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Internal links cannot be mistaken for being part of the quotation, nor will they mislead, or confuse, the reader.
--
Shyam Has Your Anomaly Mitigated (
talk)
07:07, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
As much as possible, avoid linking from within quotes...This does not totally forbid links from within quotes. If there is a link that really should be there, put it in and explain why in a comment. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 12:24, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
I've looked and just seen last year's RfC on quotation templates. Has there been any update specifically on the practice of using block quotations for illustrative purposes (i.e. in a box set off to the side, similarly to how we use images), as opposed to narrative quotations (the usual blockquotes supposed to fit into the flow of the text)? Since quote boxes have been quite extensively used it seems confusing that the MOS doesn't directly address them. -- Paul_012 ( talk) 11:12, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
{{
Quote}}
for block quotes, and to not use pull quotes, that they'd just go away. And of course that didn't work. May have to revert to the "don't abuse pull quote templates for things that are not actually
pull quotes – and pull quotes are virtually never used in articles anyway" sort of instructions we had. The experiment is being less explicit has been a failure. Just like the experiment in using decorative quote templates all over the place has been a failure.What's an example of an "illustrative" quotation in an article? Last year I went through over100 articles with pull quote templates in them, back-to-back, and in 100% of the cases, they were either block quotations mis-marked-up in decorative fashion, very short quotes that should have simply been given inline, or PoV-pushing exercises where an editors was drawing grossly
WP:UNDUE weight to a particular statement by someone. I find it difficult to imagine that this has changed.
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SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
03:30, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
{{
quote}}
, inline in their context. I forget the page that sparked that debate; some article on a gay UK politician from back when being a gay politician was a scandal. The bulk of the article is about a legal dispute between two parties, and multiple quotations of one party are used in decorative templates, including a sidebar, which of course grossly overbalances the article in that party's favour. There are a lot of problems like this.There are many old FAs that have not been updated to current MoS standards because we're mostly directing our attention to crappy articles that need a lot of work. Bringing FAs into current compliance can actually be occasionally difficult, as certain editors feel excessively proprietary about "their" articles, and some of the WP:FAC crowd are overtly hostile to MoS-based cleanup and even to MoS's existence, despite "* It [the FA-candidate article] follows the style guidelines, including [three bullet points here]" being in the FA Criteria. This list of three things includes one which is actually not an MoS matter, but WP:CITE stuff. The handful of people strangely convinced that MoS doesn't apply to FAs are misreading it as "follows the style guidelines on the following enumerated points", when of course "including" is not exclusive and doesn't mean that at all.
The central issue is probably that all templates that could be used for documentary excerpts are mis-documented as quotation templates (formerly as block-quotation templates, but since changed to distinguish between block and pull quotes and to say not to use pull quotes in articles). People use them for decoration in any article because they think it looks cool, and they don't read MoS. When
WP:MOS- and
WP:UNDUE-cognizant editors object, the would-be owners of the article get angry, and point to an FA from 2006 as their justification, even though what they're doing isn't actually similar to what the FA is doing in most cases (literary excepts) – other than visually, in that they're both boxes of text attributed to someone. A previous commenter called them "
attractive nuisances": as long as the templates like {{
Rquote}}
and {{
Quote box}}
named and documented as any kind of quote template, this "make Wikipedia look like a magazine or a blog" problem with continue. They should obviously be changed to refer only to documentary excerpts, and be documented as to when this is actually appropriate, with NPOV and COPYVIO pointers, and so on.
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SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
18:05, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
Please explain. Otherwise use wiki markup instead of HTML. Bright☀
==<span id="Old name"></span>New name==
obviously doesn't scale: if a long heading that was renamed to another long heading, you end up with an edit summary pre-filled with span crap that is actually longer than the edit summary window can handle, much less having any room for you to provide an actual edit summary. People who favor this "solution" haven't really thought it through very carefully.The test-cases page I linked to above shows what we have to work with. It's not much. The proper solution would be for MW to be upraded to handle this is some other way. E.g, interpreting an empty, id-bearing span (or template outputting one) immediately before a heading as part of the section to be headed when doing section editing. But getting practical features added to MW is a decade-long process.
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SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
18:14, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
I moved WP:Alternative text for images to WP:Manual of Style/Accessibility/Alternative text for images, where the rest of the MOS:ACCESS supplement pages are. All links and shortcuts to it work, it just now isn't lost in the vast sea of the "Wikipedia:" namespace, but is consolidated with the related material. Also fixed the old WP:ALTPDI and MOS:ALTPDI shortcuts to work (they'd lost their anchor point when the "Purely decorative images" heading went away). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 23:53, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
At MOS:PMC, an errant phrase needs to be corrected where it is written: "When a vulgarity or obscenity is quoted, it should appear exactly as it does in the cited source; unless faithfully reproducing quoted text, Wikipedians should never bowdlerize words by replacing letters with dashes, asterisks, or other symbols." I don't know what was intended by its inclusion and have temporarily commented it out. Does anyone know what sentiments were meant to be carried?-- John Cline ( talk) 19:34, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
{{
notatypo|...}}
or {{
sic|hide=y|...}}
, because many editors upon encountering a quoted "f--k" are probably apt to think an editor censored "fuck" out of the original [not to be confused with censoring the fuck out of the original, which might go further than that. >;-] —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
23:41, 20 December 2017 (UTC)I moved the words around and added only enough to make it parse, and this should work fine "When a vulgarity or obscenity is quoted, it should appear exactly as it does in the cited source; Wikipedians should never bowdlerize words by replacing letters with dashes, asterisks, or other symbols, except when faithfully reproducing quoted text that did so." I still am not sure we should be advising a visible [ sic]. The only purpose of it is to alert editors that the censorship is in the original; readers don't (usually) know we have a WP:NOTCENSORED policy and don't care. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 23:47, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
Level 2 headings are called "level 2 headings", not "==-level headings". Using this ungrammatical terminology is not "saying exactly what's meant", it's making up a new term for an existing term. A bullet list isn't called a •-list, a parenthetical statement isn't called a ()-statement, and a levle 2 heading isn't called a ==-level heading.
Also, mere paragraphs from MOS:IMAGES there's MOS:PAREN, which asks editors to avoid constructs like "Each image should be inside the major section to which it relates (within the section defined by the most recent ==-level heading, or at the top of the lead section)". Bright☀ 16:08, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
a level-2 heading (== ... ==
(or "a second-level heading", though "level-2" probably works better, as a clearer reference to <h2>
for the super-dorks who know all that HTML mumbo-jumbo. >;-) —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
02:55, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
"people who use VE are abnormal and not to be trusted."That makes them just like the rest of us. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 03:09, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
(Linking here for posterity) Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Accessibility/Archive_10#Image_position - the original discussion about images in the appropriate section; Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_114#Images_and_third_level_headings - subsequent alteration to level-2 heading. As originally discussed, images should be placed in their appropriate sections (of any heading level) for accessibility reasons. This was altered to level-2 headings to give editors more freedom in placing images. Bright☀ 07:01, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
In many articles, for example The Bible and violence, we name some/a lot of scholars in the text. This is sometimes done "Anderson says" [1], sometimes "Philosopher, professor and author Eleonore Stump says" and anything in between. Is there any WP-guidance on what is "best", or is it all local consensus?
My personal preference is towards the latter. As a reader, I want some in-text info on who this is and why I´m listening to them, even if there´s a wikilink (though I´m less annoyed if there´s a wikilink). It may make the text more clunky and less scholarly, but still. Gråbergs Gråa Sång ( talk) 12:46, 23 December 2017 (UTC)
But "philosopher, professor and author Eleonore Stump" is pointlessly redundant. There are virtually no professional philosophers who are not academics (those that are are better known as authors than philosophers), being a professor isn't special or contextually important anyway (even being the Alfred B. Ceesdale Professor of Philosophical Inquiry, or some other fancy-named endowment position, isn't important for our purposes, except in a bio on that person), all academics "publish or perish", so we would not be quoting this person if not an author of at least a bunch of peer-reviewed papers (there'd be no way for us to ascertain their in-field reliability as a source if they had no publication history). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 16:17, 23 December 2017 (UTC)
There are virtually no professional philosophers who are not academics– what about the many professional philosophers working in private industry? E Eng 22:51, 23 December 2017 (UTC)
{{R from/to ...}}
redirect categorization of "MOS:" shortcutsPlease see:
Wikipedia talk:Categorizing redirects#Request for comments on MoS shortcut redirect categorization.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
08:30, 23 December 2017 (UTC)
{{
R to subpage}}
, which has potentially non-trivial consequences
[2]. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
11:11, 30 December 2017 (UTC)Should we add in and display the year that a marriage ends when the subject of the biography has died. Or should we not display, or remove the end date for the marriage. This was originally presented at the template page and the RFC was closed and the instruction were to reopen it here. The issue arose because some editors are mass removing the end date for marriages, when the end date is when the subject of the biography has died.
Robert Smith | |
---|---|
Born | October 20, 1911 |
Died | December 23, 1940 | (aged 29)
Spouse(s) |
Alice Jones
(
m. 1930; "his death" is deprecated; use "died" instead. 1940) |
Albert Brock | |
---|---|
Born | January 30, 1910 |
Died | December 23, 1960 | (aged 49)
Spouse(s) |
Jane Jones
(
m. 1930; "her death" is deprecated; use "died" instead. 1935)Salma Rogers
(
m. 1936; "his death" is deprecated; use "died" instead. 1960) |
Robert Smith | |
---|---|
Born | October 20, 1911 |
Died | December 23, 1940 | (aged 29)
Spouse(s) |
Alice Jones
(
m. 1930, "his death" is deprecated; use "died" instead) |
Neither mandate nor disallow end dates... neither encourage nor discourage not having end dates. Let editors decide what is best on a case by case, article by article basis. Blueboar ( talk) 23:32, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
Robert Smith | |
---|---|
Born | October 20, 1911 |
Died | December 23, 1940 | (aged 29)
Spouse | Alice Jones |
Albert Brock | |
---|---|
Born | January 30, 1910 |
Died | December 23, 1960 | (aged 49)
Spouse(s) |
Jane Jones Salma Rogers |
Is there a guideline on how to format interwiki hatnotes, and should they exist? The article Handegg (Swiss village) contains such a hatnote linking to to wikt:handegg (humorous term for American football, etc.). Did I format it properly? WP:HATNOTE says not to pipe non-disambiguation links, though I think it would be better to auto-format these links in Module:Hatnote (e.g. "For the English word, see handegg at [the English] Wiktionary"). Jc86035 ( talk) 11:05, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
I hope that you folks can help (have searched the archive). I regularly create aircraft engine articles, the subjects are often museum exhibits only or no longer exist at all. In the lead first sentence I always use the past tense as this seems natural to me. This is 'corrected' to present tense as if I have made a mistake. If the subject is still in service or even limited use in retirement I will use present tense.
Reading the guideline wording of do not use past tense except for dead subjects, past events, and subjects that no longer meaningfully exist as such I would regard an aircraft engine in a museum as not meaningfully existing as it is no longer running, turning a propeller or producing thrust and powering an aircraft.
Does this wording need adjusting for clarity? I've looked at some other random museum items (retired/defunct etc) and they all seem to use the past tense in the first sentence, e.g. Stephenson's Rocket, North American XB-70 Valkyrie, Space Shuttle Enterprise, RRS Discovery and the Wright Flyer, all subjects that no longer operate as they were originally designed to do ('retired' in less words!). Cheers Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 07:27, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
"Lenin's body has a meaningful existence." Exactly. It's perfectly fine to say that Challenger was a space shuttle and that parts of it are in a museum. If the entire something is in a museum, and still in working or potentially working condition (not just a shell or a fragment), though, it should probably remain in present tense. Cognitive dissonance about this can be resolved by sensible rewriting.
Wright Flyer is a perfect example: The Wright Flyer (often retrospectively referred to as Flyer I or 1903 Flyer) was the first successful heavier-than-air powered aircraft. It was designed and built by the
Wright brothers. They flew it four times on December 17, 1903, near
Kill Devil Hills, about four miles south of
Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, US. Today, the airplane is exhibited in the
National Air and Space Museum in
Washington D.C.
. Analyze it: Past-tense claim about something it did. Past-tense claim about something they did. Ditto. Present tense claim about what the plane is up to right now. There is no problem there. PS: The style on that needs fixing; it should be '''''Flyer'' I''' or '''1903 ''Flyer'''''
; the name of the aircraft did not change. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
01:29, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
Some of the most frequent comprehension-impeding errors I encounter and correct could be addressed in a small section. I think it would ease some copyediting load in the long run (and of course make the encyclopedia text better for readers in innumerable places); probably goes right after MOS:SERIAL, but it could also live in MOS:LISTS, and just be summarized in the main MoS page without the example table:
[End proposed material.]
Quite short as to rulemaking, though the examples are rich. These are just two real examples from about an hour ago (some details compressed for brevity) – in otherwise very well-written articles. The journalistic and fiction-writing aversion to the serial comma is poisonous. While no one is confused by the lack of one in a very simple construction like "My dog strangely likes pistachios, potatoes and eggplant", there's no question that it's needed in these kinds of constructions.
Yet only two days ago, I had someone tendentiously revert-warring against a comma despite patently obvious ambiguity (that was a case of "So-and-so guitarist was a member of the Chicken and Dumplings, Doodah and the Snorkel Weasels" (whatever the actual band names were); only someone familiar with the bands would be certain this meant three bands (C&D, D, and SW). The reverter's excuse? As always: "MoS doesn't say it's required."
— Preceding unsigned comment added by SMcCandlish ( talk • contribs)
When a list of areas served is present in an article's infobox, should Puerto Rico be listed if the United States is already on the list? Daylen ( talk) 00:02, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
Can we get a clarification on how MOS:LQ should be interpreted with regards to including terminating punctuation without quotemarks? For example, given two source sentences:
Would we quote them in a Wikpedia™ article in the following manner:
— Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 11:42, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
Include terminal punctuation within the quotation marks only if it was present in the original material, and otherwise place it after the closing quotation mark, then goes on to give a bunch of examples which in many cases contradict that. If you LQ zealots would get your act together and come up with a guideline that actually makes sense, is self-consistent, and is not too far off from they way normal people here on earth actually write, I'm sure most editors will do their best to follow it. In the meantime I, for one, will just do what that first sentence clearly tells me to do. E Eng 12:08, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
If the quotation is a single word or fragment, place the terminal punctuation outside the closing quotation mark. If the quotation is a full sentence and it coincides with the end of the sentence containing it, place terminal punctuation inside the closing quotation mark.We should do that because we more often quote fragments than full sentences, so people should see and absorb that part first and foremost. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 02:08, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
.
at the end wasn't a full stop/period but a different meaning of the glyph, and that's fine. But it would probably be better to rewrite. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
02:00, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
"really get under people's skin."by itself is meaningless. LQ forbids insertion of punctuation not in the original, as blatant misquotation; it does not require retention of terminal punctuation that was in the original when it doesn't make sense to do so. Otherwise no excerpting would be possible at all. I.e., there is no difference between taking an original statement, "Janet's cat is orange and ugly.", and quoting it as "He said her cat is "orange and ugly", which I though was funny.", versus "He said her cat is 'orange and ugly'." But include it inside the quote here: "He said: 'Janet's cat is orange and ugly.'" Leaving it out when quoting a full sentence strongly implies we're quoting a fragment. But if we're quoting a fragment, the exact same principle that allows us to partially quote without all the words also allows us to partially quote without terminal punctuation that doesn't make sense inside the fragment when the fragment is viewed on its own. A third way of putting it: If I write "My cat is loud, ha ha", you would not partial-quote it as "McCandlish said 'My cat is loud,'." – desperately retaining the comma as part of the original construction.
Re: the claims that
MOS:LQ "then goes on to give a bunch of examples which in many cases contradict that" we "[i]nclude terminal punctuation within the quotation marks only if it was present in the original material, and otherwise place it after the closing quotation mark" – I've reviewed it line by line and it does not do that at all. All the examples are correct. (This has not always been the case; people have monkeyed with it before, especially to make it match one of the dozen+ British styles that were inspired by LQ but have diverged from it in inconsistent ways.)
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
02:00, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
Include terminal punctuation within the quotation marks only if it was present in the original material, and otherwise place it after the closing quotation mark, period (so to speak). It says if X, do A, otherwise do B. It purports by its wording to dispose of every case that arises. The later examples don't call themselves exceptions to this Prime Directive; they're just there, telling you to do things, some of which (depending on circumstance) contradict the opening instruction. For example, let's say the source says,
What Marlin said was, "I need to find Nemo.", and for whatever reason I want to cast this as either
Marlin needed, he said, "to find Nemo".or
Marlin needed, he said, "to find Nemo."According to the later examples given by LQ, I'm supposed to write the first, but according to the LQ's unambiguous, here's-how-it's-done, no-exceptions-provided-for Prime Directive, I'm supposed to use the second. Thus the contradiction. E Eng 03:17, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
What seems to be happening here is that EEng is extrapolating beyond what it actually says and arriving at something like "Include terminal punctuation within the quotation marks if it was present in the original material, no matter what, and place all other punctuation after the closing quotation mark", or something to that effect, though it's not entirely clear, since he's just objecting without being specific.' [4] — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 03:39, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
Include terminal punctuation within the quotation marks only if it was present in the original material, and otherwise place it after the closing quotation markdon't you understand? David Eppstein, can you toss me a lifeline here? E Eng 05:26, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
This following semi-recent addition is not actually very helpful, and may be the primary source of confusion:
Aside from being repetitive of much of the sentence that precedes it, and vaguely worded, this presupposes that the reader understands all about the niceties of question mark usage, when this actually varies between style guides, and we have a section here instructing editors on our version, so we know they didn't all arrive here with this in their brains already. Worse, question marks themselves are subject to an LQ rule of their own, rendering this statement confusing and meaningless.
It would probably make more sense to just say this:
It's shorter and doesn't presuppose anything, uses clearer wording, and it covers both the He said "Ouch, that hurts." case and the "Ouch," he said, "that hurts." case (it's not all about terminal punctuation), while ruling out "Why," he asked, "did you hit me?" (must be "Why", he asked, "did you hit me?") and "Ouch," was what he said. (it's "Ouch" was what he said.) It also doesn't exclude retention of "!" and "?", which we cover in a later point. We already provide conforming examples; this isn't a substantive change in any way, just a better clarification than that "same way as question marks" attempt.
However, we should ditch the insipid fictional dialogue examples we have. Replace them with structurally identical material that actually pertains to how we write encyclopedia articles, e.g. quoting from non-fiction sources. It would make this all much easier to relate to and apply.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
03:39, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
If the quotation is a single word or a sentence fragment, place the terminal punctuation outside the closing quotation mark. When quoting a full sentence the end of which coincides with the end of the sentence containing it, place terminal punctuation inside the closing quotation mark."), and this wouldn't touch it, just prepare people for it. I.e., there is no "exception" as EEng's been conceiving of it; the existing language about fragments doesn't diverge from or contradict the main LQ rule, it's just so clouded with "same way as question marks" blather – before we even get to question marks in LQ at all – that at least a few people aren't getting it. This nutshell replacement sentence should fix that. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 06:05, 5 January 2018 (UTC); revised 06:16, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
You're all correct. I was somehow parsing the only if as if, even when it was rubbed in my face. In my (very pale) defense I'll say that the second half of Include terminal punctuation within the quotation marks only if it was present in the original material, and otherwise place it after the closing quotation mark
is redundant to the first, and it's natural for the brain to look for two different imports i.e. an implication and its converse. Laugh at me if you will.
Nonetheless, I'm glad to see there's recognition that the presentation needs improvement. May I suggest that the Prime Directive be restated simply as something like Any terminal punctuation inside the quotation marks should be marks present in the material quoted
.
E
Eng
18:32, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
The original isn't really redundant so much as giving both sides of the coin for extra clarity, and is fixable by juggling words a little, maybe Place terminal punctuation after the closing quotation mark by default; only include it within the quotation marks if it was present in the original material.
That seems totally unambiguous to me, especially if we combine it with
#Potential clarification above and get rid of the confusing "like questions marks" stuff.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
20:48, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Things like
this have (not for the first time) inspired me to consider adding something like the following after the fragments and full sentences part: "However, for long fragments that form most of a complete sentence and simply omit an introductory clause, the terminal punctuation may be retained inside the quotation marks.
" This a) would not be inconsistent with general LQ principles, and b) would agree better with both typical North American and most (not all) British/Commonwealth quotation styles. While it verges on
WP:CREEP at first glance, I think it would have a tension-reduction effect that, while subtle, would be widespread and long lasting. Similar to no longer requiring a colon before a quote of a full sentence if it's short. (People just don't like writing XYZCorp's response was: "Not yet." We don't really have a reason to demand it, even if a colon is better as an introduction of longer material. Same principle applies here.) —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
06:16, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
The study's methodology was "[30 more words]"., then people are apt to fuss about having to keep the period outside the quote. The same thing could be done as
"[The] study's methodology is [30 more words]."I'm just looking for ways to avoid people grinding their teeth, especially when it's about something we don't actually have a strong reason to care about. That said, if no one after a week or so is enthusiastic about this one, then there's no reason to add it, since it is a minor consistency variance. I'm just going by what I see people do fairly often, and what I've seen people revert about in confusion or disagreement. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 05:32, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
I often see at Wikipedia that quotes are provided inline without any inline attribution, which is really bad IMHO unless the speaker is clear from the context. Am I correct that this MOS merely requires attribution, rather than inline attribution? If so, I support editing the MOS to require not just attribution but inline attribution, unless the context makes it obvious. Often the attribution isn’t even explicit in the footnote, and so you have to click on a link in the footnote to figure out who made the quoted statement. I don’t think readers should have to go look at a footnote at all, because the body of the Wikipedia article should only include quotes with inline attribution unless the attribution is otherwise obvious. Here’s an example, which I now promise to never edit since I’m seeking a policy change that would affect it. Anythingyouwant ( talk) 18:51, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
OK, so here's the proposal:
The author of a quote
of a full sentence or moreshould be named unless their identity is already obvious in context, or the quote is not attributable to any particular named author; this is done in the main text and not in a footnote.However, attribution is unnecessary with quotations that are clearly from the person discussed in the article or section
Any comments, objections, snide remarks, glowing praise? Anythingyouwant ( talk) 03:50, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
There needs to be a better way to get at "attribute the quote when it needs to be attributed", basically. What we don't want to see is "She is 'gunning for the governorship in 2020, on a platform that amounts to center-left backlash against ignorant populism'.[1]" without this opinionated encapsulation being attributed, right there in the sentence, to someone whose opinion our readers might GaF about.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
05:17, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
The author of a quote of a full sentence or more should be named, and for a shorter quote that is sourced to only one author or source we also should provide that name; this is done in the main text and not in a footnote. However, attribution is unnecessary with quotations that are clearly from the person discussed in the article or section
Anythingyouwant ( talk) 05:35, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
Okay well, User:Boson and User:Masem, here is my last attempt:
The author of a quote of a full sentence or more should be named, and for a shorter quote that is sourced to only one author or source we also should seriously consider providing that name; this is normally done in the main text and not in a footnote. However, attribution is unnecessary with quotations that are clearly from the person discussed in the article or section
That’s more flexible. Personally, I don’t see why it’s not better to name theatre critics inline; likewise for press officers and reporters, the name of their organization (i.e. the name of the source if not the person) ought to be provided inline, IMHO. But if you disagree with this newest proposal, please suggest an alternative. Thanks and Happy New Year. Anythingyouwant ( talk) 16:46, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
we also should seriously consider; that can be fixed of course. My major worry, though, is that we need to address the points SM made: there are times when it really is appropriate to quote material which is either uncontroversial (but expresses a point better than any our paraphrase would) or, even if potentially "opinion", is just one of many similar such opinions whose authors need not be specifically called out. In these cases there's no need for in-text attribution, and the guideline as it is doesn't allow for these cases. That's what needs to be fixed. E Eng 01:37, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
Consider, yes – we should seriously consider, no; but like I said that can be probably be fixed. I don't know what you mean by "would [would not] still be in wikivoice". E Eng 02:32, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
The film was reviewed as ‘edgy and creative’[1], ‘darkly humorous’[2], and ‘the best thing Jackson has done’.[3]
Here's the old:
The author of a quote of a full sentence or more should be named; this is done in the main text and not in a footnote. However, attribution is unnecessary with quotations that are clearly from the person discussed in the article or section.
I've scrapped the inexplicable "full sentence" criterion. And the "clearly from the person" criterion. In fact, I scrapped the whole thing and just made it refer to NPOV's attribution requirement, which was a pretty clever thing to do, even if I do say so myself. Here we go:
As with all article content, the reader must be able to determine the source of any quotation, at the very least via a footnote. But the source should be additionally attributed in article text if, were it recast as paraphrase, it would need to be attributed per WP:Neutral_point_of_view#Attributing_and_specifying_biased_statements.
I'll point out right now that this is in conflict with weaker than
WP:Citing_sources#In-text_attribution, which (in my opinion) greatly overprescribes what should be in-text attributed – it says all direct speech, indirect speech, or close paraphrasing "should" be in-text attributed, and that's clearly wrong. (At least it doesn't say "must" be in-text attributed.)
E
Eng
06:12, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
The reader must be able to determine the source of any quotation, at the very least via a footnote. But the source should be additionally attributed in article text if a paraphrase of it would require attribution under WP:Neutral_point_of_view#Attributing_and_specifying_biased_statements.
Wikipedia as art, deft, beautiful, possibly even perfect(after following the link, hover over the words Sacred Cod at lower left). Perhaps you take refuge in the idea that articles are supposed to be grey and lifeless, but some of us aim higher.
All text needs sufficient contextualization for the reader to make sense of it. That's why we avoid unexplained technical jargon, include background sections, etc, etc, etc. Why would quotations be an exception?Right. Exactly. Quotations are not an exception. They have exactly the same needs for "contextualization" as does anything else not a quotation. That's what this proposal precisely says, on the specific question of the aspect of contextualization known as attribution:
the source should be additionally attributed in article text if, were it recast as paraphrase, it would need to be attributed. E Eng 00:26, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
Curly, this MOS says in-text attribution is not needed if a quote is less than a sentence long ("The author of a quote of a full sentence or more should be named; this is done in the main text and not in a footnote. However, attribution is unnecessary with quotations that are clearly from the person discussed in the article or section"). I believe shorter quotes often should have in-text attribution, and I understand you to feel the same way. But not every one, right? There are plenty of examples above, like "She is widely described as 'the Leader of the Free World'." [with a footnote referring to several articles] That doesn't need in-text attribution, right? Anythingyouwant ( talk) 23:05, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
The reader must be able to determine the source of any quotation, at the very least via a footnote. But the source should be additionally attributed in article text, by name if a paraphrase of it would require attribution under WP:Neutral_point_of_view#Attributing_and_specifying_biased_statements."? I have inserted "by name". Incidentally, the current sentence in this MOS is already addressing when the source "should be named". Anythingyouwant ( talk) 23:28, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
The text should make clear where the quotation's coming from.No, see I'm not going to let that pass. Why should the text male clear where the quotation's coming from, always, any more than the text needs to make clear, always, where anything else comes from? I agree that in most circumstances quotes should be in-text attributed (usually definitely – "Smith said", or "his sister said" – but sometimes less so – "a witness later said"), but not always. To drag in another of my pet articles, when the lead of Phineas Gage says that the subject was
once termed "the case which more than all others is calculated to excite our wonder, impair the value of prognosis, and even to subvert our physiological doctrines", it doesn't help the reader at all to
Gage's case attracted unprecedented interest, made physicians question their ability to predict whether a given injury would or would not be fatal, and brought many established ideas about human physiology into question, no one would dream of requiring in-text attribution, so why for the quotation, which gives precisely the same information (in a much longer and less vivid way)? E Eng 01:47, 5 January 2018 (UTC) Later insertions and
The current draft proposal is kind of buried above, so here it is (slightly prettified):
The reader must be able to determine the source of any quotation, at the very least via a footnote. But the source should be additionally attributed in article text, by name if a paraphrase of it would need attribution as a biased statement.
This drops the silly limitation to quotes that are a sentence or longer; merely dropping that limitation would mean every quotation would have to be attributed by name in the article text, which no one thinks would work, so this proposal loosens that requirement by only asking for attribution by name if it’s a biased statement. Anythingyouwant ( talk) 04:32, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
“The author of a quote of a full sentence or more should be named; this is done in the main text and not merely in a footnote. However, attribution is unnecessary with quotations that are clearly from the person discussed in the article or section.”Anythingyouwant ( talk) 21:33, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
The reader must be able to determine the source of any quotation, at the very least via a footnote. But the source should additionally be named in article text if a paraphrase of it would need attribution as a biased statement.
See the disambig header at
Mind Meld. I'm pretty sure that, technically, "mind meld" when used in running prose like that would be spelled with all lower-case letters, but are we supposed to refer to it in this context the same way it would appear as the title of a Wikipedia article? It's particularly weird in this case since the way it is linked it looks like a standalone article; should it rather read For the fictional practice, see Vulcan (Star Trek)#Mind melds.
?
Hijiri 88 (
聖
やや)
04:58, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
For the fictional practice, see mind meld; I don't see the point of giving Vulcan (Star Trek) § Mind melds. Just makes the hatnote take longer to read and understand. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 17:54, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
Is there any guideline concerning using complete sentences in the article prose? In particular, I am referring to this version of the lead sentence vs. this version. In the first version, the first paragraph ends with a sentence fragment. In the second version, the first paragraph ends with a complete sentence. Is there any guideline concerning which version is preferred? If there isn't, I have been told that I should start an RFC to discuss it [5]. Thank you. Frietjes ( talk) 01:00, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
Please see
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people)#Conflict between WP:NCP and WP:MOS
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
23:54, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
At time of writing, this page has 194236 bytes. I suspect that most of this is prose. Some of the subpages, such as Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers (121031 bytes), also seem too long. LaundryPizza03 ( talk) 02:18, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
FYI, the "too long" tag, that was applied and subsequently removed, links to a page that begins, "This page contains an overview of the key issues concerning article size" (bolding Wikipedia's). Nothing to say one way or another on the MOS's length, but this editing guideline does not apply in any case. Primergrey ( talk) 07:45, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
This is only peripherally MoS-related, but I figure watchlisters of articles on the English language are a probably also overlapping a lot with MoS watchers.
I've made a request at at WT:Bot requests#Tag talk pages of articles about English with Template:WikiProject English language to have the articles within the project scope bot-tagged, since doing it by had or even with AWB might be an enormous amount of effort. I'm not sure if BOTREQ requires a showing of support before action is taken to implement a bot, but I get the sense that this might be the case. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 09:58, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
Can we move WP:Manual of Style#Use of "Arab" and "Arabic" out of the MoS and into WP:List of commonly misused English words? Don't get me wrong, the advice in that MoS section is good, but I don't see it as an especially evil case.
The "Allows to" discussion above received some WP:CREEP complaints, "swat a fly with a nuclear missile" etc, this seems like the same kind of "fly". It would be nice to know that the MoS is not an ever-expanding tome. Very few pages link to the shortcuts to that MoS section. Batternut ( talk) 13:02, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
The instruction is problematic in any case; read literally, it could result in people changing gum arabic to gum arab. I'm not quite sure how to fix it, but it would be nice to address it before forgetting about it. -- Trovatore ( talk) 22:08, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
FYI, the original addition to the MoS was in February 2005 - the pre-existence of the "identity" section would appear to contradict SMcCandlish's suggestion that this material was the "genesis of the MOS:IDENTITY section". A search of the MoS talk archives found the following relevant discussions, no RfC's, and none of which proposed the original entry:
Batternut ( talk) 11:08, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
Having just raised an RfC on this subject, I suggest closing this discussion now, with a reason such as "superseded by RfC (below) - please discuss the case for MoS guidance upon Arab/Arabic usage there"? Batternut ( talk) 10:02, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
Exceptions: Ref tags are placed before dashes, not after. Where a footnote applies only to material within parentheses, the ref tags belong just before the closing parenthesis.
Claim (caveat<ref 1 />).
Claim (caveat).<ref 1 />
Claim (caveat<ref 1 />).<ref 2 />
I think this should be restored. It maybe looking better, to some people, to change #1 into #2 is no excuse for sacrificing certainty about what is being attributed to which source (if any). If the claim in this case is not in fact attributable to the same source as the caveat, then doing this is outright falsification of the sourcing. We can't have MoS advising to do this on purpose. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 10:52, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
You could make all these same arguments for periods or commas: Where a footnote applies only to material within a single sentence, the ref tags belong just before the closing period. Where a footnote applies only to material within text set off by commas, the ref tags belong just before the "closing" comma. There's nothing special about parens in this regard, or with regard to any of the arguments that have been made.
Really, none of SM's examples are even on point to my quibble with the current guideline. I just want to be able to write
instead of being forced to write
How about if we follow Chicago's "rare occasions" recommendation and say something like this:
Where it is desired to emphasize that a footnote applies only to material within parentheses, the ref tags may be placed before the closing parenthesis.
E Eng 18:54, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
Alice Betty Carolie Smith (born January 1, 1990[1]) is a Martian saxophone player and political candidate.
1. ^ Ref for birth date that doesn't give the middle names.
I'll ask you the same thing you ask everyone who wants a substantive rule change: Can you provide evidence there's an ongoing problem to solve, that editors are actually fighting about "(something[x])" formatting? What I see is editors following it without incident.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
21:30, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
See also point 3 above. I do not believe it possible to demonstrate that FAs are doing what you suppose that they might be. In every case I've looked at, the source either encompasses the material before the parenthetical as well as the parenthetical, or the material before it has its own source cited just before the parenthetical, ergo there is no possibility of confusion. That is, "Foo[1] (bar[2])" and "Foo[1] (bar)[2]" are exactly equivalent, while "Foo (bar[2])" and "Foo (bar)[2]" are not; meanwhile "Foo (bar[2])" would not be found in an FA, because it indicates that the "Foo" part is unsourced. You will thus find "Foo (bar)[2]" in FAs, but only when the source covered both "Foo" and "bar", which case that markup is exactly what we want. What we do not want, ever, is "Foo (bar)[2]" when the source only provides "bar". We consequently have no reason whatsoever to use "Foo[1] (bar)[2]" when "Foo[1] (bar[2])" is clearer, because the former inspires a misuse, that of "Foo (bar)[2]" when the source only provides "bar".
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
22:25, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
My edit corrected a venial mishyphenation ( https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Electric_pump-fed_engine&diff=prev&oldid=821874204); The Rambling Man's edit un-fixed it to restore the venial error ( https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Electric_pump-fed_engine&diff=next&oldid=821921671). The principle that hyphens do not bridge across open compounds is covered at Wikipedia:Manual of Style § Instead of a hyphen, when applying a prefix to a compound that includes a space. In this instance, there is no rewording/recasting of the term to be done, because the established name (of the type of engine) is the established name. But what does need to be done is professional punctuation rather than the amateur type. Who can move the page? In professionally edited work, "an engine that is fed by an electric pump" is an "electric pump–fed engine" or an "electric-pump-fed engine" but not an "electric pump-fed engine". — ¾-10 23:06, 23 January 2018 (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 195 | ← | Archive 197 | Archive 198 | Archive 199 | Archive 200 | Archive 201 | → | Archive 205 |
Internal links cannot be mistaken for being part of the quotation, nor will they mislead, or confuse, the reader.
--
Shyam Has Your Anomaly Mitigated (
talk)
07:07, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
As much as possible, avoid linking from within quotes...This does not totally forbid links from within quotes. If there is a link that really should be there, put it in and explain why in a comment. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 12:24, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
I've looked and just seen last year's RfC on quotation templates. Has there been any update specifically on the practice of using block quotations for illustrative purposes (i.e. in a box set off to the side, similarly to how we use images), as opposed to narrative quotations (the usual blockquotes supposed to fit into the flow of the text)? Since quote boxes have been quite extensively used it seems confusing that the MOS doesn't directly address them. -- Paul_012 ( talk) 11:12, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
{{
Quote}}
for block quotes, and to not use pull quotes, that they'd just go away. And of course that didn't work. May have to revert to the "don't abuse pull quote templates for things that are not actually
pull quotes – and pull quotes are virtually never used in articles anyway" sort of instructions we had. The experiment is being less explicit has been a failure. Just like the experiment in using decorative quote templates all over the place has been a failure.What's an example of an "illustrative" quotation in an article? Last year I went through over100 articles with pull quote templates in them, back-to-back, and in 100% of the cases, they were either block quotations mis-marked-up in decorative fashion, very short quotes that should have simply been given inline, or PoV-pushing exercises where an editors was drawing grossly
WP:UNDUE weight to a particular statement by someone. I find it difficult to imagine that this has changed.
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SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
03:30, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
{{
quote}}
, inline in their context. I forget the page that sparked that debate; some article on a gay UK politician from back when being a gay politician was a scandal. The bulk of the article is about a legal dispute between two parties, and multiple quotations of one party are used in decorative templates, including a sidebar, which of course grossly overbalances the article in that party's favour. There are a lot of problems like this.There are many old FAs that have not been updated to current MoS standards because we're mostly directing our attention to crappy articles that need a lot of work. Bringing FAs into current compliance can actually be occasionally difficult, as certain editors feel excessively proprietary about "their" articles, and some of the WP:FAC crowd are overtly hostile to MoS-based cleanup and even to MoS's existence, despite "* It [the FA-candidate article] follows the style guidelines, including [three bullet points here]" being in the FA Criteria. This list of three things includes one which is actually not an MoS matter, but WP:CITE stuff. The handful of people strangely convinced that MoS doesn't apply to FAs are misreading it as "follows the style guidelines on the following enumerated points", when of course "including" is not exclusive and doesn't mean that at all.
The central issue is probably that all templates that could be used for documentary excerpts are mis-documented as quotation templates (formerly as block-quotation templates, but since changed to distinguish between block and pull quotes and to say not to use pull quotes in articles). People use them for decoration in any article because they think it looks cool, and they don't read MoS. When
WP:MOS- and
WP:UNDUE-cognizant editors object, the would-be owners of the article get angry, and point to an FA from 2006 as their justification, even though what they're doing isn't actually similar to what the FA is doing in most cases (literary excepts) – other than visually, in that they're both boxes of text attributed to someone. A previous commenter called them "
attractive nuisances": as long as the templates like {{
Rquote}}
and {{
Quote box}}
named and documented as any kind of quote template, this "make Wikipedia look like a magazine or a blog" problem with continue. They should obviously be changed to refer only to documentary excerpts, and be documented as to when this is actually appropriate, with NPOV and COPYVIO pointers, and so on.
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SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
18:05, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
Please explain. Otherwise use wiki markup instead of HTML. Bright☀
==<span id="Old name"></span>New name==
obviously doesn't scale: if a long heading that was renamed to another long heading, you end up with an edit summary pre-filled with span crap that is actually longer than the edit summary window can handle, much less having any room for you to provide an actual edit summary. People who favor this "solution" haven't really thought it through very carefully.The test-cases page I linked to above shows what we have to work with. It's not much. The proper solution would be for MW to be upraded to handle this is some other way. E.g, interpreting an empty, id-bearing span (or template outputting one) immediately before a heading as part of the section to be headed when doing section editing. But getting practical features added to MW is a decade-long process.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
18:14, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
I moved WP:Alternative text for images to WP:Manual of Style/Accessibility/Alternative text for images, where the rest of the MOS:ACCESS supplement pages are. All links and shortcuts to it work, it just now isn't lost in the vast sea of the "Wikipedia:" namespace, but is consolidated with the related material. Also fixed the old WP:ALTPDI and MOS:ALTPDI shortcuts to work (they'd lost their anchor point when the "Purely decorative images" heading went away). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 23:53, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
At MOS:PMC, an errant phrase needs to be corrected where it is written: "When a vulgarity or obscenity is quoted, it should appear exactly as it does in the cited source; unless faithfully reproducing quoted text, Wikipedians should never bowdlerize words by replacing letters with dashes, asterisks, or other symbols." I don't know what was intended by its inclusion and have temporarily commented it out. Does anyone know what sentiments were meant to be carried?-- John Cline ( talk) 19:34, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
{{
notatypo|...}}
or {{
sic|hide=y|...}}
, because many editors upon encountering a quoted "f--k" are probably apt to think an editor censored "fuck" out of the original [not to be confused with censoring the fuck out of the original, which might go further than that. >;-] —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
23:41, 20 December 2017 (UTC)I moved the words around and added only enough to make it parse, and this should work fine "When a vulgarity or obscenity is quoted, it should appear exactly as it does in the cited source; Wikipedians should never bowdlerize words by replacing letters with dashes, asterisks, or other symbols, except when faithfully reproducing quoted text that did so." I still am not sure we should be advising a visible [ sic]. The only purpose of it is to alert editors that the censorship is in the original; readers don't (usually) know we have a WP:NOTCENSORED policy and don't care. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 23:47, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
Level 2 headings are called "level 2 headings", not "==-level headings". Using this ungrammatical terminology is not "saying exactly what's meant", it's making up a new term for an existing term. A bullet list isn't called a •-list, a parenthetical statement isn't called a ()-statement, and a levle 2 heading isn't called a ==-level heading.
Also, mere paragraphs from MOS:IMAGES there's MOS:PAREN, which asks editors to avoid constructs like "Each image should be inside the major section to which it relates (within the section defined by the most recent ==-level heading, or at the top of the lead section)". Bright☀ 16:08, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
a level-2 heading (== ... ==
(or "a second-level heading", though "level-2" probably works better, as a clearer reference to <h2>
for the super-dorks who know all that HTML mumbo-jumbo. >;-) —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
02:55, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
"people who use VE are abnormal and not to be trusted."That makes them just like the rest of us. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 03:09, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
(Linking here for posterity) Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Accessibility/Archive_10#Image_position - the original discussion about images in the appropriate section; Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_114#Images_and_third_level_headings - subsequent alteration to level-2 heading. As originally discussed, images should be placed in their appropriate sections (of any heading level) for accessibility reasons. This was altered to level-2 headings to give editors more freedom in placing images. Bright☀ 07:01, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
In many articles, for example The Bible and violence, we name some/a lot of scholars in the text. This is sometimes done "Anderson says" [1], sometimes "Philosopher, professor and author Eleonore Stump says" and anything in between. Is there any WP-guidance on what is "best", or is it all local consensus?
My personal preference is towards the latter. As a reader, I want some in-text info on who this is and why I´m listening to them, even if there´s a wikilink (though I´m less annoyed if there´s a wikilink). It may make the text more clunky and less scholarly, but still. Gråbergs Gråa Sång ( talk) 12:46, 23 December 2017 (UTC)
But "philosopher, professor and author Eleonore Stump" is pointlessly redundant. There are virtually no professional philosophers who are not academics (those that are are better known as authors than philosophers), being a professor isn't special or contextually important anyway (even being the Alfred B. Ceesdale Professor of Philosophical Inquiry, or some other fancy-named endowment position, isn't important for our purposes, except in a bio on that person), all academics "publish or perish", so we would not be quoting this person if not an author of at least a bunch of peer-reviewed papers (there'd be no way for us to ascertain their in-field reliability as a source if they had no publication history). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 16:17, 23 December 2017 (UTC)
There are virtually no professional philosophers who are not academics– what about the many professional philosophers working in private industry? E Eng 22:51, 23 December 2017 (UTC)
{{R from/to ...}}
redirect categorization of "MOS:" shortcutsPlease see:
Wikipedia talk:Categorizing redirects#Request for comments on MoS shortcut redirect categorization.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
08:30, 23 December 2017 (UTC)
{{
R to subpage}}
, which has potentially non-trivial consequences
[2]. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
11:11, 30 December 2017 (UTC)Should we add in and display the year that a marriage ends when the subject of the biography has died. Or should we not display, or remove the end date for the marriage. This was originally presented at the template page and the RFC was closed and the instruction were to reopen it here. The issue arose because some editors are mass removing the end date for marriages, when the end date is when the subject of the biography has died.
Robert Smith | |
---|---|
Born | October 20, 1911 |
Died | December 23, 1940 | (aged 29)
Spouse(s) |
Alice Jones
(
m. 1930; "his death" is deprecated; use "died" instead. 1940) |
Albert Brock | |
---|---|
Born | January 30, 1910 |
Died | December 23, 1960 | (aged 49)
Spouse(s) |
Jane Jones
(
m. 1930; "her death" is deprecated; use "died" instead. 1935)Salma Rogers
(
m. 1936; "his death" is deprecated; use "died" instead. 1960) |
Robert Smith | |
---|---|
Born | October 20, 1911 |
Died | December 23, 1940 | (aged 29)
Spouse(s) |
Alice Jones
(
m. 1930, "his death" is deprecated; use "died" instead) |
Neither mandate nor disallow end dates... neither encourage nor discourage not having end dates. Let editors decide what is best on a case by case, article by article basis. Blueboar ( talk) 23:32, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
Robert Smith | |
---|---|
Born | October 20, 1911 |
Died | December 23, 1940 | (aged 29)
Spouse | Alice Jones |
Albert Brock | |
---|---|
Born | January 30, 1910 |
Died | December 23, 1960 | (aged 49)
Spouse(s) |
Jane Jones Salma Rogers |
Is there a guideline on how to format interwiki hatnotes, and should they exist? The article Handegg (Swiss village) contains such a hatnote linking to to wikt:handegg (humorous term for American football, etc.). Did I format it properly? WP:HATNOTE says not to pipe non-disambiguation links, though I think it would be better to auto-format these links in Module:Hatnote (e.g. "For the English word, see handegg at [the English] Wiktionary"). Jc86035 ( talk) 11:05, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
I hope that you folks can help (have searched the archive). I regularly create aircraft engine articles, the subjects are often museum exhibits only or no longer exist at all. In the lead first sentence I always use the past tense as this seems natural to me. This is 'corrected' to present tense as if I have made a mistake. If the subject is still in service or even limited use in retirement I will use present tense.
Reading the guideline wording of do not use past tense except for dead subjects, past events, and subjects that no longer meaningfully exist as such I would regard an aircraft engine in a museum as not meaningfully existing as it is no longer running, turning a propeller or producing thrust and powering an aircraft.
Does this wording need adjusting for clarity? I've looked at some other random museum items (retired/defunct etc) and they all seem to use the past tense in the first sentence, e.g. Stephenson's Rocket, North American XB-70 Valkyrie, Space Shuttle Enterprise, RRS Discovery and the Wright Flyer, all subjects that no longer operate as they were originally designed to do ('retired' in less words!). Cheers Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 07:27, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
"Lenin's body has a meaningful existence." Exactly. It's perfectly fine to say that Challenger was a space shuttle and that parts of it are in a museum. If the entire something is in a museum, and still in working or potentially working condition (not just a shell or a fragment), though, it should probably remain in present tense. Cognitive dissonance about this can be resolved by sensible rewriting.
Wright Flyer is a perfect example: The Wright Flyer (often retrospectively referred to as Flyer I or 1903 Flyer) was the first successful heavier-than-air powered aircraft. It was designed and built by the
Wright brothers. They flew it four times on December 17, 1903, near
Kill Devil Hills, about four miles south of
Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, US. Today, the airplane is exhibited in the
National Air and Space Museum in
Washington D.C.
. Analyze it: Past-tense claim about something it did. Past-tense claim about something they did. Ditto. Present tense claim about what the plane is up to right now. There is no problem there. PS: The style on that needs fixing; it should be '''''Flyer'' I''' or '''1903 ''Flyer'''''
; the name of the aircraft did not change. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
01:29, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
Some of the most frequent comprehension-impeding errors I encounter and correct could be addressed in a small section. I think it would ease some copyediting load in the long run (and of course make the encyclopedia text better for readers in innumerable places); probably goes right after MOS:SERIAL, but it could also live in MOS:LISTS, and just be summarized in the main MoS page without the example table:
[End proposed material.]
Quite short as to rulemaking, though the examples are rich. These are just two real examples from about an hour ago (some details compressed for brevity) – in otherwise very well-written articles. The journalistic and fiction-writing aversion to the serial comma is poisonous. While no one is confused by the lack of one in a very simple construction like "My dog strangely likes pistachios, potatoes and eggplant", there's no question that it's needed in these kinds of constructions.
Yet only two days ago, I had someone tendentiously revert-warring against a comma despite patently obvious ambiguity (that was a case of "So-and-so guitarist was a member of the Chicken and Dumplings, Doodah and the Snorkel Weasels" (whatever the actual band names were); only someone familiar with the bands would be certain this meant three bands (C&D, D, and SW). The reverter's excuse? As always: "MoS doesn't say it's required."
— Preceding unsigned comment added by SMcCandlish ( talk • contribs)
When a list of areas served is present in an article's infobox, should Puerto Rico be listed if the United States is already on the list? Daylen ( talk) 00:02, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
Can we get a clarification on how MOS:LQ should be interpreted with regards to including terminating punctuation without quotemarks? For example, given two source sentences:
Would we quote them in a Wikpedia™ article in the following manner:
— Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 11:42, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
Include terminal punctuation within the quotation marks only if it was present in the original material, and otherwise place it after the closing quotation mark, then goes on to give a bunch of examples which in many cases contradict that. If you LQ zealots would get your act together and come up with a guideline that actually makes sense, is self-consistent, and is not too far off from they way normal people here on earth actually write, I'm sure most editors will do their best to follow it. In the meantime I, for one, will just do what that first sentence clearly tells me to do. E Eng 12:08, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
If the quotation is a single word or fragment, place the terminal punctuation outside the closing quotation mark. If the quotation is a full sentence and it coincides with the end of the sentence containing it, place terminal punctuation inside the closing quotation mark.We should do that because we more often quote fragments than full sentences, so people should see and absorb that part first and foremost. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 02:08, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
.
at the end wasn't a full stop/period but a different meaning of the glyph, and that's fine. But it would probably be better to rewrite. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
02:00, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
"really get under people's skin."by itself is meaningless. LQ forbids insertion of punctuation not in the original, as blatant misquotation; it does not require retention of terminal punctuation that was in the original when it doesn't make sense to do so. Otherwise no excerpting would be possible at all. I.e., there is no difference between taking an original statement, "Janet's cat is orange and ugly.", and quoting it as "He said her cat is "orange and ugly", which I though was funny.", versus "He said her cat is 'orange and ugly'." But include it inside the quote here: "He said: 'Janet's cat is orange and ugly.'" Leaving it out when quoting a full sentence strongly implies we're quoting a fragment. But if we're quoting a fragment, the exact same principle that allows us to partially quote without all the words also allows us to partially quote without terminal punctuation that doesn't make sense inside the fragment when the fragment is viewed on its own. A third way of putting it: If I write "My cat is loud, ha ha", you would not partial-quote it as "McCandlish said 'My cat is loud,'." – desperately retaining the comma as part of the original construction.
Re: the claims that
MOS:LQ "then goes on to give a bunch of examples which in many cases contradict that" we "[i]nclude terminal punctuation within the quotation marks only if it was present in the original material, and otherwise place it after the closing quotation mark" – I've reviewed it line by line and it does not do that at all. All the examples are correct. (This has not always been the case; people have monkeyed with it before, especially to make it match one of the dozen+ British styles that were inspired by LQ but have diverged from it in inconsistent ways.)
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SMcCandlish
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¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
02:00, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
Include terminal punctuation within the quotation marks only if it was present in the original material, and otherwise place it after the closing quotation mark, period (so to speak). It says if X, do A, otherwise do B. It purports by its wording to dispose of every case that arises. The later examples don't call themselves exceptions to this Prime Directive; they're just there, telling you to do things, some of which (depending on circumstance) contradict the opening instruction. For example, let's say the source says,
What Marlin said was, "I need to find Nemo.", and for whatever reason I want to cast this as either
Marlin needed, he said, "to find Nemo".or
Marlin needed, he said, "to find Nemo."According to the later examples given by LQ, I'm supposed to write the first, but according to the LQ's unambiguous, here's-how-it's-done, no-exceptions-provided-for Prime Directive, I'm supposed to use the second. Thus the contradiction. E Eng 03:17, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
What seems to be happening here is that EEng is extrapolating beyond what it actually says and arriving at something like "Include terminal punctuation within the quotation marks if it was present in the original material, no matter what, and place all other punctuation after the closing quotation mark", or something to that effect, though it's not entirely clear, since he's just objecting without being specific.' [4] — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 03:39, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
Include terminal punctuation within the quotation marks only if it was present in the original material, and otherwise place it after the closing quotation markdon't you understand? David Eppstein, can you toss me a lifeline here? E Eng 05:26, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
This following semi-recent addition is not actually very helpful, and may be the primary source of confusion:
Aside from being repetitive of much of the sentence that precedes it, and vaguely worded, this presupposes that the reader understands all about the niceties of question mark usage, when this actually varies between style guides, and we have a section here instructing editors on our version, so we know they didn't all arrive here with this in their brains already. Worse, question marks themselves are subject to an LQ rule of their own, rendering this statement confusing and meaningless.
It would probably make more sense to just say this:
It's shorter and doesn't presuppose anything, uses clearer wording, and it covers both the He said "Ouch, that hurts." case and the "Ouch," he said, "that hurts." case (it's not all about terminal punctuation), while ruling out "Why," he asked, "did you hit me?" (must be "Why", he asked, "did you hit me?") and "Ouch," was what he said. (it's "Ouch" was what he said.) It also doesn't exclude retention of "!" and "?", which we cover in a later point. We already provide conforming examples; this isn't a substantive change in any way, just a better clarification than that "same way as question marks" attempt.
However, we should ditch the insipid fictional dialogue examples we have. Replace them with structurally identical material that actually pertains to how we write encyclopedia articles, e.g. quoting from non-fiction sources. It would make this all much easier to relate to and apply.
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SMcCandlish
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¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
03:39, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
If the quotation is a single word or a sentence fragment, place the terminal punctuation outside the closing quotation mark. When quoting a full sentence the end of which coincides with the end of the sentence containing it, place terminal punctuation inside the closing quotation mark."), and this wouldn't touch it, just prepare people for it. I.e., there is no "exception" as EEng's been conceiving of it; the existing language about fragments doesn't diverge from or contradict the main LQ rule, it's just so clouded with "same way as question marks" blather – before we even get to question marks in LQ at all – that at least a few people aren't getting it. This nutshell replacement sentence should fix that. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 06:05, 5 January 2018 (UTC); revised 06:16, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
You're all correct. I was somehow parsing the only if as if, even when it was rubbed in my face. In my (very pale) defense I'll say that the second half of Include terminal punctuation within the quotation marks only if it was present in the original material, and otherwise place it after the closing quotation mark
is redundant to the first, and it's natural for the brain to look for two different imports i.e. an implication and its converse. Laugh at me if you will.
Nonetheless, I'm glad to see there's recognition that the presentation needs improvement. May I suggest that the Prime Directive be restated simply as something like Any terminal punctuation inside the quotation marks should be marks present in the material quoted
.
E
Eng
18:32, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
The original isn't really redundant so much as giving both sides of the coin for extra clarity, and is fixable by juggling words a little, maybe Place terminal punctuation after the closing quotation mark by default; only include it within the quotation marks if it was present in the original material.
That seems totally unambiguous to me, especially if we combine it with
#Potential clarification above and get rid of the confusing "like questions marks" stuff.
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SMcCandlish
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20:48, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Things like
this have (not for the first time) inspired me to consider adding something like the following after the fragments and full sentences part: "However, for long fragments that form most of a complete sentence and simply omit an introductory clause, the terminal punctuation may be retained inside the quotation marks.
" This a) would not be inconsistent with general LQ principles, and b) would agree better with both typical North American and most (not all) British/Commonwealth quotation styles. While it verges on
WP:CREEP at first glance, I think it would have a tension-reduction effect that, while subtle, would be widespread and long lasting. Similar to no longer requiring a colon before a quote of a full sentence if it's short. (People just don't like writing XYZCorp's response was: "Not yet." We don't really have a reason to demand it, even if a colon is better as an introduction of longer material. Same principle applies here.) —
SMcCandlish
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¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
06:16, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
The study's methodology was "[30 more words]"., then people are apt to fuss about having to keep the period outside the quote. The same thing could be done as
"[The] study's methodology is [30 more words]."I'm just looking for ways to avoid people grinding their teeth, especially when it's about something we don't actually have a strong reason to care about. That said, if no one after a week or so is enthusiastic about this one, then there's no reason to add it, since it is a minor consistency variance. I'm just going by what I see people do fairly often, and what I've seen people revert about in confusion or disagreement. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 05:32, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
I often see at Wikipedia that quotes are provided inline without any inline attribution, which is really bad IMHO unless the speaker is clear from the context. Am I correct that this MOS merely requires attribution, rather than inline attribution? If so, I support editing the MOS to require not just attribution but inline attribution, unless the context makes it obvious. Often the attribution isn’t even explicit in the footnote, and so you have to click on a link in the footnote to figure out who made the quoted statement. I don’t think readers should have to go look at a footnote at all, because the body of the Wikipedia article should only include quotes with inline attribution unless the attribution is otherwise obvious. Here’s an example, which I now promise to never edit since I’m seeking a policy change that would affect it. Anythingyouwant ( talk) 18:51, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
OK, so here's the proposal:
The author of a quote
of a full sentence or moreshould be named unless their identity is already obvious in context, or the quote is not attributable to any particular named author; this is done in the main text and not in a footnote.However, attribution is unnecessary with quotations that are clearly from the person discussed in the article or section
Any comments, objections, snide remarks, glowing praise? Anythingyouwant ( talk) 03:50, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
There needs to be a better way to get at "attribute the quote when it needs to be attributed", basically. What we don't want to see is "She is 'gunning for the governorship in 2020, on a platform that amounts to center-left backlash against ignorant populism'.[1]" without this opinionated encapsulation being attributed, right there in the sentence, to someone whose opinion our readers might GaF about.
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SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
05:17, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
The author of a quote of a full sentence or more should be named, and for a shorter quote that is sourced to only one author or source we also should provide that name; this is done in the main text and not in a footnote. However, attribution is unnecessary with quotations that are clearly from the person discussed in the article or section
Anythingyouwant ( talk) 05:35, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
Okay well, User:Boson and User:Masem, here is my last attempt:
The author of a quote of a full sentence or more should be named, and for a shorter quote that is sourced to only one author or source we also should seriously consider providing that name; this is normally done in the main text and not in a footnote. However, attribution is unnecessary with quotations that are clearly from the person discussed in the article or section
That’s more flexible. Personally, I don’t see why it’s not better to name theatre critics inline; likewise for press officers and reporters, the name of their organization (i.e. the name of the source if not the person) ought to be provided inline, IMHO. But if you disagree with this newest proposal, please suggest an alternative. Thanks and Happy New Year. Anythingyouwant ( talk) 16:46, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
we also should seriously consider; that can be fixed of course. My major worry, though, is that we need to address the points SM made: there are times when it really is appropriate to quote material which is either uncontroversial (but expresses a point better than any our paraphrase would) or, even if potentially "opinion", is just one of many similar such opinions whose authors need not be specifically called out. In these cases there's no need for in-text attribution, and the guideline as it is doesn't allow for these cases. That's what needs to be fixed. E Eng 01:37, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
Consider, yes – we should seriously consider, no; but like I said that can be probably be fixed. I don't know what you mean by "would [would not] still be in wikivoice". E Eng 02:32, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
The film was reviewed as ‘edgy and creative’[1], ‘darkly humorous’[2], and ‘the best thing Jackson has done’.[3]
Here's the old:
The author of a quote of a full sentence or more should be named; this is done in the main text and not in a footnote. However, attribution is unnecessary with quotations that are clearly from the person discussed in the article or section.
I've scrapped the inexplicable "full sentence" criterion. And the "clearly from the person" criterion. In fact, I scrapped the whole thing and just made it refer to NPOV's attribution requirement, which was a pretty clever thing to do, even if I do say so myself. Here we go:
As with all article content, the reader must be able to determine the source of any quotation, at the very least via a footnote. But the source should be additionally attributed in article text if, were it recast as paraphrase, it would need to be attributed per WP:Neutral_point_of_view#Attributing_and_specifying_biased_statements.
I'll point out right now that this is in conflict with weaker than
WP:Citing_sources#In-text_attribution, which (in my opinion) greatly overprescribes what should be in-text attributed – it says all direct speech, indirect speech, or close paraphrasing "should" be in-text attributed, and that's clearly wrong. (At least it doesn't say "must" be in-text attributed.)
E
Eng
06:12, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
The reader must be able to determine the source of any quotation, at the very least via a footnote. But the source should be additionally attributed in article text if a paraphrase of it would require attribution under WP:Neutral_point_of_view#Attributing_and_specifying_biased_statements.
Wikipedia as art, deft, beautiful, possibly even perfect(after following the link, hover over the words Sacred Cod at lower left). Perhaps you take refuge in the idea that articles are supposed to be grey and lifeless, but some of us aim higher.
All text needs sufficient contextualization for the reader to make sense of it. That's why we avoid unexplained technical jargon, include background sections, etc, etc, etc. Why would quotations be an exception?Right. Exactly. Quotations are not an exception. They have exactly the same needs for "contextualization" as does anything else not a quotation. That's what this proposal precisely says, on the specific question of the aspect of contextualization known as attribution:
the source should be additionally attributed in article text if, were it recast as paraphrase, it would need to be attributed. E Eng 00:26, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
Curly, this MOS says in-text attribution is not needed if a quote is less than a sentence long ("The author of a quote of a full sentence or more should be named; this is done in the main text and not in a footnote. However, attribution is unnecessary with quotations that are clearly from the person discussed in the article or section"). I believe shorter quotes often should have in-text attribution, and I understand you to feel the same way. But not every one, right? There are plenty of examples above, like "She is widely described as 'the Leader of the Free World'." [with a footnote referring to several articles] That doesn't need in-text attribution, right? Anythingyouwant ( talk) 23:05, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
The reader must be able to determine the source of any quotation, at the very least via a footnote. But the source should be additionally attributed in article text, by name if a paraphrase of it would require attribution under WP:Neutral_point_of_view#Attributing_and_specifying_biased_statements."? I have inserted "by name". Incidentally, the current sentence in this MOS is already addressing when the source "should be named". Anythingyouwant ( talk) 23:28, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
The text should make clear where the quotation's coming from.No, see I'm not going to let that pass. Why should the text male clear where the quotation's coming from, always, any more than the text needs to make clear, always, where anything else comes from? I agree that in most circumstances quotes should be in-text attributed (usually definitely – "Smith said", or "his sister said" – but sometimes less so – "a witness later said"), but not always. To drag in another of my pet articles, when the lead of Phineas Gage says that the subject was
once termed "the case which more than all others is calculated to excite our wonder, impair the value of prognosis, and even to subvert our physiological doctrines", it doesn't help the reader at all to
Gage's case attracted unprecedented interest, made physicians question their ability to predict whether a given injury would or would not be fatal, and brought many established ideas about human physiology into question, no one would dream of requiring in-text attribution, so why for the quotation, which gives precisely the same information (in a much longer and less vivid way)? E Eng 01:47, 5 January 2018 (UTC) Later insertions and
The current draft proposal is kind of buried above, so here it is (slightly prettified):
The reader must be able to determine the source of any quotation, at the very least via a footnote. But the source should be additionally attributed in article text, by name if a paraphrase of it would need attribution as a biased statement.
This drops the silly limitation to quotes that are a sentence or longer; merely dropping that limitation would mean every quotation would have to be attributed by name in the article text, which no one thinks would work, so this proposal loosens that requirement by only asking for attribution by name if it’s a biased statement. Anythingyouwant ( talk) 04:32, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
“The author of a quote of a full sentence or more should be named; this is done in the main text and not merely in a footnote. However, attribution is unnecessary with quotations that are clearly from the person discussed in the article or section.”Anythingyouwant ( talk) 21:33, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
The reader must be able to determine the source of any quotation, at the very least via a footnote. But the source should additionally be named in article text if a paraphrase of it would need attribution as a biased statement.
See the disambig header at
Mind Meld. I'm pretty sure that, technically, "mind meld" when used in running prose like that would be spelled with all lower-case letters, but are we supposed to refer to it in this context the same way it would appear as the title of a Wikipedia article? It's particularly weird in this case since the way it is linked it looks like a standalone article; should it rather read For the fictional practice, see Vulcan (Star Trek)#Mind melds.
?
Hijiri 88 (
聖
やや)
04:58, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
For the fictional practice, see mind meld; I don't see the point of giving Vulcan (Star Trek) § Mind melds. Just makes the hatnote take longer to read and understand. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 17:54, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
Is there any guideline concerning using complete sentences in the article prose? In particular, I am referring to this version of the lead sentence vs. this version. In the first version, the first paragraph ends with a sentence fragment. In the second version, the first paragraph ends with a complete sentence. Is there any guideline concerning which version is preferred? If there isn't, I have been told that I should start an RFC to discuss it [5]. Thank you. Frietjes ( talk) 01:00, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
Please see
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people)#Conflict between WP:NCP and WP:MOS
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SMcCandlish
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23:54, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
At time of writing, this page has 194236 bytes. I suspect that most of this is prose. Some of the subpages, such as Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers (121031 bytes), also seem too long. LaundryPizza03 ( talk) 02:18, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
FYI, the "too long" tag, that was applied and subsequently removed, links to a page that begins, "This page contains an overview of the key issues concerning article size" (bolding Wikipedia's). Nothing to say one way or another on the MOS's length, but this editing guideline does not apply in any case. Primergrey ( talk) 07:45, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
This is only peripherally MoS-related, but I figure watchlisters of articles on the English language are a probably also overlapping a lot with MoS watchers.
I've made a request at at WT:Bot requests#Tag talk pages of articles about English with Template:WikiProject English language to have the articles within the project scope bot-tagged, since doing it by had or even with AWB might be an enormous amount of effort. I'm not sure if BOTREQ requires a showing of support before action is taken to implement a bot, but I get the sense that this might be the case. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 09:58, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
Can we move WP:Manual of Style#Use of "Arab" and "Arabic" out of the MoS and into WP:List of commonly misused English words? Don't get me wrong, the advice in that MoS section is good, but I don't see it as an especially evil case.
The "Allows to" discussion above received some WP:CREEP complaints, "swat a fly with a nuclear missile" etc, this seems like the same kind of "fly". It would be nice to know that the MoS is not an ever-expanding tome. Very few pages link to the shortcuts to that MoS section. Batternut ( talk) 13:02, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
The instruction is problematic in any case; read literally, it could result in people changing gum arabic to gum arab. I'm not quite sure how to fix it, but it would be nice to address it before forgetting about it. -- Trovatore ( talk) 22:08, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
FYI, the original addition to the MoS was in February 2005 - the pre-existence of the "identity" section would appear to contradict SMcCandlish's suggestion that this material was the "genesis of the MOS:IDENTITY section". A search of the MoS talk archives found the following relevant discussions, no RfC's, and none of which proposed the original entry:
Batternut ( talk) 11:08, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
Having just raised an RfC on this subject, I suggest closing this discussion now, with a reason such as "superseded by RfC (below) - please discuss the case for MoS guidance upon Arab/Arabic usage there"? Batternut ( talk) 10:02, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
Exceptions: Ref tags are placed before dashes, not after. Where a footnote applies only to material within parentheses, the ref tags belong just before the closing parenthesis.
Claim (caveat<ref 1 />).
Claim (caveat).<ref 1 />
Claim (caveat<ref 1 />).<ref 2 />
I think this should be restored. It maybe looking better, to some people, to change #1 into #2 is no excuse for sacrificing certainty about what is being attributed to which source (if any). If the claim in this case is not in fact attributable to the same source as the caveat, then doing this is outright falsification of the sourcing. We can't have MoS advising to do this on purpose. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 10:52, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
You could make all these same arguments for periods or commas: Where a footnote applies only to material within a single sentence, the ref tags belong just before the closing period. Where a footnote applies only to material within text set off by commas, the ref tags belong just before the "closing" comma. There's nothing special about parens in this regard, or with regard to any of the arguments that have been made.
Really, none of SM's examples are even on point to my quibble with the current guideline. I just want to be able to write
instead of being forced to write
How about if we follow Chicago's "rare occasions" recommendation and say something like this:
Where it is desired to emphasize that a footnote applies only to material within parentheses, the ref tags may be placed before the closing parenthesis.
E Eng 18:54, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
Alice Betty Carolie Smith (born January 1, 1990[1]) is a Martian saxophone player and political candidate.
1. ^ Ref for birth date that doesn't give the middle names.
I'll ask you the same thing you ask everyone who wants a substantive rule change: Can you provide evidence there's an ongoing problem to solve, that editors are actually fighting about "(something[x])" formatting? What I see is editors following it without incident.
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SMcCandlish
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21:30, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
See also point 3 above. I do not believe it possible to demonstrate that FAs are doing what you suppose that they might be. In every case I've looked at, the source either encompasses the material before the parenthetical as well as the parenthetical, or the material before it has its own source cited just before the parenthetical, ergo there is no possibility of confusion. That is, "Foo[1] (bar[2])" and "Foo[1] (bar)[2]" are exactly equivalent, while "Foo (bar[2])" and "Foo (bar)[2]" are not; meanwhile "Foo (bar[2])" would not be found in an FA, because it indicates that the "Foo" part is unsourced. You will thus find "Foo (bar)[2]" in FAs, but only when the source covered both "Foo" and "bar", which case that markup is exactly what we want. What we do not want, ever, is "Foo (bar)[2]" when the source only provides "bar". We consequently have no reason whatsoever to use "Foo[1] (bar)[2]" when "Foo[1] (bar[2])" is clearer, because the former inspires a misuse, that of "Foo (bar)[2]" when the source only provides "bar".
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SMcCandlish
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22:25, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
My edit corrected a venial mishyphenation ( https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Electric_pump-fed_engine&diff=prev&oldid=821874204); The Rambling Man's edit un-fixed it to restore the venial error ( https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Electric_pump-fed_engine&diff=next&oldid=821921671). The principle that hyphens do not bridge across open compounds is covered at Wikipedia:Manual of Style § Instead of a hyphen, when applying a prefix to a compound that includes a space. In this instance, there is no rewording/recasting of the term to be done, because the established name (of the type of engine) is the established name. But what does need to be done is professional punctuation rather than the amateur type. Who can move the page? In professionally edited work, "an engine that is fed by an electric pump" is an "electric pump–fed engine" or an "electric-pump-fed engine" but not an "electric pump-fed engine". — ¾-10 23:06, 23 January 2018 (UTC)"