This page 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. |
Because the style guide is about 40 kb, I made a quick trim draft at * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style--Draft Trim. See if you think it's OK. Maurreen 05:58, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I think this should be put back. It is a nice tip for rare but occasional cases where extra spacing is wanted (without fiddling with ).The page itself will only display one space (unless you use to force it otherwise).
This was only added to the Manual very recently. But it is recommendation of most style guides and I believe it to be an excellent one, one I've tried to follow for years, though I still catch myself typing one or the other of these. The abbreviations i.e. and e.g. are essentially space-savers for use primarily in footnotes and in compressed writing and in technical writing and I think should be left there, where they do belong.* Scholarly abbreviations of Latin terms like i.e., or e.g. should be avoided and English terms such as such as and for example used instead.
I personally found this very helpful. I think it should remain though it could do with some shortening.<br\><br\>I agree with the rest of the changes. I especially agree with the omission of multiple examples where one or two alone suffices.<br\>Thus "other meanings" should be used rather than "alternate meaning" or "alternative meaning". Some dictionaries discourage or do not even recognize this latter use of alternate. For example, the American Heritage Dictionary "Usage Note" at alternative simply says: "Alternative should not be confused with alternate." However, alternative is also not entirely acceptable because of the very common connotations in American English of "non-traditional" or "out-of-the-mainstream". Further, some traditional usage experts consider "alternative" to be appropriate only when there are exactly two alternatives.
The colon doesn't work well, as it only indents on the left side. I have been using <blockquote> and </blockquote> instead which do the job properly. I realize they are deprecated HTML tags ... but they work properly.This is done by prepending a colon to the first line.
I agree with this, but why bother? In actual practice in Wikipedia it seems it is ok to ignore this, as long as you do it with a template. Most inconsistant.Try to avoid highlighting that the article is incomplete and in need of further work.
Anglicization is just Oxford-style British English spelling, as used, for example, in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: "Translation of these presented little difficulty; but there remained one or two older names of forgotten meaning, and these I have been content to anglicize in spelling: as Took for Tûk, or Boffin for Bophîn." This is a very bad example in the Manual. Anyone jarred by that deserves a good jarring! :-)A reference to "the American labour movement" (with a U) or to "Anglicization" (with a Z) may be jarring.
This advice is horrendous! Is there another style guide in the world that would suggest one should reconsider using normal, everyday English words because they have more than one common spelling? The result of this, if people paid any attention, would be a non-standard Wikipedia dialect of English, limited to spelling-neutral vocabulary. Better to go with a fixed spelling, whether US or Britsh or whatever, than this!<br\><br\> Jallan 01:12, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)If the spelling appears within the article text, also consider a consistent synonym such as focus or middle rather than center/centre.
Jallan, my understanding about the part on Latin abbreviations is that there was no consensus.
For the other things that you'd like put back in, do you want to do that, and then we can move it over to the regular style guide page?
Then we could talk about other substantive changes separately. Thanks. Maurreen 02:53, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Yet the very next section reads:A reference to "the American labour movement" (with a U) or to "Anglicization" (with a Z) may be jarring.
... a supposed example of when one should italicize. My feeling is that capital letters standing for letter names are more often not italicized in such contexts, unlike lowercase letters. If the Draft Trim says for another day without any complaints or additional changes, then I guess it can be taken as accepted. Jallan 03:29, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)The letter E is the most common letter in English
[[<s>George W. Bush</s>grammar]]
, is encouraged. [[language]]s
. [[language|languages]]
— and easier to type. This syntax is also applicable to adjective constructs such as [[Asia]]n
, as well as hyphenated phrases and the like.I disagree with jguk's changes to the draft trim. A trim is meant only to shorten. Any desired changes in meaning deserve to be brought up separately and individually. And I agree with Jallan that they should wait until after a decision on the draft trim. Maurreen 05:57, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
1 Writers are not required to follow
all or any ofthese rules (remove tautology)'
The tautology was an idiomatic, nuanced tautology. Perhaps idiomatic nuance should be avoided in a set of rules intended to be also read by people are not all totally fluent in English. But I would keep "all" at least.
2
the joy of wiki editing is that perfection is not required.(remove POV. What is perfection when talking about English anyway?)
Not POV at all. You don't have to edit any article to your own standards of perfection if you don't want to. Work on the parts where your own strengths lie. Others will fix the parts where their strengths lie. That is POV only in that it is a POV espoused at Wikipedia, quite different than a POV that article will be accepted only when vetted by give other experts, which is another quite legitimate POV.
3
Copy-editing wikipedians will refer to this manual, and pages will either gradually be made to conform with this guide or this guide will itself be changed to the same effect.(turn the tide against instruction creep)
This explains why so-called rules can be ignored, because other Wikipedians in their editing will enforce them. It looks forward to the ideal of total agreement between style guide and all articles. It is a clear explanation of how things are supposed to work in Wikipedia, and in this case (more than in some other explanations elsewhere of other facets of Wikipeida), how they actually do work. Wikipedia has a house style, just like other publications. It has editors who attempt to enforce it, just like other publications. The difference is that anyone who wants to can be a writer or editor. Many publications do not insist that all writers conform exactly to their house style: that is one thing editors are for, to edit the writing to conform to house style or to ask the author to rework material to conform to house style. The struck-out sentence is essential.
4 This article concentrates on when you may choose to use them
No. This article concentrates on "when". A writer may ignore the rules, as indicated, but later editors of the text should mostly apply them and should mostly not edit an article contrary to the rules. The meaning of the original has been subverted.
7 You may wish to consider the following suggestions: (clarify that these are guidelines not rules)
This is not clarification. This is a radical change. Guidelines are rules, whether on the page to guide a pen or in common metaphor. The material removed in number 2 clarifies: "Pages are expected to be edited to conform with this guide."
:10
This is discouraged in most situations.(no need to say this, people know what looks ok and what doesn't)
This text was a strong hint to editors that this practice should mostly be edited out, but not always – that some latitude is given here. Such hints are needed to make the guide practical. And one of the reasons why there are such guides is that people disagree on what looks ok and what doesn't.
These changes indicate a POV contrary to how this page and the more specialized parts of this guide are used within Wikipedia. The pages are used as guides and sets of rules for editors who are deciding how to improve an article and are also used as protection against editors making arbitary stylistic changes to an article. Their wordings are cited regularly in disputes. They have far more authority than simple suggestions that Wkipedians "may wish to consider". They are the rules.
8 Contractions reinserted throughout (making article easier to read)
A style guide should follow its own rules. First loosen the rules in the guide by obtaining consensus on this point. I personally doubt that there is any gain in readibility in using contractions. There is probably more gain in readibility in avoiding negatives which would get rid of many of them as a side-effect. Also, not all rules in this guide or its sub-guides are what I would choose to use. But one tries to follow them, just as one should to follow the guidelines in any project one becomes involved with. Idiosyncratic claims that something is easier or harder are often undemonstrable. Personally, I prefer spelling through and though as thru and tho, forms that are, I think, obviously easier to read, forms that did have a vogue for a while in the 60s. Also iland is easier to read than island as well as being the correct etymological form. (I have numerous other preferred spellings that I think would not be welcomed here.)
12 Replaced 'capitalization' with 'using capitals' (and derivatives) throughout. (keeping it simple)
"Using capitals" is not quite the same thing. It suggests uppercasing of the entire word (which admittedly capitalization can also mean). Later, instead of "using capitals" the replacement is the specific and perfectly accurate "begin the first letter with a capital". Now words ending in -ize/-ize are usually not very attractive and there is nothing wrong with using synonyms for that reason. But I do object to what appears to be an attempt to take away the supposed freedom at Wikipedia to choose the spelling one wishes (within the limits of some demonstratable modern conventional spelling and consistancy within an articles) by discouraging use of the very words to which this freedom can be applied. Surely we would not accept attempts to replace all occurrences of died with the euphemisim passed on and all occurrences of genital organs with private parts and so forth, while not disallowing such euphemisms either. The phrase "being the first letter with a capital" looks fine until one realizes why it is being used. Then it looks absurd: variantion-spelling prudery against words that are not monogomous in respect to the string of letters they hang out with. Should food in Wikipedia, but nowhere else, have only taste, and not flavour? Should Wikipedia have theatrical establishments and movie houses and stages but no theatres or theaters?
There are some excellent style changes here as well. I like some of the changes very much. But I agree with Maurreen. There are too many changes here and too many of them are dubious and too many indicate an attempt to change the POV of how this page is used and has been intended to be used to consider this suggested replacement adequate as a whole.
Jallan 02:44, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The word "always" here may not be a tautology but an indication that this is intended to be more strongly enforced than some others, that it when another rule contradicts this should take precidence. If the phrasing of this should be changed for clarification, and I would support that for varous reasons, it should be discussed on its own, not as part of a trim which is not intended to change the meaning of the text and should neither clarify or obscure. Refactoring of sections of the page, beyond minimal stylistic changes, should be discussed separately.*When writing an article about specific people or specific groups, always use the terminology which they themselves use ( self identification).
Removing perfectly normal words and expression and replacing them with euphemisms to avoid words with more than one spelling is not neutral. Avoiding language that is US or UK or Canadian or Australian is not neutral. There is no existing style of English that does this. If there were a style in use anywhere in which hue was almost always preferred to color or colour and journeyed was almost always preferred to traveled or travelled, that would become a different style of English, notable by its avoidance of particular words rather than its spelling. Choice of such a style is just as much a non-neutral choice as any other choice of language style, but far less acceptable when the style is recommended by no style guides, journals, or publishers, so far as I know. Wikipedia is not a soap box to advocate use of a new style of English. The phrase gray area or grey area is a common English idiom, in common use in English. It is not neutral to ban it. The sentence fragment "its significance is easier to recognize" was replaced by "its significance is easier to identify". But replacement of recognize by identify breaks the idiom and so disrupts the flow. Google shows:Second, where we can, we should avoid using language that marks it out as being US/UK or as preferring one particular style of writing words over another. The flow and sense of the article is always more important than this. I am not suggesting that words and phrases should be excised from wikipedia. But I am suggesting that if the same flow and sense can be conveyed in a neutral style, then it will be easier for an international audience to read. Where it can't, and I accept there are many many cases where it can't, then use an internationally acceptable standard form of English consistently (either US or non-US) in that article. Of course, really this comes back to readability (for an international audience) again, which brings us back to the first point.
Search pattern Hits "identify the significance" 4,120 "recognise the significance" -recognize 5,540 "recognize the significance" -recognise 15,800
Overall, the draft trim has taken more of my time that it is worth. I accept Jallan's version, and I accept the style guide as it is now. Maurreen 20:40, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)
This page 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. |
Because the style guide is about 40 kb, I made a quick trim draft at * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style--Draft Trim. See if you think it's OK. Maurreen 05:58, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I think this should be put back. It is a nice tip for rare but occasional cases where extra spacing is wanted (without fiddling with ).The page itself will only display one space (unless you use to force it otherwise).
This was only added to the Manual very recently. But it is recommendation of most style guides and I believe it to be an excellent one, one I've tried to follow for years, though I still catch myself typing one or the other of these. The abbreviations i.e. and e.g. are essentially space-savers for use primarily in footnotes and in compressed writing and in technical writing and I think should be left there, where they do belong.* Scholarly abbreviations of Latin terms like i.e., or e.g. should be avoided and English terms such as such as and for example used instead.
I personally found this very helpful. I think it should remain though it could do with some shortening.<br\><br\>I agree with the rest of the changes. I especially agree with the omission of multiple examples where one or two alone suffices.<br\>Thus "other meanings" should be used rather than "alternate meaning" or "alternative meaning". Some dictionaries discourage or do not even recognize this latter use of alternate. For example, the American Heritage Dictionary "Usage Note" at alternative simply says: "Alternative should not be confused with alternate." However, alternative is also not entirely acceptable because of the very common connotations in American English of "non-traditional" or "out-of-the-mainstream". Further, some traditional usage experts consider "alternative" to be appropriate only when there are exactly two alternatives.
The colon doesn't work well, as it only indents on the left side. I have been using <blockquote> and </blockquote> instead which do the job properly. I realize they are deprecated HTML tags ... but they work properly.This is done by prepending a colon to the first line.
I agree with this, but why bother? In actual practice in Wikipedia it seems it is ok to ignore this, as long as you do it with a template. Most inconsistant.Try to avoid highlighting that the article is incomplete and in need of further work.
Anglicization is just Oxford-style British English spelling, as used, for example, in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: "Translation of these presented little difficulty; but there remained one or two older names of forgotten meaning, and these I have been content to anglicize in spelling: as Took for Tûk, or Boffin for Bophîn." This is a very bad example in the Manual. Anyone jarred by that deserves a good jarring! :-)A reference to "the American labour movement" (with a U) or to "Anglicization" (with a Z) may be jarring.
This advice is horrendous! Is there another style guide in the world that would suggest one should reconsider using normal, everyday English words because they have more than one common spelling? The result of this, if people paid any attention, would be a non-standard Wikipedia dialect of English, limited to spelling-neutral vocabulary. Better to go with a fixed spelling, whether US or Britsh or whatever, than this!<br\><br\> Jallan 01:12, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)If the spelling appears within the article text, also consider a consistent synonym such as focus or middle rather than center/centre.
Jallan, my understanding about the part on Latin abbreviations is that there was no consensus.
For the other things that you'd like put back in, do you want to do that, and then we can move it over to the regular style guide page?
Then we could talk about other substantive changes separately. Thanks. Maurreen 02:53, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Yet the very next section reads:A reference to "the American labour movement" (with a U) or to "Anglicization" (with a Z) may be jarring.
... a supposed example of when one should italicize. My feeling is that capital letters standing for letter names are more often not italicized in such contexts, unlike lowercase letters. If the Draft Trim says for another day without any complaints or additional changes, then I guess it can be taken as accepted. Jallan 03:29, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)The letter E is the most common letter in English
[[<s>George W. Bush</s>grammar]]
, is encouraged. [[language]]s
. [[language|languages]]
— and easier to type. This syntax is also applicable to adjective constructs such as [[Asia]]n
, as well as hyphenated phrases and the like.I disagree with jguk's changes to the draft trim. A trim is meant only to shorten. Any desired changes in meaning deserve to be brought up separately and individually. And I agree with Jallan that they should wait until after a decision on the draft trim. Maurreen 05:57, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
1 Writers are not required to follow
all or any ofthese rules (remove tautology)'
The tautology was an idiomatic, nuanced tautology. Perhaps idiomatic nuance should be avoided in a set of rules intended to be also read by people are not all totally fluent in English. But I would keep "all" at least.
2
the joy of wiki editing is that perfection is not required.(remove POV. What is perfection when talking about English anyway?)
Not POV at all. You don't have to edit any article to your own standards of perfection if you don't want to. Work on the parts where your own strengths lie. Others will fix the parts where their strengths lie. That is POV only in that it is a POV espoused at Wikipedia, quite different than a POV that article will be accepted only when vetted by give other experts, which is another quite legitimate POV.
3
Copy-editing wikipedians will refer to this manual, and pages will either gradually be made to conform with this guide or this guide will itself be changed to the same effect.(turn the tide against instruction creep)
This explains why so-called rules can be ignored, because other Wikipedians in their editing will enforce them. It looks forward to the ideal of total agreement between style guide and all articles. It is a clear explanation of how things are supposed to work in Wikipedia, and in this case (more than in some other explanations elsewhere of other facets of Wikipeida), how they actually do work. Wikipedia has a house style, just like other publications. It has editors who attempt to enforce it, just like other publications. The difference is that anyone who wants to can be a writer or editor. Many publications do not insist that all writers conform exactly to their house style: that is one thing editors are for, to edit the writing to conform to house style or to ask the author to rework material to conform to house style. The struck-out sentence is essential.
4 This article concentrates on when you may choose to use them
No. This article concentrates on "when". A writer may ignore the rules, as indicated, but later editors of the text should mostly apply them and should mostly not edit an article contrary to the rules. The meaning of the original has been subverted.
7 You may wish to consider the following suggestions: (clarify that these are guidelines not rules)
This is not clarification. This is a radical change. Guidelines are rules, whether on the page to guide a pen or in common metaphor. The material removed in number 2 clarifies: "Pages are expected to be edited to conform with this guide."
:10
This is discouraged in most situations.(no need to say this, people know what looks ok and what doesn't)
This text was a strong hint to editors that this practice should mostly be edited out, but not always – that some latitude is given here. Such hints are needed to make the guide practical. And one of the reasons why there are such guides is that people disagree on what looks ok and what doesn't.
These changes indicate a POV contrary to how this page and the more specialized parts of this guide are used within Wikipedia. The pages are used as guides and sets of rules for editors who are deciding how to improve an article and are also used as protection against editors making arbitary stylistic changes to an article. Their wordings are cited regularly in disputes. They have far more authority than simple suggestions that Wkipedians "may wish to consider". They are the rules.
8 Contractions reinserted throughout (making article easier to read)
A style guide should follow its own rules. First loosen the rules in the guide by obtaining consensus on this point. I personally doubt that there is any gain in readibility in using contractions. There is probably more gain in readibility in avoiding negatives which would get rid of many of them as a side-effect. Also, not all rules in this guide or its sub-guides are what I would choose to use. But one tries to follow them, just as one should to follow the guidelines in any project one becomes involved with. Idiosyncratic claims that something is easier or harder are often undemonstrable. Personally, I prefer spelling through and though as thru and tho, forms that are, I think, obviously easier to read, forms that did have a vogue for a while in the 60s. Also iland is easier to read than island as well as being the correct etymological form. (I have numerous other preferred spellings that I think would not be welcomed here.)
12 Replaced 'capitalization' with 'using capitals' (and derivatives) throughout. (keeping it simple)
"Using capitals" is not quite the same thing. It suggests uppercasing of the entire word (which admittedly capitalization can also mean). Later, instead of "using capitals" the replacement is the specific and perfectly accurate "begin the first letter with a capital". Now words ending in -ize/-ize are usually not very attractive and there is nothing wrong with using synonyms for that reason. But I do object to what appears to be an attempt to take away the supposed freedom at Wikipedia to choose the spelling one wishes (within the limits of some demonstratable modern conventional spelling and consistancy within an articles) by discouraging use of the very words to which this freedom can be applied. Surely we would not accept attempts to replace all occurrences of died with the euphemisim passed on and all occurrences of genital organs with private parts and so forth, while not disallowing such euphemisms either. The phrase "being the first letter with a capital" looks fine until one realizes why it is being used. Then it looks absurd: variantion-spelling prudery against words that are not monogomous in respect to the string of letters they hang out with. Should food in Wikipedia, but nowhere else, have only taste, and not flavour? Should Wikipedia have theatrical establishments and movie houses and stages but no theatres or theaters?
There are some excellent style changes here as well. I like some of the changes very much. But I agree with Maurreen. There are too many changes here and too many of them are dubious and too many indicate an attempt to change the POV of how this page is used and has been intended to be used to consider this suggested replacement adequate as a whole.
Jallan 02:44, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The word "always" here may not be a tautology but an indication that this is intended to be more strongly enforced than some others, that it when another rule contradicts this should take precidence. If the phrasing of this should be changed for clarification, and I would support that for varous reasons, it should be discussed on its own, not as part of a trim which is not intended to change the meaning of the text and should neither clarify or obscure. Refactoring of sections of the page, beyond minimal stylistic changes, should be discussed separately.*When writing an article about specific people or specific groups, always use the terminology which they themselves use ( self identification).
Removing perfectly normal words and expression and replacing them with euphemisms to avoid words with more than one spelling is not neutral. Avoiding language that is US or UK or Canadian or Australian is not neutral. There is no existing style of English that does this. If there were a style in use anywhere in which hue was almost always preferred to color or colour and journeyed was almost always preferred to traveled or travelled, that would become a different style of English, notable by its avoidance of particular words rather than its spelling. Choice of such a style is just as much a non-neutral choice as any other choice of language style, but far less acceptable when the style is recommended by no style guides, journals, or publishers, so far as I know. Wikipedia is not a soap box to advocate use of a new style of English. The phrase gray area or grey area is a common English idiom, in common use in English. It is not neutral to ban it. The sentence fragment "its significance is easier to recognize" was replaced by "its significance is easier to identify". But replacement of recognize by identify breaks the idiom and so disrupts the flow. Google shows:Second, where we can, we should avoid using language that marks it out as being US/UK or as preferring one particular style of writing words over another. The flow and sense of the article is always more important than this. I am not suggesting that words and phrases should be excised from wikipedia. But I am suggesting that if the same flow and sense can be conveyed in a neutral style, then it will be easier for an international audience to read. Where it can't, and I accept there are many many cases where it can't, then use an internationally acceptable standard form of English consistently (either US or non-US) in that article. Of course, really this comes back to readability (for an international audience) again, which brings us back to the first point.
Search pattern Hits "identify the significance" 4,120 "recognise the significance" -recognize 5,540 "recognize the significance" -recognise 15,800
Overall, the draft trim has taken more of my time that it is worth. I accept Jallan's version, and I accept the style guide as it is now. Maurreen 20:40, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)