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This page says:
−
("−").The hyphen is far too short for that purpose. No respectable typesetter would use it. Compare:
Within TeX, of course one uses a hyphen, and the reader sees this:
Michael Hardy 22:48, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
The Transactions of the Linnean Society of London express their volume numbers in Roman numerals. Should I follow their lead and write:
"... and was published in Volume X of Transactions of the Linnean Society of London."
or should I convert to Hindu-Arabic:
"... and was published in Volume 10 of Transactions of the Linnean Society of London."
? Hesperian 04:42, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
thereby making it clear that "Volume X" is their usage? Andy Mabbett 09:07, 29 June 2007 (UTC)"... and was published in Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, Volume X."
Why is their any allowance for non metric systems of measurement? Ancient units I can see, simply for historical purposes, but only the US still uses a system other than metric today; even they are starting to move over. Should not, due to the fact this is a global encyclopaedia, only use the metric system? Spacedwarv 07:19, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
I find the current system just awful when it comes to readability. Most pages you read have both a unit and a conversion. Only 4% of the population are non-metric. That's technically a minority. I'd bet that higher than 4% of the population have "," instead of "." when expressing a decimal number, but "." has been made mandatory. I'd rather see the style for technical and scientific articles adopted for all articles: only SI, except for specific historical reasons. I can see the argument that for example an article on a town in the US, that it is reasonable to have both units. Wikipedia is international and non-SI units are way way in the minority. I'm sure all would agree that eventually the US will use SI - so why not lead the way? Jim77742 13:51, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
I'd strongly support a dual system in which US-related articles are US units (main) and metric (converted), and all other articles are metric alone. Tony 15:54, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
Can I propose the following words (stolen and modified from above :-)
Jim77742 01:25, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
Please look again at the first proposal. I think it is achievable. The only conceptual change is an encouragement for use of metric. This is absent from the current text. It is largely a rewrite of the existing text (plus a suggested removal of five bullets that seem to me to be unnecessary rule creep). Unfortunately, MOS wording makes little difference to the prevalence of metric in Wikipedia, particularly if the Featured Article process is giving FA status to unmetricated articles (see my new section below). Incidentally, Jim77742 please give your source for the metrication of UK roads by 2012 Olympics. Lightmouse 11:08, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
My "political leanings", as they're referred to above, concern my view that it's undesirable to pander to the xenophobia of some Americans (some) as expressed in their insistence on retaining a system of measurements that has been discarded by the rest of the world.
Please consider this:
CONVERSIONS
- Editors are strongly encouraged to use the metric system alone without conversions; conversions make articles less readable.
- Non-metric units may be used as the main units, and converted to metric units, where:
- the article is both specifically US-related and non-scientific; or
- there are compelling historical or pragmatic reasons why metric units should not be the main units.
Where non-metric units are the main units
- Spell out the main units and use unit symbols or abbreviations for conversions in parentheses; for example, “a pipe 4 inches (100 mm) in diameter and 10 miles (16 km) long”. The exception is that where there is consensus to do so, the main units may also be abbreviated in the main text after the first occurrence.
- Converted values should use a level of precision similar to that of the source value; for example, “the highway is 32 miles (51 km) long”, not “(51.2 km) long”. The exception is small numbers, which may need to be converted to a greater level of precision where rounding would be a significant distortion; for example, one mile (1.6 km), not one mile (2 km).
- Category:Conversion templates can be used to convert and format many common units, including {{ convert}}, which includes non-breaking spaces.
Other cases
- In a direct quotation, if the text contains an obscure use of units (e.g., five million board feet of lumber), annotate it with a footnote that provides standard modern units rather than changing the text of the quotation.
- Where footnoting or citing sources for values and units, identify both the source and the original units.
This is a silly discussion. There is no way that removing English units entirely from articles would ever have consensus, and even if you managed to engineer a consensus on this page it would not reflect the will of editors generally, a majority of whom are probably American. That kind of move would cause a wikiriot.
If an article or section is about something in America, or chiefly of interest to Americans, it should be in the English system because that is what we use. There should be mandatory conversion to metric units. If and when America goes metric we can revisit the issue. This is not the place to push agendas. If it relates to science or some other field where metric is the norm (e.g. some sports events), then use metric and convert if necessary to English. Articles that are chiefly about non-American subjects should use metric with no conversion required. If it's of universal interest that's a tougher call. Clearly there should be metric units, either primary or in conversion. It's a good question whether metric should be preferred and whether conversion to English should be mandatory.
There's no reasonable argument that the unit conversions make an article less readable. It's perfectly readable when you get used to it. That argument is as hollow as the argument by Americans that the metric system is too complicated for them. The short answer is "get over it." The whole debate over units, and the fervor that people bring to these debates on both sides, is ridiculous. Units are arbitrary. They are also a simple matter of arithmetic. If you were able to graduate from grade school you can handle units and conversions. Wikidemo 00:37, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
It strikes me that the current system of "use what the source uses" is most appropriate and most accurate. To avoid WP:BIAS, it's not really appropriate to base it on any assumption of the audience. Of course, in areas where there is an established standard (SI for science), the use of sources to determine the unit should lead to the automatic use of SI in such articles. Outside of things like SI-for-science, I don't think that there's any overwhelming tendency anywhere in the english-speaking world towards particular measurement systems, let alone across all-of-the-ESW-except-the-US. Here in the UK, Imperial measurements are the norm culturally, and still legally in a few areas (such as road distances). SamBC( talk) 17:58, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm all for reducing the clutter. Most of the world is used to the metric system; those who aren't shouldn't find it too hard to master.
One argument raised above is that WP shouldn't push people -- more particularly, people in the US -- to do this or that. All things being equal, I'd certainly agree. However, WP has already done this in certain ways. A clear example is WP's use of UTF-8 encoding for its articles and indeed for everything else. If you use a really old browser for en:WP, "foreign" characters are likely to be garbled. This isn't much of an issue for users of en:WP, but consider Japanese people using old browsers for ja:WP: all the characters will be garbled. UTF-8 is still unusual for Japanese-language websites, and ja:WP that's partly responsible for the disappearance of UTF-8-incapable browsers and thus the newfound ability of other people to use UTF-8 for Japanese. (I suspect it's a similar story for language versions with other scripts.) ¶ Incidentally, many of the mentions of "US" above, should I think instead read "US, Burma and Liberia" (in one order or another).
How en:WP might start to move away from near-automatic conversions is a matter needing further thought. -- Hoary 09:13, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
Remember that such an enforcement would have far reaching implications. A selection of units we would no longer be able to use are light year, electron volt, parsec, atomic mass unit, Plank units, solar mass, speed of light (as in 0.1c), monolayers, and of course degrees Celcius. All of those units have important and legitimate uses, and there are many more like them. This is a poorly thought-out suggestion. Modest Genius talk 19:53, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
Here's what I wanted to talk about - someone else moved my heading under "centuries" and then wondered why I want to talk about other contradictions under the wrong heading. If we don't exclude measurements, then it contradicts several examples in the Measurements section - 4 inches, 10 miles, 5° C, and 5 ft. Why do contradictions matter, whether or not they are about centuries? Spelling out numbers zero throught ten is the most frequently cited item on the page in my experience. If we don't tell people to do opposite things at the same time - as defined by the rules Wikipedia expects us to follow, not by the Chicago manual - then people would be more likely to obey, cite, and otherwise respect this guideline, and all the other headings on this talk page would be more likely to matter. Art LaPella 20:36, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Does that mean you endorse "excluding dates, times and measurements" or some variation that meets my goal of self-consistency? Or does it mean there should be a general disclaimer that there are exceptions to everything? Art LaPella 15:53, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
When someone writes "WP:MOSNUM" in an edit summary, I believe (but I can't think of a good way to prove it) that they usually mean "Whole numbers from zero to ten should be spelled out as words in the body of an article." So I don't think this is a Wikipedia:Ignore all rules situation; I think it should be fixed. How about "excluding dates, times and some measurements"? Art LaPella 18:57, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Since you both like the word "exceptions", how about "Exceptions include dates, times and some measurements"? Art LaPella 19:09, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
I don't understand the title. Please provide feedback on this new version. Don't you all think it's time to bite the bullet on "billion"? (Except that it doesn't quite belong under the new title.) Should there be guidance on hyphenating spelled out fractions? I've added something, and I'm unsure about it. And what about hyphens in numbers such as "twenty-four"—mandatory or optional?
There's a problem with "*Fractions standing alone should be spelled out unless they occur in a percentage. If fractions are mixed with whole numbers, use numerals." that persists in my proposed amendment ("Fractions should be spelled out unless they occur in a percentage or with an abbreviated unit ("3.5 mm") or are mixed with whole numbers. Fractions are hyphenated ("seven-eighths")."). Fractions seem to be mixed up with decimal points.
EXISTING
Numbers in words
NEW
Spelling out numbers
General rule
Exceptions
Hyphenation
Large numbers
Tony 04:47, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
(1) I've stuck my neck out by changing the ten/11 boundary to nine/10, because it's so simple to conceive the spell-out-single-digits rule. Happy to hear objections on that. (2) "What does it matter what editors prefer"? It's a polite way of strongly recommending a usage without making it mandatory. (3) I suppose there's no support for The Guardian's "bn" as an abbreviation for "billion", is there? (4) I'm uncormfortable encouraging the writing out of "twenty million" yet the use of numbers for "21 million"; I'd rather "20 million". Tony 02:09, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
Tony's responses:
"Two- and one-digit numbers are hyphenated when spelled out ('fifty-six')..." But how would you hyphenate "nine"? There are no one-digit numbers like "fifty-six", so I don't understand why the words "and one-digit" were included. Art LaPella 03:45, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
I understood it, but it took me several seconds, perhaps because in mathematics, fifty-six is one number. An alternative is "Numbers from 21 to 99 not ending in zero are hyphenated...". Art LaPella 06:30, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
ten/11 is not at all arbitrary: ten is the greatest number childrens may count on their fingers. After "ten" begins the abstraction of the number. pom 12:24, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
An editor has added a space before various occurrences of "m" for million, both in numbers (populations) and currency sums: 1.2m to 1.2 m and £3.4m to £3.4 m. I find it clearer with no space (as do others: it wasn't my writing that was being edited). Is there any guideline or consensus on this? PamD 07:29, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Have just looked at MOSNUM (having earlier been deterred by the "Out of date" tag). There seems to be an inconsistency:
Is there really supposed to be a space after the c. for deaths but not births? I saw Dionysius, thought it was a typo, then saw Rameses. Does this need tidying up? (As a newcomer to the MOSNUM pages I hesitate to tread on what's probably hotly-disputed territory) PamD 10:02, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
No, I feel that a space is called for. More strongly, I think it should be either all-spaced (c. 470 – c. 540), or without any spaces (c.470–c.540), according to WP:MOSDASH "All disjunctive en dashes are unspaced, except when there is a space within either or both of the items". So the question is simply whether a space always follows "c."
I will add spaces around the en dash for Charles Darwin's and Genghis Khan's examples, which are currently flat wrong.
I will leave alone the (fl. 760–772), because "fl." pertains to both years of the date range, and so the space is between "fl." and the date range, and is not within an item of the range. Compare with (c. 640 – 687), which indicates an approximate year of birth with a known year of death (a common situation for folks killed in battle). Does (c.640–687) muddy the distinction? I think it might. Chris the speller 16:24, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 70 | Archive 71 | Archive 72 | Archive 73 | Archive 74 | Archive 75 | → | Archive 80 |
This page says:
−
("−").The hyphen is far too short for that purpose. No respectable typesetter would use it. Compare:
Within TeX, of course one uses a hyphen, and the reader sees this:
Michael Hardy 22:48, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
The Transactions of the Linnean Society of London express their volume numbers in Roman numerals. Should I follow their lead and write:
"... and was published in Volume X of Transactions of the Linnean Society of London."
or should I convert to Hindu-Arabic:
"... and was published in Volume 10 of Transactions of the Linnean Society of London."
? Hesperian 04:42, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
thereby making it clear that "Volume X" is their usage? Andy Mabbett 09:07, 29 June 2007 (UTC)"... and was published in Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, Volume X."
Why is their any allowance for non metric systems of measurement? Ancient units I can see, simply for historical purposes, but only the US still uses a system other than metric today; even they are starting to move over. Should not, due to the fact this is a global encyclopaedia, only use the metric system? Spacedwarv 07:19, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
I find the current system just awful when it comes to readability. Most pages you read have both a unit and a conversion. Only 4% of the population are non-metric. That's technically a minority. I'd bet that higher than 4% of the population have "," instead of "." when expressing a decimal number, but "." has been made mandatory. I'd rather see the style for technical and scientific articles adopted for all articles: only SI, except for specific historical reasons. I can see the argument that for example an article on a town in the US, that it is reasonable to have both units. Wikipedia is international and non-SI units are way way in the minority. I'm sure all would agree that eventually the US will use SI - so why not lead the way? Jim77742 13:51, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
I'd strongly support a dual system in which US-related articles are US units (main) and metric (converted), and all other articles are metric alone. Tony 15:54, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
Can I propose the following words (stolen and modified from above :-)
Jim77742 01:25, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
Please look again at the first proposal. I think it is achievable. The only conceptual change is an encouragement for use of metric. This is absent from the current text. It is largely a rewrite of the existing text (plus a suggested removal of five bullets that seem to me to be unnecessary rule creep). Unfortunately, MOS wording makes little difference to the prevalence of metric in Wikipedia, particularly if the Featured Article process is giving FA status to unmetricated articles (see my new section below). Incidentally, Jim77742 please give your source for the metrication of UK roads by 2012 Olympics. Lightmouse 11:08, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
My "political leanings", as they're referred to above, concern my view that it's undesirable to pander to the xenophobia of some Americans (some) as expressed in their insistence on retaining a system of measurements that has been discarded by the rest of the world.
Please consider this:
CONVERSIONS
- Editors are strongly encouraged to use the metric system alone without conversions; conversions make articles less readable.
- Non-metric units may be used as the main units, and converted to metric units, where:
- the article is both specifically US-related and non-scientific; or
- there are compelling historical or pragmatic reasons why metric units should not be the main units.
Where non-metric units are the main units
- Spell out the main units and use unit symbols or abbreviations for conversions in parentheses; for example, “a pipe 4 inches (100 mm) in diameter and 10 miles (16 km) long”. The exception is that where there is consensus to do so, the main units may also be abbreviated in the main text after the first occurrence.
- Converted values should use a level of precision similar to that of the source value; for example, “the highway is 32 miles (51 km) long”, not “(51.2 km) long”. The exception is small numbers, which may need to be converted to a greater level of precision where rounding would be a significant distortion; for example, one mile (1.6 km), not one mile (2 km).
- Category:Conversion templates can be used to convert and format many common units, including {{ convert}}, which includes non-breaking spaces.
Other cases
- In a direct quotation, if the text contains an obscure use of units (e.g., five million board feet of lumber), annotate it with a footnote that provides standard modern units rather than changing the text of the quotation.
- Where footnoting or citing sources for values and units, identify both the source and the original units.
This is a silly discussion. There is no way that removing English units entirely from articles would ever have consensus, and even if you managed to engineer a consensus on this page it would not reflect the will of editors generally, a majority of whom are probably American. That kind of move would cause a wikiriot.
If an article or section is about something in America, or chiefly of interest to Americans, it should be in the English system because that is what we use. There should be mandatory conversion to metric units. If and when America goes metric we can revisit the issue. This is not the place to push agendas. If it relates to science or some other field where metric is the norm (e.g. some sports events), then use metric and convert if necessary to English. Articles that are chiefly about non-American subjects should use metric with no conversion required. If it's of universal interest that's a tougher call. Clearly there should be metric units, either primary or in conversion. It's a good question whether metric should be preferred and whether conversion to English should be mandatory.
There's no reasonable argument that the unit conversions make an article less readable. It's perfectly readable when you get used to it. That argument is as hollow as the argument by Americans that the metric system is too complicated for them. The short answer is "get over it." The whole debate over units, and the fervor that people bring to these debates on both sides, is ridiculous. Units are arbitrary. They are also a simple matter of arithmetic. If you were able to graduate from grade school you can handle units and conversions. Wikidemo 00:37, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
It strikes me that the current system of "use what the source uses" is most appropriate and most accurate. To avoid WP:BIAS, it's not really appropriate to base it on any assumption of the audience. Of course, in areas where there is an established standard (SI for science), the use of sources to determine the unit should lead to the automatic use of SI in such articles. Outside of things like SI-for-science, I don't think that there's any overwhelming tendency anywhere in the english-speaking world towards particular measurement systems, let alone across all-of-the-ESW-except-the-US. Here in the UK, Imperial measurements are the norm culturally, and still legally in a few areas (such as road distances). SamBC( talk) 17:58, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm all for reducing the clutter. Most of the world is used to the metric system; those who aren't shouldn't find it too hard to master.
One argument raised above is that WP shouldn't push people -- more particularly, people in the US -- to do this or that. All things being equal, I'd certainly agree. However, WP has already done this in certain ways. A clear example is WP's use of UTF-8 encoding for its articles and indeed for everything else. If you use a really old browser for en:WP, "foreign" characters are likely to be garbled. This isn't much of an issue for users of en:WP, but consider Japanese people using old browsers for ja:WP: all the characters will be garbled. UTF-8 is still unusual for Japanese-language websites, and ja:WP that's partly responsible for the disappearance of UTF-8-incapable browsers and thus the newfound ability of other people to use UTF-8 for Japanese. (I suspect it's a similar story for language versions with other scripts.) ¶ Incidentally, many of the mentions of "US" above, should I think instead read "US, Burma and Liberia" (in one order or another).
How en:WP might start to move away from near-automatic conversions is a matter needing further thought. -- Hoary 09:13, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
Remember that such an enforcement would have far reaching implications. A selection of units we would no longer be able to use are light year, electron volt, parsec, atomic mass unit, Plank units, solar mass, speed of light (as in 0.1c), monolayers, and of course degrees Celcius. All of those units have important and legitimate uses, and there are many more like them. This is a poorly thought-out suggestion. Modest Genius talk 19:53, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
Here's what I wanted to talk about - someone else moved my heading under "centuries" and then wondered why I want to talk about other contradictions under the wrong heading. If we don't exclude measurements, then it contradicts several examples in the Measurements section - 4 inches, 10 miles, 5° C, and 5 ft. Why do contradictions matter, whether or not they are about centuries? Spelling out numbers zero throught ten is the most frequently cited item on the page in my experience. If we don't tell people to do opposite things at the same time - as defined by the rules Wikipedia expects us to follow, not by the Chicago manual - then people would be more likely to obey, cite, and otherwise respect this guideline, and all the other headings on this talk page would be more likely to matter. Art LaPella 20:36, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Does that mean you endorse "excluding dates, times and measurements" or some variation that meets my goal of self-consistency? Or does it mean there should be a general disclaimer that there are exceptions to everything? Art LaPella 15:53, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
When someone writes "WP:MOSNUM" in an edit summary, I believe (but I can't think of a good way to prove it) that they usually mean "Whole numbers from zero to ten should be spelled out as words in the body of an article." So I don't think this is a Wikipedia:Ignore all rules situation; I think it should be fixed. How about "excluding dates, times and some measurements"? Art LaPella 18:57, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Since you both like the word "exceptions", how about "Exceptions include dates, times and some measurements"? Art LaPella 19:09, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
I don't understand the title. Please provide feedback on this new version. Don't you all think it's time to bite the bullet on "billion"? (Except that it doesn't quite belong under the new title.) Should there be guidance on hyphenating spelled out fractions? I've added something, and I'm unsure about it. And what about hyphens in numbers such as "twenty-four"—mandatory or optional?
There's a problem with "*Fractions standing alone should be spelled out unless they occur in a percentage. If fractions are mixed with whole numbers, use numerals." that persists in my proposed amendment ("Fractions should be spelled out unless they occur in a percentage or with an abbreviated unit ("3.5 mm") or are mixed with whole numbers. Fractions are hyphenated ("seven-eighths")."). Fractions seem to be mixed up with decimal points.
EXISTING
Numbers in words
NEW
Spelling out numbers
General rule
Exceptions
Hyphenation
Large numbers
Tony 04:47, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
(1) I've stuck my neck out by changing the ten/11 boundary to nine/10, because it's so simple to conceive the spell-out-single-digits rule. Happy to hear objections on that. (2) "What does it matter what editors prefer"? It's a polite way of strongly recommending a usage without making it mandatory. (3) I suppose there's no support for The Guardian's "bn" as an abbreviation for "billion", is there? (4) I'm uncormfortable encouraging the writing out of "twenty million" yet the use of numbers for "21 million"; I'd rather "20 million". Tony 02:09, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
Tony's responses:
"Two- and one-digit numbers are hyphenated when spelled out ('fifty-six')..." But how would you hyphenate "nine"? There are no one-digit numbers like "fifty-six", so I don't understand why the words "and one-digit" were included. Art LaPella 03:45, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
I understood it, but it took me several seconds, perhaps because in mathematics, fifty-six is one number. An alternative is "Numbers from 21 to 99 not ending in zero are hyphenated...". Art LaPella 06:30, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
ten/11 is not at all arbitrary: ten is the greatest number childrens may count on their fingers. After "ten" begins the abstraction of the number. pom 12:24, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
An editor has added a space before various occurrences of "m" for million, both in numbers (populations) and currency sums: 1.2m to 1.2 m and £3.4m to £3.4 m. I find it clearer with no space (as do others: it wasn't my writing that was being edited). Is there any guideline or consensus on this? PamD 07:29, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Have just looked at MOSNUM (having earlier been deterred by the "Out of date" tag). There seems to be an inconsistency:
Is there really supposed to be a space after the c. for deaths but not births? I saw Dionysius, thought it was a typo, then saw Rameses. Does this need tidying up? (As a newcomer to the MOSNUM pages I hesitate to tread on what's probably hotly-disputed territory) PamD 10:02, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
No, I feel that a space is called for. More strongly, I think it should be either all-spaced (c. 470 – c. 540), or without any spaces (c.470–c.540), according to WP:MOSDASH "All disjunctive en dashes are unspaced, except when there is a space within either or both of the items". So the question is simply whether a space always follows "c."
I will add spaces around the en dash for Charles Darwin's and Genghis Khan's examples, which are currently flat wrong.
I will leave alone the (fl. 760–772), because "fl." pertains to both years of the date range, and so the space is between "fl." and the date range, and is not within an item of the range. Compare with (c. 640 – 687), which indicates an approximate year of birth with a known year of death (a common situation for folks killed in battle). Does (c.640–687) muddy the distinction? I think it might. Chris the speller 16:24, 12 July 2007 (UTC)