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The rules state for conversion and the example given
is completely against the international standard SI. After a number the abbreviation form should always be used!!!! AnyFile 17:49, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
I am not certain this has been addressed, but after reviewing other pages for the answer to this question, I believe there is no rule with regard to spelling out numbers under a certain amount (e.g., "John had 1 album" vs. "John had one album"). The Uniform System of Citation (Bluebook) requires spelling out numbers from one to ninety-nine in the main text while one to nine are to be spelled out in footnotes. This does not include volume or page numbers (e.g., "John mentioned the lost album on page 2 of his autobigraphy." Anyone know the status of the rule, if any? Jtmichcock 20:36, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
I'm going to start spelling out everything for all those cases where numbers are used to start a sentence—and there are a zillion of them on Wikipedia. That's a much bigger problem than this.
A distinction should also be made between counting numbers (integers) and measured quantities. When 5 means anything within about 0.5 of 5.0, then 5 should usually be written as a digit rather than spelled out. Too many style guides don't even mention that when discussing the spelling out of numbers. Gene Nygaard 11:56, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
If you want an example of a spelled-out-numbers-policy 'The Chicago Manual of Style' would be a good book to look at. -- kop 20:19, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
The current templates for geographical coordinates display with ugly additional blanks. These occur after the minute and second symbols and before the NESW indicators, like in 33°56' 24" N 118°24' 00" W. (to show the effect I purposely replaced the symbols by quotes). Is this intentional? Is there a remedy? I usually see coordinates in other sources formatted as 33°56'24"N 118°24'00"W. − Woodstone 10:27:04, 2005-08-25 (UTC)
Now that it's been a nice while since the units debate died down, I want to bring a few points up - minor ones, not fundamental ones like the one about conversions. The first is the removal of the line suggesting ¹²³ rather than <sup> tags to make 1 2 3. The reason for this is that the superscript, as you can see, makes the lines uneven. I think ¹ is a relatively new character, so maybe just ² and ³. Come to think of it, there are no situations where you'd need ¹.
So, a suggestion to add a line suggesting the use of ² and ³ where appropriate (e.g. m² rather than m2). This isn't asking much, but this is a style guide and it's worth putting that in just for clarification. Any thoughts? Neonumbers 11:24, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
sup, sub {line-height: 0.1em; font-size: 1ex;}
One question: where do you find your user stylesheet? (you can answer on my talk page if you want.)
I wanted to refer only to units here, so mathematical equations et cetera are a different story. Just units.
Now, about the -1, this ties in with something I wanted to discuss but gave way in order to speed things up: representing division in units. I wanted the guide to recommend using a forward slash (what was its proper name? solidus, was it?), so instead of m s-1, use m/s. If we do that, there would be no problem (or at least, I can't think of any units that use something to the fourth power).
On that division thing, the complete line I wanted to add was to recommend using a solidus, and, where more than one unit is below the division line in e.g. newtons per amperes per metres (which is actually teslas if I remember right) would be N/(A m) except with thin spaces. Anyway, that's another issue, but the solidus part ties in with this I guess. Neonumbers 08:11, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
A²·s⁴/kg/m² | A²·s4/kg/m² | A2·s4/kg/m2 | |||||||||
A²·s⁴/(kg·m²) | A²·s4/(kg·m²) | A2·s4/(kg·m2) | |||||||||
(A²·s⁴)/(kg·m²) | (A²·s4)/(kg·m²) | (A2·s4)/(kg·m2) | |||||||||
A²·s4·kg−1·m−2 | A2·s4·kg−1·m−2 | ||||||||||
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Well, now I know that there is a unit that uses the fourth power.
With regard to ambiguity: The SI brochure specifically details how to resolve this. It says, for example, the multiple solidi are never to be used (i.e. never A²·s⁴/kg/m²), because this, as well as any multiplication after the solidus (e.g. A²·s⁴/kg·m²), is ambiguous. In any case where there is more than one unit with a negative exponent, i.e. after the solidus, brackets are to be used, so it should be A²·s⁴/(kg·m²) — or, of course, using negative exponents. On the chemical infobox, I think last time I checked parentheses were used (as an example, and I'm too lazy to check again now), so I think it was J/(mol·K).
I quote from The International System of Units (SI), the manual:
You're correct, my preference for the solidus is partly because people are more familiar with it. (Personally, I like negative exponents, though I don't think should they be used here.) My preference, however, also comes back to the superscript numeral characters: the superscript html tags (at least in my IE7 browser) make the lines uneven, the use of solidi would eliminate their need. (On that note, does anyone know of any units that use a fourth power, like the farad does, but doesn't have its own name, like "mole per cubic metre"?)
My focus with the superscript numerals is actually with smaller cases like area and volume, rather than complicated cases. So for m², that doesn't cause uneven lines (= extra leading?), whereas m2 does. They also look significantly different. This is significant because (here comes my rant about consistency) this is one project by one team and in something like this should have one way. I'll refrain from reciting the extended version of my consistency rant. Neonumbers 13:20, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
Eyesight saving says use <sup> tag. Simplicity of editing says use <sup> tag (that is, I have no ² key on my keyboard). Anti-rule-creep says why have any rule. Consistency says pick either one, but only one. Therefore, if anything, I support using <sup>, otherwise, lets just leave it out. Chuck 16:05, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
We link to dates like this [[Month Day]] [[Year]]. The reason we do this is because there is a bit of software magic that makes dates so linked automatically display for logged-in users in their preferred format.
Unforunately this convention makes the links themselves almost complete useless. Have you tried whatlinkshere for your birthday? You get thousands and thousands of links across hundreds of years. For relatively recent dates (say the last hundred years?) it would be much much better to link to [[Month Day Year]]. Then whatlinkshere suddenly becomes a massively useful resource for finding out what when on when in history.
Ok the display preference software will be broken temporarily. This is no big deal:
I am open to suggestions on what content should go at the target of each day. Recent dates can redirect to the relevant part of the archived current events page. Pages refering to pre-2002 will in time grow as people examine the what links here for that page. Initially they should perhaps be a small page pointing to the year and day. E.g. September 3 1939 will point readers at September 3 1939.
I'll await some comments before changing the policy page, but I see this as a big step forward in how we present our information and hope you'll support it. Pcb21| Pete 13:46, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
I agree that there should be a change to the date preference mechanism. As I have said before, create date-object should be done with a method different to that for real linking. As examples of how ludicrous the linking has become, dates:
There is a widespread false belief that all calendar elements must be linked each time they occur. So people link solitary elements such as Tuesday or January or 2001 even if they are repeated many times in the same article. These have almost zero added value. I sometimes remove such links but the response is often an immediate revert. Overlinking of solitary date elements is one of the silliest things in Wikipedia articles. I wish the guidance in the Manual of Style could be more explicit.
Date preference formatting deals with two issues with distinctly different priorities:
Please see a discussion that I raised a while back in Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive ( archived) involving users such as Tim Starling, Thryduulf and Cyrius. Bobblewik 18:10, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
This is quite a complicated topic that would need extensive discussion here. Setting guidelines on this matter would require much discussion on elaboration on many exceptions - See http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/numbers.htm for an example. I think any guidelines should be as simple as possible with as few exceptions as possible. Zero to ten suits me fine, and there are still plenty of exceptions within that. -- JimWae 20:00, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
I didn't know there was an on-going discussion about this. I changed the 16th to 21st centuries to number in words format. Phil objected on my talk page. Uncle Ed 16:33, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
[[10th century|tenth century]]
).![]() | 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 25 | Archive 26 | Archive 27 | Archive 28 | Archive 29 | Archive 30 | → | Archive 35 |
The rules state for conversion and the example given
is completely against the international standard SI. After a number the abbreviation form should always be used!!!! AnyFile 17:49, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
I am not certain this has been addressed, but after reviewing other pages for the answer to this question, I believe there is no rule with regard to spelling out numbers under a certain amount (e.g., "John had 1 album" vs. "John had one album"). The Uniform System of Citation (Bluebook) requires spelling out numbers from one to ninety-nine in the main text while one to nine are to be spelled out in footnotes. This does not include volume or page numbers (e.g., "John mentioned the lost album on page 2 of his autobigraphy." Anyone know the status of the rule, if any? Jtmichcock 20:36, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
I'm going to start spelling out everything for all those cases where numbers are used to start a sentence—and there are a zillion of them on Wikipedia. That's a much bigger problem than this.
A distinction should also be made between counting numbers (integers) and measured quantities. When 5 means anything within about 0.5 of 5.0, then 5 should usually be written as a digit rather than spelled out. Too many style guides don't even mention that when discussing the spelling out of numbers. Gene Nygaard 11:56, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
If you want an example of a spelled-out-numbers-policy 'The Chicago Manual of Style' would be a good book to look at. -- kop 20:19, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
The current templates for geographical coordinates display with ugly additional blanks. These occur after the minute and second symbols and before the NESW indicators, like in 33°56' 24" N 118°24' 00" W. (to show the effect I purposely replaced the symbols by quotes). Is this intentional? Is there a remedy? I usually see coordinates in other sources formatted as 33°56'24"N 118°24'00"W. − Woodstone 10:27:04, 2005-08-25 (UTC)
Now that it's been a nice while since the units debate died down, I want to bring a few points up - minor ones, not fundamental ones like the one about conversions. The first is the removal of the line suggesting ¹²³ rather than <sup> tags to make 1 2 3. The reason for this is that the superscript, as you can see, makes the lines uneven. I think ¹ is a relatively new character, so maybe just ² and ³. Come to think of it, there are no situations where you'd need ¹.
So, a suggestion to add a line suggesting the use of ² and ³ where appropriate (e.g. m² rather than m2). This isn't asking much, but this is a style guide and it's worth putting that in just for clarification. Any thoughts? Neonumbers 11:24, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
sup, sub {line-height: 0.1em; font-size: 1ex;}
One question: where do you find your user stylesheet? (you can answer on my talk page if you want.)
I wanted to refer only to units here, so mathematical equations et cetera are a different story. Just units.
Now, about the -1, this ties in with something I wanted to discuss but gave way in order to speed things up: representing division in units. I wanted the guide to recommend using a forward slash (what was its proper name? solidus, was it?), so instead of m s-1, use m/s. If we do that, there would be no problem (or at least, I can't think of any units that use something to the fourth power).
On that division thing, the complete line I wanted to add was to recommend using a solidus, and, where more than one unit is below the division line in e.g. newtons per amperes per metres (which is actually teslas if I remember right) would be N/(A m) except with thin spaces. Anyway, that's another issue, but the solidus part ties in with this I guess. Neonumbers 08:11, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
A²·s⁴/kg/m² | A²·s4/kg/m² | A2·s4/kg/m2 | |||||||||
A²·s⁴/(kg·m²) | A²·s4/(kg·m²) | A2·s4/(kg·m2) | |||||||||
(A²·s⁴)/(kg·m²) | (A²·s4)/(kg·m²) | (A2·s4)/(kg·m2) | |||||||||
A²·s4·kg−1·m−2 | A2·s4·kg−1·m−2 | ||||||||||
|
|
| |||||||||
|
|
|
Well, now I know that there is a unit that uses the fourth power.
With regard to ambiguity: The SI brochure specifically details how to resolve this. It says, for example, the multiple solidi are never to be used (i.e. never A²·s⁴/kg/m²), because this, as well as any multiplication after the solidus (e.g. A²·s⁴/kg·m²), is ambiguous. In any case where there is more than one unit with a negative exponent, i.e. after the solidus, brackets are to be used, so it should be A²·s⁴/(kg·m²) — or, of course, using negative exponents. On the chemical infobox, I think last time I checked parentheses were used (as an example, and I'm too lazy to check again now), so I think it was J/(mol·K).
I quote from The International System of Units (SI), the manual:
You're correct, my preference for the solidus is partly because people are more familiar with it. (Personally, I like negative exponents, though I don't think should they be used here.) My preference, however, also comes back to the superscript numeral characters: the superscript html tags (at least in my IE7 browser) make the lines uneven, the use of solidi would eliminate their need. (On that note, does anyone know of any units that use a fourth power, like the farad does, but doesn't have its own name, like "mole per cubic metre"?)
My focus with the superscript numerals is actually with smaller cases like area and volume, rather than complicated cases. So for m², that doesn't cause uneven lines (= extra leading?), whereas m2 does. They also look significantly different. This is significant because (here comes my rant about consistency) this is one project by one team and in something like this should have one way. I'll refrain from reciting the extended version of my consistency rant. Neonumbers 13:20, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
Eyesight saving says use <sup> tag. Simplicity of editing says use <sup> tag (that is, I have no ² key on my keyboard). Anti-rule-creep says why have any rule. Consistency says pick either one, but only one. Therefore, if anything, I support using <sup>, otherwise, lets just leave it out. Chuck 16:05, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
We link to dates like this [[Month Day]] [[Year]]. The reason we do this is because there is a bit of software magic that makes dates so linked automatically display for logged-in users in their preferred format.
Unforunately this convention makes the links themselves almost complete useless. Have you tried whatlinkshere for your birthday? You get thousands and thousands of links across hundreds of years. For relatively recent dates (say the last hundred years?) it would be much much better to link to [[Month Day Year]]. Then whatlinkshere suddenly becomes a massively useful resource for finding out what when on when in history.
Ok the display preference software will be broken temporarily. This is no big deal:
I am open to suggestions on what content should go at the target of each day. Recent dates can redirect to the relevant part of the archived current events page. Pages refering to pre-2002 will in time grow as people examine the what links here for that page. Initially they should perhaps be a small page pointing to the year and day. E.g. September 3 1939 will point readers at September 3 1939.
I'll await some comments before changing the policy page, but I see this as a big step forward in how we present our information and hope you'll support it. Pcb21| Pete 13:46, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
I agree that there should be a change to the date preference mechanism. As I have said before, create date-object should be done with a method different to that for real linking. As examples of how ludicrous the linking has become, dates:
There is a widespread false belief that all calendar elements must be linked each time they occur. So people link solitary elements such as Tuesday or January or 2001 even if they are repeated many times in the same article. These have almost zero added value. I sometimes remove such links but the response is often an immediate revert. Overlinking of solitary date elements is one of the silliest things in Wikipedia articles. I wish the guidance in the Manual of Style could be more explicit.
Date preference formatting deals with two issues with distinctly different priorities:
Please see a discussion that I raised a while back in Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive ( archived) involving users such as Tim Starling, Thryduulf and Cyrius. Bobblewik 18:10, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
This is quite a complicated topic that would need extensive discussion here. Setting guidelines on this matter would require much discussion on elaboration on many exceptions - See http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/numbers.htm for an example. I think any guidelines should be as simple as possible with as few exceptions as possible. Zero to ten suits me fine, and there are still plenty of exceptions within that. -- JimWae 20:00, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
I didn't know there was an on-going discussion about this. I changed the 16th to 21st centuries to number in words format. Phil objected on my talk page. Uncle Ed 16:33, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
[[10th century|tenth century]]
).