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Archive 115 | ← | Archive 117 | Archive 118 | Archive 119 | Archive 120 | Archive 121 | → | Archive 125 |
(And please don't tell me not to ask here, to ask on the FA forum, since until I have an FA done, I lack street cred. ;))
What do y'all think of the use of unit conversion templates as opposed to manually typing the conversion? (good or bad, or even the movement to require them). Sounds dumb, but I find that the conversion templates have occasional bad features. Like when I have a rounded number of meters (200 m) giving me 679 ft or the like, just looks bad. There's an implied vagueness of measurement in the first measurement which I WANT TO KEEP (we are talking about how far away from land a painted turtle nests, NOT the well-surveyed height of Everest.) If I do it manually, I can kind of decide how to tweak the rounding on the second unit. Also, I may try yards vice feet to get around this. But I find the conversions in the first place kinda load the article down. And I am even a bit of a conservative, but in a science article, could see using metric (not in a US state article, though). But anyway, if we are going to have them, the FA requirement to use them, ends up making the text look worse than what I could do on my own, manually. I'm just saying... TCO ( talk) 16:35, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
The presence of an adjustable sig fig may be all I needed. Also had an interesting glitch where we used it for converting celsius to farenhiet, BUT we were refering to a difference of degrees and of course it converted absoltue temperature. No biggie though. I'm fine with fitting in. TCO ( talk) 23:49, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
, which I suspect would be more confusing to new editors than the template. A disadvantage is that it sometimes breaks sorting in tables, as its output gets sorted "alphabetically", by which I mean 2000 would get put in between 10 and 30.
Adrian J. Hunter(
talk•
contribs)
07:02, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
{{sort|0074|{{convert|74|kg|lb|0}}}}
/{{sort|0074|74 kilograms (163 lb)}}
(assuming the largest value in the table is less than 10,000 kg).
A. di M. (
talk)
12:54, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
I have just discovered that the policy ( MOS:COLLAPSE) prevents concealing a list of people who have run an organization, like the mayors of a town, or the presidents of a university. Yes, I know that Wikipedia is NOTALIST. Some of these people in a list were notable; but most weren't. This was once the only list that was allowed, no other names allowed in place or school articles. Some of these lists were long, and concealing them did allow readers to skip them at will. I guess they will have to be erased which is a shame IMO. A bit of history lost to readers. And often, there is no other list anywhere that is current. Student7 ( talk) 21:59, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
I'm having a hard time understanding that guidance on collapsing. I don't think I agree with it either, and I don't know the background, but to start with, it's hard to understand. On content: surely collapse is a highly useful device. (even for text). And why would putting a list in a table make it any different than if bulleted (although I guess putting stuff in a table allows getting the needed benefit, while still matching policy. TCO ( talk) 16:36, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
I think there is a lot of benefit of having some click to expand text versus a subpage, at times. See subpages and summaries constantly clashing. Yes, a click to expand could be non-consistent as well, just as sections of an article might. but I think consistency would average higher and also reader appreciates staying in same window for comparisons, etc. this is not to say never have a subpage. also, it's just a feature. like wikilinking or the like. media is changing...
Of course, your list, well...that's not what I mean really. I mean more when articles are getting long, but still splitting into pages will not be best solution. TCO ( talk) 23:33, 17 December 2010 (UTC)ho
I too would support at least an RFC on collapsible content. The biggest argument against it is that since pages shouldn't exceed a certain size, the mount of scrolling should be limited. The exception to this argument is long lists (of short items). Therefore I would support an exception allowing collapsibility of long lists of short items.
Rich
Farmbrough,
02:24, 22 December 2010 (UTC).
Almost every time I see country subpages with summaries, there are marked differences between the two. I suspect having the content on the same page, would help keep things more consistent (yes, you could still ahve a breakdown, just like with section to section, but I think it would be less). All kinds of other parts of the web, like blogs, use click for more info. Readers don't like having to open a seconde window. Click for more info would be sweet. TCO ( talk) 02:34, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
The first box on the page says, "This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style."
In contrast, the first sentence under the section [
General Principles] states,
"The Manual of Style is a guide applicable to all Wikipedia articles."
If this is intended, it is hard to tell where the General Principles end and the "English Wikipedia Manual of Style" section starts. The next use of the word "English" appears in the subsection "Follow the Sources."
Proposal is to insert the word "English":
The Manual of Style is a guide applicable to all English Wikipedia articles.
RB
66.217.118.31 (
talk)
18:16, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
Please see figure dash I have changed the section of the MoS redirected from WP:DASH to include a brief not about the use of figure dashes on the Englih Wikipedia. As far as I'm aware, it's only come up twice in naming an article: 867-5309/Jenny and Royal Albert Hall London May 2-3-5-6, 2005. I moved both of those from the version that includes hyphens to one using figure dashes and the consensus was to move back the title of the article, but to use the figure dash in the body text as appropriate. For what it's worth, I am still in favor of using the figure dash in the title as well. — Justin (koavf)❤ T☮ C☺ M☯ 20:54, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
The cited standard is: International Telecommunications Union E.123 : Notation for national and international telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and Web addresses. The standard says the space character is the separator. If you use the space character in both national and international numbers then you're compliant with E.123. If you use any other character in an international number then you're non-compliant. You may use another character in national numbers and claim compliance with E.123 if you can refer to some other agreement. I hope that helps. Lightmouse ( talk) 16:30, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
Is there an easy-to-use template for advising new users about the Manual of Style's policy on National varieties of English? Rossami (talk) 18:49, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
See Talk:Alberni–Clayoquot_Regional_District#Requested_move. Per WP:COMMONNAME, if a proper noun uses always a hyphen, then we should use also a hyphen. Should we add an exception to WP:EMDASH? -- Enric Naval ( talk) 19:33, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
With a view to gathering ideas for possible adaptation for use with guidelines in the English Wikipedia Manual of Style, I ask this question: How is consensus achieved for guidelines in other style guides (whether in print or online or both)?
―
Wavelength (
talk)
00:01, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
[I
revised my message at 0:51, but I forgot to add a comment with my signature and timestamp.
—
Wavelength (
talk)
16:21, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
With a view to gathering ideas for possible adaptation for use with guidelines in the English Wikipedia Manual of Style, I ask this question: When and how does consensus lapse for guidelines in other style guides (whether in print or online or both)?
―
Wavelength (
talk)
00:01, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
[I
revised my message at 0:51, but I forgot to add a comment with my signature and timestamp.
—
Wavelength (
talk)
16:21, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
I keep coming across total headscratchers of logic on this site! I see sentences glommed together into paras, but I can't tell what the logic is of one to the next. Or sometimes there is a two-para section with (perhaps) two themes, but with sentences not cordoned off into "theme one" and "theme two". Just littered like stray toys. Not organized. Dolls with dolls. Legos with legos. Or Red with red and green with green. Or old with old and new with new. Or whatever!
P.s. I want to learn to write and am probably too old to do so, but I at least can see fault. So please don't shoot down my discussion, by saying "I can't run the football in the NFL". I can still criticize Clinton Portis nonetheless. Let's talk about how to make cuts and get yardage, not my lack of steroids and speed.
TCO ( talk) 00:13, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
Not sure what you expect here. True, the writing of many articles is horrible. We could enforce a writing test before allowing people to edit. We could unloose some grammar/coherence checking software on articles. We could attempt to train people. Each of these alternatives has drawbacks. Instead we correct what we can. I suppose a page pointing to tutorials in composition or some such thing might be useful, but I don't think this is the forum for providing those tutorials directly! --John ( User:Jwy/ talk) 00:21, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
The difference here is there isn't the centralized responsibility for the writing as in the corporate world. No one person is responsible for an article - so often, after the first version of the article, people are focussed on their little contribution and are not looking or feeling responsibility for the article as a whole. --John ( User:Jwy/ talk) 07:07, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2011 January 3#MOS:
The nom is certainly right that these redirects should not exist if the pages are not in the MOS. Some of those listed in this group deletion nomination (of the redirects, not the pages they redirect to - mostly essays) should definitely not be in the MoS. I say, however, that some definitely should, especially the target of MOS:BETTER, which is used as a guideline, and is the product of a lot of consensus-building editing over many years by many 'Pedians, and is no longer simply an essay, in my view. There are some other candidates for elevation to MoS status, I would think, but I'll let others chime in. The one I feel most strongly about is MOS:BETTER. It's very much a WP style guideline at this point. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 06:10, 4 January 2011 (UTC) NB: No naming conventions pages are part of the MoS, so all of the MOS redirs to them should be removed. That accounts for about half of the entries in the nomination. It can be argued that all of the NC pages should be part of MoS. I'm neutral-ish on the matter. Discuss here.— SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 05:16, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
Subject says it all: is there a place to get third opinions on the MOS-aspects of a specific article? -- MASEM ( t) 04:58, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
I was wondering whether this would be the right place to post that I would like to see User:John Carter/Religion outline perhaps considered as a first draft of a layout guideline for religion articles, and what I would have to do to initiate widespread discussion of it. John Carter ( talk) 19:20, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
With a view to gathering ideas for possible adaptation for use with guidelines in the English Wikipedia Manual of Style, I ask this question: How is consensus defined for guidelines in other style guides (whether in print or online or both)?
—
Wavelength (
talk)
00:01, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
[I
revised my message at 0:51, but I forgot to add a comment with my signature and timestamp.
—
Wavelength (
talk)
16:21, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
Thank you all for commenting at
#Defining consensus (for other style guides),
#Achieving consensus (for other style guides),
#Lapses in consensus (for other style guides), and
#Recording consensus (for other style guides). I especially appreciate the list of "author/title examples" provided by Airborne84 in the second of those sections.
Perhaps I will research my questions at wikis and other websites, at some time in the future, and report my findings to this talk page. Other editors are welcome to do likewise.
(I was counting on posting this to all four sections, and did not notice the statement "Sections with no replies in 5 days may be automatically moved." The waiting period used to be 10 days. I wanted to keep the four sections together in the original order: "Defining ...", "Achieving ...", "Lapses ...", and "Recording ...".)
—
Wavelength (
talk)
16:05, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
With a view to gathering ideas for possible adaptation for use with guidelines in the English Wikipedia Manual of Style, I ask this question: How is consensus recorded for guidelines in other style guides (whether the style guides are in print or online or both)?
―
Wavelength (
talk)
00:01, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
[I
revised my message at 0:51, but I forgot to add a comment with my signature and timestamp.
—
Wavelength (
talk)
16:21, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
Thank you all for commenting at
#Defining consensus (for other style guides),
#Achieving consensus (for other style guides),
#Lapses in consensus (for other style guides), and
#Recording consensus (for other style guides). I especially appreciate the list of "author/title examples" provided by Airborne84 in the second of those sections.
Perhaps I will research my questions at wikis and other websites, at some time in the future, and report my findings to this talk page. Other editors are welcome to do likewise.
(I was counting on posting this to all four sections, and did not notice the statement "Sections with no replies in 5 days may be automatically moved." The waiting period used to be 10 days. I wanted to keep the four sections together in the original order: "Defining ...", "Achieving ...", "Lapses ...", and "Recording ...".)
—
Wavelength (
talk)
16:05, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
In the requested move I initiated here, it is being argued that moving the page from "WBX (W-Boiled Extreme)" to "W-B-X (W-Boiled Extreme)" is against WP:MOSTM (low traffic talk page) and WP:ABBR (another low traffic talk page) because "hyphens are simply a styled form of the period/full stop". Yet on other pages on the project on music (e.g. B.O.B. (song), The E.N.D.) these full stops are allowed anyway.
Should we continue to not use the name of the song as it is printed everywhere else ( [1], [2], [3], [4] [the wavy dashes in the second part of the name are a different issue at the moment]), ignore this aspect of the MOS's, or simply phase out this aspect of the MOS?— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙) 19:28, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
Back in 2008, see Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_97#Blank_lines_around_headings, the suggestion on blank lines around headings changed in this diff to the current asymmetric form suggesting a blank line before, not after. Why not both? I find that headings are so much easier to spot when editing if they're set off by blank lines. Some editors go through and squeeze out the spaces after, making the source files very "scrunched"; I tend to go the other way. What would you all think if we recommended spaces both before and after? Dicklyon ( talk) 06:31, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
Can we defer or move the broader discussion of spacing elsewhere, and get back to the question of what to recommend for blank line after headings? Poll? Please chime in to give an idea whether you prefer the present asymmetric recommndation, versus to say that setting off headings with one blank line before and one after is preferred. Dicklyon ( talk) 18:40, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
Vertical white space after section headings serves no purpose whatsoever. It does not enhance much of anything, except for stretching logically connected text needlessly across more space. This is rather annoying, as it disassociates headings from their sections. The existing markup for section headings is prominent enough to guide the eye. In addition, these are presented in bold anyways in the fancy editors. Guidelines should simply state that a single blank line follows every paragraph. Kbrose ( talk) 03:14, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
<p></p>
tags it automatically places in the HTML page source. When you do that with a heading, nothing happens (counterintuitively). The reason, of course, is that it doesn't make sense from a layout point of view to allow extra space below the heading in the rendered view, so the MediaWiki interpreter treats this case differently. The fact that there's an automatic filter that keeps bad layout from being rendered isn't a good reason to keep using the inconsistent markup as a matter of standard practice.<dl><dd><dl><dd><dl><dd><dl><dd></dd></dl></dd></dl></dd></dl></dd></dl>
tag soup that happens on talk pages (because of the ::::
at the beginning of the line). That's fortunately invisible to the reader (as opposed to the editor), and the colons are convenient to type and coexist peacefully with the line break separations.The ideal would be to have the blank line generate some sort of <p></p>
thing instead (like what you need to use when you're trying to maintain paragraph indenting on a bulleted list on a talk page). Unfortunately, the current state of the MediaWiki interpreter means that that involves hardcoding the tags, and they don't co-operate peacefully with the blank line—if you use a blank line (or even a single carriage return) in the editor window to make it look like sort of like the output, you can't also use <p></p>
because it loses the indentation. (This is probably a known bug that hasn't been acted upon because it could potentially break a lot of talk pages over an invisible piece of HTML that contributes only a extra few bytes to the page length.)
While it's possible to use ::::
at the beginning of a talk page reply, and then <p></p>
for every paragraph thereafter, that hardcoding sort of defeats the purpose of having the interpreted MediaWiki syntax in the first place, and conceals paragraphs in the editor view. (See the code of this comment for examples....)
TheFeds
07:02, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
Is there a process to get a wider discussion here? I see at least 3 of us who see a good reason to put a blank line after headings to make editing easier; 1 who denies that reason ("Vertical white space after section headings serves no purpose whatsoever"), as he seems to have other tools to solve the problem; 1 who has some reasons about html internals or something for disliking such spaces, and a few comments that don't seem to actually take a position on the question. Dicklyon ( talk) 19:59, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
OK, how about this approach... presently we have this:
I suggest we change to:
Better? Please note your approval or opposition herebelow. Dicklyon ( talk) 01:55, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia contains instances of text presented as quotes yet sometimes they are actually translations. Editors are (understandably) unwilling to question a quote. Even the most accurate translation can and should be constantly challenged for changes introduced by the translator. This is in contrast to quotes where no translation has taken place so the words presented were the actual words spoken/written.
Furthermore, a quote should add value that wouldn't exist if the same information were presented in prose text. If there is a translation and hence liable to contain errors/spin that could go undetected, perhaps the test should be even stricter. It would be handy to have a discussion about that.
For an example of this issue in an article, see: Talk:Johann Sebastian Bach. I couldn't find any guidance on presentation of translations so I welcome a debate so that editors can identify and improve them as appropriate. Lightmouse ( talk) 21:45, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
Can we have a guideline that says something like:
I hope that captures what I mean. Feel free to suggest alternative guidance. Lightmouse ( talk) 11:46, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
Not clear what Wikipedia's policy is. In an article about Abdulla Saeed, do I use "Mr. Abdulla Saeed" or just "Saeed"? -- Tomwsulcer ( talk) 23:00, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
Discussion here. Basically I want to kick ass on articles and feel like I'm struggling in quicksand as I can't learn the "journal" citation standard and that even when I want to collaborate and use same system ans others, there's no system. More over there. Feel free to throw your pennies at it. TCO ( talk) 04:02, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
Despite the absurdity of copyediting in a language I don't speak (British English), I'm finding I really don't have a choice. We've offered money, we've begged, we've been patient, and still we don't have other copyeditors available in the places I hang out. I'm going to have to grab a British English style guide or two and sit down and read them, and make notes cross-referencing to Chicago and AP Stylebook. The question is ... which one(s) do you Anglophiles consider most authoritative and relevant to Wikipedia? The Oxford Style Manual (2003) and New Hart's Rules (2005) are affordable. The Guardian (and Observer?) style guide has the advantage of having an online version, so that I can point people there, and it's of course more up-to-date, but in the US at least, style guides suitable for news writing aren't as satisfactory for Wikipedia as Chicago since they don't make a serious effort to reflect the style of typical Wikipedia sources.- Dank ( push to talk) 15:40, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm having a disagreement with an editor over the format of dates in the History of supernova observation. He has tried to apply international format dates to the article. I reverted his edit under the WP:DATERET policy. We have been holding a discussion on the talk page.
I believe Wikipedia policy is on my side on this dispute, and he may be violating WP:POINT by continuing his reverts. I suspect he is trying to set a precedent for a policy change, but this seems like the more appropriate location for that venue. What would you suggest I do? (I have asked him to bring up the topic here, but he apparently declined.) Thank you.— RJH ( talk) 18:35, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
At Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-01-10/News and notes#In brief, the second item is the following.
— Wavelength ( talk) 22:02, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
I've got an odd sort of ENGVAR problem over at Talk:Special education. I've got a very nice editor who is absolutely determined that British educators never-ever-ever uses certain words—today, we've added the word accommodations (in the plural) to the list—despite having been presented with UK sources (e.g., major reports from DFES [the UK's main education agency]) that definitely do so.
I don't suppose that we've got an expert on British English who could help me out? (Yes, the article is written in American English, but the presence of English words deemed to be "American" rather than "British" seems to be deeply disturbing somehow, even though they are all directly defined in the article.)
It's time for me to take a break, but I'd love to have some help. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 23:48, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
For a while I have been discovering that if a band parses their name in all lower case letters every single time, then per whichever one of the naming guidelines there is, it has to be given a capital letter first, and this is almost always the case with every band which has this set up (and the bands are generally from Japan). But when it comes to individual people such as will.i.am, apl.de.ap, k.d. lang and the like, it's perfectly allowable to use {{ lowercase}} and refer to the individual throughout the article without capital letters in the name.
Why do we have this selective treatment of lowercase letters?— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙) 01:07, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
Let me give two examples: defspiral and angela are two Japanese bands who parse their names in all lower case letters. However, because of the current reading of one of the manuals of style this is apparently not allowed because having all lower case letters is a trademark. I also have a feeling that this is a double standard because these bands are Japanese in origin and automatically it is assumed that if a band is Japanese then that means anything they do that involves the English language has to be corrected for Wikipedia, and I've seen this blatantly clear with the requested move here. While articles on artists in the Anglosphere get to have their titles parsed in any which form of capitalization.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙) 19:50, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
As a side issue, how would the current locations of the articles on the bands known as m.o.v.e or Pay money To my Pain work and the song Journey through the Decade? Or are these two WP:AT issues?— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙) 06:51, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
I would like to propose the following edit. The article currently reads:
However, where one or more sentences are wholly inside brackets, place their punctuation inside the brackets (see Sentences and brackets below).
I think that the sentence would be more helpful as follows, because it would contain an example itself:
However, where one or more sentences are wholly inside brackets, place their punctuation inside the brackets. (For examples, see "Sentences and Brackets", below.)
I know this is similar to the example shown later but given that we already have a parenthetical here, why not make use of it? Agnosticaphid ( talk) 21:45, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
As this talk page generally enjoys far higher participation levels than the talk pages of MOS subsets, I invite editors here to participate at the discussion here. Regards, — W F C— 05:07, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
Dear colleagues, the English WP's weekly journal The Signpost is keen to cover the upcoming celebrations of WP's 10th anniversary in the " In the news" section; this high-profile page typically receives 1000–2000 hits during the week. We would welcome skilled editors who would like to try their hand at contributing to the page for the next edition (published Monday UTC). More details here (there's a link to the IRC, which will be active over the weekend, and links to good places to search for the stories that will be most interesting to our readers). The Managing Editor is User:HaeB. Tony (talk) 11:03, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
There seems to be a lack of conformity in the styles used in the opening sentences of articles about nations. I've perused this page, as well as several others I thought revelant, and am still unclear about this. Is it correct to begin with the official name (i.e. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as The United Kingdom), or is it correct to begin with the title of the article (i.e. Iran, officially The Islamic Republic of Iran)? Or is it the case that either is acceptable? Joefromrandb ( talk) 04:46, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
Please see Talk:Poland–Lithuania regarding a requested move arguing that a simple dash is more acceptable. Renata ( talk) 21:54, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
FYI, a large number of WikiProject local guides are being renamed to MOS names, without any indication that those guides have any support other than local wikiproject support. See WP:RM contributions by user:Bernolákovčina
65.93.14.196 ( talk) 06:49, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
The templates {{ WikiProject style advice}} and {{ WikiProject content advice}} were recently created to address this issue. Mlm42 ( talk) 20:18, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
Contributors to this talk page might be interested in the onging "Invitation to edit" trial. This consists of adding tutorial information about using Wikipedia itself to the article lead, as seen in Conjunctivitis, Placenta, and several other medicine-related topics. There is currently discussion about whether this trial should be extended to two months instead of to the originally proposed one month. Discussion is occurring on the template talk page. Thparkth ( talk) 12:21, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
A comma is sometimes used in each of the following types of sentence: Paul makes the customer visits but Mary drafts the contracts. Paul said “no”. Is a comma necessary in these cases? And should this be the subject of a guideline? — Wrapped in Grey ( talk) 08:56, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
We've got an editor, User:Jeremiestrother, who is using the city name policy on this page to replace a city's official name (a field in the city's info box template) with its common name in dozens of articles. He has taken it upon himself to make these changes without consulting anyone regarding his novel reading of the MoS. While the policy as stated here makes good sense, it makes no sense to apply it to a field that was specifically intended to inform the reader about the city's official name. Here's a snippet of the affected info box showing the original version and with Jeremiestrother's edits in parenthesis.
{{Infobox Settlement |name = City of Noblesville, Indiana |official_name = City of Noblesville (changing to just "Noblesville") |native_name = |settlement_type = [[City]]
Please advise. Rklawton ( talk) 14:36, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
{{Infobox Settlement |name = Noblesville, Indiana |official_name = City of Noblesville |native_name = |settlement_type = [[City]]
My two cents' worth: the "official" name of a city is just the name and does not include the word city, unless it is part of the name per se (e.g., Hartford City, Indiana). That is to say: the official name of Bangor, Maine, is just: BANGOR. The word city or town should be included when the corporate governing body is acting in its official capacity. John works for the City of Boston. (He's employed by the city government.) John lives in Boston./John lives in the city of Boston. Moreover, the info box may need reworking. Maybe delete the "official name" field - because the name IS the official name. There is no reason to have both fields. Keeping in mind: the "official" name is only in reference to the corporate city government, not the geographical entity, and articles about cities/town are about the geographical entity and not their governments. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.162.43.187 ( talk) 04:45, 22 January 2011 (UTC) Chicago has this to say: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/CMS_FAQ/Capitalization/Capitalization16.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.162.43.187 ( talk) 05:01, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
Folks, I'd like to defend my position here—just a little bit—and I recognize that I'm a new editor at Wikipedia. I would like to add that I am a professional copyeditor and proofreader; that's how I make my living. Moreover, I realize that there will be (and should be) exceptions (to be mentioned later). When it comes to the InfoBox, I suggest that the field "Official Name" be done away with. There is no such thing as an "official name"—there is just a name, with very few exceptions. Consider: John Q. Public's name is John Q. Public, not the Person of John Q. Public. Similarly, Boston is just Boston, not the City of Boston. Consider: Jane lives in the state of Utah; not, Jane lives in the State of Utah. Moreover, the next field below shows the form of government, thus re-stating it in the "official name" line is redundant. There is only a name; there is no difference between an "official name" and a "name" (with a very few exceptions, situations or problems). When there is a need to distinguish between the geographical entity named Boston (THAT'S THE TRICK HERE: geography vs. corporate body!) and the corporate governing body (i.e., the city's government, in its legal capacity), THEN the government may be referred to as the City of Boston (e.g.: The City of Boston sued ABC Company for breach of contract.) A name is a name is a name; I'm not convinced that the idea of an "official" name can be supported: John Q. Public's name is not "officially": the Person of John Q. Public. The Chicago Manual of Style, AP, the New York Times MoS, etc., all recommend against capitalizing the words "city", "town", "company", "state", etc. The reason they all recommend against such practice is that they consider those words not to be part of the name of said entities. Interestingly, Chicago calls it, "tooting one's own horn." One should guard against the use of "Legalese", where, for example, many words are capitalized in contravention of the general rules of writing English; one should also guard against the desire for self-aggrandisement (i.e., "tooting one's own horn"). Wikipedia respects many varieties of English, but also recognizes generally accepted forms as opposed to non-standard forms; in this case, the established American variety of English should be respected, not the forms that cities wish to use, against generally accepted rules of grammar, simply in order to "toot their own horns". It seems to me that there really is no such thing as an "official name", there is only a name. The so-called "official name" is used only in legal matters when the city's government is acting in its official capacity. However, the government is not necessarily the same as the geographical boundaries of a city. Naturally, there are exceptions and problematic phrases. The "City of New York" is, in fact, "New York City" – it's an exception; but, Atlanta is never known as the "City of Atlanta". While Wikipedia MoS, and every other major style guide, recommends against capitalizing the word "state" (e.g., the state of Kansas), the word "commonwealth" poses difficult questions (although it shouldn't). When referring to certain countries, it's usually necessary to include the descriptive words (e.g., "Republic of Georgia", but "Germany"). My point is this: with regard to cities, towns, and states (and commonwealths), the words "city", "town", "state", etc., should not be included (or capitalized) because they are not part of the name. Chicago, AP, NYT, even the Wikipedia MoS, support this position. My suggestion is that we re-work the InfoBox to show: name, form of government, and nickname. Because the InfoBox shows the form of government (e.g., town, city, etc.), there's no need to repeat that same information in the name field. I eagerly await discussion.
Jeremiestrother ( talk) 09:17, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
Please note that User:Jeremiestrother and User:70.162.43.187 are the same editor. At this point I'm going to assume good faith that Jeremiestrother simply forgot to login for a couple of editing sessions. However, I do object to his campaign to change cities names in spite of the fact that the other editors here have agreed that "official name" means exactly that, and I will advise the editor accordingly. I will also revert his edits back per our discussion above. Rklawton ( talk) 21:02, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
Someone make also wish to take the initiative to undo the changes made by these two accounts, but please do not rollback without first previewing. This editor is in the habit of making constructive edits - just not in the matter at hand. User contributions: [9] [10] Rklawton ( talk) 21:17, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
I previously came to this page to raise issues on the lack of consistency when it came to treatment of proper nouns that are universally not capitalized which were issues with WP:MOSTM (the names of the bands defspiral and angela). I also raised a similar issue for a song title that currently has a non-standard capitalization scheme when compared with the guidelines at WP:ALBUMCAPS ( Journey through the Decade), a band that has a non-standard capitalization scheme that apparently has issues at WP:MOSMUSIC#Capitalization ( Pay money To my Pain) and a band whose name is stylized in a way that treats it as an initialism when it isn't which I believe is an issue with WP:ABBR ( m.o.v.e) and the title of a song where WP:ABBR (and WP:MOS-JA) was brought up ( W-B-X ~W-Boiled Extreme~ [the tildes themselves are an issue with MOS-JA and WP:AT which I brought up here but received very little input from individuals uninvolved with the prior discussion at MOS-JA]).
From the various arguments that have been raised at a handful of move requests I put in place for these pages, it seems that there is an inherent issue with the applications of WP:MOSTM (most people ignore the part that says "When deciding how to format a trademark, editors should choose among styles already in use (not invent new ones) and choose the style that most closely resembles standard English, regardless of the preference of the trademark owner."), WP:COMMONNAME, and WP:UE ("If there are too few English-language sources to constitute an established usage, follow the conventions of the language appropriate to the subject")
I am aware that all of these cases also fall under the umbra of WP:MOS-JA, but due to the various style guidelines in place, I believe that this venue would provide more outside input and be able to determine a consensus that affects the whole project, rather than the treatment of just the English language in a Japanese context.
In short, the way non-Anglophone nations use the English language in their media is treated differently than the way Anglophone nations use the English language on this Wikipedia. When some stylizations are completely thrown out because they are not standard English and are not from an English speaking nation, similar stylizations are kept in place for article subjects of American, Canadian, British, Irish, Australian, New Zealand extraction. The specific manuals of style (e.g. WP:MOS-JA, WP:MOSMUSIC) that mistakenly apply the more general ones (e.g. WP:ABBR, MOS:TM), and have improper applications of WP:AT, should be modified to remove this disparity.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙) 20:54, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
At the suggestion of an administrator, I bring this issue here. The current text of the WP:MMA, with the recommended guidelines for MMA related articles regarding records, currently enforces some manual of style related problems. The first one is capitalization in the Method column, which right now is enforced in non proper names, acronyms, or initialisms. For example, right now it's used "Submission (Shoulder Injury)" instead of "Submission (shoulder injury)" or "KO (Punch)" instead of "KO (punch)".
The other one is the overuse of flag icons in the Location column despite that the location is mentioned with text. For example, "
Tokyo, Japan" instead of simply "
Tokyo, Japan". I've tried to address these and other related issues, but some editors seem to believe that it looks "stupid". You can check the changes
here. In the discussion, I have pointed out that
MOS:CAPS and
MOS:ICON already state that those two issues should be avoided, but some editors simply ignore them. Regarding flag icons, I also think that they are completely unnecessary because the location is already mentioned and also because they increases server load. There are a few other MoS related issues, such as adding extra text for events (e.g. [[UFC 60|UFC 60: Hughes vs. Gracie]] instead of [[UFC 60]] which is the article title.)
Since there are very few editors actively discussion these issue (most simply revert the changes) and even fewer know of the manual of styles, and since no agreement can be reached, I request assistance in this issue, because I don't believe that using such capitalization or adding unneeded flag icons help in any way to improve the quality of the articles. If anyone could comment in the discussion at the talk page of WP:MMA it would be helpful because the discussion is going nowhere and there are only 3 editors actively participating, with on of them reverting the changes. I also want to point out that these problems are not limited to the WP:MMA. Most MMA related biographies have these problems also, so the discussion is not limited to the guideline. Jfgslo ( talk) 04:21, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
Per above, we've agreed that "Official name" should be a city's official name rather than a shortened or common version. During the discussion, Oknazevad suggested we use the article's name for the "name" field, so I thought it useful to start a new thread for that discussion. I'd be interested in hearing from any dedicated geographers, but given that the "name" field also serves as the title for the info box, I believe Oknazevad's recommendation makes good sense and that any exceptions to this would need to be justified and discussed prior to implementation on a per-article basis. Rklawton ( talk) 04:29, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
However, I have to ask why the (plain/common) Name field should include the state - the state is not part of the name of a city - it is descriptive information that helps us identify which city of that name it is (assuming there are multiple cities with that name, which there often are), and helps us understand where it is, but what does any of that have to do with the name? If you ask an American where he or she is from, they are likely to answer in the City, State format, but that's because they are identifying where geographically they are from, not the name of the place where they are from. Ask the same person instead, "what is the name of the city you are from?", and see what you get. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 23:23, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
Given that the Manual of Style has a line on just about everything, I was wondering if there was one on this? I was very surprised to check my watchlist and find half a dozen edits such as this. Thanks in advance, — W F C— 20:01, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
I think you'll agree that these have different meanings (not modifies a different word), and that #1, though it breaks no rule that I've ever heard of or seen written, is, if not just plain wrong, pretty strange and just not the way English is spoken. It would be best to use a contraction in the first case. Chrisrus ( talk) 22:29, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
The situations in which contracted forms are natural are rarely useful to the encyclopedia; we ask very few questions - and we normally use a formal register, in which he didn't come is unidiomatic. But there are exceptions to both generalizations; there should be more: much of our worst writing comes from a failed attempt at a high register. When they arise, ignore all rules ( that's policy); that's why WP:CONTRACTIONS is phrased as it is, with generally.
If you find that's why in an article, consider recasting the sentence; but don't just substitute that is why, which makes Wikipedia look stupid - and will, for most anglophones, make it harder to read. Even if they don't realize why, they will stumble over the failure of idiom and look around for what's wrong, and why this strangeness has arisen. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:15, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
Spawned from Wikipedia:Help desk#Image is annotated in Spanish, the current guideline at Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Avoid entering textual information as images seems to be talking about use of "an image of text" rather than "the text itself" (for example, exported from Word or other formatting system). Should it be extended to include text-annotations in a graphics image (labels or details on a diagram)? For example, Wikipedia:Manual of Style (chemistry)/Structure drawing#General states "Do not include English text in images: this prevents their reuse in other languages." DMacks ( talk) 09:22, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
The blanket claim that "bird names are capitalized" is not my understanding. AIUI Bald Eagle is indeed capitalized, but eagle is sentence case. -- Trovatore ( talk) 22:48, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
When you look at WP it has huge traffic. I'm sure we must have some paid employees who work on the servers and such. What if we got some paid editors? It's just money. Money can be located. This thing is a frigging Google H-bomb. It justifies that. And having some editors would not mean that all the work gets done. There's so much to do, even on the policy front, that there would still be a place for all the circular arguments and such. But the project is big enough to "deserve" the expenditure. And I feel for what Tony said about wanting direction. And this is not to say it would be Nirvana...but it would help and would move us to getting work done (article content written and prose completed) vice the never-ending wonk-battles.
Obviously, you need to pick someone who has both "skills" as well as sympathy for the crazy thing that we have here and a willingness to work in the New Media world. But there are people in those two intersecting circls of a Venn diagram. Just run the search and make it happen. Would be fun to think about bringing in some Michael Wolfe (maybe not, he seems a prima donna). But we could raid Britannica or NYT or National Geographic or what have you. And it's not about our having some ghetto resentment of the establishment, but just about getting the job done (and the job done is finished work product for people to read...never forget the silent majority that reads WP, but does not contribute and definitely does not come to MOS to debate dashes and curly-Qs, etc.
I would start with 3 hires: a head editor, a "copy editor" (he would mostly work on style policy, not actualy copyediting), and a featured content editor (FA, FP, GA, DYK, all that crap). This has to have been thought of. But why not some attention on the content as opposed to the servers? Or as opposed to the whole structure around conduct (going from admins to arbs to I guess the board of wikimedia)? TCO ( talk) 13:10, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
Should this guideline be discussing article titles at all? We haver a policy on the subject on WP:TITLE#Special_characters, which already says much of this (have redirects from the hyphened form) rather less verbosely. Where they agree, this is unnecessary; where they disagree, it is excrescent.
In addition, the guidance here on which to use is use dashes when dashes are proper. I'm underwhelmed with this. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:47, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
Since Tony is the only proponent of the audacious view that this guideline overrules policy; and in the process rewrites English, the majority text should be restored with a tag. If this revert war continues, I will dispute the status of this semi-literate waste of electrons as a guideline. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:08, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
But all this could be obviated if WP:DASH were to include WP:MOSFOLLOW. DASH is at best a set of reasonable guidelines for punctuation (some of its provisions may be somewhat less than that), but it is not intended to be an exact account of English punctuation, which is bent by innumerable crossing idioms. If it said, at the beginning, something like The following are guides to what English usage usually is; if in doubt, follow the punctuation of reliable English secondary sources on the subject, we would avoid undiomatic forms both in text and in titles. We don't have to make editors try to figure out what English ought to be; they should look at what English is.
If there are two actually contesting forms in reliable sources, there is nothing wrong with leaning to regularity as a tie-breaker; I would appreciate suggestions on how to phrase that. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:43, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
There has been an annoying spread of the abuse of what it is claimed WP:DASH says, and the defenders of replacing virtually every hyphen in Wikipedia with dashes makes it sound like this is mandatory and all kinds of silly arguments are made to defend mis-applications about it. Current RMs on Talk:Poland-Lithuania and Talk:Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District and an unfiled one about Greco-Turkish Wars on WP:RM (no template has been placed on Talk:Greco-Turkish War (er, looking again, taht was Greco-Persian Wars, same argument applies) all make the "dash here, dash there, hyphens nowhere" argument, which claims to be about "typography" and "style" being more important than the sources - and wantonly ignoring what WP:ENDASH actually says, which is:
The section needs clarification so that geographic hyphenated names, and other names of that kind, do not go so breezily dismissed as being left up to the imposition of Wikipedia's "style" in defiance of what the rest of the world (the real world) uses. I dispute many of the sweeping conventions/declarations of WP:DASH which, though consensus long ago at some point, are not immutable and deserve revisition, per the fifth pillar of WP:CCC (I think that's it) about consensus being adaptable and changeable. In this case it doesn't have to be, as both WP:HYPHEN and WP:ENDASH have more than enough of them to invalidate any suggestion that the dash is mandatory; those fanatical about this continue to deny that names such as Poland-Lithuania are actual names, and want to claim they are made of independent elements (on that premise, so are "Lennard" and "Jones" in Lennard-Jones, the name-example used in ENDASH). WP:HYPHEN needs expansion, WP:ENDASH needs emendation and clarification and more examples, and the wanton arrogance of teh "typography is more important than the sources" crowd needs to be slapped down. Skookum1 ( talk) 21:09, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
Noted, but I think some emendation/expansion/clarification is needed, so that no one will construe (again) geographic hyphenated names as not being the same as hyphenated personal names, which they utterly are. It's not just that said editors are ignoring the whole of DASH/HYPHEN sections, they're wildly misinterpreting them and also interpolating and extrapolating off them some kind of absolutism-of-the-dash, while invoking MOS very loudly to justify their own....er, judgments; how to rein that in I don't know, other than to hope for better education methods in our schools....the comment in ENDASH about prefixes with no lexical indepedence, as with Sino- in Sino-Tibetan, as one of the dash-pushing editors is maintaining that the adjectival form Polish-Lithuanian shouldn't be a hyphen, even though the root term Poland-Lithuania is (or should be, which is the subject of that RM); so it's not jsut "lexical independence" which mandates a hyphen, but also adjectival forms and adjectival auxiliaries.....I read all three sections (HYPHEN, ENDASH and EMDASH) and quite frankly found them very vague in spots, and mutually conflicting sometimes too. The passage about the use of hyphens needing to be flexible and requiring some subtlety should be highlighted, at least - it's a key component, something like the infamous notwithstanding clause in the Canadian constitution, which is the back door out of anything a government wants to pull that the Charter ordinarly wouldn't allow - but there's also items in DASH which say "optional" which are being invoked, loudly, as if Doctrines From On High (but without the "optional" bit).....I"m not asking for sweeping revisions here, just clarity and more examples, as with geographic names using hyphens, and maybe a point-clause numbering system for line-quotes when you need to beat someone on the head about what they want MOS to say, even if it doesn't actually say it. I think there's been a lot of misapplication of the DASH in recent months, and there should be some kind of review investigating all the inappopriate changes, to titles, to categories, and to article content; similarly there's been a lot of misapplication of the lower-case-second-word "rule" too, often with embarrassing or just inane results ("Columbia river", "Fraser river", the "Persian wars" etc)...it's almost like someone has geared a bot to look for all two-capped combination terms and make the second one a lower-case without discretion or reference to the actuality of their proper name-hood. Lots of knee-jerk application of MOS, it seems, by people who don't really understand it....I'm also tired of hearing that MOS out-trumps sources, though that doesn't seem to come from anybody who actually wrote MOS or works on it at present..... Skookum1 ( talk) 05:02, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
The Polish-Lithuanian union and Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth are both referred to historically as " Poland-Lithuania"; the distinctions are wiki-titles to distinguish between two different political structures (of the same country) only and should reflect the source term, which is never "dash-ized". See Austria-Hungary for its official names; the convention remains hyphenated in English, and always has been, and always should be. Also, because of teh lnkage in referenc to a single country, whether "Polish-" or "Poland-" in reference to this country, these are NOT "lexically indepedent uses" because in those forms they are only' used in relation to the union/commonwealth with Lithuania. Skookum1 ( talk) 06:28, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
–
or using the appropriate keyboard shortcut.
Dabomb87 (
talk)
22:50, 18 January 2011 (UTC)[undent] Blame it on Windows, then, blame it on Windows users, that they didn't have the capacity to write with your newfangled way of doing things. Pity me, I was raised on an Underwood in the age of mechanical typewriters, and have used everything from telex to wordprocessing typewriters to the various electrics; had a slick portable my DAd owned, kinda space age '50s design, and our school had the old big black ones with the cash-register type keys. Not a friggin' dash on any one of them, only the hyphen and underline. Where do you get off talking like your way is better becaues Mac can along and improved things and made useless things possible? Wikipedia should be about ease-of-entry, and the MOS not overcompliated with unnecssary special characters; the same reason news copy and magazine copy isn't (unless "arty" designed). Wikipedia should be about enabling content, not fussing with design at the expense of people actually able and willing to add content meaningfully. The amount of energy going into this nonsense is really, really discouraging; the suggestion that technology is improving the way we write language, and that we have to get used to it and embrace it, is utter arrogant hogwash and all from a minority faction....the mainstream is the mainstream, typing has been typing for a hundred years before Wikipedia came along; Wikipedia should be part of it, not try to change it or tell experienced tpyists "you're doing things wrong, this is for publication and all these normal hyphen places are not acceptable because we say so". "We" being a handful of design-obsessed people, who don't have enough experience with content - or with typing - to be relevant in dicsussions of how to spell (or typeset) historical names, or dictate changes to historical conventions, some centuries-old. YOu haven't improved anything, you've unnecessarily complicated things for those of us actually interested in what the content is about. All because you have a Mac keyboard and want to sniff your nose at the rest of us for not keeping up with you??? Gimme a break. Technology should not wantonly redesign langauge as its own justification; nobody appionted you to write new spelling rules, or come up with a typographic system you're mis-using MOS to apply..... WP:KISS. Making things tougher for writers, instead of more encouraging, is the wrong way to go; dissing them because they were raised on Windows machines, or in my case, ancient typewriters....not hearing you, and dno't think much of what you're saying. Skookum1 ( talk) 04:49, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
Could we simply add, under "En dashes in page names", that "When naming an article, an en dash is not used as a substitute for a hyphen that properly belongs in the title according to the naming policy."? There is already a similar sentence for preventing useless removals of dashes from places where they rightfully belong. -- Enric Naval ( talk) 20:49, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
Another very-irresponsible mis-application of the dash, in another context, is the Spokane – Coeur d'Alene – Paloos War, which was wrongly dashified (with spaces, no less, which is totally beyond any convention or utility except somebody's idea of "typographical improvement"). It was not a war between the Spokan people, Coeur d'Alene people and Palus people, it was an alliance, so the dash gives a totally wrong context to the name, and is also at complete variance to all authoritative sources. There's no adjectival or "lexically dependent" forms for "Spokanian", "Couer d'Alenian" and "Palusian" - except maybe in those languages - and in many other cases the noun form of a name may be the same as the adjectival form. Distinguishing between Spanish-American War or Mexican-American War and any conceivable variants e.g. Spain-America War would be the same context and should have the same spelling (I maintain, strongly, that use of hyphens especially in proper names, is "spelling" and has nothing to do with "typographical style"). Consistency should be de rigeur.....and the utterly specious arguments that Guinea-Bissau is OK, but Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District is an "and/to" construction (when it's not) is just so much wikipedian bunkum. Skookum1 ( talk) 19:45, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
to
The en dash conveys relationships, too, such as "Japan–Australia Free Trade Agreement". Tony (talk) 10:48, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
The, to me, very crazy argument that while Poland-Lithuania, it is finally being conceded, is a hyphenated name and should be re-hyphenated, the same resistant, obstructive people who speedy-changed titles without adequate discussion are insisting that the adjectival forms of such names should remained dashes; this is absurd; the new addition to ENDASH should have a corollary phrase added "adjectival forms of hyphenated names are to be hyphenated". Polish-Lithuanian Army (if that even exists....yet), Polish-Lithuanian union, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth are all clearly derived from Poland-Lithuania, any argument that they should be spelled with different characters than the parent term might be some kind of principle in MOS, but if it is, then MOS needs changing (and is not carved in stone). Skookum1 ( talk) 23:15, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
There are two key points here:
I have included both, in the hope that common sense will be uncontroversial. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:06, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
I was warned by a certain admin that WTMOS is a snakepit. Now I see why...and who. No logic prevails here, just typographical inanity and defense of the indefensible, and people pulling shit as faits accomplis that weren't even what MOS said, and then arguing away anyone who wants those WRONG CHANGES returned to their proper state - with stupid, childish, ill-informed sophomoric arguments and lexical analysis of terms they don't even friggin' understand. You claim to have consensus on what MOS means, but as long as you keep sayhing it says things it doesn't, you might as well burn this whole place; because if you don't listen to input, your "consensus" is just a club, and disconnected from reality. I think you're deliberately irritating, DickLyon, and McLarrister, too, I think you do this just to feel powerful and creative, to make big decisions affecting places and people you dno['t know anything about, and then being smug and difficult point-pickers when it's pointed out you're wrong. And you're wrong. About Poland-Lithuania, about the Alberni-Clayoquot Regional Dietrict, about Grandview-Woodland; and you're wrong, also, in presuming to tell people they better catch up to typographically more enlightened people like yourself. What a load of friggin' crap. This ain't over, I'm finding somewhere upstairs to take it; did you just say that, Dicklyon, to provoke me to try and get me banned and out of the way? Join me in hell, baby, it's a long ways down and I've been there before, I know my way around.....instead of going "oh, you mean those names are always hyphenated?" as you should have, you've opened up a bigger can of worms than just the one you and your friends live in.....I'm tired of this shit; there's no way some typography-obsessed nerd in another country has the right to say "Alberni-Clayoquot sin't a hyphenated name" and override the input of people actually from the province/country it's in. Go stuff yourself, kid.... Skookum1 ( talk) 07:32, 27 January 2011 (UTC) And my edit count would be a LOT frickin' lower if I didn't have to put out stupid-idiot fires like this one all the time, and could jsut write history etc articles and fix geography etc, which is what I came to Wikipedia for. Not to ahve to argue with some typographical fanatics about their over-reach and overweeing power. Getting me blocked for repsonding to DickLyon's deciding to provoke me as much as possible - all this delay about what is obviously correct ("hyphenated names are hyphenated names") is insane; it's insane, I'm not. but I sure am pissed off at being angered like this in such a stupid, stupid, stupid way - you claimed the opposite of what was true, Dicklyon, with articles under discussion of the very kind you claim don't exist. You must like being an asshole, I think..... Skookum1 ( talk) 07:36, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
This subject is being discussed at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#MOS vs. MOSNUM on centuries. Hmains ( talk) 19:36, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
This edit summary genuinely shocks me; the claim that do as [reliable English] sources do is a serious change of guidance for any section of this page should disqualify that section for z guideline on the English Wikipedia; the claim that such a position is consensus of Wikipedia (not of some clique of rule-makers) is an evident falsehood; if it were consensus, it would not be controversial – as WP:DASH evodently is.
I hope, however, that there is some other explanation that the assertion that MOS attempts to provide rules which are not supported by the usage of actual English beyond Wikipedia. Wikipedia editors (at least most of the time ;}) write real English, not MOSese; more importantly, our readers read the language actually found in published sources – not some artificial construct. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:35, 29 January 2011 (UTC) What is WP:DASH? The top of this section links to an edit summary claiming that it has nothing to do with how English is actually written outside Wikipedia; I don't believe it. The top of this page links to a long and acrimonious discussion provoked by a claim that it is binding on article titles even when the result is almost unheard of in English (demonstrating in the process that the meaning of these innumerable bullet points isn't the same for everybody). I think this violates our article title policy, and I still don't believe it. What do other people think? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:24, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
There seem to me three possibilities about WP:DASH:
1 I believe #1. Let's have other views. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:52, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
I also believe #1. The complaint was about changing from the simple style statement "a hyphen is not used as a substitute for an en dash that properly belongs in the title" to a statement that tried to provide guidance on making the decision about whether an en dash properly belongs: "use dashes when the sources do". The edit summary said "That would be quite a change from the current consensus", which it is, since the MOS until now doesn't attempt to give much guidance there (at least not in this section), and because it is an attempt to turn a decision over to the often erratic results of the styles of others rather than leaving it more up to WP style. My own interpretation is this: if I think that an en dash belongs in a title, and it currently has a hyphen, I might move it, but only if I first find and cite a source that does it that way. I don't require a preponderance, or a majority, or even a large number of sources doing it that way, because most sources aren't curated well enough to bother to respect the value of indicating meaning via punctuation, which is what the style guide says elsewhere we try to do with en dashes, using them to indicate a different kind of connection than hyphens indicate. But I do need at least one source to back up my opinion before I'll do it; I might be tempted to change "Springer-Verlag" to "Springer–Verlag" if I were ignorant of the real meaning of this German-derived name, but hopefully when looking at sources I'd find out that that would be wrong, and I'd leave it alone. Those of us who have been brought up on a combination of good grammar and good typography find the hyphen offensive when it indicates the wrong meaning by being used where the en dash belongs; and vice-versa. But it's not always obvious, so cases need to be looked at by editors who get the point and are willing to make decisions without the emotional baggage of dashphobia or dashphilia. Dicklyon ( talk) 02:51, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
See Talk:Alberni–Clayoquot_Regional_District#Requested_move re TheTom, McLay and Skinsmoke's comments, and refer back to the arduous Poland-Lithuania RM for many of the same uninformed pronouncements that this is two separate entities so must be dashed, plus other rationalizations why the sources don't matter and what matters is style and "typographical" technology over content (many of your own posts were about that, very repetitively and you also, it seems to me, said that the prevailing usages in the sources weren't important and coudl be discounted; just as you have done so immediately above). The Canadian placenames were changed by User:Arctic.gnome and User:Renata3 (the latter took part in Poland-Lithuania, as I recall) citing the mis-taken "and/to" concept that these are just linked items, and not unique placenames referring to unique places/concepts (which they are). You nkow all this already, and you know what I was referring to; yet you ask me to back it up with "facts"....but the facts are that the sources ARE the sources, and Wikipedia is not a source (and MOS even less so). Skookum1 ( talk) 07:19, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
So, the question is this: If MOS, as Dicklyon suggests, isn't based on what English does, what is it based on? Not on style manuals: it cites none, and they are in turn ultimately based on usage. If it is based the Original Research of some Wikipedians - as his answer would suggest, why should we keep it? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:31, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
I just put the page on unwatch, even though I care about the MOS and enjoy talking style nuances with the best of the best here. But it's a total buzzkill to see these moth-flying-into-flame debates the last day or so. Heck, I don't like the dashes either, but let's roll with it. Let's have a system and use it. Having no style guide (or some sort of jury nullification) would be worse than one with a couple tiny debatable issues. This place needs better content, better writing. There's plenty of work to be done that has nothing do to with dashes. This is supposed to be fun, but following this page last day has been unfun. TCO ( talk) 06:16, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
I've moved several articles with disjunctive names to titles with en dashes per MOS:ENDASH, only to have them reverted because WP:RSs use hyphens. What is our policy here? I would expect that we do not need to follow RS's in this any more than we do other orthographic or stylistic conventions, but some editors get quite irate at any divergence from their sources.
Most of the time, for me this involves language families. For example, a large number of families are named after two languages or groups, such as the Amto-Musan languages (= Amto + Musan) and the Kwomtari-Fas languages (= Kwomtari + Fas). Since they are disjunctive, these should have en dashes, despite being "proper names", correct?
In other cases the elements themselves have spaces or hyphens. One of the most important is Trans-New Guinea languages. En dash despite trans- being a prefix, correct? Others are the Left May–Kwomtari languages, Ramu–Lower Sepik languages, Yele–West New Britain languages, and Reefs–Santa Cruz languages, which have not (yet) been reverted. However, since these are both disjunctive and contain spaces, should there be spacing on either side of the dashes?
Then, if our sources (many written on a typewriter!) use hyphens, do we need to follow that practice per WP:RS, or are orthographic conventions independent of sourcing? (For TNG, I've found sources with "Trans New Guinea" and "Trans–New Guinea", but the clear majority have "Trans-New Guinea".)
A non-linguistic example is the Spokane–Coeur d'Alene–Paloos War. There was recently an edit war over this. I restored it to the stable 2008 title with en dashes, but since 2009 it had been stable with spaces as well. One of the arguments for moving this back to hyphens was that the Spokane, Coeur d'Alene, and Paloos were not fighting each other, but were allies (AFAIK an overly literal reading of "disjunction"); another was that "War" is capitalized, and therefore a proper name, and proper names require hyphens.
A critical test case would be Niger-Congo languages. It seems disjunctive, being the languages which range from the Niger to the Congo rivers. Yet I can find no sources which use en dashes; even the refs which had "Trans New Guinea" and "Trans–New Guinea" use a plain hyphen for "Niger-Congo". Is this not truly disjunctive, because the family is not composed of "Niger languages" + "Congo languages", but is simply named after its geographic extremes, much like Indo-European? Should we only use en dashes for families such as Amto–Musan, which are named after two disjunctive groups of languages? or should we use "Niger–Congo" despite that usage being unattested in the (voluminous) lit? or do we defer to sourcing despite the MoS?
It would be nice if less straightforward examples such as these could be spelled out in the guide, as fights like these crop up over and over. — kwami ( talk) 20:31, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
Back to the NC question: is there any reason why a name based on extremes which are not themselves units should be treated differently than a name based on genuine units? That is, any reason why "Niger-Congo" (= in the expanse from the Niger to the Congo) should be handled differently than "Tai-Kadai" (= a group consisting of the Tai languages and the Kadai languages)? Per Skookum's objections, do we have a source with a clear definition of what "disjunction" means, since he's arguing that Michelson–Morley experiment is conjunctive rather than disjunctive? Or is "disjunction" a misnomer here?
Or, perhaps, is a name based on two people, such as the Michelson–Morley experiment, en-dashed to distinguish it from a name based on a single person with a hyphenated name, such as the Lennard-Jones potential? In other words, should this convention be specifically for compounds of surnames? — kwami ( talk) 21:58, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
Are there any objections to these reverted edits? They are clarifications, the removal of the incorrectly used word 'disjunction', which has already created problems, and a fifth use of the en dash (a variant of the hyphen in all-cap text) which I've seen in two sources now. — kwami ( talk) 10:51, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
Proposed content, please comment -
"Policies on not doing original research include that synthesizing material from a variety of sources into a single sentence is original research. Sometimes an editor may initially find it stylistically better to include material from two sources in a single sentence because they go so well together. This can lead other editors to make accusations of synthesis. To avoided the accusation, break the material into two shorter sentences, each with its own citation."
deleted material not germane to topic----
Current text: "In general, the use of contractions—such as don't, can't, won't, they'd, should've, it's—is informal and should be avoided."
Proposed replacement text: "In general, the pointed avoidance of contractions—such as don't, can't, won't, they'd, should've, it's—is stilted and should be avoided. It was a traditional rule of formal versus informal writing in the pre-Internet era, and nowadays it seems stodgy and outdated to most readers under 40."
No, I don't expect the people who read this page to accept this change anytime soon—not now, nor this year, nor this decade. Yes, it needed to be said anyway. No, it doesn't present any actual problems to EFL readers or readers who are machines. Yes, it will eventually happen. Till then, I remain, — ¾-10 23:33, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
Mr Anderson, an editor whose specialisations in the classics and mathematics I admire, has suddenly taken to making substantive changes to the MoS without consensus. Above, he has reprimanded User:Ozob for an edit-summary to a reversion of one of these changes earlier today. Editors need a stable MoS, and changes to it, unless everyone here agrees—not just one or two people where there's also disagreement—need to be discussed on this page. Consideration should sometimes be given to advertising the discussion more widely to involve the community.
I ask that the normal protocols be observed on this important page. There seems to be a spiralling element in which disagreement to change is met by a bulldozer. We need to treat each other more kindly and maintain peaceful discussion. \
In yet another example, this:
has been changed to this:
I'd have thought "In general" was enough leeway for common sense to be applied in particular instances. "On the other hand" isn't a particularly thrilling phrase for a style guide. Can we have examples of where "the pointed avoideance of contractions is stilted and also should be avoided"? Otherwise, it seems to be bloat. What will new editors make of it? I'm struggling with it myself. Tony (talk) 01:56, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
It seems like an OK situation of WP:BRD to me. The revert was absolutely appropriate, as is this discussion; and the bold change was OK, too, but then don't rag on the reverters. I made a bold change myself to the page recently, and nobody complained (I was surprised); so it depends on what the consensus is, right? Dicklyon ( talk) 02:55, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm just waiting (w8ng?) for the moment when someone argues that text-speak is their "national variety of English". Blueboar ( talk) 16:10, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
I agree that we shouldn't blindly replace contractions with potentially stilted wording, but it often is possible to simply recast a sentence in a manner that eliminates the issue entirely.
In the case of "Why couldn't they see something in Sagittarius...", it's true that "Why could they not see something in Sagittarius..." is awkward, but alternative options (such as "Why did they see nothing in Sagittarius..." and "Why was nothing found in Sagittarius...") exist.
Of course, apart from quotations (which obviously shouldn't be modified in that manner), Wikipedia is unlikely to contain this style of prose in the first place.
I don't understand Pmanderson's earlier example, as I see absolutely nothing unnatural about the wording "...did not make his first appearance...". I agree that the paragraph contains unrelated flaws, but I find it rather unfair and distasteful to mock an editor for failing to address them (as though this was an either-or proposition in which the change from "didn't" to "did not" was performed instead). —
David Levy
03:19, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
On that, let me comment on Mr Anderson's example above from Brittanica": "Shapley’s work caused astronomers to ask themselves certain questions: How could the existing stellar data be so wrong? Why couldn’t they see something in Sagittarius, the proposed galactic centre, 30,000 light-years away?" I do believe this tone is not encouraged in WP articles. It comes perilously close to POV in the relationship it assumes with the readers. If authoritative sources reacted in this way, it should be expressed as such, not as though it's WP's opinion. Have I got this right? Tony (talk) 14:36, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
Mild disagree: (Let me "pre-caveat": The last thing in the world (World?) I want to do is run around her fixing people's contractions or cripes edit-warring them. That said I wrote Ph.D. thesis and several peer-reviewed science papers without contractions (searching to fix all) and I never felt the "shackles" as heavy on me, or that the writing was strange afterwards. TCO ( talk) 22:30, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
When writing articles, we need to code-switch into an "encyclopedic" tone. That changes most people's writing considerably. In particular, the prose in our articles shouldn't use contractions, because that makes it sound too informal. But people like me can use contractions on talk pages if they want to. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 02:24, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
Remove the rule. I think that the guideline should recommend against "informal language" in general and leave it at that. This rule is too specific and, as such, it invites lazy editors to apply it mechanically. A paragraph with overly informal language needs to rewritten by someone who is actually thinking about what they are writing. "To write is to think, and to write well is to think well". This rule invites "thoughtless" edits. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 06:13, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
(This proposal could be applied to some sections of the MOS article itself.)
“When possible, use of concrete examples is helpful in explaining concepts.”
A mathematics professor at Stanford “boasted” in the preface to his widely used graduate Probability textbook, that he wrote it without any geometric diagrams exemplifying the concepts developed. While this may have satisfied a particular philosophy of math perspective, it was not very helpful to my learning from his text as a grad student. PPdd ( talk) 20:27, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
Proposed add to links section, or following "avoid jargon" -
”If a highly technical term can be simply explained with a very few words, don’t make a reader use a link to understand the sentence, especially if this requires going into nested links (a link that goes to a page with another technical term needed to be linked, which goes to a page with a link to another technical term, and so on).”
PPdd ( talk) 20:27, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
I have long wondered whether sections that begin with numbers, usually years, should have the word following the number capitalized or not. For instance, is it "2010 General election" or "2010 general election"? My practice has been to go with the latter on the theory that the number acts as the first word, but I can see the argument that the MoS provision says "word" and figures aren't words. I didn't find anything about this in the archives, and I was wondering whether we might make a decision and update the page to reflect it. - Rrius ( talk) 03:22, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
There are a bunch of specialized MOS's here [14]. Am I failing to read some hat in the main MOS article referring users to this, or should there be a hat referring to a listing of them above the main MOS article? PPdd ( talk) 08:20, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
I propose adding to MOS aand/or RS the following –
“Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, and is often viewed with mistrust. Wikipedia responds to this by requiring reliable sources. Users can then always check the content of an article by reading the source provided in the reference list. It is helpful to the reader to include a very brief quote from the source in the ref, so the reader can quickly find where the content came from in the source.”
Please comment. HkFnsNGA ( talk)
Here is a proposal for the style of writing refs as to whether or not to use quotes, which incorporates the above comments -
“Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, and is often viewed with mistrust. Wikipedia responds to this by requiring reliable sources. Users can then always check the content of an article by reading the source provided in the reference list. It is critically helpful to include page numbers from which article content specifically came from. It is also helpful to some readers to include a very brief quote from the source in the ref, so the reader can quickly find where the content came from in the source. This can also add 'punch' by giving extra info, flavor, or in driving home the proof. However some editors find that a brief quotation is often misleading, and using them might be abused by some editors. ”
HkFnsNGA ( talk) 16:42, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
At the moment V says in a footnote: "When there is dispute about whether a piece of text is fully supported by a given source, direct quotes and other relevant details from the source should be provided to other editors as a courtesy." But that could be done on the talk page. SlimVirgin TALK| CONTRIBS 01:04, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
"It is helpful for an editor to create a supplemental page for quotes called "(Article title) quotes", and include a link in the ref to it, but it is up to the editor to decide whether or not it is helpful to include a quote or an abbreviated quote in the actual article page ref or not. Quotes from sources that are not online are encouraged to be put somewhere, but never selectively quoted in a way to violate WP:NPOV. It is up to a contesting editor to point out why it may be POV, under WP:GF."
What does supplemental page mean here? Another (sub)page separate from the article? If that the case, then I'm rather against it, because it becomes unnecessarily complicated and convoluted (an article should consist of one page allowing as much straight forward editing as possible). Ifd an aithor feeols the needs to provide quotes in connection with his inline citations, he can do so in the regular references/notes section. I see no reason to mandate or recommend here anything in particular (see WP:CREEP as well). Keept it simple!-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 07:59, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
When I first came to MOS, I found it so long that I did not read it. The style of the article should be to have the most common things an editor is likely to need easily picked out at the outset, with minutiae left to sections and subsections. It is ironic that the manual of style would have stylistic problems likely to scare off a typical editor, whose concern is likely just a quick overview. Perhaps a new article should be created, "Concise essentials of MOS". HkFnsNGA ( talk) 03:10, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
I was actually serious in suggesting creating a short, but useful, "Intro to MOS". HkFnsNGA ( talk) 05:46, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
Slight rewording (to be edited as y'all see fit):
For those of you who are just getting started, the main points are as follows:
1IMO we shouldn't suggest the full list of style guides. Some of the most popular are absolute garbage, telling you to avoid all sorts of things that even the style guides themselves do (see #10). — kwami ( talk) 08:41, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
Getting back on topic, MOS violates itself, multiply, and WP:GF, in that -
Say something like this as a lead, with links where appropriate to the General Principles and ENGVAR.
I've tweaked the layout and added Blueboar's sentence as something WPians agree on.I have also tweaked the internationalism sentence, but we can discuss exactly what that should say - if anything - after discussion of the general idea. Also enlarged the involcation of WP:CONSISTENCY. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:43, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
Telling visitors not to write in English, as much of this page does, irritates me. If the function of this page is not advice on how to write English, why is it here? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:54, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
This has been raised on my talk page—something I've been meaning to ask here for some time after ?User:Headbomb, was it, confirmed age-old advice only a month or two ago, here, that this instantly yields an en dash. I would love to know how this can work. I ask clients who have Windows to do it, and they say ... errr ... won't work. Is it a fiction, I wonder? :-) Tony (talk) 02:43, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
If you don't know how to type an en dash, don't worry. You'll never need to. Just enter a hyphen, and if it matters someone who cares will fix it. Or if you use the standard editor, use the "Wiki markup Insert:" feature below where it's the first character. Or get a Mac. Dicklyon ( talk) 03:52, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
User:GFHandel sent me this comment, which I am posting below:
“ | Have a look at
this page, which has a "how to" section. If the ALT codes don't work, check the following:
|
” |
Tony (talk) 02:41, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
By no means do I suggest that those who devised the current input methods for non-ASCII characters are any less idiots than users who aren’t enamored of the cryptic crap. But I also don’t think the entry methods are nearly as difficult as many make them out to be. The greater problem is that the codes aren’t mnemonic (those on a Mac are shorter but just as off the wall); with older formatting languages like troff and TEX, the codes are easier to remember (at least for native English speakers). To an extent, the same is true for most HTML character entities, though the cost of being less cryptic is more typing. And for those who insist that Unicode support is still lacking for some browsers, the entities completely avoid the problem for all but the most ancient browsers. But the entities seem informally deprecated by many editors.
The greater problem with the en dash (and most other non-ASCII characters) is that most people would not recognize one even if it bit them; as you previously mentioned, though, in many cases another editor who does know the difference will change a hyphen to the proper character (en dash, em dash, or minus).
Nonetheless, this topic has come up so often that providing an easier method of entry (or even just clearly describing existing methods) for those who do know the difference seems like a worthwhile endeavor even if it means stooping to a dreaded “how to”. GFHandel’s comment posted by Tony is a good example; the Alt method isn’t really that difficult, but it’s essential that all the steps be followed, and most descriptions omit some of them. Incidentally, I find the method works with either Alt key. JeffConrad ( talk) 07:09, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
While others have been posting alternative methods, I might as well do so too. I downloaded a program called “Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator” and created my own layout, I can now easily type not only en dashes but also just about every conceivable character I could want to type while using Latin-based languages, and more… “ × ⅓ • √ ♙ ✓ ∴ ”. I find this solution more useful and practical than any of those suggested above (my layout is freely available to anyone who wants it). MTC ( talk) 07:10, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
Many editors complain when I put a "See" tag at the top, that it should be in the "See also" section at the bottom. The problem is that many newer users coming to a technical "daughter article", do not know where to find the mother article at the bottom. Even if they did know to look at the bottom "See also" section, it is often filled with "related" articles, with no indication as to which should be read before the article they are in, and which are only peripherally related to the subject article, or provide only supplemental reading. A further thing that comes up is when I put a "see" tag at top, it gets removed as "already in a link word in the lede ot body, with no indication that link should be read first, among the multitude ot links in the article.
This would help me alot with an unfamiliar subject, and likely would help others. PPdd ( talk) 06:33, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
Proposal add subsection to MOS links section -
"- Links to related articles - When an article is a general or introductory treatment of a topic, and another article is a technical treatment, an Wikipedia:Hatnote tag should be placed at the top of each page. The links between articles should be at the top of the article, not in the “See also” section at the bottom. For example… evolution and introduction to evolution… (then give example of how to use the Wikipedia:Hatnote tag). In this case, this should be used over and above a “disambiguation” tag."
PPdd ( talk) 18:29, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
- "Choice of style?" - WP:Hat says about hats, "The choice of style in a given article is based on editors' preference". But it says nothing about the stylistic choice about what to put in a hatnote vs. in "See also". PPdd ( talk) 03:47, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia's convention is that the title word or title phrase of an article is set in bold at its first appearance in the article, usually in the first sentence, apparently except when the title is a long descriptive phrase like "How Einstein learned of Lennard's experiments on the photoelectric effect".
Is this convention stated in any of Wikipedia's style manuals? Where is it? Michael Hardy ( talk) 18:05, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
I understand what the MOS says about capitalization of Article and Section titles ("List of music recording certifications" not "List of Music Recording Certifications") and I don't object or want to change it... but I am curious as to why we adopted this style... and why didn't we adopt the more common style of capitalizing the first letter of all words in the title? If this is a frequently asked question, just link to a previous discussion. Blueboar ( talk) 16:17, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
From an informational perspective, title case extinguishes a whole level of signifying: that of initial caps that carry real meaning, mostly in proper nouns. The text becomes harder reader when the "alphabet soup" method is used. I would be very happy to explicitly discourage the use of title case in book, chapter, and paper titles in our reference sections. But I suppose that's not gonna happen. Tony (talk) 07:11, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
It is just a small point but I don't think an English encyclopaedia should be using the feminine gender when referring to inanimate objects such as ships. I can't find anything in the MoS but perhaps I haven't looked hard enough. (Apologies if this is the case.) It may be romantic to use "she" for a ship but to me it doesn't seem encyclopaedic. However it may just be a matter of personal preference, so I think we need a ruling through a wider discussion to ensure consistency throughout Wikipedia. A few random ships showed "she" was mainly used in Wikipedia: German battleship Bismarck, HMS Hood (51), HMS_Montagu_(1901), HMS Invincible (1907) and MS Estonia. To get some background I searched for precedents. I found a discussion from 2004 in Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive (ships as "she") which seemed to reach no conclusion, and there is also a statement in Gender-specific pronoun, though this may just be one person's opinion. This latter entry refers to The Chicago Manual of Style. This is a paid web-site so I took this lead no further. I then looked at British style guides. The BBC and The Economist are silent on the subject. However The Guardian's style guide under the heading 'ships' is against the feminine gender (see [ [18]]). Conversely The Times style (see [ [19]]) is in favour of the feminine gender. Whether newspapers and encyclopaedias should have similar styles is debatable, but I think a standard should be defined in Wikipedia's Style Guide as well. JMcC ( talk) 00:29, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
Why is a ship referred to as she? Because it costs so much to keep one in paint and powder. TCO ( talk) 02:44, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
There are some draft guidelines purporting to aid discussion here, at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Proposed MOS talk page standards. For now, could those who want to help develop these standards, comment at the bottom and I will respond to changes.
At some later stage, this method of sole editing may change.
For those who don't want these at all, just wait. You will have the option later of voting them down. Thanks.
And please don't comment here. Not looking to start another unending discussion thread! :) Student7 ( talk) 14:56, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
I created Wikipedia:Manual of Style (list of specialized Manual of Style articles), but it needs alot of work and improvement. It is very long. Please help out. PPdd ( talk) 15:37, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
It should point to Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National_varieties_of_English but instead it goes to the main page Wikipedia:Manual of Style. This sort of thing usually happens in regular articles when a section name changes after people have put the link in. I don't know how the WP: shortcuts are edited or I could see maybe where it went wrong. These shortcuts should point to the section of the appropriate article so people can see what is being pointed to/talked about. Someone responds to a query with "WP:ENGVAR" and you have a whole manual of style to read before you could even begin to wonder what they were on about that has anything to do with the question you asked. I am pretty sure other wp: shortcuts do this, maybe some don't, but IMHO they all should point to the section of the target article that is relevant to the subject. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rifter0x0000 ( talk • contribs) 20:53, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
Could part of the problem with en dashing be regional variation? Users Johnlp and DuncanHill inform me that compounded compounds are not en dashed in the UK; such wording is either avoided, or a virgule is used. Duncan quotes the Oxford University Press style guide, as set down in the Oxford Writers' Dictionary.
Of course, some US style guides say the same thing, and some have only the compounded-compound type, so this may not indicate a general lack of the convention in the UK. Does anyone have a UK style guide that parallels the CMOS in this case? — kwami ( talk) 22:10, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
Hm, the The Oxford dictionary of American usage and style (2000:94) says the same thing, and only adds the following:
So it may be an Oxford thing rather than necessarily a UK thing. — kwami ( talk) 23:06, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
Here's most of what the CMOS has to say. (I left out several repetitions and details of en-dash between numbers.)
CMOS
|
---|
The principal use of the en dash is to connect numbers and, less often, words. In this use it signifies up to and including (or through). For the sake of parallel construction the word to, never the en dash, should be used if the word from precedes the first element; similarly, and, never the en dash, should be used if between precedes the first element. [I've seen this explained elsewhere as the en-dash including the sense of from–to, so that using it w from was redundant]
[then a section on open dates w a dangling en-dash] The en dash is used in place of a hyphen in a compound adjective when one of its elements is an open compound or when two or more of its elements are open compounds or hyphenated compounds (see 7.83). As illustrated by the first four examples below, en dashes separate the main elements of the new compounds more clearly than hyphens would (“hospital” versus “nursing home,” “post” versus “World War II,” etc.), thus preventing ambiguity. In the last two examples, however, to have used en dashes between “non” and “English” and between “user” and “designed” would merely have created an awkward asymmetry; the meaning is clear with hyphens.
(Abbreviations for compounds are treated as single words, so a hyphen, not an en dash, is used in such phrases as “U.S.-Canadian relations.”) [mentions idiosyncratic use in some scientific disciplines] In some instances an en dash is used to link a city name to the name of a university that has more than one campus.
A slash is sometimes used in dates instead of an en dash, or even in combination with an en dash, to indicate the last part of one year and the first part of the next.
A series of pitches are joined by en dashes.
Harmonic progressions are indicated by capital roman numerals separated by en dashes: IV–I–V–I. compass points and directions: northeast, southwest, east-northeast, a north–south street, the street runs north–south. (Closed in noun, adjective, and adverb forms unless three directions are combined, in which case a hyphen is used after the first. When from . . . to is implied, an en dash is used.) noun + gerund: decision making, a decision-making body, mountain climbing, time-clock-punching employees, a Nobel Prize–winning chemist (for use of the en dash, see 6.85), bookkeeping, caregiving, policymaking. (Noun form usually open; adjective form hyphenated before a noun. Some permanent compounds closed.) e: e-mail, e-article, e-commerce, e-marketing, e-zine, e–graduate school. (Hyphenated; use en dash if e precedes an open compound.) Compounds formed with prefixes are normally closed, whether they are nouns, verbs, adjectives, or adverbs. A hyphen should appear, however, (1) before a capitalized word or a numeral, such as sub-Saharan, pre-1950; (2) before a compound term, such as non-selfsustaining, pre–Vietnam War (before an open compound, an en dash is used; see 7.83); ... An en dash used between two numbers implies up to and including, or through.
If from or between is used before the first of a pair of numbers, the en dash should not be used; instead, from should be followed by to or through, between by and. The wording or context should indicate the degree of inclusiveness. Avoid between . . . and where precision is required.
Inclusive spelled-out numbers should not be joined by an en dash.
A range of equations is referred to by giving the first and last equation numbers, joined by an en dash:
|
— kwami ( talk) 01:18, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
As for the question at the root of this section; it's not purely national variation; the strongest voice I know for the double level of hyphenation is proudly British. It is that there are various traditions of how to deal with such fine points, each propagated by high-school teaching (and, far more often by imitation) - and since Australians tend to read and be taught by Australians (and likewise for Poms and Yanks), once a tradition is established in a given country, it tends to propagate there; thus each country has several of them. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:44, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
Tony, this isn't about avoiding three or more hyphens, it's about not using hyphens with different meanings in one word. AFAIK, there's no problem with "13-year-old girl" or "12-mile-long bridge". At least, if en-dashes were expected for those, they'd be included in the style guides, as they would be much more common than the other, sometimes forced examples they give. "Up-to-the-moment information" – there: no problem w 3 commas. Ambiguity only arises when you want to link "up-to-the-moment" with something else; using a 4th hyphen would then make it difficult to read.
Here's what CMOS has to say on multiple hyphens:
Personally, since we're an encyclopedia and expect precision, I think we should use logical hyphenation, just as we use logical punctuation with quotation marks. That isn't necessary either, but IMO it's a good idea for WP to be reliable in the details. — kwami ( talk) 23:00, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
I thought this was here, but I don't seem to find it so I was wondering if there was any rules regarding the use of quotations for special words that are used as as alternate terminology for something. For example, After John defeats or "cleanses" the enemy he advances a level or "sphere". 陣 内 Jinnai 15:47, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
MOS:HEAD currently contains this guidance:
This is a remnant of two problems: the inability to make simple internal links to a heading containing a link; and an accessibility problem that affected JAWS prior to version 7.1. The former problem was solved some time ago as evidenced by this note in Help:Section#Section linking:
Opinion at WT:ACCESS#Section headers and links was that there are no longer any significant accessibility issues either. One of our most active JAWS users, Graham87 states that "very few people would be using JAWS versions prior to 7.1 these days" – which seems likely as Jaws 7.1 was introduced in June 2006. As a result, the section of WP:ACCESS linked to in the MOS guideline above no longer contains any mention of problems with section headers and links. I suggest it's time to remove this outdated guidance from MOS as well. -- RexxS ( talk) 05:07, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
I find links in headers to be terribly distracting. I'd prefer to see a guideline to try instead to link anything linkable in the text rather than in the heading. Dicklyon ( talk) 06:02, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
Discussion seems to have petered out now, and it seems clear to me that opinion here is in favour of maintaining the MOS guidance not to put links in section headers. I'll revise the current text to remove the inaccurate part about accessibility, and leave the rest in place. -- RexxS ( talk) 23:20, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
Kwami has recently taken upon himself to blindly replace any hyphens into dashes by make mass moves, and replacements with AWB. None of them make any sense! Switching "pre-main star" to "pre–main star", "post-World War II" to "post–World War II". Could someone do a mass rollback (and undo all the page moves he made) and revoke his/her AWB access? Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 07:10, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
En dashes have been standard typographic practice for at least a century. The reason I asked at the astronomy page was in case there was an expected form in technical articles, though I've seen several contradictory punctuations myself. Anyway, they're not "pre-main stars" (and presumably also "sequence stars") as Headbomb incorrectly states, they're "pre-[main sequence] stars".
I made a similar inquiry on the linguistics page. According to the style manuals, language families like Niger-Congo should be en-dashed, but that is minority usage in the actual journals. (Though Nature has used it.) I figured it would be too disruptive to follow the guideline in such cases, since they're (almost?) never ambiguous. — kwami ( talk) 09:30, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
I have no horse in this race. I just want to see this thing properly thrashed out into a consensus before we make any such radical changes to the guideline. I have wound it back to what I felt was the last WP:Consensus version for now, pending resolution. -- Ohconfucius ¡digame! 14:47, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
Kwami's ill-advised moves continue. Please stop, or I will consider the most effective means to stop this. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:45, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
There is no magic bullet; all of the "solutions" have disadvantages. But I do think MoS should at least point out the option of rewording the item so that no typographical marks are required. We do this already for units:
"Multi-hyphenated items: It is often possible to avoid multi-word hyphenated adjectives by rewording (a four-CD soundtrack album may be easier to read as a soundtrack album of four CDs). This is particularly important where converted units are involved (the 6-hectare-limit (14.8-acre-limit) rule might be possible as the rule imposing a limit of 6 hectares (14.8 acres), and the ungainly 4.9-mile (7.9 km) -long tributary as simply 4.9-mile (7.9 km) tributary)." Tony (talk) 02:12, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
Before the edit war started Jan. 29, it said:
I've put this back, since the effort to make it non-optional led to it being deleted altogether. Dicklyon ( talk) 06:17, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
Jenks, "pre-WWII technologies" would be fine with a hyphen only because we are already familiar with the phrase and with the concept of WWII; also, the change in capitalization helps. But without that context, it's not so simple to work out. What about "pre-apocalyptic war events"? Given that this could be capitalized various ways, would that mean events prior to the war of the apocalypse, or events of a war prior to the apocalypse? The first would be dab'd "pre–apocalyptic war events". (I'm sure s.o. can come up with a better example.)
One could argue that en-dashes should only be used when necessary. However, that would mean that when we use a hyphen in an ambiguous situation, the reader would have to guess whether we think it's ambiguous enough to require disambiguation. That is, the reader wouldn't be able to rely on a hyphen just being a hyphen. If we consistently use en-dashes, on the other hand, then when we do use a hyphen it will reliably mean that an en-dash is not appropriate.
This is rather like using logical punctuation with quotations. Most of the time it really doesn't matter whether we put the period or comma inside or outside the quotations marks. However, there's general WP agreement that for an encyclopedia we want precision, and so should be clear whether the punctuation belongs within the quotation or not. — kwami ( talk) 22:33, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
To prevent further MOS-claimed changes of BC placenames to dashes, this is notice that, as explained on the now-closed RM2 at Talk:Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District, the Office of the Legislative Council has an official styleguide, based in the legislation creating such places and their names, that has decided that RM, mandating hyphens in all those cases; see BCLaws.ca re the Local Government Act, and in re BC provincial parks, many of which are so far still hyphenated and have not been "MOS-ified", see in the same link the Protected Areas of British Columbia Act which gives a full list of parks, protected areas, ecological reserves, and conservancies as to their official usages; some officially use space-dash-space as with Smith River Fall – Fort Halkett Provincial Park and Ed Bird – Estella Lakes Provincial Park, but most do not and the hyphen is mandatory in most other cases, as also the use of forward-slashes in some cases, as well as special characters of various kinds for aboriginally-derived official placenames. Note also on the ACRD-RM there is mention of the Concise Gazetteer of Canada, which is not only and costs $39.95 or something like that, but is probably in most major city and university libraries in the References section. Canadian usages should be used in Canadian articles; speedy renames implanting dashes on such articles, if they occur in future, should be quickly reversed, citing the relevant pieces of legislation. I'm drafting an addition to WP:CANMOS which does not directly address this issue which should be approved by WPCANADA editors by consensus, as specified in CANMOS. Skookum1 ( talk) 20:01, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
As has been explained to me, TLDR is generally used by people trying to shut down a discussion, or who just don't want to understand what it has to say. And I don't really care if either of you read it, so what? It's in reply to Art La Pella and oknazevad. WP:Butt out. Skookum1 ( talk) 18:42, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
Five short guidelines purporting to aid discussion here, are now at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Proposed MOS talk page standards. Please express your opinion on whether 1) none should be inserted above, or whether all should be inserted above ("vote" once) or 2) whether one or more should be accepted or rejected ("vote" five times).
Probably will make it easier on this watchlist to comment there on same line, if you like, rather than discussing it here. (And PPdd, I've got my eye on you! :) Student7 ( talk) 23:07, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
Revised to clarify original question – Kerαunoςcopia◁
galaxies
04:39, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
{{
Cite web}} is a template that auto-formats its title=
parameter by adding quotation marks. Reference titles that end in double/single quotation marks are therefore susceptible to awkward pairs of quotation marks that can be difficult to read. For example:
<ref>{{cite web|url=en.wikipedia.org|title=Website publishes article titled 'Foo' |date=8 February 2011 |accessdate=8 February 2011}}</ref>
yields [1]
As far as I can tell, there are no templates specifically designed to help kern these quotation marks apart within the actual template. {{ " '}}, as suggested at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Quotations_within_quotations, would not work; what would be needed is a template of a single qm followed by a space. Any thoughts? – Kerαunoςcopia◁ galaxies 03:49, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
{{cite web|url=en.wikipedia.org|title=Website publishes article titled 'Foo' |date=8 February 2011 |accessdate=8 February 2011}}
You can also use {{
'-}}:
{{cite web|url=http://en.wikipedia.org|title=Website publishes article titled 'Foo{{tl|'-}} |date=8 February 2011 |accessdate=8 February 2011}}
"Website publishes article titled 'Foo{{[[Template:'-|'-]]}}". 8 February 2011. Retrieved 8 February 2011. {{
cite web}}
: URL–wikilink conflict (
help)
Talk pages at MOS used to talk about stylistic presentation of content, like lede structure, not get bogged down with uses of commas.
"The American Academy for the Scientific Criticism of Acupuncture did a comprehensive review of scientific acupuncture studies on prevention of lung cancer and said, 'We did a systematic review of lung cancer studies and acupuncture and as a result we believe that acupuncture significantly decreases lung cancer rates compared to cessation of smoking'."
The problem is, that "American Academy" is a bunch of whackos who assumed an authoritative title and is trying to market acupuncture, and is RS for its own beliefs! Yet the stylistic presentation leaves a typical layperson with the impression that some legitimate and authoritative national science board really made that finding. One could put a MOS guideling to describe any quoted authority, which would bog down every quote at WP. An accurate rewording is "A major acupuncture believes that acupuncture is more effective than cessation of smoking for lung cancer." But what MOS guideline would lead to this accurate stylistic persentation, as opposed to the original misleading stylistic presentation? PPdd ( talk) 03:01, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
Just need confirmation here that images in the lede should not be left justified. It has shown up in a number of spacecraft articles including MESSENGER, Mars Polar Lander, Galileo (spacecraft), Voyager 1, Voyager 2, Pioneer 11, Pioneer 10, Mars Climate Orbiter, Mars Observer and Viking program.-- Labattblueboy ( talk) 04:12, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
I don't think that the ledes of Wikipedia articles should ever have left-aligned floating images. Images in the lede should be on the right, and there should be only a single column of images/infoboxes there. That style is consistent across millions of our articles. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 15:16, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
I ran into a case today for which I couldn't quite determine the MoS advice. From 2008 Hungarian Grand Prix:
Should these partnerships be en dashes? -- Andy Walsh (talk) 21:18, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
I have a source that has a title in all caps, and a subtitle in title case and enclosed by em dashes on both sides, with spaces. The title and subtitle are repeated in the same format, only in the same line, at the top of every odd-numbered page. How should I render it in a cite journal |title= parameter? Both title and subtitle in title case, and leave both em dashes around the subtitle, but remove spaces? -- Rontombontom ( talk) 22:09, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
There's a discussion about whether non-Manual of Style pages should use shortcuts prefixed with "MOS:" over at Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2011_January_8#MOS:ALT. Any comments would be appreciated. Thanks! Mhiji 18:18, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
"Titles should be short—preferably fewer than ten words.[2]"
Ten words for a title–even a subtitle– seems really long, and the source doesn't quite confirm this either. Shouldn't this be closer to 2 to 4 words at most? AerobicFox ( talk) 04:31, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
If the title is of a book or something which has a name that long of course the title should be that long. However some of these could be shortened:
Clearly things like "List of" are automatically going to have two additional words "list of" and need not be shortened. Also titles of songs, paintings, groups, etc, should remain the same. Nonetheless, only one of those you cited even had 10 words in it(the name of a painting). Is there any reason this is at 10, and not say 8?, or 5? AerobicFox ( talk) 05:23, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
"Thoughts should be short, preferably two to four words". Geez, worded that way it's like a dictum from the Ministry of Truth in 1984 (there it was "sentences"). "Thou shalt not have complicated thoughts" or the like - "don't use long sentences, it hurts my brain" (of which WP:TLDR is a manifestation). The post-literate era has arrived and inflicts itself on the literate....The re Scottish Rite title above, the official name of the city of Bangkok in Thai is over 100 words long and begins with the phrase "Royal City of Angels"....just something I remember from my Bangkok guidebook from years ago (which quoted the first twenty words, though in Roman script); Bangkok is a foreign/outside word/usage that has become the standard. Skookum1 ( talk) 17:39, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
The longest title in words is (and has been (at least the tie) longest in characters (since it hits the software limit) for some years) Dante And Randal And Jay And Silent Bob And A Bunch Of New Characters And Lando, Take Part In A Whole Bunch Of Movie Parodies Including But Not Exclusive To, The Bad News Bears, The Last Starfighter, IN Jones And The Temple Of Doom, Plus A High Scho. As I remember there is a sequel or prequel which also runs up against the maxlength buffers.
Other long titles in words are:
Note that the 35 word title The hill of the flute playing by Tamatea — who was blown hither from afar, had a circumcised penis, grazed his knees climbing mountains, fell on the earth, and encircled the land — to his beloved redirects to Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu, only one word, but hardly easier to remember or type.
How about "Short titles are preferred to long titles." ?
Rich
Farmbrough,
15:34, 19 February 2011 (UTC).
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 115 | ← | Archive 117 | Archive 118 | Archive 119 | Archive 120 | Archive 121 | → | Archive 125 |
(And please don't tell me not to ask here, to ask on the FA forum, since until I have an FA done, I lack street cred. ;))
What do y'all think of the use of unit conversion templates as opposed to manually typing the conversion? (good or bad, or even the movement to require them). Sounds dumb, but I find that the conversion templates have occasional bad features. Like when I have a rounded number of meters (200 m) giving me 679 ft or the like, just looks bad. There's an implied vagueness of measurement in the first measurement which I WANT TO KEEP (we are talking about how far away from land a painted turtle nests, NOT the well-surveyed height of Everest.) If I do it manually, I can kind of decide how to tweak the rounding on the second unit. Also, I may try yards vice feet to get around this. But I find the conversions in the first place kinda load the article down. And I am even a bit of a conservative, but in a science article, could see using metric (not in a US state article, though). But anyway, if we are going to have them, the FA requirement to use them, ends up making the text look worse than what I could do on my own, manually. I'm just saying... TCO ( talk) 16:35, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
The presence of an adjustable sig fig may be all I needed. Also had an interesting glitch where we used it for converting celsius to farenhiet, BUT we were refering to a difference of degrees and of course it converted absoltue temperature. No biggie though. I'm fine with fitting in. TCO ( talk) 23:49, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
, which I suspect would be more confusing to new editors than the template. A disadvantage is that it sometimes breaks sorting in tables, as its output gets sorted "alphabetically", by which I mean 2000 would get put in between 10 and 30.
Adrian J. Hunter(
talk•
contribs)
07:02, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
{{sort|0074|{{convert|74|kg|lb|0}}}}
/{{sort|0074|74 kilograms (163 lb)}}
(assuming the largest value in the table is less than 10,000 kg).
A. di M. (
talk)
12:54, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
I have just discovered that the policy ( MOS:COLLAPSE) prevents concealing a list of people who have run an organization, like the mayors of a town, or the presidents of a university. Yes, I know that Wikipedia is NOTALIST. Some of these people in a list were notable; but most weren't. This was once the only list that was allowed, no other names allowed in place or school articles. Some of these lists were long, and concealing them did allow readers to skip them at will. I guess they will have to be erased which is a shame IMO. A bit of history lost to readers. And often, there is no other list anywhere that is current. Student7 ( talk) 21:59, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
I'm having a hard time understanding that guidance on collapsing. I don't think I agree with it either, and I don't know the background, but to start with, it's hard to understand. On content: surely collapse is a highly useful device. (even for text). And why would putting a list in a table make it any different than if bulleted (although I guess putting stuff in a table allows getting the needed benefit, while still matching policy. TCO ( talk) 16:36, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
I think there is a lot of benefit of having some click to expand text versus a subpage, at times. See subpages and summaries constantly clashing. Yes, a click to expand could be non-consistent as well, just as sections of an article might. but I think consistency would average higher and also reader appreciates staying in same window for comparisons, etc. this is not to say never have a subpage. also, it's just a feature. like wikilinking or the like. media is changing...
Of course, your list, well...that's not what I mean really. I mean more when articles are getting long, but still splitting into pages will not be best solution. TCO ( talk) 23:33, 17 December 2010 (UTC)ho
I too would support at least an RFC on collapsible content. The biggest argument against it is that since pages shouldn't exceed a certain size, the mount of scrolling should be limited. The exception to this argument is long lists (of short items). Therefore I would support an exception allowing collapsibility of long lists of short items.
Rich
Farmbrough,
02:24, 22 December 2010 (UTC).
Almost every time I see country subpages with summaries, there are marked differences between the two. I suspect having the content on the same page, would help keep things more consistent (yes, you could still ahve a breakdown, just like with section to section, but I think it would be less). All kinds of other parts of the web, like blogs, use click for more info. Readers don't like having to open a seconde window. Click for more info would be sweet. TCO ( talk) 02:34, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
The first box on the page says, "This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style."
In contrast, the first sentence under the section [
General Principles] states,
"The Manual of Style is a guide applicable to all Wikipedia articles."
If this is intended, it is hard to tell where the General Principles end and the "English Wikipedia Manual of Style" section starts. The next use of the word "English" appears in the subsection "Follow the Sources."
Proposal is to insert the word "English":
The Manual of Style is a guide applicable to all English Wikipedia articles.
RB
66.217.118.31 (
talk)
18:16, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
Please see figure dash I have changed the section of the MoS redirected from WP:DASH to include a brief not about the use of figure dashes on the Englih Wikipedia. As far as I'm aware, it's only come up twice in naming an article: 867-5309/Jenny and Royal Albert Hall London May 2-3-5-6, 2005. I moved both of those from the version that includes hyphens to one using figure dashes and the consensus was to move back the title of the article, but to use the figure dash in the body text as appropriate. For what it's worth, I am still in favor of using the figure dash in the title as well. — Justin (koavf)❤ T☮ C☺ M☯ 20:54, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
The cited standard is: International Telecommunications Union E.123 : Notation for national and international telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and Web addresses. The standard says the space character is the separator. If you use the space character in both national and international numbers then you're compliant with E.123. If you use any other character in an international number then you're non-compliant. You may use another character in national numbers and claim compliance with E.123 if you can refer to some other agreement. I hope that helps. Lightmouse ( talk) 16:30, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
Is there an easy-to-use template for advising new users about the Manual of Style's policy on National varieties of English? Rossami (talk) 18:49, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
See Talk:Alberni–Clayoquot_Regional_District#Requested_move. Per WP:COMMONNAME, if a proper noun uses always a hyphen, then we should use also a hyphen. Should we add an exception to WP:EMDASH? -- Enric Naval ( talk) 19:33, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
With a view to gathering ideas for possible adaptation for use with guidelines in the English Wikipedia Manual of Style, I ask this question: How is consensus achieved for guidelines in other style guides (whether in print or online or both)?
―
Wavelength (
talk)
00:01, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
[I
revised my message at 0:51, but I forgot to add a comment with my signature and timestamp.
—
Wavelength (
talk)
16:21, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
With a view to gathering ideas for possible adaptation for use with guidelines in the English Wikipedia Manual of Style, I ask this question: When and how does consensus lapse for guidelines in other style guides (whether in print or online or both)?
―
Wavelength (
talk)
00:01, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
[I
revised my message at 0:51, but I forgot to add a comment with my signature and timestamp.
—
Wavelength (
talk)
16:21, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
I keep coming across total headscratchers of logic on this site! I see sentences glommed together into paras, but I can't tell what the logic is of one to the next. Or sometimes there is a two-para section with (perhaps) two themes, but with sentences not cordoned off into "theme one" and "theme two". Just littered like stray toys. Not organized. Dolls with dolls. Legos with legos. Or Red with red and green with green. Or old with old and new with new. Or whatever!
P.s. I want to learn to write and am probably too old to do so, but I at least can see fault. So please don't shoot down my discussion, by saying "I can't run the football in the NFL". I can still criticize Clinton Portis nonetheless. Let's talk about how to make cuts and get yardage, not my lack of steroids and speed.
TCO ( talk) 00:13, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
Not sure what you expect here. True, the writing of many articles is horrible. We could enforce a writing test before allowing people to edit. We could unloose some grammar/coherence checking software on articles. We could attempt to train people. Each of these alternatives has drawbacks. Instead we correct what we can. I suppose a page pointing to tutorials in composition or some such thing might be useful, but I don't think this is the forum for providing those tutorials directly! --John ( User:Jwy/ talk) 00:21, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
The difference here is there isn't the centralized responsibility for the writing as in the corporate world. No one person is responsible for an article - so often, after the first version of the article, people are focussed on their little contribution and are not looking or feeling responsibility for the article as a whole. --John ( User:Jwy/ talk) 07:07, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2011 January 3#MOS:
The nom is certainly right that these redirects should not exist if the pages are not in the MOS. Some of those listed in this group deletion nomination (of the redirects, not the pages they redirect to - mostly essays) should definitely not be in the MoS. I say, however, that some definitely should, especially the target of MOS:BETTER, which is used as a guideline, and is the product of a lot of consensus-building editing over many years by many 'Pedians, and is no longer simply an essay, in my view. There are some other candidates for elevation to MoS status, I would think, but I'll let others chime in. The one I feel most strongly about is MOS:BETTER. It's very much a WP style guideline at this point. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 06:10, 4 January 2011 (UTC) NB: No naming conventions pages are part of the MoS, so all of the MOS redirs to them should be removed. That accounts for about half of the entries in the nomination. It can be argued that all of the NC pages should be part of MoS. I'm neutral-ish on the matter. Discuss here.— SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 05:16, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
Subject says it all: is there a place to get third opinions on the MOS-aspects of a specific article? -- MASEM ( t) 04:58, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
I was wondering whether this would be the right place to post that I would like to see User:John Carter/Religion outline perhaps considered as a first draft of a layout guideline for religion articles, and what I would have to do to initiate widespread discussion of it. John Carter ( talk) 19:20, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
With a view to gathering ideas for possible adaptation for use with guidelines in the English Wikipedia Manual of Style, I ask this question: How is consensus defined for guidelines in other style guides (whether in print or online or both)?
—
Wavelength (
talk)
00:01, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
[I
revised my message at 0:51, but I forgot to add a comment with my signature and timestamp.
—
Wavelength (
talk)
16:21, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
Thank you all for commenting at
#Defining consensus (for other style guides),
#Achieving consensus (for other style guides),
#Lapses in consensus (for other style guides), and
#Recording consensus (for other style guides). I especially appreciate the list of "author/title examples" provided by Airborne84 in the second of those sections.
Perhaps I will research my questions at wikis and other websites, at some time in the future, and report my findings to this talk page. Other editors are welcome to do likewise.
(I was counting on posting this to all four sections, and did not notice the statement "Sections with no replies in 5 days may be automatically moved." The waiting period used to be 10 days. I wanted to keep the four sections together in the original order: "Defining ...", "Achieving ...", "Lapses ...", and "Recording ...".)
—
Wavelength (
talk)
16:05, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
With a view to gathering ideas for possible adaptation for use with guidelines in the English Wikipedia Manual of Style, I ask this question: How is consensus recorded for guidelines in other style guides (whether the style guides are in print or online or both)?
―
Wavelength (
talk)
00:01, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
[I
revised my message at 0:51, but I forgot to add a comment with my signature and timestamp.
—
Wavelength (
talk)
16:21, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
Thank you all for commenting at
#Defining consensus (for other style guides),
#Achieving consensus (for other style guides),
#Lapses in consensus (for other style guides), and
#Recording consensus (for other style guides). I especially appreciate the list of "author/title examples" provided by Airborne84 in the second of those sections.
Perhaps I will research my questions at wikis and other websites, at some time in the future, and report my findings to this talk page. Other editors are welcome to do likewise.
(I was counting on posting this to all four sections, and did not notice the statement "Sections with no replies in 5 days may be automatically moved." The waiting period used to be 10 days. I wanted to keep the four sections together in the original order: "Defining ...", "Achieving ...", "Lapses ...", and "Recording ...".)
—
Wavelength (
talk)
16:05, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
In the requested move I initiated here, it is being argued that moving the page from "WBX (W-Boiled Extreme)" to "W-B-X (W-Boiled Extreme)" is against WP:MOSTM (low traffic talk page) and WP:ABBR (another low traffic talk page) because "hyphens are simply a styled form of the period/full stop". Yet on other pages on the project on music (e.g. B.O.B. (song), The E.N.D.) these full stops are allowed anyway.
Should we continue to not use the name of the song as it is printed everywhere else ( [1], [2], [3], [4] [the wavy dashes in the second part of the name are a different issue at the moment]), ignore this aspect of the MOS's, or simply phase out this aspect of the MOS?— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙) 19:28, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
Back in 2008, see Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_97#Blank_lines_around_headings, the suggestion on blank lines around headings changed in this diff to the current asymmetric form suggesting a blank line before, not after. Why not both? I find that headings are so much easier to spot when editing if they're set off by blank lines. Some editors go through and squeeze out the spaces after, making the source files very "scrunched"; I tend to go the other way. What would you all think if we recommended spaces both before and after? Dicklyon ( talk) 06:31, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
Can we defer or move the broader discussion of spacing elsewhere, and get back to the question of what to recommend for blank line after headings? Poll? Please chime in to give an idea whether you prefer the present asymmetric recommndation, versus to say that setting off headings with one blank line before and one after is preferred. Dicklyon ( talk) 18:40, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
Vertical white space after section headings serves no purpose whatsoever. It does not enhance much of anything, except for stretching logically connected text needlessly across more space. This is rather annoying, as it disassociates headings from their sections. The existing markup for section headings is prominent enough to guide the eye. In addition, these are presented in bold anyways in the fancy editors. Guidelines should simply state that a single blank line follows every paragraph. Kbrose ( talk) 03:14, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
<p></p>
tags it automatically places in the HTML page source. When you do that with a heading, nothing happens (counterintuitively). The reason, of course, is that it doesn't make sense from a layout point of view to allow extra space below the heading in the rendered view, so the MediaWiki interpreter treats this case differently. The fact that there's an automatic filter that keeps bad layout from being rendered isn't a good reason to keep using the inconsistent markup as a matter of standard practice.<dl><dd><dl><dd><dl><dd><dl><dd></dd></dl></dd></dl></dd></dl></dd></dl>
tag soup that happens on talk pages (because of the ::::
at the beginning of the line). That's fortunately invisible to the reader (as opposed to the editor), and the colons are convenient to type and coexist peacefully with the line break separations.The ideal would be to have the blank line generate some sort of <p></p>
thing instead (like what you need to use when you're trying to maintain paragraph indenting on a bulleted list on a talk page). Unfortunately, the current state of the MediaWiki interpreter means that that involves hardcoding the tags, and they don't co-operate peacefully with the blank line—if you use a blank line (or even a single carriage return) in the editor window to make it look like sort of like the output, you can't also use <p></p>
because it loses the indentation. (This is probably a known bug that hasn't been acted upon because it could potentially break a lot of talk pages over an invisible piece of HTML that contributes only a extra few bytes to the page length.)
While it's possible to use ::::
at the beginning of a talk page reply, and then <p></p>
for every paragraph thereafter, that hardcoding sort of defeats the purpose of having the interpreted MediaWiki syntax in the first place, and conceals paragraphs in the editor view. (See the code of this comment for examples....)
TheFeds
07:02, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
Is there a process to get a wider discussion here? I see at least 3 of us who see a good reason to put a blank line after headings to make editing easier; 1 who denies that reason ("Vertical white space after section headings serves no purpose whatsoever"), as he seems to have other tools to solve the problem; 1 who has some reasons about html internals or something for disliking such spaces, and a few comments that don't seem to actually take a position on the question. Dicklyon ( talk) 19:59, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
OK, how about this approach... presently we have this:
I suggest we change to:
Better? Please note your approval or opposition herebelow. Dicklyon ( talk) 01:55, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia contains instances of text presented as quotes yet sometimes they are actually translations. Editors are (understandably) unwilling to question a quote. Even the most accurate translation can and should be constantly challenged for changes introduced by the translator. This is in contrast to quotes where no translation has taken place so the words presented were the actual words spoken/written.
Furthermore, a quote should add value that wouldn't exist if the same information were presented in prose text. If there is a translation and hence liable to contain errors/spin that could go undetected, perhaps the test should be even stricter. It would be handy to have a discussion about that.
For an example of this issue in an article, see: Talk:Johann Sebastian Bach. I couldn't find any guidance on presentation of translations so I welcome a debate so that editors can identify and improve them as appropriate. Lightmouse ( talk) 21:45, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
Can we have a guideline that says something like:
I hope that captures what I mean. Feel free to suggest alternative guidance. Lightmouse ( talk) 11:46, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
Not clear what Wikipedia's policy is. In an article about Abdulla Saeed, do I use "Mr. Abdulla Saeed" or just "Saeed"? -- Tomwsulcer ( talk) 23:00, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
Discussion here. Basically I want to kick ass on articles and feel like I'm struggling in quicksand as I can't learn the "journal" citation standard and that even when I want to collaborate and use same system ans others, there's no system. More over there. Feel free to throw your pennies at it. TCO ( talk) 04:02, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
Despite the absurdity of copyediting in a language I don't speak (British English), I'm finding I really don't have a choice. We've offered money, we've begged, we've been patient, and still we don't have other copyeditors available in the places I hang out. I'm going to have to grab a British English style guide or two and sit down and read them, and make notes cross-referencing to Chicago and AP Stylebook. The question is ... which one(s) do you Anglophiles consider most authoritative and relevant to Wikipedia? The Oxford Style Manual (2003) and New Hart's Rules (2005) are affordable. The Guardian (and Observer?) style guide has the advantage of having an online version, so that I can point people there, and it's of course more up-to-date, but in the US at least, style guides suitable for news writing aren't as satisfactory for Wikipedia as Chicago since they don't make a serious effort to reflect the style of typical Wikipedia sources.- Dank ( push to talk) 15:40, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm having a disagreement with an editor over the format of dates in the History of supernova observation. He has tried to apply international format dates to the article. I reverted his edit under the WP:DATERET policy. We have been holding a discussion on the talk page.
I believe Wikipedia policy is on my side on this dispute, and he may be violating WP:POINT by continuing his reverts. I suspect he is trying to set a precedent for a policy change, but this seems like the more appropriate location for that venue. What would you suggest I do? (I have asked him to bring up the topic here, but he apparently declined.) Thank you.— RJH ( talk) 18:35, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
At Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-01-10/News and notes#In brief, the second item is the following.
— Wavelength ( talk) 22:02, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
I've got an odd sort of ENGVAR problem over at Talk:Special education. I've got a very nice editor who is absolutely determined that British educators never-ever-ever uses certain words—today, we've added the word accommodations (in the plural) to the list—despite having been presented with UK sources (e.g., major reports from DFES [the UK's main education agency]) that definitely do so.
I don't suppose that we've got an expert on British English who could help me out? (Yes, the article is written in American English, but the presence of English words deemed to be "American" rather than "British" seems to be deeply disturbing somehow, even though they are all directly defined in the article.)
It's time for me to take a break, but I'd love to have some help. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 23:48, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
For a while I have been discovering that if a band parses their name in all lower case letters every single time, then per whichever one of the naming guidelines there is, it has to be given a capital letter first, and this is almost always the case with every band which has this set up (and the bands are generally from Japan). But when it comes to individual people such as will.i.am, apl.de.ap, k.d. lang and the like, it's perfectly allowable to use {{ lowercase}} and refer to the individual throughout the article without capital letters in the name.
Why do we have this selective treatment of lowercase letters?— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙) 01:07, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
Let me give two examples: defspiral and angela are two Japanese bands who parse their names in all lower case letters. However, because of the current reading of one of the manuals of style this is apparently not allowed because having all lower case letters is a trademark. I also have a feeling that this is a double standard because these bands are Japanese in origin and automatically it is assumed that if a band is Japanese then that means anything they do that involves the English language has to be corrected for Wikipedia, and I've seen this blatantly clear with the requested move here. While articles on artists in the Anglosphere get to have their titles parsed in any which form of capitalization.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙) 19:50, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
As a side issue, how would the current locations of the articles on the bands known as m.o.v.e or Pay money To my Pain work and the song Journey through the Decade? Or are these two WP:AT issues?— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙) 06:51, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
I would like to propose the following edit. The article currently reads:
However, where one or more sentences are wholly inside brackets, place their punctuation inside the brackets (see Sentences and brackets below).
I think that the sentence would be more helpful as follows, because it would contain an example itself:
However, where one or more sentences are wholly inside brackets, place their punctuation inside the brackets. (For examples, see "Sentences and Brackets", below.)
I know this is similar to the example shown later but given that we already have a parenthetical here, why not make use of it? Agnosticaphid ( talk) 21:45, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
As this talk page generally enjoys far higher participation levels than the talk pages of MOS subsets, I invite editors here to participate at the discussion here. Regards, — W F C— 05:07, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
Dear colleagues, the English WP's weekly journal The Signpost is keen to cover the upcoming celebrations of WP's 10th anniversary in the " In the news" section; this high-profile page typically receives 1000–2000 hits during the week. We would welcome skilled editors who would like to try their hand at contributing to the page for the next edition (published Monday UTC). More details here (there's a link to the IRC, which will be active over the weekend, and links to good places to search for the stories that will be most interesting to our readers). The Managing Editor is User:HaeB. Tony (talk) 11:03, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
There seems to be a lack of conformity in the styles used in the opening sentences of articles about nations. I've perused this page, as well as several others I thought revelant, and am still unclear about this. Is it correct to begin with the official name (i.e. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as The United Kingdom), or is it correct to begin with the title of the article (i.e. Iran, officially The Islamic Republic of Iran)? Or is it the case that either is acceptable? Joefromrandb ( talk) 04:46, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
Please see Talk:Poland–Lithuania regarding a requested move arguing that a simple dash is more acceptable. Renata ( talk) 21:54, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
FYI, a large number of WikiProject local guides are being renamed to MOS names, without any indication that those guides have any support other than local wikiproject support. See WP:RM contributions by user:Bernolákovčina
65.93.14.196 ( talk) 06:49, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
The templates {{ WikiProject style advice}} and {{ WikiProject content advice}} were recently created to address this issue. Mlm42 ( talk) 20:18, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
Contributors to this talk page might be interested in the onging "Invitation to edit" trial. This consists of adding tutorial information about using Wikipedia itself to the article lead, as seen in Conjunctivitis, Placenta, and several other medicine-related topics. There is currently discussion about whether this trial should be extended to two months instead of to the originally proposed one month. Discussion is occurring on the template talk page. Thparkth ( talk) 12:21, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
A comma is sometimes used in each of the following types of sentence: Paul makes the customer visits but Mary drafts the contracts. Paul said “no”. Is a comma necessary in these cases? And should this be the subject of a guideline? — Wrapped in Grey ( talk) 08:56, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
We've got an editor, User:Jeremiestrother, who is using the city name policy on this page to replace a city's official name (a field in the city's info box template) with its common name in dozens of articles. He has taken it upon himself to make these changes without consulting anyone regarding his novel reading of the MoS. While the policy as stated here makes good sense, it makes no sense to apply it to a field that was specifically intended to inform the reader about the city's official name. Here's a snippet of the affected info box showing the original version and with Jeremiestrother's edits in parenthesis.
{{Infobox Settlement |name = City of Noblesville, Indiana |official_name = City of Noblesville (changing to just "Noblesville") |native_name = |settlement_type = [[City]]
Please advise. Rklawton ( talk) 14:36, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
{{Infobox Settlement |name = Noblesville, Indiana |official_name = City of Noblesville |native_name = |settlement_type = [[City]]
My two cents' worth: the "official" name of a city is just the name and does not include the word city, unless it is part of the name per se (e.g., Hartford City, Indiana). That is to say: the official name of Bangor, Maine, is just: BANGOR. The word city or town should be included when the corporate governing body is acting in its official capacity. John works for the City of Boston. (He's employed by the city government.) John lives in Boston./John lives in the city of Boston. Moreover, the info box may need reworking. Maybe delete the "official name" field - because the name IS the official name. There is no reason to have both fields. Keeping in mind: the "official" name is only in reference to the corporate city government, not the geographical entity, and articles about cities/town are about the geographical entity and not their governments. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.162.43.187 ( talk) 04:45, 22 January 2011 (UTC) Chicago has this to say: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/CMS_FAQ/Capitalization/Capitalization16.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.162.43.187 ( talk) 05:01, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
Folks, I'd like to defend my position here—just a little bit—and I recognize that I'm a new editor at Wikipedia. I would like to add that I am a professional copyeditor and proofreader; that's how I make my living. Moreover, I realize that there will be (and should be) exceptions (to be mentioned later). When it comes to the InfoBox, I suggest that the field "Official Name" be done away with. There is no such thing as an "official name"—there is just a name, with very few exceptions. Consider: John Q. Public's name is John Q. Public, not the Person of John Q. Public. Similarly, Boston is just Boston, not the City of Boston. Consider: Jane lives in the state of Utah; not, Jane lives in the State of Utah. Moreover, the next field below shows the form of government, thus re-stating it in the "official name" line is redundant. There is only a name; there is no difference between an "official name" and a "name" (with a very few exceptions, situations or problems). When there is a need to distinguish between the geographical entity named Boston (THAT'S THE TRICK HERE: geography vs. corporate body!) and the corporate governing body (i.e., the city's government, in its legal capacity), THEN the government may be referred to as the City of Boston (e.g.: The City of Boston sued ABC Company for breach of contract.) A name is a name is a name; I'm not convinced that the idea of an "official" name can be supported: John Q. Public's name is not "officially": the Person of John Q. Public. The Chicago Manual of Style, AP, the New York Times MoS, etc., all recommend against capitalizing the words "city", "town", "company", "state", etc. The reason they all recommend against such practice is that they consider those words not to be part of the name of said entities. Interestingly, Chicago calls it, "tooting one's own horn." One should guard against the use of "Legalese", where, for example, many words are capitalized in contravention of the general rules of writing English; one should also guard against the desire for self-aggrandisement (i.e., "tooting one's own horn"). Wikipedia respects many varieties of English, but also recognizes generally accepted forms as opposed to non-standard forms; in this case, the established American variety of English should be respected, not the forms that cities wish to use, against generally accepted rules of grammar, simply in order to "toot their own horns". It seems to me that there really is no such thing as an "official name", there is only a name. The so-called "official name" is used only in legal matters when the city's government is acting in its official capacity. However, the government is not necessarily the same as the geographical boundaries of a city. Naturally, there are exceptions and problematic phrases. The "City of New York" is, in fact, "New York City" – it's an exception; but, Atlanta is never known as the "City of Atlanta". While Wikipedia MoS, and every other major style guide, recommends against capitalizing the word "state" (e.g., the state of Kansas), the word "commonwealth" poses difficult questions (although it shouldn't). When referring to certain countries, it's usually necessary to include the descriptive words (e.g., "Republic of Georgia", but "Germany"). My point is this: with regard to cities, towns, and states (and commonwealths), the words "city", "town", "state", etc., should not be included (or capitalized) because they are not part of the name. Chicago, AP, NYT, even the Wikipedia MoS, support this position. My suggestion is that we re-work the InfoBox to show: name, form of government, and nickname. Because the InfoBox shows the form of government (e.g., town, city, etc.), there's no need to repeat that same information in the name field. I eagerly await discussion.
Jeremiestrother ( talk) 09:17, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
Please note that User:Jeremiestrother and User:70.162.43.187 are the same editor. At this point I'm going to assume good faith that Jeremiestrother simply forgot to login for a couple of editing sessions. However, I do object to his campaign to change cities names in spite of the fact that the other editors here have agreed that "official name" means exactly that, and I will advise the editor accordingly. I will also revert his edits back per our discussion above. Rklawton ( talk) 21:02, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
Someone make also wish to take the initiative to undo the changes made by these two accounts, but please do not rollback without first previewing. This editor is in the habit of making constructive edits - just not in the matter at hand. User contributions: [9] [10] Rklawton ( talk) 21:17, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
I previously came to this page to raise issues on the lack of consistency when it came to treatment of proper nouns that are universally not capitalized which were issues with WP:MOSTM (the names of the bands defspiral and angela). I also raised a similar issue for a song title that currently has a non-standard capitalization scheme when compared with the guidelines at WP:ALBUMCAPS ( Journey through the Decade), a band that has a non-standard capitalization scheme that apparently has issues at WP:MOSMUSIC#Capitalization ( Pay money To my Pain) and a band whose name is stylized in a way that treats it as an initialism when it isn't which I believe is an issue with WP:ABBR ( m.o.v.e) and the title of a song where WP:ABBR (and WP:MOS-JA) was brought up ( W-B-X ~W-Boiled Extreme~ [the tildes themselves are an issue with MOS-JA and WP:AT which I brought up here but received very little input from individuals uninvolved with the prior discussion at MOS-JA]).
From the various arguments that have been raised at a handful of move requests I put in place for these pages, it seems that there is an inherent issue with the applications of WP:MOSTM (most people ignore the part that says "When deciding how to format a trademark, editors should choose among styles already in use (not invent new ones) and choose the style that most closely resembles standard English, regardless of the preference of the trademark owner."), WP:COMMONNAME, and WP:UE ("If there are too few English-language sources to constitute an established usage, follow the conventions of the language appropriate to the subject")
I am aware that all of these cases also fall under the umbra of WP:MOS-JA, but due to the various style guidelines in place, I believe that this venue would provide more outside input and be able to determine a consensus that affects the whole project, rather than the treatment of just the English language in a Japanese context.
In short, the way non-Anglophone nations use the English language in their media is treated differently than the way Anglophone nations use the English language on this Wikipedia. When some stylizations are completely thrown out because they are not standard English and are not from an English speaking nation, similar stylizations are kept in place for article subjects of American, Canadian, British, Irish, Australian, New Zealand extraction. The specific manuals of style (e.g. WP:MOS-JA, WP:MOSMUSIC) that mistakenly apply the more general ones (e.g. WP:ABBR, MOS:TM), and have improper applications of WP:AT, should be modified to remove this disparity.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙) 20:54, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
At the suggestion of an administrator, I bring this issue here. The current text of the WP:MMA, with the recommended guidelines for MMA related articles regarding records, currently enforces some manual of style related problems. The first one is capitalization in the Method column, which right now is enforced in non proper names, acronyms, or initialisms. For example, right now it's used "Submission (Shoulder Injury)" instead of "Submission (shoulder injury)" or "KO (Punch)" instead of "KO (punch)".
The other one is the overuse of flag icons in the Location column despite that the location is mentioned with text. For example, "
Tokyo, Japan" instead of simply "
Tokyo, Japan". I've tried to address these and other related issues, but some editors seem to believe that it looks "stupid". You can check the changes
here. In the discussion, I have pointed out that
MOS:CAPS and
MOS:ICON already state that those two issues should be avoided, but some editors simply ignore them. Regarding flag icons, I also think that they are completely unnecessary because the location is already mentioned and also because they increases server load. There are a few other MoS related issues, such as adding extra text for events (e.g. [[UFC 60|UFC 60: Hughes vs. Gracie]] instead of [[UFC 60]] which is the article title.)
Since there are very few editors actively discussion these issue (most simply revert the changes) and even fewer know of the manual of styles, and since no agreement can be reached, I request assistance in this issue, because I don't believe that using such capitalization or adding unneeded flag icons help in any way to improve the quality of the articles. If anyone could comment in the discussion at the talk page of WP:MMA it would be helpful because the discussion is going nowhere and there are only 3 editors actively participating, with on of them reverting the changes. I also want to point out that these problems are not limited to the WP:MMA. Most MMA related biographies have these problems also, so the discussion is not limited to the guideline. Jfgslo ( talk) 04:21, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
Per above, we've agreed that "Official name" should be a city's official name rather than a shortened or common version. During the discussion, Oknazevad suggested we use the article's name for the "name" field, so I thought it useful to start a new thread for that discussion. I'd be interested in hearing from any dedicated geographers, but given that the "name" field also serves as the title for the info box, I believe Oknazevad's recommendation makes good sense and that any exceptions to this would need to be justified and discussed prior to implementation on a per-article basis. Rklawton ( talk) 04:29, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
However, I have to ask why the (plain/common) Name field should include the state - the state is not part of the name of a city - it is descriptive information that helps us identify which city of that name it is (assuming there are multiple cities with that name, which there often are), and helps us understand where it is, but what does any of that have to do with the name? If you ask an American where he or she is from, they are likely to answer in the City, State format, but that's because they are identifying where geographically they are from, not the name of the place where they are from. Ask the same person instead, "what is the name of the city you are from?", and see what you get. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 23:23, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
Given that the Manual of Style has a line on just about everything, I was wondering if there was one on this? I was very surprised to check my watchlist and find half a dozen edits such as this. Thanks in advance, — W F C— 20:01, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
I think you'll agree that these have different meanings (not modifies a different word), and that #1, though it breaks no rule that I've ever heard of or seen written, is, if not just plain wrong, pretty strange and just not the way English is spoken. It would be best to use a contraction in the first case. Chrisrus ( talk) 22:29, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
The situations in which contracted forms are natural are rarely useful to the encyclopedia; we ask very few questions - and we normally use a formal register, in which he didn't come is unidiomatic. But there are exceptions to both generalizations; there should be more: much of our worst writing comes from a failed attempt at a high register. When they arise, ignore all rules ( that's policy); that's why WP:CONTRACTIONS is phrased as it is, with generally.
If you find that's why in an article, consider recasting the sentence; but don't just substitute that is why, which makes Wikipedia look stupid - and will, for most anglophones, make it harder to read. Even if they don't realize why, they will stumble over the failure of idiom and look around for what's wrong, and why this strangeness has arisen. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:15, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
Spawned from Wikipedia:Help desk#Image is annotated in Spanish, the current guideline at Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Avoid entering textual information as images seems to be talking about use of "an image of text" rather than "the text itself" (for example, exported from Word or other formatting system). Should it be extended to include text-annotations in a graphics image (labels or details on a diagram)? For example, Wikipedia:Manual of Style (chemistry)/Structure drawing#General states "Do not include English text in images: this prevents their reuse in other languages." DMacks ( talk) 09:22, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
The blanket claim that "bird names are capitalized" is not my understanding. AIUI Bald Eagle is indeed capitalized, but eagle is sentence case. -- Trovatore ( talk) 22:48, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
When you look at WP it has huge traffic. I'm sure we must have some paid employees who work on the servers and such. What if we got some paid editors? It's just money. Money can be located. This thing is a frigging Google H-bomb. It justifies that. And having some editors would not mean that all the work gets done. There's so much to do, even on the policy front, that there would still be a place for all the circular arguments and such. But the project is big enough to "deserve" the expenditure. And I feel for what Tony said about wanting direction. And this is not to say it would be Nirvana...but it would help and would move us to getting work done (article content written and prose completed) vice the never-ending wonk-battles.
Obviously, you need to pick someone who has both "skills" as well as sympathy for the crazy thing that we have here and a willingness to work in the New Media world. But there are people in those two intersecting circls of a Venn diagram. Just run the search and make it happen. Would be fun to think about bringing in some Michael Wolfe (maybe not, he seems a prima donna). But we could raid Britannica or NYT or National Geographic or what have you. And it's not about our having some ghetto resentment of the establishment, but just about getting the job done (and the job done is finished work product for people to read...never forget the silent majority that reads WP, but does not contribute and definitely does not come to MOS to debate dashes and curly-Qs, etc.
I would start with 3 hires: a head editor, a "copy editor" (he would mostly work on style policy, not actualy copyediting), and a featured content editor (FA, FP, GA, DYK, all that crap). This has to have been thought of. But why not some attention on the content as opposed to the servers? Or as opposed to the whole structure around conduct (going from admins to arbs to I guess the board of wikimedia)? TCO ( talk) 13:10, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
Should this guideline be discussing article titles at all? We haver a policy on the subject on WP:TITLE#Special_characters, which already says much of this (have redirects from the hyphened form) rather less verbosely. Where they agree, this is unnecessary; where they disagree, it is excrescent.
In addition, the guidance here on which to use is use dashes when dashes are proper. I'm underwhelmed with this. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:47, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
Since Tony is the only proponent of the audacious view that this guideline overrules policy; and in the process rewrites English, the majority text should be restored with a tag. If this revert war continues, I will dispute the status of this semi-literate waste of electrons as a guideline. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:08, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
But all this could be obviated if WP:DASH were to include WP:MOSFOLLOW. DASH is at best a set of reasonable guidelines for punctuation (some of its provisions may be somewhat less than that), but it is not intended to be an exact account of English punctuation, which is bent by innumerable crossing idioms. If it said, at the beginning, something like The following are guides to what English usage usually is; if in doubt, follow the punctuation of reliable English secondary sources on the subject, we would avoid undiomatic forms both in text and in titles. We don't have to make editors try to figure out what English ought to be; they should look at what English is.
If there are two actually contesting forms in reliable sources, there is nothing wrong with leaning to regularity as a tie-breaker; I would appreciate suggestions on how to phrase that. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:43, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
There has been an annoying spread of the abuse of what it is claimed WP:DASH says, and the defenders of replacing virtually every hyphen in Wikipedia with dashes makes it sound like this is mandatory and all kinds of silly arguments are made to defend mis-applications about it. Current RMs on Talk:Poland-Lithuania and Talk:Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District and an unfiled one about Greco-Turkish Wars on WP:RM (no template has been placed on Talk:Greco-Turkish War (er, looking again, taht was Greco-Persian Wars, same argument applies) all make the "dash here, dash there, hyphens nowhere" argument, which claims to be about "typography" and "style" being more important than the sources - and wantonly ignoring what WP:ENDASH actually says, which is:
The section needs clarification so that geographic hyphenated names, and other names of that kind, do not go so breezily dismissed as being left up to the imposition of Wikipedia's "style" in defiance of what the rest of the world (the real world) uses. I dispute many of the sweeping conventions/declarations of WP:DASH which, though consensus long ago at some point, are not immutable and deserve revisition, per the fifth pillar of WP:CCC (I think that's it) about consensus being adaptable and changeable. In this case it doesn't have to be, as both WP:HYPHEN and WP:ENDASH have more than enough of them to invalidate any suggestion that the dash is mandatory; those fanatical about this continue to deny that names such as Poland-Lithuania are actual names, and want to claim they are made of independent elements (on that premise, so are "Lennard" and "Jones" in Lennard-Jones, the name-example used in ENDASH). WP:HYPHEN needs expansion, WP:ENDASH needs emendation and clarification and more examples, and the wanton arrogance of teh "typography is more important than the sources" crowd needs to be slapped down. Skookum1 ( talk) 21:09, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
Noted, but I think some emendation/expansion/clarification is needed, so that no one will construe (again) geographic hyphenated names as not being the same as hyphenated personal names, which they utterly are. It's not just that said editors are ignoring the whole of DASH/HYPHEN sections, they're wildly misinterpreting them and also interpolating and extrapolating off them some kind of absolutism-of-the-dash, while invoking MOS very loudly to justify their own....er, judgments; how to rein that in I don't know, other than to hope for better education methods in our schools....the comment in ENDASH about prefixes with no lexical indepedence, as with Sino- in Sino-Tibetan, as one of the dash-pushing editors is maintaining that the adjectival form Polish-Lithuanian shouldn't be a hyphen, even though the root term Poland-Lithuania is (or should be, which is the subject of that RM); so it's not jsut "lexical independence" which mandates a hyphen, but also adjectival forms and adjectival auxiliaries.....I read all three sections (HYPHEN, ENDASH and EMDASH) and quite frankly found them very vague in spots, and mutually conflicting sometimes too. The passage about the use of hyphens needing to be flexible and requiring some subtlety should be highlighted, at least - it's a key component, something like the infamous notwithstanding clause in the Canadian constitution, which is the back door out of anything a government wants to pull that the Charter ordinarly wouldn't allow - but there's also items in DASH which say "optional" which are being invoked, loudly, as if Doctrines From On High (but without the "optional" bit).....I"m not asking for sweeping revisions here, just clarity and more examples, as with geographic names using hyphens, and maybe a point-clause numbering system for line-quotes when you need to beat someone on the head about what they want MOS to say, even if it doesn't actually say it. I think there's been a lot of misapplication of the DASH in recent months, and there should be some kind of review investigating all the inappopriate changes, to titles, to categories, and to article content; similarly there's been a lot of misapplication of the lower-case-second-word "rule" too, often with embarrassing or just inane results ("Columbia river", "Fraser river", the "Persian wars" etc)...it's almost like someone has geared a bot to look for all two-capped combination terms and make the second one a lower-case without discretion or reference to the actuality of their proper name-hood. Lots of knee-jerk application of MOS, it seems, by people who don't really understand it....I'm also tired of hearing that MOS out-trumps sources, though that doesn't seem to come from anybody who actually wrote MOS or works on it at present..... Skookum1 ( talk) 05:02, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
The Polish-Lithuanian union and Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth are both referred to historically as " Poland-Lithuania"; the distinctions are wiki-titles to distinguish between two different political structures (of the same country) only and should reflect the source term, which is never "dash-ized". See Austria-Hungary for its official names; the convention remains hyphenated in English, and always has been, and always should be. Also, because of teh lnkage in referenc to a single country, whether "Polish-" or "Poland-" in reference to this country, these are NOT "lexically indepedent uses" because in those forms they are only' used in relation to the union/commonwealth with Lithuania. Skookum1 ( talk) 06:28, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
–
or using the appropriate keyboard shortcut.
Dabomb87 (
talk)
22:50, 18 January 2011 (UTC)[undent] Blame it on Windows, then, blame it on Windows users, that they didn't have the capacity to write with your newfangled way of doing things. Pity me, I was raised on an Underwood in the age of mechanical typewriters, and have used everything from telex to wordprocessing typewriters to the various electrics; had a slick portable my DAd owned, kinda space age '50s design, and our school had the old big black ones with the cash-register type keys. Not a friggin' dash on any one of them, only the hyphen and underline. Where do you get off talking like your way is better becaues Mac can along and improved things and made useless things possible? Wikipedia should be about ease-of-entry, and the MOS not overcompliated with unnecssary special characters; the same reason news copy and magazine copy isn't (unless "arty" designed). Wikipedia should be about enabling content, not fussing with design at the expense of people actually able and willing to add content meaningfully. The amount of energy going into this nonsense is really, really discouraging; the suggestion that technology is improving the way we write language, and that we have to get used to it and embrace it, is utter arrogant hogwash and all from a minority faction....the mainstream is the mainstream, typing has been typing for a hundred years before Wikipedia came along; Wikipedia should be part of it, not try to change it or tell experienced tpyists "you're doing things wrong, this is for publication and all these normal hyphen places are not acceptable because we say so". "We" being a handful of design-obsessed people, who don't have enough experience with content - or with typing - to be relevant in dicsussions of how to spell (or typeset) historical names, or dictate changes to historical conventions, some centuries-old. YOu haven't improved anything, you've unnecessarily complicated things for those of us actually interested in what the content is about. All because you have a Mac keyboard and want to sniff your nose at the rest of us for not keeping up with you??? Gimme a break. Technology should not wantonly redesign langauge as its own justification; nobody appionted you to write new spelling rules, or come up with a typographic system you're mis-using MOS to apply..... WP:KISS. Making things tougher for writers, instead of more encouraging, is the wrong way to go; dissing them because they were raised on Windows machines, or in my case, ancient typewriters....not hearing you, and dno't think much of what you're saying. Skookum1 ( talk) 04:49, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
Could we simply add, under "En dashes in page names", that "When naming an article, an en dash is not used as a substitute for a hyphen that properly belongs in the title according to the naming policy."? There is already a similar sentence for preventing useless removals of dashes from places where they rightfully belong. -- Enric Naval ( talk) 20:49, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
Another very-irresponsible mis-application of the dash, in another context, is the Spokane – Coeur d'Alene – Paloos War, which was wrongly dashified (with spaces, no less, which is totally beyond any convention or utility except somebody's idea of "typographical improvement"). It was not a war between the Spokan people, Coeur d'Alene people and Palus people, it was an alliance, so the dash gives a totally wrong context to the name, and is also at complete variance to all authoritative sources. There's no adjectival or "lexically dependent" forms for "Spokanian", "Couer d'Alenian" and "Palusian" - except maybe in those languages - and in many other cases the noun form of a name may be the same as the adjectival form. Distinguishing between Spanish-American War or Mexican-American War and any conceivable variants e.g. Spain-America War would be the same context and should have the same spelling (I maintain, strongly, that use of hyphens especially in proper names, is "spelling" and has nothing to do with "typographical style"). Consistency should be de rigeur.....and the utterly specious arguments that Guinea-Bissau is OK, but Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District is an "and/to" construction (when it's not) is just so much wikipedian bunkum. Skookum1 ( talk) 19:45, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
to
The en dash conveys relationships, too, such as "Japan–Australia Free Trade Agreement". Tony (talk) 10:48, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
The, to me, very crazy argument that while Poland-Lithuania, it is finally being conceded, is a hyphenated name and should be re-hyphenated, the same resistant, obstructive people who speedy-changed titles without adequate discussion are insisting that the adjectival forms of such names should remained dashes; this is absurd; the new addition to ENDASH should have a corollary phrase added "adjectival forms of hyphenated names are to be hyphenated". Polish-Lithuanian Army (if that even exists....yet), Polish-Lithuanian union, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth are all clearly derived from Poland-Lithuania, any argument that they should be spelled with different characters than the parent term might be some kind of principle in MOS, but if it is, then MOS needs changing (and is not carved in stone). Skookum1 ( talk) 23:15, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
There are two key points here:
I have included both, in the hope that common sense will be uncontroversial. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:06, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
I was warned by a certain admin that WTMOS is a snakepit. Now I see why...and who. No logic prevails here, just typographical inanity and defense of the indefensible, and people pulling shit as faits accomplis that weren't even what MOS said, and then arguing away anyone who wants those WRONG CHANGES returned to their proper state - with stupid, childish, ill-informed sophomoric arguments and lexical analysis of terms they don't even friggin' understand. You claim to have consensus on what MOS means, but as long as you keep sayhing it says things it doesn't, you might as well burn this whole place; because if you don't listen to input, your "consensus" is just a club, and disconnected from reality. I think you're deliberately irritating, DickLyon, and McLarrister, too, I think you do this just to feel powerful and creative, to make big decisions affecting places and people you dno['t know anything about, and then being smug and difficult point-pickers when it's pointed out you're wrong. And you're wrong. About Poland-Lithuania, about the Alberni-Clayoquot Regional Dietrict, about Grandview-Woodland; and you're wrong, also, in presuming to tell people they better catch up to typographically more enlightened people like yourself. What a load of friggin' crap. This ain't over, I'm finding somewhere upstairs to take it; did you just say that, Dicklyon, to provoke me to try and get me banned and out of the way? Join me in hell, baby, it's a long ways down and I've been there before, I know my way around.....instead of going "oh, you mean those names are always hyphenated?" as you should have, you've opened up a bigger can of worms than just the one you and your friends live in.....I'm tired of this shit; there's no way some typography-obsessed nerd in another country has the right to say "Alberni-Clayoquot sin't a hyphenated name" and override the input of people actually from the province/country it's in. Go stuff yourself, kid.... Skookum1 ( talk) 07:32, 27 January 2011 (UTC) And my edit count would be a LOT frickin' lower if I didn't have to put out stupid-idiot fires like this one all the time, and could jsut write history etc articles and fix geography etc, which is what I came to Wikipedia for. Not to ahve to argue with some typographical fanatics about their over-reach and overweeing power. Getting me blocked for repsonding to DickLyon's deciding to provoke me as much as possible - all this delay about what is obviously correct ("hyphenated names are hyphenated names") is insane; it's insane, I'm not. but I sure am pissed off at being angered like this in such a stupid, stupid, stupid way - you claimed the opposite of what was true, Dicklyon, with articles under discussion of the very kind you claim don't exist. You must like being an asshole, I think..... Skookum1 ( talk) 07:36, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
This subject is being discussed at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#MOS vs. MOSNUM on centuries. Hmains ( talk) 19:36, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
This edit summary genuinely shocks me; the claim that do as [reliable English] sources do is a serious change of guidance for any section of this page should disqualify that section for z guideline on the English Wikipedia; the claim that such a position is consensus of Wikipedia (not of some clique of rule-makers) is an evident falsehood; if it were consensus, it would not be controversial – as WP:DASH evodently is.
I hope, however, that there is some other explanation that the assertion that MOS attempts to provide rules which are not supported by the usage of actual English beyond Wikipedia. Wikipedia editors (at least most of the time ;}) write real English, not MOSese; more importantly, our readers read the language actually found in published sources – not some artificial construct. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:35, 29 January 2011 (UTC) What is WP:DASH? The top of this section links to an edit summary claiming that it has nothing to do with how English is actually written outside Wikipedia; I don't believe it. The top of this page links to a long and acrimonious discussion provoked by a claim that it is binding on article titles even when the result is almost unheard of in English (demonstrating in the process that the meaning of these innumerable bullet points isn't the same for everybody). I think this violates our article title policy, and I still don't believe it. What do other people think? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:24, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
There seem to me three possibilities about WP:DASH:
1 I believe #1. Let's have other views. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:52, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
I also believe #1. The complaint was about changing from the simple style statement "a hyphen is not used as a substitute for an en dash that properly belongs in the title" to a statement that tried to provide guidance on making the decision about whether an en dash properly belongs: "use dashes when the sources do". The edit summary said "That would be quite a change from the current consensus", which it is, since the MOS until now doesn't attempt to give much guidance there (at least not in this section), and because it is an attempt to turn a decision over to the often erratic results of the styles of others rather than leaving it more up to WP style. My own interpretation is this: if I think that an en dash belongs in a title, and it currently has a hyphen, I might move it, but only if I first find and cite a source that does it that way. I don't require a preponderance, or a majority, or even a large number of sources doing it that way, because most sources aren't curated well enough to bother to respect the value of indicating meaning via punctuation, which is what the style guide says elsewhere we try to do with en dashes, using them to indicate a different kind of connection than hyphens indicate. But I do need at least one source to back up my opinion before I'll do it; I might be tempted to change "Springer-Verlag" to "Springer–Verlag" if I were ignorant of the real meaning of this German-derived name, but hopefully when looking at sources I'd find out that that would be wrong, and I'd leave it alone. Those of us who have been brought up on a combination of good grammar and good typography find the hyphen offensive when it indicates the wrong meaning by being used where the en dash belongs; and vice-versa. But it's not always obvious, so cases need to be looked at by editors who get the point and are willing to make decisions without the emotional baggage of dashphobia or dashphilia. Dicklyon ( talk) 02:51, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
See Talk:Alberni–Clayoquot_Regional_District#Requested_move re TheTom, McLay and Skinsmoke's comments, and refer back to the arduous Poland-Lithuania RM for many of the same uninformed pronouncements that this is two separate entities so must be dashed, plus other rationalizations why the sources don't matter and what matters is style and "typographical" technology over content (many of your own posts were about that, very repetitively and you also, it seems to me, said that the prevailing usages in the sources weren't important and coudl be discounted; just as you have done so immediately above). The Canadian placenames were changed by User:Arctic.gnome and User:Renata3 (the latter took part in Poland-Lithuania, as I recall) citing the mis-taken "and/to" concept that these are just linked items, and not unique placenames referring to unique places/concepts (which they are). You nkow all this already, and you know what I was referring to; yet you ask me to back it up with "facts"....but the facts are that the sources ARE the sources, and Wikipedia is not a source (and MOS even less so). Skookum1 ( talk) 07:19, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
So, the question is this: If MOS, as Dicklyon suggests, isn't based on what English does, what is it based on? Not on style manuals: it cites none, and they are in turn ultimately based on usage. If it is based the Original Research of some Wikipedians - as his answer would suggest, why should we keep it? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:31, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
I just put the page on unwatch, even though I care about the MOS and enjoy talking style nuances with the best of the best here. But it's a total buzzkill to see these moth-flying-into-flame debates the last day or so. Heck, I don't like the dashes either, but let's roll with it. Let's have a system and use it. Having no style guide (or some sort of jury nullification) would be worse than one with a couple tiny debatable issues. This place needs better content, better writing. There's plenty of work to be done that has nothing do to with dashes. This is supposed to be fun, but following this page last day has been unfun. TCO ( talk) 06:16, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
I've moved several articles with disjunctive names to titles with en dashes per MOS:ENDASH, only to have them reverted because WP:RSs use hyphens. What is our policy here? I would expect that we do not need to follow RS's in this any more than we do other orthographic or stylistic conventions, but some editors get quite irate at any divergence from their sources.
Most of the time, for me this involves language families. For example, a large number of families are named after two languages or groups, such as the Amto-Musan languages (= Amto + Musan) and the Kwomtari-Fas languages (= Kwomtari + Fas). Since they are disjunctive, these should have en dashes, despite being "proper names", correct?
In other cases the elements themselves have spaces or hyphens. One of the most important is Trans-New Guinea languages. En dash despite trans- being a prefix, correct? Others are the Left May–Kwomtari languages, Ramu–Lower Sepik languages, Yele–West New Britain languages, and Reefs–Santa Cruz languages, which have not (yet) been reverted. However, since these are both disjunctive and contain spaces, should there be spacing on either side of the dashes?
Then, if our sources (many written on a typewriter!) use hyphens, do we need to follow that practice per WP:RS, or are orthographic conventions independent of sourcing? (For TNG, I've found sources with "Trans New Guinea" and "Trans–New Guinea", but the clear majority have "Trans-New Guinea".)
A non-linguistic example is the Spokane–Coeur d'Alene–Paloos War. There was recently an edit war over this. I restored it to the stable 2008 title with en dashes, but since 2009 it had been stable with spaces as well. One of the arguments for moving this back to hyphens was that the Spokane, Coeur d'Alene, and Paloos were not fighting each other, but were allies (AFAIK an overly literal reading of "disjunction"); another was that "War" is capitalized, and therefore a proper name, and proper names require hyphens.
A critical test case would be Niger-Congo languages. It seems disjunctive, being the languages which range from the Niger to the Congo rivers. Yet I can find no sources which use en dashes; even the refs which had "Trans New Guinea" and "Trans–New Guinea" use a plain hyphen for "Niger-Congo". Is this not truly disjunctive, because the family is not composed of "Niger languages" + "Congo languages", but is simply named after its geographic extremes, much like Indo-European? Should we only use en dashes for families such as Amto–Musan, which are named after two disjunctive groups of languages? or should we use "Niger–Congo" despite that usage being unattested in the (voluminous) lit? or do we defer to sourcing despite the MoS?
It would be nice if less straightforward examples such as these could be spelled out in the guide, as fights like these crop up over and over. — kwami ( talk) 20:31, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
Back to the NC question: is there any reason why a name based on extremes which are not themselves units should be treated differently than a name based on genuine units? That is, any reason why "Niger-Congo" (= in the expanse from the Niger to the Congo) should be handled differently than "Tai-Kadai" (= a group consisting of the Tai languages and the Kadai languages)? Per Skookum's objections, do we have a source with a clear definition of what "disjunction" means, since he's arguing that Michelson–Morley experiment is conjunctive rather than disjunctive? Or is "disjunction" a misnomer here?
Or, perhaps, is a name based on two people, such as the Michelson–Morley experiment, en-dashed to distinguish it from a name based on a single person with a hyphenated name, such as the Lennard-Jones potential? In other words, should this convention be specifically for compounds of surnames? — kwami ( talk) 21:58, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
Are there any objections to these reverted edits? They are clarifications, the removal of the incorrectly used word 'disjunction', which has already created problems, and a fifth use of the en dash (a variant of the hyphen in all-cap text) which I've seen in two sources now. — kwami ( talk) 10:51, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
Proposed content, please comment -
"Policies on not doing original research include that synthesizing material from a variety of sources into a single sentence is original research. Sometimes an editor may initially find it stylistically better to include material from two sources in a single sentence because they go so well together. This can lead other editors to make accusations of synthesis. To avoided the accusation, break the material into two shorter sentences, each with its own citation."
deleted material not germane to topic----
Current text: "In general, the use of contractions—such as don't, can't, won't, they'd, should've, it's—is informal and should be avoided."
Proposed replacement text: "In general, the pointed avoidance of contractions—such as don't, can't, won't, they'd, should've, it's—is stilted and should be avoided. It was a traditional rule of formal versus informal writing in the pre-Internet era, and nowadays it seems stodgy and outdated to most readers under 40."
No, I don't expect the people who read this page to accept this change anytime soon—not now, nor this year, nor this decade. Yes, it needed to be said anyway. No, it doesn't present any actual problems to EFL readers or readers who are machines. Yes, it will eventually happen. Till then, I remain, — ¾-10 23:33, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
Mr Anderson, an editor whose specialisations in the classics and mathematics I admire, has suddenly taken to making substantive changes to the MoS without consensus. Above, he has reprimanded User:Ozob for an edit-summary to a reversion of one of these changes earlier today. Editors need a stable MoS, and changes to it, unless everyone here agrees—not just one or two people where there's also disagreement—need to be discussed on this page. Consideration should sometimes be given to advertising the discussion more widely to involve the community.
I ask that the normal protocols be observed on this important page. There seems to be a spiralling element in which disagreement to change is met by a bulldozer. We need to treat each other more kindly and maintain peaceful discussion. \
In yet another example, this:
has been changed to this:
I'd have thought "In general" was enough leeway for common sense to be applied in particular instances. "On the other hand" isn't a particularly thrilling phrase for a style guide. Can we have examples of where "the pointed avoideance of contractions is stilted and also should be avoided"? Otherwise, it seems to be bloat. What will new editors make of it? I'm struggling with it myself. Tony (talk) 01:56, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
It seems like an OK situation of WP:BRD to me. The revert was absolutely appropriate, as is this discussion; and the bold change was OK, too, but then don't rag on the reverters. I made a bold change myself to the page recently, and nobody complained (I was surprised); so it depends on what the consensus is, right? Dicklyon ( talk) 02:55, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm just waiting (w8ng?) for the moment when someone argues that text-speak is their "national variety of English". Blueboar ( talk) 16:10, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
I agree that we shouldn't blindly replace contractions with potentially stilted wording, but it often is possible to simply recast a sentence in a manner that eliminates the issue entirely.
In the case of "Why couldn't they see something in Sagittarius...", it's true that "Why could they not see something in Sagittarius..." is awkward, but alternative options (such as "Why did they see nothing in Sagittarius..." and "Why was nothing found in Sagittarius...") exist.
Of course, apart from quotations (which obviously shouldn't be modified in that manner), Wikipedia is unlikely to contain this style of prose in the first place.
I don't understand Pmanderson's earlier example, as I see absolutely nothing unnatural about the wording "...did not make his first appearance...". I agree that the paragraph contains unrelated flaws, but I find it rather unfair and distasteful to mock an editor for failing to address them (as though this was an either-or proposition in which the change from "didn't" to "did not" was performed instead). —
David Levy
03:19, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
On that, let me comment on Mr Anderson's example above from Brittanica": "Shapley’s work caused astronomers to ask themselves certain questions: How could the existing stellar data be so wrong? Why couldn’t they see something in Sagittarius, the proposed galactic centre, 30,000 light-years away?" I do believe this tone is not encouraged in WP articles. It comes perilously close to POV in the relationship it assumes with the readers. If authoritative sources reacted in this way, it should be expressed as such, not as though it's WP's opinion. Have I got this right? Tony (talk) 14:36, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
Mild disagree: (Let me "pre-caveat": The last thing in the world (World?) I want to do is run around her fixing people's contractions or cripes edit-warring them. That said I wrote Ph.D. thesis and several peer-reviewed science papers without contractions (searching to fix all) and I never felt the "shackles" as heavy on me, or that the writing was strange afterwards. TCO ( talk) 22:30, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
When writing articles, we need to code-switch into an "encyclopedic" tone. That changes most people's writing considerably. In particular, the prose in our articles shouldn't use contractions, because that makes it sound too informal. But people like me can use contractions on talk pages if they want to. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 02:24, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
Remove the rule. I think that the guideline should recommend against "informal language" in general and leave it at that. This rule is too specific and, as such, it invites lazy editors to apply it mechanically. A paragraph with overly informal language needs to rewritten by someone who is actually thinking about what they are writing. "To write is to think, and to write well is to think well". This rule invites "thoughtless" edits. ---- CharlesGillingham ( talk) 06:13, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
(This proposal could be applied to some sections of the MOS article itself.)
“When possible, use of concrete examples is helpful in explaining concepts.”
A mathematics professor at Stanford “boasted” in the preface to his widely used graduate Probability textbook, that he wrote it without any geometric diagrams exemplifying the concepts developed. While this may have satisfied a particular philosophy of math perspective, it was not very helpful to my learning from his text as a grad student. PPdd ( talk) 20:27, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
Proposed add to links section, or following "avoid jargon" -
”If a highly technical term can be simply explained with a very few words, don’t make a reader use a link to understand the sentence, especially if this requires going into nested links (a link that goes to a page with another technical term needed to be linked, which goes to a page with a link to another technical term, and so on).”
PPdd ( talk) 20:27, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
I have long wondered whether sections that begin with numbers, usually years, should have the word following the number capitalized or not. For instance, is it "2010 General election" or "2010 general election"? My practice has been to go with the latter on the theory that the number acts as the first word, but I can see the argument that the MoS provision says "word" and figures aren't words. I didn't find anything about this in the archives, and I was wondering whether we might make a decision and update the page to reflect it. - Rrius ( talk) 03:22, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
There are a bunch of specialized MOS's here [14]. Am I failing to read some hat in the main MOS article referring users to this, or should there be a hat referring to a listing of them above the main MOS article? PPdd ( talk) 08:20, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
I propose adding to MOS aand/or RS the following –
“Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, and is often viewed with mistrust. Wikipedia responds to this by requiring reliable sources. Users can then always check the content of an article by reading the source provided in the reference list. It is helpful to the reader to include a very brief quote from the source in the ref, so the reader can quickly find where the content came from in the source.”
Please comment. HkFnsNGA ( talk)
Here is a proposal for the style of writing refs as to whether or not to use quotes, which incorporates the above comments -
“Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, and is often viewed with mistrust. Wikipedia responds to this by requiring reliable sources. Users can then always check the content of an article by reading the source provided in the reference list. It is critically helpful to include page numbers from which article content specifically came from. It is also helpful to some readers to include a very brief quote from the source in the ref, so the reader can quickly find where the content came from in the source. This can also add 'punch' by giving extra info, flavor, or in driving home the proof. However some editors find that a brief quotation is often misleading, and using them might be abused by some editors. ”
HkFnsNGA ( talk) 16:42, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
At the moment V says in a footnote: "When there is dispute about whether a piece of text is fully supported by a given source, direct quotes and other relevant details from the source should be provided to other editors as a courtesy." But that could be done on the talk page. SlimVirgin TALK| CONTRIBS 01:04, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
"It is helpful for an editor to create a supplemental page for quotes called "(Article title) quotes", and include a link in the ref to it, but it is up to the editor to decide whether or not it is helpful to include a quote or an abbreviated quote in the actual article page ref or not. Quotes from sources that are not online are encouraged to be put somewhere, but never selectively quoted in a way to violate WP:NPOV. It is up to a contesting editor to point out why it may be POV, under WP:GF."
What does supplemental page mean here? Another (sub)page separate from the article? If that the case, then I'm rather against it, because it becomes unnecessarily complicated and convoluted (an article should consist of one page allowing as much straight forward editing as possible). Ifd an aithor feeols the needs to provide quotes in connection with his inline citations, he can do so in the regular references/notes section. I see no reason to mandate or recommend here anything in particular (see WP:CREEP as well). Keept it simple!-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 07:59, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
When I first came to MOS, I found it so long that I did not read it. The style of the article should be to have the most common things an editor is likely to need easily picked out at the outset, with minutiae left to sections and subsections. It is ironic that the manual of style would have stylistic problems likely to scare off a typical editor, whose concern is likely just a quick overview. Perhaps a new article should be created, "Concise essentials of MOS". HkFnsNGA ( talk) 03:10, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
I was actually serious in suggesting creating a short, but useful, "Intro to MOS". HkFnsNGA ( talk) 05:46, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
Slight rewording (to be edited as y'all see fit):
For those of you who are just getting started, the main points are as follows:
1IMO we shouldn't suggest the full list of style guides. Some of the most popular are absolute garbage, telling you to avoid all sorts of things that even the style guides themselves do (see #10). — kwami ( talk) 08:41, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
Getting back on topic, MOS violates itself, multiply, and WP:GF, in that -
Say something like this as a lead, with links where appropriate to the General Principles and ENGVAR.
I've tweaked the layout and added Blueboar's sentence as something WPians agree on.I have also tweaked the internationalism sentence, but we can discuss exactly what that should say - if anything - after discussion of the general idea. Also enlarged the involcation of WP:CONSISTENCY. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:43, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
Telling visitors not to write in English, as much of this page does, irritates me. If the function of this page is not advice on how to write English, why is it here? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:54, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
This has been raised on my talk page—something I've been meaning to ask here for some time after ?User:Headbomb, was it, confirmed age-old advice only a month or two ago, here, that this instantly yields an en dash. I would love to know how this can work. I ask clients who have Windows to do it, and they say ... errr ... won't work. Is it a fiction, I wonder? :-) Tony (talk) 02:43, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
If you don't know how to type an en dash, don't worry. You'll never need to. Just enter a hyphen, and if it matters someone who cares will fix it. Or if you use the standard editor, use the "Wiki markup Insert:" feature below where it's the first character. Or get a Mac. Dicklyon ( talk) 03:52, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
User:GFHandel sent me this comment, which I am posting below:
“ | Have a look at
this page, which has a "how to" section. If the ALT codes don't work, check the following:
|
” |
Tony (talk) 02:41, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
By no means do I suggest that those who devised the current input methods for non-ASCII characters are any less idiots than users who aren’t enamored of the cryptic crap. But I also don’t think the entry methods are nearly as difficult as many make them out to be. The greater problem is that the codes aren’t mnemonic (those on a Mac are shorter but just as off the wall); with older formatting languages like troff and TEX, the codes are easier to remember (at least for native English speakers). To an extent, the same is true for most HTML character entities, though the cost of being less cryptic is more typing. And for those who insist that Unicode support is still lacking for some browsers, the entities completely avoid the problem for all but the most ancient browsers. But the entities seem informally deprecated by many editors.
The greater problem with the en dash (and most other non-ASCII characters) is that most people would not recognize one even if it bit them; as you previously mentioned, though, in many cases another editor who does know the difference will change a hyphen to the proper character (en dash, em dash, or minus).
Nonetheless, this topic has come up so often that providing an easier method of entry (or even just clearly describing existing methods) for those who do know the difference seems like a worthwhile endeavor even if it means stooping to a dreaded “how to”. GFHandel’s comment posted by Tony is a good example; the Alt method isn’t really that difficult, but it’s essential that all the steps be followed, and most descriptions omit some of them. Incidentally, I find the method works with either Alt key. JeffConrad ( talk) 07:09, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
While others have been posting alternative methods, I might as well do so too. I downloaded a program called “Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator” and created my own layout, I can now easily type not only en dashes but also just about every conceivable character I could want to type while using Latin-based languages, and more… “ × ⅓ • √ ♙ ✓ ∴ ”. I find this solution more useful and practical than any of those suggested above (my layout is freely available to anyone who wants it). MTC ( talk) 07:10, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
Many editors complain when I put a "See" tag at the top, that it should be in the "See also" section at the bottom. The problem is that many newer users coming to a technical "daughter article", do not know where to find the mother article at the bottom. Even if they did know to look at the bottom "See also" section, it is often filled with "related" articles, with no indication as to which should be read before the article they are in, and which are only peripherally related to the subject article, or provide only supplemental reading. A further thing that comes up is when I put a "see" tag at top, it gets removed as "already in a link word in the lede ot body, with no indication that link should be read first, among the multitude ot links in the article.
This would help me alot with an unfamiliar subject, and likely would help others. PPdd ( talk) 06:33, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
Proposal add subsection to MOS links section -
"- Links to related articles - When an article is a general or introductory treatment of a topic, and another article is a technical treatment, an Wikipedia:Hatnote tag should be placed at the top of each page. The links between articles should be at the top of the article, not in the “See also” section at the bottom. For example… evolution and introduction to evolution… (then give example of how to use the Wikipedia:Hatnote tag). In this case, this should be used over and above a “disambiguation” tag."
PPdd ( talk) 18:29, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
- "Choice of style?" - WP:Hat says about hats, "The choice of style in a given article is based on editors' preference". But it says nothing about the stylistic choice about what to put in a hatnote vs. in "See also". PPdd ( talk) 03:47, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia's convention is that the title word or title phrase of an article is set in bold at its first appearance in the article, usually in the first sentence, apparently except when the title is a long descriptive phrase like "How Einstein learned of Lennard's experiments on the photoelectric effect".
Is this convention stated in any of Wikipedia's style manuals? Where is it? Michael Hardy ( talk) 18:05, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
I understand what the MOS says about capitalization of Article and Section titles ("List of music recording certifications" not "List of Music Recording Certifications") and I don't object or want to change it... but I am curious as to why we adopted this style... and why didn't we adopt the more common style of capitalizing the first letter of all words in the title? If this is a frequently asked question, just link to a previous discussion. Blueboar ( talk) 16:17, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
From an informational perspective, title case extinguishes a whole level of signifying: that of initial caps that carry real meaning, mostly in proper nouns. The text becomes harder reader when the "alphabet soup" method is used. I would be very happy to explicitly discourage the use of title case in book, chapter, and paper titles in our reference sections. But I suppose that's not gonna happen. Tony (talk) 07:11, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
It is just a small point but I don't think an English encyclopaedia should be using the feminine gender when referring to inanimate objects such as ships. I can't find anything in the MoS but perhaps I haven't looked hard enough. (Apologies if this is the case.) It may be romantic to use "she" for a ship but to me it doesn't seem encyclopaedic. However it may just be a matter of personal preference, so I think we need a ruling through a wider discussion to ensure consistency throughout Wikipedia. A few random ships showed "she" was mainly used in Wikipedia: German battleship Bismarck, HMS Hood (51), HMS_Montagu_(1901), HMS Invincible (1907) and MS Estonia. To get some background I searched for precedents. I found a discussion from 2004 in Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive (ships as "she") which seemed to reach no conclusion, and there is also a statement in Gender-specific pronoun, though this may just be one person's opinion. This latter entry refers to The Chicago Manual of Style. This is a paid web-site so I took this lead no further. I then looked at British style guides. The BBC and The Economist are silent on the subject. However The Guardian's style guide under the heading 'ships' is against the feminine gender (see [ [18]]). Conversely The Times style (see [ [19]]) is in favour of the feminine gender. Whether newspapers and encyclopaedias should have similar styles is debatable, but I think a standard should be defined in Wikipedia's Style Guide as well. JMcC ( talk) 00:29, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
Why is a ship referred to as she? Because it costs so much to keep one in paint and powder. TCO ( talk) 02:44, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
There are some draft guidelines purporting to aid discussion here, at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Proposed MOS talk page standards. For now, could those who want to help develop these standards, comment at the bottom and I will respond to changes.
At some later stage, this method of sole editing may change.
For those who don't want these at all, just wait. You will have the option later of voting them down. Thanks.
And please don't comment here. Not looking to start another unending discussion thread! :) Student7 ( talk) 14:56, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
I created Wikipedia:Manual of Style (list of specialized Manual of Style articles), but it needs alot of work and improvement. It is very long. Please help out. PPdd ( talk) 15:37, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
It should point to Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National_varieties_of_English but instead it goes to the main page Wikipedia:Manual of Style. This sort of thing usually happens in regular articles when a section name changes after people have put the link in. I don't know how the WP: shortcuts are edited or I could see maybe where it went wrong. These shortcuts should point to the section of the appropriate article so people can see what is being pointed to/talked about. Someone responds to a query with "WP:ENGVAR" and you have a whole manual of style to read before you could even begin to wonder what they were on about that has anything to do with the question you asked. I am pretty sure other wp: shortcuts do this, maybe some don't, but IMHO they all should point to the section of the target article that is relevant to the subject. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rifter0x0000 ( talk • contribs) 20:53, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
Could part of the problem with en dashing be regional variation? Users Johnlp and DuncanHill inform me that compounded compounds are not en dashed in the UK; such wording is either avoided, or a virgule is used. Duncan quotes the Oxford University Press style guide, as set down in the Oxford Writers' Dictionary.
Of course, some US style guides say the same thing, and some have only the compounded-compound type, so this may not indicate a general lack of the convention in the UK. Does anyone have a UK style guide that parallels the CMOS in this case? — kwami ( talk) 22:10, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
Hm, the The Oxford dictionary of American usage and style (2000:94) says the same thing, and only adds the following:
So it may be an Oxford thing rather than necessarily a UK thing. — kwami ( talk) 23:06, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
Here's most of what the CMOS has to say. (I left out several repetitions and details of en-dash between numbers.)
CMOS
|
---|
The principal use of the en dash is to connect numbers and, less often, words. In this use it signifies up to and including (or through). For the sake of parallel construction the word to, never the en dash, should be used if the word from precedes the first element; similarly, and, never the en dash, should be used if between precedes the first element. [I've seen this explained elsewhere as the en-dash including the sense of from–to, so that using it w from was redundant]
[then a section on open dates w a dangling en-dash] The en dash is used in place of a hyphen in a compound adjective when one of its elements is an open compound or when two or more of its elements are open compounds or hyphenated compounds (see 7.83). As illustrated by the first four examples below, en dashes separate the main elements of the new compounds more clearly than hyphens would (“hospital” versus “nursing home,” “post” versus “World War II,” etc.), thus preventing ambiguity. In the last two examples, however, to have used en dashes between “non” and “English” and between “user” and “designed” would merely have created an awkward asymmetry; the meaning is clear with hyphens.
(Abbreviations for compounds are treated as single words, so a hyphen, not an en dash, is used in such phrases as “U.S.-Canadian relations.”) [mentions idiosyncratic use in some scientific disciplines] In some instances an en dash is used to link a city name to the name of a university that has more than one campus.
A slash is sometimes used in dates instead of an en dash, or even in combination with an en dash, to indicate the last part of one year and the first part of the next.
A series of pitches are joined by en dashes.
Harmonic progressions are indicated by capital roman numerals separated by en dashes: IV–I–V–I. compass points and directions: northeast, southwest, east-northeast, a north–south street, the street runs north–south. (Closed in noun, adjective, and adverb forms unless three directions are combined, in which case a hyphen is used after the first. When from . . . to is implied, an en dash is used.) noun + gerund: decision making, a decision-making body, mountain climbing, time-clock-punching employees, a Nobel Prize–winning chemist (for use of the en dash, see 6.85), bookkeeping, caregiving, policymaking. (Noun form usually open; adjective form hyphenated before a noun. Some permanent compounds closed.) e: e-mail, e-article, e-commerce, e-marketing, e-zine, e–graduate school. (Hyphenated; use en dash if e precedes an open compound.) Compounds formed with prefixes are normally closed, whether they are nouns, verbs, adjectives, or adverbs. A hyphen should appear, however, (1) before a capitalized word or a numeral, such as sub-Saharan, pre-1950; (2) before a compound term, such as non-selfsustaining, pre–Vietnam War (before an open compound, an en dash is used; see 7.83); ... An en dash used between two numbers implies up to and including, or through.
If from or between is used before the first of a pair of numbers, the en dash should not be used; instead, from should be followed by to or through, between by and. The wording or context should indicate the degree of inclusiveness. Avoid between . . . and where precision is required.
Inclusive spelled-out numbers should not be joined by an en dash.
A range of equations is referred to by giving the first and last equation numbers, joined by an en dash:
|
— kwami ( talk) 01:18, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
As for the question at the root of this section; it's not purely national variation; the strongest voice I know for the double level of hyphenation is proudly British. It is that there are various traditions of how to deal with such fine points, each propagated by high-school teaching (and, far more often by imitation) - and since Australians tend to read and be taught by Australians (and likewise for Poms and Yanks), once a tradition is established in a given country, it tends to propagate there; thus each country has several of them. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:44, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
Tony, this isn't about avoiding three or more hyphens, it's about not using hyphens with different meanings in one word. AFAIK, there's no problem with "13-year-old girl" or "12-mile-long bridge". At least, if en-dashes were expected for those, they'd be included in the style guides, as they would be much more common than the other, sometimes forced examples they give. "Up-to-the-moment information" – there: no problem w 3 commas. Ambiguity only arises when you want to link "up-to-the-moment" with something else; using a 4th hyphen would then make it difficult to read.
Here's what CMOS has to say on multiple hyphens:
Personally, since we're an encyclopedia and expect precision, I think we should use logical hyphenation, just as we use logical punctuation with quotation marks. That isn't necessary either, but IMO it's a good idea for WP to be reliable in the details. — kwami ( talk) 23:00, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
I thought this was here, but I don't seem to find it so I was wondering if there was any rules regarding the use of quotations for special words that are used as as alternate terminology for something. For example, After John defeats or "cleanses" the enemy he advances a level or "sphere". 陣 内 Jinnai 15:47, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
MOS:HEAD currently contains this guidance:
This is a remnant of two problems: the inability to make simple internal links to a heading containing a link; and an accessibility problem that affected JAWS prior to version 7.1. The former problem was solved some time ago as evidenced by this note in Help:Section#Section linking:
Opinion at WT:ACCESS#Section headers and links was that there are no longer any significant accessibility issues either. One of our most active JAWS users, Graham87 states that "very few people would be using JAWS versions prior to 7.1 these days" – which seems likely as Jaws 7.1 was introduced in June 2006. As a result, the section of WP:ACCESS linked to in the MOS guideline above no longer contains any mention of problems with section headers and links. I suggest it's time to remove this outdated guidance from MOS as well. -- RexxS ( talk) 05:07, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
I find links in headers to be terribly distracting. I'd prefer to see a guideline to try instead to link anything linkable in the text rather than in the heading. Dicklyon ( talk) 06:02, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
Discussion seems to have petered out now, and it seems clear to me that opinion here is in favour of maintaining the MOS guidance not to put links in section headers. I'll revise the current text to remove the inaccurate part about accessibility, and leave the rest in place. -- RexxS ( talk) 23:20, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
Kwami has recently taken upon himself to blindly replace any hyphens into dashes by make mass moves, and replacements with AWB. None of them make any sense! Switching "pre-main star" to "pre–main star", "post-World War II" to "post–World War II". Could someone do a mass rollback (and undo all the page moves he made) and revoke his/her AWB access? Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 07:10, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
En dashes have been standard typographic practice for at least a century. The reason I asked at the astronomy page was in case there was an expected form in technical articles, though I've seen several contradictory punctuations myself. Anyway, they're not "pre-main stars" (and presumably also "sequence stars") as Headbomb incorrectly states, they're "pre-[main sequence] stars".
I made a similar inquiry on the linguistics page. According to the style manuals, language families like Niger-Congo should be en-dashed, but that is minority usage in the actual journals. (Though Nature has used it.) I figured it would be too disruptive to follow the guideline in such cases, since they're (almost?) never ambiguous. — kwami ( talk) 09:30, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
I have no horse in this race. I just want to see this thing properly thrashed out into a consensus before we make any such radical changes to the guideline. I have wound it back to what I felt was the last WP:Consensus version for now, pending resolution. -- Ohconfucius ¡digame! 14:47, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
Kwami's ill-advised moves continue. Please stop, or I will consider the most effective means to stop this. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:45, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
There is no magic bullet; all of the "solutions" have disadvantages. But I do think MoS should at least point out the option of rewording the item so that no typographical marks are required. We do this already for units:
"Multi-hyphenated items: It is often possible to avoid multi-word hyphenated adjectives by rewording (a four-CD soundtrack album may be easier to read as a soundtrack album of four CDs). This is particularly important where converted units are involved (the 6-hectare-limit (14.8-acre-limit) rule might be possible as the rule imposing a limit of 6 hectares (14.8 acres), and the ungainly 4.9-mile (7.9 km) -long tributary as simply 4.9-mile (7.9 km) tributary)." Tony (talk) 02:12, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
Before the edit war started Jan. 29, it said:
I've put this back, since the effort to make it non-optional led to it being deleted altogether. Dicklyon ( talk) 06:17, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
Jenks, "pre-WWII technologies" would be fine with a hyphen only because we are already familiar with the phrase and with the concept of WWII; also, the change in capitalization helps. But without that context, it's not so simple to work out. What about "pre-apocalyptic war events"? Given that this could be capitalized various ways, would that mean events prior to the war of the apocalypse, or events of a war prior to the apocalypse? The first would be dab'd "pre–apocalyptic war events". (I'm sure s.o. can come up with a better example.)
One could argue that en-dashes should only be used when necessary. However, that would mean that when we use a hyphen in an ambiguous situation, the reader would have to guess whether we think it's ambiguous enough to require disambiguation. That is, the reader wouldn't be able to rely on a hyphen just being a hyphen. If we consistently use en-dashes, on the other hand, then when we do use a hyphen it will reliably mean that an en-dash is not appropriate.
This is rather like using logical punctuation with quotations. Most of the time it really doesn't matter whether we put the period or comma inside or outside the quotations marks. However, there's general WP agreement that for an encyclopedia we want precision, and so should be clear whether the punctuation belongs within the quotation or not. — kwami ( talk) 22:33, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
To prevent further MOS-claimed changes of BC placenames to dashes, this is notice that, as explained on the now-closed RM2 at Talk:Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District, the Office of the Legislative Council has an official styleguide, based in the legislation creating such places and their names, that has decided that RM, mandating hyphens in all those cases; see BCLaws.ca re the Local Government Act, and in re BC provincial parks, many of which are so far still hyphenated and have not been "MOS-ified", see in the same link the Protected Areas of British Columbia Act which gives a full list of parks, protected areas, ecological reserves, and conservancies as to their official usages; some officially use space-dash-space as with Smith River Fall – Fort Halkett Provincial Park and Ed Bird – Estella Lakes Provincial Park, but most do not and the hyphen is mandatory in most other cases, as also the use of forward-slashes in some cases, as well as special characters of various kinds for aboriginally-derived official placenames. Note also on the ACRD-RM there is mention of the Concise Gazetteer of Canada, which is not only and costs $39.95 or something like that, but is probably in most major city and university libraries in the References section. Canadian usages should be used in Canadian articles; speedy renames implanting dashes on such articles, if they occur in future, should be quickly reversed, citing the relevant pieces of legislation. I'm drafting an addition to WP:CANMOS which does not directly address this issue which should be approved by WPCANADA editors by consensus, as specified in CANMOS. Skookum1 ( talk) 20:01, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
As has been explained to me, TLDR is generally used by people trying to shut down a discussion, or who just don't want to understand what it has to say. And I don't really care if either of you read it, so what? It's in reply to Art La Pella and oknazevad. WP:Butt out. Skookum1 ( talk) 18:42, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
Five short guidelines purporting to aid discussion here, are now at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Proposed MOS talk page standards. Please express your opinion on whether 1) none should be inserted above, or whether all should be inserted above ("vote" once) or 2) whether one or more should be accepted or rejected ("vote" five times).
Probably will make it easier on this watchlist to comment there on same line, if you like, rather than discussing it here. (And PPdd, I've got my eye on you! :) Student7 ( talk) 23:07, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
Revised to clarify original question – Kerαunoςcopia◁
galaxies
04:39, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
{{
Cite web}} is a template that auto-formats its title=
parameter by adding quotation marks. Reference titles that end in double/single quotation marks are therefore susceptible to awkward pairs of quotation marks that can be difficult to read. For example:
<ref>{{cite web|url=en.wikipedia.org|title=Website publishes article titled 'Foo' |date=8 February 2011 |accessdate=8 February 2011}}</ref>
yields [1]
As far as I can tell, there are no templates specifically designed to help kern these quotation marks apart within the actual template. {{ " '}}, as suggested at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Quotations_within_quotations, would not work; what would be needed is a template of a single qm followed by a space. Any thoughts? – Kerαunoςcopia◁ galaxies 03:49, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
{{cite web|url=en.wikipedia.org|title=Website publishes article titled 'Foo' |date=8 February 2011 |accessdate=8 February 2011}}
You can also use {{
'-}}:
{{cite web|url=http://en.wikipedia.org|title=Website publishes article titled 'Foo{{tl|'-}} |date=8 February 2011 |accessdate=8 February 2011}}
"Website publishes article titled 'Foo{{[[Template:'-|'-]]}}". 8 February 2011. Retrieved 8 February 2011. {{
cite web}}
: URL–wikilink conflict (
help)
Talk pages at MOS used to talk about stylistic presentation of content, like lede structure, not get bogged down with uses of commas.
"The American Academy for the Scientific Criticism of Acupuncture did a comprehensive review of scientific acupuncture studies on prevention of lung cancer and said, 'We did a systematic review of lung cancer studies and acupuncture and as a result we believe that acupuncture significantly decreases lung cancer rates compared to cessation of smoking'."
The problem is, that "American Academy" is a bunch of whackos who assumed an authoritative title and is trying to market acupuncture, and is RS for its own beliefs! Yet the stylistic presentation leaves a typical layperson with the impression that some legitimate and authoritative national science board really made that finding. One could put a MOS guideling to describe any quoted authority, which would bog down every quote at WP. An accurate rewording is "A major acupuncture believes that acupuncture is more effective than cessation of smoking for lung cancer." But what MOS guideline would lead to this accurate stylistic persentation, as opposed to the original misleading stylistic presentation? PPdd ( talk) 03:01, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
Just need confirmation here that images in the lede should not be left justified. It has shown up in a number of spacecraft articles including MESSENGER, Mars Polar Lander, Galileo (spacecraft), Voyager 1, Voyager 2, Pioneer 11, Pioneer 10, Mars Climate Orbiter, Mars Observer and Viking program.-- Labattblueboy ( talk) 04:12, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
I don't think that the ledes of Wikipedia articles should ever have left-aligned floating images. Images in the lede should be on the right, and there should be only a single column of images/infoboxes there. That style is consistent across millions of our articles. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 15:16, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
I ran into a case today for which I couldn't quite determine the MoS advice. From 2008 Hungarian Grand Prix:
Should these partnerships be en dashes? -- Andy Walsh (talk) 21:18, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
I have a source that has a title in all caps, and a subtitle in title case and enclosed by em dashes on both sides, with spaces. The title and subtitle are repeated in the same format, only in the same line, at the top of every odd-numbered page. How should I render it in a cite journal |title= parameter? Both title and subtitle in title case, and leave both em dashes around the subtitle, but remove spaces? -- Rontombontom ( talk) 22:09, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
There's a discussion about whether non-Manual of Style pages should use shortcuts prefixed with "MOS:" over at Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2011_January_8#MOS:ALT. Any comments would be appreciated. Thanks! Mhiji 18:18, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
"Titles should be short—preferably fewer than ten words.[2]"
Ten words for a title–even a subtitle– seems really long, and the source doesn't quite confirm this either. Shouldn't this be closer to 2 to 4 words at most? AerobicFox ( talk) 04:31, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
If the title is of a book or something which has a name that long of course the title should be that long. However some of these could be shortened:
Clearly things like "List of" are automatically going to have two additional words "list of" and need not be shortened. Also titles of songs, paintings, groups, etc, should remain the same. Nonetheless, only one of those you cited even had 10 words in it(the name of a painting). Is there any reason this is at 10, and not say 8?, or 5? AerobicFox ( talk) 05:23, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
"Thoughts should be short, preferably two to four words". Geez, worded that way it's like a dictum from the Ministry of Truth in 1984 (there it was "sentences"). "Thou shalt not have complicated thoughts" or the like - "don't use long sentences, it hurts my brain" (of which WP:TLDR is a manifestation). The post-literate era has arrived and inflicts itself on the literate....The re Scottish Rite title above, the official name of the city of Bangkok in Thai is over 100 words long and begins with the phrase "Royal City of Angels"....just something I remember from my Bangkok guidebook from years ago (which quoted the first twenty words, though in Roman script); Bangkok is a foreign/outside word/usage that has become the standard. Skookum1 ( talk) 17:39, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
The longest title in words is (and has been (at least the tie) longest in characters (since it hits the software limit) for some years) Dante And Randal And Jay And Silent Bob And A Bunch Of New Characters And Lando, Take Part In A Whole Bunch Of Movie Parodies Including But Not Exclusive To, The Bad News Bears, The Last Starfighter, IN Jones And The Temple Of Doom, Plus A High Scho. As I remember there is a sequel or prequel which also runs up against the maxlength buffers.
Other long titles in words are:
Note that the 35 word title The hill of the flute playing by Tamatea — who was blown hither from afar, had a circumcised penis, grazed his knees climbing mountains, fell on the earth, and encircled the land — to his beloved redirects to Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu, only one word, but hardly easier to remember or type.
How about "Short titles are preferred to long titles." ?
Rich
Farmbrough,
15:34, 19 February 2011 (UTC).