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 175 | ← | Archive 179 | Archive 180 | Archive 181 | Archive 182 | Archive 183 | → | Archive 185 |
Currently, this style guide suggests de-capitalizing quoted sentences:
However, I have never seen another English-language source that does this, and every grammar guide that I could find on the internet recommends the opposite:
Also, I checked the Chicago Manual of Style (which I have a physical copy of) and The New York Times, and they both disagree with our recommendation. From a practical point of view I also think that our recommendation is bad advice as it can potentially change the reading of the sentence (by implying that the quotation is a partial, rather than complete, sentence). Would anyone object if I remove the bullet point cited above? Kaldari ( talk) 19:17, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
I agree the current wording is misleading, verging on outright incorrect, and has incrementally drifted away from what we arguably had some sort of consensus for at some point, despite its flaws, which was the 2012 wording quoted above. The older wording roughly agrees with a few external style guides (our current wording on this probably agrees with none). However, in both cases MoS's conceptualization and illustration of the idea is sorely confused and confusing, because it's equating aphorisms and epigrams with quotations, and the two are not the same thing. We probably do not need to retain capitalization of any form of cliché when it appears mid-sentence. Some external guides would, others would not. Most would not use quotation marks; some would use italics, some no markup. Most of those things are pretty arbitrary, reall.
The serious WP problem with regard to just reverting to the 2012 version for actual quotations is that it violates the principle of minimal change (PMC) rather badly. We should probably adopt the strictest of the numerous approaches to this issue, and not change the case, in either direction, unless it's done with a bracketed editorial change, writing to avoid that construction if possible. Another issue is that many if not most editors, and external style guides, will not accept The doctor said "He only has a week to live." or even The doctor said "[h]e only has a week to live." as valid, due to lack of punctuation. External style guides almost unanimously want either a colon or a comma here, and the majority of them recommend a colon when it's a complete sentence:
I know this is how I write here, no one reverts me when I fix stuff to be written this way, and I don't seem to need to do it all that often. I thus move that we adopt the three "rules" illustrated in green here, and permit the use of bracketed changes of case when they seem necessary (e.g., when beginning our own sentence with a quote that was not the beginning of the quoted sentence: "[O]nly has a week to live" was the doctor's prognosis), but not "silent" changes that mislead the reader (as in The doctor said: "he only has a week to live." when the original was "He ..."). It would be hypocritical to retain logical quotation on a PMC basis, and then ignore the PMC to mimic sloppy, journalistic writing style, especially after so many things from journalistic style have been rejected as unencyclopedically informal, or expedient at the cost of clarity. Although I can think of someone who would have made some kind of WP:ENGVAR argument, there is no strong national tie. There's a bit of favoritism toward The doctor said, "He only has a week to live." in American sources, and toward The doctor said: "He only has a week to live." in British ones, but it is not universal, and WP has a clear rationale (actually multiple ones) to prefer the latter.
If we start adopting journalistic quotation style, this will breathe new life into all sorts of tendentious, disruptive campaigning, e.g. against dashes, against a consistent approach to dates, placenames, and measurement/unit handling, in favor of always capitalizing job titles, toward the over-capitalization of trivial words in work/composition titles, etc., etc., etc. There are dozens of ways that news writing diverges from the more formal register WP uses, and agitation for journo style is probably the #1 source of MoS-related conflict (or maybe #2, after the WP:SSF).
Sourcing work for this should probably be done at Quotation marks in English, since it covers capitalization after, and punctuation before, the opening quotation mark, and the article badly needs work in this regard. We might even want to defer consideration of the the above until this work is done.
— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 15:44, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
Kaldari started off this thread by quoting the MOS:
But it's important to understand the context of that guideline. It is amongst a list of changes one is allowed to make to a quotation without being viewed as having misquoted the source. A similar example is being allowed to change slanted quote marks to straight quote marks. Just because it's allowed doesn't mean it's always a good idea. Kaldari also says the Chicago Manual of Style disagrees with our recommendation. But my version (16th ed.) says in sec. 13.13 "the first word in a quoted passage must often be adjusted to conform to the surrounding text. In most types of works, this adjustment may be done silently, as such capitalization does not normally affect the significance of the quoted material, which is assumed to have been taken from another context. In some types of works, however, it may be obligatory to indicate the change by bracketing the initial quoted letter; for examples of this practice, appropriate to legal writing and some types of textural commentary, see 13.16."
Section 13.14 gives examples of changing the capitalization or not, depending the degree to which the quoted passage is integrated into the whole sentence:
But
Perhaps the problem is that some of the items in the list of things that can be done to a quote should always be done (changing slanted quotes to straight quotes) and other things are optional (expanding abbreviations). But I wouldn't want to over-complicate the guideline by trying to include language to indicate mandatory vs. optional changes, because one can usually find a rare exception for something that approaches being mandatory. Jc3s5h ( talk) 16:35, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
@ Jc3s5h, SMcCandlish, and Peter coxhead: What do you think about removing the current bullet point and adding the following guidance at the end of the "Typographic conformity" section (to reflect what was agreed on in the previous discussions):
The issue of commas and colons is already dealt with in MOS:QUOTEMARKS and referred to from the colon and comma sections, so I don't think we need to repeat it in MOS:QUOTE. Kaldari ( talk) 01:46, 15 March 2016 (UTC)
When quoting a complete sentence, it is recommended to keep the first word capitalized unless the quoted passage has been integrated into the surrounding sentence (case changes, like other alterations, are indicated with square brackets).
@ Jc3s5h, @ Kaldari: I tried some repair on the Gandhi quote in second example by taking out the redundant and interruptive "that" in my earlier revision, but it's still poor, though better than the original for multiple reasons. (No offense intended; it's actually very difficult to come up with a good example using famous quotation; I tried for about an hour.) The problem is that the whole construction is unencyclopedic; it's something for a dictionary of quotations and a book of advice, which WP:ISNOT.
We need to replace it with something actually illustrative of how we write here, not marred by two editorial [changes] at once, and without first- or second-person pronouns. Something along the lines of:
But I'm so dead tired my brain is rebelling and demanding that I hit the pillow. Can youse guys come up with a good one? It's way more important that we give examples that match our usage, even if there invented, than that we try to find great quotes from famous people. We quote statements from sources way, way more often than notables' bon mots. But a real example is probably easy to find in any MEDRS dispute. >;-) — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 11:54, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
A 2015 Public Health England report concluded that: "[Electronic cigarette] use releases negligible levels of nicotine into ambient air with no identified health risks to bystanders".However, this is clumsy, and the actual wording used as of now is
A 2015 Public Health England report concluded that e-cigarette use "releases negligible levels of nicotine into ambient air with no identified health risks to bystanders".Only if the quoted sentence is well-known in its entirety, i.e. as a sentence as well as for what it says, is it likely that we wouldn't be willing to extract from it and thus avoid the issue. Peter coxhead ( talk) 12:20, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
Anyway, if we use something realistic in the format used for the pseudo-example, we could even include our standard suggestion to rewrite to avoid the need for the change, but I think Kaldari's "Acceptable" gets that across nicely without having to spell it out. Really, the point of the segment is: "Keep the capital if the quote works well as a sentence after a colon; don't keep it – but don't transgress WP:PMC – when the quote needs to flow into the surrounding sentence." Ideally we can illustrate the entire set of concepts in just two variants of one example. My eyes are too lidded to go look for it right now. Good night! :-) — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 12:57, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
Because it doesn't flow as visually smoothly as text without brackets, most of us would rewrite when possible. Something like According to a November 2015 study by the NIH, "[t]he rate of reported cancers of this type has dropped steadily since 1990". is rarely needed. If that was a full sentence, do: According to a November 2015 study by the NIH: "The rate of reported cancers of this type has dropped steadily since 1990." If it was not, do: "According to a November 2015 study by the NIH, the "rate of reported cancers of this type has dropped steadily since 1990"., or "According to a November 2015 study by the NIH, the reported incidence of this type of cancer "has dropped steadily since 1990"., or whatever. Simple. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 22:46, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
The doctor said, "He only has a week to live.""does not comport with the common colon-before-full-sentence rule". I have never seen this rule. – Corinne ( talk) 00:09, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
There's an RfC at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Wikipedia:Disambiguation and inherently ambiguous titles about the sentence in WP:Disambiguation that encompasses the long-standing practice at WP:RM of permitting natural disambiguation for precision-and-recognizability reasons even in the absence of an actual article title collision. This frequently arises with breeds, cultivars, landraces, and other non-human populations the names of which may be confused with human ones (e.g. the move of Algerian Arab, now a disambiguation page, to Algerian Arab sheep, and of British White to British White cattle to ease confusion with the White British). — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 17:14, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
I propose an addition bullet point under:
Article titles, headings, and sections[edit]
Article titles[edit]
Main page: Wikipedia:Article titles
When choosing an article's title, refer to the article titles policy. A title should be a recognizable name or description of the topic that is natural, sufficiently precise, concise, and consistent with the titles of related articles. If these criteria are in conflict, they should be balanced against one another.
...followed by several bullet points
--
The proposed new bullet point is that:
The rationale is that frequently, I see examples like this...
Linate Airport was the site of the Linate Airport disaster on 8 October 2001, when Scandinavian Airlines Flight 686, which was bound for Copenhagen Airport, (comment Linate Airport disaster appears to be used only because it is a WP article name. A better alternative would be "A collision involving Scandinavian Airlines Flight 686 pm 8 October 2001, which was bound for Copenhagen Airport,...)
André Adam (10 September 1936 – 22 March 2016) was a Belgian diplomat. He was killed in the 2016 Brussels bombings.
Ensign Hapuna of the Royal Hawaiian Navy ( talk) 19:32, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
I find several articles that are using Bold lettering to highlight something. I'm sure it is incorrect, but couldn't find anything in the manuyal of style that mentions the use of boldface type. Did I miss it? StarHOG ( talk) 17:01, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
In considering software or distribution products that are typically only provided as online/broadcasted services, such as online websites, software with online functionality (like MMOs), television and radio networks, and the like, and where that service has been fully terminated making the product non-functional or usable, it seems odd to use present tense to discuss the product in the lede. For example Google Reader currently starts with "was an RSS reader"; if it was switched to "is a discontinued RSS reader...", it implies that one could get it, which of course is not true. (In contrast, the current example of a "PDP-10 is a discontinued computer line" makes sense since with effort I can still find a PDP-10 in existence even if I can't buy it new). I would propose that TENSE reflect that when specifically talking about a service that can no longer be used or accessed at all because it was discontinued, that we write that in the past tense. Note that this does have some blurred lines. Taking an MMO as an example, while the MMO may be discontinued one could potentially still find physical or digital copies of the software, suggesting we use "is" for tense in the first sentence, but because the software is otherwise non-functional without the server to support it, it still makes sense to use "was" for the tense. -- MASEM ( t) 21:55, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
I've started compressing out massive redundancy at MOS:RETAIN, which is still much too verbose.
MOS:RETAIN Wording as of this writing
|
---|
When an English variety's consistent usage has been established in an article, maintain it in the absence of consensus to the contrary. With few exceptions (e.g., when a topic has strong national ties or a term/spelling carries less ambiguity), there is no valid reason for such a change. When no English variety has been established and discussion cannot resolve the issue, default to the English variety used in the first post- stub revision to introduce an identifiable variety. The variety established for use in a given article can be documented by placing the appropriate Varieties of English template on its talk page. An article should not be edited or renamed simply to switch from one variety of English to another. The |
I did
the same and more at
WP:CITEVAR [but it was reverted, pending further discussion]: merging redundant sentences; normalizing to MOS:RETAINS's sensible standard of first post-stub revision to establish a clear style; removal of the same kind of infantile, claim-staking
WP:OWN /
WP:VESTED nonsense already purged from MoS, fixed reversal or order of consensus determination (CITEVAR had "first major contributor" (now "first non-stub..." first, but it's a last-resort default if consensus process fails). Between
Peter coxhead's earlier work on the section and my last major go, this section is now a concision model for MOS:RETAIN.
WP:CITEVAR wording as of this writing
|
---|
As with spelling differences, editors should not change an article's established citation style merely on the grounds of personal preference or to make it match other articles. If you believe an established style is inappropriate for the needs of the article, seek consensus for a change on the talk page. If discussion does not resolve the issue, default to the style used in the first post- stub revision to introduce a consistent citation style. If an article has no consistent citation style, an editor may use whichever style seems best for the article. |
— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 11:47, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
There's a lot more to do.
The sections found so far that need this treatment (feel free to add more) are:
Also with wording that may be implicated:
To-do list
|
---|
The first two items are from Wikipedia talk:Citing sources, generalized [will need more drafting]:
|
Let's get to it. We've been talking about this for months. I've left pointers to this discussion at WT:MOSNUM and WT:CITE for now. I figure MoS should get is own house in order before trying to harmonize with TITLEVAR. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 11:47, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
That feud is over. There is clearly a WP-wide consensus that these cite styles are permissible and should be, well, in their style, not half in their style and half in MoS style. So, we just make it part of MoS, and all is well for the first time in a very long time. Right now, we basically have a POVfork situation, but the viewpoints have become the same again. I feel pretty confident in saying this because I used to be one of the vocal opponents of using external styles. I changed my mind, and I don't know anyone who has not either seen the light or become resigned to the fact. I might have been the last hold out for all I know.
[My road to citation Damascus: Aside from it just becoming clear that "the meta-RfC was closed", as it were, what convinced me was a conversation with a chemist who made the case that our readers totally
WP:DGAF (not his words) about citation formatting, but our expert editors care about it a great deal. It is a touchstone for them, an anchor of familiarity in the chaos of writing in an academically alien environment with rules that are (aside from complicated) seemingly backward to them. We want secondary sources. They can't cite their own influential paper without getting accused of self-promotion. Admins younger than their university students have more authority than they do. They have to cite sources for things they consider ridiculously obvious. We have old research we're reporting as factual when a paper came out last week blowing holes in it, just because there aren't any literature reviews that have caught up to it yet. But they can deal with all this if you let them cite how they know how to cite, using the format is "real" to them. I found this very compelling.
—
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼
16:37, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
In the "to do list" above, the text "A consistent style needs a note (even a footnote) defining it [in the context of guide guideline implementation] as non-trivial and an actual style (consistent, programmatic and identifiable)." appears. I object to this strongly if it is intended to say or imply that a "consistent style' must be a documented or published style. If it doesn't intend that, i want to know what an "actual style" means. And insofar as this regards citation styles, I want to see this discussed at WT:CITE, not here. DES (talk) 15:45, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
WP:Stand-alone lists (formerly MOS:SAL) used to be a drama factory, even to the point of people denying that it wasn't a guideline because "MoS is a style guideline, and this is a content rule! That's not valid!" or "This is a naming convention, I wanna to take the MoS tag off it and get rid of the style rules", etc. Today it is part MoS, part naming convention, and mostly content guideline, each part distinguished as such, but centralized at that page instead of split up. because it makes more sense for editors' sanity. Zero drama, way more clarity. We need more of that. Many (most?) of us consider WP:CITE part of MOS to the extent it covers style. It even has shortcuts in it like MOS:IBID. The roadblocks are easy to clear if we just do it, or more like just agree to let them roll away – he've been holding them in place with great effort on a steep hill. This entire split is illusory and worse that pointless; all it does it cause FUD and confusion (for everyone, not just the pages' editors, who are mostly the same people; it's really schizophrenic).
How much trouble could it possibly be to add a line-item to MoS saying that certain style rules do not apply inside citations that follow particular defined styles? Cross-referenced to the more detailed MOS section at WP:CITE on this citation styles, just like MOS-main leaves the details of list article formatting the SAL, and just summarize a few key points. (And be specific enough that people don't do stupid or WP:GAMING things. "Ooh, I can use 40 flag icons and 50-point font because it's inside a ref tag!" No.)
So: MoS (our own left hand) scratches the itch at CITE (our right) to not have default MoS rules bollix up APA, Vancouver or whatever citations. CITE scratches MoS's itch: "yes, WP has a style guide, and our style material is [now] an intact part of it, just like at SAL". MOS scratches back: "Of course MOS is not a content guideline and WT:MOS discussions are not going to change citation procedures; that's not part of the MoS section." CITE scratching back: "Sure, WT:CITE will not make up new style rules that conflict with MOS." Much better than two itchy hands for no reason. Suddenly everyone's happy, especially the whole rest of the editorship, who have long been conflicted about which "competing" style guide to follow as soon as they hit a <
ref>
tag. Imagine the joy over at
Help talk:CS1. Aside from these citation-style-specific matters, citations do actually follow MoS; there really is only a very small bridge to rebuild.
Then there will no longer be any perceived "threat" to the content guidelines in CITE, just as there is not at SAL (mostly the same people again). I think this is more urgent than it may seem, too. We are getting an increasing number of problems as people try to fork "their" page further and further from MOS, largely due to miscommunication and no small amount of territoriality. So much so that there was serious talk only a month or so ago of mostly merging AT back into MoS. It would probably be far more productive, for the same reason SAL material is topically centralized, to do a sectional "virtual merge", with style material in it being organized into a MoS-tagged section.
I've wanted to see an end to this divisiveness for so very, very long. At any rate, this is not a proposal to !vote on right this second. People probably have things to add to or modify about this idea. I do have to point out how flawlessly the SAL solution has worked, though. It's just been totally painless.
—
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼
15:13, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
Unproductive time-sink —
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼
19:34, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
|
---|
SMcCandlish Regarding your recent edit to Wikipedia:Manual of Style, like you, I am all for clarity and conciseness, but I think there may be some problems with the wording you introduced. (I mean no harsh criticism of your commendable effort; this is not easy.) 1) When you tell editors to "default" to something (a) it may not be clear to all editors what that means; I think more ordinary words should be used so they know what to do, or not do, and (b) usually, I believe, the verb "default" is used for something non-human: X defaults to Y when...; furthermore, the noun/adjective form is more common: "the default is", or "the default setting is". 2) Adding the phrase "to introduce an identifiable variety" after already saying editors should "default" to something – which could mean "leave it the way it is", but is not clear as I mentioned above – is confusing. What does that mean, anyway? Does it mean to ensure consistency in the article or to post a tag that identifies the English variety to be used in the article, or something else? I actually like the first sentence the way it was written:
I think it is the second sentence that needs re-writing:
Saying, "the tie is broken" makes it sound like this is a competitive sport. I think it should be more descriptive:
– Corinne ( talk) 14:27, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
|
A concern was raised in the forked discussion at
WT:CITE#Consistent citation style that if someone wants to change from one form of <
ref>
-based citation code formatting to a different one with the same end-user output (style), e.g. to
WP:LDR, that a failure to reach consensus about such a change would constitute a total failure of consensus about style [in that scenario, of
WP:CITEVAR style, but the issue is generalizable to ENGVAR and DATEVAR], and thus result in defaulting back to the first non-stub version of all of it, e.g. to citation formatting from 2005 that pre-dated the introduction of the ref tag!
That would not be a desirable result, obviously, and one we an't permit as a valid interpretation. The general WP principle – which a style guideline can't undo – is to default to the status quo if there's no consensus for a change, regardless what kind of change it is. This whole conversation points out the futility of trying to treat code-level aspects of formatting of citations (or anything else) as "style". It results in some of us mentally wikilawyering ourselves into an anti- WP:COMMONSENSE absurdity.
The VAR rules should be written clearly enough to prevent anyone trying to WP:GAME with such an interpretation, but we needn't take the interpretation seriously ourselves. The simplest solution is to clarify in some way like the following:{{block indent|1=
But get this across in more compact wording. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 19:48, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
I see both used, but which is mos-compliant? Is there any relevant guidance? Dondervogel 2 ( talk) 09:21, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
See the first entry in Garner's The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style, which supports "a" and quotes Mark Twain, 1882, "Correct writers of the American language do not put an before those words." Dicklyon ( talk) 15:25, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
To amplify Dick Lyon's citation above: The updated and internationally expanded Garner's Modern English Usage (which supersedes the ODAUS and its larger version Garner's Modern American Usage) concurs, on pp. l, 1. It notes of the historically attested variance of a / an usage "that's no excuse for a modern writer". It includes an analysis of this trend over time, with authorities since Fowler's Dictionary of English Usage (UK, 1926) agreeing to use a not an before words like "historical" and "humble" despite the existence of regional dialects in which the h- is silent. It contiues: "Today ... such wordings as *an hypothesis, *an hereditary title, *an historic era are likely to strike readers and listeners as affectations in need of editing". It's listed as stage 4 in the language change index ("virtually universal but is opposed ... by a few linguistic stalwarts (the traditionalists that David Foster Wallace dubbed 'snoots')". That's a compelling reason to avoid doing it here. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 20:18, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
It may be time to hold an RfC – after some additional usability checks – on permitting (maybe even recommending) curly quotes instead of straight ones. It appears that the last remaining technical issue is in-page searches in Internet Explorer, a browser that Microsoft has already replaced, but which still has a userbase in older versions of Windows. No one that I know of has even tested this in years. It's worth seeing whether current versions of IE even still have the problem that a search for Sofie's Choice
will not find the string Sofie’s Choice
or vice versa (and doing similar tests on double quotation marks). —
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼
19:01, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
I agree that there's no requirement, but this is a collaborative atmosphere; if at all possible, it is (at least) my personal expectation that I write in !compliance with the style guide (or any guideline, naturally), so as to lessen others' burden.
I'm not sure I agree regarding non-trivial work--copy and pasting a Word document (for that's where curly quotes surely originate for the most part) into Notepad before saving sanitizes the input. (It also washes away some UTF-8/16 characters of course, so editors need to be wary, of course). -- Izno ( talk) 22:52, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
<table class=“wikitable”>...</table>
simply will not work to apply the wikitable
class to a table. Most browsers will skip right over it, and apply no class at all. --
Redrose64 (
talk)
14:24, 29 March 2016 (UTC)Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:Citation needed#Apologies, but object strongly, to content in article here based on decades of experience. A WP:Permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn ( talk) 23:21, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
Disclaimer: I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this question.
I came across an article that had info boxes with links to non-free images, in place of actual images. I was of the opinion that this was non-standard, and pretty ugly. Are there any previous cases, guidelines, etc that cover this type of issue?
[ [8]]
The above is one (of many) instances of info boxes with links in the article.
This is the current format of the info boxes (although I have aligned it to the left, so it fits a little better on this talk page):
Madeleine's bedroom window
showing the exterior shutter
Spacecowboy420 ( talk) 09:10, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
We should episode count on TV show franchises pages, not in season pages if that makes any of you feel better. Episode count in franchise pages, like NCIS franchise, Chicago franchise, Law & Order franchise and such, should have episode appearance count because they can intertwine in different shows. Like what you see in Chicago shows you'll see main characters from Fire, P.D. and Med appear in different Chicago shows as guest stars many times before. Some main characters in those franchises sometimes never appear in that episode for storyline reasons and other reasons, despite the fact they are credited in the episode they didn't appear in. All the more reasons to have episode appearances count in franchise pages. BattleshipMan ( talk) 14:49, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
In Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Singular_nouns, the three options include #2 "Just add an apostrophe" (for singular nouns ending with one s). Is it true that this style is recommended by any reputable grammar or style guide? I'm familiar with the others, #1 being what Strunk & White says, and #3 being seen in some less prescriptive guides. But #2 – where does that come from? Dicklyon ( talk) 04:24, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
Some writers and publishers prefer the system, formerly more common, of simply omitting the possessive s on all words ending in s. The Associated Press style guide says that only an apostrophe should be used after all proper nouns ending in s, though the AP guide is a bit bizarre on other fronts. — Nizolan (talk) 18:03, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
Moses'is fine in writing, but I would say it must be pronounced with two syllables, and
Moses'smust be pronounced with three. -- Trovatore ( talk) 19:48, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
The use of en dashes between physical locations has become a bit of an issue after a recent page move. I have an opinion on this but I was seeking clarification. When talking about a road (in this case the "Pacific Motorway") between Brisbane and Brunswick Heads, which is correct:
The MOS is bit vague on this. Examples point to one of the options being correct, while MOS:ENDASH can be taken as pointing to the other. -- AussieLegend ( ✉) 11:04, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
"The en dash in a range is always unspaced, except when at least one endpoint of the range includes at least one space". The disambiguation term is the range Brisbane to Brunswick Heads, or Brisbane through Brunswick Heads. At Talk:Pacific_Motorway_(Brisbane–Brunswick_Heads)#Title, HandsomeFella has said "I'm pretty sure that goes for date/time ranges only" – if the ranges section is really meant to refer to only certain types of ranges, perhaps this could be clarified in the MOS. - Evad37 [ talk 02:10, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
Thanks. -- 79.115.170.40 ( talk) 22:55, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
How about if the topic is debateably tied to either one of HK or Mainland China, the latter of which would definitely not be covered under TIES. Faye Wong has had a mixture of British and American spellings for over a decade, the earliest versions seeming to favour American spelling ("flavor" has apparently survived since 2004), but could an argument be made that the article should be using "Hong Kong English", which presumably (I don't know) would be closer to British? Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 09:05, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Icons#Use of flag icons on genocide-related articles. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 21:30, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
There is a discussion underway to move the article Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (with a single comma) to Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Please share your opinion on the matter at Talk:Martin Luther King, Jr. Day#Requested move 22 April 2016. Thank you. Dicklyon ( talk) 03:48, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
User:AnomieBOT has been adding new redirects to talk pages with en dash in their titles, "because titles with en-dashes are hard to type". Do people really ever type the titles of talk pages? I understand it's encouraged for article titles, but talk pages, too? Anyway, since about April 7 it has added about 30,000 of them. That tells me that the MOS has succeeded in educating users about how to use en dashes in various contexts (scanning quickly I didn't notice any misuses, but there could be some of those, too). Dicklyon ( talk) 03:38, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
Under Plurals, it says "allow for cases" where the common dictionary plural differs from the original root-language plural. To me, "allow for" means it's OK to use the non-dictionary-preferred form, but the examples given seem to indicate the opposite. The two dictionaries I use most both list "excursuses (also excursus)" as the plural of excursus, so I assume we are not talking about words for which the dictionary omits the archaic plural entirely.
Full disclosure: I want to use the dictionary-preferred plurals in every case. I particularly dislike the affected "aquaria," which I see all over the place in Wikipedia.
Can we adjust the language in the MOS so that this is a little clearer, one way or the other? Krychek ( talk) 19:26, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
the more widely used of multiple alternativeswas always preferred then Wikipedia would be written in US English. [For what it's worth, Google ngrams show that "aquariums" overtook "aquaria" in the American English corpus around 1982, whereas "aquaria" remains more popular (just) up to the last year of data (2008) in British English.] Dictionaries are also inconsistent: MeriamWebster online gives "femurs" before "femora" but "tibiae" before "tibias", but it would surely be more appropriate to use "femurs" and "tibias" in an article or "femora" and "tibiae", the choice depending on the nature of the article. Peter coxhead ( talk) 17:20, 20 April 2016 (UTC)
In this edit I tried to fix what I find as a not-uncommon weird lede structure of the form "The <title> refers to ..." or "The <title> is the name of ..." – essentially mixing up the possibility to use the subject name or to refer to it. A possible fix would be "<Title> is the name of ..." or something like that, italicizing the mentioned term. But it seems preferable, and much more common to just use instead of mention, as "The <title> is ...".
Question: is this addressed anywhere in the MOS? If not, should it be? Dicklyon ( talk) 18:36, 20 April 2016 (UTC)
Here's another like that: [9]. Should the MOS contain advice to prefer such? Dicklyon ( talk) 17:09, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
I contend such distinctions very often, especially in articles on alleged new animal breeds (most of which are really landrace populations, and some in-bred pets a few people are trying to promote for profit, often with multiple names. To make up an example (and thus avoid picking on a particular article), one of them might start: "Quux dog is a name advanced by the Baz Kennel Association (BKA) for a variety of dog originally found in Shangrila. The local landrace population is referred to as fnordu in Shangrilese. It is a large herding dog, and [descriptive stuff here]. Starting in 2005, Western breeders in Idaho and New South Wales have been working to develop a standardized breed from imported Shangrilese specimens. The BKA recognizes these selectively bred dogs under the name Quux in the breed registry's "Experimental" category, but no other registries recognize either the Western or original dogs as a breed." Something to that effect. The original PoV-pushing version might have read something like "The Quux dog or 'Fnordu' is a breed of herding dog from Shangrila. It is [description]." I restructure the material to be more factual and to avoid implying questionable assertions about breed status, even to remove the "The [Name]" construction that implies that the population is singular, unique, and universally recognized as such. This kind of cleanup comes up frequently with "designer crossbreeds" being aggressively promoted as "new breeds" but which are not; there's no such thing as "the" labradoodle, and it is not a proper name; there are just labradoodles (or a labradoodle, in the singular, per Blueboar's comment about a vs. the, above).
Anyway, the point is that sometimes less direct wording is necessary, but its not necessary to italicize (or quote), as words-as-words, any alternative names that are not being approached as linguistic material. Using either style may be confusing, especially when used with proper names; the italics are easily mistaken for emphasis or the marking of a foreign term, and quotes are apt to be inferred as "so-called" scare-quoting. I'd make an exception for nicknames and epithets like "Jack the Ripper"; those conventionally go in quotation marks anyway: Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson. See, e.g.,
Black Dahlia, which gets it just right. There's no need to mark up something like Bigfoot or Jack Rose with quotes or italics, except later in the piece: "The name Jack Rose derives from ...".
—
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼
02:03, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
Does anyone have a problem with "would" in "Their descendants would continue to inhabit Pitcairn into the 21st century" or with "just" in "just one surviving mutineer"? I've been told they don't sound right to BrE ears. - Dank ( push to talk) 12:05, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
I added the following as I have been seeing lots of quote spam in the past few months..-- Moxy ( talk) 17:40, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
"While quotations are an indispensable part of Wikipedia, try not to overuse them. Brief quotations of copyrighted text may be used to illustrate a point, establish context, or attribute a point of view or idea. It is generally recommended that content be written in Wikipedia editor's own words. Using too many quotes is incompatible with an encyclopedic writing style. Consider minimizing the use of quotations by paraphrasing, as quotes shouldn't replace plain and concise text."
In the Manual of Style we have a section National varieties of English with a shortcut ( MOS:ENGVAR), which is useful to cite when reverting edits that arbitrarily change the variant of English used.
Regarding other style options we have the third paragraph of the lead (...editors should not change an article from one of those styles to another without a good reason....), and also a link to an Arbcom decision regarding changing date notation between BC/AD and BCE/CE. This is less easy to cite. So could we have a section that proscribes arbitrary changes of style - with a handy shortcut?
The sort of style changes I have in mind include changing between and [10] and between ordinary brackets and square brackets [11] and between LaTeX and HTML (without consultation or consensus). -- catslash ( talk) 21:23, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
At this point, I'm not sure how we could craft a general rule – if consensus actually wanted one, which does not appear to be the case – that wouldn't be abused by
WP:OWNers to
WP:GAME everyone half to death. The most likely and negative result of it would be that someone who favors a non-encyclopedic style (e.g. all the comma abandonment that is common in news writing – In 2016 David Bowie died of cancer) would feel empowered to fight forever to prevent anyone else improving the prose and formatting. If some particular mathematical styles should be left alone, because people fight endlessly about them, project-wide, that might be a rationale for a "MOS:MATHVAR", but I don't see any evidence the problem is widespread enough to warrant this. I don't see any discussion at
Talk:Triple product indicating intractable dispute about the math formatting edit you use an example of a problem, for example. Where there's no smoke, there's probably no fire. Anyway, there is no "consultation" process, and consensus is not required to make a change (consensus is required for a change to stick). "That wasn't discussed first" is not a real revert rationale; "this is problematic because [legitimate reason here], see discussion on talk page" is a real rationale.
—
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼
00:48, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
Even though
MOS:SINGLE says that in simple glosses, "unfamiliar terms are usually enclosed in single quotes",
[1] that section links to
Gloss (annotation) § In linguistics, which references only Historical Linguistics: An Introduction, a book printed and bound in Great Britain (where in most contexts, '
is used instead of "
), and a book in which the author does not distinguish between the singles and doubles (for example, "books or articles on ‘proper’ English ..."),
[2]: 10 and moreover, uses ‘typographical quotation marks’ instead of the typewriter‑style 'apostrophes' and "straight quotation marks" that
MOS:QUOTEMARKS recommends.
I am not aware of any other English‑language encyclopedia that differentiates between single and double quotations in the way we currently recommend, and the contents of MOS:SINGLE appear to be what came from a 2006 discussion which found house style recommendations for double quotation marks or parentheses, but not for single quotation marks in glosses only. There is no support whatsoever for the use of apostrophes in glosses and quotation marks elsewhere, which is what we currently recommend.
The answer is probably just that: replace the text like so:
— LLarson ( said & done) 15:05, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
The single quotes are uniform, very nearly universal, usage in all linguistics materials, and it's very useful since it distinguishes precisely what the thing is, a gloss of what just came before, and not some other kind of annotation. Most obvious external source for this is the Linguist Society of America stylesheet: "After the first occurrence of non-English forms, provide a gloss in single quotation marks". The Chicago Manual of Style also covers this. So does the Canadian Journal of Linguistics style guide [13]. So do university linguistics dept. style guides (e.g. this one): "Use only single quotation marks for quotes within quotes and for glosses of foreign words. ... Cited forms in a foreign language should be followed at their first occurrence by a gloss in single quotation marks." And this one from U. of Alabama: "After the first occurrence of non-English forms, provide a gloss in single quotation marks". And various ones provided by linguistics professors/researchers like this one by Haspelmath ("Single quotation marks are used exclusively for linguistic meanings, e.g. Latin habere 'have' is not cognate with Old English hafian 'have'."), and another by Gruyter Mouton, and so on. There are only two major linguistics journals that don't insist on it. But seriously, you can just Google this in five seconds and find a whole flood of material about this [14]. Interlinear, morpheme-by-morpheme glosses should be formatted as un-bordered tables. This is part of the Leipzig Glossing Rule], a widely adopted standard (may well be near-universal now; I can't remember the last time I saw linguistic material that did not follow it, and it was already standard by the 1990s in all the classes I took in the subject. One of the above cited pages says it is part of basic competency in the field now.)
If I didn't have real work to do today, I could easily provide 50+ citations for this stuff in about an hour or two. Please do your research before coming here and declaring what the real-world "facts" are. "There is no support whatsoever"? When you come here with confrontational declarations like this but clearly haven't looked into the matter and are just going by your vague opinion of how things should be, you will not gain any traction on any concern you might be trying to raise. PS: You seem to be unaware that in plain ASCII, as we use for punctuation characters (i.e. not curly quotes, per MOS:CURLY), the apostrophe and single quotation mark are the same character. PPS: The parenthetical style is sometimes used, but only with the single quote style, and the distinction between them is that the parenthetical is an extremely literal translation and the singled-quoted one a usage gloss, e.g. "Soy bien cabrón danzando (I am [a] good goat dancing) 'I'm darned good at dancing'". This is "high academic" style that one would not normally use in an encyclopedia, because it will not be clear to non-linguists what the distinction is; we would explain it in prose, and probably link to wikt:cabrón so people can see the literal and informal meanings and usage. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 20:28, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
Quotation mark vs. apostrophe: I wrote carefully for a reason: "in plain ASCII ... (i.e. not curly quotes, per MOS:CURLY), the apostrophe and single quotation mark are the same character." They are. You can look this up in any ASCII table. The curly glyphs are not ASCII, they're Unicode. I agree that en.wp will eventually probably use typographic (curly) quotation marks and apostrophes; several of the non-English ones already do. I very recently raised a discussion on this page about the idea of migrating to this usage now, and there were objections, so "not yet". Straight quotes are just plain ASCII (and also part of Unicode as such, since it's a superset). Your argument that WP in general is not limited to plain ASCII is correct, but not relevant; en.wp is presently limited to plain ASCII quotation/apostrophe punctuation for most purposes.
Re: "How does an English‑language encyclopedia..." – What matters here is is how WP collectively wants to do it; we do not have to ape the style of other encyclopedias. When I arrived here a decade ago, WP was not recognizing the use of single quotes for glosses. This was irritating to anyone from a linguistics background, and linguistics editors just used it anyway, per WP:IAR. Now the usage is sanctioned (in the positive sense), because it is in fact standard usage for glosses; even Chicago Manual of Style says so. So consensus changed. You seem to have arrived years later to reverse the change in consensus, and made a claim that the usage wasn't supported by any real-world sources, but it definitely is, so at this point I guess I don't see what the conversation is about.
Re: "neither of us found an encyclopedia that uses apostrophes for glosses and typewriter‑style double quotation marks elsewhere." That's meaningless, an apples-and-oranges comparison. You won't find a paper encyclopedia that doesn't use curly quotes, and it would use curly glyphs for both quotations and glosses. WP uses non-curly for both cases. So this scenario of "is there an encyclopedia using curly for one and straight for another?" isn't likely to exist, and wouldn't matter anyway, since who cares? WP has its own house style. If it turned out that the World Book Encyclopedia coincidentally happened to do precisely what you were looking for, WP would have no reason to adopt the split-style practice. Another way of approaching this: When WP switches to using curly quotes for quotations, it will also switch to using them for glosses.
—
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼
21:48, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
References
Anyone know when the "glosses" line got added to MOS:SINGLE? I don't recall ever seeing that usage at FAC, and I'm concerned that it's going to confuse some writers. - Dank ( push to talk) 04:31, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
See Template talk:OldStyleDateDY for a discussion about a proposed cosmetic change to the output from this template. ― Mandruss ☎ 06:22, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
Is there somewhere I can read the most up to date discussion this? I just realized it seems to be promoting British usage in American articles which seems insane to me. - KaJunl ( talk) 13:32, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
Marlin needed, he said, "to find Nemo"., the full stop is part of the quoted phrase
I need to find Nemo., but it is placed outside the quotemarks because the quote is not a complete sentence. Just sayin'. ― Mandruss ☎ 08:38, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
I see no good reason for the stricture on this abbreviation. It isn't the only "United States" in the world or even in North America, and the abbreviation is not rare in respectable publications. U.S.A. All the Way - Walter Kirn, nytimes.com. Jim.henderson ( talk) 13:20, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
There is currently a discussion happening at Talk:Boys Like Girls#LANGVAR edit warrior that would likely be of interest for this project. Walter Görlitz ( talk) 07:31, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
Please comment at WP:VPP#RfC: MOS vs COMMONNAME. -- Izno ( talk) 13:08, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
Hey guys :) Does anyone have any useful suggestions or ideas for things that could be included in the WP:HYPERHEADING article? Olowe2011 Talk 21:22, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
{{
main}}
is an alternative to {{
see also}}
. 'see also' implies the link goes to something related but necessarily the same as section topic. 'main' implies the link goes to something that talks about the subject itself and that this section is a mere summary of that other article.
Stepho
talk
21:43, 2 May 2016 (UTC)<h1>...</h1>
to <h6>...</h6>
tags, or in Wikicode with =...=
to ======...======
, such as the page title "Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style" or section title "
WP:HYPERHEADER"; whereas headers are things that go at the top of a page, section or table, like the box containing "This is a talk page. Please respect the talk page guidelines ..." seen when editing this page. (ii) Why does your page not link back to
Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Section headings or an equivalent shortcut such as
MOS:HEADINGS? (iii) Why have you gone against that advice in this very thread? --
Redrose64 (
talk)
23:32, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
Is there any technical reason for not using links in headings? In articles {{ Main}} and {{ See also}} are better, but I can't see a problem with using them on talk pages. nyuszika7h ( talk) 19:27, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
Please take part in a discussion on when to use italics and when to use quotemarks in titles at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Comics#Request for Comment: Quotes and italics. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 00:16, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
When I saw this construction for the first I corrected what looked like an obvious error, by changing "thru" to "through". But then I noticed that this spelling of "thru" is quite common when making statements about climate. It still looks mighty weird though. Is it an ENGVAR issue? Dondervogel 2 ( talk) 21:29, 6 May 2016 (UTC)
NYT. Tony (talk) 07:19, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
Right now, the policy firmly states An article should not be edited or renamed simply to switch from one variety of English to another. But what if an article title goes against WP:TIES? Imagine an article about "Lorries in the United States", for example. With that in mind, I'm suggesting that this be added. Nyttend ( talk) 02:29, 21 May 2016 (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 175 | ← | Archive 179 | Archive 180 | Archive 181 | Archive 182 | Archive 183 | → | Archive 185 |
Currently, this style guide suggests de-capitalizing quoted sentences:
However, I have never seen another English-language source that does this, and every grammar guide that I could find on the internet recommends the opposite:
Also, I checked the Chicago Manual of Style (which I have a physical copy of) and The New York Times, and they both disagree with our recommendation. From a practical point of view I also think that our recommendation is bad advice as it can potentially change the reading of the sentence (by implying that the quotation is a partial, rather than complete, sentence). Would anyone object if I remove the bullet point cited above? Kaldari ( talk) 19:17, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
I agree the current wording is misleading, verging on outright incorrect, and has incrementally drifted away from what we arguably had some sort of consensus for at some point, despite its flaws, which was the 2012 wording quoted above. The older wording roughly agrees with a few external style guides (our current wording on this probably agrees with none). However, in both cases MoS's conceptualization and illustration of the idea is sorely confused and confusing, because it's equating aphorisms and epigrams with quotations, and the two are not the same thing. We probably do not need to retain capitalization of any form of cliché when it appears mid-sentence. Some external guides would, others would not. Most would not use quotation marks; some would use italics, some no markup. Most of those things are pretty arbitrary, reall.
The serious WP problem with regard to just reverting to the 2012 version for actual quotations is that it violates the principle of minimal change (PMC) rather badly. We should probably adopt the strictest of the numerous approaches to this issue, and not change the case, in either direction, unless it's done with a bracketed editorial change, writing to avoid that construction if possible. Another issue is that many if not most editors, and external style guides, will not accept The doctor said "He only has a week to live." or even The doctor said "[h]e only has a week to live." as valid, due to lack of punctuation. External style guides almost unanimously want either a colon or a comma here, and the majority of them recommend a colon when it's a complete sentence:
I know this is how I write here, no one reverts me when I fix stuff to be written this way, and I don't seem to need to do it all that often. I thus move that we adopt the three "rules" illustrated in green here, and permit the use of bracketed changes of case when they seem necessary (e.g., when beginning our own sentence with a quote that was not the beginning of the quoted sentence: "[O]nly has a week to live" was the doctor's prognosis), but not "silent" changes that mislead the reader (as in The doctor said: "he only has a week to live." when the original was "He ..."). It would be hypocritical to retain logical quotation on a PMC basis, and then ignore the PMC to mimic sloppy, journalistic writing style, especially after so many things from journalistic style have been rejected as unencyclopedically informal, or expedient at the cost of clarity. Although I can think of someone who would have made some kind of WP:ENGVAR argument, there is no strong national tie. There's a bit of favoritism toward The doctor said, "He only has a week to live." in American sources, and toward The doctor said: "He only has a week to live." in British ones, but it is not universal, and WP has a clear rationale (actually multiple ones) to prefer the latter.
If we start adopting journalistic quotation style, this will breathe new life into all sorts of tendentious, disruptive campaigning, e.g. against dashes, against a consistent approach to dates, placenames, and measurement/unit handling, in favor of always capitalizing job titles, toward the over-capitalization of trivial words in work/composition titles, etc., etc., etc. There are dozens of ways that news writing diverges from the more formal register WP uses, and agitation for journo style is probably the #1 source of MoS-related conflict (or maybe #2, after the WP:SSF).
Sourcing work for this should probably be done at Quotation marks in English, since it covers capitalization after, and punctuation before, the opening quotation mark, and the article badly needs work in this regard. We might even want to defer consideration of the the above until this work is done.
— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 15:44, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
Kaldari started off this thread by quoting the MOS:
But it's important to understand the context of that guideline. It is amongst a list of changes one is allowed to make to a quotation without being viewed as having misquoted the source. A similar example is being allowed to change slanted quote marks to straight quote marks. Just because it's allowed doesn't mean it's always a good idea. Kaldari also says the Chicago Manual of Style disagrees with our recommendation. But my version (16th ed.) says in sec. 13.13 "the first word in a quoted passage must often be adjusted to conform to the surrounding text. In most types of works, this adjustment may be done silently, as such capitalization does not normally affect the significance of the quoted material, which is assumed to have been taken from another context. In some types of works, however, it may be obligatory to indicate the change by bracketing the initial quoted letter; for examples of this practice, appropriate to legal writing and some types of textural commentary, see 13.16."
Section 13.14 gives examples of changing the capitalization or not, depending the degree to which the quoted passage is integrated into the whole sentence:
But
Perhaps the problem is that some of the items in the list of things that can be done to a quote should always be done (changing slanted quotes to straight quotes) and other things are optional (expanding abbreviations). But I wouldn't want to over-complicate the guideline by trying to include language to indicate mandatory vs. optional changes, because one can usually find a rare exception for something that approaches being mandatory. Jc3s5h ( talk) 16:35, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
@ Jc3s5h, SMcCandlish, and Peter coxhead: What do you think about removing the current bullet point and adding the following guidance at the end of the "Typographic conformity" section (to reflect what was agreed on in the previous discussions):
The issue of commas and colons is already dealt with in MOS:QUOTEMARKS and referred to from the colon and comma sections, so I don't think we need to repeat it in MOS:QUOTE. Kaldari ( talk) 01:46, 15 March 2016 (UTC)
When quoting a complete sentence, it is recommended to keep the first word capitalized unless the quoted passage has been integrated into the surrounding sentence (case changes, like other alterations, are indicated with square brackets).
@ Jc3s5h, @ Kaldari: I tried some repair on the Gandhi quote in second example by taking out the redundant and interruptive "that" in my earlier revision, but it's still poor, though better than the original for multiple reasons. (No offense intended; it's actually very difficult to come up with a good example using famous quotation; I tried for about an hour.) The problem is that the whole construction is unencyclopedic; it's something for a dictionary of quotations and a book of advice, which WP:ISNOT.
We need to replace it with something actually illustrative of how we write here, not marred by two editorial [changes] at once, and without first- or second-person pronouns. Something along the lines of:
But I'm so dead tired my brain is rebelling and demanding that I hit the pillow. Can youse guys come up with a good one? It's way more important that we give examples that match our usage, even if there invented, than that we try to find great quotes from famous people. We quote statements from sources way, way more often than notables' bon mots. But a real example is probably easy to find in any MEDRS dispute. >;-) — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 11:54, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
A 2015 Public Health England report concluded that: "[Electronic cigarette] use releases negligible levels of nicotine into ambient air with no identified health risks to bystanders".However, this is clumsy, and the actual wording used as of now is
A 2015 Public Health England report concluded that e-cigarette use "releases negligible levels of nicotine into ambient air with no identified health risks to bystanders".Only if the quoted sentence is well-known in its entirety, i.e. as a sentence as well as for what it says, is it likely that we wouldn't be willing to extract from it and thus avoid the issue. Peter coxhead ( talk) 12:20, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
Anyway, if we use something realistic in the format used for the pseudo-example, we could even include our standard suggestion to rewrite to avoid the need for the change, but I think Kaldari's "Acceptable" gets that across nicely without having to spell it out. Really, the point of the segment is: "Keep the capital if the quote works well as a sentence after a colon; don't keep it – but don't transgress WP:PMC – when the quote needs to flow into the surrounding sentence." Ideally we can illustrate the entire set of concepts in just two variants of one example. My eyes are too lidded to go look for it right now. Good night! :-) — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 12:57, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
Because it doesn't flow as visually smoothly as text without brackets, most of us would rewrite when possible. Something like According to a November 2015 study by the NIH, "[t]he rate of reported cancers of this type has dropped steadily since 1990". is rarely needed. If that was a full sentence, do: According to a November 2015 study by the NIH: "The rate of reported cancers of this type has dropped steadily since 1990." If it was not, do: "According to a November 2015 study by the NIH, the "rate of reported cancers of this type has dropped steadily since 1990"., or "According to a November 2015 study by the NIH, the reported incidence of this type of cancer "has dropped steadily since 1990"., or whatever. Simple. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 22:46, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
The doctor said, "He only has a week to live.""does not comport with the common colon-before-full-sentence rule". I have never seen this rule. – Corinne ( talk) 00:09, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
There's an RfC at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Wikipedia:Disambiguation and inherently ambiguous titles about the sentence in WP:Disambiguation that encompasses the long-standing practice at WP:RM of permitting natural disambiguation for precision-and-recognizability reasons even in the absence of an actual article title collision. This frequently arises with breeds, cultivars, landraces, and other non-human populations the names of which may be confused with human ones (e.g. the move of Algerian Arab, now a disambiguation page, to Algerian Arab sheep, and of British White to British White cattle to ease confusion with the White British). — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 17:14, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
I propose an addition bullet point under:
Article titles, headings, and sections[edit]
Article titles[edit]
Main page: Wikipedia:Article titles
When choosing an article's title, refer to the article titles policy. A title should be a recognizable name or description of the topic that is natural, sufficiently precise, concise, and consistent with the titles of related articles. If these criteria are in conflict, they should be balanced against one another.
...followed by several bullet points
--
The proposed new bullet point is that:
The rationale is that frequently, I see examples like this...
Linate Airport was the site of the Linate Airport disaster on 8 October 2001, when Scandinavian Airlines Flight 686, which was bound for Copenhagen Airport, (comment Linate Airport disaster appears to be used only because it is a WP article name. A better alternative would be "A collision involving Scandinavian Airlines Flight 686 pm 8 October 2001, which was bound for Copenhagen Airport,...)
André Adam (10 September 1936 – 22 March 2016) was a Belgian diplomat. He was killed in the 2016 Brussels bombings.
Ensign Hapuna of the Royal Hawaiian Navy ( talk) 19:32, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
I find several articles that are using Bold lettering to highlight something. I'm sure it is incorrect, but couldn't find anything in the manuyal of style that mentions the use of boldface type. Did I miss it? StarHOG ( talk) 17:01, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
In considering software or distribution products that are typically only provided as online/broadcasted services, such as online websites, software with online functionality (like MMOs), television and radio networks, and the like, and where that service has been fully terminated making the product non-functional or usable, it seems odd to use present tense to discuss the product in the lede. For example Google Reader currently starts with "was an RSS reader"; if it was switched to "is a discontinued RSS reader...", it implies that one could get it, which of course is not true. (In contrast, the current example of a "PDP-10 is a discontinued computer line" makes sense since with effort I can still find a PDP-10 in existence even if I can't buy it new). I would propose that TENSE reflect that when specifically talking about a service that can no longer be used or accessed at all because it was discontinued, that we write that in the past tense. Note that this does have some blurred lines. Taking an MMO as an example, while the MMO may be discontinued one could potentially still find physical or digital copies of the software, suggesting we use "is" for tense in the first sentence, but because the software is otherwise non-functional without the server to support it, it still makes sense to use "was" for the tense. -- MASEM ( t) 21:55, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
I've started compressing out massive redundancy at MOS:RETAIN, which is still much too verbose.
MOS:RETAIN Wording as of this writing
|
---|
When an English variety's consistent usage has been established in an article, maintain it in the absence of consensus to the contrary. With few exceptions (e.g., when a topic has strong national ties or a term/spelling carries less ambiguity), there is no valid reason for such a change. When no English variety has been established and discussion cannot resolve the issue, default to the English variety used in the first post- stub revision to introduce an identifiable variety. The variety established for use in a given article can be documented by placing the appropriate Varieties of English template on its talk page. An article should not be edited or renamed simply to switch from one variety of English to another. The |
I did
the same and more at
WP:CITEVAR [but it was reverted, pending further discussion]: merging redundant sentences; normalizing to MOS:RETAINS's sensible standard of first post-stub revision to establish a clear style; removal of the same kind of infantile, claim-staking
WP:OWN /
WP:VESTED nonsense already purged from MoS, fixed reversal or order of consensus determination (CITEVAR had "first major contributor" (now "first non-stub..." first, but it's a last-resort default if consensus process fails). Between
Peter coxhead's earlier work on the section and my last major go, this section is now a concision model for MOS:RETAIN.
WP:CITEVAR wording as of this writing
|
---|
As with spelling differences, editors should not change an article's established citation style merely on the grounds of personal preference or to make it match other articles. If you believe an established style is inappropriate for the needs of the article, seek consensus for a change on the talk page. If discussion does not resolve the issue, default to the style used in the first post- stub revision to introduce a consistent citation style. If an article has no consistent citation style, an editor may use whichever style seems best for the article. |
— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 11:47, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
There's a lot more to do.
The sections found so far that need this treatment (feel free to add more) are:
Also with wording that may be implicated:
To-do list
|
---|
The first two items are from Wikipedia talk:Citing sources, generalized [will need more drafting]:
|
Let's get to it. We've been talking about this for months. I've left pointers to this discussion at WT:MOSNUM and WT:CITE for now. I figure MoS should get is own house in order before trying to harmonize with TITLEVAR. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 11:47, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
That feud is over. There is clearly a WP-wide consensus that these cite styles are permissible and should be, well, in their style, not half in their style and half in MoS style. So, we just make it part of MoS, and all is well for the first time in a very long time. Right now, we basically have a POVfork situation, but the viewpoints have become the same again. I feel pretty confident in saying this because I used to be one of the vocal opponents of using external styles. I changed my mind, and I don't know anyone who has not either seen the light or become resigned to the fact. I might have been the last hold out for all I know.
[My road to citation Damascus: Aside from it just becoming clear that "the meta-RfC was closed", as it were, what convinced me was a conversation with a chemist who made the case that our readers totally
WP:DGAF (not his words) about citation formatting, but our expert editors care about it a great deal. It is a touchstone for them, an anchor of familiarity in the chaos of writing in an academically alien environment with rules that are (aside from complicated) seemingly backward to them. We want secondary sources. They can't cite their own influential paper without getting accused of self-promotion. Admins younger than their university students have more authority than they do. They have to cite sources for things they consider ridiculously obvious. We have old research we're reporting as factual when a paper came out last week blowing holes in it, just because there aren't any literature reviews that have caught up to it yet. But they can deal with all this if you let them cite how they know how to cite, using the format is "real" to them. I found this very compelling.
—
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼
16:37, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
In the "to do list" above, the text "A consistent style needs a note (even a footnote) defining it [in the context of guide guideline implementation] as non-trivial and an actual style (consistent, programmatic and identifiable)." appears. I object to this strongly if it is intended to say or imply that a "consistent style' must be a documented or published style. If it doesn't intend that, i want to know what an "actual style" means. And insofar as this regards citation styles, I want to see this discussed at WT:CITE, not here. DES (talk) 15:45, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
WP:Stand-alone lists (formerly MOS:SAL) used to be a drama factory, even to the point of people denying that it wasn't a guideline because "MoS is a style guideline, and this is a content rule! That's not valid!" or "This is a naming convention, I wanna to take the MoS tag off it and get rid of the style rules", etc. Today it is part MoS, part naming convention, and mostly content guideline, each part distinguished as such, but centralized at that page instead of split up. because it makes more sense for editors' sanity. Zero drama, way more clarity. We need more of that. Many (most?) of us consider WP:CITE part of MOS to the extent it covers style. It even has shortcuts in it like MOS:IBID. The roadblocks are easy to clear if we just do it, or more like just agree to let them roll away – he've been holding them in place with great effort on a steep hill. This entire split is illusory and worse that pointless; all it does it cause FUD and confusion (for everyone, not just the pages' editors, who are mostly the same people; it's really schizophrenic).
How much trouble could it possibly be to add a line-item to MoS saying that certain style rules do not apply inside citations that follow particular defined styles? Cross-referenced to the more detailed MOS section at WP:CITE on this citation styles, just like MOS-main leaves the details of list article formatting the SAL, and just summarize a few key points. (And be specific enough that people don't do stupid or WP:GAMING things. "Ooh, I can use 40 flag icons and 50-point font because it's inside a ref tag!" No.)
So: MoS (our own left hand) scratches the itch at CITE (our right) to not have default MoS rules bollix up APA, Vancouver or whatever citations. CITE scratches MoS's itch: "yes, WP has a style guide, and our style material is [now] an intact part of it, just like at SAL". MOS scratches back: "Of course MOS is not a content guideline and WT:MOS discussions are not going to change citation procedures; that's not part of the MoS section." CITE scratching back: "Sure, WT:CITE will not make up new style rules that conflict with MOS." Much better than two itchy hands for no reason. Suddenly everyone's happy, especially the whole rest of the editorship, who have long been conflicted about which "competing" style guide to follow as soon as they hit a <
ref>
tag. Imagine the joy over at
Help talk:CS1. Aside from these citation-style-specific matters, citations do actually follow MoS; there really is only a very small bridge to rebuild.
Then there will no longer be any perceived "threat" to the content guidelines in CITE, just as there is not at SAL (mostly the same people again). I think this is more urgent than it may seem, too. We are getting an increasing number of problems as people try to fork "their" page further and further from MOS, largely due to miscommunication and no small amount of territoriality. So much so that there was serious talk only a month or so ago of mostly merging AT back into MoS. It would probably be far more productive, for the same reason SAL material is topically centralized, to do a sectional "virtual merge", with style material in it being organized into a MoS-tagged section.
I've wanted to see an end to this divisiveness for so very, very long. At any rate, this is not a proposal to !vote on right this second. People probably have things to add to or modify about this idea. I do have to point out how flawlessly the SAL solution has worked, though. It's just been totally painless.
—
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼
15:13, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
Unproductive time-sink —
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼
19:34, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
|
---|
SMcCandlish Regarding your recent edit to Wikipedia:Manual of Style, like you, I am all for clarity and conciseness, but I think there may be some problems with the wording you introduced. (I mean no harsh criticism of your commendable effort; this is not easy.) 1) When you tell editors to "default" to something (a) it may not be clear to all editors what that means; I think more ordinary words should be used so they know what to do, or not do, and (b) usually, I believe, the verb "default" is used for something non-human: X defaults to Y when...; furthermore, the noun/adjective form is more common: "the default is", or "the default setting is". 2) Adding the phrase "to introduce an identifiable variety" after already saying editors should "default" to something – which could mean "leave it the way it is", but is not clear as I mentioned above – is confusing. What does that mean, anyway? Does it mean to ensure consistency in the article or to post a tag that identifies the English variety to be used in the article, or something else? I actually like the first sentence the way it was written:
I think it is the second sentence that needs re-writing:
Saying, "the tie is broken" makes it sound like this is a competitive sport. I think it should be more descriptive:
– Corinne ( talk) 14:27, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
|
A concern was raised in the forked discussion at
WT:CITE#Consistent citation style that if someone wants to change from one form of <
ref>
-based citation code formatting to a different one with the same end-user output (style), e.g. to
WP:LDR, that a failure to reach consensus about such a change would constitute a total failure of consensus about style [in that scenario, of
WP:CITEVAR style, but the issue is generalizable to ENGVAR and DATEVAR], and thus result in defaulting back to the first non-stub version of all of it, e.g. to citation formatting from 2005 that pre-dated the introduction of the ref tag!
That would not be a desirable result, obviously, and one we an't permit as a valid interpretation. The general WP principle – which a style guideline can't undo – is to default to the status quo if there's no consensus for a change, regardless what kind of change it is. This whole conversation points out the futility of trying to treat code-level aspects of formatting of citations (or anything else) as "style". It results in some of us mentally wikilawyering ourselves into an anti- WP:COMMONSENSE absurdity.
The VAR rules should be written clearly enough to prevent anyone trying to WP:GAME with such an interpretation, but we needn't take the interpretation seriously ourselves. The simplest solution is to clarify in some way like the following:{{block indent|1=
But get this across in more compact wording. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 19:48, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
I see both used, but which is mos-compliant? Is there any relevant guidance? Dondervogel 2 ( talk) 09:21, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
See the first entry in Garner's The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style, which supports "a" and quotes Mark Twain, 1882, "Correct writers of the American language do not put an before those words." Dicklyon ( talk) 15:25, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
To amplify Dick Lyon's citation above: The updated and internationally expanded Garner's Modern English Usage (which supersedes the ODAUS and its larger version Garner's Modern American Usage) concurs, on pp. l, 1. It notes of the historically attested variance of a / an usage "that's no excuse for a modern writer". It includes an analysis of this trend over time, with authorities since Fowler's Dictionary of English Usage (UK, 1926) agreeing to use a not an before words like "historical" and "humble" despite the existence of regional dialects in which the h- is silent. It contiues: "Today ... such wordings as *an hypothesis, *an hereditary title, *an historic era are likely to strike readers and listeners as affectations in need of editing". It's listed as stage 4 in the language change index ("virtually universal but is opposed ... by a few linguistic stalwarts (the traditionalists that David Foster Wallace dubbed 'snoots')". That's a compelling reason to avoid doing it here. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 20:18, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
It may be time to hold an RfC – after some additional usability checks – on permitting (maybe even recommending) curly quotes instead of straight ones. It appears that the last remaining technical issue is in-page searches in Internet Explorer, a browser that Microsoft has already replaced, but which still has a userbase in older versions of Windows. No one that I know of has even tested this in years. It's worth seeing whether current versions of IE even still have the problem that a search for Sofie's Choice
will not find the string Sofie’s Choice
or vice versa (and doing similar tests on double quotation marks). —
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼
19:01, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
I agree that there's no requirement, but this is a collaborative atmosphere; if at all possible, it is (at least) my personal expectation that I write in !compliance with the style guide (or any guideline, naturally), so as to lessen others' burden.
I'm not sure I agree regarding non-trivial work--copy and pasting a Word document (for that's where curly quotes surely originate for the most part) into Notepad before saving sanitizes the input. (It also washes away some UTF-8/16 characters of course, so editors need to be wary, of course). -- Izno ( talk) 22:52, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
<table class=“wikitable”>...</table>
simply will not work to apply the wikitable
class to a table. Most browsers will skip right over it, and apply no class at all. --
Redrose64 (
talk)
14:24, 29 March 2016 (UTC)Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:Citation needed#Apologies, but object strongly, to content in article here based on decades of experience. A WP:Permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn ( talk) 23:21, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
Disclaimer: I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this question.
I came across an article that had info boxes with links to non-free images, in place of actual images. I was of the opinion that this was non-standard, and pretty ugly. Are there any previous cases, guidelines, etc that cover this type of issue?
[ [8]]
The above is one (of many) instances of info boxes with links in the article.
This is the current format of the info boxes (although I have aligned it to the left, so it fits a little better on this talk page):
Madeleine's bedroom window
showing the exterior shutter
Spacecowboy420 ( talk) 09:10, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
We should episode count on TV show franchises pages, not in season pages if that makes any of you feel better. Episode count in franchise pages, like NCIS franchise, Chicago franchise, Law & Order franchise and such, should have episode appearance count because they can intertwine in different shows. Like what you see in Chicago shows you'll see main characters from Fire, P.D. and Med appear in different Chicago shows as guest stars many times before. Some main characters in those franchises sometimes never appear in that episode for storyline reasons and other reasons, despite the fact they are credited in the episode they didn't appear in. All the more reasons to have episode appearances count in franchise pages. BattleshipMan ( talk) 14:49, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
In Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Singular_nouns, the three options include #2 "Just add an apostrophe" (for singular nouns ending with one s). Is it true that this style is recommended by any reputable grammar or style guide? I'm familiar with the others, #1 being what Strunk & White says, and #3 being seen in some less prescriptive guides. But #2 – where does that come from? Dicklyon ( talk) 04:24, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
Some writers and publishers prefer the system, formerly more common, of simply omitting the possessive s on all words ending in s. The Associated Press style guide says that only an apostrophe should be used after all proper nouns ending in s, though the AP guide is a bit bizarre on other fronts. — Nizolan (talk) 18:03, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
Moses'is fine in writing, but I would say it must be pronounced with two syllables, and
Moses'smust be pronounced with three. -- Trovatore ( talk) 19:48, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
The use of en dashes between physical locations has become a bit of an issue after a recent page move. I have an opinion on this but I was seeking clarification. When talking about a road (in this case the "Pacific Motorway") between Brisbane and Brunswick Heads, which is correct:
The MOS is bit vague on this. Examples point to one of the options being correct, while MOS:ENDASH can be taken as pointing to the other. -- AussieLegend ( ✉) 11:04, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
"The en dash in a range is always unspaced, except when at least one endpoint of the range includes at least one space". The disambiguation term is the range Brisbane to Brunswick Heads, or Brisbane through Brunswick Heads. At Talk:Pacific_Motorway_(Brisbane–Brunswick_Heads)#Title, HandsomeFella has said "I'm pretty sure that goes for date/time ranges only" – if the ranges section is really meant to refer to only certain types of ranges, perhaps this could be clarified in the MOS. - Evad37 [ talk 02:10, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
Thanks. -- 79.115.170.40 ( talk) 22:55, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
How about if the topic is debateably tied to either one of HK or Mainland China, the latter of which would definitely not be covered under TIES. Faye Wong has had a mixture of British and American spellings for over a decade, the earliest versions seeming to favour American spelling ("flavor" has apparently survived since 2004), but could an argument be made that the article should be using "Hong Kong English", which presumably (I don't know) would be closer to British? Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 09:05, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Icons#Use of flag icons on genocide-related articles. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 21:30, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
There is a discussion underway to move the article Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (with a single comma) to Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Please share your opinion on the matter at Talk:Martin Luther King, Jr. Day#Requested move 22 April 2016. Thank you. Dicklyon ( talk) 03:48, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
User:AnomieBOT has been adding new redirects to talk pages with en dash in their titles, "because titles with en-dashes are hard to type". Do people really ever type the titles of talk pages? I understand it's encouraged for article titles, but talk pages, too? Anyway, since about April 7 it has added about 30,000 of them. That tells me that the MOS has succeeded in educating users about how to use en dashes in various contexts (scanning quickly I didn't notice any misuses, but there could be some of those, too). Dicklyon ( talk) 03:38, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
Under Plurals, it says "allow for cases" where the common dictionary plural differs from the original root-language plural. To me, "allow for" means it's OK to use the non-dictionary-preferred form, but the examples given seem to indicate the opposite. The two dictionaries I use most both list "excursuses (also excursus)" as the plural of excursus, so I assume we are not talking about words for which the dictionary omits the archaic plural entirely.
Full disclosure: I want to use the dictionary-preferred plurals in every case. I particularly dislike the affected "aquaria," which I see all over the place in Wikipedia.
Can we adjust the language in the MOS so that this is a little clearer, one way or the other? Krychek ( talk) 19:26, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
the more widely used of multiple alternativeswas always preferred then Wikipedia would be written in US English. [For what it's worth, Google ngrams show that "aquariums" overtook "aquaria" in the American English corpus around 1982, whereas "aquaria" remains more popular (just) up to the last year of data (2008) in British English.] Dictionaries are also inconsistent: MeriamWebster online gives "femurs" before "femora" but "tibiae" before "tibias", but it would surely be more appropriate to use "femurs" and "tibias" in an article or "femora" and "tibiae", the choice depending on the nature of the article. Peter coxhead ( talk) 17:20, 20 April 2016 (UTC)
In this edit I tried to fix what I find as a not-uncommon weird lede structure of the form "The <title> refers to ..." or "The <title> is the name of ..." – essentially mixing up the possibility to use the subject name or to refer to it. A possible fix would be "<Title> is the name of ..." or something like that, italicizing the mentioned term. But it seems preferable, and much more common to just use instead of mention, as "The <title> is ...".
Question: is this addressed anywhere in the MOS? If not, should it be? Dicklyon ( talk) 18:36, 20 April 2016 (UTC)
Here's another like that: [9]. Should the MOS contain advice to prefer such? Dicklyon ( talk) 17:09, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
I contend such distinctions very often, especially in articles on alleged new animal breeds (most of which are really landrace populations, and some in-bred pets a few people are trying to promote for profit, often with multiple names. To make up an example (and thus avoid picking on a particular article), one of them might start: "Quux dog is a name advanced by the Baz Kennel Association (BKA) for a variety of dog originally found in Shangrila. The local landrace population is referred to as fnordu in Shangrilese. It is a large herding dog, and [descriptive stuff here]. Starting in 2005, Western breeders in Idaho and New South Wales have been working to develop a standardized breed from imported Shangrilese specimens. The BKA recognizes these selectively bred dogs under the name Quux in the breed registry's "Experimental" category, but no other registries recognize either the Western or original dogs as a breed." Something to that effect. The original PoV-pushing version might have read something like "The Quux dog or 'Fnordu' is a breed of herding dog from Shangrila. It is [description]." I restructure the material to be more factual and to avoid implying questionable assertions about breed status, even to remove the "The [Name]" construction that implies that the population is singular, unique, and universally recognized as such. This kind of cleanup comes up frequently with "designer crossbreeds" being aggressively promoted as "new breeds" but which are not; there's no such thing as "the" labradoodle, and it is not a proper name; there are just labradoodles (or a labradoodle, in the singular, per Blueboar's comment about a vs. the, above).
Anyway, the point is that sometimes less direct wording is necessary, but its not necessary to italicize (or quote), as words-as-words, any alternative names that are not being approached as linguistic material. Using either style may be confusing, especially when used with proper names; the italics are easily mistaken for emphasis or the marking of a foreign term, and quotes are apt to be inferred as "so-called" scare-quoting. I'd make an exception for nicknames and epithets like "Jack the Ripper"; those conventionally go in quotation marks anyway: Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson. See, e.g.,
Black Dahlia, which gets it just right. There's no need to mark up something like Bigfoot or Jack Rose with quotes or italics, except later in the piece: "The name Jack Rose derives from ...".
—
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼
02:03, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
Does anyone have a problem with "would" in "Their descendants would continue to inhabit Pitcairn into the 21st century" or with "just" in "just one surviving mutineer"? I've been told they don't sound right to BrE ears. - Dank ( push to talk) 12:05, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
I added the following as I have been seeing lots of quote spam in the past few months..-- Moxy ( talk) 17:40, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
"While quotations are an indispensable part of Wikipedia, try not to overuse them. Brief quotations of copyrighted text may be used to illustrate a point, establish context, or attribute a point of view or idea. It is generally recommended that content be written in Wikipedia editor's own words. Using too many quotes is incompatible with an encyclopedic writing style. Consider minimizing the use of quotations by paraphrasing, as quotes shouldn't replace plain and concise text."
In the Manual of Style we have a section National varieties of English with a shortcut ( MOS:ENGVAR), which is useful to cite when reverting edits that arbitrarily change the variant of English used.
Regarding other style options we have the third paragraph of the lead (...editors should not change an article from one of those styles to another without a good reason....), and also a link to an Arbcom decision regarding changing date notation between BC/AD and BCE/CE. This is less easy to cite. So could we have a section that proscribes arbitrary changes of style - with a handy shortcut?
The sort of style changes I have in mind include changing between and [10] and between ordinary brackets and square brackets [11] and between LaTeX and HTML (without consultation or consensus). -- catslash ( talk) 21:23, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
At this point, I'm not sure how we could craft a general rule – if consensus actually wanted one, which does not appear to be the case – that wouldn't be abused by
WP:OWNers to
WP:GAME everyone half to death. The most likely and negative result of it would be that someone who favors a non-encyclopedic style (e.g. all the comma abandonment that is common in news writing – In 2016 David Bowie died of cancer) would feel empowered to fight forever to prevent anyone else improving the prose and formatting. If some particular mathematical styles should be left alone, because people fight endlessly about them, project-wide, that might be a rationale for a "MOS:MATHVAR", but I don't see any evidence the problem is widespread enough to warrant this. I don't see any discussion at
Talk:Triple product indicating intractable dispute about the math formatting edit you use an example of a problem, for example. Where there's no smoke, there's probably no fire. Anyway, there is no "consultation" process, and consensus is not required to make a change (consensus is required for a change to stick). "That wasn't discussed first" is not a real revert rationale; "this is problematic because [legitimate reason here], see discussion on talk page" is a real rationale.
—
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼
00:48, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
Even though
MOS:SINGLE says that in simple glosses, "unfamiliar terms are usually enclosed in single quotes",
[1] that section links to
Gloss (annotation) § In linguistics, which references only Historical Linguistics: An Introduction, a book printed and bound in Great Britain (where in most contexts, '
is used instead of "
), and a book in which the author does not distinguish between the singles and doubles (for example, "books or articles on ‘proper’ English ..."),
[2]: 10 and moreover, uses ‘typographical quotation marks’ instead of the typewriter‑style 'apostrophes' and "straight quotation marks" that
MOS:QUOTEMARKS recommends.
I am not aware of any other English‑language encyclopedia that differentiates between single and double quotations in the way we currently recommend, and the contents of MOS:SINGLE appear to be what came from a 2006 discussion which found house style recommendations for double quotation marks or parentheses, but not for single quotation marks in glosses only. There is no support whatsoever for the use of apostrophes in glosses and quotation marks elsewhere, which is what we currently recommend.
The answer is probably just that: replace the text like so:
— LLarson ( said & done) 15:05, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
The single quotes are uniform, very nearly universal, usage in all linguistics materials, and it's very useful since it distinguishes precisely what the thing is, a gloss of what just came before, and not some other kind of annotation. Most obvious external source for this is the Linguist Society of America stylesheet: "After the first occurrence of non-English forms, provide a gloss in single quotation marks". The Chicago Manual of Style also covers this. So does the Canadian Journal of Linguistics style guide [13]. So do university linguistics dept. style guides (e.g. this one): "Use only single quotation marks for quotes within quotes and for glosses of foreign words. ... Cited forms in a foreign language should be followed at their first occurrence by a gloss in single quotation marks." And this one from U. of Alabama: "After the first occurrence of non-English forms, provide a gloss in single quotation marks". And various ones provided by linguistics professors/researchers like this one by Haspelmath ("Single quotation marks are used exclusively for linguistic meanings, e.g. Latin habere 'have' is not cognate with Old English hafian 'have'."), and another by Gruyter Mouton, and so on. There are only two major linguistics journals that don't insist on it. But seriously, you can just Google this in five seconds and find a whole flood of material about this [14]. Interlinear, morpheme-by-morpheme glosses should be formatted as un-bordered tables. This is part of the Leipzig Glossing Rule], a widely adopted standard (may well be near-universal now; I can't remember the last time I saw linguistic material that did not follow it, and it was already standard by the 1990s in all the classes I took in the subject. One of the above cited pages says it is part of basic competency in the field now.)
If I didn't have real work to do today, I could easily provide 50+ citations for this stuff in about an hour or two. Please do your research before coming here and declaring what the real-world "facts" are. "There is no support whatsoever"? When you come here with confrontational declarations like this but clearly haven't looked into the matter and are just going by your vague opinion of how things should be, you will not gain any traction on any concern you might be trying to raise. PS: You seem to be unaware that in plain ASCII, as we use for punctuation characters (i.e. not curly quotes, per MOS:CURLY), the apostrophe and single quotation mark are the same character. PPS: The parenthetical style is sometimes used, but only with the single quote style, and the distinction between them is that the parenthetical is an extremely literal translation and the singled-quoted one a usage gloss, e.g. "Soy bien cabrón danzando (I am [a] good goat dancing) 'I'm darned good at dancing'". This is "high academic" style that one would not normally use in an encyclopedia, because it will not be clear to non-linguists what the distinction is; we would explain it in prose, and probably link to wikt:cabrón so people can see the literal and informal meanings and usage. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 20:28, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
Quotation mark vs. apostrophe: I wrote carefully for a reason: "in plain ASCII ... (i.e. not curly quotes, per MOS:CURLY), the apostrophe and single quotation mark are the same character." They are. You can look this up in any ASCII table. The curly glyphs are not ASCII, they're Unicode. I agree that en.wp will eventually probably use typographic (curly) quotation marks and apostrophes; several of the non-English ones already do. I very recently raised a discussion on this page about the idea of migrating to this usage now, and there were objections, so "not yet". Straight quotes are just plain ASCII (and also part of Unicode as such, since it's a superset). Your argument that WP in general is not limited to plain ASCII is correct, but not relevant; en.wp is presently limited to plain ASCII quotation/apostrophe punctuation for most purposes.
Re: "How does an English‑language encyclopedia..." – What matters here is is how WP collectively wants to do it; we do not have to ape the style of other encyclopedias. When I arrived here a decade ago, WP was not recognizing the use of single quotes for glosses. This was irritating to anyone from a linguistics background, and linguistics editors just used it anyway, per WP:IAR. Now the usage is sanctioned (in the positive sense), because it is in fact standard usage for glosses; even Chicago Manual of Style says so. So consensus changed. You seem to have arrived years later to reverse the change in consensus, and made a claim that the usage wasn't supported by any real-world sources, but it definitely is, so at this point I guess I don't see what the conversation is about.
Re: "neither of us found an encyclopedia that uses apostrophes for glosses and typewriter‑style double quotation marks elsewhere." That's meaningless, an apples-and-oranges comparison. You won't find a paper encyclopedia that doesn't use curly quotes, and it would use curly glyphs for both quotations and glosses. WP uses non-curly for both cases. So this scenario of "is there an encyclopedia using curly for one and straight for another?" isn't likely to exist, and wouldn't matter anyway, since who cares? WP has its own house style. If it turned out that the World Book Encyclopedia coincidentally happened to do precisely what you were looking for, WP would have no reason to adopt the split-style practice. Another way of approaching this: When WP switches to using curly quotes for quotations, it will also switch to using them for glosses.
—
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼
21:48, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
References
Anyone know when the "glosses" line got added to MOS:SINGLE? I don't recall ever seeing that usage at FAC, and I'm concerned that it's going to confuse some writers. - Dank ( push to talk) 04:31, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
See Template talk:OldStyleDateDY for a discussion about a proposed cosmetic change to the output from this template. ― Mandruss ☎ 06:22, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
Is there somewhere I can read the most up to date discussion this? I just realized it seems to be promoting British usage in American articles which seems insane to me. - KaJunl ( talk) 13:32, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
Marlin needed, he said, "to find Nemo"., the full stop is part of the quoted phrase
I need to find Nemo., but it is placed outside the quotemarks because the quote is not a complete sentence. Just sayin'. ― Mandruss ☎ 08:38, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
I see no good reason for the stricture on this abbreviation. It isn't the only "United States" in the world or even in North America, and the abbreviation is not rare in respectable publications. U.S.A. All the Way - Walter Kirn, nytimes.com. Jim.henderson ( talk) 13:20, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
There is currently a discussion happening at Talk:Boys Like Girls#LANGVAR edit warrior that would likely be of interest for this project. Walter Görlitz ( talk) 07:31, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
Please comment at WP:VPP#RfC: MOS vs COMMONNAME. -- Izno ( talk) 13:08, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
Hey guys :) Does anyone have any useful suggestions or ideas for things that could be included in the WP:HYPERHEADING article? Olowe2011 Talk 21:22, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
{{
main}}
is an alternative to {{
see also}}
. 'see also' implies the link goes to something related but necessarily the same as section topic. 'main' implies the link goes to something that talks about the subject itself and that this section is a mere summary of that other article.
Stepho
talk
21:43, 2 May 2016 (UTC)<h1>...</h1>
to <h6>...</h6>
tags, or in Wikicode with =...=
to ======...======
, such as the page title "Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style" or section title "
WP:HYPERHEADER"; whereas headers are things that go at the top of a page, section or table, like the box containing "This is a talk page. Please respect the talk page guidelines ..." seen when editing this page. (ii) Why does your page not link back to
Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Section headings or an equivalent shortcut such as
MOS:HEADINGS? (iii) Why have you gone against that advice in this very thread? --
Redrose64 (
talk)
23:32, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
Is there any technical reason for not using links in headings? In articles {{ Main}} and {{ See also}} are better, but I can't see a problem with using them on talk pages. nyuszika7h ( talk) 19:27, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
Please take part in a discussion on when to use italics and when to use quotemarks in titles at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Comics#Request for Comment: Quotes and italics. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 00:16, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
When I saw this construction for the first I corrected what looked like an obvious error, by changing "thru" to "through". But then I noticed that this spelling of "thru" is quite common when making statements about climate. It still looks mighty weird though. Is it an ENGVAR issue? Dondervogel 2 ( talk) 21:29, 6 May 2016 (UTC)
NYT. Tony (talk) 07:19, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
Right now, the policy firmly states An article should not be edited or renamed simply to switch from one variety of English to another. But what if an article title goes against WP:TIES? Imagine an article about "Lorries in the United States", for example. With that in mind, I'm suggesting that this be added. Nyttend ( talk) 02:29, 21 May 2016 (UTC)