Saturday, March 31, 2012

But the old folks haz a sad

Oh, Google, say it ain't so ...

Google search for 'the kids are all right' returns results for 'the kids are alright' instead.

The Google Books Ngram view of the situation doesn't give much support for why their search algorithm should respond as it does. But the Google Books dataset ends at 2008, and those data are in any case from books, so maybe there's been a spike in the number of people online typing in the wrong new version the past few years.

[Added] That wasn't very bright of me. Try this ngram view instead. Worrisome trend!

;)

3 comments:

Ocean said...

Ah, that explains it. See how "alright" starts to go up in the 80s, when I arrived in this country...

bjkeefe said...

Not to worry. I don't hold you fully responsible.

Ocean said...

Thank you, Brendan. I'm much relieved now.

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