Talk:International System of Units/Archives/03/2014

Spelling choice for "angstrom"

The general rules about spelling in Wikipedia are to use the most common English literature spelling. The UK Oxford English dictionary lists angstrom as "angstrom", with "ångström" being given as an alternative. I changed the spelling in this article to match the more common spelling, but another editor has changed it back to "ångström" - citing the Angstrom article as the reason. As there is nothing in that article to justify using the secondary spelling, can we discuss the choice of spelling here please. FishGF (talk) 12:25, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Extract from the article Angstrom

The symbol is always written with a ring diacritic, as in the Swedish letter. Although the unit's name is often written in English without the diacritics, the official definitions contain diacritics.

I have chosen to follow the official definition. Martinvl (talk) 12:56, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

I can understand the symbol being written that way as it is a symbol. The word though should surely follow the most prevalent spelling in English, which is not necessarily as in the official definition. I guess we need a robust methodology for establishing the most prevalent spelling. Any ideas? FishGF (talk) 13:09, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

American Heritage Dictionary (3rd ed.) (AHD) lists "angstrom or ångstrom" and the dictionary's "Guide to the Dictionary" indicates variants joined by "or" are equal variants. But AHD indicates an ordinary "o". Jc3s5h (talk) 14:13, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

The British OED ("The definitive record of the English language") gives "Ångström ... Also angstrom". The version with the diacritics is always capitalised.

The British online Oxford Dictionaries gives "angstrom ... also ångström". FishGF (talk) 14:38, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Please look at the article Wikipedia:Reviewing good articles. May I draw the following sentences to attention:

• Reviewers should aim to advise on content and form rather than to impose their preferences.
• A reviewer involved in a contentious discussion should consider withdrawing, so that a less-involved editor can make the final assessment and decision on the Good article criteria.

Please make up are mind - are you still reviewing this article? If so, let a third party arbitrate on this point, if not, please formally abandon your role in the review. Martinvl (talk) 14:44, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

I am still reviewing the article, and have no intention of imposing anything - which is why I brought it here for discussion. Now that I have discovered that that spelling is controversial, I am trying to establish what the best advice for the spelling choice is. FishGF (talk) 14:54, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

In which case please identify it as a point of contention to be addressed as part of the review follow-up. It is not necessary to address it while conducting the rest of the review. Martinvl (talk) 15:20, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

I agree with the concept of Martinvl's posting; a choice among several spellings of angstrom, each of which is supported by a reliable source should not be deciding factor as to whether this is a good article, so can be addressed at any time by anyone, before or after the conclusion of the GA review.

I found a blog from the University of Illinois. The blogger, Dennis Baron, indicates the US Supreme Court has referred to dictionaries over 664 times when it was necessary to find the common meaning of words. In recent words, they relied on Webster’s Third or the Oxford English Dictionary. We've seen what the OED lists first, maybe someone has convenient access to Webster’s Third.

There are at least two complications.

1. Since ångström is mostly used by people with technical backgrounds, they might be more inclined to follow an official standard than general speakers of English, if they were aware of the standard.

1. Dictionaries count instances of words in well-edited publications. It's possible some of the author's who's writing was counted might have wished they could have used the diacritical marks, but the editing system at their disposal didn't let them do so.

Jc3s5h (talk) 16:30, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

I'll mention it in the review, and leave it there. FishGF (talk) 22:02, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

A Dictionary of Science and Technology might be appropriate in this context. --Boson (talk) 23:20, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

The Larousse Dictionary of Science and Technology has ångström. So does the body of the fifteenth edition of Kaye & Laby (properly called Tables of Physical and Chemical Constants and some Mathematical Functions), a popular WP:RS. Curiously the index of Kaye and Laby has Ångstrom; the entire index is capitalised but the omission of the umlaut is odd (it is retained in other index entries such as Lamb-Mössbauer fraction); it's hard to imagine it was a deliberate assertion that the text was wrong. The index of the first edition does have the umlaut. NebY (talk) 15:01, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

I think the best way forward regarding the spelling to use (and if necessary any differences between usage in different types of article) might be a discussion at Talk:Angstrom, advertised at WP:WikiProject Measurement, WP:WikiProject Sweden, and WT:Article titles. This might also involve a move request, --Boson (talk) 23:20, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

I fear editors might not want to re-open discussion there just two years after the last very inconclusive RM discussion, but I have watchlisted it and would join in. NebY (talk) 15:08, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

It seems to me that RSs in English lean towards using Å. In terms of this turning into a RM, that would make it the "version of the name of the subject which is most common in the English language, as you would find it in reliable sources (for example other encyclopedias and reference works, scholarly journals and major news sources)." (WP:EN) Also, it's not like this is a completely foreign spelling to a general English speaking audience. A single vowel with a circle over it is still legible as if it were written in all English letters. ...but I am biased towards favouring such spellings (FFD).
In any case, I agree with Boson. If there is a serious desire to bring this to discussion (and consensus), the best way forward is moving this to Talk:Angstrom and posting {{please see}} notices on other related talk pages. —Sowlos  20:03, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

As a meta-issue, this thread starts with the statement "The general rules about spelling in Wikipedia are to use the most common English literature spelling." Could we have a reference for this? It seems to me that it is something that is being applied with far too much force in general, especially when the competing spellings are not from different variants of English, but from different contexts, some of which may merit more weight than others. — Quondum 22:40, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

See WP:DIACRITICS, specifically: "... when deciding between versions of a word which differ in the use or non-use of modified letters, follow the general usage in reliable sources that are written in the English language (including other encyclopedias and reference works)." FishGF (talk) 19:43, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Appreciated, and obviously applicable in this instance. Not applicable per se in the broader context (e.g. deciding between Google books n-gram counts and standards bodies, usually not involving modified letters), where I see occasional disputes too. — Quondum 20:03, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

ChrisJBenson (talk) 12:15, 13 March 2014 (UTC) (as usual arriving six months late) writes: The Angstrom article states:

The unit's name is often written in English without the diacritics. (citing an unabridged dictionary)

That is an understatement. For the record (at least of this Talk page), Google's N-gram Viewer registers only a very small (but non-zero) frequency of the [case insensitive] appearance of ångström in the English corpus ,starting around 1960 (after excluding references to the scientist as a person, Swedish-English dictionaries, and other bilingual texts) with angstrom being one thousand times more popular in 1963, and three thousand times more popular by 2000. Although there are several fictional characters named Angstrom and occasionally other authors named Ångström, scientific texts [books and papers] in English, overwhelmingly favour the unaccented form, even by people of a technical background obviously using this meaning of angstrom. I think this indicates the more common English language spelling is angstrom by so much of a margin that it would have to remain so after discarding "typographically-challenged" sources. The diacritic form of the word as a unit of measurement of course appears consistently in official SI documents, but a little less consistently in scientific dictionaries, only in a secondary role in good general-purpose dictionaries, and almost not at all in the general corpus of English publications, which by the word's very meaning, are nearly all of a scientific nature, and written by people with a technical background.

I deliberately refrained from even sneaking a look at the breakdown of those results by British/American variants, but could one re-use the Wikipedia policy/guideline in that perennial transatlantic tussle? To whit: use angstrom throughout, but mention at the first instance that the official definition is ångström. The first instance is the only instance in the current version of this article, but in my opinion, that should not obviate conformance with such an adopted Wikipedia policy. I noted the following sentence in this essay on writing better articles:

In the English-language Wikipedia, the English form does not always have to come first: sometimes the non-English word is better as the main text, with the English in parentheses or set off by commas after it.

It would be ironic if the original reverter (to the accented form) really did cite Wikipedia's Angstrom article (rather than the Ångström article), particularly as it does not indicate that ångström is in "greater general usage in English" than angstrom. And that is Wikipedia's clearly-stated criterion in this matter (see Wikipedia:Diacritics). It was hard for me (a research scientist) to learn that Wikipedia content reflects what is commonly reported in the majority of reliable sources rather than "the truth", or the formal official definition. Although WP:NPOV is about Ps of V rather than spelling, one could argue that using the official SI-defined spelling (that is usually repeated in scientific encyclopaedias) is biased, failing to give due weight to the majority of reliable sources. General dictionaries may not be considered the authoritative source by the serious angstrom-user, but they already know. Wikipedia's target audience is a lay-person in another English-speaking country who wants to learn.

For amusement purposes only: This joint JPL/NASA web page manages to offer three different spellings and three different meanings in just four instances of angstrom. ChrisJBenson (talk) 12:15, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

I'd leave it as is (i.e. with diacritics). As you say, it's the first mention so should show the correct form. Yes, it could also show the commonly-used form, but in this situation - one simple mention in a brief list - I don't think the text needs to dwell on it. Anyone perturbed by the diacritics can click on the link which is to Angstrom and not to Ångström which is a redirect. All this is entirely in keeping with WP:DIACRITICS, from which FishGF quoted "... when deciding between versions of a word which differ in the use or non-use of modified letters, follow the general usage in reliable sources that are written in the English language (including other encyclopedias and reference works)" but omitted the beginning of the sentence "The use of modified letters (such as accents or other diacritics) in article titles is neither encouraged nor discouraged;" or any mention that this part of the guideline concerned titles rather than body text. (Similarly, when you say "It would be ironic if the original reverter (to the accented form) really did cite Wikipedia's Angstrom article" I fear that you have been misled by FishGF; the reverter actually commented "Please see Wikipedia article on the ångström". There's some history there; WP:Sockpuppet_investigations/DeFacto/Archive#31_July_2013 touches on it.) NebY (talk) 16:35, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

I agree with all of the paragraph above, except with the interpretation of "general usage". To me, that means "the more common usage" (in reliable sources in the English language). That is overwhelmingly without diacritic marks. It's not a big deal, and the overarching constraint of being consistent is likely to be maintained with only one appearance ;-) ChrisJBenson (talk) 07:23, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

... and I trust there's no problem with my unrelated reversion at the end of the lead. It was formerly "buildings, trades, and railways sectors" (three things, two of them nonsensical), and was corrected to "building trade and railway sectors" (two things in common parlance). ChrisJBenson (talk) 07:35, 15 March 2014 (UTC)