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Conversations on copyediting and grammar etc. with GOCE members and others. TOC is limited to 3 levels.

GOCE conversations

Year and comma

Diannaa

Commas after year

• Hi. AS this seems to be a recurring thing, can you point me to the MoS that states there should be a comma after the year.
• ie "In 2011, the" rather than "In 2011 the"
• thanks for correcting the filmography - I missed italicising didnt I :¬( Chaosdruid (talk) 04:14, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

• Hi! I checked the WP:MoS and cannot find specific advice. Chicago says not to put a comma there; see section 6.45. So it looks like I was wrong. --Diannaa ^(Talk) 04:32, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
• I was having a debate about this with another editor User_talk:Chaosdruid#Year_and_comma and even after searching through the archives we couldn't find any advice for MoS entries that were a little ambiguous. It looks like when I was "correcting" sentences with "On July 4, 2010 there was a firework display" to "On July 4, 2010, there was a firework display" I was wrong as the MoS seems to imply there should not be a comma "Month before day: February 14 and February 14, 1990 (comma required)." although once we examined it I realised it is just referring to the one used after 14 lol.
• Thanks again for the italicising though - I went off to try and find out which of his works were short stories and which were novels and got distracted then totally forgot about it much to my embarrasment!Chaosdruid
• Wait a minute. If the sentence says: "In 2005 there was a display...", there should not be a comma. However, if the sentence says: "On January 17, 2011, there was a display...", then there should be a comma. I hate commas. My Chicago falls open to the chapter on commas because I have looked at it so much. :( --Diannaa ^(Talk) 04:44, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
• I know, such a small thing, a comma, and yet so many problems lol
• The table in the Mos Page doesn't have one and nor does the example ("January 5–7, 1979 with an unspaced...").
• Anyway I must be off as I have to watch NCIS before bed time - my fav. Gibbs would know what to do about the bloody commas lol Chaosdruid (talk) 04:50, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
• See you later. --Diannaa ^(Talk) 04:53, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

• Hi, Imzadi1979. The Chicago Manual of Style calls for commas the way that Chaosdruid edited them. Chicago section 6.45 gives the following examples:
• The performance took place on February 2, 2006, at the State Theatre...(American system: place a comma after the year)
• See his journal entries of 6 October 1999 and 4 January 2000. (British system: no comma)
• In March 2008 she turned seventy-five. (where a month and year only are given [this is also what to do when only the year is given. For example, "In 1968 many bad things happened."])
• On Thanksgiving Day 1998 they celebrated....(specific day such as a holiday, along with a year: omit the comma).

So Chaosdruid was correct about the commas, in my opinion. Good luck at your FA. --Diannaa ^(Talk) 03:11, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

USS Chesapeake (1799)

Copy edit [1] checked by Dianna and comments were:

Hi Chaosdruid. I couldn't remember where we had that conversation about the Chesapeake so I thought I would drop a line here. I addressed a couple of your concerns from the article talk page and made note of what I did. I also did another round of copy edits:

• I added serial commas throughout, as the author had a mixture of both styles
• Other punctiation fixes were done (mostly the dreaded commas)
• I re-worded some awkward and/or unclear sentences
• Some sentences were split in two as they were too long. If the second part of a sentence introduces a new idea, that's the place to make the split.
• I added locations on a couple of the cites using info from Worldcat.org
• Dab solver showed no links to disambiguation pages
• One dead link was found and marked
• Dashes and empty spaces were fixed using two scripts

I am pretty sure we are done here but whether it's enough for FA is still an open question. I will continue to watch-list and we will see what happens. Thank you for tackling this article. --Diannaa ^(Talk) 18:21, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

MoS for capitalisation of political titles

Hi all

Small problem with capitalisation of things such as "Cabinet Minister". Should it be capitalised or not ?

• "was a cabinet minister from" - I am supposing non capitals
• "was made Cabinet Minister for Trade" - I am leaning towards capitals, but still unsure

I cannot find anything, so far, in the MoS guides such as Wikipedia:Manual of Style (titles), Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(proper_names) or Wikipedia:Manual of Style (text formatting) nor in archive searches.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Chaosdruid (talk) 17:00, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

I would think the generic term would not be capitalized, but if it is a specific office, then yes capitalize it. So your guesses were correct. :) —Torchiest ^talk_edits 23:24, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

In case you're still curious, here's the spot in the MOS where this is discussed: WP:Job titles.

The MOS link above is pretty clear for this case. Where the MOS isn't clear, one can fall back on generally accepted practices, such as those documented in The Chicago Manual of Style. While that won't prevent someone from arguing about it, it will at least give you something to stand on.

CMoS 16th Ed. covers this topic in sections 8.18 to 8.32. Summarizing, the general rule is that titles and offices are capitalized when they immediately precede a personal name and are used as part of that name, although there are exceptions for titles after the name in promotional or ceremonial contexts. A title on its own is capitalized when in a context such as a toast, formal introduction, or direct address. (When the title is standing in place of a personal name to identify a particular officeholder, that would be direct address.) Titles given in apposition before a name (usually preceded by the or a modifier) are not capitalized: "the empress Elizabeth of Austria" (but "Empress Elizabeth of Austria"), "former president Carter". Political, military, quasi-miltary, and religious titles are capitalized only when used as part of the name, regardless of the wishes of the title holder. Corporate and organizational titles are rarely used as part of a name, and thus are lower-cased. Descriptive titles are lowercased ("the historian William McNeill"). Civic and academic honors are capitalized when following a personal name: "Laurence L. Bongie, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada" but "the fellows".

Of course, different conventions may apply for articles written in dialects of English other than American English, but none occur to me immediately... // ⌘macwhiz (talk) 21:59, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Comprised - Giraffedata

Hi

I realise that you are on a mission, however I would like you to explain why you are changing "was comprised of" to "comprised"

I ask as I use what I perceive to be the standard past tense as per OED, the particular group is no longer in existence and comprised is not a stand alone when used in the past tense, as far as I am aware. If this is an ENGVAR then please can you point me to the relevant comparison.

Thanks Chaosdruid (talk) 09:32, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

"comprised" in "was comprised of" is not past tense (or even a verb - the verb is "was"), it is an adjective (made out of a past participle, though). In this usage, "comprise" means "compose." Dictionaries list this usage because lots of people use it, but lots of other people don't accept this as valid English, which is why it is good to avoid it. I have an exhaustive discussion of the issue at here.

I don't believe there is any regional variation in how much "compose" is accepted as a definition of "comprise."

I don't find anything in the dictionary entry you link that suggests "comprised" can't stand on its own. The first definition shown for "comprise" is "consist of," so "comprised" would be the obvious form to mean "consisted of." If the group were around today you would say "the group comprises a, b, and c." Since it is in the past, we say "the group comprised a, b, and c."

Bryan Henderson (talk) 16:53, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I would say I agree with you on referring to things in the present tense, or in a current time-frame.

The OED entry says comprise is a verb. It then gives (be comprised of) and the example "documents are comprised of words"

So if the document is comprised of words and is no longer in existence "the document was comprised of words"

It then gives usage and states that when used in the passive it is "more or less synonymous", not that it is exactly interchangeable with, nor does it give its usage in the past tense, but I would go with you on those, just not the p.p.

Macmillan - clearly here there is "be comprised of: The course is comprised of ten core modules.

Merriam Webster p. 274 - Column 1 deals with the issue quite well.

In conclusion: I would have accepted that there was some merit to a case for the dropping of "was", but I cannot accept the dropping of both "was" and "of".

As a matter of interest I include this link [2], as I said, only of interest - I would of course be one of the 65% :¬) Chaosdruid (talk) 17:43, 28 February 2011 (UTC)