so people are welcome to correct it if the general Wiki prefers it the conventional way.  --AC

That's the general case with posts - it's in the nature of misspellings, leetisms and regionalisms that people don't notice their own. It's nice of you to offer to make the effort :) - MoonShadow

Eeehh? Surely not? Are you *that* discerning? I know I've watched fansubs at yours with less-than-100% proofreading. As for fanfics, the best fanfic author I've discovered has French as his first language. I do proofreading for one of his ongoing works - I typically find about 30 typos or odd turns of phrase in each 80k chapter. If you really switch off so quickly, you'd be missing an awful lot...  --AlexChurchill

Missing an awful lot of FanFiction.  How will it live with self.  --Vitenka </SARCASM>

An awful lot of good FanFiction, being the point. As I think was clear. :-P :-)  --AC

Your intimation both scares and intrigues me.  --Vitenka

Heeheehee. Okay, possibly I ought to retract the claim that there is a *lot* of FanFiction which is both good and endowed with reasonable numbers of typos. But it seems a bit much to judge a fic based on typos or idiosyncrasies (sp?) that are genuinely independent of the story or whatever you're reading the fic for.  --AC

I don't judge it. I just don't bother reading it, 'cos there's usually plenty enough other good stuff to read. If it's something exceptional, someone who is less irritated by such things than me usually reads it first and recommends it to me, and I then give it a second chance. - MoonShadow

I do proofreading for one of his ongoing works - uh, isn't that arguing my point? This author is getting their work proofread because rather than defending their non-first-language right to misspell - "English isn't my first language, so I'm going to misspell everything. Deal with it. If you don't read my fic, you are a poncy overdiscerning spelling bigot.", they actually care about what people are going to think when they read the fic. I see that as a good sign. If someone can't be bothered to get their fic proofread, I see that as a bad sign. There is plenty enough net writing around that I don't have to scrape the dregs - there's still much more there than I can ever read even after filtering out ones that make me go "ick" every other sentence, whether the reason is content or spelling. Fansubs we often have to put up with, because there is often not an alternative; but I always look. For an example, I found that LastExile episode yesterday very hard watching - I'll have to make sure I don't get those fansubbers again. - MoonShadow

Agreed about the LastExile ep, but I think that's arguing my point, because what we found cringeworthy was a deliberate choice by the fansubbers to use what turned out to be "technically correct" names from the Japanese website. (Assuming that's what you were talking about.) 

It looks from the fansub like someone went through and romanized all the names, whether the fansubber or the author of the site. This is not generally the correct thing to do - seeing "shicarla" when the word "cicada" is being clearly pronounced and - going by the plot cues - intended *grates*, no matter how technically correct a romanisation it is. All along I've been arguing from a perspective of "I personally find this distasteful" - it's just that in the case of the word "thru" I also have common usage to back me up and probably quite a few other people on my side. - MoonShadow

But I think you've argued against your fanfic point: if an anime is sufficiently good, we'll put up with a bad fansubs to get at the good story / animation / style etc.  So if a fanfic is good enough, I'll put up with typos or insufficient proofreading to get at the good story / etc. 

Indeed. And if someone recommends something to me highly enough, so will I; and if it's good enough I'll even fix it up so other people don't have to struggle. If the original author were to come back to me and say "no, actually, I intended these typos to be there; no, they don't add anything to the plot, it's just how I type - deal with it (since I sure don't intend to), all the less discerning people do" (which is roughly how I am seeing your originally proposed use of the spelling "thru"), my opinion of the author, and by association of the fic, would probably drop sharply. - MoonShadow

The series I'm proofreading was one where I took it upon myself to volunteer - he was publishing the chapters on his website in their state with 30ish niggles in each.  (He's had one prior proofreader since before I volunteered, but I gather that's more plot/continuity proofreading than spelling/grammar.  And he wins 1-2 Best of Year awards each year, indicating his writing is worth reading thru the non-English-first-language niggles.)  --AC

Yes, you're doing much what I would do. You've found something you like, and in order to promote it, or reward the author or whatever, you are putting it into a form that other people find less irritating to read. I approve. But it seems against the spirit of the original post on this page. - MoonShadow

He is that discerning. One of the WolfsRain fansub groups used the word 'cuz'. We stopped downloading their subs (''cause' would have been fine). I can understand it in general because some deliberate misspellings put my teeth on edge and I watch anime for fun - SunKitten

Okay, I suppose I was overinterpreting "look for a different fansubber". I can understand finding a different group if one of them irritates you for whatever reason - that's kinda natural.  --AC

Like I say, I don't mind people changing "thru", unless it's really written "[[thru]]".  If the page is being refactored, then my turns of phrase will be changed anyway (if it's a proper WikiWikiWeb?-style refactoring), so certainly my idiosyncrasies can be also.  Does that answer most of the question? --AlexChurchill

To your first point, well, "-ough" in the EnglishLanguage is generally a disgrace.  Probably, people should (eventually) switch from "plough" to "plow", from "through" to "thru", from "though" to "tho", from "tough" to "tuff", from "cough" to "coff", and from "hiccough" to "hiccup".  Interestingly, this has already happened with "plow" in AmericanEnglish, and with "hiccup" in both English and American English.  For your second point, ff this change is made consistently, it'll eventually be much easier for English-second-language people... see also NuSpel and EnglishSpellingReform?.  In the meantime, perhaps I should try to replace all my "-ough"s, perhaps I shouldn't.  I don't have many occasions to write "plough"... most of those where I would are in relation to MTG: Swords to Plowshares which is already the phonetic spelling.  I don't use the currently-slangy spellings of "tuff" or "enuff" yet.  But... well, to coin a phrase: "I'm starting a revolution, one degree at a time".  --AC

Coming back to this for a moment - if people are going to be doing things like thru, is there much point making changes like this MaintainMe? Both are common-wiki-style vs OP's-opinion-of-how-things-should-look issues, IMO. - MoonShadow

Hmmm. Maybe a page is needed for discussion of the common issues between the two.  IMO the page should be: (a) definitely corrected if the original author becomes convinced; (b) corrected anyway if there's sufficiently vocal opinions from the rest of the active ToothyWikizens.  I think the group-maintenance aspect of Wiki is a goood thing, and I'd hate to lose it.  --AC (there's a scale, too. Vitenka and I use things like "goood" vs. "good", which I'm sure some ToothyWikizens think should be corrected despite being deliberate. I'm happy to be convinced not to do so, but haven't been so convinced yet)

That's a different question entirely - goood is (presumably) spelt that way in just a few places deliberately for style and associations. If you want your text to have the particular style and associations that go with thru, more power to you - but I thought that wasn't the case? - MoonShadow

Okay, fair point.  That is a different question because those are done for style and associations, whereas I suppose spacing isn't really.  --AlexChurchill

No, that's just people not being able to spell correctly.  I don't know of any precedent for "definate" other than other people's incorrect spelling. --M-A