Nine Years, One Letter: The Yog(h)urt Wars

There is a letter H that cost Wikipedia the better part of a decade. It sits — or doesn't — in the middle of everyone's favorite fermented dairy product.

The minor edit

American English says yogurt. British English often says yoghurt. Wikipedia policy says an article sticks with the variety of English it started with, absent a strong reason to change. What followed was a strong disagreement about what counts as a strong reason.

− Yoghurt

• Yogurt

edit summary: "requested move — round 8"

The article's title was challenged in move request after move request across nearly nine years. Each round summoned dueling dictionary citations, sales figures for supermarket labels, and increasingly weary administrators.

The major consequence

The war finally ended in 2011, when a closing panel moved the article to Yogurt and the community essentially agreed to never speak of it again. The saga became shorthand — cited in essays and policy debates — for discussions that consume infinitely more energy than their subject could ever justify.

The H, for the record, is doing fine. It appears twice in "yoghurt," a word you can still type into Wikipedia, which will politely redirect you to the winning spelling.