Common Mistakes When Entering Verses

Posted on February 28, 2010 Andy 55 comments

There are a few common mistakes that we've noticed when people enter new memory verses:

1. Quotation Marks - please do not omit quotation marks. It is understandably tempting to omit the single sided quotation marks but they should be included as they are part of the text
2. 'LORD' vs 'Lord' - I don't remember the exact difference but in Old Testament verses we frequently see 'LORD' entered as 'Lord'. These two terms are different and it's important to enter them correctly. Fortunately, everything is case-insensitive when you're memorizing so you won't be tested on the difference!
3. Periods and Full-stops - these are very frequently left out at the end of verses.

We are not being pedantic on this front. All the major translations' copyright restrictions require identical punctuation and spelling so we eventually correct every verse to match the given translation.

The Work of the Scribes

Posted on November 22, 2009 Andy 1 comment

If you're very alert you will occasionally notice corrections to verses that you're memorizing. In the early days of Memverse, we allowed anyone to edit any verse. The hope was that, like Wikipedia, any inaccuracies would gradually be eliminated. This turned out to be a foolish hope as users often decided that a slight tweak to the work of the Bible translators would be preferable. Since we now have thousands of users memorizing some verses, it was important that one person not be allowed to tamper with a jot or tittle of the text.

If you look at your list of verses you will notice that the last column designates verses as either 'Locked' or 'Editable'. If a verse is still editable, it means that you are the only person currently memorizing that verse and we encourage you to edit it to be as accurate as possible. Cutting and pasting from Bible Gateway (please also remove any footnote information, verse numbering, and new line characters) is the best method to ensure accuracy. At some point that verse is likely to have a second user who will be memorizing the verse as you entered it.

Once a second user starts memorizing a verse, it is flagged for review by one of the moderators. The verse will typically be verified within a day or so and will then be locked to prevent further editing.

Despite the best efforts of our moderators, you will occasionally find a verse that is locked but that still has an error. Just drop us a line and we'll gladly correct it.