User:Charles Gaudette/Wikipedia Notes

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This user sub-page is intended to hold Charles Gaudette's notes associated with editing Wikipedia. These notes will include: spelling, grammar, style, language differences, and code fragments. Charles wants to get at them no matter where he is: work, home, traveling, and so-on. If you are going to edit this page, please do him a favor — first comment on his Talk page. It is entirely possible that an "error" on this page is especially deliberate.

It would be a mistake to consider this page: Charles' Wikipedia editing philosophy, but there is some of that discipline in here. More likely these notes are up for consideration in his philosophy.

Rights and citations

Rights

Citations

citation |saɪˌteɪʃən| (abbr.: cit.) noun

a quotation from or reference to a book, paper, or author, esp. in a scholarly work : there were dozens of citations from the works of Byron | recognition through citation is one of the principal rewards in science.

Wikipedia:Inline Citation

Numbers

accuracy is key
base 10 unless there is a reason
use commas to separate every third digit ahead of the decimal point
SI number notation where SI number notation is the standard
watch for rounding errors, try to inspect the value used by the credible source

Units

Multiple-byte units

Decimal
Value	Metric
1000	kB	kilobyte
1000²	MB	megabyte
1000³	GB	gigabyte
1000⁴	TB	terabyte
1000⁵	PB	petabyte
1000⁶	EB	exabyte
1000⁷	ZB	zettabyte
1000⁸	YB	yottabyte
1000⁹	RB	ronnabyte
1000¹⁰	QB	quettabyte

Binary
Value	IEC		Memory
1024	KiB	kibibyte	KB	kilobyte
1024²	MiB	mebibyte	MB	megabyte
1024³	GiB	gibibyte	GB	gigabyte
1024⁴	TiB	tebibyte	TB	terabyte
1024⁵	PiB	pebibyte	—
1024⁶	EiB	exbibyte	—
1024⁷	ZiB	zebibyte	—
1024⁸	YiB	yobibyte	—
—
—

Orders of magnitude of data

SI units when in doubt
units used by the credible source
expected units (this might mean a preference for archaic units)
commonly understood units
SI units

Spelling

Is It "Its" or "It's"?

A seemingly simple pair of words that many people have trouble keeping straight is its and it's. Editorial types keep telling us not to use apostrophe "S" as a plural; it is always a possessive. So if we refer to Gary's pen, then the logical possessive of "it" is "it's," right? Actually not. "It's" isn't a possessive like Gary's, it's a contraction — like isn't.

"It's" is a contraction for "it is" or "it has."
"Its" is a possessive pronoun meaning, more or less, "of it" or "belonging to it."

Simple test: If you can replace "its" in your sentence with "it is" or "it has," then your word is "it's"; otherwise, your word is "its."

And there is absolutely no such word as "its'."

Another technique: "Its" is the neuter version of "his" or "her." Try plugging "his" or "her" into your sentence where you think "its" belongs. If it still works as a sentence grammatically (if not logically), then your word is "its."

Grammar

No double punctuation marks
- except abbreviations, for example: "U.S.." at the end of a sentence, which probably should be avoided
- except ellipsis, for example: "…." at the end of a sentence, which is fine

Language

The universally accepted word: "aircraft" is preferred over "airplane" or "aeroplane".
It is better to replace the word "theory" (system of ideas) with the word "supposition" (an uncertain belief) when refering to a explaination that is not citable to a on-topic PhD.

Style

One-offs

One space, one space only after punctuation marks.
Roman numerals are deprecated, please do not use them, copyedit them on sight unless: (1) critical to clarity, or (2) part of a quote or established title.
When abbreviating "United States", as when referring to the United States of America, use "U.S." with periods. When additional abbreviations are suffixed — USA, USMC, USAF, and so forth — do not use periods.
Quote or italics? See, Quote, Italics, and Use-mention distinction.

Accessible character?

Is the character accessible as <key> or <shift>-<key>?

Yes

Use "&", not &.

No

non-breaking space,   → (non-breaking space holds the text either side together)
Em dash, — → — (normal spaces on either side, this allows for line-breaks to happen as they will)
Ellipsis,  …  → … (non-breaking spaces on either side, this holds text together)
Multiply sign, × → × (preferred over "x", and usually preferred over mid-dot; remember spaces, maybe  )
Mid-dot, · → · (remember spaces, maybe  )
Apple command key, {{unicode|⌘}} → ⌘ (Unicode: "Place Of Interest" symbol)
Meta key, {{unicode|◆}} → ◆

Italics in tricky locations

CODE

…David Bernath, "We're thrilled to have '<span style="font-style: italic;">Scrubs</span>' join the network…"

DISPLAYS: …David Bernath, "We're thrilled to have 'Scrubs' join the network…"

The dreaded of

The possessive form (apostrophe s) is vastly preferred over syntactic constructions using the preposition of.

of |əv| |ə| preposition

expressing the relationship between a part and a whole : the sleeve of his coat | in the back of the car | the days of the week | a series of programs | a piece of cake | a lot of money.
expressing the relationship between a scale or measure and a value : an increase of 5 percent | a height of 10 feet.
1. expressing an age : a boy of fifteen.
indicating an association between two entities, typically one of belonging : the son of a friend | the government of India | a photograph of the bride | [with a possessive ] a former colleague of John's.
1. expressing the relationship between an author, artist, or composer and their works collectively : the plays of Shakespeare | the paintings of Rembrandt.
expressing the relationship between a direction and a point of reference : north of Chicago | on the left of the picture.
expressing the relationship between a general category and the thing being specified which belongs to such a category : the city of Prague | the idea of a just society | the set of all genes.
1. governed by a noun expressing the fact that a category is vague : this type of book | the general kind of answer that would satisfy me.
indicating the relationship between a verb and an indirect object
1. with a verb expressing a mental state : they must be persuaded of the severity of the problem | I don't know of anything that would be suitable.
2. expressing a cause : he died of cancer.
indicating the material or substance constituting something : the house was built of bricks | walls of stone.
expressing time in relation to the following hour : it would be just a quarter of three in New York.

PHRASES
be of possess intrinsically; give rise to : this work is of great interest and value.
of all denoting the least likely or expected example : Jordan, of all people, committed a flagrant foul.
of all the nerve (or Brit. cheek) an expression of indignation.
of an evening (or morning, etc.) informal 1 on most evenings (or mornings, etc.). 2 at some time in the evenings (or mornings, etc.).

ORIGIN Old English , of Germanic origin; related to Dutch af and German ab, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin ab and Greek apo.

USAGE It is a mistake to use of instead of have in constructions such as: you should have asked (not | you should of asked). For more information, see usage at HAVE .

New Oxford American Dictionary, 2nd Edition

Standard appendices

Some heading titles have standard wording, and for these, the wording or capitalization must not be changed.

See also
Notes
References
Further reading
External links

or, equally good:

See also
References
Notes
Further reading
External links

Two equally acceptable sequences exist, as shown above, and the choice of one over the other depends on the system of references and notes being used in the article. Notes and references may also be combined into one Notes and references.

Pronunciation

([[International Phonetic Alphabet|IPA pronunciation]]: {{IPA|[aɪ piː eɪ]}})
IPA pronunciation
IPA chart for English
prəˈnənsiˌeɪʃən

Eliminate Latin phrases

Why do articles (for years) 1700 to 2099 have Roman dates?

Every article regarding years 1700 through 2099 in Wikipedia (English language) has the Arabic numerals immediately followed by the same as Roman numerals. Why? Is there a template that drops this into the article? If so, why? Is this some The Da Vinci Code ~~crap~~ reference? --Charles Gaudette 09:07, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Asian glyphs

Keep Chinese characters together? Well, the old <nobr> tag does not work because it is not an HTML 4.0 standard and not part of Wiki. Then, what does work? Nothing so far. Let's try:

Sample without tag

Another very simple Chinese logograph is the character 〇 (líng), which simply refers to the number zero. For instance, the year 2000 would be 二〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇年. The logograph 〇 is a native Chinese character, and its earliest documented use is in 1247 AD during the Southern Song dynasty period, found in a mathematical text called 數術九章 (Shǔ Shù Jiǔ Zhāng "Mathematical Treatise in Nine Sections"). It is not directly derived from the Hindi-Arabic numeral "0".^[1] Interestingly, being round, the character does not contain any traditional strokes.

Sample with tag

Another very simple Chinese logograph is the character 〇 (líng), which simply refers to the number zero. For instance, the year 2000 would be 二〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇〇年. The logograph 〇 is a native Chinese character, and its earliest documented use is in 1247 AD during the Southern Song dynasty period, found in a mathematical text called 數術九章 (Shǔ Shù Jiǔ Zhāng "Mathematical Treatise in Nine Sections"). It is not directly derived from the Hindi-Arabic numeral "0".

Code

Sucessful: <code><nowiki>...</nowiki></code>
Not so much: <nowiki><code>...</code></nowiki>

Tables


{| class="notwikitable" border="n" cellspacing="n" cellpadding="n" align="[left | right | center]"
|+ caption
! c1h
! c2h
|- 
| c1r1
| c2r1
|-
| c1r2
| c2r2
|-
|}

caption
c1h	c2h
c1r1	c2r1
c1r2	c2r2

For more, see Help:Table

Images

Links

Usage

[[Image:filename.ext|(frame, thumb)|( $n$ px)|(none, left, right)|(caption text)]]

At times it is nessessary to also force a clear line break.

<br style="clear:both;" />

Media linking

Link to the picture without displaying it.

[[Media:Wikipedesketch.png]]

Media:Wikipedesketch.png
or

[[Media:Wikipedesketch.png|This is the wikipede]]

This is the wikipede

This can be awkward if the image is high-resolution and larger than any reasonable display monitor. The following method avoids this problem.

[[:Image:Wikipedesketch.png]]

Image:Wikipedesketch.png
or

[[:Image:Wikipedesketch.png|This links directly to the Wikipede's image page]]

This links directly to the wikipede's image page

Font files

Modern computers and UTF-8 web browsers provide for many alphabets, languages, and symbols. So far Charles has only had to install the following fonts:

Languages of Ethiopia — GF Zemen Unicode, ftp://ftp.ethiopic.org/pub/fonts/TrueType/gfzemenu.ttf
Ruby characters
Georgian language fonts

Diplomatic debate tools

Logical fallacy

Code fragments and miscellaneous

Code fagments

User_talk:
{{Otheruses4|this|other|here}}

→ This article is about this. For other, see here.

About Wiki pipes

Help:Piped link

Lead section edit trick

Normally, to edit the lead section of an article, you have to click the "edit this page" link at the top, and edit the whole page. This can lead to edit conflicts. However, despite the lack of an "edit" link for the lead, it is still possible to edit it as a section. Simply click on any section's "edit" link, and then change section=x to section=0 in the URL in your browser window. Reload the URL and you will now be editing the lead section.

Don't fix links to redirects that aren't broken

Some editors are tempted, upon finding links using a legitimate redirect target, to edit the page to "fix" the link so that it points "straight" at the "correct" page. Unless the link displays incorrectly — for instance, if the link is to a misspelling, or other unprintworthy redirects, or if the hint that appears when you hover over the link is misleading — there is no need to edit the link. The link may be deliberate, may consolidate related information in one place, or may indicate possible future articles.

Most especially, there should never be a need to replace [[redirect]] with [[direct|redirect]].

Some editors are under the mistaken impression that fixing such links improves the capacity of the Wikipedia servers. Because editing a page is seemingly thousands of times more expensive for the servers than following a redirect, the opposite is true if anything. It's inadvisable to worry about performance.

This is a Wikipedia user page.

This is not an encyclopedia article. If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user this page belongs to may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia itself. The original page is located at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Charles_Gaudette/Wikipedia_Notes.

Wikimedia Foundation

^ Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Volume III

[1] Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Volume III

[1]