Talk:Potato (word)

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[edit] Dan Quayle

This page is should insert the fact that this "slip up" occurred at an elementary school spelling bee and that Dan Quayle was reading from a spelling bee card that the teacher supplied him. Andyqaz

This page was voted on for deletion at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Potatoe. The consensus was to keep or redirect it. dbenbenn | talk 08:22, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)


IMO, this page should be a redirect to potato. -- SGBailey 09:28, 2005 Feb 7 (UTC)

  • As of right now, currently working search feature does not turn up the Dan Quayle article among the first ten hits. Since this misspelling is so associated with the Dan Quayle article, I think it is important that someone searching on the misspelling be quickly and easily directed to Dan Quayle as there's a fairly high chance that that's what they're searching for. Dpbsmith (talk) 11:07, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Since this question is being hashed out on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Potatoe right now, the matter will be decided in a few days. In the meantime, the article's present form addresses the two main potential redirects (Dan Quayle and Potato), contains the proper VfD notice, and presents the disambiguation option. I would suggest that changing the page to a redirect now might be confusing to anybody looking at the VfD. --TenOfAllTrades 13:22, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
In WordPerfect Enhanced version 3.5 for Macintosh 680x0 (released in 1997), the misspelled word "potatoe" is automatically corrected into "potato". Apparently, the automatic correction ("QuickCorrection") is triggered by an entry, among few entries, in its preinstalled correction database. In other words, the programmers decided that the word "potatoe" is misspelled and that the word should be changed automatically into "potato". No other word processors are known to do the same thing.
  • I have removed this paragraph as unencyclopedic, and quite likely false. Pretty much all text processors have spell checking functions, and quite a few of them (including MS Word) can automatically replace misspelled text as you type it. - Mike Rosoft 20:00, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Subject

IT'S POTATOE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Djf2014 15:32, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

First correct spelling now links to potato page.

[edit] Dan Quayle??

How is this relevant other than to make political points on the spelling of "potato"? If this is to be a political statement about Dan Quayle, then in fairness it should be emphasized strongly that the "incorrect" spelling was a variant spelling AND that the word was spelled "POTATOE" on the flash card supplied to Quayle. Further, if one wants to make this political, then it would be fair to point out that this was only considered a "mistake" by those that held a different political viewpoint than Quayle. To conservatives, this is simply a retelling of a fable designed to make Quayle look stupid. So I deleted the biased, non-neutral point of view.

I deleted the reference to Dan Quayle. Apparently it was reinserted by "BongWarrior". I'd like to know what the relevance of Dan Quayle is to a word, except in the minds of certain members of the left. For example, there is on reference to Bill Clinton under the topic "sexual relations". He's synonymous with the term to many members of the right.

So I deleted it..again.

Okaythere 15:40, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

It happened, and it's relevant to the article. If it's unflattering to the reputation of Dan Quayle, that's not Wikipedia's problem. Please try to build consensus before removing it again. --Bongwarrior 18:10, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps add that however, it was the original spelling of the word, and that correcting someone who writes "cacao", telling them that it is "cocoa" is similar. Zchris87v 21:36, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
And enclosed used to be spelled encloased... honestly who gives a shit. By the time he learned how to spell it, it would have been considered wrong. The reason it is notable has nothing to do with politics. It was a widely known event when it happened, and it was talked about quite a lot. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.102.196.38 (talk) 00:47, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I was specifically looking for the Quayle incident when I looked up "Potatoe". If it wasn't for Quayle's outdated flash cards, this article wouldn't even exist. And to be fair, if I was using those flash cards, I would have made the same mistake. Potatoe... Potato... let's call the whole thing off. Mingusboodle (talk) 19:09, 23 March 2008 (UTC)