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As per discussion on Talk: United Kingdom, it would be useful if we could get 'thousand million' the preferred wording for articles of a UK focus rather than 'billion', as 'billion' is ambiguous in UK contexts. To some it's 109 and to others it's 1012. 'Thousand million' is unambiguously 109, and thus preferable for UK contexts. Thoughts? Matthew 12:28, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't think anyone has used billion to mean a million million in about 10 years - not in anything official/formal, anyway. -- Tango 17:58, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
There is a discussion going on at Talk:Daedalus class battlecruiser (from Stargate) regarding how the name of a piece of fictional technology should be written. Is it "Mark VIII tactical nuclear warheads" or "Mark 8 tactical nuclear warheads"? The name is only ever spoken on the show, and we have no written reference supporting either notation. Any comments? -- Tango 22:46, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Which is correct or are both wrong? There appears to be inconsistency is applying currency formatting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_%28dates_and_numbers%29#Currency Is USD$ the default symbol and currency for currency. When use a numeric example USD$ is a mouthful. Can I use €?
NilssonDenver 08:52, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
It's USD or US$, the D stands for Dollar, so you should never have both the D and the $-symbol. However, in the case of an arbitrary currency used for an example, I'd just pick any symbol you like. It doesn't matter if it's US$ or CAN$ or Z$ or any other dollars, so just say $. (Or €, or £, or ¥, or whatever else you like.) -- Tango 20:23, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for all the contibutions. The guide seemed to imply that US$ or $ must be used unless it is country specific. Being European, I don't see the dollar as the only currency in the world and the Euro € is now a dominant and recognised currency and symbol. So first in on the article gets dibs on the symbol :-> (it also says that in the manual) NilssonDenver 21:47, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Isn't there research showing that even numbers as low as 2 read faster as numerals than as words? 216.179.3.122 17:11, 25 February 2007 (UTC)robgood
The guideline currently says that "whole numbers from zero to ten" should be spelled out, then it says numbers that can be expressed with "two or fewer words". In practice, everything from 0-100 falls into that category, so maybe this should be clarified. — CharlotteWebb 07:57, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
The page says "In country-specific articles such as Economy of Australia use only the symbol specific to the country, in this case $, with an italicized note placed at the top of the article to make this clear." I think this is a very bad idea, because it clutters the articles, and distracs the reader from the actual introduction. Wikipedia has too many boilerplates as it is. Experienced users know to skip reading italic text before the article, but new users are distracted by all the apologies about capitalization in the title and whatever. Anyway, why put the above sentence into this guideline and why? Was there any discussion leading to it? -- Apoc2400 06:33, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
I can't seem to find any standard for this. Which one do we use? Associated Press style is "No. 1." Thanks! — Rebelguys2 talk 19:21, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
I can't seem to find any standard for this here (if it exists, please point me to it), but I'd like to ask if there was a standard set on this (1st or first, 2nd or second, etc), or is it okay to use any as long as it's consistent with the rest of the article? -- Tydus Arandor 01:20, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
When wikilinking the currency abbreviation (say, US$), should only the first use in an article (or section) be so linked, or every time it appears? Also, once it has been "introduced" (as "US$"), should it always be so written or is it subsequently permissible to use simply "$" (as long as it causes no confusion)? Askari Mark (Talk) 21:44, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
I thought I saw somewhere in Wikipedia the use of a template to collect and display both the birth and death dates of a person. I don't remember what it looked like, but I would hope that it would show the day/month/year formatted by user preference (but only if a full date is given), and also include a category tag for birth and death years, cutting that particular maintenance effort in half and eliminating the synchronization problem. (I edit people articles only infrequently, and even I've run into at least three incorrect birth or death dates in the past year, none of them apparently due to the ever-preesent vandalism, so this must be a not-uncommon problem.)
However, I couldn't find an obviously named template for this. None of the following somewhat overlapping templates do what I'd hoped for:
One other, {{ birthdate}}, suggests the categorization element, but it doesn't seem to be in use yet, and I'm not familiar with the metadata syntax, so I'm not sure if it actually does what I expect.
I also found no allusion to any such templates in this guideline page's "Dates of birth and death" section, nor did I find anything in the past few archives (looking for "birth"). Is this issue being addressed somewhere I haven't looked yet? If not, might we consider it to reduce maintenance and synchronzation problems? ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:13, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
I have removed the following exceptions to "space before unit" which were inserted in the last few hours:
I agree that this is an exception, but I don't think it's an exception we need a guideline about. Anyone who knows to hyphenate an adjectival phrase is not going to be confused and think "but the guideline says I should use a space, help, what shall I do?". So it's instruction creep.
This doesn't look correct. Apart from the mis-spelling of Système International, are we seriously proposing that one should write 41°F but 5 °C? In the same sentence? And Kelvin doesn't take a ° symbol at all; it's just 278 K. Also, note that we already have a section on geographical coordinates.
If anyone wants to defend these, or propose better versions, go ahead, but I've taken them out for the moment.
Stephen Turner ( Talk) 05:39, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
@ 2007-04-07T05:46Z
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 66 | Archive 67 | Archive 68 | Archive 69 | Archive 70 | → | Archive 75 |
As per discussion on Talk: United Kingdom, it would be useful if we could get 'thousand million' the preferred wording for articles of a UK focus rather than 'billion', as 'billion' is ambiguous in UK contexts. To some it's 109 and to others it's 1012. 'Thousand million' is unambiguously 109, and thus preferable for UK contexts. Thoughts? Matthew 12:28, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't think anyone has used billion to mean a million million in about 10 years - not in anything official/formal, anyway. -- Tango 17:58, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
There is a discussion going on at Talk:Daedalus class battlecruiser (from Stargate) regarding how the name of a piece of fictional technology should be written. Is it "Mark VIII tactical nuclear warheads" or "Mark 8 tactical nuclear warheads"? The name is only ever spoken on the show, and we have no written reference supporting either notation. Any comments? -- Tango 22:46, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Which is correct or are both wrong? There appears to be inconsistency is applying currency formatting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_%28dates_and_numbers%29#Currency Is USD$ the default symbol and currency for currency. When use a numeric example USD$ is a mouthful. Can I use €?
NilssonDenver 08:52, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
It's USD or US$, the D stands for Dollar, so you should never have both the D and the $-symbol. However, in the case of an arbitrary currency used for an example, I'd just pick any symbol you like. It doesn't matter if it's US$ or CAN$ or Z$ or any other dollars, so just say $. (Or €, or £, or ¥, or whatever else you like.) -- Tango 20:23, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for all the contibutions. The guide seemed to imply that US$ or $ must be used unless it is country specific. Being European, I don't see the dollar as the only currency in the world and the Euro € is now a dominant and recognised currency and symbol. So first in on the article gets dibs on the symbol :-> (it also says that in the manual) NilssonDenver 21:47, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Isn't there research showing that even numbers as low as 2 read faster as numerals than as words? 216.179.3.122 17:11, 25 February 2007 (UTC)robgood
The guideline currently says that "whole numbers from zero to ten" should be spelled out, then it says numbers that can be expressed with "two or fewer words". In practice, everything from 0-100 falls into that category, so maybe this should be clarified. — CharlotteWebb 07:57, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
The page says "In country-specific articles such as Economy of Australia use only the symbol specific to the country, in this case $, with an italicized note placed at the top of the article to make this clear." I think this is a very bad idea, because it clutters the articles, and distracs the reader from the actual introduction. Wikipedia has too many boilerplates as it is. Experienced users know to skip reading italic text before the article, but new users are distracted by all the apologies about capitalization in the title and whatever. Anyway, why put the above sentence into this guideline and why? Was there any discussion leading to it? -- Apoc2400 06:33, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
I can't seem to find any standard for this. Which one do we use? Associated Press style is "No. 1." Thanks! — Rebelguys2 talk 19:21, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
I can't seem to find any standard for this here (if it exists, please point me to it), but I'd like to ask if there was a standard set on this (1st or first, 2nd or second, etc), or is it okay to use any as long as it's consistent with the rest of the article? -- Tydus Arandor 01:20, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
When wikilinking the currency abbreviation (say, US$), should only the first use in an article (or section) be so linked, or every time it appears? Also, once it has been "introduced" (as "US$"), should it always be so written or is it subsequently permissible to use simply "$" (as long as it causes no confusion)? Askari Mark (Talk) 21:44, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
I thought I saw somewhere in Wikipedia the use of a template to collect and display both the birth and death dates of a person. I don't remember what it looked like, but I would hope that it would show the day/month/year formatted by user preference (but only if a full date is given), and also include a category tag for birth and death years, cutting that particular maintenance effort in half and eliminating the synchronization problem. (I edit people articles only infrequently, and even I've run into at least three incorrect birth or death dates in the past year, none of them apparently due to the ever-preesent vandalism, so this must be a not-uncommon problem.)
However, I couldn't find an obviously named template for this. None of the following somewhat overlapping templates do what I'd hoped for:
One other, {{ birthdate}}, suggests the categorization element, but it doesn't seem to be in use yet, and I'm not familiar with the metadata syntax, so I'm not sure if it actually does what I expect.
I also found no allusion to any such templates in this guideline page's "Dates of birth and death" section, nor did I find anything in the past few archives (looking for "birth"). Is this issue being addressed somewhere I haven't looked yet? If not, might we consider it to reduce maintenance and synchronzation problems? ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:13, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
I have removed the following exceptions to "space before unit" which were inserted in the last few hours:
I agree that this is an exception, but I don't think it's an exception we need a guideline about. Anyone who knows to hyphenate an adjectival phrase is not going to be confused and think "but the guideline says I should use a space, help, what shall I do?". So it's instruction creep.
This doesn't look correct. Apart from the mis-spelling of Système International, are we seriously proposing that one should write 41°F but 5 °C? In the same sentence? And Kelvin doesn't take a ° symbol at all; it's just 278 K. Also, note that we already have a section on geographical coordinates.
If anyone wants to defend these, or propose better versions, go ahead, but I've taken them out for the moment.
Stephen Turner ( Talk) 05:39, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
@ 2007-04-07T05:46Z