Talk:Spoilt vote

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[edit] Spoilt or spoiled

"Spoilt"? Is that even a word?
Signed, some American

Seriously, should this be spoiled? "Spoilt" might be right in Britain (I don't know, though), but it isn't in the US. Does Wikipedia have a policy on what to do in these cases? A10brown 19:33, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

"Spoilt" is in fact correct; in general, a "default" policy is to "give" the name to whoever started the article, a sort of "first come first served" basis. --Lenoxus 01:10, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Weeelll, Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English does indeed say "Follow the dialect of the first contributor." and also "If an article has been in a given dialect for a long time, and there is no clear reason to change it, leave it alone." However, it also says, "Try to find words that are common to all." I reckon that applies to spelling as well as vocabulary. "Spoiled vote" is no worse than "spoilt vote" in British (as well as being a good deal better in American). jnestorius^(talk)

I've just done a Google search, and 'spoiled vote' gives 1.85 million hits compared to 420,000 for 'spoilt vote'. Given that result suggests 'spoiled vote' is the far more common usage, I would support a page move to that title. As Jnestorius says above, 'spoiled vote' is not incorrect in British English, and seems to be the only spelling used in American English, making it probably the most appropriate choice. Terraxos 19:46, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

This isn't so much a language issue as a contextual one. This article is about voting and is the correct spelling for that context. To give some further insight, a Google search of the complete phases "spoilt vote" vs. "spoiled vote" shows nearly twice as many entries for spoilt. Terraxos, your search only shows the word "spoilt" is less common overall than the word "spoiled." --Electiontechnology 03:17, 29 October 2007 (UTC)