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Something "obvious" that I'm pretty sure we used to have is missing from WP:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#Numbers as figures or words: use figures before a unit. I.e., we do not want to see "seven kg" but "7 kg" (except "Seven ..." at the beginning of a sentence, if moving "7 kg" to elsewhere in the sentence doesn't work well for some reason). It seems very strange to me that this bit of very basic and central advice, which experienced editors all seem to be following, has somehow gone missing. The chart at WP:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#General guidelines on unit names and symbols illustrates the figure style pretty consistently, while permitting some examples of spelled-out number words (presumably for sentence-initial cases).
At least one thread on this page (namely, part of the discussion at #Number ranges more generally) indicates some confusion about this, an inference that MoS is somehow expecting/demanding "five to seven kg", due to lack of an exception for measurements, so this probably should be resolved. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 22:53, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
Do not spell out numbers before unit symbols ... but words or figures may be used with unit names.There's a kind of division of labor under which Numbers as figures or words deals mostly with unitless stuff + non-scientific stuff like money and minutes/hours, and Unit names and symbols deals with hardcore units. I'm always torn about whether to duplicate advice like numbers-as-figures-or-words in two places. E Eng 02:28, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
Meant to bring this up a long time ago, but forgot. The logic and resultant rule we're applying to date ranges – to give them in the form 2002–2011 not 2002–11 – applies to all numeric ranges (outside of directly quoted material) and we need to state that explicitly. I keep running into sporadic WP:WIKILAWYERing along lines which can be parodied as "I can use 'p. 2002–11' if I wanna because MOS:NUM#Ranges only technically applies to dates, and no matter how much WP:COMMONSENSE dictates that that the reasoning applies across the board, the rules don't quite say it, so ha ha ha." Let's just fix it. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 06:18, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
PS: I think I've IDed the problem, and have addressed it under separate cover at #Missing point in "Numbers as figures or words" section, below. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 22:54, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
What symbols should {{ convert}} display for units that need a product dot or a micro sign? I suspect that convert uses the wrong symbols. Examples:
kW.h
has symbol kW·h (uses middot). Discussion at
Template talk:Convert#Dots.um
has symbol µm (uses micro). Discussion at
Template talk:Convert#Micro symbols.Dot
Micro
µ
in at least two browsers)I'm planning to change convert to use sdot (instead of middot) and mu (instead of micro). Using sdot contradicts the first WP:MOSNUM link above. Thoughts? Johnuniq ( talk) 00:50, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
⋅
– U+22C5 (dot operator a.k.a. multiplication dot), ⋅
, ⋅
, ⋅
µ
– U+00B5 (micro sign), µ
, µ
, µ
{{
lang|el|...}}
). This is science and other fields repurposing what originated as a Greek letter, for symbolic purposes unrelated to rendering Greek text. Saying we should use the Greek letter μ is tantamount to saying we should not use the ™ symbol, but instead use <sup style="font-variant: small-caps;">TM</sup>
.Skimming that [micro/mu discussion], I don't find it compellinga strong argument. I point to the Kendall-K1 quote above @00:29: that the micro sign is a
compatibility decomposable character, per a major Unicode policy. That is: added to provide compatability with legacy code systems (think old ASCII with limited number of code points so only selected non-Latin characters were imported into Latin set). Also, nowhere does Unicode claim or even suggest the micro sign should replace the letter mu anywhere. Also no need to go to the "confusion" area of the web, of Unicode, or of anyone's understanding. Both Unicode and SI are perfectly clear in this, and the web can handle this clarity.
x
versus ×
. It does not matter that some other publishers chose to use - for minus and x for multiplication because they don't care about Unicode distinctions; WP is not among those publishers. Another example is duplicate-looking glyphs in Greek and Latin, and in Greek, Cyrillic, etc. We don't use the Greek ones in Cyrillic or the Latin ones in Greek just because we feel like it or they're easier to type, or any other reason. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
00:26, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
<b>
, <i>
, <u>
, and <s>
in HTML5 (in favor of using styled spans for these things when they do not have a semantic value conveyed, respectively, by <strong>
, <em>
, <ins>
, and <del>
) but this did not end up happening, so these elements are in fact still in use and legitimate to use. (They did deprecate <tt>
, in favor of <code>
and the related semantic tags, so <tt>
should not be used here or elsewhere, even if browsers are generally not going to choke on it). "I wish this were deprecated" isn't good enough for me, especially when it runs into "use of micro- and the symbol for it in English has F'-all to do with rendering Greek-language material". I can't think of anything else to add that won't simply be rehash of what I already said. Bazillions of things are among those that some people want to deprecate and which do not actually get deprecated; life goes on. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
19:09, 21 November 2017 (UTC)References
Unicode is a black hole from which useful information rarely escapes. Johnuniq ( talk) 22:19, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
I changed
WP:MOSNUM to recommend ⋅
for the dot operator instead of ·
. I gather we all agree with that.
Johnuniq (
talk)
00:28, 23 November 2017 (UTC)
Is it possible to add Jewish dates in templates (for example {{cite news|date="7 Tishrei, 5775 // October 1, 2014"}})? -- Jonund ( talk) 19:19, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
I was wondering why this says "Integers from zero to nine are spelled out in words", when "ten" is clearly more readable than "10". I would have thought changing "nine" for "ten" in the MOS would make sense? MapReader ( talk) 10:05, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
Personally I think that any number that can be expressed with a single word (rather than a two-word combination) is more readable as a word than in figures, except in special circumstances like lists and tables. So this would put the dividing line at "twenty" - which is actually a pretty good place for it. Or, if you argue that words like fourteen are effectively four-teen, you could put the upper limit at "twelve". Either of these would be more logical and sensible than "nine", since the additional figure when you increment to "10" decreases readability, and the reduction of one letter from "nine" to "ten" increases it - so "ten" very clearly has a greater readability premium over "10" than "nine" does over "9". MapReader ( talk) 19:34, 3 December 2017 (UTC) MapReader ( talk) 19:34, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
I note that no protocol is listed for the use of the terms fall and autumn - perhaps it's worth pointing out which countries use each term? (AFAIK, fall is used in all Western Hemisphere English-speaking countries, and autumn elsewhere, but I'd prefer some confirmation from Canadian, Jamaican, etc. editors) Grutness... wha? 08:24, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
The term Western Hemisphere was new to me and I confused it for Western Civilisation. Anyway, I think we're good. Stepho talk 11:30, 27 November 2017 (UTC)
On
Erhard Maertens, the first (indeed, only) major contributor,
scope creep, chose a date-number format that contravenes the Unacceptable date formats table, namely, Do not use ordinals (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.)
. What is the proper resolution here, and can
WP:DATERET's wording be made clearer/stronger as to how these conflicts should be resolved in the future? ~
Tom.Reding (
talk ⋅
dgaf)
13:22, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
If an article has evolved using predominantly one acceptable date format, this format should be used throughout the article...
If an article has evolved using predominantly one date format (whether acceptable or unacceptable), this format should be used throughout the article...
(whether acceptable or unacceptable), and indeed someone did. Also, when you said
that obviously means one acceptable format, it's more accurate to replace "means" with "implies". For a catch-all section, explicitness is better than implicitness, so "acceptable" wouldn't have to be placed everywhere, I think. I would not want the scenario as you describe it to play out either, though.
If an article has evolved using predominantly one [[#Dates and years|acceptable date format]] ...
. All it takes is a word and a wikilink in this case. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
12:30, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
Hi Tom.Reding, Hi E Eng, I think there needs to be an awareness that the date formats used in most European countries and to a certain extent, those countries that European countries, conquered, e.g. Britain conquering India, means that India uses the date format 10th May 2019, and other countries. I propose an extension is made to the format to enable this format. For most British, reading a date like 10th May 2019 is natural. Not 10 may 2019. That is read here as ten May 2019, which doesn't sound right. It should be 10th as in tenth of May 2019. As regards the WP:DATERET I have been using it fend folk off who have changed to American Date formats. I don't know what your thinking it, but the American format dates subverts British English articles, and reduces them. It is not fair really. I propose an extension or whatever the procedure to extend the MOS in this specific instance. Thanks. scope_creep ( talk) 17:45, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
Dear Wikipedians!!, You WP:MOS folk, I think, I suspect that like most folk, you are resistant to change. But we live in a changing world. SMcCandlish most newspapers, designed in the UK, and other English speaking nations, are designed to be read by transatlantic audiencies, and as such use the simplest of date format as possible, the American date format. SMcCandlish I see you have never written a very large, complex article, perhaps involving 100's, or 1000's of hours of research, then to write it, in British English, and realize you can't use British date formats, because at some point, somebody is going run a bot against the article and remove the ordinal dates. It is disheartining and not really fair. Your rationale is therefore incorrect. I will round up some evidence. Out of the 2.2million books published in the UK every year, some of them must use it. I will find the research. What is the formal method to raise a change in the WP:MOS. scope_creep ( talk) 00:54, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
I see you have never written a very large, complex article, perhaps involving 100's, or 1000's of hours of research, you should consider yourself to have got off easy. And there's a reason there's a box near the top of this page: It has been X days since the outbreak of the latest dispute over date formats. E Eng 09:21, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
I propose removing this line from the "Notes and exceptions" subsection of WP:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#Numbers as figures or words:
Personal ages are typically stated in figures (8-year-old child).
It simply isn't correct, and is patent WP:CREEP. It's entirely normal English, including in an encyclopedic register (perhaps especially in one) to write "eight-year-old child". Many of us do this, and the alleged exception is inconsistent with the general "Numbers as figures or words" rule, for no good reason. We gain nothing – for readers or for editors – in having this line-item. This is simply someone's personal preference, and I don't believe it represents consensus at all. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 22:59, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
There's a long-term productively risk too: If we had no line-item in MoS saying to rewrite (when practical) to avoid beginning running-prose sentences with numerals, lower-case letters, and misc. symbols, then people would do it way more than probably anyone would be comfortable with. The effective status quo is that we generally write to avoid it, but don't stress about it and go ahead and use a "3M" or an "iPod" at the start of a sentence if rewriting would be awkward. All is well. What we could end up with is people who hate rules who just don't give a damn going around writing sentences like "21 episodes were aired in season 3.", just because they can get away with it and like to write like this is their personal blog. The amount of work it would take to clean up genuinely poor usage could greatly exceed the amount of work we presently engage in to avoid that poor usage because of the "rule" (recommendation). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 18:41, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
Am I missing something where changes to MOS like this are communicated? Or is it a matter of embarrassment & crazy-making that all editors must go thru when quoting MOS in editsums, to learn they were mistaken, or check each time for a changed MOS before quoting it, respectively? (I'd suggest a summary of changes published quarterly, in the WP online "magazine". It'd be a reasonable place & time for an editor to review what's changed. Else embarrassment & crazy-making. Am I missing if/where such a summary is published periodically? Obviously, the changes to MOS s/b synch'd with the periodic publication, not done piece-meal at random/unpredictable times.) Thx. -- IHTS ( talk) 13:03, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:International System of Units. Legobot ( talk) 04:28, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
Should the title of the Watt article have an initial cap or not? If you care, please comment at Talk:Watt. Kendall-K1 ( talk) 19:35, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
There are many hundreds of pages that have "was jailed for two-and-a-half years" or similarly (unnecessarily) hyphenated mixed numbers. The hyphens need to be removed. The manual says "Mixed numbers are usually given in figures", so my inclination is to change it to "was jailed for 2+1⁄2 years". Would such a change bring howls of protest from editors who prefer something else, like "was jailed for two and a half years" or "was jailed for two and one-half years"? The manual does not cover the topic of hyphens or lack of hyphens in mixed numbers that are spelled out. If the number is adjectival, I think that "a two-and-a-half-year sentence" would be improved if changed to "a 2+1⁄2-year sentence". Does anyone feel differently, or am I on the right track? Chris the speller yack 17:26, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
I have started an RFC at Talk:Tesla Model S#RfC about date format in references about whether an article using MDY date format in the text is allowed to have yyyy-mm-dd date format in references or not. There was also discussion in the talk topic just above it at Talk:Tesla Model S#Date format. Please answer there, not here. Stepho talk 05:00, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
I'm looking at [8], which consistently changed CE to AD, in violation of MOS:ERA: "Do not change the established era style in an article unless there are reasons specific to its content. Seek consensus on the talk page...". But, at first blush, reverting that change seems to be hypocritical. Should I interpret "established" as "the style used over the several most recent edits, or for a significant amount of time"? Am I worrying too much? Probably. David Brooks ( talk) 14:09, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
I have to question whether this should be retained, at least in anything like the current form:
* M (unspaced) or bn (unspaced) respectively may be used for "million" or "billion" after a number, when the word has been spelled out at the first occurrence (She received £70 million and her son £10M).<!-- This needs to be coordinated with text in units tables re nonuse of M (for 1000) MM, etc. -->
Reasons:
{{
abbr}}
, regardless how recently we used million somewhere in the same page.— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 05:34, 30 October 2017 (UTC)
I've just
reformatted a date range from fl. 1st/2nd century AD
to fl. 1st to 2nd century AD
. Keeping century AD
seems necessary here, and in that case using an en dash doesn't seem appropriate, but this kind of range isn't addressed here or at
Wikipedia:Manual of Style#En dashes. Does this format seem right? If so, could it be made explicit here?
Languorrises (
talk)
17:43, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
fl. 1st/2nd century ADas "in the first and/or the second" and
fl. 1st to 2nd century ADas "in the first and the second". The impicit uncertainty of the first form will often be appropriate and clearly is in this case (we shouldn't say that someone who is only known to have begun practicing medicine at some point in Trajan's 98–117 AD reign definitely flourished in the first century). 79.73.243.152 ( talk) 12:21, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
Please help. MOS says a format is acceptable (MOS says it "may" be used). An editor keeps on traipsing around the Project, changing it. As though MOS says the opposite -- that it "may not" be used. From the already-used acceptable format.
That's the sort of silly, useless, unhelpful date-edit-warring that has plagued wikipedia for years. I thought we were past that. Convo is here. -- 2604:2000:E016:A700:88BC:545A:BD53:F393 ( talk) 18:03, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at
WT:JAPAN#Date formats. --
Marchjuly (
talk)
05:23, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
While there was some support to phase out the use of crore/lakh in articles, it seems that the consensus is to retain such terms in India-related articles, provided that either crore or lakh is to be linked at the first mention in the article, and that a conversion to either US$ or regular Rupee numbers is provided. As for how to present such conversions, consensus appears to be that US$ conversions must include whatever the conversion was at the relevant time (the {{INRConvert}} template can be used for this purpose). ( non-admin closure) Narutolovehinata5 t c csd new 13:40, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
Presently, MOS:NUMS includes:
Sometimes, the variety of English used in an article may necessitate the use of a numbering system other than the Western thousands-based system. For example, the South Asian numbering system is conventionally used in South Asian English. In those situations, link the first spelled-out instance of each quantity (e.g. crore, which yields: crore).
This is followed by three more bullet points of WP:CREEP about crore. The lead sentence of this is just patently false; nothing necessitates the use of alternative numbering systems. Proof that Indian English doesn't do so abounds (including with regard to Indian currency) [9], [10], [11], [12] etc., etc.
I propose that this be deleted and replaced with a) short advice against use of crore in Wikipedia articles, unless conversion is provided to Western numbers, and b) retaining the advice against using "1,00,00,000" for "10,000,000".
Rationale: I do not believe the present wording has actual consensus, and crore are rarely used in our articles even on Indian subjects. Some small number of Indian editors have somehow gotten MoS to be permissive about crore, despite it being non-English and meaning nothing to most anyone outside that part of the world, and despite English-speakers of India having no problem with "ten million" (or "10,000,000", "10mil", "10M", etc.)
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
05:08, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
The estimated cost of approximately Rs.25.5 billion, this water project intended to provide 65 crore gallons of water to the Karachiites in three phases (260mgd + 260mgd + 130 MGD).- 165.234.252.11 ( talk) 19:03, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
Prefer vocabulary common to all varieties of English. [...] Universally used terms are often preferable to less widely distributed terms, especially in article titles. For example, glasses is preferred to the national varieties spectacles (British English) and eyeglasses (American English); ten million is preferable to one crore (Indian English).(So I guess I'm in favor per the letter of COMMONALITY, too.) Different ways of counting are in a whole different league from color vs. colour and pounds vs. kilos. - 165.234.252.11 ( talk) 18:58, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/crore - Oxford dictionary
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/crore - Cambridge dictionary
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crore - Websters dictionary
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/crore - Collins dictionary
Anish Viswa
06:08, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
I'm proposing a change to Template:Convert to italicise the rai and pyeong units, in accordance with MOS:FOREIGNITALIC, so that, for example:
{{convert|3995|pyeong|ha}}
→ 3,995 pyeong (1.321 ha) becomes 3,995 pyeong (1.321 ha){{convert|9|rai|ha acre|lk=in}}
→ 9
rai (1.4 ha; 3.6 acres) becomes 9
rai (1.4 ha; 3.6 acres)Comments would be appreciated at Template talk:Convert#Italics for units that are foreign words. Thank you. -- Paul_012 ( talk) 21:15, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
<i><span lang="th-Latn">rai</span></i>
<i><span lang="ko-Latn">pyeong</span></i>
It seems there's a rather clear no consensus in support of italicising such units, at least when they follow numbers. I think this can safely be dropped; thanks for the input. -- Paul_012 ( talk) 04:12, 10 May 2018 (UTC)
This page (in the table “Guidelines on specific units”) gives the option of using either of the SI symbols for litre: “l” or “L”, just as SI itself does. In the United States the National Institute of Standards and Technology explicitly says to use “L”, not “l” (nor “ℓ”). (See note (b) to table 6 in SP 811.) I do not know if other English-speaking nations have similar conventions that officially favor “l” over “L”. Given the U.S. preference for “L”, and the logic expressed in the annotation, I think it makes sense for Wikipedia to simply stick with “L”.
-- Sbauman ( talk) 14:36, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
How about the following? The first sentence is what's in the guideline already.
The symbol l (lowercase "el") in isolation (i.e. not in such forms as ml) is easily mistaken for the digit 1 or the capital letter I ("eye"). Outside scientific articles it may be preferable to use L.
Somehow I figured "it may be preferable" would be all things to all people and avoid a long debate. E Eng 03:02, 28 April 2018 (UTC)
Yoo hoo! Any thoughts about my proposed text? E Eng 14:32, 28 April 2018 (UTC)
Well, hell then:
The symbol l (lowercase "el") in isolation (i.e. not in such forms as ml) is easily mistaken for the digit 1 or the capital letter I ("eye"). Therefore L may be preferable.Reminder: The first sentence is in the guideline already.
Again, I've used the preferable language in hopes of avoiding a big debate. E Eng 16:54, 28 April 2018 (UTC)
The symbol l (lowercase "el") in isolation (i.e. not in such forms as ml) is easily mistaken for the digit 1 or the capital letter I ("eye"). Therefore L may be preferable. Once a symbol for litre is chosen for an article, the same symbol is used throughout that article (e.g., "1 L is 1000 mL", and not "1 L is 1000 ml").
but do not mix units using "L" and units using "l" in the same article? Kahastok talk 21:36, 29 April 2018 (UTC)
In response to EEng's recent reminder: I kinda like it as it stands, without change: informative, possibly even suggestive, but clearly leaving discretion to the editor. When it comes to "preferable", there are so many factors involved that IMO it cannot sensibly be distilled into a clear recommendation. — Quondum 21:14, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
Perhaps "L" is preferable to "l" when standing alone, but to me "mL" looks weird, and "ML" is
Local magnitude scale. As the core issue is "easily mistaken for the digit 1
" (ever since typewriters didn't come one with a "1" key), perhaps a better approach would be to deal with the underlying typographical issue by forcing "l" into a more distinct typeface, such as this: "l". This could be done with a template, which, when given a value, would also add a non-breaking space. ♦
J. Johnson (JJ) (
talk)
21:35, 29 April 2018 (UTC)
I spot checked a bottle of bourbon on my shelf, and it said it was "750 ML", which should be enough for everyone on the planet to have a good stiff double. -- Trovatore ( talk) 00:31, 28 April 2018 (UTC)
I don't find any of this the slightest bit amusing. Having been around during the metrication and decimaisation debates in the 1970, and then having implemented the decisions in schools, and enforcement agencies on local councils there is one correct form - the lower case 'l' which is written with a loop in cursive handwriting. Go into any Walmart (Asda) and Aldi, Tescos,and, by law the products must be marked up with a lower case 'l'. In the EU and any country that trades with the EU. It is done this way to give exporters a compatible system across the 28. A little joke about a couterfeit whisky does not mean that Wikipedia should veer away from international norms and standards. We follow referenced standards not invent our own ClemRutter ( talk) 19:53, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
::::[Principles ::::Roman (upright) type, in general lower-case, is used for symbols of units; if, however, the symbols are derived from proper names, capital roman type is used. These ::::symbols are not followed by a full stop. ::::In numbers, the comma (French practice) or the dot (British practice) is used only to separate the integral part of numbers from the decimal part. Numbers may be divided in groups of three in order to facilitate reading; neither dots nor commas are ever inserted in the spaces between groups. ::::l-liter
(f) The liter, and the symbol lower-case l, were adopted by the CIPM in 1879 (PV, 1879, 41). The alternative symbol, capital L, was adopted by the 16th CGPM (1979, Resolution 6; CR, 101 and Metrologia, 1980, 16, 56-57) in order to avoid the risk of confusion between the letter l (el) and the numeral 1 (one). Editors’ note: Since the preferred unit symbol for the liter in the United States is L, only L is given in the table; see the Federal Register notice of July 28, 1998, “Metric System of Measurement: Interpretation of the International System of Units for the United States” (FR 40334-4030).
This whole thing is silly. WP is not dictated to by the random whimsy of some other entity's house style, such as that of a bottle or label factory. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 02:00, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
Rather than reverting a second time,
EEng, I might as well just mention that—beyond the rationale stated in
my edit summary about conforming the longform usage of {{
floruit}}
with the longform usage of {{
circa}}
immediately above it—there are actually
1,418 transclusions of the {{
floruit}}
template on the English Wikipedia at this time, which is nearly 2.5 (~2.48) times more common than the current
499 transclusions of {{
fl.}}
. (Meanwhile,
there
are
zero for
the other three redirects.) So, contrary to
your edit summary, the longform usage is actually used very frequently.
I don't particularly care which is mentioned, though. This is both too pedantic and too insignificant an issue to dispute. I was just trying to ensure the more common one (which also conformed with other template usage in the section) was stated, especially since it eliminates a needless redirect for anyone clicking on the link. I do want to note this information, however, in the event that it is mistaken that {{
fl.}}
is at all the more common transclusion. With that stated, I will leave it up to you and anyone else reading this to decide which template usage to mention. I'll go back to my usual editing.
Thanks for your time. ― Nøkkenbuer ( talk • contribs) 14:59, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
Regnal years of English monarchs (originally constructed by User:Walrasiad) lists the official regnal year of the monarchs of England and successor states.
The regnal calendar ("nth year of the reign of King X", etc.) is used in many official British government and legal documents of historical interest, notably parliamentary statutes and also historically parliamentary sessions. It may be that the sources used by a Wikipedia editor will use the regnal calendar. I suggest that a subsection is added to the section "Dates, months and years" of this guideline, stating that if regnal years are used the year or year range in the appropriate Julian (prior to 1752) or Gregorian calendar is appended in parenthesis.
The reason for doing this is because most people have no idea which year for example is Elisabeth I, 10 (November 1568–November 1569); and mentioning the article " Regnal years of English monarchs" here will inform editors where they can go to get the information do the conversion.
-- PBS ( talk) 17:33, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
The source of actually interminable style conflicts is MoS making a pseudo-rule like "do A or B, per editorial discretion at the article" (or us knowing there's a perennial dispute but neglecting to account for it in MoS at all). This is guaranteed to lead to repeated disputes at many pages for no good reason, until the un-rule (or lack of one) is replaced with a single instruction.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
10:17, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
There is no nothing like what
WP:CALC contemplates: Routine calculations do not count as original research, provided there is consensus among editors that the result of the calculation is obvious, correct, and a meaningful reflection of the sources. Basic arithmetic, such as adding numbers, converting units, or calculating a person's age are some examples of routine calculations.
Using the regnal-years table, which has 14 footnotes along the lines of:
Henry VI was deposed by Edward IV on 4 March 1461, officially bringing his reign and last regnal year to a close. However, Henry VI briefly recovered the throne in 1470–1471, so he has an extra regnal year, dated from 9 October 1470 to c. April 1471, and referred to as the 49th year ("Anno ab inchoatione regni nostri") or 1st year of restoration ("Readeptionis nostrae regiae potestatis"). Henry VI's "restoration" year does not mar the continuity of Edward IV's regnal years – Edward IV's 10th Year is counted unbroken as beginning from 4 March 1470 and ending 3 March 1471, his 11th year beginning 4 March 1471, etc.
And that's before we fold in the issue of civil vs. historical years. A process that even sometimes involves considerations like that cannot be called a "calculation" which is "obvious". But I'm back to the question of use case. Are we building article content from sources so old that they give dates in regnal form? Do we really consider those reliable sources? An article on the history of weights-and-measures legislation should draw on modern sources discussing that history, not cobble together way-old sources from all over the map. E Eng 18:58, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
looking up one line in a table??? 49 Henry VI was when, exactly? – be sure to read the footnotes! Look, make a table with Regnal years, or ranges of them, on the left, and the corresponding calendar year range X–X+1, on the right (something like [16]) and then I'll call it
looking up one line in a table. But you can collapse the "inside" years of most reigns via formulas showing how to compute X=Y+REGNALYEAR. There will still need to be some notes about OS/NS, of course, but you can never avoid that. The current table takes skill to apply. E Eng 19:38, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
There is already a Template:British regnal year that uses a Lula module to convert Julian/Gregorian years to regnal ones:
*1649 {{British regnal year|1649}}
I have used that year to demonstrate how the template handles anomalies. I have asked on the
template talk page if it is possible to add an inversion so that if a Julian/Gregorian regnal year is put in it will display the regnal Julian/Gregorian years. --
PBS (
talk)
22:26, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
I am raising, once again, the issue that au (not AU) should be used as the abbreviation for astronomical unit. It has been discussed both here and on the talk page for Astronomical unit. About five years ago I recommended allowing both abbreviations to be used in the article on the Astronomical unit until the issue was sorted out by appropriate defining authorities. At that time the situation stood as follows:
Since that time, the situation has changed. The 2014 Supplement to the eighth edition of the BIPM brochure on The International System of Units and the draft ninth edition (forthcoming 2019) recommended the symbol au in both English and French texts, citing IAU resolution B2, 2012 which recommends "that the unique symbol 'au' be used for the astronomical unit." National organizations such as the American Astronomical Society and the Royal Astronomical Society also recommend the use of au in their publications, the AJ, ApJ, and MNRAS. Given this agreement among the authoritative international organization on weights and measures and the primary national and international organizations on astronomy, Wikipedia should follow suit by changing its Manual of Style to reflect accepted practice. -- SteveMcCluskey ( talk) 20:00, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
Rather than discussing an abstraction, I'll propose a specific change for the table, drawing on the discussion to date:
Group | Name | Symbol | Comment |
---|---|---|---|
Length, Speed |
astronomical unit | au, AU (not A.U., ua) | au is recomended by the BIPM [1] and the IAU, [2] and is called for in the publications of the AAS ( AJ and ApJ) [3] and the RAS ( MNRAS) [4]. AU is a commonly used symbol for this unit, both in popular and professional articles. |
References
SI Brochure
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).-- SteveMcCluskey ( talk) 14:42, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
Here is a revision which indicates the preferred option, responding to the discussions below:
Group | Name | Symbol | Comment |
---|---|---|---|
Length, Speed |
astronomical unit | au, AU (not A.U., ua) | The preferred option au is recomended by the BIPM [1] and the IAU, [2] and is called for in the publications of the AAS ( AJ and ApJ) [3] and the RAS ( MNRAS) [4]. AU remains an acceptable option as it is a commonly used symbol in both popular and professional articles. |
References
SI Brochure
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).-- SteveMcCluskey ( talk) 15:43, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
How about this:
Group | Name | Symbol | Comment |
---|---|---|---|
Length, Speed |
astronomical unit | au (not A.U., ua) | The preferred option is au. An alternative is AU. Articles that already use AU may choose to switch to au or continue to use AU. |
I prefer this wording because it makes it clear au is preferred, permitting AU during the transition (to au) but not promoting it. Also, we do not normally include the reason for our choices in mosnum. I think this is to keep it short. Dondervogel 2 ( talk) 18:31, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
Fourth proposal:
Group | Name | Symbol | Comment |
---|---|---|---|
Length, Speed |
astronomical unit | au (not a.u., AU, ua) |
I added this simpler option to address SMcCandlish's criticism of the other three. Dondervogel 2 ( talk) 09:45, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
For as long as the
ISQ
ISO 80000-3 'Quantities and Units - Space and Time' prefers ua, what is the reason for mosnum to prefer au?
Dondervogel 2 (
talk)
18:21, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
In view of the questions about what is actual use, I did a very quick search of recent articles in the Astrophysics Data System: Four of the first five articles I could download from Arxiv (to be published this year in AJ Letters, ApJ, and MNRAS) used AU, one (forthcoming in Astronomy and Astrophysics) used au. Since these are preprints, I can't confirm what they will look like after going through the formal editing, but it does indicate that authors submitting papers to AJ Letters, ApJ, and MNRAS still use AU, despite the style guides calling for au. It seems our draft using both AU and au reflects current usage. -- SteveMcCluskey ( talk) 15:06, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
I have checked articles from MNRAS, A&A, Icarus (all European journals), and there the published articles that I have read use au. In Nature AU, in ApJ and AJ (US journal) I have found AU or au (but more au in the more recent ones) SkZ ( talk) 02:42, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
The ayes 'n nays were to discuss a single proposal (the first one) and things are getting difficult to follow. Let's discuss the merits of the 4 proposals here. Dondervogel 2 ( talk) 09:54, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
Pinging SMcCandlish again because I spelt his name wrong at my first attempt. Dondervogel 2 ( talk) 11:04, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
My proposal, just to put a damned end to this perennial rehash, is to recommend the au version, and deprecate "AU" and "ua" if we mention them at all, because all the actually authoritative/definitive sources that set standards for this stuff codify that version of it, except ISO likes the "ua" version, while we have no support for "AU" other than vestigial use that doesn't have much of anything current to cite to back it up. We should not recommend "ua", because it's sorely outnumbered, and because it's French and not recognizable to (i.e., will be confusing to) English-speakers. Even someone like me who has never taken a single astronomy-related class knows what an au or AU is, but has never seen "ua" in this context outside of an MoS squabble. The average person who reads or watches any sci-fi on a casual basis knows what au/AU means. Probably less that 0.1% of even that faintly-geeky crowd knows what "ua" stands for, and hearing it aloud would mistake it for a reference to United Artists.
Just put this to bed and move on. We've wasted way too much collective time on this. Repeatedly. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 01:58, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
*
, ·
), and so on. We don't permit that kind of chaos, because it makes both writing and understanding the encyclopedia more difficult. We have no reason to make a magically special exception to our normalization practices here just to please a handful of greybeard astronomers fighting a badly-losing style battle within their field. Taking up their side in that trivial fight isn't WP's job. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
13:17, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
Our job is to look neutrally at all the RS (which means publications, not legal entities) and consider them in the context of each other. It doesn't matter to WP what IAU says versus what BIPM says versus what another relevant organization says [as long as none of them are disreputable – we're looking for RS, here], except inasmuch as it helps us be sure the option we do pick isn't stupid and, if we're lucky, does have multi-authority support. But all this focus on organizations is a red herring. What we really care most about is what the majority of non-obsolete RS – in total, not just specialist publications – prefer. That's our first choice. And we might reject it anyway, if there's some kind of problem with it (technical, ambiguity, even social). The end goal is recognizability to the readership, not the approval of a particular group. The readership is everyone from kids to ESL learnings, line cooks to Nobel Prize winners.
Furthermore, we've had rare but serious problems in the past with people associated with off-site organizations trying to use WP as a vehicle to promote adoption of their would-be "standard" or "convention" when it really had little real-world acceptance among relevant organizations and institutions, but a significant "fan base" among individuals in the field. In one case, it led to over a decade of intermittent disruption, and reader-confusing output in thousands of articles. Some WP:COI was demonstrably happening – someone from the on-site editorial clique pushing this supposed convention was regularly updating a blog-style page at the off-site organization's website with news of the "progress" of imposing their spec on our content. [I'll pass on giving more detailed about it here; there's no active dispute now, this isn't a WP:DR forum anyway, and one shouldn't pick at scabs.]
The point is that while we usually think of things like this in terms of commercial, political, religious, and fringe groups, even highly-regarded institutions can be the source or inspiration of programmatic PoV pushing on this site, so we're rightly skeptical of any "our organization has The Truth" stance-taking. While, obviously, no one in this debate has some weird CoI agenda, our averseness to taking sides in off-site disputes between professional bodies and the like serves multiple purposes, and serves us well. For the case I'm alluding to, no one would have thought – at first – that something untoward was happening without really looking into it. I've had my own doubts about a few issues that have recurred on this particular page, including several years of vehemence about gibibytes and the like.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
09:05, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
MOS:APPROXDATE says if you have two possible birth years based on an as-of date, you should say for example "born 1912 or 1913". But we have a template for this, Template:Birth based on age as of date, that instead uses a slash: "1912/1913". You can add a param to make the template comply with MOS, but shouldn't that just be the default? Kendall-K1 ( talk) 16:07, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
|mos=1
added to the template with
this edit quite some time ago ... See the template's
documentation.Slashes are a bad idea. If someone was born on "10 January 1701/1702" it is stating that the person was born on 10 January 1702 ( New Style). So using slashes can be confusing for years before 1752 and before March 25 of those years for dates given within Britain and the colonies. -- PBS ( talk) 17:41, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
@ SMcCandlish I'm afraid I did not explain myself well. The problem with the quoted extract (from Boxee) is not particularly that GB is ambiguous, but that it is used with two different meanings in the same sentence. When describing RAM it means 10243 bytes. When describing flash memory it means 10003 bytes. The problem would go away if we could only think of one symbol that means 10003 bytes and another that means 10243 bytes <sigh>. Dondervogel 2 ( talk) 11:06, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
{{
Nihongo}}
does with Japanese. These number conversions are something software can do automatically. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
00:50, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
If I may steer the discussion back to where it started, it really is not difficult to improve on the Luddite advice we have now. Dondervogel 2 ( talk) 10:57, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
Please see
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography#The lead date-range vs. full dates thing
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
13:39, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
If u want to use format 2001-07, why is it not allowed on the manual style of dates yyyy-mm-dd is allowed, so why is yyyy-mm not allowed then? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:A000:1103:5EB:1097:199B:8DE1:7098 ( talk) 13:16, 5 July 2018 (UTC)
[http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/eag/246374.htm Economic Effects of State Bans on Direct Manufacturer Sales to Car Buyers]" ''Economic Analysis Group Competition Advocacy'', May 2009.
{{cite report |last=Bodisch |first=Gerald R. |url=http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/eag/246374.htm |title=Economic Effects of State Bans on Direct Manufacturer Sales to Car Buyers |orig-year=2009 |date=15 October 2015 |work=Economic Analysis Group |publisher=United States Department of Justice}}
I recently worked on an article where the source that ultimately was used was a parish register of vital events. It spanned several decades. Later it was microfilmed, and then the microfilm was put online. WP:CITE#Dates and reprints of older publications says to cite both the original date and the date of the re-publication where you saw it. The original date might be something like 1706-11, or some might write it 1706-1711. If the second year in the range were written with 2 digits, there could be genuine confusion whether it means 1706 to 1711, or November 1706. Indeed, an editor trying to "correct" it should examine the source to discover which is the case.
Such a date (1706-1711) could be valid, in the sense that during the period when the book was only partially full, members of the public could look at it, so in a sense it was "published" throughout that period. Jc3s5h ( talk) 00:23, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
MOS:UNITSYMBOLS includes "Where space is limited, such as in tables, infoboxes, parenthetical notes, and mathematical formulas, unit symbols are preferred." The "Guidelines on specific units" table lists "in" as the unit symbol for "inch", with the comment Do not use ... ″
(″) ... or quote (").
When I tried to use "inch" [20] or "in" [21] for this infobox single, I was reverted. In their first edit comment, SnapSnap wrote: "Per MOS:UNITSYMBOLS, unit symbols are preferred in infoboxes." [22] In their second, they added "Quotation marks are widely used for inches in music article infoboxes, plus the guideline doesn't mention anything about using "in" instead of quotes in infoboxes." [23]
However,
Template:Infobox song#format (which replaced Infobox single) includes: "Do not use "
or ″
(double quote) for inches, instead use 7-inch
rather than 7"
(if it is necessary to abbreviate, use 7 in
; see
WP:Units)."
It's clear that quote marks ( " ) should not be used for inches in prose, but clarification on what to use in infoboxes, tables, section headings, etc., would be appreciated.
—
Ojorojo (
talk)
18:35, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
There's a lot of problems with that section (for instance the whole of §4.4.1). I'd take note that the table is headed "Guidelines on specific units" not "Rules ..." and act with common sense. Martin of Sheffield ( talk) 20:46, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
|format=
takes up too much space. There needs to be a way to abbreviates these without using ( " ). —
Ojorojo (
talk)
14:57, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
{{
abbr|in|inch}}
single" if desperate, I suppose. We just don't hyphenate between digits and unit symbols (apparently we are now hyphenating between digits and unit names; I corrected the bullets above to reflect this. I dislike how inconsistent this is, but [shrug] c'est la vie. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
02:25, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
Could someone who understands the dating system(s?) of India/Hinduism please clean up Ram Charan (guru) and Ram Kishor to conform to MOS:DATE and WP:USEENGLISH? It's pretty impenetrable to anyone who isn't a Hindi speaker, and the material is veering back and forth between calendars in a very confusing way. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 11:28, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
An alternative is AUcontradicts the overall idea and sentiment of deprecation, and it will be struck from the updated table. If there comes a point where au is officially recognized by all astronomical societies and its use has been deprecated on the English Wikipedia, there is no prejudice against starting a new discussion to remove the "Comment" regarding AU, though a formal RFC might not be necessary. Primefac ( talk) 22:03, 30 June 2018 (UTC)
This RfC relates to the options discussed in the immediately preceding section, which has become inactive in the last week. To bring this discussion to a close, I am initiating a formal RfC, which may attract additional participants and has a formal closing mechanism. Below are sections for expressing support of the four draft revisions proposed above. SteveMcCluskey ( talk) 02:02, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
Option | Group | Name | Symbol | Comment |
---|---|---|---|---|
Status quo | Length, Speed |
astronomical unit | AU (not A.U., au, ua) |
AU is the most commonly used symbol for this unit, both in popular and professional articles, and is hence also used on Wikipedia (though some organizations, including the BIPM [1] and IAU, [2] recommend au). |
One | Length, Speed |
astronomical unit | au, AU (not A.U., ua) |
au is recomended by the BIPM [1] and the IAU, [3] and is called for in the publications of the AAS ( AJ and ApJ) [4] and the RAS ( MNRAS) [5]. AU is a commonly used symbol for this unit, both in popular and professional articles. |
Two | Length, Speed |
astronomical unit | au, AU (not A.U., ua) |
The preferred option au is recomended by the BIPM [1] and the IAU, [6] and is called for in the publications of the AAS ( AJ and ApJ) [7] and the RAS ( MNRAS) [8]. AU remains an acceptable option as it is a commonly used symbol in both popular and professional articles. |
Three | Length, Speed |
astronomical unit | au (not A.U., ua) |
The preferred option is au. An alternative is AU. Articles that already use AU may choose to switch to au or continue to use AU. |
Four | Length, Speed |
astronomical unit | au (not a.u., AU, ua) |
|
Unicode | length, speed |
astronomical unit | ㍳ / ㍳ | ㍳ / ㍳ |
References
SI Brochure
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).{{
efn}}
. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
23:19, 12 June 2018 (UTC){{
efn}}
footnote. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
23:15, 12 June 2018 (UTC)Unicode is coded for an AU symbol. If we change, we should use the Unicode coded version. Otherwise, we should remain at the status quo, per older discussions. -- 65.94.40.190 ( talk) 06:46, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
Unicode encodes a character for the Astronomical Unit, it is U+3373 (13171) ㍳ / ㍳ -- 65.94.40.190 ( talk) 06:46, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
Are we not talking about symbols rather than abbreviations here? That is my working assumption and I have edited the title of the RfC accordingly. I have also requested comment at the Astronomy talk page. Dondervogel 2 ( talk) 07:52, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
This has gone quiet and perhaps all the arguments have been presented. How do we precipitate closure? Dondervogel 2 ( talk) 21:18, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
It strikes me as worth asking, so that a specific variant can be recommended for specific contexts (or so we can recommend to use the variant appropriate to the context, rather than listing them out here). E.g., subspecies is abbreviated ssp. in zoology, but subsp. in botany, which uses it as a symbol in scientific names while zoology does not. Wondering if something similar might be going on in, say cosmology and archaeoastronomy versus astrophysics and exoplanetology, or whatever. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 04:11, 5 July 2018 (UTC)
If composed fraction characters are to be avoided in prose, should 6½ Avenue and similar titles be changed? Obviously {{ frac}} can't be used in article titles, so maybe there should be guidance for this. (Note that 6+1⁄2 Avenue is actually between Sixth Avenue and Seventh Avenue, so I'm not sure how it's supposed to be pronounced.) Jc86035 ( talk) 11:06, 20 July 2018 (UTC)
6 1/2
style. Probably worth mass-
WP:RMing the ones using the Unicode fractions. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
07:11, 23 July 2018 (UTC)MOS:CURRENCY states, "Conversions should be in parentheses after the original currency, rounding to avoid false precision (two significant digits is usually sufficient, as most exchange rates fluctuate significantly), with at least the year given as a rough point of conversion rate reference; e.g. Since 2001 the grant has been 10,000,000 Swedish kronor ($1.4M, €1.0M, or £800k as of August 2009 [update]), not ($1,390,570, €971,673 or £848,646)". I find this guideline unclear. Why is 1,390,570 rounded just around 10k to 1.4M but 848,646 to 800k -a difference of almost 50k? Wouldn't it be better to round it up to 850k? After all, the guideline itself says that two significant digits is usually sufficient, so it is unclear why it was rounded to 800k. In addition, why use two different formats for millions in the same sentence, 10,000,000 and 1.4M? Thinker78 ( talk) 07:21, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
Well, obviously not me, and here's a few examples to get us started:
Dondervogel 2 ( talk) 16:02, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
References
@ Ham105 and EEng: Please stop talking over edit summaries. -- Izno ( talk) 14:20, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, @ Izno:. I have framed a more specific basis for discussion in the new section below. -- Ham105 ( talk) 16:30, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
Following the shortcut MOS:DATERANGE currently leads to a long section covering more than 25 style guidelines for date ranges. It is cumbersome for the reader to find specific guidelines within. Proposal: The text be organised into subsections:
To produce the subheadings and layout as sandboxed here. Rationale: to aid reading navigation and break the guideline into more manageable segments when editing. Comments sought and welcomed. -- Ham105 ( talk) 16:23, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
covering more than 25 style guidelines– No, that's a huge exaggeration. Maybe 10, depending how you count. But that's not the point. Good structure isn't arrived at by some formula, but by thinking about how to best help the reader understand each portion of the guideline.
this is especially important within an article. Would appreciate the clarification. -- Gonnym ( talk) 15:28, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
@ EEng: Please stop subverting this discussion point by editing it into a subsection. Show some good faith. While citing WP:TPO in your edit summary ... It can also sometimes be appropriate to merge entire sections under one heading ...", you somehow omitted the text "To avoid disputes, it is best to discuss a heading change with the editor who started the thread, if possible, when a change is likely to be controversial." -- Ham105 ( talk) 12:39, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
Ha ha! Consolation prize and apology accepted, my good man. ;-) But I'm happy to let the original discussion take its fair course. That part of the MoS reads like a dog's breakfast. It is a long mishmash of boldface masquerading as headings and, well,
While I'm enjoying Sectionpedia, EE, make sure you have fun in Bulletopia! -- Ham105 ( talk) 13:52, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
The MoS says date ranges should use an unspaced ndash or a spaced mdash (bot of which I agree with). However, it doesn't say whether we should use the unicode character (as given in the helpful toolbox just below the edit summary), the html entity –
or the template {{tlx{ndash}}. Or is there no preference? Should we retain the existing variation, similar to
WP:RETAIN and
WP:DATERET? I find the unicode character easy to enter using the toolbox or via copy and paste from nearby text. I also find the other 2 choices quite cluttered that makes editing harder to read. Thoughts? — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Stepho-wrs (
talk •
contribs)
should use an unspaced ndash or a spaced mdashWhere is this? Please link the actual section where this is stated. -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 09:15, 4 August 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 150 | ← | Archive 155 | Archive 156 | Archive 157 | Archive 158 | Archive 159 | Archive 160 |
Something "obvious" that I'm pretty sure we used to have is missing from WP:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#Numbers as figures or words: use figures before a unit. I.e., we do not want to see "seven kg" but "7 kg" (except "Seven ..." at the beginning of a sentence, if moving "7 kg" to elsewhere in the sentence doesn't work well for some reason). It seems very strange to me that this bit of very basic and central advice, which experienced editors all seem to be following, has somehow gone missing. The chart at WP:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#General guidelines on unit names and symbols illustrates the figure style pretty consistently, while permitting some examples of spelled-out number words (presumably for sentence-initial cases).
At least one thread on this page (namely, part of the discussion at #Number ranges more generally) indicates some confusion about this, an inference that MoS is somehow expecting/demanding "five to seven kg", due to lack of an exception for measurements, so this probably should be resolved. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 22:53, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
Do not spell out numbers before unit symbols ... but words or figures may be used with unit names.There's a kind of division of labor under which Numbers as figures or words deals mostly with unitless stuff + non-scientific stuff like money and minutes/hours, and Unit names and symbols deals with hardcore units. I'm always torn about whether to duplicate advice like numbers-as-figures-or-words in two places. E Eng 02:28, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
Meant to bring this up a long time ago, but forgot. The logic and resultant rule we're applying to date ranges – to give them in the form 2002–2011 not 2002–11 – applies to all numeric ranges (outside of directly quoted material) and we need to state that explicitly. I keep running into sporadic WP:WIKILAWYERing along lines which can be parodied as "I can use 'p. 2002–11' if I wanna because MOS:NUM#Ranges only technically applies to dates, and no matter how much WP:COMMONSENSE dictates that that the reasoning applies across the board, the rules don't quite say it, so ha ha ha." Let's just fix it. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 06:18, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
PS: I think I've IDed the problem, and have addressed it under separate cover at #Missing point in "Numbers as figures or words" section, below. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 22:54, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
What symbols should {{ convert}} display for units that need a product dot or a micro sign? I suspect that convert uses the wrong symbols. Examples:
kW.h
has symbol kW·h (uses middot). Discussion at
Template talk:Convert#Dots.um
has symbol µm (uses micro). Discussion at
Template talk:Convert#Micro symbols.Dot
Micro
µ
in at least two browsers)I'm planning to change convert to use sdot (instead of middot) and mu (instead of micro). Using sdot contradicts the first WP:MOSNUM link above. Thoughts? Johnuniq ( talk) 00:50, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
⋅
– U+22C5 (dot operator a.k.a. multiplication dot), ⋅
, ⋅
, ⋅
µ
– U+00B5 (micro sign), µ
, µ
, µ
{{
lang|el|...}}
). This is science and other fields repurposing what originated as a Greek letter, for symbolic purposes unrelated to rendering Greek text. Saying we should use the Greek letter μ is tantamount to saying we should not use the ™ symbol, but instead use <sup style="font-variant: small-caps;">TM</sup>
.Skimming that [micro/mu discussion], I don't find it compellinga strong argument. I point to the Kendall-K1 quote above @00:29: that the micro sign is a
compatibility decomposable character, per a major Unicode policy. That is: added to provide compatability with legacy code systems (think old ASCII with limited number of code points so only selected non-Latin characters were imported into Latin set). Also, nowhere does Unicode claim or even suggest the micro sign should replace the letter mu anywhere. Also no need to go to the "confusion" area of the web, of Unicode, or of anyone's understanding. Both Unicode and SI are perfectly clear in this, and the web can handle this clarity.
x
versus ×
. It does not matter that some other publishers chose to use - for minus and x for multiplication because they don't care about Unicode distinctions; WP is not among those publishers. Another example is duplicate-looking glyphs in Greek and Latin, and in Greek, Cyrillic, etc. We don't use the Greek ones in Cyrillic or the Latin ones in Greek just because we feel like it or they're easier to type, or any other reason. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
00:26, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
<b>
, <i>
, <u>
, and <s>
in HTML5 (in favor of using styled spans for these things when they do not have a semantic value conveyed, respectively, by <strong>
, <em>
, <ins>
, and <del>
) but this did not end up happening, so these elements are in fact still in use and legitimate to use. (They did deprecate <tt>
, in favor of <code>
and the related semantic tags, so <tt>
should not be used here or elsewhere, even if browsers are generally not going to choke on it). "I wish this were deprecated" isn't good enough for me, especially when it runs into "use of micro- and the symbol for it in English has F'-all to do with rendering Greek-language material". I can't think of anything else to add that won't simply be rehash of what I already said. Bazillions of things are among those that some people want to deprecate and which do not actually get deprecated; life goes on. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
19:09, 21 November 2017 (UTC)References
Unicode is a black hole from which useful information rarely escapes. Johnuniq ( talk) 22:19, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
I changed
WP:MOSNUM to recommend ⋅
for the dot operator instead of ·
. I gather we all agree with that.
Johnuniq (
talk)
00:28, 23 November 2017 (UTC)
Is it possible to add Jewish dates in templates (for example {{cite news|date="7 Tishrei, 5775 // October 1, 2014"}})? -- Jonund ( talk) 19:19, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
I was wondering why this says "Integers from zero to nine are spelled out in words", when "ten" is clearly more readable than "10". I would have thought changing "nine" for "ten" in the MOS would make sense? MapReader ( talk) 10:05, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
Personally I think that any number that can be expressed with a single word (rather than a two-word combination) is more readable as a word than in figures, except in special circumstances like lists and tables. So this would put the dividing line at "twenty" - which is actually a pretty good place for it. Or, if you argue that words like fourteen are effectively four-teen, you could put the upper limit at "twelve". Either of these would be more logical and sensible than "nine", since the additional figure when you increment to "10" decreases readability, and the reduction of one letter from "nine" to "ten" increases it - so "ten" very clearly has a greater readability premium over "10" than "nine" does over "9". MapReader ( talk) 19:34, 3 December 2017 (UTC) MapReader ( talk) 19:34, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
I note that no protocol is listed for the use of the terms fall and autumn - perhaps it's worth pointing out which countries use each term? (AFAIK, fall is used in all Western Hemisphere English-speaking countries, and autumn elsewhere, but I'd prefer some confirmation from Canadian, Jamaican, etc. editors) Grutness... wha? 08:24, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
The term Western Hemisphere was new to me and I confused it for Western Civilisation. Anyway, I think we're good. Stepho talk 11:30, 27 November 2017 (UTC)
On
Erhard Maertens, the first (indeed, only) major contributor,
scope creep, chose a date-number format that contravenes the Unacceptable date formats table, namely, Do not use ordinals (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.)
. What is the proper resolution here, and can
WP:DATERET's wording be made clearer/stronger as to how these conflicts should be resolved in the future? ~
Tom.Reding (
talk ⋅
dgaf)
13:22, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
If an article has evolved using predominantly one acceptable date format, this format should be used throughout the article...
If an article has evolved using predominantly one date format (whether acceptable or unacceptable), this format should be used throughout the article...
(whether acceptable or unacceptable), and indeed someone did. Also, when you said
that obviously means one acceptable format, it's more accurate to replace "means" with "implies". For a catch-all section, explicitness is better than implicitness, so "acceptable" wouldn't have to be placed everywhere, I think. I would not want the scenario as you describe it to play out either, though.
If an article has evolved using predominantly one [[#Dates and years|acceptable date format]] ...
. All it takes is a word and a wikilink in this case. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
12:30, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
Hi Tom.Reding, Hi E Eng, I think there needs to be an awareness that the date formats used in most European countries and to a certain extent, those countries that European countries, conquered, e.g. Britain conquering India, means that India uses the date format 10th May 2019, and other countries. I propose an extension is made to the format to enable this format. For most British, reading a date like 10th May 2019 is natural. Not 10 may 2019. That is read here as ten May 2019, which doesn't sound right. It should be 10th as in tenth of May 2019. As regards the WP:DATERET I have been using it fend folk off who have changed to American Date formats. I don't know what your thinking it, but the American format dates subverts British English articles, and reduces them. It is not fair really. I propose an extension or whatever the procedure to extend the MOS in this specific instance. Thanks. scope_creep ( talk) 17:45, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
Dear Wikipedians!!, You WP:MOS folk, I think, I suspect that like most folk, you are resistant to change. But we live in a changing world. SMcCandlish most newspapers, designed in the UK, and other English speaking nations, are designed to be read by transatlantic audiencies, and as such use the simplest of date format as possible, the American date format. SMcCandlish I see you have never written a very large, complex article, perhaps involving 100's, or 1000's of hours of research, then to write it, in British English, and realize you can't use British date formats, because at some point, somebody is going run a bot against the article and remove the ordinal dates. It is disheartining and not really fair. Your rationale is therefore incorrect. I will round up some evidence. Out of the 2.2million books published in the UK every year, some of them must use it. I will find the research. What is the formal method to raise a change in the WP:MOS. scope_creep ( talk) 00:54, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
I see you have never written a very large, complex article, perhaps involving 100's, or 1000's of hours of research, you should consider yourself to have got off easy. And there's a reason there's a box near the top of this page: It has been X days since the outbreak of the latest dispute over date formats. E Eng 09:21, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
I propose removing this line from the "Notes and exceptions" subsection of WP:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#Numbers as figures or words:
Personal ages are typically stated in figures (8-year-old child).
It simply isn't correct, and is patent WP:CREEP. It's entirely normal English, including in an encyclopedic register (perhaps especially in one) to write "eight-year-old child". Many of us do this, and the alleged exception is inconsistent with the general "Numbers as figures or words" rule, for no good reason. We gain nothing – for readers or for editors – in having this line-item. This is simply someone's personal preference, and I don't believe it represents consensus at all. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 22:59, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
There's a long-term productively risk too: If we had no line-item in MoS saying to rewrite (when practical) to avoid beginning running-prose sentences with numerals, lower-case letters, and misc. symbols, then people would do it way more than probably anyone would be comfortable with. The effective status quo is that we generally write to avoid it, but don't stress about it and go ahead and use a "3M" or an "iPod" at the start of a sentence if rewriting would be awkward. All is well. What we could end up with is people who hate rules who just don't give a damn going around writing sentences like "21 episodes were aired in season 3.", just because they can get away with it and like to write like this is their personal blog. The amount of work it would take to clean up genuinely poor usage could greatly exceed the amount of work we presently engage in to avoid that poor usage because of the "rule" (recommendation). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 18:41, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
Am I missing something where changes to MOS like this are communicated? Or is it a matter of embarrassment & crazy-making that all editors must go thru when quoting MOS in editsums, to learn they were mistaken, or check each time for a changed MOS before quoting it, respectively? (I'd suggest a summary of changes published quarterly, in the WP online "magazine". It'd be a reasonable place & time for an editor to review what's changed. Else embarrassment & crazy-making. Am I missing if/where such a summary is published periodically? Obviously, the changes to MOS s/b synch'd with the periodic publication, not done piece-meal at random/unpredictable times.) Thx. -- IHTS ( talk) 13:03, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:International System of Units. Legobot ( talk) 04:28, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
Should the title of the Watt article have an initial cap or not? If you care, please comment at Talk:Watt. Kendall-K1 ( talk) 19:35, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
There are many hundreds of pages that have "was jailed for two-and-a-half years" or similarly (unnecessarily) hyphenated mixed numbers. The hyphens need to be removed. The manual says "Mixed numbers are usually given in figures", so my inclination is to change it to "was jailed for 2+1⁄2 years". Would such a change bring howls of protest from editors who prefer something else, like "was jailed for two and a half years" or "was jailed for two and one-half years"? The manual does not cover the topic of hyphens or lack of hyphens in mixed numbers that are spelled out. If the number is adjectival, I think that "a two-and-a-half-year sentence" would be improved if changed to "a 2+1⁄2-year sentence". Does anyone feel differently, or am I on the right track? Chris the speller yack 17:26, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
I have started an RFC at Talk:Tesla Model S#RfC about date format in references about whether an article using MDY date format in the text is allowed to have yyyy-mm-dd date format in references or not. There was also discussion in the talk topic just above it at Talk:Tesla Model S#Date format. Please answer there, not here. Stepho talk 05:00, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
I'm looking at [8], which consistently changed CE to AD, in violation of MOS:ERA: "Do not change the established era style in an article unless there are reasons specific to its content. Seek consensus on the talk page...". But, at first blush, reverting that change seems to be hypocritical. Should I interpret "established" as "the style used over the several most recent edits, or for a significant amount of time"? Am I worrying too much? Probably. David Brooks ( talk) 14:09, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
I have to question whether this should be retained, at least in anything like the current form:
* M (unspaced) or bn (unspaced) respectively may be used for "million" or "billion" after a number, when the word has been spelled out at the first occurrence (She received £70 million and her son £10M).<!-- This needs to be coordinated with text in units tables re nonuse of M (for 1000) MM, etc. -->
Reasons:
{{
abbr}}
, regardless how recently we used million somewhere in the same page.— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 05:34, 30 October 2017 (UTC)
I've just
reformatted a date range from fl. 1st/2nd century AD
to fl. 1st to 2nd century AD
. Keeping century AD
seems necessary here, and in that case using an en dash doesn't seem appropriate, but this kind of range isn't addressed here or at
Wikipedia:Manual of Style#En dashes. Does this format seem right? If so, could it be made explicit here?
Languorrises (
talk)
17:43, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
fl. 1st/2nd century ADas "in the first and/or the second" and
fl. 1st to 2nd century ADas "in the first and the second". The impicit uncertainty of the first form will often be appropriate and clearly is in this case (we shouldn't say that someone who is only known to have begun practicing medicine at some point in Trajan's 98–117 AD reign definitely flourished in the first century). 79.73.243.152 ( talk) 12:21, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
Please help. MOS says a format is acceptable (MOS says it "may" be used). An editor keeps on traipsing around the Project, changing it. As though MOS says the opposite -- that it "may not" be used. From the already-used acceptable format.
That's the sort of silly, useless, unhelpful date-edit-warring that has plagued wikipedia for years. I thought we were past that. Convo is here. -- 2604:2000:E016:A700:88BC:545A:BD53:F393 ( talk) 18:03, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at
WT:JAPAN#Date formats. --
Marchjuly (
talk)
05:23, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
While there was some support to phase out the use of crore/lakh in articles, it seems that the consensus is to retain such terms in India-related articles, provided that either crore or lakh is to be linked at the first mention in the article, and that a conversion to either US$ or regular Rupee numbers is provided. As for how to present such conversions, consensus appears to be that US$ conversions must include whatever the conversion was at the relevant time (the {{INRConvert}} template can be used for this purpose). ( non-admin closure) Narutolovehinata5 t c csd new 13:40, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
Presently, MOS:NUMS includes:
Sometimes, the variety of English used in an article may necessitate the use of a numbering system other than the Western thousands-based system. For example, the South Asian numbering system is conventionally used in South Asian English. In those situations, link the first spelled-out instance of each quantity (e.g. crore, which yields: crore).
This is followed by three more bullet points of WP:CREEP about crore. The lead sentence of this is just patently false; nothing necessitates the use of alternative numbering systems. Proof that Indian English doesn't do so abounds (including with regard to Indian currency) [9], [10], [11], [12] etc., etc.
I propose that this be deleted and replaced with a) short advice against use of crore in Wikipedia articles, unless conversion is provided to Western numbers, and b) retaining the advice against using "1,00,00,000" for "10,000,000".
Rationale: I do not believe the present wording has actual consensus, and crore are rarely used in our articles even on Indian subjects. Some small number of Indian editors have somehow gotten MoS to be permissive about crore, despite it being non-English and meaning nothing to most anyone outside that part of the world, and despite English-speakers of India having no problem with "ten million" (or "10,000,000", "10mil", "10M", etc.)
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
05:08, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
The estimated cost of approximately Rs.25.5 billion, this water project intended to provide 65 crore gallons of water to the Karachiites in three phases (260mgd + 260mgd + 130 MGD).- 165.234.252.11 ( talk) 19:03, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
Prefer vocabulary common to all varieties of English. [...] Universally used terms are often preferable to less widely distributed terms, especially in article titles. For example, glasses is preferred to the national varieties spectacles (British English) and eyeglasses (American English); ten million is preferable to one crore (Indian English).(So I guess I'm in favor per the letter of COMMONALITY, too.) Different ways of counting are in a whole different league from color vs. colour and pounds vs. kilos. - 165.234.252.11 ( talk) 18:58, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/crore - Oxford dictionary
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/crore - Cambridge dictionary
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crore - Websters dictionary
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/crore - Collins dictionary
Anish Viswa
06:08, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
I'm proposing a change to Template:Convert to italicise the rai and pyeong units, in accordance with MOS:FOREIGNITALIC, so that, for example:
{{convert|3995|pyeong|ha}}
→ 3,995 pyeong (1.321 ha) becomes 3,995 pyeong (1.321 ha){{convert|9|rai|ha acre|lk=in}}
→ 9
rai (1.4 ha; 3.6 acres) becomes 9
rai (1.4 ha; 3.6 acres)Comments would be appreciated at Template talk:Convert#Italics for units that are foreign words. Thank you. -- Paul_012 ( talk) 21:15, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
<i><span lang="th-Latn">rai</span></i>
<i><span lang="ko-Latn">pyeong</span></i>
It seems there's a rather clear no consensus in support of italicising such units, at least when they follow numbers. I think this can safely be dropped; thanks for the input. -- Paul_012 ( talk) 04:12, 10 May 2018 (UTC)
This page (in the table “Guidelines on specific units”) gives the option of using either of the SI symbols for litre: “l” or “L”, just as SI itself does. In the United States the National Institute of Standards and Technology explicitly says to use “L”, not “l” (nor “ℓ”). (See note (b) to table 6 in SP 811.) I do not know if other English-speaking nations have similar conventions that officially favor “l” over “L”. Given the U.S. preference for “L”, and the logic expressed in the annotation, I think it makes sense for Wikipedia to simply stick with “L”.
-- Sbauman ( talk) 14:36, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
How about the following? The first sentence is what's in the guideline already.
The symbol l (lowercase "el") in isolation (i.e. not in such forms as ml) is easily mistaken for the digit 1 or the capital letter I ("eye"). Outside scientific articles it may be preferable to use L.
Somehow I figured "it may be preferable" would be all things to all people and avoid a long debate. E Eng 03:02, 28 April 2018 (UTC)
Yoo hoo! Any thoughts about my proposed text? E Eng 14:32, 28 April 2018 (UTC)
Well, hell then:
The symbol l (lowercase "el") in isolation (i.e. not in such forms as ml) is easily mistaken for the digit 1 or the capital letter I ("eye"). Therefore L may be preferable.Reminder: The first sentence is in the guideline already.
Again, I've used the preferable language in hopes of avoiding a big debate. E Eng 16:54, 28 April 2018 (UTC)
The symbol l (lowercase "el") in isolation (i.e. not in such forms as ml) is easily mistaken for the digit 1 or the capital letter I ("eye"). Therefore L may be preferable. Once a symbol for litre is chosen for an article, the same symbol is used throughout that article (e.g., "1 L is 1000 mL", and not "1 L is 1000 ml").
but do not mix units using "L" and units using "l" in the same article? Kahastok talk 21:36, 29 April 2018 (UTC)
In response to EEng's recent reminder: I kinda like it as it stands, without change: informative, possibly even suggestive, but clearly leaving discretion to the editor. When it comes to "preferable", there are so many factors involved that IMO it cannot sensibly be distilled into a clear recommendation. — Quondum 21:14, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
Perhaps "L" is preferable to "l" when standing alone, but to me "mL" looks weird, and "ML" is
Local magnitude scale. As the core issue is "easily mistaken for the digit 1
" (ever since typewriters didn't come one with a "1" key), perhaps a better approach would be to deal with the underlying typographical issue by forcing "l" into a more distinct typeface, such as this: "l". This could be done with a template, which, when given a value, would also add a non-breaking space. ♦
J. Johnson (JJ) (
talk)
21:35, 29 April 2018 (UTC)
I spot checked a bottle of bourbon on my shelf, and it said it was "750 ML", which should be enough for everyone on the planet to have a good stiff double. -- Trovatore ( talk) 00:31, 28 April 2018 (UTC)
I don't find any of this the slightest bit amusing. Having been around during the metrication and decimaisation debates in the 1970, and then having implemented the decisions in schools, and enforcement agencies on local councils there is one correct form - the lower case 'l' which is written with a loop in cursive handwriting. Go into any Walmart (Asda) and Aldi, Tescos,and, by law the products must be marked up with a lower case 'l'. In the EU and any country that trades with the EU. It is done this way to give exporters a compatible system across the 28. A little joke about a couterfeit whisky does not mean that Wikipedia should veer away from international norms and standards. We follow referenced standards not invent our own ClemRutter ( talk) 19:53, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
::::[Principles ::::Roman (upright) type, in general lower-case, is used for symbols of units; if, however, the symbols are derived from proper names, capital roman type is used. These ::::symbols are not followed by a full stop. ::::In numbers, the comma (French practice) or the dot (British practice) is used only to separate the integral part of numbers from the decimal part. Numbers may be divided in groups of three in order to facilitate reading; neither dots nor commas are ever inserted in the spaces between groups. ::::l-liter
(f) The liter, and the symbol lower-case l, were adopted by the CIPM in 1879 (PV, 1879, 41). The alternative symbol, capital L, was adopted by the 16th CGPM (1979, Resolution 6; CR, 101 and Metrologia, 1980, 16, 56-57) in order to avoid the risk of confusion between the letter l (el) and the numeral 1 (one). Editors’ note: Since the preferred unit symbol for the liter in the United States is L, only L is given in the table; see the Federal Register notice of July 28, 1998, “Metric System of Measurement: Interpretation of the International System of Units for the United States” (FR 40334-4030).
This whole thing is silly. WP is not dictated to by the random whimsy of some other entity's house style, such as that of a bottle or label factory. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 02:00, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
Rather than reverting a second time,
EEng, I might as well just mention that—beyond the rationale stated in
my edit summary about conforming the longform usage of {{
floruit}}
with the longform usage of {{
circa}}
immediately above it—there are actually
1,418 transclusions of the {{
floruit}}
template on the English Wikipedia at this time, which is nearly 2.5 (~2.48) times more common than the current
499 transclusions of {{
fl.}}
. (Meanwhile,
there
are
zero for
the other three redirects.) So, contrary to
your edit summary, the longform usage is actually used very frequently.
I don't particularly care which is mentioned, though. This is both too pedantic and too insignificant an issue to dispute. I was just trying to ensure the more common one (which also conformed with other template usage in the section) was stated, especially since it eliminates a needless redirect for anyone clicking on the link. I do want to note this information, however, in the event that it is mistaken that {{
fl.}}
is at all the more common transclusion. With that stated, I will leave it up to you and anyone else reading this to decide which template usage to mention. I'll go back to my usual editing.
Thanks for your time. ― Nøkkenbuer ( talk • contribs) 14:59, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
Regnal years of English monarchs (originally constructed by User:Walrasiad) lists the official regnal year of the monarchs of England and successor states.
The regnal calendar ("nth year of the reign of King X", etc.) is used in many official British government and legal documents of historical interest, notably parliamentary statutes and also historically parliamentary sessions. It may be that the sources used by a Wikipedia editor will use the regnal calendar. I suggest that a subsection is added to the section "Dates, months and years" of this guideline, stating that if regnal years are used the year or year range in the appropriate Julian (prior to 1752) or Gregorian calendar is appended in parenthesis.
The reason for doing this is because most people have no idea which year for example is Elisabeth I, 10 (November 1568–November 1569); and mentioning the article " Regnal years of English monarchs" here will inform editors where they can go to get the information do the conversion.
-- PBS ( talk) 17:33, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
The source of actually interminable style conflicts is MoS making a pseudo-rule like "do A or B, per editorial discretion at the article" (or us knowing there's a perennial dispute but neglecting to account for it in MoS at all). This is guaranteed to lead to repeated disputes at many pages for no good reason, until the un-rule (or lack of one) is replaced with a single instruction.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
10:17, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
There is no nothing like what
WP:CALC contemplates: Routine calculations do not count as original research, provided there is consensus among editors that the result of the calculation is obvious, correct, and a meaningful reflection of the sources. Basic arithmetic, such as adding numbers, converting units, or calculating a person's age are some examples of routine calculations.
Using the regnal-years table, which has 14 footnotes along the lines of:
Henry VI was deposed by Edward IV on 4 March 1461, officially bringing his reign and last regnal year to a close. However, Henry VI briefly recovered the throne in 1470–1471, so he has an extra regnal year, dated from 9 October 1470 to c. April 1471, and referred to as the 49th year ("Anno ab inchoatione regni nostri") or 1st year of restoration ("Readeptionis nostrae regiae potestatis"). Henry VI's "restoration" year does not mar the continuity of Edward IV's regnal years – Edward IV's 10th Year is counted unbroken as beginning from 4 March 1470 and ending 3 March 1471, his 11th year beginning 4 March 1471, etc.
And that's before we fold in the issue of civil vs. historical years. A process that even sometimes involves considerations like that cannot be called a "calculation" which is "obvious". But I'm back to the question of use case. Are we building article content from sources so old that they give dates in regnal form? Do we really consider those reliable sources? An article on the history of weights-and-measures legislation should draw on modern sources discussing that history, not cobble together way-old sources from all over the map. E Eng 18:58, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
looking up one line in a table??? 49 Henry VI was when, exactly? – be sure to read the footnotes! Look, make a table with Regnal years, or ranges of them, on the left, and the corresponding calendar year range X–X+1, on the right (something like [16]) and then I'll call it
looking up one line in a table. But you can collapse the "inside" years of most reigns via formulas showing how to compute X=Y+REGNALYEAR. There will still need to be some notes about OS/NS, of course, but you can never avoid that. The current table takes skill to apply. E Eng 19:38, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
There is already a Template:British regnal year that uses a Lula module to convert Julian/Gregorian years to regnal ones:
*1649 {{British regnal year|1649}}
I have used that year to demonstrate how the template handles anomalies. I have asked on the
template talk page if it is possible to add an inversion so that if a Julian/Gregorian regnal year is put in it will display the regnal Julian/Gregorian years. --
PBS (
talk)
22:26, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
I am raising, once again, the issue that au (not AU) should be used as the abbreviation for astronomical unit. It has been discussed both here and on the talk page for Astronomical unit. About five years ago I recommended allowing both abbreviations to be used in the article on the Astronomical unit until the issue was sorted out by appropriate defining authorities. At that time the situation stood as follows:
Since that time, the situation has changed. The 2014 Supplement to the eighth edition of the BIPM brochure on The International System of Units and the draft ninth edition (forthcoming 2019) recommended the symbol au in both English and French texts, citing IAU resolution B2, 2012 which recommends "that the unique symbol 'au' be used for the astronomical unit." National organizations such as the American Astronomical Society and the Royal Astronomical Society also recommend the use of au in their publications, the AJ, ApJ, and MNRAS. Given this agreement among the authoritative international organization on weights and measures and the primary national and international organizations on astronomy, Wikipedia should follow suit by changing its Manual of Style to reflect accepted practice. -- SteveMcCluskey ( talk) 20:00, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
Rather than discussing an abstraction, I'll propose a specific change for the table, drawing on the discussion to date:
Group | Name | Symbol | Comment |
---|---|---|---|
Length, Speed |
astronomical unit | au, AU (not A.U., ua) | au is recomended by the BIPM [1] and the IAU, [2] and is called for in the publications of the AAS ( AJ and ApJ) [3] and the RAS ( MNRAS) [4]. AU is a commonly used symbol for this unit, both in popular and professional articles. |
References
SI Brochure
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).-- SteveMcCluskey ( talk) 14:42, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
Here is a revision which indicates the preferred option, responding to the discussions below:
Group | Name | Symbol | Comment |
---|---|---|---|
Length, Speed |
astronomical unit | au, AU (not A.U., ua) | The preferred option au is recomended by the BIPM [1] and the IAU, [2] and is called for in the publications of the AAS ( AJ and ApJ) [3] and the RAS ( MNRAS) [4]. AU remains an acceptable option as it is a commonly used symbol in both popular and professional articles. |
References
SI Brochure
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).-- SteveMcCluskey ( talk) 15:43, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
How about this:
Group | Name | Symbol | Comment |
---|---|---|---|
Length, Speed |
astronomical unit | au (not A.U., ua) | The preferred option is au. An alternative is AU. Articles that already use AU may choose to switch to au or continue to use AU. |
I prefer this wording because it makes it clear au is preferred, permitting AU during the transition (to au) but not promoting it. Also, we do not normally include the reason for our choices in mosnum. I think this is to keep it short. Dondervogel 2 ( talk) 18:31, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
Fourth proposal:
Group | Name | Symbol | Comment |
---|---|---|---|
Length, Speed |
astronomical unit | au (not a.u., AU, ua) |
I added this simpler option to address SMcCandlish's criticism of the other three. Dondervogel 2 ( talk) 09:45, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
For as long as the
ISQ
ISO 80000-3 'Quantities and Units - Space and Time' prefers ua, what is the reason for mosnum to prefer au?
Dondervogel 2 (
talk)
18:21, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
In view of the questions about what is actual use, I did a very quick search of recent articles in the Astrophysics Data System: Four of the first five articles I could download from Arxiv (to be published this year in AJ Letters, ApJ, and MNRAS) used AU, one (forthcoming in Astronomy and Astrophysics) used au. Since these are preprints, I can't confirm what they will look like after going through the formal editing, but it does indicate that authors submitting papers to AJ Letters, ApJ, and MNRAS still use AU, despite the style guides calling for au. It seems our draft using both AU and au reflects current usage. -- SteveMcCluskey ( talk) 15:06, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
I have checked articles from MNRAS, A&A, Icarus (all European journals), and there the published articles that I have read use au. In Nature AU, in ApJ and AJ (US journal) I have found AU or au (but more au in the more recent ones) SkZ ( talk) 02:42, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
The ayes 'n nays were to discuss a single proposal (the first one) and things are getting difficult to follow. Let's discuss the merits of the 4 proposals here. Dondervogel 2 ( talk) 09:54, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
Pinging SMcCandlish again because I spelt his name wrong at my first attempt. Dondervogel 2 ( talk) 11:04, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
My proposal, just to put a damned end to this perennial rehash, is to recommend the au version, and deprecate "AU" and "ua" if we mention them at all, because all the actually authoritative/definitive sources that set standards for this stuff codify that version of it, except ISO likes the "ua" version, while we have no support for "AU" other than vestigial use that doesn't have much of anything current to cite to back it up. We should not recommend "ua", because it's sorely outnumbered, and because it's French and not recognizable to (i.e., will be confusing to) English-speakers. Even someone like me who has never taken a single astronomy-related class knows what an au or AU is, but has never seen "ua" in this context outside of an MoS squabble. The average person who reads or watches any sci-fi on a casual basis knows what au/AU means. Probably less that 0.1% of even that faintly-geeky crowd knows what "ua" stands for, and hearing it aloud would mistake it for a reference to United Artists.
Just put this to bed and move on. We've wasted way too much collective time on this. Repeatedly. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 01:58, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
*
, ·
), and so on. We don't permit that kind of chaos, because it makes both writing and understanding the encyclopedia more difficult. We have no reason to make a magically special exception to our normalization practices here just to please a handful of greybeard astronomers fighting a badly-losing style battle within their field. Taking up their side in that trivial fight isn't WP's job. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
13:17, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
Our job is to look neutrally at all the RS (which means publications, not legal entities) and consider them in the context of each other. It doesn't matter to WP what IAU says versus what BIPM says versus what another relevant organization says [as long as none of them are disreputable – we're looking for RS, here], except inasmuch as it helps us be sure the option we do pick isn't stupid and, if we're lucky, does have multi-authority support. But all this focus on organizations is a red herring. What we really care most about is what the majority of non-obsolete RS – in total, not just specialist publications – prefer. That's our first choice. And we might reject it anyway, if there's some kind of problem with it (technical, ambiguity, even social). The end goal is recognizability to the readership, not the approval of a particular group. The readership is everyone from kids to ESL learnings, line cooks to Nobel Prize winners.
Furthermore, we've had rare but serious problems in the past with people associated with off-site organizations trying to use WP as a vehicle to promote adoption of their would-be "standard" or "convention" when it really had little real-world acceptance among relevant organizations and institutions, but a significant "fan base" among individuals in the field. In one case, it led to over a decade of intermittent disruption, and reader-confusing output in thousands of articles. Some WP:COI was demonstrably happening – someone from the on-site editorial clique pushing this supposed convention was regularly updating a blog-style page at the off-site organization's website with news of the "progress" of imposing their spec on our content. [I'll pass on giving more detailed about it here; there's no active dispute now, this isn't a WP:DR forum anyway, and one shouldn't pick at scabs.]
The point is that while we usually think of things like this in terms of commercial, political, religious, and fringe groups, even highly-regarded institutions can be the source or inspiration of programmatic PoV pushing on this site, so we're rightly skeptical of any "our organization has The Truth" stance-taking. While, obviously, no one in this debate has some weird CoI agenda, our averseness to taking sides in off-site disputes between professional bodies and the like serves multiple purposes, and serves us well. For the case I'm alluding to, no one would have thought – at first – that something untoward was happening without really looking into it. I've had my own doubts about a few issues that have recurred on this particular page, including several years of vehemence about gibibytes and the like.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
09:05, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
MOS:APPROXDATE says if you have two possible birth years based on an as-of date, you should say for example "born 1912 or 1913". But we have a template for this, Template:Birth based on age as of date, that instead uses a slash: "1912/1913". You can add a param to make the template comply with MOS, but shouldn't that just be the default? Kendall-K1 ( talk) 16:07, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
|mos=1
added to the template with
this edit quite some time ago ... See the template's
documentation.Slashes are a bad idea. If someone was born on "10 January 1701/1702" it is stating that the person was born on 10 January 1702 ( New Style). So using slashes can be confusing for years before 1752 and before March 25 of those years for dates given within Britain and the colonies. -- PBS ( talk) 17:41, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
@ SMcCandlish I'm afraid I did not explain myself well. The problem with the quoted extract (from Boxee) is not particularly that GB is ambiguous, but that it is used with two different meanings in the same sentence. When describing RAM it means 10243 bytes. When describing flash memory it means 10003 bytes. The problem would go away if we could only think of one symbol that means 10003 bytes and another that means 10243 bytes <sigh>. Dondervogel 2 ( talk) 11:06, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
{{
Nihongo}}
does with Japanese. These number conversions are something software can do automatically. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
00:50, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
If I may steer the discussion back to where it started, it really is not difficult to improve on the Luddite advice we have now. Dondervogel 2 ( talk) 10:57, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
Please see
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography#The lead date-range vs. full dates thing
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
13:39, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
If u want to use format 2001-07, why is it not allowed on the manual style of dates yyyy-mm-dd is allowed, so why is yyyy-mm not allowed then? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:A000:1103:5EB:1097:199B:8DE1:7098 ( talk) 13:16, 5 July 2018 (UTC)
[http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/eag/246374.htm Economic Effects of State Bans on Direct Manufacturer Sales to Car Buyers]" ''Economic Analysis Group Competition Advocacy'', May 2009.
{{cite report |last=Bodisch |first=Gerald R. |url=http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/eag/246374.htm |title=Economic Effects of State Bans on Direct Manufacturer Sales to Car Buyers |orig-year=2009 |date=15 October 2015 |work=Economic Analysis Group |publisher=United States Department of Justice}}
I recently worked on an article where the source that ultimately was used was a parish register of vital events. It spanned several decades. Later it was microfilmed, and then the microfilm was put online. WP:CITE#Dates and reprints of older publications says to cite both the original date and the date of the re-publication where you saw it. The original date might be something like 1706-11, or some might write it 1706-1711. If the second year in the range were written with 2 digits, there could be genuine confusion whether it means 1706 to 1711, or November 1706. Indeed, an editor trying to "correct" it should examine the source to discover which is the case.
Such a date (1706-1711) could be valid, in the sense that during the period when the book was only partially full, members of the public could look at it, so in a sense it was "published" throughout that period. Jc3s5h ( talk) 00:23, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
MOS:UNITSYMBOLS includes "Where space is limited, such as in tables, infoboxes, parenthetical notes, and mathematical formulas, unit symbols are preferred." The "Guidelines on specific units" table lists "in" as the unit symbol for "inch", with the comment Do not use ... ″
(″) ... or quote (").
When I tried to use "inch" [20] or "in" [21] for this infobox single, I was reverted. In their first edit comment, SnapSnap wrote: "Per MOS:UNITSYMBOLS, unit symbols are preferred in infoboxes." [22] In their second, they added "Quotation marks are widely used for inches in music article infoboxes, plus the guideline doesn't mention anything about using "in" instead of quotes in infoboxes." [23]
However,
Template:Infobox song#format (which replaced Infobox single) includes: "Do not use "
or ″
(double quote) for inches, instead use 7-inch
rather than 7"
(if it is necessary to abbreviate, use 7 in
; see
WP:Units)."
It's clear that quote marks ( " ) should not be used for inches in prose, but clarification on what to use in infoboxes, tables, section headings, etc., would be appreciated.
—
Ojorojo (
talk)
18:35, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
There's a lot of problems with that section (for instance the whole of §4.4.1). I'd take note that the table is headed "Guidelines on specific units" not "Rules ..." and act with common sense. Martin of Sheffield ( talk) 20:46, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
|format=
takes up too much space. There needs to be a way to abbreviates these without using ( " ). —
Ojorojo (
talk)
14:57, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
{{
abbr|in|inch}}
single" if desperate, I suppose. We just don't hyphenate between digits and unit symbols (apparently we are now hyphenating between digits and unit names; I corrected the bullets above to reflect this. I dislike how inconsistent this is, but [shrug] c'est la vie. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
02:25, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
Could someone who understands the dating system(s?) of India/Hinduism please clean up Ram Charan (guru) and Ram Kishor to conform to MOS:DATE and WP:USEENGLISH? It's pretty impenetrable to anyone who isn't a Hindi speaker, and the material is veering back and forth between calendars in a very confusing way. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 11:28, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
An alternative is AUcontradicts the overall idea and sentiment of deprecation, and it will be struck from the updated table. If there comes a point where au is officially recognized by all astronomical societies and its use has been deprecated on the English Wikipedia, there is no prejudice against starting a new discussion to remove the "Comment" regarding AU, though a formal RFC might not be necessary. Primefac ( talk) 22:03, 30 June 2018 (UTC)
This RfC relates to the options discussed in the immediately preceding section, which has become inactive in the last week. To bring this discussion to a close, I am initiating a formal RfC, which may attract additional participants and has a formal closing mechanism. Below are sections for expressing support of the four draft revisions proposed above. SteveMcCluskey ( talk) 02:02, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
Option | Group | Name | Symbol | Comment |
---|---|---|---|---|
Status quo | Length, Speed |
astronomical unit | AU (not A.U., au, ua) |
AU is the most commonly used symbol for this unit, both in popular and professional articles, and is hence also used on Wikipedia (though some organizations, including the BIPM [1] and IAU, [2] recommend au). |
One | Length, Speed |
astronomical unit | au, AU (not A.U., ua) |
au is recomended by the BIPM [1] and the IAU, [3] and is called for in the publications of the AAS ( AJ and ApJ) [4] and the RAS ( MNRAS) [5]. AU is a commonly used symbol for this unit, both in popular and professional articles. |
Two | Length, Speed |
astronomical unit | au, AU (not A.U., ua) |
The preferred option au is recomended by the BIPM [1] and the IAU, [6] and is called for in the publications of the AAS ( AJ and ApJ) [7] and the RAS ( MNRAS) [8]. AU remains an acceptable option as it is a commonly used symbol in both popular and professional articles. |
Three | Length, Speed |
astronomical unit | au (not A.U., ua) |
The preferred option is au. An alternative is AU. Articles that already use AU may choose to switch to au or continue to use AU. |
Four | Length, Speed |
astronomical unit | au (not a.u., AU, ua) |
|
Unicode | length, speed |
astronomical unit | ㍳ / ㍳ | ㍳ / ㍳ |
References
SI Brochure
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).{{
efn}}
. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
23:19, 12 June 2018 (UTC){{
efn}}
footnote. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
23:15, 12 June 2018 (UTC)Unicode is coded for an AU symbol. If we change, we should use the Unicode coded version. Otherwise, we should remain at the status quo, per older discussions. -- 65.94.40.190 ( talk) 06:46, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
Unicode encodes a character for the Astronomical Unit, it is U+3373 (13171) ㍳ / ㍳ -- 65.94.40.190 ( talk) 06:46, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
Are we not talking about symbols rather than abbreviations here? That is my working assumption and I have edited the title of the RfC accordingly. I have also requested comment at the Astronomy talk page. Dondervogel 2 ( talk) 07:52, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
This has gone quiet and perhaps all the arguments have been presented. How do we precipitate closure? Dondervogel 2 ( talk) 21:18, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
It strikes me as worth asking, so that a specific variant can be recommended for specific contexts (or so we can recommend to use the variant appropriate to the context, rather than listing them out here). E.g., subspecies is abbreviated ssp. in zoology, but subsp. in botany, which uses it as a symbol in scientific names while zoology does not. Wondering if something similar might be going on in, say cosmology and archaeoastronomy versus astrophysics and exoplanetology, or whatever. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 04:11, 5 July 2018 (UTC)
If composed fraction characters are to be avoided in prose, should 6½ Avenue and similar titles be changed? Obviously {{ frac}} can't be used in article titles, so maybe there should be guidance for this. (Note that 6+1⁄2 Avenue is actually between Sixth Avenue and Seventh Avenue, so I'm not sure how it's supposed to be pronounced.) Jc86035 ( talk) 11:06, 20 July 2018 (UTC)
6 1/2
style. Probably worth mass-
WP:RMing the ones using the Unicode fractions. —
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
07:11, 23 July 2018 (UTC)MOS:CURRENCY states, "Conversions should be in parentheses after the original currency, rounding to avoid false precision (two significant digits is usually sufficient, as most exchange rates fluctuate significantly), with at least the year given as a rough point of conversion rate reference; e.g. Since 2001 the grant has been 10,000,000 Swedish kronor ($1.4M, €1.0M, or £800k as of August 2009 [update]), not ($1,390,570, €971,673 or £848,646)". I find this guideline unclear. Why is 1,390,570 rounded just around 10k to 1.4M but 848,646 to 800k -a difference of almost 50k? Wouldn't it be better to round it up to 850k? After all, the guideline itself says that two significant digits is usually sufficient, so it is unclear why it was rounded to 800k. In addition, why use two different formats for millions in the same sentence, 10,000,000 and 1.4M? Thinker78 ( talk) 07:21, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
Well, obviously not me, and here's a few examples to get us started:
Dondervogel 2 ( talk) 16:02, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
References
@ Ham105 and EEng: Please stop talking over edit summaries. -- Izno ( talk) 14:20, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, @ Izno:. I have framed a more specific basis for discussion in the new section below. -- Ham105 ( talk) 16:30, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
Following the shortcut MOS:DATERANGE currently leads to a long section covering more than 25 style guidelines for date ranges. It is cumbersome for the reader to find specific guidelines within. Proposal: The text be organised into subsections:
To produce the subheadings and layout as sandboxed here. Rationale: to aid reading navigation and break the guideline into more manageable segments when editing. Comments sought and welcomed. -- Ham105 ( talk) 16:23, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
covering more than 25 style guidelines– No, that's a huge exaggeration. Maybe 10, depending how you count. But that's not the point. Good structure isn't arrived at by some formula, but by thinking about how to best help the reader understand each portion of the guideline.
this is especially important within an article. Would appreciate the clarification. -- Gonnym ( talk) 15:28, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
@ EEng: Please stop subverting this discussion point by editing it into a subsection. Show some good faith. While citing WP:TPO in your edit summary ... It can also sometimes be appropriate to merge entire sections under one heading ...", you somehow omitted the text "To avoid disputes, it is best to discuss a heading change with the editor who started the thread, if possible, when a change is likely to be controversial." -- Ham105 ( talk) 12:39, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
Ha ha! Consolation prize and apology accepted, my good man. ;-) But I'm happy to let the original discussion take its fair course. That part of the MoS reads like a dog's breakfast. It is a long mishmash of boldface masquerading as headings and, well,
While I'm enjoying Sectionpedia, EE, make sure you have fun in Bulletopia! -- Ham105 ( talk) 13:52, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
The MoS says date ranges should use an unspaced ndash or a spaced mdash (bot of which I agree with). However, it doesn't say whether we should use the unicode character (as given in the helpful toolbox just below the edit summary), the html entity –
or the template {{tlx{ndash}}. Or is there no preference? Should we retain the existing variation, similar to
WP:RETAIN and
WP:DATERET? I find the unicode character easy to enter using the toolbox or via copy and paste from nearby text. I also find the other 2 choices quite cluttered that makes editing harder to read. Thoughts? — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Stepho-wrs (
talk •
contribs)
should use an unspaced ndash or a spaced mdashWhere is this? Please link the actual section where this is stated. -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 09:15, 4 August 2018 (UTC)