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 65 | ← | Archive 67 | Archive 68 | Archive 69 | Archive 70 | Archive 71 | → | Archive 75 |
Allowing American, British or Indian or whatever forms of English for various articles is inconsistent and difficult to review for editing. I think we should move English Wikipedia to a standard written English.
Of course this raises the question of which form of English to use. I propose American English because 1) it has more native speakers, 2) in a very few cases it is arguably simpler, and 3) Wikipedia originates in America.
Or maybe someone can create a tool that converts British spellings and terms to American spellings and terms and vice versa? We could use the tool to translate/filter in real time the reader's preference.
I am watching comments on this - Thanks Tee Owe 17:17, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
If this were a purely American project, then Wikipedia would have so much less information. If America only had it's own information, then America would have so much less of it. This is the beauty of the internet, it shares a lot of information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.197.69.171 ( talk)
My (admittedly thoroughly unrealistic) modest proposal is at User:Angr/Unified English Spelling. — An gr 10:35, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
May I please warn against the pervasive corruption of AMERICAN English by Hollywood, or "Hollyork" as Fred Reed calls it (Google for "Hollyork Nation" to see discussion). The malign effect of the alien "Hollyork" on the English language generally is aggravated in respect of British English by tainting of British English through the flood of "Hollyork English" language pouring into the parlours of the native speakers of British English (that is to say, mainly the inhabitants of Australasia, South Africa, the rest of the Commonwealth except Canada, and where English is a vital second or alternative language in Commonwealth countries such as the continent of India). For example, in competent British grammars (such as the small but authoritative guide, "The Complete Plain Words") variations called "Americanisms" are acknowledged and then either accommodated or rejected with explanation. In neither American nor British English, however, is there any room for Hollyork solecisms such as (to cite but one) the abandonment of the adverbial form of "good", as in the corrupt expression "He did good" when good is NOT meant as a noun. Or such uneven constructions such as, Question: "Have you a coat?" Answer: "Yes I do" (or "No I do not") so common in cinema and TV scripts from Hollywood. In our opinion American and British English are identical grammatically and vary (legitimately) only in local geographical usages of spelling and colloquial idiom. The writer must be expected to know enough grammar to know all about these (and about his reader) when he takes up his pen. The reader must, equally, be expected also to know of these local or topical variations and how to handle them. This cannot excuse those who say (for example) "lay" when they mean "lie " even if they are on TV acting the part of a woman president of the USA or one of her White House advisors. The grammar of the English Language is common to both the USA and the Commonwealth. It seems it is simply less well taught and used in the USA; or their teaching is swamped by the immediacy of the alien Hollyork element. Mentorsmentor 10:38, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
The simple answer to the original question is "because it is unworkable and will sorely piss people off no matter what 'standard' is chosen". — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont ‹(-¿-)› 02:09, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
A standard English is needed purely for uniformity; the lack thereof often moves my reading over to other language wikis. A standard, possibly BBC English is needed so wikipedia does not look horrible. If it makes people mad then there are many people who get mad over absolutely nothing. I would go through and change to the new uniform language quite a bit if a uniform standard was chosen. Spacedwarv 01:54, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
Is there any established policy for romanisation? I've been looking, but can't find it stated anywhere. It seems to me there are many inconsistencies, at least for Russian, and it would be nice if we could just standardise on scientific transliteration which is a blind substitution algorithm. This does mean Boris Yeltsin becomes Boris Elcin and Nikita Khrushchev becomes Nikita Xruščëv. The spellings in use are quite arbitrary anyway, and completely foreign(!) to, say, German speakers of English, which are accustomed to Jeltsin and Chruschtschow. Anyhow, if that is too drastic, I would at least like to see a standard for simple things like -ий, which is written as -y or -ij, and -ич, which alternates between -ey and -ei. I'm sure there are similar issues for CJK which should be addressed, too. Kjetilho 02:15, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Currently Harold Wilson has the correct titling for the main description of his name (i.e., basically none). However, the caption of the picture describes him as "The Rt Hon Harold Wilson Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, KG, OBE, FRS, PC" Am I correct to presume that the MOS rules apply to the picture description as well and so this should be reduced to simply "Harold Wilson"? JoshuaZ 20:02, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
I am trying to find a standard or comment about the use of non English characters in articles.
The basic English (Latin) alphabet does not include diacritics. For instance in the article Māori the word Maori is written as Māori all the way through. This also happens in the article Romanization of Japanese where romaji is often written rōmaji. The word Māori is not an English word, the English word is Maori. I understand it is important to include diacritics at the beginning of the article as foreign words (like Japanese) are included as a reference eg. "Kanji (Japanese: 漢字 (help·info)) are the Chinese characters ...". But using diacritics throughout the article is incorrect as it is not English.
Any thoughts or pointers to a guidline highly appreciated. Brettr 06:57, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
So what was the consensus? It has been discussed several times on this talk and the template was put up for TFD and was voted keep. So what does MOS have to say about these templates... nothing? Shouldn't we have something in there? Even if there is no consensus on the use of the templates, we could at least put that in there. Discuss the quotation templates and what ones are approved and what ones have disagreement among editors. I've replaced them in the past for blockquotes but I'm seeing them more and more. Heck - even Jimbo's article has one on it. Morphh (talk) 20:12, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
I see in the archives this has come up before but I can't find anywhere which shows the consensus as to whether these are a good or bad thing - two examples of where this is an issue are the silly edit warring on Nicole Kidman regarding her nationality; and the confusing situation on Emma Watson ( Union Flag and Flag of France next to her place of birth - clearly she was not born in two different countries). I'm confident that I'm not alone in thinking that a guideline or policy on this should be set out clearly somewhere to improve consistency across articles. An essay exists at WP:FLAG, but as far as I can see there is no existing policy or guideline either at the WP:MOS or the Biography WikiProject. QmunkE 15:34, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Why, oh why, is there no manual of style guideline on alphabetization? I can't begin to tell you how many times one comes across completely incorrect alphabetization. For instance, in Template:India states, there is a list of states which puts "Uttarakhand" before "Uttar Pradesh". This is just wrong (it is also unfixable by me, since the current order of the list corresponds to numbering on a map, which I'm not in a position to fix). It is not how alphabetization is done, and every time we do this kind of thing it makes us look stupid and unprofessional. Can we please have a guidelines with respect to correct alphabetization? (I believe that correct alphabetization also counts "Mc" as though it is "Mac", and "St." as though it is "Saint," but I'm willing to discuss those). It certainly does not follow a "Uttarakhand" comes before "Uttar Pradesh" policy, and we ought to be clear about this. john k 18:44, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
There's a bit of a disconnect in the manual when comparing the capitaliztion styles recommended for "president" and "prime minister". In both cases, the manual says you should use lowercase when the office is meant "generically", but that word seems to be used differently, given that "the British Prime Minister" is suggested (whereas we would certainly write "the American president").
This comes up because of a dispute over how the article on the prime minister of Italy should be titled. I think it looks better at prime minister of Italy, but a couple of people have moved it to Prime Minister of Italy on the grounds that articles on other countries' prime ministers use the capital M. It could be that it's a slightly different case, given that "prime minister" (or primo ministro) is not the formal name of the office in Italian, but rather an informal description (legally, he's presidente del consiglio dei ministri). -- Trovatore 16:01, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, that's one strong argument. To be honest with you, though, I think there's an even stronger one: I really think it would be odd to see in print a sentence like "Today, the Prime Minister said that...", which is apparently what the current MOS advises. Is that really what we want? Of course in front of a name you'd use it -- "Today, Prime Minister Harper said..." -- but without a name? Really? -- Trovatore 07:39, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
I think one reason Prime Minister is capitalized is that ministers and prime ministers are called by that title. Where the Americans would say "Mr President, thank you" in the Commonwealth the equivalent is "Prime Minister, thank you".
Brettr 04:25, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
I have started the "requested moves" process at
talk:Prime Minister of Italy; please feel free to contribute. --
Trovatore 08:55, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
Americans are generally of a mind to capitalize anything that seems important, including their own job titles. It is common to read of Customer Sales Representatives, let alone Presidents and Vice Presidents. By any professional publishing standard, this is poor writing, but it is a battle I don't see being fought well on Wikipedia. Incidentally, it is traditional to capitalize a title used as a name ("Have you talked to Father today?"), so "Mr. President, thank you" and "Prime Minister, thank you" are very appropriate, but not "The Prime Minister said...". -- Tysto 01:17, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
In the Mary Wollstonecraft article there was an edit war over whether to use American or British English. It turned out that all of the disputed spellings involved "-ise" vs "ize". Since both American spelling and Oxford spelling used "-ize" for the disputed words and Oxford spelling is acceptable in British English, the dispute was resolved by agreeing to use the Oxford spelling in those cases (thus both the "British" and "American" sides won). This seems to be a logical extension of the existing directive to "Try to find words that are common to all." Since I think this might be helpful to other editors as well, I have added the following suggestion under that directive:
I hope that is agreable to everyone. Kaldari 16:52, 7 March 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 65 | ← | Archive 67 | Archive 68 | Archive 69 | Archive 70 | Archive 71 | → | Archive 75 |
Allowing American, British or Indian or whatever forms of English for various articles is inconsistent and difficult to review for editing. I think we should move English Wikipedia to a standard written English.
Of course this raises the question of which form of English to use. I propose American English because 1) it has more native speakers, 2) in a very few cases it is arguably simpler, and 3) Wikipedia originates in America.
Or maybe someone can create a tool that converts British spellings and terms to American spellings and terms and vice versa? We could use the tool to translate/filter in real time the reader's preference.
I am watching comments on this - Thanks Tee Owe 17:17, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
If this were a purely American project, then Wikipedia would have so much less information. If America only had it's own information, then America would have so much less of it. This is the beauty of the internet, it shares a lot of information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.197.69.171 ( talk)
My (admittedly thoroughly unrealistic) modest proposal is at User:Angr/Unified English Spelling. — An gr 10:35, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
May I please warn against the pervasive corruption of AMERICAN English by Hollywood, or "Hollyork" as Fred Reed calls it (Google for "Hollyork Nation" to see discussion). The malign effect of the alien "Hollyork" on the English language generally is aggravated in respect of British English by tainting of British English through the flood of "Hollyork English" language pouring into the parlours of the native speakers of British English (that is to say, mainly the inhabitants of Australasia, South Africa, the rest of the Commonwealth except Canada, and where English is a vital second or alternative language in Commonwealth countries such as the continent of India). For example, in competent British grammars (such as the small but authoritative guide, "The Complete Plain Words") variations called "Americanisms" are acknowledged and then either accommodated or rejected with explanation. In neither American nor British English, however, is there any room for Hollyork solecisms such as (to cite but one) the abandonment of the adverbial form of "good", as in the corrupt expression "He did good" when good is NOT meant as a noun. Or such uneven constructions such as, Question: "Have you a coat?" Answer: "Yes I do" (or "No I do not") so common in cinema and TV scripts from Hollywood. In our opinion American and British English are identical grammatically and vary (legitimately) only in local geographical usages of spelling and colloquial idiom. The writer must be expected to know enough grammar to know all about these (and about his reader) when he takes up his pen. The reader must, equally, be expected also to know of these local or topical variations and how to handle them. This cannot excuse those who say (for example) "lay" when they mean "lie " even if they are on TV acting the part of a woman president of the USA or one of her White House advisors. The grammar of the English Language is common to both the USA and the Commonwealth. It seems it is simply less well taught and used in the USA; or their teaching is swamped by the immediacy of the alien Hollyork element. Mentorsmentor 10:38, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
The simple answer to the original question is "because it is unworkable and will sorely piss people off no matter what 'standard' is chosen". — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont ‹(-¿-)› 02:09, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
A standard English is needed purely for uniformity; the lack thereof often moves my reading over to other language wikis. A standard, possibly BBC English is needed so wikipedia does not look horrible. If it makes people mad then there are many people who get mad over absolutely nothing. I would go through and change to the new uniform language quite a bit if a uniform standard was chosen. Spacedwarv 01:54, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
Is there any established policy for romanisation? I've been looking, but can't find it stated anywhere. It seems to me there are many inconsistencies, at least for Russian, and it would be nice if we could just standardise on scientific transliteration which is a blind substitution algorithm. This does mean Boris Yeltsin becomes Boris Elcin and Nikita Khrushchev becomes Nikita Xruščëv. The spellings in use are quite arbitrary anyway, and completely foreign(!) to, say, German speakers of English, which are accustomed to Jeltsin and Chruschtschow. Anyhow, if that is too drastic, I would at least like to see a standard for simple things like -ий, which is written as -y or -ij, and -ич, which alternates between -ey and -ei. I'm sure there are similar issues for CJK which should be addressed, too. Kjetilho 02:15, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Currently Harold Wilson has the correct titling for the main description of his name (i.e., basically none). However, the caption of the picture describes him as "The Rt Hon Harold Wilson Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, KG, OBE, FRS, PC" Am I correct to presume that the MOS rules apply to the picture description as well and so this should be reduced to simply "Harold Wilson"? JoshuaZ 20:02, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
I am trying to find a standard or comment about the use of non English characters in articles.
The basic English (Latin) alphabet does not include diacritics. For instance in the article Māori the word Maori is written as Māori all the way through. This also happens in the article Romanization of Japanese where romaji is often written rōmaji. The word Māori is not an English word, the English word is Maori. I understand it is important to include diacritics at the beginning of the article as foreign words (like Japanese) are included as a reference eg. "Kanji (Japanese: 漢字 (help·info)) are the Chinese characters ...". But using diacritics throughout the article is incorrect as it is not English.
Any thoughts or pointers to a guidline highly appreciated. Brettr 06:57, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
So what was the consensus? It has been discussed several times on this talk and the template was put up for TFD and was voted keep. So what does MOS have to say about these templates... nothing? Shouldn't we have something in there? Even if there is no consensus on the use of the templates, we could at least put that in there. Discuss the quotation templates and what ones are approved and what ones have disagreement among editors. I've replaced them in the past for blockquotes but I'm seeing them more and more. Heck - even Jimbo's article has one on it. Morphh (talk) 20:12, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
I see in the archives this has come up before but I can't find anywhere which shows the consensus as to whether these are a good or bad thing - two examples of where this is an issue are the silly edit warring on Nicole Kidman regarding her nationality; and the confusing situation on Emma Watson ( Union Flag and Flag of France next to her place of birth - clearly she was not born in two different countries). I'm confident that I'm not alone in thinking that a guideline or policy on this should be set out clearly somewhere to improve consistency across articles. An essay exists at WP:FLAG, but as far as I can see there is no existing policy or guideline either at the WP:MOS or the Biography WikiProject. QmunkE 15:34, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Why, oh why, is there no manual of style guideline on alphabetization? I can't begin to tell you how many times one comes across completely incorrect alphabetization. For instance, in Template:India states, there is a list of states which puts "Uttarakhand" before "Uttar Pradesh". This is just wrong (it is also unfixable by me, since the current order of the list corresponds to numbering on a map, which I'm not in a position to fix). It is not how alphabetization is done, and every time we do this kind of thing it makes us look stupid and unprofessional. Can we please have a guidelines with respect to correct alphabetization? (I believe that correct alphabetization also counts "Mc" as though it is "Mac", and "St." as though it is "Saint," but I'm willing to discuss those). It certainly does not follow a "Uttarakhand" comes before "Uttar Pradesh" policy, and we ought to be clear about this. john k 18:44, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
There's a bit of a disconnect in the manual when comparing the capitaliztion styles recommended for "president" and "prime minister". In both cases, the manual says you should use lowercase when the office is meant "generically", but that word seems to be used differently, given that "the British Prime Minister" is suggested (whereas we would certainly write "the American president").
This comes up because of a dispute over how the article on the prime minister of Italy should be titled. I think it looks better at prime minister of Italy, but a couple of people have moved it to Prime Minister of Italy on the grounds that articles on other countries' prime ministers use the capital M. It could be that it's a slightly different case, given that "prime minister" (or primo ministro) is not the formal name of the office in Italian, but rather an informal description (legally, he's presidente del consiglio dei ministri). -- Trovatore 16:01, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, that's one strong argument. To be honest with you, though, I think there's an even stronger one: I really think it would be odd to see in print a sentence like "Today, the Prime Minister said that...", which is apparently what the current MOS advises. Is that really what we want? Of course in front of a name you'd use it -- "Today, Prime Minister Harper said..." -- but without a name? Really? -- Trovatore 07:39, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
I think one reason Prime Minister is capitalized is that ministers and prime ministers are called by that title. Where the Americans would say "Mr President, thank you" in the Commonwealth the equivalent is "Prime Minister, thank you".
Brettr 04:25, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
I have started the "requested moves" process at
talk:Prime Minister of Italy; please feel free to contribute. --
Trovatore 08:55, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
Americans are generally of a mind to capitalize anything that seems important, including their own job titles. It is common to read of Customer Sales Representatives, let alone Presidents and Vice Presidents. By any professional publishing standard, this is poor writing, but it is a battle I don't see being fought well on Wikipedia. Incidentally, it is traditional to capitalize a title used as a name ("Have you talked to Father today?"), so "Mr. President, thank you" and "Prime Minister, thank you" are very appropriate, but not "The Prime Minister said...". -- Tysto 01:17, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
In the Mary Wollstonecraft article there was an edit war over whether to use American or British English. It turned out that all of the disputed spellings involved "-ise" vs "ize". Since both American spelling and Oxford spelling used "-ize" for the disputed words and Oxford spelling is acceptable in British English, the dispute was resolved by agreeing to use the Oxford spelling in those cases (thus both the "British" and "American" sides won). This seems to be a logical extension of the existing directive to "Try to find words that are common to all." Since I think this might be helpful to other editors as well, I have added the following suggestion under that directive:
I hope that is agreable to everyone. Kaldari 16:52, 7 March 2007 (UTC)