Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 109

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Archive 105

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Archive 107

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Helpers wanted for developing MOS subpage

I am working on a manual of style for dermatology-related articles at MOS:DERM, this after discussing it at the main MOS page. The goal of MOS:DERM is a tailored MoS for dermatology-related content, addressing issues specific to this content. With that being said, I wanted to know if any of you would be interested in helping to develop it. Regardless, thank you all again for your work on wikipedia. ---kilbad (talk) 19:14, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Dermatology task force. -- Wavelength (talk) 20:04, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

See Category:Dermatology task force. -- Wavelength (talk) 20:06, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

[I corrected the link by adding an undisplayed colon before "Category". -- Wavelength (talk) 20:16, 21 April 2009 (UTC)]

This is a comment addressed to all watchers of this talk page, because I might not always be watching it. If a similar request appears on this talk page in the future, about assistance in a specific subject area, it would be useful to refer to Wikipedia:WikiProject for a directory of WikiProjects according to subject area. -- Wavelength (talk) 20:12, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I wish to suggest to kilbad that the heading of this section be changed to something more specific, such as the following:

"Helpers wanted for developing MOS subpage". An improved heading can make Archive searches easier in the future.

-- Wavelength (talk) 20:22, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Done. Thanks for the advice! ---kilbad (talk) 20:55, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

See Category:Wikipedian physicians. -- Wavelength (talk) 21:45, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

http://www.searchenginecolossus.com/ >> http://www.dandruffdirectory.com/. -- Wavelength (talk) 22:15, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

RFC on the reform of ArbCom hearings

The attention of all editors is drawn to a Request for Comment on a major issue for the English Wikipedia: a package of six proposals to move the ArbCom hearings process away from the loose, expansionary model that has characterised it until now, to a tighter organisational model. The RFC started Tuesday 29 April. Your considered feedback would be appreciated. Tony (talk) 16:20, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Loft of Guitars

The term relating to a collection of many guitars, attributed to Richard "Dickman" Cripps of the rock group "Nervous", having had a "Loft" full of guitars that they had displayed and photographed for a photo shoot. As far as I am aware there is no name for such a collection of guitars. Although this may sound somewhat inane, many musicians now use this for a collection of many guitars kept in one place. Generally more than three would constitute a "Loft"
Italic text

Many guitarists have extraordinarily large collections of guitars, these would be considered to be a "Loft" of Guitars

--BrianIndian (talk) 22:39, 28 April 2009 (UTC)Brian Indian

RFC 1924 links in headers

Currently MOS:HEAD says "Section names should not normally contain links, especially ones that link only part of the heading". I couldn't figure out how to un-link the automatically-generated link in the section Ascii85#RFC 1924 version. Does MOS:HEAD apply to such RFC links? If so, how do I un-link it? If I overlooked the answer in the archives, my apologies -- please link to the relevant archive. --68.0.124.33 (talk) 05:40, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

If you need to suppress wiki markup, use the nowiki tag. I've done this for the Ascii85 article. Mind matrix 13:12, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Does this behaviour of MediaWiki seem arbitrary and undesirable to anyone else? Oliphaunt (talk) 21:24, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Well yeah. How on earth did it get in? I'm taking it up at WP:VPT. --Kotniski (talk) 06:26, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Question about en dashes

Reading over WP:NDASH, it says when naming an article, en dashes should used when it properly belongs in the title. Does this rule apply to categories as well? — Σ xplicit 05:55, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, or at least it ought to, though there has been argument about it in the past (since there ought to be a redirect from the hyphen form for ease of typing, and category redirects don't work as beautifully as they might). When the devs finally get round to fixing the bug in the category redirect functionality, I assume there won't be any problem with using dashes. --Kotniski (talk) 09:50, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Italicising softwares and sites names

Is it true it is forbidden to italicise softwares and sites names in wikipedia. It seems strange to me because I think it is usual in books or newspapers (this question originates from a discussion I had about metamath here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:CRGreathouse#Metamath) -- fl —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.175.209.213 (talk) 18:39, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Current consensus for adding wikilinks within quotations

I've read the archived discussions and MOS:QUOTE currently states, ".. unless there is good reason to do so". Now, I realize it's not a major issue, and hopefully this isn't too creepy, but I think it would be more helpful if the MoS gave at least one or two examples of what would be an appropriate use of a wikilink inside a direct quotation. Specifically, for future reference, I'd like to know if this particular edit would be an example that is discouraged by the MoS? Or would this be something that is 'reasonable'? In my view this wikilink would be appropriate because it's within a short quotation not attributed to any specific person, and is the only mention of the topic "Pulitzer Prize" anywhere in the article... -- OlEnglish ^(Talk) 20:02, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Three alternatives here:

Don't link Pulitzer Prize, which is unhelpful to non-American readers.
Link as indicated. A Pulitzer Prize winner for commentary,....
Some construction like A Pulitzer Prize winner [see Pulitzer Prize ] for commentary,.... This would be the dead-tree method, but I don't see any great advantage for us over #2. Some would argue that #2 distorts the emphasis and literal accuracy of the quote; but so does #3. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:29, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Here is a fourth alternative:

A Pulitzer Prize[1] winner for commentary,.... -- Wavelength (talk) 00:41, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Which many will criticize as using WP as a source (and as a bald link); we should be clear when we are using what are in effect internal links. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:13, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

If there is a need to link Pulitzer Prize, then (2) is best. If there is no good reason to link it, then no link at all is best.--Toddy1 (talk) 04:24, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Another option would be to omit "Pulitzer Prize" from the quotation, and structure it around that. WP:QUOTE tells us that quotation should only bee used for controversial statements or for a "unique phrase or term". The type of terms we tend to want to link to are, as in this instance, proper names, which are neither unique nor controversial. Instead of 'Johnny said he "walked Bob to the Fourth District Park in a brisk and gentlemanly fashion".', one can write 'Johnny described his walking Bob to the Fourth District Park as "brisk and gentlemanly".' This strategy of paraphrasing can be deployed in many cases. Skomorokh 04:32, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the approaches suggested by Skomorokh and Toddy1, that is, try and rephrase so that the term sought to be linked is not within the quote, but if that proves impractical then go ahead and link it according to option (2). Personally, I don't think adding wikilinks to quotations is confusing to readers because it is clear that such links are highly unlikely to have been in the original source (I can't really think of a situation where they might be). — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 05:08, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

intro for lists?

Can someone point me to the standard for the intro sentence for articles of the form "list of ..."? (I'm wondering if something was supposed to be bolded or not). RJFJR (talk) 17:11, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

It looks like I was looking for Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists. RJFJR (talk) 21:23, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Capitalisation—use of "The" mid-sentence

I noticed a couple of articles on groups (e.g., The Beatles) where "The" is always capitalised even mid-sentence. This surpised me and I wanted to check MOS but couldn't find a definitive answer. I've previously been accustomed to the same rule as for WP:Manual_of_Style#Institutions, viz:

"Names of institutions (the University of Sydney, George Brown College) are proper nouns and require capitals. The at the start of a title is not normally capitalized (a degree from the University of Sydney), except where it begins a sentence."

The use of this convention for group names too is supported by a quick search in the wider world, for example, this New York Times article and this one. The Beatles at the start of a sentence, but the Beatles otherwise. I propose we add MOS guidance to this effect, i.e., "The at the start of a title is not normally capitalized (an album by the Beatles), except where it begins a sentence." PL290 (talk) 19:56, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Capitalising the definite article inside a sentence is of course totally wrong, but in the Beatles case there has been a long war about this, which was won by The Groupies. --Hans Adler (talk) 20:12, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

The Groupies (whoever it is you mean, do tell!) don't appear to have cemented winning a war if there's no MOS guidance to that effect... and in any case, does not this idea—that an opinion can prevail and the matter henceforth be forever closed—make a mockery of the whole basis of Wikipedia? PL290 (talk) 21:08, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

By "The Groupies" I mean those editors who identify so much with the Beatles that they insist on following their, or their representatives', absurd capitalisation guidelines instead of common sense and general practice. No of course this can, and should be, revised at some time, but you may not be aware of how big a thing you are trying to tackle. You should really look browse the 20 Talk:The Beatles archives to get an idea of the hostility that you are likely to face. Not quite as big as the date formatting thing. Not quite. --Hans Adler (talk) 21:55, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

As I've stated before, I don't think you can make a uniform rule on this. For some bands the The is genuinely part of the name; for others it isn't. A rule of thumb is that if the noun is plural, the the is probably not part of the name, but if singular (or not a noun at all), then it probably is (contrasting the Beatles with The Who). But I wouldn't be comfortable setting even that in stone. I think this is an issue that's best discussed case-by-case, at the individual-article level. --Trovatore (talk) 21:15, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

A quick search turned up this site which indicates that the trade name for the group, registered in 1964, is "The Beatles" rather than just "Beatles", so it would appear that The Beatles article is properly named and "The" would be appropriately capitalized elsewhere as part of the name. -- Tcncv (talk) 22:56, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes. That was the main argument by The Groupies. But see Britannica on "the Beatles". In fact almost nobody capitalises the definite article in this case, and it's even translated into other languages: "les Beatles", "die Beatles" etc. But of course it is absolutely necessary that our Beatles article follows the presumed wishes of The Beatles. --Hans Adler (talk) 23:28, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

PS: Britannica also write "the Who". --Hans Adler (talk) 23:32, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, that clearly tends to undermine them as a source; it's obviously The Who. You can't ordinarily use Who without The (though I suppose I can imagine a phrase like Who frontman Roger Daltrey, it's a little forced).

I would argue that even the current guideline is a little too negative towards capitalizing The. It's certainly correct for the University of California. But it really ought to be The Ohio State University because that's the official proper name. Here I hope I cannot be accused of fannishness — my PhD is from the University of California, and I have no connection with OSU. --Trovatore (talk) 00:09, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia seems to be fairly consistent in preserving title case for leading articles that are part of a proper name. A cursory look at movies such as The Silence of the Lambs and newspaper articles such as The Times shows consistent usage both within the articles and other articles which reference them. In contrast, Financial Times does not have "the" in its title, and this is reflected in the article body and articles that refer to it. (I'm sure there are exceptions – I just fixed a reference to "the The Financial Times".) The specific case of (T/t)he Beatles is listed as an example in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (definite and indefinite articles at beginning of name)#Names of bands and groups, which acknowledges the use of leading articles in some proper names. Title case in general seems to have a variety of standards used by numerous publications as discussed in Letter case#Headings and publication titles. There seems to even be some national variety is common usage.

I agree with Trovatore in that the MoS wording should be fine tuned to give preference to official or registered proper name. -- Tcncv (talk) 00:17, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

The Ohio State University is exactly the sort of silliness WP:MOSTRADE says we should avoid. If it catches on,outside the University itself, fine; let it join mob as a Sturdy Indefensible; but until then we should not encourage it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:47, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

(outdent!) Jumping back in here, as there seems to be confusion about what point is being argued! Yes, "The" is genuinely part of the name of many things ("The University of California", "The New York Times", "The Beatles", and so on). The point that I'm making is: there's an established general practice, which can easily be seen by looking anywhere in the wider world, that the definite article is not capitalised inside a sentence even when it is genuinely part of a name, for example, this New York Times article and this one. I would ask those who doubt this to research it now and produce compelling evidence here to the contrary, but otherwise I propose Wikipedia should now set this in stone and should make a uniform rule on it which matches the rule long established in the wider world. PL290 (talk) 01:51, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

This seems to be the Times style, even for the Who. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:02, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

(ec)It is not part of the name of the University of California. Proof is that the phrase University of California often appears by itself.

I'm afraid I think you're just wrong on the normative claim. We should indeed use lower case the for the University of California, but we should use upper case for The Who. --Trovatore (talk) 02:03, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Citation please: the Times says Pete Townshend still cares about the Who's songs. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:05, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Asking for a "citation" in this sort of circumstance is kind of silly; this is a discussion about desired style. I'm sure I can find lots of sources that capitalize the The. In general journalistic style has lots of features I would not like to see in Wikipedia (for example newspapers almost never use the serial comma). --Trovatore (talk) 02:09, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

So is the arguement for common usage to prevail on a case by case basis? "Beatles" when used as a proper noun in context is commonly recognized as "The Beatles". However a NY Times search for "Hague" yields many articles where "The" in "The Hague" is always capitalized, even in the middle of the sentence. - Tcncv (talk) 02:13, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

That's my feeling, yes. The Hague is an excellent example; lowercasing the the here would be just wrong, and everyone understands it. The same principle applies to some other proper names, but there is no clear rule for demarcating which ones. --Trovatore (talk) 02:19, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Sept's comment above gives an interesting example, writing the Times for the New York Times. I agree with that capitalization for the NYT. However the one from London is The Times — that's its actual name, whereas for the NYT or LAT it isn't; their names are simply New York Times and Los Angeles Times, with the the added when needed for grammatical purposes. --Trovatore (talk) 02:25, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Ah, actually maybe I was wrong about the NYT. I was definitely right about the Los Angeles Times though. --Trovatore (talk) 03:02, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

I'd normally not capitalise the the, the The The the being the exception. JIMp_talk·cont 08:23, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Is there consensus on the general principle of "common usage should prevail on a case by case basis"; if so, we can be quite simple. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:15, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

As we've reached an indication of consensus I'll update the article accordingly. As a side-issue, some merging appears to be due because the current article refers editors to the main capitalization article but in each article there's a lot of pertinent detail not present in the other. I think it may be best to move most or all of the detail to the main capitalization article eventually. Based on current content I judge the current article to be the more appropriate location for the addition pro tem. PL290 (talk) 11:53, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Done. PL290 (talk) 11:56, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I note this discussion has not been notified to the Beatles Wikiproject, or on Talk:The Beatles or even WP:MUSTARD. An appalling breach of courtesy and protocol. Well, you've sown the breeze.... Rodhull andemu 14:09, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, the consensus at The Beatles is to use T, so you might want to choose another example for now - at least until the fun at Talk:The Beatles settles down. (John User:Jwy talk) 18:27, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Replaced with The United Kingdom. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:43, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Follow the sources

Since it has been reverted, I discuss "follow the sources" here. It has been suggested above, and seems generally a good idea; rather than say it at the several sections where it applies, it seems simpler to say it once:

Many points of usage can be decided by seeing what other writers do about the problem. Unless there is some clear reason to do otherwise, it is generally a good idea to follow the usage of reliable sources on a subject; the sources for the article itself ahould be reliable. If the sources can be shown to be unrepresentative of current English usage as whole (because, for example, they were published in the nineteenth century, or in one of the states involved in a territorial dispute), follow current English usage instead — and consult more sources.

Comments? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:37, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm OK with the idea. I think the second example is weird, though. Are you alluding to something like the Republic of Macedonia naming controversy? If so, we might try to be a little clearer. (Most readers would just wonder: "Huh? Why, if a state is involved in a dispute, stuff written there can't be used as a model for grammar and typography?") A source having those problems wouldn't be normally considered "reliable" anyway, per WP:RS and WP:NPOV. --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 21:11, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

While we follow sources with regard to facts, I don't see much reason to follow them in matters of style (at least, not in matters where WP has its own established style). We have our own style guidelines for perhaps three good reasons: (1) to provide stylistic consistency in WP; (2) to encourage the use of styles appropriate to what WP is; (3) to enable lame disputes on multiple article pages to be settled quickly. Saying "follow what sources do" thwarts all of these aims: (1) because different sources (even within the scope of a single article) use different styles; (2) because our sources are mostly not online encyclopedias; (3) because arguments about which sources do what and whether they are reliable are liable to drag on interminably. So if we feel a need to add this as a principle, then it should be made clear that WP's own style guidance (where it exists) still takes precedence.--Kotniski (talk) 08:18, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, to make an example with the last such discussion (see above), if most (if not all) sources write "Big Bang" with capitals and "quantum mechanics" with lowercase, there is very little point in doing otherwise. Also, our own guidelines can be applied inconsistently, leading to very strange things. For example, the title of the article about the album Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D is "Year Zero Remixed" "per WP:MOSTM". But, considering that almost all sources refer to the album as Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D, referring to it as Year Zero Remixed is borderline original research. Indeed, one guy once proposed to move "(pronounced 'lĕh-'nérd 'skin-'nérd)" to "Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd", but another guy refused to do that because "[t]hat would probably be considered synthesis." (On the other hand, the article about the song "Rock N Roll Train" [sic] is at "Rock 'n' Roll Train".) If we could agree that we should at the very least spell proper names the way they are usually spelt by reliable secondary sources in English (the "secondary" is to avoid stuff such as lowercase "adidas", and the "in English" is to avoid having to spell Akira Toriyama as "鳥山明"), that would at least be a good start to prevent arbitrary name mangling. (I think there are people eagerly waiting for the last person who pronunces "NASA" as en-ay-es-ay to pass on, so that they can move the article to "Nasa".) --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 10:42, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that makes sense to me in relation to the specific question of proper names.--Kotniski (talk) 11:08, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments; I think they've improved the section, and I have restored it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:30, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I believe it should NOT be a general principle - too broad a context for this. If my source is a 16th century document (extreme for emphasis), do I capitalize all the nouns? Use f for s? "Use the source" is an exception for particular situations. And 24 hours is not enough time to collect consensus for a "general principle" on the most critical style page in Wikipedia. But if I'm alone. . . (John User:Jwy talk) 18:49, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Most 16th century documents are primary sources (and the problem with them is that they are unrepresentative of current usage); so that should be twice covered by the present wording:

Many points of usage, such as the treatment of proper names, can be decided by seeing what other writers do about the problem. Unless there is some clear reason to do otherwise, it is generally a good idea to follow the usage of reliable secondary sources in English on the subject; the sources for the article itself ahould be reliable. If the sources for the article can be shown to be unrepresentative of current English usage as a whole, follow current English usage instead — and consult more sources.

The reason to add this is that "follow the sources" has come up several times in various contexts here over a long period; it seems simpler to add it as a general principle and then refer to the principle than to add it to a dozen sections and not to others. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:00, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

On closer examination, my example is very poor! My main concern is the appropriate balance with the first general principle - I think we want to avoid having WP be a confusing mix of styles (I'm far from saying it MUST be absolutely consistent!), I see the new "principle" applying in cases where there is no guidance here or for "special" exceptions. Does it makes sense to add wording to that effect - or does that fall into "break the rules"? (John User:Jwy talk) 19:49, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I can't see how the principles conflict: if different reliable secondary sources use different styles, you can pick one and use it consistently in an article. --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 20:05, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I think, using this general principle, we can simplify a lot of the existing text. For example, we could add a link to it from the section on mid-sentence The - and I will do so if it is not reverted again. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:08, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

mea culpa - fast/lazy reading on my part. I was thinking it was wikipedia-wide consistency. Sorry to take your time to deal with my poor reading skills (and for the initial revert). (John User:Jwy talk) 00:35, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Navboxes

Is there any specific MOS on navboxes? I've seen a few (Template:The Simpsons, Template:Red Dwarf) that use apparently non standard colours. If there isn't a MOS related to these, perhaps there should be to make everything consistent? Rehevkor ✉ 21:58, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Template messages#See also has a link to Wikipedia:Colours. -- Wavelength (talk) 14:27, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Capitalize Holy Spirit?

Wikipedia's MoS should specify capitalization rules for "Holy Spirit" and "holy spirit". My thought is that when "Holy Spirit" is a figure or person, the term must be capitalized; when "holy spirit" is a mindset or impersonal force, then it need not be capitalized, but may be when quoting references which capitalize it.

Please post most reasoning on the capitalization page, where the matter is more thoroughly presented:
MOS:CAPS#Holy Spirit? ...Soc8675309 (talk) 17:45, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Can you give examples of where holy spirit refers to a mindset or impersonal force? JIMp_talk·cont 18:34, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

The matter is more thoroughly presented, with examples, at "MOS:CAPS":

MOS:CAPS#Holy Spirit?

It might be best to concentrate discussion there. ...--Soc8675309 (talk) 19:47, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Too many people with too much spare time?

Must every question about how to follow a particular MoS guideline lead to a proposal to change the guideline, often followed by a lengthy debate, but seldom leading to a consensus for change? Couldn't all this time be used more productively—to improve Wikipedia articles, for example? Finell (Talk) 12:26, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes indeed. You can feel a "but" coming, can't you. However ^{fooled you!}, it flows from the fact that the guides are there to keep the articles in shape, and when people feel those are being quoted and used in an absurd way, they'll go back to the guide and try to hammer them out for further clarity. HarryAlffa (talk) 19:58, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually. How dare you sir! That describes every single Wikipedian! Outrageous!

HarryAlffa (talk) 20:01, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Page protection

Due to the ongoing edit war, I have fully protected the page for 1 week per a request at WP:RFPP. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:21, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

"Quotes" section

In the articles on 86-DOS and Tim Paterson there is a separate "Quotes" section that only contains a couple quotes. This seems unencyclopedic, and I'm wondering if it's allowable or advisable under the MoS for articles to have their own separate "Quotes" section, that's meant to stand on its own, not directly related to the 'flow of the text'. -- OlEnglish ^(Talk) 02:46, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

A "Quotes" section is inadvisable and unencyclopedic. It is better to work pertinent quotations into the text. Finell (Talk) 03:33, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Quotes may well be harmless, and may be raw material for a later section; so case by case is best; 86-DOS does sound like it could become a story. But the normal and recommended treatment is to move such sections to Wikiquote, and link. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:24, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Lead sentence

Can the lead sentence be changed to "The Manual of Style (often abbreviated MoS) is a style guide for Wikipedia articles." ? See MOS:INTRO, particularly MOS:BOLDTITLE. Z a bM i l e n k o 06:26, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Done

Section ==Miscellaneous==

Change to ==Miscellanea==. Section names should not be ambiguous and thus should not be appelled with only an adjective.68.148.149.184 (talk) 23:14, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Miscellanea is a Latin adjective; I fail to see the improvement - or the ambiguity. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:31, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Miscellanea is an English noun (and a Latin noun too, I think, but that's beside the point). A synonym is Miscellany.

There is, in my experience, a standard English idiom of using miscellaneous to name the catch-all taxon at the end of a list; it's shorthand, I suppose, for "miscellaneous items" or the like; so I have no particular problem leaving the section name as-is. I believe I do understand the objection, though — setting aside the word choice ambiguous, it is true that the other section names are nouns, so that having one section name be an adjective is non-parallel; also, in general naming a section with an adjective rather than a noun feels a bit... dissolute, perhaps, rather like using the passive voice rather than the active. (Here, though, miscellaneous is idiomatic shorthand for a noun.) Pi zero (talk) 13:56, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

including boldface section from WP:MOSTEXT in WP:MOS

finding the proper convention for use of boldface [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS:BOLD#Boldface ] would be easier if this convention was discussed in [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Article_titles.2C_headings.2C_and_sections ]. this is also the logical place to look for the use of boldface when a new user first edits wikipedia. specifically, WP:MOS "Article titles, headings, and sections" should include "Boldface is used to separate the article name from ordinary text. It is typically used in the first paragraph of an article, used with proper names and common terms for the article topic, including any synonyms and acronyms. Do this only for the first occurrence of the term; for instance, you should avoid using boldface in both the lead section and the caption of the lead image." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS:BOLD#Boldface) diremarc (talk) 16:55, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

What's wrong with MOS

Let me start with what's right with MOS: the notice that when English speakers do a thing in two different ways, as with WP:ENGVAR or the Oxford comma, that both are widely accepted and should be left alone.

Beyond that, it would be harmless if MOS stated what is universally accepted about English prose (End every sentence or fragment with punctuation. would be one example - and even to that there might be exceptions).

[Also, as below, certain conventions "to prevent factual errors or ambiguity". This principle does not include (as some would argue) conventions that choose among alternatives, and which might prevent ambiguity provided the readers knew that particular paragraph of MOS; very few of our readers will. 18:34, 19 May 2009 (UTC)]

If, when there are two widely accepted ways of doing things, as with "logical" punctuation, we stated advantages and disadvantages, and left the editor to make up his mind, that would be treating our editors like adults. Even if we then expressed a preference between the alternatives, that would be informative, respectful, and useful.

But we do not; explanations are routinely removed, and arbitrary choices imposed, in the interests of a chimerical Wikipedia-wide "consistency". Our articles will never be consistent: some have infoboxes, some don't; some use color, some use colour; some use asyndeton, some don't.

Even on those issues on which MOS pretends to impose "consistency", they are not consensus, but the opinion of a handful of editors. (More editors have objected to the requirement of "logical" punctuation that ever have supported it; but they don't stick around.) Their imposition is a massive violation of WP:NOT, which is policy: Instruction creep should be avoided. Wikipedia's policies and guidelines are descriptive, not prescriptive. They represent an evolving community consensus for how to improve the encyclopedia and are not a code of law.

I dispute 90% of MOS, therefore, individually and in parts. Whatever comes of the current Arbitration, I shall be taking it off my watchlist, as beyond present repair; I hope that (as with other entrenched disasters) I will find it better after a long intermission.

I encourage those who think they can fix this divisive and polemical page to continue to try; indeed, I post this in an effort to assure them that they are not alone, and have support, even in absentia.

Comments? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:06, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

That perfect consistency can never be achieved does not make it worthless to try for greater consistency. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:36, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Greater consistency in dashes and quote-marks is not worth very much to begin with; that striving for it is futile does make the effort vacuous. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:47, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Your problem with the Manual of Style is that it is a manual of style. That's not going to change. Ilkali (talk) 15:58, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

The present state of MOS is inconsistent with being a guideline. In the long run, one of them will change. The present decrees of MOS are inconsistent with the English language; in that case, there is little doubt which will change.

But it really doesn't matter; the force of a guideline (except to newbies who don't realize how little tags mean) rests in the persuasiveness of the arguments it makes and the consensus it represents. MOS has no arguments, and (with the exceptions above) represents no consensus. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:47, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

If, as you say, "The present decrees of MOS are inconsistent with the English language", can you provide examples of those inconsistencies and sources to support your assertion? -- Wavelength (talk) 23:35, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

For one, the effort to bury aesthetic or typographer's punctuation by silence. There are two methods of dealing with the question, both with style guides that support them and recommend against the other (I mention this because it is discussed a few sections sections up, with citations).
For another, the guideline on Celestial bodies, which says that we should use The greatest cobalt deposit on earth with a lower case earth, unless another celestial body is mentioned in the same sentence. This is not what is done; if the availability of cobalt on Mars is the subject, Earth is capitalized whether Mars is in the same sentence or not.
But there are hundreds; the whole section on Figures and words is an effort to patch a misbegotten hard rule quarried out of a collection of rules of thumb so that it doesn't produce too many howling violations of idiom. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:31, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

At a minimum, a manual of style should prescribe some enforceable rules that prevent factual errors or ambiguity. Some that should be in this MOS are:

- - The decimal point is the period (full-stop), never the comma
  - Billion and trillion have the short-scale meaning, never the long-scale meaning
  - Dates in the format YYYY-MM-DD are governed by ISO-8601 (or are not so governed, but we should make up our minds)
  - All-numeric dates in other than the YYYY-MM-DD format are forbidden
  - The citation format should be specified in a manner so that pages, volumes, and issues can be clearly distinguished.
  - When a name for a unit of measure, such as gallon, indicates different quantities in different countries, there is no presumption about which national variety of the unit is intended and any article that fails to specify the variety is in error.

If we wanted to, we could confine the manual of style to those kinds of pronouncements, and for the rest, give a list of well-regarded manuals such as the Chicago Manual. --Jc3s5h (talk) 16:18, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree to some extent with PMA. We should lay down some basic style guidelines, and we should insist on consistency within articles. But if we try to pin down every tiny thing, in the end we'll succeed mostly in undermining the MoS. It would be good if we could have a small but solid core of rules, and thereafter advice outlining choices and explaining who tends to do what where. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 17:53, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

(ec) All of Jc3s5h's examples are quite reasonable; as a quibble, it might be possible to permit the decimal comma provided there is a clear note explaining what's going on. They make up another valid category: avoiding unclarity.

Let me, however, encourage reduction towards that minimum. I look forward to seeing a revised and simplified MOS in some months. Good luck. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:59, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

There are a few other useful part, like WP:LAYOUT (excluding WP:MOSIMAGE), which actually helps editors and readers. But on the whole MOS is WP:CREEP - for example dictating what kinds of dash should be used for page rages in citations. And as for making every last minutia of MOS a requirement for FA, well, if I'm gouig to spend that much time researching, it will be on a subject I enjoy. --Philcha (talk) 18:17, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

You've expressed my sentiments exactly, especially with regard to "treating our editors like adults." A very thoughtful post. Best, Miguel Chavez (talk) 07:46, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Pmanderson indicates that when there are alternative styles which lead to factually different meanings, readers can not or will not rely on the MOS to decide which alternative is intended in an artilce. If this is so, then the MOS should be deleted, and every single article should be written in an unambiguous style. For example, if a journal is cited in a style that does not spell out or abbreviate the terms "volume", "issue", and "page(s)" then it must contain a statement about which manual of style the citations follow. --Jc3s5h (talk) 18:52, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Is it sufficient to be clear about which number is which, without necessarily following any model? "Vol. 5, Issue 2, pp. 143-158" will give any reader the location of the article, which is the reason to cite it in the first place. It may be preferable to follow either the standard citation method in the field, or how the journal cites itself, but is it important? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:59, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Style guides at WP are "devisive and polemical" only inasmuch as a single editor, above, has been running this line for three years; it has largely been a singular crusade. I hear no complaints from our article editors, whether those who prepare and maintain featured content or those who contribute to other articles, about the nature and function of MoS. Most editors, like me, are grateful to have a resource that clears up doubt. Every professional publication has a style guide, and WP's is significantly less fine-grained that the major hard-copy style guides. Those who feel there is insufficient stylistic latitude might ponder on the overwhelming proportion of stylistic decisions editors make (would it be 95%?) that are not covered by MoS. That is as it should be. There is no solid evidence that editors out there do not like the function and status of MoS as it has been over years. Tony (talk) 05:20, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

They were divisive and polemical before I ever saw them, they are now, and they will continue to be. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:35, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

TONY, you "hear no complaints from our article editors" because you listen in the wrong places, mainly at FAC. See: the quotes at User:Philcha#GA.2C__FA.2C_etc. and Category:Hyphen Luddites. How many hours' study does it take to become thoroughly familiar with MOS? I'd rather spend the time researching publications that that help to build content. --Philcha (talk) 07:09, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

"How many hours' study does it take to become thoroughly familiar with MOS?" Nobody is forced to spend time learning it. If you follow the wrong style, the worst that will happen is that someone will leave you a message suggesting that you adjust to something different. Even that's optional. As long as you don't deliberately change things from good style to bad, there's no problem. Ilkali (talk) 07:37, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Pilcha: "How many hours' study" does it take to learn how to write to a professional level? That is the requirement of featured articles. "Good articles" are usually not written well, and are full of inconsistencies (not all, but most). I'd say reading through the MoSs would be a quick-sure way of improving one's writing ability, but not sufficient to achieve a professional standard, since only a tiny part of style is treated by the style guides (grammar, redundancy, logic, and flow are too multifarious and detailed to treat, and would quickly end up being over-presriptive). Probably you'd want to become more familiar with some parts than others—that's certainly the case for me, and I quickly consult any part I'm unfamiliar with, where on occasion it is necessary. I very much like most of what is on your page, Pilcha, including general advice on article writing; but I'm unsure I agree with your stance on the style guides, since not everyone can do as well as you can without its advice. Perhaps there's a case for the writing of a beginner's guide to the style guides (with links for the reader who wants a greater level of detail on any particular matter). Tony (talk) 07:50, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

TONY, who's this "Pilcha" whose views you're commenting on?

The fatal flaw in your case it that I've seen many examples of lousy writing that complies with MOS, and it's quite easy to write decent to good prose that ignores MOS. Which is more beneficial for readers? On which would time be better spent? Your own excellent advice on User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 1a (of FAC - "engaging, even brilliant prose") illustrates my point - only one section of it considers MOS, and it's the one I ignore, while enthusiatically recommending the rest. --Philcha (talk) 08:12, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I think these "criticisms" would apply to all WP policies and guidelines - but it was never claimed that they would enable perfection to be achieved, nor that they should be followed blindly without exception, nor that editors should read and master the whole set of them before writing anything. They are (or should be) useful references to be consulted when you're not sure about something or when editors take differing views. Of course the MoS and other project pages need a great deal of improvement, but that can be achieved by proposing concrete changes and discussing them calmly. --Kotniski (talk) 09:31, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi, Kotniski, re "discussing them calmly", I do not find MOS exciting :-)

Re "nor that they should be followed blindly without exception", I wish - see WP:WIAFA.

Re "They are (or should be) useful references to be consulted when you're not sure about something or when editors take differing views", it's impossible to find anything in it, and there's no overview, index or any thing that would help. What little I know about MOS is based on review comments that cited relevant pages - and with which I did not always agree.

Re "that can be achieved by proposing concrete changes", an incremental strategy only works for upgrading a reasoanbly good product. I dont' think MOS qualifies. --Philcha (talk) 12:31, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, the difficulty of finding the information is something that could be worked on (although it's not totally disastrous at the moment - there's a main MoS page and a sidebar that guides you to the various subpages). If you think the FA people impose MoS rules more rigidly than was intended, then that's more a matter for FA than for MoS (it says at the top of this and all other guidelines that there will be occasional exceptions). Do you have any other complaints?--Kotniski (talk) 13:15, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm not the only one who has complaints - see User:Philcha#GA.2C__FA.2C_etc..

Re "the difficulty of finding the information is ... not totally disastrous at the moment", I disagree. The sidebar on the right seems to reflect mainly which groups have at various times in the past kicked up a fuss. OTOH I see no easy navigation to WP:LAYOUT, which, with one possible exception, is very useful. In fact I'm astonished that the "create article" dialogue does not automatically insert a template (subst, not transcluded) that sets up the standard sections.

The "possible exception" to the usefulness of WP:LAYOUT is WP:MOSIMAGE. This seems to be going through one of its moderate phases, but I've seen periods when it has outright forbidden the explicit sizing of images - which is nuts.

The difficulty of navigating and finding stuff is partly a consequence of the size of MOS, and would be reduced if MOS were slimmed down. The other problem is that WP's internal search engine is pretty useless. Although that's not MOS' fault, I suggest MOS needs to adapt to the fact.

I'm having a skim through MOS now to see what I think as good / desirable but inadequate / bad and will post my thoughts here when I think I have enough material. --Philcha (talk) 14:18, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

PS I partially agree with "that's more a matter for FA than for MoS". The sad fact is that WP has its fair share of people who get their kicks out of bossing others around, by no means confined to FAC, and I think WP guidelines should be careful not to provide weapons for such people. --Philcha (talk) 14:22, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I am glad to see that so much productive conversation has been sparked by what was intended to be a farewell. I think this would make a good essay, which is why I have continued to engage; it would be better if written by someone who intends to stick around. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:03, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

One characteristic of Wikipedia is that, even if an editor makes a mistake, another editor can correct the mistake. Therefore, there is no urgency for an editor to learn all the details of the Manual of Style, although each editor would do well to continue learning at a reasonable speed. There is also no need to remove from the Manual useful guidelines which some editors appreciate. Also, not all editors have easy access to the Chicago Manual of Style and other manuals of style. Please let the guidelines remain for those who appreciate them, and, if some editors ignore some guidelines, then please let other editors correct their mistakes.

-- Wavelength (talk) 20:47, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Another thing that MOS could usefully do is to report what Chicago, Oxford and so on say about a given question. Those are reasons to choose between alternatives. But MOS doesn't. I hope to return to find things otherwise.

There is also no need to remove from the Manual useful guidelines which some editors appreciate. This is too broad. If many, or (as sometimes happens) more, editors disapprove of them, then they should be removed. Guidelines are supposed to be consensus, and such "guidelines" aren't; nor are they useful, except in stirring up controversy. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:00, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Nobody is forced to spend time learning it. If you follow the wrong style, the worst that will happen is that someone will leave you a message suggesting that you adjust to something different. Even that's optional. As long as you don't deliberately change things from good style to bad, there's no problem.

Would any of this were true; if it were, MoS would not be a problem, and such of its regulations as are unwise would sink into a harmless obscurity. If it can be arranged to become true, I would leave this page forever, instead of long enough to let it evolve without me. But the worst that will happen is that bots will be driven through articles to fix what doesn't need fixing (including altering direct quotations), and useful articles will be turned down for FA because they don't comply with a prejudice codified in some obscure MOS subpage. Worse yet, incompetent and dishonest articles can pass FA, because "correcting" MOScruft looks like a full review, even if the accuracy, neutrality, verifiability, and clarity of the article have not been considered.

The last sentence has other problems: is it really meant to imply that "good style" is whatever MOS approves of, no matter how obscure and illiterate, and "bad style" is what NOS disapproves of? I hope not. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:52, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

¶ I'd been stuck on the talk page of WP:MOSNUM so long that I'd forgotten that a Mother Page existed, and suggested a shorter working Manual for essential questions of accessibility, readability and clarity. Then when I was reminded (by a reference to this very secton) that such an overall summary MoS did in fact exist, I checked the kilobyte count in this article's edit history, and saw that it exceeded 144,000. If you added the counts of all the two-dozen subsidiary manuals (excluding linguistic and technical ones) to that, I'm not sure what literary work's word count would be exceeded: Dickens, Shakespeare, the New Testament? the Bible? Certainly if you tried to read all the discussion archives, too, you'd be planning on a long programme of study.

It's true that printed Manuals of Style (Modern Language Association, Associated Press, U.S. Government Printing Office, New York Times, University of Chicago Press, Clarendon Press, etc.) are bound volumes of some length, but they're largely for the use of full-time paid professional writers, reporters, professors, copy-editors and editors. Fewer than two dozen people are actually getting paid for any function by Wikipedia.

There's nothing wrong with guides to usage and manuals of style as such, but I think there's a parallel with the argument summaries listed under phrases like WP:Snowball and WP:Not. Although people often forget, they're not arguments in and of themselves, just summaries or collections of other arguments that might be valid ones to use in reaching a consensus for a particular question on a particular page. Similarly, as Septentronalis suggested above, a listing of the various reasons that different manuals (and different discussions at Wikipedia) have come to different conclusions, or to similar conclusions, about some question of usage, is extremely valuable, but (in the absence of some unarguable danger of confusion, mistake, error, ambiguity or unreadability) the actual context of the particular article, especially the needs of that article's likely readers, rather than some Universal ('bot-enforced) Wikipedia Rule, should be the basis for any decision that might be needed. —— Shakescene (talk) 00:57, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Responding to Septentrionalis' point, I believe the value for Wikipedia of a MoS lies in a few areas, which include:

Avoiding edit wars. (Edit wars over style have typically been vicious, incomprehensible to onlookers, & lame.)
Achieving some degree of consistency in Wikipedia articles. (For example, order of end material sections.)
Providing guidance for perplexed editors. (AFAIK, the examples of Manuals of Style quoted above by Septentrionalis & Shakescene do not discuss proper format for article titles, hyperlinks, nor naming conventions.)

I would hope that these points are enough of a chore for anyone. The secret to a minimum of stress & frustration on Wikipedia is not knowing how to succeed in disputes, but knowing how to avoid them in the first place.

Trying to make the MoS a proscriptive can only end in frustration. Who is going to ban an editor from Wikipedia for, say, repeatedly splitting infinitives? Who would avoid being banned for complaining about it endlessly? -- llywrch (talk) 21:41, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Waste of time I think that this conversation is basically one big chatty discussion about pet peeves and irritations. Honestly, people, there's the village pump for this kind of stuff, and I hear there's an IRC chat too. If PMA wanted to (keep) dispute(ing) "90%" of MOS, then he could do that line-by-line and point-by-point. If you have a specific proposal for changes, I suggest taking it to another section. As for PMA's "goodbye", it's worth remembering what that usually means in wikiland. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:55, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I have seen dozens of specific proposals made; almost all of them have been greeted with the same ~~lie~~falsehood: whatever MOS says is immemorial consensus, even if only one or two editors can actually be found who support it or indeed understand it. (I have made some in the course of this discussion, and they stand unresponded to.) I do not have more energy to waste on this WP:OWN and WP:CREEP violation; but I would like to see it cleaned up in a year's time, and salute those who seem willing to do so. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:51, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

- This is about the broad picture, not over the hundreds of different details (which are just mentioned in the discussion immediately above for illustration). There are two (and of course more) different approaches to how a manual of style should be employed, how much detail it needs, and how prescriptive or permissive it should be. The editors on both sides are hard-working and sincere, with the best interests of Wikipedia, its editors and its readers at heart, but when we argue about these questions in the context of one of the hundreds of different details, the debate can degenerate into personal sniping and irritation (exactly what everyone wants to avoid). And where better to discuss approaches to the Manual of Style than on its Talk Page? —— Shakescene (talk) 23:40, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Japan-related articles

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles) is highly useful and our Japan-related articles would be a mess without it. Do not touch. --Apoc2400 (talk) 15:09, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

That's actually a fairly good guideline; it abides by consensus, and provides explanations; when it chooses between systems of romanization, it chooses a widely intelligible one, and says why. Most of it is a straight application of WP:Use English; it has shortfalls as a page-naming convention, but it seems to be being ignored where it is over-eager, as indeed it ought to be. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:42, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I was consciously and (at least once) explicitly excluding the whole class of language-related pages from my own discussion of the family of two-dozen MoS pages and sub-pages, because those linguistic/national pages really deal with very different and very specific issues that most English-Wikipedia editors won't often encounter (unlike, for example, WP:MOSNUM or WP:MOSICON). —— Shakescene (talk) 05:44, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

En-dashes and image file corruption

File:Henry Fuseli — Hamlet and the Ghost.JPG

Corrupted version: Horatio, Marcellus, Hamlet, and the Ghost (Artist: Henry Fuseli 1798).

Mostly copy/pasted from a post to FAC talk where this is also relevant: from 17 May until today, two illustrations at an existing featured article failed to display because an attempt to implement MoS compliance corrupted the filenames (which contained hyphens).[2] The surprising thing is that this filename corruption remained uncorrected for so long at the article Hamlet. The problem was quite noticeable and prominent: redlinks appeared in place of these images and one of them was very high on the page. After correcting the problem, posting to article talk, and notifying the user who performed these edits am also posting here because this went unnoticed and unfixed for a week at Shakespeare's most famous play: one wonders how many other articles (featured or otherwise) may have been damaged in a similar manner. On my other account I caught similar problems at non-featured articles several months ago. Respectfully submitted, _Hamlet, Prince of Trollmark^{bugs and goblins} 18:07, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

[Aside:] I similarly wonder all the time why the Wikimedia software, unlike almost all similar software, is case-sensitive, which vastly complicates, and often frustrates, searches and wikilinking, as well as pulling up the correct image or file. —— Shakescene (talk) 18:20, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, most of these images are hosted at Commons. That project is vastly multilingual, so we can't tell them to stop using hyphens in filenames. _Hamlet, Prince of Trollmark^{bugs and goblins} 18:28, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

About U.S. Customary units in US-specific articles

Perhaps the guidelines have to be changed in favor of SI as en-wiki isn't us-wiki and only Americans have feeling of U.S. Customary. SkyBon^{Talk\Contributions} 19:22, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

There's a good reason for keeping U.S. customary units in U.S.-related articles, apart from keeping Americans happy! The sources for such articles will usually use customary units, and converting to SI can be misleading. For example, imagine a distance quoted as 1 mile; we would usually convert that as 1.6 km, but the real distance might be 1.5 km or 1.7 km (both of which we could convert as 1 mi, or we could be more precise). If we write the distance as "1 mile (1.6 km)", it is unambiguous that the metric measurement is a convertion of the customary measurement, and not the other way round. Physchim62 (talk) 07:55, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I completely agree. Saying that something was "2.54 (or even 2.5) cm (1 inch)" long or weighed "2.2 kg (1 lb)" can indicate misleading precision (as I said in some recent discussion that may now be archived). —— Shakescene (talk) 08:02, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Physchim62 and Shakescene, and (drifting slightly off-topic) would add that this is a more general problem. It's not uncommon to see converted values given to more precision than can reliably be inferred from the source. Just as a made-up example, something like 1 mile (1.61 km).

I don't know that the MOS can really do much about this latter problem, though, as it's not really a style issue. Anyone who understands units and physical quantities will already know not to do this, and for those who don't, it's not intuitive that they should look in a style manual to find out about it. --Trovatore (talk) 09:39, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I would say that a style manual is probably the best place to advise editors about this point. I was unaware of this issue until another editor pointed it out to me, and to be honest I am still not entirely sure how much precision a converted quantity should be expressed in. I have been operating on the assumption that the converted quantity should generally be expressed to the same precision as the original quantity, though if the original quantity is an integer (e.g., 1 mile) it is acceptable to express the converted quantity (e.g., 1.6 km) to an additional decimal place. Is this correct? If so, the {{Convert}} template can be used as follows: "{{convert|1|mi|km|1}}". — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 10:31, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the {{convert}} template is a great tool for non-specialists, and is maintained by people who know what they're talking about (even if I don't always agree with them on the finest of fine details!). Adding a single extra significant figure to the conversion, as in "1 mile (1.6 km)" is fine, and advisable if the converted measurement is less than about five units. If there is a demand, we can get some more specific guidelines together: however, I'm not sure that there is a huge problem that needs solving here. Physchim62 (talk) 12:05, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I think it depends on the kind of measurement: if it is a nominal (defined) value, as in two miles or pint glass, then it's OK to give one or two more significant digits, e.g. 3.2 km and 0.57 l (or even 3.22 km and 0.568 l); if it is an estimate or an order of magnitude, as in "X is a village about 2 miles north of Y", then converting to 3.2 km rather than to 3 km makes very little sense. (In this particular example, the value is intrinsically indeterminate to within that level of precision, unless you specify which point of each settlement you're considering, or both settlements are less than 50 metres across.) I would tolerate an exception if the significand of the conversion is 1, to avoid rounding for example 1.4 down to 1, but refusing to round 4.8 up to 5 when the source doesn't actually justify such a precision is pointless. The template as it currently exists yields "15 kilometres (9.3 mi)" using its default precision, which is ridiculous. (On the other hand, I don't like the paranoia by which the template reduces the precision by one digit when the conversion factor is greater than 2, yielding "84 kilograms (185 lb)" and "53 inches (130 cm)" rather than "84 kilograms (185 lb)" and "53 inches (135 cm)"; I would increase the treshold to √10.) --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 00:22, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

BTW, if the source value is a defined value, I think it is generally better to explicitly state whether or not the conversion also is: "210 mm × 297 mm (approx. 8.28 in × 11.69 in)" or "8.5 in × 11 in (215.9 mm × 279.4 mm exactly)". --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 00:32, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Protection

~~This came up on WP:RFPP and I protected for edit warring for 2 weeks. Unfortunately, this locks out everyone as well.~~

If the two folks involved would be willing to agree here to not edit war again, I'll happily unlock the page, with the provision that if you two go at again, either myself or someone else will block you.

~~What do you say? rootology/equality 20:46, 29 May 2009 (UTC)~~

Per a good faith request on RFPP, I've unprotected the page. Any further edit warring can and will likely lead to blocks. Please discuss, not edit war. rootology/equality 21:28, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

This is what I proposed, which led to the unblock:

Warn the two warriors that they will be blocked if they edit the MoS, and that the dispute should be resolved by consensus on the MoS talk page.
Unblock the MoS.
The section involved should be restored to what is was before the current dispute, and should not be changed in substance unless a clear consensus for change is reached on the MoS talk page. The consensus, if reached, should be implemented by editors other than the warriors.
Warn everyone, on the MoS talk page, that further editing of the section involved that does not conform to this resolution will result in blocks of the offending editors.

I am creating a subsection below for resolution of the content dispute. Will someone who is familiar with the dispute please make the subsection heading more specific? Thank you. Finell (Talk) 21:39, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

What edit war?

What edit war? I got a message from Root, so I suppose I'm meant to be involved. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:23, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I see that someone's removed my changes, so I'm going to assume that my addition of the lines regarding Wikipedia's use of quotation marks. Please correct me if this is not the case.

I posit that this is not an edit war. The first time I typed in my changes, I mistakenly wrote "inside" instead of "outside." In all likelihood, this is why they seemed untrue to Kotniski. However, since I had not yet noticed the typo, I responded to K (in the change description; see History) as if K had been responding to the fact that the stop rule is not considered correct in American English. Also visible in the page history, I noticed the typo shortly after and corrected it.

It may be relevant that I did answer Kotniski's question "why??" but it seemed more appropriate to do so on K's talk page than here.Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:51, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I am also assuming that this message does not refer to my correction of the passage regarding quotation marks and punctuation to address proper usage of colons and semicolons, but please confirm. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:59, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

In restoring the section to an earlier state, I interpreted the duration of the edit war to include the entire consecutive sequence of edits by the two parties involved. It did seem to me as I was reversing them that, absent an edit war, most (perhaps all) of them would not have stood anyway without getting consensus first. Pi zero (talk) 23:36, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Seems reasonable on your part. Still not sure what this is about myself.Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:39, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

(Double take) What, not even the one about colons? "Punctuation" implies "all punctuation," which is not the case. It's my understanding that colons and semicolons go outside the quote marks in both British and American English. And what about the parallel construction? If Wikipedia did the same thing both times, select a way of doing things that's accepted in some places but not others for technical reasons, then why wouldn't a decision to describe them in the same pay pass scrutiny? Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:03, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia has not, so far as I can see, selected a way of doing things that's accepted in some places but not others (at least, not in this case). It has adopted its own house style for technical reasons, and since it says all punctuation (I agree that that is what the current wording means), that is the house style unless consensus is successfully built to change it. Note that strictly according to that house style, it would be very unusual for a colon to go inside the quotation marks anyway; your example with a colon outside the quotation marks is, in fact, consistent with the house style.

BTW, the practice of tagging things as British or American seems potentially inflammatory, though obviously not intended to be; they aren't British or American, they're the house style. I might support a proposal (depending on its particulars) to add a sentence... somewhere... stating explicitly that these things are the house style, independent of what variety of English may be preferred by any given article. The wording and placement of such a sentence would be tricky, and seeking consensus would be a very wise discretion. Pi zero (talk) 02:10, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

By "acceptable in some places but not in others," I mean that Wikipedia's policy of using the stop rule for commas and periods with quote marks is acceptable in British English but not in American. Since Wikipedia has done this twice--once with commas, periods and quotes and once with choosing double quotes over single--it makes sense to describe them both the same way. You will note that the section on double quotes includes an explanation of why this form was chosen. I simply changed it so that it matched the one in the section about commas, periods and quote marks.

Also, if placing colons outside the quote marks is the house style, then the MoS should reflect that. Right now it says to put "punctuation," which I read as "all punctuation," inside or outside the quote marks depending on the stop. Because neither British nor American English permits this in the case of colons and semicolons, I figured that it was an oversight on the part of some previous contributor. One of the changes I made earlier today corrected this.Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:18, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

To be clear here (although the point has been expressed in other words elsewhere): Saying that the house style usually causes a trailing colon to go outside the quote marks is different from saying that it always does so. It usually does so, but only because a trailing colon usually isn't part of what is being quoted. The particular example you had added to the MOS is one in which logical quotation happens to be in agreement with the British and American styles. The reason you gave in the example is incorrect under the current house rules: the colon doesn't go outside in that example because it is a colon; rather, it goes outside because it is not part of the thing being quoted (i.e., the word "gender"). Pi zero (talk) 16:24, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Found a source on the matter. See below. Matters of advisory notes, parallel construction and what exactly the war is supposed to be about still stand.Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:55, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Request for clarification

It was User:MBisanz who asked for, and briefly obained, temporary full protection of the project page because, he said, "Two experienced users edit warring." If there is really any question about who was edit warring and what they were warring about, please ask User:MBisanz. Evidently User:Pi zero knows who the two warriors are. Otherwise, please identify the subject of the subject the dispute and discuss it below the next heading, so some progress can be made. If it is the subject of the MOS's prescription of so-called logical placement of punctuation inside or outside quotations, that subject was discussed to death above, there was no concensus to change the long-standing policy, and that section of the MOS should be restored to what it was before without further pointless argument. Editors' denials of an edit war or their participation does nothing to advance the project. Admins generally do not block a page for edit warring in the absence of an edit war. Thank you. Finell (Talk) 00:02, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

No, the changes that I made that were reversed by Pi zero were not the subject of any discussion previously shown on this talk page and did not alter any of Wikipedia's rules. I only described regional status, added a line about semicolons and colons, and matched some phrases, as you can see either just above your own post or in the page history.Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:37, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Update: MBisanz's talk page says that said user is taking a wikibreak and won't be back until June 1. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:20, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

My complaint was about [3] and [4] which wholesale undid another user's contributions while there was no concurrent discussion at the talk page about the actions. MBisanz ^talk 21:38, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for clearing that up, MBisanz.Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:05, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I answered Kotniski's question on said user's talk page, here: [[5]]. This only pertains to the line about single quotes vs. double. If you look in the page history, you'll see that Kotniski and I had no further dispute on the other one. I'm confident that this matter was put to rest, at least as far as the two of us are concerned, before the page was blocked. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:09, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

A grammatical mystery

Dear colleagues, although this is not directly connected with a recommendation in MoS, I wonder whether anyone can point to a source that discusses a grammatical phenomenon that appears to be utterly unacknowledged in the major style guides and grammatical authorities. Understanding the phenomenon—why it works—may assist our editors when they use (or don't use) the construction at issue. I've raised the issue on an international linguistics mailing list, but I'm unsure that the professionals have yet provided a convincing answer.

The issue concerns the ability in English to remove "the" from nominal groups (nouns, put simply), when two or more occur in a clause (typically "A and B", but also "from A to B"). The removal of "the" in these instances is not possible if only one noun is expressed.

"We travelled over hill and dale to get there" (but not "We travelled over hill to get there").
"In that situation, driver and passenger are equally liable" (rather than "the driver and the passenger").
"She would start by placing bucket and shovel to one side".
"It involves an algorithm to prune each node top-down from root to leaves" (rather than "from the root to the leaves").

Both singular and plural are possible ("leaves"), and the removal of "a" is possible in the singular. The odd thing is that such exclusion (is it ellipsis?) can appear to be elegant in a duple construction (and I guess a triple or more) while being plain wrong in a single noun. If you know how to explain this phenomenon, I'd be most grateful to hear. Perhaps on my talk page if more than a short reply? Tony (talk) 17:08, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Subsequent posts transferred to Tony1 talk; further discussion there is welcome.

Where is the subject–verb agreement subsection of Grammar[?]

I need MoS guidance on how Wikipedia treats plural-only noun forms: "I bought a pair of shoes yesterday." Shall I treat the subsequent pronoun as plural (the shoes) or singular (the pair) for Wikipedia style? If there is a more specific Wiki article on subject-verb agreement rules, I'd like some direction to it. How does Wikipedia treat collective nouns? I'm just seeking to know what Wikipedia wants. Fdssdf (talk) 23:12, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

In my experience, there are some circumstances in which a collective noun should be treated as singular, and other circumstances in which it should be treated as plural, depending on whether you're discussing the collection as a unit, or discussing its constituent elements. I generally rely on my instincts as a native speaker to tell me when to do which, and only in a very clear-cut situation would I be likely to take action when challenged on it — the best action being to rephrase the entire passage so as to avoid the question (an excellent way to achieve consensus, assuming you can find a strong enough alternative).

That said, there is actually a rather laughable claim in the MoS about this, at WP:PLURALS, that in North American English such words are invariably plural. Having lived all my life in North America, I know this to be codswallop. Pi zero (talk) 01:43, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

E.g.: Politics: "Politics is a controversial subject." Cf. the Wikipedia lead para., beginning: "Politics is the process by which groups of people make decisions." To me these constructions illustrate correct grammar (subject-verb agreement); however, I hear all around me (in the U.S.) "Politics are...." constructions, as if Politics were a plural term. (One needs to look up the difference between the adjective politic and the noun politics (which happens to end in an s, so that there is no distinction between the singular version politics and the plural version politics, as in the example given in Wiktionary: "What are your politics?"). Lack of sufficient education of Americans in grammar and syntax (in high school) makes many errors of this kind unnoticeable to many Americans. This is not, in my view as an American professor of English language and literature, a matter of "varieties of English" or one's personal "instincts"; this is a matter of knowledge of current conventional usage rules of English grammar and syntax. One needs to use a dictionary and a style guide when in doubt, not depend on Wikipedia's ("optional") style guidelines in its Manual of Style. Some matters are not "stylistic"; they are matters of conventional and/or current usage defined in the most up-to-date books on grammar and syntax. Such discussions in Wikipedia's own MOS need to be documented with verifiable citations to reliable sources, following WP:CITE. Otherwise, Wikipedia's editors and readers cannot consider them dependable (reliable). --NYScholar (talk) 02:46, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

For the general acknowledgment that Wikipedia editors and readers need to consult style guides for "details" (including such matters of subject-verb agreement) of style, grammar, syntax, etc., see WP:MOS#Further reading. There is an assumption here that Wikipedia's editors and readers have knowledge of basic conventions of current usage of grammar, mechanics, and style, and that, if they do not have such knowledge, they need to do such "further reading" about matters that Wikipedia's style manual may not be discussing in "detail" and/or about matters that Wikipedia's own editors and readers may be engaged in disputing. (See current talk page above and the lengthy archives of this project talk page.) --NYScholar (talk) 02:56, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

WP:MOS#Further reading encourages editors to be familiar with other style guides; that's not at all prescriptivist. The objective here is to achieve phrasing for Wikipedia articles that is clear, professional, and fosters a stable consensus. We want the vast majority of editors at any given article to be able to agree that the phrasing there is good English in the formal register. If two fluent native speakers disagree on a point, and find each other's choice of phrasing truly cringe-worthy, then it would actually make the situation worse to have WP:MOS weighing in on the question: those two editors need to iron out a solution they can both live with, which is most likely to be something different than either of them had originally envisioned — and that's much less likely to happen if WP:MOS says that one of them is "right". A good consensus solution would leave both editors satisfied with a job well done; WP:MOS ramming a resolution down one of their throats would be apt to diminish that editor's commitment to Wikipedia, which in the long run, averaged over many such situations, is far more damaging to Wikipedia than any particular phrasing of the article would have been. Pi zero (talk) 05:34, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

I really do not understand some of the emphases in your response. I did not say anything about being "prescriptivist". I understand that "Further reading" is to provide "guidance" to those who feel that they need it. The template for "Style"--{{Style}} makes it very clear that there are Style guides for more information about "details" of writing and editing that Wikipedia's own MOS (WP:MOS) does not cover. (Please see the rest of my comment, which is only a series of observations from my own perspective; it is not intended to be "prescriptive", but just to present a perspective gleaned from contributing to Wikipedia since June 2005.) --NYScholar (talk) 17:12, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't find "what is cringe-worthy" in any way a practical (or practicable) guideline: what makes one person (and all readers are people) "cringe" may not make another person "cringe"; that is no guideline at all. There is much in Wikipedia that makes me "cringe"; but I do not comment on it all, because I know those things may not make others "cringe". (I cannot say "that makes me cringe" as a means of convincing a student, writer, or another editor of the lack of feasibility of a written construction; I have to point to a reliable style guide [or dictionary, depending on matter at hand] for them to refer to as a source.) Cringing is clearly relative to one's personal, cultural, and educational background, professional training and experience, and knowledge; "cringing" is highly subjective. [Where is so-called cringe-worthiness presented in Wikipedia as either a policy or a guideline? I never noticed the ref. to it before seeing this talk page. (Maybe I missed it in WP:LOP?)] --NYScholar (talk) 17:50, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the guidance guys, especially NYScholar. Fdssdf (talk) 16:58, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Back to the example given by the initial poster of this section: re: "a pair of shoes" (notice the indefinite singular article a) and shoes: the former is singular in number ("a pair"), while the latter is plural in number ("shoes"). In the syntax (order of words) and grammar of an English sentence, regarding "subject-verb agreement", one generally would encounter agreement of the verb with the subject in number (not with the direct object or indirect object). (Note that "subject-verb agreement" or "subject-pronoun agreement" are different kinds of agreement in English grammar.) (cont.)

Concerning the poster's original question about how to refer back to the sentence subsequently: the number of the pronoun reference depends on whether the writer is referring to back to the entire pair of shoes or to the shoes; it is up to the writer. In this case, it appears to me, it (referring to "a pair of shoes" or to "the pair of shoes") would clearly designate being referred to the entire pair; whereas they refers back to shoes in the sentence (i.e., to both "shoes"). --NYScholar (talk) 20:09, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

[In reply to a specific other question raised by the initial poster: for a very rudimentary [and incomplete] discussion in Wikipedia of some kinds of "agreement", see Verb#Agreement; a simple search for "subject-verb agreement" turned it up. --NYScholar (talk) 23:55, 28 May 2009 (UTC) (Please see also the templates at top of that article.) --NYScholar (talk) 00:01, 29 May 2009 (UTC)]

[See also another templated related subject article: Agreement (linguistics). --NYScholar (talk) 00:05, 29 May 2009 (UTC)]

[…So as not to take up so much space, I'm moving a long ("hidden" templated) comment that I wrote over an extended period of time to my own user space: one can find it in my sandbox, accessible from either my user page or my talk page headers (if one wants more information related to the matter of MOS re: "agreement" and/or "further reading"). I'll leave it in my sandbox for a while and remove it later. Otherwise one can find it in the editing history. --NYScholar (talk) 00:32, 29 May 2009 (UTC)]

"a rather laughable claim in the MoS about this, at WP:PLURALS, that in North American English such words are invariably plural. Having lived all my life in North America, I know this to be codswallop." I agree entirely; it should be removed. I quite like Fowler's observation that one might consider it grammatically plural to emphasise the individual components (the plurality) and singular to emphasise the wholeness. I think either is acceptable, as long as it doesn't jar with the reader. Tony (talk) 06:32, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Bold face, emphasis, readability for understanding.

Taking out emphasis (bold face) lost readability and emphasis. I used a commonly used method of boldfacing Bible Text used in Christian textbooks, which has all been erased. The page has now lost its readability and is difficult to read and understand.

Non-issue, really. Those quotations should not have been boldfaced, but put in quotation marks, and cited (i.e. to the specific version of the Bible being quoted), just like any other quotation. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:43, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Allowable typographical changes in quotations

In the Quotations section, the list of Allowable typographical changes includes the following:

Some text styling (of course the typeface will be automatically made the same as the article's default typeface; but preserve bold, underlining, and italics; see Italics, above).

This guideline is problematical. First, it gives no guidance as to what text styling may permissibly be altered. Large and small caps, perhaps? Decoration? Second, I believe that preserving underlining is incorrect. A correct statement would be something like this: Replace underlining with italic unless the publication being quoted uses both italic and underlining. Third, of course, it goes without saying that the original typeface need not and will not be duplicated, so we should go without saying it. I would try to clarify the statement, but I don't have a good enough idea of what kind of text styling can permissibly be altered. Would someone else like to have a go at this? Unless it can be make into something intelligible, we should delete this statement. Finell (Talk) 06:31, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree that this sentence needs further refinement. I think your suggestions sound all right, namely:

Emphasis using bold and underlining should be replaced with italics, unless the publication being quoted uses two types of emphasis simultaneously (this should probably be explained further – what should editors do when they wish to emphasize text that is already emphasized in some way? Always use bold italics, or preserve the original style of emphasis and apply italics on top of that?)
There's no need to explicitly mention the non-duplication of the original typeface.

We might want to add that strings of text that are all in uppercase such as book titles should be altered such that only the first letter of the first word is (or the first letters of all the important words are – what is the current style for this?) capitalized.

By the way, here's a real-life example: in "Robert Hues", the term "Three Magi" appears with the initial letter of each word capitalized and the rest in small caps. In the pending FA review of this article, some reviewers have suggested that this should be changed. Should it? — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 20:08, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I consider the term Three Magi to function as a proper noun (or a proper noun with a proper adjective) because it refers to a group of three specific people in the New Testament. I believe that I have usually seen it with initial capital letters. According to a guideline for treating religious subjects in U.S. Government Printing Office A Manual of Style, it appears that it should be capitalized, although the Manual does not include the Three Magi as an example. However, I am not a Bible or religion scholar. Finell (Talk) 07:51, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Agree that: 1) Three Magi in this case is a compound proper noun; 2) that it shouldn't use small caps; that's just some weirdo typographical effect selected by Hues; 3) That titles done in odd styles like all-caps should be redone in capitalize-important-words style; and 4) the MOS section in question should be clarified on this matter and does not need to mention font face non-issues. Another way of looking at this: Conventions such as capitalization vs. lower case, spacing of words, use of punctuation at all, etc., etc., have only been around for a few centuries. If we were to quote a medieval Latin chant, for example, without making allowable modernization, it would come out something like "GLORIAINTEDOMINE". Obviously not useful for our readers. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:06, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Proposition: Linking to fork articles

It is currently proper practice to place a link to fork articles in the main article. I would like to see an addition here regarding this practice. I'm not referring to the current practice where only a "main" link is used, but to where the main article already has an actual section that describes the subject of the fork article. An example can be found and analyzed at Aspartame#Controversy.

The procedure, which should be formalized and described in this MoS or on another appropriate guideline page, is as follows:

Create a section title using words from the title of the fork article.
Include an invisible editorial note to prevent edit warring over the section.
Start with a "main" link.
The only contents thereafter should be the LEAD from the fork article.

This serves the purpose of:

stimulating interest in reading the fork article,
reducing the risk of edit wars over the section's contents, and
also prevents descrepancies between the section and the fork article. (They should always be in complete harmony, with no disagreements, and no content that is not dealt with in each other.)

That's my proposition for a new section possibly entitled:

Linking to fork articles

What think ye?

-- Brangifer (talk) 14:24, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

While the motives are noble, I disagree with adding this to the guideline: it would be cumbersome & there are far too many situations where:

The LEAD is not an adequate summary of the main article
It would interrupt the flow of the "parent" article
Any summary at all may be unwanted (in articles with many "main articles," it would lengthen the page considerably)

--Karnesky (talk) 16:57, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Karnesky for the legitimate concerns. I probably didn't express myself clearly, and now that you have pointed out some things, I'll try to explain.

If the LEAD is written properly, it MUST be a summary of the article. If there is any fault here, it would be with an improperly written LEAD, rather than this proposition.
The matter of flow is important, and that can easily be solved by placing the section at the proper location in the article. There is nothing that hinders adding a sentence or two to make the section fit in better.
My proposition doesn't mean to imply that this should always be done. I wrote: "I'm not referring to the current practice where only a "main" link is used, but to where the main article ("already" added later) has an actual section that describes the subject of the fork article." To make this clearer I'll go back and refactor by adding "already". I hope that helps.

OTOH, in controversial articles, if such a section doesn't exist, then the fork is likely a forbidden POV fork created to hide the fact that there is a controversy, or more correctly, that is being somewhat hidden from public view by deliberately failing to link to it from the main article. In such cases, a single "main" link is not enough to resolve the issue. The fork must be described in the main article. The legitimate reason for the existence of such a POV fork is only because of space concerns in an already overly long main article.

I agree that not all articles need such a section. Interestingly, there is a whole article that is made pretty much entirely of such sections that are transcluded(!) into the article. I believe it's a physics, mathematics, or history article. The trick in that case has been accomplished by adding a code to the lead of each subarticle, and then transcluding the leads into the main article. As I recall, when one looks at the editing view of the article, it's a collection of subsection headings and templates, and not much else. That has the benefit of ensuring that the main article is always up to date and never conflicts with content in the subarticles. I doubt that it is a controversial article.

For such situations, it would be nice if the Wikimedia software by default automatically added such a code to all article leads (and maybe even subsections). -- Brangifer (talk) 22:40, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Style considered harmful in article names

Resolved

– Off-topic; see WP:NC.

It is English style to name things simply. This reads great (which was Strunk or White's original idea), but I fear often leads to articles with "interesting" titles but are intrinsically pov. Let me take cases that may seem amusing: "French kissing" implies something the French do or know or originate. There is a built-in implication that the French are better at, well something, anyway. I agree that it is simple and interesting.

Another example is "Spanish flu" or "Asian flu." While there may have been vectors from those places, history has often named diseases after countries or places they didn't like or were even enemies.

My point in all this is that there are simple, one word (maybe two or so) subjects that can only be named one way: France, arithmetic, Bill Clinton, etc.

There are larger classes that get us into trouble. I propose inserting the general topic first, the specific target second. So in my joke example above (I'm not really seriously considering doing this, just for example only), the title would be "Kissing by French people", "Flu vectored from Asia". We have had many articles, which I don't want to list here to avoid spilling over boundaries, that would have been easily solved by using these guidelines for titles. These also, BTW, imply the possibility of other articles which the original titles didn't do. Do Swedes kiss? Did a flu bug ever originate in the US?

Unstylistic, but npov. Student7 (talk) 16:16, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

The best practice seems to be to use the most correct name for the actual title of the article and then create redirects for other common names. If we type in "Spanish Flu," we're directed to a page officially named "1918 Influenza Epidemic." Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:18, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

This isn't relevant here. Student7, you are looking for Wikipedia:Naming conventions. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 17:48, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Moved. Delete above if desirable.Student7 (talk) 18:30, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Feedback request

I'd appreciate additional eyes on "my" essay, which I really intend as at least an "interpretation" piece to be added to the overall "suite" of MOS pages. It is at WP:MODLANG. I'm sure it will irritate some Brits and some Yanks in equal proportions, among others, like Canadians. I'm a British-educated American citizen who lived in Canada, after all. Maybe the South Africans, New Zealanders and Belizians are immune to my critique. >;-) Anyway, the point of the piece is care in word/phrase usage, especially with regard to readers who are non-native English speakers/readers, and those who are not college graduates. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:42, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Took a look. Do you want a critique or comments? Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:06, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:17, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh dear. This is a very personal, subjective essay. Some of it seems to be completely unnecessary. Dear SMcCandliſh, prithee tell if there be, unbeknownſt to me, a living Wikipedian who ſpeaketh or writeth, or ever ſpake or wrote, in Early Modern Engliſh? Methinketh thou ſhouldst amaſs in thy treatiſe the errors of the common man, not beanes or locations whither puerile boys may ſhove the ſelfſame. There is also some good advice that I hope will be uncontroversial, some good advice that I am afraid will be controversial, and some bad advice.

I am not sure this thing should be in mainspace. --Hans Adler (talk) 12:51, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I thought it was generally a useful essay and one that might be worth having in the mainspace, although I think that some of the prescriptions may need further discussion. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 19:56, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm with Adler on this one. Some of the stuff in there is perfectly logical and some of it reads like pet peeves. I doubt we'll all agree on which are which. If a form is correct English, then we should allow it on Wikipedia. If it's unclear or undesirable, then it'll get edited out without any guidelines against it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:11, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Very few things appear in the essay that I have not encountered directly and personally here, from "long s" to "thither" to "zir". See also the thread below about allowable style changes to quotations. A quotation from the US Declaration of Independence should, at Wikipedia, read "the separate and equal station", not "the ſeparate and equal ſtation", which will not be understandable to most of our readers. Maybe the essay needs work, but I wrote it for a reason. The intent of its current draft is simply to be a draft, and I put it in "Wikipedia:"-space so that others can edit it, including removing some things they think go too far. If I wanted it to be an inviolate list of my own pet peeves I would have kept it in my userspace. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:17, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I really don't understand your point. Why did you mention "thou"? Do you want to replace it by "you" in a literal quotation, or do you want to encourage editors not to address the reader in this way? The first would be unacceptable (while modernising orthography is OK), the second unnecessary. Or am I missing something? --Hans Adler (talk) 00:47, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

And I should clarify that the main problem that I am seeing is the same as Darkfrog24's (it seems): This type of essay threatens to import the full version of the insane conflict between prescriptivism and descriptivism into Wikipedia. It's structurally very similar to the conflict between deletionism and inclusionism and is not going to make this a better place. Actually it's already a bit of a problem on this very page, but I am afraid it might get much worse if we start discussing principles of the choice of words rather than specific formulations. --Hans Adler (talk) 00:59, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Stanton, I think either you have written the opening to this discussion, mistakenly or otherwise, with an eye toward eliciting personal attacks or you have had your prose mercilessly edited by a malefactor who seeks to do the same for you. Although checking the diffs could certainly confirm the latter, I refuse to do so: that'll be your problem. If ever the question fit, and I hope I never have to ask it on Wikipedia, your superficially elitist remark concerning the targets of your essay begs the query: How dare you? That you might cast a prescriptivist shadow over non-native speakers and persons without a college degree in this broad way would define you as a person whose writing deserves a place in the back pages of a never-to-be-published notebook of screeds rather than within the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style. To illustrate, the final sentence of your intro here reminds me of the hypothetical musing of a half-joking wannabe William F. Buckley, Jr. mimic who might position his imperious writing as targeted toward "negroes, Puerto Ricans and men who attended Harvard" in the dark intellectual days of the 1950s.

I scanned your essay and found it to be very well written, as your contributions and comments always are. I generally agree with the goals you have set and with your overall push toward excellence in writing. Unfortunately, I can not rationalize and excuse away the feeling that the tone you set with your RFC here evokes a culture where a small group of members of a virtual dorm room bull session at an imaginary elite prep (BE: public) school enthusiastically dictates to and proscribes the actions of well meaning but, by virtue of their past education or upbringing, inherently lower class citizens.

Your aspirations for superlative writing are in fact also often held by the very editors you unabashedly seek to target, a group which includes this writer, someone who never got a degree beyond high school. I'll throw this weasel into the mulberry bush: quite a few of the people you categorize into your target audience are better writers than you. They also possess qualities that your statement suggests to me you lack: humility, grace and politeness. That no one before me has directly questioned the tone of your opening may speak to that.

Before you angrily reply with a sea of blue links and threats of a Wikiquette posting questioning my own tone and motives, please view this comment as a request for clarification. You may have not been aware that your words can be taken as insulting or dismissive. I only ask that you explain why you apparently feel that this large group of possibly very well-read editors who by circumstance were not privileged or by happenstance were unable to own English as their native language or for other reasons unable to complete a post-secondary degree deserve your instructions en masse. Please, I want you to be taken seriously, but that possibility is currently threatened by my own interpretation of your remark. Sincerely, Sswonk (talk) 16:49, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

If the Manual of Style does not specify a preferred usage ...

The lead section says, "If the Manual of Style does not specify a preferred usage, discuss your issues on the Manual of Style talk page." Has this always been there? I thought that matters of style where the MOS does not specify a usage are left to editorial judgment, with any differences of opinion among an article's editors to be resolved by consensus or by following the style set by the article's first major contributors. This talk page is to discuss what MOS's content should be, not to arbitrate questions where the MOS is silent. Finell (Talk) 04:51, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree. If it's not broken, don't bring on the instruction creep. I'd support replacing this line with, "If the MoS does not specify a preferred usage, discuss your issues on the article's talk page," or even removing it entirely. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:00, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

A year ago, the lead looked like this. Some of the changes made since then may have important administrative motives, and some other changes are probably in order (noting that the particular sentence asked about in this thread was already there a year ago). Ideally, someone ought to try to figure out why various changes were made, including (as background) which ones were made by consensus and which were someone being bold; but we're talking about maybe fourteen hundred edits to the project page and a humongous pile of talk archives, so that ideal may be difficult to realize. (I sure don't have that kind of time.) So perhaps the only practical approach is to discuss specific points in the here-and-now. We might do well, though, to use the version from a year ago as the starting point for such a discussion instead of starting from the current version — because from what I can see, just replacing the current lead with the one from exactly a year ago would be a huge improvement. Pi zero (talk) 13:09, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Small caps and acronyms

I'm interested in some opinions on using small caps in acronyms that are 4 letters or longer. See the "Design and construction" section of USS West Bridge (ID-2888). You have some standard acronyms (DWT) and then the small caps ones (USSB). My primary beef is the contrast between the standard acronyms and the small caps ones, which are actually specified by a template this editor has set up. His position is that it is an existing typesetting standard, and that these long acronyms can get unsightly. I guess some military acronyms can grow to ten or more characters.

I don't think the MoS suggests anything here. Should it? --Laser brain (talk) 22:24, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Here's a thought, though: sometimes government organizations put their style guides online. How do they capitalize it? Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:24, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I invite readers of this discussion page to consult and/or copy (but not to change) User:Wavelength/About English/Style guides.

There are not many style guides of government organizations listed at this time, but there may be more in the future.

-- Wavelength (talk) 01:54, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

NASA's online, but they're not exactly military. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:21, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

See Small caps and Acronym and initialism and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (capital letters)#All caps. All of those seem to lack any mention of small caps in acronyms. It might be useful for Wikipedia to have a guideline for this, but I do not know of any style guide which has a guideline for it. -- Wavelength (talk) 04:18, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

The sixth result from my Google search for "acronym small caps" was Fine Points of Typographical Usage. The section "Small caps" discusses this topic, referring to The Elements of Typographic Style. The first result was Smalll Caps - Designing Pages with Small Capital Letters [sic], with additional links at the bottom of the article. -- Wavelength (talk) 06:44, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Using small caps or large and small caps as professional publishers do is not practical for Wikipedia. There is no HTML or wikimarkup for it (it could be done with font size codes, but the stroke weight would be wrong and one would have to know or experiment with the right size for small caps: they should be x-height), and it is way too much to ask of Wikipedia's editors to master professional typographic conventions. Since only a tiny fraction of Wikipedia editors are aware that small caps exist, and those who are see that they are not used on Wikipedia, I don't think that the MOS should mention it. Indirectly, the MOS does have style guidelines that say, in effect: where a professional publication would use all small caps, Wikipedia uses all caps; where a professional publication would use large and small caps, Wikipedia uses capitals and lower case. Finell (Talk) 08:21, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

While I concur that there's little reason to encourage (or discourage) small caps in this guideline, there is no real technical barrier to using small caps in WP. See {{sc}} and {{smallcaps}} and the CSS markup they employ for the method to do so. --Karnesky (talk) 16:48, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

MOS should say something about this, in the negative. Typographic usage and stylization are of little or no relevance here or in other online publications; online usability and accessibility (for both readers and editors) is far more important here. Also, small-caps for acronyms is not "a standard" in any meaningful sense at all, it is simply a preference elected by certain publications and publishers. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 17:51, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with this statement, and this was really the crux of my argument all along. I don't think typographic standards in the print world should carry any weight here. --Laser brain (talk) 18:53, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I like to use small caps for the acronyms for English honours following a person's name, in the formal listing of their name at the start of a bio article: "Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS". In this context they serve to help the flow of the lede sentence by de-emphasizing the honours. I don't think we should be using them for acronyms in general. MOS:CAPS doesn't seem to say anything about this but one can find other style books that suggest this style. {{sc}} doesn't work here (or in general for acronyms) because they should be typed in upper case and {{sc}} only makes small caps out of lower case letters; instead, I've seen this done with <small> (with some care: the comma between the two acronyms for Turing should not be small). —David Eppstein (talk) 04:44, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

The US government style manual: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/stylemanual/index.html —Wulf (talk) 21:15, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Grafting national sentiments onto an issue?

I agree with Finell's reversion of the quite inappropriate national branding of internal/external quotation-final punctuation. Some US publications, particularly scientific, forbid the use of the illogical and intrusive "internal," punctuation, particularly as a slavish formula. Many British writers use internal punctuation, particularly in the writing out of dialogue. And forgive my arrogance, but aren't there anglophone countries aside from the US and the UK? Tony (talk) 07:27, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

A wagish response (not mine) to Tony's question (rhetorical?) would be, None that matter. (BIG grin to the folks Down Under) Finell (Talk) 08:03, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

The short paragraph in question provides context to the guideline in very neutral and minimalist language. It lets readers know that there are differences in style, and Wikipedia has chosen a style which is slightly different then the ones readers are accustomed to. If they are instructed to use an unfamiliar style, such as logical quotation, they should be informed that the MoS is aware of these differences, and has chosen a different rout. Furthermore, the paragraph does not frame the issue as a national issue so much as a geographic issue (as America comprises many nations). You are welcome to change the language for the sake of clarity. However deleting it would be a gross breach of numerous Wikipedia policies. Lastly, very few US publications, especially scientific ones, use a style remotely resembling British quotation. Care to name them? And lastly, inside quotation is neither illogical or intrusive. It's just different. You're really stretching it on this one. Best, Miguel Chavez (talk) 08:06, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that it is not context. To the contrary, it is misleading because national variations of English are not the basis of Wikipedia's guideline. Further, the two national varieties you cite are tendencies, but not uniform. Counterexamples are cited above on this Talk page, but that isn't the main point. This is Wikipedia's MOS, not a survey of punctuation in Great Britain and the U.S. Further, you are watering down Wikipedia's long-standing consensus guideline, with no consensus for that change. Please do not change the MOS without consensus for that change. Thank you. Finell (Talk) 12:08, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

First, it does provide context as it demonstrates that logical quotation is very different from both American and British styles, which are generally perceived as geographic customs (even among scholarly reviewed style guides). Second, the paragraph never made illusions to the idea that punctuation styles were geographically universal, as I was conscious enough to use the qualifying word "most." Third to call that minimalist paragraph a "survey" is a desperate and egregious abuse of the English language. Miguel Chavez (talk) 12:49, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

This edit war is getting oh so childish. The new paragraph does not change Wikipedia's quotation policy one iota. It merely provides readers with context and explanation. If I had seen such an explanation on the MoS it would have immediately remedied my initial confusion over Wikipedia policy. It is not only helpful in that respect, but it is also instructive to those who do not understand the varying rules of punctuation. There is no sensible reason fore deleting it, other than to hide the existence of alternatives. The fact that some editors here cannot even tolerate a contextual explanation of their policy speaks volumes about their overzealous commitments. Miguel Chavez (talk) 12:21, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree that the edit war is childish. Please stop edit warring on this issue. Also, the watering down of the guideline is not the English varieties paragraph, but the actual change in the first sentence of the guideline itself. I changed it back to the way it was, and you reverted me on that, too. Finell (Talk) 12:45, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

It doesn't water the MoS down. It explains why Wikipedia adopted a system that is considered flat-out wrong by almost the entire English-speaking world. I know of no other Wikipedia guideline for which this is true. Yes, that merits an explanation. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:49, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

No, the paragraph on English varieties does not explain why Wikipedia made logical quotation the guideline. English varieties had nothing to do with Wikipedia's choice, which makes the paragraph misleading. Finell (Talk) 13:24, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but without context the passage makes it sound as though logical quotation were delivered to us at Mount Sinai, de novo. Furthermore, it can lead to the (wrong) impression that logical quotation is the standard way English speakers use punctuation, when just the opposite is the case. Miguel Chavez (talk) 14:54, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with the paragraphs inclusion. It is not POV. It is not misinformative. It is not terribly written. If you were the sole author, I imagine you or Ilkali would not have included it. But this is a public encyclopedia and sometimes you have to let others contribute too. I was careful not to step on toes. All I wanted to do is provide context and explanation. What you are doing is not editing, you are suppressing. This is a violation of all the self-proclaimed pillars of Wikipedia. Miguel Chavez (talk) 13:14, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

You are confusing article space policies with guidelines for editors. Further, please stop trying to hide your edits on a matter in controversy by marking them as "minor". That is contrary to policy. Finell (Talk) 13:24, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

My opinions of Wikipedia's policy have not remotely transgressed into the paragraph on the varying styles of punctuation. It serves only to provide context and does not merit deletion. This is a red herring. Miguel Chavez (talk) 14:54, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure we can come to a compromise here - it's only a matter of presentation. Can we agree on a short (one-sentence?) indication that the Wikipedia style is not the universally recommended one in the outside world (particularly the US), with a link to the relevant Wikipedia article for fuller information? --Kotniski (talk) 13:36, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Agree with MChavez that added section did not add a POV. It was just the fact. Agree with Finell that the addition of this much text does not constitute a minor change. Kotniski's idea is good but, shorter sentences tend to pack more punch in this case. We can come out and say, "This style is considered incorrect in by most British and American style guides. Wikipedia has adopted it because [reasons]"? or we can show how the styles differ. More is, in this case, less in a good way because it's less inflammatory. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:45, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Could I remind all parties (1) that it's important for MoS to retain its stability, and (2) to try to keep their edit summaries civil? Kotniski, did you have a proposal for that wording? Thanks. I'm sure we can work something out on this page, without using the style guide as a sandbox. ArbCom has recently expressed its concern about instability in style guides. Tony (talk) 13:50, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

As a first try, something like this: "The placement of periods and commas inside or outside quotation marks is a matter on which style guides differ, particularly between the U.S. and the UK. For details, see Quotation mark#Punctuation." (Discuss among yourselves; I'll be away till Monday.)--Kotniski (talk) 14:12, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Too vague. It makes it sound as though Wikipedia was selecting from among many roughly equal options when the truth is that there are two arguably equal options and Wikipedia picked a third extremely rare option, one considered flat-out wrong by almost the entire English-speaking world. If we use a one-line description, then it does need to include a word like "incorrect." IMHO, we're better off just briefly relating the facts and letting the viewers make the value judgments themselves. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:30, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

In matters of style such as this, there is no such thing as "flat-out wrong", except (maybe) within the context of an accepted style. That is, a particular usage, no matter how rare, is only wrong in a work that has adopted a different style. I know, as you argue, that there are other issues involved in adopting a rare style, but there's a huge and important distinction, often missed in discussions on this page, between correctness and propriety. /Ninly (talk) 14:56, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

You may notice that I did mention the "by whom" with "considered flat-out wrong." Considering that the "by whom" is "almost every accepted style in the English-speaking world" then yes, Wikipedia's policy on this matter does require more explanation than other policies. With regard to your comment, I posit that it is neither correct nor proper to use a system designed for technical documents on articles to which it does not apply. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:01, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

"Wikipedia picked a third extremely rare option, one considered flat-out wrong by almost the entire English-speaking world". This claim has been made before, and it's still utterly wrong. Our choice of quotation glyphs and our choice of inside-vs-outside are two distinct issues. For each distinct issue, Wikipedia has chosen a style that has significant support, both geographically and in published writing. Ilkali (talk) 15:19, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm not talking about single-quotes-vs.-double, Ilkali. So-called logical style is considered incorrect in the U.S. because of its treatment of commas and periods and in the U.K. because of its treatment of colons and semicolons. In both American and British English, the logical system is wrong, just not for the same reasons. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:39, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Again with the colons thing? There's no difference, or at least practically none.

Also, can I suggest that you not talk about styles as "right" or "wrong"? A given piece of text can be wrong with respect to a given style, but it's incoherent to describe styles themselves in that way. The most they can be is adopted or not adopted. Ilkali (talk) 16:39, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Ilkali, I have already been doing that. When I say "wrong," I also say "in American English" or "according to almost every English-language style manual." Still, saying that punctuation is adopted or not adopted is like saying that a spelling is adopted or not adopted. Spelling "rock" "r-o-k" isn't "not adopted" so much as it is "wrong." Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:23, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

A spelling can be wrong relative to a given spelling system. A styling can be wrong relative to a given stylistic convention. A pronunciation can be wrong relative to a given accent. But spelling systems, stylistic conventions and accents cannot be "wrong". Apples and oranges, guy. This is basic linguistics. Ilkali (talk) 17:51, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

That being said, would "incorrect" bother you less? Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:44, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Correct and incorrect aren't applicable terms. Familiar and unfamiliar works, or conventional and unconventional, or adopted and not adopted, or common and uncommon, or prescribed and proscribed. Take your pick. Ilkali (talk) 17:51, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

You are mistaken, Ilkali. It is just as possible for punctuation to be wrong as it is for spelling to be wrong. That's what "wrong" means. I'll use what words I think best, as you've said, because I have none that would please us both but I ask that you remember that I don't mean to offend you, only to describe things as accurately as possible. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:16, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

You still don't understand the difference between an instance of spelling and a spelling convention. Don't worry, I wasn't really expecting you to. Ilkali (talk) 19:50, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

There are times when one way of doing things is just as good as another and it's solely a matter of taste, but this isn't one of them. Ilkali, with regard to the understanding of the words "correct" and "incorrect" relevant to the maintenance and improvement of a Wikipedia page, yes, there is such a thing as correct and incorrect spelling and punctuation. It's like a microscope: If your magnification is so high that you can't tell what you're looking at any more, then dial it down a bit. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:42, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

How about this? I think we had something like it up a few fiascoes ago: "This practice, which differs from both standard American English and standard British English is referred to as logical quotation" or "This practice is called logical quotation. Please be advised that it can be considered incorrect in both standard American English and standard British English, though in different ways." Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:15, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

This has already been addressed, repeatedly. The "British colons issue" is a red herring, and MOS does not need to go into it. WP uses logical quotation because it is precise and unambiguous. Period. There is nothing else to the matter at all, and any US vs. British discussion is simply noise. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 17:43, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

The ways in which the so-called logical system does and does not differ from the British system are not the issue at the moment. I will gladly discuss them with you in a new section if you wish. The issue is whether an explanation paragraph belongs in the MoS and what any such paragraph should say. I've proposed a few ideas above. What do you think of them? Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:46, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

What the explanation paragraph really does

The presence of the paragraph explaining American and British style serves an additional purpose: It prevents people from assuming that "logical style" is another name for "British style" in a way that the previous, brief passage did not. This talk page will get fewer, "Why are we doing it the British way?" questions if it stays. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:45, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

What the paragraph really does—and, I put it to you, intentionally so—is water down the MoS. The MoS is not the place to discuss various different styles. The purpose of the MoS is to set out Wikipedia style. Other styles are discussed in articles such as Quotation mark. The text links to the discussion noting that it is a particular style that WP has chosen as it did before this paragraph was, without consensus, shoved into the MoS. I would suggest that this is enough. If we want more explanation, though, perhaps another sentence or two (within the one paragraph) are in order but we don't need a whole paragraph. JIMp_talk·cont 16:01, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Jimp, this paragraph doesn't water down Wikipedia's instructions. It still instructs users to use the so-called logical style. The paragraph prevents confusion, will probably prevent unnecessary discussions on this talk page and warns users that Wikipedia's style is not commonly accepted outside of Wikipedia. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:23, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Logical quotation is used quite broadly outside of Wikipedia, it is simply not what most Americans are used to, to the extent that the average reader pays any attention at all to such matters, which is very close to none. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 17:39, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Broadly on the Internet, but erroneously. Ironically, because so many bloggers copy Wikipedia. In things like books and newspapers, it is not commonly used; British and American systems are. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:14, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

The origins and ties of Internet culture make it natural to think of a quoted passage as a string of characters, and that way of thinking makes it natural to include between the quotation marks exactly those characters that are actually part of the quoted material. I see no cause to assume that widespread Internet use of logical quotation is widely caused by either error or (unconsidered) copying. Pi zero (talk) 16:54, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Maybe that would have been true a few years ago, but now Wikipedia comes up first for almost every Google search of everything. It's not just pro and hobbyist programmers who see it anymore. Wikipedia needs to take some responsibility for that. While it is right and proper for Wikipedia to reflect changes in language, it is in this case creating one, and that is not what encyclopedias are for. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:40, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

I do think you may be underestimating the extent to which the Internet is a culture, and therefore current practice is shaped by past practice (and therefore I probably should have qualified "copying" as "copying of Wikipedia"). As may be, encyclopedias are not for creating language change. They are for delivering information to the reader — which is why Wikipedia uses logical quotation. If people like the way Wikipedia does things and choose to do the same, that is their choice: encyclopedias are not for preventing language change, either. Pi zero (talk) 19:12, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree that encyclopedias are not for creating language change, but this is why Wikipedia should not use logical quotation for all articles. Logical quotation does not help deliver information to the reader. Using a style that is almost always considered incorrect skews the reader's perception of English and how it's used, much like giving equal time to a fringe theory in journalistic coverage of the sciences. In adopting this one, rare style for use in all articles, Wikipedia is pushing change toward that style. It's miseducation. A policy of using the style most appropriate to the subject matter would be more in keeping with Wikipedia's encyclopedic mission and NPOV policy. Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:27, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

We have no duty to enforce any particular perception of English in a reader's mind. You are clutching at straws here. Ilkali (talk) 23:57, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Exactly. So why are we enforcing one? Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:16, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

...are you always like this? Do you really not see the difference between doing something because it's a goal, and doing something as an indirect consequence of chasing some other goal? Wikipedia doesn't set out to influence anybody's writing in any direction. We have no obligations in that matter. Any effect we have is incidental and irrelevant. Ilkali (talk) 01:04, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Whether Wikipedia sets out to be so or not, it is an extremely influential website. It shows up first in almost any web search. Its reach and influence is probably greater than most newspapers. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:11, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

"Whether Wikipedia sets out to be so or not, it is an extremely influential website". Incidental and irrelevant. Ilkali (talk) 10:23, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

It's relevant to the commitment that Wikipedia has to do right by its readers and the responsibility that such influence creates. Darkfrog24 (talk) 10:27, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

There is no policy or guideline or precedent that supports you on this. All I can say is that you're entitled to an opinion. Ilkali (talk) 10:29, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

That and it directly responds to the conversation we've been having over whether or not Wikipedia influences people's writing. I do pay attention to what you say when you speak to me. As for precedent, there's always, "With great power comes great responsibility." Darkfrog24 (talk) 10:33, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

It's a good principle worth retaining to pursue our pillar/policy of being as faithful as possible to our sources. Just why we should tamper needlessly with them, by shifting punctuation that would normally be in our sentence into the sourced text is beyond me. Tony (talk) 07:09, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Because adding a comma or period to the end of a quote when appropriate does not constitute tampering with a source. Hundreds of different academic disciplines agree on this point. It is a non-issue. Darkfrog24 (talk) 10:16, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Addition is a form of change. Removal is a form of change. Under logical quotation, if you see punctuation within the quotation marks, that means it's part of the source, and if punctuation isn't within the quotation marks, that means it's not part of the source. Neither British nor American style conveys as much information. You may believe that the information preserved isn't important (and others may believe otherwise); but it simply isn't true that the other styles preserve as much information as logical quotation does. Pi zero (talk) 13:48, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

I do believe that preserving information is important. However, Wikipedia's current style is not any better at this than American or British styles. It is just as inaccurate in that it removes the original punctuation. Was this punctuated with a period or comma? Was there an exclamation point here? Did the source stop here or was there more? In any system, the reader must go to the source to find out. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:53, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Logical quotation is not as accurate as quoting the entire source; that would be true. However, logical quotation is more accurate than American or British style, both in that it can convey more information, and that it does not destroy as much information. Certainly there are some situations in which logical quotation cannot readily preserve the original punctuation, but in those situations neither American nor British style can do so either; and there are situations in which logical quotation can — and sometimes must — preserve information about the original punctuation (either information about what is there, or information about what isn't there) when neither American nor British style is capable of preserving that information. Pi zero (talk) 21:24, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

But in encyclopedia writing, those situations--quoting web addresses and keyboard inputs--are so rare that the exceptions built into the American and (I assume) British systems are adequate. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:30, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

This particular line of discussion appears to be academic at this point. You and I don't agree. We're both repeating ourselves. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:30, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

I was referring to quoting prose, i.e. "general encyclopedia writing"; neither quoting web addresses nor quoting keyboard inputs had occurred to me (neither here nor in any earlier thread on this page; perhaps you were misled by my reference in an earlier thread to the character-oriented mindset as it applies to quoting prose?).

As far as I know, this is new substance we're getting into here. Pi zero (talk) 23:07, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Ah. I mean that the only time in which the use of the American system could create confusion or any other undesirable result is when quoting something like a web address. If I tell someone to type in "www.uk.gov.us," do I want the person to type in the comma or not? In these situations, the American system permits the placement of commas and periods outside the quote marks, though most style guides advise rewording to avoid. In general encyclopedia writing, however, these cases are rare. Most of the time, we're quoting text sources, describing idioms, or words-as-words. In these cases, the American system doesn't cause any problems. Think about it: Historical societies are as or more serious about the quality of their sources as Wikipedia. If the American system caused any problems, they'd have found one by now. Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:35, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm hopeful that we have nearly reduced all this to elementary points on which we can agree or irreducibly disagree.

outdent.

Quoting text sources is the only interesting case, so far as I can see, because it's the one case where there is an opportunity for the systems to differ in how much information they preserve; we're agreed that these other cases, like web addresses, are not interesting. You are contending, I perceive, that there is no practically significant difference between the information preserved under logical quotation versus under the other two styles. I'll assume (unless told otherwise) that we're clear on the fact that there is a difference, practically significant or not.

There are at least two problems with citing historical societies' practices as evidence that the American system doesn't cause problems.

Most basically, just because lots of people stubbornly follow a traditional way of doing things, and manage to achieve their purposes, that most certainly doesn't require that way to be unproblematic; it just means that people value their conformity more than whatever amount of trouble they have to go to to achieve their purposes within that tradition; witness the QWERTY keyboard.

Beyond that, the dynamics of Wikipedia are different from those of the working environment of a typical historical society. The work-around for preserving final punctuation under the American system is to use block quotation instead of in-line quotation; but where an historical society will always be willing to do that for the sake of accuracy, it isn't so obvious that that should be done for shortish quotations in an encyclopedia, and certainly Wikipedians won't always agree on it. In fact, over time a quotation in a Wikipedia article may be converted back and forth between block and inline; and if the American system were used for the inline form, each time this would involve loss of information in one direction and filling in of missing information in the other — often without reconsulting the source, so that actual errors would be introduced. Is this sort of switching back and forth a "rare" occurrence? Well, I've seen it happen, in the few small corners of Wikipedia that I've observed, so with almost three million articles, it should be happening rather a lot. It's worth acknowledging that we probably have an irreducible difference of opinion on the appropriate threshold of significance that would justify adopting logical quotation on Wikipedia: you have claimed (as I understand you) that this adoption does harm to readers' English skills, which I find entirely unconvincing (so that I'll always put the threshold lower than you will).

Another point regarding the dynamics of Wikipedia, bearing more broadly on adoption of logical quotation, is that if Wikipedia didn't adopt a specific style for punctuating inline quotations — leaving it up to individual articles to decide how they want to do it, which is I believe what you've advocated — then logical quotation would lose much of its value. If logical quotation is the standard, then all articles will tend over time to gravitate toward it, and information delivered is maximized, in that, even for a casual reader, the more well-developed an article is, the more likely that the treatment of final punctuation on its inline quotations is an accurate reflection of the original source. If there is no standard across all articles, then a casual reader has every reason to assume that the final punctuation on inline quotations is always uncorrelated from the original source. Pi zero (talk) 04:30, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm not talking about only block quotations or only historical societies. The idea that American punctuation creates serious problems when quoting text is a myth.

With regard to whether people are doing things out of habit, I notice a lot of programmers and computer science degrees on this page. It seems to me that people tend to favor the system that they are used to. However, like with the arguments about aesthetics, this shouldn't be number one on our list.

Your comment about logical quotation losing its value interests me. It seems that it would not be bad for Wikipedia if logical quotation lost its value, only bad for logical quotation. We should support the encyclopedia, not the specific punctuation style. As I've said earlier, it is right and proper for Wikipedia to reflect changes in language but not for Wikipedia to push or create them. If Wikipedia articles "gravitate away" from logical quotation, then it will be a natural process reflecting the balance of readers and contributors on Wikipedia.

You didn't exactly bring this up, but we have already seen in the case of British and American spelling that using more than one system does not debase Wikipedia.

And yes, I find that constantly showing readers a type of punctuation that is considered incorrect in the overwhelming majority of British and American English contexts is bad for the user experience. It also makes Wikipedia look less legitimate. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:35, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

It seems there are some things not yet said, largely to do with the Big Picture of quotation styles (which figures, as I'd mainly concentrated before on making narrow points). The natural order of comment seems to follow your most recent comments in reverse.

Your position appears, on the face of it, to be that Wikipedia should not be promulgating a style that is wrong in virtually all other contexts. There are nuances to the position, but I suspect they don't really go to the heart of the matter. In its latest incarnation, you are framing it in terms of being bad for the user experience and making Wikipedia look less legitimate. I could argue (and do believe, actually) that increasing information content is in the long run the most fundamental factor in the quality of the user experience of Wikipedia, which plainly favors logical quotation over all other styles (that's pretty much the definition of the logical style); and also argue that reducing information content for the sake of regional quotation styles would in the long run make Wikipedia look less legitimate. However, all this seems to be missing the real point. You might respond with some variant of your recent remark that "The idea that American punctuation creates serious problems when quoting text is a myth", which I've always thought irrelevant — again, all missing the point. I strongly suspect that where we really differ, fundamentally, is in our views of the overall situation.

I believe that logical quotation is a legitimate competitor to the other styles, that did not arise from Wikipedian usage and is still not being driven by it. This was touched on in an earlier subthread, about the influence of the digitally-based traditions of the Internet; I'll add to that the effects of the global community, because of which regional idiosyncracies (like American or British quotation style) are being forced to compete on an equal footing — and on an equal footing, they tend to do poorly against logical quotation.
I believe that logical quotation isn't nearly as universally "incorrect" as you're claiming it is; and it's making headway all the time, because it does well when it competes on an even footing with the other styles in the global environment of the Internet.
I believe that when someone operates in the sort of context that requires a particular style of in-line quotation, they need to make a deliberate effort to conform to it anyway, because the default condition is informal contexts that do not so require, and the world is international so that formal contexts, when encountered, are a mishmash of different styles; just because one lives in the U.S. (for example) doesn't prevent one from having to contend with the British style.

Using both American and British spelling doesn't involve a difference in how much information is conveyed, merely in the representation by which it is conveyed, so it's not similar. BTW, I don't recall anyone using the word "debase" in this matter (until you did) — I may well have used the word "degrade", as in "degradation of information content", which is accurate and technical and objective.

Regarding the benefits of having logical quotation as a standard, rather than having no standard at all, I am of course guilty of hyperbole — and, even worse, incautious hyperbole since it really only makes sense in the presence of those fundamental assumptions I've enumerated that you presumably don't share. Having already enumerated them, I can perhaps better articulate my point on this: logical quotation is always beneficial to every individual article that adopts it, because it is inherently superior to all other styles in promoting the basic purpose of Wikipedia (to convey information); but the more pervasive it is across all articles, the more efficiently readers will receive the additional information conveyed, so that the benefit to Wikipedia as a whole increases more than linearly with the number of articles that adopt logical quotation. This reasoning is, I expect, a non-starter for you because your fundamental assumptions cause you to assign a negative benefit for each individual article in adopting logical quotation. Pi zero (talk) 15:05, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

No, logical quotation is not always beneficial to those articles that adopt it, only to those articles in which British or American punctuation would be a detriment, and those articles are rare. American punctuation in particular offers the advantage in that it is simpler, easier to use, easier to teach and more consistent. American and British punctuation both offer the advantage of making Wikipedia look professional. The American system has been around for over a hundred and fifty years without causing serious factual problems.

Outside of keyboard entries and web addresses, logical quotation does not preserve factual information in any significant way that American and British punctuation do not. If a reader wants to know how the source was punctuated, then he or she must look at the source directly regardless of which system was used to quote it.

Logical quotation is making headway not because of any true superiority but because of the effect of the Internet. The Internet increases the amount of information available and opens up venues to writers whose low or mediocre skill levels would not ordinarily permit them an audience (or who would otherwise have to go through an official organization, which would provide copy editing). The downside of this is that things like grammar, punctuation and spelling suffer. We see a similar effect in capitalization styles and the widespread use of "'s" to indicate a plural. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:17, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

The passage itself

The direct issue over which this page was blocked was the question of whether or not the passage on quotation marks should include a passage explaining that Wikipedia's style differs from standard American and standard British English and what such a paragraph should say. How about this?

"This practice, which differs from both standard American English and standard British English is referred to as logical quotation" or "This practice is called logical quotation. Please be advised that it can be considered incorrect in both standard American English and standard British English, though in different ways." Darkfrog24 (talk) 10:21, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

I do not agree that there is any meaningful difference between our quoting style and that prevalent in Britain. Also, I do not think we should be bringing regional differences into this. I wouldn't object to explicitly mentioning typesetters' quotation as a dispreferred style. Ilkali (talk) 12:21, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

The problems that the passage is to solve are 1. let users know that Wikipedia's style is not a mistake and 2. to give them fair warning that copying Wikipedia in an academic or professional piece of writing might not be advisable. Saying "typesetters" instead of "American" probably wouldn't help us accomplish this because many users will not realize that they are meant to be the same thing.

Wikipedia's style differs from British in its placement of periods after full-sentence quotes and in its use of colons and semicolons. Brits could mistake Wikipedia's style for an error just as easily as Americans, Australians, Canadians or New Zealanders could. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:59, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Point 1 is silly. Point 2 covers something that is not our concern. Ilkali (talk) 13:14, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Point 1 is what would prevent further conversations like this one. MChavez thought Wikipedia was being British. With the colons and semicolons, I thought that Wikipedia had made a mistake. A paragraph like this one would have prevented both those issues from clogging this talk page. Point 2 is just considerate and responsible. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:17, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

You're talking about this section? I see about a page of people explaining how you were wrong (ie, how you had mistakenly brought territorial irrelevances into it) and three pages of pointless bloating, all due to you. I don't think anything could have stopped you from clogging this talk page. Ilkali (talk) 13:29, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

That section and [this one]. With regard to the way my mind works, it seems I need to correct you: If the page itself had had a paragraph like this one (with some wikilinks to some more detailed explanations with sources), then that whole conversation would not have happened. No one would have needed to explain to me that Wikipedia's style differed from both British and American English in this way, because I would have found out on my own before bringing it up. As you can see right at the top of the section, I brought the matter up because I was sure that some previous contributor had simply made a mistake, because I believed that Wikipedia's style did not differ from American and British in this way. Before bringing the matter up, I'd checked a few British sources and found--to my surprise--that American and British styles agreed on this point. I had no reason to expect that Wikipedia's style differed from this. A paragraph explaining the matter or linking to an explanation would have given me one. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:39, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Darkfrog24's flouting of the MoS

This isn't really the place for this, but I tried on his talk page and my message was quickly deleted, and I still want there to be a chance of discussion before anything formal is filed (especially since he apparently disagrees with my interpretation). It might be of interest to some here. Darkfrog24, since joining this discussion you have on several occasions changed an article from logical quotation to typesetters' quotation, in direct and informed contravention of both the current MoS and the version you are arguing for on this talk page.

Evidence: [6], [7], [8], [9]

Do you consider this an accurate analysis? Ilkali (talk) 10:51, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

The MoS permits changing a style to conform with that chosen by the article's original writer. It also expresses a preference for words over numerals. What's that got to do with this? Darkfrog24 (talk) 10:55, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Can you show where the MoS advocates changing to an original author's style when that style is explicitly dispreferred? Ilkali (talk) 10:56, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

"When in doubt, follow the original author's lead" is found throughout Wikipedia. The style guide itself reads, "This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style. Use common sense in applying it; it will have occasional exceptions," right up top. Your comments here make it look like I fish through articles changing every single comma and you know very well that I don't. I happened to run across a few articles that already used American style and I fixed a few strays, especially if I was already making an edit for some other purpose. Darkfrog24 (talk) 11:04, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

""When in doubt, follow the original author's lead" is found throughout Wikipedia". You're "in doubt" here? One style is prescribed, one is proscribed. Where is the room for doubt? Nowhere does any policy or guideline say to revert to a dispreferred style just because the original author used it. That kind of advice is reserved for situations where multiple styles are accepted, and you are well aware that this is not such a situation. Ilkali (talk) 11:13, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

For the answer to your question, Ilkali, please see my previous comment. Darkfrog24 (talk) 11:19, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay, so you're still purporting to be right and you're not willing to discuss it. Do you intend to continue making similar changes to articles? Ilkali (talk) 11:24, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

You can see on this page that I am willing to discuss it, just not to repeat myself. Darkfrog24 (talk) 11:35, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Do you intend to continue making similar changes to articles? Ilkali (talk) 12:23, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Darkfrog, it seems that you've arrived here to conduct a WP:POINTY campaign against anything you have pet peeves about. This has apparently led to the protection of the page. Now you are prompting edit wars out in articles. Please calm down and take note of the way the culture has evolved. You are too confrontational and you appear to want to be disruptive. Tony (talk) 11:42, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

This discussion was under way before I got here, Tony. Darkfrog24 (talk) 11:53, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Isn't it commendable that Darkfrog24 seems prepared to protect "the easily damaged smallest pieces of type for the comma and period [...] behind the more robust quotation marks"? (Original rationale for illogical quotation style according to the usually fairly reliable Wikipedia, see Quotation mark#punctutation.) I must say that most commentators here have exhibited a disappointing recklessness with regards to the physical well-being of the poor bits that are quietly working behind the scenes to bring punctuation on our computer screens. Not to mention the countless full stop and comma sorts in our readers' laser printers that are destroyed daily when articles in the obviously inferior quotation style dictated by MOS are printed on paper. --Hans Adler (talk) 11:52, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Hans, do not call the American and British systems illogical and inferior. It is neither true nor courteous. Darkfrog24 (talk) 11:56, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

I am not calling the British system illogical and inferior, I am calling the American system illogical and inferior, because that's what it is for our purpose, which is producing an online encyclopedia as opposed to an old-fashioned mechanically typeset book. As I explained, the seemingly absurd convention of moving full stops and commas inside a quotation where they don't belong once had a perfectly logical technical reason that no longer applies and in fact never applied to Wikipedia. That the creators of this convention themselves weren't too happy with this workaround is readily apparent from the fact that only full stops and commas were treated in this manner, but not the larger punctuation symbols for which the problem did not arise. The problem being the well-known one that after so many printings of a book most sentences were no longer ended by a full stop and occasionally a comma was missing as well. I am sure you have seen this yourself in some of your old books. Making sure that all full stops and commas were close to a letter was a technique for containing this problem. --Hans Adler (talk) 13:35, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

You shouldn't be calling either or any system names. You've already shown that you can find better ways to express yourself. I'm fully aware of how the American system got to be there. I simply don't see anything that makes it inferior for quoting text. The idea that putting periods and commas inside the quote marks creates confusion simply doesn't hold water. Almost every academic discipline does it and time has shown that it isn't a problem. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:28, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

"What the [so-called] explanation paragraph really does" is give a false explanation (or, if you prefer, false background) of Wikipedia's guideline on punctuation within (actually, at the end of) a quotation. It is false because Wikipedia's guideline was not based on consideration of American versus British style. Therefore, discussion on how this issue is treated in American versus British usage (which, by the way, is not uniform in either variety of English), or anyone's preference of one national variety over the other (which, by the way, is usually the one you were taught) does not belong on this page. Furthermore, everyone has said all that they have to say on the subject, the repetition of the same arguments is boring, and the consensus to retain the long-standing guideline—without the misleading paragraph about American versus British—is clear. If you must continue discussing this subject, please take it elsewhere.

Darkfrog24 and Mchavez (I don't believe there is a third, is there?): Please stop trying to force this paragraph into the MOS. There is no consensus for this change, and further discussion now is really just a fillabuster. Will you two agree to stop re-inserting this American versus British material, and stop watering down the long-standing style guideline, so we can tell the admins that the war is over and get the page unprotected, so others can get back to doing constructive work on this project? Thank you. Finell (Talk) 00:23, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd be cool with something like, "This style, called 'logical quotation,' can differ significantly from standard British and American English. It is used on Wikipedia because..." That would prevent more editors from mistaking Wikipedia's chosen policy for a mistake without inserting any value judgments. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:27, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

That isn't the question I asked, and there is no consensus even for this addition. The question is, will you and your ally agree to stop reintroducing this material so we can get the page unprotected and move on? Finell (Talk) 03:29, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Finell, there's no alliance. I speak for no one but myself. I've joined no camp, party, grouping or conspiracy. You're talking about an edit war in which I was not a participant; it has nothing to do with me. This is a discussion, not a filibuster, a suggested improvement, not an attempt to confuse.

Yes, I'd agree that we have not reached a consensus. Do you have any response to the suggestion I've made above? Darkfrog24 (talk)

No one said that there was a conspiracy, alliance, etc. I addressed the two of you because you two are advocating this position and made edits to MOS against consensus, which led to the page being protected twice, with the second one still in effect. Have I missed anyone? Is there anyone else who has expressed support either for revising the guideline itself or adding a discussion of American versus English usage?

As for the addition that you propose now ("I'd be cool with something like ..."), I don't believe that it is necessary, since the guideline and the reasons for its adoption are already clearly stated. Further, reference to the two varieties of English raises an issue that is not part of the rationale for the guideline, and therefore could lead to confusion. Finell (Talk) 02:53, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

You're talking about confusion that might happen. I'm talking about the confusion that did happen. We had one person who thought it was British, another person who thought the colons and semicolons were a mistake. This would head it off. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:31, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Edit warring and protected, again

As there appears to be more too much back and forth reverting and not enough discussion (again) I've protected this, again. Please hash out what you need and want changed here on talk, and once a firm consensus exists, place an {{editprotected}} request on this page to either make the specific changes or ping any admin to unprotect, if you all decide to go that route. rootology (C)(T) 15:10, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Just leave it protected. Far too many people simply wander in here and start changing things that they don't like (usually because it doesn't perfectly match their South African or US or Australian or British or Canadian or whatever variety of prescriptive grammar). This is an untenable situation. MOS must be a compromise, since it is literally impossible to reconcile all of these English varieties, yet every other editor who stops by here wants to enforce their version of "the truth" against all others. No further changes should be made to MOS (or WP:MOSNUM, etc. for that matter) without broad consensus, including RfCs if that's what it takes. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 17:46, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

There seem to be four kinds of edits to the MOS.

Implementation of consensus from the talk page. These, of course, could be handled via {{editprotected}}.
Inherently uncontroversial fixes, like misspellings, broken or misdirected links, etc. Allowing these sows good will and Wikipedian spirit, by demonstrating belief in the good judgment of editors to seek consensus before making potentially controversial edits. However, editors willing to involve themselves in the intimidating process of developing the MOS tend to be passionate about the issues involved, and this (aided and abetted by WP:BOLD, which is also part of Wikipedian spirit) can have a strong undermining effect on editors' good judgment.
Edits that don't have consensus, and aren't challenged in practice, but that are not inherently uncontroversial. Some of these would have gotten consensus if they'd been brought up on the talk page, while others would not, and when someone comes along months or years later and wonders where they came from, there's no discussion that could be found in the talk archives. Building consensus, even if it's easy to do, also sows good will and Wikipedian spirit.
Edits that don't have consensus and get challenged. These don't always lead to edit wars, but most edit wars are probably started by these; and those edit wars sow ill will and tax everyone's Wikipedian spirit.

On balance, I'm inclined to think Wikipedia would be better off if the protection were left in place. Pi zero (talk) 14:56, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

You know what might help? If everyone stays on topic. If we're talking about an explanation paragraph, don't bring up the dispute tag. If we're talking about the dispute tag, don't bring up the policy itself. Bring something up, and people feel obligated to respond, then they do, and progress gets sidetracked. As they say in Star Wars, "STAY ON TAR-GET!" Solving this problem might seem impossible, but so did blowing up the Death Star. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:48, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

A difficulty with this plan is that ostensibly separate topics may be entangled, so that each of them is to some extent a legitimate concern in discussing the other. BTW, didn't the Star Wars character who said that get blown up? Pi zero (talk) 15:46, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Hey, if I have to sacrifice myself to save the Rebel Alliance, then prep my X-wing! Yes it is natural for the topics to get tangled, but lately I'm seeing people respond to "We should keep the dispute tag," with "You're wrong! Semicolons have nothing to do with this." I propose this: If something new comes up or if something reminds you of something else that's worthy of discussion, start a new mini-section nearby and quote the person to whom you're responding. That way we'll be able to resolve these issues one by one. We'll also have an easier time fighting the urge to divide into camps. For example, it's possible for someone to believe that Wikipedia should keep the technical punctuation style but also believe that this page should keep the dispute tag. By mixing everything together, people are more likely to form alliances based on feelings and hostility rather than evaluating each separate issue on its merits. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:57, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

In other words, if the discussion is about the explanation paragraph--which is the issue over which this page was protected--and you feel the need to bring up the dispute tag, only do so if you also explain exactly what the dispute tag has to do with the issue at hand. If you see someone else doing that and wish to respond, respond only to the part that has to do with the explanation paragraph. If you feel the need to respond to the part about the dispute tag, then make a new section. Darkfrog24 (talk)

I find myself wondering if there is enough to this to turn into an essay. Pi zero (talk) 19:22, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

What, you mean like, "Here are some things to try when the fight goes round and round?" Sure, why not. I wouldn't propose it as a policy, though. I just think it might help in our case. Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:36, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

If I were writing it I'd probably go for a narrower essay, called "Stay on target", which is why I wondered if there was enough to it. But that's just me; I definitely don't have time to write Wikipedia essays. Pi zero (talk) 20:02, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

In the interests of staying on target, I'll point out that the page was not protected over an issue at all, nor because of the character of discussion on the talk page. It was protected because decision making that should have been resolved to consensus on the talk page, and then implemented on the project page in an orderly fashion, was instead being thrashed out by intensive editing of the project page. Pi zero (talk) 20:02, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

This debate has reached the word count of a novella. I propose it be added to WP:LAME once it finally dies. —Wulf (talk) 21:55, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Maybe the whole dispute over whether or not we should keep the dispute tag. That one's pretty freakin' funny in its way. Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:48, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Left-aligned images directly below section headers

Hi, I remember that placing left-aligned images directly below any section headers were basically prohibited a while ago. However, it appears that the guidance here has changed to only prohibit left-aligned images directly below third-level and lower headers. If the goal of the restriction is to keep the text of the section from being separated from the section text, I don't understand why it was changed as placing a left-aligned image below a second-level header will indent the section text significantly to the right of the header, which I thought is not desirable. A search of the archives revealed no clear-cut reasons for the change. If someone can enlighten me as to why the change was made, I'd be very grateful. Thanks. – T M F 10:08, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I recall reading somewhere that it was because second-level headers have a horizontal line, so a left-aligned image under it doesn't cause the second-level heading to look too disconnected from the text. Personally, though, I don't find a left-aligned image under third- and lower-level headings problematic. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 10:14, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Gender pronouns

Discussion currently rampant (in about five different sections) on Talk:Chaz Bono about the former Chastity Bono's new gender identity and how to address it in the article. The main problem is a passage in which she informed her mother that she was a lesbian. Only now it comes out that he was a lesbian. This guideline says to use the individual's preferred pronouns, but to avoid illogical constructions as well. Suggestions on how we can satisfy both goals in this situation are welcome. Powers ^T 01:12, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Here's one way to look at it: Is it C. Bono's position that he didn't decide to become male so much as figure out that he always was male? If that's the case, then use "he" throughout the article. This also makes the logical problem disappear: If he was always a man, then he was mistaken about being a lesbian and, "He told his mother that he was a lesbian," is only confusing if taken out of context. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:12, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

As I understand that item in the guideline, it doesn't matter whether they decided to become male vs. figured out that they always were male. The only things that matter are (1) what is their current preference and (2) have they explicitly said to us a different pronoun for the phase of their life in question. Full stop. If a confusing or seemingly logically impossible construction would result from pronoun usage, avoid that construction. The word nevertheless in that item in the guideline is unnecessary and misleading; I therefore suggest striking that word, so that the item reads

A transgender, transsexual or genderqueer person's latest preference of name and pronoun should be adopted when referring to any phase of that person's life, unless this usage is overridden by that person's own expressed preference. Avoid confusing or seemingly logically impossible text that could result from pronoun usage (e.g., she fathered her first child).

Incidentally, there is a hidden comment on that item that should probably be removed since it refers to a discussion that ended many months ago (long since archived). Pi zero (talk) 14:57, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

See Male pregnancy. -- Wavelength (talk) 15:03, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Bad precedent. Bad policy. Political correctness trumps real-world correctness on Wikipedia? Identifying someone as something other than what they are because they 'choose' to be identified differently is wrong as a Wikipedia policy? Everywhere else on wikipedia, we are required to provide a Reliable Source -- a source noted for its research -- to back up any controversial statements we insert... But somehow that doesn't apply to any female who 'feels like a man' and wants to be called 'Bob'. And the mirror situation of Billy, who 'feels like a woman' and wants to be called 'Betty'. A man should be referred to as 'he' and a woman should be referred to as 'she'. If a person subsequently has a sex-change operation then the gender pronoun would change accordingly but not retroactively. That is wrong because it is a rewriting of history. Any 'history' that is recorded for that person should have the appropriate gender pronoun for that temporal event (e.g. 'She had three children, then underwent a sex-change operation. After release from the hospital, he bought a car dealership.') Additionally, 'gender' is not a 'state of mind' as it is being portrayed and rewritten here on Wikipedia. When I study Spanish and other languages, I learn that many words have a gender. No, they don't have a 'state of mind', and they don't 'think' they are male or female-- they ARE male or female. The word 'Gender' existed and had its correct meaning long before prison sentences for homosexuals were eliminated. Allowing the homosexual community to redefine already-existing English words (gender) and portray their new, corrupted, meaning as THE meaning is wrong. Allowing 'innies' to be identified as 'he', and allowing 'outies' to be identified as 'she' because they said they want it so, is wrong in an encyclopedia. There are many things we accept out on the street that are not acceptable in an encyclopedia. Wikipedia is on a slippery slope allowing one group to 'self-identify' different from their personal biology and having that distortion of the truth be posted AS the truth in the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. Joe Hepperle (talk) 20:24, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

I absolutely agree with you that gender (colloquial definition) is a physical reality rather than a state of mind or social construct. However, with regard to whether it is appropriate to use the person's chosen pronoun throughout the article, I posit that it is. Here's why: Studies of the brain structure of people who transition from one gender identity to the other more closely resembles the brain structure of the new identity than the old one. In other words, the person with female chromosomes, genitals, gonads, body chemistry and secondary sexual characteristics (breasts) feels like he's "really a man on the inside" because he has a male brain on the inside. This particular physical characteristic trumps the others. In other words, the person doesn't decide to become male or female but rather figures out that he/she always was.

Since both the male brain characteristics and, in most cases, the feeling of being in the wrong gender role persist throughout childhood, then the male pronoun should be used throughout the article, even when describing parts of the person's life in which he publicly identified as female.

For another reason, when I was a little Darkfrog, my mother taught me, "If [the person] wears a skirt, call her a woman." This was before "political correctness" became a household term. It's not PC; it's just good manners. Similarly, Wikipedia's naming conventions tend to use the person's most common/recognizable/preferred name (Muhammed Ali, not Cassius Clay). This can be viewed as an expansion of that. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:33, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

I see no good reason to ignore simple facts in this, or any other, matter. In any number of sources on Bono, we have her self-identify as female. We can support the use of female gender identity for many actions and events occurring for much of her life, and ignoring that in any way will lead to a great deal of edit warring over time. We have now a declaration that she NOW sees herself as male. She may even regard her past actions in a new light, but we are NOT Big Brother, and we cannot revise history. Instead, it is the most responsible compromise between many aspects of reality (law, biology, stacks of citation about the subject) and respect to the subject now, to differentiate at that point in the article between genders - 'On x date, Bono publicly stated she was undergoing GRS. Bono, now calling himself Chaz, made this announcement in the place he did'. That way, readers see that one, Wikipedia respects the person's declaration, but does not ignore the history that's evidenced all over. ThuranX (talk) 23:51, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

If only the facts were simple. "Male or female?" has an easily observable answer in the vast majority of the population, but in the case of most transgender people, it doesn't. One could just as easily argue that Bono has always been male and that previous sources—and Bono himself for that matter—were mistaken.

Lots of people have different ideas about how gender really works and what really makes men men and women women, but the article in question is about Bono and not about gender politics in general. Using the subject's preferred pronoun throughout the article keeps more of the focus on the subject him/herself rather than on the politics of gender. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:22, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

So instead we report that a male was involved with a female in a lesbian relationship? that's deceptive and a huge POV push. Instead, we properly identify taht whiel considering herself female, she was in a lesbian relationship, but now, transitioning to male, considers her relatinoship heterosexual (pending citations, of course.) We should not engage in revisionist history. ThuranX (talk) 01:38, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

He is and was a male; he was involved with a female; they considered it a lesbian relationship at the time. All three of those facts are true. It's hardly "revisionist history". It's just a matter of respecting the gender identity of the subject of the article and treating him with the basic respect that WP:BLP demands that we accord him. BLP doesn't cease to apply because of your political agenda. Rebecca (talk) 04:07, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it's long established in all anglophone societies and many others that gender self-identity is what matters in such cases. Tony (talk) 04:33, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Chastity Bono was born XY, identified XY in significant ways, including repeated identification as a lesbian woman in press releases, interviews, and an autobiography. This is a self-identification supportable by innumerable citation. Now we have a new self-identification, supported by a lot less citation. Wikipedia runs on citation, not on 'other people's feelings'. Even in a BLP, we should hew close to citation, which would mean writing about the female up to the point in that biography where male identification occurs. She cannot retroactively change her identifications before this, nor can she credibly say 'i've been a man all along, and my past should be seen that way.' She can credibly say 'I now realize that I am a man, and I need to reevaluate my life in that light, I'll be releasing a book/granting interviews/buying billboards.' and we then cite her new views on her actions. If a politician changes viewpoints, we cannot responsibly redact history to make that person always a supporter - congressional voting records betray that idea. Similarly, we do not write up a BLP to reflect the current religion of a converted person to always have been their religion. Likewise, we cannot make an exception to that here, to allow her to have always been XX, or to have always identified that way, because it is not true, and we have the citations to support that it would be false to represent her in that way. ThuranX (talk) 23:33, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Think of it this way: Say that most of our sources on famous actress Jane Smith report that she was born in Memphis, TN. Then, when digging through an attic, Smith finds a copy of her birth certificate. To her surprise, she finds that, despite what she, her fans and her closest friends had believed to be true, she was really born in Nashville and just raised in Memphis, TN. Now we don't have to throw out everything that we got from our old sources, but we do have to acknowledge that certain data are out of date and must be replaced by newer, more accurate material.

It's the same with Bono's gender. In this one respect, the sources are out of date. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:54, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

You're seriously considering a geographic point of data the same as a change in sexuality? The two are incomparable. At most, you've got a self-identified Tennessean correcting a point of objective fact. Objective fact. Our article then states that she represented herself as a Memphisite, she later in life discovered she was a Nashvillian. Which is exactly what I'm proposing we do here. Let me help you more. Believing herself to be a Memphis native, she engages in charity work on behalf of Memphis orphans. After finding out about her Nashville connection, she splits her attention, working for orphans in both cities. We do not change her article to say she'd always worked on behalf of Nashville orphans. Likewise, we state that Bono was a Lesbian woman (memphisite), who later discovered she really ought to consider herself a genetically mis-assigned male. We do not remove all reference to her lesbian nor female past. The move here by some is to revise history to meet political correctness and gay sensitivities. The push by others will be to make her female no matter what. One disregards plain objective facts, like her XX Chromosomes, the other disregards any sensitivity or respect to the subject of a BLP. What I propose ought to satisfy all but the far wingtip crowds. We rely on citation contemporary with the events, which will show her to have been female in mind and body, and then from this point on (the second coming out), as male, in accordance with her BLP-based wishes. I don't see why this is such a problem for people. We're here to be neutral in our reporting, not to push either of the two POVs otherwise incurred - that gender is immutable and no matter what you say, your chromosomes don't change (aka 'trannies is unnatural and unholy'), or the opposite 'It doesn't matter what the facts are, as long as YOU feel good about it'. The courts take a far more nuanced approach to it, so do trained journalists. We should as well. ThuranX (talk) 02:47, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh, common misconception. Gender is one thing and sexuality is another. Also, what you're proposing is that the article refer to the singer as a Memphisite up until the point when she discovered that she was a Nashvillian when what we should do is refer to her as a Nashvillian throughout and mention when appropriate that she believed herself to be a Memphisite.

The real problem here is that not everyone has the same idea about what makes men men and women women. You seem to consider Bono to have been female during some or all of his life, while I find that Bono was never female in mind and never entirely female in body. Bono's chromosomes, it is safe to assume, read XX and not XY and I assume he grew breasts during puberty. However, it is also safe to assume that, like other trans men, Bono has male brain anatomy. We know that he displayed male-type behavior during childhood, despite parental and social encouragement to act female. From my perspective, the brain trumps the rest of the body; Bono is male and has been throughout his life. Referring to Bono as male, then, does not constitute changing history.

But from what you've written here, you have not come to this same conclusion. So what do we do when there isn't one line of reasoning that's clearly, unambiguously and respectfully superior? We respect the subject's wishes. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:13, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Talking about male or female "brain anatomy" is: 1) Nonsense, and 2) Dangerous. If we learned somehow that Barack Obama has female "brain anatomy", would it compel us even slightly to refer to him as female on here? Mostly I agree with you, though. On most of the cases discussed so far, I think careful wording will yield something acceptable to everyone. Ilkali (talk) 12:24, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Abuse of html element to emphasie POV on talk page

If someone in argumentation on the talk page use special style element to emphasise his talk over that of other would it be appropriate to remove/alter the style codings of his comments / Example:

Is this is the way People should discuss on WP:talk pages ?

What do you think ? hAl (talk) 16:19, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

I think it is somewhat childish, and not important. Redaction of talk pages is to be avoided, but formatting is often necessary. If it helps you to read the talk page, feel free to remove the style elements. But the place to discuss this is WP:VPP, and WP:Talk. MOS deals exclusively with mainspace. "MOS, is a style guide for Wikipedia articles." (emphasis added) 199.125.109.126 (talk) 16:42, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Succession boxes

Is there a MOS regarding those succession boxes. I only really noticed them on actor pages (previous winner, previous Q (James Bond). But at this discussion it was mentioned they are also on many more articles. See Julius Ceasar and Winston Churchill for some excessive examples. And that's besides the dozens of templates on those articles. Garion96 (talk) 19:47, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

The correct spelling is "Caesar". -- Wavelength (talk) 20:01, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

I knew something was wrong with it when I wrote it. But it was a blue link so thought it was okay. Damn redirects. :) Garion96 (talk) 20:12, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

See Template:Succession box. -- Wavelength (talk) 19:59, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Succession Box Standardization/Guidelines has some guidelines, although I don't know how much support they have from the larger community. Powers ^T 20:03, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, that's one I missed. What are the opinions here about those boxes? Garion96 (talk) 20:12, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Dash spacing question

Should Oklahoma City-Ada-Atoka Railway be Oklahoma City – Ada–Atoka Railway or Oklahoma City – Ada – Atoka Railway? --NE2 11:54, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Definitely spaced if OC, Ada, and Atoka are three different places (Ada presumably mid-journey). When any item has an internal space, the en dash needs to be spaced too. And vice versa. Thanks for asking. See WP:MOSDASH Tony (talk) 12:38, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Um... my question is about the second dash. --NE2 12:45, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Are Ada and Atoka different places, or one place with a hyphenated name? Tony (talk) 13:26, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Two different places. I assume it's the latter with both dashes spaced, but I'd like to be sure. --NE2 13:30, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Precisely. Tony (talk) 13:34, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Do you happen to know the answer to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (capital letters)#Numbers? --NE2 13:39, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

If it is a proper name, we should use the punctuation and spacing they use themselves, whichever it is; if it isn't, I kinda agree with Tony, but the R in "Railway" should be lowercase. (OTOH, there are no spaces around the dash in "Born–von Karman boundary condition", and there shouldn't be any, as they're not used in the literature. So the wording "All disjunctive dashes" should be amended to make it clearer that it doesn't apply to such cases?) --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 18:51, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

It's a proper name, but one can never be sure what they used themselves. [10] has the logo, the only official thing I can find with their name, but note the lack of space after the comma on the second line. A case which might have more official sources to look at is St. Louis – San Francisco Railway. --NE2 00:00, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

A., I'm sure a comprehensive search of the literature would turn up instances of more sane formatting for "Born-von", which is completely at odds visually with the structure of this nominal group. Tony (talk) 03:09, 16 June 2009 (UTC) PS A simple google search reveals that they just can't get it right—practice is all over the place. There's:

Born–von Karman boundary condition (at least it's an en dash)
- Huh? So it was in the version of the article I visited yesterday... (Has anyone changed it to a hyphen meanwhile?) --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 13:22, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
Born/von Karman boundary condition
Born / von Karman boundary condition
Born-von Karman boundary condition
Born–von-Karman boundary condition ("let's try both types")
Born von-Karman boundary condition
Born - von Karman boundary condition (They knew the squashy thing was wrong, so why not spread it out?)

And the nervous nellies recoil and insert no puncuation to help the reader determine the relationship easily (that is probably better than the bad guesswork that abounds):

Born von Karman boundary condition

Someone has had a bet each way ("I remember there's some kind of thingy, but where does it go?"):

Born/von-Karman boundary condition

And aargh:

Born- von Karman boundary condition

And if one is lost, put them everywhere:

Born-von-Karman boundary condition

They're scientists, and hardly any care much about language (5–10%), despite its centrality to communicating their findings and absorbing those of their colleagues; trust me, I deal with scientists and their language most days. The shambolic array above proves the point that while WP needs to be influenced by the literature, there is a limit. One of the features that gives WP authority on the Internet is its consistency, not to mention the fact that it often (mostly?) chooses the best option. WP:MOSDASH recommends:

"Born – von Karman boundary condition" (preferably with non-breaking spaces either side of the en dash if you remember). Tony (talk) 03:30, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

User:Noetica noticed this discussion and sent me the following examples of the chaos in the hard-copy literature: [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18]. Tony (talk) 03:45, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

TONY, your "One of the features that gives WP authority on the Internet is its consistency, not to mention the fact that it often (mostly?) chooses the best option" is gross exaggeration:

Within reasonable limits I'd prefer a site with high-quality content and OK presentation to one with high-quality presentation and only OK content.
"often (mostly?) chooses the best option" - and the example you quoted following that was WP:MOSDASH, which: is one of the worst cases of WP:CREEP; is probably the most controversial part of MOS, sometimes the Talk page is all about MOSDASH; shows no significant benefit to the reader but is difficult to apply in any consistent way (I remember a couple of linguistics students taking it apart on the last couple of months). I woon't go on about MOS's faults just yet. --Philcha (talk) 08:46, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Very easy to accuse MoS of instruction creep, but if you want good writing and a certain level of consistency, you need a MoS. You may not need it, but most serious WPian editors like somewhere to go for advice. That is what is provided here. Perhaps we shouldn't be talking about whether to capitalise the terms for celestial objects? You could strip away almost everything. Tony (talk) 08:58, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

There is also the part where the MoS does not address content, but presentation style and grammar. Bethe–Lombardi refers to two people, Bethe-Lombardi refers to one dude (or dudette) named Bethe-Lombardi. Likewise Gell-Mann–Nishijima refers to two people (Gell-Mann, and Nishijima); Gell-Mann-Nishijima is either one guy or bad grammar. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 21:04, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Additionally, if you don't like to bother writing down endashes and emdashes, then don't, and someone else will clean up after you. Just don't undo their work. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 21:06, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Just a comment about the spelling Born–von-Karman boundary condition: In German there is an extremely common similar problem with street names. What would be Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Street in English, almost always appears as Johann Wolfgang von Goethestraße or Johann Wolfgang von Goethe-Straße, suggesting a funny last name. The officially correct spelling is Johann-Wolfgang-von-Goethe-Straße. Before this background this spelling doesn't look at all odd to me, and in fact I might have come up with it myself. --Hans Adler (talk) 09:06, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Purview of the Manual of Style

The introduction to the Manual of Style says: "The Manual of Style, often abbreviated MoS or MOS, is a style guide for Wikipedia articles." It does not specify whether or not it applies to other namespaces.
Another editor has recently commented to me: "Making MOS changes outside of the article namespace is not necessary." See
User talk:Wavelength#Removing hyphens from Wikipedia namespace and User talk:Wavelength#Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard/3RRArchive85 etc. and User talk:Wavelength#Comment on talk AN.
Especially at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language, use of good English by editors answering questions seems important. See the last 14 lines of Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 May 21#Most successful English writer.
It seems to me that the application of style guidelines to other namespaces would contribute to a respectable image for Wikipedia. Discussion pages might be exceptions (although, really, using correct language all the time makes it easier to use it when it matters most). Please note that some pages which are not in the discussion part of a namespace are effectively discussion pages. Could there be a decision about the purview of the Manual of Style, and then possibly a revision to the introduction?
-- Wavelength (talk) 06:55, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

I think the general practice is to apply MOS to article space, category space, portal space, and to a lesser extent to those parts of project space that generally don't have an identifiable author. On the other hand correcting someone else's spelling in a signed post is obviously rude unless you have good reason to believe they don't mind, and so is pointing out a misspelling in an old discussion or one that cannot cause misunderstandings. (With the obvious exception of joking around among consenting ~~adults~~ editors.)

All of this is so obvious that I doubt that more than one or two editors would profit from an official clarification to that effect. --Hans Adler (talk) 08:02, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Hans, and fully support Wavelength's gnoming work in this area. Tony (talk) 08:30, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Are you sure?[19] --Hans Adler (talk) 08:35, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Concur. Gnome public/official spaces. Leave even semipersonal comments alone. I don't know that we need a rule stating that the MoS must apply, but I don't see how anyone would mind. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:17, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm lost; could both of you be more explicit? Tony (talk) 14:11, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

It seems that Wavelength created talk pages for archived ANI pages in order to point out MOS violations in archived discussion posts. I can't see them because they were deleted. --Hans Adler (talk) 14:44, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard. -- Wavelength (talk) 17:00, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Maybe this would be a good rule of thumb: If the "speaker" is Wikipedia (articles, article titles, public Wikipedia), then gnoming is acceptable. If speaker is an individual (any sort of signed comment, most userpages), then gnoming should be avoided. In conversations between editors, even official conversations, make only those changes that are necessary for the conversation to proceed, and then only when first getting the speaker's permission would not be practical. Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:55, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Very, very occasionally, and with a little hesitation, I will fix something like minor formatting (e.g. indents or sub-sub-headers), possibly-ambiguous misspelling, a slight misquotation or a broken or misdirected link/Wikilink in someone else's post, but only where necessary and where the change wouldn't change the original style, message and voice of the original poster. I'd never dream of changing someone else's post, either to a Talk page or to a User page, to match my own (or Wikipedia's) preference about units of measure(ment), capitalization or punctuation. —— Shakescene (talk) 22:35, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

I have been removing incorrectly used hyphens from project pages in the Wikipedia namespace, and referring, in my edit summaries, to Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Hyphens, sub-subsection 3, point 4. When I found them on project pages which were effectively discussion pages, I left those pages unchanged but mentioned the errors on the actual discussion pages, using messages which referred to the same guideline. (I hope that I have adequately clarified the possibly ambiguous expression discussion pages in this message.) -- Wavelength (talk) 23:32, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Entirely unnecessary. You don't need to go around cleaning up the grammar in old discussions. It's like going through chatrooms trying to make sure everyone uses capital letters and periods. Talk pages are not what Wikipedia presents to the outside world, they're just an expedient way for editors to collaborate. Keep MoS to the content namespaces, please. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 14:07, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Overview - Lack of Introduction

I suggest a brief introduction, preferably by someone who has more familiarity with this page than I, describing the following:

The Wikipedia style guide attempts to merge British and American usage into one coherent style. (Include Australia, Canada, etc?) Has this been done before outside of Wikipedia? (cite refs?)

"The Wikipedia style guide has come about haphazardly drawing upon many style guides, using citation of various style guides" Is this true?

Note: it can be interesting to note disputes, but professionals usually adopt whichever style is mandated by an organization, accepting its value for the consistency it provides as much as for its "correctness." This is the attitude I urge. I would have urged adoption of BBC and Associated Press, and if any other organization had attempted to unify those styles, use its efforts as a resource. Is it too late? (From the looks of it, yes!) Mydogtrouble (talk) 17:20, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I think you're somewhat misguided about the purpose and development of a style guide. While it is true that our style guide draws on many sources, it's false that it attempts to combine British and American usage. Style guides provide professionalism and consistency, and should reflect the needs of the audience. Over time, we've come to a consensus on various guidelines that make sense for Wikipedia. That the BBC or AP does something shouldn't be the basis for our doing it. --Laser brain (talk) 17:38, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, while the MoS does take notice of hard-copy style guides and other online practices, it ultimately decides on the best style for WP's unique circumstances: its readership, geographical spread, and its display on monitors rather than in hard copy, among other considerations. Tony (talk) 18:33, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

The Wikipedia MoS does not attempt to merge British and American English into one (and should do even less than it's doing toward that end) but rather attempts to come up with a set of guidelines that improve the Wikipedia user experience. Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:00, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

RfC on Joseph Priestley lead image alignment

A RfC has been opened to discuss the issue of alignment of the lead image on the Joseph Priestley article. Each side makes the case that the current left-alignment in the image in the lead is a function of MOS:IMAGE. Regular MOS editors' input is requested at Talk:Joseph Priestley#RfC on lead image alignment. Madcoverboy (talk) 03:28, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

How does one edit the Manual of Style?

I'm new to Wikipedia and just signed up to be able to edit articles. In glancing over the MoS, I've already found a mistake that needs to be corrected. Under Capital letters, Directions and regions, Regions, the second sentence starts with a lowercase "s."WriteRight1stTime (talk) 04:47, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

There has been a dispute about the Manual of Style, so it is locked; only administrators can edit it. So just ignore the Manual of Style until the dispute is over. --Jc3s5h (talk) 05:38, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

No, don't ignore the Manual of Style, just apply it as it stands. :-) — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 06:58, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) the original poster is asking how to edit a protected page, right? see the banner at the top, where it says "you may use the {{editprotected}} template to ask an administrator to make the edit if it is supported by consensus." the change WriteRight1stTime wants made is a correction of a simple typo so it shouldn't cause any controversy; whether it's worth bothering an admin over may be another question. it does seem strikingly silly to have a capitalization error in the section on capitalization. Sssoul (talk) 07:09, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

The MoS is in need of house-cleaning, too—more than just a single lower-case s. Tony (talk) 07:41, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Problem solved. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 07:46, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Comment requested on use of flags

See here. Thanks, Dabomb87 (talk) 15:21, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

incorrect html/xml

There are two tags with the same id: <sup id=refQref">. I wonder if this is being caused by the showing of an example? Długosz (talk) 16:07, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Punctuation: multiple sentence-enders

I would like to raise an issue that hasn't been addressed by earlier discussions of punctuation and quotation marks.

In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet asks: "Wherefore art thou Romeo?" Suppose I want to ask someone why she said that. I would have to say: "Why did Juliet say 'Wherefore art thou Romeo?'?" It seems to me that both question marks are needed, because it’s a question about a question.

What do people think?

Occultations (talk) 17:11, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that seems correct. However, it would be best to rephrase the sentence to avoid this odd-looking result, for instance, "In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Juliet asks, 'Wherefore art thou Romeo?' Why did she say this?". In any case, I think questions within questions are unlikely to occur often in Wikipedia articles. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 19:46, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Are you asking about a situation in which someone asks: "Why did juliet say 'Wherfore art thou Romeo?'?"?:-) --MoreThings (talk) 22:44, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Use only one question mark, placed inside the quotation marks. It ends both sentences. Exception: MLA-style parenthetical citation, though the MLA style guide recommends just rearranging the sentence. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:21, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, the APA style also says to use just one question mark, but they put it outside instead. [20] Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:32, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Though the sources that I've found so far differ on where the mark should be placed, they all agree that there should be only one. It seems to me that the Wikipedia MoS should not advocate two quotation marks unless we can find at least one outside style guide that does so. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:20, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Jack's suggestion to reword. And I agree with Df that two question marks should be avoided at all cost. Tony (talk) 14:26, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Yep, no doubling. The only doubling of terminal punctuation I can find anywhere in pre-existing style guides is a common but not universal one to double periods with parentheticals, when a) the parenthetical ends in a period and b) the parenthetical ends the sentence containing it. E.g. "It happened on Christmas Eve (24 Dec.)." This is ugly enough, and frequently enough mistaken for an error and reverted, that I almost always rewrite to avoid it. Our articles by and large use far too many parentheticals as it is. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 17:59, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Ok, no double question marks. What about what Juliet says just before that: "O Romeo, Romeo!"? Occultations (talk) 14:56, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

U.S. Federal Government allows any punctuation

Oh, yes, allow double quotation marks, and double exclamation points ("I am appalled that my anger is ignored about punctuating 'O Romeo, Romeo!'!"). No, really, I am livid that I can't write: "Romeo!"!!! I mean, OMG!!??!!?? There's this little thing called "Freedom of speech" and for the U.S. Federal Government, that freedom overrides any manuals of style in Federal communications. It does not apply in private American businesses, but when it comes to what people are officially allowed to write in America, with public funding, then the style-guides are secondary to what people want to write, so long as it does not violate obscenity, sedition or classified information. Even in America, with non-logical quotations, the style-guides are not as powerful as some would suppose them to be. -Wikid77 (talk) 10:03, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

What an obscene, seditious idea. Tony (talk) 10:36, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Please don't refer to American punctuation as non-logical. It is neither accurate nor courteous.

Yes, Wikipedia editors are free to type in whatever they want and other editors are free to replace that text with more formal, encyclopedic writing and punctuation. In standard U.S. English, two exclamation points is informal and more than two exclamation points (or question marks) is incorrect. Strictly speaking, though, an encyclopedic tone would almost never require exclamation points at all. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:20, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Do you prefer anachronistic? Nowadays mechanically typeset print products are extremely rare, so it no longer makes sense to intentionally misplace periods and commas to where nearby letters protect them against premature wasting. Continuing this practice anyway, after the UK has mostly switched and given that in other languages it was never done in the first place, is eccentric and illogical. --Hans Adler 13:21, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Adler, the U.S. rule of placing periods and commas inside the quote marks may have gotten there for typographical reasons, but it is still there because it is simple, graceful, easy to teach, easy to use and easy to copy edit and because there was never in the past 150 years nor is there now any true reason to change it. The British may use a more complicated system if they like, but the U.S. system, like U.S. spelling, suits us culturally. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:54, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Frog, you obviously don't know what you are talking about. --Hans Adler 15:16, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Adler, you've shown that you can speak more appropriately than that. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:41, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunetaly for you, the US isn't the only country in the world, nor are people bound to the stylistics choices of the American goverment. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 13:35, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Concur. Wikipedia's system of using British rules on British-themed articles, U.S. on U.S., etc. is best for a multiple-English work of this kind. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:54, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

What you have described is Wikipedia's system with regard to spelling differences but is not Wikipedia's system with regard to punctuation styles. The punctuation style is invariant, i.e., is not dependent on subject matter. (It does in some instances depend on the editor's personal choice, such as whether to italicize "i.e."; either method is acceptable, per the abbreviations guideline.) JamesMLane t c 17:59, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Then I'll clarify. I am describing what Wikipedia is doing in some cases and should be doing in the case of punctuation. I concur with the idea that it is not Wikipedia's job to create or impose one form of English on the entire English-speaking reader base. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:41, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

It's not a "form of English" (a variety) that WP has decided on, but the best one—in this case—to do justice to our overriding policy of reducing our tampering with quoted material to a minimum. There are other reasons, but they are less important. Please try not to see this in national terms. Tony (talk) 08:40, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

I understand that Wikipedia's selected form of punctuation is different from both standard British and American English. In the case of quotation marks with other punctuation, Wikipedia's choice does not improve functionality. American and British English standards do not constitute tampering with sources. Darkfrog24 (talk) 09:53, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

It's bad form to go on and on and on when there are no signs that Wikipedia is going to follow you to suit your personal tastes or your personal variant of conservatism or patriotism, or whatever it is that is driving you. – By the way, are you aware that your last user box, the one advocating "American punctuation", uses an example where there is no difference between the American and British/logical styles? Do you only care about punctuation when it's not in a larger, bold typeface and serves a critical role for getting a point across? Hans Adler 10:20, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I am actually. I've asked about editing/creating new user boxes on the talk page, but no one's answered me yet. And I care about good writing across the board, though this seems to be the place where people divide into factions.

Speaking of factions I think the point of all this is that those of us here, for our various reasons, believe that the fact that the U.S. government allows any punctuation is not something that we should put at the top of our list of things to take into account for the Wikipedia MoS. Darkfrog24 (talk) 10:46, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Based on the number of exclamation marks this section started with, I think it's fairly safe to assume that Wikid77 was guilty of WP:SARCASM. Hans Adler 11:29, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Use of an archaic printers mark

I've seen at least two editors (both raised in Britain no later than the 1950's or 1960's) use a colon followed by a hyphen (":-") to start lists. From what I can tell, this is an outdated printer's mark, known colloquially as a "dog's bollocks" ([21], [22]). Since this typography seems to be archaic in Britain and unheard of in the U.S., I propose that for consistency's sake, MOS:#Colons ought to state that it should not be used. » Swpb^{τ • ¢} 23:16, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

So this is the mid-century British equivalent of ":)"? Then this is less of a punctuation issue and more of a formality/encyclopedic tone issue. It should be governed by the same rules governing modern l33t et al, regardless of the age or nationality of its users. Can you give us the Wikipedia page where it was used? Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:22, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

The section of the MoS governing lists is here. Here is the page dedicated to lists and recommended list styles. This should cover you. Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:25, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

This came up only recently. Generally, people use a spaced en dash alone; occasionally a colon alone is used. A hyphen is unusual and I'd have thought discouraged. The "archaic" doublet you cite is ... well, plain ugly. Tony (talk) 12:41, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Well I've removed the hyphen wherever I've found it; it's been on dozens of pages (one example). It don't think the issue is one of formality – I suspect that in its day, this mark was considered perfectly proper (its informal nickname aside). The issue is more one of inconsisistency. The mark is so rare and outdated that it simply appears wrong to any audience not raised in mid-century Britain, so I think the encyclopedia would be best served by declaring it to be wrong, as far as the MoS is concerned. It seems like the main MoS page section on the use of colons would be a better place to address this than MOS:LIST, as its use is not confined to formal lists. » Swpb^{τ • ¢} 03:26, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I see, it's being used to introduce a list, not as a bullet mark or text accent. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:44, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh right, sorry for the confusion. » Swpb^{τ • ¢} 14:15, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Well then, should I go ahead and add the statement? » Swpb^{τ • ¢} 04:46, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

I think you should. I recently saw a few instances of these, and changed them to colons. Chris the speller (talk) 15:52, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Date unlinking bot proposal

I have started a community RFC about a proposal for a bot to unlink dates. Please see Wikipedia:Full-date unlinking bot and comment here. --Apoc2400 (talk) 10:23, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

roman numerals

{{editprotected}} I would like to add a bulletpoint for "Roman numerals at the end of phrases such as World War II or Pope Benedict XVI" to the first list at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Non-breaking_spaces. Notify me on my talk page if this is possible.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 14:19, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Can you give some more background to this request and preferably get some consensus on this page? Thanks, — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:51, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Truth determination bar

I know this does not quite fit here - this is the talk page for the styling within pages and I am more looking for a discussion of layout overall - but I could not find a better place to put this. Please direct me.

Wikipedia gets a lot of grief for its potential to be flawed and the fact that if someone does not like the truth they can simply change the wikipedia page about it. There is also the story of the student that wrote the false quote on a recently dead composer that was spread by reporters world wide.

A partial solution to this would be to clearly notify the reader how often a section of the page has been edited. This could simply be a vertical line that ran the length of the page. In areas that were edited frequently the line would be red while areas that were quite settled upon would be green.

Of course, the flaw here is that a lot of revisions can either mean deeper, more verified truth, or greater dispute. No revision may mean that the area is quite true or that no one really knows anything about it. For these reasons I elect that areas with a lot of recent revisions be colored a vibrant red while heavily revised areas that have been dormant for a good while are marked a bright green. Areas with less revision would be duller in color.

Boiled down:

Red	Recently revisions
Green	No recent changes
Vibrant	Many revisions
Dull	Few Revisions

What do you think? How would you improve this?

Also, and again, direct me where this should go if this is not the best place.

Que? (talk) 02:32, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

What if most of those edits are by 1 user? What about minor edits and edits from bots? Also what about new sections being created or existing ones deleted/merged?陣内 _Jinnai 03:12, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

¶ Nothing wrong with discussing it here, but I think that it would fit more comfortably and naturally at WP:Village Pump (proposals), where a number of closely-parallel or complementary ideas have been suggested, and where you're likely to find more editors who'd be interested in discussing yours. For example, there's a current proposal to WP:VPR#display time since last edit on article in a more-prominent place, which isn't identical to your own proposal but serves a very closely-related purpose. If you get enough interest to set up a straw poll or WP:Request for comment, you might also consider adding the title to the Centralized discussion template, designed specifically to notify users of significant discussions in pages they might not be watching. ¶ And don't feel embarrassed about not knowing what and where the Village Pump is; it took me a year to actually look at that page. —— Shakescene (talk) 04:26, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

"Irrregular" Roman numerals

Hello my fellow MOSNUMmers

this is not very well formed but I wanted to set it down while I think of it. On a lot of buildings around here there are inscriptions in Roman numerals however they don't obey "the rules". As with all quotations I think obviously as a quotation it should be written in Wikipedia as it is written on the building itself (and I see little need for a conversion to "correct" roman numerals in fact the romans were by no means consistent in their use of it). I don't think this is a big deal but if not mentioned in MOSNUM I think a simple statement that, as always, quote what is said, would be a good thing? I have not looked up MOSNUM on the subject yet just wanted to set this down before I forget.

For example the classic is IIII on clocks not IV, but analagous examples exist on the dates buildings were erected/dedicated etc.

SimonTrew (talk) 18:04, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

See Roman numerals. -- Wavelength (talk) 18:47, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Title formatting discussion

This is just a pointer to a question I posted at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (titles)#Theme park attractions, since that page seems to be not widely watched. Powers ^T 11:07, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

ENGVAR scope: Germany, UK English, and the EU

As per ENGVAR, shouldn't Germany be affected by it due to its EU membership? As per ENGVAR articles about the EU should use British/Irish English. Since Germany is an EU member and since the EU has profound effects on various political and cultural aspects of its member states, generally, shouldn't articles relating to all EU member states use British English? WhisperToMe (talk) 17:42, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

No. Consider the analogous situation: The articles on J.R.R. Tolkien and his works are written in British English. Since Tolkien's books have had a profound influence on the fantasy genre, all articles on fantasy books should be written in British English. Strad (talk) 18:10, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

This is in context with national ties, something inherent to countries. By definition a fantasy book has no national ties whatsoever. Likewise Germany has deep ties to the UK, Ireland, and Malta through its EU membership. WhisperToMe (talk) 18:33, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

What about Ramstein Air Base? Most articles about the EU as such use British or Irish English, but there's no reason to apply that to every article about anything connected to an EU country. Physchim62 (talk) 18:26, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Ramstein Air Base would be an exception to the rule, as there is the fact that it's an American air force base. I'm referring to articles like Berlin, which use American English simply because that was how the article started out. I use the word generally for that reason. WhisperToMe (talk) 18:33, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

[the following has probably been somewhat outdated by an intervening edit conflict:] I don't see a "deep" connection between the British Isles and Germany (p.s., Cyprus is another EU country in the Commonwealth). I think that the U.S. zone of occupation in Germany and Berlin was greater than the British, and that the U.S. forces in Germany were greater than the British Army of the Rhine, so you could argue that American influences were almost as great as British ones. There's also been a larger German- and Yiddish-speaking community in the U.S., interacting with Germany, than in Britain or Ireland. (This isn't nationalism on my part since I was born in London, still retain British citizenship, root for British sports teams and favour British spellings, though I've long lived in the States.) I don't think that German articles in general classify as either U.S. or British-oriented, so the first-major-editor rule should apply, although naturally some specific articles might have a particular orientation to the U.S., Ireland or Britain (as vs. the EU), and attract British, Irish or American editors (e.g. the Berlin Airlift, Dresden, Hanover, Haydn or Joseph Weydemeyer). By the way, I think many of these arguments might apply to Austria, while rather different ones might apply to Switzerland. —— Shakescene (talk) 19:20, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

I believe the appropriate answer is to find out what kind of English the Germans most typically use when writing in English. I see no a priori reason to guess based on membership in international organizations. Some contrary evidence: on www.spiegel.de there are about 1000 uses of "color" and only about 100 uses of "colour", so I suspect an editorial decision to use American spelling. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:42, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

I understand the European Union itself uses British English - Should I check to see what variant of English is preferred by German government websites and press releases? WhisperToMe (talk) 18:58, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

At Berlin.de (City of Berlin website) - English pages only: Colour appears 289 times - Color appears 163 times EDIT: Added some parameters that excluded German pages WhisperToMe (talk) 19:05, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

This would be useful to know, but I think that the general rules should probably apply: whatever the first editor finds most natural to use. There's little point to adding yet another Wikipedia rule or to expect editors of articles with ties to each of a couple of hundred possible nations to look up whether the Czechs, the Chinese or the Argentines prefer English or American spelling. Editing an article about Marie Curie, Shinto or gauchos would require enough care and effort already. On the other hand, if one is truly indifferent about British or American spelling, and just wants to pick the most appropriate for a German-related article that German users might read in English, this would obviously be useful information to have. —— Shakescene (talk) 19:20, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with your comments, Shakescene, but just want to point out that we don't tailor German-related articles to German users, but rather to all readers of the English-language encyclopedia. We can't assume that most readers of an article like Berlin are in Germany (in fact, they probably aren't). --Skeezix1000 (talk) 19:31, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

It strikes me that this issue isn't easily solved by reference to the variant preferred by the EU, the German gov't, the City of Berlin, German media, the Berlin tourist board, etc. etc., because none of those sources purport to establish an official or preferred English variant for Germany or anywhere else in Europe (and their own usage may vary and/or be inconsistent). This is an issue for all articles pertaining to any non-English-speaking nation in the world. Articles such as Berlin, just like Table (furniture), Warsaw and Screwdriver, have no strong ties to any variety of English -- arguments about British-membership in the EU, or what variant Germans are more likely to use, are inherently subjective and not much help here (you can just imagine the endless debates over the "national ties" of the many place name articles, and whether the links to Britain or America are stronger). As such (pardon me for stating the obvious), retain the existing variant and look for opportunities for commonality. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 19:28, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Concur. Right now, Germany itself does not seem to have a preference for U.K. or U.S. English overall. Its membership in the E.U. alone should not mean that Wikipedia articles on German subjects must be written in British English. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:04, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

When I learned English at school it started with British English. Then, after 5 or 6 years, it switched to American English. This was not due to some change of policy but intentional, so that we learn both variants. Of course this kind of thing probably varies over time and between German states. But it's safe to say that neither variant dominates in Germany. Scientists use AE or BE depending on factors such as time spent in English-speaking countries or whether they have more contacts in the US or in Commonwealth countries. BE is used for things connected to EU bureaucracy, AE is used in computing. Places like Heidelberg or Schloss Neuschwanstein have a lot more American than British tourists, so information for tourists tends to be in AE. Hans Adler 00:42, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Germany is not an ancestral native anglophone country (there are seven obvious ones). The normal rules apply to Germany. Tony (talk) 03:06, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Only seven? Category:English-speaking countries and territories has rather more than that. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:16, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

There are 53 states in the Commonwealth ... — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 04:04, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I understand the original motivation of this thread as an attempt to revise ENGVAR so that WP:MOS#Strong national ties to a topic applies more widely. Arguing that all of Europe should get the same status as the UK and all of South America the same status as the US does make some sense and would lead to greater inter-article consistency. I think it's appropriate to discuss the merits of this proposal (or point to an earlier discussion if this is a perennial proposal). Hans Adler 08:05, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Not sure that would work. What about the British overseas territories in South and Central America? IMO it should just be left as is, though perhaps any article directly on the EU itself should use British English.陣内 _Jinnai 19:26, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, for British territories they would use British English, but I tend to use US English for topics about Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries in Latin America. BTW the consensus seems to be clear that no national variety is preferred for Germany, so... WhisperToMe (talk) 02:29, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree, and in fact I argued for keeping ENGVAR as it is (in the case of Germany). Hans Adler 19:36, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Some justifications for the ENGVAR custom are

When a topic has a strong tie to a particular English speaking nation, readers from that nation are likely to make up a disproportionate share of the readers, so those readers should be catered to.
The past, present, and future editors of an article with strong ties to a particular English speaking nation are likely to be from that nation, and it will be easier for them to write in their native variety.

These justifications just don't apply to nations where English is not the primary language, no matter how close they may be geographically to an English-speaking nation. --Jc3s5h (talk) 20:04, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree overall, Jc3s5h. However, I personally would make the exception that if a non-English speaking area or subject shows a marked preference for one form of English over the others, then I would support writing articles about that area or subject in that variety of English. That doesn't seem to be true in the case of Germany, however. If we were talking about India...

I would also add that writing of British subjects in British English (etc.) adds an air of authenticity to the article and seems more respectful of the subject. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:11, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

India is different; it's not really a "non-English-speaking country". English has a recognized Indian dialect that has actual native speakers (a lot of them, in fact). This is the real difference, I think; there is "Indian English", but there is not any serious "German English" or "French English", notstanding the fact that huge numbers of Germans and French speak English. --Trovatore (talk) 21:23, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Editors and readers from the ancestral native-speaking countries—seven of them, or so—are the ones mostly likely to get uppity about the variety (the US and Canada, the UK and Ireland, Australia and NZ, and South Africa). While English is big in places such as India, people are less emotionally attached to a particular variety. Tony (talk) 05:19, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Vertical whitespace

I have seen a number of articles lately like the current revision of General radiotelephone operator license which have an odd style involving lots of vertical whitespace. unless I missed it, there is no guideline on this point. If there is not, perhaps there should be. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 03:56, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

That whole section looks like it was lifted directly from a manual. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:23, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I think the main issue is that there is a lot of text in point form. If it were recast into paragraphs, the whitespace problem would disappear. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 05:07, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Italicize a media franchise?

Hello everyone. There's a dispute concerning whether or not the word "Pokémon" should be italicized when referring to the franchise as a whole. "Pokémon video game series" and "the Pokémon anime" are correct, but something like "Pokémon book series" is incorrect. So, what about "the Pokémon franchise"? Thanks in advance. -sesuPRIME 04:34, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

This query was split off from this discussion. Please read that before commenting here. Artichoker^[talk] 15:54, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, we say things like, "The Anita Blake series," but italicize the titles of the books themselves, so perhaps "Pokemon" itself should not be italicized.

Question, though: Is Star Trek italicized when discussed in its entirety? I think it is. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:06, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

It appears so. See Star Trek. Opening words are italicized (normally they might just be bolded otherwise).陣内 _Jinnai 19:26, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Hm. This looks like a case-by-caser, Sesu. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:21, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Why do you say that? -sesuPRIME 01:06, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I think it depends on whether the franchise is named after a media property (as the Star Trek franchise is named for the Star Trek television program, and the Pokemon franchise is named for the card game Pokemon) or after some other aspect of the universe (such as Forgotten Realms or the Wold Newton family or the Sherlock Holmes stories (Note that Forgotten Realms is often italicized but I'm not clear why)). Powers ^T 13:12, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

While it may not be the case that all media franchises are italicized, it does seem to happen more often than not, at least in formal writing. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:18, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

My take on this is that there is no need to italicize terms like "Pokémon" and "Star Trek" when used in relation to a media franchise because the terms are not being used as the titles of works (books, films, games, etc.) or any of the other instances where italics are generally used in Wikipedia: see WP:ITALICS. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 17:37, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

It could be argued that the terms are being used as the titles of works. For instance, "the Star Trek franchise" could be interpreted to mean "the franchise based on the original television program Star Trek". Powers ^T 18:00, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

True... Does the italics rule apply to games like "Pokémon"? It seems a little odd to italicize names like Monopoly, Scrabble and Uno. On the other hand, italics seem fine for games like Dungeons and Dragons and Grand Theft Auto. Are content-rich electronic and video games to be differentiated from board games? — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 18:20, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm wondering if its because those games are presented as a narrative work and Monopoly isn't.陣内 _Jinnai 19:17, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to clarify that "Pokémon" didn't start out as a card game, but as a pair of video games. I think LtPowers got it right when he(?) said ""the Star Trek franchise" could be interpreted to mean "the franchise based on the original television program Star Trek"." Perhaps the original product on which the franchise is based should be the template for how it's written. For example, we'd use "the Pokémon franchise" because the original "Pokémon" product, the video games, is italicized. Thoughts? -sesuPRIME 21:22, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Replying to Powers ^T 13:12, 1 July 2009 (UTC) above: One could argue that the Pokémon franchise is named after the creatures, too. So that can be seen both as an argument for italics and as one against it. (Is the Rocky film series named after Rocky Balboa or is it named after the first film in the series?) --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 10:39, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

That's a straw man. Every franchise is based off of a title. Yes some franchise titles have elements like characters, creatures, world, etc. in them but the franchise is based off the title, not the element otherwise Star Trek franchise would be called the Enterprise franchise or something like that. The only exception to that is when a character becomes popular enough to have their own spinoff and even then they usually have a work with their name.陣内 _Jinnai 01:50, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I checked around. The "Disney Princess" franchise is not based off a title and usually goes unitalicized. Here's a question: Does Nintendo italicize the name of the franchise on official documents (ones that might have been expected to receive professional copy editing)? Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:43, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Proposal: a MoS section for the use of prepositions

In the phrases "a character [preposition] the [movie/tv show/novel/etc.]..." and "a member [preposition] the group", I propose that the MoS should state that the following prepositions be used:

"in" for characters in movies and books
"in" or "on" for characters on television series
"of" for members of a group, such as a band
"from" should never be used in any of these contexts

I often see phrases like "a character from the movie..." on disambiguation pages and in articles. To me, "from" makes it sound like the character emerged from film and began walking around, and it just plain reads like third-grade writing. I don't know if this is a matter of technical incorrectness, but it seems like something the MoS should address. Thoughts? » Swpb^{τ • ¢} 19:52, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

The use of "from" in "a character from the movie" might be annoying at times, but it usually isn't incorrect and it doesn't make Wikipedia look stupid. We shouldn't ban people from using words in correct, formal, intelligible ways unless those ways are unencyclopedic or confusing. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:04, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

There will inevitably be variations in idiom and personal style. Are we going to start discouraging "a passage from the Bible" or "an excerpt from the Court's opinion"? "A line from Shakespeare" (standing in for "a line from Shakespeare's plays") is much better to my eyes than "a line of Shakespeare" or "a line in Shakespeare", both of which seem slightly odd or ambiguous; but then why not "a character from Shakespeare" and thus "a line from Hamlet" and "a character from Macbeth"? I would still use "in" for a particular performer in a group or production, as "he'd played a small role in Romeo and Juliet" or "a character actor in Kenneth Branagh's Henry V." In this case the choice of prepositions helps to distinguish the rôle from the actor. [In some of these examples, one could also use a possessive formation with "of" as in "a line of Shakespeare's" or "one of Shakespeare's villains", but that doesn't work with the Bible.] Judgement and clarity are what's needed, but they can't easily be prescribed by rules in a manual. —— Shakescene (talk) 21:57, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Too strict, I think, Swpb, and unless there's evidence of common mistakes, best not for the MoS to go there. An example of an exception is "its" versus "it's", which is widely misused. Tony (talk) 13:19, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Also, using "from" is helpful for characters who were killed off their television shows or are no longer on those television shows for whatever reason. Why? Well, some IPs and newbie editors will often put "was a fictional character" when that character has been killed off or is no longer on the show. As we know, a character dying off or leaving the series does not make that character no longer a fictional character; the character will always be fictional, but this does not register to these editors when thinking of these characters in some form of real-world context. Having "is a fictional character on" or "is a fictional character in" only adds to them feeling that the character is still being presented as currently within the show. By saying "is a fictional character from" somewhat solves this problem. "From" does not seem to suggest that the character is still on the show...but rather is or was a part of it. Flyer22 (talk) 01:22, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

italicised dates

User:Stilltim has been italicising dates of birth in the lead of articles. I can't seem to find any restriction on doing so, but the format in every other article I've ever seen is to keep them non-italicised. Thoughts? Ironholds (talk) 10:35, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

My thought, for whatever it's worth, is that this is the kind of thing where I'm just going to differ naturally with most of the regulars here. Some written reference books italicise dates of birth and death, and others don't, so I just say (much to others' horror): to each his or her own preferred style. For example, the first page I open from what I have instantly to hand, Le Petit Larousse Illustré, 2004, italicises the dates for

NAPOLÉON III (Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte), Paris 1808 - Chislehurst, Kent, 1873, empéreur des Français ( 1852 - 1870 )....

while my Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Encyclopedia (created in cooperation with Encyclopaedia Britannica) has

Hopkins, Gerard Manley (1844-1889) British poet....

If we want to reduce (or at least not increase) Wikipedia's unmanageable and crushing amount of instruction sprawl, this would be (at least for someone who isn't keen on uniformity for its own sake) a grand place to begin. No one's going to be taken aback, let alone confused or misled, by the variation; in fact very few will notice. —— Shakescene (talk) 11:14, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

While I find Shakescene's remarks interesting, I think we do already have a guideline on this: WP:ITALICS. Dates of birth and death are not items that the guideline advises editors to italicize, so arguably they should not be italicized. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 12:01, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

My argument exactly. In terms of style we have a positive law, not a negative one - if something isn't specifically mentioned then, taking common sense into account, they probably should be excluded from the guideline. Ironholds (talk) 12:34, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Shakescene. WP: ITALICS says nothing either way about italicizing dates. This should not be interpreted to mean that they must or must not be italicized. I would only add that italicizing previously unitalicized dates would constitute a style change and would therefore be worth discussing on the articles' individual talk pages where there is reason to believe that other contributors will object—which seems to be the case with Stilltim and Ironholds. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:38, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

The italicisation of dates isn't used anywhere else on the wiki - I think that's sign enough that it isn't considered valid, whatever the MoS directly says. Ironholds (talk) 12:42, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Expressio unius est exclusio alterius – the express mention of one thing excludes all others. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 12:48, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Jacklee, but the WP: ITALICS page includes both lists of the sorts of things to italicize and the sorts of things to not italicize. Again, it doesn't show us either way. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:54, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Ummm, not as far as I can tell. WP:ITALICS indicates only items that are italicized in Wikipedia. There is a section called "When not to use emphasis", but that is about "the use of various style devices to show emphasis" and not just italics. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 18:47, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

If we're using statutory interpretation style things here the mischief rule also applies. The MoS was put in to create a "house style" for articles. The currently used house style is to non-italicise dates. As such, italicising dates defeats the purpose of the MoS. Ironholds (talk) 12:52, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

That's a common style, Ironholds, but if our stated guidelines are guidelines and not laws, then surely our unstated common practices have even more flexibility.

There seem to be two questions here 1. whether the Wikipedia MoS in general states or implies that dates should or should not be italicized and 2. whether Stilltim is doing anything wrong. In the case of this second, if Stilltim is going into articles and changing optional styles without raising the matter with the other editors, then yes, he could be said to be doing something wrong (though I could understand why he might not think anyone would mind). In that case, someone should go to his talk page and tell him, "Please raise the issue of italicizing dates on the talk page before implementing the change." If Stilltim is reasonable, then that should solve the problem. However, Stilltim seems to also create a number of articles himself. In those cases, he'd likely be the first major contributor. Then, the issue of changing the dates to non-italics would have to be raised on the talk page. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:03, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Hm, have we been looking in the wrong place? MOS:DOB doesn't specifically mention italics, but what do you guys think? Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:07, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

That doesn't give anything specific, but I note that it advises us to use the birthdeath templates where possible. Those templates don't include italicised dates, and only use normal text. A clue? Ironholds (talk) 13:17, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I note that in Shakescene's example, the italicized dates are not within parentheses, and therefore are italicized to set them off from the rest of the text. Since our birth and death dates are parenthesized, we need not italicize them too. Powers ^T 14:02, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

It would be helpful to see it in context: no links? In principle, I'm against needless formatting, and find much text in English over-formatted. There is also the matter of consistency in the project; while no one wants to impose a straight jacket, I see no need to run around introducing this little innovation. A date's a date, and it's perfectly plain and clear in roman face like the rest of the text. Should be italicise the profession of the subject, too? Tony (talk) 14:17, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Just like with autoformatting, why make things more complicated with unnecessary markup? I don't see the need for italics; the dates are right after the bolded name and can't be missed. Dabomb87 (talk) 16:41, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Don't italicize dates. I am not aware of any general style guideline to italicize dates of birth and death. If a particular publication italicizes them, that is an idiosyncrasy of their house style (their internal manual of style) and is irrelevant to us (a foreign language example is even less relevant than one in the English language might be). Unless the relevant MOS guidelines—WP:ITALICS and, in this instance, MOS:DOB—prescribe italic for a particular usage, text should not be italicized. That is what a guideline means. If the argument above that anything may be italicized in addition to what the MOS guidelines prescribe were correct, then one might arbitrarily choose to italicize all proper nouns, or surnames, or months, or the first word of every paragraph. An important purpose of our MOS, and of any style manual, is to avoid such non-uniform chaos. As for those who worry about instruction creep (which is an essay, not a policy), Wikipedia's MOS is the least prescriptive style manual there is. No other publication allows such a wide variety of choices as to citation form, serial commas, use of dashes, English variety, date formatting, etc., etc., etc. Finell (Talk) 18:37, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Finell, I'm not arguing in favor of italicizing dates. I agree with most of you that it's not necessary. The question is whether or not it's forbidden and it doesn't seem to be. The above argument refers to whether WP: ITALICS gives us a policy on italicizing dates. It doesn't. Therefore, if we were going solely by WP: ITALICS, then we could say that Stilltim was not doing anything wrong other than making an optional change without consulting other editors, which is what Ironhold has asked us about.

On the other hand, the fact that none of the examples in MOS:DOB are in italics is telling. I would say that it implies that dates are not to be italicized on Wikipedia. However, if our stated styles are guidelines and not rules, than unstated styles must be still more flexible. Therefore, if the issue is what to do about Stilltim, then treating this as an optional change is probably the best way to go. The best thing to do would be to 1. ask Stilltim to raise the issue of such style changes on articles' talk pages in the future and 2. go to articles that he's already changed and say, "Hey, do we really need those italics?" I expect that a consensus of "No, I guess we don't" will occur in relatively short order. Problem solved.

If the next question is whether we should add a passage to MOS:DOB explicitly barring italics in the future, I feel that we should not. Italics on dates may not be necessary, but, unlike italics on random parts of speech, they do no harm. Adding another complication would do more harm than good. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:13, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Let me add that I agree with the opinions above that once dates have been added to an article, their style shouldn't be changed either to or from italic without discussion on the article's talk page. If this isn't significant enough in my opinion to merit a new rule, it's surely not worth starting an edit war over. The first editor's style, as in WP:ENGVAR should apply. (The one situation I can think of where uniformity might be desirable in itself is extremely-closely-related biographies, such as those for John, Paul, George and Ringo — as opposed, say, to John and Yoko, or Paul and Linda. Otherwise, just let it be.) —— Shakescene (talk) 03:32, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

This isn't how a style manual works. Generally, a style manual says what to do, not what not to do. WP: ITALICS prescribes when to use italics. It doesn't also have to say, "Don't use italics for dates. Don't use italics for ordinary English words. Don't use italics for nick-names. Don't use italics for numbers written out in words...." MOS:DOB gives examples of how to show dates of birth and death in the article's lead. The examples are not in italic. It is not necessary to add, "Don't use italic. Don't use boldface. Don't use underscore. Don't use red font color. Don't use blue font color. Don't use all caps for months. Don't use large and small caps for months. Don't say 'around' in place of circa." I know, WP: ITALICS does say not to use italics for quotations; so does WP:QUOTE. That is because setting quotations in italic is an especially prevalent mistake. But in general, where the MOS prescribes usage, it is not necessary to prohibit explicitly all alternative or additional usages; that is implicit. Where alternate usages are acceptable, the MOS says so explicitly: e.g., serial commas, BC/AD vs BCE/CE, where to place AD. I do not agree with the proposition that if an article's first author used red font for the entire article, everyone else has to leave it alone because the MOS doesn't prescribe color. Finell (Talk) 06:00, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Red font a straw argument. Red font or italics on random parts of speech both make the article more difficult to read and italics on dates do not. I agree that MOS:DOB can be taken to imply that italics should not be used on dates but not to the point at which it is unreasonable for an editor to come to a different conclusion in good faith or to the point at which we should go and tell him that he's doing it wrong.

Not all of the MoS is so concrete as you describe. For example, there is a part of this MoS that says (of section headers), "Capitalize the first letter of the first word and any proper nouns in headings, but leave the rest in lower case." This can be solidly interpreted to mean that title-style capitalization should not be used on Wikipedia section headers; the wording covers all cases of section headers. With regard to italics on dates, that's not the case with WP: ITALICS and one can make an argument for that not being the case with MOS:DOB. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:13, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Fellow writers- I am an amateur historian, very busy raising my family and doing my real job. I'm not an editor knowledgable of all the incredibly detailed comments made above. Nor do I have a great deal of time sorting through this stuff. I simply stumbled on a presentation that seemed to make one point of information more understandable faster for a simple, quick read. I didn't like it at first then grew on me, so thinking applying to simple Delaware would be a good testing tube. Nothing sacred and nothing I won't undue happily if the logic for doing so was present. But it seems to look better each time I look.

I am very anxious to comply format to the experts and the rules, but I also have some brain left and have been doing this very thing several years and have altered design of the information I've contribution to match what seems to be the rules many times, even if I don't like them. Meanwhile, from a couple of individuals, I constantly get bitter criticism for some creativity and doing no such thing. So, what to do, knowing there really is an allowance, for some easy way to make potential improvements that are essentially harmless. Our writing can't be that static.

I would appreciate the opportunity to marginally experiment with more readable ways to present this information, goodness knows what we do can always be improved. And please keep my sincere efforts for readability from the claws of individuals determined to set the rules strictly and for eternity for reasons beyond my understanding. Thanks for all your incredible insightful thinking...what I learned reading this is almost worth giving up my present heartfaced desire on this subject. I don't want a fight, but I do want a better presented article where possible. stilltim (talk) 20:18, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Just to add my 2 cents, it seems, reading MOS:DOB that all examples there give DOBs in Roman within parentheses, making that the de facto MOS for dates, even if not explicitly stated. Therefore, it seems that the standard already exists to not italicize dates. I'd stick with that. oknazevad (talk) 00:42, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Another factor I failed to mention yesterday. For a couple of years I always displayed the dates in blue, connecting them to the common calendar. I liked that connection (a lot) because it gave good additional information and made the dates really visible. I was very reluctantly convinced to remove that connection to maintain consistency throughout WP, and keep some of the nearly annonymous WP growlers at bay. But it gave up the benefits. The italics restores that a bit. Perhaps if it is insisted that the italics have to go, the connection could be restored. Just my amateur logic for promoting visibility. If italics or blue is a better display, the premium good results could be considered more important for our readers than automatic common display guidelines. In my opinion their benefit is the goal, nothing else. stilltim (talk) 10:47, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Just so it's clear, in general, we're not required to maintain consistency throughout Wikipedia, just throughout individual articles. It is often desirable to do so anyway, but it's not required. Still, in this case, I'd go with non-italicized dates. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:14, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

That is not entirely correct, and therefore could mislead others. Where the MOS prescribes a particular style, such as it does with punctuation in quotations or use of italic, consistency generally is required throughout the Wikipedia. In instances where the MOS has no guideline or authroizes alternate styles, usage within a article should be consistent, but Wikipedia-wide consistency is not required. Finell (Talk) 17:55, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Please do not use markup with a specific meaning ("this date is hyperlinked to an article about the date") just because you like the appearance. This practice would cause Wikipedia to be full of false meanings just because it looks nice. --Jc3s5h (talk) 11:58, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Stilltim, I'm at a loss to know why plain, roman, black text for dates is inadequate. Can you provide an example where it's unclear without special formatting? Tony (talk) 13:26, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Echoing Tony. We don't need to highlight every "important" bit of information in a special way. Even if we did, why just dates? If so, we might as well put places of birth in green, names of people in red, and other proper nouns in orange. Dabomb87 (talk) 16:50, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Punctuation: multiple sentence-enders revisited

Sorry to raise this again, but the MHRA Style Guide 2008 gives some examples of multiple sentence-enders:

For quotations which are either interrogatory or exclamatory, punctuation marks should appear both before and after the closing quotation mark:

The pause is followed by Richard’s demanding ‘will no man say “Amen”?’.

Why does Shakespeare give Malcolm the banal question ‘Oh, by whom?’?

And there's the example I gave earlier - what should we do about "O Romeo, Romeo!"? These all seem perfectly clear and acceptable to me.

--Occultations (talk) 17:48, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

It is my understanding (and the MLA's) that only one sentence ender is required. The MHRA is British. This might be a job for ENGVAR. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:48, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

NB: I'm not quick to classify aspects of style in national terms. Engvar is basically for spelling and a few lexical items that differ. Tony (talk) 00:52, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

No matter what rule or convention you follow, there will occasionally have to be some exceptions because of the context or the meaning you're trying to convey. One sentence-ender should usually be enough, but I can think of cases where you'd want to punctuate both the internal quotation and the sentence that encloses it. —— Shakescene (talk) 05:28, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I think Shakescene has got it exactly right. One sentence-ender is nearly always correct, but very occasionally we need more than one. And the exceptions are questions and exclamations. We could have a question about an exclamation, or an exclamation about a question:

Why did she say "O Romeo, Romeo!"?

It was extraordinary, he said "Oh, by whom?"!

In both these case, omitting one of the sentence-enders would be simply wrong: it would lose essential information. And in the complementary cases of a question about a question, and an exclamation about an exclamation:

Why did he say "Oh, by whom?"?

It was extraordinary, she said "O Romeo, Romeo!"!

omitting one of the sentence-enders would lose useful information. The multiple sentence-enders serve as a useful reminder that these are a question about a question, and an exclamation about an exclamation. --Occultations (talk) 11:59, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Occultations, while your first set of examples demonstrates a good case for multiple sentence-enders, I'm not too sure about the second set. What does the Chicago Manual of Style say? Wavelength has a long list of various MoSes around here somewhere. We should review both British and American sources and find out what's correct. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:29, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

See User:Wavelength/About English/Style guides. -- Wavelength (talk) 00:42, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

WP:RETAIN - restore original point of first contributor rule

The WP:RETAIN section currently states:

In the early stages of writing an article, the variety chosen by the first major contributor to the article should be used.

This wording was introduced with this edit. Prior to that edit, the wording was:

* Follow the variety established by the first contributor.
If there is no settled spelling and all else fails, consider following the spelling style preferred by the first major contributor to the article (after the article was a stub, that is).

link

It seems to me that the intent of that section was always the ultimate fall back rule to resolve any dispute where no other resolution is possible, and that this effect was undermined by adding the "In the early stages of writing an article" clause, leaving no fall-back solution for articles past the "early stages" point.

For example, the article yogurt was originally at Yogurt and changed at some point to Yoghurt. Since it has been at Yoghurt countless (6, 8? 12?) efforts have been made to change it back to Yogurt, with no consensus ever being reached. So each time the article stays at Yoghurt, until someone else again proposes to change it back to Yogurt. If the original intent still existed in the MOS, then this "first contributor" rule could be used to clearly settle this dispute once and for all. However, because of the "In the early stages of writing an article" clause, it is stuck in this years-long quagmire.

I propose restoring the original intent of the first contributor rule by changing the current wording above to:

In the early stages of writing an article, the variety chosen by the first major contributor to the article should be used. If a particular variety is routinely challenged, the variety chosen by the first major contributor to the article should be restored, regardless of how long the challenged variety has been in place.

Comments? --Born2cycle (talk) 21:03, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

No, this would be far too arbitrary. This would cause chaos, not only in WP:LAME disputes such as the one over the fermented dairy comestible article, but to any of our subjects of political dispute where one may expect regular and routine challenges from partizans. The first-to-write standard makes sense as a way to prevent editors from getting bogged down by minutiae in the early stages of an article, and as a way to head off editors who are too obsessed with this level of detail from wasting their time changing over whole articles, but not as a trump card for heavily contested issues. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:12, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Born2cycle. Any solution is arbitrary; this one is at least clear. I don't see how it would cause more "chaos" than currently exists. --Trovatore (talk) 21:19, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, my original understanding of ENGVAR, the spirit of which applies to many situations, was that we let inertia have it. The idea is, if the argument is between two versions of English, then find a way not to care where it is, with the result that it stays there. That interpretation continues to make a lot of sense to me, but I'm curious to see what others think. -GTBacchus^(talk) 21:23, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Inertia achieved by a name that is constantly challenged makes no sense to me. Inertia is fine when it works. If it doesn't work, then we need a definitive tie breaker, if you will, and the first contributor rule, applied whether the article is in its first stages or not, would provide that. By going with the first contributor's usage, you eventually have inertia as well as consistency with first contributor usage to establish stability. I too want to hear from others. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:30, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Ok, let's be more specific, and possibly inflammatory. Suppose that the first version of our article on the country Macedonia titled it FYROM, as the Greek partizans would still like to call it (instead, the oldest revision I can see was in fact titled Macedonia, and spelled out the FYROM acronym on its first line). One can expect that, in the presence of the rewritten rule you suggest, any title other than FYROM would be "routinely challenged" by those same partizans. Does this mean that it would be correct to title the article FYROM today, based on what was in that first version? No. And so, your rewritten rule is wrong, in the very sort of situation that one can expect it to be frequently applied. Specifically, your wording about "routinely challenged" is far too broad, as it does not take into account how well-founded the challenges are or how broad the consensus for a particular name might be. The point of the first contributor rule is to prevent pointless name-changing, but your version also prevents name-changing when there is a very good reason for the change as long as someone is persistent enough to keep complaining. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:02, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Good point. The original wording, "if all else failed", limited the scope to only those situations where there were no compelling objective arguments in favor of one name over the other, and that scope limiting intent should be retained in the new wording.

In the early stages of writing an article, the variety chosen by the first major contributor to the article should be used. If a particular variety is routinely challenged and all other attempts to achieve consensus fail, the variety chosen by the first major contributor to the article should be restored, regardless of how long the challenged variety has been in place.

Better? --Born2cycle (talk) 22:20, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Born2 that this is a problem. However, I believe that the original wording cited here—by which I mean the wording from before the edit—is the clearest and best of the three. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:38, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

The core issue is that go with inertia and go with first contributor (without regard to whether in early stages) are contradictory. The advantage of ultimately going with first contributor is it is unambiguous. The problem with the inertia rule is it is not nearly as clear. For example, if the name in question (e.g., Yoghurt) has been continually challenged ever since the article was moved there years ago, is inertia established? What that shows is that there probably never was consensus for that name since it was changed from the first contributor's use. The MOS should be clear on what to do in this situation; currently it is not. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:06, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Given that you have been a frequent contributor in the talk pages of the fermented dairy comestible article, that its name has been a subject of recent controversy, and that you keep mentioning it here as an example of a "problem" that would be "fixed" by your proposal, I am also wary of gaming the system, above and beyond any general principles about article naming. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:16, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Let's focus on the proposal and soundness of the arguments presented, regardless of by whom are why they are being presented, please. If you start questioning motivations, that's just a bottomless quagmire. This is a legitimate problem and ambiguity in the current MOS. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:23, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

While we should not assume that B2C is unbiased in this matter, the question is valid. We all have a good idea of what the guideline means: when the article content has no logical tie to one form of English and there is no consensus to use or not use a given form of English, then copy the usage of the first major contributor. Does its current phrasing express it well enough? The Yog/hurt issue here is useful to us only if it is an example of confusion caused by any lack of clarity in the guideline. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:42, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

It was our own Tony1 who made the edit in question. He probably has some insight on this matter. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:46, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Born2cycle, I can arrange for anything to be continually challenged. Let's not set a precedent - that we know future editors will lawyer - that "continually challenged" is proof that something doesn't work, and should be changed. That would be a great big invitation to exploit that precedent to gain the upper hand in disputes.

There's no ambiguity in "if it involves regional versions of English stop caring now". Not a bit. That is the best common-sense policy I can think of to deal with this question. -GTBacchus^(talk) 00:03, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, that isn't going to work, because people do care. If you let that be the rule, then when someone slips a change by and it isn't immediately caught, there's no remedy, except to try to be equally sneaky at some later time. This rewards bad behavior. --Trovatore (talk) 00:25, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

You may be right, that it can't work. I think that's a damn shame. I prefer believing it can work, and working to make that happen. -GTBacchus^(talk) 00:40, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Oppose; would simplify matters by dealing us bad outcomes. Hesperian 23:20, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Oppose: This guideline was amended to its current form on 10 June 2007 because it was agreed by consensus that the amendedment was an improvement over the previous version. It has been stable for over two years. I believe that the change was partly motivated by a change in circumstances. In the early years of Wikipedia, it was common for entire articles to be largely the product of a single editor. It was therefore appropriate to defer to that editor on matters of style, including national variety of English in the absense of a guideline or other strong reason to the contrary. Today, most articles, in their current state, are the product of a lot of work (including revision) by a large number of editors. It is therefore more appropriate today—or even two years ago—to be guided by what is more prevalent in the article's current state as the best reflection of all editors' contributions to the article. (Of course, if one or a few editors suddenly make major changes contrary to the then-prevailing style, and therefore contrary to this guideline, that should not be regarded the new prevailing style for the purpose of the guideline.) Going back to the earlier guideline open the door to rewriting many stable articles in the styled of the first major contributor. That would not improve the encyclopedia one bit, but would casue disruption and possible conflict.

For the same reason, we should have strong reasons, beyond the personal preferences of those who happen to be watching one of the MOS pages that week, for changing a guideline that has been stable. In considering changes to existing guidelines, we should be guided by the Wikipedia:Principle of minimum disruption; that is, we should have a strong reason for changing a guideline in a way that puts a substantial number of well-Wikified articles into the [[Category:Articles that need to be wikified]]. Finell (Talk) 02:24, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Let's not build "routine challenging" into the guidelines. I was not satisfied at the time with the emphasis on some boundary between early and later stages. However, stability was the issue: people were concerned that in articles not strongly related to an anglophone country, the way would have been opened for sleuths to run about challenging on the basis of the start of the edit-history and forcing wholesale changes in large, well-established articles back to what the very first writer chose. What is the problem with "Yog(h)urt"; who cares? You say neether and I say neither. Being a bad speller, I wasn't even aware that the "h" made it British (am I correct?). I'd just leave it as it is, unless there are inconsistencies elsewhere in the article. Tony (talk) 02:55, 10 July 2009 (UTC) PS I seem to remember that I stirred things up by initially presenting an new version of the section (which was poorly written), and quite a few people weighed in to improve it through negotiation. That's often the way. Tony (talk) 02:59, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

not having been around for the 2007 discussion that led to the current wording, i find the stipulation about "the early stages of writing an article" rather baffling. is some different principle supposed to apply in later stages? Sssoul (talk) 06:26, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I am getting the impression, Sssoul, that the principle that is supposed to apply in later stages is "use the article's prevailing style." In the case of Yog/hurt, the first major contributor's spelling was "yogurt," but the article has spelled it "yoghurt," though not without dispute, for five years. What Tony1 and Finell seem to be saying is that it wouldn't be proper for someone to go to Yoghurt now and change the spelling back to Yogurt, that even if the original spelling change to "yoghurt" was improper (and it's not clear that it was), going in and putting "yogurt" back solely because it's what the FMC wrote wouldn't be proper either.

The relevant part, though, is that I am getting this impression from this conversation, not from the phrasing of the MoS itself. Is this something that we need to address? Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:32, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

yeah, i reckon it would be desirable for the MoS itself to be worded clearly, even for people who aren't familiar with yoghurt-like situations. Sssoul (talk) 08:21, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Narrative present and other verb tense issues

I have some questions and would like input on the use of the narrative present verb tense in Wikipedia article text. Please comment at WT:MOSBETTER. — AjaxSmack 01:07, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Hyphens in category names

Currently the policy includes this statement 'Dashes should never be used in the filenames of images (use hyphens instead).' I would like to propose changing this to 'Dashes should never be used in category names or the filenames of images, (use hyphens instead).' The reason for this is that category redirects do not work the same as an article redirect so that the only way to actually automatically navigate to a category from a keyboard entry is to actually be able to input a character that does not exist on the common keyboard. This would reaffirm a long standing consensus on WP:CAT that, whenever possible, only normal keyboard characters be used for category names. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:00, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm in favor of this change, with two provisos: a spurious comma found its way into your rephrasing, and I recommend an additional "in" (just after "or") to clarify the phrase structure. The following sentence is also slightly ungrammatical; fixing that by inserting "a dash is", the paragraph would be

Dashes should never be used in category names or in the filenames of images (use hyphens instead). If a dash is used in an article's title, there should be a redirect from the version with a hyphen.

Pi zero (talk) 00:28, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

That version is fine. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:33, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but no. Parentheses may demarcate clauses, not sentences without due punctuation. The following is more grammatically correct: "Dashes should never be used in category names or in the filenames of images. Use hyphens instead." Cheers Bjenks (talk) 03:03, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Why are we even discussing image file names here? Most of our images should be hosted on commons and the policy on commons rather than here should prevail. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:59, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

When we no longer host files and commons is the only choice, then maybe that would be a valid point. But while wikipedia has files, there is a need for guidelines. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:33, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Given that Commons:Policy and Guideline contains nothing about hyphens in image file names, nor indeed anything about what is acceptable in a file name, what is the point of having a more restrictive guideline or policy for locally-uploaded files? This seems like a big case of WP:CREEP to me, and it opens a can of worms involving situations where we might need a local copy of a commons file that doesn't satisfy our stricter requirements. I'd rather just see our policy be "whatever is allowed on commons is allowed here". Categories are a completely different issue, of course. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:54, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

En dashes should be used on WP-hosted files where they are recommended elsewhere—i.e., in the main text and article titles. Tony (talk) 14:36, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Image names are generally copied and pasted, rather than retyped, so that's not an issue. As for categories, I would agree with discouraging the use of non-ASCII characters until the behaviour of category redirects is fixed. --A. di M. (talk) 15:27, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

So is the consensus on wording for something like;

Dashes should never be used in category names (use hyphens instead). If a dash is used in an article's title, there should be a redirect from the version with a hyphen.

This removes any reference to an exception for images, which was not my request, but seems to be the only sticking point. Vegaswikian (talk) 17:32, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

I have no problems with this version. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:36, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

The substance is good. Bjenks does have a point about the awkwardness of the parentheses. How about:

Dashes should never be used in category names; use hyphens instead. If a dash is used in an article's title, there should be a redirect from the version with a hyphen.

Pi zero (talk) 03:31, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

I asked before but never got an answer: should the spacing guidelines be followed? In other words, should Category:St. Louis-San Francisco Railway be moved to Category:St. Louis - San Francisco Railway? --NE2 18:06, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't see a reason to object to the spaces. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:41, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

If, because of technical limitations, a category is named Category:St. Louis - San Francisco Railway, it would be helpful to provide a hatnote, as follows:

The correct name of this category is Category:St. Louis – San Francisco Railway, but is rendered differently because of technical limitations.

Also, there can be an introductory sentence which says:

The main article for this category is St. Louis – San Francisco Railway.

Any other mention of the railway on the same page would also be rendered correctly.

-- Wavelength (talk) 14:25, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Actually since the railroad article would be included, there may not be much of an issue. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:50, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Since, there seems to be a consensus, albeit with a small number of editors involved, and minimal concerns, can someone update the project page? I would rather not do the update since I have been active in some discussions over this point. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:50, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Sick of passive phrases

Many articles in Wikipedia contain an enormous amount of passive phrases. This makes them hard to read for me; I assume it does for others as well. Should this be captured in the style manual? Being that they are very annoying, we should state that passive phrases should be avoided. --RobertGary1 (talk) 22:10, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Many writing classes say to avoid the passive voice, but that is mostly for persuasive writing. In some situations, such as scientific writing, it's better to use the passive voice ("The data were recorded," rather than "Dr. Zitter recorded the data,") because it keeps the focus on what's happening rather than who's doing it. The question is whether or not the passive voice can be unencyclopedic and, if so, under what circumstances it should be avoided.

RobertGary, can you give us a link to a good example of the kind of passive phrase that you feel is detrimental to Wikipedia? Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:30, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree. The passive has its place (that's why it exists). We should not put a blanket ban on the passive for this notion that the passive is hard to read. Let's look at the final clause of Robert's post, "passive phrases should be avoided". JIMp_talk·cont 06:36, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I, too, agree. Although we can suggest that editors try not to overuse the passive voice, we can't be too prescriptive about this. In some cases, the passive voice is appropriate, if only to provide some variety to the text. See also the discussion taking place at WT:MOSBETTER#Narrative present and other verb tense issues. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 06:42, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't see why there's a need to be prescriptive at all. So long as we're not explicitly advocating the passive voice (except in situations like the lead sentence of an article where the active voice has traditionally been discouraged) then it's simply a matter of good English to avoid it. The MoS isn't here to teach people how to write well, after all. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 10:39, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Better to allow the writers their freedom here. If a given phrase is awkward or unencyclopedic, then any editor may come in and improve it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:10, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Agree, too, for the same reason. That doesn't stop editors from rewording unnecessary or ungainly passive voice, though. And we sometimes have to resist the leprosy in scientific text out there—in journal articles, conference proceedings and doctoral dissertations—which says use lots of passive because it fools people into thinking there's no author, and therefore the text is objective. The disease is at its worst in engineering when explaining processes, particularly experiments. But it's probably unsuitable to include in the MoS. Tony (talk) 14:18, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

"Should this be captured in the style manual? ... passive phrases should be avoided." This is a joke, right? Strad (talk) 21:44, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Good one! Thanks for highlighting how idiotic this anti-passive-voice push really is. At least the Micro$oft language manipulation was thinly justifiable for pre-school children and adult morons unable to spell or understand syntax, but let's not go into dumbing-down here on Wikipedia, eh? Cheers Bjenks (talk) 00:55, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I doubt there's any cause to belittle the original poster or his grammar. He was expressing an opinion, so let's focus on debating the opinion. --Laser brain (talk) 01:03, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I certainly agree the OP shouldn't be belittled in any way, but it gives at least anectodal evidence that passive forms are hard to avoid, or at least it's often enough awkward to avoid them. I don't think the OP ever stated that the passive voice should be avoided entirely, though, as others seemed to assume... and I do agree that its use should be limited: it's effective as long as it's not overused. However, it's very hard to put this into a manual of style unless it's restricted to somthing quite generic like "Don't overuse the passive voice", which clearly doesn't help editors very much. --LjL (talk) 01:49, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Er, should we not rather focus on whether the IP user's opinion ("passive phrases should be avoided") has any validity, given the self-contradictory nature of its construction? Imho, to prescribe WP language so radically would seriously threaten the quality of the project. Bjenks (talk) 07:19, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

fullurl for internal link

{{editprotected}} Please replace

 (for example: [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Timpani&oldid=223110896 Timpani])

with

 (for example: [{{fullurl:Timpani|oldid=223110896}} Timpani])

so that the link does not needlessly redirect users to a different server. Thank you.—C45207 | Talk 16:53, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Done. --Laser brain (talk) 17:06, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Foreign street names

Moves are currently underway to improve the Riga article to GA or FA status. One issue that isn't clear is the issue of foreign street names. For example for the Latvian "Brīvības iela" there are several possibilities

Brīvības iela (English: Freedom Street)
Freedom Street (Latvian: Brīvības iela)
Brīvības Street

Category:Streets by city produces ambiguous results. For example in the Luxembourg city section we have the English translation Fishmarket but the French Avenue de la Liberté. Category:Streets in Vilnius, the closest equivalent to Riga, has the streets in English. Cluj-Napoca, a good article, produces inconsistencies. Victor Babeş Street is a direct translation of Strada Victor Babeş but there we also have the Romanian Bulevardul Eroilor partially translated as Eroilor Avenue when a more complete translation would be Heroes Boulevard. I personally favour the first option Brīvības iela (English: Freedom Street) as being most informative to readers though there could be exceptions for languages which do not use the Latin alphabet but could we have a ruling on this please? Valenciano (talk) 10:10, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Just want to add the fact that street names of Western Europe (Germany, France, Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Denmark, Sweden) in the streets by city category generally are uniform, using the local name in the article title. ^Talk/♥фĩłдωəß♥\^Work 11:34, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

I think we should take our lead from "Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)#Use English": "When a widely accepted English name, in a modern context, exists for a place, we should use it. ... If a native name is more often used in English sources than a corresponding traditional English name, then use the native name. ... If no name can be shown to be widely accepted in English, use the local name." Therefore, if "Brīvības iela" is widely known in English as "Freedom Street", it should be set out as "Freedom Street (Brīvības iela)". However, if the native name is more common or there is no widely accepted English name, then it should be set out as "Brīvības iela (Freedom Street)". — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 13:00, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Agree with Jacklee. I have no idea of why, but in English Charles Bridge is normally referred to as "Charles Bridge" rather than "Karlův most", but Potsdamer Platz is normally referred to as "Potsdamer Platz" and not "Potsdam Square". So the one-size-fits-all approach doesn't work. --A. di M. – 2009 Great Wikipedia Dramaout 13:03, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, your examples are consistent with "Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)#Use English". It may be difficult to figure out why "Karlův most" is usually known in English as Charles Bridge but Potsdamer Platz not commonly called "Potsdam Square", but the point is that in the first example the English name is widely accepted and so it should be used, while in the second example the native name is the norm in English sources so that should be used. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 04:20, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

If I may engage in idle speculation, the afformentioned use of Charles Bridge vs Potsdamer Platz may have to do with the US and UK troops and other officials in Berlin during the Cold War, who became more familiarized with the German name and used in daily life while conversing with locals, whereas there were far far fewer English speakers in Prauge at the time, so day-to-day usage of the Czech name was far less, resulting in translation being more often used. As is said, idle speculation. oknazevad (talk) 04:48, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, if I may engage in idle speculations as well, it has something to do with historic traditions. For example, street names (and anything else for that matter) in the ex-Soviet Union were always transliterated to English from the chyrillic Russian alphabet (a good example is Yurmala). This means street names of the Baltic states are now mostly known in English by their transliteration from the Russian alphabet, a transliteration that always had "Street" added to the ending. The transliteration process was "inherited" from the Russian Empire. I believe the Austro-Hungarian Empire had this practice as well of transliteration. In other words, nothing has changed since World War I, the Anglosphere still uses transliterations from an imperialistic era. So, your idea about the Cold War was not farfetched. ^Talk/♥фĩłдωəß♥\^Work 20:43, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that's the full explanation, as most places in "Western" Europe are called by native names (e.g. Champs-Élysées, even if there weren't many troops in Paris). But it must have to do something with the fact that English speakers are far less likely to be familiar with Czech than with German or French (as well as the huge number of foreign tourists in Prague in the last years, much larger than in the past, maybe). --A. di M. 11:01, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Guidance for bulleted lists

I recently removed bullets from many paragraphs in Write-in candidate (diff), because in those sections every paragraph was preceded by a bullet, which seemed pointless to me. However, it was soon reverted (diff), with the claim that the sections do not read easily using plain paragraphs.

Eons ago, the Manual of Style said, "If every paragraph in a section is bulleted, it is likely that none should be bulleted" (see, for example, [23]). Over time, the wording of this sentence was changed a bit, and apparently at some point a comment was added which I do not understand ("this is a critique of a hypothetical article - not guidance"). Eventually the sentence was removed in an edit that, ironically, turned the entire "bullets and numbered lists" section into a bulleted list (diff). No edit summary was used when this sentence was deleted, and the only discussion I can find in the talk page archives does not seem to explain why this sentence was removed (see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 93#Bullets and numbered lists).

I am looking for some guidance for situations like this. I do not understand why the addition of bullets before every paragraph in a section of an article can make it easier to read, and so I feel that they are unnecessary and should be removed. The paragraphs read just as well without the bullets as they do with the bullets. This is an encyclopedia, after all, not a PowerPoint presentation. Is it not true that "if every paragraph in a section is bulleted, it is likely that none should be bulleted"? What do the bullets contribute in a situation like this? —Bkell (talk) 18:01, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

As the editor who reverted, all I can say is that in the case of Write-in candidate, each paragraph is independent, and the paragraphs do not "flow" as a story. The paragraphs are intended to be read independently (because some candidates are more interesting than others). Therefore, I think it is easier to read the article with bullets. Dems on the move (talk)

I agree with Dems. These sections are collections of lists in paragraph form. Bullet points are not without application here. Whether we absolutely need to have the bullet points is another question, but they are not nearly as out of place as they would be in most articles. The real question is whether the sections should be written in list-paragraph form in the first place. I think it's easy to read, organizing the paragraphs by candidate, especially because there are so few of them. Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:08, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I'd seen that disconnected, particulate nature of each para and thought that this is one of the unusual instances where bullets are probably OK. They are, at least, a signal to the reader not to expect the normal flow that is encountered in a WP section. Some editors would have framed it explicitly as a list, which would also be OK. If it were a FA nomination, the reviewers would complain if the bulleted sections were not balanced by the presence of more flowing information. Tony (talk) 07:55, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Help with parens

Over at Expedition to the Barrier Peaks I'm doing an FAC, and it hasn't come up, but I'm wondering if I'm using parens correctly. Here's what it says:

He gave it 9/10 overall, but complained that some of the maps were printed on both sides of the same sheet, making them useless as a Dungeon Master's shield.[1] (A visual barrier that allows dice rolls and other activities to be conducted without the players knowing the outcome.)

Can I put a whole sentence inside parens? Should it go inside the first sentence? If it should, where should I put the ref, because it only supports the first sentence. Thanks. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 21:21, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

The sentence inside the parentheses is a fragment, so either it needs to go with the first sentence:

He gave it 9/10 overall, but complained that some of the maps were printed on both sides of the same sheet, making them useless as a Dungeon Master's shield[1] (a visual barrier that allows dice rolls and other activities to be conducted without the players knowing the outcome).

or it needs to be rewritten as a full sentence:

He gave it 9/10 overall, but complained that some of the maps were printed on both sides of the same sheet, making them useless as a Dungeon Master's shield.[1] (A Dungeon Master's shield is visual barrier that allows dice rolls and other activities to be conducted without the players knowing the outcome.)

The first option is probably better, since you don't have to repeat "Dungeon Master's shield". In both cases the reference should appear directly after "as a Dungeon Master's shield". Strad (talk) 23:27, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Cool. Thanks. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 00:12, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

No dashes in category names? Hello?

Someone has launched in and made a major change. I don't think there was consensus for this, was there? I think it should be reverted until there is proper consensus. There's some reference to archives in the edit summary. Tony (talk) 12:22, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't remember any discussion for this change. The change description mentions that this change was requested on July 14 and is in the archives. Archived dash sections from around that time include [24], [25], and [26]. None of them explicitly mention changing "file names of images" to "category names." Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:35, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 109#Hyphens in category names. DrKiernan (talk) 13:16, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

I undid the change. If consensus to make any change develops while the MOS page is still protected, please use the {{editprotected}} template to bring in an uninvolved admin to edit the MOS page. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:23, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

So 1. a consensus did exist 2. but Vegaswikian should have requested administrative intervention rather than inputting the new phrasing personally. Okay. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:03, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Normally, if a discussion sits idle for so long that it is archived, I would take that as evidence that there was not a consensus for a change. But things are more difficult on fully-protected pages, because many editors will be unable to make changes they propose. One role of the editprotected template (beyond bringing in someone to make the change) is that the template itself serves as a proxy for the edit that cannot be directly made to the protected page. If there is consensus for the change, editors will not contest the editprotected tag. If there is not consensus, editors will contest it. This makes it much easier for an uninvolved admin to see whether there is consensus for the change. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:09, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

I believe the discussion should be revisited before any action is taken. And can someone determine whether the use of punctuation in category names is dealt with in another style guide or policy? I seem to remember a doubling up. Tony (talk) 15:48, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Category names in general avoid any characters that can not be directly entered from a common English language keyboard since redirects don't work on categories. There is, to my knowledge, nothing actually written in WP:CAT on this. However a significant majority of past discussions have supported this restriction. Vegaswikian (talk) 17:46, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

OK, So where do we go from here? Do I simply have to make another request to have the change made? Do I tag the change that had consensus in this discussion with the template? I read the template and the document that goes along with it is less then clear on this. Vegaswikian (talk) 17:29, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm not going to participate further in this discussion as an admin or a participant, but my suggestion is to make a new post with the precise change you propose. Link to the previous discussion as well. Add the {{editprotected}} template with you comment. Then wait for either an admin to make the change or someone else to dispute the change and remove the editprotected tempate. I will see if I can clarify the documentation for the editprotected template to make it easier for people in the future. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:58, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Punctuation within a name

This is something I wanted to check about regarding a character article, MissingNo. The period at the end of its name is clearly a part of the character's actual name, as supported by printed material and the game it appears in. However one user noted it was being read as a full-stop, and should be omitted within the body of the article. So my questions are:

Should it be omitted within the article body and written as just "MissingNo"
And if so, should it be left as "MissingNo." for the first mention in the article's lead and/or image captions?

Thanks for any advice on this matter.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 01:17, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

If it's part of the character's name, it should be used at all occassions. Omitting it would constitute changing the character's name, which would be incorrect on accuracy and intelectual honesty. oknazevad (talk) 02:33, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

If it's not something ridiculous, then keep it. MoS: NAME doesn't mention a thing about punctuation, but keeping the period in "No." seems to be in keeping with the spirit. I'd reword to avoid full-stop ambiguity where necessary. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:03, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Without the period/full stop, the only way to read it is as "Missing No" (negative), when "Missing Number" must be at least one of the intended meanings. So there's more than just a stylistic reason to keep the stop (as opposed to commercial brands that insist on using ALL CAPITALS or all lower-case). And in the case of authors like e.e. cummings and anomalies like eBay and the iPod, we should (but apparently don't) keep their style instead of substituting Wikipedia's. —— Shakescene (talk) 08:27, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

You might want to read E. E. Cummings#Name and capitalization. --NE2 09:31, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it means "missing number", so it needs a period at the end. --A. di M. – 2009 Great Wikipedia Dramaout 12:07, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

But No is a special case (Numero, French I think into English but perhaps other latinate languages also). By UK English WP rules you don't put a stop after No because it ends in O (it would, I guess be N'o to show the missing letters but no stop at the end) but in practice No is written thus, and stops seem rather optional. The difficulty arises, I think that it is not an English abbreviation, it is an abbreviation of a French word. A. di. M. is perhaps best to qualify this, considering the stops in the username (and his general intelligence and sensibility).

Best wishes SimonTrew (talk) 00:15, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, in UK English there's no period when the abbreviation ends with the same letter as the full word (e.g. "Mr" for "Mister"), but in US English there is, and WP:ENGVAR says, "The exceptions are: ... proper names (the original spelling is used, for example United States Department of Defense and Australian Defence Force); ..." (Now you might argue about whether names of Pokémon species are proper names, but c'mon.) --A. di M. 10:16, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

(BTW the French word has an accent somewhere, "numero" comes from the Latin ablative: see Numero sign. --A. di M. 10:18, 26 July 2009 (UTC))

I suppose they're proper nouns. "Gandalf" and "USS Enterprise" are both proper nouns even though they're both fictional. Aside from that, judging solely by the video game screencap shown in the article, the source material seems to place a period after "No." Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:27, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

MissingNo. is an abbreviation, and it's standard (American) English to use a period (see R.E.M., E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial). So there's nothing wrong with it. If the period was just decoration (like Clerks. it would be preferable to ignore it. —Werson (talk) 14:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

ampersand in corporate names

The style book says:

"The ampersand (&) is a symbol representing the word and. In running prose, and should mainly be used instead as it is more formal. If it appears in the titles of businesses, works, or in a quotation, the use of an ampersand is justified."

OK, "justified." But is the ampersand preferable to "and" in the names of corporate entities? Is it conventional and thus to be used in the title of an article on such an entity? I'm starting a stub on the 19th-century architectural firm "Lanyon, Lynn & Lanyon," to which I'll need to link. Cynwolfe (talk) 16:44, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Shouldn't it use the form that the company itself uses/used? --Auntof6 (talk) 18:01, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. The only time you alter a company name is to remove ridiculous formatting conventions. If the company uses an ampersand, use the ampersand. If it uses and, use and. Strad (talk) 19:13, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

On the other hand, if the company, or that business as a whole, seems to use 'and' and '&' interchangeably, it may make sense to create a naming convention ("house style") for that field. For example, Trains magazine always uses the ampersand, even when the railroad company always uses 'and'; our longstanding naming convention is the opposite. --NE2 19:23, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

The common-sense principles above (that is, do as the corporation itself does) seem right to me for modern entities; however, the point about using the two interchangeably and the proposal to have a "house style" gets at my question better. My particular corporation is historical, long dead and gone; when we title the article "William Shakespeare," we're relying on our own conventions of orthography, since his name was spelled variously in his life. Printers in the 19th century and earlier used the ampersand willy-nilly for "and," so in many if not most historical instances, corporate in-house style, if it existed, would be difficult if not impossible to determine. (I also corrected an earlier typo in '19th-century' above.) Cynwolfe (talk) 21:16, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Would WP: COMMONNAMES apply here? Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:15, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Hm. Helpful in principle. But in part that's what I'm asking: my impression is that an ampersand is common and even conventional in corporate names, but I don't know what I'm basing that on. Cynwolfe (talk) 01:27, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I would add that we should exempt logos and headers from the estimation of what is common and go with body text only. Many companies punctuate differently when going for visual effect. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:28, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

¶ Although none of these should be the deciding factor, some technical considerations may be relevant:

Ampersands are usually harder to find and type on standard keyboards (it's shift-7 on my US Windows Vista one from Compaq), so used in the titles of articles they may make searches a little harder.
On the other side, ampersands remove some ambiguity from unfamiliar foreign conjunctions such as those in Moët et Chandon, Saône-et-Loire, Thurn und Taxis or Romeo y Julieta.
There may be some problem because in HTML, ampersands are used to introduce extra non-alphabetic characters such as comma, colon and ampersand itself.

As for corporate style, everyone in the Northern California refers to the local utility, Pacific Gas and Electric orally as "Pee-Gee-and-Ee", abbreviated in writing as "PG&E", "P.G.& E.", or occasionally "P.G. and E." But when covering a municipalization initiative in Berkeley in the early 1970's I found that the company's own press releases referred to it as "PGandE". However, I see that the present logo includes the ampersand prominently. —— Shakescene (talk) 04:19, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Point 3 sounds sobering. Point 2 perplexes me: are you saying it would be OK and maybe even helpful to substitute an ampersand in, say, Saône-et-Loire? Et, y, and especially und would seem to qualify rather as familiar foreign conjunctions. But I think what's emerging is that there really is no strong pull toward conventional usage one way or the other when it comes to the ampersand for a corporate name. There is, however, an argument for avoiding an ampersand when possible even in these names. Yes or no? Cynwolfe (talk) 04:52, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm not yet taking a definite stand one way or the other on any of these issues, just throwing out some points to consider. But your point is well taken: I must have been thinking more of the reverse situation, where the foreign entity most often uses an ampersand (or, to confuse things further, a plus-sign, +) and a reader might not know enough (especially with less-familiar languages like Finnish, Basque, Hebrew or Arabic) to substitute the correct conjunction. I wish that I could remember some good examples, but they escape my mind right now. This is less of a problem in Spanish, Portuguese and Italian where an ampersand would normally replace a single-letter conjunction (y, e or i) and would thus save little space. —— Shakescene (talk) 07:10, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Change wording on when to use hyphens

Currently the policy includes this statement 'Dashes should never be used in the filenames of images (use hyphens instead).' I'm requesting that this be changed to 'Dashes should never be used in category names; use hyphens instead.' This request is based on the consensus in this archived discussion.

The proposal does two things. It removes a restriction from our MoS that is apparently in conflict the naming convention on commons for files. It adds an exception for issues that still exists from the software in how it supports category redirects. This proposal does not address an issue raised in the discussion on using spaces before or after a hyphen. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:35, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Hyphens are not normally spaced—certainly in titles. Run past us again why dashes should never be used in either image filenames or in category names? I've never heard anything so illogical. Tony (talk) 13:42, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

There's a very good reason not to use dashes where they have to be parsed correctly by the software or produce the wrong output - they are extremely difficult to distinguish from hyphens in isolation, which makes names with dashes in the names considerably harder to link to in articles. For articles this is less problematic because we can create redirects from the hyphenated names, but this isn't available for filespace or catspace. It's an issue of simple utility over MoS purism. Both should be discouraged as a simple courtesy to that majority of the population which doesn't know or care about characters which aren't available on regular keyboards. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 15:10, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Tony, you've seriously never heard anything as ridiculous as a disagreement over punctuation? How long have you been on Wikipedia again? =) For the record, I agree with Vegas and Chris. Powers ^T 15:20, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

The proposal seems reasonable, an understandable concession to technological limitations. However, shouldn't the phrasing mention both file names of images and category names? Also, acknowledging that this change was properly discussed before it was implemented. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:35, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Chris says: "they have to be parsed correctly by the software or produce the wrong output - they are extremely difficult to distinguish from hyphens in isolation, which makes names with dashes in the names considerably harder to link to in articles". I don't understand a bit of it. If software can "parse" dashes in article titles, what is the problem with parsing them in category titles? In what respect are they "extremely difficult to distinguish from hyphens"? I've seen a developer debunk these arguments before, I'm sure. Tony (talk) 16:00, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Most people cannot reliably distinguish between - and – in isolation (i.e. without having the other to compare to it). If I type Scottish Premier League 2008-09 then I am transparently taken to Scottish Premier League 2008–09 via a redirect page; as explained here, the same is not possible for redirects to the file or category namespaces. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 16:46, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

My initial proposal was to add categories to images as the exception. A point was made that since there is no restriction on commons for files that we should not be more restrictive. If the change is made and images are left in as an exception, I don't think that most editors would be upset. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:36, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

The proposal is not consensual. It is made at a time when the page is locked. I believe that several skilled and experienced editors are not participating in discussions here, and that they will not return until the people responsible for the current absurd impasse have repaired their damage.

Nor has discussion in the archives yielded wide consensus for any such change. (The page was already disrupted, and avoided, when that discussion took place.) Therefore, even without weighing the supposed merits of the particular case, I oppose the proposal.

I call on Darkfrog, and any others he or she nominates as bringing about the present dire problem, to get on with fixing it. I see no reason for us to accept them as participants in this or any other discussion until they have done so.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 22:53, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

The fact that the page is locked over some other dispute is simply no reason not to make changes in other areas that have consensus. To shut down sensible work on the encyclopedia and its policies because of some bickering is simply unacceptable! Please contribute to productive work and changes! Vegaswikian (talk) 23:22, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Darkfrog, the page remains locked because when, a few weeks ago, I tried to arrange for it to be unlocked, ~~you stuck a knife into that move~~ it received negative comment from you and others. Tony (talk) 02:54, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Saying, "I don't have strong feelings about it either way" is sticking a knife in it? What are you talking about? Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:08, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. The fact that the page is locked has nothing to do with this. The proposal should be discussed on its merits. With regard to whether the previous discussion was valid because other editors may or may not have been discouraged from participating by the page's protected status, isn't there a policy that says, " 'There's no consensus because I wasn't here' isn't a good argument against consensus"? Or was that only a line in "signs that you might be slipping into feelings of article ownership"? EDIT: Ah yes this is where I saw it.

Noetica, the page was locked over an edit war in which I did not participate. I had no more or less to do with it than anyone else who was not a direct participant. Kindly stop addressing these requests to me. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:34, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Vegaswikian writes: "The fact that the page is locked over some other dispute is simply no reason not to make changes in other areas that have consensus." I agree. But as I have pointed out, we do not have consensus for the proposed change. We cannot get consensus while experienced MOS-editing regulars are staying away from discussion because of the present stalement.

Darkfrog, I have suggested that you nominate those you think are responsible for the current mess, and that we hold them to account. You continue in your failure to do this, and to acknowledge your own well-documented role in destabilising the page (see your edits around 30 May 2009: two months ago, now). It is ridiculous to suggest that I claim any ownership here, and your attempt to appeal to a policy page to suggest any impropriety on my part is ill-focused and futile. I say only that the work of all editors is seriously impeded by the disruption in which you participated. Fix it, please. That hard work is overwhelmingly urgent. Discussion of other issues in the meantime is a waste of everyone's time.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 03:09, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I do not mean to imply that you were claiming ownership for yourself, Noetica, but it seemed as if you were claiming it on other people's behalf. I meant only to show that last month's discussion about whether to change the phrasing is not invalidated by the absence of any specific Wikipedia editor.

The page was not protected because of a discussion; it was protected because of an edit war. You seem to feel that no improvements can be made to the MoS while it is protected, but the discussions on this page are evidence to the contrary.

Finger-pointing is improper. Please stop and please stop asking me to join in. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:29, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

[Outdent] Darkfrog, no clear, wide, or resilient consensus was reached in the discussion you refer to. I do not make any claim about any specific editor's absence, then or now. I do say (yet again) that during the current disruption editors are staying away, just because it is so unpleasant to be here and because they can see no way to do useful work in this climate.

It remains mysterious why you do not acknowledge your part in disrupting our work, in the face of plain evidence. It is also mysterious why you are not pushing for a resolution to the impasse, even if you were not involved.

I am asking that you, and everyone, accept that we have larger work to do before we can proceed with details. I have been patient and restrained. So have others, whom we do not so far see joining in my call for action. Who, after all, would want to engage with the implacable obstructionism we have seen over the last two months?

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 04:13, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I do not claim that last month's discussion was perfect, only that the absence of one or more specific people from that discussion is not sufficient to invalidate it (and that therefore Vegaswikian was not out of line in believing that consensus was sufficient). We should certainly discuss the matter further now that other editors want to weigh in.

I certainly did participate in a long and often heated discussion about Wikipedia's punctuation policies and the way they are treated in the MoS, but this discussion is not why the page is locked. I have not pushed for the page to become unlocked because I do not have strong feelings about the matter. I do not see the page's locked status as a serious problem, though I can respect the feelings and conclusions of those who do. If other users have not "joined in your call," then perhaps it is not because they are afraid of me but rather because they, too, do not see it as a serious problem. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:27, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

No one's afraid of you, Darkfrog. People are, however, dismayed at your unwillingness to respect MOS and the work of its editors.

It is not a question of "the absence of one or more specific people". Two points (already made, above): There was no sound consensus anyway; and editors generally were staying away, and are still staying away, because of the dismal overwhelming problem with this page. Yes, as you now admit you "certainly did participate in a long and often heated discussion about Wikipedia's punctuation policies and the way they are treated in the MoS"; and your own earlier irresponsible editing was a major factor in fanning that conflagration. Take responsibility. Work towards a solution, please. As you say, you "do not have strong feelings about the matter". Interesting. You care about all manner of details, but you don't care that the day-to-day work of dedicated editors has been disrupted for weeks, with no end in site.

I urge editors not to tolerate this sort of contemptuous abuse of process.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 05:31, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Wading into these turbulent waters, I believe the proposal is reasonable, for although it may not be fully grammatically correct to not use dashes in file and category names, it is a reasonable variation to accomodate Wiki's technical limtations. And file names should still be included, for although the limitations may not exist at commons, it is virtually impossible for every file to be on commons due to the fair use nature of corporate logos, which can't be hosted on common, iinm.

As for whether this is a valid consensus, the lack of participation by some editors cannot be held against it, as participation in the project is not mandatory. If some have choosen not to participate, then consensus must be based on those that do choose to participate. There's no permanent membership or quorom to fulfill here. If one is absent from the discussion, then that is that. oknazevad (talk) 05:13, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Oknazedad, it is not a simple choice not to participate in particular discussions. People are understandably repelled by the obstructionism of the last few weeks. This is not a climate in which reasoned collegial discussion can proceed. Those who brought about the present difficulties do not budge. Why would any editor want to confront such stonewalling? They stay away, and their absence means that we cannot go about "business as usual". This is indeed a crisis.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 05:25, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

No. The only obstructionism here is from you. Numerous editors have been attempting to have reasoned, collegial discussions about a variety of topics. Yet you keep badgering one contributor in all discussions on this page, even when they are completely unrelated to the original dispute. Frankly, I find your behaviour here obnoxious and more detrimental to collegial discussion than any past incidents. Please stop. oknazevad (talk) 21:54, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Good to see you expressing your view robustly, Oknazevad. Unfortunately, history shows that you are wrong. I mean the histories of WP:MOS, of this talkpage, and of Darkfrog's and my contributions. The evidence shows that work on MOS has been irresponsibly interrupted (it still is!), that Darkfrog was centrally involved, and that I was not. The evidence also plainly shows that the perpetrators are doing nothing to undo this damage. If editors whose work is disrupted cannot robustly hold those enemies of collegiality to account without being branded "obnoxious" and uncollegial, we are in even worse shape than I say above. No wonder several editors specialising in MOS stay silent and stay away; and no wonder these disruptive elements have their way – again and again. I again call on editors to suspend any development work on MOS guidelines until the present crisis is resolved.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 09:15, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Some of us are actually trying to get work done here. There are plenty of people who are glad and willing to do just that. Past contributions don't guarantee future rights to determine future outcomes, so just because some past contributors have stopped contributing does NOT mean that work must stop ! Your so-called "crisis" only exists in your mind. oknazevad (talk) 14:32, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Once more, Oknazevad, it is good to see your bold opinions aired. But once more, strident assertions are not enough. We'd need evidence and reasoned argument. When a page that is important for the whole project is disabled for weeks on end, with no prospect of relief, and the editors who caused that do nothing towards a solution, we have a crisis. When a straggling few dwell on mere details here, distracting attention from the central problem, we have a crisis. When those who remind them of this sorry state of affairs are themselves accused, we have a crisis. No wonder editors stay away.

I don't say that work must stop. We might reasonably answer queries, offer interpretations, and the like. But don't imagine that there can be serious development of the page, while the crisis quite manifestly continues. Of course I can't stop people ignoring the plain facts; but I can draw attention to them so that people don't grow entirely oblivious.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 16:29, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Noetica, why don't you start a new section? You certainly seem to feel that this issue is important enough to merit one. That way, it would be more likely to get the attention that you feel it deserves and the rest of the issues under discussion can proceed with fewer interruptions. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:18, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Comment I have not been actively watching this discussion, so I may say things that have been said before. Here are my views: dashes for file names are unnecessary and would make things difficult; in the edit screen, there is no difference between the appearance of a hyphen and an en dash, and the difference between the hyphen / en dash and the em dash (in the edit screen) is barely noticeable. For category names, I agree it would be nice for en dashes, but only if there was a way to make a "category redirect" (not sure if these exist or technically feasible). Dabomb87 (talk) 17:36, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Vegaswikian, perhaps it would be best to leave the edit request tag off until after we confirm that we've reached a consensus. To that effect...

Support. This change of phrasing seems to be a reasonable concession to technological limitations. Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:08, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

That would be fine if we can keep the discussion on track. Consensus was already reached in the archived discussion. Right now the only issues are over the inclusion of two additional words and the dispute over some individuals who apparently think that they can take the ball and go home shutting down changes here. If consensus is difficult to see, it is only because of the side issues that don't have to do with the actual proposed content changes. I agree that I'm not normally here for discussions, but this is not what I expected. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:26, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

With regard to the two words, I for one am satisfied with the reasons you gave for why they are not included in the new phrasing. With regard to the previous consensus—which I believe does count as consensus—while it is not invalidated by any given editor's absence, I believe that it is right and proper for an editor to create a new discussion if he or she has serious concerns. I don't agree with Tony's conclusion, but he's gone about it in the right way. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:34, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Oppose removing dashes from category titles. I agree that typographic style is not important for file names since they don't appear in the article, they're mostly only seen by editors, they're nongrammatical, and are expected to be saved to hard drives, etc., where technical limitations are more significant. But category titles actually appear in mainspace, and readers interact with them. They should be stylistically correct. Categories are edited infrequently, and generally by experienced users who use that drop-down box script, whatever it's called. Dashes don't cause enough problems to forbid them. —Werson (talk) 03:52, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually most of the category names have hyphens and this has worked without issues. It is only lately that some requests for changing of the hyphen have become more common. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:31, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Obviously the hyphen won't cause "issues", but if it's incorrect it should be changed. —Werson (talk) 23:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Another dash question

What should be used for Lehigh-Buffalo Terminal Railway? The name comes from it being the Lehigh Valley Railroad's terminal railway in Buffalo. --NE2 15:58, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Same thing for Wabash-Hannibal Bridge Company (the Wabash Railroad's bridge at Hannibal). --NE2 16:01, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

"Lehigh – Buffalo Terminal Railway", if the route is from Lehigh (Valley) to Buffalo, since an en dash is used for direction, motion, route. But I'm wrong to space the en dash if "Buffalo Terminal" or "Buffalo Terminal Railway" are not the second unit; that is, if it's the Terminal Railway for the Lehigh–Buffalo route. If one or both of the units linked by the en dash has an internal space, the en dash itself is spaced on both sides.

"Wabash–Hannibal Bridge Company": this is a company specifically to build a bridge between Wabash and Hannibal? If so, unspaced, since both units are single words. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tony1 (talk • contribs)

I explained how the names were formed. The first means "terminal railway in Buffalo for the Lehigh Valley Railroad" and the second "bridge company at Hannibal for the Wabash Railroad" (which owned the Wabash Bridge). --NE2 17:02, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

OK, so my suggestion was correct: "Buffalo Terminal", not "Buffalo", is the second element; therefore, a spaced en dash is required, since there's a space in at least one of the elements. This is a good example of why we need to use spaced and unspaced en dashes functionally. Same for the Wabash example. Tony (talk) 03:41, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Section headers renamed in picture tutorial

{{editprotected}} Please install this minor change to adjust to new section header names in Wikipedia:Picture tutorial. Thanks. Eubulides (talk) 23:13, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Done. --- RockMFR 23:37, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Probable misspelling: "Pluralis" instead of "plurals"

Hello,

In Sec 4 - "Acronyms and abbreviations", Plural and possessive forms, "... other nouns, become _plurals_ by adding ...", the word "plurals" has been misspelt as "pluralis". Please verify and correct if this observation is accurate.

Arunsreelalan (talk) 07:20, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks A. All fixed now.–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 07:31, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

When alt text can be omitted

Where the current page says that images need not have alt text, it could be misread into saying that it's perfectly OK for an ordinary thumbnail or image to lack alt text. The actual guideline given in WP:ALT (derived from W3C accessibility guidelines) is somewhat stricter, in that editorial decision on whether an image has alt text should depend on whether the image is purely decorative. To reflect this, I propose changing "The guideline on this subject notes that images need not have alt text; editors should ..." to "The guideline on this subject notes that an image need not have alt text if it is purely decorative, that is, if it conveys no additional information and nothing happens when you click on it. Editors should ...". Eubulides (talk) 23:13, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with any attempt to force editors to add alt text. One reason I object is that FAs are expected to follow the MoS; therefore if the MoS can be interpreted as recommending alt text, that will be one more burden on FA writers, and the burden is heavy enough as it is. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 06:54, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

The proposed change does not change any requirements; it merely fixes a misleading summary of the WP:ALT guideline. There is widespread consensus that Wikipedia should make its content accessible to people with a disability such as blindness and low vision. This consensus includes a recommendation for alt text not only in guidelines such as WP:ALT and WP:ACCESSIBILITY, but also in policy such as WP:IUP. The specific reason given for objecting is based on a misunderstanding, as WP:FACR#3 independently requires featured articles to have alt text and the proposed change would neither affect this nor add to FA writers' burden. Eubulides (talk) 08:06, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I really strongly object to that, Eublides. People shouldn't be adding to the FA style criteria without much stronger consensus, because writers are already groaning under the weight of them. I have five or six articles that have been almost ready for FA for some time (a couple of years in some cases), and I can't face getting them there because of the heavy focus on style. We definitely should not be making that worse. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 08:42, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

In practice alt text has not proved to be much of a burden, and the process is working well at WP:FAC and WP:FAR. The initial reaction of some editors was also to object, but typically once people found out how little work it was, and how much benefit accrues to visually impaired readers, the objections were withdrawn. Could give a specific example of why alt text would be a significant burden to one of the articles you're working on? Eubulides (talk) 09:11, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I've replied over at FAC, as it has already been added there. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 09:22, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Can you offer evidence that this is actually helping visually impaired readers? SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 09:25, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes I can. I will do so at WT:FAC to avoid duplicating the discussion here. Regardless of the results of that discussion, we still have to fix the problem here somehow, as the current text gives an inaccurate (or at best, misleading) summary of WP:ALT. Can you suggest alternate wording that would solve this problem while still addressing your concerns? Eubulides (talk) 20:09, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I'll take a look at the current wording. You said you would post some evidence at FAC, but I didn't see it. Would you mind posting it here? I'd be very interested to know who this is actually helping, and what kinds of descriptions are best for them. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 09:17, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

I followed up at WT:FAC #Alt text helps the visually impaired. Eubulides (talk) 18:17, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Humungously long alt text

On a slightly different note, I've seen alt texts in FACs that are humungously long: surely that wasn't the original intention. Tony (talk) 11:05, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
- Maybe what we need is someone that is really good writing captions and alt text to establish a Dispatch or something before expecting everyone to follow a standard? (I don't question the need to include alt text, just that there is confusion between what that and the caption should do). --MASEM (t) 15:29, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
  - Humungously long alt text is not the intention, and runs afoul of WP:FACR's requirement that alt text be "brief". The difference between alt text and caption is currently described in WP:ALT #Difference from captions. It is a good suggestion to write a Dispatch; in the meantime WP:ALT is intended to cover the points that an alt text writer needs to know. Suggestions for improving WP:ALT are welcome. 20:09, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Query: here's the alt text for the garish green/yellow map cited at the top of this section.

alt=Map showing much of north-western Britain, with the sea in blue, Norse–Gaelic land in yellow; other regions marked in green, from south to north, are: "Earldom of Northumbria" where the upper region of the Tyne lies, "Strathclyde" on the Clyde, "Kingdom of Alba" on the rivers Tay and Earn; in yellow territory from south to north: "Mann" where the isle of Man lies, "Na Renna" on Wigtownshire, "Gallgaidelaib" on north Ayrshire, "Cenn Tire" on Kintrye, "Airir Gaidel" on Lorne, and "Innse Gall" on Islay and adjacent islands

Here's the visible caption: "A map of the Norse–Gaelic zone, with region names as described in the sources of the period; Gallgaidelaib is the word Galloway, Airir Gaidel is modern Argyll, Cenn Tire is Kintyre, Innse Gall is the Hebrides, Na Renna is Wigtownshire, and Mann is the Isle of Man."

Is that out of balance? Tony (talk) 08:58, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Er, where's the pic and the article to which all this refers? --Philcha (talk) 09:19, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, it's the map towards the top of Donnchadh, Earl of Carrick. The map looks larger today, and doesn't sit well in relation to the surrounding text. I suppose if you squint you can read the text now, but the in-pic title is larger than life (and is missing "in"). Not the most successful map I've ever seen on WP. Tony (talk) 10:12, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Agree about the map quality. The alt text and caption were both suboptimal, as they repeated each other and the caption unnecessarily repeated text that's clearly visible in the map. I changed it to so that the alt text is '"North-West Britain the mid-11th century". Hiberno–Norse regions and kingdoms outside Ireland are on the west coast of Britain and range from the area opposite the the isle of Mann, north through Na Renna, Gallgaidelaib, Cenn Tire, and Airir Gaidel, with the Innse Gall islands off the northwest coast.' and the caption is 'In this map, region names are as described in the sources of the period; Gallgaidelaib is the word Galloway, Airir Gaidel is modern Argyll, Cenn Tire is Kintyre, Innse Gall is the Hebrides, Na Renna is Wigtownshire, and Mann is the Isle of Man.' No doubt it could be tightened further. Eubulides (talk) 18:17, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Eubulides. I'm going to refer people at WT:FAC to your advice here. Tony (talk) 09:39, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Regarding the word "duology"

(Linking to this from numerous places)

There's some debate at Talk:List of film duologies regarding whether the nascent term "duology" should be used on Wikipedia. It refers to a two-part work of fiction; it's not listed in any established dictionary, but is widely used on the web. The issue seems to be one of brevity versus clarity. Here are a few of the places the term is in use:

There was some prior discussion over this last August at Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(films)#Problems_with_film_series_titling_guideline. The consensus at that time appeared to be that film series should use "(film series)", and by analogy I presume that "(series)" or "(book series)" is appropriate for literature. That leaves open the question of the use of the term in the bodies of articles, and the use of it in the names of list articles like List of film duologies (should it be List of two-part film series?). What's the final verdict on "duology"? Dcoetzee 05:33, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Well I hope the term "duology" is correct, as I've been using it professionally to refer to a pair of literary works on a common theme by the same author! I dislike the use of the term "series" to refer to only two works – in publishing, a "series" is four works or more. Etymologically, it should be "dilogy", but "dilogy" means a word or phrase which has two meanings: "dilogy" is not a dilogy, although it would be kind cute if it were… Physchim62 (talk) 08:31, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the word duology is ugly; but so are most new words. And yes, it is not well-formed from Greek; but then, neither is television (first part Greek, second part Latin). And yes, dilogy is already taken (as well as "an ambiguity", as Physchim points out, it can mean "2. Repetition of a word or phrase, in the same context. In recent Dicts" (OED). Looks like it fills a niche that diptych does not fit into neatly. We can't recommend against it without also recommending something better in its place.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 09:28, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Agree with Noetica ... except that I have no objection to Greek/Latin combos! Tony (talk) 11:25, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Normally, I am fine with "duology" and "trilogy", but my problem is with the {{Film series}} template that goes beyond these: tetralogies, pentalogies, hexalogies, heptalogies, octologies, ennealogies, decalogies, and polylogies! I mean, come on. "Trilogy" is the most well-known of the bunch, and "duology" is known to a lesser extent, but the rest of them seem like an overly complicated way to be consistent with trilogy and duology. I think we should pursue a different naming convention -- something like "List of film series with two entries". —Erik (talk • contrib) 12:00, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Perfect illustration of how the template mentality can go awry. Tony (talk) 14:29, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. It seems that even the film world stops using number-specific terminology once they hit four films. As for "duology," I'm of a divided mind on the word itself, but "List of film series with two entries" seems quite unobjectionable. However, it also sounds as though not all film series that happen to have two entries are true duologies, just as not all film series that have three entries are true trilogies. Therefore, our real criterion should be what exactly it is that we're trying to describe. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:04, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

When I skimmed the lists of film series with x entries, they seemed well-updated. If a film series gets one more film, the list of films is moved to the successive "list of film series" article. My real concern is for the article titles. "Duology" and "trilogy" can be somewhat misleading because it sounds like an intended setup, where it's not always the case. For example, American Psycho had a DTV sequel that really had very little to do with the first film (and actually completely missed the purpose of it). Using "List of film series with x entries" makes the issue more ambiguous since unlike the tetralogy/pentalogy/hexalogy names, it does not sound like a preconceived setup. —Erik (talk • contrib) 17:39, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Leaving aside the quality of the articles, Wikipedia has a policy where neologisms should be avoided. As "duology" cannot be established in any dictionary, this alone should be enough for it not to be used, but as additionally there is already controversy as to whether "dilogy" should be used in its place, then there is no question something else should be used. Serious consideration should also be given as to whether pentalogy / hexalogy / etc should be used as these words do not appear in dictionaries. As a couple of other posters point out however, with the articles in question (as well-updated and meticluously put together as they might be) it isn't an issue, as they are not lists of true "trilogies", etc as they include works that do not follow a overall cohesive narrative arc, etc, so to my mind these should all be moved. One could argue that some of the entries on these lists do not even form true series, but that's probably an argument best left for another day.

I'm unsure what to suggest as an alternative for the word "duology", and they do get more clumsy as the numbers get higher. If in publishing three is a "trilogy" and four or more is a "series" (noting that four is not a "tetralogy"), this would therefore seem to be the appropriate convention to follow for films with more than three in a series. As, in the case of the film lists, this would be a simple movement even for the "trilogy" list as as we have established above, a lot of these do not form coherent trilogies. "List of film series with x entries" would seem to be the appropriate form as others mention above, even for two. Others can argue as to what counts as part of the series and what doesn't - I believe Star Wars is in under "ennealogies", which for me is two trilogies, or a series of 6 films.

I think that we just don't have a word for a series of two works (although i don't have a problem with "a series of two" myself). I don't think that it is up to us to invent one, and neither should we use "duology" until "they" put it in the dictionary. Robsinden (talk) 12:21, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

To satisfy my own curiosity, it would appear "Star Wars" has moved from "ennealogies" to "decalogies" and now back to "hexalogies". I wonder about the necessity of these lists! Robsinden (talk) 12:32, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Please see Talk:Film_series#Requested_move - Robsinden (talk) 12:13, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Full stops in post-nominals

All,

Could we use full stops after post nominals such as knighthoods etc. (eg. Horatio Nelson K.B. instead of Horatio Nelso KB). This would help indicate that there is more than one word in the post nominal (eg. O.B.E. (three words) instead of OBE (one word)). However, with titles from universities the common version could still be used (dPhil and not d.Phil. etc.).

Please discuss and share your opinions.

With compliments.

DAFMM (talk), 6th August 2009.

What would be the advantage of so indicating? Barnabypage (talk) 18:05, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

It's pretty standard these days to omit the full stops; see, for example, the British monarchy official offical website. I don't think the MOS should legislate full stops here, when even the Queen omits them nowadays. Eubulides (talk) 18:17, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

There is a trend away from these unnecessary dots. Capitalisation is enough to show that it's not a word ... that and simple facts like that there is not such word as obe. JIMp_talk·cont 18:18, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

This would be a step back to the 1970s and before. Throughout the English-speaking world there has been a strong trend to drop the fly-specks from abbreviations (at least those that end with the word-final character), acronyms and initialisms. As a result, a long-standing redundancy has been removed from usage, and text looks more attractive. We still have one mountaint to climb: you dot es dot. While we have to accept that some US writers still insist on this, by the end of the next decade it will be a thing of the past, as in almost every other US acronym (USA). Tony (talk) 09:32, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm in favour of fewer dots in general. As Tony says, the text looks better without them; and without such superfluities essential punctuation stands out more. Functionality, clarity, elegance.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 22:38, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I find that we should be very careful about predicting what will happen with language. They're tricky things and don't always do what they're told. The MoS should deal with what is, not with what we think might be in ten years. That being said, the trend away from dots in acronyms is stronger in the U.K. than in the U.S. and, since this issue has strong national ties to the U.K. over the U.S., it is reasonable to follow the British preference. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:33, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Nobody has mentioned what the MoS currently says, & I can't be bothered to look. The full stops should certainly not be mandated, per those above, but they should not be forbidden, especially given the ENGVAR aspect. Johnbod (talk) 15:12, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Even the English don't normally use full stops in general initialisms these days (GPO vs. G.P.O., etc), but some old hands still seem to want have postnominals taking up as much space as possible, so any comma or full stop that can possibly be squeezed in is seen to be fair game. It's old hat, really. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:58, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Proposal: No colors in body text

I have made a proposal at Wikipedia talk:Colours#Proposal: No colors in body text to prohibit the use of colored links, colored text and colored backgrounds in the body of the article. Comments welcome. Jpatokal (talk) 08:46, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Formal name of UK prime minister

I see someone has added a comment in the project about this.

The formal names of the titles of the British Prime Minister are First Lord of the Treasury and Minister for the Civil Service. The first is what is written on the brass plate on the door of number 10. So there is no formal title of Prime Minister, at all. SimonTrew (talk) 21:48, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

No, those may be the only formal portfolios the PM holds, but the title of his/her office is still "Prime Minister of the United Kingdom". -- JackofOz (talk) 21:52, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

This problematic "formality" is not relevant anyway. It is a matter of what to do with the usual terms for these offices and the people who occupy them. I have amended the guideline, trimming it of glosses that are obvious and removing the modifier formal.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 22:49, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Consistency in serial commas?

One editor in an edit summary to "Quark" pointed out the section on MoS requiring to either use or omit the serial commas consistently in each article. What's the point of that? Some sentences read better with it, and some without it. (As a rule of thumb I'd say I'd omit it when the last member of the list is very short, about three words or fewer, and use it if it's longer; but that's a matter of judgement, and I wouldn't add such a rule to the MOS.) Fortunately there is an exception when using or omitting it would result in ambiguities. But consider a sentence such as:

John had fish and chips, Giuseppe had spaghetti with garlic, oil and chilli peppers, and Akira had some sushi.

The current rule suggests that I should either add a comma before "and chilli peppers" or remove the one before "and Akira", as neither change would make the sentence ambiguous; but both changes would make it more awkward and slightly harder to parse. (In the edits I'm referring to, all the newly inserted commas were before very short (mostly single-word) items, where IMO they uselessly slow down the rhythm of the sentences.) What do you think? -- A. di M. 19:43, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

These are different things. On the one hand, there are commas between the three clauses of the sentence, and the three clauses constitute the entire sentence. On the other hand, there are commas between the individual things that Giuseppe had. I think the rule applies to the latter more than the former. --Auntof6 (talk) 21:25, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

See Semicolon#English usage, point 3, subpoints 1, 2, and 3. -- Wavelength (talk) 21:53, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

That editor at Quark was me. I fixed some small problems with references, something in alt-text, some grammar, and these serial commas. Since it is a featured article, Quark is required to conform to MOS guidelines, including this provision:

Both styles [serial commas by default, or no serial commas by default] are acceptable in Wikipedia, with consistency in an article; but in a case where including or omitting the comma clarifies the meaning of the sentence, that solution should be adopted.

The effect is clear: an article can have serial commas consistently, or it can have no serial commas, with exceptions only as required to "clarify the meaning". Since Quark had many serial commas that were not strictly needed to clarify the meaning (though they were stylistically better), I simply made the article consistent. No changes of mine diminished clarity. As I pointed out in copious edit summaries, the wording in instances of inclusion and omission was closely parallel. Not a good look.

So much for the editing in question. On the more general matter of the guideline, I say this: it is too long and detailed. I would like it trimmed to something much tighter. We don't need all that theoretical to-and-fro, since the linked article Serial comma does that admirably.

I declare my interest: Argument, evidence, precedent, authority of the best style guides, and long experience convince me that the best policy is serial comma by default – with the only exceptions being some formular or proverbial utterances, some similar omissions for marking prosody, and very rare complex cases that probably call for rewording anyway (if that option is available). [This third exception added later.–N]

As things stand, I am prepared to support the two-style guideline as we now have it, just as I support the choice between consistent unspaced em dashes and consistent spaced en dashes (which I prefer) as sentence-level punctuation. I will argue strenuously against any departure from either of these two-style compromises.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 01:08, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I do not feel that the MoS should rely on links to other articles to clarify its viewpoint on this matter for two reasons: 1) Writers come here looking for answers. There's enough link-jumping going on in the expanded MoS to make a writer too weary of it to be expected to do it again. 2) These other articles often describe grammar and punctuation principles that are not endorsed by the MoS. In this case, the MoS gives two good examples of problems that can be expected to come up on a semiregular basis. The explanation is short but not incomplete and it makes no false or overly hypothetical statements. Darkfrog24 (talk) 11:49, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I understand that your edits conformed to the MoS, and that they don't decrease clarity; I was just questioning the point of requiring "consistency in an article". That's why I posted here and not at Talk:Quark. That's not a purely stylistic point such as the spaced en dash and the unspaced em dash, which are always 100% equivalent and thus there is never any point in mixing them in the same article; ditto for the spelling of colour; the serial comma instead affects pronunciation. I can understand in the case of parallel constructions (I had missed them in Quark); but requiring consistency for all constructions is, IMO, pointless. Consider a list of very short items, especially not at the end of a sentence: "... are designated x, y and z, and remain unchanged ...". Now consider a list of sentence-length items, especially one ending a sentence: "... it allowed for a better description of the weak interaction (the mechanism that allows quarks to decay), equalized the number of known quarks with the number of known leptons, and implied a mass formula that correctly reproduced the masses of the known mesons." If you read them aloud, you'll see that the latter will have a more "natural" rhythm if you make a pause before "and implied", whereas the former will if you make no such pause before "and z". A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. -- A. di M. 13:13, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

A di M:

First, a foolish consistency, perhaps; but not a wise consistency. Clichés will get us nowhere.

Second, as you can see from the article Serial comma, there are not only good arguments for consistency, but also for consistent default use of the serial comma. See especially the quote from one of the most eminent sources, The Oxford Style Manual:

For a century it has been part of OUP style to retain or impose this last serial (or series) comma consistently, [...] but it is commonly used by many other publishers both here and abroad, and forms a routine part of style in US and Canadian English. [...] Given that the final comma is sometimes necessary to prevent ambiguity, it is logical to impose it uniformly, so as to obviate the need to pause and gauge each enumeration on the likelihood of its being misunderstood – especially since that likelihood is often more obvious to the reader than the writer. (pp. 121–122)

I highlight with bold and underlining some points that are especially relevant to our articles, which are written and edited by dedicated amateurs, many of whom are unaware of such traps.

Third, the requirement for consistency in matters of style is fundamental and general, and has a solid basis. If you want to address that requirement, please raise it generally.

Fourth, yes: it may be worthwhile examining some edits in the case of Quark, to illustrate the point about consistency as applied to serial commas with concrete examples that you have raised. In none of these do I detect prosodic points that carry any weight in favour of inconsistency, and in fact I disagree with your prosodic analysis. As I have discussed a couple of years ago with an editor at the talkpage of Serial comma, we notoriously do not know how we read things out aloud. We don't know where we pause, often. In any case, nothing could be prosodically clearer than saying this, for three items: A [pause] B [pause] and C, and that is how we typically do it, with a very quick and quiet and. (Believe it or not; try it: dispassionately and with an open mind.) So even if prosody and rhythm did have primacy, the prosody we naturally use is matched by the punctuation with serial comma anyway: A, B, and C.

The text had this already, with two serial commas:

a red, a green, and a blue arrow canceling out to white, representing a baryon; a yellow ("antiblue"), a magenta, and a cyan ("antired") arrow canceling out to white, representing an antibaryon.

And this without:

There are three types of color charge, arbitrarily labeled blue, green and red.

And this without:

Each of them is complemented by an anticolor—antiblue, antigreen and antired.

And this without:

Just as the laws of physics are independent of which directions in space are designated x, y and z, and remain unchanged ...

I added serial commas to those last three. The absence of them is worse than distractingly inconsistent: the expectation in this highly intricate and technical article is that punctuation will follow sense more than sound, and that it will do so in a principled way. It is not poetry, it is difficult scientific prose. Now, consider the last case I cite above. The reader scans for a group of items, and has been primed to expect a serial comma by earlier uses. So momentarily there is a tendency to parse x, y and z, and ... as two items (x, then y and z) followed by a serial comma and an and, with the expectation of some third item to follow. This sort of thwarted expectation incrementally slows reading and hinders comprehension. Why introduce even the possibility of such inconvenience, when a simple, consistent, and rational policy will prevent it?

Darkfrog:

I still don't quite understand how you want MOS to work, any more than I did when I raised the question in an earlier section. We have excellent articles elaborating on some of the topics that MOS must deal with; we can usefully refer to them. Earlier you seemed to like that! As for the rest, I take it that you approve of the serial comma guideline as it stands, is that right? Well, I'd like to look at trimming it to make it more focused on guiding and less on detailed justifying. But I would like to do that later. There are other issues that have not yet been settled on this talkpage first.

So I recommend not doing much more on this now. It's a perennial issue, usually very poorly handled, and we have other business.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 15:11, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I believe that the current policy on the serial comma, which I interpret as recommending consistency within each article whenever reasonably practical, is right and proper and does not need modification at this time. I believe that the two examples of cases in which the serial comma can either create or prevent confusion are also good and should remain. This is because they directly address the way in which we expect writers to use the serial comma on Wikipedia, regardless of how serial commas were and are used in other works. They do not state beliefs; they give instructions: "When you see one of these, use the serial comma. When you see one of these, don't." Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:32, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Darkfrog. I understand your meaning better now. Myself, I'd still like to see the guideline trimmed. But that issue can wait.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 22:41, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't use a longer pause before and in "A, B and C" than the normal foot break I would also use in "B and C"; YMMV. -- A. di M. 18:11, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Last Names vs First Names

A couple of years back, someone made mass changes to a page I was working on, converting most references to the people involved to use the people's last names after the initial mention. It was quoted that this was done by MOS. I've used this style since. Now, on another page I'm working on, I'm getting revered to first name references. I went looking for the MOS guideline to back up my version, but have been unable to find such. So before I raise the level of discussion on a MOS point that maybe does not exist, I figured I would ask if anyone else can point me to such a guideline somewhere in the MOS over the use of personal/fist vs family/last names in an article that refers to people multiple times. (The article is current question is the one on the current season of America's Got Talent, and the names at issue are the names of the judges, who get referred to over and over throughout the article.) - TexasAndroid (talk) 13:19, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

You want WP: SURNAME, Texas Android. Be advised, in some naming traditions, particularly the one they use in Iceland, it is more proper to use a person's given name than his or her last name. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:24, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Understood. We're talking about American and British names here, so I do not think that'll be a problem. Thanks. - TexasAndroid (talk) 21:40, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Some people are usually referred by given name even when they do have surnames, e.g. Dante, Prince, Galileo, etc. Dunno about the US, but in Italy this is the case for many reality show participants. How are those people most commonly referred to by the media? -- A. di M. 18:20, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

WP: SURNAME specifically mentions this, actually. Dante, Prince and Madonna are covered under the same rule. However, even in the cases of celebrities who are only known mostly by one name (rather than nearly exclusively as with Madonna) the MoS instructs editors to use the surname in subsequent mentions: Beyonce Knowles and then Knowles, rather than Beyonce Knowles and then Beyonce. This seems to be where the contestants would fit in; they're known mostly by one name. It is my opinion that even when the entertainment news is informal, Wikipedia should maintain an encyclopedic tone. In this case, that means surnames for TV show contestants. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:47, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

TexasAndroid said it was the judges, not the contestants. The judges are definitely "Hasselhoff, Osborne, and Morgan" not "David, Sharon, and Piers". I'm stunned anyone could argue that. Powers ^T 12:52, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Punctuation and inline citations section

I'm personally not sure if the section on footnote/numbered references is correct having never used them before editing Wikipedia. I am sure though that it it incorrect for parenthetical system (Harvard/Chicago), the page for Wikipedia:Citing sources#Parenthetical referencing is correct in showing that punctuation goes after the reference. Perhaps the difference between the 2 types of referencing should be pointed out on this page. NicholasAdams (talk) 13:14, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

I notice that APA Style agrees; see page 307 of the manual for an example. --Jc3s5h (talk) 13:47, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Hyphens vs. en dashes

It seems to me that this MOS could do a better job of differentiating between the use of hyphens for conjunction and en dashes for disjunction. Hyphens are properly used to group things, as in Mason-Dixon Line, surveyed by Messrs. Mason and Dixon. The en dash is used to separate things, as in Pennsylvania–Maryland border. As currently written, the examples might lead an editor to think that whenever and could be used, the en dash is the proper form of punctuation. This is not so. In the example "Mason-Dixon Line," the proper nouns function as a compound adjective, and therefore fall under the "compound adjectives and adverbs" usage of hyphens. But since no similar examples are given, an editor might instead believe that this example more closely matches the "substitute for some uses of and" usage for en dashes. ThreeOfCups (talk) 04:05, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

It's ridiculous to expect editors to worry these increasingly hair-splitting distinctions - especially as they are not visible in our standard CSS, so there's no benefit to unregistered readers. --Philcha (talk) 05:34, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your minority opinion, Philcha. But all respectable style guides address such matters. See below:

In fact, Three, Mason[]Dixon Line is spelt with either a hyphen or an en dash. It is very similar in form to Michelson–Morley experiment, which is an example MOS uses for en dash as opposed to hyphen. Mason–Dixon Line is correct according to MOS principles; the matter seems not to have been discussed for the article Mason-Dixon Line, which currently has a redirect from Mason–Dixon Line. Such cross-linking conforms to MOS also, except that MOS would have it the other way around.

There is variation for all such combinations, in various dictionaries and style guides. Garner's Modern American Usage favours the en dash in the present case, as do the Oxford Style Manual and SOED. Chicago is against such use of the en dash, and favours the hyphen: Mason-Dixon Line. Perhaps the matter is settled clearly enough here at MOS in favour of the en dash. Apart from the example Michelson–Morley experiment, we have this:

As a substitute for some uses of and, to, or versus for marking a relationship involving independent elements in certain compound expressions (Canada–US border, blood–brain barrier, time–altitude graph, 4–3 win in the opening game, male–female ratio, 3–2 majority verdict, Lincoln–Douglas debate, diode–transistor logic; but a hyphen is used in Sino-Japanese trade, in which Sino-, being a prefix, lacks lexical independence.)

But to make things even clearer I'll now add an internal link. Thanks for raising the point!

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 05:46, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

I updated the Hyphens section to state that en dashes should be used instead of hyphens to join "independent elements" (rather than "equal elements"). This is consistent with the wording in the En Dashes section. It's also consistent with the guiding statement that hyphens are used for conjunction and en dashes for disjunction.

I also removed Mason-Dixon Line as an example because I believe the jury is still out on that. I checked my copy of Garner's Modern American Usage (1998 ed.), and saw nothing to indicate that an en dash is appropriate in Mason-Dixon Line. The punctuation entry indicates that an en dash is used for joint authors, but that's a specific case, and I don't think it's appropriate to extrapolate from that. (The latest edition of Modern American Usage is just out, so when I get my new copy, I'll check to see if this section has been updated.)

I'm not trying to be disruptive, controversial, or controlling. Strictly from a usability standpoint, preferring en dashes to hyphens (in those cases where either one will do) leads to a lot of needless editing. Most people don't know what an en dash is, much less how to type one. Where sources disagree on usage, why not opt for simplicity? The hyphen is familiar and easy to type on a standard keyboard. In an encyclopedia that anyone can edit, that seems the most efficient choice. ThreeOfCups (talk) 02:53, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Three, I respond to this below, rather than fragment the dialogue. Let's continue down there.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 04:09, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

hyphens vs. dashes in titles

I think this was discussed not too long ago, and may arguably belong in MOSNUM, but I think the connector in article titles, headers and sub-headers should never be anything but a hyphen, because no one is going to search for "...X&Ndash;Y..." (I capitalized the "n" in "&ndash" to avoid conversion into a dash), and very few keyboards have any connector besides the hyphen. The example I adjusted today was restoring a subhead I'd written as World Series#World Series record by team or franchise, 1903-2008. "1903–2008" ("1903&Ndash;2008") may look better in the body text, and may or may not be better aesthetically, stylistically or grammatically, but as a practical matter, we shouldn't make it essentially impossible for an ordinary reader to search for a subhead or article from the search box. We already (and to my mind utterly and shamefully unnecessarily) make many searches painfully difficult (and often unsuccessful) even for experienced old hands, by having case-sensitive software that makes you guess blindly at the capitalization. Google would never have succeeded with such rules. —— Shakescene (talk) 07:07, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

There was discussion of category-naming, Shakescene. But as for page names, the guideline remains unchanged in WP:MOS:

En dashes in page names
When naming an article, a hyphen is not used as a substitute for an en dash that properly belongs in the title, for example in Eye–hand span. However, editors should provide a redirect page to such an article, using a hyphen in place of the en dash (e.g., Eye-hand span), to allow the name to be typed easily when searching Wikipedia. See also Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision). The names of a page and its associated talk page should match exactly.

For Wikipedia's search facility, finding the hyphen-variant redirect page will do the trick, yes? I agree that the software needs reform, and I think also that many articles using the hyphen form need to be moved (not complicated, really); and many more redirect pages need to be made. Bot-makers, take one step forward please!

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 07:48, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

But you can't do that for every heading and subheading; there are far too many of them, and they change far too often. —— Shakescene (talk) 07:52, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

That's a separate problem, with distinct searching problems. And then, browser search facilities are implicated as well. There is not much that can be done, since we are already committed to en dashes as distinct from hyphens, for solid stylistic reasons. (En dashes are semantically, not merely typographically, distinct from hyphens; the matter is ontologically subtle.) This may be one area in which the various technologies need to catch up, rather than us capitulating to their inadequacy.

I suggest that you examine the archives to see what's been said about this before, Shakescene. Then if necessary, open a new section to discuss it further. It would belong here, not at WT:MOSNUM; and please: in any discussion of such matters let's all invariably specify precisely which sort of search facilities we're talking about:

Web search facilities (like Google)
Wikipedia's search facility
Browsers' search facilities

Discussions have usually been muddled in the past by people confusing these three types.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 08:27, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree that the MoS should provide instruction on subtle distinction like this one, even if readers wouldn't immediately notice. The writers who come to the MoS are the ones looking for such instruction. However, I do not feel that the MoS should ban any correct and modern usage of hyphens or similar dividers. "Mason-Dixon/Mason–Dixon" seems to be one of those times when either would do.

But just because there are hundreds or thousands of subject headers that would need to be changed doesn't mean that we should not attempt it. In any such case, we should decide whether the change is desirable on its merits, regardless of how long it would take to accomplish. Then we would change (or not change) the MoS, putting the word out to editors. Then we would accept that it would take a number of years before most Wikipedia articles would be corrected. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:31, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

The whole point of having a manual of style is to give writers and editors guidance on which style to use. When people are moving pages based on their own personal interpretation or opinion of whether a hyphen or en dash is better, the manual of style has failed. Strictly speaking, the manual of style does provide guidance that hyphens are used to join things (conjunction) and en dashes are used to separate them (disjunction). But unfortunately, insufficient examples are given to explain what conjunction and disjunction mean. En dashes are best used when the meaning is "versus," and hyphens when the meaning is "and." In certain specific cases, en dashes may be used when the meaning is "and," but these are the exceptions. The MOS needs to make this clear. And = conjunction, not disjunction. ThreeOfCups (talk) 01:43, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Three, I have reverted addition of new material that needs discussion because it adds something new of substance:

When the elements act in conjunction, however, as in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, a hyphen is used.

I am happy for the moment that you took out Mason–Dixon Line; but let me assure you it is perfectly in accord with the guidelines as we have them. Otherwise I would not have readily added it. If you think the guidelines in question call for further discussion let's go ahead and have it.

Concerning Garner, I use the second edition (2003). It does not mention Mason–Dixon Line specifically; but it makes its intention quite clear with examples such as Fischer–Spassky Match and the Prosser–Keeton text. [Added later:] To be fair, Garner has the first as an example where the sense is like to, or against. The second is very like Michelson–Morley experiment, where Michelson and Morley were surely jointly responsible for the experiment in the same manner of authors, and Mason and Dixon for the line as surveyors. Suppose Spassky and Fischer had later formed a team. Would Garner, or anyone else, want this: After the Fischer–Spassky Match they formed the Fischer-Spassky team, to everyone's surprise? Or this: The Prosser–Keeton text was inspired by the Prosser-Keeton experiments, and other Prosser-Keeton collaborations?

So the cases in Garner are parallel to the formation of Mason–Dixon Line; and given that there is no more particular ruling in Garner, that there is solid support from some other sources, and that our settled guidelines have it this way (presenting the example Michelson–Morley experiment, along with all those others), it is proper that we present this example also. I note also that Garner writes on American English, which is less disposed to use en dashes than British; and this makes it more striking that he still finds applications for en dashes that are tantalisingly close (tantamount, I say) to Mason–Dixon Line. This often happens: the guides simply miss the crux that most interests us, and we have to triangulate to it ourselves – almost like surveyors.

There's a lesson in that for any makers of style guides: Don't pass over in silence the hard or controversial cases; they are the very ones people need you for.

So as I say, question and discuss the guidelines themselves, for preference.

As for the role of manuals of style in general, and ours in particular, that is yet another matter. So are the mechanisms by which our manual operates within Wikipedia. But it is established that we do make choices between variants that occur, favouring some and rejecting others for use on Wikipedia. You can question that established practice (normal, even essential, for any style guide). But let's not mix the issues. Separate sections for separate topics, please.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 04:09, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

The examples Noetica mentions are also in the 1998 edition. "Prosser–Keeton text" refers to the specific usage of co-authors. As I stated above, I don't believe it's an indication of how en dashes should be used generally. "Fischer–Spassky Match" I assume refers to a sporting event, and therefore means Fischer vs. Spassky (in fact, the entry states clearly that en dashes are appropriate for meanings of to and vs., but makes no mention of and).

I'm asking that the community look at this material with fresh eyes, and really think about what the guidelines mean. I believe that certain subtleties in the way the guidelines were written have led people down the wrong path. But the key point, as I've stated before, is that with a very few exceptions, a hyphen is used to mean and (conjunction), while an en dash is used to mean to or vs. (disjunction). Where things occur together, yet are independent of one another, the state is one of disjunction, so an en dash is used. But if they occur together and interact, the state is one of conjunction, so a hyphen is used. To use Mason-Dixon Line as an example, if Mason had started at one end while Dixon had started at the other, then the en dash would be correct. But since they worked together, the hyphen is correct. ThreeOfCups (talk) 05:47, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

¶ I like to make reasonably-fine distinctions myself, but—at least in titles of articles, subheadings and categories—this has to be one of those cases where the encyclopedia should yield to the average keyboard and prevalent software encoding.

I like to distinguish between opening and closing quotation marks (what in England used to be called "inverted commas"), and to distinguish them in turn from inch and foot marks, but there are sound reasons that Wikipedia favours "straight" single and double quotation marks: not only are they available on most keyboards, but because different fonts, browsers and computer operating systems can decode my code for “ ” ‘ and ’ [open and close double quotation marks; open and close single quotation marks] very differently (depending on whether they're using ASCII, Unicode, UTF-8, Windows 1252, ISO 8859, or something else). You may not even see the same punctuation-marks I just wrote (using Alt-0146 through Alt-0149 on Windows Vista).
I disagree with the decision or non-decision (heavily debated in an obscure section of MOS) to allow the German ß in the titles of articles, for example, about people named Strauß or Weiß in Germany or Austria. (The Swiss haven't used that character in decades, because their multilingual typewriters don't have room.) I think that this is another case where purity has to yield to practicality, legibility, search methods and existing English-language keyboards. Only a small minority of those in Anglophone countries recognize ß as double-s rather than B, and no Weißes, Großes or Straußes are to be found among the millions of German, Austrian, Swiss [Swiß?] and Jewish families that have settled in Anglophone countries; without any exception of which I know, their original family names are spelled, respectively, Weiss (or Weisz), Gross (or Grosz) and Strauss. Allowing ß in the body text (as opposed to headings or titles) is a very different question, upon which I'm certainly open to argument.
Similarly for em-dashes and en-dashes, which are not to be found on any standard (not a typesetter's) keyboard (and which often look the same as hyphens anyway on someone else's screen.) They also play hob with my browsers' encoding/decoding and I often have to try half a dozen possible codes so that the dashes and quotation-marks in someone else's text don't come out as pi. Within the body text, it's nice to make fine distinctions about conjoining and disjunctive bars, and whether or not to space them from the words they connect or separate, but when doing searches and writing internal links for titles and headers, simplicity should be the guide. —— Shakescene (talk) 06:36, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

I can't resist mentioning that when I looked into this matter when deciding whether to rename Obsessive-compulsive disorder (with hyphen) to Obsessive–compulsive disorder (with endash) I looked into what the better medical journals use, and found that some use the endash and some use the hyphen (and a few use a space). There didn't seem to be a publishing-house standard: some Elsevier journals, for example, use hyphen and others use endash. I eventually went with endash because the New England Journal of Medicine uses it, and because Wikipedia seems to favor it, but it wasn't that easy to judge simply from the MOS. The MOS is currently not that useful for deciding whether the hyphens in the following text should be endashes: "... Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) score in patients with serotonin reuptake inhibitor-resistant obsessive-compulsive disorder treated with ..." and this is a quote from a Biological Psychiatry paper (Coric et al. 2005, PMID 15993857) in which the editors turned all the hyphens into endashes except for the hyphen in "Y-BOCS" (go figure). Eubulides (talk) 06:47, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for using Obsessive-compulsive disorder as an example, Eubulides :-) --Philcha (talk) 08:06, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh, foo. You just gave away the punch line. Now I'll have to fall back on the Baron-Cohen–Baron Cohen joke. Eubulides (talk) 09:11, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Go on then! --Philcha (talk) 13:25, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

The use of en dashes in academic and scientific writing appears to follow its own set of standards and practices, which differ from mainstream writing. I believe this difference should be called out in the WP:MOS. I'd like to see the bullet item about using en dashes "as a substitute for some uses of and, to, or versus..." broken into two items. The use of the en dash is correct when the meaning is to or versus (blood–brain barrier, 4–3 win, male–female ratio, 3–2 majority verdict, Lincoln–Douglas debate). When the meaning is and, the en dash appears to apply in two specific cases: in certain compound expressions in academic and scientific writing (which I won't begin to speculate on); and when joining two independent elements (Canada–US border, time–altitude graph, diode–transistor logic). But in general discourse, the hyphen is normally used when the meaning is and.

To Noetica's point about Prosser–Keeton text vs. Prosser-Keeton experiments vs. Prosser-Keeton collaborations, I agree that these all have the same meaning and should use the same punctuation. Since these occurrences would most likely occur in academic text, the proper choice would then be the en dash. But I disagree that it's necessarily desirable to present Fischer–Spassky match and Fischer-Spassky team the same way. One means Fischer vs.Spassky and the other means Fischer and Spassky. I don't think anyone here would argue that their and there should be spelled the same because the pronunciation is the same, even though the meaning is different. But even if Garner did argue in favor of using the same punctuation in each for consistency, I think he might argue in favor of the hyphen, since it's the far more common and familiar punctuation mark. ThreeOfCups (talk) 19:51, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Describing drum sizes

Would Wikipedia:Describing drum sizes be any good incorporated into the MOS? Hiding T 09:47, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Are all drum sizes based on the inch? Using inches for an article on mediæval Mongolian drums would seem a little absurd (unless the sources are in inches). Leaving out the first "in" in an x × y construction contradicts current guidlines. Why should drums be any exception? Moreover, x × y seems to imply a rectangle (sure, if you know the convention, you're fine, but we shouldn't be assuming this here). Let's treat drums as cylindrical objects and spell out diameter and height/depth and use units appropriate to the given drum (or given article). JIMp_talk·cont 11:35, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

It says "unless there is some reason for adopting another convention" (and this covers the Mongolian drums point), and "the convention used, whether this or any other, should always be explicitly stated" (and this covers the "if you know the convention" point). On the other hand, I wouldn't object to explicitly write "a snare drum with a 14-inch (36 cm) diameter and 5-inch (13 cm) height", if it was just a passing mention of a drum size in a general-interest article. (I can't imagine an article where you would want to do that, but maybe I lack imagination.) OTOH, in an article specifically about drums, repeating the units, the conversions, and "height"/"diameter" seven times in one paragraph such as this one would be cumbersome; just explain what "5 × 14" means and use that convention afterwards. --___A. di M. 12:34, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

What is the reason for adopting this convention? If the inch is the industry standard, let the inch be primary (where the standard applies). Is it the industry standard? If for a given drum neither the design nor the sources are based on the inch, then why use it? In other words, we can safely apply the current MOSNUM rule with respect to which units to use. As for describing a cylinder as x × y, I guess it would become cumbersome if we had to repeat it several times and, well, I s'pose the cross-section is a rectangle. Conversions, though, should be given at least once for each measurement; there are those of us for whom "15 inches" makes as much sense as "12.4 Ψῳヰゑҗзɧ". JIMp_talk·cont 14:02, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

The page in question does not explain what research was done to form the recommendation. In particular, it does not explain whether only the US marketplace was considered, or whether marketplaces around the world were researched. --Jc3s5h (talk) 14:05, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

exactly ... a point well worth considering seeing that the proposal page has, so far, only one editor ... JIMp_talk·cont 14:09, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

¶ I first came back to look for this discussion at Wikipedia talk:MOSNUM, since it's mainly about units and their arrangement. But no matter, because it seems to my naïve musically-untrained eyes that Drum Sizes could easily fit into Wikipedia:Manual of Style (music), which (at least to the minority who even know it exists; I had to confirm my own impression of its existence) seems to be the place where those interested in looking up specs for drum specs would first look.

It will surprise no one that I think the Manual is already too long to be wieldy and already has a staggering number of sub-pages, but expanding WP:MOS (music) slightly seems to be preferable to having a stand-alone standard for drum sizes. On the one hand we'll soon suffocate from rampant instruction creep or sprawl, with the result that there will be far too many (if there aren't indeed already) for anyone to follow; on the other hand, I understand how specialists in a particular field want to settle on and record a commonly-agreed and understood convention.

As for the merits, there's no predicting what will draw someone to a particular article, even a very specialised one, so as a non-musician I'd say (as I would with any article) always explain what units you're using and how. But the detailed discussion of this article's contents probably belongs on either Wikipedia talk:Describing drum sizes or at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (music). —— Shakescene (talk) 18:47, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it should go to WP:MOSMUSIC. It's not like something which will affect more than 50% of all articles (which IMO is the stuff which belongs to the main page of the MOS), and IMO it is something slightly too specialistic for WP:MOSNUM. (Yes, I know MOS:NUM contains a paragraph about uncalibrated radiocarbon dates, but I'd move it elsewhere, too, if I knew where to put it.) --___A. di M. 19:01, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Mind if I move this discussion to the talk page of the page in question? Hiding T 09:42, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

I've already put a pointer to this discussion on that talk page. There might be someone who sees value in keeping a copy of the discussion here (or moving it to WT:MOSNUM), but if there isn't, I wouldn't object to such a move. —— Shakescene (talk) 05:26, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Capitalization of religious terms

I am trying to bring some consistency to articles on religion, but the MOS is not specific enough about many terms. Religions and their followers (Catholic, Catholicism, Hindu, Hinduism) should be capitalzed--easy enough. However, there are many religious terms like evangelical, evangelicalism, fundamentalist, fundamentalism, pentecostalism, etc, which are used lower case or capitalized, depending on the article. I need directions concerning specific terms. Here are the current rules in MOS: "religious philosophies, theories, doctrines, and systems of thought do not begin with a capital letter, unless the name derives from a proper noun." State your opinion on the the terms that should be capitalized, and those not. Let's try to get a consensus so I can get on with editing religious articles. R/T-รัก-ไทย (talk) 21:14, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Capitalization in English is weird. We have "Newtonian" after Isaac Newton but "abelian" after Niels Henrik Abel. The EU's English Style Guide has: "In the case of words derived from proper nouns (such as pasteurise, quixotic, Rabelaisian), consult a reliable dictionary, as practice varies." I think we'd better suggest something like that. (Also note that a libertarian is someone who supports libertarian ideas, whereas a Libertarian is a member of the Libertarian Party.) --___A. di M. 10:52, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

And be careful; another rule of thumb is to consult the sources. Many of these terms are both capitalized and uncapitalized in different contexts; Evangelical in Evangelical Lutheran Church is part of a proper name; Evangelical doctrine is an adjective derived from the Evangels, another proper name; evangelical pastor is a common adjective. But the second and third can overlap. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:12, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

And the distinction that an ordinary person would make is that "evangelical" refers to the practice of spreading the Good News or Gospel (ev = eu = good; + angel = [I think] messenger or message or news), which can refer to someone of any denomination, while the capitalized Evangelical usually (but not always) refers to particular denominations, especially Lutheran (as distinguished from, among others, the Reformed churches, including Calvinists, Zwinglians, Congregationalists and Presbyterians). —— Shakescene (talk) 05:10, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Posession issue

I was recently working on the page Star of Bethlehem (disambiguation), and had to make the word "genus" posessive (you can see it there; "Many of this genus' specific members"). Now I know the (oft-screwed-up) technical rules on the plural possessive (i.e., this isn't plural, so regardless of its final "s," it should actually be genus's, as in Chris's, etc.). However, I remembered from the copy-editing text we used when I worked at a newspaper noted that there was some sort of an exception for Latin and some scientific words. Does anyone know specifically what rule would apply here? Furthermore, there are some copy-editing texts which say that if the possession wouldn't be pronounced, it shouldn't have a redundant "s;" though I'm not sure if it would be pronounced here, upon trying it out-loud. Any "punctuation" PhDs out there? Peace and Passion ☮ ("I'm listening....") 00:53, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Use genus's. —Finell (Talk) 04:31, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

It's a moot point now since somebody else has changed the page, but the possessive is genus's. It sounds goofy though; it would have been better to use many of the specific members of this genus. Strad (talk) 17:41, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

I absolutely agree with StradivariusTV. It's much better to rephrase to avoid the awkward sentence construction. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 18:01, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

The same situation exists on the pages for the planets Venus and Mars. The page for Venus has been changed to use Venus's everywhere, but the page for Mars uses both Mars' and Mars's. It's interesting that titles of the Mars references consistently use Mars' , and their external articles also use Mars' (such as from NASA, example here). CuriousEric (talk) 19:28, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Haha... about that Mars one; if there's no agreement, there should at least be internal consistency to particular articles :)! Just like not spelling words with two different forms, or not using the Oxford comma in some lists but not others. Consistency is key! Peace and Passion ☮ ("I'm listening....") 00:37, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

incoming link dashed

A change was made to WP:NC: 28 August 2009. The "link to article [dash] with sources and citations" was already there, but the edit removed the link here. cygnis insignis 21:38, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

I have reinstated it. Tony (talk) 03:07, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

1996–present

Can someone run past me why WP:OTHERDATE says " The form "since 1996" should be used in article text while the form "1996–present" is preferred in infoboxes."? If anything, the "since" form is more appropriate for infoboxes, because it's shorter by two characters. Grammatically, the "1996–present" construction stresses this wobbly target of "the present", which looks bad when the RL referent changes (the subject retires, for example), until it's updated here. Tony (talk) 04:47, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't know, but I wish the whole "to present" construct would go away, especially in infoboxes. I see it all that time at FAC, and think it should be banished. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:50, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

The word "present" is a moving target, but I expect it would get corrected promptly as soon as it becomes incorrect. It's slightly easier to edit "1996–present" to "1996–2009", than "Since 1996" to "1996–2006". Another reason I support the form "1996–present" for infoboxes is purely asthetic. If an artist has two or more ranges of "Years active" (such as Deep Purple), the form "1996–present" lines up nicer with the preceding line containing specific years:

1968–1976

1984–present

Since infoboxes are basically a summary of data, they need not be made into proper English such as "Since 1996". From a technical viewpoint, ranges of data are typically given as minimum-to-maximum, and "1996–present" (or even "1996–") falls into that format. Many infoboxes follow the current recommendation of "1996–present". If it changes, there would be a lot of editing to do. CuriousEric (talk) 05:39, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually, there is nothing improper about "1996 to present." I actually think that it looks better in infoboxes than "since 1996" would. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:05, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

No one complains about changing "born 1954" to "1954–2009" when they die. DF, can you address my point about the emphasis on the present in the construction, rather than on the only known fact (the starting point)? Don't you think editors should be allowed to use the "Since 1971" construction? I've just been reverted in Eric Clapton on this point. Why? As for alignment ... well, not much aligns in infoboxes, and I see no point in trying to engineer one bit of alignement, frankly. Tony (talk) 13:30, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

There is potential for the form "1996-present" (or "1996 to present" or "1996-2009" or whatever) to be interpreted by a computer and used as metadata for the article, while the "since 1996", while it can be treated, is an unexpected "field" from the above pattern. Sure, it can be worked around, so I don't know if that's a strong option to keep, but I would say that our infoboxes should be as close as possible to be easily understood by machine code to recognize all the data should someone which to index WP content in other fashions. --MASEM (t) 13:40, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Tony, i don't follow your reasoning about XXXX-present "look[ing] bad when the RL referent changes" - since XXXX also needs updating when the subject retires or whatever. and yes, the present is a "moving target", but the term the present stays right on it. the musician info boxes display a preference for "XXXX-present"; maybe the MoS can leave the info box question up to the relevant Wikiprojects? Sssoul (talk) 15:31, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

What computer can't be programmed to recognize since XXXX as one of the strings it should report? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:18, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. Tony (talk) 13:14, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Sentence length

I would like to propose a new guideline for the Wikipedia Manual of Style. The guideline would suggest that writers avoid excessively long sentences. For example, consider this sentence, from the "Ticking time bomb scenario" article:

They have expressed grave concern about the way the dramatic force and artificially simple moral answers the ticking bomb thought-experiment seems to offer, have manipulated and distorted the legal and moral perceptions, reasoning and judgment of both the general population and military and law enforcement officials.

I found that sentence to be very difficult to read, partly because of its length. I think the information would be more readable if it were rewritten as a few shorter sentences. For example, I'd rewrite it like this:

They claim that the ticking bomb thought experiment seems to offer dramatic force and artificially simple moral answers. They have expressed grave concern about the way this thought experiment has manipulated and distorted people. According to these opponents, the idea has distorted people's legal and moral perceptions, reasoning and judgment. They claim that it has affected not only the general population, but also military and law enforcement officials.

This second version contains all of the same information as the first version. But, in my opinion, it's much easier to read. I know that I shouldn't generalize, because my opinion may differ significantly from others. So I would like to hear from other contributors about whether they think this second version is more readable.

Now, I'm not saying that shorter sentences are ALWAYS more readable than longer sentences. But I think there is a rough correlation between the length and the readability of a sentence.

Also, like other existing conventions on Wikipedia, I think this should be a loose guideline, and not a strictly enforced rule. For example, we might want to pick a specific number of words. Let's say we pick thirty. Even if we pick thirty, a sentence containing more than thirty words would NOT automatically be in violation of any guidelines. We wouldn't be completely banning sentences with more than thirty words. We would simply be saying that a sentence with that many words might be more difficult to read. But the readability of a sentence would be determined on an individual basis. We would be saying to writers, "If you write a sentence that ends up being more than thirty words long, you should consider rewriting that information in a few shorter sentences." -- 03:41, 1 September 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Navigatr85 (talk • contribs)

Not to detract at all from the general point, but the original sentence suffers from a host of other problems that make it harder to read. Just two things at first glance: there's a comma in the wrong place and the sentence would greatly benefit from the addition of "in which" after "about the way" and/or "that" or "which" after "answers". Long sentences, such as all too many of my own, also benefit from lots of punctuation (in the right place) even where it would be inappropriate for a shorter sentence: for example colons, semi-colons, parentheses, brackets and dashes, as well as a reasonable number of commas. —— Shakescene (talk) 03:58, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

My first stab at rewriting that sentence, without changing its balance or nuances too much, is

They have expressed grave concern that the dramatic force and artificially-simple moral answers which the ticking-bomb thought-experiment seems to offer have manipulated and distorted the legal and moral perceptions, reasoning and judgment of the general population as well as those of military and law-enforcement officials.

That removes some of the obscurity, but the sentence is still too long. —— Shakescene (talk) 04:53, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't think this belongs in the MoS. Obviously, excessively long sentences should be avoided; that is implied by the word excessively. But what is excessive depends on what one is trying to express. The following sentence, for instance, is longer than the one quoted above but is perfectly clear:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

--Boson (talk) 06:27, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Whether this belongs in the Manual of Style as it currently exists and is currently used (or thought to be used) begs a host of difficult, sensitive, familiar and long-standing questions. ¶ In theory, the Manual is mainly stylistic guidance, suggestions, and indications of good usage or common practice, something with which even the most libertarian or rebellious amongst us would appreciate at least occasional help. If it isn't, then there should be some place in Wikipedia to find such general pointers. And what's been suggested above would fit right into such a document. The proposer is explicitly not suggesting the kind of hard-and-fast numerical limit that can be enforced by a 'bot, or used as a cudgel in a Talk Page dispute. ¶ But an MoS that (for unfathomable reasons) goes so far as to disparage July 4th for July 4 is in fact used today as a prescriptive rule book that is enforced by precisely such methods. So where can the original proposer put his or her perfectly-sensible suggestion for fellow-editors? —— Shakescene (talk) 06:56, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Sentence length is very hard to legislate on. Tony (talk) 07:51, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

What's the problem with just rewriting excessively long sentences into more parsable ones when one encounters them? --LjL (talk) 11:01, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Coz it wouldn't mean much. Tony (talk) 13:16, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

I do not support any measure against long sentences, here or elsewhere. It's not a sentence's length that makes it hard to read; it's its level of organization. The example sentence is already more than eligible to be rewritten by whoever sees fit to do so without any change to the MoS.

In addition, there's the separate problem that we already say "this is a guideline" of the entire MoS, and it is already treated as a set of rules. I don't think there is, at this time, a practical way for us to make sure that even one little piece of it really is treated as a guideline, regardless of what that guideline may be. If we add the proposed guideline to the MoS, we will get people splitting up even good long sentences solely because they are long. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:39, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

...though now that I've had a chance to think about it, don't Wikipedia essays fit into that space? They're not officially guidelines (which would make them treated like rules), so they're treated like guidelines. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:13, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (France & French-related) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as part of the Manual of Style. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:01, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Many more pages are listed at Category:Wikipedia style guidelines. -- Wavelength (talk) 02:11, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Now just a minute there: I can find no consensus that such a page should suddenly be given the status of a MoS page. Please point me to it. The page itself needs a copy-edit, and who knows what kind of contentious guidance it gives? Let's not find out two weeks down the track that there's violent disagreement. Tony (talk) 09:35, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

My post pointed to related information, without advocating what should or should not be an MoS page. I do not know about whether there is or has been consensus for such status, but there are some fundamental abstractions which need to be decided and clarified.

-- Wavelength (talk) 15:17, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

WP:MOS is on my watchlist, so please post any response(s) here. -- Wavelength (talk) 16:33, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

A list of all Wikipedia namespace pages beginning with the character string "Manual of Style" can be found here.

-- Wavelength (talk) 15:47, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

I think this sudden unilateral elevation to MoS status should be reverted until the WikiProject MoS has a look through it and endorses it. Otherwise, what is to stop anyone from creating their own guide and stamping MoS on it. I might do this for articles to do with religion, and put my own subtle POV into it. No problems, just whack the MoS sign at the top and you're done. Tony (talk) 01:55, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Tony, you might want to discuss the status of that page with the editor who edited it. -- Wavelength (talk) 00:18, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

No doubt, what about Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Arabic), and all the other pages not officially part of the MoS yet they're titled with the "Manual of Style" prefix? Something's not right. -- œ ^™ 03:50, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

OE and Wavelength: this issue has been bubbling away for years, but no one has done anything about it. I believe an RfC is required to settle the matter—that applications for MoS status be made to WP:WikiProject Manual of Style for scrunity. In fact, the only way to have a proper audit to rationalise and ensure coordination and quality in the ants' nest of MoS pages that has already grown is to for that Wikiproject to elect a panel of scrutineers. This would also need to be endorsed by an RfC. Tony (talk) 05:08, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, this issue has been bubbling away for far too many years, and this trend should stop. A small group of editors should not be able to add pages to MoS without significant community input and review. MiLHist and MEDMOS gained significant community input before they were added to MOS; since then, I've seen numerous pages added without any apparent review for consistency or overlap with other MoS pages, community-wide consensus, or any apparent community-wide process for elevating the work of a few editors to guideline level. This needs to stop, and a review of all MoS pages added in the last few years to MoS should be undertaken. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:19, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Placement of Jr suffux in citations

I see this was asked on the page Talk:Suffix, but I was wondering what we should do as editors. Where should the suffix be placed when the name is rendered in "Last, First" order? Should it be "Williams, Hank Jr." or should it be "Williams Jr., Hank"? Sabine's Sunbird talk 01:57, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

In medical articles, the usual style is "Williams H Jr", with no comma or period. That is what PubMed uses, and many medical Wikipedia articles use that style. Numeric suffixes are used after that, e.g., "Collins WF 3rd", "Li S 4th" (these are all actual PubMed-listed authors, including "Williams H Jr"!). Other fields no doubt have different traditions. Eubulides (talk) 04:08, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

The suffix is attached to the entire name; it is not an element of the surname and therefore should not go before the comma when the surname is placed first. I would be surprised to see any fields that treat suffices differently. Powers ^T 12:11, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

ACS style is "Stephenson, G. J., Jr.; Goldman, T. Phys. Lett. 1998, 440B, 89." (that's a genuine reference from an issue of Chemical Reviews I happen to have lying around!) Physchim62 (talk) 20:55, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

MoS is bloated and difficult to use

I think MoS is pretty good in many ways, thanks to the efforts of many talented editors. However, recent complaints at WT:FAC give us reason to look carefully at the utility of the page. FAC nominators were mostly critical of what they felt was "instability"; however, I think the underlying problem is the sheer size and, in parts, inaccessibiltiy, of MoS. Not including the lead, the ToC and the five appendix-type sections at the end, MoS is now 19,400 words long; when I copied that portion of it to a Word document, it stretched to 48 pages!

A whole section is devoted to heraldic terms written in Anglo-Norman: why? I see the trotting out of options that are explicitly not recommended (that is a sign of lack of confidence, frankly). There are sometimes three examples when one would do. There's a slight sense of wanting to educate WPians, possibly more broadly than is wise if the page is to be an accessible and widely used tool for textual cohesion and improvement.

I suspect that editors might want to either (1) quickly consult MoS to find out what to do in a certain instance, or (2) try to absorb it from start to finish as a way of increasing their knowledge of style, and thus their ability as a WPian editor. However, the current size makes both purposes unnecessarily daunting, and puts off all but the hardy few. I believe it could be summarised without losing much of what really matters to editors down to less than 20% of its current size, as a subsidiary resource, retaining the current document as the "master", which has ultimate authority. Tony (talk) 14:58, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

That would be extremely useful, Tony. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 15:04, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I strongly agree. For a very rough comparison, think of the "style sheet" that many newspapers, publishers and other employers hand to new employees with the expectation that it can be read and digested fairly quickly and easily, with the dense bound volumes put out not only by academic authorities (e.g. Fowler, Chicago and the MLA) but even by news organizations like The Associated Press and The New York Times. There also has to be some distinction (which human nature, stylebots and the nature of Wikipedia have inhibited) between useful stylistic advice (which the article on blazon happens to be but in a very specialised field), indications of common practice, and guidelines that in practice serve as rules. —— Shakescene (talk) 17:34, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Disagree. While we might find a bloated phrase or unnecessary example here or there in the MoS, I find that we should not go through it for the specific purpose of reducing its length on the assumption that this will be an improvement.

The thing about printed style sheets and bound style guides is that when the user sees them and picks them up, he or she gets an immediate sense of how big they are and roughly how much information they contain. A person can do this with a set of Wikipedia instructions only if they are all contained on one page. I've often gone looking for Wikipedia instructions only to find that I have to skip around through five and six pages before getting the full story. It is much easier when they are all on one big page.

As for examples? They make the page longer but they also make it easier to use, not more difficult.

This particular WP page might be long, but it's very well organized, which makes Tony's purpose (1) above easy to accomplish. The core issue here is that we just need to accept that people aren't going to be able to do purpose (2), and that this is not because this particular page is long but rather because there are so many pages of its kind scattered around with little apparent rhyme, reason or hierarchy. When I first joined Wikipedia, I went looking for a list of rules and policies but there were so many different pages (and no central page giving me an overview of how many there were) that it seemed better to just dive in and learn as I went along. This particular page, once I found it, actually struck me as pretty easy to use, but I was checking the ToS and going only to the sections that I needed, not reading it from end to end. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:18, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

But you are, relatively speaking, an expert. We expect far too much staying power by general editors, yet we need to reach them. The nominators are complaining over at FAC: why?

MoS is mostly well-organised, but there are a few repetitions and structural oddities. However, the biggest problem is bloat—not of excessive scope or number of sections, but within the sections. As Shakescene is getting at above, many style guides are pleasingly succinct: they have dropped the mid-20th-century notion of legislative thoroughness and aim to get across their point in a more user-friendly way, given the time-poor environment we now live in. The ABC Radio National online styleguide, I think modelled in some ways on the The Guardian's online styleguide are good examples. It's not that we would want to ape those resources in structure or content (or to approach them in size); but I think we can learn from their style and tone on the micro-level. Twenty thousand words and still counting, I ask you ... and that is just here at MoS main page, in display mode. Tony (talk) 13:38, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Tony, but I think the problem is that we are trying to provide both general guidance on how to write encyclopedic text well, and a description of Wikipedia's house style. In my view we would do well to split the former out into a Wikibook. Hesperian 13:50, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

For the record, I suppose this whether my comment above is taken up or not. Hesperian 02:25, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Then that is where we disagree, Tony. I find sprawl to be a much more serious problem for learning Wikipedians than bloat.

I agree with Hesperian. We should make it clear that this document contains instructions for use on Wikipedia. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:22, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I think a concise version about 20% of the current size should be trialled. I suspect it would become the primary reference for editors.Tony (talk) 15:42, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

20%?! Holy crud in a hat! You know what, it's probably clear by now that I don't think this is a good idea, but the fact that it is way more ambitious than I was expecting from your initial proposal makes me want to hear more about it. This is apparently not about going in and removing "a few repetitions and structural oddities," but rather a major restructuring. How would you expect this plan of yours to work?

(Note: Repetition can be good for the MoS in the case of the same information repeated in two different sections. As per purpose (1), we may expect that users are reading only one section per trip.) Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:48, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and the thing that I originally came here to say: If it is a matter of pruning, we should consider how text gets bloated in the first place. People fight and fight and fight over what to say and sometimes the compromise text contains extra words to please and placate. Going back a few weeks or months later with fresh eyes and cool tempers to reevaluate said text is more than valid to my mind. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:52, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to have to agree with Darkfrog on this one. While the current MOS is rather large, the need for a central depository of guidelines is important, as a one-stop reference for editors to check against without having to search all over the project. The size of it can be unwieldy, but the ToC provides the shortcuts editors need for finding the right section. I can understand what Tony's saying about the size being difficult for someone trying to read it comprehensively, but I don't think that should be the purpose of this page. oknazevad (talk) 19:14, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, if it's not this page, there should be another page that the average editor could comfortably read through and absorb in one or two sittings, at least to become aware where Wikipedia style differs significantly from common styles, especially for non-trivial reasons such as accessibility, readability, ambiguity, technical limits, libel, copyright, civil liability, possible insult, trans-Atlantic variation or universally-grasped measures and currency. The less this knowledge is gained through (naturally-resisted) reversions by some stranger or robot shouting WP:INCOMPREHENSIBLEABBREVIATION in the edit summary, the better. WP:Please do not bite the newcomers. —— Shakescene (talk) 22:52, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

¶ As for the entire database, I tried for amusement, for instruction, or out of sheer perversity to count all the current members of style categories (there's some overlap, but not much):

Category:Wikipedia style guidelines: 99 pages
Category:Style guidelines of WikiProjects: 89
Category:Wikipedia naming conventions: 70

Also listed in the categories are these proposals and derivative pages:

How many of these pages has anyone here seen? How many do you think even experienced editors know about? (By the way any category-mavens here could accomplish some useful clean-up, since significant pages such as Naming Conflicts get buried inconsistently at the end of category or sub-category pages under W or lower-case letters.) —— Shakescene (talk) 23:08, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Interesting idea, Shakescene. Perhaps such a page could be added to the list of those already sent to new members after registration. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:36, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Now there seem to be two issues: the plethora of MoS pages (yes, it's out of control), and the puffiness of MoS main itself. It's the second issue that I was addressing, not the first. As I stated above, Darkfrog, it's not the structure of MoS main that is the problem, but the bloat within it.

On the second matter, no one seemed to support my objection that a French-related style page can suddently elevate itself to MoS status without proper process. This is why the MoS infrastructure has become such a mess. We need to address this too: I suggested an RfC proposal that a team be elected at Wikiproject MoS to coordinate, scrutinise, amalgamate. Silence. Or perhaps we should simply self-appoint a team and go for it, using our knowledge and intellectual strength to put pressure on the system to rationalise itself. We need at least to produce a game-plan, a set of ongoing proposals. Tony (talk) 01:46, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Tony, I understand that you believe bloat to be a problem with the MoS. I do not share that belief, at least not to the point of reducing its length by 80% (trimming extraneous phrases here and there is, in my opinion, something that editors don't need beforehand permission to do). But I'm listening if you want to say more about your game plan, how it would work and why you think it would help. I think we need to accept that the MoS is not probably going to be able to serve purposes (1) and (2) at once, at least not well, but if you see a way in which it could, I'd love to hear it. What are your specifics? Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:19, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

As I understand it, Tony is not proposing to reduce the length by 80%. The MOS will be the same length that it always was. But the front page will leave a whole lot more detail to the subpages, and do a whole lot less of the work itself. Hesperian 02:23, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I was interpreting, "I think a concise version about 20% of the current size should be trialled," to mean that he wished to reduce the size of the MoS, by which I mean the page attached to this talk page, by 80%.

I believe that decentralizing the MoS is a bad idea. This creates more sprawl which, to my mind, is already a bigger problem than bloat. Instructions and policies are harder to find if they're scattered over many pages. I can never tell if my search is going to take one, six or ten pages of reading to find. If they're all on one big page, then an answer is just a CTRL-F away. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:36, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

It is possible to retain the main page of the Manual of Style in its present size and complexity for editors who appreciate it in that state, and also add a smaller or simpler main page of the Manual of Style for editors who prefer the latter. Please ponder the following pages as representing smaller or simpler versions of larger or more complex entities.

For a smaller or simpler main page of the Manual of Style, who is going to decide which 20% of the material is the most basic or the most important?
-- Wavelength (talk) 06:15, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
[I revised my message by adding the underlined text. -- Wavelength (talk) 14:10, 7 September 2009 (UTC)]

I agree with Tony, SlimVirgin, and Shakescene. The first place to start is by ending additions to MoS that haven't garnered community-wide consensus or been reviewed for overlap and inconsistencies. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:22, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Oh, that's not quite what I meant: I think the place to start is the current page; that is, to change the guideline substantively as well as to make it user-friendly is to shoot at two targets at once. Not doable. Tony (talk) 14:25, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't necessarily disagree with the Wavelength's point about summary articles, but note that only his/her three last examples are summaries; the rest are lists. We already have lists of guidelines — so many, in fact, that they're a little hard to find. My list of style-guide categories was actually a trimmed and simplified distillation from the category lists you'll find at the sources. —— Shakescene (talk) 19:06, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I apologize for a lack of clarity. Wikipedia:List of Introductory Articles lists articles which are simplified versions of other articles. At least some entries in Lists of basic topics correspond with at least some of the entries in Lists of topics. Wikipedia:Vital 100 is a smaller version of Wikipedia:Vital articles, which is a smaller version of Wikipedia:Vital articles/Expanded, which is being considered for being merged with Wikipedia:Core topics - 1,000, which is a smaller version of the set of all the articles in English Wikipedia. Therefore, all the pages in my list represent smaller or simpler versions of larger or more complex entities. When I used the word "represent", I sacrificed a bit of clarity for the sake of brevity. I was hoping that sharp minds would perceive what I really meant. Once again, I have been apparently misunderstood and have been reminded not to take clarity for granted. -- Wavelength (talk) 22:10, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I like Hesperian's interpretation of Tony's proposal, "But the front page will leave a whole lot more detail to the subpages, and do a whole lot less of the work itself." As for "who is going to decide which 20% of the material is the most basic or the most important?", I'd propose the rule of thumb: if it affects more than 50% of articles, it should be at WP:MOS; if not, it should be in a sub-page. A few cases would be non-obvious and would need to be discussed, but it is clear that far, far fewer than 50% of articles are affected by WP:MOS#Blason, and far, far more are affected by WP:ENGVAR. --___A. di M. 22:43, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm not in favour of reducing the scope and reach of the full version much at all. Perhaps an 80% reduction was a little ambitious; 75% might be doable. Tony (talk) 16:31, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

That's still pretty huge, Tony. Frankly, even reducing the MoS by 20% strikes me as extremely problematic unless we're removing rules. I don't see how there is that much fat to cut. If not fat and not flesh, then what?

With regard to Hesperian's proposed "Does it affect more than 50% of the articles?" rule of thumb, the MoS seems to be mostly in compliance with it already. We'd only be removing the "Miscellaneous" section. With regard to advice on, say, capitalization of celestial bodies and common mathematical symbols, better that they're here where people can find them than buried where people can't. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:35, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

On how many articles could one want to use uncalibrated radiocarbon dates? or "Abbreviations indicating long periods of time ago—such as BP (Before Present), as well as various annum-based units such as ka (kiloannum)"? Or images with so much detail that should be displayed more than 400px? Or the distinction between "Arab", "Islamic" and "Arabic"? Or transliterated foreign names? Maybe reducing to 25% would be impossible, but a significant reduction can be attempted. If people wouldn't be able to locate stuff if it's moved to WP:MOSMATH or WP:MOSCAPS, that's another issue. --___A. di M. 19:21, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

adverb + hyphen + past participle

The MOS doesn't specify exactly what to do in the case of an adverb-past participle hyphenation.

The closest rule is under WP:HYPHEN, subsection 3, bullet 4:

“

A hyphen is not used after a standard -ly adverb (a newly available home, a wholly owned subsidiary) unless part of a larger compound (a slowly-but-surely strategy). A few words ending in -ly function as both adjectives and adverbs (a kindly-looking teacher; a kindly provided facility). Some such dual-purpose words (like early, only, northerly) are not standard -ly adverbs, since they are not formed by addition of -ly to an independent current-English adjective. These need careful treatment: Early flowering plants evolved along with sexual reproduction, but Early-flowering plants risk damage from winter frosts; northerly-situated islands.

”

I bring this up because someone changed some hyphenations on an article I made, citing WP:HYPHEN, but it's not really covered.... I went a-googling and found numerous pages saying that, as a non-American, I'm correct; a couple of examples here: [27],[28]. In other words, it's a regional thing. However, it seems like the rules for punctuation on Wikipedia are prescribed, whereas the rules on spelling, grammar, etc., basically say "just be consistent". (←and that right there is another example of where American punctuation rules differ from that of other countries, even just 40 minutes north of the border!)

So, what's the deal on this? I'm tempted to edit the MOS to at least bring up this important point....

International sources are cited at User:David Kernow/Internet sources re hyphens and adverbs. -- Wavelength (talk) 04:22, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I am of the opinion that punctuation should follow ENGVAR. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:26, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Don't hyphenate: it's not ambiguous or harder to read without a hyphen. I don't notice a trans-Atlantic difference on this point. Tony (talk) 13:45, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Dashes in category names

Please see here. Comments, ideas, and suggestions would be welcome. Thank you, –BLACK FALCON ^(TALK) 22:44, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Query

Centuries and millennia are written using ordinal numbers, without superscripts and without Roman numerals: the second millennium, the 19th century, a 19th-century book.

"the second millennium" appears to be at odds with this, and if it's trying to prove a point about spelling out / numerals, it's not working there. Tony (talk) 02:45, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

For the tiny bit it's worth, this is exactly the annoying and unnecessary kind of rule that makes the Manual so unmanageable and so unread, and that I'd very dearly love to see disappear so the important stuff is visible.† From my point of view, the guidance (not rule) should be (1) consistency within an article is desirable; (2) it's easier to see sentence breaks when sentences begin with (for example) "Nineteenth" than with "19th"; (3) per contra, when centuries in the same article begin with the same letter and are roughly the same length (i.e. First, Fourth & Fifth; Fourteenth & Fifteenth; Sixth & Seventh; Sixteenth & Seventeenth), it's often easier for the reader to distinguish numerals (1st, 4th, etc.); and (4) use your own judgement. The price of absolute consistency over three million articles is far too high, no 'bot will spot the peculiar reasons that might make an editor or group of editors prefer a variation, and not one reader in a thousand will even notice a difference. Far fewer than that will care one jot.

† Another example came over my watchlist today: someone using AWB to change "world-wide" to "worldwide". I may happen to prefer the former slightly, but I'm not going to impose my choice on others. —— Shakescene (talk)

The "second millennium" example is not at odds with the preceding rule. It is written as an ordinal number. Because this number is under ten/takes two words or fewer to say, it is written as a word rather than as a numeral. That being said, I agree with Shakescene that, within the bounds of encyclopedic tone, we should allow users their freedom to choose from among correct styles. Darkfrog24 (talk)

I have no problem with changing the clunky "world-wide" to "worldwide"—just as publishers dropped "to-day" in the 1950s and 60s. Treat that editor's work as a free meal, I'd say. Now, "second millennium" is simply clouding the issue at hand by pointing (silently) to another issue that is dealt with elsewhere anyway. Disorganised and impenetrable. Our readers should not have to stop and ponder WTF it all means. Tony (talk) 04:09, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I disagree. If we did not have an ordinal-number word in the example, readers might think that it applied only to ordinal numbers written as numerals. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:04, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

But it says "without superscripts ... Tony (talk) 12:15, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Tony, are you unsure of what the "without superscripts" phrase is getting at? I think it means don't write 19^th. Or perhaps you are saying that since the rule has a provision that can only apply to numerals, the entire rule can only address numerals. I don't think that's the case. A rule can incorporate a provision that is only applicable to some of the subject matter of the rule. --Jc3s5h (talk) 13:36, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Jc, it's very confusing to the readers when the first of the three examples can't have a superscript. Made me think hard. MoS has to be user-friendly. Tony (talk) 14:30, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I didn't find it confusing, but I would certainly see no problem with writing, "the 19th century, the second millennium, a 19th-century book" instead of putting "second" first. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:20, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Three examples are too many, I think, given the need to chop, tuck, nick. Why not keep just the first one, since the hyphenated double-adjective and the spell-out / use-numeral issue are both treated elsewhere. This one should be focused on the point at hand, which is not to superscript the ordinal number. Would anyone write "19 century", I wonder? Or XIX century? I don't think I've ever had to correct them. Is this why MoS is 20,000 words long? Tony (talk) 01:12, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Because that's not how this document is used. People come in, check the table of contents, and then go to the one section that seems most relevant. We should not force people to skip around to two and six and ten unpredictable parts of the document to get the answers to their questions. All things considered, including a hyphenated ordinal number as an example is a remarkably concise way to cover this common problem.

This is not one of those times when making something shorter would make it better. Maybe if these three were full-sentence examples, but they're not. The information to space ratio is very high. I understand that you feel the MoS is too long, but we're talking about this section right now. Focus on what would make it better, not longer or shorter. The results will be shorter often enough. "Three examples are too many" is a bad rule of thumb. We should be asking, "Are any of these examples redundant? Does this section need an additional example to make its point or cover any common problem cases?" In this case, we have one as-word ordinal number, one non-hyphenated ordinal number and one hyphenated one, all taking up less than a line together. I think we're good to go. Darkfrog24 (talk) 11:49, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Another query

"In general, prefer units approved by the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM). SI units, SI derived units, and non-SI units accepted for use with SI are preferred over other units, so 25 °C (77 °F) rather than 77 °F (25 °C)."

Many readers, me included, will wonder whether BIPM comprises SI units, SI derived units, and non-SI units accepted for use with SI. There seem to be two sets of preferences. Can someone explain, please?

Why are Centigrade and Farenheit given alternately as main and converted units as an example? Is this all about main and converted? My head is spinning. Tony (talk) 06:32, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I've updated it to be a summary of the current version of WP:UNITS. --___A. di M. 21:54, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks ADM: that's much better. However, I have a hard time with this bit: "Nominal and defined values should be given in the original units first, even if this makes the article inconsistent: for example, When the Republic of Ireland adopted the metric system, the road speed limit in built-up areas was changed from 30 miles per hour (48 km/h) to 50 kilometres per hour (31 mph). (The focus is on the change of units, not on the 3.6% increase.)"

"Nominal and defined" seems opaque to me, so won't it be so to most readers? And the "focus" bit at the end is so subtle I can't fathom it. I wonder whether this whole point can be removed. I mean, the previous statement says to normally be consistent ... isn't that clear? Tony (talk) 03:40, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Instead of "Nominal and defined values ...", how about e.g. "Values stated in regualtions, standards and other important specifications ..."? --Philcha (talk) 09:42, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Also, I do wonder about the three opening principles. Do they help? The first two, about avoiding ambiguity and lack of clarity, and minimising the need for readers to look up definitions, seem to apply to all writing. The third one might well be covered in the detailed points. I'd drop 'em all. Tony (talk) 03:44, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

ADM, what are they doing over at MOSNUM? "for the UK Imperial units for some topics and metric units for others, and a mixture of units for others" ... and then it tells us immediately: "Normally, use units consistently in each article". EEEEEIUUUUW. Tony (talk) 03:59, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

The UK's use of units is very messy. In the sciences, SI rules. In UK regulations, it's now illegal to sell most products in non-metric units, but some length and volume units are still imperial - so for example road signs have longer distances in miles, but countdowns to junctions and roadworks in metres; and we now specify a car's fuel economy in miles per litre! There are also cases, especially in construction-related activities, where Imperial units dominate or at least co-exist with metric - mostly for compatible between new components and existing ones that mave a lifetime of decades, for example a standard ceiling joist is stiil 4x2 inches in cross-section, and in plumbing there are converter couplings in which side is one of the old Imperial sizes and the other is a metric size. --Philcha (talk) 09:42, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

As far as that single point is concerned, the version we had until yesterday looks a lot better, don't you think? I like the other imports from MOSNUM, though. Tony (talk) 09:45, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

(Replying to your post of 03:59.) It's supposed to mean that if you measure heights of hills, you must either do it consistently in feet or consistently in metres, and if you measure road distances, you must either do it consistently in kilometres or consistently in miles; but it is OK to consistently measure heights of hills in metres and road distances in miles in articles about the UK, because that is what is most commonly done there. But I agree the wording is confusing; how would you clarify that? --___A. di M. 10:04, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, the imported bullet from MOSNUM highlights dissonance between the two pages on this matter: it has changed the substantive meaning, as well as complicating it in an opaque way. Here, it was so simple until yesterday: "UK-related topics may have either SI (generally preferred) or imperial units as the primary units." Is it really necessary to switch from SI to imperial within an article, having chosen one? I'm very uncomfortable about going against the very next point, both at MOSNUM and here, which is about within-article consistency. And let's not forget that conversions are always provided, whichever global choice is made for a UK-related article. Tony (talk) 11:15, 8 September 2009 (UTC)PS The Times online styleguide, which is linked to in the imported version, says, inter alia: "The main aim is to avoid confusing the reader, so try not to mix the two systems in a single article. In general, we should prefer the metric, with imperial conversions in brackets at first mention." <cough, cough> Tony (talk) 11:32, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

The old version was often understood as saying that if you measure the distance between London and Oxford in miles, then you can't measure the mean January temperature in Oxford in degrees Celsius; what's the point of that, when that is by far the most common combination of units for there measures in Britain? BTW, I suggest With topics strongly associated with places, times or people, put the units most appropriate to them first. In US articles, they usually are United States customary units; for the UK, they usually are metric units for most measurements, but imperial units for some measurements such as road distances and draught beer (see, for example, Metrication in the United Kingdom and the the Times Online style guide under "Metric"). --___A. di M. 12:08, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

I think the language imported from Mosnum is unnecessarily complex. Take this sentence:

Except in the cases mentioned below, put the units first that are in the most widespread use in the world. Usually, these are International System of Units (SI) units and non-SI units accepted for use with SI; but there are various exceptions for some measurements, such as years for long periods of time or the use of feet in describing the altitude of aircraft.

Why not:

Except in the cases mentioned below and occasions when other measurements are used (e.g., years, or the use of feet in describing the altitude of aircraft), put International System of Units (SI) units and non-SI units accepted for use with SI before other units.

Instead of:

If editors cannot agree on the sequence of units, put the source value first and the converted value second. If the choice of units is arbitrary, use SI units as the main unit, with converted units in parentheses.

Consider this:

In general, put the source value first and the converted value second. If the choice of units is arbitrary, use SI units as the main unit, with converted units in parentheses.

Instead of talking about carrots and potatoes as if it was a shopping list, what about this:

Avoid inconsistent usage. Write a 600 metre (2000 ft) hill with a 650 metre (2,100 ft) hill, not a 2,000 foot (610 m) hill with a 650 metre (2,100 ft) hill.

Instead of this incomprehensible mess:

Nominal and defined values should be given in the original units first, even if this makes the article inconsistent: for example, When the Republic of Ireland adopted the metric system, the road speed limit in built-up areas was changed from 30 miles per hour (48 km/h) to 50 kilometres per hour (31 mph). (The focus is on the change of units, not on the 3.6% increase.)

consider this:

However, when comparing systems, don't hesitate to vary the above rule. for example, When the Republic of Ireland adopted the metric system, the road speed limit in built-up areas was changed from 30 miles per hour (48 km/h) to 50 kilometres per hour (31 mph). (The focus is on the change of units, not on the 3.6% increase.)

I also think there is merit in reverting to the simple wording of

"UK-related topics may have either SI (generally preferred) or imperial units as the primary units."

Michael Glass (talk) 13:33, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Citations and identifiers

A discussion to uniformized and tweak the appearence of the various identifiers (such as JSTOR 01234567 and ASIN 01234567) is currently going on at [29] and [30]. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 23:32, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Digit grouping style (notice of discussion)

In case anyone is interested, a discussion about digit grouping styles is taking place at Village Pump (policy), related to this question:

On Wikipedia, should the selection of digit grouping styles depend upon regional and topical conventions used in the English language?

Please refer to that page for details and discussion. TheFeds 04:09, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Are stages of a competition, and final positions, proper nouns?

At the end of a competition or the judging of an award, is the Winner, or the winner, established? Does an Olympian get a Bronze Medal for coming in Third Place, or is a bronze medal given for third place? Is the Final contested between Finalists, or do finalists reach a final? Kevin McE (talk) 10:37, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

My hunch says it's "Olympian" and maybe "Bronze Medal", but lower-case for all the other. --___A. di M. 12:04, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

diatribe

We all care about WP's MoS here, and we've invested significant time and talent into it. It is thus appropriate that you be aware that MoS is being denigrated big-time at WT:NC, right at the moment. It upsets me to see my colleagues' work being criticised in such strong language:

"... there is only one reason why literate editors care what those non-consensus essays say: to avoid having prose incompetently reworked by junior high school students who believe that MOS knows what it is talking about ... bad advice ... No, a half-dozen editors have hammered one together out of bits and pieces; the result is not anybody's usage - some would call it dubiously literate ... that waste of electrons ... indeed MOS is; a crusade by a handful of Language Reformers to impose some provinciality on the whole of Wikipedia - as harmful as Anglo-American warring ... it's an unsourced bunch of rules of thumb made up in school one day.

I find it hard to engage with this hot gale; personalising it will get no one anywhere useful, and would be a breach of WP:CIVILITY. Sorry to bear these tidings, but perhaps it reinforces our aim of fostering the continual improvement of MoS. Tony (talk) 17:01, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Taking a quick scan of who comes down on what side of the issue, it appears to me that PMAnderson is once again editing against consensus. His written arguments (MOS:DASH, as usual, covers dashes badly; it's an unsourced bunch of rules of thumb made up in school one day. At least dash has sources and cites them.)… show that he has great conviction, but that doesn’t matter on Wikipedia. It appears that the consensus view of the editors involved in that discussion (who appear to me to have explained their positions with nuanced reasoning founded upon practical realities and what appears to be common sense) is contrary to PMA’s wishes. From PMA’s point of view, the others may be very wrong at some level—or many levels—but that falls under the heading “so sad—too bad.” The “right thing to do” on Wikipedia is not determined by who incessantly reverts text on our style guides. The community shouldn’t have to continually be faced with these two options with PMA: 1) *sigh* and cave to his wishes, or 2) start WQAs over this pattern of behavior.
To avoid this constant trend of edit-wars, it is important for editors, faced with opposition to a particular style-guide edit, to allow the edit to be reverted to the previous version and discuss the matter on the talk pages. IF the Wikipedia-style consensus, after that discussion, is in support of the change, then so be it. If not, then leave the style guide alone—even if the editor is absolutely convinced he or she is *right*. Greg L (talk) 17:14, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Poll on Ireland article names

Further queries

I'm sorry to keep posing questions, but I'm reading through MoS properly for the first time in ages.

Identity

The Identity section includes this:

Disputes over how to refer to a person or group are addressed by policies such as Verifiability, Neutral point of view, and Naming conventions where the term appears in the title of an article.

Why is it only "where the term appears in the title of an article"? It seems to tell us that if the term appears elsewhere in an article, but not in its title, these policies have no status. Should the last 10 words simply be removed? Tony (talk) 14:32, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

My blind, uninformed guess is that the intended meaning might have been that everything should conform to policies like verifiability and neutral POV, and that when the term appears in an article's title, it should also conform to Naming conventions (which I understand to mean "conventions about naming and re-naming articles"). —— Shakescene (talk) 14:43, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Unless someone comes up with a better hypothesis in the next 24 hours, I'm gonna change it to "... view, and, where the term appears in the title of an article, Naming conventions." --___A. di M. 15:02, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I should have thought of that. Why not just remove the reference to article titles? Readers who are following up this point are going to hit each link, and will work it out; and what goes in the article title needs to be consistent with the rest of the article. I don't like "such as"; can we give the impression of precision, rather than hinting that there's more without specifying? (BTW, there's a complete rewrite going on at NC, with a copy-edit tag at the top and a lack of consensus about fundamental structure – it's chaos there at the moment, and I hope it can be resolved within a month or two.) Tony (talk) 15:27, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Sports teams

Names of towns and countries take plural verbs when they refer to sports teams

I know this is discussed from time to time. Two issues. (1) surely the result (in WP:MOS#Plurals was never to enforce collective plural for sports teams, but rather just to allow it? I wasn't aware that AmEng was quite so keen on the practice ("Manchester give their all"). (2) It's not just the verb that is plural: the Manchester example shows that the town or country name is merely a stand-in for the team's name, which itself is treated as a collective plural ("their", above). It's misleading and only half the grammatical story to say that the town/country name takes a plural, or that the verb alone is plural.

What about "Names of sports teams can be used as collective plurals, especially in British English (Manchester are the first-ranked team)."?)

Also, if this were used, do Americans say "sportS"? Tony (talk) 16:01, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

That should certainly be permissive, rather than prescriptive, and it should be clear that this is ENGVAR dependent. But that is an extraordinarily unBritish example of British English: first-ranked is not usually used, and if the example is meant to refer to football/soccer, then which Manchester team is intended? Kevin McE (talk) 18:15, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, we use "sports" as an adjective. "Sport" is almost never used in modern American English except when it means to wear something, as in "to sport a red scarf." I do not believe that we commonly refer to sports teams as plural without making the word plural. We don't say, "Notre Dame give their all." We say either, "Notre Dame gives its all," or, "The Notre Dames give their all," though this last is informal. It's the sort of thing one would hear from a sportscaster. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:27, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Of course, when the team's name is plural, such as the Philadelphia Phillies, Americans usually use the plural. ("The New England Patriots are preparing for next week's game against the New York Jets, who have just beaten the Cincinnati Bengals", but "New England is sure to beat Miami.") There's an ambiguous area (I think, but I'm no close sports fan) when the team uses an adjective, rather than a singular noun, as I don't think it would be wrong to say "the Crimson are eager for their classic battle with the Yale Bulldogs" where few Americans would say "the Crimson Tide plan to crush Auburn." And the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame are treated as plural Hibernians, regardless of race, creed, color or national origin ("Notre Dame is a proud team today, as the Fighting Irish have always been.") Although an American might have just spoken or written in the previous sentence about the Chicago Cubs, he would almost always write "Chicago is still demoralized by its loss to St. Louis."

At the moment, the only teams in Major League Baseball which don't end in a plural "s" are the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago White Sox , which poses the opposite problem: there's no graceful, generally-accepted way of referring to one of their players except as part of the collective Sox, e.g. "Mark Buehrle, the White Sox pitcher" or "Jason Varitek, a member of the Red Sox", but rarely and awkwardly "Jon Lester is glad to be a Red Sox" and never "a Red Sock". —— Shakescene (talk) 21:10, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

But on the main point, I agree: the current guideline's absurd. No doubt someone who'd written "Arsenal are a famous team" was upset when his handiwork was changed to "Arsenal is" or when an edit war started over the singular and plural, and the guideline was instituted to stop such edits. But Americans aren't going to be happy to read that "Green Bay are a team in the National Football League." Permissive language can be very helpful, with a strong nudge towards WP:ENGVAR, but prescriptive language is not. ¶ And Americans do refer to "sport" for an individual sport: "The King of Sports and the Sport of Kings" (horseracing), "gymnastics is becoming a popular sport among boys", "which sport are you going out for this year?". —— Shakescene (talk) 21:50, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

(1) Does anyone get it wrong? (2) Do we need a whole subsection on it? (Can it be part of Identity)? (3) Can it be general advice in a single sentence, just to answer people's queries? Tony (talk) 01:20, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Curiouser and curiouser

The third "principle", right at the top, is paraded thus:

Follow the sources

See also: WP:MOSTM and WP:NOR

Many points of usage, such as the treatment of proper names, can be decided by seeing what other writers do about the problem. Unless there is some clear reason to do otherwise, it is generally a good idea to follow the usage of reliable secondary sources in English on the subject; the sources for the article itself should be reliable. If the sources for the article can be shown to be unrepresentative of current English usage as a whole, follow current English usage instead—and consult more sources.

This is confusing to the reader. "Many points of usage ... can be decided by seeing what other writers do about the problem? Perhaps this refers to many points the reader is about to encounter in MoS. Which ones? Why would we bother including points in MoS having already told editors to go to secondary sources instead? And why does usage have to be framed so negatively, as a "problem"?

If this is a reference to WP:Naming conventions, it is obtuse and so broadly worded as to undermine the whole of MoS. WP:NC receives quite adequate reference in the links beneath titles. (NC is a messy war-zone at the moment, anyway; whether it will drag itself out of it is yet to be seen.) Or is it a reference to the "Consult the sources principle for Units of measurement?

Why is WP:No original research relevant? And why on earth is the MoS subpage on trademarks (MOSTM), of all things, elevanted to such a prominent status, and why is it relevant?

I suggest that this third "principle" die a quick death: MoS deals with secondary sources where necessary within sections. Tony (talk) 11:03, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's talking about proper names, so trademarks will show up. It's talking about following sources, which is relevant to NOR. But it is very chunky and confusing. This is one of those times when "better" means "shorter." We should try to figure out what this was originally supposed to mean and, if it's important, say that clearly. My current guess would be "For the treatment of proper names, it is best to follow the usage found in reliable secondary sources unless there is a clear reason not to." Hmm... Still pretty iffy... Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:23, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. That so-called principle (which is fine, but has to compete with lots of other notions that could also be principles) is well catered for in links to WP:NC on the section level. It must be a fairly recent bloat-bubble. The principles, I believe, could be expressed in two bullet points, each one sentence. The effusion of didactic text at the top rivals the Australian Constitution ... not a good document to model anything on, frankly. I really think we should change the tone so it doesn't offend editors (or daunt them, or put them off). Short, pithy, to the point. Get straight into it. Don't waste their time. Don't lecture at them beyond telling them what to do and what not to (in terms of the guideline). This is the message we're getting from FAC nominators, many of whom are fed up with the style guides. Tony (talk) 13:33, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

It does contain one good point. When deciding on usage, one should look to the consensus of as many of the the English-language sources as you have time to deal with, not just the sources for that particular article. Otherwise the article can be unstable as sources are added and deleted, especially when you consider that those revising the article will have access to different subsets of the sources.

This point is often overlooked when something is inserted into one of the family of style manuals about "follow the sources". I find myself wondering if there is some other mention of "follow the sources" in this manual which relies on the passage-under-discussion to define "follow the sources". --Jc3s5h (talk) 14:00, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

It's badly written and framed, and needs to come down from that pedestal, I think. It was reasonably well handled before right at the top, without appearing to be a fuss. But I think your point about "as many as possible" might be a little fine-grained here. As far as instability arising from the addition of new sources ... well, it is a wiki. The whole point is flexibility, adaptation. Tony (talk) 14:14, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

To give some guidance as to why this section may exist, there recently was a debate at Talk:Fox Broadcasting Company over the proper capitalization of Fox vs FOX, namely whether Fox's internal usage of the all-caps version should be used here, when most sources use the common English styled initial capital. This section of the MOS, in conjunction with the naming conventions, would help determine the proper usage, exactly the sort of thing the MOS is supposed to do. oknazevad (talk) 15:19, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Another guiding example, this one not involving proper names: there is currently a long discussion at Talk:Water fluoridation #More controversial edits recently installed whether the lead sentence should define fluoridation to be the "addition of fluoride" or "the addition of a chemical". Pertinent evidence being brought up in the discussion is the terminology used by reliable sources in their definitions of fluoridation. Choice of terms can greatly affect POV; and we should look to reliable sources for guidance on terminology to avoid imposing our own POV. Eubulides (talk) 18:32, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

This involves choice of terms in a field, I presume, whereas MoS deals with this only peripherally. That is why it's so odd to have this elevated to the status of a basic principle, right here at the top of MoS (and a recent addition, too). As well, it's a blow-by-blow process description ("if not X, do Y and do Z"), and is filled with repetitive fluff. If it's retained at the top at all, it needs to be tight and short:

In the choice of terms within an article, generally follow the usage of reliable secondary sources in English on the subject.

But I'd prefer this to be in the body of MoS. Tony (talk) 03:01, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Proposed tweaks to Template:Convert's default precision

See the discussion at Template talk:Convert#Some suggestions for changes to the default precision. --___A. di M. 21:02, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

MOSNUM needs to be merged into MoS

Michael Glass, thanks for picking that up and pasting in the more up-to-date version from MOSNUM's Units of measurement (see the section immediately above).

This, prompted by A. di M.'s good move in this direction the other day (well, except for the UK bit, in my view), highlights the absurdity of having two different pages, when MoS main, here, covers just about all of the scope of MOSNUM. There is insufficient difference in the two scopes of MoS main and MOSNUM to warrant the fragmentation of guidance, discussion and monitoring.

Our style guides are far too fragmentary, and it would go some way towards serving the project better to merge at least MOSNUM into this one. All of the main sections (except, oddly, Currencies, which is a pretty important one for general editors), are here.

Why don't we make things easier for ourselves? The highly specialised guidance in MOSNUM that is not here could easily be sequestered into either a separate subsection or—better IMO—an appendix, here. The merger should not add much text to MoS main (indeed, everything needs significant rationalisation on the micro-scale). Tony (talk) 10:52, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Michael Glass (talk) 11:04, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely. The whole point of MOS is to not have to look all over the place for a guideline, so let's just put them together. There's no reason to have separate pages with such a big overlap. Werson (talk) 04:14, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

I have a rather nasty feeling that there would prove to be a secondary or external reason to keep MOSNUM segregated (whatever the prima facie principal reasons for or against merger): so that bloodthirsty Talk-Page/edit wars like Date Autoformatting can be quarantined from the current ("timeless" or "innumerate") Manual of Style, and so that page protections for one page don't paralyze the other. Think what this talk page would have looked like if it had been merged with MOSNUM Talk at the floodtide of the Great Date-Autoformatting War. This may be a terrible and not very rational argument in principle, especially if it's arguing against greater convenience and transparency for Joe or Maria Averageditor, but unpleasant recent history has to be at least acknowledged. —— Shakescene (talk) 05:20, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, an overwhelming topic can always be given its own talk subpage. Werson (talk) 06:01, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

(1) Yes, it can. (2) I don't think we'll ever see another event like the date wars. (3) I don't mind if style guides are protected. (4) There are several options on the table, one of which is to retain only the specialist sections at MOSNUM, leaving the guidance more applicable to 95% of editors in MoS alone; this is probably the cleanest and simplest. Another is to retain it all at MOSNUM but to trasclude those non-specialist areas into MoS. Either way, keeping two separate sections on dates, on numbers, etc is crazy—they diverge naturally. Tony (talk) 08:51, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
I'd go with the latter option but replacing "transclude" with "summarize" (with the understanding that whenever a non-trivial change is made on the "master" section at MOSNUM, its summary at MOS main be updated to reflect the change). --___A. di M. 11:21, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

ADM, that has been the current situation since 2006, and although there was an "understanding" to update changes (why not have all changes updated automatically not just non-trivial changes?), it has been impossible to achieve, despite the overlapping of personnel at both talk pages. Who, I ask, will take responsibility for this high-maintenance task? There are four options, as far as I can see, all involving mutual wikilinks:

Option A—do nothing: allow the disparities to continue and grow unless someone volunteers to be a go-between, faithfully and promptly making the changes at MoS manually. This clearly does not work: we're all too busy, and it's a tiresome and, I believe, unnecessary chore.

Option B—transclude "general" sections to MoS, including the current MoS sections covered: (i) do a little re-organisation of a few sections in MOSNUM to sequester the highly specialist stuff from what general editors need to know, and (ii) transclude those "general" sections alone to MoS?.

Option C—smaller, specialist-only MOSNUM: give MoS the general sections, retaining only the specialist ones in MOSNUM (there are quite, quite enough for a style guide). No transclusion and no duplication.

Option D—delete MOSNUM: Move the part of MOSNUM (25%?) that is not covered at MoS into MoS and delete MOSNUM, with the general versus specialist sections all at MoS.

Talk-page issue: I am uneasy when editors ask questions about dates/numbers at MoS and MOSNUM editors are not around; on the other hand, the more specialised debates at MOSNUM do become incredibly long and involved at WT:MOSNUM, so Option D might be a disadvantage in that respect. Tony (talk) 12:53, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

The fact is that some sections contain both general and specialist aspects of the same issue; so, under option B) disentangling them so that only the more general parts of such aspects could be not-so-trivial to do; and under option C) it is weird that a page should only contain the details of some rule without mentioning the general one. --___A. di M. 13:20, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

I have no fear of long, involved MOSNUM discussions on the talk page. It's not as if we have limited space. We've already seen that people who don't consider a given topic to be their area of expertise don't have to participate.

My view on the matter is generally that things are easier to find if they're all on one big page rather than a lot of little pages, but not knowing exactly how specialized the "specialist" portions of MOSNUM are, I could go with either a full combination or a retention of the common material here and a small specialist page elsewhere. However, this last leaves us with the problem of people going to the small MOSNUM page and finding only specialized material, not realizing that the general material is elsewhere. I'd like to minimize page-jumping. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:40, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Re "that has been the current situation since 2006": Yes, it is a "summary" strictly speaking, but it is a summary which is more than one third the size of the original text. (MOSNUM and the transcluded protected page about dates together are 75 KB of wiki source code, whereas sections 10–14 of MOS are 27 KB.) A truly useful summary would be less than 25% of the original text (i.e. less than 19 KB in this case). Shorter summaries, as well as avoiding going into useless detail which doesn't matter to most editors, would also be much easier to maintain. --___A. di M. 18:59, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

I mentioned over at WT:MOSNUM that I thought we should probably put general guidance in WP:MOS, and put details in WP:MOSNUM. (I always wondered about the duplication, and would definitely support removing contradictions, and minimizing redundancy.)

I'm worried about a few things, though. Firstly, the talk pages. I think centralizing the discussion is a good idea, so we don't have WP:MOSNUM and WP:MOS doing their own things and diverging. We don't benefit from people with knowledge of writing style or math style being segregated in their own little MoSs.

But as a technical matter, I'm not sure what to do about long discussions edging out other conversations, or making the page too large. I appreciate Shakescene's concern, and I think Werson's suggestion of filtering discussions into subpages is a good idea, so long as we can make sure to keep the archive straight afterwards.

Another issue is related to the one A. di M. raises: how do we decide what's for general eyes, and what's too specific? After all, it's all intended to be binding, and different editors with different priorities will disagree on what merits inclusion in the basic MoS, and what is relegated to MOSNUM. We should try to think up a simple principle that articulates the resolution of this discussion, or else we'll be arguing for a long time about why some pet topic is isn't in the MoS.

Maybe the general test for inclusion in WP:MOS should be (something like) "simple stuff that gets used in nearly every article", while the specifics in WP:MOSNUM cover the rest. If we're especially crafty, we could try to open each MOSNUM topic with a short summary paragraph that gets transcluded from MOS to MOSNUM, and continue the rest of the explanation seamlessly thereafter—but if that's more of pipe dream, or a long-term objective, we could do reasonably well with a summary, like A. di M. said. I think that looks a lot like option B.

C might work too, but we'd have to be able to say with certainty that some things don't need to be considered by the average MoS reader, and can be safely relegated. I think that's less likely to work out than B.

One more issue to throw on the fire: I noticed that some of the folks at WP:VPP were getting a little annoyed at MOS and MOSNUM editors, because we were off doing our own thing while the rest of the community is busy adding article content, irrespective of what's happening here. It might be worth bringing a couple of them on board to get some fresh perspective on what editors need to see, and what editors can be counted upon to ignore, even if we it state it clearly here. TheFeds 06:32, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Sections and common content

A discussion on Further reading section use and templates over at the Lighthouses WikiProject is ongoing. As this projectspace page looks at when and how to use Further reading sections, while covering section management, participation from those active here would be welcome. Thank you. –Whitehorse1 21:27, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

BIt missing

I notice that this is missing:

Initial capitals are not used in the full name of an item just because capitals are used in the abbreviation.

Incorrect (not a name): We used Digital Scanning (DS) technology
Correct: We used digital scanning (DS) technology.

It was there in February, my spot-check, and had been there for years. I think it should go back in. Tony (talk) 03:53, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Now it's in the "Acronyms and abbreviations" section. --___A. di M. 09:08, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Linking units on first occurrence

Why, in a scientific topic, must "kilometre" always be linked on first occurence? Tony (talk) 09:18, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Because, if you do not give a conversion to miles, readers who don't know how long a kilometre is (and there are hundreds of millions of them) will have to look the conversion factor up. And converting all metric measures to US customary or imperial in a scientific article is as pointless as converting all yards to metres in articles about American football. (For everyday measures such as the kilometre, adding a footnote stating that "1 km ≈ 0.621 mi" would be a valid alternative, but for more technical units such as the pascal, I'd always link the unit rather than (or as well as) giving a conversion to pounds-force per squared inch.) --___A. di M. 09:28, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia (not a reliable source, I know) tells us that Use of the mile as a unit of measurement is largely confined to the United States and the United Kingdom where it remains customary. I believe that every Brit who is not mentally impaired and is between infancy and dotage is acquainted with kilometres, with the exception of those whose poor command of English (probably not their fault) or extreme sloth or bloody-minded incuriosity would anyway render them unlikely to want to read up on scientific subjects. As for the Youessians, they have land borders with two nations that use kilometres. My reading of Jonathan Kozol tells me that knowledge is distributed very unevenly across the US, but I'm surprised to hear that there are hundreds of millions who don't know what a kilometre is. Are you sure of this? -- Hoary (talk) 10:42, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm curious as to how a UK or US reader who has trouble imagining how long a km is would be assisted by kilometre, which opens:

The kilometre (American spelling: kilometer), symbol km is a unit of length in the metric system, equal to one thousand metres and is therefore exactly equal to the distance travelled by light in free space in 1⁄ 299,792.458 of a second.^[1]
It is the conventionally used measurement unit for expressing distances between geographical places in countries which use the metric system. While it is defined exactly as 1000 m, it equals roughly a ten minutes' walk [excuse the grammar].

Slang terms for kilometre include click (sometimes spelled klick or klik) and kay (or k).

Then it goes on about pronunciation.

Ten minutes' walk is the closest we get, but how far would a seven-year-old schoolgirl or an 80-year-old man who has consulted the scientific article walk in that time?

What I'm concerned about is the assumption that linking, and linking in every article, is regarded as useful per se. Tony (talk) 11:27, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Just look how bold I've been! What I wonder about is the location of these hundreds of millions of people who don't know what a kilometre is and yet want to read up on science. I've a hunch that Stephen Colbert could give a convincing explanation. -- Hoary (talk) 11:43, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Tweaked it further. (Can a native speaker of British English confirm my suspect that it uses the plural in "0.6214 miles"?) The assumption that linking in every article is regarded as useful per se is wrong, but the assumption that, when an article is bad, hiding it away by removing non-useless links to it is a valid solution isn't 100% correct, either... (BTW, in the case of "kilometre" I agree that the link isn't vital, but I think the piece of instruction we're discussing about is more intended to deal with such units as the joule, the pascal, the kelvin, and similar, when used in the discussion of experimental results; writing "It lies in a tunnel 27 kilometres (17 mi) in circumference" with a conversion and no links in the article about the LHC is perfectly reasonable, IMO.) --___A. di M. 15:02, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Question

I have a question about two of the image requirements, which I often see raised at FAC.

1. Avoid sandwiching text between two images that face each other.

2. Do not place left-aligned images directly below a subsection-level heading (=== or lower), as this sometimes disconnects the heading from the text that follows it.

I'm someone who likes to do both: I like sandwiching, and I often use left-aligned images directly under a subsection heading. I often use them when the image (if it's a person) on the left is looking directly at the image on the right, and vice versa. When the text in between is about some issue these people are having with each other, it means the article visually represents the text.

I've never seen left alignment under a subhead, or text sandwiching, cause a problem (unless there are other templates or quote formats in the way). Are there still solid reasons for having these requirements in the MoS? SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 12:49, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

I fully agree with Slim on the left alignment under a heading (why is a No. 2 heading OK but not a No. 3 heading, anyway?). I do have a problem with sandwiched text, although I concede that it might occasionally work thematically, and partly depends on the text size a reader's browser is set at, and indeed the image sizes forced by the editors or the default size for thumbnails chosen by a WPian. The trouble is that most editors are not aware of the need to be cautious when it comes to images placed horizontally adjacent—to try to make it work or to use alternative placements it it does not. Perhaps we might consider expressing the guideline in a way that cautions (e.g., "usually") but does not forbid. Tony (talk) 13:11, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Apparently there is an accessibility issue with putting left-aligned images under subsection headers. I'll ask at WT:ACCESS for clarification. Dabomb87 (talk) 13:31, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Cautioning without forbidding would be great. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 13:57, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

I think "sandwiching" would look real crappy when the images aren't very narrow and the browser window isn't very wide. Some users (e.g. of netbooks, smart phones, etc.) might have to read text in a column with a width of two or three words. But I think that it'd be more useful to just say something amounting to "when adding many images in the same section, narrow your browser window to about 800 pixels or so and make sure that the layout still doesn't look crappy that way", than to give a number of rules which, in absence of a rationale, sound like someone pulled them out of their ass.--___A. di M. 14:22, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

A, can you advise how to narrow the browser to 800 pixels i.e. how we would know when it was narrowed to that degree? Sorry if that's a stupid question. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 14:34, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

For example, you could open or create a picture of that width, and narrow the window to that it fits in the picture horizontally. --___A. di M. 14:44, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I see, thank you. :) SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 15:41, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

I have nothing to add to what I already said at this discussion. Also see Eubulides' comment there. I don't know how sandwiching of images would affect users, because I exclusively use a screen reader. Graham87 15:43, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Graham. To judge by the discussion you linked to, there seems to be no good reason to have this requirement in the MoS. I'm wondering if it's one of those things that has acquired a life of its own over the years, so everyone assumes there's something to it. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 15:46, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree that there doesn't seem to be any WP:ACCESSIBILITY reason for the requirement. I suspect (without really knowing) that it is an aesthetic preference, as some editors might object to a layout that looks like this (the Xs are an image):

          Subsection header                     [edit]
          XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX  The first sentence
          XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX  of the subsection
          XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX  starts here and then
          XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX  there's more text
          that eventually flows under the image.

because there's a wide visual gap between the subsection header and the first sentence. In contrast, a top-level section looks like this:

          Section header________________________[edit]
          XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX  The first sentence
          XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX  of the section
          XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX  starts here and then
          XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX  there's more text
          that eventually flows under the image.

and the horizontal line draws the eye from the section header to the first sentence. If my hypothesis is correct, this stylistic preference, while perhaps being a reasonable preference for the default skin, is to my mind too weak to be a guidance that should appear in the MoS.

In light of the above discussion, I propose that we delete the bullet 'Do not place left-aligned images directly below a subsection-level heading (=== or lower), as this sometimes disconnects the heading from the text that follows it. This can often be avoided by shifting left-aligned images down a paragraph or two.'
For the sandwiching suggestion, I propose removing 'Avoid sandwiching text between two images that face each other.', and capturing the more-general idea by prepending the sentence 'Images should be laid out so that they work well with browser windows as narrow as 800 pixels and as wide as 2000 pixels.' to the bullet 'See this tutorial for how to group images and avoid "stack-ups".'

Eubulides (talk)

I'd be fine with that. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 17:42, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

I support this change. Don't forget to update this on all style guidelines. Dabomb87 (talk) 00:42, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Images can work in very strange ways with section and subsection headers, so there might indeed be a reason, but I'd like to see it articulated somewhere. On the other hand, there can be a definite problem with right-aligned images and tables, because not only the information box, but various medallions hang down from the right (see, e.g. New York City mayoral election, 1917) and can push right-aligned images, maps and tables down in very awkward ways, besides threatening severe sandwiching problems with left-aligned images. Caught between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea or Scylla and Charybdis. —— Shakescene (talk) 05:43, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Has the guideline been changed yet? Could we have the new and the proposed texts here, first? Tony (talk) 12:08, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
I haven't changed it yet, to give time for discussion. The new and proposed texts are here; please see the two words "propose" earlier in this thread (which I've just now boldfaced). Eubulides (talk) 16:21, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

The proposal is to:

1. remove "Do not place left-aligned images directly below a subsection-level heading (=== or lower), as this sometimes disconnects the heading from the text that follows it. This can often be avoided by shifting left-aligned images down a paragraph or two."

I'm going to go ahead and do that, as there seems to be consensus, and:

2. remove "Avoid sandwiching text between two images that face each other," and replace it with, "Images should be laid out so that they work well with browser windows as narrow as 800 pixels and as wide as 2000 pixels." Then I didn't understand the next part of Eubulides proposal above, which was to prepend the above to the bullet "See this tutorial for how to group images and avoid 'stack-ups'." SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 15:59, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

I followed up in #Sandwiching text below. Eubulides (talk) 23:34, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Sandwiching text

Here's proposal 2 in more detail (inserted text, ~~deleted text~~):

Images should be inside the section they belong to (after the heading and after any links to other articles), and not above the heading.
~~Avoid sandwiching text between two images that face each other.~~
Use captions to explain the relevance of the image to the article (see Captions, below).
Images should be laid out so that they work well with browser windows as narrow as 800 pixels and as wide as 2000 pixels. See this tutorial for how to group images and avoid "stack-ups".

Eubulides (talk) 19:54, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

I welcome the removal of the left-facing bit, but don't understand how sandwiching works with image preferences. I have mine set as 300px (as any sane registered user surely does) and sandwiching of non-forced images always looks awful on my 1024 x 768 - you get 2 to 3 words per line. Or can I now go round saying anything I think doesn't "work well" on my screen is contrary to the MoS? It seems rather subjective. Johnbod (talk) 05:46, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm traveling and haven't been able to keep up with all of these discussions; when all is set, would someone summarize the changes to WT:FAC so reviewers will be aware? It escapes me why this (no left-aligned images under third-level headings) was part of WP:ACCESS for so long if it's not an accessibility issue, particularly since I worked so hard to make sure FAs complied with accessibility ... but ... it is what it is. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:00, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

On further thought, the proposed 800–2000px requirement may be too weird. We can't reasonably expect editors to test lots of browsers and window sizes. And the builtin parts of the Wikipedia skins handle 2000px windows so poorly that there's little point to trying to optimize for such display (a phrase involving "lipstick" and "pig" comes to mind ...). Eubulides (talk) 23:34, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Oppose. My old desktop is only 800px, and any sort of sandwiching looks terrible. Even on my wide laptop I don't like the look of sandwiched images at all. They should be staggered or limited. Sandwiching also looks bad on my iPhone. Saying 800 to 2000px is not always understood and is too specific when all sandwiching looks bad. Reywas92 ^Talk 00:18, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
Oppose. My general usage screen measures a health 1440px, with my screen generally around 1000-1200px wide, and sandwiching still looks bad. Image stacking and sandwiching just doesn't look great (neither does left aligned images breaking up section headings, either, in my opinion.) It basically adds visual clutter and decreases the image afforded to any one image, as a result they all mean a lot less. I think simply saying "Try to optimize image flow for a variety of screen resolutions" would be the best wording. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 00:47, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
Oppose per my comments 3 or so up, & D. Fuchs & Reywas. Johnbod (talk) 04:23, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
Qualified oppose Sandwiching generally looks bad even in a 1440px-wide window, because it cramps the text. Placing images side-by-side, e.g. in a table, is equally bad most of the time. In both cases the exception is that two small images may not cramp the text too much.
Re "Images should be inside the section they belong to (after the heading and after any links to other articles), and not above the heading", I agree with "not above the heading", but disagree with "after any links to other articles" - on wider windows, paragraphs are less tall, this makes image layout more difficult, and placing images alongside links to other articles may reduce gaps ({{clear}}) added at ends of sections to prevent images from overspilling into the next section.
"browser windows as narrow as 800 pixels and as wide as 2000 pixels" is totally unrealistic - I'm starting a new section on width below. --Philcha (talk) 06:03, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Concern over upright= method

This may be used as an alternative to the pixel method ("upright=1.5" as opposed to "270px"). In this case, it's 1.5 times whatever a logged-in user has preferenced for default image sizes (1.5 times 180px). I find this to be most unsatisfactory. Here's why:

Editors have somehow been encouraged not to pixel-size thumbnails up from the default, which in many cases is tiny at 180px.
Because many images are sized by this tiny default, some WPians choose a larger default (say, 300px).
In a circular pattern, if editors upsize their images using the multiplier method, 300px, for example, becomes a gigantic 450px for that logged-on user (but a more reasonable 270px for all othersand our readers, for whom the multiplier is based on 180px).
Yet a logged-on, preferenced user who has chosen a default of 300px for thumbnails might object if she sees an image forced to, say, 250px, which overrides their higher default setting.

I must say that I'd be happy to end the multiplier method and stick with resizing through the specification of actual pixels. This is by far the more common method: what we see is what we know our readers will see. Editors, IMO, should be encouraged to resize images gradually over the next few years using the px method. Tony (talk) 03:13, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

The absolute-pixel method has a real problem. Suppose a reader prefers large images and specifies 300px thumbnails. Suppose also that an editor wants the image to be somewhat larger than usual and specifies 200px to make it so. (This is a common scenario; it happens to me often.) Now, the reader and the editor both want the image to be larger than usual; but the result of their efforts is to make it smaller than usual for the reader: it is 200px rather than the default 300px.
On a high-resolution screen, 450px is not gigantic. It's fairly small. It's relatively common these days to have desktop screens that are 1920 pixels wide, and 450px is less than a quarter of the way across these screens. Many editors with big screens set default thumbnail size to be 300px because they don't like Wikipedia's tiny default size. Wikipedia articles should work well on these popular large displays. Absolute pixel widths generate articles that scale relatively poorly to these high-resolution monitors.
To some extent this problem has always been with us: after all, there have always been some readers with higher-resolution screens, and some with lower. But the problem is getting worse now, due to the divergence between desktops (where 2 megapixels is now quite common) and netbooks (where 600 kilopixels is fairly standard). It's likely that the variance between monitor sizes will get even greater in the future. Furthermore we should keep in mind the problems of visually-impaired (but not blind) readers, who have to deal with far fewer than 600 kilopixels effective. Wikipedia articles should aim to display well on the broad class of displays in current use; we should not attempt to retreat back to the circa-2000 world where specifying fixed-size images was good enough.
I'd rather not rely on a solution that requires editors to modify all the sizes of all the images by hand, each several times, over a period of several years. Aside from the fact that this scheme assumes an obsolescent world where monitor resolutions don't vary so much, there has got to be something better than that. (Just think of all those wasted editor hours! not to mention edit wars!)

Eubulides (talk) 04:05, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

The upright= method also has at least one real problem, that a)for several years editors have mostly been working with the other method, and b)I don't think the change was discussed nearly widely enough. I normally think I keep up with image discussions llike this, but this one I never saw - perhaps I was on holiday, like most of the rest of the world. The solution to the problem with pixel size, which at one point was the guideline, is to avoid fixing pixels below 300 in all normal circumstances. This worked as well as anything can, given the range of kit people use WP on. If the MOS stays as it is, how long will it be before all articles are changed over? In the meantime preferences have to be reset every time an article using the current policy is encountered (happily still very rarely). It is surely the new policy that will cause thousands of wasted editor hours. I think it should be debated more widely, & I would support reversing it. Johnbod (talk) 04:23, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

It is true that the px method has been around longer, and that it's easier to explain than |upright=. These are its main advantages.
The change was discussed extensively and gained consensus; I'd guess it consumed about 8,000 words and two weeks. It might help to read that thread to avoid overrehashing now.
"at one point was the guideline, is to avoid fixing pixels below 300 in all normal circumstances" That advice was amusing, as it dueled with Wikipedia:Layout, which until quite recently said the exact opposite, namely that images should never be resized above 300px. Given the obvious guideline confusion and lack of consensus about sizes of images in Wikipedia, I have become pretty wary of having guidelines recommending specific pixel sizes. Whatever particular limits are suggested are often quite wrong for real-world cases. I don't even particularly agree with the 500×400px limit currently in the manual of style (which disagrees with the 550px limit in the picture tutorial, but never mind....), and would favor removing all specific pixel limits.
"preferences have to be reset every time an article using the current policy is encountered" Can you please give an example of why preferences have to be reset with |upright=? What article has this problem, what preferences are needed to cause the problem, and what's the screen and browser-window size? In contrast, I can vouch for the fact that when I run Firefox in a window 1500 pixels wide, and tell it to use a 20-point font rather than the default 12-point, and tell Wikipedia to use 300px thumbnails rather than the default 180px (these are all reasonable settings for a mildly visually-impaired reader), the upright=-using sections of the picture tutorial look pretty good, whereas the px-using sections look absurdly out of whack: that fixed-size flag of Scotland looks like some Scotland-hater has been editing the page in an attempt to the flag look like a postage stamp with a pompously-oversized caption.

Eubulides (talk) 05:27, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

The only editor whose work I see who has implemented the new policy is User:Ealdgyth. Her Gregorian mission looked ridiculous to me after she had done so], and still looks pretty bad now after I protested & she adjusted. In an article with more images, like any art article, it would be just impossible. Also Gilbert Foliot and others of her FAs. I rather doubt the Layout guideline said "never" to go above 300px, though with these things changing all the time, who knows. There was a time when the guidelines said that fixing should generally not be below, and not much above, 300px, which was sensible, and worked. Re Tony below - I would be interested in a figure for those with size prefs set; I for one have set pic size but not date prefs. Judging from the number of comments and protests about overlapping etc pics that one gets, which must come from those either with tiny screens and/or big pref sizes set, I think the number must be way over 100. Looking at the thread you linked to, I cannot agree with your characteristization at all - in fact I see I commented myself, mostly favourably, right at the end, and just before going on holiday, but I had no idea the proposal would lead to A4 sized images I can't even fit on a single screen. The debate was very diffuse, involving I think fewer than 10 editors in total, and it is very hard to see who is agreeing with what. I know that is the MoS way of doing things, but I don't think it is enough for a change of this nature. I doubt most editors are aware of the change yet. Johnbod (talk) 16:16, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree that Gregorian mission's images are too large; this is true even in the default 180px resolution, and the problem becomes worse at a 300px default, even with font size grown to 20 point (a reasonable value for the mildly visually impaired). In centered images it's OK to use large values of |upright=, such as the |upright=2.2 used in Gregorian mission, but 2.2 is ordinarily too much for floating thumbnails. Perhaps it would help if we changed the "2.2" to a "1.4" in the MoS example? or adjusted some of the other text? Eubulides (talk) 16:51, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

At 180px they look fine to me, except perhaps for the last one, which is a bit big. There aren't very many of them. Some adjustment of the text would help, I'm sure, but the basic problem remains if you have large prefs, & it will be years before enough articles go over to the new way to make it worthwhile reducing preferences. And what happens if/when the default is increased from 180px? Every comment I see seems to support this, but it would mean any images adjusted to the new way would be likely to need resetting, surely? Frankly I don't think this has been thought through. Johnbod (talk) 18:03, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

They're too large even for the default reader. For example, currently File:Gregory I - Antiphonary of Hartker of Sankt Gallen.jpg is |upright=1.8, or 320px for the default reader. On a low-end monitor that the 180px default is designed for, pixels are about 0.3 mm apart, which makes the image currently about 9.6 cm wide. But the image is too simple to justify such a large size. If you take a look at how a good book does the same thing (say, page 194 of Spielvogel 2008, ISBN 049550288X, a lavishly illustrated large-format textbook, pretty much the extreme case for how big the image should be in a real encyclopedia), the image is only about 7.5 cm wide. To match Spielvogel on the default low-end monitor the image should be shrunk to at most |upright=1.4 (250px default), and I'd suggest even a bit less.
Regardless of whether one agrees with the previous bullet, there's a more general problem. An article with image sizes close to the limit of acceptability (and Gregorian mission clearly is that) is more likely to adversely affect users with unusual needs or preferences. Perhaps we should add something like that to the MoS advice?

Eubulides (talk) 18:36, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

(1) Eubulides, our readers come first, not the tiny fraction of WPians who set their thumbnail-size preference (I'd say about 100 active WPians, compared with tens of millions of readers every day). (2) There is nothing magical about 300px. (3) 450px may well crowd out the adjacent text. (4) Every image inserted into our articles needs thought as to size: how much detail, how important, how it impacts on text and surrounding images. This one-size-fits-all default needs to be discouraged, unless 180px just happens to be right in a particular situation; in my experience, that is very rare. Tony (talk) 06:04, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree with pretty much everything in the previous comment (except for the "100"; any way to find out what the number really is?). However, nothing in the comment argues for px or against |upright=; both are methods for avoiding the one-size-fits-all default, and the two methods are equivalent for the vast majority of online readers who don't log in or don't change their defaults. Eubulides (talk) 14:37, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Here's a wild idea: Can't we just bump up the default logged-out image value to at least 200px? I mean, it's been 180 as long as I can remember (since 2006ish?) and I'm sure we can justify increasing it slightly. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 14:47, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

David, that's an excellent idea, and would at least lessen the squint factor for our readers in all of the images that haven't been sized by editors (220 would be better, but it might be harder to convince nervous developers: worth a try, though). But it doesn't release us from the need to individually assess each image in this respect. I do it for every article I gnome. The waste, the waste, in popular music articles: I've seen remarkable free images that we can use without guilt, and they are so small they may as well not be there. Eubilides, there is a way of determining the number of preferenced users: we did it for date preferences and found a remarkably low proportion of currently active users who had preferenced date format. I can't recall who did it. I'll ask around. Tony (talk) 15:29, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, this keeps coming up & gaining support; it should really be pushed for. Johnbod (talk) 16:30, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Window / content width

An earlier sub-section proposed that layouts (incl images) shoudl work equally well in "browser windows as narrow as 800 pixels and as wide as 2000 pixels", which IMO is unrealistic. My widescreen LCD monitor is 1440px wide, while I ran my previous 17" CRT at 800px (it was as dim as my eyesight). At 1440px a text para / section is only about half as tall as at 800px, and this causes major problems with the height of images - often necessitating gaps ({{clear}}) added at ends of sections to prevent images from overspilling into the next section. Layout problems become even more difficult if we cater for 600px, as in some notebooks.

Here's a wild idea - reduce the max width of the content of WP pages, including the side menu, to 800px. Before you ROFL, try considering the advantages:

I've read several times that very long text lines are harder to read. My own experience is that widescreens are great for tabular apps (email, spreadsheets, IDEs) but no advantage for text-based apps (web, WP). I'll hunt down some refs if we get serious discussion about this idea.
Reducing the range of widths will facilitate layout of images, tables, etc. - leaving editors more time to focus on content.
Fewer ugly gaps ({{clear}}) added at ends of sections.

Fortunately there's an easy way for editors to set their browser windows to the right width to view how their content looks at 800px or lower. Use any old image editor (even MS Paint) to create an image of the required width, then use the brower's Restore function (in the control menu, click the browser's icon) to un-maximise the window, then drag it so it's the same width as the image width. Then you can scrap the image is it's just a ruler.

Those who find this too funny for words, please drop a few coins in my hat on the way out. --Philcha (talk) 06:23, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

It would certainly make it much easier to consistently format our articles, but I don't think this is ever going to happen :) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 14:47, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

It's not as wild an idea as it sounds. Very long text lines are hard to read; but it's not because of the pixels, it's because of the number of characters. If we could put into the stylesheets a mechanism whereby lines contain no more than (say) 90 characters, and text would be multicolumn in wider windows, that could be a win. It would mean that Wikipedia articles would be displayed multicolumn in very-wide browsers, but that would improve readability considerably there. See, for example, Ling & Schaik 2007 (doi:10.1016/j.displa.2007.04.003). Perhaps I should set up my hat besides yours? Eubulides (talk) 14:55, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

The 2-col idea is interesting. On my 1440px monitor the left menu looks about 160px. So, allowing for margins, that would leave 2 text cols of about 600px. Issues to be considered:

Window widths < 1440 but > 800. Ideally Javascript should detect widow width and switch between 2-col and 1-col, e.g. 2-col when maximised and 1-col when restored.
Would there be 1 set of cols for the whole article or one for each (sub-)section?
How to handle big graphs and tables in a 2-col layout of about 600pc per col. I've seen some panoramic photos, and in zoology and paleontology articles cladograms can be pretty wide. Assuming that the alignment of a File is output as a containing DIV tag with a float value in its style, in theory Javascript can change the float value from left / right to none if appropriate.This where we'd need input from WP's techies, in termso f the block structure of an article, the CSS, and browser comnpatibility - for example last time I looked (years ago) Opera was well behind the others in ability to manipulate CSS styles.

Of course this kind of trickery would not make layout any easier for editors. --Philcha (talk) 18:48, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

WP:ACCESS

I have been on various computers and readers that have problems with left aligned images under level three (or further) subheadings. It is not a preference concern but an actual concern about major errors that develop. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:31, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Can you please give an example? Which article is it, what browser and display settings were you using, and what did the result look like? If it wasn't the issue discussed (with a semi-graphical example) in #Question above, then what was it? Eubulides (talk) 20:12, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Standard table background colors

Many tables on Wikipedia contain repetitive, scalar kinds of information. Some people made templates for this task such as {{yes}} which usually transclude a cell background color and a default text. These are widely used as far as I can see. I’d like to pose the question whether the colors and sets shouldn’t be standardized more and then moved to MediaWiki:Common.css as much as possible. Please see also the collective Talk page. — Christoph Päper 17:16, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Left-side images under section headings—reversion?

I thought there was consensus above, but someone has just reverted the removal of this point:

Do not place left-aligned images directly below a subsection-level heading (=== or lower), as this sometimes disconnects the heading from the text that follows it. This can often be avoided by shifting left-aligned images down a paragraph or two.

It has been confirmed that there are no accessibility issues. Why can't it be removed? Tony (talk) 15:39, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't it look funky, though? - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 15:48, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Funky is good. :) SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 15:56, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Disconnecting the header from its text is not purely an accessibility issue, nor is it the only consideration. Personally, I find it looks horrible and unprofessional and makes an article more difficult to read, particularly on lower resolutions. I reverted the removal, however, as I did not see any good consensus for removing it, as the discussion above involved only a small number of editors who, from what I gathered, were not entirely sure why this was a guideline in the first place other than presuming it is an accessibility issue. Considering how long it has been a guideline, I think it more appropriate to have a larger discussion before just removing it. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 16:02, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Can you please give an example of where it looks horrible and unprofessional, in an actual Wikipedia article? (An old version of an article would be fine.) Certainly there was a consensus in #Question above, but of course we can always come up with a new consensus based on more-informed discussion. Eubulides (talk) 16:06, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

(ec) You don't object when images are placed on the left under a regular header (==), do you? That also disconnects the header from its text. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 16:07, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I do...images directly under any header should really be right aligned, however the wording currently only notes level 2 headers (why, I do not know) -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 16:38, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Time to advertise at VP and Centralized Discussion? Tony (talk) 16:48, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I think general discussion, possibly VP & centralised as Tony suggests. I don't like left-aligned images in most cases - they look like a more "artistic" layuot, but can cause difficulties in readability - indents lost on bullets and quotes; forces to look for the next line as it doesn't start at the normal location (x-coordinate). --Philcha (talk) 16:55, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

(ec) We could do that, though I think very few people would agree that all images under all headers must be right-aligned. I wonder if we should add a general caution about "one size fits all" in the images section. It might preempt a lot of these debates in future. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 16:58, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Throw it up on cent. Who knows what the hoi polloi reallly thinks. You can take off my entry on adding non-money ads to articles, if you want (it's mostly dead). - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 19:26, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

To the opposite, I can confirm that there is an accessibility issue. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:32, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Could you please describe that issue? I suggest putting the details in #WP:ACCESS above, to avoid duplication of threads. Thanks. Eubulides (talk) 20:12, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

It has been a while so I don't remember what page. It was just when the issue started about WP:ACCESS. I believe it was a blackberry or something similar. The image on the left caused the text to be broken up in a way I believe comes from the left alignment of text. All I remember is that words were cut in an odd manner mid-word or that the text was in a long gap from the heading. I am sure there are online readers that could be found. Ottava Rima (talk) 20:42, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

It'd be helpful to have a precise example that we can look at. For example, it's possible that there was a bug in the Blackberry software, which has since been fixed. Do you have a Blackberry now? Can you reproduce the problem, and describe what it looks like? Eubulides (talk) 20:58, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

My cell phone is 10 years old, so no. Anyway, I am sure there are people who use various readers that may be able to answer. Ottava Rima (talk) 21:57, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, I asked at WT:ACCESS and there seemed to be no indication that it might be a problem. Graham87 (talk · contribs), who uses a screen reader, said that he did not find any problems. See also User talk:Dabomb87/Archive 13#Postman's Park image placement. Dabomb87 (talk) 22:27, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

If it is going to be raised centrally, the "upright multiple" issue should also be raised. Personally, if there is no technical issue I strongly favour being able to use left-aligned images for right-facing pics and for variety. Johnbod (talk) 20:09, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I like the ability to use left-aligned images under sub-heads when the layout design within the article is clearly improved. Seems natural and logical especially if there isn't enough text to bury it two paragraphs down...Modernist (talk) 20:51, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that reading above anyone has brought this up, but the reason that the MoS only specifies level three subheads and below is because level two's have the horizontal line underneath them, therefor it's not as much of an issue for text breaks. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 12:03, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that matter was discussed in the thread that resulted in removing the requirement; see #Question above. I see now that the requirement was reinstalled with no comment here, which is unfortunate: there is certainly no consensus to reinstall it. Eubulides (talk) 15:17, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

625 instances in featured articles

In my sandbox I generated a list of all 625 instances I found in featured articles of left-aligned images under 2nd-level (or lower) headings. Most of them look just fine. Here are some examples:

Anarcho-capitalism #Nineteenth century individualist anarchism in the United States. I see no problems with this layout. There is no "breaking up" between the header and the text.
Charles Darwin #Descent of Man, sexual selection, and botany. No problem here either; there isn't any breakup.
Gregory of Nazianzus #Second Ecumenical Council and retirement to Arianzum. Nothing wrong here either.
History of evolutionary thought #Christian philosophy and the great chain of being. Likewise.
Rudolf Vrba #Broadcast of the report and the end of deportations. Likewise.
Uranium #Military. This is just under a top-level header, which supplies any visual cues needed.

Some instances do look bad, but they're in the minority and the badness is typically due to a combination of features, not simply due to left-aligned images under 2nd-level headers. Given that they're commonly used in high-quality articles, and (when properly used) don't seem to be causing any real problems, it is mystifying why the prohibition was reinstated without comment here, despite the earlier consensus to remove it. Eubulides (talk) 22:40, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

That's a very helpful list, thank you. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 22:46, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Could you speak more about when it is a problem? I know I've had problems with images on the left, but most look OK. I can't remember what was wrong with the ones that didn't work. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 02:33, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, given all the controversy over this I was pretty amazed to see that the vast majority of those 625 examples are OK. I did find some questionable ones, though. With a wide screen and a small font, the left-aligned image at the start of Gliding #Bungee launch obtrudes into the following top-level section, causing its header to appear to the right of the image; this problem is relatively minor. The serious problems I found almost all involved sandwiched text, e.g., Uranium#The effect of pH, West Wycombe Park #Ethos, Voting system #Rated voting methods; but sandwiched text is really a different problem. Eubulides (talk) 03:40, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I see. So it's a problem when sections are too small, or have too many images (barring some new info about screen readers or whatever). Then a rule probably isn't needed, and commons sense can be used on an individual basis. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 03:54, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's it. So I take it that it's OK with you to remove the unnecessary rule by undoing your recent change? Eubulides (talk) 19:43, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

So in other words we say to avoid breaking the alignment of headers and stacking images, proof the alignment on a variety of screen sizes if possible. Pretty simple. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 13:21, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

As a matter of longer-term strategy, is WP really going to try to serve miniaturised portable platforms as well as the standard monitor sizes on desktop and mobile computers? It seems that it will never be possible to please both, and that if someone wants to read a WP article on a relatively tiny mobile phone or Blackberry screen, it is they who should expect to make compromises, not those who user monitors on a scale that is more conducive to the display of text and images in an encyclopedic register. Tony (talk) 13:34, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
- Tiny matter screens such as Blackberries are typically fed via software that ignores all our size suggestions, so we shouldn't worry about them when specifying sizes. Netbooks are a different matter: size hints are generally obeyed on netbooks. Some of them are as narrow as 800px but generally they're 1024×600 or larger; these screens should be catered to. Eubulides (talk) 14:51, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
- Furthermore, you can have a 800-pixels-wide window in a 2048-pixels-wide screen, but not vice versa; therefore, a layout looking gawky in an 800-pixel window but fine in a 2048-pixel one is a more serious problem than one looking fine on 800 px and gawky on 2048 px. --___A. di M. 15:42, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
  - All the above implies we should just concentrate on being ok on screens of 800 & up (maybe we do already), for which a 180 default is unnecessarily small. Let's push on this. Johnbod (talk) 21:04, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Proposed addition to MOS:HEAD

Hey all, I'm dealing with a Mediation Cabal case where a user who is the primary contributor to an article flat-out refuses to have sections in the article, and its not just a simple WP:OWN case. So, I was looking through the policies and MOS for something saying articles should have sections, and to my surprise I couldn't find anything, despite the huge convention (All GAs and FAs have them, and pretty much anything above a Start class). There's such a vast precedent for it that its a de facto guideline, so I propose the following text to go at the top of MOS:HEAD:

Articles longer than a stub should be broken into sections by sub-topic for readability.

I think that with this line, we can formalize what has been the convention on Wikipedia for years. As with the rest of the MOS, there are exceptions, which is why this is a guideline and not a policy. The Wordsmith_{(formerly known as Firestorm)}^Communicate 03:30, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

The article is Eurymedon vase, I'm guessing. Firstly, the use of headers really cannot and should not be proscribed because, unlike dashes and non-breaking spaces, there's no hard-and-fast, mechanical rule that be applied here, nor is there an established rule as far as I know (although some WikiProjects have drawn up rough organizational guidelines for certain types of article, such as biographies). Articles' contents and structures vary widely by topic, and even within similar subjects (compare today's FA Economy of the Han Dynasty to Economy of the United States). A similar issue arose at WP:LEAD about the length of leads; some editors wanted to institute a character-count guideline for leads, which would be more burden than help for many of the same reasons here (compare writing a lead about a 7th-century monk about whom there is only infrequent mention in standard texts of the time to that of a technical, basic subject such as Fungus). While section headers are definitely necessary in most well-developed articles, they aren't always helpful—a barebones lead followed by a few sections consisting of no more than two or three sentences would IMO disrupt the flow more than organize the article for the reader's benefit. In a nutshell, this issue is better worked out through common sense and editorial consensus than by a rule in the Manual of Style. Dabomb87 (talk) 04:02, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Dabomb is right. Sections are a great idea most of the time. They keep articles neat and organized. However, we shouldn't explicitly require them in every case. Also, we might call them guidelines, but they're rules in practice. The idea that articles should have sections is treated as a guideline now. That, I think, is what we want. Ironically, it means we must not call it a guideline. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:32, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Just looking at Eurymedon vase, I think part of the problem of flow could be cured by writing a short lead that's different from the first paragraph, to let ignoramuses like me see the context faster, and why this is in fact an interesting subject. Then the table of contents wouldn't break up the flow of argument and exposition so badly (where the second paragraph refers to definitions in the first), and the body of the text could fall under some general second-order heading with less-obtrusive third-order subheads. But just like the length of articles and the number of paragraphs in a lede, the number of headings in an article should be guidance, which, as Darkfrog said, ironically means we can't call it a guideline. This, incidentally, tends to reinforce my desire to separate a short manual of more prescriptive and proscriptive rules (for things like ambiguity and accessibility) from general guidance and suggestions about style and common practice. —— Shakescene (talk) 04:47, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Articles should always have sections beyond stub class. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 05:37, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Adding section headers implies creating a lead; so I would tend to base any recommendation on WP:LEAD. A lead is supposed to introduce and summarize the article; so, ideally, the person adding the headers would also write a summary of the article for the lead, rather than just breaking an article into sections with no real lead. I can understand a certain reluctance to add a lead to an article if the whole article is shorter than the lead of a typical featured article, unless there is an obvious intent to create structure before adding more material. --Boson (talk) 10:47, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

If there's no section, then the lead is coterminous with the article; if it's too long for a lead, it should be split in sections. --___A. di M. 10:36, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree. That would constitute good article management. But do you feel that it would be best for this to be stated outright in the guideline? (I don't.) Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:22, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Maybe not in MoS, but perhaps somewhere in WP:Layout. --___A. di M. 12:31, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, good idea, ADM. And in WP:LEAD? Tony (talk) 13:55, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm opposed to mandatory sections. An article having three paragraphs, like Eurymedon vase does not lead headings. The first paragraph there is the WP:LEAD. Pcap ping 20:11, 21 September 2009 (UTC) By the way, if you are still considering this, someone thought sections were appropriate because ... the number of words in each was "meeting some recommendations on a help page. The contents of each section is obviously irrelevant as long the the number of words is meeting the specification. ROTFLMAO. Pcap ping 20:32, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Please do not misrepresent my position and present my comments out of context. My point there was as a direct answer to the incorrect assertion made by the opposing party that our argument was that 'style preferences should be settled by consensus rather than precedent', where he had already been explicit in defining 'precedent' in this matter as meaning his edits and preferred style, going so far as to say he had a right to veto any and all changes and that he would consider any edits he disagreed with as vandalism (and indeed went on to revert them as such). I was refering to pertinent information regarding guidelines for section size to show that there is indeed precedent that supported our position and also that one specific part of his argument, that the text of the article was inherrently not of sufficient length to warrant sections, was not supported by this information. This was not the basis, let alone the entire basis, of my argument in any event, but merely supporting evidence.Number36 (talk) 00:14, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

^ "Brochure, HTML version". Bureau International des Poids et Mesures. Retrieved 2009-06-22.

[1] "Brochure, HTML version". Bureau International des Poids et Mesures. Retrieved 2009-06-22.

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