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Archive 5 | ← | Archive 10 | Archive 11 | Archive 12 | Archive 13 | Archive 14 | Archive 15 |
A number of points spring to mind:
To this end, I have made a working draft proposal on
Wikipedia:Manual of Style/proposal (the first edit to this page was the current policy, so going to history and looking at the diffs will show what changes are proposed). Please feel free either to edit this page, or to offer comments either here on on
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/proposal. I have also made a draft additional guidance page on
Wikipedia:Guidance on applying the Manual of Style and
Wikipedia talk:Guidance on applying the Manual of Style. All comments would be welcome,
jguk 22:00, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I'd like to suggest the following:
Some points from above are worth repeating:
Some points about style guides and writing for publication:
People who want changes for anything, especialy to things that are long-established, would be wise to consider their approach. Maurreen 02:41, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
In the drafts what does standard English mean? Philip Baird Shearer 14:20, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Would it be helpful if an author could include some metadata in an article indicating the variant of English she is using? This might help prevent inadvertent conflict and acrimony, where the style of English being used wasn't obvious to a contributor. This could be easily accomplished by placing a comment at the top of the page.
<!-- this article is written in Canadian English -->
I write in Canadian English, and I'm sure that many British and U.S. editors would take a look and decide that it's full of spelling errors, if they weren't familiar with it. — Michael Z. 2005-03-15 15:02 Z
<!-- Spelling: en-CA, -ize -->
at the top of
Canada.<!-- Note for copy-editors: Spelling is en-CA, -ize -->
SpNeo 03:05, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)Can't wikipedia replace British spellings with US spellings (and vice versa) on the fly based on a user preference?-- Will2k 14:17, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)
I'm not wild about removal of parts of the guidelines ("quotes", vs "quotes,") simply due to their being under discussion. Perhaps there should simply be an "under discussion" notice on the section. And in any case, it ought to apply equally to the whole punctuation section, not just punctuation-in-quotes -- the serial comma rule and double quotes marks would equally be removed under the proposed revision. Alai 05:06, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Maybe people who want to fight about national differences should just take that to a separate page. I'm not sure any of this has been productive. Maurreen 06:14, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
My perspective is to have a formally expressed official style that is short, to the point, permissive and is already in line with what WPians do - and supplement it by comments on how that official style is interpreted (which is where the national differences discussions will belong). One advantage is that the non-binding supplement could represent more than one view - which should minimise many of these arguments. What's your perspective? jguk 06:59, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Wow, it's good to be back! Having the database read-only is like peering in from behind the Iron Curtain. Not that I'm addicted or anything ... Anyway, I've left comments about Jguk's proposal at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/proposal, but feel free to move or copy it here as preferred. SlimVirgin 07:51, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)
I have publicized the proposal at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals), and WP:RFC. Maurreen 16:44, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I just do want to remark: I am constantly amazed at the people who seem to have nothing better to do than to go through perfectly good, perfectly comprehensible articles, changing "-ise" to "-ize" or vice versa, or changing the forms of the dates back and forth. I've started just ignoring them. -- Jmabel | Talk 09:05, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)
Why can you not just drop attacks on the "national preference"? Articles which are perceived to be linked to a particular English speaking nation, will over time end up using that nation's English because many contributers tend to move articles that way. That the MoS recognize this tends to reduce conflict, all your suggestions which try get the Mos negate the use of specific national styles of English on articles perceived to be linked to a nation, will if adopted, encourage more edit wars not less and may well reduced the influence of the MoS. Philip Baird Shearer 13:36, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Just to add to the confusion, I would like to point out that right now the MoS says nothing at all about hyphens after prefixes like "non" and "anti" and the like. At "non-" OED says, "In the majority of the compounds of non-, the hyphen is usually retained; but it is commonly omitted in the case of a few, such as nonconformist, nonentity, nonsense, in which the etymology has to some extent been lost sight of." But Collins English Dictionary, which is also British, only hyphenates after non- if the next word starts with a capital letter (non-Hodgkin's lymphoma) or an N (non-negotiable). The American dictionaries I've checked only hyphenate between non- and a capital letter, but leave nonnegotiable without a hyphen. Anti- is even worse: OED gives anti-convulsant but anticonvulsive, Collins usually hyphenates anti- before a vowel (except antioxidant) but not before a consonant (unless capitalized, of course), and the American dictionaries hyphenate anti- only before capital letters and I. At the risk of being perceived as an American capitalist imperialist pig-dog, I suggest following the American dictionaries because the rules are easier to follow: don't hyphenate after prefixes unless what they're prefixed to is capitalized, or to prevent the jarring look of two lower-case I's next to each other. -- Angr 18:55, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
If it comes to that, we don't need rules for any of the things covered in the MoS. But we have them anyway. -- Angr 17:15, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Angr , I don't feel strongly either way. Can you draft something and put it here? Maurreen 04:43, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Personally I'd go with the Oxford definitions, but like so many other things, spelling checkers use a set of rules which may or may not conform to perceived national standards. So I think the best to go with any style, but if there is change or an addition to the text which leads to a dispute then go with primary usage. Philip Baird Shearer 10:23, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
My understanding is that no one objected when Hajor stated an intention to reinsert into the style guide the material on splitting the difference for style on quotation marks. My understanding is also that there was no discussion to remove that material, either originally or recently.
Hajor's reinsertion was reverted. I am going to restore it. If anyone disagrees, I ask that you discuss it here and get consensus first. Maurreen 04:43, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I just found out about the reinsertion of that crazy "splitting the difference" rule because I first read the Manual of Style in February and had no idea it had changed until right now (because a BE contributor reverted changes I had made to the Supreme Court of the United States) page to bring it into proper AE style. Just for the record, I preferred the previous rule (which I understood as where contributors simply keyed in their additions in their native dialect and generally refrained from editing each other's dialect peculiarities). The current compromise rule is simply insane, because as some people have pointed out in the archived talk pages, the result looks equally ridiculous to English writers everywhere. -- Coolcaesar 00:10, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
This manual of style requires some British English usage on pages which are dominated by American English, and some American English usage on pages which are dominated by British English. This is but one example of this. This does give a ridiculous result, as Coolcaesar notes - and the Manual regularly gets ignored (for obvious reasons) by many WPians.
Unfortunately all attempts to permit articles to be fully consistent with one standard form of English have met with rebuffs by those unwilling to give up their pet likes. It's a shame, and it means this Manual does not reflect WP practice - but until those users decide to stop dictate their individual preferred styles to others, it's not going to change, jguk 07:22, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
What personal titles are allowed? Someone just went through and added "Chef" to some articles including Bobby Flay. To me, this opens up a can of worms, as these are not official titles. For example, one could go through every article on a conductor and prefix their names with Maestro. – flamurai ( t) 09:23, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)
I'm just noting there doesn't appear to be any discussion of gender neutrality in the Manual of Style. Shouldn't there be?
See: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style archive (gender-neutral pronouns). The issue was also raised (though undiscussed) at Talk:Non-sexist_language#Poll_on_Wikipedia.27s_adopted_gender-neutral_pronoun. Hyacinth 01:25, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I'm a newbie testing the potential of Wikipedia, and a problem has come up concerning stylistic conventions. I find it difficult to locate clear guidelines about this sort of stuff in the Manual of Style, so maybe you guys can help me out.
Background: See the history page of Spartacus (movie) for an exchange of reverts.
Then follow the brief conversation at User talk:Cburnett under "Spartacus (movie) title row".
I mean, this is so very petty... Considering that Casablanca is the only film page that has reached featured article status, I think that a discussion of the stylistic conventions could very well get underway. 62.148.218.217 21:14, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Hi! I have a question about the use of italics. Namely, in the article Pope John Paul I, I used them, then another editor came by and removed them. See comparison of both versions. What approach would be stilistically correct? Thanks for your answer. -- Eleassar777 16:19, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I just thought that all quotations should be in italics, as it is more readable then (at least for me). I got the similar answer at the article's talk page. This should be explained in the Manual. -- Eleassar777 17:49, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Italics are used for several different things, including indicating foreign terms, for emphasis, to refer to words (instead of to what they represent), and for short quotations. None of these are non-standard or odd, but they are a matter of editorial style. — Michael Z. 2005-04-1 19:10 Z
Below is the explanation I wrote on Talk:Pope John Paul I when I edited the quotation and italicisation in the main article. Eleassar777 requested there that I add it to this article under italicisation. I think most of what I stated is already scattered throughout the italicisation & quotes sections, but I thought there might be a place for the last sentence, with the caveat that it applies to quotations short enough to be embedded in the text, not to long quotations offset in their own paragraph.
Binabik80 04:35, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I just encountered this issue about italics/quoting with The Cantos. And while my changes may have been accepted, I have to admit that it is possibile that using italics for quotations is considered good practice in some English-speaking countries who copy the practice from (IIRC) French. In the novels of James Joyce (an Irish writer) & Alan Paton (a South African), dialogue is presented as follows. When the quotation begins a paragraph:
And when the quotation is embedded in a paragraph:
Obviously, if this standard practice in these two countries, Wikipedia should acknowledge it & accept it. However, I know Joyce was an experimental writer & he may not be a suitable example for acceptible use (e.g., would you trust a spell-checker based on Finnegans Wake?) And I can't remember if the other South African writer I've read (Nadine Gordimer) follows this same style.
I mention all of this not to stir up trouble, but to be sure our consensus is as inclusive as possible. -- llywrch 17:28, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
...which is exactly why style guides call for underlining words that were originally in italics when quoting. We all know that Wikipedia is not paper, but it is supposed to be academic. We should be following widely recognized and used academic styles for the exact reasons those styles are used in other academic writings. Exploding Boy 21:37, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)
Yes, but people can learn. The fact that some people may not be familiar with academic citation styles does not mean that we shouldn't use them. Exploding Boy 22:09, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)
All this would be alleviated by stating that Wikipedia uses recognized styles: MLA for humanities topics, APA for psychology, Chicago for sociology, and so on. We could even simplify further by requiring MLA style for all articles. Exploding Boy 22:53, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)
Is there a definitive guide that Wiki's using to define whether or not superscripted ordinals are to be used?
At the moment the Manual of Style section on headings talks about, "Headings begin with a capital letter just like any other normal text. So, capitalise the first letter of the first word and any proper nouns in headings, but leave the rest lower case."
This part of the Manual of Style is WRONG. Normal English usage is to capitalise the major words of headings and sub-headings. For example, to quote section 3.39 of The United States Government Print Office Style Manual 2000:
"3.39. All principal words are capitalized in titles of addresses, articles, books, captions, chapter and part headings, editorials, essays, headings, headlines, motion pictures and plays (including television and radio programs), papers, short poems, reports, songs, subheadings, subjects, and themes. The foregoing are also quoted." [bolding of relevant words is mine]
So, we have Related Links NOT Related links being correct usage. We have other similar incorrect styles used on the Wikipedia for a long time. For article titles we have to capitalise in certain ways for disambiguation. However, for headings and sub-headings within an article normal English language rules for capitalisation of titles should be followed.
Back in March I asked on the talk page of that particular part of the Manual of Style for a reference to a style manual which applies the 'rule' which seems to have been put in place for the Wikipedia. I have not seen anyone put a reference in place. However, after a short search I have found a manual of style from a major American organisation (thus torpedoing the argument that capitalization of major words is a British usage only) which is directly the opposite of what is said with the Wikipedia's guidance.
So, we have an American manual of style, my education and the application of capitalization rules for headings that I have seen in the media to say that the person who put that 'rule' in the Wikipedia Manual of Style was wrong. I would therefore strongly urge that this be changed asap. David Newton 17:16, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I wouldn't support the idea of changing one prescriptive method (which is, in the main, followed) with another one. But would support removing any prescription. Some people like what the MoS says, others (myself included) would prefer your method - but why not allow either? The important thing is to present things nicely so a reader can absorb the info easily - not to prescribe, jguk 19:01, 9 Apr 2005 (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 5 | ← | Archive 10 | Archive 11 | Archive 12 | Archive 13 | Archive 14 | Archive 15 |
A number of points spring to mind:
To this end, I have made a working draft proposal on
Wikipedia:Manual of Style/proposal (the first edit to this page was the current policy, so going to history and looking at the diffs will show what changes are proposed). Please feel free either to edit this page, or to offer comments either here on on
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/proposal. I have also made a draft additional guidance page on
Wikipedia:Guidance on applying the Manual of Style and
Wikipedia talk:Guidance on applying the Manual of Style. All comments would be welcome,
jguk 22:00, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I'd like to suggest the following:
Some points from above are worth repeating:
Some points about style guides and writing for publication:
People who want changes for anything, especialy to things that are long-established, would be wise to consider their approach. Maurreen 02:41, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
In the drafts what does standard English mean? Philip Baird Shearer 14:20, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Would it be helpful if an author could include some metadata in an article indicating the variant of English she is using? This might help prevent inadvertent conflict and acrimony, where the style of English being used wasn't obvious to a contributor. This could be easily accomplished by placing a comment at the top of the page.
<!-- this article is written in Canadian English -->
I write in Canadian English, and I'm sure that many British and U.S. editors would take a look and decide that it's full of spelling errors, if they weren't familiar with it. — Michael Z. 2005-03-15 15:02 Z
<!-- Spelling: en-CA, -ize -->
at the top of
Canada.<!-- Note for copy-editors: Spelling is en-CA, -ize -->
SpNeo 03:05, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)Can't wikipedia replace British spellings with US spellings (and vice versa) on the fly based on a user preference?-- Will2k 14:17, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)
I'm not wild about removal of parts of the guidelines ("quotes", vs "quotes,") simply due to their being under discussion. Perhaps there should simply be an "under discussion" notice on the section. And in any case, it ought to apply equally to the whole punctuation section, not just punctuation-in-quotes -- the serial comma rule and double quotes marks would equally be removed under the proposed revision. Alai 05:06, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Maybe people who want to fight about national differences should just take that to a separate page. I'm not sure any of this has been productive. Maurreen 06:14, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
My perspective is to have a formally expressed official style that is short, to the point, permissive and is already in line with what WPians do - and supplement it by comments on how that official style is interpreted (which is where the national differences discussions will belong). One advantage is that the non-binding supplement could represent more than one view - which should minimise many of these arguments. What's your perspective? jguk 06:59, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Wow, it's good to be back! Having the database read-only is like peering in from behind the Iron Curtain. Not that I'm addicted or anything ... Anyway, I've left comments about Jguk's proposal at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/proposal, but feel free to move or copy it here as preferred. SlimVirgin 07:51, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)
I have publicized the proposal at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals), and WP:RFC. Maurreen 16:44, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I just do want to remark: I am constantly amazed at the people who seem to have nothing better to do than to go through perfectly good, perfectly comprehensible articles, changing "-ise" to "-ize" or vice versa, or changing the forms of the dates back and forth. I've started just ignoring them. -- Jmabel | Talk 09:05, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)
Why can you not just drop attacks on the "national preference"? Articles which are perceived to be linked to a particular English speaking nation, will over time end up using that nation's English because many contributers tend to move articles that way. That the MoS recognize this tends to reduce conflict, all your suggestions which try get the Mos negate the use of specific national styles of English on articles perceived to be linked to a nation, will if adopted, encourage more edit wars not less and may well reduced the influence of the MoS. Philip Baird Shearer 13:36, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Just to add to the confusion, I would like to point out that right now the MoS says nothing at all about hyphens after prefixes like "non" and "anti" and the like. At "non-" OED says, "In the majority of the compounds of non-, the hyphen is usually retained; but it is commonly omitted in the case of a few, such as nonconformist, nonentity, nonsense, in which the etymology has to some extent been lost sight of." But Collins English Dictionary, which is also British, only hyphenates after non- if the next word starts with a capital letter (non-Hodgkin's lymphoma) or an N (non-negotiable). The American dictionaries I've checked only hyphenate between non- and a capital letter, but leave nonnegotiable without a hyphen. Anti- is even worse: OED gives anti-convulsant but anticonvulsive, Collins usually hyphenates anti- before a vowel (except antioxidant) but not before a consonant (unless capitalized, of course), and the American dictionaries hyphenate anti- only before capital letters and I. At the risk of being perceived as an American capitalist imperialist pig-dog, I suggest following the American dictionaries because the rules are easier to follow: don't hyphenate after prefixes unless what they're prefixed to is capitalized, or to prevent the jarring look of two lower-case I's next to each other. -- Angr 18:55, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
If it comes to that, we don't need rules for any of the things covered in the MoS. But we have them anyway. -- Angr 17:15, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Angr , I don't feel strongly either way. Can you draft something and put it here? Maurreen 04:43, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Personally I'd go with the Oxford definitions, but like so many other things, spelling checkers use a set of rules which may or may not conform to perceived national standards. So I think the best to go with any style, but if there is change or an addition to the text which leads to a dispute then go with primary usage. Philip Baird Shearer 10:23, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
My understanding is that no one objected when Hajor stated an intention to reinsert into the style guide the material on splitting the difference for style on quotation marks. My understanding is also that there was no discussion to remove that material, either originally or recently.
Hajor's reinsertion was reverted. I am going to restore it. If anyone disagrees, I ask that you discuss it here and get consensus first. Maurreen 04:43, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I just found out about the reinsertion of that crazy "splitting the difference" rule because I first read the Manual of Style in February and had no idea it had changed until right now (because a BE contributor reverted changes I had made to the Supreme Court of the United States) page to bring it into proper AE style. Just for the record, I preferred the previous rule (which I understood as where contributors simply keyed in their additions in their native dialect and generally refrained from editing each other's dialect peculiarities). The current compromise rule is simply insane, because as some people have pointed out in the archived talk pages, the result looks equally ridiculous to English writers everywhere. -- Coolcaesar 00:10, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
This manual of style requires some British English usage on pages which are dominated by American English, and some American English usage on pages which are dominated by British English. This is but one example of this. This does give a ridiculous result, as Coolcaesar notes - and the Manual regularly gets ignored (for obvious reasons) by many WPians.
Unfortunately all attempts to permit articles to be fully consistent with one standard form of English have met with rebuffs by those unwilling to give up their pet likes. It's a shame, and it means this Manual does not reflect WP practice - but until those users decide to stop dictate their individual preferred styles to others, it's not going to change, jguk 07:22, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
What personal titles are allowed? Someone just went through and added "Chef" to some articles including Bobby Flay. To me, this opens up a can of worms, as these are not official titles. For example, one could go through every article on a conductor and prefix their names with Maestro. – flamurai ( t) 09:23, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)
I'm just noting there doesn't appear to be any discussion of gender neutrality in the Manual of Style. Shouldn't there be?
See: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style archive (gender-neutral pronouns). The issue was also raised (though undiscussed) at Talk:Non-sexist_language#Poll_on_Wikipedia.27s_adopted_gender-neutral_pronoun. Hyacinth 01:25, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I'm a newbie testing the potential of Wikipedia, and a problem has come up concerning stylistic conventions. I find it difficult to locate clear guidelines about this sort of stuff in the Manual of Style, so maybe you guys can help me out.
Background: See the history page of Spartacus (movie) for an exchange of reverts.
Then follow the brief conversation at User talk:Cburnett under "Spartacus (movie) title row".
I mean, this is so very petty... Considering that Casablanca is the only film page that has reached featured article status, I think that a discussion of the stylistic conventions could very well get underway. 62.148.218.217 21:14, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Hi! I have a question about the use of italics. Namely, in the article Pope John Paul I, I used them, then another editor came by and removed them. See comparison of both versions. What approach would be stilistically correct? Thanks for your answer. -- Eleassar777 16:19, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I just thought that all quotations should be in italics, as it is more readable then (at least for me). I got the similar answer at the article's talk page. This should be explained in the Manual. -- Eleassar777 17:49, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Italics are used for several different things, including indicating foreign terms, for emphasis, to refer to words (instead of to what they represent), and for short quotations. None of these are non-standard or odd, but they are a matter of editorial style. — Michael Z. 2005-04-1 19:10 Z
Below is the explanation I wrote on Talk:Pope John Paul I when I edited the quotation and italicisation in the main article. Eleassar777 requested there that I add it to this article under italicisation. I think most of what I stated is already scattered throughout the italicisation & quotes sections, but I thought there might be a place for the last sentence, with the caveat that it applies to quotations short enough to be embedded in the text, not to long quotations offset in their own paragraph.
Binabik80 04:35, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I just encountered this issue about italics/quoting with The Cantos. And while my changes may have been accepted, I have to admit that it is possibile that using italics for quotations is considered good practice in some English-speaking countries who copy the practice from (IIRC) French. In the novels of James Joyce (an Irish writer) & Alan Paton (a South African), dialogue is presented as follows. When the quotation begins a paragraph:
And when the quotation is embedded in a paragraph:
Obviously, if this standard practice in these two countries, Wikipedia should acknowledge it & accept it. However, I know Joyce was an experimental writer & he may not be a suitable example for acceptible use (e.g., would you trust a spell-checker based on Finnegans Wake?) And I can't remember if the other South African writer I've read (Nadine Gordimer) follows this same style.
I mention all of this not to stir up trouble, but to be sure our consensus is as inclusive as possible. -- llywrch 17:28, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
...which is exactly why style guides call for underlining words that were originally in italics when quoting. We all know that Wikipedia is not paper, but it is supposed to be academic. We should be following widely recognized and used academic styles for the exact reasons those styles are used in other academic writings. Exploding Boy 21:37, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)
Yes, but people can learn. The fact that some people may not be familiar with academic citation styles does not mean that we shouldn't use them. Exploding Boy 22:09, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)
All this would be alleviated by stating that Wikipedia uses recognized styles: MLA for humanities topics, APA for psychology, Chicago for sociology, and so on. We could even simplify further by requiring MLA style for all articles. Exploding Boy 22:53, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)
Is there a definitive guide that Wiki's using to define whether or not superscripted ordinals are to be used?
At the moment the Manual of Style section on headings talks about, "Headings begin with a capital letter just like any other normal text. So, capitalise the first letter of the first word and any proper nouns in headings, but leave the rest lower case."
This part of the Manual of Style is WRONG. Normal English usage is to capitalise the major words of headings and sub-headings. For example, to quote section 3.39 of The United States Government Print Office Style Manual 2000:
"3.39. All principal words are capitalized in titles of addresses, articles, books, captions, chapter and part headings, editorials, essays, headings, headlines, motion pictures and plays (including television and radio programs), papers, short poems, reports, songs, subheadings, subjects, and themes. The foregoing are also quoted." [bolding of relevant words is mine]
So, we have Related Links NOT Related links being correct usage. We have other similar incorrect styles used on the Wikipedia for a long time. For article titles we have to capitalise in certain ways for disambiguation. However, for headings and sub-headings within an article normal English language rules for capitalisation of titles should be followed.
Back in March I asked on the talk page of that particular part of the Manual of Style for a reference to a style manual which applies the 'rule' which seems to have been put in place for the Wikipedia. I have not seen anyone put a reference in place. However, after a short search I have found a manual of style from a major American organisation (thus torpedoing the argument that capitalization of major words is a British usage only) which is directly the opposite of what is said with the Wikipedia's guidance.
So, we have an American manual of style, my education and the application of capitalization rules for headings that I have seen in the media to say that the person who put that 'rule' in the Wikipedia Manual of Style was wrong. I would therefore strongly urge that this be changed asap. David Newton 17:16, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I wouldn't support the idea of changing one prescriptive method (which is, in the main, followed) with another one. But would support removing any prescription. Some people like what the MoS says, others (myself included) would prefer your method - but why not allow either? The important thing is to present things nicely so a reader can absorb the info easily - not to prescribe, jguk 19:01, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)