This is not a Wikipedia a wikiproject: It is an individual user's work-in-progress page, and may be incomplete and/or unreliable. The current/final version of this page may be located at
WP:WikiProject English Language now or in the future. Find sources:
Google (
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scholar ·
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WP refs) ·
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This is a
WikiProject, an area for focused collaboration among Wikipedians. New participants are welcome; please feel free to participate!
|
Welcome to WikiProject English Language. Several Wikipedians have formed this collaboration resource and group dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of the English language and the organisation of information and articles on this topic. This page and its subpages contain their suggestions and various resources; it is hoped that this project will help to focus the efforts of other Wikipedians interested in the topic. If you would like to help, please add yourself as a participant in the project, inquire on the talk page and see the to-do list below.
WikiProject English Language will focus on ensuring that Wikipedia has:
When sourcing for articles, we have to be forthcoming about which editions we're using, and only cite the current ones except for clearly delineated historical purposes. The misuse of old style guides to advance PoV-laden and often nationalistic agendas has been far too common, both in and out of mainspace. Most of the major style guides aside from Chicago have been updated in the last 1–3 years, but some of their previous editions were more than a decade earlier; ones that old are not likely to be reliable for current style matters.
When citing Web style guides, they actually need to be reliable ones; user-generated content doesn't count (including wikis, forums, AllExperts.com, Yahoo! Answers, etc.). Self-published punditry doesn't either, though the language blogs of reputable experts can sometimes be used with caution for certain things if directly attributed as primary sources. House style publications are a mix of primary and tertiary but are still sometimes useful. Individual universities' and colleges' summaries of writing tips for students are tertiary at best, being rehash of the major style guides (they have about the same weight as introductory textbooks, which is low, per WP:Identifying reliable sources).
We also need to distinguish between journalistic, academic, and general-purpose style guides, along one axis, and between those intended for broad public use vs. internal house style along another, and sometimes also along a third axis of nationality (or other cultural sphere) of the intended market. Our failure to do this programmatically has a lot to do with why our articles on English are so inconsistent, with so few at WP:Good article or WP:Featured article level.
Be aware of the sharp distinction between university guides for student academic writing, and in-house guides for the institutions' own communications departments; the latter are public relations style guides, and are uniformly based on journalistic and marketing manuals, not formal, academic ones. There's also a big difference between the publication manuals of major publishers of academic journals, and a particular journal's style guide (when it really is in-house; many of them are just copies of their publishers'). Lastly, there's a similar distinction between government-produced manuals for the public like the Style Manual for Authors, Editors and Printers by the Australian Government Publishing Service, and internal guidelines like the U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual.
If you are sourcing something in part for the Wikipedia:Manual of Style please remember that the primary purpose of the sourcing is to improve Wikipedia's articles. Beware performing one-sided, cherry-picked sourcing to make a point, and don't engage in MoS-related dispute in article talk pages, where that will be off-topic (save it for WT:MOS or one of the MoS subpages' talk pages).
Finally, always keep in mind the WP:Neutral point of view and WP:What Wikipedia is not#HOWTO policies. Our articles cannot provide advice, declare a particular usage or style to be "correct" or "wrong", or otherwise be prescriptive or proscriptive, only linguistically descriptive. Any other approach is forbidden original research. This includes attempting to engage in novel analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis of sources to arrive at our own editorial conclusions, such as that a particular style "is" colloquial, "should be" considered obsolete, or is "standard". There is no such thing as a single standard of English usage, and sources that use the term "standard" mean completely different things by it, including any of the following and more: "common in journalism or academic writing"; "common in everyday speech"; "following the prescribed methodology of a particular ToEFL programme"; "how the Queen speaks"; "how US Midwestern newscasters sound"; etc. Wikipedia cannot give undue weight to any of these approaches to the subjective notion of "standard" English.
To-do list for User:SMcCandlish/WikiProject English Language: To-do list is empty: remove {{To do}} tag or click on edit to add an item. |
Please feel free to add yourself here, and to indicate any areas of particular interest.
Please feel free to list your new English Language-related articles here (newer articles at the top, please). Any new articles that have an interesting or unusual fact in them, are at least over 1,500 characters, don't have any dispute templates on them, and cite their sources, should be suggested for the Did you know? box on the Wikipedia Main Page.
To display all subcategories click on the "►": |
---|
English corpora (18 P)
English-only movement (19 P)
English-language lyricists (1 P)
English profanity (60 P)
English language stubs (67 P) |
{{
WikiProject English Language}}
– Talk-page banner for articles within the project's scope{{
English language nav}}
- Sidebar for navigating main English language articles{{
WikiProject English Language/English language master navbox}}
{{
Description of English}}
{{
History of English}}
{{
English dialects by continent}}
{{
Dictionaries of English}}
{{
English official language clickable map}}
{{
Germanic languages}}
{{
Wikipedia:WikiProject English Language/Userbox}}
- Userbox for project participants' user pagesFor now, see Style guide.
Forthcoming:
|via=
giving the website, per
WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT):
This is not a Wikipedia a wikiproject: It is an individual user's work-in-progress page, and may be incomplete and/or unreliable. The current/final version of this page may be located at
WP:WikiProject English Language now or in the future. Find sources:
Google (
books ·
news ·
scholar ·
free images ·
WP refs) ·
FENS ·
JSTOR ·
TWL |
This is a
WikiProject, an area for focused collaboration among Wikipedians. New participants are welcome; please feel free to participate!
|
Welcome to WikiProject English Language. Several Wikipedians have formed this collaboration resource and group dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of the English language and the organisation of information and articles on this topic. This page and its subpages contain their suggestions and various resources; it is hoped that this project will help to focus the efforts of other Wikipedians interested in the topic. If you would like to help, please add yourself as a participant in the project, inquire on the talk page and see the to-do list below.
WikiProject English Language will focus on ensuring that Wikipedia has:
When sourcing for articles, we have to be forthcoming about which editions we're using, and only cite the current ones except for clearly delineated historical purposes. The misuse of old style guides to advance PoV-laden and often nationalistic agendas has been far too common, both in and out of mainspace. Most of the major style guides aside from Chicago have been updated in the last 1–3 years, but some of their previous editions were more than a decade earlier; ones that old are not likely to be reliable for current style matters.
When citing Web style guides, they actually need to be reliable ones; user-generated content doesn't count (including wikis, forums, AllExperts.com, Yahoo! Answers, etc.). Self-published punditry doesn't either, though the language blogs of reputable experts can sometimes be used with caution for certain things if directly attributed as primary sources. House style publications are a mix of primary and tertiary but are still sometimes useful. Individual universities' and colleges' summaries of writing tips for students are tertiary at best, being rehash of the major style guides (they have about the same weight as introductory textbooks, which is low, per WP:Identifying reliable sources).
We also need to distinguish between journalistic, academic, and general-purpose style guides, along one axis, and between those intended for broad public use vs. internal house style along another, and sometimes also along a third axis of nationality (or other cultural sphere) of the intended market. Our failure to do this programmatically has a lot to do with why our articles on English are so inconsistent, with so few at WP:Good article or WP:Featured article level.
Be aware of the sharp distinction between university guides for student academic writing, and in-house guides for the institutions' own communications departments; the latter are public relations style guides, and are uniformly based on journalistic and marketing manuals, not formal, academic ones. There's also a big difference between the publication manuals of major publishers of academic journals, and a particular journal's style guide (when it really is in-house; many of them are just copies of their publishers'). Lastly, there's a similar distinction between government-produced manuals for the public like the Style Manual for Authors, Editors and Printers by the Australian Government Publishing Service, and internal guidelines like the U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual.
If you are sourcing something in part for the Wikipedia:Manual of Style please remember that the primary purpose of the sourcing is to improve Wikipedia's articles. Beware performing one-sided, cherry-picked sourcing to make a point, and don't engage in MoS-related dispute in article talk pages, where that will be off-topic (save it for WT:MOS or one of the MoS subpages' talk pages).
Finally, always keep in mind the WP:Neutral point of view and WP:What Wikipedia is not#HOWTO policies. Our articles cannot provide advice, declare a particular usage or style to be "correct" or "wrong", or otherwise be prescriptive or proscriptive, only linguistically descriptive. Any other approach is forbidden original research. This includes attempting to engage in novel analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis of sources to arrive at our own editorial conclusions, such as that a particular style "is" colloquial, "should be" considered obsolete, or is "standard". There is no such thing as a single standard of English usage, and sources that use the term "standard" mean completely different things by it, including any of the following and more: "common in journalism or academic writing"; "common in everyday speech"; "following the prescribed methodology of a particular ToEFL programme"; "how the Queen speaks"; "how US Midwestern newscasters sound"; etc. Wikipedia cannot give undue weight to any of these approaches to the subjective notion of "standard" English.
To-do list for User:SMcCandlish/WikiProject English Language: To-do list is empty: remove {{To do}} tag or click on edit to add an item. |
Please feel free to add yourself here, and to indicate any areas of particular interest.
Please feel free to list your new English Language-related articles here (newer articles at the top, please). Any new articles that have an interesting or unusual fact in them, are at least over 1,500 characters, don't have any dispute templates on them, and cite their sources, should be suggested for the Did you know? box on the Wikipedia Main Page.
To display all subcategories click on the "►": |
---|
English corpora (18 P)
English-only movement (19 P)
English-language lyricists (1 P)
English profanity (60 P)
English language stubs (67 P) |
{{
WikiProject English Language}}
– Talk-page banner for articles within the project's scope{{
English language nav}}
- Sidebar for navigating main English language articles{{
WikiProject English Language/English language master navbox}}
{{
Description of English}}
{{
History of English}}
{{
English dialects by continent}}
{{
Dictionaries of English}}
{{
English official language clickable map}}
{{
Germanic languages}}
{{
Wikipedia:WikiProject English Language/Userbox}}
- Userbox for project participants' user pagesFor now, see Style guide.
Forthcoming:
|via=
giving the website, per
WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT):