Bacteria boy

Hello Bacteria boy! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. If you decide that you need help, check out Getting Help below, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. Below are some useful links to facilitate your involvement. Happy editing! matt.smart talk/contribs 10:51, 21 February 2007 (UTC) Getting started Wikipedia tutorial • The five pillars of Wikipedia How to: edit a page • upload an image Getting help Frequently asked questions Where to ask questions or make comments Request administrator attention Policies and guidelines Neutral point of view • Reliable sources Verifiability • Citing sources • No original research What Wikipedia is not • Biographies of living persons Manual of Style • Three-revert rule • Sock puppetry Copyrights • Fair use • Image use policy External links • Spam • Vandalism Deletion policy • Conflict of interest • Notability The community Building consensus • Resolving disputes Assume good faith • Civility • Etiquette No personal attacks • No legal threats Community Portal • Village pump Signpost • IRC channels • Mailing lists Things to do Be bold in editing • Help develop an article Pages needing attention • Peer review Join a WikiProject • Translating articles Cleaning up: General • Spam • Vandalism Miscellaneous Categories • Disambiguity • Stubs User pages • Talk pages Useful templates • Tools • User scripts

== Dependent or dependant? ==

Hi Bacteria boy, and welcome to Wikipedia.

Thanks for your message on my talk page about the spelling of dependent/dependant in the Bwamba Fever article. Well, I don't want to make a big thing of this, but according to The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993 the adjective is always spelt with an e. The Guide also says (though not relevant here) that the noun - usually spelt with an a in British English - is nearly always spelt with an e too. Only a minority of sources disagree with this opinion.

I should say that the corrections were made using Lupin's Live spellcheck tool, which uses Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings/For machines. If you think that the entry in that list is incorrect you can (in the spirit of Wikipedia) remove it.

By the way, I'm British too (see my User page). Every time I see or have to write Wikipedia, it hurts, but I do it :-) --Smalljim 16:59, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Dependent or dependant, continued

Good point, BB! I hadn't considered that it might be part of a recognised biological term. In that case I must bow to your specialist knowledge. But I do also have to point out that on Google:

"RNA dependant RNA polymerase" gives about 398 hits
whereas
"RNA dependent RNA polymerase" gives about 294,000 hits.

And I've just discovered that there is an entry in this very encyclopedia for RNA dependent RNA polymerase (we should both have checked for that first!).

Anyway, as you say, enough of such trivia - let's get back to doing some "useful" work on the encyclopædia!

Good luck --Smalljim 20:13, 27 February 2007 (UTC)