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I'm interested in taking on a tedious and difficult task, because it feels important: invisibly indexing useful information in all the style guidelines talk archives in some hopefully uncontroversial and useful way. (I've got lots of time until May 1.) I've noticed when doing indexing for legal projects in the past that prefixing a semicolon to index terms seems to work well as a "poor man's database". Putting an invisible <span id="1" /> [changed per Daniel Friesen below] in an archive page would let people wikilink to a line, if they like, that gives useful information on any desired keyword. (What's useful and uncontroversial will be determined through feedback on this page.) I can then maintain a page with all these links, in my userspace or elsewhere, and/or we can put the invisible links on each archive page listed (visibly!) at the top of that archive page.
It would be particularly useful to know which issues have already been argued by a wide community, with or without an RfC, so I'll make sure to put invisible links there. I'll include that information on the summary page, which I'll put in my userspace for the time being.
Archive pages say that they shouldn't be edited, so anyone who makes an edit has a pretty steep presumption working against them, but we could use this to our advantage. Anyone is welcome to help, of course, but it's not a trivial project; I don't see how someone could do it at all without having some kind of broad knowledge of what subjects keep recurring, which pieces of information in the talk archives are new, where it's been discussed before ... this is kind of a headache, so we can use the presumption against editing archives to insist that people either get broad permission or discuss potential additions or subtractions on the (current) talk page if they don't want to get reverted immediately. So, that's what I'm doing: I'm asking for broad permission to start indexing. Anyone who has a search term they'd like included, please list it here. Anyone who thinks I'll screw it up, please let me know now :) - Dan ( talk) 17:32, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
←Clarification. There's a general principle that things on WP pages shouldn't be invisible, in order to make sure we're getting the full benefit of multiple eyeballs. So I think I would recommend that we not insert <span id="1" /> on a talk page before it's archived, when we could just as easily, and in full view, insert a subsection heading that accomplishes the same thing. It's when a page is archived that inserting a new subsection heading isn't appropriate any more. Also, I really would recommend that the id's are 1, 2, 3, etc, on the principle that nothing invisible should be allowed to build up randomly even in talk archives. Having the id's be as simple as possible will make it easier to list and keep track of them. - Dan ( talk) 20:34, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
(I have eliminated this comment because I have just realized that you all discussed this subject at length above. Great minds think alike, I guess. My apologies!) ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 10:52, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
There are times where I will put one or two quoted sentences (with reference) inside of a <blockquote>...</blockquote> because it serves to emphasize the quote when formated without the (in my opinion) added visual clutter of the {{cquote}} template, although I only do it if there are no additional quotes from the same source in the section. Not sure if it's important enough to add to the MOS section but I thought I'd bring it up for discussion. Awotter ( talk) 03:39, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
The proposal is to merge Wikipedia:Manual of Style (abbreviations) into Wikipedia:Naming conventions (abbreviations), and why not? It's been tagged for months and more input is needed HERE. Comments welcome. Tony (talk) 14:44, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
WP:Words to avoid is protected because of some edit-warring (not by me) over a proposed section on the word "phenomenon". There have also been discussions about giving advice on "controversy" and "the" (when used to falsely imply importance or definiteness). I wrote some proposed language here, but there's no discussion yet. Discussion would be helpful so that the page can be un-protected. Thanks. - Dan Dank55 ( talk) 16:53, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Do the three-letter ISO currency codes go before or after the value? That is, do we write CZK 55,555 or 55,555 CZK? Shouldn't this be stated in the MOS?-- Kotniski ( talk) 08:41, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
To begin with, if this is not the appropriate notice board to post this discussion, please excuse me. I am in a dispute with Charles and, apparently, WP:MOS-FR#Noble titles. I find this whole section of the MOS faulty. It tries to set standards were it readily admits there are no standards. In the end, the standard it does promote is contrary to the actual usage of capitilization method used by the House of Bourbon between 1589 and 1830. In addition, the standard is not followed by many English-speaking authors today, leading to a style of writing most English-speakers would not be familiar with from reading a biography of a member of the French royal family.
In particular, I am offended by the following comment/directive and find it to be arbitrary, incorrect and representative of a very biased POV:
"in French with capital spelling: Comtesse de, Marquis de... (e.g. Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu; Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon; Constantin-François de Chassebœuf, Comte de Volney). This is a incorrect Franco-English hybrid form using the capitalization rules of an English-user."
I am interested in getting this policy changed, and WP:MOS-FR#Noble titles rewritten or deleted. I will summarize my argument as follows (it is found more fully in Talk:Fils_de_France and Talk:Prince_du_Sang):
1) The capitalization method described in the MOS is not an incorrect "Franco-English hybrid." It is the one used by the French royal family and court themselves:
2) Many modern English-speaking authors do not use the Wikipedia style of capitalization, and to use it not only misrepresents how the people who used those titles and styles referred to themselves, but also is confusing to most English-speakers, whose reading material should not be censored by modern French linguists and how they feel about linguistic revisionism.
The following is a list of well-known books in English on the French royal family that specifically do NOT use Wikipedia's incorrect capitalization standard for French titles:
BoBo ( talk) 14:10, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps it's worth mentioning that this kind of things can easily be checked with Google books, e.g. this book form the 17th century, printed in the 19th, uses this style. (And it's the first old book that I found.) -- Hans Adler ( talk) 16:06, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
I agree completely with BoBo. I've disliked our capitalisation of French titles intensely for a long time, but my complaints have always been shouted down. Proteus (Talk) 17:56, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
←An interesting problem. Do the French make the case that a 20th-century "comte de Lyon" (I don't even know if there is a Count of Lyon) isn't capitalized because it's not a proper noun, the same way that a barber of Lyon wouldn't be capitalized? Several other possibly relevant things come to mind, all pointing in different directions:
We write about the past, not for the past. We are not bound to use forms of French (which varied) used in the past when writing now. We do not use Old English for Henry VIII when he was called "the Kynge" nor do we use a form of a title just because it was found in letters of the time and also because some authors have used it. BoBo has claimed that the use of lower case letters for French titles is a recent invention to suit the egos of scholars who wish to rewrite history. I believe BoBo says that to serve his POV. The Almanach de Gotha, the Holy Bible of European royalty (almost all sovereigns consulted it when considering a bride's eligibility) uses lower case letters in its 1910 edition, so it's not even a new invention as BoBo would like everyone to believe. And if he wants to talk about what's official and used, the Almanach de Gotha is basically watertight. We haven't anglicized French titles because we borrow them in their entirety. If we anglicized them (which we could), we would use "Duke" instead of "duc", "Count" instead of "comte", etc. But we don't in all cases. In the last ten years, any number of authors have used both, but that isn't to say authors are always correct. Where there are variants we record what we know independently to be correct which is the French usage, not English usage if it varies (which it has). Charles 22:17, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Support the proposal to copy the conversation to WT:MOS-FR and continue the conversation there, leaving this much text here to point people to the conversation if they want to join. Enough has been presented here for people to know whether they're interested or not. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 00:03, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
'Ello 'ello 'ello. What's all this then? Are you going to immortalise yourselves on WP:LAME about, of all things, the location for the discussion about capitalisation of French names? I have a French book from 1997 (Cornette: Chronique du Règne de Louis XIV) that seems to be using inconsistent spelling. -- Hans Adler ( talk) 01:23, 21 April 2008 (UTC) (ec)
I removed the unfortunate/incorrect/POV "Franco-English" line on WP:MOS-FR. The issue of consensus on French titles remains however.
There is no problem when using the English spelling of the titles with an "of" (Duke of..., Count of...) for those people known by their English forms... although one could imagine an infinite discussion about capitalization and the use of "of" in those titles (Pulling a book from a shelf: Capetian France 987-1328 by Elizabeth M. Hallam (London & New York: Longman, 1980. ISBN 0-582-48910-5) uses the lowercase "count of" and "duke of" throughout. I notice that Britannica online [ http://www.britannica.com/] appears to use lowercase and "de": "duke de", "count de" and "prince de").
The difficulty for French language titles on the English wiki: should contemporary French usage and the TCMOS be taken as guides? I am not sure that assuming "that after the change certain English-speaking academics jumped on the band wagon to enhance their academic credentials. Academics are constantly trying to re-invent history in order to attract publishers and gain tenure" is an effective way at arriving at consensus. English language usage is chaotic. A respected introduction on modern French history -- Gordon Wright's France in Modern Times (New York & London: Norton, 1987 ISBN0-393-95582-6) -- uses Duc d'Orléans, Duc de Broglie, Comte de Paris and Comte de Chambord. A respected overview of French literature -- Denis Hollier (ed) A New History of French Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1989. ISBN 0-674-61565-4) -- uses "marquis de", "prince de", "duc de".
The word "consensus" is key. The above discussion is an obvious example of why establishing a consensus and following a manual of style is helpful, if only to avoid losing oneself in endless discussion (or worse, edit wars) so that one may go back to writing/editing articles. NYArtsnWords ( talk) 02:01, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Naturellement, André Castelot uses lower case for titles in French, as do other French historians such as, Michel Antoine, Jean Castarède, Philippe Erlanger, Paul & Pierrette Girault de Coursac, Évelyne Lever, Jean-Christian Petitfils, Étienne Taillemine, Jean Tulard, Pierre Verlet, Jean de Viguerie, just to name a few. It irks me to have men & women of such erudition be given the epithet of "revisionists" just because they do not capitalize le roi de France or la comtesse du Trou. A question: if we are to use 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th century up to 1830 (why 1830? why not 1848 or 1870?) French Court's way of address, why is "Lis" in the article on the Fleur de Lis in English Wikipedia written with an "i" instead of a "y" since the "Fleur de lys" was the symbol of the French monarchy? Following this logic, when describing how Louis XVI was acclaimed before becoming unpopular (by the way, not by all his subjects), we should not write in French "Vive le Roi!" but "Vive le Roy!" On the other hand, if we want to stay so obtuse as to refuse the evolution of a language, why bother writing about anything outside the Anglo world? And why not pick a fight on the use in the same article of words being spelled the English way while others are spelled the American way? What is the proper English of English wiki? English? American? Australian? Canadian? Talk about inconsistencies! Frania W. ( talk) 06:36, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Might I suggest the following revision of the present MOS:
Noble titles
There is currently no standard convention for French noble titles and present-day English usage varies greatly. In Wikipedia articles, French noble titles are currently listed in two different ways:
- in English translation (Duke of, Count of...) for historical figures and royalty most well-known by their English forms.
- while present-day English usage varies with regards to the capitalization of these titles [1], editors should follow the Wikipedia:Manual of Style (capital letters).
- while present-day English usage also varies with regards to the use of "of" or "de" after the titles [1], the consensus on Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles) has been to use "of" when the English title is given.
- in French for other cases, maintaining the French title spelling (seigneur, chevalier, marquis, duc, comte) and the de.
Furthermore, in the second case—French titles in French form—capitalization is currently chaotic:
- in French with lowercase spelling: comtesse de, marquis de... (e.g. Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné; Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet; Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme; François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac; Jean François Paul de Gondi, cardinal de Retz). This is the form used by The Chicago Manual of Style.
- in French with capital spelling: Comtesse de, Marquis de... (e.g. Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu; Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon; Constantin-François de Chassebœuf, Comte de Volney). This form was used at times by the French court in the past, and is often still found in English-language books about French royalty and nobility.
The consensus is that in order to prevent spelling inconsistencies within a single article or between different articles that the lowercase spelling be used.
The exception to this rule involves the style and form of address associated with the rank of specific members of the House of Bourbon. Certain members of the French royal family, the Fils de France, and their cousins, the princes and princesses du sang, were accorded a particular form of address. For example, Louis d'Orléans, Duke of Orléans was known at court as Monsieur le Prince because he was the First Prince of the Blood. His form of address should not be in lowercase (i.e. Monsieur le prince) because the style referred exclusively to him and no other royal or noble at the time.
BoBo ( talk) 22:14, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
←Okay guys. We don't want people taking WP:MoS off their watchlist because of long off-topic conversations. This stuff is relevant to Use English and WT:MOS-FR, and maybe some of the past discussions there will be helpful. You won't bring additional eyeballs or points of view into the discussion by continuing to discuss it here; in fact, the longer this gets, the less likely people are to read it. Like the bartender said, "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here." - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 13:01, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
A few hours ago, there was quite an edit war on Four-color theorem. My view is that, while Ozone009 ( talk · contribs) was in the wrong by starting it, just reverting it may not have been the right course of action.
Looking through the section, the changes don't violate "Consistency within articles" * or "Strong national ties to a topic". Both the original change and the reversion break "Retaining the existing variety" if you take that expression literally - as after Ozone009's alteration, the "existing variety" is changed. That leaves the content of that section, which talks of the variety used by the "first major contributor". This, in turn, sounds to me like a form of WP:OWN.
*It's true that the page's title wasn't changed to match, and that the edits to the references section infringed the "titles" aspect of the policy, but these aspects wasn't addressed in any of the comments.
Here's my opinion. If there's no reason to use a particular variety of English in a particular article, then it shouldn't be changed without good reason. But just changing it back is equally changing it without good reason, and two wrongs don't make a right. So rather than reverting and potentially starting an edit war, a friendly note to the person who changed it should be the first course of action.
Comments? -- Smjg ( talk) 14:52, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
"First major contributor" is intended as a last resort: what do we do when there has never been a stable consensus? We may need to strengthen this. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:13, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
The Self identity section says
Use terminology that subjects use for themselves (self-identification) whenever this is possible. Use terms that a person uses for himself or herself, or terms that a group most commonly uses for itself.
I propose we change this to:
Use terminology that the majority of sources use for the subject whenever possible. Use terms that a person uses for himself or herself, or terms that a group most commonly uses for itself when reliable sources conflict with one another.
Any thoughts? Yahel Guhan 00:51, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
According to this guideline, if the subject of an article self-identifies as x, and an overwhelming number of reliable sources identify it as (contradicting/effacing) y, we should use x. This seems in serious tension with WP:V. Either the self-identity section should be altered to state that it trumps V in this instance, or it should be deprecated. There is serious need of clarification here. Skomorokh 01:34, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
This may be a dumb question, but is there a Wikipedia style for military titles when followed by a name? Is it "Captain Hyman Rickover," or "Capt. Hyman Rickover"? Some style systems abbreviate these when followed by a name. Urzatron ( talk) 14:29, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
If you look across Wikipedia, including our FA work, the vast majority of decent articles have lead images of a large size (mostly 250px), and forcing thumb size in the lead is the most common exception to that part of the images guideline. As it says in the Images size subsection, such images (I think it specifically refers to infobox images) being less than 300 can cause problems sometimes. Why not put this generally used convention of editing in to the guideline? Van Tucky 03:39, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
...but consistency promotes professionalism, simplicity and greater cohesion in Wikipedia articles. An overriding principle is that style and formatting should be applied consistently throughout an article...
I'd like to change part of this to "An overriding principle is that style and formatting should be applied consistently throughout individual articles as well as multiple articles that are closely related". The reason is that there's currently some debate about using comma seperators for large numbers in scientific pages. Once that's settled, they should all either use them or not, to prevent confusion about the data. I believe this type of style requirement to prevent confusion applies to other pages as well. Also, some sections of pages become large enough to have their own article. The reasons why they required the same style when they are part of the original page are the same reasons why they should keep the same style after they have been split off. (I would go as far as to suggest we require ALL pages to have the same style as much as possible and reasonable, but that's a bigger discussion) --
SkyLined
(
talk) 10:48, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
I have raised a MOS policy about policy changes question at the village pump. Feel free to read it and comment. Lightmouse ( talk) 11:25, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Tony and the Duke and I would prefer 10-day archiving by MiszaBot, and MiszaBot did its thing last night. Anyone can feel free to revert if they think that's a bad thing, but we were up to about 400K, and it could have easily been 800K. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 12:53, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Please remember the major question: should this page go into this for several bullet-points at all, or should we write a general summary here, and leave the details to WP:MOSNUM? I should prefer to be simple here; let's keep that revert war in one place. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:30, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Throughout the pages that comprise the MoS, there are scattered uses of the word header as if it were a synonym for heading. A header is text in the upper margin of a page; the word has nothing to do with a section heading in an article. Wikicode and title of Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings) use the correct term, and so should the MoS pages, consistently. Finell (Talk) 17:23, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Here's a rather complicated situation regarding the pronoun(s) to be used for a fictional character, for I would appreciate guidance on interpreting the first two bullets of WP:ID. The character in question is Akito Sohma from the manga Fruits Basket and its anime adaptation. (Please ignore that article's current hideous quality, including a wretched inconsistency with pronouns: I'm preparing to clean it up soon, thus my question.) In the manga, Akito is presented as male for the first half of the series, but turns out to be biologically female and raised to live as man; at the end of the series, as part of letting go other roles he/she has been living, Akito announces that she/he will henceforth live as a woman and is afterward always shown dressed in women's clothing. The anime adaptation covers the first third of the story and was generally faithful to the manga, but was made before the manga reveled Akito's biological sex and, in wrapping up the story early, shows Akito as unambiguously male.
If I understand WP:ID correctly, when discussing the character as portrayed in the manga, Akito should be referred to with female pronouns. What about when discussing the character as portrayed in the anime (such as when describing the differences in adaptation)? What about when discussing the character generically, independent of format? And, possibly most importantly, is there any way to make distinctions clearly enough as to not confuse either readers and editors? (Especially in other articles where Akito is mentioned in passing without reason to explain pronouns.)
For full disclosure, the rule of thumb I've been following in editing other Fruits Basket articles is to use "he" except when discussing Akito after she declares she will live as a woman. Which goes against the word of the guideline, but seemed at the time to invite less confusion. My thanks for any insight others can give. — Quasirandom ( talk) 18:56, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm no style guru, but I can't fully agree with this statement from the MOS:
OK, I agree with 4–3 and 3–2, but with the others I find hyphens equally acceptable. Checking with the Chicago Manual it seems they probably prefer hyphens here too (although other style manuals no doubt take different views). Do we really need to make things more difficult for ourselves, when there's no clearly established standard in the outside world? Hyphens are easier both for editors and for users of Search. We could at least allow both styles, like we do with em dashes and spaced en dashes.
And while we're at it, how about this one:
Does this look right? Doesn't to me. I came across a neat usage from Chicago: London-Sydney (with a hyphen; see above), but New York–Sydney (use an unspaced en dash when any of the terms contains a space or hyphen). To me, that style would be aesthetically preferable.-- Kotniski ( talk) 10:56, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
← Ignoring the usual nonsense, I should like to mention that hyphens already enjoy extensive usage in various linguistic constructs, and that I do not find it necessary to further extend this usage, when clarity can be derived from the application of dashes in the other cases. Touching not only on this issue, but also on the much-discussed matter of spaced en dashes versus unspaced em dashes, I say that I like each dash having a role of its own, which not only makes things clearer but justifies each one's continued usage on Wikipedia. With a few exceptions, I have in my mind a rather clear distinction:
Simple, isn't it? Waltham, The Duke of 10:02, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Also simple, and I think more comprehensible to the ordinary writer. The point about Michelson-Morley is a good one though.-- Kotniski ( talk) 15:21, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't see why we need to prefer a usage at all. All we really need to say is: Be clear and Be consistent within any one article (for the sake of clarity). There are innumerable slightly different ways to use dashes; why bother to distinguish cetween them as long as they are not obscure? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:25, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
This may have already been discussed, but following a discussion at the help desk, there seems to be a consensus that the rules regarding initials (eg. H. G. Wells or H.G. Wells?) needs to be clearer. Do we have a policy on this, and if so, where? If we don't, should we have one? Thanks, PeterSymonds | talk 14:01, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
I have searched extensively on many occasions for a policy on this, and have failed to find one. I am referring to the practice of putting the name of something in its original language in parentheses after the English translation, like, "Some French Guy ( French: Un gars français)". Sometimes the {{ Lang}} template appears. There are numerous references to this practice, but no guideline as to how it should be done.
If the other language does not use the Latin alphabet, it is common practice to write the name as it would be written by a user of that language, and then give a Romanized version. Usually there is only one language, the original, but sometimes two are appropriate, especially for a person. Sometimes, the different versions of the name are a notable topic, addressed in that article (e.g. Christopher Columbus), as part of a separate list ( Vienna), or even in an article devoted wholly to the names of that thing ( Istanbul).
As I understand it, the purpose is to give the name in the language of origin. But I have also seen mention of the name in other languages, ones in which the thing is often named. For example, someone recently added the Turkish name of Lesbos, Midilli, while the English name is derived from the Greek. I assume the Turkish name is also used frequently, given the isle's proximity to Turkey. Is this appropriate?
If I am correct in believing that there is no policy page, I suggest that we create one.
MagnesianPhoenix ( talk) 21:04, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Once there is an at least semi-concrete consensus on something, can we go ahead and create a guideline page, as I suggested, or put it under WP:Lead section? Now, as for specific issues...
The Lang template is not just for the names of languages in the opening sentence; it has applications to any kind of foreign-language text. That said, I could care less if it was deleted.
I strongly agree with the point Septentrionalis brought up - that not linking major languages would be fraught with inconsistency and difficulty. (Though I'm not sure if you yourself agree, given your position on uniformity.) Not only would it be inconsistent, the decision on the significance or commonness of a language is unavoidably POV. For an encyclopedia trying to rid itself of its U.S./U.K./Australian bias, dividing the languages of the world into - effectively - "nobody wants to read about this language" and "nobody's heard of this language" would be an unseemly judgment call. Also, while linking to the French language article in the body of an article would usually be gratuitous, I don't think the clean, well established format of "([[Language]]: Name)", once, in the first sentence, is a problem at all. Let the reader decide to use or not use the link. What about Latin? It's extremely well known, but also a topic of interest.
The addition of the Turkish name Midilli has been reverted. I was tempted to do that myself. I know it's not a common name in English. The reason I brought it up was to ask if the inclusion of a relevant non-English name was felicitous, and to illustrate the need for a guideline with the very question. The answer, as we have been graciously informed, is found in WP:Naming conventions (geographic names). I still support the creation of a new guideline (see above).
MagnesianPhoenix ( talk) 04:45, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
I have no problem with it being part of WP:LEAD; I am not really partial to either of my suggestions. My concern is having the information somewhere. As for no one reading or obeying it, no one will read or obey it if it doesn't exist. Its existence will give editors who find themselves in my position the opportunity to look up the policy. MagnesianPhoenix ( talk) 10:02, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
I have a park that is 11 acres; do I use km^2, ha, or another unit in metric? -- NE2 22:20, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
Does the conversion in Sheridan State Scenic Corridor look good? -- NE2 00:51, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
What is the correct writing of possessive form of noun ending in S, like Knowles? -- Efe ( talk) 05:15, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
Looking at WP:AN#Politically-motivated systematic edits, it seems there's at least one user concerned by the use of the word "American" to describe people from the United States (as they point out, American and American people are both disambig pages). This does seem to be a common practice, but I'm not able to find mention of it in the MOS. Is it mentioned, one way or another? If not, should it be? – Luna Santin ( talk) 22:40, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
From United States comes this sourced statement:
“ | The standard way to refer to a citizen of the United States is as an American. Though United States is the formal adjective, American and U.S. are the most common adjectives used to refer to the country ("American values," "U.S. forces"). American is rarely used in English to refer to people not connected to the United States. | ” |
The reference for the above: Wilson, Kenneth G. (1993). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 27–28. ISBN 0231069898. Can we all agree that changing articles to eliminate use of "American" as a demonym for people from the United States is disruptive? Horologium (talk) 03:19, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
Given that there seems to be confusion as to which of these terms should be used, may I suggest deferring to the highest authority on things relating to the United States and use the form as it appears in the title of the United States Government? (i.e., not the "American Government" - there is no "American House of Representatives", not is there officially an "American Congress" the term "U.S." or "United States" is universally used as an adjective in the names of these institutions. These are not "bad examples" for being proper names; they are clear indications that as proper names they were deliberately chosen to avoid problem which might be inherent in other chosen options. There is, of course, the Organization of American States, but to the best of my knowledge it does not have delegated representing only the 50 states of the US.
The term United States fulfils all of the functions necessary for its usage as the adjective of choice on Wikipedia:
While the term "American" is definitely a common adjectival form and is understood widely (though not without some controversy in other parts of the Americas), it is hardly unambiguous in all settings and circumstances. Furthermore, as has been pointed out, "United States" is the more formal and precise term and is thus more suited to an encyclopedia. Grutness... wha? 23:29, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
I was thinking, wouldn't it be an interesting source for this discussion to go on IMDB and find every movie with the word "American" in the title, and see in how many of those cases, the term refers to the United States? Unfortunately, there were way too many hits for it to be useful. I couldn't really examine them all. Still, I would ask anyone to estimate for himself: When you hear a phrase "American ________," do you not expect this to be referring to the United States? Simply examine countless cultural sources, from the Miss America Pageant to the American Music Awards to "American Pie." I know that's not precise, but it's massively intuitive. Urzatron ( talk) 20:30, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
We all know that the "Google Test" isn't supposed to mean much, but I was curious about something. I tried a few searches on Google, filtering by *.uk and *.ca domains, to see what results I got. These are only British and Canadian sites, remember.
Of course, there was no question about what America Carolyn Parrish was talking about when she uttered her famous line "Damn Americans ... I hate those bastards." and she's supposedly "American", judging from the arguments being advanced by some people here. Horologium (talk) 22:10, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
This is from The Columbia Guide to Standard American English (1993):
American (adj.), America (n.)
We of the United States of America, citizens of only one of many nations in the Americas, North, Central, and South, have preempted the informal name of our country, America, and our title, Americans. It may be arrogant and inaccurate that we do so, but the fact is that no other citizens of the Americas seem to want to be confused with the Americans of the USA. Nor have others coined any other universally recognized names for us. Yankees and Yanks sometimes applies to all of us but often only to Northeasterners (particularly New Englanders) and twentieth-century soldiers. Our flag is almost always “the American flag.” Only the precision of The United States of America and of a citizen thereof can be official and usefully substituted, and the rest is language history: we speak American English, we live in the United States, the U.S. (or USA), or America (the beautiful), and we’re Americans, even if we only adapted and adopted the language and the lands. It is not likely that these usages will change soon, so overwhelming is their use both by others and by us.
TCMOS had 118 hits on "United States"; all 118 either used it as a noun or, when it's even arguable that it was an adjective, only in the sense of the U.S. Government. APStylebook didn't have anything useful. NYTM (1999, paperback) followed the same usage as TCMOS. First two definitions in Wordnet are "a native or inhabitant of the United States" and "American English, American language, American (the English language as used in the United States)". I can find no support at all for the idea that "United States" is an adjective, other than conceivably when it refers to the U.S. government. The phrases "New York minute" and "Munich beer hall" do not make "New York" or "Munich" adjectives.
Unless anyone has a clear argument that "United States" has wide usage as an adjective, or that there is some other synonym for "American", then we're stuck with "American" by default. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 22:26, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Unfortunately, the term "United States" is not listed as an adjective, and indeed until the 1993 revision the closest entry related to the country in question defined it as "The Republic of North America. Abbrev. U.S. or U.S.A." (1888). Just more grist for the mill.
Her Pegship
(tis herself) 04:03, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
I am quite troubled by those who are trying to use the order of definitions in a dictionary to claim that American has a primary meaning of "of the Americas" Quite a number of dictionaries give as their first definition of a word, the first definition used in time, not the main one that is currently in use. Unless one checks the dictionary's policy one cannot claim the first definition is the one that is in primary use. American these days has as its primary meaning "of the United States of America. If people think that we need more precision in our use of national adjectives, we'd be better off removing the term "British" from every article relating to Northern Ireland. Caerwine Caer’s whines 03:15, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
If anyone's still interested, the Canadian Oxford Dictionary's first sense of American relates to the U.S., but other senses remind us that Latin American, American elk, North American, and I would add American Indian all do not specifically relate to it.
Where American can cause confusion, United States and its abbreviation U.S. are certainly attributive nouns, usable as an adjective in many contexts, as in United States citizen, U.S. passport, United States government, U.S. embassy, etc. If that is awkward, then we can use of the United States, from the U.S., (U.S.) or some other formulation when necessary.
What American means depends on context and nuance. It makes no sense to impose one definition on it, or to dictate when it is to be used, when we have many editors practised in the craft of writing. Any ambiguous phrasing ought to be improved, and it's great if an editor wants to take on the task across many articles. But please don't make blanket changes without specific justification, because that only pisses people off. — Michael Z. 2008-04-26 05:30 Z
I wonder why this is only an issue with America. No one complains that we call people from the United Mexican States "Mexican". Powers T 02:51, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm sure this has been asked many times before, but is it "the democratic convention" or "the Democratic convention"? thanks. Itsmejudith ( talk) 09:45, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
Do we prefer 16th century or sixteenth century or do we have no preference? Itsmejudith ( talk) 11:01, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
I added a scrolling reflist to the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum but another editor has removed it with an edit note of we do NOT use scroling ref for reasons too long to list here. Scrolling reflists enable the article length to be reduced and are particularly useful when 40 or more references appear in an article. Can anyone show me where it says not to use scrolling reflists in articles? This feature is being used in quite a few articles now. Mjroots ( talk) 15:23, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
People interested in WP style, formatting and language might want to watchlist Template:RFCstyle list. I get the sense that very few people do. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 20:50, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
After the lengthy discussion of French noble titles (see above), I wonder if we might review the "titles of works of art" section at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (France & French-related). Specifically, should we maintain the rules given or should we adopt the simpler rules (only the first word and any proper nouns) adopted by the WP Opera people? Please respond on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (France & French-related). - NYArtsnWords ( talk) 22:06, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
ClueBot III is an outstanding archiving bot that will go find section links all over Wikipedia and correct them on the various pages as stuff gets archived. We should do this. I'm bringing it up now because it's relevant to the objection, "We can't move material from one style guidelines page to another, it will break links". Just let ClueBot III archive the section(s) to a separate page, then do a Special:WhatLinksHere on the archived page, then we can fix the links manually or run a bot. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 21:08, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
←Thanks Cobi. Cluebot III had a bad bug over on WT:Layout (archived only half the page, but deleted the whole page), and my bug report at Cluebot Commons got archived without an answer, so I put Miszabot back in for daily archiving, but Cluebot III could still be extremely useful for helping us identify which pages link to specific sections, especially with your new ArchiveNow feature. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 12:06, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
At Template talk:POTD protected/2008-05-02, I wrote this comment:
Is this sort of thing covered in any style manuals? Michael Hardy ( talk) 02:20, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
Well, this was a river rather than a city, and that could be said to account for the unhyphenated adjective, but that's not really what this was about. Michael Hardy ( talk) 04:11, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
... <dank55> Der Alte Strom ist ein Fluss in Warnemünde. [It's a river in Warnemünde} <paddyez> a major river yep <dank55> ich meine nicht irgendeinen alten Strom :) [I don't mean just any "Old River" :)] <paddyez> he lived by the old major river in Warnemünde? <dank55> wir wissen nicht, wie man im allgemein solche Worte auf Englisch schreiben soll, [we don't know how to write such words in general in English] <Thogo|trabajando> paddyez: der Alte Strom ist ein Eigenname, der heißt halt so. ["Alte Strom" is a proper noun.] <dank55> ob wir "Alte" oder "Alter" oder so was schreiben soll [whether we should write Alte or Alter] <paddyez> Thogo|trabajando: aha <paddyez> in that case the "Alte Strom"
It probably wouldn't hurt to bear in mind the context in which the term was used in English Wikipedia: Template:POTD protected/2008-05-02. It's a caption to a picture, and it's a long noun phrase, not a complete sentence. Michael Hardy ( talk) 16:37, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
OK, I see that this article bears the title Alter Bahnhof (Heilbronn) and begins by saying
Of course that's appropriate when writing in German. Writing the Alte Strom in the English Wikipedia article still seems better than writing the Alten Strom, when it's in a caption that is only a noun phrase. I remain uncertain about what is the best way to handle this. Notice that this was in the article titled Warnemünde, not an article about the river. There must be other articles in English Wikipedia that correspond to the various titles found here. Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:26, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
When a page has (article) naming convention information (including perhaps information on redirects and links), and a sizeable amount of content that is clearly intended as a style guide, would it be better to split the page, or should we perhaps create a new infobox that says that both kinds of content are present, and explains the difference? - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 13:39, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm having trouble regarding this article: Kya Aap Paanchvi Pass Se Tez Hain?. Everytime I try and edit it I am confronted with the creator, who refuses to let the phone numbers etc. be deleted. Please give the article a quick glance and let me know if there is anything in this manual that can possibly help me with this -- Maurice45 ( talk) 19:41, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
For some reason this discussion appears not to have been archived! G-Man ? 22:05, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
OK, thanks. G-Man ? 23:35, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
I can't seem to find any sort of policy or guideline regarding euphemisms. In particular, when a person has died, is it appropriate for an encyclopedia (Wikipedia) to use "passed away" or equivalent? Is this spelled out somewhere or gone under previous consideration? Thanks, (EhJJ) TALK 01:23, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
I think the current default widths for image thumbnails are hopelessly small - 180px for "thumb" tagged images and 140px for "upright" tagged images (the latter is actually hardly used).
These sizes may have been appropriate when most people browsed with 640 x 480 monitors, but with most people now using resolutions of 1024x768 or more, these sizes are hopelessly inadequate as these pixel widths appear tiny on most people's monitors. I despair when going to pages and seeing these tiny little thumbed images where you have to click each one to actually see what is going on. I know that people can adjust their settings, but this only works if you are logged in, and most people who view wikipedia aren't.
I think we need to create two new classes, portrait, and landscape, in addition to the thumb, and upright classes we have at the moment. I will illustrate this below:
I think the upright class size of 140px width is OK for tall images such as the one on the left.
I think the upright class of 140px width is too small for portrait images, at least 170px should be used. We could create a new "portrait" tag with this 170px size.
I think 180px is just about OK for square images, but perhaps 190px would look better and that would still make it the same in pixel area as the other classes.
I think 180px is too small for landscape images, and we should use 230px. The size of the Obama flag image above is 227px (height) x 170px (width). The size of the Obama image on the right is 230px (width) x 156px (height) so these two images are roughly the same size. We should therefore create a new "landscape" tag to set all images such as this one to 230px default width.
I hope I have displayed above how the current system does not address the wide range of image shapes, and how we are perversly left with a large amount of landscape images that are much smaller in area than the portrait ones. Please vote whether you are for or against my proposal below with any appropriate comments in the discussion section. Thanks Gustav von Humpelschmumpel ( talk) 20:44, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes, we very much need new bigger default sizes for image thumbnails. Even though I use 800×600 in screen resolution the current defaults are much to small. But instead of adding new thumbnail classes I suggest another approach. I think it would be easy for the devs to implement and that it would be much more flexible:
[[Image:Something.png|thumb|100%]]
will be shown at the default thumb size, or if the user is logged in and has set another size at the users default size. While [[Image:Something.png|thumb|150%]]
would show the image at 150% the default thumb size, or 150% of the size a logged in user has set.This would allow the article editors to decide on an image by image basis what size the image needs, but still allow logged in users to configure their Wikipedia experience. Since some images with a lot of details need to be larger, while some images of a single object often don't need to be that big.
-- David Göthberg ( talk) 21:46, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
A feature request was already submitted to the MediaWiki bug tracker for percentage thumbs, and it was rejected because it would make thumb caching much less efficient. I think a better option would be to stick with the fixed widths e.g. 120px, 150px, 180px, 200px, 250px, 300px, but support image parameters "bigger" and "smaller". For someone with default thumb size of 150px, "bigger" would step the image up to 180px; "smaller" would step it down to 120px. This approach would only affect caching inasmuch as it would need to support "smaller" at 120px, and "bigger" at 300px. Hesperian 13:09, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
The fact that WP:MoS#Images goes into such detail means (if we want to be consistent) that we can't ask this discussion to move to WP:Images or WP:Picture tutorial. (And btw, why do we not link WP:Images from WP:MoS#Images? Seems like an offshoot page to me.) So: do we want to have this much detail on images in WP:MoS and continue to discuss image questions here, or hand off most of the content to WP:Images and WP:Picture tutorial and discuss these things there? (I have no preference.) - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 21:05, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
(Note: this question was also asked at WP:HELPDESK here.)
Experienced editor here with a MoS question - is there a better venue to ask this? Let me know if so. Regarding this edit, where the editor changed the date range from "350-500,000 years" to "350,000-500,000 years". I've looked through the MoS for ten or fifteen minutes and can't find anything regarding this exact situation, either in the date section or number section. Anyone have any enlightenment for me? Tan | 39 15:01, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
In the section Foreign terms there is a subsection No common usage in English
Use italics for phrases in other languages and for isolated foreign words that are not current in English. However, in an article on a subject for which there is no English-language term, such terms do not require italics.
I think that the second sentence should be removed. -- Philip Baird Shearer ( talk) 10:58, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
In the section Foreign terms there is a subsection Spelling and transliteration. It says:
Use anglicized spellings; native spellings are an optional alternative if they use the English alphabet. The choice between anglicized and native spellings should follow English usage (Besançon, Edvard Beneš and Göttingen, but Nuremburg, role, naive, and Florence). In particular, diacritics are optional, except where English overwhelmingly uses them, whether for disambiguation or for accurate pronunciation (résumé, café).
Currently "Edvard Beneš" is used yet the English usage in verifiable reliable sources is for Edvard Benes. I suggest that ig we are to have examples that we replace the words where there is debate over common English usage in verifiable reliable sources with words where the use of accent marks is clearly the most common English usage in verifiable reliable sources. Replace "Edvard Beneš" with some other word. An unqualified use of the word Göttingen is not a good example because there are different usages for the word. For example a Google book search shows that "Gottingen poets" is more common than "Göttingen-poets", so I suggest that a different word is chosen where there is no ambiguity.
There is a problem with "or for accurate pronunciation". Now many English people but not all have learnt French so it is not unreasonable to include those examples. BUT what about Zurich? The Germans spell it Zürich this would suggest that we should not use Zürich because it would make the pronunciation less accurate in English. Further what about diacritics in languages less familiar than French? For example if "Điện Biên Phủ" helps with the correct pronunciation of "Dien Bien Phu" should it be an option? It seems to me that this paragraph needs re-writing using as a template the wording in WP:UE.
So I propose replacing the wording in this subsection with the following:
Names not originally in a Latin alphabet, as with Greek, Chinese or Russian, must be transliterated into characters generally intelligible to literate speakers of English. Do not use a systematically transliterated name if there is a common English form of the name; thus, use Tchaikovsky or Chiang Kai-shek even though those are unsystematic.
This Manual of Style neither encourages or discourages the use of diacritics (accent marks) on foreign words with articles, their usage depends on whether they are used in verifiable reliable sources and the constraints imposed by other more specific Wikipeda guidelines.
Within an article, use the name of the article rather than an alternative spelling unless there is a good reason to do so (such as showing alternative spellings in the lead section of an article) — For selection of the name of an article see naming conventions guideline. For other foreign names, phrases or words, within an article use the most commonly used English version, as you would find it in English language sources used as references on the subject of the article. If the foreign name, phrase, or word, does not appear in any of references on the subject of the article then use the most commonly used English version of the word or phrase as you would find it in other reliable verifiable English sources. If the foreign phrase or word does not appear often in English, then avoid using it (see Wikipedia:Avoid neologisms).
Sometimes the usage will be influenced by other guidelines such as national varieties of English which may lead to different usage in different articles depending on the common English usage in different national varieties of English.
comments? -- Philip Baird Shearer ( talk) 10:58, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
No one has commented on my first comment.
Dank55 are there any specific parts to my second part that you object to. I am willing to include examples (indeed would encourage their use) of foreign accent marks providing that they are examples where it is clear that common English usage (in reliable sources) favours them. I am not in favour of you suggestion of modern usage because one would have to define modern (and we have enough problems in this area without introducing another source of argument). -- Philip Baird Shearer ( talk) 08:29, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
I think the current default widths for image thumbnails are hopelessly small - 180px for "thumb" tagged images and 140px for "upright" tagged images (the latter is actually hardly used).
These sizes may have been appropriate when most people browsed with 640 x 480 monitors, but with most people now using resolutions of 1024x768 or more, these sizes are hopelessly inadequate as these pixel widths appear tiny on most people's monitors. I despair when going to pages and seeing these tiny little thumbed images where you have to click each one to actually see what is going on. I know that people can adjust their settings, but this only works if you are logged in, and most people who view wikipedia aren't.
I think we need to create two new classes, portrait, and landscape, in addition to the thumb, and upright classes we have at the moment. I will illustrate this below:
I think the upright class size of 140px width is OK for tall images such as the one on the left.
I think the upright class of 140px width is too small for portrait images, at least 170px should be used. We could create a new "portrait" tag with this 170px size.
I think 180px is just about OK for square images, but perhaps 190px would look better and that would still make it the same in pixel area as the other classes.
I think 180px is too small for landscape images, and we should use 230px. The size of the Obama flag image above is 227px (height) x 170px (width). The size of the Obama image on the right is 230px (width) x 156px (height) so these two images are roughly the same size. We should therefore create a new "landscape" tag to set all images such as this one to 230px default width.
I hope I have displayed above how the current system does not address the wide range of image shapes, and how we are perversly left with a large amount of landscape images that are much smaller in area than the portrait ones. Please vote whether you are for or against my proposal below with any appropriate comments in the discussion section. Thanks Gustav von Humpelschmumpel ( talk) 20:44, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes, we very much need new bigger default sizes for image thumbnails. Even though I use 800×600 in screen resolution the current defaults are much to small. But instead of adding new thumbnail classes I suggest another approach. I think it would be easy for the devs to implement and that it would be much more flexible:
[[Image:Something.png|thumb|100%]]
will be shown at the default thumb size, or if the user is logged in and has set another size at the users default size. While [[Image:Something.png|thumb|150%]]
would show the image at 150% the default thumb size, or 150% of the size a logged in user has set.This would allow the article editors to decide on an image by image basis what size the image needs, but still allow logged in users to configure their Wikipedia experience. Since some images with a lot of details need to be larger, while some images of a single object often don't need to be that big.
-- David Göthberg ( talk) 21:46, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
A feature request was already submitted to the MediaWiki bug tracker for percentage thumbs, and it was rejected because it would make thumb caching much less efficient. I think a better option would be to stick with the fixed widths e.g. 120px, 150px, 180px, 200px, 250px, 300px, but support image parameters "bigger" and "smaller". For someone with default thumb size of 150px, "bigger" would step the image up to 180px; "smaller" would step it down to 120px. This approach would only affect caching inasmuch as it would need to support "smaller" at 120px, and "bigger" at 300px. Hesperian 13:09, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
The fact that WP:MoS#Images goes into such detail means (if we want to be consistent) that we can't ask this discussion to move to WP:Images or WP:Picture tutorial. (And btw, why do we not link WP:Images from WP:MoS#Images? Seems like an offshoot page to me.) So: do we want to have this much detail on images in WP:MoS and continue to discuss image questions here, or hand off most of the content to WP:Images and WP:Picture tutorial and discuss these things there? (I have no preference.) - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 21:05, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/DyceBot 4. Discuss here if you think en-dashes should die-die-die; that's not appropriate for a bot dev page. Discuss here if you're concerned (as I am) that changing hyphens to dashes when the editors aren't expecting that will mean that they can't find stuff they wrote with a search or assume that it's not there anymore, because the two symbols look similar enough that it will be easy for many people to overlook the difference. Discuss at the bot link if you have additional rules for when the substitution should or shouldn't be made. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 14:26, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
←(copied from Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/DyceBot 4, in response to a comment) "Ah, who would have to search for something they wrote?" Everyone who writes for a living. As the saying goes among professionals, there is no writing, only re-writing. And I am not an inveterate anything, nor antagonistic, nor against en-dashes; I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear before. I completely support the current WP:MoS recommendation on use of en-dashes, and I have made the corrections at FAC's and GAN's. I support the idea of revisiting the discussions concerning all characters not found on keyboards roughly once a year, for the simple reason that all such characters are slowly dying out in "persuasive" (not sure what I mean by that) English writing, because so much content is migrating to the web these days as the primary place where it lives. We don't have to change our style the moment other publications do; we can and should be conservative. But we should keep an eye on developments.
And I agree with Tony that, if we're going to make these conversions, they should be done with a bot. But there needs to be discussion, and it needs to be done carefully, and people have to be notified. Notification is especially important when the proposed substitution is one that a majority of editors won't even notice or remember, unless they've been made aware of the issues. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 15:40, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Obviously one should not convert ALL hyphens to ndashes. Some should remain hyphens and some should be mdashes and some should be minus signs. A style manual should prescribe which is which. Michael Hardy ( talk) 04:39, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
I think a bot making substitutions of this type will do much more harm than good. The difference between hyphens and en-dashes doesn't warrant any complications that affect the substantive work of creating an encyclopedia. JamesMLane t c 06:04, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
Replacing hyphens by en-dashes in article titles is rather counterproductive. I do not expect anyone ever to type an en-dash in the entrybox when looking up an article. So a redirect from the name with hyphen would always still be required. So why not keep that as the only entry? − Woodstone ( talk) 08:34, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
(Note: this question was also asked at WP:HELPDESK here.)
Experienced editor here with a MoS question - is there a better venue to ask this? Let me know if so. Regarding this edit, where the editor changed the date range from "350-500,000 years" to "350,000-500,000 years". I've looked through the MoS for ten or fifteen minutes and can't find anything regarding this exact situation, either in the date section or number section. Anyone have any enlightenment for me? Tan | 39 15:01, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
It was a complicated month, so I hope I've captured, as simply as possible, the substantive changes. Please notify any issues on the talk page. Tony (talk) 16:02, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm trying to carve out some kind of monthly job (several of us have volunteered, but more are welcome!) of patrolling some of the style guidelines pages and talk pages, answering questions, and especially, doing monthly summaries of changes for the benefit of article reviewers. We're not going to be able to cover the 68 pages in the "style guidelines" cat, but then, we shouldn't; we have no business fiddling with most of those pages. I've created Category:Manual of Style, and I don't have a strong preference for what goes in the category, but I have some ideas about which style-guidelines pages stay out:
All of this is negotiable; feel free to add or delete pages from the new cat. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 04:50, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
Rather than monthly summaries, which I'd hoped would be covered already in my initiative earlier this month, I think we urgently need to gather information relevant to rationalising the jungle of MOS subpages, to underpin a strategy of gradually, bit by bit, merging some of them and addressing conflicts between them. Tony (talk) 08:55, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
Okay, I finished the walkthrough for everything in the style-guidelines cat. The theory in adding
CAT:MOS to some of the style guidelines is that we want editors to feel like
CAT:MOS is a learnable amount of material, the material is intuitive and not terribly controversial, it's not too much of a burden to watchlist everything in the cat (for those who care), and everything in the cat reflects well on Wikipedia. Here's the key to the following list of articles that I left in the style-guidelines cat but didn't add to
CAT:MOS:
Some pages were a judgment call. I think WP:Manual of Style (pronunciation) is a little scary for some editors, and it's not something you have to learn ahead of time; you can wait until you want to learn IPA (if ever!) before reading it. So I marked it with "S". None of my judgment calls are intended to "demote" or "promote" a guideline.
I removed the "style guidelines" cat from:
If all this is okay, we need to un-redirect the style-guidelines template (it's currently redirected to the MoS-template), and re-assign the templates. (If anyone has a problem with this, we can certainly leave them as they are, but currently, these pages more or less randomly begin with either "This page is part of the Manual of Style" or "This page is a style guideline". I don't feel strongly about what it says at the top, as long as people who patrol style guidelines reach consensus on how to deal with the various pages.) See WP:Village pump (policy)/Archive 44#Style guides for how I propose we deal with new pages that people use to develop new style guidelines. The items in the Style template also need to be changed, and the Duke has suggested that the last sections should be collapsed, which is a great idea. I had to remove the entire (uncollapsed) Style template from WP:Captions because it didn't leave enough room for examples. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 19:32, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
There are a little under 400 pages that list the Style template, which gives that long blue sidebar. Almost all of them are either style guidelines or User pages. Is there any general objection to removing that template from pages that aren't? Some pages look a little bit like style guidelines pages but aren't, such as WP:NAME, which is policy, and WP:EDIT, which is a how-to page. I think a sidebar is more likely to stick in someone's head than a cat at the bottom of the page, and it seems to me it would be best not to confuse people about the nature of the page. If people argue after I remove the style template, I'll report back. I don't see this as necessary, just potentially helpful. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 18:44, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
←I did finish today; here's the report.
Added to "Wikipedia style guidelines" cat:
See above for what S and P mean. I don't think it means anything in particular to add the cat, it just makes articles which clearly already claim to be style guidelines easier to find than having to sift through Special:WhatLinksHere. However, if people are watchlisting these pages and they've had problems with the contents, this would be a logical time for them to speak up, and I'll report here if any conflicts arise. To play it a little safer, I left messages on the talk pages of the following pages that also claim to be guidelines:
I removed the Style sidebar from 3 pages that considered themselves naming conventions instead, and since they dealt with article titles, I think they're right:
I also removed the Style template from a number of pages that were historical, proposals, etc, to reduce clutter in the "WhatLinksHere" page.
Feedback on any of this is welcome. Tomorrow, I'll hit the "Template:Style guidelines" pages that haven't been covered yet in this sweep, with the same goals: ask first, then add the "Wikipedia style guidlines" cat to make them easier to find. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 03:23, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
Okay, all done. I looked at "WhatLinksHere" in the WP namespace for {{style-guideline}}
, {{style-guide}}
, {{style guide}}
, and {{style}}
. I have now change the {{style-guide}}
and {{style guide}}
pages to {{style-guideline}}
pages. I also looked at what's currently in the {{style}}
sidebar, and I previously looked at
Category:Wikipedia style guidelines. I have moved any page that used one of the above templates into the cat, unless it had very little activity or it seemed to fit better in a different guidelines subcat (see
CAT:G). The main goal is to allow people to quickly find all the pages that claim to be style guidelines.
I've been a little surprised not to see any friction or reversions, but then, most of the style guidelines pages are like that: lots of civil discourse, not a lot of drama. The notable exceptions are the pages where material foreign to the page, generally policy-related, is being dragged in to support a fight somewhere else, which suggests a fix: don't let that happen. You can see what may or may not be a current example at WT:Layout#"References and notes" or "Notes and references". I'll wait and see what response I get in this thread, and then go back and look at WP:Layout and other CAT:MOS pages to see if there is consensus for moving some of the policy-related material on to other pages (such as moving material on citation to WP:CITE).
The point of the new cat
CAT:MOS is to identify those style pages that that don't seem to be restricted to a specific kind of article or wikiproject, and that don't regularly struggle with policy-related issues. I hope that a lot of people will watchlist these pages; they don't see a lot of action, and when they do, there's generally a good reason for it. I suggest we shorten the "Style" sidebar to the pages in
CAT:MOS, plus style-guidelines pages I've marked with "P" in this section, plus possibly a few additional pages, plus links to the style-guidelines cat and the editing-guidelines cat. The {{Style}}
sidebar is already so long that we can't include it on some of the style-guidelines pages (such as WP:Captions) because it gets in the way. Sure,
WP:Summary style is important, but not more than the other editing guidelines. Sure, Ethiopia-related articles are important, but do we really want to be in the business of saying which subjects and wikiprojects are important and which aren't? Let's back as far away from being "the man" as we can, and let any battles fought over inclusion/exclusion in the "Wikipedia style guidelines" cat be fought page by page. Most of the people who take it on themselves to maintain styles guidelines pages are doing a very good job and have a good sense of whether a page is ready to be called a style guideline.
Removed "style-guideline", "style-guide" or "style guide" template because of inactivity on the page, left msg on talk page:
Moved to editing guideline:
Added Wikipedia style guidelines category:
Added Wikipedia style guidelines category and Manual of Style category:
- Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 16:35, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Okay, unless I missed something, the {{Style}}
template in the WP namespace has now been removed from pages which are not in
Category:Wikipedia style guidelines. (No one has reverted me on this yet, but we'll see. The idea is that a graphic sticks in people's heads more than words do, so it's important that the graphic not be misleading.) Pages recently added to the cat after leaving messages on the talk pages are:
- Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 19:30, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
The article Roman Catholic Church has a vote going on at present regarding the proper use of capitalization. It appears that in reading the MOS that it is confusing as to what is proper on wikipedia. As a result, the majority of editors feel that it is most appropriate to vote in support of referring to the RCC as the Church when not using the proper noun. Could you please clarify the proper usage and if anyone would like to add a vote it would be helpful. Thanks.-- Storm Rider (talk) 00:39, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
My practice has been that when the phrase "the Church" is used as a abbreviation of the name "the Roman Catholic Church" or of the name of some other church, then it's a proper noun and should be capitalized, but in other contexts it's a common noun (e.g. "The church to which John Smith belongs practices infant baptism."---lower-case since it's not an abbreviation of the name of any particular church). Michael Hardy ( talk) 22:43, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
We can, I hope, agree that we should write:
but
Some of the discussion on the RCC would suggest that MOS is being read as requiring:
This is less than persuasive; both instances of University refer to the University of Delhi, and so both are proper nouns. This is a violation both of common sense and (at least in my university town, which is not Delhi) of idiom. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:18, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
"both instances of University refer to the University of Delhi, and so both are proper nouns." What a strange thing to say! Here's another example: "I'd like to introduce you to my friend Bill. He is an engineer." Would you say "My friend, Bill and He all refer to the same person, so all are propor nouns"? Hesperian 23:56, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps this is a better example: "Fleet Street is the street on which the British press were located until the 1980s." Would you say: "both instances of street refer to Fleet Street, and so both are proper nouns"? Hesperian 00:02, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
I notice that Anatolian Shepherd Dog contains the text owners of dogs of this breed must determinedly socialize the dogs to turn them into appropriate companions. I suppose you advocate correcting this to owners of dogs of this breed must determinedly socialize the Dogs to turn them into appropriate companions? Hesperian 05:47, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
But the problem is ever more clearly that we are imposing a simple rule on a complex situation, and are therefore wrong. I would modify to make the example Any university and be silent on the matter at hand; if we do discuss it, we should add something like:
"When the noun is being used as a short form of the proper name,
then it is usually capitalized; when it is being used of the organization as a member of the class of organizations of the type,
it should be lower case. The distinction between these is often more one of mood and emphasis than of meaning; one test is whether the proper name of the organization can be substituted for the noun without change of force."
Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:57, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
With regards to the capitalisation of the second occurence of university in The Vice-President of India is the Chancellor of the University of Delhi. The university has a distinguished alumni body and faculty, there are three positions you can take:
With regards to the first position, I think it is refuted by the fact that one could replace university by school, and this would be indisputably a common noun. I cannot see how changing school to university necessarily changes the may in which the sentence must be parsed, merely because its referent has University in its name. Fortunately this may now be a straw man, because if I have read Septentrionalis' most recent missive aright, he has now adopted position two.
I am more comfortable with position two, but I still don't think it is correct. What it boils down to is "it depends on the author's intent. Having already referred to University of Delhi in the previous sentence, the author is free to refer to the same in any of three ways: by repeating the full name University of Delhi; by use of the common noun the university i.e. "the previously identified definite article of class university"; or by use of the proper noun the University, being an abbreviated form of the full name." My objection to this is that University of Delhi has an accepted abbreviation, DU. This being an encyclopedia, I would surely be reverted if I decided to refer to it by UoD or UofD or UDelhi or any other novel abbreviation. Why then is it permissible for me to abbreviate it to University on a grammatical whim? I think that to use such an abbreviation would be wrong, if not in general then at least for an encyclopedia. I am therefore of the view that only the common noun interpretation is correct.
Hesperian 00:01, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
What, therefore, do we do? I made two proposals above; one is a rule of thumb, the other is to change our present examples to Any university... (desirable) and Any University... (undesirable) leaving the issue Hesperian and Johnbod and I have been talking about drowned in silence. We could also say The Vice-President of India is the Chancellor of the University of Delhi. The University has a distinguished faculty. depends on context, personal preference, and subtle nuances of meaning. Suggestions? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:39, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
What's the MOS's take on the current lead setup in the Kingdom of Gwynedd article? -- Jza84 | Talk 10:59, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
Is WP:MOS#Images out of sync with Wikipedia:Accessibility?
SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 03:37, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
I seriously and strongly object to the section of the article which suggests that users should "consider using gender-neutral language where it can be done without loss of neatness and precision." This policy is pointless adherence to political correctness which contributes nothing but convoluted sentences an gratuitous indulgence of minority group's requests. It encourages neologisms and assumes fact which just plain don't exist. Most importantly, it is arguably incompatible with other sections of the manual of style and policies.
1) It's political correctness. This is apparent from the very definition of PC (i.e., "language, ideas, policies, or behavior seen as seeking to minimize offense to racial, cultural, or other identity groups."). Why is political correctness inappropriate for an encyclopædia? Quite frankly, it is censorship for the protection of others, taking away the preferred style of writing for ages on end (English has had genders, in one form or another throughout its entire lifespan, it's only recently that we've lost the vast majority of said genders) to satisfy the will of a specific group of a specific agenda. No one would here would agree to support a PC motivated style change such as changing all instances of "homosexual" to "person who condones a different lifestyle choice without thinking less of other lifestyle choices" simply to avoid the chance that someone may be offended, yet that is the only reason I see here for using gender neutral language in inappropriate places. In summary, it's a pointless change that is nothing but indulging specific groups, and has no place on Wikipedia.
2) It's against precedent and policy. We have a diverse group of people on Wikipedia, each with his own customs and beliefs, as a result, we see clashes of customs and cultures. In the vast majority of these circumstances we choose the path based on the rules of the language and on common usage, not on avoiding offense to particular groups. An instance of this, particularly applicable to me, is the capitalization of pronouns for God out of respect. Wikipedia does not condone this, even though it is a simple change that would take little to no effort and serve to avoid offending Catholics and Christians in general. This is relevant in that it is a specific example of how proper academic usage is stressed over protecting a group from offense. Another specific example is the removal of "peace be upon him" from articles dealing with Muslims. Once again, this change is done in spite of the fact that it may offend some readers. What is the moral from all this? On Wikipedia, by precedent, avoiding offending people is not a valid reason for policy. This is in direct conflict with the first sentence of WP: Gender Neutral Language, "Gender-neutral language avoids constructions that might be interpreted by some readers as an unnecessary reinforcement of traditional stereotypes."
3) It encourages neologisms. Avoiding common and valid words like "chairman" or "fireman" and replacing them with words which haven't existed for any period of time, and which have been custom-created for this very purpose is silly. The gender neutral components, "chairperson" and "firefighter" respectively are awkward and unnecessary, and, as above, only serve to avoid offending a specific group. In order to avoid accepted an common words, which only have gender as a result of the nature of the language and no specific attempt to make a statement one way or another, we are often forced to use new and unaccepted words which have no place on an encyclopædia. For an extreme example, see this.
4) The offense is imagined. Languages have gender for specific words, often arbitrarily. This is a fact of life. No one among us would think it reasonable or even sane to replace all occurances of gendered nouns within Latin, for example, with their neutral gendered companion, and no one among us would take offense that iudex is male and argentaria is female as we know that this isn't a statement of the suitability of a given gender for a given role, but an arbitrary construction of grammar serving only as a result of convention. Similarly, in English, it happens that "man" both means a singular male human and the whole of the human collective. It's only because specific groups are looking for the offense that it is received.
In the end, what do we have? A pointlessly politically correct convention that results in awkward prose and ridiculous and irregular neologisms, stemming from the will to avoid an imaginary offense to a group of people in blatant violation of the precedent set by Wikipedia policy. This doesn't belong on Wikipedia. Let's be sane.-- Liempt ( talk) 02:30, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
What's this! We encourage "gender neutral" language?! Sounds like a feminazi conspiracy to me. Speaking of which, when are we going to move Flight attendant back to Stewardess? Kaldari ( talk) 15:54, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
This is why there is no consensus for anything stronger than consider. Considering alternatives to one's prose rarely hurts, and there will be occasions when a gender-neutral phrasing will be stronger and clearer than the original, aside from all claims to virtue on the part of the unco' guid. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:09, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
Liempt, you write: I have taken the time to learn the rules of grammar on a theoretical level more than the average person. Splendid, splendid. I hate to boast, but I have done the same. I wonder which route you took; my own was Radford's English Syntax, which, like every theoretical book on the rules of English grammar that comes to hand, ignores the syntactically uninteresting matter of gender-neutral phrasing. If, however, we turn to atheoretical, descriptive books on English grammar, I can think of no better than CGEL -- and sure enough, within its eighteen-hundred-plus pages there is room for this subject, particularly on pp.484–97, "Gender and pronoun–antecedent agreement". Of particular interest, and short and easy to read, are pp.492–94, which deal with "Purportedly sex-neutral he", "Purportedly sex-neutral she", "Disjunctive coordination", "Composite forms", "Singular they", and "Avoidance". What's most interesting here is the treatment of "singular they", which leads up to three samples for the reader's consideration: (i) Let me know if your father or your brother changes ___ mind; (ii) Let me know if your father or your mother changes ___ mind; and (iii) Either the husband or the wife has perjured ___ (in all three, the object coindexes with the subject).
As a theoretician, you may have bypassed this necessarily expensive book. Not to worry, you can read up on "singular they" right here.
Incidentally, I'm surprised by: This policy is pointless adherence to political correctness which contributes nothing but convoluted sentences an gratuitous indulgence of minority group's requests. It encourages neologisms and assumes fact which just plain don't exist. The policy (for policy it is, other than as "policy" is more strictly defined by WP for its own use) is not pointless, it's pointed. (The point may of course be one with which you disagree.) Which minority group, which requests? (My own group -- minority? majority? -- is one in favor of clear writing.) How does the policy encourage neologisms? (Or are you saying that they or the singular use thereof is a neologism?) What is the fact that doesn't (or what are the facts that don't) exist? (And is the term "political correctness" anything other than a rallying call for the conservatively or retrogressively inclined?) -- Hoary ( talk) 02:38, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Tony raises some interesting arguments. Upon reflection, I agree she has a point. Durova Charge! 04:29, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
I think it depends a lot on the page, but on this page, I tend to paste a phrase from my first sentence in the edit summary. I figure that people probably know whether they're interested in a topic or not, and if I give them enough to go on, they can save some time by skipping the comment. This would be overkill in the typical article, of course, because that's more a process of construction than of debate and providing links to past discussions. Should I follow the crowd and make my edit summaries shorter? - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 17:16, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
"Everybody knows" that the title word or title phrase is set in bold at its first appearance in the article. This manual says:
When an article begins by saying
I usually change it to
Is that explicitly considered entirely optional?
Also when it says
I also change it as above, so that the parentheses are INSIDE the bolded part. And I do the same with quotation marks, so that if it says
then I change it to
I've been doing this for about five years and no one's ever said a word to me about it. Have pros and cons of these sorts of things been discussed here, with the result that they've all been declared optional? Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:09, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
"Duke", I think you are guilty of an error. If the article is titled Book, it can begin by saying
including the letter s in the bolded portion, and if the article is called impossibility, it could say
...the form of the word being different from that in the title. That is appropriate and can cover quotion marks and parentheses in some cases. Michael Hardy ( talk) 22:06, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
Attempts to please rival national sensitivities sometimes lead to article names consisting of two different local names for the same thing (such as Sněžka-Śnieżka, which is the Czech name of the mountain followed by the Polish name). Whatever you may think of this "solution", what do people think should be the format of such names? I'm pretty sure there shouldn't be a hyphen in the middle. A slash is probably ruled out on technical grounds, right? So should there be an en dash there, or what?-- Kotniski ( talk) 14:52, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
You probably want to bring this up at WT:NCGN; questions of article title are naming conventions. It disapproves of multiple names, as a result of one of our lamer discussions (should the name of Bolzano be Bolzano-Bozen or Bozen-Bolzano? Twice; no, I'm not making this up). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:17, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
I want to establish a new manual of style for television-related articles. This is the current page that informs us how to write about television programs. It's only specific to the main article on the show, it's vague, and most importantly it is not an official MOS page. I have written a new page, which I hope will take the place of the other one, but in an official capacity. While not perfect, I think it embodies more of the television-related articles as a whole than simply the main article on a TV series. I also think that it is more informative about what to do. I've had a few editors give feedback and tweak wording, though I'm sure it can use more. Anyway, the point is that I'm at a loss for what I need to do next. I know that I would like the page name to be moved to Wikipedia:WikiProject Television/Style guidelines, as it is more professional, and appropriate for the broader range of coverage, but I don't know what I need to do get to the ball rolling on getting it made official. Could someone help, please? Much appreciation. BIGNOLE (Contact me) 16:47, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
It has come to my attention that the guidelines of Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Images can apply to animal articles in ways that make life a tad difficult and I'd love some clarification. How important is this rule Images of faces should be placed so that the face or eyes look toward the text..., and how should it be applied to images of entire animals? When it refers to portraits does that mean images only of a bird's (or other animal's) head, or does it mean any photo where the alignment of the image is portrait? I ask because I am currently working on two bird articles and image placement is somewhat tricky, particularly for trogon, which by virtue of being long, straight birds, tend to have long images that can often only really be situated on the right hand side of the page (thanks to the other new(?) rule about not pushing headings around). I don't want to have to stop using images because of the above rule, for example the image of the Black Throated Trogon, particularly as good images are hard to find for many species/genera/familes. How much digression do we have in these situations? (lots I hope). Sabine's Sunbird talk 00:07, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
I always have used nbsp when I use a numeric, for example 23 kangeroos. (23 :kangeroos) My rationale is that nbsp is used to prevent the number appearing at the end of a wrapped line separated from its unit of measurement. In the example, kangeroos is arguably a unit of measurement.
A few of my nbsp have been removed in later edits so I am asking here. Is the nbsp to be used generally to prevent a number apearing at the end of a line, or does it only apply to recognised abbreviated units of measurements? MortimerCat ( talk) 07:18, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
Is this the only discussion that led to the change in NBSP? The first time I read the 7 World Trade Center article, it was a wreck of hanging 7s. Same thing occurs at aircraft articles (for example Boeing 747) and spacecraft articles ( Apollo 8). Please reinstate the previous wording which included "numerical and non-numerical elements"; this was much more logical and sensible. [7] SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 04:58, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
for Jane Watson-Smith, for instance, should we use a hyphen or ndash? Happy‑ melon 20:18, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
I started a discussion on MOS:CAPS about capitalisation in cases like "three persons in one god", but it's been a couple of days and it hasn't seen much attention. Since the policy in question is also delivered (in reduced form) on the main MoS, I'm hoping it's okay to link to the discussion here and ask for input. Ilkali ( talk) 08:14, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
If you use god as a common noun, then it's a small g(e.g., The Abrahamic god, Mars was the god of war, ...). If you use it in the sense of the "proper noun" of the Abrahamic god, then it's a capital g (e.g., God said "Kill them all.", The scent of burnt animal flesh is pleasing to God). If referring to some more or less defined supreme deity, then it also takes a capital g (What is God? God is the feeling you get when a baby cries). Headbomb ( ταλκ · κοντριβς) 20:40, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
I can't find guidance on how to write the name of someone called "Noel Hughes" who was always called "Josh". There could be many ways eg
As a further issue, would James "Jim" Sutton just be called Jim Sutton, since Jim is a known nickname for James?
Apologies if this decision has already been taken and I've failed to find the policy
almost-
instinct 07:45, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
I have just become aware through User:Tony1/Monthly updates of styleguide and policy changes/May 2008 of an unfortunate change at WP:NBSP (thank goodness for Tony's updates).
The scope of the recommendation to use a non-breaking (i.e., "hard") space was narrowed from all instances where:
Compound items such as "20 chairs" are thus excluded from the recommendation.
Not a good change. Why should we see 20 on one line and chairs on the next? And why should terms like Boeing 747, Apollo 7 or 7 World Trade Center have unnatural line breaks? I oppose this change; can someone point me to the discussion please? Thanks, SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 16:05, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
I've changed my position from a few months ago, and maybe I'm alone in this, I don't know. Can anyone find a style manual or anything like a style manual that supports the idea that content editors of any kind should be inserting hard spaces? Chicago, AP Stylebook, and NYTM don't seem to even approach the issue. As I mentioned previously, I think the issue here is that there are some abbreviations (of units and otherwise) that cause a person skimming down the article to stop and go "Wha?" if they appear by themselves at the beginning of a line, so per the principle of least astonishment, IMO it would be nice if lines didn't wrap in the middle of "3 cm" or "Ames IA" (Iowa, USA). But I'm more interested these days in promoting collaborations between content experts and experienced Wikipedians, and I'm getting more and more nervous about being put in the position of having to defend orthography that none of the style manuals will touch; if a rule is considered too fussy even for academicians, authors and journalists, then it ought to be too fussy for us. If people in their roles as copyeditors want to agree on where to wrap the lines, that's fine, and if we want to follow up on the bugzilla thread to do some of it by software, that's even better, but it shouldn't be in WP:MOS or WP:MOSNUM and shouldn't be expected from editors, unless we can come up with support for the idea that this is expected outside of Wikipedia. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 17:39, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
7.42 Abbreviations [:] Abbreviations used with numerals are best left intact; either the numeral should be carried over to the next line or the abbreviation should be moved up.
345 m
24 kg
55 BCE
6:35 p.m.
- Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 22:54, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
People have gone berserk with nbsp. I would like to say that line breaks are a *good thing*. One of the benefits of the modern world is that the internet is available regardless of screen size. Try it on a pocket device and you will see what I mean. Line breaks are needed to fit things on the screen. I would hardly notice a problem with a line break in '20 chairs' and 'Boeing 747'. As Dank55 said, I think it might be nice if '3 cm' and 'Ames IA' did not break but I think we have gone too far in mandating the use of nbsp. It used to be optional. Please think about limiting the scope of nbsp because line breaks are good. Lightmouse ( talk) 19:40, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
Once again, where is the discussion that led to this change? SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 04:52, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
In compound measurements in which values and units are separated by a space, a non-breaking space (also known as a hard space) is recommended to avoid the displacement of those elements at the end of a line. Hard spaces may also be considered where line-end displacement might be disruptive to the reader (
7 World Trade Center
).
What's so special about numbers? Is it really that much more jarring to the reader to have a number and a word in separate lines than having two words in separate lines? (If there is a study about that, I'd like to see it.) I don't see any rules for inserting non-breaking spaces between articles and nouns, between verbs and adverbs, or between given names and surnames. Or even in the middle of an infinitive. While I see the suggestion of some style guides to put a nonbreaking space between 15 and kg as not too unreasonable, it can be taken too far. At least in science, not all units and numbers are one or two characters long. I decided to take a look at a few recent articles in the Journal of the American Chemical Society and Science, and I noticed that they are not afraid of putting a number and a unit in separate lines. I also noticed that in some cases a full number plus unit can easily take half a line of text. Refusing to split such a monster would be as problematic as refusing to hyphenate supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. But these journals don't mind splitting even the short cases. If they don't mind, why should we? Or does one need to be a scientist to be able to put a number and a word or symbol together when they are on different lines? I don't buy it. -- Itub ( talk) 11:16, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
I've gone back and checked now, and this seems to be another of those recent, not broadly discussed MoS changes, made only in the last few weeks (May 21 and May 26). [8] [9] I disagree with this change, and suggest going back to the long-standing wording, "In compound items in which numerical and non-numerical elements are separated by a space ... " I'm glad we're now made aware of these changes via Tony's monthtly updates, but this weekly tweaks and changes continue to frustrate. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 08:46, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
A non-breaking space (also known as a hard space) is recommended to avoid the end-of-line displacement of the elements:
Tony (talk) 14:01, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
Your feedback is welcome:
As the person who made the change (or at least started it), I see that my intervention is required here—although I should probably comment anyway, as is my habit in these cases. Basically, I made the change because the guideline, as it was written before 21 May, was too general and opened the door for an incredibly widespread usage of hard spaces, with all the disadvantages that such a thing would entail (analysed by my honourable colleagues above). It was not my intention to go to the other side and make the guideline too strict; I simply did not consider that the revised guideline would leave out numerous types of legitimate hard-space application. However, I find that a restrictive guideline is better than one which allows for undesirable overuse, especially if we are to resolve this problem in a relatively short time period. Restoring an acceptable balance is, of course, the primary target at this stage. I shall not include a more detailed reasoning for my edit here, in order to prevent my message from growing too long. I can provide it on demand, however. As far as Tony's suggestions for the location of hard spaces are concerned, I agree with all of them, and would even add a few more (see below). As far as the spaces around en dashes are concerned, I believe that the preceding space should be hard and the trailing one a breaking space. This method not only improves wrapping but is actually established practice, something reflected in the existence of a template doing this very thing ( which I have just used in the navbox below). I should mention that using hard spaces at both sides would be highly debatable—many editors choose spaced en dashes over unspaced em dashes because the latter stick with the following word while the former do not; we should grant editors this stylistic choice as far as wrapping is concerned. In addition to Tony's points, now, I believe that we should consider expanding the application of hard spaces to unabbreviated units as well, treating 9 metres exactly like 9 m. It is already widespread practice ({{ convert}} does that automatically), and it makes sense to keep measurements together, be the units full or not (people understand them in the same degree, given that they are familiar with the abbreviations). In any case, I am not sure that we should be too specific or extremely prescriptive about how hard spaces should be used, because this is a dodgy issue: no matter how many cases are described, there will always be more warranting special treatment—some in all instances, some based on editorial judgement. I propose writing a simple guideline saying that hard spaces should be used at the end of lines when items should not be separated blah blah, and making it clear that this should normally not be applied to ordinary words or in cases where, as Mr Anderson says, compounds are unlikely to break. Below could be given a table with all the specific examples where using hard spaces is encouraged.
In addition to the items in Tony's list, several names and terms would make reading easier for people if using hard spaces. This would include addresses (10 Downing Street), postcodes with two or more parts (DN37 2AB), years with a designation (AD 1066, 480 BCE), time in 12-hour format (2:50 pm), co-ordinates ({{nowrap|5° 24′ 21.12″ N}}), and names followed by a number (Boeing 747, State Route 9) or modifier (Louis XIV of France). For the last case—which might be more controversial than the rest—I find it important to use hard spaces, as these compounds make even less sense when broken than those with numbers first. All these proposals strictly fall into either the number or the name category; ordinary words are explicitly excluded. Waltham, The Duke of 00:21, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
<math>, it's a tag not a template see Help:Displaying a formula. JIMp talk· cont 03:51, 5 June 2008 (UTC) I'm pretty sure (I tested narrowing the help page I mention down) that that within the <math> tags does not wrap. It would be nice to have a word recommending that mixing these <math> expressions with regular text on the same line should be avoided wherever practical. I'm often finding stuff like spotted throughout prose, an unnecessary change in font. JIMp talk· cont 04:12, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Should we encourage the preemptive use of ? It does make edit screens less readable, which is a cost; and it occurs to me that in most of our examples, it may be makework. Consider; when will Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit – sed do eiusmod tempor break before the dash?
For this reason, it is preferable to fix a bad break if it happens, but otherwise it is OK to leave well enough alone. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:20, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
I don't know if this is the right place for this discussion, if not, please kindly me point me to the right place.
I noticed another user recently adding the template lang to some titles in foreign languages (French in this case) in some articles (e.g. here [10]), and wondered what it was used for, as it has no visible effect on the page. It turns out after a friendly discussion with the user that it is supposedly useful for people and/or tools spell checking texts, so that they don't try to "correct" text which isn't in English.
I'm not really happy with these tags, as they seem to me to be a solution looking for a problem (since none of these articles or many others I have watchlisted seem to have the problem of erroneous spelling corrections in these cases), and a nuisance for editors (yet another level of tags around titles, which often already have double [ and double ' around them). I would like some discussion to see if other people feel we should encourage or discourage this in general, or if it should only be used in some cases but not in general. As is probably clear, at the moment I'm in favour of completely discouraging it since the perceived benefit of the tags is too small to outweigh the extra trouble it gives. Fram ( talk) 19:02, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Okay, those tags could in theory be useful in various ways but is that actually the case? Can anyone point to a page where a tag like this makes the difference between text being correctly displayed or not? Do actual screen-readers pay attention to them? Do actual search engines use them? Can we have some examples where the tags are clearly doing some good? The original edit which sparked this discussion still seems confusing and crufty to me. [11] Why not mark all the French titles in the article? It looks to me like these templates are yet another thing which raises the bar for newbies and clutter page histories. These may be acceptable sacrifices but only if the benefits are clear and demonstrable. I don't feel the added convenience to typo checkers is enough of a benefit. Haukur ( talk) 16:45, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
WP:Captions doesn't get as much attention as some pages. This was just inserted in a new section last night: "Unless relevant to the subject, do not credit the image author or copyright holder in the article. It is not necessary to fulfill attribution requirements of the GFDL or Creative Commons licenses as long as the appropriate credit is on the image description page, and it implies ownership of free content, which contradicts Wikipedia policy." Thoughts?
Also, an editor wants to largely rewrite WP:PERFECT, and we haven't attracted any discussion there. Please see the talk page. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 12:28, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
The "section management" subsection says: "The standard order for optional appendix sections at the end of an article is See also, Notes (or Footnotes), References, Further reading (or Bibliography), and External links; the order of Notes and References can be reversed."? Does anyone know why footnotes are not at the foot? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 19:01, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the quick response. I understand the reasoning but I wonder whether it takes into account that folks generally get to the footnotes by clicking on a link (and return to the text the same way). So there is no benefit to putting the notes closer to the text (and there is a detriment because readers have to scroll through the "footnotes" to get to potentially valuable information). Were those factors considered when it was decided that Wikipedia footnotes are like hot dogs? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 19:47, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
This doesn't respond to my point that interactive users can jump to footnotes. (In fact this brings up an additional consideration: If "footnotes" comes before other sections then any footnote in the later sections will will appear above the footnote signal. That doesn't make sense if, as the responses to my comments seem to say, we should ignore the interactive features of on-line footnotes.) Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 12:29, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
See the new proposal Wikipedia:Usage of diacritics.
"For a placename or person that is well known in the English-speaking world, i.e. is widely mentioned in English-language sources: ... " and then goes on to lay down rules. This seems to be at variance with WP:MOS#Foreign terms -- Philip Baird Shearer ( talk) 19:09, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
So why exactly is "first text...another text" forbidden? No reason is given; nor is any citation given for any of this. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:25, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
I was so hoping that Chicago would represent a consensus among publishers, journalists and academics that Wikipedia could bootstrap off of, but Tony is right. Chicago is a horse designed by a committee; sometimes Chicago recommends things that are just goofy, and sometimes it goes on forever in a way that is just burdensome and inappropriate for Wikipedia. No one should be required to memorize Chicago's capitalization rules, or even follow them. But the good news is that, so far, I'm happy with the match between Wikipedian practices and the two manuals US journalists use the most, The NY Times Manual of Style and Usage and AP Stylebook. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 17:08, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
I have never stated a topic like this before, so I thought it might be best to start here. I believe that the minute differences in language and spelling between UK and US English can be reconciled using a translation system that is similar to the process that has been developed for the Chinese WIkipedia. Under their translation system, users have a choice of selecting either one of the following as their "viewing language" on Wikipedia:
I believe that this system has the potential to, in addition to bridge the difference in language, localize the encyclopedia for users in the wide and diverse Anglophone world. With this system in place, we can disregard the rules in regards to "-ize" or "-ise" or "-or" [as in behavior] or "-our" [as in labour].
So, I would like to put this out as a feeler, and see if anyone is interested in pursuing this further. Arbiteroftruth ( talk) 06:27, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
[after numerous edit conflicts] Would it require us to mark it up? e.g. "The {{color}}s of the rainbow are..." Who would determine the mapping? e.g. who decides whether UK "elevator" must map to US "lift"? And how do you decide when US lift means UK elevator, and when it just means lift. Surely there are situations where a two similarly spelled UK words map to a single US word, or vice verse; how would such mappings be handled? How would quotations be handled? Would it fix article titles too? Hesperian 14:02, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
I see Wikipedia, and more generally the internet, as a force that will eventually re-unify the English language, after a long natural process. In my opinion that's a good thing, not something to be prevented using technical means. The Chinese situation is special for two reasons: The traditional/simplified split hasn't grown organically but exists for political reasons. And as far as I know the Chinese writing system is used as a kind of interlingua between several mutually unintelligible languages. In that respect it's probably a bit like having a single Wikipedia for Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese (except that the Catalans would certainly be opposed to such a proposal). -- Hans Adler ( talk) 14:31, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
I want to make a response to the aforementioned questions here.
Regardless of whether English will be reunified in the future, we are dealing with the present. At this point in time, there are variations between different forms of English. Now, as far as server-side translation goes, it can be cumbersome, which is why I believe the per-article translation solution (in Chinese Wikipedia, they do this through a template) is a solution that fits our situation better for region-specific words. For words such as "colo[u]r", the server-side solution will be a better fit. This combination of solutions will do the trick. Now obviously, the problems with Chinese Wikipedia is much bigger than ours (theirs deal with readability, ours deals with the more minute matters that will not render a page unreadable), but I wanted to propose this to see where we can go with it. I think localization, while not an urgent matter, will make English Wikipedia much more special, and can serve to eliminate some of the rules that goes with styles and grammar (we can dispose with those regarding region-specific spellings) if this is implemented. Arbiteroftruth ( talk) 17:20, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
Now, to give a sense of how the per-article translation thing can work, I will show you how those editors over at the Chinese Wikipedia deal with this.
They have this template that manually translates specific words within an article, which is the solution we can implement in our case. For example, let's say we are dealing with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (film). The English title is different. So, we do it as follows:
---
{{noteTA (the title name for the Chinese Wikipedia translation template)
|T (for page title)=en-us (for US English): Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (film); en-com (for Commonwealth English): Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (film)
|1 (for word 1)=en-us: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone; en-com: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
}}
---
So this is how it could work. It doesn't require too much markups. One template takes care of all words mentioned on that very page. No fuss. Arbiteroftruth ( talk) 17:31, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
The problem with this idea is that it isn't ambitious enough. We should be internationalising all vocabulary and grammar. For example, instead of writing
, we would write
This would expand to great idea for English speakers, but the {{adjective-noun-pair}} template would know to put the adjective after the noun for French speakers, and the other templates would expand to French words for them, so for them this markup would yield
(Of course, we couldn't actually call those templates adjective-noun-pair, great and idea; we would have to come up with language neutral terms.) If enough effort was put into templatizing the grammar and vocabulary of every language and language variant in the world, then we could abandon this ridiculous idea of having a Wikipedia in each language, and write a single Wikipedia that could be read in the language of choice. The efficiency gains would be enormous, the only, very minor, downside being that only a handful of savant linguists would be able to contribute. Hesperian 02:11, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm finding it unclear whether ndashes (–) or mdashes (—) should be used in tables to mark "empty cells". For some reason I remember reading it somewhere, perhaps in an old version of the MOS, that mdashes should be used. This is also what a lot of WP:FLs use (though this may in part be because I always say they should be used in my WP:FLC reviews). A recent discussion at WT:FLC#hyphens in blank squares: why not en dashes? brought this issue up, and I just wanted to get a firm answer from the caretakers of MOS. Once this has been confirmed, could a line please be added to WP:DASH. Thanks! Matthewedwards ( talk · contribs · count · email) 05:08, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
"If a column head does not apply to one of the entries in the stub, the cell should either be left blank or be filled in by an em dash or three unspaced ellipsis dots. If a distinction is needed between “not applicable” and “no data available,” a blank cell may be used for the former and an em dash or ellipsis dots for “no data” (see table 13.8). This distinction must be made clear in a note or elsewhere. (Alternatively, the abbreviations n.a. and n.d. may be used, with definitions given in a note.) A zero means literally that the quantity in a cell is zero (see table 13.3)."
Dash | Code | Meaning |
---|---|---|
- | - | Hyphen are not to be used to indicate anything in a table. |
− | − | Minus sign should only be used in the same way a plus sign (+) would. |
–?– | –?;&nash | Unknown/No data |
— | &emdash; | Not applicable |
Headbomb: So you suggest we do the PManderson thing and allow a choice between en and em dashes? I suppose on this occasion I could be swung around to agree, reluctantly. (Never let it be said that I'm inflexible!) And although your system of symbols in the table are logical and nicely worked out, I think they're too elaborate for this context. Tony (talk) 13:37, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
As I have said above, I am rather open on this one, mostly because it does not affect proper text. Unless some major advantage or disadvantage in either option transpires, I say we go with the "use either an en dash or an em dash, centred, and consistently within an article" principle. Although I find em dashes rather long for this use, it might actually depend on the width of a table's columns which one would look better. This is largely a formatting issue, so I advocate flexibility. Waltham, The Duke of 03:56, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
Insert: –(
endash) —(
emdash) ... ‘ “ ’ ” ° ″ ′ ≈ ≠ ≤ ≥ ± − (
minus sign minutely larger than the
hyphen) × ÷ ← → · § Sign your username: ~~~~ (on talk pages)
mdash;
ndash;
nbsp;
or the spacebar space?KnowledgeHegemonyPart2 ( talk) 15:25, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
Quick question: Where's the guideline that says "don't use pictures if they don't add anything to the article"? Thanks, Matthewedwards ( talk • contribs • email) 16:01, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
←I agree with Anderson that this is hard to pin down in a guideline. People, reviewers, can appeal to common sense and the disadvantages of visual clutter to persuade, yes? Tony (talk) 05:47, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
Why was the following removed as "nonsense"?
When naming an article, a hyphen is not used as a substitute for an en dash that properly belongs in the title, for example in Eye–hand span. However, editors should provide a redirect page to such an article, using a hyphen in place of the en dash (e.g., Eye-hand span), to allow the name to be typed easily when searching Wikipedia. See also Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision). The associated talk page name should match the page name exactly.
Matthewedwards ( talk • contribs • email) 07:36, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
I went crawling through the page history and isolated the diff that changed this rule from being merely a suggestion to being the law of the land. (See here.) There doesn't appear to be any consensus or discussion behind the move, and as such, I propose changing the language back to being a suggestion, rather than being a requirement. Thoughts? -- MZMcBride ( talk) 08:02, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
(ec) Look, the linking thing is a red herring; there's no problem with using a redirect as a link. Similarly for navigation--just type the name with the hyphen into the search box and you'll get to the right place. So the only question is, which form do we want to see at the top of the page? In the case of Mexican–American War I have no strong feelings, but I suppose there's some utility to the endash to make it clear that it wasn't (or at least not especially) a war about Mexican-Americans, but rather between Mexicans and Americans. Similarly the Michelson−Morely experiment wasn't performed by a single physicist named Michelson-Morely. -- Trovatore ( talk) 08:12, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
The issue is that people should be able to type the title without the use of redirects. And now that people have taken to using automated tools to attempt to change thousands of page titles, this becomes a larger issue quite quickly. Tony: I see no consensus (as I tried to demonstrate with that diff) to make the MoS require en dashes. In fact, for years, it was merely optional – a suggestion, really. And the claim that the need for redirects is there anyway is a bit silly. I doubt many people are searching using en dashes, eh? So I really don't understand why the bit about page titles can't go back to being a suggestion rather than a mandate. -- MZMcBride ( talk) 08:18, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
←Rebecca, by "computer manufacturers don't put the en dash on their keyboards", I presume you mean that they don't allocate this function to a single keystroke, as they do the hyphen. Do I see a show of support for not using the degree symbol just because it requires two fingers simultaneously, not one? Or parentheses? And while we're at it, no more superscript please; and those monstrous non-breaking spaces are out – they require SIX keystrokes. Really, we're all aspiring to a professional standard of writing and formatting, aren't we? Tony (talk) 13:44, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
Her college years, 1998–2002, were the happiest in her life. For documentation and indexing, see chapters 16–18. In Genesis 6:13–22 we find God’s instructions to Noah. Join us on Thursday, 11:30 a.m.–4:00 p.m., to celebrate the New Year. The London–Paris train leaves at two o’clock. I have blocked out December 2002–March 2003 to complete my manuscript. Her articles appeared in Postwar Journal (3 November 1945–4 February 1946). Green Bay beat Denver 31–24. The legislature voted 101–13 to adopt the resolution. Professor Plato’s survey (1999–) will cover the subject in the final volume. Jane Doe (1950–); or Jane Doe (b. 1950) the post–World War II years a hospital–nursing home connection a nursing home–home care policy a quasi-public–quasi-judicial body (or, better, a judicial body that is quasi-public and quasi-judicial) but non-English-speaking peoples a wheelchair-user-designed environment (or, better, an environment designed for wheelchair users) (Abbreviations for compounds are treated as single words, so a hyphen, not an en dash, is used in such phrases as “U.S.-Canadian relations.”) the University of Wisconsin–Madison the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
I suggest that we acknowledge that there's a large, pre-existing base of GAs and FAs that follow the long-standing WP:MOS guideline, that this guideline is and was based both on a nice simplicity (hyphen for "and", en-dash for "or" and "between"), and on a solid foundation of the way things were done in the publishing world for a long time, that this issue is not all that important, and that we revisit it from time to time as journalists move gradually in the direction of converting to hyphens. I'll be happy to discuss it in January, but I'm not going to discuss it every month. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 15:39, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
Why are you all ignoring the fact that the naming conventions, which are policy, dictate that en-dashes are to be used in article names? And have done so for over a year? This conversation should be happening there. In any case, my argument has been iterated many times above: They look better, redirects are not even remotely a big deal, etc. There is no accessibility issue. Also Mexican-American war was moved to the hyphen version because of a technical restriction. Not because of any of the issues opposers on this page have brought up.-- Dycedarg ж 17:16, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm wholly in favour of using the correct en dash where it should be used by proper style in article titles. With redirects, there's no reason not to do it. — Nightstallion 21:25, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
←Now that Rebecca has calmed down from her earlier hysteria (referring to me as a "buffoon", etc, and to many of my colleagues here as "people who are absolutely fascinated by things like the length of a dash"); and now that it's apparent people here don't go along with Anderson's characterisation of MOS as being ruled by a few obsessive zealots, let's examine the latest assertions. While considerably down the shock-horror scale, they are nonetheless on a par with what spin doctors for politicians come up with:
Redirect notices are generally fine – they alert you to where you've been redirected from, and it does its job. It's just when you have to have one pop up every single time one accesses a page with a dash in the title that it becomes very annoying.
It's as though half of the articles had an en dash or required one. Um ... no; it's a rather tiny proportion. If they really make your sides ache, your cache settings should prevent the display of the redirect where you need to access a page more than once in a session. Mine do.
to use a character that the vast majority of our readers cannot type on their keyboards
But ... they don't have to type it. Nor do readers have to write good prose; we have to.
... before I came on Wikipedia, I'd never met anyone who knew the difference, let alone cared about it
Yeah but no but yeah but. We're engaged here in what is effectively the business of publishing on a scale never seen before, not of writing substandard undergraduate essays. Publishing houses have to deal with these matters; ordinary readers don't, but will benefit even if they're unfamiliar with the finer points of the en-dash vs. hyphen issue. Tony (talk) 03:20, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
The arguments in favour of retaining the guideline in question are overwhelming, as is the support towards it, even from people who do not frequent these noble halls of style. There are issues here of high-quality encyclopaedic writing, internal consistency, and usability, and unless there is a satisfactory reply to all these concerns, I am removing the "disputed" tag from the page on 27 June. I request that it should be retained until then, so that no objections can be raised on grounds of due-process violation, contempt of the community, hostile environment causing bias, etc. We want to be fair. :-) Waltham, The Duke of 19:06, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
I really don't understand why this discussion is still going on. It is clearly a good thing to have a certain uniformness in our articles. There are a lot of other things that are more important, but I am not aware of any that would contradict this particular prescription. We could prescribe the opposite; but that would be worse. We could make more complicated rules; nobody seems to want that.
No articles are deleted for failure to follow the MOS. No editors are banned for obstinately ignoring the MOS prescriptions. It's even possible to be an extremely active editor in ndash-infested articles without ever writing an ndash, so long as you don't revert ndashes back to hyphens just for the sake of doing it. We have a choice between ever so ugly redirects appearing when we enter something into a WP search form, or when we follow a link from WP or Google. -- Hans Adler ( talk) 22:22, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
But quite seriously, the present wording is the undefined term disjunctive with a list of examples. We concluded, last time we were asked, that we weren't sure exactly why Mon-Khmer was hyphenated, and we'd have to wait for Noetica to decide how far that example extends. Is this clarity, or is it mud? (But as long as the bot doesn't work faster than it can be watched, that may work in practice.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:18, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
I have removed the tag. This discussion is officially closed. Waltham, The Duke of 08:59, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
I would propose that MOS be updated with the additional caveat that when an article has reached a level of completeness and polish that it is undergoing little in the way of substantial rewrite or addition, that typographers’ quotes are permissible. This will keep Wikipedia easy to edit when articles are in a state of growth and flux, but will also put Wikipedia on the slow track towards looking more like a professional-grade publication. Greg L ( talk) 02:20, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
Now that both Firefox 3 and Safari have anti-aliased fonts, it may be that typographers quotes look much better on these modern browsers. I know that I couldn’t possibly even look at Wikipedia pages using the older, non-anti-aliased Firefox because italic text looked positively terrible; I couldn’t even believe people put up with it. Wikipedia pages, with their frequent use of italic text looked infinitely superior on Safari. It may well be that the same font-rendering issue is at play with typographers quotes and, if so, anti-aliased rendering is rapidly replacing the old, barbaric font-rendering method.
I would like to get to the bottom of the true facts of what appears good and bad, and to whom, and on what browsers/platforms. Some aesthetic issues, such as delimiting numeric strings, have appearance issues that are very platform-dependent. For instance, it took a lot of work and a long time to arrive at a compromise solution for delimiting numeric strings and getting the spaces alongside the times symbol to look proper, such as this one: 0.45386358×10−24 kg. Different people were saying the spaces were far too wide. It turned out that different browsers and different default fonts (mainly the former), treated em-based spacing very differently.
So maybe the same issue is at play now. I’d like to get to the bottom of it though because what I’m seeing (Safari with anti-aliased fonts on a Mac), typographers quotes look infinitely superior.
Let’s consider the following text:
It is inappropriate for an editor to change an article from one style to another unless there is a substantial reason to do so
. (without the period at the end). That text comes from the third paragraph of
Wikipedia:Manual of Style and has been stable for quite some time.
Here is the search result. As you can see, Wikipedia’s search function is nowhere as “Google-like”; it can not do project-wide (across many articles) text string searches.It still comes down that if readers really need to use a browser’s search function to find a word in its apostrophed (possessive) form once you are in a particular article, you just search on the non-possessive form and scan through the handful of hits. And, again, I just don’t even see that as happening all that often.
I’m still seeing that this issue of straight v.s. typographer’s quotes boils down to an issue of appearance. I can believe that there may be browser and default-font combinations that could produce ugly-ass results. But with anti-aliased font display becoming ever more standard in modern browsers, I’d like to explore what people are really seeing—today—and what their impressions are of what they see. Maybe we can even post or e-mail screen captures.
All I’m proposing is that after articles have reached a point where they are undergoing only minor edits (I can site examples—they do exist), then typographer’s quotes should be considered as acceptable. I buy the argument that they are cumbersome for editors on barbarian (Windows) machines so straight quotes are better for articles that are in a state of growth or flux. But I certainly don’t want to advocate their use—even for mature articles—if they truly look like garbage on a lot of browser/preferences settings combinations. Greg L ( talk) 03:00, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
Straights or curlies, it's a matter of taste, but one thing that would probably not suit anyone's taste would be inconsistancy, thus we'd do well to settle on one or the other, now were we to attempt to settle on the one which is difficult to type, where would we end up? JIMp talk· cont 03:37, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
I agree that straight quotes would be better for articles that are growing or in a state of flux. As to your “were we to attempt to settle on the one which is difficult to type, where would we end up?”, I buy into the reasoning that straight quotes are easier for editors given that Windows makes it so awfully cumbersome to use typographers’ quotes. And I agree 100% that the quote style should be consistent within an article. I’m only suggesting the following:
“ | For articles that are no longer growing nor are in a state of flux, the use of typographers’ quotes and apostrophes is acceptable. When an article is so upgraded, all quotes (double and single) and apostrophes must be converted so the article has one consistent typography style.
|
” |
I would like to propose the addition of the following text on conjunction use to the end of the Usage section. Comments are welcome and appreciated.
Conjunctions are used to connect words or phrases. The most common conjunctions are and, or and but. Each has its own context for proper usage: [2]
Starting a sentence with a conjunction should be avoided. In addition, the word but may create an unintended reaction by the reader; it may imply an action where none is present. Avoid using but where the two ideas being connected are not conflicting. If and can be substituted in place of but without changing the meaning, then and is preferred. For example, "He taught history but was fired in 2007." is preferred as "He taught history and was fired in 2007." Sometimes it is better to avoid the conjunction altogether and simply create two independent sentences. This is especially true of long sentences with several dependent clauses.
Truthanado ( talk) 15:02, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
The politically correct term for describing people of mixed descent eludes me at the moment. In any case, I am unsure as to the precise hyphenation practices of compounds like African-American. I have not managed to find a relevant guideline in the Manual, and unless there is one which I have failed to locate, it seems to me that this is an omission which should be taken care of; especially considering that I have received intelligence according to which the articles concerning such terms are inconsistent in their spelling. Please advise. Waltham, The Duke of 10:26, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
In the Images section of the MOS, one of the bullet items suggests to "avoid sandwiching text between two images facing each other" (emphasis added). Some people take this to mean no sandwiching of text between an image and an infobox. (This came up during the FA nomination for an article I had worked on, USS Orizaba (ID-1536), which has an exceptionally long infobox.) I would like to propose that the language be clarified to reflect either that it does or does not include infoboxes, whatever the consensus may be. — Bellhalla ( talk) 16:24, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
“ | Avoid sandwiching text between two images facing each other. When an article contains an infobox or other box with similar placement, images should be used sparingly when they would cause the text to be sandwiched between the image and infobox. Editors should consider the value of the image's placement, relative to the distraction of compressed prose. Consider moving images to areas where they will not conflict with the infobox. | ” |
References are inherently important in Wikipedia, and presenting them in the most intuitive manner possible is absolutely essential to further its development and continuation. I am proposing to change the current epitome to permit a more: adaptive, cohesive, and organized — method of presenting references within articles. Thereof are the following proposals and supporting reasons:
Here is a brief example of the proposed method and the associated code: Link. ChyranandChloe ( talk) 02:58, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
I couldn't find this anywhere in the Manual of Style, so I am going to ask here. I know that many grammarians prefer to use the present tense when writing about fiction. I was wondering if there was a similar rule for writing about film and television. In film and television, when should the past tense be used? Should those articles always use the present tense? Should the past tense be used if the show has been wiped? Should it be used if the show is no longer in reruns anywhere? Should it be used if the show is no longer airing first-run episodes? Please clarify (or point me to a guideline if I happened to have overlooked one). RJaguar3 | u | t 15:06, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm trying to figure out if the presence of both 44 gallon drum and 55-gallon drum is in accordance with the MOS. Both articles are identical. It appears that these exist to satisfy an argument about whether this object should be referenced by its name in imperial or US gallons. Can someone clear this up for me? I was under the impression that duplicate articles are undesirable. Phasmatisnox ( talk) 19:12, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
This is not really an MOS issue, but it is a crystal clear example of content forking and a GFDL violation as well. I have replaced the redirect. The talk page of the existing article is the appropriate place for rename discussions. Christopher Parham (talk) 22:09, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Anyone want to weigh in? Is there any new consensus? I reverted yesterday's edit. AP Stylebook is a little complicated, but says in almost all cases to use just an apostrophe after singular proper names ending in "s". NYTM disagrees and says to use 's after most of them, except for the ones ending in two successive sibilant sounds, such as Kansas' . - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 15:28, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
←I go with Strunky here, without the "possible exceptions": the simple approach has the advantage and the logic. We just need to get over our squeamishness at the jostling of two (or three) eses; Fowler's notion that only where there's an extra syllable should 's be added to a word-final s did hold sway in my mind for a while, but I've dismissed it for the simpler. Jesus's (I'm not paying respect to any religion), Jones's, Weiss's, all into the same pot. So much easier for non-native speakers, too. Tony (talk) 11:37, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
WP:MOSNUM, summarized here, says Where values in the millions occur a number of times through an article, upper-case M may be used for million, unspaced.
I couldn't find any talk page discussion of this with Google, and I have only come across its application occasionally in Wikipedia. I have found financial articles, like many English-speaking newspapers, usually use a spaced lower-case m.
Upper case M is often ambiguous, as many North Americans use M to mean 'thousands', perhaps inspired by the Roman numeral.
Should we change to lower case unspaced m? Ambiguity with 'metre' and 'milli' would be rare, but if the context makes it ambiguous, it should be spelled out. For SI and metric units, spaced upper-case M for mega, is of course appropriate. For example 20m sheep and $5m, but 25 MJ (25 million joules, not 25 millijoules, which is 25 mJ).
-- Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) ( Talk) 15:38, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (text formatting)#Foreign terms, "Wikipedia prefers italics for phrases in other languages and for isolated foreign words that do not yet have everyday use in non-specialised English." As such, in the article Full Moon o Sagashite, the term shinigami has been italicized as it is a Japanese word not in everyday use outside of manga and anime readers. However, another editor and I are in disagreement as to whether the header for the section listing the Shinigami in the series should also be in italics. I don't think the header should, in general, contain italics and a second editor agrees with me that it looks odd, but the other editor insists that all instances should be in italics, even in headers. So which is correct? -- AnmaFinotera ( talk · contribs) 01:15, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
←See header and heading. Header is a word already in use to mean supplemental data at the beginning of a file. This argument has come up a couple of times before and there was consensus that "heading" was the right word (but of course, it's not a terribly important point). I don't follow what you're saying about italics in headings; click on User_talk:Dank55#Roman–Persian Wars at FAC; the italics in the heading don't cause a problem with the link. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 02:04, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
← I missed this discussion, but I'd like to drop my two pence: in headings, avoid links, templates, and every other kind of treatment but italics. It's not exclusively a technical matter, but also one of style. There are very, very, very few exceptions to this.
On another note... How would you people feel about italics in tables of contents? It's one of my little ideas; I know nothing about its technical feasibility, but it's worth a try, no? Waltham, The Duke of 22:55, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
The following appear to be issues with the MoS pages. Please comment as to what should be done below each issue. Thanks. Bebestbe ( talk) 19:09, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
In general, this entire discussion supports the unfortunate habit of giving a special status to MOS and its subpages. They are guidelines; like most guidelines, they represent a handful of editors (sometimes literally one or two, but always a handful relative to Wikipedia); much of them is neither well-written or well-judged. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:19, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
Comparable quantities should be all figures or all spelled out. We don't say this in general, although it is the point of some of our exceptions:
Conversely, quantities which are not comparable can be distinguished by spelling out one and leaving the other in figures.
These are the principal reasons to vary between figures and spelled out numbers; the present main paragraph is one rule of thumb (of several) for deciding whether a given set of comparable quantities should be figures or words. Careful readers will say there is another: figures imply precision. The title The First Hundred Thousand differs from The First 100,000 in that the alternate form denies that there were 103 thousand of the subject (British enlistees in 1914). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:42, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
I'd say details at MOSNUM, summary here. JIMp talk· cont 02:39, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
In part because this page is protected, I will try a draft at WP:MOSNUM. This should not need changing any present guidance at all, merely the present emphases. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:06, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
There's some good in that proposal, but here's another go, copy-edited. I don't really agree with the blanket proscription against "five dogs and 32 cats", which I find better than spelling out "thirty-two". And I can't go along with the abolition of the default nine/10 (or even ten/11) boundary, even if it's just a recommendation. I'm sick of reading large numbers that are spelt out in articles. Can we dispense with the "clear as possible" and "don't be clumsy or confusing", which seem too vague to be helpful. Who would think otherwise?
In general, I prefer a few words of justification; recommendations will be more often taken by those who see their value. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:44, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
I've said three digits as the rule of thumb because that was the effective conclusion of the MOSNUM revert war. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:23, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
How curious. All of these objections apply to Tony's draft above, which I have only altered in a few places; would this barrage be fired if I taken it unaltered? Almost all of them can be answered by refering to the definition of quantity: as the OED puts it, "the amount of something." Individual replies above. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:14, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
However, this was a long summary, in the interests of preserving as much as possible. There is still general agreement on having a summary here, rather than, as at present, two long, separately evolving, texts here or at MOSNUM; not even Yony has objected. I will therefore put a short summary, a pure reference to MOSNUM. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:21, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
This 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. |
Archive 95 | ← | Archive 98 | Archive 99 | Archive 100 | Archive 101 | Archive 102 | → | Archive 105 |
I'm interested in taking on a tedious and difficult task, because it feels important: invisibly indexing useful information in all the style guidelines talk archives in some hopefully uncontroversial and useful way. (I've got lots of time until May 1.) I've noticed when doing indexing for legal projects in the past that prefixing a semicolon to index terms seems to work well as a "poor man's database". Putting an invisible <span id="1" /> [changed per Daniel Friesen below] in an archive page would let people wikilink to a line, if they like, that gives useful information on any desired keyword. (What's useful and uncontroversial will be determined through feedback on this page.) I can then maintain a page with all these links, in my userspace or elsewhere, and/or we can put the invisible links on each archive page listed (visibly!) at the top of that archive page.
It would be particularly useful to know which issues have already been argued by a wide community, with or without an RfC, so I'll make sure to put invisible links there. I'll include that information on the summary page, which I'll put in my userspace for the time being.
Archive pages say that they shouldn't be edited, so anyone who makes an edit has a pretty steep presumption working against them, but we could use this to our advantage. Anyone is welcome to help, of course, but it's not a trivial project; I don't see how someone could do it at all without having some kind of broad knowledge of what subjects keep recurring, which pieces of information in the talk archives are new, where it's been discussed before ... this is kind of a headache, so we can use the presumption against editing archives to insist that people either get broad permission or discuss potential additions or subtractions on the (current) talk page if they don't want to get reverted immediately. So, that's what I'm doing: I'm asking for broad permission to start indexing. Anyone who has a search term they'd like included, please list it here. Anyone who thinks I'll screw it up, please let me know now :) - Dan ( talk) 17:32, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
←Clarification. There's a general principle that things on WP pages shouldn't be invisible, in order to make sure we're getting the full benefit of multiple eyeballs. So I think I would recommend that we not insert <span id="1" /> on a talk page before it's archived, when we could just as easily, and in full view, insert a subsection heading that accomplishes the same thing. It's when a page is archived that inserting a new subsection heading isn't appropriate any more. Also, I really would recommend that the id's are 1, 2, 3, etc, on the principle that nothing invisible should be allowed to build up randomly even in talk archives. Having the id's be as simple as possible will make it easier to list and keep track of them. - Dan ( talk) 20:34, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
(I have eliminated this comment because I have just realized that you all discussed this subject at length above. Great minds think alike, I guess. My apologies!) ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 10:52, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
There are times where I will put one or two quoted sentences (with reference) inside of a <blockquote>...</blockquote> because it serves to emphasize the quote when formated without the (in my opinion) added visual clutter of the {{cquote}} template, although I only do it if there are no additional quotes from the same source in the section. Not sure if it's important enough to add to the MOS section but I thought I'd bring it up for discussion. Awotter ( talk) 03:39, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
The proposal is to merge Wikipedia:Manual of Style (abbreviations) into Wikipedia:Naming conventions (abbreviations), and why not? It's been tagged for months and more input is needed HERE. Comments welcome. Tony (talk) 14:44, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
WP:Words to avoid is protected because of some edit-warring (not by me) over a proposed section on the word "phenomenon". There have also been discussions about giving advice on "controversy" and "the" (when used to falsely imply importance or definiteness). I wrote some proposed language here, but there's no discussion yet. Discussion would be helpful so that the page can be un-protected. Thanks. - Dan Dank55 ( talk) 16:53, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Do the three-letter ISO currency codes go before or after the value? That is, do we write CZK 55,555 or 55,555 CZK? Shouldn't this be stated in the MOS?-- Kotniski ( talk) 08:41, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
To begin with, if this is not the appropriate notice board to post this discussion, please excuse me. I am in a dispute with Charles and, apparently, WP:MOS-FR#Noble titles. I find this whole section of the MOS faulty. It tries to set standards were it readily admits there are no standards. In the end, the standard it does promote is contrary to the actual usage of capitilization method used by the House of Bourbon between 1589 and 1830. In addition, the standard is not followed by many English-speaking authors today, leading to a style of writing most English-speakers would not be familiar with from reading a biography of a member of the French royal family.
In particular, I am offended by the following comment/directive and find it to be arbitrary, incorrect and representative of a very biased POV:
"in French with capital spelling: Comtesse de, Marquis de... (e.g. Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu; Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon; Constantin-François de Chassebœuf, Comte de Volney). This is a incorrect Franco-English hybrid form using the capitalization rules of an English-user."
I am interested in getting this policy changed, and WP:MOS-FR#Noble titles rewritten or deleted. I will summarize my argument as follows (it is found more fully in Talk:Fils_de_France and Talk:Prince_du_Sang):
1) The capitalization method described in the MOS is not an incorrect "Franco-English hybrid." It is the one used by the French royal family and court themselves:
2) Many modern English-speaking authors do not use the Wikipedia style of capitalization, and to use it not only misrepresents how the people who used those titles and styles referred to themselves, but also is confusing to most English-speakers, whose reading material should not be censored by modern French linguists and how they feel about linguistic revisionism.
The following is a list of well-known books in English on the French royal family that specifically do NOT use Wikipedia's incorrect capitalization standard for French titles:
BoBo ( talk) 14:10, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps it's worth mentioning that this kind of things can easily be checked with Google books, e.g. this book form the 17th century, printed in the 19th, uses this style. (And it's the first old book that I found.) -- Hans Adler ( talk) 16:06, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
I agree completely with BoBo. I've disliked our capitalisation of French titles intensely for a long time, but my complaints have always been shouted down. Proteus (Talk) 17:56, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
←An interesting problem. Do the French make the case that a 20th-century "comte de Lyon" (I don't even know if there is a Count of Lyon) isn't capitalized because it's not a proper noun, the same way that a barber of Lyon wouldn't be capitalized? Several other possibly relevant things come to mind, all pointing in different directions:
We write about the past, not for the past. We are not bound to use forms of French (which varied) used in the past when writing now. We do not use Old English for Henry VIII when he was called "the Kynge" nor do we use a form of a title just because it was found in letters of the time and also because some authors have used it. BoBo has claimed that the use of lower case letters for French titles is a recent invention to suit the egos of scholars who wish to rewrite history. I believe BoBo says that to serve his POV. The Almanach de Gotha, the Holy Bible of European royalty (almost all sovereigns consulted it when considering a bride's eligibility) uses lower case letters in its 1910 edition, so it's not even a new invention as BoBo would like everyone to believe. And if he wants to talk about what's official and used, the Almanach de Gotha is basically watertight. We haven't anglicized French titles because we borrow them in their entirety. If we anglicized them (which we could), we would use "Duke" instead of "duc", "Count" instead of "comte", etc. But we don't in all cases. In the last ten years, any number of authors have used both, but that isn't to say authors are always correct. Where there are variants we record what we know independently to be correct which is the French usage, not English usage if it varies (which it has). Charles 22:17, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Support the proposal to copy the conversation to WT:MOS-FR and continue the conversation there, leaving this much text here to point people to the conversation if they want to join. Enough has been presented here for people to know whether they're interested or not. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 00:03, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
'Ello 'ello 'ello. What's all this then? Are you going to immortalise yourselves on WP:LAME about, of all things, the location for the discussion about capitalisation of French names? I have a French book from 1997 (Cornette: Chronique du Règne de Louis XIV) that seems to be using inconsistent spelling. -- Hans Adler ( talk) 01:23, 21 April 2008 (UTC) (ec)
I removed the unfortunate/incorrect/POV "Franco-English" line on WP:MOS-FR. The issue of consensus on French titles remains however.
There is no problem when using the English spelling of the titles with an "of" (Duke of..., Count of...) for those people known by their English forms... although one could imagine an infinite discussion about capitalization and the use of "of" in those titles (Pulling a book from a shelf: Capetian France 987-1328 by Elizabeth M. Hallam (London & New York: Longman, 1980. ISBN 0-582-48910-5) uses the lowercase "count of" and "duke of" throughout. I notice that Britannica online [ http://www.britannica.com/] appears to use lowercase and "de": "duke de", "count de" and "prince de").
The difficulty for French language titles on the English wiki: should contemporary French usage and the TCMOS be taken as guides? I am not sure that assuming "that after the change certain English-speaking academics jumped on the band wagon to enhance their academic credentials. Academics are constantly trying to re-invent history in order to attract publishers and gain tenure" is an effective way at arriving at consensus. English language usage is chaotic. A respected introduction on modern French history -- Gordon Wright's France in Modern Times (New York & London: Norton, 1987 ISBN0-393-95582-6) -- uses Duc d'Orléans, Duc de Broglie, Comte de Paris and Comte de Chambord. A respected overview of French literature -- Denis Hollier (ed) A New History of French Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1989. ISBN 0-674-61565-4) -- uses "marquis de", "prince de", "duc de".
The word "consensus" is key. The above discussion is an obvious example of why establishing a consensus and following a manual of style is helpful, if only to avoid losing oneself in endless discussion (or worse, edit wars) so that one may go back to writing/editing articles. NYArtsnWords ( talk) 02:01, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Naturellement, André Castelot uses lower case for titles in French, as do other French historians such as, Michel Antoine, Jean Castarède, Philippe Erlanger, Paul & Pierrette Girault de Coursac, Évelyne Lever, Jean-Christian Petitfils, Étienne Taillemine, Jean Tulard, Pierre Verlet, Jean de Viguerie, just to name a few. It irks me to have men & women of such erudition be given the epithet of "revisionists" just because they do not capitalize le roi de France or la comtesse du Trou. A question: if we are to use 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th century up to 1830 (why 1830? why not 1848 or 1870?) French Court's way of address, why is "Lis" in the article on the Fleur de Lis in English Wikipedia written with an "i" instead of a "y" since the "Fleur de lys" was the symbol of the French monarchy? Following this logic, when describing how Louis XVI was acclaimed before becoming unpopular (by the way, not by all his subjects), we should not write in French "Vive le Roi!" but "Vive le Roy!" On the other hand, if we want to stay so obtuse as to refuse the evolution of a language, why bother writing about anything outside the Anglo world? And why not pick a fight on the use in the same article of words being spelled the English way while others are spelled the American way? What is the proper English of English wiki? English? American? Australian? Canadian? Talk about inconsistencies! Frania W. ( talk) 06:36, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Might I suggest the following revision of the present MOS:
Noble titles
There is currently no standard convention for French noble titles and present-day English usage varies greatly. In Wikipedia articles, French noble titles are currently listed in two different ways:
- in English translation (Duke of, Count of...) for historical figures and royalty most well-known by their English forms.
- while present-day English usage varies with regards to the capitalization of these titles [1], editors should follow the Wikipedia:Manual of Style (capital letters).
- while present-day English usage also varies with regards to the use of "of" or "de" after the titles [1], the consensus on Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles) has been to use "of" when the English title is given.
- in French for other cases, maintaining the French title spelling (seigneur, chevalier, marquis, duc, comte) and the de.
Furthermore, in the second case—French titles in French form—capitalization is currently chaotic:
- in French with lowercase spelling: comtesse de, marquis de... (e.g. Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné; Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet; Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme; François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac; Jean François Paul de Gondi, cardinal de Retz). This is the form used by The Chicago Manual of Style.
- in French with capital spelling: Comtesse de, Marquis de... (e.g. Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu; Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon; Constantin-François de Chassebœuf, Comte de Volney). This form was used at times by the French court in the past, and is often still found in English-language books about French royalty and nobility.
The consensus is that in order to prevent spelling inconsistencies within a single article or between different articles that the lowercase spelling be used.
The exception to this rule involves the style and form of address associated with the rank of specific members of the House of Bourbon. Certain members of the French royal family, the Fils de France, and their cousins, the princes and princesses du sang, were accorded a particular form of address. For example, Louis d'Orléans, Duke of Orléans was known at court as Monsieur le Prince because he was the First Prince of the Blood. His form of address should not be in lowercase (i.e. Monsieur le prince) because the style referred exclusively to him and no other royal or noble at the time.
BoBo ( talk) 22:14, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
←Okay guys. We don't want people taking WP:MoS off their watchlist because of long off-topic conversations. This stuff is relevant to Use English and WT:MOS-FR, and maybe some of the past discussions there will be helpful. You won't bring additional eyeballs or points of view into the discussion by continuing to discuss it here; in fact, the longer this gets, the less likely people are to read it. Like the bartender said, "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here." - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 13:01, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
A few hours ago, there was quite an edit war on Four-color theorem. My view is that, while Ozone009 ( talk · contribs) was in the wrong by starting it, just reverting it may not have been the right course of action.
Looking through the section, the changes don't violate "Consistency within articles" * or "Strong national ties to a topic". Both the original change and the reversion break "Retaining the existing variety" if you take that expression literally - as after Ozone009's alteration, the "existing variety" is changed. That leaves the content of that section, which talks of the variety used by the "first major contributor". This, in turn, sounds to me like a form of WP:OWN.
*It's true that the page's title wasn't changed to match, and that the edits to the references section infringed the "titles" aspect of the policy, but these aspects wasn't addressed in any of the comments.
Here's my opinion. If there's no reason to use a particular variety of English in a particular article, then it shouldn't be changed without good reason. But just changing it back is equally changing it without good reason, and two wrongs don't make a right. So rather than reverting and potentially starting an edit war, a friendly note to the person who changed it should be the first course of action.
Comments? -- Smjg ( talk) 14:52, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
"First major contributor" is intended as a last resort: what do we do when there has never been a stable consensus? We may need to strengthen this. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:13, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
The Self identity section says
Use terminology that subjects use for themselves (self-identification) whenever this is possible. Use terms that a person uses for himself or herself, or terms that a group most commonly uses for itself.
I propose we change this to:
Use terminology that the majority of sources use for the subject whenever possible. Use terms that a person uses for himself or herself, or terms that a group most commonly uses for itself when reliable sources conflict with one another.
Any thoughts? Yahel Guhan 00:51, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
According to this guideline, if the subject of an article self-identifies as x, and an overwhelming number of reliable sources identify it as (contradicting/effacing) y, we should use x. This seems in serious tension with WP:V. Either the self-identity section should be altered to state that it trumps V in this instance, or it should be deprecated. There is serious need of clarification here. Skomorokh 01:34, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
This may be a dumb question, but is there a Wikipedia style for military titles when followed by a name? Is it "Captain Hyman Rickover," or "Capt. Hyman Rickover"? Some style systems abbreviate these when followed by a name. Urzatron ( talk) 14:29, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
If you look across Wikipedia, including our FA work, the vast majority of decent articles have lead images of a large size (mostly 250px), and forcing thumb size in the lead is the most common exception to that part of the images guideline. As it says in the Images size subsection, such images (I think it specifically refers to infobox images) being less than 300 can cause problems sometimes. Why not put this generally used convention of editing in to the guideline? Van Tucky 03:39, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
...but consistency promotes professionalism, simplicity and greater cohesion in Wikipedia articles. An overriding principle is that style and formatting should be applied consistently throughout an article...
I'd like to change part of this to "An overriding principle is that style and formatting should be applied consistently throughout individual articles as well as multiple articles that are closely related". The reason is that there's currently some debate about using comma seperators for large numbers in scientific pages. Once that's settled, they should all either use them or not, to prevent confusion about the data. I believe this type of style requirement to prevent confusion applies to other pages as well. Also, some sections of pages become large enough to have their own article. The reasons why they required the same style when they are part of the original page are the same reasons why they should keep the same style after they have been split off. (I would go as far as to suggest we require ALL pages to have the same style as much as possible and reasonable, but that's a bigger discussion) --
SkyLined
(
talk) 10:48, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
I have raised a MOS policy about policy changes question at the village pump. Feel free to read it and comment. Lightmouse ( talk) 11:25, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Tony and the Duke and I would prefer 10-day archiving by MiszaBot, and MiszaBot did its thing last night. Anyone can feel free to revert if they think that's a bad thing, but we were up to about 400K, and it could have easily been 800K. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 12:53, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Please remember the major question: should this page go into this for several bullet-points at all, or should we write a general summary here, and leave the details to WP:MOSNUM? I should prefer to be simple here; let's keep that revert war in one place. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:30, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Throughout the pages that comprise the MoS, there are scattered uses of the word header as if it were a synonym for heading. A header is text in the upper margin of a page; the word has nothing to do with a section heading in an article. Wikicode and title of Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings) use the correct term, and so should the MoS pages, consistently. Finell (Talk) 17:23, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Here's a rather complicated situation regarding the pronoun(s) to be used for a fictional character, for I would appreciate guidance on interpreting the first two bullets of WP:ID. The character in question is Akito Sohma from the manga Fruits Basket and its anime adaptation. (Please ignore that article's current hideous quality, including a wretched inconsistency with pronouns: I'm preparing to clean it up soon, thus my question.) In the manga, Akito is presented as male for the first half of the series, but turns out to be biologically female and raised to live as man; at the end of the series, as part of letting go other roles he/she has been living, Akito announces that she/he will henceforth live as a woman and is afterward always shown dressed in women's clothing. The anime adaptation covers the first third of the story and was generally faithful to the manga, but was made before the manga reveled Akito's biological sex and, in wrapping up the story early, shows Akito as unambiguously male.
If I understand WP:ID correctly, when discussing the character as portrayed in the manga, Akito should be referred to with female pronouns. What about when discussing the character as portrayed in the anime (such as when describing the differences in adaptation)? What about when discussing the character generically, independent of format? And, possibly most importantly, is there any way to make distinctions clearly enough as to not confuse either readers and editors? (Especially in other articles where Akito is mentioned in passing without reason to explain pronouns.)
For full disclosure, the rule of thumb I've been following in editing other Fruits Basket articles is to use "he" except when discussing Akito after she declares she will live as a woman. Which goes against the word of the guideline, but seemed at the time to invite less confusion. My thanks for any insight others can give. — Quasirandom ( talk) 18:56, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm no style guru, but I can't fully agree with this statement from the MOS:
OK, I agree with 4–3 and 3–2, but with the others I find hyphens equally acceptable. Checking with the Chicago Manual it seems they probably prefer hyphens here too (although other style manuals no doubt take different views). Do we really need to make things more difficult for ourselves, when there's no clearly established standard in the outside world? Hyphens are easier both for editors and for users of Search. We could at least allow both styles, like we do with em dashes and spaced en dashes.
And while we're at it, how about this one:
Does this look right? Doesn't to me. I came across a neat usage from Chicago: London-Sydney (with a hyphen; see above), but New York–Sydney (use an unspaced en dash when any of the terms contains a space or hyphen). To me, that style would be aesthetically preferable.-- Kotniski ( talk) 10:56, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
← Ignoring the usual nonsense, I should like to mention that hyphens already enjoy extensive usage in various linguistic constructs, and that I do not find it necessary to further extend this usage, when clarity can be derived from the application of dashes in the other cases. Touching not only on this issue, but also on the much-discussed matter of spaced en dashes versus unspaced em dashes, I say that I like each dash having a role of its own, which not only makes things clearer but justifies each one's continued usage on Wikipedia. With a few exceptions, I have in my mind a rather clear distinction:
Simple, isn't it? Waltham, The Duke of 10:02, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Also simple, and I think more comprehensible to the ordinary writer. The point about Michelson-Morley is a good one though.-- Kotniski ( talk) 15:21, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't see why we need to prefer a usage at all. All we really need to say is: Be clear and Be consistent within any one article (for the sake of clarity). There are innumerable slightly different ways to use dashes; why bother to distinguish cetween them as long as they are not obscure? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:25, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
This may have already been discussed, but following a discussion at the help desk, there seems to be a consensus that the rules regarding initials (eg. H. G. Wells or H.G. Wells?) needs to be clearer. Do we have a policy on this, and if so, where? If we don't, should we have one? Thanks, PeterSymonds | talk 14:01, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
I have searched extensively on many occasions for a policy on this, and have failed to find one. I am referring to the practice of putting the name of something in its original language in parentheses after the English translation, like, "Some French Guy ( French: Un gars français)". Sometimes the {{ Lang}} template appears. There are numerous references to this practice, but no guideline as to how it should be done.
If the other language does not use the Latin alphabet, it is common practice to write the name as it would be written by a user of that language, and then give a Romanized version. Usually there is only one language, the original, but sometimes two are appropriate, especially for a person. Sometimes, the different versions of the name are a notable topic, addressed in that article (e.g. Christopher Columbus), as part of a separate list ( Vienna), or even in an article devoted wholly to the names of that thing ( Istanbul).
As I understand it, the purpose is to give the name in the language of origin. But I have also seen mention of the name in other languages, ones in which the thing is often named. For example, someone recently added the Turkish name of Lesbos, Midilli, while the English name is derived from the Greek. I assume the Turkish name is also used frequently, given the isle's proximity to Turkey. Is this appropriate?
If I am correct in believing that there is no policy page, I suggest that we create one.
MagnesianPhoenix ( talk) 21:04, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Once there is an at least semi-concrete consensus on something, can we go ahead and create a guideline page, as I suggested, or put it under WP:Lead section? Now, as for specific issues...
The Lang template is not just for the names of languages in the opening sentence; it has applications to any kind of foreign-language text. That said, I could care less if it was deleted.
I strongly agree with the point Septentrionalis brought up - that not linking major languages would be fraught with inconsistency and difficulty. (Though I'm not sure if you yourself agree, given your position on uniformity.) Not only would it be inconsistent, the decision on the significance or commonness of a language is unavoidably POV. For an encyclopedia trying to rid itself of its U.S./U.K./Australian bias, dividing the languages of the world into - effectively - "nobody wants to read about this language" and "nobody's heard of this language" would be an unseemly judgment call. Also, while linking to the French language article in the body of an article would usually be gratuitous, I don't think the clean, well established format of "([[Language]]: Name)", once, in the first sentence, is a problem at all. Let the reader decide to use or not use the link. What about Latin? It's extremely well known, but also a topic of interest.
The addition of the Turkish name Midilli has been reverted. I was tempted to do that myself. I know it's not a common name in English. The reason I brought it up was to ask if the inclusion of a relevant non-English name was felicitous, and to illustrate the need for a guideline with the very question. The answer, as we have been graciously informed, is found in WP:Naming conventions (geographic names). I still support the creation of a new guideline (see above).
MagnesianPhoenix ( talk) 04:45, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
I have no problem with it being part of WP:LEAD; I am not really partial to either of my suggestions. My concern is having the information somewhere. As for no one reading or obeying it, no one will read or obey it if it doesn't exist. Its existence will give editors who find themselves in my position the opportunity to look up the policy. MagnesianPhoenix ( talk) 10:02, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
I have a park that is 11 acres; do I use km^2, ha, or another unit in metric? -- NE2 22:20, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
Does the conversion in Sheridan State Scenic Corridor look good? -- NE2 00:51, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
What is the correct writing of possessive form of noun ending in S, like Knowles? -- Efe ( talk) 05:15, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
Looking at WP:AN#Politically-motivated systematic edits, it seems there's at least one user concerned by the use of the word "American" to describe people from the United States (as they point out, American and American people are both disambig pages). This does seem to be a common practice, but I'm not able to find mention of it in the MOS. Is it mentioned, one way or another? If not, should it be? – Luna Santin ( talk) 22:40, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
From United States comes this sourced statement:
“ | The standard way to refer to a citizen of the United States is as an American. Though United States is the formal adjective, American and U.S. are the most common adjectives used to refer to the country ("American values," "U.S. forces"). American is rarely used in English to refer to people not connected to the United States. | ” |
The reference for the above: Wilson, Kenneth G. (1993). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 27–28. ISBN 0231069898. Can we all agree that changing articles to eliminate use of "American" as a demonym for people from the United States is disruptive? Horologium (talk) 03:19, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
Given that there seems to be confusion as to which of these terms should be used, may I suggest deferring to the highest authority on things relating to the United States and use the form as it appears in the title of the United States Government? (i.e., not the "American Government" - there is no "American House of Representatives", not is there officially an "American Congress" the term "U.S." or "United States" is universally used as an adjective in the names of these institutions. These are not "bad examples" for being proper names; they are clear indications that as proper names they were deliberately chosen to avoid problem which might be inherent in other chosen options. There is, of course, the Organization of American States, but to the best of my knowledge it does not have delegated representing only the 50 states of the US.
The term United States fulfils all of the functions necessary for its usage as the adjective of choice on Wikipedia:
While the term "American" is definitely a common adjectival form and is understood widely (though not without some controversy in other parts of the Americas), it is hardly unambiguous in all settings and circumstances. Furthermore, as has been pointed out, "United States" is the more formal and precise term and is thus more suited to an encyclopedia. Grutness... wha? 23:29, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
I was thinking, wouldn't it be an interesting source for this discussion to go on IMDB and find every movie with the word "American" in the title, and see in how many of those cases, the term refers to the United States? Unfortunately, there were way too many hits for it to be useful. I couldn't really examine them all. Still, I would ask anyone to estimate for himself: When you hear a phrase "American ________," do you not expect this to be referring to the United States? Simply examine countless cultural sources, from the Miss America Pageant to the American Music Awards to "American Pie." I know that's not precise, but it's massively intuitive. Urzatron ( talk) 20:30, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
We all know that the "Google Test" isn't supposed to mean much, but I was curious about something. I tried a few searches on Google, filtering by *.uk and *.ca domains, to see what results I got. These are only British and Canadian sites, remember.
Of course, there was no question about what America Carolyn Parrish was talking about when she uttered her famous line "Damn Americans ... I hate those bastards." and she's supposedly "American", judging from the arguments being advanced by some people here. Horologium (talk) 22:10, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
This is from The Columbia Guide to Standard American English (1993):
American (adj.), America (n.)
We of the United States of America, citizens of only one of many nations in the Americas, North, Central, and South, have preempted the informal name of our country, America, and our title, Americans. It may be arrogant and inaccurate that we do so, but the fact is that no other citizens of the Americas seem to want to be confused with the Americans of the USA. Nor have others coined any other universally recognized names for us. Yankees and Yanks sometimes applies to all of us but often only to Northeasterners (particularly New Englanders) and twentieth-century soldiers. Our flag is almost always “the American flag.” Only the precision of The United States of America and of a citizen thereof can be official and usefully substituted, and the rest is language history: we speak American English, we live in the United States, the U.S. (or USA), or America (the beautiful), and we’re Americans, even if we only adapted and adopted the language and the lands. It is not likely that these usages will change soon, so overwhelming is their use both by others and by us.
TCMOS had 118 hits on "United States"; all 118 either used it as a noun or, when it's even arguable that it was an adjective, only in the sense of the U.S. Government. APStylebook didn't have anything useful. NYTM (1999, paperback) followed the same usage as TCMOS. First two definitions in Wordnet are "a native or inhabitant of the United States" and "American English, American language, American (the English language as used in the United States)". I can find no support at all for the idea that "United States" is an adjective, other than conceivably when it refers to the U.S. government. The phrases "New York minute" and "Munich beer hall" do not make "New York" or "Munich" adjectives.
Unless anyone has a clear argument that "United States" has wide usage as an adjective, or that there is some other synonym for "American", then we're stuck with "American" by default. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 22:26, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Unfortunately, the term "United States" is not listed as an adjective, and indeed until the 1993 revision the closest entry related to the country in question defined it as "The Republic of North America. Abbrev. U.S. or U.S.A." (1888). Just more grist for the mill.
Her Pegship
(tis herself) 04:03, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
I am quite troubled by those who are trying to use the order of definitions in a dictionary to claim that American has a primary meaning of "of the Americas" Quite a number of dictionaries give as their first definition of a word, the first definition used in time, not the main one that is currently in use. Unless one checks the dictionary's policy one cannot claim the first definition is the one that is in primary use. American these days has as its primary meaning "of the United States of America. If people think that we need more precision in our use of national adjectives, we'd be better off removing the term "British" from every article relating to Northern Ireland. Caerwine Caer’s whines 03:15, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
If anyone's still interested, the Canadian Oxford Dictionary's first sense of American relates to the U.S., but other senses remind us that Latin American, American elk, North American, and I would add American Indian all do not specifically relate to it.
Where American can cause confusion, United States and its abbreviation U.S. are certainly attributive nouns, usable as an adjective in many contexts, as in United States citizen, U.S. passport, United States government, U.S. embassy, etc. If that is awkward, then we can use of the United States, from the U.S., (U.S.) or some other formulation when necessary.
What American means depends on context and nuance. It makes no sense to impose one definition on it, or to dictate when it is to be used, when we have many editors practised in the craft of writing. Any ambiguous phrasing ought to be improved, and it's great if an editor wants to take on the task across many articles. But please don't make blanket changes without specific justification, because that only pisses people off. — Michael Z. 2008-04-26 05:30 Z
I wonder why this is only an issue with America. No one complains that we call people from the United Mexican States "Mexican". Powers T 02:51, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm sure this has been asked many times before, but is it "the democratic convention" or "the Democratic convention"? thanks. Itsmejudith ( talk) 09:45, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
Do we prefer 16th century or sixteenth century or do we have no preference? Itsmejudith ( talk) 11:01, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
I added a scrolling reflist to the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum but another editor has removed it with an edit note of we do NOT use scroling ref for reasons too long to list here. Scrolling reflists enable the article length to be reduced and are particularly useful when 40 or more references appear in an article. Can anyone show me where it says not to use scrolling reflists in articles? This feature is being used in quite a few articles now. Mjroots ( talk) 15:23, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
People interested in WP style, formatting and language might want to watchlist Template:RFCstyle list. I get the sense that very few people do. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 20:50, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
After the lengthy discussion of French noble titles (see above), I wonder if we might review the "titles of works of art" section at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (France & French-related). Specifically, should we maintain the rules given or should we adopt the simpler rules (only the first word and any proper nouns) adopted by the WP Opera people? Please respond on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (France & French-related). - NYArtsnWords ( talk) 22:06, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
ClueBot III is an outstanding archiving bot that will go find section links all over Wikipedia and correct them on the various pages as stuff gets archived. We should do this. I'm bringing it up now because it's relevant to the objection, "We can't move material from one style guidelines page to another, it will break links". Just let ClueBot III archive the section(s) to a separate page, then do a Special:WhatLinksHere on the archived page, then we can fix the links manually or run a bot. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 21:08, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
←Thanks Cobi. Cluebot III had a bad bug over on WT:Layout (archived only half the page, but deleted the whole page), and my bug report at Cluebot Commons got archived without an answer, so I put Miszabot back in for daily archiving, but Cluebot III could still be extremely useful for helping us identify which pages link to specific sections, especially with your new ArchiveNow feature. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 12:06, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
At Template talk:POTD protected/2008-05-02, I wrote this comment:
Is this sort of thing covered in any style manuals? Michael Hardy ( talk) 02:20, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
Well, this was a river rather than a city, and that could be said to account for the unhyphenated adjective, but that's not really what this was about. Michael Hardy ( talk) 04:11, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
... <dank55> Der Alte Strom ist ein Fluss in Warnemünde. [It's a river in Warnemünde} <paddyez> a major river yep <dank55> ich meine nicht irgendeinen alten Strom :) [I don't mean just any "Old River" :)] <paddyez> he lived by the old major river in Warnemünde? <dank55> wir wissen nicht, wie man im allgemein solche Worte auf Englisch schreiben soll, [we don't know how to write such words in general in English] <Thogo|trabajando> paddyez: der Alte Strom ist ein Eigenname, der heißt halt so. ["Alte Strom" is a proper noun.] <dank55> ob wir "Alte" oder "Alter" oder so was schreiben soll [whether we should write Alte or Alter] <paddyez> Thogo|trabajando: aha <paddyez> in that case the "Alte Strom"
It probably wouldn't hurt to bear in mind the context in which the term was used in English Wikipedia: Template:POTD protected/2008-05-02. It's a caption to a picture, and it's a long noun phrase, not a complete sentence. Michael Hardy ( talk) 16:37, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
OK, I see that this article bears the title Alter Bahnhof (Heilbronn) and begins by saying
Of course that's appropriate when writing in German. Writing the Alte Strom in the English Wikipedia article still seems better than writing the Alten Strom, when it's in a caption that is only a noun phrase. I remain uncertain about what is the best way to handle this. Notice that this was in the article titled Warnemünde, not an article about the river. There must be other articles in English Wikipedia that correspond to the various titles found here. Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:26, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
When a page has (article) naming convention information (including perhaps information on redirects and links), and a sizeable amount of content that is clearly intended as a style guide, would it be better to split the page, or should we perhaps create a new infobox that says that both kinds of content are present, and explains the difference? - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 13:39, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm having trouble regarding this article: Kya Aap Paanchvi Pass Se Tez Hain?. Everytime I try and edit it I am confronted with the creator, who refuses to let the phone numbers etc. be deleted. Please give the article a quick glance and let me know if there is anything in this manual that can possibly help me with this -- Maurice45 ( talk) 19:41, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
For some reason this discussion appears not to have been archived! G-Man ? 22:05, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
OK, thanks. G-Man ? 23:35, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
I can't seem to find any sort of policy or guideline regarding euphemisms. In particular, when a person has died, is it appropriate for an encyclopedia (Wikipedia) to use "passed away" or equivalent? Is this spelled out somewhere or gone under previous consideration? Thanks, (EhJJ) TALK 01:23, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
I think the current default widths for image thumbnails are hopelessly small - 180px for "thumb" tagged images and 140px for "upright" tagged images (the latter is actually hardly used).
These sizes may have been appropriate when most people browsed with 640 x 480 monitors, but with most people now using resolutions of 1024x768 or more, these sizes are hopelessly inadequate as these pixel widths appear tiny on most people's monitors. I despair when going to pages and seeing these tiny little thumbed images where you have to click each one to actually see what is going on. I know that people can adjust their settings, but this only works if you are logged in, and most people who view wikipedia aren't.
I think we need to create two new classes, portrait, and landscape, in addition to the thumb, and upright classes we have at the moment. I will illustrate this below:
I think the upright class size of 140px width is OK for tall images such as the one on the left.
I think the upright class of 140px width is too small for portrait images, at least 170px should be used. We could create a new "portrait" tag with this 170px size.
I think 180px is just about OK for square images, but perhaps 190px would look better and that would still make it the same in pixel area as the other classes.
I think 180px is too small for landscape images, and we should use 230px. The size of the Obama flag image above is 227px (height) x 170px (width). The size of the Obama image on the right is 230px (width) x 156px (height) so these two images are roughly the same size. We should therefore create a new "landscape" tag to set all images such as this one to 230px default width.
I hope I have displayed above how the current system does not address the wide range of image shapes, and how we are perversly left with a large amount of landscape images that are much smaller in area than the portrait ones. Please vote whether you are for or against my proposal below with any appropriate comments in the discussion section. Thanks Gustav von Humpelschmumpel ( talk) 20:44, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes, we very much need new bigger default sizes for image thumbnails. Even though I use 800×600 in screen resolution the current defaults are much to small. But instead of adding new thumbnail classes I suggest another approach. I think it would be easy for the devs to implement and that it would be much more flexible:
[[Image:Something.png|thumb|100%]]
will be shown at the default thumb size, or if the user is logged in and has set another size at the users default size. While [[Image:Something.png|thumb|150%]]
would show the image at 150% the default thumb size, or 150% of the size a logged in user has set.This would allow the article editors to decide on an image by image basis what size the image needs, but still allow logged in users to configure their Wikipedia experience. Since some images with a lot of details need to be larger, while some images of a single object often don't need to be that big.
-- David Göthberg ( talk) 21:46, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
A feature request was already submitted to the MediaWiki bug tracker for percentage thumbs, and it was rejected because it would make thumb caching much less efficient. I think a better option would be to stick with the fixed widths e.g. 120px, 150px, 180px, 200px, 250px, 300px, but support image parameters "bigger" and "smaller". For someone with default thumb size of 150px, "bigger" would step the image up to 180px; "smaller" would step it down to 120px. This approach would only affect caching inasmuch as it would need to support "smaller" at 120px, and "bigger" at 300px. Hesperian 13:09, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
The fact that WP:MoS#Images goes into such detail means (if we want to be consistent) that we can't ask this discussion to move to WP:Images or WP:Picture tutorial. (And btw, why do we not link WP:Images from WP:MoS#Images? Seems like an offshoot page to me.) So: do we want to have this much detail on images in WP:MoS and continue to discuss image questions here, or hand off most of the content to WP:Images and WP:Picture tutorial and discuss these things there? (I have no preference.) - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 21:05, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
(Note: this question was also asked at WP:HELPDESK here.)
Experienced editor here with a MoS question - is there a better venue to ask this? Let me know if so. Regarding this edit, where the editor changed the date range from "350-500,000 years" to "350,000-500,000 years". I've looked through the MoS for ten or fifteen minutes and can't find anything regarding this exact situation, either in the date section or number section. Anyone have any enlightenment for me? Tan | 39 15:01, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
In the section Foreign terms there is a subsection No common usage in English
Use italics for phrases in other languages and for isolated foreign words that are not current in English. However, in an article on a subject for which there is no English-language term, such terms do not require italics.
I think that the second sentence should be removed. -- Philip Baird Shearer ( talk) 10:58, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
In the section Foreign terms there is a subsection Spelling and transliteration. It says:
Use anglicized spellings; native spellings are an optional alternative if they use the English alphabet. The choice between anglicized and native spellings should follow English usage (Besançon, Edvard Beneš and Göttingen, but Nuremburg, role, naive, and Florence). In particular, diacritics are optional, except where English overwhelmingly uses them, whether for disambiguation or for accurate pronunciation (résumé, café).
Currently "Edvard Beneš" is used yet the English usage in verifiable reliable sources is for Edvard Benes. I suggest that ig we are to have examples that we replace the words where there is debate over common English usage in verifiable reliable sources with words where the use of accent marks is clearly the most common English usage in verifiable reliable sources. Replace "Edvard Beneš" with some other word. An unqualified use of the word Göttingen is not a good example because there are different usages for the word. For example a Google book search shows that "Gottingen poets" is more common than "Göttingen-poets", so I suggest that a different word is chosen where there is no ambiguity.
There is a problem with "or for accurate pronunciation". Now many English people but not all have learnt French so it is not unreasonable to include those examples. BUT what about Zurich? The Germans spell it Zürich this would suggest that we should not use Zürich because it would make the pronunciation less accurate in English. Further what about diacritics in languages less familiar than French? For example if "Điện Biên Phủ" helps with the correct pronunciation of "Dien Bien Phu" should it be an option? It seems to me that this paragraph needs re-writing using as a template the wording in WP:UE.
So I propose replacing the wording in this subsection with the following:
Names not originally in a Latin alphabet, as with Greek, Chinese or Russian, must be transliterated into characters generally intelligible to literate speakers of English. Do not use a systematically transliterated name if there is a common English form of the name; thus, use Tchaikovsky or Chiang Kai-shek even though those are unsystematic.
This Manual of Style neither encourages or discourages the use of diacritics (accent marks) on foreign words with articles, their usage depends on whether they are used in verifiable reliable sources and the constraints imposed by other more specific Wikipeda guidelines.
Within an article, use the name of the article rather than an alternative spelling unless there is a good reason to do so (such as showing alternative spellings in the lead section of an article) — For selection of the name of an article see naming conventions guideline. For other foreign names, phrases or words, within an article use the most commonly used English version, as you would find it in English language sources used as references on the subject of the article. If the foreign name, phrase, or word, does not appear in any of references on the subject of the article then use the most commonly used English version of the word or phrase as you would find it in other reliable verifiable English sources. If the foreign phrase or word does not appear often in English, then avoid using it (see Wikipedia:Avoid neologisms).
Sometimes the usage will be influenced by other guidelines such as national varieties of English which may lead to different usage in different articles depending on the common English usage in different national varieties of English.
comments? -- Philip Baird Shearer ( talk) 10:58, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
No one has commented on my first comment.
Dank55 are there any specific parts to my second part that you object to. I am willing to include examples (indeed would encourage their use) of foreign accent marks providing that they are examples where it is clear that common English usage (in reliable sources) favours them. I am not in favour of you suggestion of modern usage because one would have to define modern (and we have enough problems in this area without introducing another source of argument). -- Philip Baird Shearer ( talk) 08:29, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
I think the current default widths for image thumbnails are hopelessly small - 180px for "thumb" tagged images and 140px for "upright" tagged images (the latter is actually hardly used).
These sizes may have been appropriate when most people browsed with 640 x 480 monitors, but with most people now using resolutions of 1024x768 or more, these sizes are hopelessly inadequate as these pixel widths appear tiny on most people's monitors. I despair when going to pages and seeing these tiny little thumbed images where you have to click each one to actually see what is going on. I know that people can adjust their settings, but this only works if you are logged in, and most people who view wikipedia aren't.
I think we need to create two new classes, portrait, and landscape, in addition to the thumb, and upright classes we have at the moment. I will illustrate this below:
I think the upright class size of 140px width is OK for tall images such as the one on the left.
I think the upright class of 140px width is too small for portrait images, at least 170px should be used. We could create a new "portrait" tag with this 170px size.
I think 180px is just about OK for square images, but perhaps 190px would look better and that would still make it the same in pixel area as the other classes.
I think 180px is too small for landscape images, and we should use 230px. The size of the Obama flag image above is 227px (height) x 170px (width). The size of the Obama image on the right is 230px (width) x 156px (height) so these two images are roughly the same size. We should therefore create a new "landscape" tag to set all images such as this one to 230px default width.
I hope I have displayed above how the current system does not address the wide range of image shapes, and how we are perversly left with a large amount of landscape images that are much smaller in area than the portrait ones. Please vote whether you are for or against my proposal below with any appropriate comments in the discussion section. Thanks Gustav von Humpelschmumpel ( talk) 20:44, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes, we very much need new bigger default sizes for image thumbnails. Even though I use 800×600 in screen resolution the current defaults are much to small. But instead of adding new thumbnail classes I suggest another approach. I think it would be easy for the devs to implement and that it would be much more flexible:
[[Image:Something.png|thumb|100%]]
will be shown at the default thumb size, or if the user is logged in and has set another size at the users default size. While [[Image:Something.png|thumb|150%]]
would show the image at 150% the default thumb size, or 150% of the size a logged in user has set.This would allow the article editors to decide on an image by image basis what size the image needs, but still allow logged in users to configure their Wikipedia experience. Since some images with a lot of details need to be larger, while some images of a single object often don't need to be that big.
-- David Göthberg ( talk) 21:46, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
A feature request was already submitted to the MediaWiki bug tracker for percentage thumbs, and it was rejected because it would make thumb caching much less efficient. I think a better option would be to stick with the fixed widths e.g. 120px, 150px, 180px, 200px, 250px, 300px, but support image parameters "bigger" and "smaller". For someone with default thumb size of 150px, "bigger" would step the image up to 180px; "smaller" would step it down to 120px. This approach would only affect caching inasmuch as it would need to support "smaller" at 120px, and "bigger" at 300px. Hesperian 13:09, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
The fact that WP:MoS#Images goes into such detail means (if we want to be consistent) that we can't ask this discussion to move to WP:Images or WP:Picture tutorial. (And btw, why do we not link WP:Images from WP:MoS#Images? Seems like an offshoot page to me.) So: do we want to have this much detail on images in WP:MoS and continue to discuss image questions here, or hand off most of the content to WP:Images and WP:Picture tutorial and discuss these things there? (I have no preference.) - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 21:05, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/DyceBot 4. Discuss here if you think en-dashes should die-die-die; that's not appropriate for a bot dev page. Discuss here if you're concerned (as I am) that changing hyphens to dashes when the editors aren't expecting that will mean that they can't find stuff they wrote with a search or assume that it's not there anymore, because the two symbols look similar enough that it will be easy for many people to overlook the difference. Discuss at the bot link if you have additional rules for when the substitution should or shouldn't be made. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 14:26, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
←(copied from Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/DyceBot 4, in response to a comment) "Ah, who would have to search for something they wrote?" Everyone who writes for a living. As the saying goes among professionals, there is no writing, only re-writing. And I am not an inveterate anything, nor antagonistic, nor against en-dashes; I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear before. I completely support the current WP:MoS recommendation on use of en-dashes, and I have made the corrections at FAC's and GAN's. I support the idea of revisiting the discussions concerning all characters not found on keyboards roughly once a year, for the simple reason that all such characters are slowly dying out in "persuasive" (not sure what I mean by that) English writing, because so much content is migrating to the web these days as the primary place where it lives. We don't have to change our style the moment other publications do; we can and should be conservative. But we should keep an eye on developments.
And I agree with Tony that, if we're going to make these conversions, they should be done with a bot. But there needs to be discussion, and it needs to be done carefully, and people have to be notified. Notification is especially important when the proposed substitution is one that a majority of editors won't even notice or remember, unless they've been made aware of the issues. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 15:40, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Obviously one should not convert ALL hyphens to ndashes. Some should remain hyphens and some should be mdashes and some should be minus signs. A style manual should prescribe which is which. Michael Hardy ( talk) 04:39, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
I think a bot making substitutions of this type will do much more harm than good. The difference between hyphens and en-dashes doesn't warrant any complications that affect the substantive work of creating an encyclopedia. JamesMLane t c 06:04, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
Replacing hyphens by en-dashes in article titles is rather counterproductive. I do not expect anyone ever to type an en-dash in the entrybox when looking up an article. So a redirect from the name with hyphen would always still be required. So why not keep that as the only entry? − Woodstone ( talk) 08:34, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
(Note: this question was also asked at WP:HELPDESK here.)
Experienced editor here with a MoS question - is there a better venue to ask this? Let me know if so. Regarding this edit, where the editor changed the date range from "350-500,000 years" to "350,000-500,000 years". I've looked through the MoS for ten or fifteen minutes and can't find anything regarding this exact situation, either in the date section or number section. Anyone have any enlightenment for me? Tan | 39 15:01, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
It was a complicated month, so I hope I've captured, as simply as possible, the substantive changes. Please notify any issues on the talk page. Tony (talk) 16:02, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm trying to carve out some kind of monthly job (several of us have volunteered, but more are welcome!) of patrolling some of the style guidelines pages and talk pages, answering questions, and especially, doing monthly summaries of changes for the benefit of article reviewers. We're not going to be able to cover the 68 pages in the "style guidelines" cat, but then, we shouldn't; we have no business fiddling with most of those pages. I've created Category:Manual of Style, and I don't have a strong preference for what goes in the category, but I have some ideas about which style-guidelines pages stay out:
All of this is negotiable; feel free to add or delete pages from the new cat. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 04:50, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
Rather than monthly summaries, which I'd hoped would be covered already in my initiative earlier this month, I think we urgently need to gather information relevant to rationalising the jungle of MOS subpages, to underpin a strategy of gradually, bit by bit, merging some of them and addressing conflicts between them. Tony (talk) 08:55, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
Okay, I finished the walkthrough for everything in the style-guidelines cat. The theory in adding
CAT:MOS to some of the style guidelines is that we want editors to feel like
CAT:MOS is a learnable amount of material, the material is intuitive and not terribly controversial, it's not too much of a burden to watchlist everything in the cat (for those who care), and everything in the cat reflects well on Wikipedia. Here's the key to the following list of articles that I left in the style-guidelines cat but didn't add to
CAT:MOS:
Some pages were a judgment call. I think WP:Manual of Style (pronunciation) is a little scary for some editors, and it's not something you have to learn ahead of time; you can wait until you want to learn IPA (if ever!) before reading it. So I marked it with "S". None of my judgment calls are intended to "demote" or "promote" a guideline.
I removed the "style guidelines" cat from:
If all this is okay, we need to un-redirect the style-guidelines template (it's currently redirected to the MoS-template), and re-assign the templates. (If anyone has a problem with this, we can certainly leave them as they are, but currently, these pages more or less randomly begin with either "This page is part of the Manual of Style" or "This page is a style guideline". I don't feel strongly about what it says at the top, as long as people who patrol style guidelines reach consensus on how to deal with the various pages.) See WP:Village pump (policy)/Archive 44#Style guides for how I propose we deal with new pages that people use to develop new style guidelines. The items in the Style template also need to be changed, and the Duke has suggested that the last sections should be collapsed, which is a great idea. I had to remove the entire (uncollapsed) Style template from WP:Captions because it didn't leave enough room for examples. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 19:32, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
There are a little under 400 pages that list the Style template, which gives that long blue sidebar. Almost all of them are either style guidelines or User pages. Is there any general objection to removing that template from pages that aren't? Some pages look a little bit like style guidelines pages but aren't, such as WP:NAME, which is policy, and WP:EDIT, which is a how-to page. I think a sidebar is more likely to stick in someone's head than a cat at the bottom of the page, and it seems to me it would be best not to confuse people about the nature of the page. If people argue after I remove the style template, I'll report back. I don't see this as necessary, just potentially helpful. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 18:44, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
←I did finish today; here's the report.
Added to "Wikipedia style guidelines" cat:
See above for what S and P mean. I don't think it means anything in particular to add the cat, it just makes articles which clearly already claim to be style guidelines easier to find than having to sift through Special:WhatLinksHere. However, if people are watchlisting these pages and they've had problems with the contents, this would be a logical time for them to speak up, and I'll report here if any conflicts arise. To play it a little safer, I left messages on the talk pages of the following pages that also claim to be guidelines:
I removed the Style sidebar from 3 pages that considered themselves naming conventions instead, and since they dealt with article titles, I think they're right:
I also removed the Style template from a number of pages that were historical, proposals, etc, to reduce clutter in the "WhatLinksHere" page.
Feedback on any of this is welcome. Tomorrow, I'll hit the "Template:Style guidelines" pages that haven't been covered yet in this sweep, with the same goals: ask first, then add the "Wikipedia style guidlines" cat to make them easier to find. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 03:23, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
Okay, all done. I looked at "WhatLinksHere" in the WP namespace for {{style-guideline}}
, {{style-guide}}
, {{style guide}}
, and {{style}}
. I have now change the {{style-guide}}
and {{style guide}}
pages to {{style-guideline}}
pages. I also looked at what's currently in the {{style}}
sidebar, and I previously looked at
Category:Wikipedia style guidelines. I have moved any page that used one of the above templates into the cat, unless it had very little activity or it seemed to fit better in a different guidelines subcat (see
CAT:G). The main goal is to allow people to quickly find all the pages that claim to be style guidelines.
I've been a little surprised not to see any friction or reversions, but then, most of the style guidelines pages are like that: lots of civil discourse, not a lot of drama. The notable exceptions are the pages where material foreign to the page, generally policy-related, is being dragged in to support a fight somewhere else, which suggests a fix: don't let that happen. You can see what may or may not be a current example at WT:Layout#"References and notes" or "Notes and references". I'll wait and see what response I get in this thread, and then go back and look at WP:Layout and other CAT:MOS pages to see if there is consensus for moving some of the policy-related material on to other pages (such as moving material on citation to WP:CITE).
The point of the new cat
CAT:MOS is to identify those style pages that that don't seem to be restricted to a specific kind of article or wikiproject, and that don't regularly struggle with policy-related issues. I hope that a lot of people will watchlist these pages; they don't see a lot of action, and when they do, there's generally a good reason for it. I suggest we shorten the "Style" sidebar to the pages in
CAT:MOS, plus style-guidelines pages I've marked with "P" in this section, plus possibly a few additional pages, plus links to the style-guidelines cat and the editing-guidelines cat. The {{Style}}
sidebar is already so long that we can't include it on some of the style-guidelines pages (such as WP:Captions) because it gets in the way. Sure,
WP:Summary style is important, but not more than the other editing guidelines. Sure, Ethiopia-related articles are important, but do we really want to be in the business of saying which subjects and wikiprojects are important and which aren't? Let's back as far away from being "the man" as we can, and let any battles fought over inclusion/exclusion in the "Wikipedia style guidelines" cat be fought page by page. Most of the people who take it on themselves to maintain styles guidelines pages are doing a very good job and have a good sense of whether a page is ready to be called a style guideline.
Removed "style-guideline", "style-guide" or "style guide" template because of inactivity on the page, left msg on talk page:
Moved to editing guideline:
Added Wikipedia style guidelines category:
Added Wikipedia style guidelines category and Manual of Style category:
- Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 16:35, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Okay, unless I missed something, the {{Style}}
template in the WP namespace has now been removed from pages which are not in
Category:Wikipedia style guidelines. (No one has reverted me on this yet, but we'll see. The idea is that a graphic sticks in people's heads more than words do, so it's important that the graphic not be misleading.) Pages recently added to the cat after leaving messages on the talk pages are:
- Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 19:30, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
The article Roman Catholic Church has a vote going on at present regarding the proper use of capitalization. It appears that in reading the MOS that it is confusing as to what is proper on wikipedia. As a result, the majority of editors feel that it is most appropriate to vote in support of referring to the RCC as the Church when not using the proper noun. Could you please clarify the proper usage and if anyone would like to add a vote it would be helpful. Thanks.-- Storm Rider (talk) 00:39, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
My practice has been that when the phrase "the Church" is used as a abbreviation of the name "the Roman Catholic Church" or of the name of some other church, then it's a proper noun and should be capitalized, but in other contexts it's a common noun (e.g. "The church to which John Smith belongs practices infant baptism."---lower-case since it's not an abbreviation of the name of any particular church). Michael Hardy ( talk) 22:43, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
We can, I hope, agree that we should write:
but
Some of the discussion on the RCC would suggest that MOS is being read as requiring:
This is less than persuasive; both instances of University refer to the University of Delhi, and so both are proper nouns. This is a violation both of common sense and (at least in my university town, which is not Delhi) of idiom. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:18, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
"both instances of University refer to the University of Delhi, and so both are proper nouns." What a strange thing to say! Here's another example: "I'd like to introduce you to my friend Bill. He is an engineer." Would you say "My friend, Bill and He all refer to the same person, so all are propor nouns"? Hesperian 23:56, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps this is a better example: "Fleet Street is the street on which the British press were located until the 1980s." Would you say: "both instances of street refer to Fleet Street, and so both are proper nouns"? Hesperian 00:02, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
I notice that Anatolian Shepherd Dog contains the text owners of dogs of this breed must determinedly socialize the dogs to turn them into appropriate companions. I suppose you advocate correcting this to owners of dogs of this breed must determinedly socialize the Dogs to turn them into appropriate companions? Hesperian 05:47, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
But the problem is ever more clearly that we are imposing a simple rule on a complex situation, and are therefore wrong. I would modify to make the example Any university and be silent on the matter at hand; if we do discuss it, we should add something like:
"When the noun is being used as a short form of the proper name,
then it is usually capitalized; when it is being used of the organization as a member of the class of organizations of the type,
it should be lower case. The distinction between these is often more one of mood and emphasis than of meaning; one test is whether the proper name of the organization can be substituted for the noun without change of force."
Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:57, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
With regards to the capitalisation of the second occurence of university in The Vice-President of India is the Chancellor of the University of Delhi. The university has a distinguished alumni body and faculty, there are three positions you can take:
With regards to the first position, I think it is refuted by the fact that one could replace university by school, and this would be indisputably a common noun. I cannot see how changing school to university necessarily changes the may in which the sentence must be parsed, merely because its referent has University in its name. Fortunately this may now be a straw man, because if I have read Septentrionalis' most recent missive aright, he has now adopted position two.
I am more comfortable with position two, but I still don't think it is correct. What it boils down to is "it depends on the author's intent. Having already referred to University of Delhi in the previous sentence, the author is free to refer to the same in any of three ways: by repeating the full name University of Delhi; by use of the common noun the university i.e. "the previously identified definite article of class university"; or by use of the proper noun the University, being an abbreviated form of the full name." My objection to this is that University of Delhi has an accepted abbreviation, DU. This being an encyclopedia, I would surely be reverted if I decided to refer to it by UoD or UofD or UDelhi or any other novel abbreviation. Why then is it permissible for me to abbreviate it to University on a grammatical whim? I think that to use such an abbreviation would be wrong, if not in general then at least for an encyclopedia. I am therefore of the view that only the common noun interpretation is correct.
Hesperian 00:01, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
What, therefore, do we do? I made two proposals above; one is a rule of thumb, the other is to change our present examples to Any university... (desirable) and Any University... (undesirable) leaving the issue Hesperian and Johnbod and I have been talking about drowned in silence. We could also say The Vice-President of India is the Chancellor of the University of Delhi. The University has a distinguished faculty. depends on context, personal preference, and subtle nuances of meaning. Suggestions? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:39, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
What's the MOS's take on the current lead setup in the Kingdom of Gwynedd article? -- Jza84 | Talk 10:59, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
Is WP:MOS#Images out of sync with Wikipedia:Accessibility?
SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 03:37, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
I seriously and strongly object to the section of the article which suggests that users should "consider using gender-neutral language where it can be done without loss of neatness and precision." This policy is pointless adherence to political correctness which contributes nothing but convoluted sentences an gratuitous indulgence of minority group's requests. It encourages neologisms and assumes fact which just plain don't exist. Most importantly, it is arguably incompatible with other sections of the manual of style and policies.
1) It's political correctness. This is apparent from the very definition of PC (i.e., "language, ideas, policies, or behavior seen as seeking to minimize offense to racial, cultural, or other identity groups."). Why is political correctness inappropriate for an encyclopædia? Quite frankly, it is censorship for the protection of others, taking away the preferred style of writing for ages on end (English has had genders, in one form or another throughout its entire lifespan, it's only recently that we've lost the vast majority of said genders) to satisfy the will of a specific group of a specific agenda. No one would here would agree to support a PC motivated style change such as changing all instances of "homosexual" to "person who condones a different lifestyle choice without thinking less of other lifestyle choices" simply to avoid the chance that someone may be offended, yet that is the only reason I see here for using gender neutral language in inappropriate places. In summary, it's a pointless change that is nothing but indulging specific groups, and has no place on Wikipedia.
2) It's against precedent and policy. We have a diverse group of people on Wikipedia, each with his own customs and beliefs, as a result, we see clashes of customs and cultures. In the vast majority of these circumstances we choose the path based on the rules of the language and on common usage, not on avoiding offense to particular groups. An instance of this, particularly applicable to me, is the capitalization of pronouns for God out of respect. Wikipedia does not condone this, even though it is a simple change that would take little to no effort and serve to avoid offending Catholics and Christians in general. This is relevant in that it is a specific example of how proper academic usage is stressed over protecting a group from offense. Another specific example is the removal of "peace be upon him" from articles dealing with Muslims. Once again, this change is done in spite of the fact that it may offend some readers. What is the moral from all this? On Wikipedia, by precedent, avoiding offending people is not a valid reason for policy. This is in direct conflict with the first sentence of WP: Gender Neutral Language, "Gender-neutral language avoids constructions that might be interpreted by some readers as an unnecessary reinforcement of traditional stereotypes."
3) It encourages neologisms. Avoiding common and valid words like "chairman" or "fireman" and replacing them with words which haven't existed for any period of time, and which have been custom-created for this very purpose is silly. The gender neutral components, "chairperson" and "firefighter" respectively are awkward and unnecessary, and, as above, only serve to avoid offending a specific group. In order to avoid accepted an common words, which only have gender as a result of the nature of the language and no specific attempt to make a statement one way or another, we are often forced to use new and unaccepted words which have no place on an encyclopædia. For an extreme example, see this.
4) The offense is imagined. Languages have gender for specific words, often arbitrarily. This is a fact of life. No one among us would think it reasonable or even sane to replace all occurances of gendered nouns within Latin, for example, with their neutral gendered companion, and no one among us would take offense that iudex is male and argentaria is female as we know that this isn't a statement of the suitability of a given gender for a given role, but an arbitrary construction of grammar serving only as a result of convention. Similarly, in English, it happens that "man" both means a singular male human and the whole of the human collective. It's only because specific groups are looking for the offense that it is received.
In the end, what do we have? A pointlessly politically correct convention that results in awkward prose and ridiculous and irregular neologisms, stemming from the will to avoid an imaginary offense to a group of people in blatant violation of the precedent set by Wikipedia policy. This doesn't belong on Wikipedia. Let's be sane.-- Liempt ( talk) 02:30, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
What's this! We encourage "gender neutral" language?! Sounds like a feminazi conspiracy to me. Speaking of which, when are we going to move Flight attendant back to Stewardess? Kaldari ( talk) 15:54, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
This is why there is no consensus for anything stronger than consider. Considering alternatives to one's prose rarely hurts, and there will be occasions when a gender-neutral phrasing will be stronger and clearer than the original, aside from all claims to virtue on the part of the unco' guid. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:09, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
Liempt, you write: I have taken the time to learn the rules of grammar on a theoretical level more than the average person. Splendid, splendid. I hate to boast, but I have done the same. I wonder which route you took; my own was Radford's English Syntax, which, like every theoretical book on the rules of English grammar that comes to hand, ignores the syntactically uninteresting matter of gender-neutral phrasing. If, however, we turn to atheoretical, descriptive books on English grammar, I can think of no better than CGEL -- and sure enough, within its eighteen-hundred-plus pages there is room for this subject, particularly on pp.484–97, "Gender and pronoun–antecedent agreement". Of particular interest, and short and easy to read, are pp.492–94, which deal with "Purportedly sex-neutral he", "Purportedly sex-neutral she", "Disjunctive coordination", "Composite forms", "Singular they", and "Avoidance". What's most interesting here is the treatment of "singular they", which leads up to three samples for the reader's consideration: (i) Let me know if your father or your brother changes ___ mind; (ii) Let me know if your father or your mother changes ___ mind; and (iii) Either the husband or the wife has perjured ___ (in all three, the object coindexes with the subject).
As a theoretician, you may have bypassed this necessarily expensive book. Not to worry, you can read up on "singular they" right here.
Incidentally, I'm surprised by: This policy is pointless adherence to political correctness which contributes nothing but convoluted sentences an gratuitous indulgence of minority group's requests. It encourages neologisms and assumes fact which just plain don't exist. The policy (for policy it is, other than as "policy" is more strictly defined by WP for its own use) is not pointless, it's pointed. (The point may of course be one with which you disagree.) Which minority group, which requests? (My own group -- minority? majority? -- is one in favor of clear writing.) How does the policy encourage neologisms? (Or are you saying that they or the singular use thereof is a neologism?) What is the fact that doesn't (or what are the facts that don't) exist? (And is the term "political correctness" anything other than a rallying call for the conservatively or retrogressively inclined?) -- Hoary ( talk) 02:38, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Tony raises some interesting arguments. Upon reflection, I agree she has a point. Durova Charge! 04:29, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
I think it depends a lot on the page, but on this page, I tend to paste a phrase from my first sentence in the edit summary. I figure that people probably know whether they're interested in a topic or not, and if I give them enough to go on, they can save some time by skipping the comment. This would be overkill in the typical article, of course, because that's more a process of construction than of debate and providing links to past discussions. Should I follow the crowd and make my edit summaries shorter? - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 17:16, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
"Everybody knows" that the title word or title phrase is set in bold at its first appearance in the article. This manual says:
When an article begins by saying
I usually change it to
Is that explicitly considered entirely optional?
Also when it says
I also change it as above, so that the parentheses are INSIDE the bolded part. And I do the same with quotation marks, so that if it says
then I change it to
I've been doing this for about five years and no one's ever said a word to me about it. Have pros and cons of these sorts of things been discussed here, with the result that they've all been declared optional? Michael Hardy ( talk) 20:09, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
"Duke", I think you are guilty of an error. If the article is titled Book, it can begin by saying
including the letter s in the bolded portion, and if the article is called impossibility, it could say
...the form of the word being different from that in the title. That is appropriate and can cover quotion marks and parentheses in some cases. Michael Hardy ( talk) 22:06, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
Attempts to please rival national sensitivities sometimes lead to article names consisting of two different local names for the same thing (such as Sněžka-Śnieżka, which is the Czech name of the mountain followed by the Polish name). Whatever you may think of this "solution", what do people think should be the format of such names? I'm pretty sure there shouldn't be a hyphen in the middle. A slash is probably ruled out on technical grounds, right? So should there be an en dash there, or what?-- Kotniski ( talk) 14:52, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
You probably want to bring this up at WT:NCGN; questions of article title are naming conventions. It disapproves of multiple names, as a result of one of our lamer discussions (should the name of Bolzano be Bolzano-Bozen or Bozen-Bolzano? Twice; no, I'm not making this up). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:17, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
I want to establish a new manual of style for television-related articles. This is the current page that informs us how to write about television programs. It's only specific to the main article on the show, it's vague, and most importantly it is not an official MOS page. I have written a new page, which I hope will take the place of the other one, but in an official capacity. While not perfect, I think it embodies more of the television-related articles as a whole than simply the main article on a TV series. I also think that it is more informative about what to do. I've had a few editors give feedback and tweak wording, though I'm sure it can use more. Anyway, the point is that I'm at a loss for what I need to do next. I know that I would like the page name to be moved to Wikipedia:WikiProject Television/Style guidelines, as it is more professional, and appropriate for the broader range of coverage, but I don't know what I need to do get to the ball rolling on getting it made official. Could someone help, please? Much appreciation. BIGNOLE (Contact me) 16:47, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
It has come to my attention that the guidelines of Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Images can apply to animal articles in ways that make life a tad difficult and I'd love some clarification. How important is this rule Images of faces should be placed so that the face or eyes look toward the text..., and how should it be applied to images of entire animals? When it refers to portraits does that mean images only of a bird's (or other animal's) head, or does it mean any photo where the alignment of the image is portrait? I ask because I am currently working on two bird articles and image placement is somewhat tricky, particularly for trogon, which by virtue of being long, straight birds, tend to have long images that can often only really be situated on the right hand side of the page (thanks to the other new(?) rule about not pushing headings around). I don't want to have to stop using images because of the above rule, for example the image of the Black Throated Trogon, particularly as good images are hard to find for many species/genera/familes. How much digression do we have in these situations? (lots I hope). Sabine's Sunbird talk 00:07, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
I always have used nbsp when I use a numeric, for example 23 kangeroos. (23 :kangeroos) My rationale is that nbsp is used to prevent the number appearing at the end of a wrapped line separated from its unit of measurement. In the example, kangeroos is arguably a unit of measurement.
A few of my nbsp have been removed in later edits so I am asking here. Is the nbsp to be used generally to prevent a number apearing at the end of a line, or does it only apply to recognised abbreviated units of measurements? MortimerCat ( talk) 07:18, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
Is this the only discussion that led to the change in NBSP? The first time I read the 7 World Trade Center article, it was a wreck of hanging 7s. Same thing occurs at aircraft articles (for example Boeing 747) and spacecraft articles ( Apollo 8). Please reinstate the previous wording which included "numerical and non-numerical elements"; this was much more logical and sensible. [7] SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 04:58, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
for Jane Watson-Smith, for instance, should we use a hyphen or ndash? Happy‑ melon 20:18, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
I started a discussion on MOS:CAPS about capitalisation in cases like "three persons in one god", but it's been a couple of days and it hasn't seen much attention. Since the policy in question is also delivered (in reduced form) on the main MoS, I'm hoping it's okay to link to the discussion here and ask for input. Ilkali ( talk) 08:14, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
If you use god as a common noun, then it's a small g(e.g., The Abrahamic god, Mars was the god of war, ...). If you use it in the sense of the "proper noun" of the Abrahamic god, then it's a capital g (e.g., God said "Kill them all.", The scent of burnt animal flesh is pleasing to God). If referring to some more or less defined supreme deity, then it also takes a capital g (What is God? God is the feeling you get when a baby cries). Headbomb ( ταλκ · κοντριβς) 20:40, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
I can't find guidance on how to write the name of someone called "Noel Hughes" who was always called "Josh". There could be many ways eg
As a further issue, would James "Jim" Sutton just be called Jim Sutton, since Jim is a known nickname for James?
Apologies if this decision has already been taken and I've failed to find the policy
almost-
instinct 07:45, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
I have just become aware through User:Tony1/Monthly updates of styleguide and policy changes/May 2008 of an unfortunate change at WP:NBSP (thank goodness for Tony's updates).
The scope of the recommendation to use a non-breaking (i.e., "hard") space was narrowed from all instances where:
Compound items such as "20 chairs" are thus excluded from the recommendation.
Not a good change. Why should we see 20 on one line and chairs on the next? And why should terms like Boeing 747, Apollo 7 or 7 World Trade Center have unnatural line breaks? I oppose this change; can someone point me to the discussion please? Thanks, SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 16:05, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
I've changed my position from a few months ago, and maybe I'm alone in this, I don't know. Can anyone find a style manual or anything like a style manual that supports the idea that content editors of any kind should be inserting hard spaces? Chicago, AP Stylebook, and NYTM don't seem to even approach the issue. As I mentioned previously, I think the issue here is that there are some abbreviations (of units and otherwise) that cause a person skimming down the article to stop and go "Wha?" if they appear by themselves at the beginning of a line, so per the principle of least astonishment, IMO it would be nice if lines didn't wrap in the middle of "3 cm" or "Ames IA" (Iowa, USA). But I'm more interested these days in promoting collaborations between content experts and experienced Wikipedians, and I'm getting more and more nervous about being put in the position of having to defend orthography that none of the style manuals will touch; if a rule is considered too fussy even for academicians, authors and journalists, then it ought to be too fussy for us. If people in their roles as copyeditors want to agree on where to wrap the lines, that's fine, and if we want to follow up on the bugzilla thread to do some of it by software, that's even better, but it shouldn't be in WP:MOS or WP:MOSNUM and shouldn't be expected from editors, unless we can come up with support for the idea that this is expected outside of Wikipedia. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 17:39, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
7.42 Abbreviations [:] Abbreviations used with numerals are best left intact; either the numeral should be carried over to the next line or the abbreviation should be moved up.
345 m
24 kg
55 BCE
6:35 p.m.
- Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 22:54, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
People have gone berserk with nbsp. I would like to say that line breaks are a *good thing*. One of the benefits of the modern world is that the internet is available regardless of screen size. Try it on a pocket device and you will see what I mean. Line breaks are needed to fit things on the screen. I would hardly notice a problem with a line break in '20 chairs' and 'Boeing 747'. As Dank55 said, I think it might be nice if '3 cm' and 'Ames IA' did not break but I think we have gone too far in mandating the use of nbsp. It used to be optional. Please think about limiting the scope of nbsp because line breaks are good. Lightmouse ( talk) 19:40, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
Once again, where is the discussion that led to this change? SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 04:52, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
In compound measurements in which values and units are separated by a space, a non-breaking space (also known as a hard space) is recommended to avoid the displacement of those elements at the end of a line. Hard spaces may also be considered where line-end displacement might be disruptive to the reader (
7 World Trade Center
).
What's so special about numbers? Is it really that much more jarring to the reader to have a number and a word in separate lines than having two words in separate lines? (If there is a study about that, I'd like to see it.) I don't see any rules for inserting non-breaking spaces between articles and nouns, between verbs and adverbs, or between given names and surnames. Or even in the middle of an infinitive. While I see the suggestion of some style guides to put a nonbreaking space between 15 and kg as not too unreasonable, it can be taken too far. At least in science, not all units and numbers are one or two characters long. I decided to take a look at a few recent articles in the Journal of the American Chemical Society and Science, and I noticed that they are not afraid of putting a number and a unit in separate lines. I also noticed that in some cases a full number plus unit can easily take half a line of text. Refusing to split such a monster would be as problematic as refusing to hyphenate supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. But these journals don't mind splitting even the short cases. If they don't mind, why should we? Or does one need to be a scientist to be able to put a number and a word or symbol together when they are on different lines? I don't buy it. -- Itub ( talk) 11:16, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
I've gone back and checked now, and this seems to be another of those recent, not broadly discussed MoS changes, made only in the last few weeks (May 21 and May 26). [8] [9] I disagree with this change, and suggest going back to the long-standing wording, "In compound items in which numerical and non-numerical elements are separated by a space ... " I'm glad we're now made aware of these changes via Tony's monthtly updates, but this weekly tweaks and changes continue to frustrate. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 08:46, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
A non-breaking space (also known as a hard space) is recommended to avoid the end-of-line displacement of the elements:
Tony (talk) 14:01, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
Your feedback is welcome:
As the person who made the change (or at least started it), I see that my intervention is required here—although I should probably comment anyway, as is my habit in these cases. Basically, I made the change because the guideline, as it was written before 21 May, was too general and opened the door for an incredibly widespread usage of hard spaces, with all the disadvantages that such a thing would entail (analysed by my honourable colleagues above). It was not my intention to go to the other side and make the guideline too strict; I simply did not consider that the revised guideline would leave out numerous types of legitimate hard-space application. However, I find that a restrictive guideline is better than one which allows for undesirable overuse, especially if we are to resolve this problem in a relatively short time period. Restoring an acceptable balance is, of course, the primary target at this stage. I shall not include a more detailed reasoning for my edit here, in order to prevent my message from growing too long. I can provide it on demand, however. As far as Tony's suggestions for the location of hard spaces are concerned, I agree with all of them, and would even add a few more (see below). As far as the spaces around en dashes are concerned, I believe that the preceding space should be hard and the trailing one a breaking space. This method not only improves wrapping but is actually established practice, something reflected in the existence of a template doing this very thing ( which I have just used in the navbox below). I should mention that using hard spaces at both sides would be highly debatable—many editors choose spaced en dashes over unspaced em dashes because the latter stick with the following word while the former do not; we should grant editors this stylistic choice as far as wrapping is concerned. In addition to Tony's points, now, I believe that we should consider expanding the application of hard spaces to unabbreviated units as well, treating 9 metres exactly like 9 m. It is already widespread practice ({{ convert}} does that automatically), and it makes sense to keep measurements together, be the units full or not (people understand them in the same degree, given that they are familiar with the abbreviations). In any case, I am not sure that we should be too specific or extremely prescriptive about how hard spaces should be used, because this is a dodgy issue: no matter how many cases are described, there will always be more warranting special treatment—some in all instances, some based on editorial judgement. I propose writing a simple guideline saying that hard spaces should be used at the end of lines when items should not be separated blah blah, and making it clear that this should normally not be applied to ordinary words or in cases where, as Mr Anderson says, compounds are unlikely to break. Below could be given a table with all the specific examples where using hard spaces is encouraged.
In addition to the items in Tony's list, several names and terms would make reading easier for people if using hard spaces. This would include addresses (10 Downing Street), postcodes with two or more parts (DN37 2AB), years with a designation (AD 1066, 480 BCE), time in 12-hour format (2:50 pm), co-ordinates ({{nowrap|5° 24′ 21.12″ N}}), and names followed by a number (Boeing 747, State Route 9) or modifier (Louis XIV of France). For the last case—which might be more controversial than the rest—I find it important to use hard spaces, as these compounds make even less sense when broken than those with numbers first. All these proposals strictly fall into either the number or the name category; ordinary words are explicitly excluded. Waltham, The Duke of 00:21, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
<math>, it's a tag not a template see Help:Displaying a formula. JIMp talk· cont 03:51, 5 June 2008 (UTC) I'm pretty sure (I tested narrowing the help page I mention down) that that within the <math> tags does not wrap. It would be nice to have a word recommending that mixing these <math> expressions with regular text on the same line should be avoided wherever practical. I'm often finding stuff like spotted throughout prose, an unnecessary change in font. JIMp talk· cont 04:12, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Should we encourage the preemptive use of ? It does make edit screens less readable, which is a cost; and it occurs to me that in most of our examples, it may be makework. Consider; when will Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit – sed do eiusmod tempor break before the dash?
For this reason, it is preferable to fix a bad break if it happens, but otherwise it is OK to leave well enough alone. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:20, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
I don't know if this is the right place for this discussion, if not, please kindly me point me to the right place.
I noticed another user recently adding the template lang to some titles in foreign languages (French in this case) in some articles (e.g. here [10]), and wondered what it was used for, as it has no visible effect on the page. It turns out after a friendly discussion with the user that it is supposedly useful for people and/or tools spell checking texts, so that they don't try to "correct" text which isn't in English.
I'm not really happy with these tags, as they seem to me to be a solution looking for a problem (since none of these articles or many others I have watchlisted seem to have the problem of erroneous spelling corrections in these cases), and a nuisance for editors (yet another level of tags around titles, which often already have double [ and double ' around them). I would like some discussion to see if other people feel we should encourage or discourage this in general, or if it should only be used in some cases but not in general. As is probably clear, at the moment I'm in favour of completely discouraging it since the perceived benefit of the tags is too small to outweigh the extra trouble it gives. Fram ( talk) 19:02, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Okay, those tags could in theory be useful in various ways but is that actually the case? Can anyone point to a page where a tag like this makes the difference between text being correctly displayed or not? Do actual screen-readers pay attention to them? Do actual search engines use them? Can we have some examples where the tags are clearly doing some good? The original edit which sparked this discussion still seems confusing and crufty to me. [11] Why not mark all the French titles in the article? It looks to me like these templates are yet another thing which raises the bar for newbies and clutter page histories. These may be acceptable sacrifices but only if the benefits are clear and demonstrable. I don't feel the added convenience to typo checkers is enough of a benefit. Haukur ( talk) 16:45, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
WP:Captions doesn't get as much attention as some pages. This was just inserted in a new section last night: "Unless relevant to the subject, do not credit the image author or copyright holder in the article. It is not necessary to fulfill attribution requirements of the GFDL or Creative Commons licenses as long as the appropriate credit is on the image description page, and it implies ownership of free content, which contradicts Wikipedia policy." Thoughts?
Also, an editor wants to largely rewrite WP:PERFECT, and we haven't attracted any discussion there. Please see the talk page. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 12:28, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
The "section management" subsection says: "The standard order for optional appendix sections at the end of an article is See also, Notes (or Footnotes), References, Further reading (or Bibliography), and External links; the order of Notes and References can be reversed."? Does anyone know why footnotes are not at the foot? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 19:01, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the quick response. I understand the reasoning but I wonder whether it takes into account that folks generally get to the footnotes by clicking on a link (and return to the text the same way). So there is no benefit to putting the notes closer to the text (and there is a detriment because readers have to scroll through the "footnotes" to get to potentially valuable information). Were those factors considered when it was decided that Wikipedia footnotes are like hot dogs? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 19:47, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
This doesn't respond to my point that interactive users can jump to footnotes. (In fact this brings up an additional consideration: If "footnotes" comes before other sections then any footnote in the later sections will will appear above the footnote signal. That doesn't make sense if, as the responses to my comments seem to say, we should ignore the interactive features of on-line footnotes.) Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 12:29, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
See the new proposal Wikipedia:Usage of diacritics.
"For a placename or person that is well known in the English-speaking world, i.e. is widely mentioned in English-language sources: ... " and then goes on to lay down rules. This seems to be at variance with WP:MOS#Foreign terms -- Philip Baird Shearer ( talk) 19:09, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
So why exactly is "first text...another text" forbidden? No reason is given; nor is any citation given for any of this. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:25, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
I was so hoping that Chicago would represent a consensus among publishers, journalists and academics that Wikipedia could bootstrap off of, but Tony is right. Chicago is a horse designed by a committee; sometimes Chicago recommends things that are just goofy, and sometimes it goes on forever in a way that is just burdensome and inappropriate for Wikipedia. No one should be required to memorize Chicago's capitalization rules, or even follow them. But the good news is that, so far, I'm happy with the match between Wikipedian practices and the two manuals US journalists use the most, The NY Times Manual of Style and Usage and AP Stylebook. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 17:08, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
I have never stated a topic like this before, so I thought it might be best to start here. I believe that the minute differences in language and spelling between UK and US English can be reconciled using a translation system that is similar to the process that has been developed for the Chinese WIkipedia. Under their translation system, users have a choice of selecting either one of the following as their "viewing language" on Wikipedia:
I believe that this system has the potential to, in addition to bridge the difference in language, localize the encyclopedia for users in the wide and diverse Anglophone world. With this system in place, we can disregard the rules in regards to "-ize" or "-ise" or "-or" [as in behavior] or "-our" [as in labour].
So, I would like to put this out as a feeler, and see if anyone is interested in pursuing this further. Arbiteroftruth ( talk) 06:27, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
[after numerous edit conflicts] Would it require us to mark it up? e.g. "The {{color}}s of the rainbow are..." Who would determine the mapping? e.g. who decides whether UK "elevator" must map to US "lift"? And how do you decide when US lift means UK elevator, and when it just means lift. Surely there are situations where a two similarly spelled UK words map to a single US word, or vice verse; how would such mappings be handled? How would quotations be handled? Would it fix article titles too? Hesperian 14:02, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
I see Wikipedia, and more generally the internet, as a force that will eventually re-unify the English language, after a long natural process. In my opinion that's a good thing, not something to be prevented using technical means. The Chinese situation is special for two reasons: The traditional/simplified split hasn't grown organically but exists for political reasons. And as far as I know the Chinese writing system is used as a kind of interlingua between several mutually unintelligible languages. In that respect it's probably a bit like having a single Wikipedia for Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese (except that the Catalans would certainly be opposed to such a proposal). -- Hans Adler ( talk) 14:31, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
I want to make a response to the aforementioned questions here.
Regardless of whether English will be reunified in the future, we are dealing with the present. At this point in time, there are variations between different forms of English. Now, as far as server-side translation goes, it can be cumbersome, which is why I believe the per-article translation solution (in Chinese Wikipedia, they do this through a template) is a solution that fits our situation better for region-specific words. For words such as "colo[u]r", the server-side solution will be a better fit. This combination of solutions will do the trick. Now obviously, the problems with Chinese Wikipedia is much bigger than ours (theirs deal with readability, ours deals with the more minute matters that will not render a page unreadable), but I wanted to propose this to see where we can go with it. I think localization, while not an urgent matter, will make English Wikipedia much more special, and can serve to eliminate some of the rules that goes with styles and grammar (we can dispose with those regarding region-specific spellings) if this is implemented. Arbiteroftruth ( talk) 17:20, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
Now, to give a sense of how the per-article translation thing can work, I will show you how those editors over at the Chinese Wikipedia deal with this.
They have this template that manually translates specific words within an article, which is the solution we can implement in our case. For example, let's say we are dealing with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (film). The English title is different. So, we do it as follows:
---
{{noteTA (the title name for the Chinese Wikipedia translation template)
|T (for page title)=en-us (for US English): Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (film); en-com (for Commonwealth English): Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (film)
|1 (for word 1)=en-us: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone; en-com: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
}}
---
So this is how it could work. It doesn't require too much markups. One template takes care of all words mentioned on that very page. No fuss. Arbiteroftruth ( talk) 17:31, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
The problem with this idea is that it isn't ambitious enough. We should be internationalising all vocabulary and grammar. For example, instead of writing
, we would write
This would expand to great idea for English speakers, but the {{adjective-noun-pair}} template would know to put the adjective after the noun for French speakers, and the other templates would expand to French words for them, so for them this markup would yield
(Of course, we couldn't actually call those templates adjective-noun-pair, great and idea; we would have to come up with language neutral terms.) If enough effort was put into templatizing the grammar and vocabulary of every language and language variant in the world, then we could abandon this ridiculous idea of having a Wikipedia in each language, and write a single Wikipedia that could be read in the language of choice. The efficiency gains would be enormous, the only, very minor, downside being that only a handful of savant linguists would be able to contribute. Hesperian 02:11, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm finding it unclear whether ndashes (–) or mdashes (—) should be used in tables to mark "empty cells". For some reason I remember reading it somewhere, perhaps in an old version of the MOS, that mdashes should be used. This is also what a lot of WP:FLs use (though this may in part be because I always say they should be used in my WP:FLC reviews). A recent discussion at WT:FLC#hyphens in blank squares: why not en dashes? brought this issue up, and I just wanted to get a firm answer from the caretakers of MOS. Once this has been confirmed, could a line please be added to WP:DASH. Thanks! Matthewedwards ( talk · contribs · count · email) 05:08, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
"If a column head does not apply to one of the entries in the stub, the cell should either be left blank or be filled in by an em dash or three unspaced ellipsis dots. If a distinction is needed between “not applicable” and “no data available,” a blank cell may be used for the former and an em dash or ellipsis dots for “no data” (see table 13.8). This distinction must be made clear in a note or elsewhere. (Alternatively, the abbreviations n.a. and n.d. may be used, with definitions given in a note.) A zero means literally that the quantity in a cell is zero (see table 13.3)."
Dash | Code | Meaning |
---|---|---|
- | - | Hyphen are not to be used to indicate anything in a table. |
− | − | Minus sign should only be used in the same way a plus sign (+) would. |
–?– | –?;&nash | Unknown/No data |
— | &emdash; | Not applicable |
Headbomb: So you suggest we do the PManderson thing and allow a choice between en and em dashes? I suppose on this occasion I could be swung around to agree, reluctantly. (Never let it be said that I'm inflexible!) And although your system of symbols in the table are logical and nicely worked out, I think they're too elaborate for this context. Tony (talk) 13:37, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
As I have said above, I am rather open on this one, mostly because it does not affect proper text. Unless some major advantage or disadvantage in either option transpires, I say we go with the "use either an en dash or an em dash, centred, and consistently within an article" principle. Although I find em dashes rather long for this use, it might actually depend on the width of a table's columns which one would look better. This is largely a formatting issue, so I advocate flexibility. Waltham, The Duke of 03:56, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
Insert: –(
endash) —(
emdash) ... ‘ “ ’ ” ° ″ ′ ≈ ≠ ≤ ≥ ± − (
minus sign minutely larger than the
hyphen) × ÷ ← → · § Sign your username: ~~~~ (on talk pages)
mdash;
ndash;
nbsp;
or the spacebar space?KnowledgeHegemonyPart2 ( talk) 15:25, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
Quick question: Where's the guideline that says "don't use pictures if they don't add anything to the article"? Thanks, Matthewedwards ( talk • contribs • email) 16:01, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
←I agree with Anderson that this is hard to pin down in a guideline. People, reviewers, can appeal to common sense and the disadvantages of visual clutter to persuade, yes? Tony (talk) 05:47, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
Why was the following removed as "nonsense"?
When naming an article, a hyphen is not used as a substitute for an en dash that properly belongs in the title, for example in Eye–hand span. However, editors should provide a redirect page to such an article, using a hyphen in place of the en dash (e.g., Eye-hand span), to allow the name to be typed easily when searching Wikipedia. See also Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision). The associated talk page name should match the page name exactly.
Matthewedwards ( talk • contribs • email) 07:36, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
I went crawling through the page history and isolated the diff that changed this rule from being merely a suggestion to being the law of the land. (See here.) There doesn't appear to be any consensus or discussion behind the move, and as such, I propose changing the language back to being a suggestion, rather than being a requirement. Thoughts? -- MZMcBride ( talk) 08:02, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
(ec) Look, the linking thing is a red herring; there's no problem with using a redirect as a link. Similarly for navigation--just type the name with the hyphen into the search box and you'll get to the right place. So the only question is, which form do we want to see at the top of the page? In the case of Mexican–American War I have no strong feelings, but I suppose there's some utility to the endash to make it clear that it wasn't (or at least not especially) a war about Mexican-Americans, but rather between Mexicans and Americans. Similarly the Michelson−Morely experiment wasn't performed by a single physicist named Michelson-Morely. -- Trovatore ( talk) 08:12, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
The issue is that people should be able to type the title without the use of redirects. And now that people have taken to using automated tools to attempt to change thousands of page titles, this becomes a larger issue quite quickly. Tony: I see no consensus (as I tried to demonstrate with that diff) to make the MoS require en dashes. In fact, for years, it was merely optional – a suggestion, really. And the claim that the need for redirects is there anyway is a bit silly. I doubt many people are searching using en dashes, eh? So I really don't understand why the bit about page titles can't go back to being a suggestion rather than a mandate. -- MZMcBride ( talk) 08:18, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
←Rebecca, by "computer manufacturers don't put the en dash on their keyboards", I presume you mean that they don't allocate this function to a single keystroke, as they do the hyphen. Do I see a show of support for not using the degree symbol just because it requires two fingers simultaneously, not one? Or parentheses? And while we're at it, no more superscript please; and those monstrous non-breaking spaces are out – they require SIX keystrokes. Really, we're all aspiring to a professional standard of writing and formatting, aren't we? Tony (talk) 13:44, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
Her college years, 1998–2002, were the happiest in her life. For documentation and indexing, see chapters 16–18. In Genesis 6:13–22 we find God’s instructions to Noah. Join us on Thursday, 11:30 a.m.–4:00 p.m., to celebrate the New Year. The London–Paris train leaves at two o’clock. I have blocked out December 2002–March 2003 to complete my manuscript. Her articles appeared in Postwar Journal (3 November 1945–4 February 1946). Green Bay beat Denver 31–24. The legislature voted 101–13 to adopt the resolution. Professor Plato’s survey (1999–) will cover the subject in the final volume. Jane Doe (1950–); or Jane Doe (b. 1950) the post–World War II years a hospital–nursing home connection a nursing home–home care policy a quasi-public–quasi-judicial body (or, better, a judicial body that is quasi-public and quasi-judicial) but non-English-speaking peoples a wheelchair-user-designed environment (or, better, an environment designed for wheelchair users) (Abbreviations for compounds are treated as single words, so a hyphen, not an en dash, is used in such phrases as “U.S.-Canadian relations.”) the University of Wisconsin–Madison the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
I suggest that we acknowledge that there's a large, pre-existing base of GAs and FAs that follow the long-standing WP:MOS guideline, that this guideline is and was based both on a nice simplicity (hyphen for "and", en-dash for "or" and "between"), and on a solid foundation of the way things were done in the publishing world for a long time, that this issue is not all that important, and that we revisit it from time to time as journalists move gradually in the direction of converting to hyphens. I'll be happy to discuss it in January, but I'm not going to discuss it every month. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 15:39, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
Why are you all ignoring the fact that the naming conventions, which are policy, dictate that en-dashes are to be used in article names? And have done so for over a year? This conversation should be happening there. In any case, my argument has been iterated many times above: They look better, redirects are not even remotely a big deal, etc. There is no accessibility issue. Also Mexican-American war was moved to the hyphen version because of a technical restriction. Not because of any of the issues opposers on this page have brought up.-- Dycedarg ж 17:16, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm wholly in favour of using the correct en dash where it should be used by proper style in article titles. With redirects, there's no reason not to do it. — Nightstallion 21:25, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
←Now that Rebecca has calmed down from her earlier hysteria (referring to me as a "buffoon", etc, and to many of my colleagues here as "people who are absolutely fascinated by things like the length of a dash"); and now that it's apparent people here don't go along with Anderson's characterisation of MOS as being ruled by a few obsessive zealots, let's examine the latest assertions. While considerably down the shock-horror scale, they are nonetheless on a par with what spin doctors for politicians come up with:
Redirect notices are generally fine – they alert you to where you've been redirected from, and it does its job. It's just when you have to have one pop up every single time one accesses a page with a dash in the title that it becomes very annoying.
It's as though half of the articles had an en dash or required one. Um ... no; it's a rather tiny proportion. If they really make your sides ache, your cache settings should prevent the display of the redirect where you need to access a page more than once in a session. Mine do.
to use a character that the vast majority of our readers cannot type on their keyboards
But ... they don't have to type it. Nor do readers have to write good prose; we have to.
... before I came on Wikipedia, I'd never met anyone who knew the difference, let alone cared about it
Yeah but no but yeah but. We're engaged here in what is effectively the business of publishing on a scale never seen before, not of writing substandard undergraduate essays. Publishing houses have to deal with these matters; ordinary readers don't, but will benefit even if they're unfamiliar with the finer points of the en-dash vs. hyphen issue. Tony (talk) 03:20, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
The arguments in favour of retaining the guideline in question are overwhelming, as is the support towards it, even from people who do not frequent these noble halls of style. There are issues here of high-quality encyclopaedic writing, internal consistency, and usability, and unless there is a satisfactory reply to all these concerns, I am removing the "disputed" tag from the page on 27 June. I request that it should be retained until then, so that no objections can be raised on grounds of due-process violation, contempt of the community, hostile environment causing bias, etc. We want to be fair. :-) Waltham, The Duke of 19:06, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
I really don't understand why this discussion is still going on. It is clearly a good thing to have a certain uniformness in our articles. There are a lot of other things that are more important, but I am not aware of any that would contradict this particular prescription. We could prescribe the opposite; but that would be worse. We could make more complicated rules; nobody seems to want that.
No articles are deleted for failure to follow the MOS. No editors are banned for obstinately ignoring the MOS prescriptions. It's even possible to be an extremely active editor in ndash-infested articles without ever writing an ndash, so long as you don't revert ndashes back to hyphens just for the sake of doing it. We have a choice between ever so ugly redirects appearing when we enter something into a WP search form, or when we follow a link from WP or Google. -- Hans Adler ( talk) 22:22, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
But quite seriously, the present wording is the undefined term disjunctive with a list of examples. We concluded, last time we were asked, that we weren't sure exactly why Mon-Khmer was hyphenated, and we'd have to wait for Noetica to decide how far that example extends. Is this clarity, or is it mud? (But as long as the bot doesn't work faster than it can be watched, that may work in practice.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:18, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
I have removed the tag. This discussion is officially closed. Waltham, The Duke of 08:59, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
I would propose that MOS be updated with the additional caveat that when an article has reached a level of completeness and polish that it is undergoing little in the way of substantial rewrite or addition, that typographers’ quotes are permissible. This will keep Wikipedia easy to edit when articles are in a state of growth and flux, but will also put Wikipedia on the slow track towards looking more like a professional-grade publication. Greg L ( talk) 02:20, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
Now that both Firefox 3 and Safari have anti-aliased fonts, it may be that typographers quotes look much better on these modern browsers. I know that I couldn’t possibly even look at Wikipedia pages using the older, non-anti-aliased Firefox because italic text looked positively terrible; I couldn’t even believe people put up with it. Wikipedia pages, with their frequent use of italic text looked infinitely superior on Safari. It may well be that the same font-rendering issue is at play with typographers quotes and, if so, anti-aliased rendering is rapidly replacing the old, barbaric font-rendering method.
I would like to get to the bottom of the true facts of what appears good and bad, and to whom, and on what browsers/platforms. Some aesthetic issues, such as delimiting numeric strings, have appearance issues that are very platform-dependent. For instance, it took a lot of work and a long time to arrive at a compromise solution for delimiting numeric strings and getting the spaces alongside the times symbol to look proper, such as this one: 0.45386358×10−24 kg. Different people were saying the spaces were far too wide. It turned out that different browsers and different default fonts (mainly the former), treated em-based spacing very differently.
So maybe the same issue is at play now. I’d like to get to the bottom of it though because what I’m seeing (Safari with anti-aliased fonts on a Mac), typographers quotes look infinitely superior.
Let’s consider the following text:
It is inappropriate for an editor to change an article from one style to another unless there is a substantial reason to do so
. (without the period at the end). That text comes from the third paragraph of
Wikipedia:Manual of Style and has been stable for quite some time.
Here is the search result. As you can see, Wikipedia’s search function is nowhere as “Google-like”; it can not do project-wide (across many articles) text string searches.It still comes down that if readers really need to use a browser’s search function to find a word in its apostrophed (possessive) form once you are in a particular article, you just search on the non-possessive form and scan through the handful of hits. And, again, I just don’t even see that as happening all that often.
I’m still seeing that this issue of straight v.s. typographer’s quotes boils down to an issue of appearance. I can believe that there may be browser and default-font combinations that could produce ugly-ass results. But with anti-aliased font display becoming ever more standard in modern browsers, I’d like to explore what people are really seeing—today—and what their impressions are of what they see. Maybe we can even post or e-mail screen captures.
All I’m proposing is that after articles have reached a point where they are undergoing only minor edits (I can site examples—they do exist), then typographer’s quotes should be considered as acceptable. I buy the argument that they are cumbersome for editors on barbarian (Windows) machines so straight quotes are better for articles that are in a state of growth or flux. But I certainly don’t want to advocate their use—even for mature articles—if they truly look like garbage on a lot of browser/preferences settings combinations. Greg L ( talk) 03:00, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
Straights or curlies, it's a matter of taste, but one thing that would probably not suit anyone's taste would be inconsistancy, thus we'd do well to settle on one or the other, now were we to attempt to settle on the one which is difficult to type, where would we end up? JIMp talk· cont 03:37, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
I agree that straight quotes would be better for articles that are growing or in a state of flux. As to your “were we to attempt to settle on the one which is difficult to type, where would we end up?”, I buy into the reasoning that straight quotes are easier for editors given that Windows makes it so awfully cumbersome to use typographers’ quotes. And I agree 100% that the quote style should be consistent within an article. I’m only suggesting the following:
“ | For articles that are no longer growing nor are in a state of flux, the use of typographers’ quotes and apostrophes is acceptable. When an article is so upgraded, all quotes (double and single) and apostrophes must be converted so the article has one consistent typography style.
|
” |
I would like to propose the addition of the following text on conjunction use to the end of the Usage section. Comments are welcome and appreciated.
Conjunctions are used to connect words or phrases. The most common conjunctions are and, or and but. Each has its own context for proper usage: [2]
Starting a sentence with a conjunction should be avoided. In addition, the word but may create an unintended reaction by the reader; it may imply an action where none is present. Avoid using but where the two ideas being connected are not conflicting. If and can be substituted in place of but without changing the meaning, then and is preferred. For example, "He taught history but was fired in 2007." is preferred as "He taught history and was fired in 2007." Sometimes it is better to avoid the conjunction altogether and simply create two independent sentences. This is especially true of long sentences with several dependent clauses.
Truthanado ( talk) 15:02, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
The politically correct term for describing people of mixed descent eludes me at the moment. In any case, I am unsure as to the precise hyphenation practices of compounds like African-American. I have not managed to find a relevant guideline in the Manual, and unless there is one which I have failed to locate, it seems to me that this is an omission which should be taken care of; especially considering that I have received intelligence according to which the articles concerning such terms are inconsistent in their spelling. Please advise. Waltham, The Duke of 10:26, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
In the Images section of the MOS, one of the bullet items suggests to "avoid sandwiching text between two images facing each other" (emphasis added). Some people take this to mean no sandwiching of text between an image and an infobox. (This came up during the FA nomination for an article I had worked on, USS Orizaba (ID-1536), which has an exceptionally long infobox.) I would like to propose that the language be clarified to reflect either that it does or does not include infoboxes, whatever the consensus may be. — Bellhalla ( talk) 16:24, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
“ | Avoid sandwiching text between two images facing each other. When an article contains an infobox or other box with similar placement, images should be used sparingly when they would cause the text to be sandwiched between the image and infobox. Editors should consider the value of the image's placement, relative to the distraction of compressed prose. Consider moving images to areas where they will not conflict with the infobox. | ” |
References are inherently important in Wikipedia, and presenting them in the most intuitive manner possible is absolutely essential to further its development and continuation. I am proposing to change the current epitome to permit a more: adaptive, cohesive, and organized — method of presenting references within articles. Thereof are the following proposals and supporting reasons:
Here is a brief example of the proposed method and the associated code: Link. ChyranandChloe ( talk) 02:58, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
I couldn't find this anywhere in the Manual of Style, so I am going to ask here. I know that many grammarians prefer to use the present tense when writing about fiction. I was wondering if there was a similar rule for writing about film and television. In film and television, when should the past tense be used? Should those articles always use the present tense? Should the past tense be used if the show has been wiped? Should it be used if the show is no longer in reruns anywhere? Should it be used if the show is no longer airing first-run episodes? Please clarify (or point me to a guideline if I happened to have overlooked one). RJaguar3 | u | t 15:06, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm trying to figure out if the presence of both 44 gallon drum and 55-gallon drum is in accordance with the MOS. Both articles are identical. It appears that these exist to satisfy an argument about whether this object should be referenced by its name in imperial or US gallons. Can someone clear this up for me? I was under the impression that duplicate articles are undesirable. Phasmatisnox ( talk) 19:12, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
This is not really an MOS issue, but it is a crystal clear example of content forking and a GFDL violation as well. I have replaced the redirect. The talk page of the existing article is the appropriate place for rename discussions. Christopher Parham (talk) 22:09, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Anyone want to weigh in? Is there any new consensus? I reverted yesterday's edit. AP Stylebook is a little complicated, but says in almost all cases to use just an apostrophe after singular proper names ending in "s". NYTM disagrees and says to use 's after most of them, except for the ones ending in two successive sibilant sounds, such as Kansas' . - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 15:28, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
←I go with Strunky here, without the "possible exceptions": the simple approach has the advantage and the logic. We just need to get over our squeamishness at the jostling of two (or three) eses; Fowler's notion that only where there's an extra syllable should 's be added to a word-final s did hold sway in my mind for a while, but I've dismissed it for the simpler. Jesus's (I'm not paying respect to any religion), Jones's, Weiss's, all into the same pot. So much easier for non-native speakers, too. Tony (talk) 11:37, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
WP:MOSNUM, summarized here, says Where values in the millions occur a number of times through an article, upper-case M may be used for million, unspaced.
I couldn't find any talk page discussion of this with Google, and I have only come across its application occasionally in Wikipedia. I have found financial articles, like many English-speaking newspapers, usually use a spaced lower-case m.
Upper case M is often ambiguous, as many North Americans use M to mean 'thousands', perhaps inspired by the Roman numeral.
Should we change to lower case unspaced m? Ambiguity with 'metre' and 'milli' would be rare, but if the context makes it ambiguous, it should be spelled out. For SI and metric units, spaced upper-case M for mega, is of course appropriate. For example 20m sheep and $5m, but 25 MJ (25 million joules, not 25 millijoules, which is 25 mJ).
-- Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) ( Talk) 15:38, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (text formatting)#Foreign terms, "Wikipedia prefers italics for phrases in other languages and for isolated foreign words that do not yet have everyday use in non-specialised English." As such, in the article Full Moon o Sagashite, the term shinigami has been italicized as it is a Japanese word not in everyday use outside of manga and anime readers. However, another editor and I are in disagreement as to whether the header for the section listing the Shinigami in the series should also be in italics. I don't think the header should, in general, contain italics and a second editor agrees with me that it looks odd, but the other editor insists that all instances should be in italics, even in headers. So which is correct? -- AnmaFinotera ( talk · contribs) 01:15, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
←See header and heading. Header is a word already in use to mean supplemental data at the beginning of a file. This argument has come up a couple of times before and there was consensus that "heading" was the right word (but of course, it's not a terribly important point). I don't follow what you're saying about italics in headings; click on User_talk:Dank55#Roman–Persian Wars at FAC; the italics in the heading don't cause a problem with the link. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 02:04, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
← I missed this discussion, but I'd like to drop my two pence: in headings, avoid links, templates, and every other kind of treatment but italics. It's not exclusively a technical matter, but also one of style. There are very, very, very few exceptions to this.
On another note... How would you people feel about italics in tables of contents? It's one of my little ideas; I know nothing about its technical feasibility, but it's worth a try, no? Waltham, The Duke of 22:55, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
The following appear to be issues with the MoS pages. Please comment as to what should be done below each issue. Thanks. Bebestbe ( talk) 19:09, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
In general, this entire discussion supports the unfortunate habit of giving a special status to MOS and its subpages. They are guidelines; like most guidelines, they represent a handful of editors (sometimes literally one or two, but always a handful relative to Wikipedia); much of them is neither well-written or well-judged. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:19, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
Comparable quantities should be all figures or all spelled out. We don't say this in general, although it is the point of some of our exceptions:
Conversely, quantities which are not comparable can be distinguished by spelling out one and leaving the other in figures.
These are the principal reasons to vary between figures and spelled out numbers; the present main paragraph is one rule of thumb (of several) for deciding whether a given set of comparable quantities should be figures or words. Careful readers will say there is another: figures imply precision. The title The First Hundred Thousand differs from The First 100,000 in that the alternate form denies that there were 103 thousand of the subject (British enlistees in 1914). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:42, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
I'd say details at MOSNUM, summary here. JIMp talk· cont 02:39, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
In part because this page is protected, I will try a draft at WP:MOSNUM. This should not need changing any present guidance at all, merely the present emphases. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:06, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
There's some good in that proposal, but here's another go, copy-edited. I don't really agree with the blanket proscription against "five dogs and 32 cats", which I find better than spelling out "thirty-two". And I can't go along with the abolition of the default nine/10 (or even ten/11) boundary, even if it's just a recommendation. I'm sick of reading large numbers that are spelt out in articles. Can we dispense with the "clear as possible" and "don't be clumsy or confusing", which seem too vague to be helpful. Who would think otherwise?
In general, I prefer a few words of justification; recommendations will be more often taken by those who see their value. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:44, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
I've said three digits as the rule of thumb because that was the effective conclusion of the MOSNUM revert war. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:23, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
How curious. All of these objections apply to Tony's draft above, which I have only altered in a few places; would this barrage be fired if I taken it unaltered? Almost all of them can be answered by refering to the definition of quantity: as the OED puts it, "the amount of something." Individual replies above. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:14, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
However, this was a long summary, in the interests of preserving as much as possible. There is still general agreement on having a summary here, rather than, as at present, two long, separately evolving, texts here or at MOSNUM; not even Yony has objected. I will therefore put a short summary, a pure reference to MOSNUM. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:21, 22 July 2008 (UTC)