Improving and correcting

[olydiagron.livejournal.com]

Dear friends!
Would anyone like to give me example of the usage of исправить and попрaвить?
As far as I understand, исправить is when you make a wrong right, when you straiten something out, and попрaвить is when you make something better by adjusting it a bit?
I am thinking of "исправительная колония" (поправительная колония sounds funny.. :), and "поправить шарф".

But when it comes to ошибки, can they be both исправленные and поправленные? And when I have corrected all misstakes in a text - has it been popravlen or ispravlen?
I usually say that I "исправляю" if it is simple grammatical mistakes or spelling, but "поправляю" if somebody recommended to improve the syntax, did I get it wrong?
/Amanda

Comments

[oiseau-russe.livejournal.com]

When you speak about grammatical or orthographical (or any onter) mistakes, it's always исправить. Поправить may be used in the sens "to improuve", to make something that is not completely wrong better.

Поправить ошибку sounds completely wrong to me even if I cannot give you a rule for that ;). You can поправить того, кто ошибся, that is to correct someone's mistake by pointing to them thir error end/or giving them th correct answer. But if in English in this context the action is directed to the mistake, in russian it is directed to the person that made a mistake. So you can say исправить ошибку or поправить человека, сделавшего ошибку. I hope that it is more or less clear...

[olydiagron.livejournal.com]

Thank you! so i will always ispravit' oshibki!