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Should the guideline about words that are capitalized (like FOX) apply to TV shows/movie/video games as well? I started thinking about this after WWE RAW was moved to WWE Raw (event though the vote was just 2 votes to move and 1 vote to stay and was never even listed at WP:PW). The correct name of the show is WWE RAW, and what how it is spelled most of the time, but the article was moved because the mover cited the MoS regarding trademarks. Maybe it should be amended to allow TV show/movie/video games (and books I suppose) to be exceptions. TJ Spyke 22:51, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
Folks,
What if a writer wants style guidance?
A writer may come to the WP:MoS page thinking "APA, MLA, Chicago -- I don't care. Just tell me what the WP preferred style is and I'll try to stick with it, though I appreciate the fact that WP says it's okay to diverge when I feel the need".
And what does WP:MoS currently tell such a writer? It says "APA, MLA, Chicago -- you decide".
I think that's a mistake and a disservice to writers. We shouldn't let writers flounder when they want guidance.
I think it's not good to compel writers to make style decisions out of thin air (when WP:MoS doesn't cover the issue).
I think it's not good to make writers choose their own style guides from the many available, when they don't want to make that decision.
Instead I think WP:MoS should indicate a default, last-resort style guide for readers who want guidance.
Naming a default guide (for those who want guidance) would have at least two additional benefits --
1. It would tend to generate more consistency across WP pages, which in the long run would make it easier for writers to consolidate articles, to switch from working on one article to another, and so on.
2. When a style question comes up, there would be less need for people to hash it out ab ovo on the MoS:Talk page, less tendency for 3 or 4 assertive people to make a decision that (whether soft or hard) gets written into MoS for all time. Instead someone could report "well, the default is blah-blah-blah -- does anyone have a compelling reason we should go against the default?"
TH 17:29, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm not advocating any absolute (otherwise I would not have said "for those who want guidance"). I'm not advocating denial of choices (otherwise I would not have repeated all the disclaimers I repeated). I'm advocating a fall-back recommendation, for those who want guidance. Or one for US writers and a different one for UK. Or one for technical articles and one for general articles. Or (for simplicity) a recommended style (for those who want guidance) for an average article for a worldwide audience.
Ever since I started writing here, I've felt that WP has abdicated its responsibility by not plunking down and saying "hey, if you don't otherwise care, why not use Such-and-Such Manual of Style?"
TH 18:06, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
I noticed there is nothing in the Manual of Style in regard to the Cquote tag. Could someone add the Wikipedia recommendations on its use. I noticed it on the Thomas Jefferson article. Morphh 15:20, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
“ | Here is an example of the use of the Cquote tag. | ” |
Umm Ok.. so is anyone going to add something to Look of quotation marks and apostrophes? Something should be included as it is used and people need to know that it is available and either desirable / not desirable to Wikipedia standards. Morphh 22:08, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Normal block quotations don't need any of this additional formatting—it's definitely overkill. A pull-quote or epigraph can be formatted to stand out a bit more (for example, at the beginning of some sections in T-34), but it still doesn't need big purple graphical quotation marks—Wikipedia articles should not be made to look like weblog discussions.
I have proposed a minor tweak of the default style sheet formatting for block quotations, following traditional typesetting conventions. Please see MediaWiki talk:Monobook.css#Block quotations. — Michael Z. 2006-08-04 14:51 Z
blockquote { font-style: italic }
to
User:Tyrenius/monobook.css (or the appropriate equivalent if you don't use the default Monobook skin). If it's decided that this should be the default for everyone, that can be added to
MediaWiki:Monobook.css, and then people who prefer blockquotes in roman text can add a similar line to deitalicize them.As for typing <blockquote>
as opposed to a colon, it may be longer, but surely it's not less intuitive. The key thing is that it allows things like the change I suggested in the previous paragraph to happen easily: we know what's a blockquote and what's just indented, so we can deal with them in an automated fasihon. —
Simetrical (
talk •
contribs)
17:31, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Hallelujah! Someone else besides me has noticed that {{ cquote}} is inappropriate and ugly! I can't think of a single case I've seen where those big blue quotation marks actually enhanced a damn thing; the biggest usage of them that I've seen is to violate NPOV by placing undue visual emphasis on particular quotes that served a particular agenda. Encyclopedia articles don't need "pull quotes"; we're trying to provide useful information in an organized fashion, not to intrigue readers at a newsstand and lure them into buying an issue. The sooner cquote goes away the better. -- Antaeus Feldspar 14:54, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Here are some points to consider in defense of cquote. I'm not interested in debating it, as I think just about any solution is poor for reasons that have nothing to do with print publications (e.g. usability and accesibility, behavior of cut-and-paste, etc.) That said, cquote does some things right.
That said, cquote could be improvied on. Its use of images should be done in such a way that skins can easily target and modify them. Also, its fields should be named for more ease of extracting meta-information later on. It wouldn't hurt to have a cquote variant that auto-generates a <ref>...</ref>
of the appropriate type. For example, something like:
{{cite quote | quote="cquote could be improved on." | type=web | author=[[User:Harmil|Harmil]] url="http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style" | date=2006-09-18}}
should generate something like:
{{cquote | cquote could be improved on.| 20px|20px| [[User:Harmil|Harmil]]}}<ref>{{cite web | author=[[User:Harmil|Harmil]] url="http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style" | date=2006-09-18}}</ref>
That's just my thoughts, and I'm sure others will disagree, especially since most of the people who would care don't know about this discussion.... - Harmil 05:05, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
blockquote.significant { padding-left: 24px; background-image: no-repeat top left url(" http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/6b/Cquote1.png/20px-Cquote1.png"); }
I don't see what all the debate is about. The HTML <blockquote> element, intended for long quotations, is already formatted in the monobook style sheet. HTML is a bit problematic, because novices may forget to close the tag, and because contained block elements like paragraphs aren't handled properly (there is a patch for this, but it's not installed on Wikipedia yet; please add your vote for bug 6200 and bug 4827). So I created template:blockquote, and a redirect from template:long quotation (edit to see how it works here):
This is an example of a long quotation, entered in wikitext using {{ blockquote}}, but it would look the same if it was enclosed in an HTML <blockquote> element. It is pulled out from running text by its margins, and by a subtle reduction in font size. This is all that is necessary to format a long quotation. In professional typography, long quotations are rarely italicized, never marked with quotation marks, and certainly not with the big cartoon ones that are used in some weblogs' comments.
Paragraph breaks within block quotations still have to be entered manually as <p> tags, but this will be resolved in a future update to the Wikimedia software.
There is no need for a special format for "important" quotations, just as there is no special format for important paragraphs; the solution to this [non-existent] problem is called "writing".
Some articles do have pull quotes or epigraphs, but these are not the same thing as long quotations, and they also do not need oversized cartoonish quotation marks—perhaps such formatting is appropriate in a light-hearted weblog, but sure as heck not in an encyclopedia. For examples, see T-34 and Nagorno-Karabakh War.
Template:cquote is... how to phrase this? Very inappropriate. And its technical implementation is, um... Very crappy. — Michael Z. 2006-09-20 04:02 Z
<blockquote>
and <cite>
tags, without relying on JavaScript. You can view my progess at this page:
User:Down10/Template:Pullquote.The discussion on "Quotation marks using Cquote tag" continues into Archive 61.
![]() | 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 55 | ← | Archive 58 | Archive 59 | Archive 60 | Archive 61 | Archive 62 | → | Archive 65 |
Should the guideline about words that are capitalized (like FOX) apply to TV shows/movie/video games as well? I started thinking about this after WWE RAW was moved to WWE Raw (event though the vote was just 2 votes to move and 1 vote to stay and was never even listed at WP:PW). The correct name of the show is WWE RAW, and what how it is spelled most of the time, but the article was moved because the mover cited the MoS regarding trademarks. Maybe it should be amended to allow TV show/movie/video games (and books I suppose) to be exceptions. TJ Spyke 22:51, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
Folks,
What if a writer wants style guidance?
A writer may come to the WP:MoS page thinking "APA, MLA, Chicago -- I don't care. Just tell me what the WP preferred style is and I'll try to stick with it, though I appreciate the fact that WP says it's okay to diverge when I feel the need".
And what does WP:MoS currently tell such a writer? It says "APA, MLA, Chicago -- you decide".
I think that's a mistake and a disservice to writers. We shouldn't let writers flounder when they want guidance.
I think it's not good to compel writers to make style decisions out of thin air (when WP:MoS doesn't cover the issue).
I think it's not good to make writers choose their own style guides from the many available, when they don't want to make that decision.
Instead I think WP:MoS should indicate a default, last-resort style guide for readers who want guidance.
Naming a default guide (for those who want guidance) would have at least two additional benefits --
1. It would tend to generate more consistency across WP pages, which in the long run would make it easier for writers to consolidate articles, to switch from working on one article to another, and so on.
2. When a style question comes up, there would be less need for people to hash it out ab ovo on the MoS:Talk page, less tendency for 3 or 4 assertive people to make a decision that (whether soft or hard) gets written into MoS for all time. Instead someone could report "well, the default is blah-blah-blah -- does anyone have a compelling reason we should go against the default?"
TH 17:29, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm not advocating any absolute (otherwise I would not have said "for those who want guidance"). I'm not advocating denial of choices (otherwise I would not have repeated all the disclaimers I repeated). I'm advocating a fall-back recommendation, for those who want guidance. Or one for US writers and a different one for UK. Or one for technical articles and one for general articles. Or (for simplicity) a recommended style (for those who want guidance) for an average article for a worldwide audience.
Ever since I started writing here, I've felt that WP has abdicated its responsibility by not plunking down and saying "hey, if you don't otherwise care, why not use Such-and-Such Manual of Style?"
TH 18:06, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
I noticed there is nothing in the Manual of Style in regard to the Cquote tag. Could someone add the Wikipedia recommendations on its use. I noticed it on the Thomas Jefferson article. Morphh 15:20, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
“ | Here is an example of the use of the Cquote tag. | ” |
Umm Ok.. so is anyone going to add something to Look of quotation marks and apostrophes? Something should be included as it is used and people need to know that it is available and either desirable / not desirable to Wikipedia standards. Morphh 22:08, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Normal block quotations don't need any of this additional formatting—it's definitely overkill. A pull-quote or epigraph can be formatted to stand out a bit more (for example, at the beginning of some sections in T-34), but it still doesn't need big purple graphical quotation marks—Wikipedia articles should not be made to look like weblog discussions.
I have proposed a minor tweak of the default style sheet formatting for block quotations, following traditional typesetting conventions. Please see MediaWiki talk:Monobook.css#Block quotations. — Michael Z. 2006-08-04 14:51 Z
blockquote { font-style: italic }
to
User:Tyrenius/monobook.css (or the appropriate equivalent if you don't use the default Monobook skin). If it's decided that this should be the default for everyone, that can be added to
MediaWiki:Monobook.css, and then people who prefer blockquotes in roman text can add a similar line to deitalicize them.As for typing <blockquote>
as opposed to a colon, it may be longer, but surely it's not less intuitive. The key thing is that it allows things like the change I suggested in the previous paragraph to happen easily: we know what's a blockquote and what's just indented, so we can deal with them in an automated fasihon. —
Simetrical (
talk •
contribs)
17:31, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Hallelujah! Someone else besides me has noticed that {{ cquote}} is inappropriate and ugly! I can't think of a single case I've seen where those big blue quotation marks actually enhanced a damn thing; the biggest usage of them that I've seen is to violate NPOV by placing undue visual emphasis on particular quotes that served a particular agenda. Encyclopedia articles don't need "pull quotes"; we're trying to provide useful information in an organized fashion, not to intrigue readers at a newsstand and lure them into buying an issue. The sooner cquote goes away the better. -- Antaeus Feldspar 14:54, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Here are some points to consider in defense of cquote. I'm not interested in debating it, as I think just about any solution is poor for reasons that have nothing to do with print publications (e.g. usability and accesibility, behavior of cut-and-paste, etc.) That said, cquote does some things right.
That said, cquote could be improvied on. Its use of images should be done in such a way that skins can easily target and modify them. Also, its fields should be named for more ease of extracting meta-information later on. It wouldn't hurt to have a cquote variant that auto-generates a <ref>...</ref>
of the appropriate type. For example, something like:
{{cite quote | quote="cquote could be improved on." | type=web | author=[[User:Harmil|Harmil]] url="http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style" | date=2006-09-18}}
should generate something like:
{{cquote | cquote could be improved on.| 20px|20px| [[User:Harmil|Harmil]]}}<ref>{{cite web | author=[[User:Harmil|Harmil]] url="http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style" | date=2006-09-18}}</ref>
That's just my thoughts, and I'm sure others will disagree, especially since most of the people who would care don't know about this discussion.... - Harmil 05:05, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
blockquote.significant { padding-left: 24px; background-image: no-repeat top left url(" http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/6b/Cquote1.png/20px-Cquote1.png"); }
I don't see what all the debate is about. The HTML <blockquote> element, intended for long quotations, is already formatted in the monobook style sheet. HTML is a bit problematic, because novices may forget to close the tag, and because contained block elements like paragraphs aren't handled properly (there is a patch for this, but it's not installed on Wikipedia yet; please add your vote for bug 6200 and bug 4827). So I created template:blockquote, and a redirect from template:long quotation (edit to see how it works here):
This is an example of a long quotation, entered in wikitext using {{ blockquote}}, but it would look the same if it was enclosed in an HTML <blockquote> element. It is pulled out from running text by its margins, and by a subtle reduction in font size. This is all that is necessary to format a long quotation. In professional typography, long quotations are rarely italicized, never marked with quotation marks, and certainly not with the big cartoon ones that are used in some weblogs' comments.
Paragraph breaks within block quotations still have to be entered manually as <p> tags, but this will be resolved in a future update to the Wikimedia software.
There is no need for a special format for "important" quotations, just as there is no special format for important paragraphs; the solution to this [non-existent] problem is called "writing".
Some articles do have pull quotes or epigraphs, but these are not the same thing as long quotations, and they also do not need oversized cartoonish quotation marks—perhaps such formatting is appropriate in a light-hearted weblog, but sure as heck not in an encyclopedia. For examples, see T-34 and Nagorno-Karabakh War.
Template:cquote is... how to phrase this? Very inappropriate. And its technical implementation is, um... Very crappy. — Michael Z. 2006-09-20 04:02 Z
<blockquote>
and <cite>
tags, without relying on JavaScript. You can view my progess at this page:
User:Down10/Template:Pullquote.The discussion on "Quotation marks using Cquote tag" continues into Archive 61.