What's the "This is a minor edit" option for?

[soleado 0]

Every time you're going to submit an edit to an article you have the option to check the box "This is a minor edit".

What's that for? When is an edit minor?

[SargeCassidy 2]

For example, when it's merely fixing typos, styling, etc.

[Aemony 150]

Ultimately how people use it is up to them, but as Sarge touched upon ”minor” edits are typically edits that their author do not think need additional inspection. I think Wikipedia makes the distinction between a ”major” and a ”minor” edit by whether the meaning/gist of a paragraph changes overtly. If it doesn’t change in a meaningful way, marking an edit as “minor” allows other editors to filter out them when going through the recent changes on the site.

I believe all edits for all new users default to being “major” as such, due to ensuring existing editors do not overlook them. However within the user’s preferences there should be an option that controls whether to mark the edits as minor or major by default.