Wikipedia:WikiProject Lithuania/Tips

Lithuania WikiProject

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Top 10 tips for a Lithuanian in Wikipedia (small things that make a difference)

1. Last names: when you introduce a person to an article provide his/her full name (e.g. Algirdas Brazauskas and not A. Brazauskas). If you are using the same name over and over again, leave only last name (e.g. Brazauskas and not A. Brazauskas or Mr. Brazauskas).
2. Centuries: do not use Roman numbers for centuries. (e.g. the 19th century and not XIX c.) Note: the, th, and fully spelled out word century is a must.
3. Months: there are 3 proper formats: (1) June 27, 2006 (notice a comma after 27); (2) 27 June 2006; (3) 2006-06-27 (proper, but not recommended). Everything else must be avoided.
4. Quotations: they go like “this” and not like „this“. An apostrophe is ' and not ` or ’.
5. Translations: it's a very good idea to provide original Lithuanian names for English translations. Do it like this: Translation ([[Lithuanian language|Lithuanian]]: ''vertimas''). Shortcut: {{lang-lt}}.
6. Diacritics: use all Lithuanian letters (i.e. ž, ū, ė, ą) everywhere. Article titles included. Just don't forget to make redirects.
7. Nominatives: use nominative case (Lithuanian: vardininko linksnis) for things like Gediminas Tower, Gediminas Avenue, Tiltas Street, Palanga Airport, Vilnius "Mintis" High School.
8. Proper names: English language capitalises both words, i.e. Tiltas Street (and not Tiltas street), Vilnius Castle (not Vilnius castle), Seimas Palace (not Seimas palace), Birutė Hill (not Birutė hill), Neris River, Baltic Sea, Asveja Lake, Rusnė Island, Žuvintas Reserve, Kaunas Lagoon, etc. When using the second common noun alone later in the article, do not capitalize it and add the. For example: Vilnius Castle is very important. The castle is really beautiful. Nationalities are also capitalized (e.g. Lithuanians, Russians, Americans, Germans).
9. Grammar and spelling: plea-a-a-aze proof-read what you wrote. Use MS Word. Ask someone more experienced to copy-edit.
10. Lithuanian vs. of/in Lithuania: same as lietuvių vs. Lietuvos. Lithuanian apply only to ~85% of residents of Lithuania while of/in Lithuania apply to all 3.5M residents. So, for example, rivers, lakes, hills, cities, bogs, laws, transport system, national teams, (contained within the borders of Republic of Lithuania) etc. are of/in Lithuania. Cultural things (like mythology, literature, language) are Lithuanian.
    • Cases where both are possible: culture/literature of Lithuania (includes culture/literature of ethnic minorities: Jews, Tatars, Russians, Poles, etc.) and Lithuanian culture/literature (describes only culture/literature of ethnic Lithuanians); newspapers of Lithuania (includes all newspapers published in Lithuania: printed in Lithuanian, Russian, Polish, and other languages) and Lithuanian newspapers (describes only newspapers published in Lithuanian language both in Lithuania and abroad).
    • That being said, many articles in WP are ignoring this rule. Many "official" translations mess up this thing too. So it's not that easy sometimes.

Minor tips

1. The correct use of prepositions is a killer for those of us not writing in their native tongue, and even for those of us who are, when it comes to 20 dollar words. Thinking about the use of the word "attested" the other day, I googled: : "attested site:harvard.edu", and voila, there was the correct preposition - by. One does need to read the complete sentence to be sure; in this case it was "evidence for x is attested by x." Novickas 14:10, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
2. In Lithuanian it's ok to "Gimė tada. Dirbo ten. Parašė 10 knygų. Gyvena Vilniuje." But it's not ok in English. Every English sentence has to have a subject (grammar). So it should be in English "Jonas was born. He worked at this place. Jonas wrote ten books. He now lives in Vilnius."
3. Sometimes, Lithuanian speakers (or writers) may leave out the verb of a sentence if it is some form of the verb "to be" (Lith. būti), but although omitted it is understood the verb is some form of "to be" such as "is" or "are". This is not done in English. In English, every complete sentence must have a verb, even if the verb is just "is" or "are".