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Asking again... WP:ACCESSIBILITY is an important page. It's not currently in the style cat or in CAT:GEN, but I would be happy to put it in both, if someone who knows more than I do about images and tables will confirm that it doesn't contradict pages in the style cat or image cat. Sandy often checks articles for compliance with WP:ACCESSIBILITY, so we want to make sure to bring this page to the attention of editors. - Dan Dank55 ( send/receive) 03:28, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
WP:Article development has been marked as a style guideline for a while. It seems to me this is a good how-to page, a good page to point people to in See also sections, but it isn't and shouldn't be a guideline. (Look, and you'll see what I mean.) There has been very little activity in the article or on the talk page. - Dan Dank55 ( send/receive) 21:35, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
I have searched but can't find any Wikipedia rules for when and how to indent. Is there a standard procedure? I have been indenting whenever I add to a threaded conversation but have been told that there are certain standards that are to be followed. Perhaps, they are just rules of conduct. I'm not sure. What are the basic principles of Indenting Talk Pages and conversations??? Thanks in advance. -- Buster7 ( talk) 20:14, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
I have a major preference for alternate indenting based purely on chronology:
The splinter threads are very easy to separate from the mainstream. It is a very easy rule to apply, instead of working out whether it is the fifth or sixth indent that is the end, you simply alternate one indented and one not indented. Furthermore, indents are less accessible to reading Wikipedia on small screens - yes, there are increasing numbers of people that do this e.g. PDA and phones. I recommend people at least consider alternating indents. Lightmouse ( talk) 16:51, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
On articles related to mostly Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic topics, I've noticed almost every term, mostly proper nouns has the non-Latin spelling. For example, see List of rivers of China. Are the such scripts really necessary outside the main article or is this an excess? I personally feel this is an excess, and should be curbed as it lends little value to a reader on non topical pages. =Nichalp «Talk»= 07:38, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
The native-script names of things should be present, once, in their own article, for accurate naming, for comprehensiveness, and to assist with search. It may also be useful to have them in stand-alone lists—this also has the benefit of showing the names of things whose articles are red-linked.
But articles' text should be written for the English-language reader, and not cluttered with foreign script which the reader cannot be expected to comprehend. Normal words and names should be translated to English. Foreign names should be romanized for accessibility, and even in linguistics articles romanized transcriptions are preferable to foreign script where they are suitable to convey the point. — Michael Z. 2008-08-31 05:47 z
Take a look at Cao Cao. Is it necessary to have all names, titles and places with the Chinese equivalents? Take Literature in the Hoysala Empire on the other hand. Kannada is not used anywhere in the article as local equivalents for names or places. =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:36, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
Hey, why don't we remove all mathematical equations and chemical reactions schemes as well, as not all of our readers can decipher them. Judo, kayak and a few tens of thousands of other articles should be deleted for not having English titles. We'll have to remove all the photos at breast because I can't look at them at work (after all, pornography by region is work-safe once you scroll past the title) Come to think of it, maybe we should give up trying to write an encyclopedia at all, as it poses accessibility problems for the ignorant. English Wikipedia should be restricted to the Wikipedia and Wikipedia talk namespaces, and non-Latin scripts have no place on it! Physchim62 (talk) 10:33, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
Regards, =Nichalp «Talk»= 10:40, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
Some (minor) issues:
-- Curtis Clark ( talk) 16:33, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
All the suggested wordings sound too over-specified and micro-managing to me. There will be many specialized and unanticipated cases, which would be made vulnerable to lawyering by such a detailed and absolute edict.
I think the guideline should present a general goal, and allow editors to use their own judgment in how and when to implement it. — Michael Z. 2008-09-02 16:03 z
Template:NBA Awards is a navigational template that is placed vertically on article pages, down the right hand side. Template talk:NBA Awards#Alternate template gives a design for the same template using {{ navbox}}. The creator of the original (in use) template said, "I like the current version better because people can click on the links at the top of the page". A discussion ensued, and I said "WP:NAVBOXES should be at the bottom of the page, not in the lead."
I was then asked to return to the talk page and comment once again. I did:
This template appears in the lead section of NBA All-Star Game Most Valuable Player Award. It links to NBA Coach of the Year Award, NBA Rookie of the Year Award and Larry O'Brien Championship Trophy. Those awards are all independent to the All-Star Game Most Valuable Player, even though they are related to each other in the grand scheme of things. Further, the Coach of the Year article does not provide any information that is important to All-Star Game Most Valuable Player article, which doesn't provide any information that is important to the Rookie of the Year Award. That is why my personal preference is to see navboxes at the bottom of articles. Navbox content is not often all that relevant to the content of the articles they appears on. Navboxes usually contain links to related articles and do not provide further understanding of the subjects of the pages they appear on. Lede sections are supposed to be a brief overview or introduction to the rest of the page content. When navboxes appear in the lead, they give the impression that they are contributing to the understanding of the article content, when in fact they do not. They just provide distracting links to other semi-related pages. This is why I don't understand your comment, Chris, "I like the current version better because people can click on the links at the top of the page." Don't you want people to read your article? What if one of the links in the navboxes appears to be more interesting than the page they're currently on?
Anyway, in either format, the template brings together a collection of links of similar articles. It look awkward if the links were all crowbarred into normal prose, and if they weren't in a template they'd all be listed in the " See also" section rather than the Lede section. With that, I've done quite a bit of digging around to find something that can confirm one way or the other.
WP:Lead says Navigation templates may be in the Lede. That page links to WP:BETTER, which says they should go at the very end, as a navigational footer. BETTER links to WP:LAYOUT, which says the lead section may have navboxes, but also that "Various navigational aids go at the end of the article, following the last appendix section."
All those guidelines link to WP:NAVBOX, which says "There are two basic layouts [for Navboxes]: (1.) On the right side of page - for example {{ History of China}}. (2.) Footer boxes - for example {{ Health in the People's Republic of China}} designed to appear at the bottom of each article." It goes on to say, "For footer boxes, {{ Navbox}} is the standard. Existing hard-coded collapsible tables or NavFrames should be converted to {{ Navbox}} if possible. This standardizes the look and to eases future maintenance." This template obviously isn't a collapsible table, and while it isn't coded like a Navframe, it does appear to be a one, albeit without the collapsible bits. If we look at the code for this template, it begins with "
{| class="navbox"
", if that's the case, it should be a standard navbox. Finally I looked at WP:ACCESS to see how our handicapped readers deal with right-hand column tables. That page also allows this kind of navbox, which it calls a "sidebar", to be present in the lede. WP:MOS incidentally doesn't mention navigational boxes.
So while I don't like it, it seems this template style is allowed. And while it is, I won't oppose any articles or lists at FAC/FLC when they do use it, but I will continue to request that they change it for the reason I gave in my first paragraph.
I then said I would bring the discussion here, because it isn't just this template that does things like this and more discussion is needed. The two I can think of right now are {{ Formula One}} and {{ World Rally Championship}} (which also happen to appear after infoboxes, something one of the style guidelines I linked to above discourages).
My personal preference would be for horizontal navboxes at the end of the article, the reasons given in the first paragraph of my quoted text. Am I justified in this, or am I flogging a dead horse because four style guidelines say its okay? Matthewedwards ( talk • contribs • email) 09:23, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
Both here and at WP:ITALICS, we're saying nothing about the fact that linked words and phrases are less likely to be italicized; we used to. Linked words and phrases on Wikipedia, in mature and not-so-mature articles, tend not to be italicized to point out that they are words used as words, or foreign words, or for emphasis. Not never, but a whole lot less often. I was just doing a review at FAC where the reviewer insisted a linked word should be italicized, and WP:MOS and WP:ITALICS give no wiggle room at all on this; shouldn't they? - Dan Dank55 ( send/receive) 02:33, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
The MoS says: "Do not place left-aligned images directly below subsection-level (=== or greater) headings, as this disconnects the heading from the text it precedes."
What would be the recommendations for the format of a page such as Moorcroft, which appears to suffer from two instances of left image below heading? Anyone care to reformat as a tutorial? -- Tagishsimon (talk) 21:41, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
To actually say dont put up blank lines by typing blank lines is.............mmmm Lets not discuss the content of what was written , lets discuss how its written , but the actual content, topic, the message, or perhaps the truth of what was actually said, or its just not your idea of personal beleif. Regardless of all that , the original topic was never addressed. Only the format? Makes no sence. We are carbon copy in DNA design, but thank heaven we are not carbon copy in the minds. Sencyman ( talk) 06:38, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
I can't seem to find a definitive answer to this. How should birth vs. stage names be handled in the intro? I've seen many ways of doing this:
or
I prefer the first set, as they match it up better to the title of the article, but so often I've seen people change it to the latter without explaining why. I also think that the first set is much easier in cases where the stage and birth names are quite different. However, I've yet to find anything in the MoS that suggests either way. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • ( Broken clamshells • Otter chirps • HELP) 00:21, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
is smoother writing than the parentheses. As long as all common names, including the off-stage name, are in the first paragraph and visible through bolding, it really doesn't matter. For comparison, many articles about non-English speaking people begin with the local form of the name, like Horace, which begins "Quintus Horatius Flaccus ([dates]), commonly known as Horace...". Some of them even omit the English form of the name, because it is the title. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:18, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
It is not necessary to bring talk pages to publishing standards, so there is no need to correct typing errors, grammar, etc. It tends to irritate the users whose comments you are correcting. Do not strike out the comments of other editors without their permission.
Never edit someone's words to change their meaning, even on your own talk page. Editing others' comments is sometimes allowed, but you should exercise caution in doing so. Some examples of appropriately editing others' comments:
- If you have their permission
This is copy paste from the talk page guidelines , do not complain about the spaces.
And unless you have permission to change this page. Then please dont do so. Sencyman ( talk) 07:13, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
Many of you will know of the activities of Lightbot. It has touched over 140,000 articles with edits relating to dates and units. I've made a new request for bot approval that is largely a clarification/extension of two previous approvals and has wording that should be easier to understand. The bot approvals group is not necessarily aware of what Lightbot does so I would be grateful if you could add a few words in support at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Lightbot 3. I would also be happy to answer any questions here or on my talk page. Regards Lightmouse ( talk) 01:43, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
There are several sections here which represent sections on other pages, particularly MOSNUM. There are three ways to deal with such sections:
Comments? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 13:35, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
Transclusions are an interesting approach, yes, a little confusing for those unfamiliar with templates but the benefits may outweigh the costs. However, instead of the third page, why not just transclude MOSNUM onto MOS? I don't mean just transclude MOSNUM onto MOS as is. Using <noinclude></noinclude>
and <includeonly></includeonly>
tags we could easily create two versions of MOSNUM at the one location. For example:
<noinclude> ===Date autoformatting===<!--This section is linked from [[Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context]]--> {{shortcut|MOS:UNLINKYEARS|MOS:UNLINKDATES|MOS:SYL}} {{main|Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/Date autoformatting}}</noinclude><includeonly> ;Date autoformatting</includeonly> The linking of dates purely for the purpose of autoformatting is now [[deprecation|deprecated]].<noinclude><ref>This important change was made on August 24, 2008, on the basis of [[Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/Archive_D6#Again_calling_for_date_linking_to_be_deprecated|this archived discussion]]; a current proposal is [[Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#A_fresh_start_on_DA|here]].</ref></noinclude> The use of these tools has several disadvantages: # The feature can only be seen by registered editors<noinclude>, who are a small minority of Wikipedia’s readership, and even then only if they have configured their date preferences ('''My preferences → Date and time → Date format''')</noinclude>. # The resulting links are normally to lists of historical trivia which have little or nothing to do with the subject of the article.<noinclude> The use of these formatting tools therefore tends to produce [[Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context|overlinked]] articles.</noinclude> #<noinclude>Expressing a date as YYYY-MM-DD may imply that it is in the [[ISO 8601]] standard and so that it is Gregorian. It is undesirable to express dates before the acceptance of the Gregorian calendar in this format. Conventionally formatted dates from that era will normally be in Julian. Wikilinking such dates will cause them to be autoformatted into ISO 8601 for some users, which would constitute a false assertion they are Gregorian. Therefore such dates should never be linked.</noinclude><includeonly>For some users autoformatting produces [[ISO 8601]] dates which are only appropriate for the Gregorian calendar. Thus non-Gregorian dates should not be linked.</includeonly> #The syntax of dates differs from format to format<noinclude>: the American format should be followed by a comma when the syntax of the sentence as a whole would not otherwise require punctuation; the International format should not be</noinclude>. The functions provided by these tools nonetheless remain available; their function is described at [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/Date autoformatting|Date autoformatting]].
I'm sure you can figure out what's going on ... yeah? If you can't it's probably not a great idea after all. JIMp talk· cont 17:19, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
Is something like this ( Wikipedia:Lead section TT text) what you are talking about? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 21:38, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
I think Jimp's got it down. Transclude the mosnum with no the includes in the MOSNUM. This could and should be applied to all the the MOS section possible. Headbomb { ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 22:20, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
Transclusion adds another layer of technical complication, more watchlist items, and makes it unclear where a guideline is to be discussed.
Detailed text plus summary elsewhere makes the most sense. This makes use of the time-honoured technique of writing to get the idea across. The relationship can be made clear with a link, and perhaps a hidden comment that the summary should reflect the main text. — Michael Z. 2008-09-09 19:27 z
Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as part of the manual of style . This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 18:52, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
I read the guidance on ampersands in running prose, but in practice I see & most frequently in notes and references. Which of the following is correct in a note?
Which of the following is correct in a full reference?
I just wondered, since neither the ampersand nor citation guidance seemed to help jimfbleak ( talk) 15:16, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
See Date format resolution attempt. Some of the proposed solutions would entail significantly re-doing WP:ENGVAR. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:51, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
This discussion has raised a few questions as regards the MoS's applicability. To what extent do we allow individual WikiProjects to make style guidelines that run against the general MoS? Does consensus for this have to be expressed explicitly in discussion on the project talkpage, or as is being argued here is consensus expressed in the current state of the articles? What if articles are members of multiple projects? Does a tag claiming articles for a particular project suffice, or do we actually expect input on those article in the name of the project?
I have my own answers to these questions, but I'm interested in the wider views of MoS contributors. You may also like to contribute to the original discussion [[ here too. Knepflerle ( talk) 15:30, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
As far as I can see, only one person at WikiProject_Tennis is asking for an exception. The exception to MOS compliance is defended on the basis of preserving the 'status quo' and 'pre-existing consensus'. The many date defects and inconsistencies are defended on the basis that the articles are 'work-in-progress'. Those are two opposing philosophies. Sounds like ownership to me. Lightmouse ( talk) 16:08, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
[1] - that summarises the interpretation of the MoS that is being put forward. Knepflerle ( talk) 23:43, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
I have no comment on the tennis dispute, but there is at least one naming convention that was created by a project, essentially with ArbCom approval (as it stopped the events that led to an arbitration case; see Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Highways#Controversial moves): Wikipedia:Manual of Style (U.S. state and territory highways). -- NE2 01:43, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
The heavy-handidness of the bots and people implementing the Manual of Style guidelines is the most shocking thing. There was no prior notice on the tennis project. There was no discussion. Lightbot came along and did its robotic thing, changing articles one-by-one without any opportunity for discussion and so quickly that no human could keep up. When I told Lightbot to stop and attempted to protect the preexisting consensus just so a discussion could occur, Lightbot was turned back on within 30 minutes and I was attacked and threatened by various editors who, as far as I could tell, have never before edited a tennis article, much less had over 10,000 edits in that area like myself. Not only were years unlinked summarily, but month-date-years were unlinked. And then some of these same editors went ahead and changed other things that also are supported by overwhelming consensus for tennis articles. Look, as I have said about 10 times already in various ways, I am opposed to some of that consensus. But I respect it until it is changed. And I believe everyone else should give it a similar respect. Like it or not, there is overwhelming precedent for exceptions to be made to general purpose guidelines and policies. (And like it or not, the Manual of Style is just a guideline.) The one that comes most readily to my mind is honoring the clear consensus to ignore the plain and specific guidelines of WP:UE concerning the naming of articles. See, generally, this discussion. So long as that precedent exists (and possibly many others), there should not be any robotic or unannounced application of the Manual of Style in violation of the preexisting consensus until (and unless) that consensus changes. And don't talk about my motives here without knowing anything about them. You guys should take me at my word and WP:AGF. OK? Tennis expert ( talk) 17:45, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
The weird page at Wikipedia:Logical quotation is a prime candidate for an immediate merge. It is written like a stub article, but tagged as an essay. It is quite short, and the language in it is better on its microtopic than the wording presently in WP:MOS#Quotation marks. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:30, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
How do you properly spell the plural of Kennedy?
Kennedys; Kennedies; or Kennedy's? I tend to use the first spelling but someone corrected it to the latter, although it was not used in a possessive context. Fvlcrvm ( talk) 15:30, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. I thought so too. Fvlcrvm ( talk) 16:06, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
Do we have a guideline on this? I couldn't find one.
vs
Ilkali ( talk) 18:25, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
Yet another style guideline lurking around outside the MOS. Should be merged in here, and simply summarized and cross-referenced from WP:Footnotes. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:47, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
Is there any maximum length a quotation may be before it starts to infringe on copyright? I have looked around for a wikipedia policy on this but can not find one in MoS. Perhaps somewhere there is a copyright page on this that someone can point out to me. Also, are there guidelines on how much of an article can be devoted to quotes? At what point can one say that there are too many quotes in the article. Thanks, — Mattisse ( Talk) 17:19, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
I'm okay with the British spelling of words in an international article such as 2008 South Ossetia war but I do have a question. I don't know if it's still in this group of articles or not, but there was a sentence that said something to the effect that "The United States Embassy organised an evacuation of it citizens....." I changed it to "organized" under the justification that the United States does not "organise" an evacuation but does "organize" one. A US embassy would truly not ever "organise" anything, but it would "organize" something. I only changed the variety because the entire sentence involved the actions of the United States Embassy. This situation was not mentioned in the MoS, and goes against the "Consistency within the article" section. But I felt it was the right spelling for the above mentioned reasons. Would anyone please comment on this. I feel this is a legitimate situation which is not covered in the MoS. Jason3777 ( talk) 21:52, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
I just wanted some feedback. I majored in English Literture in the US and got points deducted if I used British spelling on exams even if it was a course on British writers. Just wanted to know what the deal was. And I do know the difference between it, its and it's. (Come on it was a typo). I was just asking a question on a talk page. If you see I do this on an article page, please correct it. I'd do it for you. Jason3777 ( talk) 02:32, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
I think it's clear that the language variety should be consistent within the article and not vary depending on the topic of a particular sentence. But on "-ize/-ise" specifically, is it not true that the "-ize" forms are acceptable also in British English (and possibly all other Englishes)? (See American and British English spelling differences#-ise, -ize.) That being the case, there seems to be no reason for us not to use -ize everywhere.-- Kotniski ( talk) 07:24, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
Y'all, I can write British and I have no problem doing it unless it is an American article. I just wanted to know what form of spelling to use in the international articles. It's weird; why do I find myself always stepping into a "hornet's nest"? Jason3777 ( talk) 08:57, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
Is it not obvious after only a few lines what the ENGVAR is without pointing it out. One of the great things about English is how open it is, so that people can come up with new spellings and new words, (although I hope ENGVAR does not last). Free expression is what matters. -- Alphasierra ( talk) 23:52, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Transclude text ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as part of the Manual of Style. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 18:52, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
That sounds so much nicer than "chores to do", doesn't it? Wikiprojects have been invited to list pages between now and October 20 that may need light spelling and grammar copyediting at Wikipedia_talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Copyediting. Editors who have listed their pages might be appreciative, because these pages will be going on the (not widely distributed) WP 0.7 DVD. Do one or twenty; there's no sign-up sheet and no obligation. I don't mean to pull anyone away from other duties; this is less strenuous work, for when your brain needs a rest. - Dan Dank55 ( send/receive) 22:00, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
I hope this is the right place to bring this up, but I've discovered the same individual's article has been created twice at Rod O'Loan and Rod O’Loan. Before I merge them I was wondering if Wikipedia had an agreed-to stance when it comes to apostrophes in surnames. After scanning this article I didn't spot anything about it. Cheers.-- Jeff79 ( talk) 04:56, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
How do u get that box on the right that says styles and formatting??? Rayman 1110 ( talk) 03:16, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
Right now, under the non-breaking space section, we recommend using non-breaking spaces in front of en dashes. Personally, I think this recommendation needs to be removed for several reasons:
Kaldari ( talk) 16:31, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
Agree, too. Unicode nbsp's (typed option-space on the Mac) before en-dashes actually work nicely, but some stupid web browsers silently convert them to plain spaces during edits, so there's not much point in entering them. They're going to end up not wrapping correctly anyway, so it's best just to stick to single em dashes instead of typing space-en dash-space with little benefit. And it's far worse to clutter ordinary sentences with extra markup in the wikitext. — Michael Z. 2008-09-16 23:06 z
The document title is currently
Should this actually, according to the MOS, contain an m-dash or an n-dash instead of a hyphen? Just curious. — CharlotteWebb 16:49, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
—
) cause problems with search engine optimization and title guidelines?—I doubt it, but developers and interested parties may want to see
[6].
Sswonk (
talk)
15:42, 19 September 2008 (UTC)Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Guidelines ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as part of the Manual of Style. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 18:52, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
Is your "parent-instructor" example consistent with your own rule that en dashes should be used " ... for marking a relationship involving independent elements in certain compound expressions (Canada–US border, ... "? I've been changing similar expressions to en dashes, but perhaps I still don't get it. Art LaPella ( talk) 17:40, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Macedonia-related articles) ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as part of the Manual of Style. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 18:52, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
I could not disagree more with the current MOS policy on punctuation inside/outside quote marks and directed/non-directed (curly/straight) quote marks, and would like to vote that the policy be changed.
Commas and periods should always go inside quote marks, regardless of whether they are part of the material being quoted or not. While doing it the other way may seem more “logical,” it is nevertheless typographically incorrect, and looks messy.
Also, directed (curly) quotes should at least be allowed, if not recommended. Again, they look neater, and they’re the professional typographical standard. We want Wikipedia to look clean and professional. Felicity4711 ( talk) 23:50, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
Dmyersturnbull ( talk) 22:27, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
While I won't take sides on where to put the period, I'd like to point out that every usage of quotation marks here has been incorrect. There's no reason to put them around logical or correct at all. Reywas92 Talk 21:08, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
I'm tempted to slap a {{ Resolved}} on this, as perennial rehash. This non-issue has been beaten to death again and again and again. WP uses logical quotation for a reason (namely that it's, well, logical). It is unambiguous, and quotes sources precisely, not questionably. Period. End or story. Please drive through. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont] ‹(-¿-)› 16:32, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Does anyone know why <q> tags are filtered by the Wiki software? They're handy because they delegate the decision over what quote type to use to CSS, so every user can choose whatever they prefer. Ilkali ( talk) 14:15, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
<q>
that would no longer be true. This is the same reason that {{
Frac}} exists (as I recently learned). I have no idea if there is any kind of policy or other statement on percentages. As for your last question, the answer is "lots". Not many in North America or the UK, mind you, but there are many very poor places where many people speak English (Jamaica, Liberia, etc.), and the few that have computers mostly have crappy old ones, with old operating systems, old browsers, and dial-up connections that cost by-the-minute (which is why there are guidelines about article size limits, and why the WP/Commons image system makes small versions of images on the fly, and dosen't just inline the full-size version with <img width="X" height="Y"...>
, etc., etc.) The en.wikipedia is for those people too. PS: I am hardly the only one to criticize W3C for <q>
and various other blatant violations of the separate-content-and-presentation paradigm of the semantic web that linger on in [X]HTML. —
SMcCandlish [
talk] [
cont] ‹(-¿-)›
04:05, 19 August 2008 (UTC)<q>
and various other blatant violations of the separate-content-and-presentation paradigm of the semantic web". What? <q> embodies that paradigm! "This is a quote" is semantic. "This is surrounded by quotation marks" is presentational.
Ilkali (
talk)
08:04, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
<q> is no more appropriate "separation of presentation from content" than would be forgoing full stops in favor a <sentence> tag. -- Random832 ( contribs) 14:37, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
{{
RFCstyle}}
One thing I have noticed is that the manner in which quotes are formatted is sometimes different in the same articles many places here at Wikipedia. Example: Quackwatch. In some articles some of the quotes are indented in the simple and normal ":" or "*" manners, while others are indented and formatted using the <blockquote> or {{quote}} template formats.
This is an unfortunate way in which editorial POV can creep into an article. An editor can insert a quote and make it more noticeable than other quotes. Either positive or critical quotes can end up getting highlighted! It may even happen with no greater ulterior motive than personal preference for a certain method of formatting, but the results are still not right. I think all quotes should use the simple wiki markup ":" or "*" methods of indenting, unless there is some special reason not related to editorial POV for doing otherwise. It isn't proper to highlight some quotes in big quote boxes, while others are kept more obscure, sometimes even hidden as part of the inline text, even though the quotes are several lines long. MOS allows both methods, but I find it to be misused at times, and would rather avoid making POV differences.
I have undone such formatting (the last two methods) in several places where I have found it.
Proposal. I would like to see our MOS guidelines modified to ensure that POV-style quoting formats aren't used anymore, at least in controversial articles. In other places it is very appropriate to use nice quote boxes. My main point is that POV-driven use of quote formatting be forbidden.-- Fyslee / talk 04:56, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
I asked this at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (capital letters) but haven't received a reply. I figure this is a more watched place, so I bring it here.
Most text which appears in comics is written upper case. When I've quoted this, I tend to place it in sentence case as appropriate. Sometimes certain parts of the text is in bold, for emphasis. Would we still embolden it, or instead italicise for emphasis? Hiding T 10:47, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Also, what about sound effects. I read a review of a collection the other day which made a good and useful point about sound effects being examples of Onomatopoeia. Would we still reduce those to sentence case? I'm thinking of KRA-KOW and the like. Admittedly it would be nicer to excerpt the actual art containing the lettering to better illustrate any such point, but where that's not possible it would be good to get some guidance. Hiding T 10:51, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Currently Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Quotations reads "Block quotations A long quote (more than four lines, or consisting of more than one paragraph, regardless of number of lines) is formatted as a block quotation, which Wikimedia's software will indent from both margins." The problem as I see it is that "four lines" is really system and browser dependent - I recently switched computers and things that were four lines on my old system are now only two or three lines. Would it make sense to express this as a number of characters (preferred) or to specify a screen resolution? Thanks, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 04:37, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
←Last discussion was Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_101#Block_quotes:_four_lines_or_four_sentences.3F. In the section #Punctuation inside/outside quotation marks below, you see a lot of short sentences that look like blockquotes; that wouldn't look good in an article. On the other hand, 150-character blockquotes are not uncommon in U.S. magazines and journals, if there's a reason to draw special attention to the quote. I don't have any particular talent in layout, but if nothing else is creating whitespace in the vicinity, I don't see the problem with this, and it doesn't seem to me to violate the look-and-feel of mature WP articles. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 13:22, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Pardon me for bringing up something you've no doubt covered before. Here's a quote from MoS at present: "Punctuation marks are placed inside the quotation marks only if the sense of the punctuation is part of the quotation". Up till very recently I took this to mean: "only put the punctuation inside the quotation marks if it would be nonsensical to have it outside, ok?" But now I examine the examples given, I reach the conclusion that the punctuation should be outside the quotation marks only if "a clause or phase is quoted", but "If a whole sentence is quoted then the fullstop should be inside the quotation marks." This means that a perfectly innocuous passage of text could have a visually inconsistent appearance. Firstly, can I double-check that this is what is intended by the rule? (The wording as it is at the moment has confused at least one person!) Secondly, it would be good if someone could reword that sentence to remove the touch of ambiguity. Thank you! almost- instinct 22:33, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
I took this to imply that fullstops shold be always outside the the quotation marks, whether the quote was a phrase or a sentence. So, since reading that, every time I've tidied up a page I changed something that looks thus:Punctuation marks are placed inside the quotation marks only if the sense of the punctuation is part of the quotation
to something like this:Many people agree that "people who tidy punctuation in wikipedia articles need to get out more." [1]
If this was wrong, then I've an awful lot of clearing up to do. Yours, crestfallen, almost- instinct 22:58, 23 August 2008 (UTC)Most people think that "spending hours fiddling around with punctuation—and then getting it wrong—is truly tragic". [2]
D part of WP:BRD: So what are the substantive objections to the edits I made to this section and which were reverted? — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont] ‹(-¿-)› 14:42, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
I'm not seeing discussion for this, did I miss it? "Use {{ " '}} ... Do not use plain or non-breaking space ( ) characters, as this corrupts the semantic integrity of the article by mixing content and presentation." I've never seen {{ " '}} before this. - Dan Dank55 ( send/receive) 12:44, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
which is simply semantically wrong. —
SMcCandlish [
talk] [
cont] ‹(-¿-)›
03:09, 29 August 2008 (UTC)Well, so it's a poor article; the concept of the separation of semantic content and presentational display dates all the way back to CSS Level 1 (well, pre-dates that, since CSS 1 was created to address that issue). Who is "they", using thin spaces? If you mean the templates, no they don't; all you have to do is read the template source code. Falsifying or mangling content "a little bit" is still falsifying or mangling content. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:09, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
{{' "}}
is only 7 characters, while ' "
is eight, and requires at least basic understanding of HTML character entities codes (e.g. knowledge that the "&" and the ";" are mandatory, etc.), while the template only requires knowing basic template syntax, which far more WP editors know than know HTML character entity encoding. Basically, if something can be done with a template it should be if the template is simpler than the alternative, which is clearly the case here. We could have unique CSS classes (in templates probably) for titles instead of plain italics, and so on; I'm kind of surprised that we don't already. I have noted increased deployment of CSS classes all over WP, so maybe that is already in the pipe. And if you look at the rendered source as delivered to the browser (after translation by MediaWiki from wiki markup), you'll see that the italicization is in fact done with CSS, not with HTML 4's deprecated <i> element, and this is of course as it should be; we seem to be on the path to better semantic handling already, and I've also noticed people implementing more and more microformats, which are seriously semantic, so it's not like no one around here is thinking about this sort of thing. Anyway, the point is that just because WP is not 100% perfect in semantic and non-presentation-clouded content markup doesn't mean that the idea isn't part of WP's goals, nor that we should not seek to improve WP in this direction. If that were the case, WP would be using table-based layouts, the <font> tag, etc. (The font tag works in wikicode, but is actually translated on-the-fly into a span with CSS; MediaWiki does lots of stuff like that, and sends validatable code to the user agent). —
SMcCandlish [
talk] [
cont] ‹(-¿-)›
03:09, 29 August 2008 (UTC)I apologize for the assumption that everyone would just automatically "get" this; I sometimes forget that some people are not web development geeks for whom this sort of thing is old hat.
The templates are pretty self-documenting.
Background: Read cascading style sheets and do an advanced Google search on mandatory terms "content", "presentation" and either/or terms "separate", "separation", for in-depth background info on the electronic design and information architecture philosophy surrounding this.
The short version is that the strings "'"
and " ' "
are not the same. Meanwhile, the strings "'"
and {{" ' "}}
are in fact the same in rendered content (copy-paste them into a plain-text editor, you'll see); the latter is simply kerned to be more readable on Wikipedia, in a way that does not affect the underlying content in any way.
We should not falsify the content (especially not quoted content!) just for a visual typographic/legibility effect, but that is what trying to improve the visual display with
does. We also should not reduce the content to ungrammatical gibberish just for a visual effect, either, but that's what we've been advising that editors do. No style guide on the planet would approve of ending a nested quotation with ...foo.' "
We should really, really not do this if there is an alternative that doesn't raise these problems, but provides the same visual improvement sought.
Please note that this is not the same as the recommendation to use non-breaking spaces between unit amounts and their symbols (23 cm
) – a space does belong there, meanwhile using a non-breaking one serves our purposes and does nothing nefarious to the content.
There may have been some confusion that the change to recommending the template has something to do with a defect in the display of the
version; this isn't he case (indeed, the templates' goal is that they look identical). So, no one is going to get out a micrometer; this isn't about what it looks like, or what editors will do to figure something out, but about what the content actually says. Wikipedia consists of content that is open and may be repurposed in any way anyone wants, in any format, including monospaced formats, or pre-kerned environments, where anything like " ' "
will look totally retarded (as well as simply be grammatically incorrect nonsense). The unconstrained reusability of WP content (with credit) is part of the very core of WP's design and purpose (even if more abstraction of content semantics would be a good thing, like the bold subject in leads, and italicized book titles stuff mentioned earlier).
Another way of putting it: It is the very fact that
means what it means that is the problem here (but a non-problem with unit spacing and other uses). It inserts an actual extraneous character into the content in this case, instead of only visually kerning things to be more readable. It doesn't have anything at all to do with whether or not
is displayed properly - I'm unaware of any browser that does not display " '
and " '
(i.e. a normal space-bar space) identically. Not related to the issue addressed by the change. It may help to actually look at the code of the templates; you'll see that there is no space (in the content) between the quotation mark characters; instead there are CSS directives saying to pad this character or that a little to the left or right for display purposes only; if the content is copy pasted, it is copy pasted as "'"
(or whatever, depending on the template in question), not " ' "
. The character entity, by contrast, is a real character, just like "Q" or "9" or "₤", in, and altering, the content.
By doing the visual spacing with CSS instead of the insertion of extraneous space characters, we preserve the integrity of the content, and different presentation/rendering environments with no CSS support or different, custom CSS, will do things their way correctly without mangling the content, or being mangled by the incorrect content. We need to do this spacing with CSS instead of extraneous space characters for the same reason that we use CSS positioning for page layout, instead of 1996-style abuse of tables, use CSS to do font effects like sizing and boldfacing instead of deprecated HTML markup for these purposes (<font> tags, etc.), and so on.
By way of comparison, someone who liked the cute little ½, ¼, ¾, etc., Unicode characters (the 9 fraction characters in Unicode, which in many fonts don't even display consistently with each other, but that doesn't really affect the hypothetical here) could cleverly create tiny images for missing ones like "4/5", "9/10", "7/16", etc. that in theory look exactly consistent with the real Unicode characters (for users who have not customized Wikipedia's diplay by changing to another font), with the intent that they be used in-line in articles because (to this person) it visually looks better than the output of {{ Frac}}. We wouldn't use them, because they falsify the content, not to mention it would be an accessibility problem.
Finally, the Internet, and Wikipedia, and computers are not perfect yet, if they ever will be. WP seems to get along just fine with a lot of arcana (non-techie editor complaints at
WP:VPT aside). At very least, most editors recognize that {{something}}
means "this is a template, and if I go to the template page there almost certainly will be documentation", which is something they can't get for
. Anyway, the problems (the issue these templates solve, and some editors being unhappy with templates in WP) are not really related. One is about doing this proper thing for the encyclopedia's content, and the other is about making things easy for editors put off by markup they are unfamiliar with. It isn't expected that the average editor will make use of these templates, in the first place, just as they do not bother to do 23 cm
instead of 23 cm
despite what MOSNUM says; rather, others who do bother to pay attention to MOS will fix it later (or their bots will), so it isn't really an editor burden at all (even if ' "
were actually easier than the shorter and more symmetrical {{' "}}
, which it isn't). There are probably at least 50 nitpicky things like this in MOS and its subpages; one more won't kill anyone. :-)
Hope that 'splains it better.
PS: Elsewhere, Dank55 pointed out that ultimately we should ask the developers to fix this. A dev fix shouldn't be hard, even in PHP, Python, Ruby or ASP (I have no idea what the MediaWiki software is actually written in). You'd just tell it (in pseudo-code, here):
If character string ("'"), then new character string ("<span style="padding-left: 2em; padding-right: 2em;">'</span>")
and move on to the next test, for ("')
, or ('")
or whatever. Pretty trivial, really. If that were implemented, no one would manually ever have to do anything at all with regard to quotation mark spacing. If there were some weird case where it was desired that these characters butt up against each other, any number of tricks would work, as long as the string in the wikicode was broken in a way that did not rendered visually, e.g. ("<span />')
— SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:34, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
'"
I've already explained that this is what we expect the average editor to do anyway, just as we expect that editor to write 23 cm
not 23 cm
, but we recommend the latter directly in order to forestall reversions by people who don't understand the change to a non-breaking space character in MOS-noncompliant prose they just wrote. I don't see that anything is gained by just mentioning a template instead of recommending its use (we mention {{
Sic}} specifically, etc.). That said, my principal issue here is getting rid of the recommendation to insert extraneous
entities. My only concern is that simply mentioning the templates will be wishy-washy. Guidelines should generally offer affirmative guidance, not "maybe do this, maybe do that, whatever". —
SMcCandlish [
talk] [
cont] ‹(-¿-)›
16:21, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
"'"
, as would be natural."'"
, we should make clear that it's his choice. Not everybody will find "'" as unsightly as S McCandlish does. Some will find the appearance of an added space undesirable. We should not simply waltz in, change things, and overrule protests with "MOS says so", we should follow
WP:BRD and that includes real discussion."'"
and " ' "
are not the same content. B) "'"
and "<span style="padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;">'</span>"
are the same content. The end. I gave a positive reason for using the templates: It achieves the desired result without violating the integrity of the content. It still says that, just differently, so I'm happy. I don't think it follows that we should "make it clear" that it's the editor's choice. Everything not subject to actual WP Policy is the editor's choice, so we need not state the obvious, and using wishy-washy language in guidelines reduces their ability to effectively guide. We shouldn't do this unless the topic in question is a matter of something close to a 50/50 split between editors' preferences for one option or the other. But the present language seems okay."'"
is pretty close to illegible when rendered was made quite some time ago, and the desire to visually space them just a hair for readability has gone unchallenged since before I took my months-long wikibreak. There is no dispute that has been raised with regard to it other than right here, but we seem to be discussing the language of the recommendation, not whether the recommendation should never have been made in the first place. If some editors do find the appearance of a little more space undesirable, they have been keeping quiet about it, so we needn't bother with trying to account for them (
WP:CREEP,
WP:BROKE,
WP:BEANS, etc.) Also, I wasn't the one that brought up the issue in the first place; it isn't that I find "'"
unsightly, it's that enough editors did to get critical mass to add something about it to MOS, that was well accepted. All I did is fix it to use a solution that isn't grotesque. Whatlinkshere won't be relevant for a while; I created the templates only a few days ago, to provide MOS with a solution to the identified spacing problem that did not cause more harm than it solved. I.e., I am not trying to change consensus, only fix the tech side of the implementation of what consensus said needed to be done."'"
"may" cause visual problems and points to where the templates are without demanding that they be used, so I think your final bullet point is satisfied. I'm okay with the passage, too.I have tweaked the text; the text I found offered the choice required, but I hope this is clearer. Saying that we want the text, character for character, exactly as in the original covers the ground as well as "semantic integrity" and may be more intelligible. Some may still object that the appearance is what matters, and we should not use kerning which looks like extra space either, but they can avoid the templates. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:51, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
spacing which wasn't controversial to begin with, just a poor implementation for reasons not considered at the time). —
SMcCandlish [
talk] [
cont] ‹(-¿-)›
18:39, 29 August 2008 (UTC)I think it’s a sad decision to encourage straight quotes. They are explicitly discouraged by the Unicode standard. Plus, curly quotes are easy to type on a US-international keyboard (with deadkeys): Alt+9 = ‘, Alt+0 = ’, Alt+Shift+[ = “, Alt+Shift+] = ”. Let the world move forward. H. ( talk) 12:11, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
(To both above:) http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2000.pdf contains:
and http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0000.pdf contains:
and
It says ‘in English’, but this is valid in a lot of languages. H. ( talk) 11:57, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
(outdent)I am sending this back to the left margin because there are a few conversations going on and I am attempting to answer two points well indented in separated parts of the thread.
First, yes Mac has been Unix based since the beginning of this century but the issue isn't the OS, it's the keyboard. The history of the Mac system is strongly influenced by the adoption of the Macintonsh GUI based system and the laser printer in the mid-eighties and onward as production machines in the printing an publishing industry. These systems were quickly accepted as replacements for large, tempermental and very expensive phototypesetting systems throughout the industry. Thousands of people who produce printed material, whether they be called typesetters, desktop publishers or pre-press artists, learned to key information using the classic Macintosh system, which used - and uses - special keystrokes to produce a large number of glyphs commonly found in printed pieces. These include the symbols for trademark, copyright, section and bullet. This was learned well in advance of the Windows system of using ALT+0XXX to produce non-standard ASCII characters. The base of production people who use the Mac keyboard and can fly through typesetting complicated documents using QuarkXPress or Adobe software is entrenched, so Apple and Adobe can be excused for leaving these keystrokes as they were for 15 years prior to the switch to FreeBSD OS X variations. I know all this WP:OR because I have been working on Macs doing that sort of work for the last twenty years.
Second, and really related to the first comment, is that "curly quotes" in the publishing industry are actually just "quotes" and "apostrophes". They are the typesetting standard, and the "straight quotes" are used only to denote measurement in inches and feet (28" striped bass, 16' pole vault). Those of us in the industry have been known to refer to those characters as "inch marks", and they are often one of the first things a typesetter must repair when importing text from ASCII or word processing sources. So, although I understand that this is very arcane stuff to a great many, and probably completely inaccessible to a vast number of casual editors, the preference of professional graphic artists is to use what is here being called "curly quotes", which is also born out by the Unicode document provided by H. above. Sswonk ( talk) 14:01, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
(there, I used a true ellipsis again) Typographers quotes do look nicer—that’s why they exist. And unless someone has a big-ass monitor running at 640 × 480, I don’t accept that typographers quotes “look good in print but not on a computer monitor”—certainly not with LCD monitors in excess of 100 pixels per inch. So I recommend the following:
In articles that have grown as large as they need to go and are relatively stable, typographers quotes are fine since the number of edits requiring attention to quotes are minimal to none. I’ve seen editors change highly stable articles from typographers to straight (all of them), not because he or she had an edit to make involving a quote—just because MOS said to. Typographers quotes exist because they not only look better, but they help the mind to recognize where a quote is starting and ending; good typography is all about facilitating smooth reading and mental flow. So I would recommend the following bullet point be added to the current policy:
• For mature and stable articles (they are no longer growing nor are in a state of flux), the use of typographers’ quotes and apostrophes is acceptable. Eligible articles should use one style consistently.
And, by the way Sswonk, now that most small-business page layout has gone from the pros at typesetting houses to secretaries pounding away on barbarian computers, the units of time (minutes and seconds) and the plane angle (minutes and seconds) are now often done—improperly—with straight quotes. However, they are properly done with ′, and ″, not ' and ". I forget what the Unicode symbol is for them. I used the Unicode originally but editors eventually come along and replace my hand coding to the resulting character. Greg L ( talk) 20:38, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
I think we need more shades of grey on Wikipedia. Defaulting down to a lowest common denominator of quality is fine when there is a legitimate concern—like ease of editing. In the absence of that reason (where articles are undergoing very little editing), there’s no reason to no longer allow them.
This puts Wikipedia on the slow track towards an increasingly professional product—but only where doing so isn’t needlessly burdensome. Greg L ( talk) 22:26, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
But when you write “I won't cooperate with adding another one to the list.” and then shout about how you will do this and do that to articles if you find something you don’t like, are you suggesting you have some sort of veto power as to what happens on MOS, or that you don’t care how others feel and their views don’t matter? Do you just want others to *feel your power* when you threaten “if I find one, I will expunge every single one of the suckers from the whole article.”? Your style of communicating here is striking. Or was that just unintentional and you are just stating your opinion here?
Sswonk made some valid points, I think, and I was seconding his motion. But rather than simply allow them—even for rapidly growing articles or ones that are in a state of flux—I was suggesting a compromise solution that seemed a win-win. Specifically, I propose a way to improve Wikipedia by the introduction of some flexibility: keep it simpler when articles are new and in a state of flux, and make them look better when they are more mature and stable. Specifically, this:
• For mature and stable articles (they are no longer growing nor are in a state of flux), the use of typographers’ quotes and apostrophes is acceptable. Eligible articles should use one style consistently.
If an edit is made to a mature article, they tend to be—as you pointed out—vandalism (too easy to revert) or minor stuff like grammar corrections. In the rare case where you’ve got a mature article that uses typographers quotes, and the edit introduces straight quotes, that’s perfectly understandable; I suspect there will be one or more shepherding authors who will be more than willing to upgrade them to curlies. The burden of using typographers quotes needn’t be on those who don’t want to deal with them.
The gist of the bullet point I am proposing is that it would sanctify the practice on mature articles. What I mainly would hope to accomplish with this wording is A) allow their use in suitable (stable) articles, and B) prohibit edits to eligible articles that do nothing but convert existing typographers quotes to straight quotes. Like I said before, I’ve seen perfectly stable articles where the only edit is to convert all typographers quotes to straight quotes. The edit wasn’t accompanied by any need to add a single apostrophe or quote; the edits were only to make wholesale conversion to the quote style—no other purpose than that. Those sort of edits are pretty much a testament to the fact that the article was mature enough (no other additions or changes were made), and the whole point was just to dumb the article down per MOS. For mature articles, that sort of editing is wholly unnecessary.
Looking up at my {quotation} of the proposed wording, I’m not seeing anything that *requires* anyone to use typographers quotes; it only permits their use. I see that it does say that articles should “use one style consistently” though, so if you feel wording should be added that takes the onus off those who don’t want to think about it, that’s would be fine with me.
Perhaps wording like this:
• For mature and stable articles (they are no longer growing nor are in a state of flux), the use of typographers’ quotes and apostrophes is acceptable. Eligible articles should use them consistently.
• The burden of adding and upgrading typographers quotes shall lie with those editors of an article who are willing to deal with them, however, editors shall not convert existing typographers quotes to straight quotes in eligible articles.
As for the “benefits v.s. costs” issue you raised, I’ve already pointed out the cost angle of that equation. Whereas you don’t see any benefit, those editors who appreciate fine typography certainly do and using typographer’s quotes in mature articles makes Wikipedia a more professional product. You don’t see the benefit. At least grant me the possibility that those who appreciate fine typography do see a benefit and your view on this issue might not be the definitive and final word on this matter (though your wholesale reversion makes it seem like you do).
Now, you’ve painted a picture of pestilence in your fields and how midwives will weep in your village over this, but it’s clear that this would have no impact on you whatsoever—you don’t have to even think about this issue if you don’t want to; just keep editing as you’ve always done. So please stop reverting text that is a perfectly reasonable compromise. If you don’t like ‘em, don’t use them. Greg L ( talk) 17:24, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
Here’s the full text of the passage in question:
I have to oppose this proposed change (re-change, really; this is rehash, and consensus has not changed). It's not a "don't want to think about it" issue (that's a red herring); it's a "it's not on my keyboard and impedes my ability to edit" thing, among many others, including search results problems and so forth. For every person who searches for a text string with a curly quote/apostrophe in it, there are probably 5000 who search for it without, because really no one is going around intentionally using complicated key combinations or pop-up character utilities to write something like "O'Sullivan" with a curly apostrophe. Curly quotes are nothing but decoration from a WP perspective, and their use is too problemlatic for editors and readers to use the cuteness of them at the expense of everone for whom they are problematic, which is almost everyone. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:00, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
You also seem terribly quick to argue your points by providing links to things like WP:CCC (consensus has not changed): a Johnnie Cochran-esqe “it’s in blue so it must be true.” You behave as if there’s no need to argue the merits because you’ve already proven your point with your links. It doesn’t work that way. Consensus can change (it happens all the time), and a valid and substantive reason has to be put forth to argue against a perfectly reasonable compromise solution.
Sswonk wrote “The author and main promoter of the style guideline, SMcCandlish, is fairly relentless.” The word “tenacious” comes to mind when I think of the tactics you’ve pulled lately. And his perception points to a possible problem here with you: climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spider-Man over every single little thing that doesn’t go entirely your way. I note that you wrote “Curly quotes are nothing but decoration from a WP perspective”. You mean from your perspective. And if you really meant “WP”, then you are equating you and Wikipedia to be one in the same thing in your mind. That’s a problem. A serious problem. So I guess I’ll try a page from your playbook: You’ve got a bit of a WP:OWN problem here on MOS. You don’t own this venue and need to actually listen to what other editors are pushing for and not be so quick to slap everyone down at every turn who has an idea that isn’t perfectly in line with what you want.
Several editors above have stated perfectly valid reasons for using typographers quotes. I can also see that some opponents raised perfectly good objections regarding how dealing with curly quotes is burdensome. My compromise solution solves all that by putting the burden entirely on those who want to use them and would further clearly delineate precisely where they can’t be used. And now your only comeback is only something lame about thoroughly rare intra-article searches involving quotes and apostrophes (an issue that is easily bypassed).
There is a serious problem with the opponents of this: Chris reverted the new guideline and fallaciously claimed that “With your rewording, I now have to go check if the page is at GA before I'm allowed to add apostrophes to it.” He obviously hadn’t even read what he reverted. And then you repeat the same line with your “it's not on my keyboard and impedes my ability to edit”-argument. Again, with my compromise wording, you don’t have to use them. You guys are going to have to do better than this.
Jimbo’s “ Wikipedia:Ignore all rules” isn’t a guideline, it’s an official policy. Many editors have quietly been using typographer’s quotes to improve Wikipedia and have just put up with editors who do nothing more to articles with typographers quotes than make a global change to convert them all. (*exasperation*) Revert the change. It’s time to make peace between these two schools with a guideline that gives them a clearly delineated set of articles where their use is appropriate and doesn’t burden editors one iota if they don’t want to use them. Greg L ( talk) 00:21, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
• The burden of adding and upgrading typographic quotes shall lie only upon those editors who are willing to deal with them. However, editors who don’t want to deal with typographic quotes shall not needlessly convert existing typographers quotes to straight quotes in eligible articles.
As for searches, intra-article searches of terms that have apostrophes and quotes are rare. Many editors who want to look for Johnnie Cochran’s rhymes
will just search on rhymes
. And on those extremely rare occasions where people have an article that mentions both Johnnie Cochran
and rhymes
innumerable times, which makes searching on just one or the other inconvenient (how often is that really going to happen?), copy/paste works just fine—even better—than typing.
One of you guys above argued that copying text from Wikipedia into another application would bring along typographers quotes. What kind of mentality is this? Most every Word doc you will ever receive uses such typography (fine-looking typography). What do you do when you receive Word docs? Cry “ Oh the humanity” and throw up your hands in frustration because funny-looking punctuation has once again darkened your doorstep?
This is all absurd. Lots of editors are using typographers quotes in Wikipedia’s articles, want to continue to do so, and will continue to do so. Let’s adopt a practical policy that makes peace and doesn’t burden you with any duties you don’t want to undertake. Greg L ( talk) 17:11, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
I don't think our guidelines forbid editors to use typographic quotation marks and apostrophes; they merely entitle other editors to change them to the typewriter versions. Personally, I should never edit an article just to do that, but I should probably find something else to correct as well, and it would make for a worthwhile edit. As a matter of fact, I usually only spot them in the edit window. I use Firefox 3, and in normal view the two styles look identical unless the quotes are in bold, italicised, or both. This does not prevent them from being treated differently in search, though—the other way for me to discover them. (For that matter, there is the additional complication with the curly quotation marks in that the opening character is different from the closing one.) I don't know about other browsers, but for me a change of the guideline would be purely negative. And any attempt to introduce limited usage of typographic quotation marks would soon devolve into chaos; many editors would be confused, many would not even be aware of any usage differences, and any distinctions would be pretty much arbitrary anyway. I find that the purported benefits of using curly quotes are insufficient to justify the problems and complexities of its usage, and that anything short of the current arrangement of straight-quotes "monopoly" has a discernible headache-inducing potential. Waltham, The Duke of 13:22, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
Obviously, typographers quotes look better than typewriter quotes. So dumbing down Wikipedia to a lowest common denominator at all times isn’t wise. We can’t have an attitude of “there are Morlocks who edit too, so to have consistent looking caves, all Eloy will have to act like Morlocks at all times”. If advocates of typographers quotes want to use them, their use should be limited to suitable articles, and they should shoulder the burden of their use. Similarly, all that would be asked of editors who don’t want to use them is that if the article is a largely stable and mature one, they should simply don’t worry about it: If they have to add a quote, do so using straight quotes if you like—just leave the rest of the curly quotes not directly involved with our edit alone. Greg L ( talk) 17:05, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
In fact, the genesis of the problem is more basic than that. The simple fact is that there are many editors who do use typographers quotes (making Wikipedia a better product in most cases) but dealing with typographers quotes is cumbersome for many others. The solution: limit the use of typographers quotes to mature articles that undergo few if any edits dealing with quotes. And even for these eligible articles, don’t require that editors use typographers quotes if they aren’t comfortable with them; put the burden on the proponents who don’t mind dealing with them. It’s a simple, compromise solution that addresses the major concerns of both camps and is a much better guideline than the current one, which is lopsided and obtuse.
This long-standing friction over the use of curly quotes on Wikipedia is clear evidence that the current guideline isn’t satisfactorily addressing the issue. It’s time for editors who have bullied their way into an WP:OWN relationship with MOS and imposed their highly polarized values into its guidelines to lighten up a tad and actually permit others to try out a different approach. Sometimes a scalpel works better than a sledgehammer. Greg L ( talk) 05:45, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
[Outdent; this is really in response to two threads at two different indentation levels by same party, and really more of a meta-point anyway.] Greg L, please actually absorb Wikipedia:Tendentious editing if you're going to cite it. (I spelled that guideline name out fully for you lest I be accused of being Cochrane-esque for abbreviating again.) Let's look at it in particular detail. WP:TE#Characteristics of problem editors on signs that one is being tendentious:
Look all that over and think about it. There is not a single point at WP:TE that you haven't run afoul of lately, sometimes in spirit (which is what counts, after all) and in many cases completely and literally.
Another way of looking at this: What do you think you are accomplishing here? I got pissy with MOS editors when I first arrived here too. Got me nowhere. I started addressing their concerns, and raising mine without denigrating them as control-freaks and idiots, and actually looking at and trying to understand the rationales for things that I didn't immediately personally like, and guess what? We come to compromise pretty often. Try it. Play ball instead of trying to light the ballpark on fire. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:08, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
You know, it really looks like you think both MOSNUM and MOS are your private domains. Sswonk observed “The author and main promoter of the style guideline, SMcCandlish, is fairly relentless.” Any objective look at the 500-edit history in August would lead most to conclude you are indeed quite active here. Human nature being what it is, that might explain your quick tendency towards being territorial here as well as your tendancy to quickly slap down anyone who treads on what you consider to be your turf. Well, it’s not. And until you can present me and the rest of us here with your *I am really, really special* license, you can stop acting like the mayor of MOS. Several editors above have advocated the use of typographers quotes. Your reaction all along has only been to simply dismiss their suggestions out of hand. And this apparent ownership of the current guideline regarding typographers quotes (which has been a less-than-stellar success) seems to underlie you fanatical efforts of guarding it here. I’m clearly seeing a WP:OWN issue with you. So please stop attacking the messenger because you don’t like the message and start listening. Stick to the issues and cease with your laughable, endless rants over how I am somehow responsible for all the pestilence and plagues that have ever befallen Wikipedia and causes your fainting spells or whatever your problem is.
Let’s see if you can raise the level of your arguments beyond a juvenile ‘Greg L is a poopy-head’ and actually address the issue at hand. So far, you have not raised a single substantive reason why editors can’t use typographers quotes in mature articles. You tried “it's not on my keyboard and impedes my ability to edit.” However, that argument lacks that necessary virtue of being remotely grounded in fact. Here’s the proposal:
Also, I have repeatedly asked above for opponents of this proposal to advance a substantive reason to oppose it. Most every opponent cited how having to use typographers quotes when they don’t want to would be a bother. Well, the new guideline clearly says such editors wouldn’t have to. The proponents haven’t advanced a single substantive reason to oppose the use of typographers quotes in eligible articles. And there must be good, substantive reasons; without them, MOS is just being hijacked by a minority fringe with extreme views, who frequent MOS and use it as as a vehicle to impose their personal views, which are dressed up to masquerade as properly deliberated and debated guidelines. Merely showing a willingness to editwar over this isn’t good enough.
After I first posted this (and was reverted), we then spent a week discussing this. We discussed and debated it until it was clear that there was no legitimate reason to not permit their limited and controlled use. If you want MOS to remain silent on the issue, that would be perfectly acceptable. There is no basis for the regulars here continually slapping down every editor who has been coming here with a proposal to use curly quotes. The regulars who frequent MOS and have undo influence aren’t, IMO, doing as good a job as their counterparts on MOSNUM and have got to start listening and show a willingness to compromise. The previous wording (a blanket prohibition), lacks any subtlety on the matter. A nuanced approach that brings order to this is needed. Try it for a while. I think you’ll see that it will finally bring peace to this issue. Greg L ( talk) 19:04, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
Substantial objections have been given. Greg L's judgement to the contrary is wrong. Because Greg L. sees every point he does not agree with as worthless, I'm done arguing with him. We'll just have to see whether his edit to the guideline prevails or not. -- Gerry Ashton ( talk) 19:33, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
code | gives |
---|---|
’ | ’ |
‘ | ‘ |
&rdquo | ” |
“ | “ |
The place for saxon genitive examples like text’s is in the SPELLING section and not here because it is not an example of a quote being used. The difference between an apostrophe and a quote is that an apostrophe is a diacritic mark and a quote is a punctuation mark. I am going to remove all examples using Saxon Genitive from this section because they do not belong here at all. -- Yecril ( talk) 13:47, 30 September 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 100 | Archive 101 | Archive 102 | Archive 103 | Archive 104 | Archive 105 | → | Archive 110 |
Asking again... WP:ACCESSIBILITY is an important page. It's not currently in the style cat or in CAT:GEN, but I would be happy to put it in both, if someone who knows more than I do about images and tables will confirm that it doesn't contradict pages in the style cat or image cat. Sandy often checks articles for compliance with WP:ACCESSIBILITY, so we want to make sure to bring this page to the attention of editors. - Dan Dank55 ( send/receive) 03:28, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
WP:Article development has been marked as a style guideline for a while. It seems to me this is a good how-to page, a good page to point people to in See also sections, but it isn't and shouldn't be a guideline. (Look, and you'll see what I mean.) There has been very little activity in the article or on the talk page. - Dan Dank55 ( send/receive) 21:35, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
I have searched but can't find any Wikipedia rules for when and how to indent. Is there a standard procedure? I have been indenting whenever I add to a threaded conversation but have been told that there are certain standards that are to be followed. Perhaps, they are just rules of conduct. I'm not sure. What are the basic principles of Indenting Talk Pages and conversations??? Thanks in advance. -- Buster7 ( talk) 20:14, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
I have a major preference for alternate indenting based purely on chronology:
The splinter threads are very easy to separate from the mainstream. It is a very easy rule to apply, instead of working out whether it is the fifth or sixth indent that is the end, you simply alternate one indented and one not indented. Furthermore, indents are less accessible to reading Wikipedia on small screens - yes, there are increasing numbers of people that do this e.g. PDA and phones. I recommend people at least consider alternating indents. Lightmouse ( talk) 16:51, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
On articles related to mostly Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic topics, I've noticed almost every term, mostly proper nouns has the non-Latin spelling. For example, see List of rivers of China. Are the such scripts really necessary outside the main article or is this an excess? I personally feel this is an excess, and should be curbed as it lends little value to a reader on non topical pages. =Nichalp «Talk»= 07:38, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
The native-script names of things should be present, once, in their own article, for accurate naming, for comprehensiveness, and to assist with search. It may also be useful to have them in stand-alone lists—this also has the benefit of showing the names of things whose articles are red-linked.
But articles' text should be written for the English-language reader, and not cluttered with foreign script which the reader cannot be expected to comprehend. Normal words and names should be translated to English. Foreign names should be romanized for accessibility, and even in linguistics articles romanized transcriptions are preferable to foreign script where they are suitable to convey the point. — Michael Z. 2008-08-31 05:47 z
Take a look at Cao Cao. Is it necessary to have all names, titles and places with the Chinese equivalents? Take Literature in the Hoysala Empire on the other hand. Kannada is not used anywhere in the article as local equivalents for names or places. =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:36, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
Hey, why don't we remove all mathematical equations and chemical reactions schemes as well, as not all of our readers can decipher them. Judo, kayak and a few tens of thousands of other articles should be deleted for not having English titles. We'll have to remove all the photos at breast because I can't look at them at work (after all, pornography by region is work-safe once you scroll past the title) Come to think of it, maybe we should give up trying to write an encyclopedia at all, as it poses accessibility problems for the ignorant. English Wikipedia should be restricted to the Wikipedia and Wikipedia talk namespaces, and non-Latin scripts have no place on it! Physchim62 (talk) 10:33, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
Regards, =Nichalp «Talk»= 10:40, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
Some (minor) issues:
-- Curtis Clark ( talk) 16:33, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
All the suggested wordings sound too over-specified and micro-managing to me. There will be many specialized and unanticipated cases, which would be made vulnerable to lawyering by such a detailed and absolute edict.
I think the guideline should present a general goal, and allow editors to use their own judgment in how and when to implement it. — Michael Z. 2008-09-02 16:03 z
Template:NBA Awards is a navigational template that is placed vertically on article pages, down the right hand side. Template talk:NBA Awards#Alternate template gives a design for the same template using {{ navbox}}. The creator of the original (in use) template said, "I like the current version better because people can click on the links at the top of the page". A discussion ensued, and I said "WP:NAVBOXES should be at the bottom of the page, not in the lead."
I was then asked to return to the talk page and comment once again. I did:
This template appears in the lead section of NBA All-Star Game Most Valuable Player Award. It links to NBA Coach of the Year Award, NBA Rookie of the Year Award and Larry O'Brien Championship Trophy. Those awards are all independent to the All-Star Game Most Valuable Player, even though they are related to each other in the grand scheme of things. Further, the Coach of the Year article does not provide any information that is important to All-Star Game Most Valuable Player article, which doesn't provide any information that is important to the Rookie of the Year Award. That is why my personal preference is to see navboxes at the bottom of articles. Navbox content is not often all that relevant to the content of the articles they appears on. Navboxes usually contain links to related articles and do not provide further understanding of the subjects of the pages they appear on. Lede sections are supposed to be a brief overview or introduction to the rest of the page content. When navboxes appear in the lead, they give the impression that they are contributing to the understanding of the article content, when in fact they do not. They just provide distracting links to other semi-related pages. This is why I don't understand your comment, Chris, "I like the current version better because people can click on the links at the top of the page." Don't you want people to read your article? What if one of the links in the navboxes appears to be more interesting than the page they're currently on?
Anyway, in either format, the template brings together a collection of links of similar articles. It look awkward if the links were all crowbarred into normal prose, and if they weren't in a template they'd all be listed in the " See also" section rather than the Lede section. With that, I've done quite a bit of digging around to find something that can confirm one way or the other.
WP:Lead says Navigation templates may be in the Lede. That page links to WP:BETTER, which says they should go at the very end, as a navigational footer. BETTER links to WP:LAYOUT, which says the lead section may have navboxes, but also that "Various navigational aids go at the end of the article, following the last appendix section."
All those guidelines link to WP:NAVBOX, which says "There are two basic layouts [for Navboxes]: (1.) On the right side of page - for example {{ History of China}}. (2.) Footer boxes - for example {{ Health in the People's Republic of China}} designed to appear at the bottom of each article." It goes on to say, "For footer boxes, {{ Navbox}} is the standard. Existing hard-coded collapsible tables or NavFrames should be converted to {{ Navbox}} if possible. This standardizes the look and to eases future maintenance." This template obviously isn't a collapsible table, and while it isn't coded like a Navframe, it does appear to be a one, albeit without the collapsible bits. If we look at the code for this template, it begins with "
{| class="navbox"
", if that's the case, it should be a standard navbox. Finally I looked at WP:ACCESS to see how our handicapped readers deal with right-hand column tables. That page also allows this kind of navbox, which it calls a "sidebar", to be present in the lede. WP:MOS incidentally doesn't mention navigational boxes.
So while I don't like it, it seems this template style is allowed. And while it is, I won't oppose any articles or lists at FAC/FLC when they do use it, but I will continue to request that they change it for the reason I gave in my first paragraph.
I then said I would bring the discussion here, because it isn't just this template that does things like this and more discussion is needed. The two I can think of right now are {{ Formula One}} and {{ World Rally Championship}} (which also happen to appear after infoboxes, something one of the style guidelines I linked to above discourages).
My personal preference would be for horizontal navboxes at the end of the article, the reasons given in the first paragraph of my quoted text. Am I justified in this, or am I flogging a dead horse because four style guidelines say its okay? Matthewedwards ( talk • contribs • email) 09:23, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
Both here and at WP:ITALICS, we're saying nothing about the fact that linked words and phrases are less likely to be italicized; we used to. Linked words and phrases on Wikipedia, in mature and not-so-mature articles, tend not to be italicized to point out that they are words used as words, or foreign words, or for emphasis. Not never, but a whole lot less often. I was just doing a review at FAC where the reviewer insisted a linked word should be italicized, and WP:MOS and WP:ITALICS give no wiggle room at all on this; shouldn't they? - Dan Dank55 ( send/receive) 02:33, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
The MoS says: "Do not place left-aligned images directly below subsection-level (=== or greater) headings, as this disconnects the heading from the text it precedes."
What would be the recommendations for the format of a page such as Moorcroft, which appears to suffer from two instances of left image below heading? Anyone care to reformat as a tutorial? -- Tagishsimon (talk) 21:41, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
To actually say dont put up blank lines by typing blank lines is.............mmmm Lets not discuss the content of what was written , lets discuss how its written , but the actual content, topic, the message, or perhaps the truth of what was actually said, or its just not your idea of personal beleif. Regardless of all that , the original topic was never addressed. Only the format? Makes no sence. We are carbon copy in DNA design, but thank heaven we are not carbon copy in the minds. Sencyman ( talk) 06:38, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
I can't seem to find a definitive answer to this. How should birth vs. stage names be handled in the intro? I've seen many ways of doing this:
or
I prefer the first set, as they match it up better to the title of the article, but so often I've seen people change it to the latter without explaining why. I also think that the first set is much easier in cases where the stage and birth names are quite different. However, I've yet to find anything in the MoS that suggests either way. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • ( Broken clamshells • Otter chirps • HELP) 00:21, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
is smoother writing than the parentheses. As long as all common names, including the off-stage name, are in the first paragraph and visible through bolding, it really doesn't matter. For comparison, many articles about non-English speaking people begin with the local form of the name, like Horace, which begins "Quintus Horatius Flaccus ([dates]), commonly known as Horace...". Some of them even omit the English form of the name, because it is the title. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:18, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
It is not necessary to bring talk pages to publishing standards, so there is no need to correct typing errors, grammar, etc. It tends to irritate the users whose comments you are correcting. Do not strike out the comments of other editors without their permission.
Never edit someone's words to change their meaning, even on your own talk page. Editing others' comments is sometimes allowed, but you should exercise caution in doing so. Some examples of appropriately editing others' comments:
- If you have their permission
This is copy paste from the talk page guidelines , do not complain about the spaces.
And unless you have permission to change this page. Then please dont do so. Sencyman ( talk) 07:13, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
Many of you will know of the activities of Lightbot. It has touched over 140,000 articles with edits relating to dates and units. I've made a new request for bot approval that is largely a clarification/extension of two previous approvals and has wording that should be easier to understand. The bot approvals group is not necessarily aware of what Lightbot does so I would be grateful if you could add a few words in support at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Lightbot 3. I would also be happy to answer any questions here or on my talk page. Regards Lightmouse ( talk) 01:43, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
There are several sections here which represent sections on other pages, particularly MOSNUM. There are three ways to deal with such sections:
Comments? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 13:35, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
Transclusions are an interesting approach, yes, a little confusing for those unfamiliar with templates but the benefits may outweigh the costs. However, instead of the third page, why not just transclude MOSNUM onto MOS? I don't mean just transclude MOSNUM onto MOS as is. Using <noinclude></noinclude>
and <includeonly></includeonly>
tags we could easily create two versions of MOSNUM at the one location. For example:
<noinclude> ===Date autoformatting===<!--This section is linked from [[Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context]]--> {{shortcut|MOS:UNLINKYEARS|MOS:UNLINKDATES|MOS:SYL}} {{main|Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/Date autoformatting}}</noinclude><includeonly> ;Date autoformatting</includeonly> The linking of dates purely for the purpose of autoformatting is now [[deprecation|deprecated]].<noinclude><ref>This important change was made on August 24, 2008, on the basis of [[Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/Archive_D6#Again_calling_for_date_linking_to_be_deprecated|this archived discussion]]; a current proposal is [[Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#A_fresh_start_on_DA|here]].</ref></noinclude> The use of these tools has several disadvantages: # The feature can only be seen by registered editors<noinclude>, who are a small minority of Wikipedia’s readership, and even then only if they have configured their date preferences ('''My preferences → Date and time → Date format''')</noinclude>. # The resulting links are normally to lists of historical trivia which have little or nothing to do with the subject of the article.<noinclude> The use of these formatting tools therefore tends to produce [[Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context|overlinked]] articles.</noinclude> #<noinclude>Expressing a date as YYYY-MM-DD may imply that it is in the [[ISO 8601]] standard and so that it is Gregorian. It is undesirable to express dates before the acceptance of the Gregorian calendar in this format. Conventionally formatted dates from that era will normally be in Julian. Wikilinking such dates will cause them to be autoformatted into ISO 8601 for some users, which would constitute a false assertion they are Gregorian. Therefore such dates should never be linked.</noinclude><includeonly>For some users autoformatting produces [[ISO 8601]] dates which are only appropriate for the Gregorian calendar. Thus non-Gregorian dates should not be linked.</includeonly> #The syntax of dates differs from format to format<noinclude>: the American format should be followed by a comma when the syntax of the sentence as a whole would not otherwise require punctuation; the International format should not be</noinclude>. The functions provided by these tools nonetheless remain available; their function is described at [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/Date autoformatting|Date autoformatting]].
I'm sure you can figure out what's going on ... yeah? If you can't it's probably not a great idea after all. JIMp talk· cont 17:19, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
Is something like this ( Wikipedia:Lead section TT text) what you are talking about? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 21:38, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
I think Jimp's got it down. Transclude the mosnum with no the includes in the MOSNUM. This could and should be applied to all the the MOS section possible. Headbomb { ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 22:20, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
Transclusion adds another layer of technical complication, more watchlist items, and makes it unclear where a guideline is to be discussed.
Detailed text plus summary elsewhere makes the most sense. This makes use of the time-honoured technique of writing to get the idea across. The relationship can be made clear with a link, and perhaps a hidden comment that the summary should reflect the main text. — Michael Z. 2008-09-09 19:27 z
Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as part of the manual of style . This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 18:52, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
I read the guidance on ampersands in running prose, but in practice I see & most frequently in notes and references. Which of the following is correct in a note?
Which of the following is correct in a full reference?
I just wondered, since neither the ampersand nor citation guidance seemed to help jimfbleak ( talk) 15:16, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
See Date format resolution attempt. Some of the proposed solutions would entail significantly re-doing WP:ENGVAR. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:51, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
This discussion has raised a few questions as regards the MoS's applicability. To what extent do we allow individual WikiProjects to make style guidelines that run against the general MoS? Does consensus for this have to be expressed explicitly in discussion on the project talkpage, or as is being argued here is consensus expressed in the current state of the articles? What if articles are members of multiple projects? Does a tag claiming articles for a particular project suffice, or do we actually expect input on those article in the name of the project?
I have my own answers to these questions, but I'm interested in the wider views of MoS contributors. You may also like to contribute to the original discussion [[ here too. Knepflerle ( talk) 15:30, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
As far as I can see, only one person at WikiProject_Tennis is asking for an exception. The exception to MOS compliance is defended on the basis of preserving the 'status quo' and 'pre-existing consensus'. The many date defects and inconsistencies are defended on the basis that the articles are 'work-in-progress'. Those are two opposing philosophies. Sounds like ownership to me. Lightmouse ( talk) 16:08, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
[1] - that summarises the interpretation of the MoS that is being put forward. Knepflerle ( talk) 23:43, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
I have no comment on the tennis dispute, but there is at least one naming convention that was created by a project, essentially with ArbCom approval (as it stopped the events that led to an arbitration case; see Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Highways#Controversial moves): Wikipedia:Manual of Style (U.S. state and territory highways). -- NE2 01:43, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
The heavy-handidness of the bots and people implementing the Manual of Style guidelines is the most shocking thing. There was no prior notice on the tennis project. There was no discussion. Lightbot came along and did its robotic thing, changing articles one-by-one without any opportunity for discussion and so quickly that no human could keep up. When I told Lightbot to stop and attempted to protect the preexisting consensus just so a discussion could occur, Lightbot was turned back on within 30 minutes and I was attacked and threatened by various editors who, as far as I could tell, have never before edited a tennis article, much less had over 10,000 edits in that area like myself. Not only were years unlinked summarily, but month-date-years were unlinked. And then some of these same editors went ahead and changed other things that also are supported by overwhelming consensus for tennis articles. Look, as I have said about 10 times already in various ways, I am opposed to some of that consensus. But I respect it until it is changed. And I believe everyone else should give it a similar respect. Like it or not, there is overwhelming precedent for exceptions to be made to general purpose guidelines and policies. (And like it or not, the Manual of Style is just a guideline.) The one that comes most readily to my mind is honoring the clear consensus to ignore the plain and specific guidelines of WP:UE concerning the naming of articles. See, generally, this discussion. So long as that precedent exists (and possibly many others), there should not be any robotic or unannounced application of the Manual of Style in violation of the preexisting consensus until (and unless) that consensus changes. And don't talk about my motives here without knowing anything about them. You guys should take me at my word and WP:AGF. OK? Tennis expert ( talk) 17:45, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
The weird page at Wikipedia:Logical quotation is a prime candidate for an immediate merge. It is written like a stub article, but tagged as an essay. It is quite short, and the language in it is better on its microtopic than the wording presently in WP:MOS#Quotation marks. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:30, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
How do you properly spell the plural of Kennedy?
Kennedys; Kennedies; or Kennedy's? I tend to use the first spelling but someone corrected it to the latter, although it was not used in a possessive context. Fvlcrvm ( talk) 15:30, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. I thought so too. Fvlcrvm ( talk) 16:06, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
Do we have a guideline on this? I couldn't find one.
vs
Ilkali ( talk) 18:25, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
Yet another style guideline lurking around outside the MOS. Should be merged in here, and simply summarized and cross-referenced from WP:Footnotes. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:47, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
Is there any maximum length a quotation may be before it starts to infringe on copyright? I have looked around for a wikipedia policy on this but can not find one in MoS. Perhaps somewhere there is a copyright page on this that someone can point out to me. Also, are there guidelines on how much of an article can be devoted to quotes? At what point can one say that there are too many quotes in the article. Thanks, — Mattisse ( Talk) 17:19, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
I'm okay with the British spelling of words in an international article such as 2008 South Ossetia war but I do have a question. I don't know if it's still in this group of articles or not, but there was a sentence that said something to the effect that "The United States Embassy organised an evacuation of it citizens....." I changed it to "organized" under the justification that the United States does not "organise" an evacuation but does "organize" one. A US embassy would truly not ever "organise" anything, but it would "organize" something. I only changed the variety because the entire sentence involved the actions of the United States Embassy. This situation was not mentioned in the MoS, and goes against the "Consistency within the article" section. But I felt it was the right spelling for the above mentioned reasons. Would anyone please comment on this. I feel this is a legitimate situation which is not covered in the MoS. Jason3777 ( talk) 21:52, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
I just wanted some feedback. I majored in English Literture in the US and got points deducted if I used British spelling on exams even if it was a course on British writers. Just wanted to know what the deal was. And I do know the difference between it, its and it's. (Come on it was a typo). I was just asking a question on a talk page. If you see I do this on an article page, please correct it. I'd do it for you. Jason3777 ( talk) 02:32, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
I think it's clear that the language variety should be consistent within the article and not vary depending on the topic of a particular sentence. But on "-ize/-ise" specifically, is it not true that the "-ize" forms are acceptable also in British English (and possibly all other Englishes)? (See American and British English spelling differences#-ise, -ize.) That being the case, there seems to be no reason for us not to use -ize everywhere.-- Kotniski ( talk) 07:24, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
Y'all, I can write British and I have no problem doing it unless it is an American article. I just wanted to know what form of spelling to use in the international articles. It's weird; why do I find myself always stepping into a "hornet's nest"? Jason3777 ( talk) 08:57, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
Is it not obvious after only a few lines what the ENGVAR is without pointing it out. One of the great things about English is how open it is, so that people can come up with new spellings and new words, (although I hope ENGVAR does not last). Free expression is what matters. -- Alphasierra ( talk) 23:52, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Transclude text ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as part of the Manual of Style. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 18:52, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
That sounds so much nicer than "chores to do", doesn't it? Wikiprojects have been invited to list pages between now and October 20 that may need light spelling and grammar copyediting at Wikipedia_talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Copyediting. Editors who have listed their pages might be appreciative, because these pages will be going on the (not widely distributed) WP 0.7 DVD. Do one or twenty; there's no sign-up sheet and no obligation. I don't mean to pull anyone away from other duties; this is less strenuous work, for when your brain needs a rest. - Dan Dank55 ( send/receive) 22:00, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
I hope this is the right place to bring this up, but I've discovered the same individual's article has been created twice at Rod O'Loan and Rod O’Loan. Before I merge them I was wondering if Wikipedia had an agreed-to stance when it comes to apostrophes in surnames. After scanning this article I didn't spot anything about it. Cheers.-- Jeff79 ( talk) 04:56, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
How do u get that box on the right that says styles and formatting??? Rayman 1110 ( talk) 03:16, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
Right now, under the non-breaking space section, we recommend using non-breaking spaces in front of en dashes. Personally, I think this recommendation needs to be removed for several reasons:
Kaldari ( talk) 16:31, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
Agree, too. Unicode nbsp's (typed option-space on the Mac) before en-dashes actually work nicely, but some stupid web browsers silently convert them to plain spaces during edits, so there's not much point in entering them. They're going to end up not wrapping correctly anyway, so it's best just to stick to single em dashes instead of typing space-en dash-space with little benefit. And it's far worse to clutter ordinary sentences with extra markup in the wikitext. — Michael Z. 2008-09-16 23:06 z
The document title is currently
Should this actually, according to the MOS, contain an m-dash or an n-dash instead of a hyphen? Just curious. — CharlotteWebb 16:49, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
—
) cause problems with search engine optimization and title guidelines?—I doubt it, but developers and interested parties may want to see
[6].
Sswonk (
talk)
15:42, 19 September 2008 (UTC)Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Guidelines ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as part of the Manual of Style. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 18:52, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
Is your "parent-instructor" example consistent with your own rule that en dashes should be used " ... for marking a relationship involving independent elements in certain compound expressions (Canada–US border, ... "? I've been changing similar expressions to en dashes, but perhaps I still don't get it. Art LaPella ( talk) 17:40, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Macedonia-related articles) ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as part of the Manual of Style. This is an automated notice of the change ( more information). -- VeblenBot ( talk) 18:52, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
I could not disagree more with the current MOS policy on punctuation inside/outside quote marks and directed/non-directed (curly/straight) quote marks, and would like to vote that the policy be changed.
Commas and periods should always go inside quote marks, regardless of whether they are part of the material being quoted or not. While doing it the other way may seem more “logical,” it is nevertheless typographically incorrect, and looks messy.
Also, directed (curly) quotes should at least be allowed, if not recommended. Again, they look neater, and they’re the professional typographical standard. We want Wikipedia to look clean and professional. Felicity4711 ( talk) 23:50, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
Dmyersturnbull ( talk) 22:27, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
While I won't take sides on where to put the period, I'd like to point out that every usage of quotation marks here has been incorrect. There's no reason to put them around logical or correct at all. Reywas92 Talk 21:08, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
I'm tempted to slap a {{ Resolved}} on this, as perennial rehash. This non-issue has been beaten to death again and again and again. WP uses logical quotation for a reason (namely that it's, well, logical). It is unambiguous, and quotes sources precisely, not questionably. Period. End or story. Please drive through. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont] ‹(-¿-)› 16:32, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Does anyone know why <q> tags are filtered by the Wiki software? They're handy because they delegate the decision over what quote type to use to CSS, so every user can choose whatever they prefer. Ilkali ( talk) 14:15, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
<q>
that would no longer be true. This is the same reason that {{
Frac}} exists (as I recently learned). I have no idea if there is any kind of policy or other statement on percentages. As for your last question, the answer is "lots". Not many in North America or the UK, mind you, but there are many very poor places where many people speak English (Jamaica, Liberia, etc.), and the few that have computers mostly have crappy old ones, with old operating systems, old browsers, and dial-up connections that cost by-the-minute (which is why there are guidelines about article size limits, and why the WP/Commons image system makes small versions of images on the fly, and dosen't just inline the full-size version with <img width="X" height="Y"...>
, etc., etc.) The en.wikipedia is for those people too. PS: I am hardly the only one to criticize W3C for <q>
and various other blatant violations of the separate-content-and-presentation paradigm of the semantic web that linger on in [X]HTML. —
SMcCandlish [
talk] [
cont] ‹(-¿-)›
04:05, 19 August 2008 (UTC)<q>
and various other blatant violations of the separate-content-and-presentation paradigm of the semantic web". What? <q> embodies that paradigm! "This is a quote" is semantic. "This is surrounded by quotation marks" is presentational.
Ilkali (
talk)
08:04, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
<q> is no more appropriate "separation of presentation from content" than would be forgoing full stops in favor a <sentence> tag. -- Random832 ( contribs) 14:37, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
{{
RFCstyle}}
One thing I have noticed is that the manner in which quotes are formatted is sometimes different in the same articles many places here at Wikipedia. Example: Quackwatch. In some articles some of the quotes are indented in the simple and normal ":" or "*" manners, while others are indented and formatted using the <blockquote> or {{quote}} template formats.
This is an unfortunate way in which editorial POV can creep into an article. An editor can insert a quote and make it more noticeable than other quotes. Either positive or critical quotes can end up getting highlighted! It may even happen with no greater ulterior motive than personal preference for a certain method of formatting, but the results are still not right. I think all quotes should use the simple wiki markup ":" or "*" methods of indenting, unless there is some special reason not related to editorial POV for doing otherwise. It isn't proper to highlight some quotes in big quote boxes, while others are kept more obscure, sometimes even hidden as part of the inline text, even though the quotes are several lines long. MOS allows both methods, but I find it to be misused at times, and would rather avoid making POV differences.
I have undone such formatting (the last two methods) in several places where I have found it.
Proposal. I would like to see our MOS guidelines modified to ensure that POV-style quoting formats aren't used anymore, at least in controversial articles. In other places it is very appropriate to use nice quote boxes. My main point is that POV-driven use of quote formatting be forbidden.-- Fyslee / talk 04:56, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
I asked this at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (capital letters) but haven't received a reply. I figure this is a more watched place, so I bring it here.
Most text which appears in comics is written upper case. When I've quoted this, I tend to place it in sentence case as appropriate. Sometimes certain parts of the text is in bold, for emphasis. Would we still embolden it, or instead italicise for emphasis? Hiding T 10:47, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Also, what about sound effects. I read a review of a collection the other day which made a good and useful point about sound effects being examples of Onomatopoeia. Would we still reduce those to sentence case? I'm thinking of KRA-KOW and the like. Admittedly it would be nicer to excerpt the actual art containing the lettering to better illustrate any such point, but where that's not possible it would be good to get some guidance. Hiding T 10:51, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Currently Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Quotations reads "Block quotations A long quote (more than four lines, or consisting of more than one paragraph, regardless of number of lines) is formatted as a block quotation, which Wikimedia's software will indent from both margins." The problem as I see it is that "four lines" is really system and browser dependent - I recently switched computers and things that were four lines on my old system are now only two or three lines. Would it make sense to express this as a number of characters (preferred) or to specify a screen resolution? Thanks, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 04:37, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
←Last discussion was Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_101#Block_quotes:_four_lines_or_four_sentences.3F. In the section #Punctuation inside/outside quotation marks below, you see a lot of short sentences that look like blockquotes; that wouldn't look good in an article. On the other hand, 150-character blockquotes are not uncommon in U.S. magazines and journals, if there's a reason to draw special attention to the quote. I don't have any particular talent in layout, but if nothing else is creating whitespace in the vicinity, I don't see the problem with this, and it doesn't seem to me to violate the look-and-feel of mature WP articles. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 13:22, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Pardon me for bringing up something you've no doubt covered before. Here's a quote from MoS at present: "Punctuation marks are placed inside the quotation marks only if the sense of the punctuation is part of the quotation". Up till very recently I took this to mean: "only put the punctuation inside the quotation marks if it would be nonsensical to have it outside, ok?" But now I examine the examples given, I reach the conclusion that the punctuation should be outside the quotation marks only if "a clause or phase is quoted", but "If a whole sentence is quoted then the fullstop should be inside the quotation marks." This means that a perfectly innocuous passage of text could have a visually inconsistent appearance. Firstly, can I double-check that this is what is intended by the rule? (The wording as it is at the moment has confused at least one person!) Secondly, it would be good if someone could reword that sentence to remove the touch of ambiguity. Thank you! almost- instinct 22:33, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
I took this to imply that fullstops shold be always outside the the quotation marks, whether the quote was a phrase or a sentence. So, since reading that, every time I've tidied up a page I changed something that looks thus:Punctuation marks are placed inside the quotation marks only if the sense of the punctuation is part of the quotation
to something like this:Many people agree that "people who tidy punctuation in wikipedia articles need to get out more." [1]
If this was wrong, then I've an awful lot of clearing up to do. Yours, crestfallen, almost- instinct 22:58, 23 August 2008 (UTC)Most people think that "spending hours fiddling around with punctuation—and then getting it wrong—is truly tragic". [2]
D part of WP:BRD: So what are the substantive objections to the edits I made to this section and which were reverted? — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont] ‹(-¿-)› 14:42, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
I'm not seeing discussion for this, did I miss it? "Use {{ " '}} ... Do not use plain or non-breaking space ( ) characters, as this corrupts the semantic integrity of the article by mixing content and presentation." I've never seen {{ " '}} before this. - Dan Dank55 ( send/receive) 12:44, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
which is simply semantically wrong. —
SMcCandlish [
talk] [
cont] ‹(-¿-)›
03:09, 29 August 2008 (UTC)Well, so it's a poor article; the concept of the separation of semantic content and presentational display dates all the way back to CSS Level 1 (well, pre-dates that, since CSS 1 was created to address that issue). Who is "they", using thin spaces? If you mean the templates, no they don't; all you have to do is read the template source code. Falsifying or mangling content "a little bit" is still falsifying or mangling content. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:09, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
{{' "}}
is only 7 characters, while ' "
is eight, and requires at least basic understanding of HTML character entities codes (e.g. knowledge that the "&" and the ";" are mandatory, etc.), while the template only requires knowing basic template syntax, which far more WP editors know than know HTML character entity encoding. Basically, if something can be done with a template it should be if the template is simpler than the alternative, which is clearly the case here. We could have unique CSS classes (in templates probably) for titles instead of plain italics, and so on; I'm kind of surprised that we don't already. I have noted increased deployment of CSS classes all over WP, so maybe that is already in the pipe. And if you look at the rendered source as delivered to the browser (after translation by MediaWiki from wiki markup), you'll see that the italicization is in fact done with CSS, not with HTML 4's deprecated <i> element, and this is of course as it should be; we seem to be on the path to better semantic handling already, and I've also noticed people implementing more and more microformats, which are seriously semantic, so it's not like no one around here is thinking about this sort of thing. Anyway, the point is that just because WP is not 100% perfect in semantic and non-presentation-clouded content markup doesn't mean that the idea isn't part of WP's goals, nor that we should not seek to improve WP in this direction. If that were the case, WP would be using table-based layouts, the <font> tag, etc. (The font tag works in wikicode, but is actually translated on-the-fly into a span with CSS; MediaWiki does lots of stuff like that, and sends validatable code to the user agent). —
SMcCandlish [
talk] [
cont] ‹(-¿-)›
03:09, 29 August 2008 (UTC)I apologize for the assumption that everyone would just automatically "get" this; I sometimes forget that some people are not web development geeks for whom this sort of thing is old hat.
The templates are pretty self-documenting.
Background: Read cascading style sheets and do an advanced Google search on mandatory terms "content", "presentation" and either/or terms "separate", "separation", for in-depth background info on the electronic design and information architecture philosophy surrounding this.
The short version is that the strings "'"
and " ' "
are not the same. Meanwhile, the strings "'"
and {{" ' "}}
are in fact the same in rendered content (copy-paste them into a plain-text editor, you'll see); the latter is simply kerned to be more readable on Wikipedia, in a way that does not affect the underlying content in any way.
We should not falsify the content (especially not quoted content!) just for a visual typographic/legibility effect, but that is what trying to improve the visual display with
does. We also should not reduce the content to ungrammatical gibberish just for a visual effect, either, but that's what we've been advising that editors do. No style guide on the planet would approve of ending a nested quotation with ...foo.' "
We should really, really not do this if there is an alternative that doesn't raise these problems, but provides the same visual improvement sought.
Please note that this is not the same as the recommendation to use non-breaking spaces between unit amounts and their symbols (23 cm
) – a space does belong there, meanwhile using a non-breaking one serves our purposes and does nothing nefarious to the content.
There may have been some confusion that the change to recommending the template has something to do with a defect in the display of the
version; this isn't he case (indeed, the templates' goal is that they look identical). So, no one is going to get out a micrometer; this isn't about what it looks like, or what editors will do to figure something out, but about what the content actually says. Wikipedia consists of content that is open and may be repurposed in any way anyone wants, in any format, including monospaced formats, or pre-kerned environments, where anything like " ' "
will look totally retarded (as well as simply be grammatically incorrect nonsense). The unconstrained reusability of WP content (with credit) is part of the very core of WP's design and purpose (even if more abstraction of content semantics would be a good thing, like the bold subject in leads, and italicized book titles stuff mentioned earlier).
Another way of putting it: It is the very fact that
means what it means that is the problem here (but a non-problem with unit spacing and other uses). It inserts an actual extraneous character into the content in this case, instead of only visually kerning things to be more readable. It doesn't have anything at all to do with whether or not
is displayed properly - I'm unaware of any browser that does not display " '
and " '
(i.e. a normal space-bar space) identically. Not related to the issue addressed by the change. It may help to actually look at the code of the templates; you'll see that there is no space (in the content) between the quotation mark characters; instead there are CSS directives saying to pad this character or that a little to the left or right for display purposes only; if the content is copy pasted, it is copy pasted as "'"
(or whatever, depending on the template in question), not " ' "
. The character entity, by contrast, is a real character, just like "Q" or "9" or "₤", in, and altering, the content.
By doing the visual spacing with CSS instead of the insertion of extraneous space characters, we preserve the integrity of the content, and different presentation/rendering environments with no CSS support or different, custom CSS, will do things their way correctly without mangling the content, or being mangled by the incorrect content. We need to do this spacing with CSS instead of extraneous space characters for the same reason that we use CSS positioning for page layout, instead of 1996-style abuse of tables, use CSS to do font effects like sizing and boldfacing instead of deprecated HTML markup for these purposes (<font> tags, etc.), and so on.
By way of comparison, someone who liked the cute little ½, ¼, ¾, etc., Unicode characters (the 9 fraction characters in Unicode, which in many fonts don't even display consistently with each other, but that doesn't really affect the hypothetical here) could cleverly create tiny images for missing ones like "4/5", "9/10", "7/16", etc. that in theory look exactly consistent with the real Unicode characters (for users who have not customized Wikipedia's diplay by changing to another font), with the intent that they be used in-line in articles because (to this person) it visually looks better than the output of {{ Frac}}. We wouldn't use them, because they falsify the content, not to mention it would be an accessibility problem.
Finally, the Internet, and Wikipedia, and computers are not perfect yet, if they ever will be. WP seems to get along just fine with a lot of arcana (non-techie editor complaints at
WP:VPT aside). At very least, most editors recognize that {{something}}
means "this is a template, and if I go to the template page there almost certainly will be documentation", which is something they can't get for
. Anyway, the problems (the issue these templates solve, and some editors being unhappy with templates in WP) are not really related. One is about doing this proper thing for the encyclopedia's content, and the other is about making things easy for editors put off by markup they are unfamiliar with. It isn't expected that the average editor will make use of these templates, in the first place, just as they do not bother to do 23 cm
instead of 23 cm
despite what MOSNUM says; rather, others who do bother to pay attention to MOS will fix it later (or their bots will), so it isn't really an editor burden at all (even if ' "
were actually easier than the shorter and more symmetrical {{' "}}
, which it isn't). There are probably at least 50 nitpicky things like this in MOS and its subpages; one more won't kill anyone. :-)
Hope that 'splains it better.
PS: Elsewhere, Dank55 pointed out that ultimately we should ask the developers to fix this. A dev fix shouldn't be hard, even in PHP, Python, Ruby or ASP (I have no idea what the MediaWiki software is actually written in). You'd just tell it (in pseudo-code, here):
If character string ("'"), then new character string ("<span style="padding-left: 2em; padding-right: 2em;">'</span>")
and move on to the next test, for ("')
, or ('")
or whatever. Pretty trivial, really. If that were implemented, no one would manually ever have to do anything at all with regard to quotation mark spacing. If there were some weird case where it was desired that these characters butt up against each other, any number of tricks would work, as long as the string in the wikicode was broken in a way that did not rendered visually, e.g. ("<span />')
— SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:34, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
'"
I've already explained that this is what we expect the average editor to do anyway, just as we expect that editor to write 23 cm
not 23 cm
, but we recommend the latter directly in order to forestall reversions by people who don't understand the change to a non-breaking space character in MOS-noncompliant prose they just wrote. I don't see that anything is gained by just mentioning a template instead of recommending its use (we mention {{
Sic}} specifically, etc.). That said, my principal issue here is getting rid of the recommendation to insert extraneous
entities. My only concern is that simply mentioning the templates will be wishy-washy. Guidelines should generally offer affirmative guidance, not "maybe do this, maybe do that, whatever". —
SMcCandlish [
talk] [
cont] ‹(-¿-)›
16:21, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
"'"
, as would be natural."'"
, we should make clear that it's his choice. Not everybody will find "'" as unsightly as S McCandlish does. Some will find the appearance of an added space undesirable. We should not simply waltz in, change things, and overrule protests with "MOS says so", we should follow
WP:BRD and that includes real discussion."'"
and " ' "
are not the same content. B) "'"
and "<span style="padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;">'</span>"
are the same content. The end. I gave a positive reason for using the templates: It achieves the desired result without violating the integrity of the content. It still says that, just differently, so I'm happy. I don't think it follows that we should "make it clear" that it's the editor's choice. Everything not subject to actual WP Policy is the editor's choice, so we need not state the obvious, and using wishy-washy language in guidelines reduces their ability to effectively guide. We shouldn't do this unless the topic in question is a matter of something close to a 50/50 split between editors' preferences for one option or the other. But the present language seems okay."'"
is pretty close to illegible when rendered was made quite some time ago, and the desire to visually space them just a hair for readability has gone unchallenged since before I took my months-long wikibreak. There is no dispute that has been raised with regard to it other than right here, but we seem to be discussing the language of the recommendation, not whether the recommendation should never have been made in the first place. If some editors do find the appearance of a little more space undesirable, they have been keeping quiet about it, so we needn't bother with trying to account for them (
WP:CREEP,
WP:BROKE,
WP:BEANS, etc.) Also, I wasn't the one that brought up the issue in the first place; it isn't that I find "'"
unsightly, it's that enough editors did to get critical mass to add something about it to MOS, that was well accepted. All I did is fix it to use a solution that isn't grotesque. Whatlinkshere won't be relevant for a while; I created the templates only a few days ago, to provide MOS with a solution to the identified spacing problem that did not cause more harm than it solved. I.e., I am not trying to change consensus, only fix the tech side of the implementation of what consensus said needed to be done."'"
"may" cause visual problems and points to where the templates are without demanding that they be used, so I think your final bullet point is satisfied. I'm okay with the passage, too.I have tweaked the text; the text I found offered the choice required, but I hope this is clearer. Saying that we want the text, character for character, exactly as in the original covers the ground as well as "semantic integrity" and may be more intelligible. Some may still object that the appearance is what matters, and we should not use kerning which looks like extra space either, but they can avoid the templates. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:51, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
spacing which wasn't controversial to begin with, just a poor implementation for reasons not considered at the time). —
SMcCandlish [
talk] [
cont] ‹(-¿-)›
18:39, 29 August 2008 (UTC)I think it’s a sad decision to encourage straight quotes. They are explicitly discouraged by the Unicode standard. Plus, curly quotes are easy to type on a US-international keyboard (with deadkeys): Alt+9 = ‘, Alt+0 = ’, Alt+Shift+[ = “, Alt+Shift+] = ”. Let the world move forward. H. ( talk) 12:11, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
(To both above:) http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2000.pdf contains:
and http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0000.pdf contains:
and
It says ‘in English’, but this is valid in a lot of languages. H. ( talk) 11:57, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
(outdent)I am sending this back to the left margin because there are a few conversations going on and I am attempting to answer two points well indented in separated parts of the thread.
First, yes Mac has been Unix based since the beginning of this century but the issue isn't the OS, it's the keyboard. The history of the Mac system is strongly influenced by the adoption of the Macintonsh GUI based system and the laser printer in the mid-eighties and onward as production machines in the printing an publishing industry. These systems were quickly accepted as replacements for large, tempermental and very expensive phototypesetting systems throughout the industry. Thousands of people who produce printed material, whether they be called typesetters, desktop publishers or pre-press artists, learned to key information using the classic Macintosh system, which used - and uses - special keystrokes to produce a large number of glyphs commonly found in printed pieces. These include the symbols for trademark, copyright, section and bullet. This was learned well in advance of the Windows system of using ALT+0XXX to produce non-standard ASCII characters. The base of production people who use the Mac keyboard and can fly through typesetting complicated documents using QuarkXPress or Adobe software is entrenched, so Apple and Adobe can be excused for leaving these keystrokes as they were for 15 years prior to the switch to FreeBSD OS X variations. I know all this WP:OR because I have been working on Macs doing that sort of work for the last twenty years.
Second, and really related to the first comment, is that "curly quotes" in the publishing industry are actually just "quotes" and "apostrophes". They are the typesetting standard, and the "straight quotes" are used only to denote measurement in inches and feet (28" striped bass, 16' pole vault). Those of us in the industry have been known to refer to those characters as "inch marks", and they are often one of the first things a typesetter must repair when importing text from ASCII or word processing sources. So, although I understand that this is very arcane stuff to a great many, and probably completely inaccessible to a vast number of casual editors, the preference of professional graphic artists is to use what is here being called "curly quotes", which is also born out by the Unicode document provided by H. above. Sswonk ( talk) 14:01, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
(there, I used a true ellipsis again) Typographers quotes do look nicer—that’s why they exist. And unless someone has a big-ass monitor running at 640 × 480, I don’t accept that typographers quotes “look good in print but not on a computer monitor”—certainly not with LCD monitors in excess of 100 pixels per inch. So I recommend the following:
In articles that have grown as large as they need to go and are relatively stable, typographers quotes are fine since the number of edits requiring attention to quotes are minimal to none. I’ve seen editors change highly stable articles from typographers to straight (all of them), not because he or she had an edit to make involving a quote—just because MOS said to. Typographers quotes exist because they not only look better, but they help the mind to recognize where a quote is starting and ending; good typography is all about facilitating smooth reading and mental flow. So I would recommend the following bullet point be added to the current policy:
• For mature and stable articles (they are no longer growing nor are in a state of flux), the use of typographers’ quotes and apostrophes is acceptable. Eligible articles should use one style consistently.
And, by the way Sswonk, now that most small-business page layout has gone from the pros at typesetting houses to secretaries pounding away on barbarian computers, the units of time (minutes and seconds) and the plane angle (minutes and seconds) are now often done—improperly—with straight quotes. However, they are properly done with ′, and ″, not ' and ". I forget what the Unicode symbol is for them. I used the Unicode originally but editors eventually come along and replace my hand coding to the resulting character. Greg L ( talk) 20:38, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
I think we need more shades of grey on Wikipedia. Defaulting down to a lowest common denominator of quality is fine when there is a legitimate concern—like ease of editing. In the absence of that reason (where articles are undergoing very little editing), there’s no reason to no longer allow them.
This puts Wikipedia on the slow track towards an increasingly professional product—but only where doing so isn’t needlessly burdensome. Greg L ( talk) 22:26, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
But when you write “I won't cooperate with adding another one to the list.” and then shout about how you will do this and do that to articles if you find something you don’t like, are you suggesting you have some sort of veto power as to what happens on MOS, or that you don’t care how others feel and their views don’t matter? Do you just want others to *feel your power* when you threaten “if I find one, I will expunge every single one of the suckers from the whole article.”? Your style of communicating here is striking. Or was that just unintentional and you are just stating your opinion here?
Sswonk made some valid points, I think, and I was seconding his motion. But rather than simply allow them—even for rapidly growing articles or ones that are in a state of flux—I was suggesting a compromise solution that seemed a win-win. Specifically, I propose a way to improve Wikipedia by the introduction of some flexibility: keep it simpler when articles are new and in a state of flux, and make them look better when they are more mature and stable. Specifically, this:
• For mature and stable articles (they are no longer growing nor are in a state of flux), the use of typographers’ quotes and apostrophes is acceptable. Eligible articles should use one style consistently.
If an edit is made to a mature article, they tend to be—as you pointed out—vandalism (too easy to revert) or minor stuff like grammar corrections. In the rare case where you’ve got a mature article that uses typographers quotes, and the edit introduces straight quotes, that’s perfectly understandable; I suspect there will be one or more shepherding authors who will be more than willing to upgrade them to curlies. The burden of using typographers quotes needn’t be on those who don’t want to deal with them.
The gist of the bullet point I am proposing is that it would sanctify the practice on mature articles. What I mainly would hope to accomplish with this wording is A) allow their use in suitable (stable) articles, and B) prohibit edits to eligible articles that do nothing but convert existing typographers quotes to straight quotes. Like I said before, I’ve seen perfectly stable articles where the only edit is to convert all typographers quotes to straight quotes. The edit wasn’t accompanied by any need to add a single apostrophe or quote; the edits were only to make wholesale conversion to the quote style—no other purpose than that. Those sort of edits are pretty much a testament to the fact that the article was mature enough (no other additions or changes were made), and the whole point was just to dumb the article down per MOS. For mature articles, that sort of editing is wholly unnecessary.
Looking up at my {quotation} of the proposed wording, I’m not seeing anything that *requires* anyone to use typographers quotes; it only permits their use. I see that it does say that articles should “use one style consistently” though, so if you feel wording should be added that takes the onus off those who don’t want to think about it, that’s would be fine with me.
Perhaps wording like this:
• For mature and stable articles (they are no longer growing nor are in a state of flux), the use of typographers’ quotes and apostrophes is acceptable. Eligible articles should use them consistently.
• The burden of adding and upgrading typographers quotes shall lie with those editors of an article who are willing to deal with them, however, editors shall not convert existing typographers quotes to straight quotes in eligible articles.
As for the “benefits v.s. costs” issue you raised, I’ve already pointed out the cost angle of that equation. Whereas you don’t see any benefit, those editors who appreciate fine typography certainly do and using typographer’s quotes in mature articles makes Wikipedia a more professional product. You don’t see the benefit. At least grant me the possibility that those who appreciate fine typography do see a benefit and your view on this issue might not be the definitive and final word on this matter (though your wholesale reversion makes it seem like you do).
Now, you’ve painted a picture of pestilence in your fields and how midwives will weep in your village over this, but it’s clear that this would have no impact on you whatsoever—you don’t have to even think about this issue if you don’t want to; just keep editing as you’ve always done. So please stop reverting text that is a perfectly reasonable compromise. If you don’t like ‘em, don’t use them. Greg L ( talk) 17:24, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
Here’s the full text of the passage in question:
I have to oppose this proposed change (re-change, really; this is rehash, and consensus has not changed). It's not a "don't want to think about it" issue (that's a red herring); it's a "it's not on my keyboard and impedes my ability to edit" thing, among many others, including search results problems and so forth. For every person who searches for a text string with a curly quote/apostrophe in it, there are probably 5000 who search for it without, because really no one is going around intentionally using complicated key combinations or pop-up character utilities to write something like "O'Sullivan" with a curly apostrophe. Curly quotes are nothing but decoration from a WP perspective, and their use is too problemlatic for editors and readers to use the cuteness of them at the expense of everone for whom they are problematic, which is almost everyone. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:00, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
You also seem terribly quick to argue your points by providing links to things like WP:CCC (consensus has not changed): a Johnnie Cochran-esqe “it’s in blue so it must be true.” You behave as if there’s no need to argue the merits because you’ve already proven your point with your links. It doesn’t work that way. Consensus can change (it happens all the time), and a valid and substantive reason has to be put forth to argue against a perfectly reasonable compromise solution.
Sswonk wrote “The author and main promoter of the style guideline, SMcCandlish, is fairly relentless.” The word “tenacious” comes to mind when I think of the tactics you’ve pulled lately. And his perception points to a possible problem here with you: climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spider-Man over every single little thing that doesn’t go entirely your way. I note that you wrote “Curly quotes are nothing but decoration from a WP perspective”. You mean from your perspective. And if you really meant “WP”, then you are equating you and Wikipedia to be one in the same thing in your mind. That’s a problem. A serious problem. So I guess I’ll try a page from your playbook: You’ve got a bit of a WP:OWN problem here on MOS. You don’t own this venue and need to actually listen to what other editors are pushing for and not be so quick to slap everyone down at every turn who has an idea that isn’t perfectly in line with what you want.
Several editors above have stated perfectly valid reasons for using typographers quotes. I can also see that some opponents raised perfectly good objections regarding how dealing with curly quotes is burdensome. My compromise solution solves all that by putting the burden entirely on those who want to use them and would further clearly delineate precisely where they can’t be used. And now your only comeback is only something lame about thoroughly rare intra-article searches involving quotes and apostrophes (an issue that is easily bypassed).
There is a serious problem with the opponents of this: Chris reverted the new guideline and fallaciously claimed that “With your rewording, I now have to go check if the page is at GA before I'm allowed to add apostrophes to it.” He obviously hadn’t even read what he reverted. And then you repeat the same line with your “it's not on my keyboard and impedes my ability to edit”-argument. Again, with my compromise wording, you don’t have to use them. You guys are going to have to do better than this.
Jimbo’s “ Wikipedia:Ignore all rules” isn’t a guideline, it’s an official policy. Many editors have quietly been using typographer’s quotes to improve Wikipedia and have just put up with editors who do nothing more to articles with typographers quotes than make a global change to convert them all. (*exasperation*) Revert the change. It’s time to make peace between these two schools with a guideline that gives them a clearly delineated set of articles where their use is appropriate and doesn’t burden editors one iota if they don’t want to use them. Greg L ( talk) 00:21, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
• The burden of adding and upgrading typographic quotes shall lie only upon those editors who are willing to deal with them. However, editors who don’t want to deal with typographic quotes shall not needlessly convert existing typographers quotes to straight quotes in eligible articles.
As for searches, intra-article searches of terms that have apostrophes and quotes are rare. Many editors who want to look for Johnnie Cochran’s rhymes
will just search on rhymes
. And on those extremely rare occasions where people have an article that mentions both Johnnie Cochran
and rhymes
innumerable times, which makes searching on just one or the other inconvenient (how often is that really going to happen?), copy/paste works just fine—even better—than typing.
One of you guys above argued that copying text from Wikipedia into another application would bring along typographers quotes. What kind of mentality is this? Most every Word doc you will ever receive uses such typography (fine-looking typography). What do you do when you receive Word docs? Cry “ Oh the humanity” and throw up your hands in frustration because funny-looking punctuation has once again darkened your doorstep?
This is all absurd. Lots of editors are using typographers quotes in Wikipedia’s articles, want to continue to do so, and will continue to do so. Let’s adopt a practical policy that makes peace and doesn’t burden you with any duties you don’t want to undertake. Greg L ( talk) 17:11, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
I don't think our guidelines forbid editors to use typographic quotation marks and apostrophes; they merely entitle other editors to change them to the typewriter versions. Personally, I should never edit an article just to do that, but I should probably find something else to correct as well, and it would make for a worthwhile edit. As a matter of fact, I usually only spot them in the edit window. I use Firefox 3, and in normal view the two styles look identical unless the quotes are in bold, italicised, or both. This does not prevent them from being treated differently in search, though—the other way for me to discover them. (For that matter, there is the additional complication with the curly quotation marks in that the opening character is different from the closing one.) I don't know about other browsers, but for me a change of the guideline would be purely negative. And any attempt to introduce limited usage of typographic quotation marks would soon devolve into chaos; many editors would be confused, many would not even be aware of any usage differences, and any distinctions would be pretty much arbitrary anyway. I find that the purported benefits of using curly quotes are insufficient to justify the problems and complexities of its usage, and that anything short of the current arrangement of straight-quotes "monopoly" has a discernible headache-inducing potential. Waltham, The Duke of 13:22, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
Obviously, typographers quotes look better than typewriter quotes. So dumbing down Wikipedia to a lowest common denominator at all times isn’t wise. We can’t have an attitude of “there are Morlocks who edit too, so to have consistent looking caves, all Eloy will have to act like Morlocks at all times”. If advocates of typographers quotes want to use them, their use should be limited to suitable articles, and they should shoulder the burden of their use. Similarly, all that would be asked of editors who don’t want to use them is that if the article is a largely stable and mature one, they should simply don’t worry about it: If they have to add a quote, do so using straight quotes if you like—just leave the rest of the curly quotes not directly involved with our edit alone. Greg L ( talk) 17:05, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
In fact, the genesis of the problem is more basic than that. The simple fact is that there are many editors who do use typographers quotes (making Wikipedia a better product in most cases) but dealing with typographers quotes is cumbersome for many others. The solution: limit the use of typographers quotes to mature articles that undergo few if any edits dealing with quotes. And even for these eligible articles, don’t require that editors use typographers quotes if they aren’t comfortable with them; put the burden on the proponents who don’t mind dealing with them. It’s a simple, compromise solution that addresses the major concerns of both camps and is a much better guideline than the current one, which is lopsided and obtuse.
This long-standing friction over the use of curly quotes on Wikipedia is clear evidence that the current guideline isn’t satisfactorily addressing the issue. It’s time for editors who have bullied their way into an WP:OWN relationship with MOS and imposed their highly polarized values into its guidelines to lighten up a tad and actually permit others to try out a different approach. Sometimes a scalpel works better than a sledgehammer. Greg L ( talk) 05:45, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
[Outdent; this is really in response to two threads at two different indentation levels by same party, and really more of a meta-point anyway.] Greg L, please actually absorb Wikipedia:Tendentious editing if you're going to cite it. (I spelled that guideline name out fully for you lest I be accused of being Cochrane-esque for abbreviating again.) Let's look at it in particular detail. WP:TE#Characteristics of problem editors on signs that one is being tendentious:
Look all that over and think about it. There is not a single point at WP:TE that you haven't run afoul of lately, sometimes in spirit (which is what counts, after all) and in many cases completely and literally.
Another way of looking at this: What do you think you are accomplishing here? I got pissy with MOS editors when I first arrived here too. Got me nowhere. I started addressing their concerns, and raising mine without denigrating them as control-freaks and idiots, and actually looking at and trying to understand the rationales for things that I didn't immediately personally like, and guess what? We come to compromise pretty often. Try it. Play ball instead of trying to light the ballpark on fire. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:08, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
You know, it really looks like you think both MOSNUM and MOS are your private domains. Sswonk observed “The author and main promoter of the style guideline, SMcCandlish, is fairly relentless.” Any objective look at the 500-edit history in August would lead most to conclude you are indeed quite active here. Human nature being what it is, that might explain your quick tendency towards being territorial here as well as your tendancy to quickly slap down anyone who treads on what you consider to be your turf. Well, it’s not. And until you can present me and the rest of us here with your *I am really, really special* license, you can stop acting like the mayor of MOS. Several editors above have advocated the use of typographers quotes. Your reaction all along has only been to simply dismiss their suggestions out of hand. And this apparent ownership of the current guideline regarding typographers quotes (which has been a less-than-stellar success) seems to underlie you fanatical efforts of guarding it here. I’m clearly seeing a WP:OWN issue with you. So please stop attacking the messenger because you don’t like the message and start listening. Stick to the issues and cease with your laughable, endless rants over how I am somehow responsible for all the pestilence and plagues that have ever befallen Wikipedia and causes your fainting spells or whatever your problem is.
Let’s see if you can raise the level of your arguments beyond a juvenile ‘Greg L is a poopy-head’ and actually address the issue at hand. So far, you have not raised a single substantive reason why editors can’t use typographers quotes in mature articles. You tried “it's not on my keyboard and impedes my ability to edit.” However, that argument lacks that necessary virtue of being remotely grounded in fact. Here’s the proposal:
Also, I have repeatedly asked above for opponents of this proposal to advance a substantive reason to oppose it. Most every opponent cited how having to use typographers quotes when they don’t want to would be a bother. Well, the new guideline clearly says such editors wouldn’t have to. The proponents haven’t advanced a single substantive reason to oppose the use of typographers quotes in eligible articles. And there must be good, substantive reasons; without them, MOS is just being hijacked by a minority fringe with extreme views, who frequent MOS and use it as as a vehicle to impose their personal views, which are dressed up to masquerade as properly deliberated and debated guidelines. Merely showing a willingness to editwar over this isn’t good enough.
After I first posted this (and was reverted), we then spent a week discussing this. We discussed and debated it until it was clear that there was no legitimate reason to not permit their limited and controlled use. If you want MOS to remain silent on the issue, that would be perfectly acceptable. There is no basis for the regulars here continually slapping down every editor who has been coming here with a proposal to use curly quotes. The regulars who frequent MOS and have undo influence aren’t, IMO, doing as good a job as their counterparts on MOSNUM and have got to start listening and show a willingness to compromise. The previous wording (a blanket prohibition), lacks any subtlety on the matter. A nuanced approach that brings order to this is needed. Try it for a while. I think you’ll see that it will finally bring peace to this issue. Greg L ( talk) 19:04, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
Substantial objections have been given. Greg L's judgement to the contrary is wrong. Because Greg L. sees every point he does not agree with as worthless, I'm done arguing with him. We'll just have to see whether his edit to the guideline prevails or not. -- Gerry Ashton ( talk) 19:33, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
code | gives |
---|---|
’ | ’ |
‘ | ‘ |
&rdquo | ” |
“ | “ |
The place for saxon genitive examples like text’s is in the SPELLING section and not here because it is not an example of a quote being used. The difference between an apostrophe and a quote is that an apostrophe is a diacritic mark and a quote is a punctuation mark. I am going to remove all examples using Saxon Genitive from this section because they do not belong here at all. -- Yecril ( talk) 13:47, 30 September 2008 (UTC)