This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
What do you say about a section advocating the usage of the non-breakable space? Cases I would start with are:
Please add more. BACbKA 22:55, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
The MOS currently states: If a word or phrase is generally regarded as correct, then prefer it to an alternative that is often regarded as incorrect. Thus "alternative meaning" should be used rather than "alternate meaning" since dictionaries often discourage or do not even recognize the latter. For example, the American Heritage Dictionary "Usage Note" at alternative simply says: "Alternative should not be confused with alternate."
I think this unnecessarily deprecates "alternate" for "alternative". There is an absolute distinction between the two when used as nouns. However, one very common meaning of alternate as and adjective (at least in the U.S.) is Serving or used in place of another; substitute: an alternate plan. "Alternative" (again, at least in the U.S.), also has the additional very common meaning a. Existing outside traditional or established institutions or systems: an alternative lifestyle. b. Espousing or reflecting values that are different from those of the establishment or mainstream: an alternative newspaper; alternative greeting cards. I think alternate is preferable to alternative for adjectival use. I think alternative has unintended connotations which I find distracting when I come across it. older≠ wiser 13:37, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
At Talk:Ampersand, User:66.32.255.51 wrote:
I replied:
Is there any previous discussion on when or if ampersands should be used instead of "and" in article text or titles? - Sean Curtin 02:09, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)
This subject was also brought up on Radiojon's User talk page. 66.245.97.5 23:14, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Is there a way to remove underlining from links? The reason I want to do this is because the underlining can be confused as part of a Chinese character if the character appears in a link. See Chinese family name. ☞spencer195 00:02, 29 May 2004 (UTC)
I am looking for a input to help resolve a dispute about the article on style guides. The question is this: Was the article better before or after the rewrite? Thanks. Maurreen 15:30, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I tried to find some good advice on structuring articles in wikipedia namespaces. All I found were some pages in the Style and How-to Directory, some pages in the Wikipedia:Manual of Style, and some links on template:FAPath. They mostly deal with the issue from a general stylistic and aesthetic viewpoint, and only touch on the underlying reasons for giving a logical and fairly standardized structure to encyclopedia articles.
I've therefore written up a draft guideline for writing articles in a "pyramid structure". Being mostly based on common sense, it is in part a description of what we already do, but its goal is also to explain why structuring articles in this way is good. It's at User:Zocky/Pyramid structure. Please feel free to improve and comment.
I'm not sure how to proceed. Proper structure should obviously be a FA requirement, and this should probably also be in the how-to series. But since structure is a fundamental editorial issue which heavily affects both quality and NPOV, it could also be a part of the Manual of Style. Zocky 19:45, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Introduction states that "All articles should have the title or subject in bold...", and the examples show triple quote marks as the way to mark text as bold.
It turns out that a free link which is the same as the article name automatically displays as bold, so I've been using that method instead of triple quotes. Is there any preference or policy regarding this?
Given that the self-ref bold display is a deliberately designed feature of Wiki, and adds more information, I think it's a Good Thing. -- Paul Richter 11:44, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Making the article title bold is also discussed in the Article names section (the first one on the page):
Shouldn't that sentence contain some reference to the first line of the article? Mightn't someone get confused and literally try to create an article whose title contains triple-apostrophes? Or, sitting on the edit page, wonder how to "get at the title" to insert them? — Or is this just my overactive imagination? - dcljr 03:20, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
This section includes the pronouncement "Remember also, American English tends to lowercase most titles except in the most formal settings, while British English uses capitals far more widely, with all words of a title being capitalised except for prepositions, articles and conjunctions." To which I say: huh? What types of titles are being referred to here? The rules I know (and consistently see applied here in the US) are exactly as described for British English. See, for example, something filled with titles such as the All Music Guide.
I'll also note that this section of the style guide uses UK vs. US spellings inconsistently, even for multiple uses of a single word within a single sentence. While recognizing that this might be done with some ironic intent, we must also recognise that the implication is that it is acceptable (desirable, even?) to switch back and forth within a single article, which seems sub-optimal to me. Jgm 21:51, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I'm going to change the above sentence and change all spellings to US variants within the next couple of days unless objections are raised here. Jgm 23:59, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Taking another look at this, and re-reading the entire Manual of Style, I'm inclined to propose that this entire section is unnecessary. There are entire sections devoted to UK vs. US style guidance; the only thing this paragraph has that isn't covered elsewhere is the claim that US and UK casing traditions may be different, and, again, I disagree with this claim from the outset (and others seem to back me up on this). There does seem to be a gap in the WMoS regarding capitalization for titles (of works rather than people), but this isn't filling it. What would be lost if this paragraph (British versus American casing) were deleted outright? Jgm 16:03, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
All that refers to is office and personal titles, ie, offices of state. It was never intended in way cover other titles, certainly not album casing. The reason it was put in was because there was a serious problem arising over how office titles were being used; major work had been done by a group of people in cleaning what had in reality become a farcical mess in pages relating to pages about presidents, prime ministers, peerage references, monarchical references, etc., only for the work to be undone by people who did not realise that (i) there is a difference between AE, BE, CE, HE, IE etc in how they capitalise, (ii) as most of the offices were non-American, applying American english capitalisation rules to titles that even American sources refer to using other forms of english, was causing friction and revert wars. The whole point was to tell people not to apply blanket AE rules in areas such as titles where AE is not used even in the US. And most people thought the addition achieved that, it being important that the page there as well as elsewhere warned people off making blanket capitalisation generalisations. And yes, there is a fundamental difference in CE and AE casing structure and traditions. FearÉIREANN 17:14, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
What do you say about a section advocating the usage of the non-breakable space? Cases I would start with are:
Please add more. BACbKA 22:55, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
The MOS currently states: If a word or phrase is generally regarded as correct, then prefer it to an alternative that is often regarded as incorrect. Thus "alternative meaning" should be used rather than "alternate meaning" since dictionaries often discourage or do not even recognize the latter. For example, the American Heritage Dictionary "Usage Note" at alternative simply says: "Alternative should not be confused with alternate."
I think this unnecessarily deprecates "alternate" for "alternative". There is an absolute distinction between the two when used as nouns. However, one very common meaning of alternate as and adjective (at least in the U.S.) is Serving or used in place of another; substitute: an alternate plan. "Alternative" (again, at least in the U.S.), also has the additional very common meaning a. Existing outside traditional or established institutions or systems: an alternative lifestyle. b. Espousing or reflecting values that are different from those of the establishment or mainstream: an alternative newspaper; alternative greeting cards. I think alternate is preferable to alternative for adjectival use. I think alternative has unintended connotations which I find distracting when I come across it. older≠ wiser 13:37, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
At Talk:Ampersand, User:66.32.255.51 wrote:
I replied:
Is there any previous discussion on when or if ampersands should be used instead of "and" in article text or titles? - Sean Curtin 02:09, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)
This subject was also brought up on Radiojon's User talk page. 66.245.97.5 23:14, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Is there a way to remove underlining from links? The reason I want to do this is because the underlining can be confused as part of a Chinese character if the character appears in a link. See Chinese family name. ☞spencer195 00:02, 29 May 2004 (UTC)
I am looking for a input to help resolve a dispute about the article on style guides. The question is this: Was the article better before or after the rewrite? Thanks. Maurreen 15:30, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I tried to find some good advice on structuring articles in wikipedia namespaces. All I found were some pages in the Style and How-to Directory, some pages in the Wikipedia:Manual of Style, and some links on template:FAPath. They mostly deal with the issue from a general stylistic and aesthetic viewpoint, and only touch on the underlying reasons for giving a logical and fairly standardized structure to encyclopedia articles.
I've therefore written up a draft guideline for writing articles in a "pyramid structure". Being mostly based on common sense, it is in part a description of what we already do, but its goal is also to explain why structuring articles in this way is good. It's at User:Zocky/Pyramid structure. Please feel free to improve and comment.
I'm not sure how to proceed. Proper structure should obviously be a FA requirement, and this should probably also be in the how-to series. But since structure is a fundamental editorial issue which heavily affects both quality and NPOV, it could also be a part of the Manual of Style. Zocky 19:45, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Introduction states that "All articles should have the title or subject in bold...", and the examples show triple quote marks as the way to mark text as bold.
It turns out that a free link which is the same as the article name automatically displays as bold, so I've been using that method instead of triple quotes. Is there any preference or policy regarding this?
Given that the self-ref bold display is a deliberately designed feature of Wiki, and adds more information, I think it's a Good Thing. -- Paul Richter 11:44, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Making the article title bold is also discussed in the Article names section (the first one on the page):
Shouldn't that sentence contain some reference to the first line of the article? Mightn't someone get confused and literally try to create an article whose title contains triple-apostrophes? Or, sitting on the edit page, wonder how to "get at the title" to insert them? — Or is this just my overactive imagination? - dcljr 03:20, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
This section includes the pronouncement "Remember also, American English tends to lowercase most titles except in the most formal settings, while British English uses capitals far more widely, with all words of a title being capitalised except for prepositions, articles and conjunctions." To which I say: huh? What types of titles are being referred to here? The rules I know (and consistently see applied here in the US) are exactly as described for British English. See, for example, something filled with titles such as the All Music Guide.
I'll also note that this section of the style guide uses UK vs. US spellings inconsistently, even for multiple uses of a single word within a single sentence. While recognizing that this might be done with some ironic intent, we must also recognise that the implication is that it is acceptable (desirable, even?) to switch back and forth within a single article, which seems sub-optimal to me. Jgm 21:51, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I'm going to change the above sentence and change all spellings to US variants within the next couple of days unless objections are raised here. Jgm 23:59, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Taking another look at this, and re-reading the entire Manual of Style, I'm inclined to propose that this entire section is unnecessary. There are entire sections devoted to UK vs. US style guidance; the only thing this paragraph has that isn't covered elsewhere is the claim that US and UK casing traditions may be different, and, again, I disagree with this claim from the outset (and others seem to back me up on this). There does seem to be a gap in the WMoS regarding capitalization for titles (of works rather than people), but this isn't filling it. What would be lost if this paragraph (British versus American casing) were deleted outright? Jgm 16:03, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
All that refers to is office and personal titles, ie, offices of state. It was never intended in way cover other titles, certainly not album casing. The reason it was put in was because there was a serious problem arising over how office titles were being used; major work had been done by a group of people in cleaning what had in reality become a farcical mess in pages relating to pages about presidents, prime ministers, peerage references, monarchical references, etc., only for the work to be undone by people who did not realise that (i) there is a difference between AE, BE, CE, HE, IE etc in how they capitalise, (ii) as most of the offices were non-American, applying American english capitalisation rules to titles that even American sources refer to using other forms of english, was causing friction and revert wars. The whole point was to tell people not to apply blanket AE rules in areas such as titles where AE is not used even in the US. And most people thought the addition achieved that, it being important that the page there as well as elsewhere warned people off making blanket capitalisation generalisations. And yes, there is a fundamental difference in CE and AE casing structure and traditions. FearÉIREANN 17:14, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)