Talk:Mourning stationery

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Lightburst talk 15:49, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

Envelope with a mourning border c. 1861

• ... that it was common in the Victorian era that people would place black borders (pictured) on letters and envelopes to signify that they are in a mourning period? Source: https://www.westerncape.gov.za/assets/departments/cultural-affairs-sport/mourning_stationary.pdf
  • Reviewed:
  • Comment: Not 100% sure on the link. For it to say "black border" rather than something to do with mourning stationery is a bit vague.

Created by Panamitsu (talk). Self-nominated at 12:55, 7 September 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Mourning stationery; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

• Panamitsu, what a fascinating subject. also, that is a rather unfortunate typo in the westerncape source.
  • general: article is new enough and long enough.
  • policy:
    • article is neutral. earwig shows nothing of concern. spot checks of at least three different sources did not reveal any close paraphrasing.
      • i was unable to confirm in either the keim source or the westerncape source that mourning stationery letters were always white (with black borders). did i miss it? alternatively, does this fall under wp:bluesky? if so, is it necessary to mention? i am admittedly unfamiliar with the available colors of paper at the time.
      • the townandcountrymag source actually states that queen elizabeth ii did use stationery with black borders after the death of prince philip, albeit only once. i'm not sure if this should somehow be incorporated into the article. a footnote seems appropriate.
    • the article is currently an orphan, but i believe wp:dyktag does not consider this disqualifying.
    • the covecollective source appears to be a student assignment. is this source considered reliable?
      • this source discusses how recipients had to pay to receive letters that used mourning stationery. however, i believe, around that time in the u.k., recipients were often supposed to pay to receive letters of any kind, so i am not sure if this is relevant to mourning stationery specifically. in addition, the source appears to be focused on u.k. practice, while the wikipedia article appears to be discussing the general practice of mourning stationery, so until i had read the source, i had gotten the impression from the article that recipients in the u.s. and in west africa also had to pay to receive letters on mourning stationery.
    • the hobancards source appears to be a blog entry for a print shop run by its proprietors as a hobby until recently. is there evidence that this is a reliable source?
  • image:
    • image was uploaded by an editor who regularly contributes to commons. it is from a collection at the university of illinois that has made its images free to use. the university states that the author of the underlying work died in 1902, making the underlying work in the public domain. the image is used in the article and is clear in the thumbnail provided.
    • is the image of a letter or an envelope? to me, it looks like an envelope. i think this is an image of one of the pages of the letter enclosed.
    • i believe the terminal punctuation should be removed, as per mos:capfrag.
  • qpq: not required.
  • hook:
    • hook is under 200 characters, interesting, accurate, cited, and neutral.
    • i don't know if this is a wp:engvar issue, but i think "place" should be replaced with either "placed" or "would place", and "are" should be replaced with "were". feel free to ignore this if you don't think doing so would be an improvement.
    • if you want to change the link text, i would recommend linking "black borders on letters and envelopes" instead. also, i think "(example pictured)" would be a more appropriate parenthetical, though "(pictured)" is fine.
  • points outside of the dyk criteria:
    • i think the concept of a calling card may be unfamiliar to many nowadays, so i would suggest linking it to the "visiting card" article.
    • to me, it seems strange to state that the death of a child had a thick border. perhaps "may have a" could be replaced with "may call for a".
    • i feel like the comma should be removed after "chose not to use the black border". with the comma, the article appears to suggest that the queen signified her mourning by not using the border, while the townandcountrymag source states instead that she signified it by using stationery that had her crest in black rather than in red.

dying (talk) 05:13, 8 September 2023 (UTC) [struck sentence regarding the article being an orphan. dying (talk) 10:30, 17 September 2023 (UTC)]

@Dying: I've incorporated your points on the "otuside of the dyk criteria". I agree with your changes about the hook. I wasn't too sure about the "white" part either so I just removed it. I wasn't able to verify what you said about Elizabeth II using the mourning border, could you perhaps give a quote? The article is also no longer an orphan. I'm also not familiar with the part about paying so I'm unsure myself about whether regular letters (and in other countries) had to pay for them, so I've just stuck to the soruces for now. As for your concerns about a source being a student assignment, I wasn't able to find any evidence of this. Perhaps could you point this out? I also agree about your last point and it seems to be an envelope rather than a letter, although I feel the terms are often interchangable. Panamitsu (talk) 05:44, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

• Panamitsu, would you like to propose an alternative hook alt1 incorporating the changes you agree with? that way, i can directly approve alt1, and any promoter can easily understand how the hook should be presented without having to review our comments. note that i think images are generally not reproduced alongside new hook alternatives, so if you agree that the caption's terminal punctuation should be removed, i think it is better to simply remove it from the originally proposed caption.
• the following quote is from the townandcountrymag source.

  Queen Elizabeth, however, did use the black-edged stationery for one final note to Prince Philip. [link removed]

  an image of the note can apparently be seen here.
• you are correct about the article no longer being an orphan. it was an orphan at the time i began my review, but i neglected to check to confirm that it still was when i published the review. apologies. i have struck the statement.
• in case you are interested, our article on the postal history of the u.k. briefly mentions the practice of having the recipient pay for postage, regardless of whether mourning stationery was used. this source from the victorian web also discusses the practice. regarding the covecollective source, there is a link near the top right of the page, with the link text "The Brontës, Fall 2022", that leads to a description of the course, seen archived here. the course is clearly focused on life in england around the time of the brontës, so i am not sure if its statements should be presented in the article without providing the proper context, since the mourning stationery article covers more than just the practice of using such stationery in england when the brontës were alive.
• that is an interesting point about the interchangeability of the words "letter" and "envelope". personally, after i had read the caption, i was expecting to find the beginning of some prose typical of the contents of a letter when examining the image more closely, so i was surprised to see that what was written in the image was not much more than a name and an informal address. in any case, this appears to be a mos:engvar issue, so after your explanation, i am happy to ignore the issue.
• did you have any comments about the hobancards source?

dying (talk) 10:30, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

I've removed the part about the recipents paying to receive the letters, it does seem to be normal for the time and it was only one source I recall that said it. The article is under 1,500 characters, so another expansion is needed.

Also I've updated the hook, I'm not sure how but I completely omitted the "would" and didn't realise, despite your mention of it being gramatically correct. Apologies, but hey at least it isn't as bad as the typo from one of the sources.

I've also updated the comment about the Queen using a mourning border at the end. Me missing things out seems to be a theme here, eh?

I also agree with your comment about 'letter' creating the expectation that it is the contents of the envelope, so I've changed that. I've also removed the terminal full stop from caption.

Yeah that hobancards source seems weird. I'll find a more reliable source. —Panamitsu (talk) ^{Please ping on reply} 11:19, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Panamitsu, i just wanted to check in to see how your search for a replacement for the hobancards source is going. i think this is the only unresolved issue; by my count, the article has about 1525 characters of prose. i noticed that the hobancards source has a list of sources at the bottom. i don't know if there is one that supports the relevant statements in the article, and i am not sure if they are all reliable, but i thought it might be worth it to check. dying (talk) 02:01, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

@Dying: I had quite a bit of trouble, but I've just found a book from 1876 in that list of sources you mention to replace the hobancards source. I also found a painting from 1863 which portrays mourning stationery which is quite interesting. Quite fortunately the painting is on Wikimedia Commons. —Panamitsu (talk) 07:57, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

oh, Panamitsu, that image is a nice find! also, i'm glad that an examination of the list in the hobancards source bore fruit.

note to promoters: the marginalian, though a self-published source, seems reliable, as the author, maria popova, is a notable writer on such topics, and it appears that some posts on the marginalian have been published in the atlantic.

anyway, everything else looks good. thanks for addressing these issues! dying (talk) 19:35, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

alt0 approved. dying (talk) 19:35, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Russian use in print

It is common practice in Russian periodicals, such as scientific journals, to put a black box around the name of an author who died before publication. Is this a related phenomenon? Piledhigheranddeeper (talk) 14:33, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I haven't heard of this before, but it certainly does look to be! —Panamitsu (talk) 21:49, 20 October 2023 (UTC)