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I think that the rules of respect of each religion should be obeyed whenever possible. In particular, the Christian rule of capitalizing words referring to God. I don't think that this conflicts with any Wikipedia principle such as the NPOV, and while I am a Christian myself, I wouldn't mind to obey similar rules of other religions. Therefore, I propose this to be changed regarding the "Religions, deities, philosophies, doctrines and their adherents" policy. Jorge 03:06, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
I strongly disagree with Jorge. We should write in a style that as many readers as possible will understand, follow and (if possible) like. This is not necessarily the style that experts or those familiar with a particular subject will use - we should put our readers first. We show respect to our subjects by reporting factual information in (as far as possible) an unbiased way, not by changing our language to accommodate them, jguk 18:05, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
Looks like another problem that the template proposal for automatically rendering the various flavours of English (see above) could solve. PizzaMargherita 18:52, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
Is 'a' the best abbreviation for year as in 'Mt/a'?
I would welcome ISO, NIST, BIPM or other respectable references on this. The article 'Acetic acid' quoted 'Mt/a'. I changed it to 'Mt/year' but it was changed back. Bobblewik 23:06, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
In English "Y" is much more commonly used, as in Y2K, YTD, YYYY - and I am sure others could provide many other examples. Years are not SI units anyway and they do not have a definite length, so all usage of it has to be a rough approximation. Every time I see it - and I am quite scientifically, "Latinly", and "Spanishly" literate, it takes me about 15 seconds to figure out what that freaking a is doing there - if I get it at all. I think use of seconds & hours should be encouraged & use of the indeterminate year be avoided. If year has to be used, I see no reason why it cannot be spelled out - not being an SI unit & being of indeterminate length, there will never be an official symbol for it anyway -- JimWae 06:37, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
For easy reading I think we should always use "year" without mentioning "a" or "y" at all (i.e. "Mt/year"). Cacycle 21:52, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
In taxonomy it is standard to italicize the Genus and species for all organizms, not limited to bacteria. I have not payed particular attention, or noticed this is not being done in Wikipedia, but the MoS states it is specific to bacteria. Comments? SailorfromNH 01:25, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
What are your thoughts on the use of columns to position sections side-by-side? Zondor ( talk · contribs) has been implementing this format on a series of articles, but without discussion - which, for such a fundamental change to article formatting, I feel is necessary. For an example of what I am referring to, scroll to the end of this article or this article. I think guidelines are necessary - whether they discourage or encourage this format.-- cj | talk 14:38, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, but placing actual "headered" sections into colums is a new idea, as far as I'm aware.-- cj | talk 04:42, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm a bit concerned about this. I agree that columns look better under ideal circumstances, but there are a couple of potential problems. As Shimmin notes, it makes the articles a bit harder to edit and maintain—a newbie might have trouble with the column code, even with the templates. The breaks have to be repositioned if the sections are substantially changed.
The other–potentially more serious–problem is for editors and readers working at lower resolution or in non-maximized windows. The columns (particularly under {{ col-3}} or {{ col-4}}) could end up quite narrow; it's the sort of thing that could make references rather difficult to read or use. TenOfAllTrades( talk) 06:05, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
No, I don't think this is a good idea. Presentation and content should be as separate as possible, and while this may look good on high resolution screens it looks horrible at lower resolutions (like on Pocket PC or Palm devices). Sortan 16:27, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't like it, apart from the mentioned problems, I just think it doesn't look as good. Martin 16:33, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
I can see the utility in some places, but I think this should be something left up to user preferences. I think I could hack out some simple CSS styles to do it in specific circumstances if people want the option, but I'd really rather not have the layout forced on me by the use of tables. — HorsePunchKid→ 龜 2005-11-25 21:21:56 Z
I like it and think that it should be left to editors judgement and community consensus per article. I've applied it for example in List of object-oriented programming terms and List of Petri net tools where it fits nicely. The columns in Iraq War ( permalink) also look good. Before this, I sometimes had the feeling that the verticle density of text in articles is sometimes quite low. I even have the feeling that increasing it where applicable is quite encyclopaedic. And technology will support this even better and better in the future as certainly the quality of display hardware will increase in the future. So we would be on the right track. On the other hand, I would put non-list content, especially whole sections in traditional style articles only with caution in sections. But I would not revert it if I see that and think it fits. Just Let the community decide per article. After all, it is a nice idea. – Adrian | Talk 09:02, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
I think it is generally a bad idea, particularly when there are list items in the columns that're forced onto 2 or 3 lines (such as on Old Man's Child). As mentioned before, it often depends on the resolution of the monitors or device & the default text size in the browser. When I design web pages w/ tables and columns, I always evaluate it with several different base font sizes larger and smaller than my own. I these equate it to "over-engineering": Going too far to optimize (the use of space) for your-own browser environment often has unintended consequences. Unless you can be sure that features like columns are benign for every viewer, I think it's safer to keep it simple. Meegs 19:18, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
I would suggest that, for example, "50 metres" should be expressed as "50m" rather than "50 m". If using an abbreviated unit, it almost always looks better to close up the number and unit (note that bar - the unit of pressure - is not an abbreviation, and thus should not be closed up). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.201.25.22 ( talk • contribs) 28 Nov 2005
There has to be a space, see http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/checklist.html Cacycle 22:04, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Both "50m" and "50 m" are wrong. The correct form is "50 m". PizzaMargherita 22:16, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
The space is important as 50m often means 50 million whereas 50 m means 50 metres.
First, a word about significant figures (sf) and decimal places (dp): the precision of a number is denoted by the number of significant figures it contains, not necessarily the number of decimal places. For example, a length measurement of 30.8mm (to 1 decimal place) can also be rendered as 3.08cm (2dp), 0.0308m (4dp) or even 0.0000308km (7dp). In every case, the number contains three significant figures, and the precision of the measurement has not changed.
Generally, use the fewest possible digits and the fewest possible decimal places: 85.3m is preferable to 85,300mm or 0.0853km. You may want to break this rule to keep all the figures in the same units.
Figures rarely need to be given to more than 3 significant figures – you are unlikely to need such precision, and measurements are seldom accurate enough to justify it. Common exceptions include money (where $24,495 is a perfectly acceptable figure) and numbers beginning with the figure 1: it would be absurd to turn a measurement such as 1,002mm into 1.00m if you were comparing it with 998mm.
Round up rather than down – ie 2.904m becomes 2.90m, while 2.905m becomes 2.91m (and in this case, beware of turning 2.904m into 2.9m – see the next point).
Drop trailing zeros in most cases, ie use 18.3m rather than 18.30m, and 23m rather than 23.0m – unless: • you are differentiating between similar numbers, eg use “the trailer is 4.0m high, 200mm lower than the old 4.2m standard”. Or: • you have a group or table of figures with similar formats, eg gear ratios: 3.67, 3.84, 4.00 and 4.25:1.
Retain leading zeros, ie use 0.67m rather than .67m (but consider also using 670mm).
Thousands are clearer if separated by commas, ie 7,500kg rather than 7500kg. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.201.25.22 ( talk • contribs) 28 Nov 2005
Why has the directive against links in the title (in the opening sentence) been removed? That's been established style for a long time, and I haven't seen some great upwell of protest against it. Occasionally one needs to make an exception, but that's true of most of our rules. I'd like to see that restored. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:22, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
I do not see the need for that equivocation. It is a rare circumstance where the words in the title that are to be linked are not used again early in the article. There is nothing in the Manual to say that these words have to be linked in the first sentence or even in the first paragraph. I think that as long as the words re-appear and are linked in the first two paragraphs, the reader has ample opportunity to follow the links to the title words. I see no reason to change a long-standing directive just because there are many articles that do not follow it. It is common to see non-proper nouns capitalized in sub-headings, too, should we abandon the attempt to have uniformity in sub-headings, or should we apply the directive? I do not think that this debate is over, and wonder if others agree with me. If not, I'll stand down. Ground Zero | t 23:50, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
I'd be perfectly glad to see the original rule restored without qualification; my rewording was intended to meet Anthony halfway. Whichever works for other people, but something needs to be there. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:47, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
No explicit exceptions please. I believe it's six against one. 'Certain complex titles or verbose leads' is IMHO unclear and the other qualifications do not call for an exception. Links in the titles are downright ugly and do not add value. You have not convinced me that we need these specific exceptions, and why the generic "apply elasticity" rule does not suffice. A section well written would bring up any newly introduced concepts, and the editor should link there. PizzaMargherita 21:14, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Is there a specific example of an article where links in headings are a good idea? Sortan 01:48, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
I have listed Category:Signpost articles (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (signpost articles)) on Categories for deletion. Thanks/ wangi 17:08, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
It says it doesn't matter whether you use single or double spaces in the markup, which is fine. But using to "enforce" double spaces in the rendered output (like this) is definitely bad, right? — Omegatron 02:01, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
I may have been looking in all the wrong places, but there doesn't seem to any section of the style manual about the uses of capital letters for some of the more esoteric examples. For example, eBay. It states in the trademark section that REALTOR should be considered Realtor, and so, according to this logic should eBay be changed to EBay? And if so, when? at the beginning of a sentence? or always? Also what of personal preference, like people like (I think) k. d. lang? Should all references to this person be reworked to normal usage (i.e. K. D. Lang) or not? Or only at the beginning of a sentence?
Linked to this, but not really, is the use of logograms, like the symbol that Prince used to go by, or the plus signs in C++. Since the +'s are just a symbol standing in for the word plus, to what extent should articles humor uncommon usages? 68.227.80.79 23:02, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
[[C plus plus|C++]]
, again with the goal of conforming to most common usage, even though you have to do some trickery with the link. —
HorsePunchKid→
龜
2005-12-03 05:46:40
Z![]() | 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 30 | ← | Archive 33 | Archive 34 | Archive 35 | Archive 36 | Archive 37 | → | Archive 40 |
I think that the rules of respect of each religion should be obeyed whenever possible. In particular, the Christian rule of capitalizing words referring to God. I don't think that this conflicts with any Wikipedia principle such as the NPOV, and while I am a Christian myself, I wouldn't mind to obey similar rules of other religions. Therefore, I propose this to be changed regarding the "Religions, deities, philosophies, doctrines and their adherents" policy. Jorge 03:06, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
I strongly disagree with Jorge. We should write in a style that as many readers as possible will understand, follow and (if possible) like. This is not necessarily the style that experts or those familiar with a particular subject will use - we should put our readers first. We show respect to our subjects by reporting factual information in (as far as possible) an unbiased way, not by changing our language to accommodate them, jguk 18:05, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
Looks like another problem that the template proposal for automatically rendering the various flavours of English (see above) could solve. PizzaMargherita 18:52, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
Is 'a' the best abbreviation for year as in 'Mt/a'?
I would welcome ISO, NIST, BIPM or other respectable references on this. The article 'Acetic acid' quoted 'Mt/a'. I changed it to 'Mt/year' but it was changed back. Bobblewik 23:06, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
In English "Y" is much more commonly used, as in Y2K, YTD, YYYY - and I am sure others could provide many other examples. Years are not SI units anyway and they do not have a definite length, so all usage of it has to be a rough approximation. Every time I see it - and I am quite scientifically, "Latinly", and "Spanishly" literate, it takes me about 15 seconds to figure out what that freaking a is doing there - if I get it at all. I think use of seconds & hours should be encouraged & use of the indeterminate year be avoided. If year has to be used, I see no reason why it cannot be spelled out - not being an SI unit & being of indeterminate length, there will never be an official symbol for it anyway -- JimWae 06:37, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
For easy reading I think we should always use "year" without mentioning "a" or "y" at all (i.e. "Mt/year"). Cacycle 21:52, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
In taxonomy it is standard to italicize the Genus and species for all organizms, not limited to bacteria. I have not payed particular attention, or noticed this is not being done in Wikipedia, but the MoS states it is specific to bacteria. Comments? SailorfromNH 01:25, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
What are your thoughts on the use of columns to position sections side-by-side? Zondor ( talk · contribs) has been implementing this format on a series of articles, but without discussion - which, for such a fundamental change to article formatting, I feel is necessary. For an example of what I am referring to, scroll to the end of this article or this article. I think guidelines are necessary - whether they discourage or encourage this format.-- cj | talk 14:38, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, but placing actual "headered" sections into colums is a new idea, as far as I'm aware.-- cj | talk 04:42, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm a bit concerned about this. I agree that columns look better under ideal circumstances, but there are a couple of potential problems. As Shimmin notes, it makes the articles a bit harder to edit and maintain—a newbie might have trouble with the column code, even with the templates. The breaks have to be repositioned if the sections are substantially changed.
The other–potentially more serious–problem is for editors and readers working at lower resolution or in non-maximized windows. The columns (particularly under {{ col-3}} or {{ col-4}}) could end up quite narrow; it's the sort of thing that could make references rather difficult to read or use. TenOfAllTrades( talk) 06:05, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
No, I don't think this is a good idea. Presentation and content should be as separate as possible, and while this may look good on high resolution screens it looks horrible at lower resolutions (like on Pocket PC or Palm devices). Sortan 16:27, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't like it, apart from the mentioned problems, I just think it doesn't look as good. Martin 16:33, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
I can see the utility in some places, but I think this should be something left up to user preferences. I think I could hack out some simple CSS styles to do it in specific circumstances if people want the option, but I'd really rather not have the layout forced on me by the use of tables. — HorsePunchKid→ 龜 2005-11-25 21:21:56 Z
I like it and think that it should be left to editors judgement and community consensus per article. I've applied it for example in List of object-oriented programming terms and List of Petri net tools where it fits nicely. The columns in Iraq War ( permalink) also look good. Before this, I sometimes had the feeling that the verticle density of text in articles is sometimes quite low. I even have the feeling that increasing it where applicable is quite encyclopaedic. And technology will support this even better and better in the future as certainly the quality of display hardware will increase in the future. So we would be on the right track. On the other hand, I would put non-list content, especially whole sections in traditional style articles only with caution in sections. But I would not revert it if I see that and think it fits. Just Let the community decide per article. After all, it is a nice idea. – Adrian | Talk 09:02, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
I think it is generally a bad idea, particularly when there are list items in the columns that're forced onto 2 or 3 lines (such as on Old Man's Child). As mentioned before, it often depends on the resolution of the monitors or device & the default text size in the browser. When I design web pages w/ tables and columns, I always evaluate it with several different base font sizes larger and smaller than my own. I these equate it to "over-engineering": Going too far to optimize (the use of space) for your-own browser environment often has unintended consequences. Unless you can be sure that features like columns are benign for every viewer, I think it's safer to keep it simple. Meegs 19:18, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
I would suggest that, for example, "50 metres" should be expressed as "50m" rather than "50 m". If using an abbreviated unit, it almost always looks better to close up the number and unit (note that bar - the unit of pressure - is not an abbreviation, and thus should not be closed up). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.201.25.22 ( talk • contribs) 28 Nov 2005
There has to be a space, see http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/checklist.html Cacycle 22:04, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Both "50m" and "50 m" are wrong. The correct form is "50 m". PizzaMargherita 22:16, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
The space is important as 50m often means 50 million whereas 50 m means 50 metres.
First, a word about significant figures (sf) and decimal places (dp): the precision of a number is denoted by the number of significant figures it contains, not necessarily the number of decimal places. For example, a length measurement of 30.8mm (to 1 decimal place) can also be rendered as 3.08cm (2dp), 0.0308m (4dp) or even 0.0000308km (7dp). In every case, the number contains three significant figures, and the precision of the measurement has not changed.
Generally, use the fewest possible digits and the fewest possible decimal places: 85.3m is preferable to 85,300mm or 0.0853km. You may want to break this rule to keep all the figures in the same units.
Figures rarely need to be given to more than 3 significant figures – you are unlikely to need such precision, and measurements are seldom accurate enough to justify it. Common exceptions include money (where $24,495 is a perfectly acceptable figure) and numbers beginning with the figure 1: it would be absurd to turn a measurement such as 1,002mm into 1.00m if you were comparing it with 998mm.
Round up rather than down – ie 2.904m becomes 2.90m, while 2.905m becomes 2.91m (and in this case, beware of turning 2.904m into 2.9m – see the next point).
Drop trailing zeros in most cases, ie use 18.3m rather than 18.30m, and 23m rather than 23.0m – unless: • you are differentiating between similar numbers, eg use “the trailer is 4.0m high, 200mm lower than the old 4.2m standard”. Or: • you have a group or table of figures with similar formats, eg gear ratios: 3.67, 3.84, 4.00 and 4.25:1.
Retain leading zeros, ie use 0.67m rather than .67m (but consider also using 670mm).
Thousands are clearer if separated by commas, ie 7,500kg rather than 7500kg. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.201.25.22 ( talk • contribs) 28 Nov 2005
Why has the directive against links in the title (in the opening sentence) been removed? That's been established style for a long time, and I haven't seen some great upwell of protest against it. Occasionally one needs to make an exception, but that's true of most of our rules. I'd like to see that restored. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:22, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
I do not see the need for that equivocation. It is a rare circumstance where the words in the title that are to be linked are not used again early in the article. There is nothing in the Manual to say that these words have to be linked in the first sentence or even in the first paragraph. I think that as long as the words re-appear and are linked in the first two paragraphs, the reader has ample opportunity to follow the links to the title words. I see no reason to change a long-standing directive just because there are many articles that do not follow it. It is common to see non-proper nouns capitalized in sub-headings, too, should we abandon the attempt to have uniformity in sub-headings, or should we apply the directive? I do not think that this debate is over, and wonder if others agree with me. If not, I'll stand down. Ground Zero | t 23:50, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
I'd be perfectly glad to see the original rule restored without qualification; my rewording was intended to meet Anthony halfway. Whichever works for other people, but something needs to be there. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:47, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
No explicit exceptions please. I believe it's six against one. 'Certain complex titles or verbose leads' is IMHO unclear and the other qualifications do not call for an exception. Links in the titles are downright ugly and do not add value. You have not convinced me that we need these specific exceptions, and why the generic "apply elasticity" rule does not suffice. A section well written would bring up any newly introduced concepts, and the editor should link there. PizzaMargherita 21:14, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Is there a specific example of an article where links in headings are a good idea? Sortan 01:48, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
I have listed Category:Signpost articles (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (signpost articles)) on Categories for deletion. Thanks/ wangi 17:08, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
It says it doesn't matter whether you use single or double spaces in the markup, which is fine. But using to "enforce" double spaces in the rendered output (like this) is definitely bad, right? — Omegatron 02:01, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
I may have been looking in all the wrong places, but there doesn't seem to any section of the style manual about the uses of capital letters for some of the more esoteric examples. For example, eBay. It states in the trademark section that REALTOR should be considered Realtor, and so, according to this logic should eBay be changed to EBay? And if so, when? at the beginning of a sentence? or always? Also what of personal preference, like people like (I think) k. d. lang? Should all references to this person be reworked to normal usage (i.e. K. D. Lang) or not? Or only at the beginning of a sentence?
Linked to this, but not really, is the use of logograms, like the symbol that Prince used to go by, or the plus signs in C++. Since the +'s are just a symbol standing in for the word plus, to what extent should articles humor uncommon usages? 68.227.80.79 23:02, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
[[C plus plus|C++]]
, again with the goal of conforming to most common usage, even though you have to do some trickery with the link. —
HorsePunchKid→
龜
2005-12-03 05:46:40
Z