Talking Turkey about Two Common Errors

Greetings again. I hope you’re doing well.

This blog post focuses on two errors that I’ve recently seen many times. The first regards the name of a statistical test. Some authors have referred to the Turkey test. However, it is the Tukey test (also known, for example, as Tukey’s procedure). It is named after John W. Tukey, who developed it.

(As you may know, a turkey is a type of large bird, commonly eaten on the US holiday Thanksgiving. The expression “to talk turkey” means to discuss something in a frank, straightforward way. Turkey is also a slang term for a person who is stupid or inept.)

Maybe the authors thought that Turkey was the correct name of the test. Or maybe the auto-correct option changed Tukey to Turkey. If you use auto-correct, remember to proofread carefully.

The other common error regards use of the word blog. A blog is a website, or part of a website, with a chronological series of entries. The entries are called posts or blog posts. By the way, the word blog is a shortened form of the word weblog.

Recently several email messages referring to individual posts have called them blogs. For instance, one of them asked people to submit a 500-word blog. Doing so was like wanting someone to write a magazine article but asking the person to write a magazine.

Are there errors that you would like this blog to discuss? If so, post a comment below or email me at bgastel@inasp.info. Even better, offer to submit a guest blog post (but not an entire blog!).

Until the next post—

Barbara