Talk:Ormulum

NPOV

Come now, this is Wikipedia - we can't describe something as "wholly devoid of literary merit" here. Besides, Orm does quite well on the drowsiness test. I can attest to once having read the first 50 lines of his magnum opus before I started nodding. That's 40 lines more than Finnegans Wake can claim, and I see people over there claiming they're writing about a masterpiece! Haeleth 15:45, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, I had planned to substantiate it a bit by pointing out that

1. It's derivative, lock-step, from Bede and Glossia Ordinaris
2. Its meter is bone-jarring
3. When it's not rattling your bones, the meter is dulling your brain
4. The allegory and typology are lacking in any references to actual life at all, so even the sermons don't give us a glimpse of anyone living
5. It's repetititititititive.

So I had kind of wanted to make the case that it was NPOV without any literary merit at all. It has a great deal of importance, but not as a work of literature. Oh, and if you think Orm's bad, try reading Cursor Mundi. I still have nightmares about having to speed read that before class because it had bored me to a coma the night before.

BTW, if you have more info on Orm, I'm going to try to work this sucka into Featured Article shape in the next few weeks. Your input would be a great help. (Reading 50 lines of Ormulum is rarer than even claiming to understand Finnegans Wake.)

Obviously, I don't have any problem with the NPOV version of the "no literary merit" claim, but I do think that saying that it has no merit is more or less incontrovertible. Geogre 16:42, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I found a source that says that the work is without literary merit! (tee-hee) (No, I won't put it in, but I will cite it when making my own disparaging comments.) (Oh, and it's not JAWs Bennett.) Geogre 22:20, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I should note for posterity that my tongue was firmly in my cheek above. I did once try to devil's-advocate Orm in a tutorial, but I must admit my argument was not wholly convincing. ^_^

Getting this featured article status sounds like a great idea. I'll see if there's anything I can add. Haeleth 23:05, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Do, please. I'm going to tinker with the lead a bit for a while, but I've finished researching it to the degree that I can. There are other things to say, but they're of the dreadfully dull variety (cataloging the ON doublets, picking some danged morphology and talking about how it shows up here then there then nowhere over X years, getting into a tangent about illiterate clergy in 1175, going on a tangent about vernacular masses in 1175, speculating on whether hand B is Walter or Orm still or none of the above, speculating on Hand C being Walter or Orm or the little boy who lives down the lane), and none of them would help make this story exciting. With a fair lead, I think the article would pass FAC, once the prose has been smoothed with rough hands. What I'm most concerned with, though, is whole angles that I've missed, as I'm sure I have. (E.g. I don't talk about patristic exegesis at all (and I don't think WP has an article on it), so explaining Augustine and Bede analyzing everything on a fourfold path is not here. It would only be here to explain how really bizarrely unhelpful Ormulum can be to moderns trying to understand the 12th c. church.) Any input welcome. (And yes, I saw the bulging cheek.) Geogre 01:37, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Hey, Haeleth? I was thinking. Perhaps this article needs a new template, one that says, "Kids, don't try (to read) this at home!" Figure folks are getting the message that reading this book is sort of like an autolobotomy? Geogre 02:05, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Including a few more quotations should have the same effect, don't you think? ;)

The dedication, for example, being the most famous (or do I mean notorious?) passage - I can't imagine why B&S didn't include it; I have it in Treharne, but a diplomatic edition would be even better. Haeleth 14:11, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

I've only got B&S and no access to a full ed., although some Projector or other may have put it on the web (and then the authority has to be established). Not much point in putting in Orm's explanation of his spelling system, as it would do no one much good. Hmmm. I'm not afraid of translating myself, but I'll need some text that's worth the effort. Again, any from your quarter would be most welcome. Geogre 18:29, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Queries

Order of C17th ownership: currently the article states "it was purchased first by Franz Junius and then Jan van Vliet, both Dutch antiquarians. It came to the Bodleian library as part of the Junius donation". I don't have anything that discusses the MS history ATM, but that looks odd to me. IIRC Junius acquired it from van Vliet's library after the latter's death - had he owned it previously too? Haeleth 22:06, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Your version makes more sense, but I did get the information from a source (that Medieval Encyclopedia, I believe), and its sentence structure said that Junius and van Vliet owned it successively. That, of course, is one of those sentences that people write when they don't want to give the specifics, and it's fully possible (likely, even) that the author there got it wrong. We all know what fudging looks like, but, when I was making my notes, I didn't have reason to look closely. However, how it came to be the "Junius donation" when it wasn't Junius's has been bothering me some. We can fudge, too, or just put it right. Feel free. (You were also right about the thorn/eth.) Geogre 22:57, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Orm the Ready?

It looks ready to me. Barring objection, I'll nominate it for FA tomorrow. Or, if you'd prefer to nominate it, Haeleth, I'll gladly give place. The point is, this is now a very, very good looking article on a very ugly book. Geogre 18:57, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

And now it is done. We wish ourselves good luck, I'm sure, and intelligent readers. Geogre 02:52, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Yuck, the Yoghs!

-or- Yoghi bare!

Umm, the yoghs still aren't displaying properly for me, with Firefox. I'm not sure what the solution to this is, as I'd need to study some to get up to naif level with screen fonts. Geogre 03:13, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Working fine for me, also with Firefox. Do they work at Yogh? I copied the solution from there (Template:Unicode). So long as you have a font installed that actually contains the proper character, they should be fine. Code2000 has it, although it's a hideous font. — Haeleth Talk 13:42, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, no, now that you mention it, they don't work at yogh for me. So long as it's the fault of my old browser, I have no problem with it. You've coded it in keeping with Wikipedia standards. Beyond that, there is little that anyone can do except use pictures, and those, of course, don't work for text samples from Ormulum. Geogre 13:47, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately, what is needed is a font which the reader of the article has installed. In this connection, the writer is relatively unimportant. Though it is not the answer of a purist, would it not be better provisionally, to use something like "ζ", together with an explanation of the diffuculty? While not ideal, it is better than the burst of machine speak, which I get now. (RJP 19:38, 23 October 2005 (UTC))

A better replacement would be ʒ... it's still not universal, but it's present in more fonts than yogh, and it's closer to the right character, too. Is it visible for you here: "þeʒʒre"?

Failing that, there's a hacky alternative: "þe33re".

It seems to work here (Firefox, IE, and Opera all display it "acceptably"), and it has the added advantage (?) of being legible even for Lynx users. Plus anyone who ever transcribed Middle English with a typewriter will surely love being reminded of this venerable technique. ;)

— Haeleth Talk 20:31, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Using Internet Explorer, these work for me on the formal discussion page but not on the edit or difference presentations of it. (RJP 22:16, 23 October 2005 (UTC))

"Turn platen one half line, type 3, backspace, type 3 again, turn platen back up half a line." Oh, yeah. Fortunately, I wasn't dealing with yoghs when I was dealing with typewriters (still thinking, at that time, that Modern literature was the coolest). All of the above work, but we really are at a difficult pass. To some degree, we can only do what we can do. Short of having articles in .pdf, we're always going to be limited to the expanded font packages. While the solutions above work for we three, we can't really tell what's going to happen to people with entirely different character sets (French, Swedish, Dutch) or those who use font translation programs (any oriental language). I'm content with things as they are, but an changing to another, more accepted, way is, of course, good. Geogre 02:11, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

I think we do need to do something - a featured article, by its very nature, needs to be accessible to those unfamiliar with the field, and while you can obviously say "aha, missing character, must be yogh", a visitor to Wikipedia would say "dear me, looks like this site is buggy". I'm rather suprised nobody's brought this up on the FAC page. They probably all have Unicode fonts installed... :/

I've managed to rule out using ezh, since my Win98 testbed (with deliberately limited range of fonts) didn't manage to display that. The <3> hack is neat, but not nice, and I don't know if Wikipedians really approve of that sort of thing.

There are two alternative approaches. The first would be to take editorial liberties: I note that Orm doesn't appear to use <y> (at least, not in the quoted passages)... might it be reasonable to substitute that, with an appropriate note? We've already followed the editors we quote in silently replacing wynn with <w>, after all, and it's the traditional thing to do for Layamon.

The other approach would be to substitute an equally "representative" passage that doesn't use any yoghs.

Comments? — Haeleth Talk 13:44, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

There's always one guy who'll say, "Meh, close enough." I suppose I'm him, here, but, at the same time, you're absolutely correct. The Ayenbite that has been requested is another such instance. (I think with Layamon the argument is sometimes that it the consonant became /y/ in his case, so modern editors feel like they're helping readers by making him more obviously Lawyerman. All such things are excuses, though.) Given that we are always already out of compliance with some browser or OS (e.g. does anyone know how far "Windows MediaCenter" or "Longhorn" are going to shove the old fonts out of whack), the kludge-y but best solution might well be to use an unusable typographical symbol (*, ^, #) and have a "Key" that indicates that that symbol was used for the yogh. That would be the most honest way to do it, but it won't give the uninitiated any way to understand it. They won't attempt to read it in their heads (assuming they can read thorn, eth, and ash now). I just don't see how we can chase down the horizon with the reverse Procrustean effort of fitting everyone's bed at once. Geogre 18:17, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Excuse my naïvety but is it not possible to ask for another character in the list at the foot of the editing page? Can they not be constructed from pixels? (RJP 22:03, 24 October 2005 (UTC))

You can't be more naive than I am when it comes to fonts, but I think that won't work. I think that what we're dealing with is less finding a way to insert a character as finding a way to ensure that everyone looking at the page can display it. Any browser can display them, if the browser's owner has updated his or her font package, but some do and some don't come with the various solutions already in the default set. Maybe I'm wrong, though. I don't even know what a unicode is (except a thing used by the unibomb). Geogre 00:10, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

It might be technically possible to insert characters as bitmaps; I believe that's the Wikipedia standard way of dealing with Egyptian hieroglyphs. It would also have been possible to include a little infobox like they have on articles about Indic languages, explaining that you might need to install a special font to see all the text perfectly.

Reading through the excerpt in B&S again, though, I was fortunate enough to come across a little passage that seems to be just as representative of Orm's delightful style, and doesn't use any yoghs. This struck me as the ideal solution - filled with accessibility and scholarly integrity. And it uses the word middellærd, so the article will now automatically appeal to Tolkien fans too. What could be better? ^_^ — Haeleth Talk 19:48, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Oh, hilarious! "The learned scribe Orm did battle against the grimlic foe of sloppy pronunciation and speedy publication. 'Publish or perish,' cried the foe. 'Both,' replied the stout Dragonman." (And the article has made it to FA. So congrats and thanks to all.) Geogre 21:12, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

I just read the passage. What a stinker! Let someone question the lack of literary champion after reading that passage. :-) (We kid because we love.) Geogre 01:23, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Sources

I can't believe this article is featured, as it is almost completely without references to credible sources, therefore I added a reference tag. Also, it has many subjective wording which should be altered. Some examples:

"While some scholars have held that the likely origin is Elsham Priory in north Lincolnshire, recently it has been widely accepted that Orm wrote in the Arrouaisian Bourne Abbey" - which scholars? widely accepted by whom? sources please!

"The date of composition is impossible to pinpoint." - again, references to sources please. Is this the author's opinion, or established fact?

"The parchment used in the manuscript is of the lowest quality, and the text itself is written untidily" - NPOV, anyone?

Also, who is this J.A.W. Bennett guy? He's the mentioned various times as authoritive, but there's no Wikipedia page on him.

Jalwikip 09:21, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

• Your ignorance is absolutely astounding! First: cited to Parke (who counters the argument and presents it). Second: no one proves a negative, so, when you find someone who pinpoints the composition, please do let the world know; until then, you can accept what every historian has said, and, of course, you could try to read the damned sentence which explains why no one knows exactly when. Fourth: cited. Fifth: you have got to be kidding. Did you even try a Google search on Bennett? Have you ever studied anything in Middle English? Have you ever studied Anglo-Saxon? Have you ever studied Medieval English history? If you have ever done any of these, you will have encountered Bennett. He owns the map. Now, if you put that tag on again, I'll speak to some folks about your behavior. You've had an admin who knows the field remove it, and now you've had me respond and remove it. If you put it back again, you'll simply show obdurance. Utgard Loki 12:38, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

It's not my ignorance that is astounding: clearly you do not know the rules of Wikipedia. I cited a list of weasel words and NPOV violations present in the article, that are without clear reference. You just dismiss those. And no, I do not want to Google for anything when I'm reading Wikipedia, the knowledge should be right here. And no, I did not study Middle English, Anglo Saxon or whatever, as you clearly did - do you mean to say I should in order to understand the merrits of your prose? This article was at the time I wrote my comment (I haven't checked it since), of very bad quality, using the weasel words and NPOV wording I spelled out, and void of any clear in-line references. If you think otherwise, it's you who is blatently ignorant (not on the subject, no doubt, but of Wikipedia guidelines in general). Jalwikip (talk) 14:19, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Here is some help for the befuddled. Bennett had a very, very long career of masterful and careful scholarship. In addition to multiple surveys of ME lit, he put together the standard OUP anthology of Early Middle English Poetry and Prose. Anyone studying eME, which is what the Ormulum is, has to hit him, if one is studying the general shape of the language and literature. It would have been mighty nice if, instead of throwing tags around without discussion, one took the time to read carefully and do even perfunctory searches. As for whether Bennett needs a Wikipedia article or not, I should expect that he was not the sort of man vain enough to wish for nor the kind of lightweight scholar who would need an article on him. He served nobly in a neglected field. Geogre 21:03, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

What I said above also stands here: I do not need to do 'perfunctory searches' if reading a Wikipedia article. My ignorance on J.A.W. Benett may be befuddling for those knowing him and having studied him, but I bet that 99.99999% of Wikipedia visitors do not know him. So at the very least, a short introductory remark the first time he is introduced between parentheses would be nice. And of course I did not 'throw around' a tag because if the Benett guy, but because of the many weasel words and lack of in-line references. Jalwikip (talk) 14:19, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Ah, that's why Bentley has an article and Bennett doesn't. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.255.154.111 (talk) 21:58, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

In defense of that anyway, one can argue that Bentley was discussed and battled against, so we need an article on him. Without knowledge of him, a fair number of jokes from 18th c. lit. fall flat, and several publishing trends get harder to understand, and the "Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns" has a hole in it. Because JAW Bennett is not raising ire, gall, or eyebrows, one supposes that there is less need for an article on him. When he becomes a figure of fun in a Martin Amiss novel, we'll have need. Geogre 10:19, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Gordon Bennett! :-) J. A. W. Bennett has existed since 20 June 2007. Carcharoth 23:37, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

It's even more mysterious, then. I wonder if our user up there is doing WP:POINT or just a parody? Geogre 10:19, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Orm's name

Does the -in element in Ormin really come from -myn = man? Couldn't it be the Norse affigated article -inn? The name is after all Scaninavian. Please explain.

-Gertjan —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.194.71.216 (talk) 12:21, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

'Orminn' (The Wyrm) wouldn't make sense as a name, as it would be in accusative case. It would be far more natural to take the name Ormrinn as a penname, which is nominative. To explain:

Orminn vegr konungrinn (the king kills the wyrm)

Ormrinn vegr konunginn (the wyrm kills the king)

The second example is far more natural as a self-reference in Old Norse. Hope this helps.

BodvarBjarki (talk) 09:28, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

His name without the suffix is Orm not Ormr. Plus as far as we know he didn't speak Norse, just English. So he wouldn't have known how to make Norse noun declensions. It's more plausible to assume that the suffix was originally the definite article, but was meaningless to a 12th century English speaker hence its seemingly optional presence. Anyway isn't the Norse word for man "maður"? Walshie79 (talk) 16:55, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Citations?

I thought this was an excellent article and enjoyed reading it, my compliments to the authors. My only concern about it was the lack, at least to my eyes, of in-line citations (Wikipedia:Citing sources) in many sections of the text. Since excellent sources are listed at the bottom of the page, surely it would be an easy enough task to indicate what pages the information was drawn from. How else would anyone be able to verify the content of the text? It could even be confused with original research.Waygugin (talk) 04:44, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree - how can an article be promoted to featured status without a single in-line citation? – ukexpat (talk) 03:22, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Seriously, what's the deal here? Should I not consider it to be primarily original research when most statements of fact are unsourced (answer: of course you should). Featured? Bleech. LoveUxoxo (talk) 03:32, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

My guess is that the article was promoted to FA status when the criteria (or the community interpretation of the criteria) were far more relaxed (2005) than they are these days. If you visit some foreign language (i.e., not as popular) wikipedias, you will see that some of them promote articles to FA status that probably wouldn't even reach GA status here, which might be due to the lack of high quality articles against which you can compare new nominations. Anyway, I enjoyed this article but was also confused by the evident lack of in-line citations. I would like to help with solving this issue, but unfortunately this was the first time I read about Ormulum. universalcosmos | talk 05:34, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

I've boldly put in a couple of tags marking what seem (to me) to be the most glaring examples of possible OR or lack of clear citations for the ordinary reader. (Including one mentioned and then dismissed earlier on this talk page.) Hopefully someone who knows the material better will get a chance to clarify and improve these. My first reaction was to tag an entire section as unreferenced. This was incorrect, as it wasn't unreferenced - just not very clear to those used to the current method of inline citations, as you say. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 08:22, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

This will go for FAR after it's off the main page for sure. Bear in mind it was promoted in 2005. Spiderone 10:32, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

I know that, but shouldn't it have been reassessed before being put on the main page five years later? – ukexpat (talk) 13:13, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Main page or not, I still think it merits a {{No footnotes}} tag. Lamberhurst (talk) 16:32, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

The unfortunate truth seems to be that, whoever is choosing TFAs, they don't seem to bother checking if the articles live up to today's standards, or those of five years ago. Lampman (talk) 03:13, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

"Oh, this will go to FAR!" Yes. That's nice. FAR serves an important function! Let's see, it's to... to... to... uh.... Anyway, the article had citations. They were also "in line." They were NOT, however, computer code citations. The author believed, before he died, that all of the footnote systems were bad. Instead, there were citations at the end of every sentence to the source in parenthetical citation. Someone has thoughtfully removed them all.

1. Having to go down to a source is a disruption of the reading experience, and it dissuades readers from considering sources.

2. All tags and codes that control "footnotes" are susceptible to superseding by the next fool with a bit of code or the next Wiki engine or the next -bot. Therefore, forcing all references into such systems imperils ALL works. On the other hand, textual citations in the form of the MLA citational method do not get superseded.

3. All tags and codes that control "notes" systems can be broken at a single juncture. An error or a bad edit or an attack edit or a poorly done -bot can neutralize all research by hitting at the control codes, where textual citations do not disappear so easily.

4. Footnotes are less reliable than textual references. Inasmuch as they are all effectively endnoted, all deferred, they can be incorrect only once and be incorrect forever, or they can be fabricated once and lie forever.

5. The final argument is a simple one: computer code controlled citations offered no advantage in terms of reliability or accountability for an article, and they introduced new errors and weaknesses to these areas.

That is why the Author was against putting in fiddly diddly codes and boxes and hanging out with coders to talk about how to get the super code to over code the under code for the note-note-not-note. He figured that there was no profit to the reader in such things.

The Author has died, though. There were exact page numbers for each fact taken from Bennett. Burchfield is a single paragraph in a book, so only one page number applies. In general, Ormulum gets relatively scant attention, so it takes some work to synthesize material. There is no "OR" here, although there is research which is conducted for the first time. This is a new synthesis of existing information, and synthesis is the presentation of something novel from the tumble and rumble of thesis and antithesis. All the dead Author wishes is that, if they go to FAR, they simply remove the star rather than stick ignorant fingers into linguistics, philology, and history, and demand "footnotes" (which will go to websites that have derived their information from... THIS ARTICLE). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.186.127.134 (talk) 17:48, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Historical Linguistics

Someone has written, in the section on "Significance," "It also demonstrates what would become Received Standard English two centuries before Chaucer (Burchfield)." Now, not having access to the Burchfield source, I of course have no idea what he actually said that was referred to here. However, is it exactly right to specify Received Standard English here? Orm's English probably didn't take a direct line to Received Standard English -- surely it became other Englishes as well? Or perhaps it died out completely and RSE is a descendant of another English? It seems a little beside-the-point to specify Received Standard English in this case, especially when Linguists value all dialects equally, and they're the ones to whom the Ormulum is most valuable as a source of information. Julie90043 (talk) 02:28, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

It's exactly what Burchfield said. I have doubts as well. I don't see a direct path, either, and I was stretching slightly for significance to avoid making Ormulum seem purely a philological curio. However, in Burchfield's defense, since his is also the very penetrating insight that the MSS may be in terrible paper because it was a draft/working copy, I would suppose that the argument is that, in comparison to the dialects we see in Agenbite of Inwitte or Ancrene Wisse, we are seeing the Midlands language that becomes the dominant RC. I.e., "If you want to see the branch of the tree that became ModE, the step behind Chaucer is this," I guess. In documentary evidence, he's probably right. Still, of all the claims in the article, that was the one that I felt least persuaded by myself. -- The Author (deceased) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.186.127.134 (talk) 17:34, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Orthography: phonetic or phonemic?

The introduction to the article claims that the Ormulum employs a 'phonetic orthography', yet the description of it that comes later makes it sound like it's a (roughly) phonemic orthography. Can anyone clarify which it is? Dougg (talk) 05:42, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Content and Style - Orm's motivation - needs clarification

This diff [1] shows two different approaches to the explanation of what Orm's motivation was. (Really this needs better sourcing as well, but that is a separate issue.)

I think I understand to some extent what is being said, but it needs further clarification. I don't think the clergy would be unable to *transliterate* Latin to Middle English, as such. Is *translate* what is meant?

I do wonder if that is also unclear. Would clergy, even low-ranking clergy, of the period, be unable to either "navigate" or translate (understand) Latin? Perhaps the meaning is rather that they were not supposed to - or allowed to - translate the Bible directly from Latin into English in this period. Whichever way it is, it should be made clearer.

It would be great to get this fixed while the article is featured on the front page, as at present this passage is somewhat confusing for the newcomer. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 08:35, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps what is meant is this: "The motivation was to provide an accessible English text for the benefit of the less educated Englishmen, which might include some clergy who found it difficult to understand the Latin of the Vulgate Bible, and the parishioners who in most cases would not understand spoken Latin at all. " Thoughts? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 08:53, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

OK I have gone ahead and put that in place. If that's not really what it means, please tell me. As apparently completely unsourced speculation about the motivations of someone who died around 800 years ago, it may have to be deleted eventually anyway. But for now at least, I think it makes better sense. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 12:15, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

• Dang game of telephone. Ok, what it said, or should have said, is for the benefit of clergy who could not understand Latin. Period. If one looks into the matter of the Fourth Lateran Council, one discovers that a chief aim of it was to ensure that priests could read Latin. No joke. Prior to that, there were priests who themselves did not understand the books they were reading aloud to the congregations, who certainly did not understand what they were hearing.
• Thus, Bennett pointed out that, in advance of an order to do so, Orm was showing an interest in ensuring that priests and laity understood the Bible with his homilies in eME. By writing paraphrase and commentary in the spoken language, he educated the clergy and laity who could not pierce Latin. There would be yet another reform to foster preaching, later. -- The Author of the Article (deceased) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.186.127.134 (talk) 17:30, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Caption awkward

The following caption is awkward, it should be reworded:

The interior of the church of Bourne Abbey, where the Ormulum was composed: the two nave arcades, though now whitewashed, remain from the church Orm would have known.

Smallman12q (talk) 11:48, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Inline Ref

Is it me, vandalism, or does the article literally not have a single inline reference as per WP:REF?Smallman12q (talk) 11:51, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Correct, see above for the reasons. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 12:12, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Which Bennett ???

There are two different sources with "Bennett", cited in the Sources section. Which one is being referred to, when? Years are needed as well, in the in-line citations, please. Thanks. -- Cirt (talk) 23:43, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Please do not remove these tags. There are two sources cited for "Bennett", so years and page numbers need to be given. -- Cirt (talk) 17:12, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

I was going to make a similar comment last night about this on the FAC but did not get round to it. Keith D (talk) 17:46, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

The page-needed tag is invalid because the ref it's applied to already has page numbers. As for the dates - no, there are not two Bennett sources, there is one Bennett and one Bennett & Smithers. These are not the same, and therefore any ref called Bennett can only be the former - thus, dates are not needed for the purposes of identifying the source. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:57, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Update: Page numbers appear to only now be needed for one Bennett cite. -- Cirt (talk) 04:14, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Citing challenged text

Copied from Wikipedia:Featured article review/Ormulum/archive1:

• Holt is available on Google Books. ODNB has an online edition, and the paper version is probably in most academic libraries - there's one in my local library, if we need it. Actually, my library has all of the sources, although a couple are 2-hour reference only - if you let me know exactly what it is that needs to be cited, I can probably manage it sometime in the next couple of days. Nikkimaria (talk)

Nikkimaria has made a generous offer, and I suggest that we use this section to present text that we believe requires verification. Hopefully, Nikkimaria will be able to find the time to verify it and then note the source & page number on this page. That process should go a long way to ensuring the article meets the requirement for verification of text "which is likely to be challenged". Perhaps consensus then can be achieved on how that verification is integrated into the article (bearing in mind the comments in #Sources above). The aim is to improve the article in a constructive manner, so please try to be reasonable with demands on Nikkimaria's time. --RexxS (talk) 14:10, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

References

Is Joan Turville-Petre's "Studies on the Ormulum MS." Journal of English and German Philology 46(1) (January 1947), 1-27 worth a mention in the references/further reading section? 81.156.175.248 (talk) 09:25, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

I'd say use your judgement and be bold. If you know the article and found it useful, other readers may do also. I'd suggest adding a Further reading section between References and External links and placing it there (you can add a very short summary of it to the same line, if you wish). --RexxS (talk) 19:06, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Whitewash

The caption for the image of the church interior says: "although now whitewashed, remain from the church Orm would have known". Is that a fact, that churches weren't whitewashed back then? Sculpted celtic crosses, like Muiredach's High Cross, are thought to have been painted, the Parthenon was painted. Were the interiors of churches just left plain in the time of Orm?--Brianann MacAmhlaidh (talk) 11:25, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

It's a slightly odd wording, but I think what it means is that the nave pillars are the same as the ones Orm would have been familiar with, albeit now whitewashed. One usually finds that the medieval pillars survive intact, but the rest of a church is extensively restored during the 19th century. Nearly all churches in England were whitewashed at the Reformation to cover over the "superstitous" coloured decoration/frescoes. It was about this time that the rood screens and so forth were destroyed during the reign of Edward VI. Further destruction of images, altar steps, stained glass, etc, was perpetrated during the protectorate. Rob (talk) 13:27, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Walls were usually plastered and painted, but I think columns could be either painted decoratively or left as plain stone. Johnbod (talk) 13:56, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

19000 lines in total, or preserved?

Does the figure of 19,000 lines refer to the whole work as planned (and maybe executed or maybe not), or does it refer to the surviving portion of the manuscript? The article doesn't really make this clear. -- 92.226.25.150 (talk) 09:42, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Orthography: Presence of characters in Unicode

The characters mentioned in Orthography were added in Unicode 14.0 in the Latin Extended-D block. These are upper and lowercase closed insular g (Ꟑ, ꟑ), lowercase double thorn (ꟓ), and lowercase double wynn (ꟕ). The latter two are used to indicate vowel length while the former represents the voiced velar plosive. Given this, I am of the opinion that they should be inserted into the Orthography section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Count Cherokee (talk • contribs) 01:27, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Orthography: Lack of information about double thorn and double wynn

ꟕ redirects to Ormulum#Orthograpy, but there is no information about the letter in the orthography section of the article. ꟓ also until recently redirected the same way, but I edited it to redirect to Thorn (letter) as that page mentions both the double thorn, and that it is used in the Ormulum (while the page for wynn does not mention anything about double wynn except for its existence). I would recommend either more information about these letters to be added, or that they redirect elsewhere. Syollandre (talk) 10:52, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

I think redirecting elsewhere would make more sense - did you have a particular target in mind? Nikkimaria (talk) 04:36, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Probably just redirect double-bowled wynn to Wynn, since i believe it is already listed on there as a variant of wynn Syollandre (talk) 06:49, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Fixing broken citations

This article uses a manual system of citations which (as discussed over a decade ago, above) predate the modern Wikipedia templates. They do not work well on mobile devices or with the visual editor, and a few of them are broken due to the manual coding. I would like to update the article with more modern and specific scholarship, as it is unnecessarily reliant on anthologies and encyclopedias, but it is unnecessarily laborious to adapt these to the article. Hence I would like first to update all the citations to the modern Wikipedia citation templates: please let me know if you have any objections. AndrewNJ (talk) 22:20, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Can you clarify what you see as being broken or not working well on mobile? I've checked both mobile and desktop and they seem to be working as expected. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:42, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Because all the links are manual, a few of the links lead to the wrong citation in the references. On mobile for me, the footnotes are completely broken: one only sees the short reference, then if one clicks on the link to see the full version, the reader loses their place in the article. Neither of these behaviours happen with the standard Wikipedia citation templates. AndrewNJ (talk) 14:55, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks - fixed the linking errors. I can't replicate the mobile behaviour however. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:18, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you; I take it that you have no other concerns about changing the references to use citation templates? AndrewNJ (talk) 13:35, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

On the contrary, with the errors fixed and without being able to replicate other concerns, I'm not seeing a reason to change the existing format. Changing what sources are used does not require changing how they are cited. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:59, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Could you please explain why you would like to keep the references in a format that is incompatible with the visual editor, and thus very difficult for editor to update or enhance? AndrewNJ (talk) 16:18, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

I've checked the page in Visual Editor, and was able to successfully add a reference in the current format. Could you elaborate on what difficulties you're having with it? Nikkimaria (talk) 01:01, 18 May 2024 (UTC)