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I am moving this page, currently named Safety deposit box, to Safe deposit box. ""Safety" is rarely pronounced very differently from "safe-D" so it is natural that many people suppose they are hearing the word at the beginning of this phrase, but the correct expression is in fact "safe-deposit box."" http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/safety.html
You can also look at bank websites and see that they all call them safe deposit boxes, and a search for "safety deposit" either return no results or redirects to safe deposit. Fuhghettaboutit04:35, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not disagreeing with you, but I will point out that your last statement, "a search for 'safety deposit' either return no results or redirects to safe deposit" is flawed. Do you mean a search on Wikipedia? If you do, since the redirect was created by Wikipedia, that is circular reasoning along the lines of "since X is true on Wikipedia, it is true". If instead you mean a search on Google, then, as of this writing, "safety deposit box" returns 2,210,000 results (compared to 2,520,000 for "safe deposit box")--2 million is definitely not "no results" as you claim. —Lowellian (reply) 09:50, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Although I can see how you might have read the beginning of the sentence as disconnected from its end (my fault for writing without perfect clarity), the search at issue was of the bank websites, using their internal search functions. Try not to slap your forehead too hard:-)--Fuhghettaboutit18:06, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
We should look at usage in general in published sources, not just the banks' websites. They do not own the language used to describe their facilities. A search of Google News archive for 1998 through 2008 (to make sure it is contemporary usage) shows 5820 entries for "safety deposit" [1] and 22,700 for "safe deposit"[2]. Over all the dates covered by Google News archive the numbers are 30,800 for "safety deposit" and 106,000 for "safe deposit." The useage "safety deposit" is less prevalent than "safe deposit" but certainly quite common in published news articles. As for pronunciation, I do not agree that "Safe deposit" sounds anything like "Safety deposit" unless the speaker uses the Slurvian [3] dialect of English. Edison (talk) 17:38, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Although I agree that "Safety Deposit Boxes" is an incorrect term for safe deposit boxes, in an online discussion with Professor Paul Brians, referenced by Fuhghettaboutit, the professor argued that Wikipedia states "Safety Deposit Boxes" as being incorrect, building on the argument for circular reasoning. In the end he opted for a democratic argument, People who manufacture and sell and rent safe deposit boxes mostly use that term, so that's enough for me." This comment being made without sufficient, let alone rigorous, research is anecdotal and not so overwhelming as my experience, working with the safe deposit box department at a mid-cap bank. --daleallenbaker 2:15, 21 February 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.170.62.235 (talk)
