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WP:MOS|WP:STYLE Despite the presence of the above box [archiver's note: I provided a link to the template instead of the template itself, so that this page doesn't get added to the cat - Dan Dank55 ( push to talk)] at the very top of WP:MOS, several editors here have recently indicated a belief that MOS should be prescriptive, and thereby demonstrated a lack of understanding that it is a "guideline", the meaning of which is laid out in WP:POL. Please take a moment to review at least the nutshell. LeadSongDog ( talk) 02:19, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
[Here is my own considered opinion of the role of MOS, and of the continuing attack on MOS. Please comment after, not within my post.–N]
It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go. (Collected papers of Bertrand Russell, volume 10, Routledge)
prescribe v. 1.To set down as a direction or rule to be followed; ordain; enjoin. 2.Med. To order the use of (a medicine, treatment, etc.). 3.Law To render invalid by lapse of time. v.i. 4. To lay down laws or rules; give direction. 5.Med. To order a remedy; give prescriptions. 6.Law a To assert a title to something on the basis of prescription: with for or to. b To become invalid or unenforceable by lapse of time.
Prescriptive, though somewhat less strict than a WP policy. -- Goodmorningworld ( talk) 21:16, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
Rather than continuing to use the word "descriptive," which might suggest neutrality toward the useage being described, or to use "prescriptive," which might suggest that there is only one "correct" usage, I would suggest the more useful, enlightened, less-judgmental, and commonly used terms: "conventional" and "unconventional." To describe a particular usage as "conventional" means that it is something less than foundationally and inherently and essentially "correct" but certainly more than completely arbitrary and open to casual revision. Generally, no one is harmed too much by unconventional choices in language usage; however, the person employing unconventional usage risks have his or her choice regarded as, well, unconventional. To be "conventional," use a common style guide, which is to say do what most people do; to be "unconventional," do something else and accept that your usage will be viewed for what it is: unconventional. That's all. Style guides will, of course, vary in small ways simply because there are few absolutes in something as dynamic and maleable and contingent as everyday language use. This change in terms won't stop people from arguing for or against a particular useage, but it might change the tone. You're arguing the changing conventions of language and not the immutable absolutes of math.
Jthepp ( talk) 20:44, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
The MOS should be, in almost all situations, descriptive and not prescriptive. There will almost always be circumstances and situations where the MoS should not be applicable and should be safely ignored. It should also never be used in an automated fashion, especially when there's significant objection to portions of it. — Locke Cole • t • c 09:05, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
Here is the content of the section "First sentences":
== First sentences ==<!-- To edit this text go back to the article and click on the edit button for the "First sentence content" or "First sentence format" sub-section. For more about transclude text go to [[WP:Transclude text]] --> {{:Wikipedia:Lead section TT first sentence content|show=1}}{{:Wikipedia:Lead section TT first sentence format}}
This is how it now reads, after my extensive trial-and-error modifications, which ended with simply including "|show=1" in the first transclusion template. Why this should require it, and the second template fail when it is included, is one of life's mysteries.
I am not happy with my time being taken up like this: investigating the transclusion files themselves, finding how they were linked at articles where they did in fact work, fixing the incompatible and very poor text, formatting, and markup at the transclusion files themselves, and checking and rechecking MOS to see that it all fitted together.
If we must have such transclusions, I suggest that the instigators themselves check and recheck, instead of imposing an unfair burden on others because of their failure to do so. If this method must be used, let it be used uniformly and well. I can imagine that most of MOS and other articles could eventually consist of transcluded text; but it should be strenuously resisted if the technology is managed this badly.
– ⊥¡ɐɔıʇǝoNoetica! T– 22:50, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
Here on WT:MOSNUM (scroll down), Noetica and I have been discussing a better way to show example text.
By using a distinctive color and typeface in example text, we are liberated with very easy-to-distinguish example text that is no longer encumbered with italicizing and quote-mark problems. For instance, if we show example text in italics, Like this text, we are breaking our own guidelines and the rule of the SI when we write that a non-breaking space should separate the number and the unit symbol, like “15 kg” because the unit symbol is italicized. Further, when we write This example text, wherein we say that variables are italic, like “T = 60 K”, we can’t “see” the variable and the unit symbol is screwed up too. Using quotes introduces its own set of issues when we are talking about the use of quote marks. So…
Noetica and I propose the use of both color and typeface to set off example text. Color, by itself, introduces the potential for violating accessibility guidelines on Wikipedia. Color alone is not supposed to convey important information. But…
I know a bit about color blindness. I worked with a color-blind engineer on fuel cells. One of his jobs was to look up at ceiling-mounted hydrogen sensors when they tripped a facility-wide hydrogen-safety system I had designed. There were a bunch of these sensors on the ceiling of the big, main testing room (as well as everywhere else in the building). For practical considerations, some of the sensors had to share a single channel on the control box. The sensors had a multi-color LED that went from green to red if it was the one that sensed the hydrogen. Like most color-blind individuals, this engineer had red/green blindness—most inconvenient. He had to ask for someone else’s assistance to look up and squint at LEDs twenty feet up. Once you knew which sensor went off, you knew which engineer’s experiment was leaky. (Don’t get me started about putting hydrogen-fueled, fuel cell-powered cars in the hands of the public.)
Anyway, my point is that setting aside a metric butt-load of political correctness (because a small, small percentage see no color whatsoever), and embrace a little bit of common sense, setting off example text in maroon (or some tweak of maroon that won’t be confused with red, and certainly not relying upon the use of both red and green to mean two, distinct things), should be fine. And when color is then combined with typeface, we have some nice-looking text with zero accessibility issues.
Let’s look at some example text…
I am refering to some example text containing quotes as exactly written on WT:MOSNUM by Army1987: for example, "2 m" means two metres, and "2m" usually means twice the mass."?
In this example there are no “quote mark” issues and it is also clear what text ‘owns’ the question mark at the end.
And then this example (which is currently on MOSNUM with italicized example text that sweeps up unit symbols with the italicizing):
…Or this complex text:
Greg L wrote on WT:MOSNUM as follows: Unless there is a good typographical or communication-based reason otherwise, in numeric equivalencies, the unit symbol shall be in roman (non-italic) text. A non-breaking space “ ” almost always separates the value and the unit symbol (e.g., 2.4 GHz, 325 km, 25 °C). Exceptions are the degree, minute, and second for plane angle, °, ′, and ″, (e.g., 47° 38′ 8.8″), and the percent (%) symbol. Variables are always italicized, (e.g., T = 298 K, e = mc2).
This is coded as follows:
<font color=maroon face="times new roman" normal style="font-size: 107%;">
Example text shown in the resultant font.</font>
The above could even be simplified with a template so {{hilight|Sample text here shown in resultant font}}
could make the markup more convenient. However, we wouldn’t have to wait for such a template, since this markup would be limited primarily at first to MOS and MOSNUM.
Greg L (
talk)
23:57, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
<span style="...">
rather than <font>
, and serif
rather than "times new roman"
, but I agree about the idea.style_example {color: maroon; background: white; font-family: serif;}
to common.css, so that we'd just need <span class="style_example">
for each instance. --
Army1987 –
Deeds, not
words.
12:30, 11 December 2008 (UTC)I don't have a position. If people start adding color and special fonts to pages in the General style guidelines, then I'll reflect that style at WP:Update. - Dan Dank55 ( send/receive) 17:37, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
<span style="color: maroon; background: white; font-family: serif; font-size:107%">
Produces this example text shown here its rendered, clear-as-glass glory.</span>
Wundervoll. Please explain in plain-speak: what are the benefits of <span> v.s. <font>? After all, this: <font color=maroon face="times new roman" normal style="font-size: 107%;">
Example text produced with “<font>-based” HTML code</font>
, looks the same. I had suggested that the <font>-based method could be implemented via a template like {{hilight|
Sample text here showing product of template}}
. Does a span-based technique similarly make things as (or more) convenient?
Greg L (
talk)
21:42, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
style_example { color: maroon; background: white; font-family: serif; font-size:107% }
to
MediaWiki:common.css, and <span class="style_example">
around text to be marked. (Of course, if a template is used, this issue is less relevant.)serif
causes whatever serif font the reader chooses in his/her browser preferences to be used. (Most browsers are smart enough to choose a serif font as a replacement for Times New Roman when it's unavailabe, but we should avoid depending on that, given that we can.) --
Army1987 –
Deeds, not
words.
22:14, 12 December 2008 (UTC)I'm opening a RfC for this, since there has been little input from editors on this. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 21:22, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
Kaldari asks above why both should be implemented. Wouldn't colour alone be enough? Greg points out that the highlighting is even clearer, using both. Certainly true; but there are other reasons:
– ⊥¡ɐɔıʇǝoNoetica! T– 03:20, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
Here are some points that arose in a thread below. They belong here for consideration, with all the other points about attributes for example text.– ⊥¡ɐɔıʇǝoNoetica! T– 07:36, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
Greg L: To PMAnderson [who had not liked a white background] and Army1987: A) do we have to prescribe a background color? And B) If we want to use this on MOS and MOSNUM, do we really have to worry about non-white backgrounds? Answering my own question to “B,” I suppose if one wanted to use maroon-highlighted text in a {{quotation}} template or within a green-div box, specifying a background color would be as ugly-ass as Bruno Magli shoes on O.J. So, Army1987: can we de-specify (leave transparent) the backround in your <span> technique?
Noetica:...Background colour needs to be considered. In my opinion, yes: keep it transparent. People have different local setups affecting background and the like; and in any case three attribute changes is going a bit far. WP already uses two attributes changes for links: colour and underlining. I like underlining, as I explained in the discussion at WT:MOSNUM; but since links use it already, I guess it should be set aside as an option for our purposes.
Couldn't find where anyone had linked to Using colours in articles. While I see people referring to the issue, and with good regard to, say, "which colors?" to minimize problems, the fact that there are references elsewhere means you should consider soliciting wider comment. Just how I don't know, but it should be done. Shenme ( talk) 05:16, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
I read WP:Using colours in articles just now, Shenme. Twarn’t nothin’ there but a steaming pile of plain ol’ common sense; all stuff that has already been discussed above. The article you cite does have some examples of text with other colors, such as red text, (which I think looks like a broken link), and blue text, (which I think obviously looks like a link), and green text, (which I think has rather low contrast). I’ve personally used color to denote quoted complex text for about a year now. With the possible exception of a custom color, #721F01; brown, which looks rather similar to named “maroon” in many browsers, I haven’t found anything much better.
And this is not for failing to actually look into the subject of color with some measure of due diligence. I’ve explored other color combinations, which have been on my user page for a long time. They are:
This is an example of using Red text via RGB manipulation.
Here's a custom brown color with RGB values manipulated: custom brown
This is an example of using a named color “maroon” to change the color of text.
Here are more colors:
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make AQUA text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make BLACK text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make BLUE text.
This is Wikipedia link-blue, which is in <font color="#002BB8"> text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make BROWN text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make CHARTREUSE text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make FUCHSIA text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make GRAY text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make GREEN text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make LIME text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make MAROON text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make NAVY text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make OLIVE text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make ORANGE text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make PURPLE text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make RED text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make SILVER text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make TEAL text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make VIOLET text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make WHITE (white) text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make YELLOW text.
I think all we pretty much need here is just to dish out our own pile of common sense. If the text is easy on the eye and effectively sets off example text in a manner in which the method of doing so doesn’t get in the way of the message point, then it’s a good thing and we can stop wondering if the color gods somewhere will make the volcano overhead rumble tonight. Greg L ( talk) 05:39, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
Span-based with transparent background on different backgrounds:
Here are some examples of maroon with transparent background (no specification), imbedded in some popular themes used on MOS and MOSNUM. The span tag is as follows: <span style="color: maroon font-family: serif; font-size:107%">
:
Here is <div style> (“green box” or “green div”):
Here is the quotation. Note that I could make neither <span> nor <font>-based techniques work.
Do not note a conversion as approximate where the initial quantity has already been noted as such; e.g., write as follows: Earth's radius is approximately 6,400 km (4,000 mi), not Earth's radius is approximately 6,400 km (approx. 4,000 mi).
I don’t see this inability to use this typestyle in a quotation template as a deal-breaker myself. But it would be nice if someone could show me A) what I’m doing wrong here, or B) figure out what is wrong with the quotation template. Greg L ( talk) 08:19, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
style_example { color: maroon; font-family: serif; font-size:107% }
to
MediaWiki:common.css, without specifying any background color, then we could simply use <span class="style_example">
to mark-up examples; someone perverse enough to use styles such as the one above could then add style_example { background: white }
or whatever to their own stylesheet.=
to {{=}}
. Templates, when they see foo bar = baz quux
, believe you're passing them a named argument foo bar
with a value of baz quux
. More simply, you can add 1=
immediately after the first pipe, telling that everything after the =
and before the next |
or the }}
is the content of argument 1.=
s with {{=}}
s in the example above:Do not note a conversion as approximate where the initial quantity has already been noted as such; e.g., write as follows: Earth's radius is approximately 6,400 km (4,000 mi), not Earth's radius is approximately 6,400 km (approx. 4,000 mi).
<p>
tags confuse MediaWiki.)--
Army1987 –
Deeds, not
words.
16:38, 13 December 2008 (UTC)And the reason for my above use of <p> tags is because of the paragraph weirdness, Army. I can’t figure it out.
Finally, thanks for figuring out how to get this into a quotation box. You da man. Greg L ( talk) 20:18, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
Memorializing where we are to this point: Army1987 figured out how to make the span tag work within quotation boxes. It is as follows: <span style{{=}}"color: #721F01; font-family: serif; font-size:107%">
Example text set in highlighted style.</span>
.
This text looks like this in a quotation box:
Do not note a conversion as approximate where the initial quantity has already been noted as such; e.g., write as follows: Earth's radius is approximately 6,400 km (4,000 mi), not Earth's radius is approximately 6,400 km (approx. 4,000 mi).
and like this in a green-div box:
and like this as regular text:
Here is a more complex double check (it has several imbedded {{nowrap|text}} in it) and a little bit of just about everything else:
And this:
Greg L ( talk) 03:24, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
Example text
rather than ExampleText
, but you can make a redirect from the latter to the former if you prefer so. I also like to Keep It Simple, but {{
Example}} is already used for a different purpose.) --
Army1987 –
Deeds, not
words.
17:53, 14 December 2008 (UTC)Use {{Example text|0.1 kg}}, not for example {{Example text|.1 kg}}, {{Example text|0.1kg}}, or {{Example text|0.1 Kg}}.
Use 0.1 kg, not for example .1 kg, 0.1kg, or 0.1 Kg.
Use {{xt|0.1 kg}}, not for example {{xt|.1 kg}}, {{xt|0.1kg}}, or {{xt|0.1 Kg}}.
Thanks again Army.
I don’t see the need to open debate on atomic-level details like exact size and color. Once you head down that path in a forum like this, nothing will get done. I think it is better to start using the darn thing and see if very many Wikipedians and readers pop up in “real life” (if you can call actual use on Wikipedia “real life”) who write posts like “On my Phing Thang-brand 640 × 480 CRT monitor, using MS-Barbarian OS and the Andromeda Strain browser, maroon looks indistinguishable from broken-link red.” If a pattern develops, you tweak. Same for size. I see no need to get an RfC started on WT:MOS on the details of the recipe for vegetable beef soup. For the moment, soup it is. I can, however simulate a PC (I use a Mac) by running GammaToggleX. I can tell that maroon can likely not go any darker. I had explored all this a year ago.
I do agree that it would be nice to have an abbreviated alias that works in place of the full expression “Example text” I note that {{xt|Thanks Army}} produces Thanks Army. So perhaps {{xt|Thanks Army}}? I see it is not taken ({{ xt}}). Greg L ( talk) 05:44, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
Yeah well I skipped right at the end of all this text, I thought people were debating what name to use and where to code things. Nevermind my last post then. Headbomb { ταλκ κοντριβς – WP Physics} 06:07, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
Here is an example at 114% using hex-specified carmine: Editors should write Earth's radius is approximately 6,400 km (4,000 mi), not Earth's radius is approximately 6,400 km (approx. 4,000 mi). Greg L ( talk) 07:37, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
How about #900012;? Here is an example at 114% using hex-specified #900012;: Editors should write Earth's radius is approximately 6,400 km (4,000 mi), not Earth's radius is approximately 6,400 km (approx. 4,000 mi). I tried it just now on the template. If you think it is an abomination in the eyes of all good Wikipedians, by my guest; I thought I’d look at it on MOS for a bit here… Greg L ( talk) 08:21, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
Sandbox for testing the new {{xt}} template | |||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Acronyms and abbreviations
|
I also think we need to recognize that there are clearly four prime movers here on this: you (Noetica), me, Army1987, and Headbomb. Army figured out how to make the text display in quotation boxes and made the template. Headbomb is enthusiastically doing the heavy lifting here, and is clearly being very meticulous about it to ensure nothing gets messed up. You and I did the easy part. Greg L ( talk) 19:42, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
I'm coming to this late, and I admittedly haven't read all the comments, so maybe this has been covered. I see nothing in the markup of the tests (either in MOS or the sandbox) that would provide any indication to a user of a screen reader or a user without CSS support that there has been any change to the text. The US federal government and some states (including California) are required to follow Section 508 Amendment to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 on their web pages, which states, "Web pages shall be designed so that all information conveyed with color is also available without color, for example from context or markup." <span> is unfortunately not adequate markup. I'm not saying that Wikipedia has to meet any accessibility guidelines, but I wanted you to be aware that if you think {{ xt}} is accessible, it isn't.-- Curtis Clark ( talk) 04:25, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
Also, (and this is me falling back onto another “shortcoming”: plain-speak of what I think is truth), people who are legally blind but still have some sight can still read by having their OS present truly gargantuan text on screen. I’ve seen it on TV: a legally blind person with her nose about 10 cm (4 inches) from the screen. Who wants to listen to a synthetic computer voice if they can read it themselves? No one. So screen readers are used by whom? By the totally or near-totally blind; that’s who. Screen readers allow these individuals access to important Wikipedia content. We can thank companies like Apple for producing a screen reader that properly pronounces text like “I project you will be done with that project Jan. 21st.” Not only does OS X recognize the transitive verb and noun forms of “project”, it pronounces the end as “January twenty-first.” Smart stuff.
Now, what we are discussing here is the use of {{ xt}} on MOS and MOSNUM to highlight example text and make it visually distinctive from the prose describing it. MOS and MOSNUM are unique venues where users learn about style guidelines expected for authoring content. I’m not quite buying it here that the totally blind are going to be authoring Wikipedia content; it’s not passing my *grin test* here. To me, this is like faulting the concrete workers as they are putting in a wheelchair ramp at a corner crosswalk because they are using concrete-laying tools that permit only the able-bodied to be concrete workers. I’m thinking we’ve addressed the issue of accessibility sufficiently well with the fact that the totally blind can read our articles.
As for color blindness, that’s all be discussed above and I won’t repeat it here. Suffice to say though, having the example text also in a serif typeface addresses this issue just fine. Greg L ( talk) 22:50, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
Army1987 and Noetica pointed out (and I completely agree) that showing instructions like “It is 1.8 m and not 1.8m” not only violates the rule of SI, it also violates our own guidelines. In order to handle “It is 1.8 m and not 1.8m” and things like T = 295 K, MOS had to suddenly jump to the use of a different technique to set off text being spoken of, like quotation marks. When I look at the older versions of MOS with italic example text, it looked horrid to me (this speaks to the difference between our “eyes”); the reliance upon italics didn’t distinguish example text very well from the prose text and it was hard for my eye to parse what was this and what was that. Very hard. You hate it, and oddly, I think {{ xt}} makes it really, really, really, easy to parse the MOS page. I really like it. Clearly Noetica, Headbomb and Army1987 feel the same way. You might find this hard to believe, but Army1987 used {{ xt}} when illustrating some example text in a post on WT:MOSNUM and, initially, I didn’t even notice the technique he had used to set off text being discussed—the method didn’t call attention to itself and interfere or compete with his message point. It clearly does call attention to itself in your case and I’m hoping that this isn’t common and, further, that it will prove to be an issue of just getting use to it.
I’d like to point out that I perceive no need whatsoever for others to have a sense of urgency nor for worries about this technique being effectively grandfathered as a consequence of it ‘sending down tap roots’ and being hard to extricate due to intervening edits to the content of guidelines. It is ultra easy to change the color on {{ xt}}, or any other attribute for that matter. We could always set xt to simply generate italic text, or generate 107% black serif in bold style. If we want to preserve, for archival purposes, existing discussion text already marked up with xt, we could even create {{ xt2}} and do a seach & replace on MOS. Having example text flagged with xt gives us all sorts of options and flexibility that we never had before. 19:07, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
(Moved to Template talk:Xt.)
I find text with italicized quotations easier to read, especially with longer quotations; different styling helps understand what belongs to the main text and what is an illustration. The need to scan several lines of text backward and forward to find a tiny quotation mark is a serious impediment. I reserve quotation marks for short quotations (e.g. of proper names) where both of them are in sight while reading, and I use straight quotation marks for them. In addition, wikisyntax itself uses apostrophes, which can be viewed as primitive quotation marks, for italic. Of course, these remarks do not apply to literary prose because it is usually read rather than scanned as a source of information so the reader does not need to determine the character of the text being read from from within.
Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Archive 107 should allow italic quotations when they are longer, e.g. contain sentences, but singling them out with a block would break exposition. -- Yecril ( talk) 10:36, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
The quotation can be both italic and in marks, where the marks can be suppressed for browsers that support CSS. The current situation is that the reader finds himself in the middle of something and it is hard to figure out what exactly it is. Of course, it would be best to style quotations with Q
, but we would have to get Brion allow Q
first. --
Yecril (
talk)
17:54, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
I understand that; however, several authors, for various reasons, prefer inline quotations. We are not discussing block quotations here as they do not present usability problems. And besides, all italic things
Philcha brought into our attention are significantly shorter, so there is no risk of ambigüity, and, moreover, they are better served by EM
and CITE
. --
Yecril (
talk)
21:41, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
I find the green colour much less intrusive and messy on the page than the rusty red colour that was previously tried—thanks to Greg L for that. However, there are several problems—two visual and two procedural:
<span style="color: #006400; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 110%;">
, which parses as hex 64 green (dark “Tony” green, or decimal 100); Times New Roman (or Times if you don”t have that, or your browser’s “serif” typeface per its preferences setting if it has neither font installed); and 110%, which boosts the size proportionally irrespective of the zoom level. But at zero zoom (actual, 12 pt text), 110% is equivalent to boosting Times New Roman from 12 pt text to 13 pt text.Our discussions are at Template talk:Xt. I’ve been waiting for your input there because I know that you see colors as being particularly bright on your Mac. Headbomb sees things the opposite way. So far, Army1987, Headbomb, Kaldari, and I have all had a hand in modifying the template to make it better; join on in. And, BTW, here’s a sandbox: Template:Xt/Sandbox featuring high-precision color and size examples. Greg L ( talk) 06:18, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
Above I respond to Noetica's general posting regarding the use of transclusion. Here I ask a non-transclusion question: Should we remove the discussion of First sentence content and format from this page altogether? It doesn't seem to fit with the other issues talked about on this page. And it does fit in wp:lead (where it already appears). So perhaps we should just remove it from this page. Your thoughts? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 23:07, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
Last call. I'll delete it in a couple of days unless there is a meaningful objection to removing it. Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 23:43, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
Could we please edit the MOS to specify that, where possible, the HTML entities and so on are used instead of their Unicode equivalents? Given that the 'insert' box at the bottom of the edit window puts in the Unicode characters for — and so on, it is not possible to say that this is mandatory, but when editing an article, particularly with a view to the GA or FA criteria, it is extremely annoying with standard fonts to tell the hyphens and dashes apart, and virtually impossible with the spaces. It is mainly the space and dash characters where this is a problem, and short of using a font like DPCustomMono2 (which still has problems with dashes), this can sometimes be a real nuisance. What are people's thoughts?— Kan8eDie ( talk) 17:45, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
(outdent)
No, that’s not the issue, Roger. Here’s the issue in a nutshell: It’s about being able to see the difference while in edit view (and you can’t see the difference when the actual rendered non-breaking space and non-breaking hyphen are used instead of their code). It’s not the difference in the appearance of these characters; it’s the difference in their behavior, which is substantial since they prevent line-end word wraps like these:
and this one…
So to ensure that other editors see that these special characters are used, we don’t want a bot replacing 25 kg with 25 kg. The code for these hard-to-distinguish characters to show so other editors to take a clue to copy & paste. This part of my response is addresses the polite part of your post.
As for your final, impolite parting comment (the part where you put your foot in your mouth voluntarily: (“I really think a case could be made that some of these "invisible" minutiae are not worth the effort, even discussing them is a waste of electricity and only serves to exacerbate global warming”), these details we’re discussing are those that other editors here routinely take the time to get right so Wikipedia reads well as a high-quality product for the world to enjoy—you too, as you clearly aren’t tending to these details yourself. You’re welcome anyway. And if you *really* felt that even discussing this “minutiae” isn’t worth the effort, then why in the world would you ignore your own expressed value and choose to weigh in on the subject??? It seems that parting shot of yours was just an effort to demonstrate that you are some sort of *big picture* guy who can’t be bothered with trivial little points. Instead, all I gathered is that you don’t understand details that others are quietly taking care of behind the scenes and you only demonstrated your cluelessness about fine typography.
P.S. I’m an engineer; we tend to details. If anything works in this world, it is because engineers somewhere gave a crap to sweat the details and get something right. Your post reminds me of some managers I’ve met. Management sounds like a splendid career path for you. Next time, try checking your attitude at the door before entering. Greg L ( talk) 21:29, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
I was led to this page because of objections to my removal of hyphens after -ly adverbs.
(See
User talk:Wavelength#Hyphens - thanks for the ref.)
After several weeks of discussion, followed by a short respite, I have these questions:
-- Wavelength ( talk) 02:19, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
There doesn't seem to be a section here on the appropriate tone for articles, and who the target audience is. I think those things ought to be defined. Is that included elsewhere? Some editors write as for a scientific journal. Their style is ultra-formal, argumentative, and beyond the comprehension of the average reader. I take the approach that someone who knows nothing about the subject should be able to understand every word of the article (assuming that person is high school age or above). Am I way off base here? ThreeOfCups ( talk) 03:38, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
Was the move of this to St. Louis–San Francisco Railway correct? It seems kind of silly, since it reads fine with the normal dash, and as far as I know the company just used a normal dash. (They usually called themselves the Frisco though, so it's hard to find, for instance, a map where they use the full name.) -- NE2 20:15, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
MOS correctly suggests using italics for phrases etc., but in what order? Should we use "Syndicat des instituteurs du Dahomey (Teachers' Union of Dahomey)" or "Teachers' Union of Dahomey (Syndicat des instituteurs du Dahomey)"? I was taught the former, but that may be a Linguistics thing. Tks Ling.Nut ( talk— WP:3IAR) 21:47, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
In the Subsection Wikipedia:ENGVAR#Formatting the sentence following sentence 'Do not place a currency symbol after the value (123$, 123£, 123€), unless the symbol is normally written as such. Do not write $US123 or $123 (US)' should be changed to Do not place a currency symbol after the value (123$, 123£), unless the symbol is normally or in some nations written as such (123€). Do not write $US123 or $123 (US) dues to the fact that the Euro in some nations is placed after the number in others it is before it is therefore not a suitable exampled of not what to do . Any thoughts ? 安東尼 TALK 圣诞快乐 22:50, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
(Italian sucks in many other respects, but at least you can write "Sono alto 1,88 m e ho pagato questo 1,88 €" without any useless inconsistency. Now I've discovered that in English one must remember which symbols go before and which go after, too. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 13:49, 31 December 2008 (UTC))
Please be aware of an attempt to change the way coordinates are displayed by {{ Coord}} (and thus in other templates which call it). This is being falsely presented as a bug in that template, used in around a quarter of a million instances, apparently in order to circumvent the need to obtain consensus to make such a change. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 22:44, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
Please see WP:VPP#Adding 2 policy pages to WP:Update. - Dan Dank55 ( send/receive) 15:09, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
...at WT:PERFECT. I reverted Andy's edits, and I'm pretty sure he thinks I was acting improperly in a number of ways. Footnote: even though we get a fair amount of traffic in WT:MOS, we can go for months with no discussion and with no one but me checking the diffs in many of the other general style guidelines. Andy is claiming, quite correctly, that if it's just me arguing one side, that's OWNership, at least in appearance if not in fact, so I need to step back. - Dan Dank55 ( send/receive) 02:44, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
I notice that the collapsed "Support Wikipedia: a non-profit project. — Donate Now" header at the top of all Wikipedia pages uses a spaced em dash, even though WP:DASH outlaws this. Is that odd? — TedPavlic | ( talk) 18:14, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
There is a request for comment about whether or not WP:BOOSTER documents a standard consensus and good practice that all editors and school/college/university articles should follow as an official policy or guideline. Madcoverboy ( talk) 18:59, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
For me it seems superfluous. There is already a policy about neutrality, and another about articles being based on verifiable references. Perhaps I am missing something? Stealthaxe ( talk) 05:25, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
Should Wikipedia be working towards meeting the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines? Please join discussion at Wikipedia talk:Accessibility#WCAG 2.0. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 08:24, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
Talk:Alexander Alekhine#Hidden solutions in diagrams: a number of articles on chess players and chess tactics include 'problems', where a chessboard is shown midway through a game, there being an optimal set of moves for one or other side thereafter. The captions on these pseudo-images include the sequence of moves, but hidden inside collapsible sections ( eg). I removed the hidden styling citing both accessibility and 'not censored' concerns, but was reverted. Comments are appreciated. Happy‑ melon 21:35, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
According to most style manuals (Chicago, Prentice Hall, McGraw-Hill), proper names take 's in the possessive, even when they end in sibilants. So it's Brahms's, Glass's, and so on.
There has been some contention about this on a number of pages recently (see discussion here, so, if no one makes any suggestions in the next couple of days to the contrary, I will update the MOS section on possessives. Regards, -- Ravpapa ( talk) 07:05, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
:*i support the suggestion that the apostrophe-s form should be adopted (including for "classical/Biblical" names): Jones's, Moses's etc are clearer than the apostrophe-only forms.
Sssoul (
talk) 07:29, 5 January 2009 (UTC) edit: in light of the discussion below, i'm suspending my "vote" until Ravpapa clarifies whether he/she's retracting the proposal to make the apostrophe-s form the wikipedia-wide standard.
Sssoul (
talk)
21:13, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
jeanne, you are still a mere babe in arms compared to some of us. We all, I think, learned in high school that there is no 's for words ending in sibilants. But there is unanimity among style manuals today (well, at least those I know) that proper nouns take the 's no matter what. -- Ravpapa ( talk) 13:09, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
I don't have an online subscription, and I am probably hopelessly out of date on these matters. My copy of Chicago is from 1993, my McGraw-Hill is from 1989, my Words into Type (does anyone use that anymore?) is from 1974. I have a bunch of others (Turabian, Strunk and White, Microsoft), but all at least 15 years old. Back in those days, we all wrote 's after proper names, but times change. I have no strong feelings about it one way or another, I just think we should be consistent. Even a statement that "you can do it this way or that way, just do it the same way throughout the article" would be fine with me. Age has mellowed me a lot. -- Ravpapa ( talk) 16:56, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
(outdent) thank you Dan - i'll try to help out. WT:Manual_of_Style/Archive_92#Possessives of proper names ending in "s" concludes with a recommendation to accept both versions, as long as consistency is maintained within a given article; i'll try to find time to wade through some more of those later today. meanwhile, should we close the RfC, at least until it's clear whether any radical change to the MoS is really being proposed? Sssoul ( talk) 06:02, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. -- Ravpapa ( talk) 17:12, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
I would like to reiterate my gentle plea for common sense: all singular names, whether it is John or Charles or what have you, should end with an apostrophe s to denote the possessive case. Somewhere in a time, long long ago, long before Wikipedia was founded, someone began a meme in which it was decreed that Charles (for example) should not get an apostrophe s simply on aesthetic grounds. But it seems to me that the issue here shouldn't be aesthetics, but whether or not Charles possesses something. If he does, such as a book, then it's Charles's book. Incidentally, and I could be mistaken, I think there's no quarrel about this with the Brits. I subscribe to The London Review of Books and The Times Literary Supplement, and they regularly use the apostrophe s. In the meantime, I see that Roland Burris's claim to take his seat in the senate was rejected today. Mysloop ( talk) 18:52, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
Ssoul, no, I haven't looked at those discussions yet. I ought to. In the meantime, do you recommend that I continue my edits (I'd like to call up some other entries) and just take the responses I might get on a case-by-case basis? Thanks for your advice. Mysloop ( talk) 23:28, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
The horse is dead. Enough discussion. Sssoul, go ahead and make the change. Try to keep it pithy. -- Ravpapa ( talk) 12:29, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
Well done. -- Ravpapa ( talk) 17:54, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
This is a commentary on the MoS page itself.
There seems to be an error on the MoS page where the word quote is used and the word quotation is what should be used. The page also says to make sure that there is consensus on the matter before changing anything here. There are actually a couple of places where this word is misused. The first example noticed starts like this:
Attribution The author of a quote of a full sentence or more should be named;
Does anyone care to comment on that please ? Stealthaxe ( talk) 05:21, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
Stealthaxe ( talk) 07:00, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
For readers that have color blindness, using a green colored font is not a good idea, for emphasizing text. Can someone change this? Thanks -- Funandtrvl ( talk) 20:32, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
The color is to provide yet another way to distinguish example text for normal-sighted individuals. This is similar to the way chemistry wash bottles are in wet labs (where I once spent some time in a ‘former life’): the isopropanol wash bottle has a blue top, ethanol = orange top, methanol = green top, acetone = red top. There is a big difference between acetone and methanol (red/green). If one is color blind, you read the wording on the bottle. If you have normal color vision, you have both indicators, where color is the quicker one. To this day, I still see “red” when I think of acetone. It’s the same for cylinders of compressed hydrogen; they come in red cylinders. Oxygen (big difference) is green. Of course, they are labeled with their contents too. Color is simply assistive. Same here. Greg L ( talk) 22:30, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
There's a discussion at Template talk:Infobox Weather#This template or template:Climate_chart about the use of {{ Infobox Weather}} vs. {{ Climate chart}} which both present the same kind of data but in completely different formats (one is a table of numbers with different color backgrounds to indicate coldness to hotness where the other is a bar chart). If anyone here has MoS reasons one of these should be preferred over the other please comment (there, not here). Thanks. -- Rick Block ( talk) 03:33, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
Editors of the English-language Wikipedia may be interested in examining other English-language style guides, and possibly adding some of them to their collections. Comments are welcome.
At
Citizendium, there is
CZ:Manual of Style - Citizendium,
but what seems more like a style guide is
CZ:Article Mechanics - Citizendium.
At
Knol, the closest thing to a style guide that I could find is
Best Practices: Writing Good Knols - a knol by Knol Help.
--
Wavelength (
talk)
07:00, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
Here are some more.
-- Wavelength ( talk) 19:56, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
Here are style guides for some of the wikis listed at List of wikis.
-- Wavelength ( talk) 04:55, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
-- Wavelength ( talk) 17:13, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
A request for comment has been opened at the talk page of WP:MOSCL, on how the Manual of Style should handle mixed and non-capitalization in personal names. – Cyrus XIII ( talk) 20:20, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
What is the MoS for names of cities in the US. Would it be Lansing, Michigan or Lansing, Michigan, USA. For the longest time I've included the USA in the biographical data of hockey players, vaguely on the memory that MoS required it to a provide a less NA-centric view. I got someone removing them now. There's no edit war or anything, I just trying to find an existing MoS on the subject. Can someone provide a link if there is one on the subject? ccwaters ( talk) 16:24, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
Whichever it is, surely Wikipedia:Mos#Images and Wikipedia:Layout#Images ought to be saying the same thing?
One says: "Where it is appropriate to force size, images should generally be no more than 550 pixels wide, so that they can be comfortably displayed on 800x600 monitors."
The other says: "An image should not overwhelm the screen; 300px may be considered a limit, as this is approximately half Wikipedia's text space's width on a 800x600 screen."
-- Malleus Fatuorum 13:59, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
(unindent) Not sure about this suggestion. If we're talking about a page with en.Wikipedia's guidelines on images, then it has to be on en.Wikipedia and not at meta. Anything we say at meta has to be applicable to all projects, so basically it's software documentation only.-- Kotniski ( talk) 12:12, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
The dialectical process whereby an article evolves in Wikipedia can often be seen, fossilized in the text of an article. I wish to discuss this, and in doing so bring to light what I believe should be an important style guideline for editors, that in seeking to improve an article, contributors should aim to produce a text which is insofar as possible independent of that dialectical process by which it is reached.
I will introduce my point by a trivial example. The article on Peter and the Wolf contains a brief list of the instruments associated with the various characters in the story. A side-by-side view of my edit and a prior version, shows, I believe, the type of editing I am discussing. The earlier and latter lines are reproduced below.
The first version is suggestive of an early contributor having stated that the hunters are represented by percussion, and a second contributor expanding on this. It suggests that the second contributor has added the two parenthetic items of text, rather than replacing the existing text with a new one that includes both pieces of information. I would contend that this is not desirable, as it is not concise, and it distracts from the informative value of the article, by shifting the readers focus to the process by which the text has evolved. The purpose of my edit is fairly obvious, in seeking to eliminate this.
I would like to invite comments, then, on the following: firstly, the assertion that the second style is preferable, for the reasons of brevity, and of focusing on the information that the article seeks to convey, rather than the process by which the article evolved; secondly, that a style policy be enacted to this effect, such that editors wishing to improve the text can simply refer to it in their edit descriptions. I realise that where subject matter is contentious, this process will become all the more difficult, but I would contend that it is in these circumstance in particular that it is important that the article reflects both the consensus, and disputed viewpoints in a clear editorial narrative, rather than reflecting the, perhaps heated, process whereby the views have been reached.
Should a conclusion be reached that such a policy is desirable, I would be happy to draft such a policy, or not, as the community sees fit. I open the matter to the floor.
-- Che Gannarelli ( talk) 12:20, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
I've search the Manual of Style, and I cannot find anything about how (or whether) to abbreviate large number ranges. For example, from the Saltholm article: "10-12,000 ducks breed and graze on Saltholm during autumn and late winter/spring."
Now, in this case, an educated person can guess that that "10–12,000" probably doesn't mean between 10 ducks and 12,000 ducks. But in cases where there is less certainty about variability, there could be ambiguity.
A little guidance would be useful.
Misha Vargas ( talk) 08:40, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
MOSICON has been marked disputed , can you have a look please Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(icons)#Consensus.3F Gnevin ( talk) 15:56, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
Over recent months an edit war of sorts is developing in the articles relating to female members of the acting profession, both living and deceased. An increasing number of editors feel that the term actress is demeaning and alter it to actor, when it will immediately be reversed. I have no particular preference but feel that it is approaching a time where a consensus would clarify the matter. The wiki article for 'actor' currently says:
Is a MOS consensus possible or desirable to reduce the level of edit reversals? 21stCenturyGreenstuff ( talk) 20:02, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
Erm well, many thanks for the steer...but quite frankly no it did not help one little bit. As I said before I have no personal preference either way, but I have a few dozen female thespians in my watch list and there is a daily parade of warring changes between actor and actress. It is a nuisance and a nonsense and will only get worse until some kind of firmer guideline is established that editors can work to. As many others will do I came to the manual of style for that guidance and have come away empty handed. Frankly the discussion you referred me to was nothing much more than a head in the sand "if we ignore it, it does not exist" attitude. Disappointing to say the least, but Oh well...which patch of sand is free for me to insert my head into? 21stCenturyGreenstuff ( talk) 03:21, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
dramatic ( talk) 03:53, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
Suggestions 1 and 2 are excellent, eg Helen Mirren who has never referred to herself as anything but an actor. But 3 would not stop the endless changes back and fore....but I am off to reinsert my head in this handy bucket of sand. 21stCenturyGreenstuff ( talk) 03:59, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
And of course there is the Academy Award "Best Actress", isn't there?-- Jchthys ( talk) 18:15, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
I think dramatic's idea-or at least the first two points-is fantastic. And i'm a woman and a feminist who would rather be called actress 'cause it sounds nicer! I don't think just because it separates us it automatically implies inferiority! It's the people who have the problem with the word that demonise it. But that's just my opinion. That was my first serious discussion post-scary! I'm not used to this yet! Deadlego ( talk) 17:50, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
Difference of opinion on Romy Schneider about where she is born. Germany, Nazy Germany, or Austria. (1938 anschluss etc). All of them are correct, in a way. Is there any official guideline/MOS regarding this. Garion96 (talk) 20:21, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
So it should be Germany, not Austria. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 15:00, 24 January 2009 (UTC)Many place names have a historical context that should be preserved, but common sense should prevail. There can be few places that have not been parts of more than one culture or have had only one name. An article about Junipero Serra should say he lived in Alta Mexico not the U.S. state of California because the latter entity did not exist at the time of Junipero Serra. The Romans invaded Gaul, not France, and Thabo Mbeki is the president of the Republic of South Africa, not of the Cape Colony. To be clear, you may sometimes need to mention the current name of the area (for example "what is now France"), especially if no English name exists for that area in the relevant historical period.
The 2008 Barack Obama assassination scare in Denver refers to news reports of an alleged plot by Shawn Robert Adolf, Tharin Robert Gartrell and Nathan Dwaine Johnson to assassinate then-Senator Barack Obama, then the 2008 Democratic Party presidential nominee...
When should an article contain "then-title" for a past title. It seems obvious to me that without "then", it refers to when the person had those titles, but I couldn't find a Wiki MOS guideline and am unfamiliar with other MOS guidelines. Galatee ( talk) 17:52, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
Hey, is there a standardized style fot this? Spinach Monster ( talk) 04:45, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
Yes, i think it's "Notable residents" or "notable past residents". :) RingtailedFox • Talk • Contribs 20:28, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
Okay, so, not to put too much of a point on it, but do we have an MoS decision on random drive-by wikimapia linking? I, as should be obvious from the section head, suffer from POV. I find myself increasingly annoyed by seeing bots or persons with bot-like minds come through and shotgun a bunch of irrelevant links into articles I edit. The name of a town where event X occurred is not notable unless that town is widely known for its association with X. The wikilinking of a street where event X occurred 80 years ago, an event with no specifically geographical interest, is a sin against humanity and God, in my view. Yes, of course, in a story about JFK's assasination I should certainly expect to see a map of the grassy knoll, but in a story about, say, Eisenhower's presidency, a map of Abilene, Kansas is just plain pathetic. I want so very badly to assume good faith, but instead I find myself theorizing dumb-assed indifference. Please, yell at me or something so I know what to do. GPa Hill ( talk) 00:19, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
At the moment, AWB is stripping all self links that it finds. However, it is the convention of some editors to use self links to implement the bold reiteration in the first sentence of each article (because self links are rendered as bold by Mediawiki). The AWB behavior causes those editors to have to do an additional edit to re-add the bold. It has been suggested that AWB replace first-sentence self links with bold (rather than stripping all mark-up entirely).
There is a need for clarification on whether it is bad practice to use self links to implement bold reiteration. According to Help:Self link,
Self links are usually not recommended. One exception is within a text that is transcluded between several pages. Per the Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Article titles, you should not use self-links to make the article name bold in the first paragraph.
However, nowhere in Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Article titles is this topic discussed (and so that entry should probably be removed from Help:Self link). This topic is also not discussed in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links).
It does follow the WPMOS to wikify all relevant keywords in an article the first time they are used. It is also good web policy to use content-based tags rather than explicit style-based tags. So it seems like implementing the bold reiteration with a wikification makes sense. Comment? Thanks. — TedPavlic ( talk) 15:48, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
It was fixed in the latest release, see WT:AWB. §hep • Talk 03:56, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
Is there a stylature guide for when describing (not naming) places? Should it be "shot in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada" or what? Should it be "performed in California, USA" or what? Do we have any guidelines/guidance on this somewhere? — pd_THOR | =/\= | 19:01, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
I completely disagree with the Retaining the existing variety policy of the manual. In short, it says that the spelling of the "first major contributor" will stand as the Wikipedia spelling unless a specific reason to change it comes up. This is ridiculous. If a fringe spelling used by the "first major contributor" does not cross dialects, the more common one will naturally replace it. Why then would a spelling that does cross this boundary be exempt from this common sense rule?
For the purposes of this argument, we can ignore smaller English variations to focus on the two largest ones, American English and British English. According to Alexa [5], Wikipedia has more than five times as many American users (23.1%) than British users (4.1%). If India (5.4%) is added to British users, Americans still more than double the number. More over, approximately two thirds of native speakers of English live in the United States, [6] and therefore speak American English.
American English is by far the most common English variant both on Wikipedia and in the world, therefore unless contradicted by the other three guidelines, American English should be standard on Wikipedia.-- Marcus Brute ( talk) 06:35, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
I would absolutely reject the idea that Wikipedia should be entirely in US English, and take the chance to remind anyone happening across this discussion of the element of ENGVAR that is perhaps both most overlooked and most valuable, opportunities for commonality, Version-neutral English as I prefer to call it. Of course it is not always possible, as when one needs to refer to the metal with the atomic number 13, but a little thoughtfulness can bear much fruit in terms of providing that which is equally acceptable to all readers. Kevin McE ( talk) 10:09, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
To respond directly to the question asked, say two-thirds of people use American spelling, and one-third British spelling, and assume further for the sake of argument that there are no other kinds. Then the result of the "retaining the existing variety" rule is that two-thirds of the spellings on Wikipedia will be American, and one-third British, albeit not coexisting in the same article. Since that reflects the actual balance in the English-speaking world, what's wrong with that? If a spelling is a fringe one in the real world, it will remain a fringe spelling on Wikipedia to the same extent, unless the adherents of that spelling are unusually prolific contributors. Joeldl ( talk) 10:36, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
If the English language version of Wikipedia were to standardise on American-English, there would then be a need for a non-American English language version of Wikipedia in the same way that there is a German language version and a French language version, etc. I think most people can see that this would be absurd.-- Toddy1 ( talk) 15:04, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
There is an ongoing RfC here on WT:MOSNUM that could use more input from Wikipedians on its three propositions. Greg L ( talk) 23:51, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Any objections? OlEnglish ( talk) 22:16, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
Done
OlEnglish (
talk)
19:56, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
I've been revising some articles that I've worked on exensively to experiment with different TOC arrangements. It's a subjective issue, and some like the TOC in the default layout (with white space to the right.) The question is more relevant when the TOC is long and creates a large block of white space before your can read the body text. An example of a before and after are included in case anyone wants to offer an opinion.
Thanks in advance. -- Wikiwatcher1 ( talk) 21:52, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
Recently, I made some editing decisions involving alphabetization in the article Esperantist, and I discovered that Wikipedia has few or no guidelines for this process, which is probably important enough and comprehensive enough to deserve its own subpage. Here is a permanent link to a discussion of the topic: User talk:Noetica - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [section 4: "Alphabetization (given names, surnames, domestic name order, thorn)"].
Initial discussion with Noetica | ||
---|---|---|
|
-- Wavelength ( talk) 00:09, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
To add to Noetica's nice list above, St. and Mt. should be alphabetized as Saint and Mount, right? Reywas92 Talk 19:08, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
From the archives, here are 23 related discussions, of which seven of the most relevant are in boldface italics.
-- Wavelength ( talk) 23:10, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia has the article Collation, which discusses alphabetization. One definition of alphabetize is "to express by or furnish with an alphabet" [7], hence, there is Alphabetization.org - Easily fighting illiteracy!
Besides those two examples, five of the leading results of my Google search for "alphabetization" are as follows.
-- Wavelength ( talk) 04:19, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
From the five external links listed above, I have learned that there are two major methods of alphabetization: word-by-word alphabetization and letter-by-letter alphabetization. In the former method (my preference of the two), word in print precedes wording, whereas, in the latter method, wording precedes word in print.
Besides that "major" distinction, methods of alphabetization differ in various other respects, involving: abbreviations (such as St. and Mt.), surnames (with Mc, Mac, and M' ; and with da, de, di, do, du, van, von, and so forth); name order (of given name and surname), capitalization (A to Z before a to z, or A before a to Z before z), punctuation, numerals, and other features.
At this moment, I am inclined to favor a system of collation based on the very thorough outline at
Martin Tulic, Book indexing - About indexing (with its list of linked pages), and supplemented by the following.
-- Wavelength ( talk) 23:50, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
I would favor the word-by-word method also, as humans tend to think in word units rather than letter units. The Martin Tulic resource looks like a good reference. As for the diacritics, as a mostly-English cataloger, I have no opinion, although the use of redirects on WP is a life-saving procedure for instances with spelling variants. My 2¢. Pegship ( talk) 20:05, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
The standard alphabetization methodology in the Anglo-American library industry is 'word by word', otherwise known as 'nothing before something'. I favour this on the basis of my own professional experience in the information industry. The American Library Association Code (Rule 6), follows this methodology, and further notes 'abbreviated words should be filed as if they were spelled out in full, with one exception, that is, the abbreviation Mrs. St. is therefore filed as if it were spelled Saint, and Mc... as Mac'. -- Taiwan boi ( talk) 14:11, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
Kmzundel ( talk) 17:08, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
Noetica’s suggested protocol, and other editors, may have alluded to the following issue, but the examples don’t address it explicitly. I’m concerned about (usually French) names starting with Le and La. Some Le s and La s are separated from the next part of the name – Le Boucher, La Roch, etc. Others are not – Leboucher, Laroche, etc. Currently, all the names that have a space after La/Le appear earlier on in a category, and the names without spaces appear later. Hence, Maurice Leroux could be at quite some distance from Maurice Le Roux. In this particular case, these turned out to be the same person, so they have to be merged (I have no idea which is the correct spelling). This would have been picked up much more quickly if they’d appeared together in the first place. My intuitive way of ordering names in the real world does not just focus on the first element of a multi-part surname, but ignores spaces utterly and considers all the letters as if they were contiguous. I know that WP has decided to use only the first element for sorting purposes, but that has always seemed an odd decision to me. It feels like a decision made by a computer whizkid who's all tied up with primary and secondary sorting keys. That's good in theory, except that that's just not the way names work. We don’t think that the principal part of Maurice Le Roux’s surname is merely "Le", with some less important letters appended merely to distinguish him from Pierre Le Roy. No, Roux and Roy are, if anything, more important than Le, so they deserve to be fully taken into account as integral parts of name. There should be no "primary and secondary sorting key" idea with surnames. The whole surname is the primary - and sole - sorting key. The only real issue is deciding what exactly is the surname - and cases like Charles De Gaulle and Vincent van Gogh are classic examples. Is it "De Gaulle" and "van Gogh", or merely "Gaulle" and "Gogh"? But that's a completely separate issue. Once we decide that Vincent was Herr "van Gogh" and not Herr "Gogh", then he would be listed as a V name, after a putative Vangoff and before a Van Goit. See the discussion here that brought me to this page. -- JackofOz ( talk) 21:46, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
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WP:MOS|WP:STYLE Despite the presence of the above box [archiver's note: I provided a link to the template instead of the template itself, so that this page doesn't get added to the cat - Dan Dank55 ( push to talk)] at the very top of WP:MOS, several editors here have recently indicated a belief that MOS should be prescriptive, and thereby demonstrated a lack of understanding that it is a "guideline", the meaning of which is laid out in WP:POL. Please take a moment to review at least the nutshell. LeadSongDog ( talk) 02:19, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
[Here is my own considered opinion of the role of MOS, and of the continuing attack on MOS. Please comment after, not within my post.–N]
It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go. (Collected papers of Bertrand Russell, volume 10, Routledge)
prescribe v. 1.To set down as a direction or rule to be followed; ordain; enjoin. 2.Med. To order the use of (a medicine, treatment, etc.). 3.Law To render invalid by lapse of time. v.i. 4. To lay down laws or rules; give direction. 5.Med. To order a remedy; give prescriptions. 6.Law a To assert a title to something on the basis of prescription: with for or to. b To become invalid or unenforceable by lapse of time.
Prescriptive, though somewhat less strict than a WP policy. -- Goodmorningworld ( talk) 21:16, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
Rather than continuing to use the word "descriptive," which might suggest neutrality toward the useage being described, or to use "prescriptive," which might suggest that there is only one "correct" usage, I would suggest the more useful, enlightened, less-judgmental, and commonly used terms: "conventional" and "unconventional." To describe a particular usage as "conventional" means that it is something less than foundationally and inherently and essentially "correct" but certainly more than completely arbitrary and open to casual revision. Generally, no one is harmed too much by unconventional choices in language usage; however, the person employing unconventional usage risks have his or her choice regarded as, well, unconventional. To be "conventional," use a common style guide, which is to say do what most people do; to be "unconventional," do something else and accept that your usage will be viewed for what it is: unconventional. That's all. Style guides will, of course, vary in small ways simply because there are few absolutes in something as dynamic and maleable and contingent as everyday language use. This change in terms won't stop people from arguing for or against a particular useage, but it might change the tone. You're arguing the changing conventions of language and not the immutable absolutes of math.
Jthepp ( talk) 20:44, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
The MOS should be, in almost all situations, descriptive and not prescriptive. There will almost always be circumstances and situations where the MoS should not be applicable and should be safely ignored. It should also never be used in an automated fashion, especially when there's significant objection to portions of it. — Locke Cole • t • c 09:05, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
Here is the content of the section "First sentences":
== First sentences ==<!-- To edit this text go back to the article and click on the edit button for the "First sentence content" or "First sentence format" sub-section. For more about transclude text go to [[WP:Transclude text]] --> {{:Wikipedia:Lead section TT first sentence content|show=1}}{{:Wikipedia:Lead section TT first sentence format}}
This is how it now reads, after my extensive trial-and-error modifications, which ended with simply including "|show=1" in the first transclusion template. Why this should require it, and the second template fail when it is included, is one of life's mysteries.
I am not happy with my time being taken up like this: investigating the transclusion files themselves, finding how they were linked at articles where they did in fact work, fixing the incompatible and very poor text, formatting, and markup at the transclusion files themselves, and checking and rechecking MOS to see that it all fitted together.
If we must have such transclusions, I suggest that the instigators themselves check and recheck, instead of imposing an unfair burden on others because of their failure to do so. If this method must be used, let it be used uniformly and well. I can imagine that most of MOS and other articles could eventually consist of transcluded text; but it should be strenuously resisted if the technology is managed this badly.
– ⊥¡ɐɔıʇǝoNoetica! T– 22:50, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
Here on WT:MOSNUM (scroll down), Noetica and I have been discussing a better way to show example text.
By using a distinctive color and typeface in example text, we are liberated with very easy-to-distinguish example text that is no longer encumbered with italicizing and quote-mark problems. For instance, if we show example text in italics, Like this text, we are breaking our own guidelines and the rule of the SI when we write that a non-breaking space should separate the number and the unit symbol, like “15 kg” because the unit symbol is italicized. Further, when we write This example text, wherein we say that variables are italic, like “T = 60 K”, we can’t “see” the variable and the unit symbol is screwed up too. Using quotes introduces its own set of issues when we are talking about the use of quote marks. So…
Noetica and I propose the use of both color and typeface to set off example text. Color, by itself, introduces the potential for violating accessibility guidelines on Wikipedia. Color alone is not supposed to convey important information. But…
I know a bit about color blindness. I worked with a color-blind engineer on fuel cells. One of his jobs was to look up at ceiling-mounted hydrogen sensors when they tripped a facility-wide hydrogen-safety system I had designed. There were a bunch of these sensors on the ceiling of the big, main testing room (as well as everywhere else in the building). For practical considerations, some of the sensors had to share a single channel on the control box. The sensors had a multi-color LED that went from green to red if it was the one that sensed the hydrogen. Like most color-blind individuals, this engineer had red/green blindness—most inconvenient. He had to ask for someone else’s assistance to look up and squint at LEDs twenty feet up. Once you knew which sensor went off, you knew which engineer’s experiment was leaky. (Don’t get me started about putting hydrogen-fueled, fuel cell-powered cars in the hands of the public.)
Anyway, my point is that setting aside a metric butt-load of political correctness (because a small, small percentage see no color whatsoever), and embrace a little bit of common sense, setting off example text in maroon (or some tweak of maroon that won’t be confused with red, and certainly not relying upon the use of both red and green to mean two, distinct things), should be fine. And when color is then combined with typeface, we have some nice-looking text with zero accessibility issues.
Let’s look at some example text…
I am refering to some example text containing quotes as exactly written on WT:MOSNUM by Army1987: for example, "2 m" means two metres, and "2m" usually means twice the mass."?
In this example there are no “quote mark” issues and it is also clear what text ‘owns’ the question mark at the end.
And then this example (which is currently on MOSNUM with italicized example text that sweeps up unit symbols with the italicizing):
…Or this complex text:
Greg L wrote on WT:MOSNUM as follows: Unless there is a good typographical or communication-based reason otherwise, in numeric equivalencies, the unit symbol shall be in roman (non-italic) text. A non-breaking space “ ” almost always separates the value and the unit symbol (e.g., 2.4 GHz, 325 km, 25 °C). Exceptions are the degree, minute, and second for plane angle, °, ′, and ″, (e.g., 47° 38′ 8.8″), and the percent (%) symbol. Variables are always italicized, (e.g., T = 298 K, e = mc2).
This is coded as follows:
<font color=maroon face="times new roman" normal style="font-size: 107%;">
Example text shown in the resultant font.</font>
The above could even be simplified with a template so {{hilight|Sample text here shown in resultant font}}
could make the markup more convenient. However, we wouldn’t have to wait for such a template, since this markup would be limited primarily at first to MOS and MOSNUM.
Greg L (
talk)
23:57, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
<span style="...">
rather than <font>
, and serif
rather than "times new roman"
, but I agree about the idea.style_example {color: maroon; background: white; font-family: serif;}
to common.css, so that we'd just need <span class="style_example">
for each instance. --
Army1987 –
Deeds, not
words.
12:30, 11 December 2008 (UTC)I don't have a position. If people start adding color and special fonts to pages in the General style guidelines, then I'll reflect that style at WP:Update. - Dan Dank55 ( send/receive) 17:37, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
<span style="color: maroon; background: white; font-family: serif; font-size:107%">
Produces this example text shown here its rendered, clear-as-glass glory.</span>
Wundervoll. Please explain in plain-speak: what are the benefits of <span> v.s. <font>? After all, this: <font color=maroon face="times new roman" normal style="font-size: 107%;">
Example text produced with “<font>-based” HTML code</font>
, looks the same. I had suggested that the <font>-based method could be implemented via a template like {{hilight|
Sample text here showing product of template}}
. Does a span-based technique similarly make things as (or more) convenient?
Greg L (
talk)
21:42, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
style_example { color: maroon; background: white; font-family: serif; font-size:107% }
to
MediaWiki:common.css, and <span class="style_example">
around text to be marked. (Of course, if a template is used, this issue is less relevant.)serif
causes whatever serif font the reader chooses in his/her browser preferences to be used. (Most browsers are smart enough to choose a serif font as a replacement for Times New Roman when it's unavailabe, but we should avoid depending on that, given that we can.) --
Army1987 –
Deeds, not
words.
22:14, 12 December 2008 (UTC)I'm opening a RfC for this, since there has been little input from editors on this. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 21:22, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
Kaldari asks above why both should be implemented. Wouldn't colour alone be enough? Greg points out that the highlighting is even clearer, using both. Certainly true; but there are other reasons:
– ⊥¡ɐɔıʇǝoNoetica! T– 03:20, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
Here are some points that arose in a thread below. They belong here for consideration, with all the other points about attributes for example text.– ⊥¡ɐɔıʇǝoNoetica! T– 07:36, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
Greg L: To PMAnderson [who had not liked a white background] and Army1987: A) do we have to prescribe a background color? And B) If we want to use this on MOS and MOSNUM, do we really have to worry about non-white backgrounds? Answering my own question to “B,” I suppose if one wanted to use maroon-highlighted text in a {{quotation}} template or within a green-div box, specifying a background color would be as ugly-ass as Bruno Magli shoes on O.J. So, Army1987: can we de-specify (leave transparent) the backround in your <span> technique?
Noetica:...Background colour needs to be considered. In my opinion, yes: keep it transparent. People have different local setups affecting background and the like; and in any case three attribute changes is going a bit far. WP already uses two attributes changes for links: colour and underlining. I like underlining, as I explained in the discussion at WT:MOSNUM; but since links use it already, I guess it should be set aside as an option for our purposes.
Couldn't find where anyone had linked to Using colours in articles. While I see people referring to the issue, and with good regard to, say, "which colors?" to minimize problems, the fact that there are references elsewhere means you should consider soliciting wider comment. Just how I don't know, but it should be done. Shenme ( talk) 05:16, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
I read WP:Using colours in articles just now, Shenme. Twarn’t nothin’ there but a steaming pile of plain ol’ common sense; all stuff that has already been discussed above. The article you cite does have some examples of text with other colors, such as red text, (which I think looks like a broken link), and blue text, (which I think obviously looks like a link), and green text, (which I think has rather low contrast). I’ve personally used color to denote quoted complex text for about a year now. With the possible exception of a custom color, #721F01; brown, which looks rather similar to named “maroon” in many browsers, I haven’t found anything much better.
And this is not for failing to actually look into the subject of color with some measure of due diligence. I’ve explored other color combinations, which have been on my user page for a long time. They are:
This is an example of using Red text via RGB manipulation.
Here's a custom brown color with RGB values manipulated: custom brown
This is an example of using a named color “maroon” to change the color of text.
Here are more colors:
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make AQUA text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make BLACK text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make BLUE text.
This is Wikipedia link-blue, which is in <font color="#002BB8"> text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make BROWN text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make CHARTREUSE text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make FUCHSIA text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make GRAY text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make GREEN text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make LIME text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make MAROON text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make NAVY text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make OLIVE text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make ORANGE text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make PURPLE text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make RED text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make SILVER text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make TEAL text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make VIOLET text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make WHITE (white) text.
This is an example of using one of the widely supported named colors to make YELLOW text.
I think all we pretty much need here is just to dish out our own pile of common sense. If the text is easy on the eye and effectively sets off example text in a manner in which the method of doing so doesn’t get in the way of the message point, then it’s a good thing and we can stop wondering if the color gods somewhere will make the volcano overhead rumble tonight. Greg L ( talk) 05:39, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
Span-based with transparent background on different backgrounds:
Here are some examples of maroon with transparent background (no specification), imbedded in some popular themes used on MOS and MOSNUM. The span tag is as follows: <span style="color: maroon font-family: serif; font-size:107%">
:
Here is <div style> (“green box” or “green div”):
Here is the quotation. Note that I could make neither <span> nor <font>-based techniques work.
Do not note a conversion as approximate where the initial quantity has already been noted as such; e.g., write as follows: Earth's radius is approximately 6,400 km (4,000 mi), not Earth's radius is approximately 6,400 km (approx. 4,000 mi).
I don’t see this inability to use this typestyle in a quotation template as a deal-breaker myself. But it would be nice if someone could show me A) what I’m doing wrong here, or B) figure out what is wrong with the quotation template. Greg L ( talk) 08:19, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
style_example { color: maroon; font-family: serif; font-size:107% }
to
MediaWiki:common.css, without specifying any background color, then we could simply use <span class="style_example">
to mark-up examples; someone perverse enough to use styles such as the one above could then add style_example { background: white }
or whatever to their own stylesheet.=
to {{=}}
. Templates, when they see foo bar = baz quux
, believe you're passing them a named argument foo bar
with a value of baz quux
. More simply, you can add 1=
immediately after the first pipe, telling that everything after the =
and before the next |
or the }}
is the content of argument 1.=
s with {{=}}
s in the example above:Do not note a conversion as approximate where the initial quantity has already been noted as such; e.g., write as follows: Earth's radius is approximately 6,400 km (4,000 mi), not Earth's radius is approximately 6,400 km (approx. 4,000 mi).
<p>
tags confuse MediaWiki.)--
Army1987 –
Deeds, not
words.
16:38, 13 December 2008 (UTC)And the reason for my above use of <p> tags is because of the paragraph weirdness, Army. I can’t figure it out.
Finally, thanks for figuring out how to get this into a quotation box. You da man. Greg L ( talk) 20:18, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
Memorializing where we are to this point: Army1987 figured out how to make the span tag work within quotation boxes. It is as follows: <span style{{=}}"color: #721F01; font-family: serif; font-size:107%">
Example text set in highlighted style.</span>
.
This text looks like this in a quotation box:
Do not note a conversion as approximate where the initial quantity has already been noted as such; e.g., write as follows: Earth's radius is approximately 6,400 km (4,000 mi), not Earth's radius is approximately 6,400 km (approx. 4,000 mi).
and like this in a green-div box:
and like this as regular text:
Here is a more complex double check (it has several imbedded {{nowrap|text}} in it) and a little bit of just about everything else:
And this:
Greg L ( talk) 03:24, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
Example text
rather than ExampleText
, but you can make a redirect from the latter to the former if you prefer so. I also like to Keep It Simple, but {{
Example}} is already used for a different purpose.) --
Army1987 –
Deeds, not
words.
17:53, 14 December 2008 (UTC)Use {{Example text|0.1 kg}}, not for example {{Example text|.1 kg}}, {{Example text|0.1kg}}, or {{Example text|0.1 Kg}}.
Use 0.1 kg, not for example .1 kg, 0.1kg, or 0.1 Kg.
Use {{xt|0.1 kg}}, not for example {{xt|.1 kg}}, {{xt|0.1kg}}, or {{xt|0.1 Kg}}.
Thanks again Army.
I don’t see the need to open debate on atomic-level details like exact size and color. Once you head down that path in a forum like this, nothing will get done. I think it is better to start using the darn thing and see if very many Wikipedians and readers pop up in “real life” (if you can call actual use on Wikipedia “real life”) who write posts like “On my Phing Thang-brand 640 × 480 CRT monitor, using MS-Barbarian OS and the Andromeda Strain browser, maroon looks indistinguishable from broken-link red.” If a pattern develops, you tweak. Same for size. I see no need to get an RfC started on WT:MOS on the details of the recipe for vegetable beef soup. For the moment, soup it is. I can, however simulate a PC (I use a Mac) by running GammaToggleX. I can tell that maroon can likely not go any darker. I had explored all this a year ago.
I do agree that it would be nice to have an abbreviated alias that works in place of the full expression “Example text” I note that {{xt|Thanks Army}} produces Thanks Army. So perhaps {{xt|Thanks Army}}? I see it is not taken ({{ xt}}). Greg L ( talk) 05:44, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
Yeah well I skipped right at the end of all this text, I thought people were debating what name to use and where to code things. Nevermind my last post then. Headbomb { ταλκ κοντριβς – WP Physics} 06:07, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
Here is an example at 114% using hex-specified carmine: Editors should write Earth's radius is approximately 6,400 km (4,000 mi), not Earth's radius is approximately 6,400 km (approx. 4,000 mi). Greg L ( talk) 07:37, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
How about #900012;? Here is an example at 114% using hex-specified #900012;: Editors should write Earth's radius is approximately 6,400 km (4,000 mi), not Earth's radius is approximately 6,400 km (approx. 4,000 mi). I tried it just now on the template. If you think it is an abomination in the eyes of all good Wikipedians, by my guest; I thought I’d look at it on MOS for a bit here… Greg L ( talk) 08:21, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
Sandbox for testing the new {{xt}} template | |||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Acronyms and abbreviations
|
I also think we need to recognize that there are clearly four prime movers here on this: you (Noetica), me, Army1987, and Headbomb. Army figured out how to make the text display in quotation boxes and made the template. Headbomb is enthusiastically doing the heavy lifting here, and is clearly being very meticulous about it to ensure nothing gets messed up. You and I did the easy part. Greg L ( talk) 19:42, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
I'm coming to this late, and I admittedly haven't read all the comments, so maybe this has been covered. I see nothing in the markup of the tests (either in MOS or the sandbox) that would provide any indication to a user of a screen reader or a user without CSS support that there has been any change to the text. The US federal government and some states (including California) are required to follow Section 508 Amendment to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 on their web pages, which states, "Web pages shall be designed so that all information conveyed with color is also available without color, for example from context or markup." <span> is unfortunately not adequate markup. I'm not saying that Wikipedia has to meet any accessibility guidelines, but I wanted you to be aware that if you think {{ xt}} is accessible, it isn't.-- Curtis Clark ( talk) 04:25, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
Also, (and this is me falling back onto another “shortcoming”: plain-speak of what I think is truth), people who are legally blind but still have some sight can still read by having their OS present truly gargantuan text on screen. I’ve seen it on TV: a legally blind person with her nose about 10 cm (4 inches) from the screen. Who wants to listen to a synthetic computer voice if they can read it themselves? No one. So screen readers are used by whom? By the totally or near-totally blind; that’s who. Screen readers allow these individuals access to important Wikipedia content. We can thank companies like Apple for producing a screen reader that properly pronounces text like “I project you will be done with that project Jan. 21st.” Not only does OS X recognize the transitive verb and noun forms of “project”, it pronounces the end as “January twenty-first.” Smart stuff.
Now, what we are discussing here is the use of {{ xt}} on MOS and MOSNUM to highlight example text and make it visually distinctive from the prose describing it. MOS and MOSNUM are unique venues where users learn about style guidelines expected for authoring content. I’m not quite buying it here that the totally blind are going to be authoring Wikipedia content; it’s not passing my *grin test* here. To me, this is like faulting the concrete workers as they are putting in a wheelchair ramp at a corner crosswalk because they are using concrete-laying tools that permit only the able-bodied to be concrete workers. I’m thinking we’ve addressed the issue of accessibility sufficiently well with the fact that the totally blind can read our articles.
As for color blindness, that’s all be discussed above and I won’t repeat it here. Suffice to say though, having the example text also in a serif typeface addresses this issue just fine. Greg L ( talk) 22:50, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
Army1987 and Noetica pointed out (and I completely agree) that showing instructions like “It is 1.8 m and not 1.8m” not only violates the rule of SI, it also violates our own guidelines. In order to handle “It is 1.8 m and not 1.8m” and things like T = 295 K, MOS had to suddenly jump to the use of a different technique to set off text being spoken of, like quotation marks. When I look at the older versions of MOS with italic example text, it looked horrid to me (this speaks to the difference between our “eyes”); the reliance upon italics didn’t distinguish example text very well from the prose text and it was hard for my eye to parse what was this and what was that. Very hard. You hate it, and oddly, I think {{ xt}} makes it really, really, really, easy to parse the MOS page. I really like it. Clearly Noetica, Headbomb and Army1987 feel the same way. You might find this hard to believe, but Army1987 used {{ xt}} when illustrating some example text in a post on WT:MOSNUM and, initially, I didn’t even notice the technique he had used to set off text being discussed—the method didn’t call attention to itself and interfere or compete with his message point. It clearly does call attention to itself in your case and I’m hoping that this isn’t common and, further, that it will prove to be an issue of just getting use to it.
I’d like to point out that I perceive no need whatsoever for others to have a sense of urgency nor for worries about this technique being effectively grandfathered as a consequence of it ‘sending down tap roots’ and being hard to extricate due to intervening edits to the content of guidelines. It is ultra easy to change the color on {{ xt}}, or any other attribute for that matter. We could always set xt to simply generate italic text, or generate 107% black serif in bold style. If we want to preserve, for archival purposes, existing discussion text already marked up with xt, we could even create {{ xt2}} and do a seach & replace on MOS. Having example text flagged with xt gives us all sorts of options and flexibility that we never had before. 19:07, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
(Moved to Template talk:Xt.)
I find text with italicized quotations easier to read, especially with longer quotations; different styling helps understand what belongs to the main text and what is an illustration. The need to scan several lines of text backward and forward to find a tiny quotation mark is a serious impediment. I reserve quotation marks for short quotations (e.g. of proper names) where both of them are in sight while reading, and I use straight quotation marks for them. In addition, wikisyntax itself uses apostrophes, which can be viewed as primitive quotation marks, for italic. Of course, these remarks do not apply to literary prose because it is usually read rather than scanned as a source of information so the reader does not need to determine the character of the text being read from from within.
Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Archive 107 should allow italic quotations when they are longer, e.g. contain sentences, but singling them out with a block would break exposition. -- Yecril ( talk) 10:36, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
The quotation can be both italic and in marks, where the marks can be suppressed for browsers that support CSS. The current situation is that the reader finds himself in the middle of something and it is hard to figure out what exactly it is. Of course, it would be best to style quotations with Q
, but we would have to get Brion allow Q
first. --
Yecril (
talk)
17:54, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
I understand that; however, several authors, for various reasons, prefer inline quotations. We are not discussing block quotations here as they do not present usability problems. And besides, all italic things
Philcha brought into our attention are significantly shorter, so there is no risk of ambigüity, and, moreover, they are better served by EM
and CITE
. --
Yecril (
talk)
21:41, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
I find the green colour much less intrusive and messy on the page than the rusty red colour that was previously tried—thanks to Greg L for that. However, there are several problems—two visual and two procedural:
<span style="color: #006400; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 110%;">
, which parses as hex 64 green (dark “Tony” green, or decimal 100); Times New Roman (or Times if you don”t have that, or your browser’s “serif” typeface per its preferences setting if it has neither font installed); and 110%, which boosts the size proportionally irrespective of the zoom level. But at zero zoom (actual, 12 pt text), 110% is equivalent to boosting Times New Roman from 12 pt text to 13 pt text.Our discussions are at Template talk:Xt. I’ve been waiting for your input there because I know that you see colors as being particularly bright on your Mac. Headbomb sees things the opposite way. So far, Army1987, Headbomb, Kaldari, and I have all had a hand in modifying the template to make it better; join on in. And, BTW, here’s a sandbox: Template:Xt/Sandbox featuring high-precision color and size examples. Greg L ( talk) 06:18, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
Above I respond to Noetica's general posting regarding the use of transclusion. Here I ask a non-transclusion question: Should we remove the discussion of First sentence content and format from this page altogether? It doesn't seem to fit with the other issues talked about on this page. And it does fit in wp:lead (where it already appears). So perhaps we should just remove it from this page. Your thoughts? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 23:07, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
Last call. I'll delete it in a couple of days unless there is a meaningful objection to removing it. Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 23:43, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
Could we please edit the MOS to specify that, where possible, the HTML entities and so on are used instead of their Unicode equivalents? Given that the 'insert' box at the bottom of the edit window puts in the Unicode characters for — and so on, it is not possible to say that this is mandatory, but when editing an article, particularly with a view to the GA or FA criteria, it is extremely annoying with standard fonts to tell the hyphens and dashes apart, and virtually impossible with the spaces. It is mainly the space and dash characters where this is a problem, and short of using a font like DPCustomMono2 (which still has problems with dashes), this can sometimes be a real nuisance. What are people's thoughts?— Kan8eDie ( talk) 17:45, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
(outdent)
No, that’s not the issue, Roger. Here’s the issue in a nutshell: It’s about being able to see the difference while in edit view (and you can’t see the difference when the actual rendered non-breaking space and non-breaking hyphen are used instead of their code). It’s not the difference in the appearance of these characters; it’s the difference in their behavior, which is substantial since they prevent line-end word wraps like these:
and this one…
So to ensure that other editors see that these special characters are used, we don’t want a bot replacing 25 kg with 25 kg. The code for these hard-to-distinguish characters to show so other editors to take a clue to copy & paste. This part of my response is addresses the polite part of your post.
As for your final, impolite parting comment (the part where you put your foot in your mouth voluntarily: (“I really think a case could be made that some of these "invisible" minutiae are not worth the effort, even discussing them is a waste of electricity and only serves to exacerbate global warming”), these details we’re discussing are those that other editors here routinely take the time to get right so Wikipedia reads well as a high-quality product for the world to enjoy—you too, as you clearly aren’t tending to these details yourself. You’re welcome anyway. And if you *really* felt that even discussing this “minutiae” isn’t worth the effort, then why in the world would you ignore your own expressed value and choose to weigh in on the subject??? It seems that parting shot of yours was just an effort to demonstrate that you are some sort of *big picture* guy who can’t be bothered with trivial little points. Instead, all I gathered is that you don’t understand details that others are quietly taking care of behind the scenes and you only demonstrated your cluelessness about fine typography.
P.S. I’m an engineer; we tend to details. If anything works in this world, it is because engineers somewhere gave a crap to sweat the details and get something right. Your post reminds me of some managers I’ve met. Management sounds like a splendid career path for you. Next time, try checking your attitude at the door before entering. Greg L ( talk) 21:29, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
I was led to this page because of objections to my removal of hyphens after -ly adverbs.
(See
User talk:Wavelength#Hyphens - thanks for the ref.)
After several weeks of discussion, followed by a short respite, I have these questions:
-- Wavelength ( talk) 02:19, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
There doesn't seem to be a section here on the appropriate tone for articles, and who the target audience is. I think those things ought to be defined. Is that included elsewhere? Some editors write as for a scientific journal. Their style is ultra-formal, argumentative, and beyond the comprehension of the average reader. I take the approach that someone who knows nothing about the subject should be able to understand every word of the article (assuming that person is high school age or above). Am I way off base here? ThreeOfCups ( talk) 03:38, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
Was the move of this to St. Louis–San Francisco Railway correct? It seems kind of silly, since it reads fine with the normal dash, and as far as I know the company just used a normal dash. (They usually called themselves the Frisco though, so it's hard to find, for instance, a map where they use the full name.) -- NE2 20:15, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
MOS correctly suggests using italics for phrases etc., but in what order? Should we use "Syndicat des instituteurs du Dahomey (Teachers' Union of Dahomey)" or "Teachers' Union of Dahomey (Syndicat des instituteurs du Dahomey)"? I was taught the former, but that may be a Linguistics thing. Tks Ling.Nut ( talk— WP:3IAR) 21:47, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
In the Subsection Wikipedia:ENGVAR#Formatting the sentence following sentence 'Do not place a currency symbol after the value (123$, 123£, 123€), unless the symbol is normally written as such. Do not write $US123 or $123 (US)' should be changed to Do not place a currency symbol after the value (123$, 123£), unless the symbol is normally or in some nations written as such (123€). Do not write $US123 or $123 (US) dues to the fact that the Euro in some nations is placed after the number in others it is before it is therefore not a suitable exampled of not what to do . Any thoughts ? 安東尼 TALK 圣诞快乐 22:50, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
(Italian sucks in many other respects, but at least you can write "Sono alto 1,88 m e ho pagato questo 1,88 €" without any useless inconsistency. Now I've discovered that in English one must remember which symbols go before and which go after, too. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 13:49, 31 December 2008 (UTC))
Please be aware of an attempt to change the way coordinates are displayed by {{ Coord}} (and thus in other templates which call it). This is being falsely presented as a bug in that template, used in around a quarter of a million instances, apparently in order to circumvent the need to obtain consensus to make such a change. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 22:44, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
Please see WP:VPP#Adding 2 policy pages to WP:Update. - Dan Dank55 ( send/receive) 15:09, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
...at WT:PERFECT. I reverted Andy's edits, and I'm pretty sure he thinks I was acting improperly in a number of ways. Footnote: even though we get a fair amount of traffic in WT:MOS, we can go for months with no discussion and with no one but me checking the diffs in many of the other general style guidelines. Andy is claiming, quite correctly, that if it's just me arguing one side, that's OWNership, at least in appearance if not in fact, so I need to step back. - Dan Dank55 ( send/receive) 02:44, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
I notice that the collapsed "Support Wikipedia: a non-profit project. — Donate Now" header at the top of all Wikipedia pages uses a spaced em dash, even though WP:DASH outlaws this. Is that odd? — TedPavlic | ( talk) 18:14, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
There is a request for comment about whether or not WP:BOOSTER documents a standard consensus and good practice that all editors and school/college/university articles should follow as an official policy or guideline. Madcoverboy ( talk) 18:59, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
For me it seems superfluous. There is already a policy about neutrality, and another about articles being based on verifiable references. Perhaps I am missing something? Stealthaxe ( talk) 05:25, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
Should Wikipedia be working towards meeting the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines? Please join discussion at Wikipedia talk:Accessibility#WCAG 2.0. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 08:24, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
Talk:Alexander Alekhine#Hidden solutions in diagrams: a number of articles on chess players and chess tactics include 'problems', where a chessboard is shown midway through a game, there being an optimal set of moves for one or other side thereafter. The captions on these pseudo-images include the sequence of moves, but hidden inside collapsible sections ( eg). I removed the hidden styling citing both accessibility and 'not censored' concerns, but was reverted. Comments are appreciated. Happy‑ melon 21:35, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
According to most style manuals (Chicago, Prentice Hall, McGraw-Hill), proper names take 's in the possessive, even when they end in sibilants. So it's Brahms's, Glass's, and so on.
There has been some contention about this on a number of pages recently (see discussion here, so, if no one makes any suggestions in the next couple of days to the contrary, I will update the MOS section on possessives. Regards, -- Ravpapa ( talk) 07:05, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
:*i support the suggestion that the apostrophe-s form should be adopted (including for "classical/Biblical" names): Jones's, Moses's etc are clearer than the apostrophe-only forms.
Sssoul (
talk) 07:29, 5 January 2009 (UTC) edit: in light of the discussion below, i'm suspending my "vote" until Ravpapa clarifies whether he/she's retracting the proposal to make the apostrophe-s form the wikipedia-wide standard.
Sssoul (
talk)
21:13, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
jeanne, you are still a mere babe in arms compared to some of us. We all, I think, learned in high school that there is no 's for words ending in sibilants. But there is unanimity among style manuals today (well, at least those I know) that proper nouns take the 's no matter what. -- Ravpapa ( talk) 13:09, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
I don't have an online subscription, and I am probably hopelessly out of date on these matters. My copy of Chicago is from 1993, my McGraw-Hill is from 1989, my Words into Type (does anyone use that anymore?) is from 1974. I have a bunch of others (Turabian, Strunk and White, Microsoft), but all at least 15 years old. Back in those days, we all wrote 's after proper names, but times change. I have no strong feelings about it one way or another, I just think we should be consistent. Even a statement that "you can do it this way or that way, just do it the same way throughout the article" would be fine with me. Age has mellowed me a lot. -- Ravpapa ( talk) 16:56, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
(outdent) thank you Dan - i'll try to help out. WT:Manual_of_Style/Archive_92#Possessives of proper names ending in "s" concludes with a recommendation to accept both versions, as long as consistency is maintained within a given article; i'll try to find time to wade through some more of those later today. meanwhile, should we close the RfC, at least until it's clear whether any radical change to the MoS is really being proposed? Sssoul ( talk) 06:02, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. -- Ravpapa ( talk) 17:12, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
I would like to reiterate my gentle plea for common sense: all singular names, whether it is John or Charles or what have you, should end with an apostrophe s to denote the possessive case. Somewhere in a time, long long ago, long before Wikipedia was founded, someone began a meme in which it was decreed that Charles (for example) should not get an apostrophe s simply on aesthetic grounds. But it seems to me that the issue here shouldn't be aesthetics, but whether or not Charles possesses something. If he does, such as a book, then it's Charles's book. Incidentally, and I could be mistaken, I think there's no quarrel about this with the Brits. I subscribe to The London Review of Books and The Times Literary Supplement, and they regularly use the apostrophe s. In the meantime, I see that Roland Burris's claim to take his seat in the senate was rejected today. Mysloop ( talk) 18:52, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
Ssoul, no, I haven't looked at those discussions yet. I ought to. In the meantime, do you recommend that I continue my edits (I'd like to call up some other entries) and just take the responses I might get on a case-by-case basis? Thanks for your advice. Mysloop ( talk) 23:28, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
The horse is dead. Enough discussion. Sssoul, go ahead and make the change. Try to keep it pithy. -- Ravpapa ( talk) 12:29, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
Well done. -- Ravpapa ( talk) 17:54, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
This is a commentary on the MoS page itself.
There seems to be an error on the MoS page where the word quote is used and the word quotation is what should be used. The page also says to make sure that there is consensus on the matter before changing anything here. There are actually a couple of places where this word is misused. The first example noticed starts like this:
Attribution The author of a quote of a full sentence or more should be named;
Does anyone care to comment on that please ? Stealthaxe ( talk) 05:21, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
Stealthaxe ( talk) 07:00, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
For readers that have color blindness, using a green colored font is not a good idea, for emphasizing text. Can someone change this? Thanks -- Funandtrvl ( talk) 20:32, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
The color is to provide yet another way to distinguish example text for normal-sighted individuals. This is similar to the way chemistry wash bottles are in wet labs (where I once spent some time in a ‘former life’): the isopropanol wash bottle has a blue top, ethanol = orange top, methanol = green top, acetone = red top. There is a big difference between acetone and methanol (red/green). If one is color blind, you read the wording on the bottle. If you have normal color vision, you have both indicators, where color is the quicker one. To this day, I still see “red” when I think of acetone. It’s the same for cylinders of compressed hydrogen; they come in red cylinders. Oxygen (big difference) is green. Of course, they are labeled with their contents too. Color is simply assistive. Same here. Greg L ( talk) 22:30, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
There's a discussion at Template talk:Infobox Weather#This template or template:Climate_chart about the use of {{ Infobox Weather}} vs. {{ Climate chart}} which both present the same kind of data but in completely different formats (one is a table of numbers with different color backgrounds to indicate coldness to hotness where the other is a bar chart). If anyone here has MoS reasons one of these should be preferred over the other please comment (there, not here). Thanks. -- Rick Block ( talk) 03:33, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
Editors of the English-language Wikipedia may be interested in examining other English-language style guides, and possibly adding some of them to their collections. Comments are welcome.
At
Citizendium, there is
CZ:Manual of Style - Citizendium,
but what seems more like a style guide is
CZ:Article Mechanics - Citizendium.
At
Knol, the closest thing to a style guide that I could find is
Best Practices: Writing Good Knols - a knol by Knol Help.
--
Wavelength (
talk)
07:00, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
Here are some more.
-- Wavelength ( talk) 19:56, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
Here are style guides for some of the wikis listed at List of wikis.
-- Wavelength ( talk) 04:55, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
-- Wavelength ( talk) 17:13, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
A request for comment has been opened at the talk page of WP:MOSCL, on how the Manual of Style should handle mixed and non-capitalization in personal names. – Cyrus XIII ( talk) 20:20, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
What is the MoS for names of cities in the US. Would it be Lansing, Michigan or Lansing, Michigan, USA. For the longest time I've included the USA in the biographical data of hockey players, vaguely on the memory that MoS required it to a provide a less NA-centric view. I got someone removing them now. There's no edit war or anything, I just trying to find an existing MoS on the subject. Can someone provide a link if there is one on the subject? ccwaters ( talk) 16:24, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
Whichever it is, surely Wikipedia:Mos#Images and Wikipedia:Layout#Images ought to be saying the same thing?
One says: "Where it is appropriate to force size, images should generally be no more than 550 pixels wide, so that they can be comfortably displayed on 800x600 monitors."
The other says: "An image should not overwhelm the screen; 300px may be considered a limit, as this is approximately half Wikipedia's text space's width on a 800x600 screen."
-- Malleus Fatuorum 13:59, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
(unindent) Not sure about this suggestion. If we're talking about a page with en.Wikipedia's guidelines on images, then it has to be on en.Wikipedia and not at meta. Anything we say at meta has to be applicable to all projects, so basically it's software documentation only.-- Kotniski ( talk) 12:12, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
The dialectical process whereby an article evolves in Wikipedia can often be seen, fossilized in the text of an article. I wish to discuss this, and in doing so bring to light what I believe should be an important style guideline for editors, that in seeking to improve an article, contributors should aim to produce a text which is insofar as possible independent of that dialectical process by which it is reached.
I will introduce my point by a trivial example. The article on Peter and the Wolf contains a brief list of the instruments associated with the various characters in the story. A side-by-side view of my edit and a prior version, shows, I believe, the type of editing I am discussing. The earlier and latter lines are reproduced below.
The first version is suggestive of an early contributor having stated that the hunters are represented by percussion, and a second contributor expanding on this. It suggests that the second contributor has added the two parenthetic items of text, rather than replacing the existing text with a new one that includes both pieces of information. I would contend that this is not desirable, as it is not concise, and it distracts from the informative value of the article, by shifting the readers focus to the process by which the text has evolved. The purpose of my edit is fairly obvious, in seeking to eliminate this.
I would like to invite comments, then, on the following: firstly, the assertion that the second style is preferable, for the reasons of brevity, and of focusing on the information that the article seeks to convey, rather than the process by which the article evolved; secondly, that a style policy be enacted to this effect, such that editors wishing to improve the text can simply refer to it in their edit descriptions. I realise that where subject matter is contentious, this process will become all the more difficult, but I would contend that it is in these circumstance in particular that it is important that the article reflects both the consensus, and disputed viewpoints in a clear editorial narrative, rather than reflecting the, perhaps heated, process whereby the views have been reached.
Should a conclusion be reached that such a policy is desirable, I would be happy to draft such a policy, or not, as the community sees fit. I open the matter to the floor.
-- Che Gannarelli ( talk) 12:20, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
I've search the Manual of Style, and I cannot find anything about how (or whether) to abbreviate large number ranges. For example, from the Saltholm article: "10-12,000 ducks breed and graze on Saltholm during autumn and late winter/spring."
Now, in this case, an educated person can guess that that "10–12,000" probably doesn't mean between 10 ducks and 12,000 ducks. But in cases where there is less certainty about variability, there could be ambiguity.
A little guidance would be useful.
Misha Vargas ( talk) 08:40, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
MOSICON has been marked disputed , can you have a look please Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(icons)#Consensus.3F Gnevin ( talk) 15:56, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
Over recent months an edit war of sorts is developing in the articles relating to female members of the acting profession, both living and deceased. An increasing number of editors feel that the term actress is demeaning and alter it to actor, when it will immediately be reversed. I have no particular preference but feel that it is approaching a time where a consensus would clarify the matter. The wiki article for 'actor' currently says:
Is a MOS consensus possible or desirable to reduce the level of edit reversals? 21stCenturyGreenstuff ( talk) 20:02, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
Erm well, many thanks for the steer...but quite frankly no it did not help one little bit. As I said before I have no personal preference either way, but I have a few dozen female thespians in my watch list and there is a daily parade of warring changes between actor and actress. It is a nuisance and a nonsense and will only get worse until some kind of firmer guideline is established that editors can work to. As many others will do I came to the manual of style for that guidance and have come away empty handed. Frankly the discussion you referred me to was nothing much more than a head in the sand "if we ignore it, it does not exist" attitude. Disappointing to say the least, but Oh well...which patch of sand is free for me to insert my head into? 21stCenturyGreenstuff ( talk) 03:21, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
dramatic ( talk) 03:53, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
Suggestions 1 and 2 are excellent, eg Helen Mirren who has never referred to herself as anything but an actor. But 3 would not stop the endless changes back and fore....but I am off to reinsert my head in this handy bucket of sand. 21stCenturyGreenstuff ( talk) 03:59, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
And of course there is the Academy Award "Best Actress", isn't there?-- Jchthys ( talk) 18:15, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
I think dramatic's idea-or at least the first two points-is fantastic. And i'm a woman and a feminist who would rather be called actress 'cause it sounds nicer! I don't think just because it separates us it automatically implies inferiority! It's the people who have the problem with the word that demonise it. But that's just my opinion. That was my first serious discussion post-scary! I'm not used to this yet! Deadlego ( talk) 17:50, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
Difference of opinion on Romy Schneider about where she is born. Germany, Nazy Germany, or Austria. (1938 anschluss etc). All of them are correct, in a way. Is there any official guideline/MOS regarding this. Garion96 (talk) 20:21, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
So it should be Germany, not Austria. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 15:00, 24 January 2009 (UTC)Many place names have a historical context that should be preserved, but common sense should prevail. There can be few places that have not been parts of more than one culture or have had only one name. An article about Junipero Serra should say he lived in Alta Mexico not the U.S. state of California because the latter entity did not exist at the time of Junipero Serra. The Romans invaded Gaul, not France, and Thabo Mbeki is the president of the Republic of South Africa, not of the Cape Colony. To be clear, you may sometimes need to mention the current name of the area (for example "what is now France"), especially if no English name exists for that area in the relevant historical period.
The 2008 Barack Obama assassination scare in Denver refers to news reports of an alleged plot by Shawn Robert Adolf, Tharin Robert Gartrell and Nathan Dwaine Johnson to assassinate then-Senator Barack Obama, then the 2008 Democratic Party presidential nominee...
When should an article contain "then-title" for a past title. It seems obvious to me that without "then", it refers to when the person had those titles, but I couldn't find a Wiki MOS guideline and am unfamiliar with other MOS guidelines. Galatee ( talk) 17:52, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
Hey, is there a standardized style fot this? Spinach Monster ( talk) 04:45, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
Yes, i think it's "Notable residents" or "notable past residents". :) RingtailedFox • Talk • Contribs 20:28, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
Okay, so, not to put too much of a point on it, but do we have an MoS decision on random drive-by wikimapia linking? I, as should be obvious from the section head, suffer from POV. I find myself increasingly annoyed by seeing bots or persons with bot-like minds come through and shotgun a bunch of irrelevant links into articles I edit. The name of a town where event X occurred is not notable unless that town is widely known for its association with X. The wikilinking of a street where event X occurred 80 years ago, an event with no specifically geographical interest, is a sin against humanity and God, in my view. Yes, of course, in a story about JFK's assasination I should certainly expect to see a map of the grassy knoll, but in a story about, say, Eisenhower's presidency, a map of Abilene, Kansas is just plain pathetic. I want so very badly to assume good faith, but instead I find myself theorizing dumb-assed indifference. Please, yell at me or something so I know what to do. GPa Hill ( talk) 00:19, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
At the moment, AWB is stripping all self links that it finds. However, it is the convention of some editors to use self links to implement the bold reiteration in the first sentence of each article (because self links are rendered as bold by Mediawiki). The AWB behavior causes those editors to have to do an additional edit to re-add the bold. It has been suggested that AWB replace first-sentence self links with bold (rather than stripping all mark-up entirely).
There is a need for clarification on whether it is bad practice to use self links to implement bold reiteration. According to Help:Self link,
Self links are usually not recommended. One exception is within a text that is transcluded between several pages. Per the Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Article titles, you should not use self-links to make the article name bold in the first paragraph.
However, nowhere in Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Article titles is this topic discussed (and so that entry should probably be removed from Help:Self link). This topic is also not discussed in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links).
It does follow the WPMOS to wikify all relevant keywords in an article the first time they are used. It is also good web policy to use content-based tags rather than explicit style-based tags. So it seems like implementing the bold reiteration with a wikification makes sense. Comment? Thanks. — TedPavlic ( talk) 15:48, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
It was fixed in the latest release, see WT:AWB. §hep • Talk 03:56, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
Is there a stylature guide for when describing (not naming) places? Should it be "shot in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada" or what? Should it be "performed in California, USA" or what? Do we have any guidelines/guidance on this somewhere? — pd_THOR | =/\= | 19:01, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
I completely disagree with the Retaining the existing variety policy of the manual. In short, it says that the spelling of the "first major contributor" will stand as the Wikipedia spelling unless a specific reason to change it comes up. This is ridiculous. If a fringe spelling used by the "first major contributor" does not cross dialects, the more common one will naturally replace it. Why then would a spelling that does cross this boundary be exempt from this common sense rule?
For the purposes of this argument, we can ignore smaller English variations to focus on the two largest ones, American English and British English. According to Alexa [5], Wikipedia has more than five times as many American users (23.1%) than British users (4.1%). If India (5.4%) is added to British users, Americans still more than double the number. More over, approximately two thirds of native speakers of English live in the United States, [6] and therefore speak American English.
American English is by far the most common English variant both on Wikipedia and in the world, therefore unless contradicted by the other three guidelines, American English should be standard on Wikipedia.-- Marcus Brute ( talk) 06:35, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
I would absolutely reject the idea that Wikipedia should be entirely in US English, and take the chance to remind anyone happening across this discussion of the element of ENGVAR that is perhaps both most overlooked and most valuable, opportunities for commonality, Version-neutral English as I prefer to call it. Of course it is not always possible, as when one needs to refer to the metal with the atomic number 13, but a little thoughtfulness can bear much fruit in terms of providing that which is equally acceptable to all readers. Kevin McE ( talk) 10:09, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
To respond directly to the question asked, say two-thirds of people use American spelling, and one-third British spelling, and assume further for the sake of argument that there are no other kinds. Then the result of the "retaining the existing variety" rule is that two-thirds of the spellings on Wikipedia will be American, and one-third British, albeit not coexisting in the same article. Since that reflects the actual balance in the English-speaking world, what's wrong with that? If a spelling is a fringe one in the real world, it will remain a fringe spelling on Wikipedia to the same extent, unless the adherents of that spelling are unusually prolific contributors. Joeldl ( talk) 10:36, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
If the English language version of Wikipedia were to standardise on American-English, there would then be a need for a non-American English language version of Wikipedia in the same way that there is a German language version and a French language version, etc. I think most people can see that this would be absurd.-- Toddy1 ( talk) 15:04, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
There is an ongoing RfC here on WT:MOSNUM that could use more input from Wikipedians on its three propositions. Greg L ( talk) 23:51, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Any objections? OlEnglish ( talk) 22:16, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
Done
OlEnglish (
talk)
19:56, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
I've been revising some articles that I've worked on exensively to experiment with different TOC arrangements. It's a subjective issue, and some like the TOC in the default layout (with white space to the right.) The question is more relevant when the TOC is long and creates a large block of white space before your can read the body text. An example of a before and after are included in case anyone wants to offer an opinion.
Thanks in advance. -- Wikiwatcher1 ( talk) 21:52, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
Recently, I made some editing decisions involving alphabetization in the article Esperantist, and I discovered that Wikipedia has few or no guidelines for this process, which is probably important enough and comprehensive enough to deserve its own subpage. Here is a permanent link to a discussion of the topic: User talk:Noetica - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [section 4: "Alphabetization (given names, surnames, domestic name order, thorn)"].
Initial discussion with Noetica | ||
---|---|---|
|
-- Wavelength ( talk) 00:09, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
To add to Noetica's nice list above, St. and Mt. should be alphabetized as Saint and Mount, right? Reywas92 Talk 19:08, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
From the archives, here are 23 related discussions, of which seven of the most relevant are in boldface italics.
-- Wavelength ( talk) 23:10, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia has the article Collation, which discusses alphabetization. One definition of alphabetize is "to express by or furnish with an alphabet" [7], hence, there is Alphabetization.org - Easily fighting illiteracy!
Besides those two examples, five of the leading results of my Google search for "alphabetization" are as follows.
-- Wavelength ( talk) 04:19, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
From the five external links listed above, I have learned that there are two major methods of alphabetization: word-by-word alphabetization and letter-by-letter alphabetization. In the former method (my preference of the two), word in print precedes wording, whereas, in the latter method, wording precedes word in print.
Besides that "major" distinction, methods of alphabetization differ in various other respects, involving: abbreviations (such as St. and Mt.), surnames (with Mc, Mac, and M' ; and with da, de, di, do, du, van, von, and so forth); name order (of given name and surname), capitalization (A to Z before a to z, or A before a to Z before z), punctuation, numerals, and other features.
At this moment, I am inclined to favor a system of collation based on the very thorough outline at
Martin Tulic, Book indexing - About indexing (with its list of linked pages), and supplemented by the following.
-- Wavelength ( talk) 23:50, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
I would favor the word-by-word method also, as humans tend to think in word units rather than letter units. The Martin Tulic resource looks like a good reference. As for the diacritics, as a mostly-English cataloger, I have no opinion, although the use of redirects on WP is a life-saving procedure for instances with spelling variants. My 2¢. Pegship ( talk) 20:05, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
The standard alphabetization methodology in the Anglo-American library industry is 'word by word', otherwise known as 'nothing before something'. I favour this on the basis of my own professional experience in the information industry. The American Library Association Code (Rule 6), follows this methodology, and further notes 'abbreviated words should be filed as if they were spelled out in full, with one exception, that is, the abbreviation Mrs. St. is therefore filed as if it were spelled Saint, and Mc... as Mac'. -- Taiwan boi ( talk) 14:11, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
Kmzundel ( talk) 17:08, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
Noetica’s suggested protocol, and other editors, may have alluded to the following issue, but the examples don’t address it explicitly. I’m concerned about (usually French) names starting with Le and La. Some Le s and La s are separated from the next part of the name – Le Boucher, La Roch, etc. Others are not – Leboucher, Laroche, etc. Currently, all the names that have a space after La/Le appear earlier on in a category, and the names without spaces appear later. Hence, Maurice Leroux could be at quite some distance from Maurice Le Roux. In this particular case, these turned out to be the same person, so they have to be merged (I have no idea which is the correct spelling). This would have been picked up much more quickly if they’d appeared together in the first place. My intuitive way of ordering names in the real world does not just focus on the first element of a multi-part surname, but ignores spaces utterly and considers all the letters as if they were contiguous. I know that WP has decided to use only the first element for sorting purposes, but that has always seemed an odd decision to me. It feels like a decision made by a computer whizkid who's all tied up with primary and secondary sorting keys. That's good in theory, except that that's just not the way names work. We don’t think that the principal part of Maurice Le Roux’s surname is merely "Le", with some less important letters appended merely to distinguish him from Pierre Le Roy. No, Roux and Roy are, if anything, more important than Le, so they deserve to be fully taken into account as integral parts of name. There should be no "primary and secondary sorting key" idea with surnames. The whole surname is the primary - and sole - sorting key. The only real issue is deciding what exactly is the surname - and cases like Charles De Gaulle and Vincent van Gogh are classic examples. Is it "De Gaulle" and "van Gogh", or merely "Gaulle" and "Gogh"? But that's a completely separate issue. Once we decide that Vincent was Herr "van Gogh" and not Herr "Gogh", then he would be listed as a V name, after a putative Vangoff and before a Van Goit. See the discussion here that brought me to this page. -- JackofOz ( talk) 21:46, 8 February 2009 (UTC)