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I've been working on this, off and on, for over four years. I think it is ready for prime time now. I've researched this so much I feel like I could teach a class about it. I'm not proposing it formally yet, just asking for MOS regulars' input for now. When I formally propose it, it'll be advertised via WP:VP/P and WP:CENT, and the relevant projects invited to comment, of course. Please discuss suggested changes or any concerns/issues here at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Organisms. I've covered things that have never been touched on in MOS before like how to handle hybrids, greges, landraces, natural breeds, etc., etc., etc. It is a one-stop shop for all scientific and vernacular naming questions, including animals, plants, bacteria and viruses. (And yes, it includes the MOS position that capitalizing bird common names is controversial, and why, but I've tried not to be inflammatory about it.) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 10:52, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
The part beginning "These taxonomic designations are also never italicized: ..." has some problems.
Peter coxhead ( talk) 13:49, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
I can only say that I regard the text as biassed and highly inflammatory. WP:BIRDS is not the only WikiProject capitalizing common names. Wikipedia:WikiProject Arthropods allows this for Odonata and Lepidoptera. WikiProject:Plants accepts that there is no consensus and capitalization generally varies according to the practice of the country of origin of the plants. Edit warring over capitalization is unproductive and would be encouraged by the wording used at present. Simply state the factual situation. Peter coxhead ( talk) 14:05, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
Attempting to arm-twist the WP community into doing so, with canvassed campaigns of poll disruption, hijacking of WP:DRN to launch further attacks on critics of the capitalizing, and threats of editorial walk-outs and boycotts, as various of the "bird capitalization warriors" have, is intellectually dishonest and unethical, as well as a major WP:POINT, WP:DE and WP:BATTLEGROUND problem. (I commend editors from the projects or task forces on those particular two insect topics and few botanical topics, like Peter coxhead, for not behaving like this.) No rational case can be made, in the face of the broader facts than "specialist journals and books in this topic capitalize" (the only fact most proponents of the capitalization ever want to admit into the debate) for pushing a weird convention from a very isolated ivory tower into the most general-purpose publication in history.
The typical argument for capitalization goes: Academic experts in [insert caps-friendly field here] are so used to writing their way that it's onerous for them to not do so, and basically hateful to tell them they can't, and they're all going to run away screaming and quit Wikipedia because they just can't take this level of stupidity and ignorance. This is unadulterated balderdash, of course, because a) it's simply not happening, and b) these very same academics routinely write without this capitalization when they submit papers to journals outside their speciality, as all of them do unless they want to commit career suicide, and submit articles for mainstream publications. It's frankly grossly insulting to imply that professional academics are so brittle-minded that they cannot fathom or tolerate dealing with one particular venue's in-house style guide. Much of their professional lives are spent writing very precisely to a large array of in-house style guides; it's a big part of their day-to-day jobs. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 07:08, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
From names of breeds: "Breed/variety names are also capitalized logically because they are formal, artificial constructs of fancier and breeder/grower registration organizations, and thus constitute proper-name titles." This touches on the sole legitimate reason to capitalize bird names:
I am emphatically not arguing for capitalization, but this is the logical basis for capitalized bird names and many other "common" names. By putting these in the same document, you are basically inviting the proponents of capitalization to pick at the difference.-- Curtis Clark ( talk) 03:16, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
The "logic" you've outlined would make proper names out of every single thing ever catalog[u]ed and named by any organization of any kind. Every element and mineral and compound, for example. Every philosophical or scientific concept. Every legal or technical term of art. Every piece of construction hardware. Etc. That's just under point #1; "oxygen", "gravity", "defamation" and "two-pound framing hammer" are all "entities" under such a conception, yet we all know these are not proper names. This is English, not German; we actually distinguish (sometimes unclearly) between nouns and proper names. English did not used to do so; we've only been doing it since the 1800s. But we're serious about it. Point number two is irrelevant and tautological; of course the names of species correspond to species, by definition. It's a red herring. Point #3 is thus a doubly fallacious conclusion. I have no doubt that you are correct that people will make this argument, as they've already been doing for 8+ years without convincing anyone. If there's a way you can think to rewrite that will minimize confusion/gameability on this, please let me know. Or just edit.
PS: I'm not 100% in favor of capitalizing breed names. I used to outright hate it. But I'm resigned to the fact that it's so overwhelmingly widespread there's nothing to be done about it, and that mainstream English does not consider it wrong. That's not true of species capitalization, which is widely regarded in botany and zoology, as well as generalist publications, as substandard usage. As far as I can tell after 5 years of consistent involvement in the topic here, the only people on all of WP willing to fight and disrupt to get capitalization are around 12 or so (who knows at any given moment and over time) editors at one project. There are a few others who would prefer it for certain topics, but they understand the larger issues and don't make a scene. I would happily ignore the birds case, if it weren't for the fact that their caps keeps spreading and spreading and spreading (partly because certain members of that project have actively proselytized capitalization to other wikiprojects, and yes I can prove that if it comes to it). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 05:19, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
SMcCandlish: I think your initial doubts about capitalizing breed names were valid.
Like Curtis Clark, I think it's very hard to maintain that the two cases (capitalizing breed names and capitalizing common names) are sharply different, particularly if someone cares to research usage in depth. Peter coxhead ( talk) 20:58, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Rich
Farmbrough,
17:59, 3 January 2013 (UTC).
{{
R with possibilities}}
.Some parts of this sound wrong to me, but I don't know enough about viral nomenclature to comment. Are there WP virus experts you could consult?-- Curtis Clark ( talk) 05:09, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
"All of the virus names should be in italics in this context, whether in a virology article or not."If you mean italicizing "Herpesviridae" and "Betaherpesvirinae" outside of virology-focused articles, no one but a virologist, and not even all virologists on WP, probably not even a majority of them, will accept that, because it will lead to an immediately reader-confusing conflict of taxonomic styles in the same article. The #1 rule of MOS is "be consistent within an article". What this draft is saying about writing about viruses outside of virology-focused articles is precisely what it (and more to the point, MOS proper) has said about ornithologists [controversially] capitalizing bird species common names: Don't do it outside articles focused on that field. Virology isn't somehow immune [pun!] to the same reasoning. I would bet good money that the more general/broad refereed science journals like Nature and Science handle this the same way (I know for a fact that they do not permit bird capitalization even in orn. articles, because it's jarring to everyone but bird people, so I'm highly skeptical they would permit non-standard italicization of taxa at levels above genus, just because a virus was mentioned). Agreed that the section needs to make it clear that it's not Rotavius except in taxonomy. A similar clarifiation is needed more broadly. Been meaning to add that all day, actually. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 04:33, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
The assertion was made at WP:EQUINE that "Exmoor pony" is the breed name, implying that a careful consideration of the common name for the breed might determine that Exmoor pony should be the article title. Lest this document be in conflict with WP:TITLE, there needs to be wording to the effect that disambiguation is only necessary when the common name is ambiguous. Making this clear would make a stronger case for a consistent disambiguation style, since it's a way of separating those common names that include "cat", "pony", etc., from those that don't.-- Curtis Clark ( talk) 23:43, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
Footnote 4 begins with "(the majority of participants in that project have never voiced an opinion on the matter)". "that project" refers to WikiProject Birds, which the reader is expected to remember from 99 words before the footnote. He is further expected to eliminate alternative meanings for "that project" like "site-wide consensus", on the grounds that each of those possibilities is not a "project". I think it will take him several seconds to understand it. Was that deliberate? Art LaPella ( talk) 02:04, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
You might be interested in this discussion from WP:PLANTS (took me awhile to find it in the archives). I don't think we ever came to a conclusion, but the pitfalls remain.-- Curtis Clark ( talk) 16:16, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Starting in a small way from the top of the page, a couple of points that don't sit well with the botanical code of nomenclature: "Capitalize scientific names from subgenus upward, and italicize them from supragenus downward through subspecies."
"Formal domesticated varieties/breeds may be capitalized, but not informal landraces or types."
MOS:CAPS#Common names has a far less aggressive and more (although not fully) accurate account of the present situation. I see no reason why its wording should not be used here. Peter coxhead ( talk) 02:36, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
I've tried to address this a bit, but it's important to note that people keep trying to tweak MOS:CAPS#Common_names itself to subtly (and less subtly over time) contradict MOS. I just undid that, for the umpteenth time over there, though I expect I'll get reverted by someone or other, and the kvetching will start over again until some kind of dispute resolution happens. MOS (as it says right up at the top of it) supersedes it's sub-pages, so it is a pointless to keep futzing with the text to contradict the main MOS page, but people keep doing it anyway. MOS:ORGANISMS here refrains from engaging in that game, and thus, as MOS:CAPS is nudged to diverge from MOS, MOS:CAPS will also necessarily diverge from MOS:ORGANISMS. I have attempted to moderate the language Peter coxhead isn't happy with, but such an effort can only go so far before it sounds like an invitation for every wikiproject on the system to pretend WP:LOCALCONSENSUS policy does not exist and start making up their own inconsistent rules again. LOCALCONSENSUS exists, and grew out of a series of ARBCOM cases, specifically to prevent wikiprojects from ignoring broader consensuses at mainstream policies and guidelines. There's really just no way around this, no matter how much a few tendentious participants in one project are liable to have a fit about it, just like they do every single time anyone ever brings up their non-standard typography, for nine years running so far. Really, at some point they are going to have to stop pretending they cannot hear that consensus is against them. The only reason the debate has been endless-to-date is because people who work on MOS are unusually patient and understand how difficult it is to let go of a grammatical or stylistic peeve for the good of the project, and thus no one's bothered to take the matter to ArbCom. But that happening is pretty much inevitable if a dozen or so of them fighting their "capitalization war" (not my term – one of them came up with that) don't drop their WP:BATTLEGROUND anti-MOS positioning; I think we all know which way that case is going to go. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 23:46, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
I encountered this on a page about cactuses/cacti:
''[[Acanthocereus]]'' <small>([[George Engelmann|Engelm.]] ex [[Alwin Berger|A.Berger]]) [[Nathaniel Lord Britton|Britton]] & [[Joseph Nelson Rose|Rose]]</small>
which renders as:
It raises three questions (to me – maybe there are others):
<small>...</small>
be used here? Some people have raised
WP:Accessibility concerns with ever using it, but I'm not sure how convincing they are (and it is regularly used in various templates likes infoboxes). I think it improves parseability in such a case, quite dramatically: Acanthocereus (Engelm. ex A.Berger) Britton & Rose vs. Acanthocereus (Engelm. ex A.Berger) Britton & Rose I've not recommended the small style in the draft guideline (yet).A. Berger
: A. Berger. It's just readable enough that it's not a problem, and it does help group the initial(s) with the surname.— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼ 21:01, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
The spacing issue is complicated. I'd prefer to include the space, but unspaced author citation is far more common on Wikipedia. The ICNAFP says:
Brummitt & Powell’s Authors of plant names (1992) provides unambiguous standard forms for a large number of authors of names of organisms in conformity with this Recommendation. These abbreviations, updated as necessary from the International Plant Names Index (www.ipni.org) and Index Fungorum (www.indexfungorum.org), have been used for author citations throughout this Code.
When authors are cited in the code itself spaces are consistently included. In contrast, the sources for author citation that the codes explicitly recommends Brummit & Powell (the printed book), and IPNI consistently omit spaces. I've always assumed this was due to limitations in a 1980's database (the printed B&P is basically a straight dump of a database). B&P and IPNI don't anywhere discuss their reasons for omitting spaces.
The Plant List follows B&P and omits spaces. TROPICOS and ARS-GRIN include spaces. Template:Botanist is widely used on botanist biography pages, and runs a query of IPNI's authority data. The IPNI query fails to work if a space is included. I'd prefer to follow the example of the Code, but I don't think there's enough consistency in botany to support support one practice over the other (and I'll admit, when I'm adding an authority to a Wikipedia article, I usually copy-paste it from The Plant List, so it is unspaced). Plantdrew ( talk) 22:53, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
{{
Botanist}}
is a problem. Will have to go ask around over there about a technical solution. I don't see any way to strip whitespace, at
WP:Parser functions. Which is kind of stupid, but oh well. If there's not, then I don't see that there's a solution to would allow A. Berger, other than multipole fields in
Template:Botanist. —
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼
01:40, 18 April 2014 (UTC)I'm seeing this author information in <small>...</small>
very frequently, though not consistently, throughout our articles, and am not seeing anyone having fits about it, so it seems worth codifying here. It really does help the reader focus on the non-minutiae. —
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼
10:54, 13 April 2014 (UTC)
I've been making edits based on an article that uses "et" for multiple authorities. That strikes me as unusual; "and" or "&" are more typical, and usage on Wikipedia is surely mixed. Not sure if this is something worse addressing in MOS. There are some other variations in citing authorities. Presence of a comma between authority name and year in zoological authorities? How to format a year when it is helpful for botanical authorities? This MOS should definitely mention that years are not routinely given in botany. Plantdrew ( talk) 03:24, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
The International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants always capitalizes "Group" when it has its specialized meaning. Thus the following contradicts the ICNCP, and should be changed: "The sole exception is the horticultural designation of cultivar "group", which is capitalized when (and only when) it follows a group name: Mishmiense Group but not some members of the Group were reclassified."
It should read "The sole exception is the horticultural designation of cultivar group, which is always capitalized: Mishmiense Group; some members of the Group were reclassified."
Peter coxhead ( talk) 17:33, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
PS: The cultivar group article needs re-writing. I already fixed where it was making false statements about what ICNCP said (and citing non-existent sections). It still cites nothing but one edition of ICNCP for the whole article. That's like citing only the ICN and ICZN at species and ignoring all other sources. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 13:04, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
The main objective of MOS:ORGANISMS is just laying out how to style what the sources tell us, in a consistent way that can be understood by fairly smart editors who are not professional biologists. We needn't get into every rule, like which authorities are put in what order and notation; editors here should be copying that information from the sources they cite. Another objective has been to do lay this out in a way that doesn't allow any particular specialty to arm-twist all other editors into requiring style quirks that conflict with general usage or with other specialties, but to otherwise encourage compliance with all such stylistic conventions even if they're not formally codified, simply because it keeps experts happier at very little cost, and tends to agree with usage in more sources. This can be more important than it seems. E.g. the ICN makes a big point of specifically stating that it does not even require italicization of genus and species, but all hell would break loose here if actual style minimalists, which I keep getting accused of being, were to seize upon this and start de-italicizing scientific names of plants.
A WP:BEANS / WP:CREEP danger also lies here, in explaining these codes and their exact details in too-specific terms, that inspire people who don't know what they're doing to attempt to apply principles we could describe here to contexts in which they should not be used. E.g. if someone adds a photo of a frog or deer or an orchid to an article, but isn't personally sure what species it is, we don't want them to guess with a "cf." construction in the image caption. Academics can do that in peer-reviewed journals, but here, it would just be a weird form of original research. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 02:06, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
Anyway, I'm sure that various hair-splitting cases will arise. That more of them keep arising during the drafting process is why this proposal's been in development for several years. Heh. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 05:12, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Editors sometimes suggest that because there's no "official" distinction between a breed and a landrace, that we shouldn't care or try to distinguish them here. First, there's no such thing as "official" in such a context (who are the officials, in what office, and who gave them authority, of what sort?). Words mean what they mean, based on documented usage in the real world. In point of fact, however, breed registries do in fact clearly distinguish was is and isn't a breed, so this assumption is actually false, from a reliable sourcing point of view (the breed-standards publications of such organizations are "official" within their purview). The main source of such objections seems to be simple unfamiliarity with the term "landrace", or it's confusing use in certain formal breed names (i.e., some think the suggestion is that the Danish Landrace pig is not actually a breed, but a landrace, when clearly is a breed named after the landrace from which it was derived. A second source of cognifitive dissonance on the issue is the false perception that not using the word breed is somehow a devaluation of a topic, e.g. that the St. John's water dog and the Van cat are less notable somehow for being correctly described as landraces not breeds. In reality, some landraces are more notable that formal breeds derived from them, and our articles on them reflect this. It's not a contest between breeds and landraces (and feral populations, and hybrids, and...).
The
landrace article, with its sources, is actually clear on what the difference is: A breed has selective breeding for specific traits, with pedigrees tracked by some organization, while a landrace does not, and has any more-or-less distinctive characteristics mostly or entirely because of a limited geographical gene pool with limited if any selective breeding. The
Breed article is really clear: A breed is a specific group of domestic animals or plants having
homogeneous appearance (
phenotype), homogeneous
behavior, and/or other characteristics that distinguish it from other organisms of the same
species and that were arrived at through
selective breeding.
[3] All breed registries, across all species, understand this distinction. There are long and involved processes to go through to establish a breed of any kind of animal, and they are either a) controlled, pedigreed breeding to fix, further develop and breed-true some traits found in a landrace population, or b) controlled, pedigreed breeding to develop, fix and breed-true some trait(s) desired for aesthetic or practical reasons using specimens from diverse populations (modern genetic tampering with highly-controlled varieties like lab rats also falls under the latter).
The problem arises in places like Wikipedia, and fancier magazines, that some people gloss over the difference and call them all "breeds" as a form of shorthand, which complicates the sourcing. This is especially true of non-English sources in many languages. E.g. in Spanish the term is raza ('race'), and a formal breed isn't distinguished from a landrace with a simple word change, but by describing it in further prose as pedigreed or not, as free-breeding or not, etc. English sources often have to be read carefully in such a regard, too, especially when produced for a general audience (e.g. "X Breeds of the World books, fancier/kennel/conformance club magazines, etc., versus formal breed standards publications. Landrace only dates to the 1930s in English, so older sources have to be read critically for indications of controlled breeding, because "breed" was used in a much looser manner.
If you really want to create a pseudo-official "standard" on Wikipedia of what is or is not a breed (do we really need to) the way to do this under WP:V/ WP:RS, and WP:N/ WP:NFT, would likely be to ask "Is there a breed standard published by a national or international organization of breeders and fanciers, a government agency, or some other notable body? If yes, is breeding pedigreed?" If either answer is "no", it's not a breed for WP purposes. But all of this is already implicit in the very meaning of the word "landrace". If we insisted on it, however, a rubric like that would eliminate four WP:NOR problems:
It comes down to selective breeding for delineated traits, with pedigrees verified and tracked by a formal organization. Very simple.
At any rate, the important point is that conflating some sources' imprecise use of "breed" with the formal meaning of the word as used by breed pedigree organizations is the fallacy of equivocation and is impermissible WP:Original research. The actual establishment of a breed, like any other technological achievement, is a factual claim that has to be verifiable with sources that are unmistakeably reliable on the relevant points. "This website used the term 'breed'" isn't sufficient by itself, because we know the word may be used misleadingly or confusedly. Show us the breed standards (or for extinct breeds that there was one).
PS: The concept of "natural breeds" (i.e. landraces that have been formalized into pedigreed breeds) is also covered at the Landrace article and accounts for a lot of breeds of all species, and can be linked as natural breed; it could probably be developed into its own article.
Finally, if one just doesn't like the word landrace because horse (or whatever) people don't use it much, then use piped links, e.g. "The Cthulhian pony is an ancient breed of small horse..." The important point is not falsely stating or implying that landraces (or feral populations) are formal breeds. Our own Breed article is unmistakeably about formal breeds, not a looser sense of what "breed" can sometimes mean. This is perfectly fine, because WP:NOT#DICTIONARY. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 05:27, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Peter is right - the name follows the group - AND it can be "notable" without some group saying it is "official." The FAO, for example, lists hundreds of landrace breeds, which clearly would thus meet wikipedia's GNG criteria.Once again, as we have discussed all over the wiki, there is no universal definition of "breed" or even "formal breed" or "standardized breed." Biologists don't go there for the most part, taxonomists don't go there, what a "breed" is varies from one animal group to another (often as much due to politics as anything else. (look at the issue with the Russell Terrier, Jack Russell Terrier and Parson Russell Terrier. You can't tell me that those splits were not somehow more political than practical ). This stick really has to drop. Montanabw (talk) 19:39, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
Our own Breed article is unmistakeably about formal breeds, not a looser sense of what "breed" can sometimes mean.Um... The article is poorly referenced and self-contradictory, so I'm not myself sure what it's really about. The only breeds of animal in which I have any interest are "rare breeds". The definition of breed by the UK Rare Breeds Survival Trust is a general and loose one: "A breed is defined as a group of animals that has been selected by humans to possess a set of inherited characteristics that distinguishes it from other animals within the same species." This definition applies equally well to "landrace" and many "rare breeds" could equally well be called "rare landraces" – at least within my understanding of the term. It seems to me that "breed" is a classic example of a broad concept and so needs a broad concept article, with sections on the different usages of the term "breed" – from a very broad use equivalent to landrace, the notion of "rare breeds", through to more narrow uses such as standardized breeds which have to fit published descriptors, or pedigree breeds where the animal can only descend from specified ancestors. It would be wrong to say that "breed" means only one or some subset of these possible meanings.
Anyway, I really don't know where the idea in the heads of some (especially dog and horse) people comes from that "landrace" is some kind of demotion, dismissal, slur, etc. There is no support for this interpretation in reliable sources. A landrace is (in this context) simply an identifiably distinct regional population of domesticated organism the breeding of which is just loose enough to allow it to adapt to an extent to the local environment (e.g. long coats on cattle in the Scottish Highlands as protection from the cold), even when being bred to some (even a great) extent for other specific traits. If there is no strict pedigree recordkeeping system, and consistently complete control over breeding, then what you have is a landrace by definition, not a breed in any meaningful sense of the word. I think we had concluded that the attested term "landrace breed" (which is synonymous with landrace) is the way around the propensity for people in certain breeder and fancier circles to freak out any time the word "breed" is absent. We can do that, but we can't fudge facts and wrongly imply to most readers that something is a pedigreed, standardized breed when there's no evidence for it, especially not on the basis that some writers use the word "breed" to mean "any identifiable domestic population". — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 16:30, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
Plants: The divergence of meanings is something we'll need to address as we would in any "definitional" article-writing context: Use as a baseline what the major strings of RS agree on, then note additions/subtractions, and also note attempts at radical redefinition, if the sources are mainstream enough to bother with. WP wrestles with this, with aplomb, in many thousands of articles, often with far more complexity (what is "culture"? "religion"?) — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 16:49, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
The proposal says The bi- or tri-nominal name is conventionally abbreviated if the full version has occurred previously in the same material. While this is true in technical writing, we need to keep in mind that the Wikipedia is not technical writing, see WP:Manual of Style#Technical language. It can be very annoying to track back to see what the genus is when a link takes a reader to a specific section. There are not the space limitations of paper, as the guideline notes. I find that it would do a disservice to our non-scientist readers to incorporate this as a standard abbreviating technique in our guideline. I note that previously this was not included at either WP:Manual of Style#Abbreviations or WP:Manual of Style/Abbreviations. -- Bejnar ( talk) 01:56, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
This 2012 thread on nomina and their dates may be worth re-reading to see if MOS:ORGANISMS needs to address any of it further [5]. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 16:02, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
21.3. Each word of a cultivar epithet must start with an initial capital letter unless linguistic custom demands otherwise. Exceptions are words after a hyphen (see Art.35.11) unless they are proper nouns, conjunctions, and prepositions other than those in the first word of the epithet (see also Art. 21.25). Ex. 7. A cultivar epithet commemorating the town of 's-Hertogenbosch in The Netherlands is to be written ‘'s-Hertogenbosch’ and not ‘'S-Hertogenbosch’; similarly, the epithet commemorating the town IJsselham (spelled with the initial two letters in capitals) is to be written ‘IJsselham’ and not ‘Ijsselham’.
So, I have constructed a new wording of the Abbreviating section. The current wording is this:
The bi- or tri-nominal name is conventionally abbreviated if the full version has occurred previously in the same material (and the material does not discuss multiple taxa at the same level that would share the same abbreviation): Thomson's gazelle (Eudorcas thomsonii) is easily distinguishable from the red-fronted gazelle (E. rufifrons), but not the zoo's E. thomsonii specimen survived an E. coli infection. The final element of the name is never abbreviated: the arctic wolf (Canis lupus arctos) is a subspecies of gray wolf (C. lupus), or subspecies of Canis lupus include C. l. arctos and C. l. dingo, but not Canis lupus arctos is a subspecies of C. l.
The new wording would say this:
The bi- or tri-nominal name should generally be abbreviated if the full version has occurred previously in the same second level section (the lead, in this case, will be considered a second level section). This does not apply when a section discusses multiple taxa at the same level that would share the same abbreviation: Thomson's gazelle (Eudorcas thomsonii) is easily distinguishable from the red-fronted gazelle (E. rufifrons), but not the zoo's E. thomsonii specimen survived an E. coli infection. The final element of the name is never abbreviated: the arctic wolf (Canis lupus arctos) is a subspecies of gray wolf (C. lupus), or subspecies of Canis lupus include C. l. arctos and C. l. dingo, but not Canis lupus arctos is a subspecies of C. l.
Basically what this means is that the full tri/binomial would have to be given at the first occurrence in the lead section and each second level section. This addresses the problem of readers having to search for the first occurrence of some genus or species name. Thanks! RileyBugz Yell at me | Edits 19:49, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
In response to the criticisms here, I will now submit a new proposal: New wording:
The bi- or tri-nominal name may be abbreviated if the full version has occurred previously in the same second level section or if it is the subject of the article in the case where the article title is the scientific name (the lead, in this case, will be considered a second level section). This does not apply when a section discusses multiple taxa at the same level that would share the same abbreviation: Thomson's gazelle (Eudorcas thomsonii) is easily distinguishable from the red-fronted gazelle (E. rufifrons), but not the zoo's E. thomsonii specimen survived an E. coli infection. The final element of the name is never abbreviated: the arctic wolf (Canis lupus arctos) is a subspecies of gray wolf (C. lupus), or subspecies of Canis lupus include C. l. arctos and C. l. dingo, but not Canis lupus arctos is a subspecies of C. l.
Thoughts on this one? @ Peter coxhead, AddWittyNameHere, William Avery, and FunkMonk:
Suggested wording
|
---|
The bi- or tri-nominal name may be abbreviated if the full version has occurred previously either
This does not apply when a section discusses multiple taxa at the same level that would share the same abbreviation: Thomson's gazelle (Eudorcas thomsonii) is easily distinguishable from the red-fronted gazelle (E. rufifrons), but not the zoo's E. thomsonii specimen survived an E. coli infection. The final element of the name is never abbreviated: the arctic wolf (Canis lupus arctos) is a subspecies of gray wolf (C. lupus), or subspecies of Canis lupus include C. l. arctos and C. l. dingo, but not Canis lupus arctos is a subspecies of C. l. |
I moved to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Organisms/Workshop the "workshop" material (mostly outdated) on cleanup work that may be needed for integration of MOS:ORGANISMS. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 17:23, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
Anyway, a bunch of that material needs compression, but it's at least in an easily parsed list now instead of a big blob.
—
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼
03:28, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
Shouldn't Classification (botany) go somewhere? It's redlinking as of this writing. One of the footnotes in MOS:ORGANISMS makes the point that "Saxifraga aizoon var. aizoon subvar. brevifolia is technically a classification not a taxonomic name." That's what made me think to check. It's not even clear what this sentence really means, except to a botanist I presume. :-) Maybe a short section at Botanical nomenclature would be the right place? — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 04:23, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
Subordinate taxon and
Subordinate taxa don't go anywhere. This is apt to be confused with
Junior synonym.
Biological nomenclature [that just redirects to
Nomenclature codes
Taxonomy (biology) is the "likely suspect" target article, but it doesn't use the term. I think I'll raise these over at
WT:TOL, too. —
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼
19:05, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
There's a thread at " Talk:Cultivar group#Capitalization belongs on the symbol used in the name; ICNCP does not dictate everyday English" that, in retrospect, might have been better posted here.
Some follow-on discussion from it is actually better here, so I've copy-pasted it, below, and replied here, so we don't bury the cultivar group talk page in cultivar talk. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 23:56, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
this is virtually never done outside of horticultural writing– but that doesn't make not doing it right. Newspapers and the like rarely get the styling of scientific names right, using either no or two capitals in binomials, etc. As you well know from previous discussions, many sources consistently fail to use hyphens and dashes correctly. In neither case do we give up on maintaining our standards. This isn't a horticultural encyclopedia, but it is an encyclopedia. Peter coxhead ( talk) 12:49, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
I'm not sure that using the single quotes around cultivar names outside of scientific names/classifications, other than as semantically necessary/helpful, is actually "our standard" or would be accepted as it in an across-the-board manner. A potential compromise position is that it will actually be helpful in any context involving taxonomy or cultivar development, while not so much in sentence like "Red Delicious apples are the primary export product of Elbonia".
We're definitely not using it consistently; Yukon Gold (potato) (why is that parenthetically disambiguated?) uses it only in the "technical" material and in the infobox, Golden Delicious doesn't use it at all, while Red Delicious is a mixture of styles from paragraph to paragraph, probably owing to different editors.
The table of derived cultivars at Golden Delicious would be much harder to read if all the cultivar names were put in single quotes; the stylization simply wouldn't do anything useful there. A "use stylization when necessary not 'just because'" approach to this would be consistent with MoS's general approach. Quality but not-specialized publications are consistent about italicizing bi- and tri-nominals, even in abbreviated form, so I don't think that style is in any danger here. But they don't use the single quotes for cultivars most of the time.
These and some other articles suggest we can use a checklist of circumstances:
The answers to these questions aren't necessarily obvious. E.g., it might be best to distinguish between cultivar and trade desig. epithets in separate table columns instead of by stylistic markup (which screen readers can't see); Red Delicious takes this approach (it also includes "sports" or patented mutations, which MOS:ORGANISMS isn't addressing yet, and isn't a very clear table). This bullet list above is probably missing a lot of questions that would come to mind after poring over more cultivar articles, e.g. for grain crops and ornamental plants, but it's probably enough to start with.
Just looking at these few articles, it seems to me that using the single quotes constantly is rather brow-beating (
Granny Smith illustrates this effect, though it's not being done consistently there either). However, there are cases where it's needed, e.g. at
Yukon Gold (potato)#Development and naming, where we have: "In 1966, the development team made their first cross between a W5289-4 (2× cross between 'Yema de huevo' and 2× Katahdin) and a 'Norgleam' potato native to North Dakota. After the 66th cross that year, true-breeding seed was produced, and the G6666 was created." This could use some clarification as to what is a hybrid ("the G6666" isn't going to mean anything; and there's no such thing as a potato native to ND). Otherwise later editors are likely to apply cultivar quotes to the hybrid names (not that hybrids are all "immune" to that style; cultivars generally are hybrids, there's just a distinction between a hybrid name and a cultivar name). This text also provides another hint at "we may need to say something about not changing the capitalization of names that are codes" (see thread above); the "W5289-4" item, for example, could just as easily have been something with contiguous letters none of which should be lower-cased. Anyway, it's probably not hard to formulate a rule to use 'Cultivar Caps' in discussions of taxonomy and cultivar breeding history, but not in more "vernacular" sentences like "The Golden Delicious was designated the official state fruit of West Virginia by a Senate resolution on February 20, 1995." Looking at
Golden Delicious#History, which does not use the cultivar quotes, it seems that it should in that context. PS:
Template:Trade designation/doc#No template-applied style was already written (by me, I think) to include the idea that the stylization would not be applied except where useful.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
23:56, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
On mis-labeling and mis-styling things as cultivars: Definitely. I just ran across and corrected multiple errors of this sort here (I didn't see those alphanum-code hybrid names in cultivar quotes in sources). There are surely hundreds more (hopefully not thousands). That kind of thing (and people doing crap like making up fake trinomials for cat breeds) was where the MOS:ORGANISMS idea started. Anyway, maybe one way to address this is to spell out that the cultivar quotes are used with cultivar names verifiable with an ICRA, or if the sources consistently use them for that name; and to not presume that because something is a cultivar that the name found is a cultivar epithet in the INCNCP sense. Just like we don't make up fake trinomials out of animal breed names (*Felis cattus siamensis, etc.)
BTW, that edit also suggested to me that {{
Infobox cultivar}}
needs a change, to stop having separate lines for genus and species, since it results in one of: rather redundant |genus=''[[Solanum]]''|species=''[[Potato|S. tuberosum]]''
; severely redundant |genus=''[[Solanum]]''|species=''[[Potato|Solanum tuberosum]]''
; or technically wrong |genus=''[[Solanum]]''|species=''[[Potato|tuberosum]]''
(with tuberosum appearing on a line by itself). Every other place we're laying out a bi- or trinomial in such boxes we're doing it as a single name/classification, together. The corresponding templates on the zoology side, for breeds, are not giving separate genus lines. It's just kind of weird that the cultivar one is. The setup also doesn't seem to account for the fact that many of these are going to have trinomials, and many are going to be intergeneric hybrids. It just seems better to have a single line for this. If youse agree, I can propose that change at the template's talk page and sandbox a version that does this (will have to be a new parameter, and deprecation of the old ones). Pot: Yeah, I just ran across an article yesterday while trying to find old INCNP editions, all about cannabis nomenclature and "woe is me, please systematize". Not pot-specific: Also saw an ambitious thing called the Draft BioCode from 2007, I think; a proposal to merge zoo. and bot. nomenclature. Brought a tear to my eye. "Visualize world peace!". Bananas: "Cultivar subgroup"? Is that even a real term, or something a Wikipedian made up?
"[T]here's a place for [cultivar quotes]; at the very least, in the lead and infobox, when cultivar name/status is verifiable" – Yep. I'm also arguing to broaden it to more, even in food crop articles, but to avoid a case of "every single instance must use the quotes, over and over again, regardless of context". It's exactly, to me, like the distinction we already draw between using Lynx in the context of taxonomy, but "lynx" where we're talking about the same cat as something you might run into in on a trail, to your mutual startling (bt;dt, at night, too!)
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
04:50, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
In taxonomy and breeding history material, it may not be possible to prevent later editors from mangling names that do need (or should never have) stylization, if they're not wrapped in separate templates for at least cultivars, hybrids, and trade designations (we already have {{
tdes}}
a.k.a. {{
trade designation}}
for the last of those). But if the consensus result ends up being that the stylization should only be applied in certain circumstances, like that quoted Yukon Gold sentence, then the templates would have to be well-documented to not be used at every single occurrence (and some people might do it anyway, creating an opposite maintenance hassle, though probably a much lesser one).
I would love to be able to add features to the templates, such as providing a full name/classification as a tooltip when you mouse over it; however this would require a bunch of JavaScript tricks, since the easy <span title="tooltip text here">...</span>
method cannot use any markup like italics in the title=
value. It would probably interfere directly with existing gadgets that do stuff like this when mousing over a wikilink, e.g. the
navigation popups, but maybe there's a way to work around that. Something to think about for the future, I guess.
Even now, such templates could maybe use title=
tooltip of some kind to indicate that something is a cultivar, hybrid, trade desig., etc., for screen-reader users.
Template:Trade designation/sandbox is doing this now.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
23:56, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
Some sources I ran into while looking for prior editions of ICNCP:
{{
cite book}}
: |work=
ignored (
help)Might be useful for something.
Also found another code; not even sure what it's for: Weber, H. E; Moravec, J.; Theurillat, J.-P. (October 2000).
International Code of Phytosociological Nomenclature (PDF). Vol. 11 (3rd ed.). Uppsala: International Association for Vegetation Science / Opulus Press. pp. 739–768.
doi:
10.2307/3236580. {{
cite book}}
: |work=
ignored (
help) Seems to have a lot to do with syntaxa (taxonomic synonyms).
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
01:09, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
Is a Section (botany) always styled thus: Podosphaera (sect. Sphaerotheca) xanthii? Wondering if the parentheses are required. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 02:21, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
Not sure what do with "genus group" as a general taxonomic term; there's apparently a usage (as genus group, genus-group, or just group, when not confusable with group in lepidoptery or cultivar group in horticulture); not sure if this is zoological, or what. We don't seem to have an article on it, and Genus doesn't cover it, nor does Taxonomic rank. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 02:38, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
Hi, I wasn't sure where to ask but I thought this might be a good place. Right now the template Template:Ill allows a red link to display a parenthetical blue link that goes to the corresponding entry in another article. So, for instance as there is no Monocentropus balfouri in the English Wikipedia but there is one in various other language wikipedias, e.g., Italian, the template might look like Monocentropus balfouri. What's neat about this template is that as soon as the English language article gets created, it'll automatically just look like a normal blue link -- the parenthetical links to other language wikipedias is only while it's a red link.
For instance ''{{ill|Monocentropus|it}}''
just looks like
Monocentropus since there is an English wikipedia article for the genus
What might be more useful for this style sheet is that instead of a link to another language wikipedia, the parenthetical link can be to wikidata, i.e., Monocentropus balfouri, which in turn provides a link to Wikispecies.
I don't know much about how the template works, but that makes it seem like it also might be conceivable to have a similar template that would parenthetically link directly to Wikispecies? Is this feasible to code? Would it be useful?
Just a thought :) Umimmak ( talk) 07:10, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
Zoology seems to be a field where it's common to both cite works (at least those with taxonomic acts) with both the listed date of publication, and the date actually published (i.e., what would go in the author citation). I've seen different citations in different entries handle this differently; perhaps there could be clarity as to which way these should be listed on wikipedia (or if both should even be in the citation). Umimmak ( talk) 00:01, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
Now that {{ Small}} is just a short form for wrapping text in <small>..</small> (it wasn't in the past), I don't see any reason to recommend one rather than the other. Leave it to editors. Peter coxhead ( talk) 09:59, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
In the article body, wrap the author and date information in— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 14:13, 29 April 2022 (UTC){{ small}}
or<small>...</small>
. This need not be done in a taxobox, which handles this automatically.
Right now it reads: The bi- or tri-nominal name may be abbreviated if the full version has occurred previously
. But it seems like even if the full name of a particular taxon hasn't appeared previously, a binomen/trinomen can be abbreviated if there is only one salient genus/species: for instance, in listing the species of a particular genus, either in the infobox or in the article text. Pinging
Plantdrew since the question stems from
this edit.
Umimmak (
talk)
19:21, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
Per the ICZN:
Recommendation 67B. Citation of type species. The name of a type species should be cited by its original binomen. If the name of the type species is, or is currently treated as, an invalid name, authors may also cite its valid synonym.
I need to look into the practice on Wikipedia more, but my impression is that type species in taxoboxes most frequently give current combination, not the "original binomen". "Original binomen" is just a recommendation by ICZN. I don't really care whether Wikipedia follows the recommendation or not, but Wikipedia practice should be consistent and documented in this MoS.
On a related note, spacing of botanist authorities has been discussed here before, albeit with no firm conclusions. I may have missed something, but I'm not seeing botanist spacing addressed. In Wikipedia practice, botanist authorities are unspaced. ICNafp spaces them, but recommends following IPNI which omits spaces. Plantdrew ( talk) 02:58, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
<!-- Editorial comments -->
in the wikitext may help with that.
Adrian J. Hunter(
talk•
contribs)
10:56, 4 April 2019 (UTC)I've now added a description of |type_species=
to the template data table at
Template:Automatic taxobox/doc, to match that at
Template:Taxobox/doc, as per this discussion.
Peter coxhead (
talk)
09:36, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
I agree that we should follow the ICZN and specify the original combination in the taxobox. Perhaps it would make the taxobox easier to understand if the heading was changed from "Type species" to "Type species (original binomial)". This would look a bit clunky but would help the readers and the editors who are not aware of the ICZN recommendations. - Aa77zz ( talk) 10:30, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
This seems reasonable enough, but I have to ask why we think this needs to be in the infobox instead of just somewhere in the article body? It may be super-mega-important to ICZN, but it isn't to many of our readers. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 02:13, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
Others here might have more experience to what the consensus is on Wikipedia for how to cite sources when the date listed on a source and the available date of publication differ: Help talk:Citation Style 1#Date indicated in journal versus actual publication / availability date Umimmak ( talk) 19:55, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
With regards to this diff, i dont know which section of the MOS explains about keeping Soviet Union int he broad sense, or using a modern country name before its time. Thanks, L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 17:56, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
Probably worth noting that "described by" is the de facto norm for attributing taxonomic authorship in prose in Wikipedia articles on organisms. Other phrasings may also work. "Discovered" is not good. Taxa are not infrequently described on the basis of specimens that have been in natural history collections for decades. Indigenous people may have long known of various organisms before they were described scientifically. Editor who don't usually create taxa articles, but were inspired by a press-release about the recent "discovery" of a new vertebrate (at least, usually a vertebrate) to create an article are mostly responsible for this, but "discovered" sometimes shows up in articles about taxa that were described long ago. At least one editor created a large number of articles on beetles where taxonomic authorship was phrased as "observed by", which isn't as bad as "discovered", but could be phrased more precisely. Plantdrew ( talk) 04:00, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
A few points I think should be addressed:
Is there currently a consensus, then, on the italicization of higher bacteria taxa? This is by no means my field, but I came here since I noticed that many higher-level taxa (e.g. Bacteroidota) are being italicized in article titles and text, and that seems to contradict the guidance in this MOS. Should the articles be changed, or the guidance, or am I missing something? W. P. Uzer ( talk) 08:30, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
Presently, we're saying:
In taxonomy, using parentheses (round brackets) around an author's name has specific meaning (beyond the scope of this guideline), which varies from field to field, and is not a typographic whim, so punctuate these as reliable sources do for the case in question.
Is it really so complicated that we can't just summarize it in a bullet list? To borrow wording from Plantdrew, one such bullet could be:
- In [which specific field or fields?], parentheses indicate that a species has been transferred to a different genus from the one in which it was originally described.
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 11:38, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
It is recommended to copy a TAS verbatim from a taxonomically reliable source.as if TAS were a term of art in taxonomy, perhaps it should be reworded? Umimmak ( talk) 01:16, 9 May 2022 (UTC)
An RfC has been opened at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biology#RfC on boldfacing of scientific names in articles about organisms. The discussion should take place there, not here, in order to keep the discussion centralized. Thank you. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 21:44, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
What induces and controls use of double quotation marks (inverted commas) around a species or subspecies epithet, as illustrated in the second caption here: Ring species#Examples? It's something this page isn't accounting for. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 04:20, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
Please see Talk:Pinot gris#Requested move 16 February 2023. At issue is whether "pinot gris" is in fact a cultivar name and ought to be capitalized. I suspect this is a broader variety with several cultivars within it (just as "broccoli" isn't a cultivar of cabbage), but source material is hard to find, maybe confined to specialist publications. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:17, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
Should there be any guidelines about how families are treated in lead sentences in regards to grammatical number and definiteness of article?
I opened a bunch of articles for which the article title is the scientific name and copied lead sentences to get a sense of variety. (While these are not cherrypicked, they certainly do not represent anything close to a properly randomized sample.)
Lazily chosen examples
|
---|
Links and references have been stripped out for to minimize distraction.
|
My kneejerk reaction is that treating a family name as plural is truer to the Latin but more confusing to the average reader, but I’m unsure what stance this MOS page should take—if it takes any. What I am certainly hoping to see, however, is something explicit enough that an editor searching the page for ‘plural’ or ‘singular’ (as I did) doesn’t keep looking for something that isn’t there. Cheers — jameslucas ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄ 01:18, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
What's the standard for grape varieties such as
Pinot Noir,
Cabernet Sauvignon or
Sauvignon Blanc? For example, currently the article on
Pinot Noir apparently consistently does not capitalize ("pinot noir
").
Cabernet Sauvignon does capitalize the name of that variety, but otherwise the capitalization appears to be not very consistent: in the lead we have "the grape is ... the product of a chance crossing between Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon blanc ...
". Here, both words in "Cabernet Franc" are capitalized, but only the first word in "Sauvignon blanc". Why is that? What would be the official rules? --
2001:16B8:147E:9500:FDE7:B758:D27D:FA61 (
talk)
00:05, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
Is it correct that "agg.", abbreviation for species aggregate, is not italicised along with the binomial? "In the wild" I've encountered it both ways, but surely only one style is the prescribed one. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 03:41, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
Not volunteering but I see it was started more than 10 years ago. Chidgk1 ( talk) 15:23, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
Euxine–Colchic deciduous forests has a mix - should I standardize and if so how? Chidgk1 ( talk) 15:26, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
Would it be acceptable to change the MOS:COMMONNAME redirect to point to the same page as WP:COMMONNAME? Partially selfish, because I personally keep tripping on this page. Remsense 留 22:17, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
"When there are three or more authors, give the first author name (or botanical abbreviation) followed by "et al.", not in italics." I hope this advice isn't referring to the author listing in the "authority" parameter in the taxobox. If so, I've not been complying (and I'll be back later to argue that this is poor advice). If not, could it be made clearer that it applies to prose? Esculenta ( talk) 14:39, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
Loanwords or phrases that have been assimilated into and have common use in English, such as praetor, Gestapo, samurai, esprit de corps, e.g., i.e., etc., do not require italicization. Likewise, musical tempo markings, and terms like minuet and trio, are in normal upright font. Rule of thumb: do not italicize words that appear in multiple major English dictionaries.
Last; et al. (2024). Title.or
Last1 et al. (2024)
Recommendation 51C. Citation of multiple authors. When three or more joint authors have been responsible for a name, then the citation of the name of the authors may be expressed by use of the term "et al." following the name of the first author, provided that all authors of the name are cited in full elsewhere in the same work, either in the text or in a bibliographic reference.And so what I’ve typically done is truncate with an et al., but have a footnote there directly to the source with all names.
46C.2. After a name published jointly by more than two authors, the citation should be restricted to the first author followed by “& al.” or “et al.”, except in the original publication. Ex. 2. Lapeirousia erythrantha var. welwitschii (Baker) Geerinck, Lisowski, Malaisse & Symoens (in Bull. Soc. Roy. Bot. Belgique 105: 336. 1972) should be cited as L. erythrantha var. welwitschii (Baker) Geerinck & al. or L. erythrantha var. welwitschii (Baker) Geerinck et al.So unlike the ICZN there isn’t even a requirement to have the full list of authors elsewhere when the name is abbreviated. Umimmak ( talk) 23:41, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
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I've been working on this, off and on, for over four years. I think it is ready for prime time now. I've researched this so much I feel like I could teach a class about it. I'm not proposing it formally yet, just asking for MOS regulars' input for now. When I formally propose it, it'll be advertised via WP:VP/P and WP:CENT, and the relevant projects invited to comment, of course. Please discuss suggested changes or any concerns/issues here at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Organisms. I've covered things that have never been touched on in MOS before like how to handle hybrids, greges, landraces, natural breeds, etc., etc., etc. It is a one-stop shop for all scientific and vernacular naming questions, including animals, plants, bacteria and viruses. (And yes, it includes the MOS position that capitalizing bird common names is controversial, and why, but I've tried not to be inflammatory about it.) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 10:52, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
The part beginning "These taxonomic designations are also never italicized: ..." has some problems.
Peter coxhead ( talk) 13:49, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
I can only say that I regard the text as biassed and highly inflammatory. WP:BIRDS is not the only WikiProject capitalizing common names. Wikipedia:WikiProject Arthropods allows this for Odonata and Lepidoptera. WikiProject:Plants accepts that there is no consensus and capitalization generally varies according to the practice of the country of origin of the plants. Edit warring over capitalization is unproductive and would be encouraged by the wording used at present. Simply state the factual situation. Peter coxhead ( talk) 14:05, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
Attempting to arm-twist the WP community into doing so, with canvassed campaigns of poll disruption, hijacking of WP:DRN to launch further attacks on critics of the capitalizing, and threats of editorial walk-outs and boycotts, as various of the "bird capitalization warriors" have, is intellectually dishonest and unethical, as well as a major WP:POINT, WP:DE and WP:BATTLEGROUND problem. (I commend editors from the projects or task forces on those particular two insect topics and few botanical topics, like Peter coxhead, for not behaving like this.) No rational case can be made, in the face of the broader facts than "specialist journals and books in this topic capitalize" (the only fact most proponents of the capitalization ever want to admit into the debate) for pushing a weird convention from a very isolated ivory tower into the most general-purpose publication in history.
The typical argument for capitalization goes: Academic experts in [insert caps-friendly field here] are so used to writing their way that it's onerous for them to not do so, and basically hateful to tell them they can't, and they're all going to run away screaming and quit Wikipedia because they just can't take this level of stupidity and ignorance. This is unadulterated balderdash, of course, because a) it's simply not happening, and b) these very same academics routinely write without this capitalization when they submit papers to journals outside their speciality, as all of them do unless they want to commit career suicide, and submit articles for mainstream publications. It's frankly grossly insulting to imply that professional academics are so brittle-minded that they cannot fathom or tolerate dealing with one particular venue's in-house style guide. Much of their professional lives are spent writing very precisely to a large array of in-house style guides; it's a big part of their day-to-day jobs. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 07:08, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
From names of breeds: "Breed/variety names are also capitalized logically because they are formal, artificial constructs of fancier and breeder/grower registration organizations, and thus constitute proper-name titles." This touches on the sole legitimate reason to capitalize bird names:
I am emphatically not arguing for capitalization, but this is the logical basis for capitalized bird names and many other "common" names. By putting these in the same document, you are basically inviting the proponents of capitalization to pick at the difference.-- Curtis Clark ( talk) 03:16, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
The "logic" you've outlined would make proper names out of every single thing ever catalog[u]ed and named by any organization of any kind. Every element and mineral and compound, for example. Every philosophical or scientific concept. Every legal or technical term of art. Every piece of construction hardware. Etc. That's just under point #1; "oxygen", "gravity", "defamation" and "two-pound framing hammer" are all "entities" under such a conception, yet we all know these are not proper names. This is English, not German; we actually distinguish (sometimes unclearly) between nouns and proper names. English did not used to do so; we've only been doing it since the 1800s. But we're serious about it. Point number two is irrelevant and tautological; of course the names of species correspond to species, by definition. It's a red herring. Point #3 is thus a doubly fallacious conclusion. I have no doubt that you are correct that people will make this argument, as they've already been doing for 8+ years without convincing anyone. If there's a way you can think to rewrite that will minimize confusion/gameability on this, please let me know. Or just edit.
PS: I'm not 100% in favor of capitalizing breed names. I used to outright hate it. But I'm resigned to the fact that it's so overwhelmingly widespread there's nothing to be done about it, and that mainstream English does not consider it wrong. That's not true of species capitalization, which is widely regarded in botany and zoology, as well as generalist publications, as substandard usage. As far as I can tell after 5 years of consistent involvement in the topic here, the only people on all of WP willing to fight and disrupt to get capitalization are around 12 or so (who knows at any given moment and over time) editors at one project. There are a few others who would prefer it for certain topics, but they understand the larger issues and don't make a scene. I would happily ignore the birds case, if it weren't for the fact that their caps keeps spreading and spreading and spreading (partly because certain members of that project have actively proselytized capitalization to other wikiprojects, and yes I can prove that if it comes to it). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 05:19, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
SMcCandlish: I think your initial doubts about capitalizing breed names were valid.
Like Curtis Clark, I think it's very hard to maintain that the two cases (capitalizing breed names and capitalizing common names) are sharply different, particularly if someone cares to research usage in depth. Peter coxhead ( talk) 20:58, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Rich
Farmbrough,
17:59, 3 January 2013 (UTC).
{{
R with possibilities}}
.Some parts of this sound wrong to me, but I don't know enough about viral nomenclature to comment. Are there WP virus experts you could consult?-- Curtis Clark ( talk) 05:09, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
"All of the virus names should be in italics in this context, whether in a virology article or not."If you mean italicizing "Herpesviridae" and "Betaherpesvirinae" outside of virology-focused articles, no one but a virologist, and not even all virologists on WP, probably not even a majority of them, will accept that, because it will lead to an immediately reader-confusing conflict of taxonomic styles in the same article. The #1 rule of MOS is "be consistent within an article". What this draft is saying about writing about viruses outside of virology-focused articles is precisely what it (and more to the point, MOS proper) has said about ornithologists [controversially] capitalizing bird species common names: Don't do it outside articles focused on that field. Virology isn't somehow immune [pun!] to the same reasoning. I would bet good money that the more general/broad refereed science journals like Nature and Science handle this the same way (I know for a fact that they do not permit bird capitalization even in orn. articles, because it's jarring to everyone but bird people, so I'm highly skeptical they would permit non-standard italicization of taxa at levels above genus, just because a virus was mentioned). Agreed that the section needs to make it clear that it's not Rotavius except in taxonomy. A similar clarifiation is needed more broadly. Been meaning to add that all day, actually. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 04:33, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
The assertion was made at WP:EQUINE that "Exmoor pony" is the breed name, implying that a careful consideration of the common name for the breed might determine that Exmoor pony should be the article title. Lest this document be in conflict with WP:TITLE, there needs to be wording to the effect that disambiguation is only necessary when the common name is ambiguous. Making this clear would make a stronger case for a consistent disambiguation style, since it's a way of separating those common names that include "cat", "pony", etc., from those that don't.-- Curtis Clark ( talk) 23:43, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
Footnote 4 begins with "(the majority of participants in that project have never voiced an opinion on the matter)". "that project" refers to WikiProject Birds, which the reader is expected to remember from 99 words before the footnote. He is further expected to eliminate alternative meanings for "that project" like "site-wide consensus", on the grounds that each of those possibilities is not a "project". I think it will take him several seconds to understand it. Was that deliberate? Art LaPella ( talk) 02:04, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
You might be interested in this discussion from WP:PLANTS (took me awhile to find it in the archives). I don't think we ever came to a conclusion, but the pitfalls remain.-- Curtis Clark ( talk) 16:16, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Starting in a small way from the top of the page, a couple of points that don't sit well with the botanical code of nomenclature: "Capitalize scientific names from subgenus upward, and italicize them from supragenus downward through subspecies."
"Formal domesticated varieties/breeds may be capitalized, but not informal landraces or types."
MOS:CAPS#Common names has a far less aggressive and more (although not fully) accurate account of the present situation. I see no reason why its wording should not be used here. Peter coxhead ( talk) 02:36, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
I've tried to address this a bit, but it's important to note that people keep trying to tweak MOS:CAPS#Common_names itself to subtly (and less subtly over time) contradict MOS. I just undid that, for the umpteenth time over there, though I expect I'll get reverted by someone or other, and the kvetching will start over again until some kind of dispute resolution happens. MOS (as it says right up at the top of it) supersedes it's sub-pages, so it is a pointless to keep futzing with the text to contradict the main MOS page, but people keep doing it anyway. MOS:ORGANISMS here refrains from engaging in that game, and thus, as MOS:CAPS is nudged to diverge from MOS, MOS:CAPS will also necessarily diverge from MOS:ORGANISMS. I have attempted to moderate the language Peter coxhead isn't happy with, but such an effort can only go so far before it sounds like an invitation for every wikiproject on the system to pretend WP:LOCALCONSENSUS policy does not exist and start making up their own inconsistent rules again. LOCALCONSENSUS exists, and grew out of a series of ARBCOM cases, specifically to prevent wikiprojects from ignoring broader consensuses at mainstream policies and guidelines. There's really just no way around this, no matter how much a few tendentious participants in one project are liable to have a fit about it, just like they do every single time anyone ever brings up their non-standard typography, for nine years running so far. Really, at some point they are going to have to stop pretending they cannot hear that consensus is against them. The only reason the debate has been endless-to-date is because people who work on MOS are unusually patient and understand how difficult it is to let go of a grammatical or stylistic peeve for the good of the project, and thus no one's bothered to take the matter to ArbCom. But that happening is pretty much inevitable if a dozen or so of them fighting their "capitalization war" (not my term – one of them came up with that) don't drop their WP:BATTLEGROUND anti-MOS positioning; I think we all know which way that case is going to go. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 23:46, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
I encountered this on a page about cactuses/cacti:
''[[Acanthocereus]]'' <small>([[George Engelmann|Engelm.]] ex [[Alwin Berger|A.Berger]]) [[Nathaniel Lord Britton|Britton]] & [[Joseph Nelson Rose|Rose]]</small>
which renders as:
It raises three questions (to me – maybe there are others):
<small>...</small>
be used here? Some people have raised
WP:Accessibility concerns with ever using it, but I'm not sure how convincing they are (and it is regularly used in various templates likes infoboxes). I think it improves parseability in such a case, quite dramatically: Acanthocereus (Engelm. ex A.Berger) Britton & Rose vs. Acanthocereus (Engelm. ex A.Berger) Britton & Rose I've not recommended the small style in the draft guideline (yet).A. Berger
: A. Berger. It's just readable enough that it's not a problem, and it does help group the initial(s) with the surname.— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼ 21:01, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
The spacing issue is complicated. I'd prefer to include the space, but unspaced author citation is far more common on Wikipedia. The ICNAFP says:
Brummitt & Powell’s Authors of plant names (1992) provides unambiguous standard forms for a large number of authors of names of organisms in conformity with this Recommendation. These abbreviations, updated as necessary from the International Plant Names Index (www.ipni.org) and Index Fungorum (www.indexfungorum.org), have been used for author citations throughout this Code.
When authors are cited in the code itself spaces are consistently included. In contrast, the sources for author citation that the codes explicitly recommends Brummit & Powell (the printed book), and IPNI consistently omit spaces. I've always assumed this was due to limitations in a 1980's database (the printed B&P is basically a straight dump of a database). B&P and IPNI don't anywhere discuss their reasons for omitting spaces.
The Plant List follows B&P and omits spaces. TROPICOS and ARS-GRIN include spaces. Template:Botanist is widely used on botanist biography pages, and runs a query of IPNI's authority data. The IPNI query fails to work if a space is included. I'd prefer to follow the example of the Code, but I don't think there's enough consistency in botany to support support one practice over the other (and I'll admit, when I'm adding an authority to a Wikipedia article, I usually copy-paste it from The Plant List, so it is unspaced). Plantdrew ( talk) 22:53, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
{{
Botanist}}
is a problem. Will have to go ask around over there about a technical solution. I don't see any way to strip whitespace, at
WP:Parser functions. Which is kind of stupid, but oh well. If there's not, then I don't see that there's a solution to would allow A. Berger, other than multipole fields in
Template:Botanist. —
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼
01:40, 18 April 2014 (UTC)I'm seeing this author information in <small>...</small>
very frequently, though not consistently, throughout our articles, and am not seeing anyone having fits about it, so it seems worth codifying here. It really does help the reader focus on the non-minutiae. —
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼
10:54, 13 April 2014 (UTC)
I've been making edits based on an article that uses "et" for multiple authorities. That strikes me as unusual; "and" or "&" are more typical, and usage on Wikipedia is surely mixed. Not sure if this is something worse addressing in MOS. There are some other variations in citing authorities. Presence of a comma between authority name and year in zoological authorities? How to format a year when it is helpful for botanical authorities? This MOS should definitely mention that years are not routinely given in botany. Plantdrew ( talk) 03:24, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
The International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants always capitalizes "Group" when it has its specialized meaning. Thus the following contradicts the ICNCP, and should be changed: "The sole exception is the horticultural designation of cultivar "group", which is capitalized when (and only when) it follows a group name: Mishmiense Group but not some members of the Group were reclassified."
It should read "The sole exception is the horticultural designation of cultivar group, which is always capitalized: Mishmiense Group; some members of the Group were reclassified."
Peter coxhead ( talk) 17:33, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
PS: The cultivar group article needs re-writing. I already fixed where it was making false statements about what ICNCP said (and citing non-existent sections). It still cites nothing but one edition of ICNCP for the whole article. That's like citing only the ICN and ICZN at species and ignoring all other sources. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 13:04, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
The main objective of MOS:ORGANISMS is just laying out how to style what the sources tell us, in a consistent way that can be understood by fairly smart editors who are not professional biologists. We needn't get into every rule, like which authorities are put in what order and notation; editors here should be copying that information from the sources they cite. Another objective has been to do lay this out in a way that doesn't allow any particular specialty to arm-twist all other editors into requiring style quirks that conflict with general usage or with other specialties, but to otherwise encourage compliance with all such stylistic conventions even if they're not formally codified, simply because it keeps experts happier at very little cost, and tends to agree with usage in more sources. This can be more important than it seems. E.g. the ICN makes a big point of specifically stating that it does not even require italicization of genus and species, but all hell would break loose here if actual style minimalists, which I keep getting accused of being, were to seize upon this and start de-italicizing scientific names of plants.
A WP:BEANS / WP:CREEP danger also lies here, in explaining these codes and their exact details in too-specific terms, that inspire people who don't know what they're doing to attempt to apply principles we could describe here to contexts in which they should not be used. E.g. if someone adds a photo of a frog or deer or an orchid to an article, but isn't personally sure what species it is, we don't want them to guess with a "cf." construction in the image caption. Academics can do that in peer-reviewed journals, but here, it would just be a weird form of original research. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 02:06, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
Anyway, I'm sure that various hair-splitting cases will arise. That more of them keep arising during the drafting process is why this proposal's been in development for several years. Heh. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 05:12, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Editors sometimes suggest that because there's no "official" distinction between a breed and a landrace, that we shouldn't care or try to distinguish them here. First, there's no such thing as "official" in such a context (who are the officials, in what office, and who gave them authority, of what sort?). Words mean what they mean, based on documented usage in the real world. In point of fact, however, breed registries do in fact clearly distinguish was is and isn't a breed, so this assumption is actually false, from a reliable sourcing point of view (the breed-standards publications of such organizations are "official" within their purview). The main source of such objections seems to be simple unfamiliarity with the term "landrace", or it's confusing use in certain formal breed names (i.e., some think the suggestion is that the Danish Landrace pig is not actually a breed, but a landrace, when clearly is a breed named after the landrace from which it was derived. A second source of cognifitive dissonance on the issue is the false perception that not using the word breed is somehow a devaluation of a topic, e.g. that the St. John's water dog and the Van cat are less notable somehow for being correctly described as landraces not breeds. In reality, some landraces are more notable that formal breeds derived from them, and our articles on them reflect this. It's not a contest between breeds and landraces (and feral populations, and hybrids, and...).
The
landrace article, with its sources, is actually clear on what the difference is: A breed has selective breeding for specific traits, with pedigrees tracked by some organization, while a landrace does not, and has any more-or-less distinctive characteristics mostly or entirely because of a limited geographical gene pool with limited if any selective breeding. The
Breed article is really clear: A breed is a specific group of domestic animals or plants having
homogeneous appearance (
phenotype), homogeneous
behavior, and/or other characteristics that distinguish it from other organisms of the same
species and that were arrived at through
selective breeding.
[3] All breed registries, across all species, understand this distinction. There are long and involved processes to go through to establish a breed of any kind of animal, and they are either a) controlled, pedigreed breeding to fix, further develop and breed-true some traits found in a landrace population, or b) controlled, pedigreed breeding to develop, fix and breed-true some trait(s) desired for aesthetic or practical reasons using specimens from diverse populations (modern genetic tampering with highly-controlled varieties like lab rats also falls under the latter).
The problem arises in places like Wikipedia, and fancier magazines, that some people gloss over the difference and call them all "breeds" as a form of shorthand, which complicates the sourcing. This is especially true of non-English sources in many languages. E.g. in Spanish the term is raza ('race'), and a formal breed isn't distinguished from a landrace with a simple word change, but by describing it in further prose as pedigreed or not, as free-breeding or not, etc. English sources often have to be read carefully in such a regard, too, especially when produced for a general audience (e.g. "X Breeds of the World books, fancier/kennel/conformance club magazines, etc., versus formal breed standards publications. Landrace only dates to the 1930s in English, so older sources have to be read critically for indications of controlled breeding, because "breed" was used in a much looser manner.
If you really want to create a pseudo-official "standard" on Wikipedia of what is or is not a breed (do we really need to) the way to do this under WP:V/ WP:RS, and WP:N/ WP:NFT, would likely be to ask "Is there a breed standard published by a national or international organization of breeders and fanciers, a government agency, or some other notable body? If yes, is breeding pedigreed?" If either answer is "no", it's not a breed for WP purposes. But all of this is already implicit in the very meaning of the word "landrace". If we insisted on it, however, a rubric like that would eliminate four WP:NOR problems:
It comes down to selective breeding for delineated traits, with pedigrees verified and tracked by a formal organization. Very simple.
At any rate, the important point is that conflating some sources' imprecise use of "breed" with the formal meaning of the word as used by breed pedigree organizations is the fallacy of equivocation and is impermissible WP:Original research. The actual establishment of a breed, like any other technological achievement, is a factual claim that has to be verifiable with sources that are unmistakeably reliable on the relevant points. "This website used the term 'breed'" isn't sufficient by itself, because we know the word may be used misleadingly or confusedly. Show us the breed standards (or for extinct breeds that there was one).
PS: The concept of "natural breeds" (i.e. landraces that have been formalized into pedigreed breeds) is also covered at the Landrace article and accounts for a lot of breeds of all species, and can be linked as natural breed; it could probably be developed into its own article.
Finally, if one just doesn't like the word landrace because horse (or whatever) people don't use it much, then use piped links, e.g. "The Cthulhian pony is an ancient breed of small horse..." The important point is not falsely stating or implying that landraces (or feral populations) are formal breeds. Our own Breed article is unmistakeably about formal breeds, not a looser sense of what "breed" can sometimes mean. This is perfectly fine, because WP:NOT#DICTIONARY. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 05:27, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Peter is right - the name follows the group - AND it can be "notable" without some group saying it is "official." The FAO, for example, lists hundreds of landrace breeds, which clearly would thus meet wikipedia's GNG criteria.Once again, as we have discussed all over the wiki, there is no universal definition of "breed" or even "formal breed" or "standardized breed." Biologists don't go there for the most part, taxonomists don't go there, what a "breed" is varies from one animal group to another (often as much due to politics as anything else. (look at the issue with the Russell Terrier, Jack Russell Terrier and Parson Russell Terrier. You can't tell me that those splits were not somehow more political than practical ). This stick really has to drop. Montanabw (talk) 19:39, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
Our own Breed article is unmistakeably about formal breeds, not a looser sense of what "breed" can sometimes mean.Um... The article is poorly referenced and self-contradictory, so I'm not myself sure what it's really about. The only breeds of animal in which I have any interest are "rare breeds". The definition of breed by the UK Rare Breeds Survival Trust is a general and loose one: "A breed is defined as a group of animals that has been selected by humans to possess a set of inherited characteristics that distinguishes it from other animals within the same species." This definition applies equally well to "landrace" and many "rare breeds" could equally well be called "rare landraces" – at least within my understanding of the term. It seems to me that "breed" is a classic example of a broad concept and so needs a broad concept article, with sections on the different usages of the term "breed" – from a very broad use equivalent to landrace, the notion of "rare breeds", through to more narrow uses such as standardized breeds which have to fit published descriptors, or pedigree breeds where the animal can only descend from specified ancestors. It would be wrong to say that "breed" means only one or some subset of these possible meanings.
Anyway, I really don't know where the idea in the heads of some (especially dog and horse) people comes from that "landrace" is some kind of demotion, dismissal, slur, etc. There is no support for this interpretation in reliable sources. A landrace is (in this context) simply an identifiably distinct regional population of domesticated organism the breeding of which is just loose enough to allow it to adapt to an extent to the local environment (e.g. long coats on cattle in the Scottish Highlands as protection from the cold), even when being bred to some (even a great) extent for other specific traits. If there is no strict pedigree recordkeeping system, and consistently complete control over breeding, then what you have is a landrace by definition, not a breed in any meaningful sense of the word. I think we had concluded that the attested term "landrace breed" (which is synonymous with landrace) is the way around the propensity for people in certain breeder and fancier circles to freak out any time the word "breed" is absent. We can do that, but we can't fudge facts and wrongly imply to most readers that something is a pedigreed, standardized breed when there's no evidence for it, especially not on the basis that some writers use the word "breed" to mean "any identifiable domestic population". — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 16:30, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
Plants: The divergence of meanings is something we'll need to address as we would in any "definitional" article-writing context: Use as a baseline what the major strings of RS agree on, then note additions/subtractions, and also note attempts at radical redefinition, if the sources are mainstream enough to bother with. WP wrestles with this, with aplomb, in many thousands of articles, often with far more complexity (what is "culture"? "religion"?) — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 16:49, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
The proposal says The bi- or tri-nominal name is conventionally abbreviated if the full version has occurred previously in the same material. While this is true in technical writing, we need to keep in mind that the Wikipedia is not technical writing, see WP:Manual of Style#Technical language. It can be very annoying to track back to see what the genus is when a link takes a reader to a specific section. There are not the space limitations of paper, as the guideline notes. I find that it would do a disservice to our non-scientist readers to incorporate this as a standard abbreviating technique in our guideline. I note that previously this was not included at either WP:Manual of Style#Abbreviations or WP:Manual of Style/Abbreviations. -- Bejnar ( talk) 01:56, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
This 2012 thread on nomina and their dates may be worth re-reading to see if MOS:ORGANISMS needs to address any of it further [5]. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 16:02, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
21.3. Each word of a cultivar epithet must start with an initial capital letter unless linguistic custom demands otherwise. Exceptions are words after a hyphen (see Art.35.11) unless they are proper nouns, conjunctions, and prepositions other than those in the first word of the epithet (see also Art. 21.25). Ex. 7. A cultivar epithet commemorating the town of 's-Hertogenbosch in The Netherlands is to be written ‘'s-Hertogenbosch’ and not ‘'S-Hertogenbosch’; similarly, the epithet commemorating the town IJsselham (spelled with the initial two letters in capitals) is to be written ‘IJsselham’ and not ‘Ijsselham’.
So, I have constructed a new wording of the Abbreviating section. The current wording is this:
The bi- or tri-nominal name is conventionally abbreviated if the full version has occurred previously in the same material (and the material does not discuss multiple taxa at the same level that would share the same abbreviation): Thomson's gazelle (Eudorcas thomsonii) is easily distinguishable from the red-fronted gazelle (E. rufifrons), but not the zoo's E. thomsonii specimen survived an E. coli infection. The final element of the name is never abbreviated: the arctic wolf (Canis lupus arctos) is a subspecies of gray wolf (C. lupus), or subspecies of Canis lupus include C. l. arctos and C. l. dingo, but not Canis lupus arctos is a subspecies of C. l.
The new wording would say this:
The bi- or tri-nominal name should generally be abbreviated if the full version has occurred previously in the same second level section (the lead, in this case, will be considered a second level section). This does not apply when a section discusses multiple taxa at the same level that would share the same abbreviation: Thomson's gazelle (Eudorcas thomsonii) is easily distinguishable from the red-fronted gazelle (E. rufifrons), but not the zoo's E. thomsonii specimen survived an E. coli infection. The final element of the name is never abbreviated: the arctic wolf (Canis lupus arctos) is a subspecies of gray wolf (C. lupus), or subspecies of Canis lupus include C. l. arctos and C. l. dingo, but not Canis lupus arctos is a subspecies of C. l.
Basically what this means is that the full tri/binomial would have to be given at the first occurrence in the lead section and each second level section. This addresses the problem of readers having to search for the first occurrence of some genus or species name. Thanks! RileyBugz Yell at me | Edits 19:49, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
In response to the criticisms here, I will now submit a new proposal: New wording:
The bi- or tri-nominal name may be abbreviated if the full version has occurred previously in the same second level section or if it is the subject of the article in the case where the article title is the scientific name (the lead, in this case, will be considered a second level section). This does not apply when a section discusses multiple taxa at the same level that would share the same abbreviation: Thomson's gazelle (Eudorcas thomsonii) is easily distinguishable from the red-fronted gazelle (E. rufifrons), but not the zoo's E. thomsonii specimen survived an E. coli infection. The final element of the name is never abbreviated: the arctic wolf (Canis lupus arctos) is a subspecies of gray wolf (C. lupus), or subspecies of Canis lupus include C. l. arctos and C. l. dingo, but not Canis lupus arctos is a subspecies of C. l.
Thoughts on this one? @ Peter coxhead, AddWittyNameHere, William Avery, and FunkMonk:
Suggested wording
|
---|
The bi- or tri-nominal name may be abbreviated if the full version has occurred previously either
This does not apply when a section discusses multiple taxa at the same level that would share the same abbreviation: Thomson's gazelle (Eudorcas thomsonii) is easily distinguishable from the red-fronted gazelle (E. rufifrons), but not the zoo's E. thomsonii specimen survived an E. coli infection. The final element of the name is never abbreviated: the arctic wolf (Canis lupus arctos) is a subspecies of gray wolf (C. lupus), or subspecies of Canis lupus include C. l. arctos and C. l. dingo, but not Canis lupus arctos is a subspecies of C. l. |
I moved to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Organisms/Workshop the "workshop" material (mostly outdated) on cleanup work that may be needed for integration of MOS:ORGANISMS. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 17:23, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
Anyway, a bunch of that material needs compression, but it's at least in an easily parsed list now instead of a big blob.
—
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
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03:28, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
Shouldn't Classification (botany) go somewhere? It's redlinking as of this writing. One of the footnotes in MOS:ORGANISMS makes the point that "Saxifraga aizoon var. aizoon subvar. brevifolia is technically a classification not a taxonomic name." That's what made me think to check. It's not even clear what this sentence really means, except to a botanist I presume. :-) Maybe a short section at Botanical nomenclature would be the right place? — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 04:23, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
Subordinate taxon and
Subordinate taxa don't go anywhere. This is apt to be confused with
Junior synonym.
Biological nomenclature [that just redirects to
Nomenclature codes
Taxonomy (biology) is the "likely suspect" target article, but it doesn't use the term. I think I'll raise these over at
WT:TOL, too. —
SMcCandlish ☺
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19:05, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
There's a thread at " Talk:Cultivar group#Capitalization belongs on the symbol used in the name; ICNCP does not dictate everyday English" that, in retrospect, might have been better posted here.
Some follow-on discussion from it is actually better here, so I've copy-pasted it, below, and replied here, so we don't bury the cultivar group talk page in cultivar talk. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 23:56, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
this is virtually never done outside of horticultural writing– but that doesn't make not doing it right. Newspapers and the like rarely get the styling of scientific names right, using either no or two capitals in binomials, etc. As you well know from previous discussions, many sources consistently fail to use hyphens and dashes correctly. In neither case do we give up on maintaining our standards. This isn't a horticultural encyclopedia, but it is an encyclopedia. Peter coxhead ( talk) 12:49, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
I'm not sure that using the single quotes around cultivar names outside of scientific names/classifications, other than as semantically necessary/helpful, is actually "our standard" or would be accepted as it in an across-the-board manner. A potential compromise position is that it will actually be helpful in any context involving taxonomy or cultivar development, while not so much in sentence like "Red Delicious apples are the primary export product of Elbonia".
We're definitely not using it consistently; Yukon Gold (potato) (why is that parenthetically disambiguated?) uses it only in the "technical" material and in the infobox, Golden Delicious doesn't use it at all, while Red Delicious is a mixture of styles from paragraph to paragraph, probably owing to different editors.
The table of derived cultivars at Golden Delicious would be much harder to read if all the cultivar names were put in single quotes; the stylization simply wouldn't do anything useful there. A "use stylization when necessary not 'just because'" approach to this would be consistent with MoS's general approach. Quality but not-specialized publications are consistent about italicizing bi- and tri-nominals, even in abbreviated form, so I don't think that style is in any danger here. But they don't use the single quotes for cultivars most of the time.
These and some other articles suggest we can use a checklist of circumstances:
The answers to these questions aren't necessarily obvious. E.g., it might be best to distinguish between cultivar and trade desig. epithets in separate table columns instead of by stylistic markup (which screen readers can't see); Red Delicious takes this approach (it also includes "sports" or patented mutations, which MOS:ORGANISMS isn't addressing yet, and isn't a very clear table). This bullet list above is probably missing a lot of questions that would come to mind after poring over more cultivar articles, e.g. for grain crops and ornamental plants, but it's probably enough to start with.
Just looking at these few articles, it seems to me that using the single quotes constantly is rather brow-beating (
Granny Smith illustrates this effect, though it's not being done consistently there either). However, there are cases where it's needed, e.g. at
Yukon Gold (potato)#Development and naming, where we have: "In 1966, the development team made their first cross between a W5289-4 (2× cross between 'Yema de huevo' and 2× Katahdin) and a 'Norgleam' potato native to North Dakota. After the 66th cross that year, true-breeding seed was produced, and the G6666 was created." This could use some clarification as to what is a hybrid ("the G6666" isn't going to mean anything; and there's no such thing as a potato native to ND). Otherwise later editors are likely to apply cultivar quotes to the hybrid names (not that hybrids are all "immune" to that style; cultivars generally are hybrids, there's just a distinction between a hybrid name and a cultivar name). This text also provides another hint at "we may need to say something about not changing the capitalization of names that are codes" (see thread above); the "W5289-4" item, for example, could just as easily have been something with contiguous letters none of which should be lower-cased. Anyway, it's probably not hard to formulate a rule to use 'Cultivar Caps' in discussions of taxonomy and cultivar breeding history, but not in more "vernacular" sentences like "The Golden Delicious was designated the official state fruit of West Virginia by a Senate resolution on February 20, 1995." Looking at
Golden Delicious#History, which does not use the cultivar quotes, it seems that it should in that context. PS:
Template:Trade designation/doc#No template-applied style was already written (by me, I think) to include the idea that the stylization would not be applied except where useful.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
23:56, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
On mis-labeling and mis-styling things as cultivars: Definitely. I just ran across and corrected multiple errors of this sort here (I didn't see those alphanum-code hybrid names in cultivar quotes in sources). There are surely hundreds more (hopefully not thousands). That kind of thing (and people doing crap like making up fake trinomials for cat breeds) was where the MOS:ORGANISMS idea started. Anyway, maybe one way to address this is to spell out that the cultivar quotes are used with cultivar names verifiable with an ICRA, or if the sources consistently use them for that name; and to not presume that because something is a cultivar that the name found is a cultivar epithet in the INCNCP sense. Just like we don't make up fake trinomials out of animal breed names (*Felis cattus siamensis, etc.)
BTW, that edit also suggested to me that {{
Infobox cultivar}}
needs a change, to stop having separate lines for genus and species, since it results in one of: rather redundant |genus=''[[Solanum]]''|species=''[[Potato|S. tuberosum]]''
; severely redundant |genus=''[[Solanum]]''|species=''[[Potato|Solanum tuberosum]]''
; or technically wrong |genus=''[[Solanum]]''|species=''[[Potato|tuberosum]]''
(with tuberosum appearing on a line by itself). Every other place we're laying out a bi- or trinomial in such boxes we're doing it as a single name/classification, together. The corresponding templates on the zoology side, for breeds, are not giving separate genus lines. It's just kind of weird that the cultivar one is. The setup also doesn't seem to account for the fact that many of these are going to have trinomials, and many are going to be intergeneric hybrids. It just seems better to have a single line for this. If youse agree, I can propose that change at the template's talk page and sandbox a version that does this (will have to be a new parameter, and deprecation of the old ones). Pot: Yeah, I just ran across an article yesterday while trying to find old INCNP editions, all about cannabis nomenclature and "woe is me, please systematize". Not pot-specific: Also saw an ambitious thing called the Draft BioCode from 2007, I think; a proposal to merge zoo. and bot. nomenclature. Brought a tear to my eye. "Visualize world peace!". Bananas: "Cultivar subgroup"? Is that even a real term, or something a Wikipedian made up?
"[T]here's a place for [cultivar quotes]; at the very least, in the lead and infobox, when cultivar name/status is verifiable" – Yep. I'm also arguing to broaden it to more, even in food crop articles, but to avoid a case of "every single instance must use the quotes, over and over again, regardless of context". It's exactly, to me, like the distinction we already draw between using Lynx in the context of taxonomy, but "lynx" where we're talking about the same cat as something you might run into in on a trail, to your mutual startling (bt;dt, at night, too!)
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
04:50, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
In taxonomy and breeding history material, it may not be possible to prevent later editors from mangling names that do need (or should never have) stylization, if they're not wrapped in separate templates for at least cultivars, hybrids, and trade designations (we already have {{
tdes}}
a.k.a. {{
trade designation}}
for the last of those). But if the consensus result ends up being that the stylization should only be applied in certain circumstances, like that quoted Yukon Gold sentence, then the templates would have to be well-documented to not be used at every single occurrence (and some people might do it anyway, creating an opposite maintenance hassle, though probably a much lesser one).
I would love to be able to add features to the templates, such as providing a full name/classification as a tooltip when you mouse over it; however this would require a bunch of JavaScript tricks, since the easy <span title="tooltip text here">...</span>
method cannot use any markup like italics in the title=
value. It would probably interfere directly with existing gadgets that do stuff like this when mousing over a wikilink, e.g. the
navigation popups, but maybe there's a way to work around that. Something to think about for the future, I guess.
Even now, such templates could maybe use title=
tooltip of some kind to indicate that something is a cultivar, hybrid, trade desig., etc., for screen-reader users.
Template:Trade designation/sandbox is doing this now.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
23:56, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
Some sources I ran into while looking for prior editions of ICNCP:
{{
cite book}}
: |work=
ignored (
help)Might be useful for something.
Also found another code; not even sure what it's for: Weber, H. E; Moravec, J.; Theurillat, J.-P. (October 2000).
International Code of Phytosociological Nomenclature (PDF). Vol. 11 (3rd ed.). Uppsala: International Association for Vegetation Science / Opulus Press. pp. 739–768.
doi:
10.2307/3236580. {{
cite book}}
: |work=
ignored (
help) Seems to have a lot to do with syntaxa (taxonomic synonyms).
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<
01:09, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
Is a Section (botany) always styled thus: Podosphaera (sect. Sphaerotheca) xanthii? Wondering if the parentheses are required. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 02:21, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
Not sure what do with "genus group" as a general taxonomic term; there's apparently a usage (as genus group, genus-group, or just group, when not confusable with group in lepidoptery or cultivar group in horticulture); not sure if this is zoological, or what. We don't seem to have an article on it, and Genus doesn't cover it, nor does Taxonomic rank. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 02:38, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
Hi, I wasn't sure where to ask but I thought this might be a good place. Right now the template Template:Ill allows a red link to display a parenthetical blue link that goes to the corresponding entry in another article. So, for instance as there is no Monocentropus balfouri in the English Wikipedia but there is one in various other language wikipedias, e.g., Italian, the template might look like Monocentropus balfouri. What's neat about this template is that as soon as the English language article gets created, it'll automatically just look like a normal blue link -- the parenthetical links to other language wikipedias is only while it's a red link.
For instance ''{{ill|Monocentropus|it}}''
just looks like
Monocentropus since there is an English wikipedia article for the genus
What might be more useful for this style sheet is that instead of a link to another language wikipedia, the parenthetical link can be to wikidata, i.e., Monocentropus balfouri, which in turn provides a link to Wikispecies.
I don't know much about how the template works, but that makes it seem like it also might be conceivable to have a similar template that would parenthetically link directly to Wikispecies? Is this feasible to code? Would it be useful?
Just a thought :) Umimmak ( talk) 07:10, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
Zoology seems to be a field where it's common to both cite works (at least those with taxonomic acts) with both the listed date of publication, and the date actually published (i.e., what would go in the author citation). I've seen different citations in different entries handle this differently; perhaps there could be clarity as to which way these should be listed on wikipedia (or if both should even be in the citation). Umimmak ( talk) 00:01, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
Now that {{ Small}} is just a short form for wrapping text in <small>..</small> (it wasn't in the past), I don't see any reason to recommend one rather than the other. Leave it to editors. Peter coxhead ( talk) 09:59, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
In the article body, wrap the author and date information in— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 14:13, 29 April 2022 (UTC){{ small}}
or<small>...</small>
. This need not be done in a taxobox, which handles this automatically.
Right now it reads: The bi- or tri-nominal name may be abbreviated if the full version has occurred previously
. But it seems like even if the full name of a particular taxon hasn't appeared previously, a binomen/trinomen can be abbreviated if there is only one salient genus/species: for instance, in listing the species of a particular genus, either in the infobox or in the article text. Pinging
Plantdrew since the question stems from
this edit.
Umimmak (
talk)
19:21, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
Per the ICZN:
Recommendation 67B. Citation of type species. The name of a type species should be cited by its original binomen. If the name of the type species is, or is currently treated as, an invalid name, authors may also cite its valid synonym.
I need to look into the practice on Wikipedia more, but my impression is that type species in taxoboxes most frequently give current combination, not the "original binomen". "Original binomen" is just a recommendation by ICZN. I don't really care whether Wikipedia follows the recommendation or not, but Wikipedia practice should be consistent and documented in this MoS.
On a related note, spacing of botanist authorities has been discussed here before, albeit with no firm conclusions. I may have missed something, but I'm not seeing botanist spacing addressed. In Wikipedia practice, botanist authorities are unspaced. ICNafp spaces them, but recommends following IPNI which omits spaces. Plantdrew ( talk) 02:58, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
<!-- Editorial comments -->
in the wikitext may help with that.
Adrian J. Hunter(
talk•
contribs)
10:56, 4 April 2019 (UTC)I've now added a description of |type_species=
to the template data table at
Template:Automatic taxobox/doc, to match that at
Template:Taxobox/doc, as per this discussion.
Peter coxhead (
talk)
09:36, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
I agree that we should follow the ICZN and specify the original combination in the taxobox. Perhaps it would make the taxobox easier to understand if the heading was changed from "Type species" to "Type species (original binomial)". This would look a bit clunky but would help the readers and the editors who are not aware of the ICZN recommendations. - Aa77zz ( talk) 10:30, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
This seems reasonable enough, but I have to ask why we think this needs to be in the infobox instead of just somewhere in the article body? It may be super-mega-important to ICZN, but it isn't to many of our readers. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 02:13, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
Others here might have more experience to what the consensus is on Wikipedia for how to cite sources when the date listed on a source and the available date of publication differ: Help talk:Citation Style 1#Date indicated in journal versus actual publication / availability date Umimmak ( talk) 19:55, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
With regards to this diff, i dont know which section of the MOS explains about keeping Soviet Union int he broad sense, or using a modern country name before its time. Thanks, L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 17:56, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
Probably worth noting that "described by" is the de facto norm for attributing taxonomic authorship in prose in Wikipedia articles on organisms. Other phrasings may also work. "Discovered" is not good. Taxa are not infrequently described on the basis of specimens that have been in natural history collections for decades. Indigenous people may have long known of various organisms before they were described scientifically. Editor who don't usually create taxa articles, but were inspired by a press-release about the recent "discovery" of a new vertebrate (at least, usually a vertebrate) to create an article are mostly responsible for this, but "discovered" sometimes shows up in articles about taxa that were described long ago. At least one editor created a large number of articles on beetles where taxonomic authorship was phrased as "observed by", which isn't as bad as "discovered", but could be phrased more precisely. Plantdrew ( talk) 04:00, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
A few points I think should be addressed:
Is there currently a consensus, then, on the italicization of higher bacteria taxa? This is by no means my field, but I came here since I noticed that many higher-level taxa (e.g. Bacteroidota) are being italicized in article titles and text, and that seems to contradict the guidance in this MOS. Should the articles be changed, or the guidance, or am I missing something? W. P. Uzer ( talk) 08:30, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
Presently, we're saying:
In taxonomy, using parentheses (round brackets) around an author's name has specific meaning (beyond the scope of this guideline), which varies from field to field, and is not a typographic whim, so punctuate these as reliable sources do for the case in question.
Is it really so complicated that we can't just summarize it in a bullet list? To borrow wording from Plantdrew, one such bullet could be:
- In [which specific field or fields?], parentheses indicate that a species has been transferred to a different genus from the one in which it was originally described.
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 11:38, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
It is recommended to copy a TAS verbatim from a taxonomically reliable source.as if TAS were a term of art in taxonomy, perhaps it should be reworded? Umimmak ( talk) 01:16, 9 May 2022 (UTC)
An RfC has been opened at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biology#RfC on boldfacing of scientific names in articles about organisms. The discussion should take place there, not here, in order to keep the discussion centralized. Thank you. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 21:44, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
What induces and controls use of double quotation marks (inverted commas) around a species or subspecies epithet, as illustrated in the second caption here: Ring species#Examples? It's something this page isn't accounting for. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 04:20, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
Please see Talk:Pinot gris#Requested move 16 February 2023. At issue is whether "pinot gris" is in fact a cultivar name and ought to be capitalized. I suspect this is a broader variety with several cultivars within it (just as "broccoli" isn't a cultivar of cabbage), but source material is hard to find, maybe confined to specialist publications. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:17, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
Should there be any guidelines about how families are treated in lead sentences in regards to grammatical number and definiteness of article?
I opened a bunch of articles for which the article title is the scientific name and copied lead sentences to get a sense of variety. (While these are not cherrypicked, they certainly do not represent anything close to a properly randomized sample.)
Lazily chosen examples
|
---|
Links and references have been stripped out for to minimize distraction.
|
My kneejerk reaction is that treating a family name as plural is truer to the Latin but more confusing to the average reader, but I’m unsure what stance this MOS page should take—if it takes any. What I am certainly hoping to see, however, is something explicit enough that an editor searching the page for ‘plural’ or ‘singular’ (as I did) doesn’t keep looking for something that isn’t there. Cheers — jameslucas ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄ 01:18, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
What's the standard for grape varieties such as
Pinot Noir,
Cabernet Sauvignon or
Sauvignon Blanc? For example, currently the article on
Pinot Noir apparently consistently does not capitalize ("pinot noir
").
Cabernet Sauvignon does capitalize the name of that variety, but otherwise the capitalization appears to be not very consistent: in the lead we have "the grape is ... the product of a chance crossing between Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon blanc ...
". Here, both words in "Cabernet Franc" are capitalized, but only the first word in "Sauvignon blanc". Why is that? What would be the official rules? --
2001:16B8:147E:9500:FDE7:B758:D27D:FA61 (
talk)
00:05, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
Is it correct that "agg.", abbreviation for species aggregate, is not italicised along with the binomial? "In the wild" I've encountered it both ways, but surely only one style is the prescribed one. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 03:41, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
Not volunteering but I see it was started more than 10 years ago. Chidgk1 ( talk) 15:23, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
Euxine–Colchic deciduous forests has a mix - should I standardize and if so how? Chidgk1 ( talk) 15:26, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
Would it be acceptable to change the MOS:COMMONNAME redirect to point to the same page as WP:COMMONNAME? Partially selfish, because I personally keep tripping on this page. Remsense 留 22:17, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
"When there are three or more authors, give the first author name (or botanical abbreviation) followed by "et al.", not in italics." I hope this advice isn't referring to the author listing in the "authority" parameter in the taxobox. If so, I've not been complying (and I'll be back later to argue that this is poor advice). If not, could it be made clearer that it applies to prose? Esculenta ( talk) 14:39, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
Loanwords or phrases that have been assimilated into and have common use in English, such as praetor, Gestapo, samurai, esprit de corps, e.g., i.e., etc., do not require italicization. Likewise, musical tempo markings, and terms like minuet and trio, are in normal upright font. Rule of thumb: do not italicize words that appear in multiple major English dictionaries.
Last; et al. (2024). Title.or
Last1 et al. (2024)
Recommendation 51C. Citation of multiple authors. When three or more joint authors have been responsible for a name, then the citation of the name of the authors may be expressed by use of the term "et al." following the name of the first author, provided that all authors of the name are cited in full elsewhere in the same work, either in the text or in a bibliographic reference.And so what I’ve typically done is truncate with an et al., but have a footnote there directly to the source with all names.
46C.2. After a name published jointly by more than two authors, the citation should be restricted to the first author followed by “& al.” or “et al.”, except in the original publication. Ex. 2. Lapeirousia erythrantha var. welwitschii (Baker) Geerinck, Lisowski, Malaisse & Symoens (in Bull. Soc. Roy. Bot. Belgique 105: 336. 1972) should be cited as L. erythrantha var. welwitschii (Baker) Geerinck & al. or L. erythrantha var. welwitschii (Baker) Geerinck et al.So unlike the ICZN there isn’t even a requirement to have the full list of authors elsewhere when the name is abbreviated. Umimmak ( talk) 23:41, 1 February 2024 (UTC)