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I'm trying to find a reference to a style policy on the language-links list, but I can't find the right place. It should be here on the MOS page, but there is no mention of it.
I want to know in what order the list of links to an article in other languages should be kept. Should it be in alphabetical order according to the two-letter ISO code (for example, DE (German) would come before HR (Croatian)), or should it be alphabetical according to the English name of the other languages (Croatian would come before German). Does anyone know what the guideline is? Thanks. EuroSong talk 23:53, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
I saw an interesting commentary in the Independent (which they do not seem to have included in the online version - but I will try and pick up a copy of the paper later and transcript the relevent section) this morning which discussed the recent "terrorist" plot in the UK. One of the points that was dicussed was the use of "British-born Muslim" as a form of soft racism rather than "British Muslim" or "Muslim Briton" (the author contented it was soft racism because the papers do not use that form of address about any other ethnic or religious group).
What would be considered the correct syle in a wikipedia article? -- Charlesknight 13:46, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
I have corrected the grossly incorrect statement about possessives. You almost always add an apostrophe and an s to all nouns, even if they end with an s, unless it is a plural noun that ends with s. Here is backup for this correction:
In practice, regularly leaving off the s after the apostrophe is as nonstandard and weird as not pronouncing the h in human or humble. In striving to be a publication with mainstream appeal and understandability, Wikipedia must use standard forms.
Nova SS 19:26, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
About half the recommendations seem to concern "style" (grammar, expression, naming, etc), and half concern "layout" or "format" (when to link, headings, how to use images, captions etc). Could we consider splitting this into a genuine "Manual of Style" (nothing but questions of "how to say it"), and a "Manual of Layout" or "Manual of Formatting", which concerns presentation? My concern is primarily that there is very little guidance on layout, and the size of this beast is a discouragement against adding any. Stevage 16:55, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
The Paris article formerly had a custom TOC. I replaced it with the usual TOC, on the grounds of consistency, but someone else asked me about whether there was a guideline on the issue, and I couldn't find anything that clearly includes this. The closest is Formatting issues, which states:
Formatting issues such as font size, blank space and color are issues for the Wikipedia site-wide style sheet and should not be dealt with in articles except in special cases.
Should this be expanded to something like:
In general, features of pages that are specified by the software or style sheets, or for which there are standard HTML tags, should not be overridden on a case-by-case basis except where there's special reason. Likewise, if a template is available, use that if possible rather than writing your own formatting. If you think the default style looks ugly, you can feel free to propose site-wide changes, or (in many cases) edit your style sheets to automatically make the style appear as you prefer, but don't manually override any specific instance of a standard site style: it makes Wikipedia look inconsistent and unprofessional.
? That's kind of the point of a manual of style, after all . . . — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 17:56, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
The place to propose a change to the TOC style is, well, here. You should drop a note to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) too. But the idea is, it should remain consistent across the site. (Note that making the TOC smaller or dropping subsections for long pages only is still consistent, in that it treats different cases differently only insofar as they differ: it doesn't have one page look one way, and an analogous page look different.)
As for adding a link to the MoS, we need to be wary of overcrowding. The MoS isn't nearly as important as the rest of the links we have there; most editors won't need to know anything about it. They just shouldn't object to people cleaning up their edits after the fact. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 19:01, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
There is normally no need to put quotations in italics unless the material would otherwise call for italics (emphasis, use of non-English words, etc.).
Should this be strengthened to
Quotations should not be put in italics unless the material would otherwise call for italics (emphasis, use of non-English words, etc.).
? Or perhaps be weakened or otherwise be made more explicit? I've always disliked italicized quotations, but never changed them because I got the impression they were viewed as acceptable (certainly some reputable publications do italicize them). At the very least, there should be no need to manually italicize <blockquote>
s, because it would be easy for anyone to change that in their stylesheet; inline quotes that's not an option for. —
Simetrical (
talk •
contribs)
18:21, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
<blockquote> The first paragraph. <p> The second paragraph. </blockquote>
<p>
. I'll put figuring out 6200 on my to-do list. —
Simetrical (
talk •
contribs)
00:30, 15 August 2006 (UTC)Quotations should never be in italics, even if the original material is italicized. Editors on Wikipedia have a bad habit of italicizing all quotations as a matter of course, and it's irritating to the eye, makes articles harder to read, and is distracting. Quoted material that is rendered in italics is normally underlined. Exploding Boy 04:38, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
I removed the text
In particular, do not use the CSS
float
orline-height
properties because they break rendering on some browsers when large fonts are used.
with the summary "This page's HTML source contains 61 floats inline alone, and main.css alone has 17 line-height declarations. I mean, huh?" User:Mzajac restored it with summary "restore advice against complex markup *in article body*".
If the reason for not using those properties is "they break rendering on some browsers when large fonts are used", why does it matter whether they're in the article body or in the stylesheet? If the reason is because they're complex (as the positioning would seem to suggest), why single out those two? — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 18:25, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
This is a substantial, contested addition to a guideline. Insofar as its substance is uncontroversial, it is long-winded and repetitive; please explain why it is necessary. Beyond that, it is in some parts a large alteration in the current standard, and should not be added without further discussion. If you could explain here the purpose of why you think this should be added, the proposal can be improved, rather than just adding it and reverting without discussion. — Centrx→ talk • 21:33, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
It seems to me that we ought to have specific guidelines on alphabetizing for lists. There's a lot of complicated stuff, for instance:
This would apply not only to list articles, but also, I think, to categories, in instances where the automatic alphabetization doesn't follow whatever we choose to prefer). john k 14:32, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
This sounds mostly good. It leaves the "Mc/Mac" and "St/Saint" issues. I think that St/Saint pretty much has to be viewed as equivalent. Alphabetizing "St" as "St" creates tons of problems, since it's totally arbitrary whether a place uses "St" or "Saint" in its name (and the same thing in people's names, I think, as well). I'm less sure of "Mc". I have something of a preference for alphabetizing as "Mac." But I could be persuaded otherwise. john k 00:34, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
But be aware that other langagues use different sort orders, particularly for the accented letters, which sometimes go at the end of the sequence, and sometimes next to the unaccented letter; this is still necessary to be taken into account when using a printed bilingual dictionary. DGG 00:45, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
== Tag Essay-entry ==
I am looking in vain for an explanation on how to improve an article that has the following tag:
![]() | This article is written like a
personal reflection, personal essay, or argumentative essay that states a Wikipedia editor's personal feelings or presents an original argument about a topic. (March 2008) |
Any help? Thanks CuriousOliver 18:00, 17 August 2006 (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 50 | ← | Archive 52 | Archive 53 | Archive 54 | Archive 55 | Archive 56 | → | Archive 60 |
I'm trying to find a reference to a style policy on the language-links list, but I can't find the right place. It should be here on the MOS page, but there is no mention of it.
I want to know in what order the list of links to an article in other languages should be kept. Should it be in alphabetical order according to the two-letter ISO code (for example, DE (German) would come before HR (Croatian)), or should it be alphabetical according to the English name of the other languages (Croatian would come before German). Does anyone know what the guideline is? Thanks. EuroSong talk 23:53, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
I saw an interesting commentary in the Independent (which they do not seem to have included in the online version - but I will try and pick up a copy of the paper later and transcript the relevent section) this morning which discussed the recent "terrorist" plot in the UK. One of the points that was dicussed was the use of "British-born Muslim" as a form of soft racism rather than "British Muslim" or "Muslim Briton" (the author contented it was soft racism because the papers do not use that form of address about any other ethnic or religious group).
What would be considered the correct syle in a wikipedia article? -- Charlesknight 13:46, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
I have corrected the grossly incorrect statement about possessives. You almost always add an apostrophe and an s to all nouns, even if they end with an s, unless it is a plural noun that ends with s. Here is backup for this correction:
In practice, regularly leaving off the s after the apostrophe is as nonstandard and weird as not pronouncing the h in human or humble. In striving to be a publication with mainstream appeal and understandability, Wikipedia must use standard forms.
Nova SS 19:26, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
About half the recommendations seem to concern "style" (grammar, expression, naming, etc), and half concern "layout" or "format" (when to link, headings, how to use images, captions etc). Could we consider splitting this into a genuine "Manual of Style" (nothing but questions of "how to say it"), and a "Manual of Layout" or "Manual of Formatting", which concerns presentation? My concern is primarily that there is very little guidance on layout, and the size of this beast is a discouragement against adding any. Stevage 16:55, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
The Paris article formerly had a custom TOC. I replaced it with the usual TOC, on the grounds of consistency, but someone else asked me about whether there was a guideline on the issue, and I couldn't find anything that clearly includes this. The closest is Formatting issues, which states:
Formatting issues such as font size, blank space and color are issues for the Wikipedia site-wide style sheet and should not be dealt with in articles except in special cases.
Should this be expanded to something like:
In general, features of pages that are specified by the software or style sheets, or for which there are standard HTML tags, should not be overridden on a case-by-case basis except where there's special reason. Likewise, if a template is available, use that if possible rather than writing your own formatting. If you think the default style looks ugly, you can feel free to propose site-wide changes, or (in many cases) edit your style sheets to automatically make the style appear as you prefer, but don't manually override any specific instance of a standard site style: it makes Wikipedia look inconsistent and unprofessional.
? That's kind of the point of a manual of style, after all . . . — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 17:56, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
The place to propose a change to the TOC style is, well, here. You should drop a note to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) too. But the idea is, it should remain consistent across the site. (Note that making the TOC smaller or dropping subsections for long pages only is still consistent, in that it treats different cases differently only insofar as they differ: it doesn't have one page look one way, and an analogous page look different.)
As for adding a link to the MoS, we need to be wary of overcrowding. The MoS isn't nearly as important as the rest of the links we have there; most editors won't need to know anything about it. They just shouldn't object to people cleaning up their edits after the fact. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 19:01, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
There is normally no need to put quotations in italics unless the material would otherwise call for italics (emphasis, use of non-English words, etc.).
Should this be strengthened to
Quotations should not be put in italics unless the material would otherwise call for italics (emphasis, use of non-English words, etc.).
? Or perhaps be weakened or otherwise be made more explicit? I've always disliked italicized quotations, but never changed them because I got the impression they were viewed as acceptable (certainly some reputable publications do italicize them). At the very least, there should be no need to manually italicize <blockquote>
s, because it would be easy for anyone to change that in their stylesheet; inline quotes that's not an option for. —
Simetrical (
talk •
contribs)
18:21, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
<blockquote> The first paragraph. <p> The second paragraph. </blockquote>
<p>
. I'll put figuring out 6200 on my to-do list. —
Simetrical (
talk •
contribs)
00:30, 15 August 2006 (UTC)Quotations should never be in italics, even if the original material is italicized. Editors on Wikipedia have a bad habit of italicizing all quotations as a matter of course, and it's irritating to the eye, makes articles harder to read, and is distracting. Quoted material that is rendered in italics is normally underlined. Exploding Boy 04:38, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
I removed the text
In particular, do not use the CSS
float
orline-height
properties because they break rendering on some browsers when large fonts are used.
with the summary "This page's HTML source contains 61 floats inline alone, and main.css alone has 17 line-height declarations. I mean, huh?" User:Mzajac restored it with summary "restore advice against complex markup *in article body*".
If the reason for not using those properties is "they break rendering on some browsers when large fonts are used", why does it matter whether they're in the article body or in the stylesheet? If the reason is because they're complex (as the positioning would seem to suggest), why single out those two? — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 18:25, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
This is a substantial, contested addition to a guideline. Insofar as its substance is uncontroversial, it is long-winded and repetitive; please explain why it is necessary. Beyond that, it is in some parts a large alteration in the current standard, and should not be added without further discussion. If you could explain here the purpose of why you think this should be added, the proposal can be improved, rather than just adding it and reverting without discussion. — Centrx→ talk • 21:33, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
It seems to me that we ought to have specific guidelines on alphabetizing for lists. There's a lot of complicated stuff, for instance:
This would apply not only to list articles, but also, I think, to categories, in instances where the automatic alphabetization doesn't follow whatever we choose to prefer). john k 14:32, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
This sounds mostly good. It leaves the "Mc/Mac" and "St/Saint" issues. I think that St/Saint pretty much has to be viewed as equivalent. Alphabetizing "St" as "St" creates tons of problems, since it's totally arbitrary whether a place uses "St" or "Saint" in its name (and the same thing in people's names, I think, as well). I'm less sure of "Mc". I have something of a preference for alphabetizing as "Mac." But I could be persuaded otherwise. john k 00:34, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
But be aware that other langagues use different sort orders, particularly for the accented letters, which sometimes go at the end of the sequence, and sometimes next to the unaccented letter; this is still necessary to be taken into account when using a printed bilingual dictionary. DGG 00:45, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
== Tag Essay-entry ==
I am looking in vain for an explanation on how to improve an article that has the following tag:
![]() | This article is written like a
personal reflection, personal essay, or argumentative essay that states a Wikipedia editor's personal feelings or presents an original argument about a topic. (March 2008) |
Any help? Thanks CuriousOliver 18:00, 17 August 2006 (UTC)