I thought I read someplace on this site when I first started here that it didn't matter whether or not I used upper or lower case at, for example, the beginning of a word.

And, for the most part that has been true. But, every once in a while, and both yesterday and today, I've missed a question because I used lower case. It wouldn't be so crucial except that my shift key is not working the way it should so it takes me some time - which in quizzes I don't have - to get it to show upper case.

So, which is it? Did I misread in the first place?

Lee

I have never once used capitals in any question required a typed-in answer. And I have never gotten it wrong because of that. If you get one wrong that "appears" to be correct, it's usually something to do with extra spaces (either before or after words).

Jakeroo is correct - all "Fill the Blank" answers are completely case-independent. You might either have encountered a typo (letter swap) or other minor error. Leading and trailing spaces are also ignored (I just tested all of them with today's daily Brain Twist), but having two spaces between words does cause an answer to be marked wrong even though this is not visible on screen.

You probably read it in Quiz Creation Guidelines:
http://www.funtrivia.com/quizzes/general/quiz_creation_guidelines/fill_in_the_blanks__fitbs.html

Thank you all for your replies. I do not believe either had an error, at least not in spelling. To me it looked simply like a lack of upper case.

I'll check more closely the next time it occurs, if it does. I've had it happen at least 6-8 times in the past year, I know, but not usually in back-to-back days.

Lee

You mentioned having problems with your shift key. If there is excessive grunge in your keyboard, you may also be experiencing intermittent double 'space' commands from a single entry. When you are in shut down, try turning the keyboard over and do some gentle shaking and then try vacuuming from the top side. If you have an old keyboard around that works, try swapping them. There are some unethical types (he he he) out there that would buy a new keyboard, use that as a replacement in troubleshooting and if no improvement is noted, returning it to the store (save your receipt). If your keyboard is gel-type or touchscreen, other advice is needed.
Most keyboards have two shiftkeys. Is the problem evident with both of them or just the one you are used to using?

Actually I think habitsowner is correct. I can recall a number of quizzes where I too have gotten wrong answers because a title or name was not capitalized. Looking back after completing the quizzes, I noticed that the instructions actually reminded the player to capitalize. They may have been quizzes from an earlier time, since I'm not sure what the original rules were, but I know it happened to me as well.

Fred, authors may have written this in the past, but the system evaluates all quizzes equally.

Capitalization does not matter.
Trailing and leading spaces do not matter.
Double spaces between words, any mismatched punctuation or any other deviations from the exact spelling of the correct answer do matter and will make your answer wrong.

This information is correct and tested in a live quiz as of today, 11 June 2012

That is correct. It is how things have been for about 10 years now.

It is POSSIBLE that if you are using an incredibly strange character set that your capital letters get decoded weirdly by your browser. I've seen this happen a couple of times over the years, but it is very, very rare. If you've got an English keyboard, then odds are you have too many spaces between words in your answer.

On this last point, it is probably something I should add checking for (ignoring extra spaces in answers) eventually.

Terry

When correction notes are sent for this, 95% of the time there is a spelling error, usually transposed letters. Even when you're checking for this, it's easy to miss it, as the eye sees what the eye expects to see.

Here is an example of FITBs errors: these three answers are all different, but appear the same on the screen:

Terry Ford
Terry Ford
Terry Ford

The only correct one is the last one .. this is what was entered:

 Terry Ford
Terry  Ford
Terry Ford

(there's a leading-space in the first line and a double space bar in the second line)

gtho4,

Wes just said that leading and trailing spaces do not matter, that only double spaces matter.

Since I don't believe I had any of those, I'm just now trying to figure out which is correct.

Thank you,

Lee

I think the point in posting it was to show that no matter where the double (or more) spaces appear, they are displayed on the screen as if they weren't there when you ee the answers, and that makes it harder to realize if you did it or not. I have pressed back before and gotten to my actual answer screen and then use the back arrows withing th answer space to see if I've had extra spaces, and to my amazement, I have. It is easier to do it without wanting to than you would think.

I'd like to stress the point made by agony. When checking correction notices on this there is nearly always a typo or spelling error in the recorded answer that the player typed.

There's nothing very surprising in that ... After all, if a player has been routinely spelling Caesar (as in Julius Caesar) for years and years as Cesar, then presumably he or she doesn't notice the difference till getting an FITB answer wrong.


Editor, History and People


PS. About once a month or so I see a correction notice asking that Cesar be added to the accepted spellings of Caesar.

For that particular word, bloomsby, I also find myself typing in ceasar, which is not usually accepted either.

I don't generally make many (text) errors (I'm not bragging, but it's my job to input data all day - just saying it's easy for me to assume that I didn't make an error THIS time either LOL). You will note that I left out an entire word in my previous post.

And because our own errors are usually the hardest to spot, when I have to send out a department-wide message at work, I get a colleague to read it for me before I hit send.

So, it could be inattention to minute detail, or perhaps a sticky or foreign keyboard, but it can't be the game itself, or I'd have gotten every answer I ever typed wrong lol.

Hope you get it sorted, habitsowner! : )

It's that rare? I figured it'd be much more commonplace.

Words like fluorescent or its alternatives will also cause problems.

Cesar (as in Julius) is wrong on a few levels. That being said, I had a q in one of my quizzes that sat there for almost an entire year as "Ceasar" before Mr. Melston mortified me with my negligence. (sigh - but thank you!)

edited because somehow I got Melston and Morrow confused, which is inexcusable (not saying they're not both really nice guys! lol)

Cesar is not wrong if you are Spanish, though I think it would need an accent somewhere

If I recall correctly, it is the E. (César)

You recall correctly, dg_dave.

Another key comes into play that is rarely used on the keyboard but can be typed accidentally when going for the Tab key. It's that one right under the tilde, the `. What is that thing anyway? It's not the apostrophe ( ' vs ` ). Does it have a name and what is it's use? If you are going for speed and mistrike the Tab key that mark can be overlooked quite easy on review and, being struck adjacent to the Tab, can come up as a trailer (as in wordwise`) or a lead in (as in `wordwise). In addition to ignoring spaces, might ignoring the ` help improve some scores?`

It's called accent grave.

Thank you Sue, that was the lead I needed. Wiki wants to call it Grave Accent. Either way it's aptly named (Grave/Dead). Its use is for programs that allow double key entries (How many of those around?). In ASCII it is character 96. It is also used by programmers and they call it the backtick or backquote. Aren't ticks carriers of diseases and viruses? All the more reason for Terry's readers to consider it a danger and not read it.

More can be found at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grave_accent
But who would want to? It's just trivia.

It is really not viable to set up the templates to ignore a large range of undesired symbols - that is one of the reasons why Fill in the Blank questions are not allowed to contain punctuation (despite the instructions you may read in older quizzes). It is not too complicated to ignore spaces, especially leading and trailing pones, but after that it starts to get complicated. The accent grave (as I learned to call it in 8th grade French classes) is only one of many symbols you shouldn't include. No punctuation, no diacriticals (accents grave, acute or circumflex, umlaut, etc.), and you're safe. Even if in your heart of hearts you know it should be there.

edited to clarify the reference to diacritical marks

Accent grave as in Egbert Souse (see at about 1:40). They for some reason spell it with an acute accent where you see it written.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K8WtjelXEg

I do agree, though, that the "grave accent" can be a bother. I don't know how many times I've had to go back to a previous question to remove it from my answer. :P

I try and avoid all diacritical marks in multiple choice answers, too. When playing in Flash mode or quiz mode, diacriticals often create confusing renderings on the screen (for instance, replacing the letter with its ASCII code).

Even if the answer is "piñata", generally, a fill in the blank answer will have it as "pinata", as the main language on this site is English, and therefore the majority of players do not even have a keyboard with such symbols. Granted, there are programs that allow for symbol choices for each letter (similar to what happens if you hold down a letter on an iPod), and there is also the "alt+164" trick for the ñ, but that still makes things extremely complicated when playing hourlies. It's hard enough when playing a quiz!

So ya, I avoid diacritical marks as often as possible as well.

FITBs shouldn't have any diacritical marks at all, for the same reason they shouldn't have punctuation. If you come across one, please send a correction note and we'll change it to multiple choice. There, even if something does go wonky, it's usually possible to figure out what was meant.