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. |
From the article on Hezbollah:
Which is the correct format for period placement? Before or after the <ref>...</ref> tags. --
Roxi2
16:19, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
JA: WP:Footnotes are a crime against literacy. Use parenthetical citations. Then you have the choice of (1) placing the citation inside the sentence to source the sentence, or (2) placing the citation outside the last sentence of a blockquote paragraph to source the entire paragraph. Jon Awbrey 16:50, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm dismayed that WP policy is to use British-style punctuation (punctuation outside quotation marks) in articles that are written in American English. Sorry, but it's just wrong. WP might as well set a policy that "through" is to be spelled "thru." It doesn't make sense for WP to make up new rules of punctuation that are not used anywhere else, in any publication, anywhere in the English-speaking world. It also doesn't make sense to set a rule that will be violated by any literate person who hasn't read WP's Manual of Style. Anyone who understands the mechanics of punctuation in American English will naturally correct these mistakes --- and they are mistakes, regardless of whether the MoS tries to decree that they're not.-- 24.52.254.62 20:16, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
On the one hand, house styles can indeed be as arbitrary as the proprietors can get away with. And on the other, readers familiar with established conventions are free to find oddities of usage odd (or even semi-literate). I understand that in matters such as the serial comma, different organizations favor different practices, but in the matter of punctuating quotation marks, it makes sense to follow the flag rather than "splitting the difference." Is WP a US or UK enterprise? RLetson 05:49, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
Every publisher in the English speaking world uses the conventions of his location. If a UK edition is published, and then a US, all the quotation marks and all the spelling will be changed. Some books with UK conventions are sold in the US, as not all works have a separate US edition. In addition, some works intending to have a "UK flavour" will retain the UK conventions. But the intent of this policy is apparently that all articles about English monarchs should be in UK style, including both the spelling and the use of punctuation. But look at them: US spelling is used, and US style quotation marks. We can't have a Wiki with style considered acceptable by publishers and educators in both countries, because there isn't any. The only way we could achieve that-- eventually--is to have UK and US versions with all the punctuation etc. automatically changed. Our goal for now ought to be a style which the readers of both countries will accept, which is fairly flexible, as readers do at least occasionally encounter both outside WP. An additional consideration is the ease of writing and editing. I want to write in the way I find easiest--there is quite enough problems without using an alien style. I do not want to go around changing other people's national style, or have them waste time changing mine. Let them look to my errors, instead. I'm not going to go through the English monarchs and change every quotation mark. I don't think anybody should. In the meanwhile, the best we can have is consistency. Certainly within an article: anyone editing an article ought to follow the style of the article, and it would be right to change inadvertent difference as one finds them. Possibly within a series of articles, possibly within a type of article, such as pop culture figures specific to one or another country, or which deliberately maintain such specificity. DGG 08:25, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
Æsthetics is in the eye of the beholder as was mentioned. There may be a lot of beholders in the US but there are more outside. As for me, I don't find logical punctuation unsightly. Quite the contrary for me it's American punctuation which is the eye-sore. -- Jimp 00:42, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
In my particular field, scholarly publishing , the overwhelming majority of publishing is outside the US, as it has always been. Most scholarly journals use one style or another, because in conventional publication, one looks through an issue and it is unsettling if the successive ones do not look the same. In e-journals and other contemporary forms, people read each article by itself. They are as likely to go from an article of publisher A to one of publisher B, and, although they may notice the style difference, they don't much care. There's no real precedent for a work like this one. The structure invites people to go from one article to another, but the overall consistency in the makeup of the page is enough. If we keep that, its sufficient.
It's a reference, not a textbook
We do indeed need to worry about style, but we are worrying about the wrong half--the "accidentals", not the "substantatives". The punctuation, not the ideas. DGG 08:25, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
Are we discussing quotation style? Again? It's not the "British" way, nor the "American" way. It's called logical quotation style. Wikipedia adopts it. End of story. Shall we put a comment in the MoS with a reference to the
archives?
PizzaMargherita
07:40, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Please check the archives. PizzaMargherita 08:51, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
The truth of the matter is, it's not more logical. It's occasionally less ambiguous than the American style, but only by a small degree, and that still only makes it more logical if you accept the axiom that style rules should be geared to minimize ambiguity, which clearly not everyone here does (I largely do). It's certainly not any more logical than the British style. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 19:00, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
PizzaMargherita, you were not appointed head grammarian. If the MOS were intended to be enforced rigorously, then I would think it worth demonstrating how you have gotten amost of what you discuss confused. I advise you not to try enforcement. Anyone who makes large scale changes to express their stubbornness about the one right way to do punctuation should be looked for, and reverted. I'd say this even if I thought your "logical" style had any logic. This is not a question of what style is right, its a question of how to do coperative work. DGG 08:25, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
If you think that the current policy on national spellings is working, you are mistaken. The policy on punctuation and quotes was changed to put an end to edit wars. Note that the same cannot be done with spelling because in that case it's not true that one variety is clearly superior to others, and the different styles do reflect geography. PizzaMargherita 05:30, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Very early in this discussion, somebody said "It also doesn't make sense to set a rule that will be violated by any literate person who hasn't read WP's Manual of Style." I agree with this statement completely. It's very frustrating for me to have to learn a whole new set of rules for Wikipedia that don't apply any where else. I, an American, should be free to use American conventions when writing for/about Americans, and it's rather silly of Wikipedia to ask me to do otherwise. As for Convention vs. Logic, when I read the talk above about the "logical" approach, it seems that some of the people arguing don't even know the rules that they are arguing for or against. For example, the rule of placing punctuation inside or outside of quotation marks refers chiefly to periods and commas. The rule for question marks is this: The question mark goes inside the quote if and only if it is part of the quote. Perfectly logical, and (I believe) the same on both sides of the Atlantic, so irrelevent to this discussion. -- MiguelMunoz 11:47, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
do you think you have accomplished anything positive? The total inconsistency within articles remains. The articles completely ignoring the need for clarity remain. The number of articles that ignore the UK/US convention probably increases. There is no way to enforce the details except by being a dictator, which i believe is not the WP intent. The MOS is for the purposes of saying: here are a few good ways to do things. Look at them, look at similar articles, and see what works and what doesn't. And if you have to do something you never imagined, like decide whether to capitalize transliterated Japanese, most of our people who have encountered it have been doing it thus and so. The rules that need attention in WP are the basic ones about content. DGG 08:25, 18 September 2006 (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. |
From the article on Hezbollah:
Which is the correct format for period placement? Before or after the <ref>...</ref> tags. --
Roxi2
16:19, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
JA: WP:Footnotes are a crime against literacy. Use parenthetical citations. Then you have the choice of (1) placing the citation inside the sentence to source the sentence, or (2) placing the citation outside the last sentence of a blockquote paragraph to source the entire paragraph. Jon Awbrey 16:50, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm dismayed that WP policy is to use British-style punctuation (punctuation outside quotation marks) in articles that are written in American English. Sorry, but it's just wrong. WP might as well set a policy that "through" is to be spelled "thru." It doesn't make sense for WP to make up new rules of punctuation that are not used anywhere else, in any publication, anywhere in the English-speaking world. It also doesn't make sense to set a rule that will be violated by any literate person who hasn't read WP's Manual of Style. Anyone who understands the mechanics of punctuation in American English will naturally correct these mistakes --- and they are mistakes, regardless of whether the MoS tries to decree that they're not.-- 24.52.254.62 20:16, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
On the one hand, house styles can indeed be as arbitrary as the proprietors can get away with. And on the other, readers familiar with established conventions are free to find oddities of usage odd (or even semi-literate). I understand that in matters such as the serial comma, different organizations favor different practices, but in the matter of punctuating quotation marks, it makes sense to follow the flag rather than "splitting the difference." Is WP a US or UK enterprise? RLetson 05:49, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
Every publisher in the English speaking world uses the conventions of his location. If a UK edition is published, and then a US, all the quotation marks and all the spelling will be changed. Some books with UK conventions are sold in the US, as not all works have a separate US edition. In addition, some works intending to have a "UK flavour" will retain the UK conventions. But the intent of this policy is apparently that all articles about English monarchs should be in UK style, including both the spelling and the use of punctuation. But look at them: US spelling is used, and US style quotation marks. We can't have a Wiki with style considered acceptable by publishers and educators in both countries, because there isn't any. The only way we could achieve that-- eventually--is to have UK and US versions with all the punctuation etc. automatically changed. Our goal for now ought to be a style which the readers of both countries will accept, which is fairly flexible, as readers do at least occasionally encounter both outside WP. An additional consideration is the ease of writing and editing. I want to write in the way I find easiest--there is quite enough problems without using an alien style. I do not want to go around changing other people's national style, or have them waste time changing mine. Let them look to my errors, instead. I'm not going to go through the English monarchs and change every quotation mark. I don't think anybody should. In the meanwhile, the best we can have is consistency. Certainly within an article: anyone editing an article ought to follow the style of the article, and it would be right to change inadvertent difference as one finds them. Possibly within a series of articles, possibly within a type of article, such as pop culture figures specific to one or another country, or which deliberately maintain such specificity. DGG 08:25, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
Æsthetics is in the eye of the beholder as was mentioned. There may be a lot of beholders in the US but there are more outside. As for me, I don't find logical punctuation unsightly. Quite the contrary for me it's American punctuation which is the eye-sore. -- Jimp 00:42, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
In my particular field, scholarly publishing , the overwhelming majority of publishing is outside the US, as it has always been. Most scholarly journals use one style or another, because in conventional publication, one looks through an issue and it is unsettling if the successive ones do not look the same. In e-journals and other contemporary forms, people read each article by itself. They are as likely to go from an article of publisher A to one of publisher B, and, although they may notice the style difference, they don't much care. There's no real precedent for a work like this one. The structure invites people to go from one article to another, but the overall consistency in the makeup of the page is enough. If we keep that, its sufficient.
It's a reference, not a textbook
We do indeed need to worry about style, but we are worrying about the wrong half--the "accidentals", not the "substantatives". The punctuation, not the ideas. DGG 08:25, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
Are we discussing quotation style? Again? It's not the "British" way, nor the "American" way. It's called logical quotation style. Wikipedia adopts it. End of story. Shall we put a comment in the MoS with a reference to the
archives?
PizzaMargherita
07:40, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Please check the archives. PizzaMargherita 08:51, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
The truth of the matter is, it's not more logical. It's occasionally less ambiguous than the American style, but only by a small degree, and that still only makes it more logical if you accept the axiom that style rules should be geared to minimize ambiguity, which clearly not everyone here does (I largely do). It's certainly not any more logical than the British style. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 19:00, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
PizzaMargherita, you were not appointed head grammarian. If the MOS were intended to be enforced rigorously, then I would think it worth demonstrating how you have gotten amost of what you discuss confused. I advise you not to try enforcement. Anyone who makes large scale changes to express their stubbornness about the one right way to do punctuation should be looked for, and reverted. I'd say this even if I thought your "logical" style had any logic. This is not a question of what style is right, its a question of how to do coperative work. DGG 08:25, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
If you think that the current policy on national spellings is working, you are mistaken. The policy on punctuation and quotes was changed to put an end to edit wars. Note that the same cannot be done with spelling because in that case it's not true that one variety is clearly superior to others, and the different styles do reflect geography. PizzaMargherita 05:30, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Very early in this discussion, somebody said "It also doesn't make sense to set a rule that will be violated by any literate person who hasn't read WP's Manual of Style." I agree with this statement completely. It's very frustrating for me to have to learn a whole new set of rules for Wikipedia that don't apply any where else. I, an American, should be free to use American conventions when writing for/about Americans, and it's rather silly of Wikipedia to ask me to do otherwise. As for Convention vs. Logic, when I read the talk above about the "logical" approach, it seems that some of the people arguing don't even know the rules that they are arguing for or against. For example, the rule of placing punctuation inside or outside of quotation marks refers chiefly to periods and commas. The rule for question marks is this: The question mark goes inside the quote if and only if it is part of the quote. Perfectly logical, and (I believe) the same on both sides of the Atlantic, so irrelevent to this discussion. -- MiguelMunoz 11:47, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
do you think you have accomplished anything positive? The total inconsistency within articles remains. The articles completely ignoring the need for clarity remain. The number of articles that ignore the UK/US convention probably increases. There is no way to enforce the details except by being a dictator, which i believe is not the WP intent. The MOS is for the purposes of saying: here are a few good ways to do things. Look at them, look at similar articles, and see what works and what doesn't. And if you have to do something you never imagined, like decide whether to capitalize transliterated Japanese, most of our people who have encountered it have been doing it thus and so. The rules that need attention in WP are the basic ones about content. DGG 08:25, 18 September 2006 (UTC)