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background-image?

Is there any way to add an uploaded image to the background?
I've read things about altering the CSS to make changes globally (I don't exactly know what the CSS is, if I'm allowed to change it, or what that would even do if i did) ... I merely want to alter a background on a page-only basis so that myself and other users can see it.

I know how to use the style "background:#XXX" to alter the color.

THIS WORKS NO PROBLEM!!

Is the style "background-image" disabled? Does it even exist? Robert M Johnson (talk) 21:34, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

You mean having a washed-out image behind the text? I find that distracting, frankly. I don't know if it would be best in an encyclopedia, though it can be artistic in other contexts. 24.187.189.117 (talk) 03:37, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I have no objection if editors want to use such a feature on their user pages, but don't think it's a good idea at all for articles and other namespaces (Help:, Talk:, Wikipedia:, etc.). I agree with 24.187.189.117 that it would be distracting, and can't think of a good reason why we would want to have background images on such pages. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 13:55, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

None of you have used a background image anywhere (on your computer, website, etc.)? Robert M Johnson (talk) 14:23, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I have an image on my desktop, but then my desktop isn't covered with text I'm trying to read. On what pages would you like to use a background image, and why? — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 15:31, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Just my user page, thus far. I'm a relatively new user, and I'm in the middle of creating my user page. I was going to have an extremely faded image of the Pyramid of the moon from Teotihuacan behind my userboxes, and several (opaque/translucent) tables. Certain images, yes, obviously inhibit a reader from clearly being able to read text. When dealing with opacities/transparencies, etc. a background image creates depth and art, not difficulty in coveying a message. For a user page or a talk page, I see no harm in adding a background. (The wikipedia, itself for example, has a background image. If you are logged in right now, the words my talk, my preferences, my watchlist, my contributions etc. are all text on a background.)Robert M Johnson (talk) 16:22, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

As I said, I have no objection at all to background images on user pages, but at this point remain unconvinced that they enhance other types of pages (including talk pages). I would want to hear a good reason why an image that is regarded as relevant to a page is not simply displayed in the usual way. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 17:24, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I have no reasoning behind using a background image on a wiki article (or non-user page). If you want to be convinced on background usage in its entirety, do not look to me. I'm merely inquiring on the matter in order to perhaps utilize a background on my user page. Since a clear answer to my question has not been posted... Would it be correct to assume this feature does indeed exist, but lies disabled due to the obvious number of persons objecting to it? Robert M Johnson (talk) 18:22, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

It is more likely that the option does not exist at all instead of it being disabled. Garion96 (talk) 18:55, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Robert, if your query is only about user pages, then this is probably not the right talk page to discuss your question. You might want to post a message at "Wikipedia talk:User page". — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 07:58, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Requested edit

{{editprotected}} Please add "Colons should never be followed by a hyphen or dash." to the section MOS:#Colons per the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#Use_of_an_archaic_printers_mark. Thanks, » Swpb^{τ • ¢} 14:43, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps the phrasing, "Do not place hyphens or dashes after colons" would be better. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:04, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Added. --Laser brain (talk) 16:56, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I'm pleased. I'd not thought of such a rule, but it's a definite improvement. Colon plus hyphen is a squashy little urchin that doesn't belong in the sophisticated formatting we now have available. Thanks, Lb. Tony (talk) 14:21, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

WP:BLAZON

We at WP:HV have created a guideline on a particular subject: WP:BLAZON. It's currently in "review" stage. Can anyone suggest a place here that might be suitable to mention it? (Or, if you have a familiarity with the subject, raise issues with it here). It does only cover italics, that sort of thing, so it's worth a mention somewhere, but I feel awkward editing straight such a well-held guideline as this. Any suggestions (or just do it, of course)? - Jarry1250 ^{[ humourous – discuss ]} 16:52, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Looking over the list I would put it as a new subsection Heraldic vocabulary between National varieties of English and Grammar. It may be appropriate to have that subsection point to the WP:BLAZON rather than go into too much detail. -- Evertype·✆ 17:14, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Blazon is actually a formalised system of specifying coats of arms, including the specialised vocabulary, but also including word order, qualifiers and other points of language. In some areas, it's extremely loose and in others very particular. Rough analogies might be found in computer programming code, pharmacology, architectural specifications and formal logic. So it's a little more than "heraldic vocabulary"; on the other hand, you want a title that doesn't baffle the lay reader. —— Shakescene (talk) 05:23, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Evertype and I are aware of the policy (having written it!) - it's just a case of showing it's not really what you say, but how you should say it. Like all the MoS it's about caps, italics etc. Maybe just "Heraldry" or "Blazon" (I reckon most people looking it up will know enough about what it is)? - Jarry1250 ^{[ humourous – discuss ]} 11:39, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I;ve stuck a "blazon" section in misc. It really should be moved, but my problem with Evertype's suggestion is that involves putting it in the Grammar section, which doesn't realyl cover it - this is more about "typesetting" sort of things. A coupl of small links need to be placed elsewhere, but the section needs to find a home first. - Jarry1250 ^{[ humourous – discuss ]} 19:11, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

My suggestion was to put it as a section of its own between National Varieties and Grammar, not within Grammar. -- Evertype·✆ 20:20, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I must have misunderstood. It goes like this:

• Grammar

• ...
• National varieties of English

• Consistency within articles
• ...

• Foreign terms

I don't see where you mean. - Jarry1250 ^{[ humourous – discuss ]} 20:33, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

A proposal

I'd like to know the regulars' opinions of changing Wikipedia policy pages from (disambiguation) format to /subpage format. Please read and respond here. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 02:19, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

To a general audience, (dismabiguation) notation should be more accessible than /subpage notation. To a computer-technical audience, it should still be no less accessible than /subpage notation. Pi zero (talk) 02:55, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

By accessible do you mean intuitive, or something like that? I would disagree. The (disambiguation) format for articles came well after the /subpage format. Originally topics were hierarchical, and the / signified that these articles were grouped together. When it was decided that WP shouldn't have this hierarchy, the original proposal was to disambiguate with a "-". I think certainly regulars are used to (this format), but anyone who has used a computer is used to folders, sub-directories, URLS, etc., all using "/". This symbol implies that the former page is the parent of the latter. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Abbreviations implies that Wikipedia:Manual of Style is the parent article, and that simply clipping the URL will get you there. The backlink at the top of the page created by the software proves it. Wikipedia:Manual of Style (abbreviations) does not clearly imply a parent page. It also de-emphasizes the unique title of that page, "abbreviations", by not giving it proper capitalization, and by containing in parenthesis like an afterthought.

If you mean accessible in the literal sense, all of these titles are at least two characters shorter, and provide clearer accessibility to the parent article through the backlink. If you still object to the idea, please comment further at the main discussion. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 03:45, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

While I agree that non-programmers (such as myself) would not have a hard time understanding what is meant by the "/" format, I find that the "()" format looks more professional and elegant. Unless there's a real problem that changing the format would solve, I say stick with what we've got. It wouldn't have to be a large problem, but it would have to be a real one. For now, I've got too agree with the "not broken, don't fix it" camp. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:07, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

I would first like to clarify that this is not about articles (which should never have subpages), but for the WP: namespace. It's not about a specific problem, it's about ease of use and clarity. In point-of-fact, many WP pages are hierarchical. The software is designed for this. Look at WP:AN and WP:AN/I. Look at WP:Reference desk and its own subpages. The software automatically creates a backlink to the parent page, and a clear relationship is established. Look at the wording of {{style}}. The MoS pages are subpages. I hope this doesn't read like I am disregarding your comment. Even if you feel that little is gained, surely it is more than any potential loss? Please read the full proposal and reasoning at the village pump and voice your concerns you still have at the discussion there. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 05:06, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

• To me this seems a solution in search of a problem - I don't see where there is an issue that justifies fiddling with the entire namespace. "ease of use and clarity" doesn't work - I think all Wikipedians have pretty much worked out how the namespace works and have no problem with using it. Ironholds (talk) 06:43, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
• I agree with the above opposition, and would also point out that "Manual of Style/Abbreviations" could just as easily mean it's a manual of both style and abbreviations, so it is not as unambiguous as suggested. Powers ^T 13:05, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
  • Frankly, I see no reason for the current usage to be changed. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 08:14, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Bumbety-bump

Someone has recently inserted a comma where it is entirely unnecessary, and in my view undesirable:

Arthur said that the situation was, "deplorable".

Occasionally, some authors do use a comma as an extra marker for the start of directly quoted text. Here, a single word does not seem to require this extra highlighting. Tony (talk) 07:58, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Exactly, the comma is often used (depending on the prevalent conventions) when "that" is omitted as in:

Arthur said, "The situation is deplorable." or
Arthur said, "the situation is deporable."

but, P.S. (ex post facto), this is trivial and hardly a noteworthy abuse of power when poor language is still so prevalent in some parts of Wikipedia that it's a genuine barrier to understanding.—— Shakescene (talk) 05:23, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I commented on this above - I think a comma is entirely unconventional in this context. Dcoetzee 08:07, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree entirely. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 08:13, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

But worse, User:Hyacinth, only recently promoted to adminship, is abusing his tools by overriding the "protect" to insert an undiscussed change. That fact that it's a bad change makes it plain weird. I am raising this at ANI in a few minutes' time. Tony (talk) 09:19, 8 July 2009 (UTC). PS I have asked, while visiting ANI, why the MOS is still protected. Tony (talk) 09:33, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

{{editprotected}} Please revert this. --NE2 12:23, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Please do. That comma isn't merely unnecessary and undesirable, it's (sorry to be blunt, but) ungrammatical. --Pi zero (talk) 13:54, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

 Done. But really guys, this isn't a big deal. lifebaka++ 16:55, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Another dash question ...

Was I correct to move Manistee and North-Eastern Railroad to Manistee and North–Eastern Railroad? --NE2 19:32, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

No, there should be a hyphen, not a dash between North and Eastern. This is not one of the instances where a dash is required "[a]s a substitute for some uses of and, to, or versus for marking a relationship involving independent elements in certain compound expressions". — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 19:39, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

To that end, would the same hold true for NE2's move of Metro-North Railroad to Metro–North Railroad? That one never sat well with me, as it isn't a case of the railroad's name meaning "metro and north", though it could possibly be interpreted that way. AFAIK, the term was coined in the late 1970s because it sounded good, and the MTA was considering renaming the New York City Subway to the 'New York Metro at the time. (I'm glad that didn't happen, no one would have used it anyway.)

(I'm not picking on NE2, btw. He's an excellent contributor to transportation-related articles. i just think he made a mistake here)oknazevad (talk) 23:47, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

"Metro-north" is a location, is it? If the compound term referred to "Metro to/towards north", yes, an en dash would be appropriate; but I think that meaning is unlikely to have been intended, since what goes north returns south. So ... hyphen. Jacklee is right on "north-eastern", which is a compound adjective; some folk join the words ("northeastern"). En dashes normally join two words (and usually both nouns) that are in opposition (blood–brain barrier) or where motion between them, or a range, is indicated London–Pretoria flight. Try my toffee-nosed nerdy exercises in hyphens and dashes. PS If your browser or font selection shows no difference in display mode ... it's time to change it! Tony (talk) 00:47, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

"Metro-North" (note capitalization) is the name of a commuter railroad company that serves the northern part of the New York City metropolitan area. The company uses a hyphen it its name. None of the guidelines permit an en-dash in this situation. Further, it may mess up searches, because people will type hyphens into search boxes; I don't know if (all?) search engines have code that treat hyphens and dashes as equivalent. Finell (Talk) 02:49, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Tony and Finell. If "Metro-North" is the name of a company and not, say, a location such that the name means "Metro to/towards the North", then a hyphen is correct and an en-dash incorrect. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 05:15, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. I reverted the move. I think the confusion may have arisen from the fact that the name could be interpreted as referring to the location of the service area (the city and northern suburbs), which influenced its original selection. But since it is, as noted, a proper noun, the proper hyphenated spelling should be used. oknazevad (talk) 07:45, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Good call, Oknazevad. Tony (talk) 07:47, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Aren't all of these proper nouns though? How can we know whether the St. Louis – San Francisco Railway used a fancy dash? --NE2 08:18, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't think the issue is whether the term is a proper noun or not. In the example you gave, an en-dash is correct because the term means "St. Louis to San Francisco Railway" or "railway between St. Louis and San Francisco". — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 08:49, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Interesting issue, the proper noun and the owner's usage. I've just discussed this with User:Noetica, who's kind of busy at the moment. He suggests that if the owner's usage is "wrong" in its choice of dash or hyphen—spaced or unspaced (or indeed no punctuation at all, with just a space or jammed together—that we consider whether the owner itself is consistent in such usage. If it is consistent, we should be more likely to use its version; however, if the owner is inconsistent, and perhaps if other references to the item on the Internet are inconsistent, we are freer to apply the WP MoS in this respect. I think this is worth considering as logical and not over-proprietary on our part. (Above, I used "wrong" in the sense of "it conflicts with the WP MoS, if I can be so bold.) What do people think? Tony (talk) 10:36, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

← That's essentially what I've recently asked at WT:MOSTM. If a clear majority of reliable secondary sources consistently write "CERN" in all-caps, "Paint It, Black" with a comma, and "Toshihide Maskawa" without a U in running text in English, so should we, even if that comma makes little sense. If several styles can be found in the sources with numbers in the same ballpark, we are free to choose whichever one of them pleases us most, but we shouldn't make up new styles (or, at the very least, not for proper names). --A. di M. (talk) 11:24, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Tony that it is possible for a copyright owner to punctuate his or her own term incorrectly. It's also possible for the public to do the same thing. Here is something that we could use for a rule of thumb: If it is reasonable to assume that the copyright owner/company/etc. made the error by mistake, then we should correct it. The distinction between hyphens and dashes isn't too well known publicly, so it's reasonable to use our best estimation of correct usage. However, in the case of widespread misspellings or disputed spellings, we should also use the most correct spelling from the most authoritative sources. In the case of a work of art, such as song titles, that would be the artists' original spelling and punctuation. (The song "Paint It Black" would be a special case requiring specific discussion because the artists themselves claim that the original punctuation was an error introduced by the record label.) Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:36, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to add another layer to song titles. In the cases of songs that are made out of non-pronounceable characters but are commonly pronounced as words, then we should consider each case by case. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:00, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Proper names are not subject to copyright. Sometimes they can be used or registered as a trademark. Indeed, trademarks are often spelled differently from similar generic terms; otherwise they might not be eligible for trademark registration (for example, if I cut lumber, I could never register the trademark "wood" for my product, but I might be able to register "Wud").

In the case of figuring out what kind of dash the owner of a tradmark or proper name prefers, the typesetting capabilities of the media being examined must be considered. If examining old telegrams, for example, one would have to realize that the Railroad Morse code didn't have any kind of dash character. --Jc3s5h (talk) 12:57, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Excellent point. It's not always a mistake; sometimes it's just necessary. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:00, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

An interesting and probably irrelevant story is that the Erie–Lackawanna Railroad had trouble with shipments because a dash/hyphen/whatever (it was probably all handwritten anyway) generally meant to route freight along the first railroad, then the second - and the EL was a consolidation of the Erie and the Lackawanna, so people at other railroads who didn't realize they had merged would think they had to route it to the Erie, even if that movement had gone to the Lackawanna pre-merger. --NE2 13:38, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Ack, why did I mention that? --NE2 20:37, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

If anyone mentions Концерт I'll... oh wait... --NE2 13:42, 9 July 2009 (UTC) The name used by a clear majority of reliable secondary sources in running text in English appears to be Kohuept, so that should be the title of the article, and that should be used in the text beyond the first sentence. But the article itself should start with "КОНЦЕРТ (transl. Kontsert, Russian for "concert"; /kɒnˈtsɛrt/), commonly referred to as Kohuept, is ...", much like the article Chuck Norris starts with "Carlos Ray "Chuck" Norris (born March 10, 1940) is ...". --A. di M. (talk) 20:26, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Top-of-article order suggestion

I suggest that point #1 of MOS:IMAGES be changed to the following order: 1) infobox; 2) vertical & collapsible navboxes & sidebars (see God game for an example); 3) image. I think that images are rarely as relevant to the lead sections of articles (and are therefore decorative) as they are to more specific sub-sections (see point #2 of MOS:IMAGES). I think that navigational/statistical information is better fit for lead sections. SharkD (talk) 03:59, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, another dash question

"Cen-Tex Rail Link" was short for Central Texas Rail Link. Which type of dash should be used? --NE2 17:35, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Hyphen, because Central Texas seems to be serving as a compound adjective in this case. --Laser brain (talk) 17:47, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I concur. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 18:11, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

A couple more dashes

Was I correct to move these to endashes?

1. Atlanta and Richmond Air–Line Railway
2. Auto–Train Corporation
3. Cincinnati and Chicago Air–Line Railroad
4. Indiana Hi–Rail Corporation
5. Michigan Air–Line Railway
6. Northern Electric Railway–Marysville and Colusa Branch

I'm pretty sure the Air-Line and Hi-Rail ones were wrong, but Auto-Train and the last one are murkier. --NE2 00:10, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

"Air–line railway" would mean "a railway from the air to the line". Definitely not what is meant ("air-line" being a compound here). "Hi–rail corporation" would make no sense at all (a corporation of highs and rails? what's that?). Nobody would use a dash in "high-speed", why should this be different? As for Auto–Train Corporation, if it meant "corporation of autos and trains" it'd be fine, but it doesn't. It is the corporation of Auto Train (a compound). In the last one the second clause specifies the first, as if it was "Northern Electric Railway: Marysville and Colusa Branch"; so it should be either a spaced en dash or an em dash. (All of these assume that there aren't non-standard usages common enough for WP:UCN to apply.) --A. di M. (talk) 00:28, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you (I think): hyphens on all but the last, spaced en-dash or unspaced em-dash on the last one. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:34, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. --Laser brain (talk) 00:36, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

COPY EDITING FROM MOSNUM

The version that was copied from MOSNUM was not from the latest version. I have corrected that. Now, whatever might be said for or against the policies, at least they are the same. I personally think that this section could be edited into simpler language. At the moment the policy is unnecessarily verbose. The same thing could be said more simply and directly. Michael Glass (talk) 01:23, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Formal name / ampersand question

Question - I've read over the bit about ampersand usage in articles and it makes sense, but I have a question (or else why would I even be here?) Drexel University's Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design uses an ampersand on their website in place of the "and" in the title. I would normally think that it's a formal name and change "and" to "&" but the university (as well as the college itself) seems to use & and "and" interchangeably on their websites. So I'm a bit confused as to which would be considered a formal name (if any) and whether or not the "and" should be changed to an ampersand? Thanks, --ImGz (t/c) 21:58, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Write "and." Use standard English. University webpages vary in formality. The "&" comes up more often in logos and graphic representations of the name, right? It's artistic license. Since Wikipedia articles are mostly body text, use the "and" that would occur in body text. WP:TRADEMARK Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:11, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I figured as much but wanted a second opinion since, at one point, I was getting more ghits with the ampersand than the "and". I'm not sure how I was getting that result now, it's just been a long day... --ImGz (t/c) 23:34, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

You might want to look at how the media writes it. There's probably not a specific naming convention here, but the railroad convention is to use "and". --NE2 02:58, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

But also see the discussion behind it, referring to still-earlier discussion, at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains/Manual of style#Erroneous use of "and". —— Shakescene (talk) 06:18, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Some suggested edits to the weights and measures section

I want to suggest some simplifications of wording to the weights and measures section. My idea here is to say the same thing more concisely. Here is a suggested draft:

When parts of the English-speaking world use different units for the same measurement, follow the "primary" unit with a conversion in parentheses. This is to enable readers from all over the world to understand the measurement: for example, the Mississippi River is 2,320 miles (3,734 km) long; the Murray River is 2,375 kilometres (1,476 mi) long. (See § Unit conversions below.)

Except in the cases mentioned below, put International System of Units (SI) units and non-SI units accepted for use with SI first.

• There are some exceptions for measurements such as years for long periods of time or the use of feet in describing the altitude of aircraft.
• With topics strongly associated with places, times or people, put the units most appropriate to them first. For example, 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").
• 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.
• 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. However, this may be varied when the name of the unit is the focus: 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.)
• Avoid ambiguous unit names (e.g., write imperial gallon or US gallon rather than gallon). Only in the rarest of instances should ambiguous units be used, such as in direct quotations, to preserve the accuracy of the quotation.
• In scientific articles, use the units employed in the current scientific literature on that topic. This will usually be SI, but not always; for example, natural units are often used in relativistic and quantum physics, and Hubble's constant should be quoted in its most common unit of (km/s)/Mpc rather than its SI unit of s⁻¹.
• Some disciplines use units not approved by the BIPM, or write them differently from BIPM-prescribed format. When a clear majority of the sources relevant to those disciplines use such units, articles should follow this (e.g., using cc in automotive articles and not cm³). Such non-standard units are always linked on first use.
• Use familiar rather than obscure units—do not write over the heads of the readership (e.g., a general-interest topic such as black holes would be best served by having mass expressed in solar masses, but it might be appropriate to use Planck units in an article on the mathematics of black hole evaporation).

Any comments or suggestions? Michael Glass (talk) 11:23, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

• First query: "There are some exceptions for measurements such as years for long periods of time or the use of feet in describing the altitude of aircraft." Years? Can you explain more? I'd rather like to have a metric equivalent of 30,000 feet (I can't conceive it easily otherwise). Don't they do this on passenger aircraft, for dummies like me? If so, WP should convert, I think. Tony (talk) 11:55, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

  You'd rather want to measure Obama's age in years than in gigaseconds, even if the year is neither a SI unit nor a unit accepted for use with the SI. As for aircraft height, there's nothing forbidding a conversion, it just says you should put feet first as it is the most widely internationally used unit for that. (Personally I'd rather use inches for the diagonal of television screens as the example, as it is something far more familiar to most readers; but Michael Glass has some objection with that which I can't understand.) --___A. di M. 12:40, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

My objection to the screen sizes is one of triviality. It really doesn't matter. However, it does matter if there is widespread use of feet in measuring altitude for aircraft. Actually, it may be better to omit all examples. Michael Glass (talk) 21:23, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

While lots of the points seem well-thought-out and well explained, the corpus of the proposal is too SI-centric, and doesn't give enough deference to common usages in a particular field. For example the nautical mile is much used in navigation, the micron (identical, of course to the micrometer, but a different name) in electrical engineering, and so on. Wikipedia is not an adjunct of the CGPM and should not give it any more deference than it is in fact given in practice. --Trovatore (talk) 22:39, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Another point: Any guideline should spell out that editors should avoid misleading precision, things like (to take an extreme obvious example) Johnson declared that he would walk a thousand miles (1609 km) to achive this goal. --Trovatore (talk) 22:44, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't believe that electrical engineers use the micron anymore, at least in writing. It might still be used in speech. --Jc3s5h (talk) 22:55, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Not true; it's used frequently. Do a Google Scholar search on "IEEE micron". --Trovatore (talk) 22:58, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

OK, "micron" is still used. However, "μm" is used a great deal too. And some of the "micron" references are to company names rather than the unit of measure. --Jc3s5h (talk) 23:09, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

New-look Manual of Style

A few weeks ago there was extensive discussion on FAC talk about the vast size, complexity and instability of the Manual of Style. On reviewing the text of the MoS, I agree that the Manual is much larger than necessary to cover the areas it does: about 20 thousand words. In particular:

• it is often wordy;
• it provides more examples than necessary;
• it lectures around some of its points in a way that is not strictly necessary;
• it is a little repetitive and disorganised.

As a service to featured-content nominators and reviewers, and editors at larger, I've created a new, user-friendly version of the MoS that is only 40% of the size of the full version. There are no intended changes in substantive meaning. The new version has the following features:

1. brevity and directness of language, including the default use of active voice and contractives;
2. new inline headings for every point, for ease of navigation;
3. the removal of highly specialised points about numbers and dates, which are treated by MOSNUM;
4. the removal of a few other sections that appear to be on the fringe, including Blason;
5. the addition of a Currency section, summarised from MOSNUM.
6. improvements in structural organisation;
7. the use of links by asterisk, to reduce clutter.

Any changes to the full MoS as reflected in the new version will be notified, at the start of each month. Your feedback is welcome on the talk page.Tony (talk) 02:49, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I find some of your shortened texts more confusing than their longer counterparts. Some of it presupposes knowledge of Wikipedia-specific terms and ideas, which is not ideal for a beginner's manual. Overall, it seems pretty good, though. My concern is that its only virtue seems to be that it's shorter. Wouldn't it still be intimidating for new users, even at its current size? Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:08, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Darkfrog, it would probably be most useful to Tony if you could delineate your specific issues on the Talk page set up for such. I think it is far less intimidating than the traditional page and sub-pages approach. --Andy Walsh (talk) 04:39, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Italics for shorthand names of book series?

Against the Giants. It's series of D&D books. Each has its own name, like Steading of the Hill Giant Chief. Each also has a "module code", like G1. The three G books were combined into one book called Against the Giants, with code G1-3 (or maybe G1–3). This happens with a lot of DnD books. Do I italicize the "G"? Would it be "G series", or G1, "G series", or what? There are a ton of article like this, and I'd like to do this correctly. Thanks. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 04:59, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Typographic-style punctuation marks

The issue of typographic quotation marks has come up a number of times on this talk, and I looked through the archives but didn't find much clarification... A while ago, I came upon an editor who prefers typographic punctuation marks such as ’, “, and ”. He did not take kindly to my recommendation of following wp:punct, or my later quoting of wp:style:

"The Arbitration Committee has ruled that editors should not change an article from one guideline-defined style to another without a substantial reason unrelated to mere choice of style, and that revert-warring over optional styles is unacceptable."

His exact response was: "You should learn to understand the difference between 'forbidden' and 'not recommended'. As long as “ and ” are not forbidden, I’ll continue to use them." And, indeed he has, including continuing to make edits solely to modify articles to utilize his preferred style. To what extent is the preference to avoid typographic-style punctuation marks enforced, if it is enforced at all? user:J aka justen (talk) 10:16, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

You are right and this other editor is wrong. Where is this? Tony (talk) 12:06, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Concur. If this were the difference between spaced en dashes and unspaced em dashes, then there would be no reason to change it; here, the MOS explicitly prefers one over the other, and IDONTLIKEIT is not a good reason to ignore the guideline. Dabomb87 (talk) 12:43, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Originally at Haiku (operating system). More recently at Akonadi, KDE 4, Arch Linux, and, I imagine, elsewhere. The "discussion" with the user, if you can call it that, took place here. user:J aka justen (talk) 13:17, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

You’re kidding, right? Mere two users decide how I should write my articles without even involving me? Yeah, right.... The “Insert” drop-down menu still includes typographic quotation marks, so they are obviously meant to be used. Neither of you two seems to be an admin. So on which authority do you think you have over me? Remove the quotation marks from the “Insert” drop-down menu and I shut up. As long as they are there, a real admin wants users to use them. --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 14:23, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

The three folks who have discussed the issue here didn't decide how you should write your articles; the countless editors who help develop the style guide determine what preferences should be applied across this project. The Arbitration Committee for this Wikipedia has decided, as well, that those style guidelines shouldn't be ignored by any one editor based on their own preferences. Features that are or are not enabled in the MediaWiki software, such as including the typographic marks in the insert section, do not trump consensus. user:J aka justen (talk) 14:57, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

KAMiKAZOW: You don't write your articles. You contribute to building an encyclopedia, subject to consensus and governed by policies and guidelines. See WP:OWN. —Finell (Talk) 15:53, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Two (or three) people are not a consensus (especially if you discuss matters about me over my head) and PUNCT clearly states “not recommended” as opposed to “forbidden”. If in the future a real democratic decision is made, I’ll happily follow it. I don’t follow a handful random people who try to impose their taste on other people.

MediWiki is FOSS. Some admin should remove the “Insert” drop-down menu if it opposes some alleged consensus. --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 14:36, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

The style guidelines were developed by consensus. The Arbitration Committee has indicated that ignoring that consensus based on your own preference is unacceptable. The three editors attempting to convince you of this here did not singularly develop that consensus, we're simply three people who are attempting to convey it to you at this point in time. user:J aka justen (talk) 15:09, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Changing punctuation back and forth is a Bad Thing™. I agree that curly quotes would be better, but policy is policy. I will continue to advocate for a change in the policy, but I will obey it in the meantime… —Wulf (talk) 05:20, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

A recommendation is still not a ban. Using `` and ´´ is banned. Using “ and ” is not. --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 15:33, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

"Custom" TOCs

Are there any guidelines on custom TOCs, like this [1]? I think they are a bad idea as breaking the automatic link between the article headings and the TOC means it's liable to stop working if someone changes the former without updating the latter. The Red Hat of Pat Ferrick ^t 11:16, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Such things should not be used. Articles that are sufficiently long should use the regular Mediawiki TOC and not the NOTOC keyword. The example provided has a TOC that looks exactly like an infobox. There are many benefits to having all articles use the same format for TOCs. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:20, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I posted a notice on the talk page of the editor who (re)added it. The Red Hat of Pat Ferrick ^t 11:24, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Just to be complete, here are some of the reasons I have in mind for using the standard TOC:

• Readers are used to looking in that place for the TOC, and so putting it somewhere else makes navigation slower. If every article puts the TOC in a different place, we have to start searching for them. This example makes the TOC look like a navigational template pointing to other articles.
• Having all the TOCs use the standard system allows us to format them all uniformly. If some TOCs use a different system, changes we make to the standard system will not be reflected in those TOCs
  • Moreover, we already have a system in which the various parts of the TOC can be styled by CSS and manipulated by scripts. Hand-made TOCs such as this [2] do not have the appropriate element IDs and CSS styles. We should not expect users to maintain these manually; the automatic TOC includes them without any user effort.
• Manually-created TOCs have to be updated every time the sections are changed, rearranged, or retitled. This is a maintenance problem because few editors expect that, when they retitle a section, they must also edit the TOC manually.

— Carl (CBM · talk) 11:49, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, the typographic standards for TOCs are pretty sucky on Wikipedia (To me, they are the 2nd most annoying thing next to the incredibly long lines [on >1024px-width screens], which negatively impact readability). The Macau article looks way better with the custom TOC. Having said that, there are indeed good maintainability reasons to use an auto-generated TOC. Is there a way to style the auto-generated TOC on a page independently of the global CSS settings? Pcap ping 12:37, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

It seems strange to make each page have a different TOC; really the appearance of the TOC should depend on the skin, not on the article. The solution would be to have an RFC to choose a design, saying how we want all tables of contents to look. If there were agreement on a redesign, then we could implement that in Mediawiki without much effort. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:42, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

We do have formatting templates like {{TOCright}} and custom TOC templates like {{AlphanumericTOC}}. But we shouldn't be creating anything that looks different, like in the Macau example. --NE2 16:04, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Most of the uses of TOCright in articles should be removed; unless there is a left-aligned image or similar, the TOC should just be in the default position. For pages in other namespaces, it makes less difference. Many of the uses are disambiguation pages, where there is particularly no reason to float the TOC anywhere. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:49, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Silently correct typos in quotes?

"Trivial spelling or typographical errors should be silently corrected (for example, correct ommission to omission, harasssment to harassment—unless the slip is textually important)." Why? Isn't that what [sic] is for? Dabomb87 (talk) 03:13, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

[sic] is only for misspellings in printed text written by the original author/speaker. If the quote is taken from a newspaper report of something that was originally spoken, then one presumes that it was the newspaper's writer/copyeditor/typesetter that made the error, not The original speaker that is being quoted. In such cases, it's usually appropriate to just fix the mistake, unless the point is to illustrate the mistake in the first place. oknazevad (talk) 03:33, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Might this be clarified in the MOS? Dabomb87 (talk) 03:51, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I'd be very wary of "correcting" any but the most blatent typos unless one is absolutely confident of one's command of the style of English being used. Meddling people are always "correcting" period quotes or UK English & have to be reverted. Johnbod (talk) 04:36, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I concur with Dabomb. The fact that this is only supposed to be used in cases in which the source can be expected to have misspelled another entity's spoken words should be spelled out. In this case, using [sic] would suggest that the speaker, not the newspaper etc., made the error. Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:28, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

i think that's why the guideline refers specifically to typographical errors (which can slip into quotes of written statements as well as spoken ones); but yeah: clarifying that [sic] is used to indicate errors made by the original writer/speaker is probably worthwhile. Sssoul (talk) 05:46, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

This may be quite irrelevant, but I think that [sic] doesn't always indicate error; it can show uncharacteristic words coming from an unexpected source or in an unusual context when the words are either intended or doubtful. "X said that the world will blow up in 3 seconds [sic] ", "Y has declared that our greatest enemy is strawberries [sic] " If those are the words X or Y said, then of course it would be wrong to correct them silently.—— Shakescene (talk) 06:58, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

The article about [sic] says that it can be used in writing "to indicate that an incorrect or unusual spelling, phrase, punctuation, and/or other preceding quoted material has been reproduced verbatim from the quoted original and is not a transcription error."

-- Wavelength (talk) 07:11, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

FWIW, I recently came across an important use of "sic" in a published article about the Manson family murders. They wrote "Healter Skelter" at one crime scene, inspired by the Beatles' song "Helter Skelter". That's a famous spelling error. It'd be a problem if readers thought it was a typo or if helpful editors "fixed" the quotation. But I agree that trivial erros should simply be corrected silently.   Will Beback  talk  07:54, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

"[Sic]" considered harmful

Let's leave the MoS alone. "[Sic]" should be used only when a typo (or other weird construct) is important. Using "[sic]" to mark unimportant typos is pedantry so distracting that it harms the encyclopedia. It's typically better to correct the typo silently. Suppose we had an article about Kosovo that said: 'The BBC reported that the Belgrade Agreement "was not acceptible [sic] since it allowed only for the autonomy of Kosovo within Serbia"' (citing http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/195006.stm). Aagh! Just fix the spelling and omit the "[sic]": the article's supposed to be about Kosovo, not about the BBC's low-quality copyediting, and the "[sic]" is distracting the reader from the goal. Eubulides (talk) 07:36, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Avoid [sic], per Eubulides. --Philcha (talk) 07:41, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Agree with Eubulides. It's standard practice in journalism quietly to fix quotations where there's been an irrelevant typo or grammatical error. To focus on it is not only distracting, it risks making the source look stupid, and it makes the writer who's added "sic" look as though he's mocking the source. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 07:44, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

What SlimVirgin said. Hesperian 07:49, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I didn't consider it harmful at all, I was just confused as to why MOS said that. Now I know :) Dabomb87 (talk) 12:47, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Isn't it better to put the corrected letters in brackets, like it was done here? Pcap ping 09:33, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps, but it's visually distracting. Looking at Eubulides's example, you would have 'The BBC reported that the Belgrade Agreement "was not accept[a]ble since it allowed only for the autonomy of Kosovo within Serbia"'. Dabomb87 (talk) 12:47, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

That particular edit is a bad example because it's not really a typo - the editor just changing the author's word choice to his own. Had it been a typo, I think silently correcting it would have been better. Christopher Parham (talk) 13:15, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. In American English "ensure" can also be spelt "insure". And it cannot be a typo, as the E and I keys are nowhere near each other on the keyboard. I'd "silently correct" only if I were sure beyond reasonable doubt that it's a typo; here, I'm sure "almost" beyond reasonable doubt that it isn't. --___A. di M. 13:22, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

• So here's an example where I think [sic] needs to remain: on Okami#Wii Version, there's a quote that includes the line "As we are NOT at that point in the process yet, we are loathe [sic] to even mention any potential changes or enhancements for fear of disappointing the fans/media." There have been arguments on the talk page on whether the word should be "loathe" (to hate) or "loath" (unwilling to do something), as both readings "work" for this, and does change the intent of the statement. I can't see this being assured this is a typo so this case I would think that [sic] needs to remain. --MASEM (t) 13:30, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

At User talk:Noetica#Complications with ly, Noetica has said:

Generally, I would add "[sic]" only:

• where the reader would otherwise be uncertain whether the peculiarity was original or introduced; and
• where the peculiarity is noteworthy in some relevant way, and is not signalled by any other means for the reader's attention.

and: "The best editing is like invisible mending. Ars est celare artem." -- Wavelength (talk) 15:22, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Per my example in the previous section, I think a third reason to use "sic" is if it was used by a secondary source for the quotation. If our source thought that "sic" was necessary and appropriate then we should retain it rather than making the correction ourselves.   Will Beback  talk  20:26, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Will Beback, according to my understanding, what Noetica said refers to two conditions conjunctively, as indicated by the word and. (The word or would indicate two conditions disjunctively.) In other words, if both conditions are met simultaneously, then Noetica would add "[sic]". The first condition in isolation is covered by the principle of correcting silently unless there is a reason to do otherwise. Therefore, Noetica mentioned one compound reason and the reason which you would add is a second reason.

-- Wavelength (talk) 22:09, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

• I agree with Slim. Tony (talk) 08:51, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Let's end the MoS/MOSNUM duplication

Here. Tony (talk) 08:50, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Addendum: Time magazine, linked to from the current Signpost, asks questions about what has stunted the growth of WPians. Inter alia, it says: "for your edits to stick, you've got to learn to cite the complex laws of Wikipedia ... The foundation has been working to address some of these issues; for example, it is improving the site's antiquated, often incomprehensible editing interface."

This resonates with the feeling among some editors here, including me, that the MoS main page is too wordy and not sufficiantly easy to navigate around, and that the entire MoS infrastructure needs to be gradually rationalised. I rest my case for creating the trim version of MoS main page and for advocating a saner relationship between MoS main and MOSNUM. Tony (talk) 13:07, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

It does not seem to me that "antiquated, often incomprehensible editing interface" has anything to do with the MoS or how long or short it is. I think they're talking about the edit screen. Is there anything in the rest of the article that makes you think they're talking about the MoS? Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:48, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

No, I am drawing the association. Tony (talk) 14:35, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

The article discusses in general how too many rules and bureaucrats are driving people away, or failing to encourage new people. So I agree with Tony. Anything that can be done to streamline, clarify, summarize, and encourage sensible application of the rules, is heading in the right direction. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 19:46, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Oh I can agree with that. It is very hard to get into the Wikibureaucracy. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:40, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

What if the main MOS page provided just enough information to cover what 90-99% of the editors that typically edit will see (when/how to use wiki-markup for bold and italics, how to use refs, etc.), and then break out the most specific guidelines like MOSNUM where only a fraction of the editors will detail with the specifics? --MASEM (t) 00:52, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

The trimmed version has chopped out 60% of the word length. Additionally, I suppose it could be reorganised to put what editors need first, sequestering the less-needed information until later. But it may not be easy to do that. Tony (talk) 00:55, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Masem, I don't think that's a good idea. This page might be big, but it's well-organized and easy to use. The rules are easier to find if they're all on one big page. When I was new to Wikipedia, I found it frustrating that I had to click through five and six and ten pages before I could find the information I needed.

That being said, Tony has come up with a shorter version of the MoS and I believe he's still taking comments on it. Care to add your voice? Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:37, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Summary done

I have finished my summary of sections 3 and 4 of WP:MOSNUM, intended to replace sections 10 and 11 of WP:MOS. It is found at User:A. di M./MOSNUM. If no-one objects in one week, I'm going to do the replacement. Meanwhile, feel free to tweak it, copy-editing it, adding important stuff which I left out, removing or trimming not-so-important stuff which I kept in, etc. --___A. di M. 22:54, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

It's a pity that so much work has gone into producing two shortened forms of the same sections simultaneously, as though they're in competition. What would have been much more useful is for the non-MoS parts of MOSNUM—that is, the specialist stuff—to be (1) properly defluffed; and (2) disentangled from the material that is covered here at MoS main page. That would be a prelude to cleaning out of MOSNUM all of the duplicated stuff here. Is it possible that we might collaborate on cleaning up MOSNUM? Tony (talk) 13:22, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

What concerns me most is that I think the current coverage of MoS main page in these areas should stay (in trimmed form), and MOSNUM should delete them. MOSNUM is best concentrating on the substantial part of its content that is for specialist use. Tony (talk) 00:58, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

This is to say that the "Numbers as figures or words" section of MOSNUM should only contain:

• Using figures at the start of sentence risks the period being read as a decimal point or abbreviation mark.
• Do not use Nineteen forty five and 1950 were important elections for the Labour Party, but rather The elections of 1945 and 1950 were important for the Labour Party.
• Do not use the seventh of January or twelve forty-five p.m. or Two thousand eight was the year that ....
• Historical references such as Fifth of November are treated as proper names.

• Decimal representations containing a decimal point are not spelled out (1.00, 3.14159).
• Numbers in mathematical formulae are never spelled out (3 < π < 22/7, not three < π < 22 sevenths).
• Do not use spelled-out numbers before symbols for units of measurement: write five minutes, 5 minutes, or 5 min, but not five min.
• Quasi-continuous quantities are normally stated in figures, even when the value is a small positive integer: 9 mm, The option price fell to 5 within three hours after the announcement.
• When expressing large approximate quantities, it is preferable to write them spelled out, or partly in figures and part as a spelled‑out named number; e.g., one hundred thousand troops may be preferable to 100,000 troops when the size of the force is not known exactly; write Japan has the world's tenth largest population, with about 128 million people (as it is just an approximation to a number likely to be anywhere between 127,500,000 and 128,500,000), but The movie grossed $28,106,731 on its opening day (the exact quantity).
• When both a figure and spelled-out named number are used in a quantity, it is useful to use a non-breaking space, as in 128 million or 128{{nbsp}}million to prevent a line break from occurring between them.
• Sometimes figures and words may carry different meanings, for example Every number except one implies that there is one exception (we don't know which), while Every number except 1 means that the specific number 1 is the exception.

That is, there are rationales and examples of rules which aren't stated because the rules themselves are at MOS; also, the general rule is not stated because it's at MOS but particular cases are. It means that someone trying to get all the rules of when to spell out numbers and when to use figures will have to jump back and forth between pages, or have two windows each with one page. That doesn't sound right to me. --___A. di M. 10:21, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, is this your version, the current MoS version or the current MOSNUM version? I have a number of micro-problems with it. Tony (talk) 10:58, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Internal consistency within the Wikipedia Manual of Style

The section on [and parentheses treats the term "brackets" as the preferred word for these symbols, not "parentheses". "These rules apply to both round brackets ( ( ) ), often called parentheses, and square brackets ( [ ] )." However, the section on [[3]] treats them in the opposite manner: "A pair of commas is often used for parenthetic material, and it interrupts the sentence less than parentheses (brackets) or dashes. Sometimes other punctuation can mask the need for a comma, especially the second in such a pair when parentheses are also used."Eric Kindig 00:53, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

This is similar to the discussion we had about whether to call them "full stops" or "periods." We're going to have to mention both terms in each section so that readers from all major varieties of English will understand. I feel no particular need to make sure that every section uses the same one first, but I have no objection either. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:30, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

However, many editors are not so quick to see everything in terms of engvar. I really don't want to see unnecessary clutter, and I don't care whether parentheses or brackets, period or full-stop are mainly used, although one conversion somewhere might be ok. One assumes that WP editors have some pre-existing exposure to these terms. Tony (talk) 08:22, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

If the Manual is for the guidance of an average non-literary editor writing about sports or politics or popular music or a difficult technical subject or the history and geography of a particular town, one might presume that he or she has probably seen such words as parentheses. bracket, full stop and period, but that doesn't mean that he or she has the same understanding of their meaning, or even know that others a continent away might put a very different and specific meaning to such words. For those who want Wikipedia to assume some disembodied "encyclopedic tone", varying the order of conversion would indicate an impartial detachment from any one place; for those who want Wikipedia to reflect the diversity of its human editors, varying the order would show that. —— Shakescene (talk) 08:49, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Needs to be minimised. Certainly not once per section. Tony (talk) 09:35, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

On the contrary, Tony, we must assume that users are not going to read the MoS from beginning to end but rather jump to the sections that they need. A high school graduate from the U.S. will have heard of "brackets" to mean {}, not (). Regardless of whether it's an American/British split, it is a split. We should mention both each time. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:04, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

• The more length and clutter you insist on, the more you will drive users to the trimmed down version of the MoS. Tony (talk) 14:33, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

I have no objection to that. Let editors gravitate to the MoS that they find more useful. Evidence in practice is better than theoretical arguments in this case. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:11, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Thoughts on MOS structure

In reading through the above discussions, I started thinking about what the scope of the MOS should be, and how it reflects and is reflected in the actual usage if English on en.wikipedia. What came to mind is that there's really three types of English used on this encyclopedia.

The first is what I'll call common usage, that is the sort of basic English language usage rules that is inherent in (almost) all articles simply because they are written in English. They turn up in, oh say, 85+% of all articles. New (concientious) editors would likely want to quickly, and in one sitting, familiarize themselves with wikipedia-standard usage before editing.

The second are what I call general usages. These sorts of usages may not be as common, but they aren't tied to a particular area of knowledge, and therefore could turn up in just about any article. They're the sort of more esoteric rules that show a strong, highly-literate grasp of the English language. While their usage would reflect well upon the project, the average editor might not be as familiar with them, and a guide that allows that editor a place to look up how to use them in the wiki-context would be beneficial.

The third are what I call special interest usages. These are strongly tied to a specific area of knowledge, and are likely only to be encountered in articles directly related to those areas (i.e., writting classifiction names on articles about indidivual species, heraldic blazons in an article about a coat-of-arms). Since these areas can get very precise and specific, a separate page for each is best, as it not only gives an editor a specific place to look, it prevents a long technical section from overwhelming a more general-intrest guide.

As there are three tiers of editor's usages, there should be a three-tiered structure to the MOS as a whole.

For implementing this structure, Tony's Beginner's Guide, still under construction, looks to be the sort of read-through-in-one-sitting-to-get-a-general-idea-of-wiki-usage guide that fulfills the needs of the first tier of editor usage.

The current MOS is the look-up-a-less-common-wiki-usage guide. The current MOS shouldn't be trimmed of the content in the Beginner's Guide, though, as it's use of more numerous, and often more subtle, examples provides the greater guidence that an editor in the second tier of usage is likely to find useful.

The current MOS subpages fall into the third tier, fulfilling the role they were originally intended for. The hardest part is making sure that what's on a subpage doesn't conflict with what's on the other two tiers, such as was recently discovered between MOS main and MOSNUM. Vigilance and cross MOS discussion will be necessary.

Thougts?oknazevad (talk) 17:31, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Would you give us an example of each of your three categories, Oknazevad? Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:05, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Italics, for example. That titles of long-form creative works should be in italics is first tier, while the italicization of non-anglicizied foriegn loan words is more second tier. Finally, the italicization of binomial classification (as opposed to common name) of a species of animal would fall into the third tier.

Of course, the borders are fuzzy. The binomial classification might turn up in an article on the geographic feature or person the species is named after, but that's relatively uncommon. oknazevad (talk) 18:58, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

"Of course, the borders are fuzzy." That is an understatement. Finell (Talk) 16:40, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it is, but I don't think it's an inaccurate assessment, as there's likely to be areas of overlap. oknazevad (talk) 02:29, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Section headings/article titles - avoid superfluous ending punctuation?

Should there be some statement discouraging the use of punctuation such as colons or full stops/periods as the last character of a heading? Or perhaps even generally applicable to article titles? For example, the h3 subheadings under Mutya Buena#History use colons after a date range (which seems appropriate, when further words follow) but the headings also terminate with colons (which seems superfluous and inappropriate, a practice that does not seem to be normal in WP). Appropriate exceptions could be quotations or punctuation that is integral to proper names. Dl2000 (talk) 01:11, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any relevant provision in the MoS, but colons or another punctuation at the end of article names and sections should almost never exist. If there isn't a statement in the MoS that's applicable to this, I think one should be added. Emw2012 (talk) 01:41, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Apparently non-controversial, therefore WP:MOS#Article titles is expanded accordingly. Some reasonable exceptions are noted such as to allow parentheses for disambiguation or periods for abbreviations. The general ideas to consider are that titles and headings are not formal sentences, nor do titles require ending punctuation for decoration or emphasis. Dl2000 (talk) 02:44, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics/Style guidance has been marked as part of the Manual of Style

Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics/Style guidance (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, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

OK, this raises the issue that came up earlier this summer with the MoS for French- and France-related articles. How do these fit in, and under what policy or procedure? There are (as I recall from my last count) around 100 pages in the MoS category, plus two dozen subpages of MoS like WP:MOSNUM and WP:ACCESS and nearly a hundred Naming Conventions. And why would "Anime and Manga" be subpages of MoS and this (at least at the moment) not?

By the way, if you look at the document, it is truly forbidding in the amount of detail it specifies in regard to a carefree children's diversion. Those of a certain age might remember Spin and Marty in the Mickey Mouse Club; one of them joked that the Triple R Ranch was named for "Riding, Roping and Reading old comic books." —— Shakescene (talk) 03:28, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Not only the French—there was yet another one more recent, and I can't recall the name. They're growing like Topsy. We need an RfC to establish a board at WikiProject MOS, charged with auditing these Johnny Come Latelies and accepting or rejecting them. Tony (talk) 03:41, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

More importantly, we need to step back and behold the entire structure as it now exists. I doubt that there are more than fifty people on the entire planet who've read all 73 Naming Conventions, 101 Style Guidelines, 90 Style Guidelines of WikiProjects and dozens of subpages and offshoots. How does it all fit together? How much is reasonable for us to expect people to know about, let alone read or master? What is essential? When is specialized guidance necessary or desirable? What (as Tony implies) are the purpose and minimum standards for a Project Guideline? And looking at the entire corpus of guidelines that appear to govern the first sentence you start typing into Wikipedia, is it any wonder that ordinary non-vandal readers are a little hesitant (even gun-shy) about offering more than a tiny tweak, an external link, a spelling correction or a revised date?

Who here has read all of the above (and remember they're the "Key" policies and guidelines, presumably the essential ones)? Who's read all the sub-pages and all the non-key (but presumably printworthy) guidelines and policies?

As for Tony's specific point, there is this (apparently not quite adequate) wording on the top of Category:Wikipedia style guidelines:

Category:Wikipedia style guidelines is a top style guide category for pages related to standards for design and writing of Wikipedia documents. A page may be considered a style guide if it is intended to help keep the formatting, grammar and style of Wikipedia's articles consistent.
Official guidelines that may be categorized outside of the Manual of Style may be categorized here automatically by using {{Subcat guideline|style guideline}} at the top of the page.
Please post a message at WT:Manual of Style if you add or are thinking of adding a page to this category. We encourage people to write style guidelines on new topics, but group efforts work best. For a short introduction on how to go from proposal to style guideline, see Category:Wikipedia proposals and Wikipedia:Manual of Style.

—— Shakescene (talk) 05:48, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, we urgently need to correct this; at the moment, a free-for-all do-as-you-please is encouraged. Can anyone imagine the creation of featured articles and lists along the same lines? I note that suddenly, without consensus, comic-related featured nominations have to obey this self-elevated guide line. We have to bite the professional bullet, and we owe it to all who have contributed to the MoS to straighten out the jungle these 60 or so pages have become: otherwise, the community may well regard it with suspicious or even contempt. Apart from this, the wording is woolly and partly irrelevant.

Something like the following change to the wording Shakescene has quoted above would immediately create a meaningful role for WP:MOSCO, a Wikiproject that was started with high intentions of cleaning up the MoS mess, but which has been a ghost town ever since. MOSCO's role may subsequently evolve towards the systematic review of style-guide quality, overlap and consistency—which we desperately need. But first things first. This change in the wording at the style-guide category would be a start:

Category:Wikipedia style guidelines is a top style guide category for pages that set out standards to promote consistency in the formatting and language style of Wikipedia's articles. Pages are accepted as part of the Manual of Style only if a proposed application for MoS status gains consensus at the WikiProject_Manual_of_Style.
MoS pages are categorized as such here automatically by using {{Subcat guideline|style guideline}} at the top of the page.

Please be aware that some editors at outlying pages of the MoS may be sensitive to the notion that MoS main page might be trying to take them over. That is why the neutral page, MOSCO, was created, and why it should be the focal point for coordinating the clean-up.

It may need an RfC, or perhaps we can simply put the proposal at the category talk page and (one hopes) gain consensus there. Advertising the proposal at VP, Centralized discussions, and on the talk pages of all current MoS pages (respectable and shady alike), would help to marshal awareness of this step towards sanity in the MoS community.

Your thoughts? Tony (talk) 13:59, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

User:Emperor added a header at 16:00, 10 December 2008. User:Hiding updated the header at 22:19, 25 September 2009.

Maybe this discussion should involve those editors. -- Wavelength (talk) 16:13, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) ¶ I think that we need to make a distinction between guidelines and naming conventions that came out of existing WikiProjects and an apparently-large number that arose from other places. In the former, such as the French/France-related guidelines, the Comic Book style guidelines (originally called "editorial guidance"), heraldic blazon, scientific nomenclature and Railroad Naming Conventions, there was (or should have been) at least some consensus among some of the editors of such articles about the need for regularization and convergence, and about the best ways to answer such a need. As Tony says, it's not only foolish for non-experts to trample ignorantly in such fields, but might be seen as disrespectful of the enthusiasts' work and of compromises that may only have been reached by careful work and difficult arguments.

¶ But what about all the other subpages and style guides? Abbreviations, capitalization (with which I often disagree strongly), external links, footnotes, dates & numbers, etc. Where did they come from? How was consensus reached? How do they equate with the specialized guides? (To repeat my earlier query: why is Anime & Manga an official MoS sub-page while Comic Books is not?) If the non-specialist guides are really part of the MoS, how much is reasonable and how much an unattainable degree of perfection that only a 'bot could presume to absorb (very imperfectly, of course, since 'bots can't read)? —— Shakescene (talk) 16:22, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

So the first hole to plug is that which allows unfettered self-promotion to MoS status from now on. If we can get that right, the way is open for MOSCO to systematically and probably rather gradually work its way through the more obvious, easier tasks of quality assessment, status, and rationalisation of those pages that have already slipped through. Tony (talk) 16:50, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

• "a carefree children's diversion". Cheers guys. I hope we can rise above that sort of debate. This debate looks to be more suited to you than me. The thing's tagged the way it is because that's teh way these things tend to get tagged as far as I can see. Whether these things should be tagged that way I don't know. As to consensus, yes, most all of the stuff in the comics guidance results from a rough consensus, and we're not really looking to tread on toes with the official or main or whatever we want to call it MoS. We certainly don't want edit wars and the like. What we really want to say is that, look, we've discussed this stuff before and we've found this is the best way of doing it. We'll be happy with the same sort of treatment as Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Style guide, Wikipedia:WikiProject Films/Style guidelines and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (anime- and manga-related articles). This discussion looks to be getting fragmented so let me know where you want to discuss it all. Hiding T 13:04, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
• Also, I think if you want to propose some sort of official system to mandate entry to the Manual of Style, you'll probably want to propose that first at the village pump or initiate an RFC, yes? Hiding T 13:09, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Cheers. None of this, so far as I can tell, is directed specifically at the Comics guidelines, and no one I hope is saying which is more weighty, profound or important to Wikipedia. Nor do I think that anyone's suggesting that the Comic Book project did anything improper or different from what countless other projects have done in following the current established procedures. We're just trying to look at the process and see where it leads. And I think those who are proposing any significant changes were certainly planning to put any proposals up for discussion on a far-wider base than just this page or WT:MOSCO, probably for starters at one of the Village Pumps and on the Centralized Discussion template. ¶ But yes, although I understand why editors see the need for guidelines, I did find the Comics Book guidelines rather forbidding (although well-organized and well-written) and a world away in tone from their fondly-remembered subject matter. A carefree children's diversion is what comic books should continue to be, and that's no insult. (The same, of course, applies to baseball, football, and a host of other pursuits. An English soccer manager is celebrated for saying that football isn't a life and death matter because it's far more important than that.) —— Shakescene (talk) 23:42, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Shankly's widely misquoted. To misquote Pasternak, art is not more important than life or death, it is life and death. Please don't dismiss an entire art form on the basis of nostalgia. I am not sure I am comfortable with so readily dismissing artistic achievement as being a carefree children's diversion. Although I apologise if you also view the mediums of film and literature as carefree children's diversions based on the output of Disney. It's a shame you find the page forbidding; we've tried to write the lead so that it is quite clear this is just how we tend to try and do stuff, and if something is different work out why before you change it. We also felt it was better to tie our many pages of guidance up into one, for better ease of use. Also, please note we're not the Comic Book project, we're the Comics project. Names are kind of important. And I've never understood the need for guidelines, so perhaps you could enlighten me. But that is all for another day, I feel. Like I said, this debate isn't really suited to me, it is suited to you. If you want to re-frame the debate to suit others, that's up to you, but I'm sure, as I said before, we'll be happy with the same sort of treatment as Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Style guide, Wikipedia:WikiProject Films/Style guidelines and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (anime- and manga-related articles). We can leave the art debate until we both agree with Tolstoy, that in order to correctly define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure and consider it as one of the conditions of human life... Hiding T 10:46, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Supplemental tag

Have you guys thought about making a supplemental tag, sort of like {{Supplement}}? Hiding T 11:24, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Recent change to image-size guidelines

Unfortunately there is now dissonance between the MoS and Wikipedia:Image_use_policy#Displayed_image_size. My resizing of a few tiny squidgy little images at London Heathrow Airport has been queried at its talk page on the basis of that policy, which remains unchanged despite our lengthy discussion here a few weeks ago. I have the mentioned the matter at that policy page, too. The policy says:

In articles, if you wish to have a photo beside the text, you should generally use the "thumb" (thumbnail) option available in the image markup. This results in a display 180 pixels wide (140 pixels if the "upright" option is used as well), except for those logged-in users who have set a different default in their user preferences. As a rule images should not be set to a fixed size (i.e. one that overrides this default), but see the Manual of Style for exceptions.

Tony (talk) 12:13, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

As for that particular article, none of the images (except the 1940s map and maybe the photos of terminals) contain such relevant detail as to justify giantification, also because many of them are facing each other. (The Greater London map can be modified so that "Heathrow" is written with 2× larger type, and then the thumb shrunk to half its size, so that it doesn't uselessly take up space but doesn't become hard to read, either.) But if we have two contradicting guidelines, either of them should be fixed. --___A. di M. 22:28, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Just as a comment, were we going to approach whomever would be the responsible party (after gaining consensus) to boost the default thumb size? In the meantime, yes, the Image Use Policy page should be adjusted to come to the same decision that "Thumb" should be encourage but by no means has to be default. --MASEM (t) 22:47, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

OK. But why should default thumbnail be "encouraged", I'm wondering. I thought the gist of the discussion here was that there's no rationale for favouring default, as opposed to editorial judgement for a larger (or smaller) size. Many of the pics (there are probably too many in total) are just too small on the display. I could argue in reverse and say: why don't we turn them all down to 140px? Take a look through. What is wrong with 200–260px as a norm (although I'm not suggesting this be written into a guideline). Tony (talk) 01:44, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I'd much prefer we keep thumbs, just because that allows user flexibility. We wouldn't have to force resize a lot of images if the default were 20-40px larger by default anyhow. Who do we have to talk to about changing that? (Aesthetically, different sized images just look poor anyhow.) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 02:01, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Even with a larger default size of 220px, editorial judgement should be encouraged to re-size some pics on the basis of their existing size, their level of detail, their quality and importance, and the surrounding text and pics. I've asked developer Tim Starling for advice on how to go about pushing for a larger default. Tony (talk) 14:32, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

En dashes in category names

Consensus was reached at WT:Categories for discussion that en dashes should be used in category names; there are subsequent reports of progress concerning the hard/soft redirect issue. Tony (talk) 14:27, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

RfC on banning YYYY-MM-DD in footnotes

Comments are requested on a new proposal at Wikipedia:Mosnum/proposal on YYYY-MM-DD numerical dates to prohibit the use of YYYY-MM-DD dates in footnotes. Eubulides (talk) 20:02, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

RfC about Red links in featured lists

Comments are appreciated at this RfC. Dabomb87 (talk) 23:33, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

An idea: markup for bad examples

How's this:

• Titles are generally nouns or noun phrases (Effects of the wild, not About the effects of the wild).

A template could be created specifically to mark up bad examples. --___A. di M. 00:32, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Looks good: accessibility issues? I suppose they couldn't be bolded as well, could they? On my monitor, which has sharp colours, the supposedly "dark"green colour is not very dark, and the green examples are thus slightly harder to read. The red is much clearer (almost too clear), but will not be distinguishable for the 8% of males who have red–green colour blindness. Tony (talk) 02:24, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

The colour can be tweaked; and I'm not proposing to use it as the sole way of distinguishing good examples from bad ones; as long as each bad example is explicitly marked as such as they are now, doing this is not going to make things worse for anybody. (They could be bolded, but then you mightn't use it for examples which do involve boldface; but anyway they're going to be rare.) I'm also thinking of adding underline to correct examples to better contrast with strike-through in bad examples, such as

• Titles are generally nouns or noun phrases (Effects of the wild, not About the effects of the wild).

What do you think? --___A. di M. 09:55, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

I think it's better than the current system. Would you like to mark up one section as a demo? My concern now is that the struck through text is more difficult to read. However, without underlining or striking through, the addition of the red to the green would look very similar to what colour-blind people see now; that is, it would be no worse. For 96% of readers, it would be better.Tony (talk) 11:01, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

I have no objection to the use of color in this way. It doesn't look as aesthetically pleasing, but it looks like it could do some good. We ought to go without the strikethrough, though. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:11, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

to me it would make no sense without the strikethrough - the red would make the examples of incorrectness more visible than the examples of correctness, and the colour-blind among us would see no difference at all. (as long as i'm here, i might as well note that i find the use of that other font for examples seriously unattractive; at the same time, that green isn't bright enough to distinguish it well from the surrounding text. so i'd be glad to see changes to the markup of good examples as well as bad examples.) Sssoul (talk) 12:44, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

They would have to be marked with "(Correct)" and "(Incorrect)" in addition to being differently colored, but the color might make a nice shorthand in addition to that. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:25, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I think we can consider the negative/positive context as satisfying the accessibility principle that colour alone should not provide the message. It does appear that people are not entirely satisfied with the green currently used. I must say that it looks to be of slightly lower resolution than the black on my monitor, although that may be an optical illusion. Pity there isn't a darker, sharper green; this is why I've bolded green-coloured text where I've used it in my tutorial exercises. Bold is probably too much here, though. Maybe a less dominating shade of red/brown might work for the negative. What is it now? Darkred?

In producing the trimmer version of the MoS, I was very pleased to have ADM's green template, despite its drawbacks. It avoids a forest of quotation marks or italics, both of which can create problems of formatting and logic. On the other hand, one has to be careful not to create a messy appearance on the page by using a font/colour/formatting that is too sharp or different. Torn between the two, we may be.

And the other quandary I remember when the green was developed ?last year was that whatever you come up with is likely to be dispalyed differently on the various monitors, browsers and platforms. Tony (talk) 14:39, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

You might consider using these symbols: ✓ (CHECK MARK), ✔ (HEAVY CHECK MARK), ✗ (BALLOT X), and ✘ (HEAVY BALLOT X).

Also, you might consider using white text on a black background to indicate incorrect usage.—Wavelength (talk) 14:57, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

That's a sexy idea, although I would use the particular shade of maroon found on the {{xt}} talk page. The new template could be located {{!xt}}. I say thumbs up with underlines and strikethroughs. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 15:00, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

An idea I had is to display the underline/strike-through with a brighter colour than the text itself, maybe like this:

• Titles are generally nouns or noun phrases (✔ Effects of the wild, not ✘ About the effects of the wild).

Unfortunately, then, the strike-through goes in front of the text, making it even harder to read. Does anyone know a workaround to show the text in front of the strike? --___A. di M. 15:48, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

BTW, I think that this would eliminate the need for Georgia typeface, so that we'd not have messy numbers due to "lower-case digits". --___A. di M. 15:50, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Here's a sandbox. Maybe the font colours might be made a tad darker, and the tick before correct examples could be removed, only keeping the cross before wrong ones. --___A. di M. 16:21, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

• I'm sorry: I just loathe the ticks and crosses aesthetically, both as one reads and as one looks synoptically at the page. Tony (talk) 16:16, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
  • The sandbox looks very overformatted and crowded. I need sunglasses. The idea at the top of this section seemed relatively simple, but has now ballooned. I say this knowing that ADM has put considerable work into the sandbox. Tony (talk) 16:45, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Just a personal observation, but to me, when text has been struckthrough it has been negated, so striking a statement that something is wrong, indicates that it is not wrong, because the statement itself is wrong... if that makes any sense. Before reading through this section, I assumed that the text in question was part of an initial proposal that had subsequently been discarded (and struck, as you often see on talk pages) as the discussion progressed. I would suggest that, as a reader of the guideline, this part of the MOS is quite clear as it currently stands, and there is potential here to confuse things. Cheers, Miremare 17:08, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Huh? I had this idea looking at my English grammar book, which also uses strike-through to show incorrect examples. It might look like we're negating that it's incorrect if the "not" were struck as well, but I don't think it can confuse anyone if it isn't... --___A. di M. 17:22, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

I couldn't say whether grammar books it in examples (but I bet there are plenty that don't too), I'm just saying how it appears to me as a reader. But regarding my second point, is there a reason that this needs to be changed from how it currently is? Miremare 23:24, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

• A. di M., I love what you are proposing and think there are many uses for it on Wikipedia. However, I hate that you propose to “change” an existing template. On my talk page, you wrote I've made a proposal to change the behaviour [of {{xt}} ].

  Once a template has been in use for a while, those editors who favor using it A) are typically quite pleased with exactly what they are using, and B) don’t want to see work that looks a certain way changed.

  That a template will be relatively stable is a reasonable expectation of template users. We often lock down our templates since doing so is a *pinky promise* to the community that editors will have stability in their articles. This practice encourages adoption and widespread use of templates. I think it is exceedingly bad form to make radical changes to templates that are already in use; doing so discourages the adoption of new templates. Now…

  If what you are proposing is an extension to the existing {xt} template, where additional pipes yield the results you are proposing, then that is fine; non-piped existing expressions of {xt} won’t be affected. However, if you are proposing to flat-change it’s behavior, then I strenuously object' to that way of achieving your ends.

  Again, I’m not sure exactly how you intended /now intend to implement this. However, I would suggest that the best way to get this out there for us to all try and begin using would be to create a new template, perhaps {{xtu}}. The current {xt} template, by virtue of the fact that it changes only the face and color of text, is, IMO, the perfect technique in a MOS where style advise for using “quotes”, italics, 'bolding, and underlining of text. What you propose is somewhat of a Swiss Army knife that is really a different animal and should properly be a separate template for us to use, not a “change” to an existing template.

  Frankly, since it would be a different (new) template, why don’t you just go ahead and make it? There can’t possibly any harm in your doing so. We can all give it a whirl and even try it in those sections of MOS and MOSNUM where it would be most appropriate. Greg L (talk) 17:45, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm... Yeah, making another template rather than changing the existing one would be a better idea. --___A. di M. 18:03, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

OK, I've created {{xtu}} and {{!xt}}. --___A. di M. 18:12, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Before we go ahead with anything, be advised that the MoS advises against using red and green together because people with red-green color blindness can't see the difference. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:56, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

As long as we don't rely on colour to show the difference, that's not a problem. Colour-blind readers will be able to tell incorrect examples from correct ones just like they do now. --___A. di M. 18:03, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

• Indeed, that’s OK. Darkfrog24, A. di M. is correct. Color is only assistive here for normal-sighted individuals. The thing to remember is that color alone—particularly red and green—must not be used to convey an important distinction, like “this is good” but “this is bad” or “GOOD/BAD”. This is prohibited under Wikipedia policy and it is never wise to do so. I remember a hydrogen sensor that used a dual-color LED, red and green, to denote “OK” and “leaking hydrogen”. Talk about “stupid.” The test lab’s director actually had red/green color blindness and he’d come to me and ask me to stare at the ceiling and tell him which sensor had triggered.

  A. di M.’s use of color is perfectly fine because the strike through and the big “X” (v.s. underlined and a checkmark) provides all the clues any of us would require, even if we had a old Classic Mac with a black & white screen. Color simply provides yet another quick clue for normal-sighted individuals to quickly distinguish “OK” and “Not OK.” This is similar to the chemistry wash bottles found in wet labs: the isopropanol wash bottle has a blue top, ethanol = orange top, methanol = green top, acetone = red top. There is a big difference between acetone and methanol (red/green). If one is color blind, you read the wording on the bottle. If you have normal color vision, you have both indicators, where color is the quicker one. To this day, whenever I think of “acetone”, I think “red.” It’s the same for cylinders of compressed hydrogen; they come in red cylinders. Oxygen (big difference) cylinders are green. Of course, both are labeled with their contents too. Color is simply assistive; same here. Greg L (talk) 18:11, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

• And even without check marks or underlines, “Effects of the wild, not About the effects of the wild” would not be any worse than “Effects of the wild, not About the effects of the wild” for colour-blind readers, and it'd be better for non-colour-blind ones. --___A. di M. 18:20, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

• Good point. Back to the razor-sharp logical basics, I see. Greg L (talk) 18:28, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

• Let me try this: Write I have been properly trained in the discipline of technical writing. and not I ain’t been learned good English. (looking at it in Preview here…)

  Can you make it so the underlining and strike through doesn’t apply to both the checkmark and the X? It would also be nice if they both left a plain space after the checkmark and X before the example text starts. Greg L (talk) 18:36, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

I do not feel that the strikethrough is a good idea. It makes things harder to read. Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:12, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Is this maybe just a solution in search of a problem? Are there vast numbers of editors who can't comprehend the current "correct" and "incorrect" indicators throughout the style guide? I don't find the current format difficult to understand or read; am I alone on that? The green, red, symbols, all just seem to make things more difficult to read (especially so, I fear, for those of our editors with visual impairments). I respect the enthusiasm, but I don't see the net return on investment, unless I'm just missing it entirely? user:J aka justen (talk) 19:50, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

• I agree about the strikethru; it’s hard to read. Sometimes it’s quite important to scrutinize and read precisely what it is one is not supposed to do. Without the attendant change in typeface to Georgia, I’m not sure how one would setoff example text; that is, without resorting to italic text or “Putting ‘quoted’ text” in quotes, both of which screw up example text when our advise is about quoting text that itself contains quotations or is concerning italicizing. In my mind, simply writing…

“ Editors should write subsections as nouns, such as Hydro dams and not About hydro dams. ”

…is clear enough. While I see some potential with some of these design element concepts, it’s just not falling into place for me so far. Frankly, the big red s and nice green checkmarks seems to be a trick taken from the “…For Dummies” books, where they might have an icon of a policeman blowing his whistle and holding his baton in the air placed inside a sidebar containing cautionary advise. While sorta nice, I’m not seeing the need here if it compromises being able to read something. Greg L (talk) 20:46, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, maybe you all are right. Doing all of that clutters the page. Re. "is there any problem right now": No, but I have seen strike-through used to mark incorrect examples in a grammar book and thought it was a good idea. (That book uses black text and a grey strike, so I attempted to have darker text than the strike in ✘!xt; unfortunately the strike goes in front of the text, making it even less legible. Does anyone know any way of having the text in front of the strike?) --___A. di M. 09:38, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

BTW, now I've redirected {{xtu}} to {{xt}}, and made {{!xt}} identical to {{xt}} except for the colour and the cross at the beginning. Now the sandbox looks like this. --___A. di M. 09:45, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

I think it should stay as it is for the moment. The green template is a significant improvement on what we had before; let's not ruin it with clutter. Tony (talk) 13:19, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

I actually came here to suggest using red for the wrong examples, only to find this thread in progress. I would suggest visually distinguishing the wrong examples may have three benefits not considered above:

(1) It may aid parsing slightly. Compare

• Suffixes, articles and commas. Don't use ordinal suffixes or articles, or put a comma between month and year: 14 February, not 14th February or the 14th of February; October 1976, not October, 1976 or October of 1976.

with

• Suffixes, articles and commas. Don't use ordinal suffixes or articles, or put a comma between month and year: 14 February, not 14th February or the 14th of February; October 1976, not October, 1976 or October of 1976.

This example comes from Tony's condensed MoS, but I think what I'm trying to illustrate is generally true. I found the first example slightly difficult to parse on first read; one must rely on the little dot in the semi-colon to make sense of it all. The colour makes things ever-so-slightly clearer, and a little easier for the reader.

(2) A reader can tell at a glance which example is correct. Consider an experienced editor who's momentarily forgotten whether to put a comma after the month in October 1976. In the second example, this editor can quickly scan the paragraph for the examples she is looking for and can tell immediately which is correct; she need not even read the surrounding text. This is improved usability.

(3) It makes the wrong example look wrong. Part of the way we learn to spell correctly is that incorrect spellings look unfamiliar. That's why it's a bad learn-to-spell program that displays misspelt words and asks the pupil to correct them – it jeopardises the unfamiliar look of incorrect spellings. Obviously we can't avoid showing examples of incorrect formatting, but I suspect colouring those examples red would inhibit the wrong formatting from acquiring familiarity to MoS readers.

On the specifics, I oppose using strike-through: what works in a printed manual doesn't necessarily work on a screen, and I don't think the increased difficulty of reading could be justified, even with a lighter-coloured strike appearing behind the text. I strongly oppose the check boxes. What I see is empty square boxes in Internet Explorer, and square boxes cryptically containing "2 7 1 7" in Firefox. I'm on Windows XP, IE 7 and Firefox 3.0.13, so I'm not out of date and I'm sure other users would have the same problem. But regardless, the check boxes seem to me to be unnecessary clutter. A simple colour change seems to have all the benefits without any increase in clutter.

Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 14:33, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

I've removed the cross from Example text, too; now the only difference between them is the colour and the name of the class. Does anyone disagree that "the addition of the red to the green would look very similar to what colour-blind people see now; that is, it would be no worse[; f]or 96% of readers, it would be better"? (BTW, here's the sandbox.) ___A. di M. 15:16, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Proposal to use a separate manual of style for featured articles

See [4]. Dabomb87 (talk) 12:31, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Formal RfC on increasing the default size for thumbnail images

It's here, with initial discussion in the section above it. This may have implications for the advice in MoS's image section. Tony (talk) 08:01, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

# in British English

I haven't found any discussion of this so far on American and British English differences or Wikipedia:Manual of Style so wanted to bring up this topic.

At Number sign#Usage in the UK and Talk:Number sign#Use_in_UK.3F we've determined that there's aren't any reliable sources for the use of # as "number" in British English. While investigating this, we found a number of Wikipedia pages to do with British musicians that refer to "reaching #1 in the UK album charts" etc. Should these be replaced by "No. 1" and a note made in the Manual of Style? The only source we've found says # is used very rarely in British English [5] but the # usage does seem very common on Wikipedia even though we can't find a relaible source

Examples are:

• Calvin Harris
• McFly
• Leon Jackson

Alexd (talk) 21:17, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, really I wouldn't mind if we deprecated this usage for all articles, regardless of dialect. It strikes me as insufficiently formal for an encyclopedia. I say this as a speaker of American English who certainly has no trouble interpreting the number sign.

Not sure about the No. usage either. Maybe write out number, or else reword. --Trovatore (talk) 21:21, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

I didn't understand "#" when I came over to the States in 1961 at age 11. I can't see it being appropriate (outside quotations) in the body text, but there might be tables where compression might make its use expeditious, although in that case there should be some explanation for non-Americans. I can't see much use for "No." in body text either (unless it's in a quotation or part of a name such as Chanel No. 5), but there are places where it's the clearest and most efficient notation in tables, Info Boxes, etc. And remember that widespread though "No." is, many readers are non-English-speakers who sometimes would use a different abbreviation (that would confuse Anglophones), such as "Nr." —— Shakescene (talk) 05:29, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Regardless of whether "#" or "No." would be too informal, I concur that ENGVAR would apply here. Use the encyclopedic term most common and appropriate in British English. Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:32, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

I've looked at the addition. Thank the blessed lord we can now get rid of those hedgehog #s that litter popular music articles. The appropriate WikiProjects need to be informed. However, I'm not sure I like "number 1" without the "N", I guess because I'm not used to it. It is standard? Also, I'm unsure that "No. 1" should be outlawed from running prose.

Another issue is that I think we should allow the abbreviated forms in tables and infoboxes (not the very informal № 1, but at least No. 1 and #1). Tony (talk) 12:05, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

If "#" could cause confusion, then there's really no need to keep it, as "No." is widely enough recognized in most forms of English as to be suitable for all.

I also don't think we need to get rid of "No." from running text, though, as it is an abrreviation most similar to "Mr." or "Ms.", which are rarely spelled out, even in formal writing.

And as a note to Shakescene, I don't think we need to worry about what abbreviations are used by speakers of other languages, as this is the English Wikipedia. I understand not wanting to confuse non-native speakers who might be used to other abbreviations, but I don't believe it unreasonable to expect someone to learn the standard abbreviations as part of learning the language.oknazevad (talk) 19:21, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. We should not deliberately make things difficult for non-native English speakers, but using ordinary English abbreviations does not constitute making things difficult. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:14, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

• I've amended the guidance to allow No. based on the above discussion. Now, can you guys work out if, since we can't use #, we should use number or issue when discussing comics and magazines? And should the terms be capitalised or not? Hiding T 13:46, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

• Actually, I think we can resolve the issue and number problem looking at a number of featured articles, issue seems to be fine, issue number can work, and I doubt there's a problem with issue No., so we're good. Hiding T 13:57, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

I speak British English and this is all news to me. As Hiding knows this is in heavy use by the Comics Project (we may be the biggest users of # on Wikipedia) and finding an alternative and changing over to it is a big deal (nearly all the comics-related articles will need changing) and I am not yet convinced of the argument for getting rid of it - the usage should be pretty obvious from the context, although perhaps it might be an idea to change this when in the main body of the text: "Sockman appeared in Sockdrawer issue number 1" but allow it for footnotes and infoboxes (as I imagine there is a problem with "No." as it is also an abbreviation). Is there not a way round this like using {{#}} which provides a tool tip saying "issue number" and/or plugging into personal preferences? (Emperor (talk) 14:31, 30 September 2009 (UTC))

I do not believe it's a matter of English variety. When I first came across # in WP, it took me a little while to get used to it. I think it's pretty ugly. The changeover doesn't need to be immediate. I believe moves are afoot to use a bot. Tony (talk) 15:24, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

My recollection is that the origin of the difference (No. vs. #) goes back to the keys on U.S. vs UK models of typewriters and teletype machines, used by news wire services until they moved to internet transmission. On those keyboards the U.S. models had # at the place where the UK models had the £ symbol. (On those keyboards, and on the Murray Code paper tapes they used, each key was overloaded with different symbols in "Numbers" and "Letters" modes with reserved modesetting symbols by thoses names used to put the receiver into the desired mode.) For usage other than direct quotes and where space permits, spelling out "Number" or "Issue" is clearly the practice that follows WP:ENGVAR. In very dense tables we should follow the local variant if there is one. Editors could also choose the option of entirely omitting the prefix where it does not introduce confusion.LeadSongDog come howl 16:49, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

As Emperor notes above, I think it's likely at WikiProject Comics that the consensus will initially be to use # only for notes and tables and so on. Maybe once we work out what to do with article text, we'll work out a solution that works for when brevity is better. I don't think any of us dispute that an article crammed full of "#" looks ugly. Actually, that might not be true, we may have the odd user who pointedly thinks different, but I never like to speak with certitude anyway. Hopefully we can avoid the sort of drama date formatting caused, because I think at heart most all of us are reasonable people here. I'm not one overly bothered by style issues, in the sense that I'll happily bow to the passing wind, even if I occasionally gripe about that wind. Certainly I can see why the style manual wants to avoid usage of "#", and we'll certainly look to avoid it wherever we can. Hiding T 11:23, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

• I don't think # should be used in general contexts, but in articles on some specialized topics, such as comics & popular music, where it has become well established on both sides of the Atlantic, it should be allowed. Johnbod (talk) 12:27, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
  • I agree. # seems to be in common use in those contexts. Powers ^T 13:20, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
    • I think it's standard for comics, and their isn't a better relacement. No opinion on other types of articles. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 16:54, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm British (and middle aged), and I'm probably responsible for adding "#1" in some of the articles on British musicians. As far as I'm concerned, it is now a widely understood symbol in the UK for "number", and the abbreviation "No.", while still used, is becoming increasingly old-fashioned. In any case, there are many more American readers of WP than British; and many more uses of "#" generally here than "No." There are benefits in consistency, and obviously no consensus that the use of "#" is inappropriate, at least in music articles and I suspect more generally. As far as I'm concerned it's a non-issue. Ghmyrtle (talk) 17:47, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Amongst

Despite the repeated reverts, I'd like to see a reference that amongst is "not widely accepted" as this MOS claims. Do not point me to List of English words with disputed usage. It's not covered there. As I pointed out it my initial edit, all that article says is that between is disputed when used instead of among/amongst, not that amongst is disputed, as this MOS claims. If anything, between should be mentioned in the MOS when used to mean among/amongst. Pcap ping 06:59, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, here's what the 3rd edition of Fowler's says about it. First, in Burchfield's collections among is about ten times as common as amongst. Second, "There is no demonstrable difference of sense or function between the two, and the distribution is puzzling except that amongst seems to be somewhat less common in AmE than in BrE." Given this, I don't see why the MoS should prohibit amongst; it is less common than among but I see no sense in which it is "not widely accepted". Certainly amongst/among is in a different category from whilst/while, as whilst is not used in American English whereas amongst is. Eubulides (talk) 07:41, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

I only noticed that section of the MoS today because of the reverting. I think it should be removed. I often use whilst, amongst, overly (overly should be avoided?), and in writing I would sometimes use thusly. I take the point about "straining for formality" suggesting an insecure grasp of English, but that's when the words are over-used or used inappropriately; if we were to advise against using all the words Wikipedians use wrongly when they think they're being formal, we'd decimate the vocabulary. But these words, like the rest of the language, are fine when used correctly. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 07:56, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Thanks for finding that detailed discussion. In the mainstream dictionary links given in List of English words with disputed usage amongst is given as variation of among, but with no discussion as to its use or acceptance (the only discussion was the disputed use of between instead of among/amongst). So, I assumed amongst itself is not disputed (contrary to what our MOS says). It looks like your reference confirms that in more explicit terms, even though among is more common. Since the MOS couldn't possibly give all examples in the "List of..." article, and that amongst isn't even disputed there, I think it's a really bad example to give in the MOS. Pcap ping 08:02, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

While, but not whilst, we're on the subject of forbidden words, apparently the MoS also doesn't allow the use of "didn't". I've had someone arrive at an FA candidate of mine to remove several instances of it because, it seems, the MoS says no. And not only remove it, but replace it throughout with "did not," leaving the sentences awkward and clunky. The people writing the MoS ought to bear in mind that there are lots of editors out there who hang on its every word, and indeed on its every forbidden word, so that what starts life as a helpful tip is interpreted as an unalterable and unquestioned fact about the universe that must be applied rigidly to all texts without exception or mercy.

If there is indeed a section advising against "didn't," does anyone mind if I remove it? SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 08:06, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

I think contractions in general should be avoided. Encyclopedic writing is just about the highest register that exists; informality that would be perfectly acceptable in an academic journal or textbook (I was just noticing yesterday that Kunen's well-regarded set theory text has a section called How free are we to monkey with the powers of regular cardinals?) is jarring here.

My American ear reacts violently to amongst, and while I personally have no objection to overly, I'm perfectly willing to let it go if the A-word goes as well. --Trovatore (talk) 08:12, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

This should be about published canons of English, not some personal preferences of the few editors that watch this page. I suspect you'd object to British spelling like colour etc. But, that's explicitly allowed in this MOS. Pcap ping 08:20, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't particularly like the colour spelling, but I can live with it just fine. Amongst on the other hand is really really jarring, sort of ultra-British, completely out of bounds on this side of the pond. I would be OK with it in articles on strongly British topics, I suppose, but not in ones that just happen to use British spelling because it's established in that article. After all, among is just fine in British English as well. --Trovatore (talk) 08:51, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Philip Roth uses it, arguably America's greatest living writer. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 08:58, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

And so did Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain. [6], [7]. Granted, they're amongst the dead. Pcap ping 09:11, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) re "I think [this section] should be removed": would it be useful simply to provide the links so that people who get into disputes over these terms know where to look? maybe the section title needs changing as well – WP:Words to avoid isn't really "contested vocabulary", at least not in the same sense as List of English words with disputed usage. Sssoul (talk) 08:18, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Our MoS has to take into account that the people applying it are not professional editors. If I'm writing for a magazine with a style guide that doesn't like "didn't," and my article has several of them, one of two things will happen: either my note in the text to leave "didn't" will be respected, or the editor will rewrite the sentences to remove it. But he will rewrite them. He won't simply plonk in a "did not" wherever there was a "didn't."

Because our MoS is applied by people who aren't editors, we can't invariably afford the luxury of having rigid rules as other style guides do, because we can guess that they won't be applied well. We are therefore far better not getting into issues such as when it's appropriate to use contractions, because it sometimes is, and it sometimes isn't, and the only way to tell, really, is to develop a feel for it. And even then, people will disagree. But this "highest register" thing is a recipe for precisely the kind of writing that was mentioned earlier, the "straining for formality" that suggests an insecure grasp of English. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 08:42, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, the right solution there is not to take the MoS that seriously, which by a happy coincidence is my opinion already. I'll take your word for it that there are situations (other than, obviously, direct quotes) where someone might defensibly use a contraction in WP; I can't think of any, but then I can't think of everything. But in the range of those things the MoS can usefully do, I think pointing out that contractions are at least usually a bad idea, is clearly among the things it should do. --Trovatore (talk) 08:59, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that it seems to be impossible to get people to apply the MoS with common sense. Either it's ignored entirely, or it's applied rigidly—and the people who ignore it entirely tend to do so because they've had a run-in with its rigidity. Given that this is a long-term problem, and is getting worse, it has to be addressed at the guideline level, and the only way to do that is to withhold the ammunition. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 09:03, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

But that contractions should be avoided, at least in most cases, is one of the best pieces of advice the MoS gives. That's precisely the sort of thing it should do. If you take that out, then what shouldn't we take out on the sort of grounds you're discussing? --Trovatore (talk) 09:15, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

I would take out anything that suggests there's a recipe for good writing. There are times when "didn't" and "amongst" are absolutely wrong, and there are times when they're the only words that fit. I would make that sort of thing clear. And I would strengthen the prohibition on going around changing from one style to another, or removing forbidden words, just because the MoS has expressed a view. A less intrusive MoS would be a more respected one. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 10:46, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Now, I really can't imagine a case where amongst is "the only word that fits". Can you please give an example? --Trovatore (talk) 19:57, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

• Whether MoS says so or not, my view is that "amongst" and "whilst" (and many occurrences of "upon") should be discouraged by copy-editors: these forms have become distinctly old-fashioned, have a rather formal ring about them, and go against what seems (to me) a general rule of thumb that if it adds no meaning, don't use it (like most occurrences of "in order to"). Tony (talk) 13:27, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Instead of banning this word or that word, we should advise against "straining for formality." That would allow editors to handle these matters on a case-by-case basis. In the case of "amongst," it's certainly not going to confuse anyone. Sometimes it's awkward and sometimes it's not. While it is more common in British English than American English, it's not incorrect in either one, so this isn't as clear-cut as other ENGVAR issues.

With regard to the fact that not everyone working on Wikipedia has professional-quality editing skills, however, I do not think that we should codify this in the MoS. Of course not everyone contributing to Wikipedia will do so on a professional level, but the whole idea is that then other editors who are more skilled can go in and polish up what they have added. So no, the MoS should not explicitly permit inappropriate styles solely because not everyone knows about them.

I would love to deal with the "people don't treat it like a guideline" issue, but that deserves a separate section and a new conversation. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:00, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

I too am not in love with this these usually unnecessary formalized variations of common English words, but I don't think the MoS should ban them. However, whenever I review an article for a content-review process, I almost always recommend that the words are changed to their simpler forms. Dabomb87 (talk) 23:34, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Since this topic has been seriously side-tracked by the discussion in the subsection below, let me try to summarize the main positions:

1. no real-world evidence has been provided that amongst is "not widely accepted" (personal opinions notwithstanding)
2. some editors still feel amongst should be forbidden because it's excessively formal

If (2) has consensus, can someone at least edit the guideline and provide a non-misleading reason for banning amongst? Pcap ping 18:09, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

It's not "excessively formal". It's agressively British. Since among works in British too, amongst should be avoided. Yes, this is a personal opinion, but it's one I happen to be right about. --Trovatore (talk) 18:16, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Are you seriously proposing we write "don't use because it's aggressively British" in the MOS? Pcap ping 18:23, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Not in those exact words. I am saying that this is the commonality among those words: amongst is gratuitously British, overly is gratuitously American, so ideally neither should be used in articles without strong natural ties. By gratuitously I mean that there are perfectly workable substitutes in both dialects, that can easily be swapped in without affecting the meaning, and that do not have a negative effect on readers from another dialect. --Trovatore (talk) 18:29, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Fowler's contradicts the claim that amongst is aggressively British. Please the second comment in this thread. Eubulides (talk) 18:41, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

At the same time Fowler's does say that amongst is less common. So, if we still want to forbid it, perhaps say something like "When a word has several variants with the same meaning, use the most common one." Pcap ping 18:46, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Fowler is from 1926. The other examples of American usages were from the 19th century, excepting Philip Roth, for whom I suspect it's an individual idosyncracy. Really, amongst is an extreme outlier in contermporary American usage. To me it seems that there is no reason to use it except to emphasize one's Britishosity; that's what I mean by "gratuitous".

As to "forbidding" it: Let's keep in mind that the MoS has no authority to "forbid" anything. What it can do is point out that the word is likely to be received negatively by American readers, as it is possible that some Commonwealth editors don't know that — I didn't know about overly until I saw it in that list. --Trovatore (talk) 19:33, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

That's exactly what we're talking about under "MoS's role as a guideline." Perhaps the MoS isn't supposed to be taken as a ban on this word or that, but it is in practice. We have to take that into account on the "amongst" issue. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:00, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

No, we should fix the problem. --Trovatore (talk) 20:07, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Fowler's quoted by Eubulides is the New Fowler's. It also gives multiple examples of well-known authors using it in 1970s and 1980s. It won't bother listing them here. Pcap ping 19:46, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Replying to Trovatore's comment of 18:29: that also applies with verbs in "-ise", but we also have article titles such as characterisation which is an article having nothing to do with the UK, but AFAIK no-one ever proposed to deprecate -ise verbs on WP. --___A. di M. 12:47, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

I think there's actually a very faint difference in connotation or style between "among" and "amongst", because I might use "amongst" in some contexts and "among" in most others. A tabloid (even an American one) might scream "The Terrorists Amongst Us", and the difference from "the terrorists among us" to me is that the latter suggests that the terrorists are one of us, while the former suggests more of an alien incursion. This kind of thing might fit in a general discussion of style as found in something like Fowler or Eric Partridge or William Safire, but it has no place in a prescriptive style-sheet like the AP's and should certainly not be in a Manual of Style that's used by 'bots and typo-patrollers. —— Shakescene (talk) 13:52, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Data

The Cambridge Guide to English Usage has much more informative data:

“ amid, amidst, among or amongst

These four prepositions share much the same grammatical functions these days, but differ somewhat in their regional distribution and their applications. Overall the shorter forms (amid and especially among) are much more frequent than the longer ones, as the relative percentages show in both British and American databases:

BNC CCAE
amid 3.8% 6.2%
amidst 1.7% 0.4%
among 78.8% 93.1%
amongst 15.7% 0.3%

”

So, Trovatore was right about amongst being very British :-) But this kind of details are over the top for MOS. I think a general recommendation to use the common variants of words with the same meaning is sufficient... Pcap ping 10:11, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

The less common versions like amid(st) have their own idiomatic usage however, e.g. amid(st) speculation but not among(st) speculation (there's longer table in the Guide, I won't copy it here). Please read the whole entry in the Guide before jumping to banning any words explicitly. Pcap ping 10:27, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage has this to say:

“ Among, amongst. Most of the commentators who mention these words note that amongst is less common but both are correct. Our evidence confirms this; it also shows amongst a bit more common in British usage than American. The few commentators that who call amongst quaint or overrefined are off target. Here is a selection of mostly recent and unquaint examples [about 7 examples from 1970-1990 works.] ”

Not that quantitative, but the same idea. Pcap ping 12:49, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

That seems to be the point here. This may be an ENGVAR issue, but it's not a straight ENGVAR issue. In American English, "centre" is wrong. In British English "center" is wrong. However, while "amongst" is certainly more common in British English, it is not incorrect in either variation. We should not ban it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:43, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

(ec) By the way, unlike most dictionaries, this M-W usage dictionary is readable on google books; the Cambridge Guide isn't. Pcap ping 13:46, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Overly

Since this was raised above as an example in the other (that is, overly American) direction, this is what The Cambridge Guide says:

“ This adverb meaning "excessively" seems to have originated in the US in C18. It has steadily gained ground in the UK, by the note in the Oxford Dictionary (1989), and by its use in everyday writing in almost 150 BNC texts. [Examples:]

• the demise of the overly modest bathing costume
• not being overly concerned about the future

Despite suggestions that overly is an unnecessary word--which could be replaced by "too or "excessively"--it fills the niche between them in terms of bulk. Overly is equally useful in noun and verb phrases, as shown in those examples, whereas "too" is awkward in the noun phrase, and "excessively" rather an overkill in either. One other alternative is to use the adverbial prefix over-, creating compounds such as overmodest, overconcerned, although this works better with the second type (adjective / past participle) than the first (a simple adjective).

”

So, this is even less clear cut than amongst. All these discussion only serve to show that edicts banning one word or the other in this MOS are fairly misinformed... Pcap ping 13:06, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

M-W Usage Dictionary has this entry:

“ Bache 1869 and Ayres 1881 succinctly insulted contemporaries who used this word, calling them vulgar and unschooled. Times have changed: modern critics merely insult the word itself. Follett 1966, for example, claims that overly is useless superfluous, and unharmonious and should be replaced by the prefix over-. Bryson 1984 adds that "when this becomes overinelegant ..., the alternative is to find another adverb: 'excessively' or 'unnecessarily' or even the admirably concise 'too'." You may not want to go to such lengths to avoid overly, and some modern commentators (Evans 1957, for example) would agree that there is no need to. We concur. In fact, in some cases none of the alternatives sound as good as overly.

• ... a not overly clean tunic
• ... the author of various not overly inspired books
• make his otherwise overly comfortable life more interesting

[I've omitted the original source citations]

Even when over-, too, excessively, or unnecessarily would be a successful substitute, the fact that a synonym is available does not mean that you have to use it. [6 examples follow]

Overly is not as commonly used in England as in the U.S., but according to the OED Supplement it is gaining ground there.

”

So, I'm going to remove overly from the short list of banned words. Pcap ping 13:33, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Support. "Overly" is not incorrect English. Rather than banning it, we should simply allow users to correct it where it is awkward. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:55, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

MoS's role as a guideline

(Conversation has been sectioned off from "Amongst" as of 9-21-2009. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:52, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

(reply to Darkfrog) That is the key issue about the MoS, in my view. If people would remember it's a guideline, which means it's advisory, it would be fine to have all this detailed information. But it's being applied as though it's policy, and applied rigidly, regardless of context. That makes it unpopular, which means it ends up being ignored even when it would be a good idea to heed it. I would like to see a section making very clear that this is a guideline, but written carefully in a way that won't undermine it. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 23:39, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

SlimVirgin, can you clarify what you mean by "advisory"? This road sign has an "advised" speed limit, but many drivers can and do ignore that speed recommendation (myself included) anytime they want. By the same token, are you saying that editors should only follow the MoS when they feel like it (i.e., if they just don't like what is says, they can ignore it without further reason)? I shudder to think what would happen if editors took that view toward WP:RS and WP:SPAM, and I don't think that's what you meant.

If you in fact meant that the MOS is a guideline that should generally be followed except for those times (not too frequent, but not unheard of) that there's a good reason (i.e. more than IDONTLIKEIT and in compliance with editorial consensus) to ignore it, then I'm right with you.

Now, with regard to the specific proposal, I agree that we don't need to spell out every word that should not be used; after all, we've been working for the past few weeks to condense the MOS by reducing redundancy and these unnecessarily specific points. Dabomb87 (talk) 00:58, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Could it be that the MoS is a major but silent agent for minimising edit wars? Tony (talk) 01:16, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

To my mind, "guideline" means "here are some helpful but not obligatory pieces of advice" in ordinary speech. In my opinion, on Wikipedia, "guideline" should mean, "Do this unless you can get a consensus that there's a good reason not to." For example, the guideline might say that the mid-sentence "the" should not be capitalized, but the fans of the band "the Beatles" decided that it should be in the case of the name of the band (and let's assume for the sake of this example that their reasons were sound and logical), so articles on the Beatles ignore the guideline and spell the name "The Beatles."

Tony also makes an excellent point. The MoS might not have been designed to serve as a tiebreaker in the prevention of edit wars, but it probably does serve that role. Anything we do should preserve that.

SV, we might spell out a paragraph saying that this is a guideline and not hard-and-fast rules, but would people take it at face value? Right now, the culture of Wikipedia is to treat the guideline as rules. We could, of course, just use that by spelling out the exact circumstances under which the guideline should or shouldn't be followed...

We should acknowledge this as one of our options: We could always just change the name and refer to the MoS as rules openly. That, at least, might get people treating other guidelines as guidelines. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:52, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

The MoS has made a major contribution to improving the standard of articles over the past few years: I see no reason to weaken its role. Tony (talk) 01:58, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

The MoS is a guideline. Most editors who are not too new to Wikipedia roughly know what a guideline is, both in absolute terms and relative to policies—on one hand—and to essays—on the other hand, though some are clearly more influential than others. Adding a section explicitly saying to take anything the MOS says with a grain of salt would probably further undermine the MOS's role, as well as add to the bloat we've been fighting so hard to keep out. The authority of the guideline is clearly stated in the banner at the top, and #General principles is enought to keep most style arguments that aren't decided by MOS at bay. Dabomb87 (talk) 02:12, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Dabomb, when we say guidelines are advisory, it means editors don't have to follow them. The policy on sourcing is V, not RS. People are welcome to ignore RS, except that, most of the time when I've looked at it recently, it says the same as V, and really shouldn't exist for that reason, but that's a separate issue. Policies are regarded as mandatory, but guidelines not.

Tony, I've seen the MoS cause and resolve edit wars. It's hard to know what it does most. I do know that, whenever an MoS-related issue has come before AN/I or ArbCom, editors are advised not to arrive at articles only to make style changes, as the MoS itself as always said or implied, going back to 2002: "Writers are not expected to follow all these rules ...", or 2004 quoting the Chicago Manual of Style: "Rules and regulations such as these ... are meant for the average case, and must be applied with a certain degree of elasticity." Then in 2005 or 2006, we had a couple of ArbCom cases where the principle was upheld.

It's that elasticity that is being eroded. It is being applied as though it's policy. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 02:24, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm not saying that guidelines should be treated as policies. I know that guidelines, including the MOS, are not to be enforced with an iron rod, and that flexibility and allowance for exceptions are vital principles of a guideline. What I am saying is that on the other side of the spectrum, editors sometimes (intentionally) don't follow guidelines beacause they simply don't like what it's telling them to do without providing a specific reason, common sense or otherwise, to ignore it. Since guidelines reflect (or at least are supposed to reflect) consensus, they generally should be followed. Dabomb87 (talk) 02:46, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I will add that if users are trying to wield MOS and other style/content guidelines as policy, then the problem might not rest with the MOS or any one guideline so much as a flaw in the way guidelines are viewed, and their relationship with policies. Dabomb87 (talk) 02:53, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Guidelines often don't reflect consensus, though, because too many people edit them, and not enough people keep watch over them. It's much harder to change a policy—they're more stable and there are more eyes on them, which makes it safer to assume there's consensus.

Most people have no idea what the MoS says. I'm one of those editors who frequently ignores it, either because I don't agree with some part of it, or because it's not clear that there's any consensus for it. The business about images needing to be thumbs, and not being allowed to be on the left under third-level headings, are two recent cases in point. Wikignomes have been going around enforcing these for the last couple of years, and edit warring if anyone reverted them, yet there was no consensus for them (as you could see by the fact that they were widely ignored), and no good reason to have them in the guideline in the first place.

Every time a wikignome does something like, he undermines the MoS. A section advocating more flexibility would strengthen the MoS (if carefully worded), not weaken it. Think of it as a high-rise building in a strong wind. We need it to bend. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 03:00, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree with SlimVirgin. Too many editors have defined their purpose on this wiki as the enforcement of the MOS. Furthermore, these editors constantly want to expand the set of rules that justifies their actions. Just look in the section above titled #Proposed addition to MOS:HEAD, which is motivated by a WP:LAME edit war over adding section headings to a three-paragraph article (Eurymedon vase, drama still going strong). Pcap ping 06:00, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Adding headers is being equated with vandalism. :) SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 06:34, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree with SlimVirgin's original comment and the subsequent posts that emphasise that MOS is a guideline, not a policy. Perhaps we need to spell out some criteria or higher-level objectives by which to judge whether MOS should be applied in full in specific cases.

I suggest as criteria: whether full application of MOS would benefit ordinary readers (as opposed to style mavens); and whether from the ordinary reader's point of view the effort would better spent on other aspects of the same article, or on other articles. --Philcha (talk) 06:14, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't know about that, Philcha. In general, ordinary readers benefit from precise and correct styles, even if they cannot recognize them. A non-expert, upon viewing up a crummily edited page, can tell that there's something amateurish and sloppy about it even if he or she can't pick out all the specific mistakes. Also, consider that just because people are told to stop doing one thing doesn't mean that they switch to other parts of the article. I'm not an expert on, say, Zoroastrianism, but if I happen to be reading an article on that subject, I might duck in to correct some punctuation even if I wouldn't presume to change the content. If I were not to polish the style, then I wouldn't go off and spend my time scrubbing content; I'd do nothing to the article at all. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:51, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Avoid instruction creep has always been an important principle on WP. It advises

"For proposed new instructions, instruction creep can be avoided if all of the following hold:

"1. There is a good indication of an actual problem (as opposed to a hypothetical or a perceived problem).

"2. The proposed instructions truly solve this problem (as opposed to treating symptoms or making symbolic gestures).

"3. The instructions have few or no undesirable side effects (such as false positives, overcomplexity, or unnecessary prohibitions)."

And then an important point: "Policies and guidelines exist to document accepted practice, rather than actually dictate such. If on such a page an instruction appears which does not accurately reflect commonly accepted practice, and then this instruction gains the consensus of editors who happen to participate at the talk page in question, then the process has failed."

In other words, there is a strong descriptive element to policies and guidelines, not only prescriptive. This is one of the MoS's key problems. There are parts of it that describe only what the editors of the MoS, often going back many years, wanted people to do. Forcing editors to use only thumbnails of images, for example, was widely ignored by good editors. It had to be ignored because it made articles look silly, but it sat here for years, all efforts to get rid of it were fought, and wikignomes routinely edit warred to remove fixed image sizes. It wasn't until Tony noticed it that we finally got it out of the MoS. I'm guessing there's a lot more material like that still in it, and there are routine attempts to add even more. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 06:27, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

←"Policies and guidelines exist to document accepted practice, rather than actually dictate such." But they do end up dictating: WP:CIVIL, WP:NFC, WP:NC and many more. If there is consensus at an article to breach an aspect of the MoS, those who want to follow that course need to provide compelling reasons when another editor wants to bring the article into compliance with the MoS. Otherwise, I say to them: go to WT:MoS and argue it out there. It is, after all, part of the boiling pot that feeds into the MoS (as you pointed out WRT the section on images).

We must have a degree of centralised formatting and style—it provides cohesion, authority, even branding for WP. This is much of why the wiki mechanism works: freedom and constraint working alongside each other—sometimes in dynamic tension. When a reader chooses a WP article in a google search, they unconsciously expect to find those branding attributes. It's just like every other reputable publisher: a house style is vital to the message and the brand. It has become part of WP's business model, its public image, and we should put our energy into helping the style guides to evolve, not to removing or weakening their authority. Moreover, there is much anecdotal evidence that editors want to follow guidance. Show me an article riven with MoS breaches and a sibling article that is MoS-compliant and you'll see a much better product (if not, change MoS, don't disregard it).

When I read my Scientific American each month, I would be upset to find discrepancies in the use of images, headings, certain punctuation. I trust those surface details and they partly confirm my admiration for the deeper meanings. It is the dressing. Tony (talk) 07:47, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree with a lot of what you say. But I think you overlook a few key issues:

(1) It is virtually impossible to change the MoS on certain points, because a small number of editors simply won't allow it. I'm therefore not allowed to write "organize," because some people think it's not British, when it is. I'm not allowed to write September 22 for the same reason—and that's also perfectly standard in the UK. I'm not allowed to place punctuation inside quotes, even though that's as British as ham and egg for breakfast—it's so-called logical punctuation that's the newcomer.

A group of professional editors of the kind who wrote the Scientific American style guide are not making decisions based on mistaken notions of what is and isn't British. I'm happy to go along with a guideline that is rational, even if I disagree with it, but it's infuriating to see so much of it based on misunderstandings.

(2) Other style guides don't have our "descriptive, as well as prescriptive" rule. That's peculiar to Wikipedia, and people did not agree to let the MoS be an exception. We are supposed to prescribe whatever is best practice on Wikipedia, and that's what good editors do as a matter of fact. Best practice is not what good editors would do if they were doing what the MoS editors wanted them to do back in 2004.

(3) Scientific American is a professional publication. Everyone is trained, everyone is paid, and there are professional copy editors, who are flexible when they need to be. In my own writing offwiki, I have never been dictated to about style issues the way I have been onwiki. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 08:03, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

(Pohta, in a Bishonean mood, looks at this talk page and can't help but nod towards "it's infuriating to see so much of it based on misunderstandings.") Pcap ping 09:09, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I just read my previous post again, and I must apologize for sounding so shrill. :) It's just that some of this is really quite frustrating. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 09:17, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I tend to disagree with you about the impact of the MOS on Wikipedia's cohesion and branding. When people arrive at a site and see our page design and logo in the corner, they recognize that they are on Wikipedia. They probably also recognize they've arrived here when they find video game trivia in articles about staid historical figures. Nobody, however, associates logical quotation or some other technical point of punctuation with our brand and it wouldn't be harmed if articles assumed varied postures on these issues.

These rules exist, in my view, largely divorced from any calcuation of their necessity or usefulness in the context of Wikipedia. The logical quotation rule is an excellent example because it makes sense at WT:MOS - editors here feel it's a good idea so why not make it a rule? cheers all around - but little sense in the context of actually reading Wikipedia - nobody has any idea what quotation rule any given instance follows, so there's no information to be gained. The current structure of MOS encourages a conflation of two very different questions: (1) what would be an ideal house style if I were starting a publication from the ground up? and (2) what guidelines best serve Wikipedia and its readers? Christopher Parham (talk) 15:08, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

It is true that guidelines are not policy. That does not mean that guidelines may be freely ignored. Both policies and guidelines are to be applied using common sense. An editor should have a good reason, beyond personal preference, for deviating from a guideline in a particular instance. According to Wikipedia's policy page on Policies and guidelines, "Wikipedia policies and guidelines are developed by the community to describe best practice, clarify principles, resolve conflicts, and otherwise further our goal of creating a free, reliable encyclopedia ..." As for their role, "Guidelines are primarily advisory. They advise on how to prevent or avoid causing problems, and on how to apply and execute policy under specific circumstances." However, guidelines are enforceable: "If an editor violates the community standards described in policies and guidelines, other editors can persuade the person to adhere to acceptable norms of conduct, over time resorting to more forceful means, such as administrator and steward actions."

Most publications strive for consistency of style and presentation, and adopt style manuals as a means to that end. Unlike Wikipedia, at most publications, most editors have no say about the publication's style manual; a small group of editors known to be good "stylists" prescribe the styles that all editors must follow. Further, while the editors who write those style "guides" try to compile the specific usages that they believe are best suited to their particular publication, in instances where alternative usages might be equally appropriate, they pick one for the sake of consistency. Wikipedians who chafe at our MOS should realize that it allows individual editors far more freedom than any other style guide on this planet. Most style guides either prescribe or prohibit the so-called serial comma, for example; our MOS leaves the choice up to the editors (but, appropriately, requires consistency within a single article). Further, those editors who do not wish to master the entire MOS should be thrilled that some of us are so deranged that we will do this grunt work for them. Finell (Talk) 16:36, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I couldn't disagree more with your last sentence. To the extent that any content contributor bothers to follow any aspect of the MOS, that's a kindness those who care about this shouldn't expect. Indeed, if you're copyediting an article, you should be thrilled that an author has released his original, legally protected content under a license that allows you to fiddle with it. The article was in all likelihood perfectly clear and understandable, and equally valuable to any reader, before it was brought into compliance with the MOS. And to your first point, we would never block or sanction someone for not following the MOS (at least not any of its technical points) w/r/t original content they were writing. (People making edits, especially small ones, to existing content are a different story.) That would simply violate our values. Perhaps this indicates that "guideline" is not quite the right status for MOS; it's not really a standard we expect all editors generally to adhere to, but rather a standard we expect the encyclopedia to aspire to as a whole and don't want anyone to actively subvert. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:19, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Guys, this is no time to get all content vs. gnoming. Both contributors and editors improve the Wikipedia reader experience and both roles should be celebrated. Finell, Chris P, if you would both join me for a brief sing-along... 19:58, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Whoa! Christopher, where in the world did you get the idea that I don't value content? Or even that I value style (in the sense we are using that term here) as much as content? It is a given that content is king. Good editing improves the quality of content by improving its readability and communicative power, but editing can't do anything without quality content. Further, I value content editing (the kind that, say, Encyclopaedia Britannica staff editors to with the content submitted contributing "editors", who are actually authors) to improve organization, grammar, syntax, word choice, concision, etc., over style-guide conformity. But copy editing (in its limited sense) and style-guide conformity still contribute to improving the quality of Wikipedia. But I repeat, content is king. I am not aware of any editors who think otherwise. Finell (Talk) 21:31, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I can appreciate what Parham is saying, but the content of the MoS isn't the issue at hand. The problem isn't that we have an MoS in the first place—that's a good thing. The issue is that people treat the MoS as if it were rules, not as if it were a guideline. What we should be trying to establish is 1. whether or not this is a problem 2. if so, what outcome would be best and 3. how to accomplish said outcome. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:51, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Finell, your quoting that policy page above is a good example of why unstable policies or guidelines need to be ignored. That page has been under attack for a few months by a couple of editors to want to minimize the mandatory nature of the policies. To do this, they've been editing that page to equate policies with guidelines. That's the only reason there's anything about people possibly being blocked for violating a guideline. In fact, no one would be blocked for that, especially not for violating the MoS. At countless AN and AN/I discussions, and a few times at ArbCom, the principle is always upheld that no one should be edit warring to impose style changes on stable and internally consistent articles.

As Christopher said, there are a few style issues that affect our content in the sense of providing us with a strong corporate identity: page layout being the most obvious. But most of the MoS revolves around personal preferences that otherwise no one notices. Those are the issues I'm arguing should not be imposed on articles over objections. Because otherwise what we're saying is that the personal preferences of people who regularly edit the MoS matter more than the personal preferences of the writers who may disagree. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 21:50, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Is this all about internal vs external punctuation? Is it born mainly of the frustration of those who "don't like it"—that they've never been able to gain consensus to change the external rule? It seems to me that the whole of the MoS is now being denigrated because of this. Tony (talk) 03:38, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

It doesn't really have anything to do with punctuation (at least not from my perspective). It has to do with instruction creep, and the way the MoS is enforced. It was never intended to be enforced rigorously like this. The point of it was to offer advice about some common errors, find compromises where possible, and offer options where not possible. Now we have a situation where it's causing a fair bit of ill feeling or it's being ignored entirely, neither of which is good for it. What I would like to see is a very professional style guide that is to some extent descriptive of what editors already do, and which is gently enforced. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 03:56, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

As there is no logical or practical reason to ban American punctuation, I would have to agree that problem seems to be that there are people who just don't like it and have imposed their preferences on the rest of us. But no, that's not why I split the section off.

It's come up again with "amongst," but it's happened before. Someone requests that a certain thing be added to the MoS, but we find that it wouldn't be best for us to do it because Wikipedians would take it too much to heart. For example, it would probably be okay to have an actual in-practice guideline advising Wikipedians to avoid words like "amongst." We've had people say, "Oh it would be all right to add this because the MoS is only a guideline." However, if we say "don't use 'amongst'" on the MoS, then people will treat it as a hard-and-fast rule, removing the word even in situations in which it would be desirable to have it remain. The result is that we don't get to add stuff like that to the MoS.

The MoS is described as a guideline, but people treat it like a set of concrete rules. I split off the conversation so we could evaluate 1. whether or not this is a problem (we could of course just keep things as they are, leaving things like "avoid 'amongst'" unwritten), 2. what the ideal role of the MoS should be and 3. how we would effect it.

As for descriptive/prescriptive, the MoS's job is to give instructions. It should be written in the imperative. The issue is how fiercely those instructions should be implemented. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:07, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Constructing an article, or individual parts, that defy the basic instructions of the MoS are doomed to failure. Browsers like Firefox increasingly have pluggable editors that automatically analyze Wikipedia articles and recommend spelling and style changes that can be enacted with one-button while reading or editing. The MoS does not necessarily have to be enforced rigorously but attempting to maintain styles against the MoS is increasingly an attempt to hold back the tides. Miami33139 (talk) 04:14, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Ignoring rubbish prescription like we had for overly until a few minutes ago is simply common sense. I fail to see what "pluggable editors" have to do with it. Maybe you plug one into your brain/Firefox and it writes "correct" English according to this MOS?! Like I wrote above a couple of times, a shocking amount of material in the MOS is based on misconceptions not supported by scholarly research or other widely used style guides. Take a look at the section on punctuation in quotes for another example. (#Never understood). Pcap ping 13:59, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the existence/use of automated tools for wikignoming are an argument for being conservative with the prescriptions here. See below. Pcap ping 14:34, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

I think User:Shakescene raised a really good point above, namely that we need to carefully consider the demographics of our audience in these guidelines. You can fully expect some teenager to write a script replacing a "banned" word in all articles. I've seen editors auto-link words ignoring context for example. We already had some holy wikiwars involving automated tools over MOS issues I consider irrelevant, e.g. date linking. So, we need to be conservative with the MOS prescriptions because there's a real chance of causing WP:LAME incidents rather than preventing them. Pcap ping 14:20, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't think I agree with a single thing in the previous post. Tony (talk) 14:33, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

I think you're confusing User:Tony1/How to improve your writing, which is a respectable enterprise, with this MOS, which is an equally respectable, but different enterprise. Pcap ping 14:39, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

What Pcap seems to be describing is that we accept that the MoS is treated as rules and therefore walk carefully when adding or removing instructions. This is one way to deal with it. But if we're going to do that, I think we should acknowledge it openly. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:12, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Some of these grammar/vocabulary prescriptions might be appropriate at MOS:BETTER, although I don't see why that page needs to be a guideline at all. What makes it different from this page? It addresses no discernible subtopic but rehashes some of the stuff here. Pcap ping 17:23, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

(1) "Amongst terrorists" is hedgehog language. (2) I'm not convinced that there's anything wrong with the provision of a small amount of assistance for readers in the fields of grammar and word usage. Where is the line drawn if advice against the use of old-fashioned words such as this (with letters redundant against their modern counterparts) is expunged?Tony (talk) 01:02, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Proposed rule

Based on the above discussion I suggest the following:

When a word has multiple variants with the same meaning but different degrees of use in major varieties of English, prefer the word variant globally accepted. For instance, opt for among instead of amongst (the latter is seldom used in American English) and thus instead of thusly (the latter is seldom used in British English).

Comments? Pcap ping 09:36, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

P.S.: I know that thusly is considered "hypercorrect" and is used mostly for ironic or comic purposes even in AE, but I don't want to make this rule longer than it strictly needs to be. Other rules (should) deal with the degree of (in)formality acceptable in Wikipedia articles. Pcap ping 09:45, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Oppose. While "among" will often be preferable to "amongst," the latter isn't incorrect and we should not ban it. We already permit editors to correct awkward or overly formal turns of phrase. That already covers "amongst." Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:04, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Strongly Oppose: We don't need a rule for this. It's all very well to say that the MoS isn't prescriptive and proscriptive rules, and I wish it weren't, but the plain fact is that hundreds of editors and dozens of 'bots (including AWB) treat it that way. This kind of usage issue is best handled in context by the editors who would normally handle the article anyway. Perhaps, however, some kind of stand-alone list (outside the MoS) indicating words and idioms that are little-understood outside a particular country or region might be helpful to such discussions. ¶ If, however, there were such a rule, you'd have to add something about nuance, because there are many times when I'd prefer "amongst" to "among" and "overly" to "over", and many when I'd prefer the opposite. And such guidance would add more words without being sufficient. —— Shakescene (talk) 04:59, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Oppose I write articles in BE, and naturally use amongst. It has nothing to do with my "straining for formaility", and as it is entirely acceptable in AE, just less common, and guideline that implies it is incorrect in an dialect is simply wrong. Every article i write has American editors appearing to change single examples they dislike, and they almost never bother to keep the article at least consistant. The MoS should be giving no ammunition to either side, as the subject either comes down to good writing or personal preference - the former should be dealt with on talk pages oand the latter is not a MoS issue.YobMod 15:26, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Oppose I in fact practice this most of the time, but to impose it, even as a guideline, totally undercuts WP:ENGVAR, and requires all editors to have a sophisticated awareness of the varities of usage that is wholly unrealistic. Johnbod (talk) 12:24, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Thusly

Since this may cause a dispute as well: both Fowler's 3rd edition and The Cambridge Guide discuss thusly only briefly, and stress its Americanness and its (original) ironic/comic purpose. M-W Usage Dictionary has nearly a page-long entry, in which they point out that even in some non-ironic instances thusly is more suitable than thus, and recommend that one should not automatically replace thusly with thus in all circumstances, but suggest that "in this way" or "as follows" should also be considered as replacements depending on context. Pcap ping 10:02, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Whatever: it sounds awful to me. I'd strike out the ly in any variety, and most professional American editors would too. I don't much like "thus", but use it in scientific/engineering text when necessary. Tony (talk) 05:56, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Heart of the matter

I suggest that we remove the words "thusly, whilst, amongst, as per," and "refute in the sense of dispute" from the section on contested vocabulary, so that the section reads like this:

Avoid words that are either overly regional or not widely accepted in the form of English in which the article is written (see National varieties of English below). Avoid straining for formality, as this suggests an insecure grasp of English. See List of English words with disputed usage, Words to avoid, and List of commonly misused English words; see also Identity and Gender-neutral language below.

Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:35, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Although it might tug a little against the pluralistic drift of what I've been saying earlier, I think that the local/national/regional idiom of an article, its subject matter or its authors is not the deciding factor (a parallel issue came up in WT:MOSNUM about units and conversions), because there's no way of telling where the readers of many articles might come from or how they use and understand English. For a very rough example, Statue of Liberty might get more overseas than American readers, Tower of London might get more overseas than British readers, and Taj Mahal might get more non-Asian than South Asian readers. So there is reason to discourage localisms or regionalisms that just aren't well-understood outside a particular geographical area. ("Amongst" or "thusly" might be unfamiliar and even odd to many, but their meaning isn't really obscure. On the other hand, "hitting it for six" or "a ball-park estimate" might draw a blank from those who have never seen [respectively] a cricket or a baseball game.) —— Shakescene (talk) 23:55, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps "hitting it for six" and "ballpark estimate" should go into the section instead of "amongst," "thusly" and their unambiguous little friends. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:25, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

I'd just get rid of "refute". And does this mean that a regional term can't appear, even if glossed on first appearance? Tony (talk) 02:33, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Modified text

How about this?

Avoid words and phrases that are either overly regional, not widely accepted or that give the impression of straining for formality. See List of English words with disputed usage, Words to avoid, and List of commonly misused English words; see also Identity and Gender-neutral language below. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:10, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Repainting the Great Wall of China

Any comments about this metaphorical essay about consistency between like articles? Kransky (talk) 10:46, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Cute, but I do not concur with your conclusions. It says "consistency within an article" it does not draw any distinction between articles that are part of the same Wikiproject and those that are not. If you feel it's unclear, though, then we could certainly specify that the MoS does not require consistency within a Wikiproject. Your essay also seems to imply that the person who argues for the change must be the person who carries out all of that change. Your Liang is depicted as lazy and fickle, but his actions (assuming he did finish his portion of the wall before giving up) are reasonable. Also consider that there is no real-world equivalent to the barbarian warlords. There are no negative consequences to disputes of Liang and Huang's kind. They don't show up in the articles. To the reader, a set of articles undergoing of dispute of this kind looks no worse than otherwise. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:44, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

...except that discussions about points of style that most readers are unlikely to ever notice (much less care about) detract time which could be used for useful work. ___A. di M. 12:50, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Not really. Style points are useful work. Readers notice that articles seem neat or sloppy even if that can't pick out every period, comma, dash and column alignment that makes them seem that way. Besides, people who do think style is important can continue the discussions and people who don't think so can go do something else. One could argue, "We should be doing something more useful than this" about just about anything. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:53, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Also, clarifying my earlier comment: The MoS does have a policy about whether articles in the same Wikiproject need to be consistent: they don't. This is covered under "consistency within an article but not necessarily Wikipedia as a whole." However, if this is unclear enough to confuse people, then it wouldn't cost us anything to add words specifying that Wikiprojects are covered under this principle. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:53, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) thanks for bringing this to the talk page. like Darkfrog24, i don't find the metaphor apt, nor do i agree with all the conclusions; and even as you cite ArbCom's decree about not changing stylistic points without compelling reasons, assertions like "anybody is welcome to propose new styles, for practical, aesthetic [you want to fix that typo] or other reasons" sound like you're suggesting that the ArbCom ruling can be ignored. if that's not what you mean, then you need to clarify what you do mean ... and even then, i'm not sure an essay like this needs to be listed in the "see also" section of the MoS. Sssoul (talk) 08:17, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Everyone has a right to his or her opinion, but I don't feel that this is one that the MoS should endorse. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:26, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

And/or

I find it odd that this article, which claims to reflect consensus, says that "and/or" should be avoided while the article itself uses it numerous times. It doesn't exactly roll off the tongue but I don't have a problem with it and I certainly don't see that the suggested "x or y, or both" is necessarily better.74.73.227.68 (talk) 04:07, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

I'd noticed that too. I think the MoS could loosen up a bit in its negative statements about and/or. And the section goes on and on and on. Unnecessary. Tony (talk) 04:33, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Concur. I actually prefer and/or than saying "X or Y (or both)". Dabomb87 (talk) 13:32, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Grammatically, using a forward slash in prose tends to not be advisable. In a series, "and [...], or both" can also provide greater clarity than the discouraged alternative, similar to the always-controversial serial comma. user:J aka justen (talk) 18:26, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

I do not feel that "and/or" is in keeping with Wikipedia's encyclopedic tone. There are usually better ways to write the sentence. Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:20, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

There is no place in the English language for and/or, ever. Usually one conjunction or the other is correct or sufficient, more often or (which is non-exclusive, so it embraces and). In rare instances where both must be used, either this or that, or both is correct, even if unattractive. The problem can usually be avoided altogether by rewriting the sentence, which is the best solution. More broadly, a this/that construction is inappropriate in formal writing, in my most un-humble opinion. Finell (Talk) 19:42, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

"And/or" comes, I think, from legal prose which is not of course what you want to see in most of the encyclopedia. But occasionally it's the most elegant, or least-inelegant, way of conveying the meaning. And much as some would dearly love to make "or" mean either inclusive "or" or exclusive "or", a millennium of English usage runs very strongly against them. It's not always clear that "or" is not exclusive, because as children we learn that you can have (or do) this or that, with the implicit but unspoken "but not both" usually in the background. If someone said "you can have ice cream or pie" and you wanted both, you learned to avoid disappointment (and make difficult choices if necessary) by always asking "can I have both?". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Shakescene (talk • contribs) 20:31, 3 October 2009 —— Shakescene (talk) 22:45, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually the phrases inclusive or and exclusive or generally refer to the truth-table versions of these things; truth-functional or is not actually a good model for these natural-language uses. If you may have ice cream or pie (but not both) is true, then you may have ice cream is true, and you may have pie is also true, so you may have ice cream XOR you may have pie is actually false. The natural-language meaning of or cannot really be captured by truth tables in classical logic, except in a few restricted cases. --Trovatore (talk) 22:36, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

In the common practice of everyday language, or is looked at as exclusive. It's the way it's used in mathematics and computer programming, and it's seeped into the standard language. That said, the construct and/or is awkward and informal, and should probably be avoided by rephrasing the sentence. Of course, as it becomes more common, it's also becomming more acceptable, so my opinion may change. oknazevad (talk) 02:06, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

(Re. to Trovatore.) It depends on what you take the implicit repeated verb to be. Assuming that you may have ice cream, you may have pie, but you can't have both, "{you may have ice cream} AND {you may have pie}" is true, but "you may {{have ice cream} AND {have pie}}" is false. "You may have ice cream and pie" is usually taken to mean the latter, so by analogy I guess "you may have ice cream or pie" means "you may {{have ice cream} XOR {have pie}}". (If it meant "{you may have ice cream} OR {you may have pie}", it'd be true even if you could only have pie but you couldn't have ice cream.) --___A. di M. 11:20, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Your second reading is no longer truth-functional, and XOR usually means a truth function. That's my point — it's not really possible to discuss these various meanings of the word or via truth tables. They mean something subtler.

In the particular ice cream/pie example, it might be possible to save the XOR reading by changing from propositional logic to predicate logic, and the or would be considered a truth function at the atomic level. But most meanings of or that are alleged to be "exclusive" cannot, in any way I can see, be formalized even in predicate logic; you'd have to use relevance logic or some such. --Trovatore (talk) 19:56, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Well then, it seems that we have some sort of consensus then :) Perhaps I'm just growing more accustomed to "and/or" because I hear it in spoken English more often, but of course that argument does not hold water. Dabomb87 (talk) 02:12, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

If people want to use and/or, let them. If someone sees it and wants to reword, thats fine too. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 02:24, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

I'd stick with the "avoid." It leaves open the possibility that it, like "amongst," may be appropriate in some unusual contexts while still giving the idea that it is not usually desirable. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:48, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

That's not how many people would interpret it. If you mean that (so do I), I'd keep the current wording, which makes clear that saying "A, B, or both" when it's more awkward than "A and/or B" defeats the purpose of the advice. ___A. di M. 11:20, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Or one step lighter than avoid? "... use cautiously and only where it appears to be necessary", or something like that? Then can we remove the turgid, verbose examples? Tony (talk) 12:07, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

That sounds too wordy to me. If you feel that the current phrasing isn't clear enough, just say "The term and/or for the inclusive or (as in x and/or y) is usually awkward. Writing x, y, or both is often preferable." And what "turgid, verbose examples" you're talking about? I don't think any example of "and/or" can possibly be less verbose than x and/or y. ___A. di M. 13:47, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

• ADM, sure, why don't you change it? Verbose? The second and third paras are a quick way to turn off editors and give the MoS a bad name. Can't it be reduced to a simple piece of advice? Here:

The term and/or is awkward. In general, where it is important to mark an inclusive or, use x or y, or both, rather than x and/or y. For an exclusive or, use either x or y, and optionally add but not both, if it is necessary to stress the exclusivity.

Where more than two possibilities are presented, from which a combination is to be selected, it is even less desirable to use and/or. With two possibilities, at least the intention is clear; but with more than two it may not be. Instead of x, y, and/or z, use an appropriate alternative, such as one or more of x, y, and z; some or all of x, y, and z.

Sometimes or is ambiguous in another way: Wild dogs, or dingoes, inhabit this stretch of land. Are wild dogs and dingoes the same or different? For one case write: wild dogs (dingoes) inhabit ... (meaning dingoes are wild dogs); for the other case write: either wild dogs or dingoes inhabit ....

Tony (talk) 13:56, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

I can't find it in my handbook but is my understanding that "wild dogs [comma] or dingoes [comma]" does mean "'wild dogs' is another word for 'dingoes.'" If so, then perhaps it is not the best example. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:31, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

I learn so much from this talk page. Above: There is no place in the English language for and/or, ever. Should I infer that this is neither about nor in English? -- Hoary (talk) 15:41, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

(interjecting) It is about Legalese. Legalese is not English and/or is a corruption of English and/or is not an example to which Wikipedia should aspire (sorry, no time right now to figure out the correct conjunctions and/or best sentence structure). Should you find yourself writing and/or, take a break, read from a published work by an exemplary author for at least 30 minutes, then rewrite to avoid the abomination. Finell (Talk) 21:44, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

The proof of the pudding is that the MoS itself uses it in a number of places. I say let's get rid of the x, y, z stuff and just put in a mild warning that and/or can be awkward and to use it only where it is neater than alternatives. Short and sweet, please. In putting on the teacher's hat, we can end up not being read at all by the edtors we want to reach out to. Hoary's link to Language Log is highly recommended. Tony (talk) 15:59, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

the bits about inclusive and exclusive or seem to be there simply to show off those terms, and some of what's there isn't really relevant to and/or. how about:

The term and/or can be awkward or unclear, or both; consider rephrasing things to avoid overusing it. The term and/or is awkward. In general, where it is important to mark an inclusive or, use x or y, or both, rather than x and/or y. For an exclusive or, use either x or y, and optionally add but not both, if it is necessary to stress the exclusivity. Where more than two possibilities are presented, from which a combination is to be selected, it is even less desirable to use and/or. With two possibilities, at least the intention is clear; but with more than two it may not be. Instead of x, y, and/or z, use an appropriate alternative, such as one or more of x, y, and z; some or all of x, y, and z. Sometimes or is ambiguous in another way: Wild dogs, or dingoes, inhabit this stretch of land. Are wild dogs and dingoes the same or different? For one case write: wild dogs (dingoes) inhabit ... (meaning dingoes are wild dogs); for the other case write: either wild dogs or dingoes inhabit ....

Sssoul (talk) 16:33, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

This gives no clue whatsoever about ways to rephrase it, and when can it be "unclear", exactly? ___A. di M. 18:05, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

smile: it's self-referential, A di M: the phrase can be awkward and/or unclear, so the way i phrased that is an example of how to rephrase it. my suggestion was meant somewhat lightheartedly - sorry! - but really the bulk of what i struck out is mighty uninformative. Sssoul (talk) 18:17, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't read the MoS in too much detail, so maybe I can give an outside opinion. I am sure that, if I was editing an article, I would rephrase any instances of "and/or" I come across, just as I would rephrase contractions, "his/her", and "if/when". I would not view any of these are true questions of editorial style, but rather questions of encyclopedic tone. In other words, I would view a sentence using "and/or" as having the same fundamental flaw as the sentence "There are plenty of unstable nilpotent groups", which I ran into earlier today. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:49, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

What flaw? I understand that "plenty" might sound informal, but the most obvious replacement ("a great number of") might be interpreted as "a great finite number of", which I suspect it isn't the case (however weak my knowledge of group theory is); the only way to be rigorous would be "there are [insert cardinal number here] unstable nilpotent groups up to isomorphism", and then any layman would have no idea of what you're speaking about (if it were an infinite cardinal other than aleph-n or beth-n I wouldn't either). Sometimes deliberately vague terms are better than terms which might sound like they're precise but they aren't. --___A. di M. 18:15, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

"And/or" is very technical and can be informal. As such, it can be appropriate for documents, such as the MoS, that are meant to instruct. However, it is not ideal for encyclopedia articles. In other words, "and/or" does have a place in the English language and possibly a place on the MoS, but most Wikipedia articles would be better off with more formal wording. However, because seeing "and/or" on the MoS could confuse people about whether it's preferred, I would not object to replacing it here.

As for the examples, perhaps they could stand to be reworded, but let's not remove them entirely.

As far as Language Log is concerned, remember this: It's a linguist's job to describe what people are doing, regardless of whether it is correct or not. They're like anthropologists. Anthropologists had to come up with cultural relativism so that they could set aside their preconceived notions (such as non-Christians => hellbound heathens, naked breasts => wicked seductresses) and learn about other cultures. However, that doesn't mean that the study of ethics was thrown out the window. They're simply separate pursuits. If you want to know what people are doing, ask an anthropologist, but if you want to know if a given course of action is ethical within your own moral system, ask an ethicist. If we want to know what is correct in grammar and punctuation, we're better off consulting the Chicago, MLA or Cambridge guides than Language Log. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:55, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Several mysteries there; among them, the nature of "correct grammar" (as contrasted with grammar described by linguists and not flagged with "%" or similar), and the identity of the "Cambridge guide". -- Hoary (talk) 23:19, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Cambridge, Oxford, whatever the top British one is. Wouldn't know. Not British. Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:57, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

The top British what? Meanwhile, your appeal (if I understand it correctly) to the Chicago Manual of Style and the MLA Handbook for matters of grammar surprises me: although both do indeed deal with punctuation, I don't think that either deals (other than tangentially) with grammar -- aside from parts of a single, discrete, and curiously underinformed chapter by one Bryan Garner within the 15th edition of the latter. -- Hoary (talk) 00:58, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

From what I've read, most of the people on Language Log would rather mock copy editors than deal with what's correct. They are incredibly biased, almost universally dismissing any non-descriptive view of language. They even have a tag for what they call "prescriptivist poppycock." That doesn't suggest to me that they have much respect for what we're doing. While their columns are sometimes interesting, they're not dealing with the same sorts of issues that we are in the editing and improvement of this MoS. Ergo, for grammar and punctuation, we are better off using respectable style guides such as Chicago, MLA and their British counterparts than Language Log. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:20, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

As I was saying, the issue here is not really prescriptivist grammar, nor editorial style. It is simply an issue of us code-switching into a tone that is suitable for an encyclopedia. Even the most die-hard descriptivists can empathize with that. They can even describe the traits of the sort of English that we switch into, if they like. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:25, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Darkfrog, the writers of the Language Log know whereof they speak. Where prescriptivism derives from assertions about language that are wrong and known to be wrong, the result richly deserves the term "poppycock". I note that you are repeating your advice that "we" would be wise to use "respectable style guides such as Chicago, MLA and their British counterparts" not only for matters of orthography but also for grammar. Questions for you. 1: To what extent does "MLA" deal with matters of grammar? (My own copy, if I haven't yet tossed it into the trash, is several editions old.) 2: Why should readers take seriously Garner's demonstrably underinformed chapter within Chicago? 3: To what extent do the Garner-free chapters of Chicago deal with grammar? -- Hoary (talk) 01:53, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

They may know whereof they speak, but they're not speaking of things that are of use to us. They correspond to anthropologists and we need something that corresponds to ethicists. They're not trying to give an unbiased view of what is and is not correct about language; they're writing a blog geared toward a like-minded audience for fun and to blow off steam. Using the blogs of people who do not believe in prescriptivism as a source for an essentially prescriptivist document like this one is like using the blog of an anti-religion atheist or fundamentalist Christian as a source on the Koran. Sure, there might be something good in there somewhere, but in general, it's probably not our best bet. We're not their audience anyway. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:19, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

For Language Log editors' views on copy editors in general (as opposed to some of the poppycock some copy editors sometimes come up with), see also their statement "Copy editors are a blessing, and a necessity." ... added at 08:12, 5 October 2009 by Boson

Let's see... The writer refers to what copy editors do as "silly" and "superstitious." The writer claims that the copy editor about whom he is writing said things that he did not actually say, setting up straw arguments. This is biased person who doesn't want to be thought of as biased but is.

I'm not saying that Language Log is never going to be useful on Wikipedia, but for the MoS the question "Is this correct or not?" is going to keep coming up. For the answer, we're better off with a less prejudiced source. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:09, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

No, Darkfrog. The writer (Pullum) carefully dismantles a "quadripartite claim" underlying a certain distinction, beloved by many prescriptivists, between contexts for "that" and which" in relative clauses (RC), and says that copyediting in accordance with this inadequately motivated distinction is superstitious, a waste of company time, and a sorry waste of the time of the particular humans who do it. Now, I think it is likely that Pullum is able to discuss RC with more expertise than could all of us together. He has also published voluminously and even when not copyedited writes at least as well as any of us. The argument of this "biased person" on RC is one that you are free to challenge; however, it looks convincing to me, and as long as it does convince, it is hard to see how copyediting in accordance with the "quadripartite claim" -- dismantled not only here but in any of several descriptive grammars -- is anything but superstitious. If the question "Is it grammatically correct to say 'Fidelio is the only opera which Beethoven completed'?" were to come up, then the answer would be yes it is (although its correctness doesn't mean it can't be stylistically improved by the the removal of the correct but superfluous "which"). However, the writers of MoS are free to turn their backs on the established facts about English and instruct would-be writers for WP to follow rules that pertain to what might reasonably be called voodoo linguistics. (Coming next, world history as illumined by the "Illuminati".) -- Hoary (talk) 14:59, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

But the writer under critique wasn't making that precise quadripartite claim in the first place. The Language Log writer added things in for the purpose of taking them apart.

Look at it this way, they picked the tag "prescriptivist poppycock," and that says something. They didn't pick a word that meant "the ones who take it too far"; they picked a word that meant "all of them." It's as if a conservative blog took an idea held by only the most extreme liberals and said "liberal poppycock" instead of "extremist radical poppycock." That same conservative blog will swear up and down that it is only reporting the truth, and that's all right because it's written for its audience and it's understood that there's a slant. The Language Log writers could have said "which-hunter poppycock" or some similar term, but they didn't. These are people who don't want to be thought of as biased, who perhaps don't even realize that they're biased, but they are. We should use their material with the same caution that we would apply to a political blog. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:14, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm lost. Are you saying that this allegedly grammatical distinction between that and which for RC is extreme prescriptivism, or that it's an example of something so extreme as to call for a word stronger than "prescriptivism"? If there is a grammatical distinction, on what might it rest other than the quadripartite claim? Do you say that nothing "prescriptivist" should ever be called "poppycock"? -- Hoary (talk) 15:27, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

What you're trying to construct is a set of guidelines that will help people write better, or avoid writing badly, or both. This is indeed not the purpose of the people who write articles for the Language Log. However, those people tend to write at least as well as does the average conscientious contributor to WP. That being so, sceptical comments on prescriptivism might merit some consideration. I don't think you'll find much support there (or here) for any idea that flabby prose should not be improved or that a pointless and confusing lack of standardization is desirable. However, you may find opposition to the notion that much of the difference between "correct" and sub-par English can be expressed as a set of near-shibboleths, reproduced more or less automatically from opuscules that your doting grandparents may have given your younger self. Happily, the MoS largely avoids lists of words and constructions; however, it does approvingly point to such pages as List of commonly misused English words, which in turn implies that (inter alia) the use of "infer" to mean "imply" is a misuse -- not a judgement that has much scholarly support. The MoS links to that list from a section titled "Contested vocabulary", whose appearance as a subsection of "Grammar" is a reminder to me of my -- or somebody else's? -- profound ignorance of the meaning of the term "grammar". Meanwhile, the punctuation section now sports a subsection ostensibly dedicated to and/or (but whose paragraph on [and-less] or suggests that it is about and/or and/or or). This starts with the assertion that The term and/or is awkward, an assertion that's far from self-evident, for which no argument or authority is provided, and which on this talk page is supported by such zany expostulations as There is no place in the English language for and/or, ever (although there demonstrably is such a place). However, if you want the MoS to descend into a laughing stock, don't let me hinder you. -- Hoary (talk) 10:13, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Meanwhile, if you're looking for an accessible British rulebook for spelling and wording, try this one. It's the guide for a respected newspaper, it's always available, it costs nothing, and its acquisition damages no tree. Incidentally, it has nothing to say about "and/or"; I infer that the Guardian has no objection to its normal uses. -- Hoary (talk) 02:12, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

My impression is that the guys and gals at LanguageLog aren't opposed to all grammar, only to the descriptive grammar which has that has with no basis on reality. For example, G. K. Pullum's February 2005 post clearly shows that he thinks that there's a linguist (James McCawley) which he does not dislike, and his March 2008 post shows that he agrees, among other things, that "which" should introduce all those supplementary relatives that have non-human head nouns, that it shouldn't be used for humans, etc. Anyway, it seems that in recent decades even prescriptive linguistics is becoming based on reality: very few grammarians would nowadays consider all "split infinitives" to be incorrect, as they have been very widely used even in the most formal prose, so stating that they are "incorrect" would be groundless. ___A. di M. 15:26, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

McCawley was the author of a substantial theoretical grammar of English (and much else that's related). Pullum is the coauthor of the largest and most highly regarded descriptive grammar of English (and much else that's related). What could "[opposition] to all grammar" mean; and whatever it might mean, how could Pullum and others be suspected of harboring or manifesting it? (Oh, and Pullum likes plenty of linguists; need this be spelled out?) -- Hoary (talk) 15:44, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

If the writers on Language Log think that the distinctions between "which" and "that" have no basis in reality, then that is a point against them, not in favor. Sure, the distinction is given more weight in the U.S. than in Britain, but it is there.

Hoary, I am saying that we should take what the writers on Language Log say with a grain of salt because of the low level of respect that they hold for prescriptivism. That isn't to say that these people aren't experts in their fields or that nothing they say holds any weight, but we should take into account that 1. their profession is primarily about descriptive linguistics, which requires a certain mindset and 2. while they are writing for Language Log, they are writing for the entertainment of a like-minded audience and will phrase things accordingly. A like-minded audience wouldn't mind that the copy editor in question did not actually make all of the claims under examination, but we should take notice of it.

"Which hunter" is a term used in the article that Boson showed us. I do not happen to think paying attention to the difference between "which" and "that" with regard to restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses is extreme prescriptivism, but the Language Log writer seems to. "Which hunter" is a term that Language Log could have used instead of "prescriptivist" in its tag "prescriptivist poppycock." In choosing a term that applied to all prescriptivists and not, as they claim, only to the ones who take it too far, they are showing me that it is prescriptivism itself that they hold in low esteem. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:20, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

(after edit conflict)

Replace plenty of with many, which has the additional advantage reducing the word count, which, in turn, is usually an improvement. Although widely used, a number of is vague. It should be replaced by a specific number (if known) or (that's exclusive or) a few, several, some, or (exclusive) many.

And/or should be expunged from the MoS; MoS should lead by example. Finell (Talk) 22:02, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Did it this afternoon. Now the only uses of "and/or" in the MoS are those that discuss it as a term. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:31, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Excellent! Finell (Talk) 03:06, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

• I'm launching a competition for an alternative to the journal article title "Molecular dynamics simulations at constant pressure and/or temperature" that avoids the detestable "and/or" but is just as efficiently expressed. Any takers? (It's the target of Hoary's "demonstrably" link above.) Tony (talk) 11:19, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Titles are not prose, of course; this discussion is about the prose within articles, while journal article titles are not sentences. Still, the easiest change in this case would be to use simply "or" and explain in the abstract that the methods include the case when both are constant. I already know what the arguments against that would be, so there is no need to remind me of them. It's simply a matter of preference in that title.

Now, regardless whether and/or has a place in some English, or is used by some writers, I would argue it does not have a place in our particular English on Wikipedia, because it has the wrong tone for us. Do those who argue in favor of "and/or" feel similarly about "his/her" or "if/when" in Wikipedia articles? I would view all three of these as parallel constructions that we should avoid. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:43, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

"If/when" can always be replaced with "if and when" without any change of meaning. As for "his/her", you can use "the player's" (or the equivalent replacing player with whichever common noun you need), sometimes "the", sometimes "their", and if all else fails "his or her". In some (rare, but possible) cases, there's no good way of avoiding "and/or" without possible confusion short of rewording the sentence altogether, and if the replacement sentence "sound worse" or is three times as long, that's not a Good Thing. IOW, I would discourage it when possible, but saying that "it does not have a place" sounds like throwing the baby away with the bathwater. ___A. di M. 13:00, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

What a coincidence! The example Tony found is very close to the topic of the B.Sc. thesis I'm working on right now. ___A. di M. 13:01, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

This is actually a pretty good example of "and/or" as a term that can be appropriate or inappropriate depending on context. Of course we shouldn't change the title of one of our sources when quoting it directly. However, that doesn't mean that we have to import the tonal preferences of physical chemistry journals onto Wikipedia. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:12, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

That title is an easy one: change and/or to or. First, the context suggests non-exclusive or. Who would be looking for, or write, an article about either constant pressure or temperature, but not both? (If the article is about fluids, pressure and temperature are related.) Second, it's a title, so brevity is at a premium. The lead sentence and abstract would clarify any doubt. What's my prize?

By the way, scientists share with lawyers (sorry) the language usage trait of thinking that wordier is more precise, or that each statement stands alone; context can provide sufficient precision.

If and when is more Legalese. Even lawyers don't use if/when. In most contexts, either word will do; in some contexts, one may sound more natural than the other. Use English! Finell (Talk) 16:11, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually, scientists prize conciseness quite highly. There's an expression that scientific journals "charge by the square inch." (This is also why so many of the graphs and charts are tight and hard to read.) If a scientific journal or title has lots of words, it is because the scientist believed that all of them were necessary to get the exact meaning across. This title is a good example. It's long, but take away almost any one of the words in it and the meaning would change. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:24, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't know about practices at scientific journals. Have you tried reading A New Kind of Science? It is excruciating (the writing, not the math). Most sentences begin with a warm-up and end with a clarification. Expressions like, "One may, for example ..." begin many sentences, one after another. Wolfram's preface explains that he decided to forgo the editorial process entirely so no one would interfere with his text. Big mistake!

Darkfrog, do you live on this page? I think you are risking repetitive strain injury from clicking the refresh button so often. Finell (Talk) 16:51, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh, it's just what I've picked up from working in protein biochemistry labs. Thank you for your kind thoughts about the state of my wrists, but as Amy Tan would say, you need not concern yourself with that for my sake.

Consider that "scientific article" can mean more than one thing. A scientific journal article is the sort that would appear in the Journal of Biological Chemistry or the back half of Science or Nature. It will have an abstract, a methods section, a conclusion section, etc. This kind of article will be written in sciencese, which can be hard for laypeople to read. The other kind of article is the sort we'd see in Scientific American or the front half of Science or Nature. These articles are supposed to be written in proper, intelligible English. Tony seems to be working with the first kind, a journal article. "A New Kind of Science" sounds like it would be the second. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:09, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I should have linked A New Kind of Science. It's a huge book. Interesting content, horrible to read. Finell (Talk) 20:37, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Bizarre bug?

What's with the weird Turandot (ctrl-click)">Turandot (ctrl-click)"> that came up in this edit to the MoS? I try to remove it, but when I click Preview, although the preview itself looks fine, the weirdness has magically re-appeared in the edit box. Odd thing is, I've had similar text pop up in one of my own edits in the corresponding part of Tony's condensed MoS [8], which Tony subsequently removed [9], apparantly without any trouble. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 16:29, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

It's got something to do with previewing templates. It's a bug across all of wikipedia. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 18:16, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I thought someone must have crept in in the middle of the night and put that in the concise version of the Mos. Got up my goat that it's exclusive Win-doze speak, too. (Those of us who drive a Rolls Royce use the "command" key, not the "ctrl".) Tony (talk) 12:10, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

I recall such a problem with WikiEd a couple months ago. Dabomb87 (talk) 13:23, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Use of italics when introducing a term

I'd like to propose a small addition to the italics guideline both here and in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (text formatting), under the "emphasis" heading.

The reason for my proposal is that I was confused when consulting the MoS because it only briefly mentions emphasis, and then goes on to discuss "mentions" of words (for example, to show the word or root under discussion in language articles) and refers the readers to an article page Use–mention distinction that I think needs some work.

Italics are often used in ordinary printed text when introducing a new term, especially if it is then going to be employed in later discussion in a particular way. For example, at Gloss I read:

A collection of glosses is a glossary (though glossary also means simply a collection of specialized terms with their meanings).

Now the first occurrence of "glossary" is linked and emphasised, which I agree is perfectly correct and normal use of italics, and is a use, whereas the second is a mention rather than an emphasis, and is a correct use of italics for a different reason. (The third and final use of italics I think is debatable, but it is really a matter for linguists whether it should be in italics or quotation marks or whether neither is appropriate.) I just propose making it clear in the MoS that the the first type of emphasis is valid and often useful. There must be many, many articles where this use of italics is employed in this way, albeit in a more straightforward way. According to HTML specifications [10], ideally ... should surround "the defining instance" of a term (presumably regardless of whether the term is being employed as a use, or defined as a mention), but this HTML element is rendered as italics by default.

This is my proposed addition to Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Italics (the bits in parentheses I'm not so sure about and probably should only go into the "text formatting" subpage):

Italics may also be used for emphasis where, in the course of using a term in an article, that term is being introduced or distinguished in meaning. (If the term is synonymous with the subject of the article, then it should be emboldened rather than italicised and preferably mentioned in the lead paragraph. It may be both linked and emphasised if the meaning of the technical term also has its own article corresponding exactly to the meaning in the present article. A term being introduced is very often mentioned as a word rather than used in context [see below], and if so mentioned should be italicised or quoted, but not both.)

I'm not proposing this as a prescriptive point, more as clarification that a normal use of italics in English is still likely to be used on Wikipedia. I know a short section cannot encompass all situations under which emphasis is desirable in text, but I think that given the more lengthy discussion about use-mention, it is important. I believe Wikipedia articles differ from ordinary text in that hyperlinking has often been used to show a technical term, where such terms would be in italics on paper; this means that this use of emphasis is less frequently necessary, but still useful on occasion. Here is another slightly reflexive real-world example:

Similarly the word a, an article or determiner, would look like this:

(followed by a grammatical diagram). Here the first use of italics is a mention, the second is a use of the word "determiner" that is also introducing that word (explaining it to lay readers as more or less equivalent to "article" and that "a" is an example).

Opinions?

As an unrelated point, I'd suggest "Effect on nearby punctuation" and "Italicized links" should be made subheads, as they are not cases when to use italics which the preceding bold headings all refer to.

--Cedders^tk 10:28, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I've added a subsection at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (text formatting)#Italic_face that is the kind of thing that I hope might have been helpful to me in trying to decide the best formatting of certain words (Canadian system of soil classification is one article that prompted this). I meant to just describe normal use of italics and suggest how that most sensibly interacts with existing Wikipedia guidelines. As I say, I only suggest adding one sentence to the main MoS.

I think "Italics are used sparingly to emphasize" could be more precise in guiding contributors. I note that Fowler's suggests eight possible situations when it is helpful to put a word in italics: (a) "This word, and not the whole phrase of which it forms part, contains the point"; (b) "This word is in sharp contrast to the one you may be expecting"; (c) "These two words are in sharp contrast"; (d) "If the sentence being spoken, there would be a stress on this word"; (e) "This words wants thinking over to yield its full content"; (f) "This word is not playing its ordinary part, but is a word as such"; (g) "This is not an English word or phrase"; (h) "This word is the title of a book or newspaper...". Points (f), (g) and (h) are explicitly dealt with in their own subsections already, but general emphasis is given a disproportionately small amount of explanation. Interestingly he doesn't mention the introduction of a new term as a specific case, but it is a commonplace practice and, I think, worthy of mention. --Cedders^tk 20:59, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Here's another example showing that HTML sensibly distinguishes different uses of italics, as <em> (for emphasis), <cite> (for citing longer works) and <dfn> (for introducing a term). http://www.htmlquick.com/reference/tags/dfn.html#tagexamples has as an example:

A Cascade Style Sheet is a document with presentational attributes grouped in classes.

which is shown as:

A Cascade Style Sheet is a document with presentational attributes grouped in classes.

Note that this is not covered by the use–mention distinction. If the defining instance here were a mention, it might be:

The phrase Cascade Style Sheet is commonly abbreviated to CSS, and could be defined as "a document comprising classes each with attributes relating to presentation on screen or print".

And there's another good example illustrating all three distinct uses of italics in HTML at [11]. --Cedders^tk 11:27, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

but not limited to

This is beginning to bug the heck out of me. I'm finding many cases where people are writing "but not limited to" after "including" as a knee jerk reaction because they have read it so often in legal documents. It's legalese, and shouldn't be in an encyclopedia. Where do we think this guideline belongs? DJ Clayworth (talk) 15:36, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Nowhere. See WP:CREEP, WP:ILIKEIT and WP:IDONTLIKEIT for why. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 15:52, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I'd agree than "not limited to" is ordinarily implied by the use of the word "including", and would remove such superfluous verbiage myself in most cases. However, there would be hundreds of other superfluous expressions and I doubt most editors would ever read such a list; also it would be hard to get agreement on what is superfluous or not as it's likely to depend on context. I don't think the Manual of Style or anything in Category:Wikipedia style guidelines really talks about writing style much at all, because it is such an idiosyncratic thing and is usually taught by example.

The nearest I can see is WP:TONE: "the article should not be written using unintelligible argot, doublespeak, legalese, or jargon; it means that the English language should be used in a businesslike manner." "Businesslike" might be worth challenging: sometimes, it may need be discursive, and "business English" is not to be imitated for academic subjects. Funnily enough, the style guideline for writing style guidelines says "be clear and terse. Avoid esoteric legal terms and verbose dumbed-down language. Be both plain and concise. Clarity and terseness are not in opposition: direct and brief writing is more clear." So maybe what you want is already covered in general terms? If not, maybe write an article off your home page or suggest at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)? Just my tuppence ha'p'orth. --Cedders^tk 16:51, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't make a rule about this one. Cedders is right that "including" can be construed to mean "but not limited to" most of the time, but there are going to be cases in which the readers could think that the following list was comprehensive, so there will be times when "but not limited to" will be okay. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:59, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

If a writer does want to imply exclusivity or limitation of a list, Fowler's advises the replacement of "include" with "comprise". "That is" (mentioned below) is another possible way of clarifying. Although such finesse may not universally applied, I haven't seen "including but not limited to" frequently myself, so am not sure it is a big problem. By the way, who reads legal documents? --Cedders^tk 09:53, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Anyone who wants to install a computer program. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:14, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

WP:MOS#Subset terms says "Do not use two subset terms", which is close enough. BTW, I would usually replace "including but not limited to" to "for example" or "such as": no-one would take "metasyntactic variables, for example foo and bar, are ..." to imply that there are no other metasyntactic variables. On the other hand, to make clear that all known elementary fermions are either quarks or electrons, I'd say something like "all known elementary fermions, that is quarks and leptons, ...". I'd leave "including" only in cases where it's unknown or completely irrelevant whether the list is complete or not. (Anyway, I agree with Headbomb's point.) ___A. di M. 19:33, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

More italics clarification and inline "see"

Is the following a fair description of current practice?

Hatnotes, one-line notes that include links to other pages, and other disambiguation and redirection templates are automatically indented and in italics if an appropriate template is used, in order to distinguish them from the text of the article proper. However, an inline "see" or "see also" instruction in the main body text should not be in italics. Such a pointer to related information that is not otherwise mentioned should also be followed directly by the relevant article name or names, on the same line, without an intervening colon or other punctuation. (See Wikipedia:Linking for more information.)

I'm thinking this might be a useful reminder to put into Wikipedia:Manual of Style (text formatting) under a new section on Wikipedia-specific use of italics. (The point about a colon arguably doesn't apply in a disambiguation page, such as International affairs, but it seems to be a sensible convention on article pages from what I've seen.) My Macmillan Encyclopedia does in fact italicise See and See also, but I wonder if that is because historically q.v. was in italics as a foreign phrase. Has this been discussed before? See also Cross-reference --Cedders^tk 00:17, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

I still can't find any previous discussion on this, and I've wondered about correct Wikipedia style for years. For information, a 1947 Encyclopedia Britannica consistently uses "See" and "See also" with the "also" in roman. Is the general consensus that it is unnecessary to italicise "see" as it is followed by one or more links, or that it should be distinguished as introducing metadata? It's in roman at, for example, France and Evolution. --Cedders^tk 09:25, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Another question is how to style the article title itself: see November Revolution? see "November Revolution"? see November Revolution? The second one is recommended by MOS:T ("Examples of titles which are quoted: ... Entries in a longer work (dictionary, encyclopedia, etc.)"); the last one is used in the examples at WP:LINK (see Fourier series for relevant background); ___A. di M. 10:31, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

The article title surely should follow the intended title of the page, so that my question becomes "See also RMS Titanic." or "See also RMS Titanic." In your example (which redirects to J/ψ meson), "November Revolution" is neither the title of an article nor of a book, therefore your third solution must apply unless I misunderstand, but my question remains "see November Revolution" or "see November Revolution". Since most traditional encyclopedias (but not Chamber's Dictionary) apparently use "see" instead of "see", if we were starting without millions of articles already written, I would argue for "see". That doesn't seem to have been the general tendency, and WP:LINK, which gives the Fourier series example, again uses roman "see", and of course "See also" section headings are also in roman. --Cedders^tk 11:31, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, "November Revolution" is the title of the Wikipedia article in that context. (I consider the part between parentheses to be just a technical means to have two articles with an identical title.) ___A. di M. 15:12, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I realised later that I had misunderstood you. It is true that logically in "see November Revolution", we are not referring to the November Revolution as we might normally, but to the Wikipedia article entitled, or referred to as, "November Revolution"; and that in a printed citation this would be indeed be in quotation marks because it is a shorter work. Another oddity perhaps is that we usually refer to Wikipedia as a thing, rather than as Wikipedia or Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.

Printed encyclopedias do not generally seem to put their own cross-referenced articles in quotation marks, possibly for space reasons. In the Britannica they are in small caps, and in the Macmillan they are in lower-case roman, possibly on the basis that the whole cross-reference is in italics and the names of the entries are in italics within italics. There is no reason the spell out "See also the article entitled "RMS Titanic".". On the other hand, I think that the word see is used to introduce an encyclopedic cross-reference and announce that until the end of the sentence, different rules apply; one wouldn't expect chapter names to be in quotation marks in a table of contents, although we would in an introduction: (See "Further Reading" for details and references.) (I've also found examples in bold and italics in an introduction). I think it's worth considering that when a Wikipedia article is printed, hyperlinks aren't visible traits that were lost in the past may not re-evolve in an identical form (see Dollo's law)[12], so it really is desirable to distinguish cross-references and metainformation from the article contents somehow. It could be by (a) putting the first word of the cross reference (see) in italics, (b) the whole in italics (as in a hatnote), but distinguishing the article names somehow, or (c) in roman so that it blends in with the rest of the text and we can then have Traits that we lost in the past are unlikely to re-evolve identically, a rule the formalisation of which is discussed more under "Dollo's law"., but the article title or titles in quotation marks. I think (a) would be clearest to people familiar with a good printed encyclopedia, but it may be that we are stuck with the de facto situation.

I'd quite like some authority to come along and resolve how editors should style cross-references. In the meantime I will make some changes based on the proposals above, since there seems no opposition here. --Cedders^tk 08:59, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) for the record, i don't understand what Cedders's edit to the MoS is trying to convey. maybe a brief example of what it's trying to talk about would be helpful. Sssoul (talk) 09:51, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for any confusion. It's to resolve an question unrelated to cross-references. I proposed it above at #Use of italics when introducing a term, and put examples and discussion there and in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (text formatting)#Emphasis. It makes the guideline for this particular usage, which I don't think would necessarily be represented as stress in speech, much clearer to me. It is common both in Wikipedia and in any number of technical or academic works, but is neither pure emphasis nor a use–mention distinction. If the longer explanation makes sense to you, and you can encapsulate it more clearly (or find a really clear example to include), please do, and if needed discuss in the section above. --Cedders^tk 10:44, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I hope it's clearer now, and I've added an example that at least has the merit of clearly being a use rather than a mention. For more details see #Use of italics when introducing a term above. --Cedders^tk 16:57, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Conversion of competition distances in sporting events

In sporting events for specific competition distances like 100 m in athletics, 100 m freestyle in swimming, 50 km in cross country skiing, of K-1 1000 m in canoe sprint, should these distances be converted into imperial units? Chris (talk) 15:32, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I'd say generally not, since it's effectively the name and definition of the event. Surely the purpose of MOS:CONVERSIONS is clarity, and while I'd quite like hectares converted to acres, anyone can roughly convert the length of a 100 m race, and it's an internationally known event. MOS:CONVERSIONS does say in some cases you can "link the first occurrence of each unit but not give a conversion every time it occurs", which sounds best. Adding conversions would IMHO clutter a page awkwardly as well as possibly confusing about the title of the event. --Cedders^tk 18:51, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Chris (talk) 20:25, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I'd prefer to see conversions to ease comparison, since miles are so firmly embedded in horse racing and the four-minute mile among other events, while historically many U.S. and Commonwealth events were in feet, yards, furlongs and miles. Even though I think few people measure baseball hits in meters rather than yards, I still added metric conversions wherever I reasonably could to Yankee Stadium (1923) and Yankee Stadium. (I also try to give conversions of hectares or acres to square yards or square miles, since "acre" doesn't mean much to me as a city boy.) It wouldn't be necessary to convert every appearance of 100 meters (or simple mentally-computable multiples like 50 m or 200 m) within an article, but some indicator early on would be very helpful. —— Shakescene (talk) 20:36, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree with User:Shakescene. I've grown up with the metric system and wouldn't know a furlong if I fell on it! A "once off" conversion for the sake of clarifying the concept for as many readers as possible is a good idea. Roger (talk) 20:57, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

It depends on context. For something like List of Olympic medalists in athletics (men), there's no point to adding "(109 yards)" after the "100 meters" in its discussion of sprints. Even the 100 meters article never mentions 109 yards, and that's OK too. Conversely, when talking about a marathon (42.195 km or 267⁄32 mi) or the Belmont Stakes (1.5 mi or 2.4 km) both units should be mentioned. Eubulides (talk) 22:48, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I think that putting a conversion somewhere would still be useful. The running, swimming and skating records in my 1900 Whitaker's Almanack (U.K.) are almost all in Imperial units (Britain's 100-yard dash record was 9 4/5 sec. for amateurs and 9 2/5 for pros). In my U.S. World Almanacs for 1929 and 1943 (Johnny Weissmuller swam the 100-yard freestyle in 51 sec. in 1927), and in my 1975 Information Please Almanac (Mary Decker ran 880 yards = 4 furlongs = 1/2 mile in 2 min., 5.2 sec., in 1974) , the distances are almost equally metric and Imperial/U.S. customary. So I'd think that anyone who'd like to make rough comparisons with today's far-more-prevalent metric distances would appreciate being able to do so in as few steps as possible. —— Shakescene (talk) 00:36, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Conversions should be included early on, as there really is no fully universal measurement system is sports. Conversions should be included to help those who are metric-minded understand US/Imperial units, and the other way, as well. My reaction to some of the above comments is that some don't understand that the 100 meters may as well be 100 glorfs to some readers. Converting to a comparable unit that'd be understood in a sports context (such as yards, which are quite often used in various sports, even in countries that are otherwise metric) is never a bad thing.oknazevad (talk) 03:06, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

A large number of sporting articles ignore the above comments, and simply say "100 meter dash" without converting meters into yards or glorfs or whatever. Modifying these articles to also mention yards would help almost nobody (every schoolchild even in the U.S. knows what meters are: they've seen Olympics coverage) and would put unnecessary glop in the article, this hurting almost everybody. This case is an easy call: just say "100 meters" and go on to the next topic. Other cases may be more difficult, of course, and it is often appropriate to include both sets of measurements at least once. Eubulides (talk) 05:01, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Have we determined in which type of article this conversion is proposed? I see no objection to the article 100 metres saying "The 100 metre (109 yard) sprint is the shortest race in international athletics events...". I hope no-one is suggesting that Usain Bolt's article should read "He is the world record holder over 100, 150 and 200 metres (109, 164 and 218 yards)..." OK in description if pitch measurements (although for a specific stadium, ENGVAR will dictate one scale or other), articles defining the sport; not in articles about individual sportsmen, or specific events. So it would be fine to describe a cricket pitch as being 22 yards (23.8 metres) in the article Cricket, but daft to say, in describing a specific Ashes match, that Abe Atsman was run out by Oz Fielder with a throw of 65 yards (70.9 metres). In the rather unusual of horse racing, which has a vocabulary pertaining to distance virtually unused outside that sport, perhaps the word furlong should be linked so that it can be defined/converted for those who need it, and not be intrusive to those who don't. Lets avoid the type of over-conversion that led to a Times sub editor a few years ago rendering a headline that said something like Minister posits oil price as $64,000 (£47,300) question. Kevin McE (talk) 08:02, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

I just finished adding a conversion table at the end, where it should be no distraction, of List of Olympic medalists in athletics (men) and List of Olympic medalists in athletics (women). (I did add mile conversions to the former's list of changing Marathon distances in the early Olympics.) The articles on 100 yard dash and 100 metres already have adequate conversions near their starts. —— Shakescene (talk) 09:35, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Quotations-2

The use of <blockquote>, {{quote}}, {{quotation}} and {{cquote}} are mentioned, but there are no guidelines for their use. As such, editors are free to use any of these for any reason mixed into any single article or single section of an article. Do we really want {{cquote}}s (scare quotes) all over articles or simply mixed in with non-scare blockquotes in the same article--all based on the latest editor's choice? {{Quotation}} results in the quote in a non-white color background and surrounded by a box. This looks nice. Should it be used in preference to <blockquote> or {{quote}} because I think it looks nice? Others might disagree and so the article gets switched back and forth. Could some quidelines be written on all this?

Also, the use of the colon (:) as the first character of a paragraph to indent the paragraph and thus make it look like a blockquote is not discussed. Is it perfectly ok to use (:) or not even ok to use (:) for this purpose? Hmains (talk) 23:00, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

The templates mentioned in the MOS guideline on quotations have documentation that discusses their usage. However, it would be a good idea to discuss the usage in MOS. The gist is that pull quotes with distinctive formatting, which is what some of the templates do, should be used very sparingly. Using a colon is not appropriate to block quotations. According to all the style guides I am aware of, or at least remember, blocked quotations are indented on both sides; the colon only indents the left margin. I glad that you care about these things. Welcome to the MOS! You will meet others here who share this interest. Finell (Talk) 00:04, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

While I agree that it would be helpful to standardize the format used for quoted passages, I should note the term "scare quotes" has an entirely different meaning than the one you are using. — CharlotteWebb 14:14, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it might be nice to mention a few things about what templates to (not) use. Misuse of cquote in particular is rampant. Strad (talk) 18:40, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

When to use talk page language templates

There are several language templates that are used to mark what variety of English the article is written in. When I added some US-English templates to anime and manga-related articles, which are mainly written in American English, an editor reverted and said that these templates should only be used in instances where there are conflicts between editors regarding which variety of English to use. A talk page discussion occurred here User_talk:TheFarix#US_English_templates where some other editors said that they felt the templates were not necessary, but they differed in proposed solutions and the details. One editor felt that the US-English template should be deleted, but that other language templates should stay. Another user feels that in general language templates should only be used when there are actual conflicts regarding the variety of English. I looked at the documentation and could not find anything which instructs "only add this template at this time" WhisperToMe (talk) 17:24, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

I haven't thought this through—sez he semi-alliteratively—, but my first-blush reaction is that they wouldn't be necessary unless a conflict came up or was foreseeable, although perhaps they could be useful. I spent part of my school years in England and part in the U.S., so my own style varies and I can't always remember which style is which for a particular word. Where one country's spelling seems clearer (e.g., U.S. judgement or Br. practise), I tend to use that one, regardless of my other spellings. And, while I'm no expert, I think that some people outside both the U.S. and the U.K. probably fall somewhere in between, e.g. Canadians. ¶ On the other hand, while the American, British and Canadian editors of War of 1812, a subject that equally concerns both sides of the Atlantic and both sides of the 49th Parallel, long ago decided to follow the British style of the first major editor, the existing British spelling and punctuation occasionally gets "corrected" by a passing American reader. In that case, perhaps a tag (which I didn't know about) would be useful.—— Shakescene (talk) 05:23, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Any rules for when one of these templates can appropriately be used would, in my mind, be a case of WP:CREEP. And I kind of have a problem with the very premise that the templates should only be used in instances where there are conflicts between editors regarding which variety of English to use -- if someone objects to the use of a template, then either there is an underlying conflict over the variety of English (in which case the use of template consistent with the eventual consensus is perfectly valid) or there is no conflict over the variety of English, in which case then I can't fathom why the heck someone would have a problem with the use of the template. If a template has been applied incorrectly, then fix it, just as one would fix the use of "color" in Calgary or "press-up" in United States Marine Corps.

Just to add -- I like these templates. While one doesn't necessarily always notice them on the talk page of any given article one edits, one does end up noticing them used on various articles over time. For novice editors in particular, they serve as a good reminder/advisement that there are many different varieties of English, and that they need not always "correct" the spelling of some words. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 19:59, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Let me switch a little closer to neutral, here, as I hadn't noticed these templates are for the talk page, where they'd be more helpful and less intrusive. (On the other hand that means they'd be less useful in stopping drive-by "correctors" who rarely see the Talk Page.) As for color in Calgary, I think that Canadians use both spellings; Maclean's decided to switch to U.S. spelling and usage about a decade ago, although I see that the Canadian Labour Congress (unlike the Australian Labor Party) still uses the "u". —— Shakescene (talk) 21:54, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

The use of the "u" is by far the preferred use in Canada, is used by all the media, and is the standard on Canada-related articles on Wikipedia. Maclean's does not use U.S. spellings. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 00:55, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

The user who objected to the template had no issue with the variety of English itself. He felt that the template was pointless. WhisperToMe (talk) 00:18, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Shakescene, isn't it "judgment" in AmEng, not "judgement"? And BrEng may accept both ... "Australian LabOR Party" was a branding exercise successfully promoted by those in the party who wanted to loosen ties with organised labour. It's an outlier. My feelings are that (1) too much can be made of which variety of English is used, (2) I don't like the potential dys-unifying effects of harping on it, (3) the differences between individuals' writing styles within a variety tend to be more significant than the differences between the varieties, and (4) yes, it would be good for house-cleaning, but it might put off some potential contributors who think "eeeuw, I'd better not edit this one, since I don't know how to write in BrEng". On balance, I'd prefer not to make a song and dance. A polite invisible note at the top of the edit box is enough, isn't it, if it is seen as important by the editors of a particular article? Tony (talk) 02:22, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I think you're right about judgement. I think both spellings are used on both sides of the Atlantic, but judgement, which Fowler and I both prefer, is perhaps used more in Britain than in the States. Just shows how murky some of these alleged national differences have become. If what Tony suggests is possible, that would be probably the best solution: just to let potential editors know (in the occasional case when it's thought important enough) what convention is being followed, and to let them know that what might look like spelling or punctuation errors might in fact be agreed national preferences. —— Shakescene (talk) 05:44, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the material difference is between one of these templates and a "polite" note at the top of the edit box. People are going to use the templates where they think they are helpful, or they'll use another means if they prefer to do so, and it's really up to the editors working on any particular article to decide the best way to approach the issue of varieties of English. I don't think that trying to come up with an across-the-board approach is particularly worthwhile. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 13:20, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I would think that a "New Zealander", having originated an article, would want to be confident that s/he wouldn't run into a spelling "correction" next time s/he looked at it. Why not put template in all documents that are not universally obvious as belonging to a particular English-speaking country? I have no problem with that. It seems to be to avoid annoying article grabs by us Americans who aren't always aware of spelling differences. A person can point to a pre-existing template. I would think the main use of this is to encourage non-American editors. We need all the editors we can get! Student7 (talk) 14:10, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Quotations-1

The "Quotations" section of this article leaves some confusion. It states quotations that are more than four lines or more than one paragraph should be made into blockquotes. Then it gives examples of blockquotes with one paragraph and less than four lines. I think blockquote can be useful even for a one sentence quote and know that many indented (blockquotes) in WP do not follow this MOS rule. So what should be a good rule? Hmains (talk) 22:41, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

All style guides I know of prescribe blocking only for quotations of a certain minimum length, although guides vary as to what that minimum is. Four lines is within the range of other guides, and seems about right to me. None that I am aware of is as short as one or two lines, and I see no reason to block anything that short. I question the "one paragraph" part of MOS's guideline, since a paragraph can (although rarely) be shorter than one line. Certainly MOS's examples should conform to the guideline. Finell (Talk) 23:46, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I am just pointing out that regardless of what the MOS states, the fact is that many WP articles with quotations have 1 to 4 lines in block quotes. I suppose that article writers do this to make quotes stand out from the rest of the text. In the articles I read, I mostly just see short partial sentences left in the text and everything in block quotes. Hmains (talk) 02:08, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Ellipses and square brackets

The current guideline states, "An ellipsis does not normally need square brackets around it, since its function is usually obvious—especially if the guidelines above are followed. Square brackets, however, may optionally be used for precision, to make it clear that the ellipsis is not itself quoted; this is usually only necessary if the quoted passage also uses three periods in it to indicate a pause or suspension." The problem with this is that the only time the reader knows the source of an ellipsis is in the unusual case where not only did the original text contain an ellipsis but also the article has introduced a second ellipsis with square brackets. The other 99% of the time the reader will see an ellipsis and not know its source. How can the distinction be important in that one case, yet unimportant the rest of the time? Would it not make more sense for the guideline to follow a convention I've seen elsewhere, namely that square brackets should always be used when the ellipsis is not itself quoted? Then the distinction is always preserved.

Proposal: Modify the guideline to say that square brackets should always be used when an ellipsis is not itself quoted. PL290 (talk) 13:53, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

How will the reader know that an ellipsis in square brackets is not itself part of the quote? The current instruction is quite on point to say that the function is usually obvious (the overwhelming majority of the time) and I think is satisfactory. Christopher Parham (talk) 15:40, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Surely that is a truly unusual case, and one for which a convention could be found if required to indicate it. I see no need to abandon the usual distinction simply because of that. PL290 (talk) 15:57, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Oppose This would modify the normal meaning of square brackets, which normally mean something has been inserted that was not present in the original text. I would suggest instead that if all the elipses were present in the origial, "[elipses present in original]" be added at the end, or if some of them were in the original "[unbracketed elipses present in the original]" be added at the end. --Jc3s5h (talk) 15:46, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

On the contrary, it would conform with the normal meaning of square brackets: the ellipsis is the "something" that's been inserted. That's just the point. PL290 (talk) 15:57, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

The elipsis, with no brackets, is so firmly embedded in the normal method of writing quotes that I was unable to interpret your proposal. Saying that every elipsis that was not quoted in the original material is so different from what every decent publication does that it is entirely out of the question. --Jc3s5h (talk) 17:01, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Oppose Ellipses in quotes normally mean that something has been elided. There is no reason to change this because of the unusual case where the quoted material itself contains ellipses. For that unusual case, Jc3s5h's solution would be fine. Eubulides (talk) 16:16, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

• Ian Spackman points out below that the MHRA Style Guide also suggests "[...]", but it is in the minority among style guides on this issue. The MLA style guide used to require the square brackets, but they were evidently controversial and were dropped from the 6th edition of the MLA handbook.[13] I see no need for Wikipedia to require the pedantic and apparently-somewhat-obsolescent brackets. Eubulides (talk) 16:44, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Support (The MHRA Style Book makes the same recommendation with the same motivation.) Ian Spackman (talk) 16:27, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Support. In the same vein as logical punctuation, inserting ellipses without indicating that they are not part of the original text is tampering. Strad (talk) 04:54, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Oppose: The most important objection is that we should not adopt a guideline that makes most existing Wikipedia articles non-complaint without an extraordinarily compelling reason. As to the substance of the proposal itself (as if we were writing on a clean state, which we aren't), ellipses enclosed in brackets is unconventional and is like wearing a belt with suspenders. Most everyone knows that ellipses in a direct quotation signify omission and square brackets signify addition or change. Unless Wikipedia is quoting from a quotation in a source (a secondary quotation), there is no ambiguity: Wikipedia inserted the ellipses. When Wikipedia is quoting from a quotation, there is always ambiguity—did Wikipedia or the source we are quoting alter the original quotation?—no matter what symbolism we use. The ambiguity can be resolved with a parenthetical explanation, or, better, avoided altogether, either by quoting the primary source directly or by quoting individual snippets of secondary quotation with no omission or alteration. Finell (Talk) 02:03, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose. It's reasonable to raise this for discussion, but I think the current wording is excellent (who wrote it?). In the perfect world, editors would be able to trace back exactly who introduced the ellipsis, and the current advice leaves open the option for this to be explained in a note at the end of the quotation. But I don't think it's reasonable to force a symbolic convention that will be impractical in many cases (Eubilides) and will instantly render many quotations faulty or suspicious (Finell). Tony (talk) 02:13, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

As Eubulides says above, the majority rule among style guides is in favor of ellipses only. I think that has been a self-fulfilling prophecy in terms of readers' perceptions. It is true that having ellipses alone might leave the reader with doubt. However, the majority rule seems to have had the effect upon us of reading all ellipses as either added by the quoter or present in the original (I can't speculate about how people outside of this thread read such ellipses, and I doubt anything more than anecdotal evidence even exists). In other words, we perceive ellipses as having the same function as square brackets. That introduces an ambiguity, but following-up on that ambiguity is easier than changing millions of quotes.

There is a deeper reason. Ellipses in the original or in a quotation serve the same function: they denote that something is not important enough to be said (or quoted) and so is omitted. Where the quoter omits with an ellipsis, that usually means the included information is not important enough for the quoter's purposes in reproducing the quoted material, which is to inform the reader. Whether the ellipsis is present in the original or was added by the quoter is usually irrelevant for the quoter's audience. All that tells the quoter's audience (our readers) is at what stage that omitted information was deemed irrelevant.--chaser (away) - talk 05:18, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Internal Links In Lists

Compare this old version to my edited version - it is counter-intuitive for the reader to have to search back through the list for the only linked instance of a band's name, and it looks 'incomplete' with many unlinked artists... The justification for not linking subsequent instances of notable terms in main article text is that it hampers readability, but I believe that in lists like these, it does the opposite. Perhaps there should be an exception made in WP:MOS#Links for lists?  :) Also, is there a native way to link to old versions of articles? I couldn't find a help page addressing that particular need.  • Gliktch •  ^(Talk)  10:29, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree that this is a good idea. The "generally link first occurrence only" guideline at WP:Linking#Repeated_links already makes just such an exception for tables, saying, "each row should be able to stand on its own". PL290 (talk) 13:32, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

This is particularly true for sortable tables where the "first occurrence" might not sit still. One could conceivably add a "sortable lists" feature to the interface based on some arbitrary but predictable criteria. — CharlotteWebb 14:11, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

As for your later questions, the guidance one gets about how to navigate and use history and watchlist pages is unbelievably inadequate. It took me over a year to learn such seemingly-obvious things as how to pull up a page version, because some things are supposed to be intuitive while others are not. To pull up a particular version, just click the date and time on the history. However to see the particular section that's been edited, that won't work: you have to click the tiny arrow just in front of the section name. To see the difference that an edit has made, click "prev". To see the differences between the page as then edited and what appears today, click "cur". And to compare any two versions, click their buttons (later one on the right, earlier one on the left), and press "Compare Selected Versions" at the top, which although in theory the most complex function, was actually the one I learned very quickly. To see pages that aren't in front of you, use the navigation boxes at the top or the bottom of the history page. Hope this helps. —— Shakescene (talk) 23:19, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Shakescene, why don't you write a page explaining this and other things newbies need to know? Tony (talk) 02:07, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

One simple answer, Tony, is that I'm not sure I've learned it all myself! And after the first couple of dozen pages of explanations that I read as a newcomer (generally practical things I read in the course of editing text or constructing tables), I stopped. So, while I've read WP:Cheatsheet, WP:Original Research and WP:Neutral Point of View, and made a stab at understanding the Table, Sort and Otheruses documentation, I've never read most of those things on the Welcome Template that arrived after my hundredth or two-hundredth edit (WP:Your First Article, WP:How to edit a page, etc.) To start a new page, I'd want to know how much should be and is being thrown at new users, what they actually read or would read, and whether a new user would miss something more useful or more important in order to read mine. The idea's certainly worth a thought, but probably at the currently-running WP:Requests for comment/new users. —— Shakescene (talk) 19:53, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Now I realize I was answering the wrong question (won't be the first or last time, either). The question was not about how to find an old version, but how to create a link to an old page, something that's often done at the Manual of Style discussion pages and at WP:Administrators' Noticeboard/Incidents, etc. I could probably figure out the answer to that question with a little thought, but the people here who've already made many such links are obviously more able than I to answer it. One method would be to pull up the old version as I outlined above, and then copy its URL from your address bar. There's also a guide somewhere on "How to create a diff". —— Shakescene (talk) 20:04, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your input Shakescene, as you can see from my original paragraph I managed to link using the full URLs, but they are treated as external links, and I was sure there must be an internal linking method I just wasn't aware of. On the Admin Noticeboard you linked to, people seem to be doing the same thing as what I used, so I guess either there isn't a better way or just no-one knows it. :p The history navigation stuff itself I managed to work out mostly by trial and error, I can't help thinking it could be improved, but there are issues with any of the alternatives I can imagine off-hand (one factor to consider would be that sometimes pages can have mile-long histories, so any kind of drop-box system is failed before it starts)..

As to the original issue, it seems to be a fair point that the exception for tables is reasonably applicable to lists of this nature. Maybe not ALL lists would qualify, but in this case it appears WP:IAR applies. :)  • Gliktch •  ^(Talk)  15:17, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Question: Title within title, and italics

The lead sentence for the article Soundtrack from the Film More begins: "Soundtrack from the Film More is...", but there is no rule about un-italicising a title within a title at MOS:TITLE. Aside from this lead, the title is usually completely italicized with no quotes or font change around the word "More". Can we have a clarification of the validity of this, and can MOS:TITLE be changed to cover it? --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 15:17, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Standard procedure is to reverse italics within italics, as you have done. Here's the question: Has the fact that MoS:TITLE does not explicitly stated caused confusion or does it just look like it would cause confusion? If the latter, how likely does it seem? (If the former, then yeah, the rule must be expanded.) Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:27, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

It's another tricky one, where editors might look for guidance rather than policy. In long stretches of italics, I would expect a title to be in roman (that is, reversed), but where a title is at the end of a title it could cause confusion.

I've checked some Routledge philosophy guidebooks that have titles in their title, and in most cases on their half-title page the books refer to themselves using all italics. For example, the one about Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge reads "Berkeley and the Principles of Human Knowledge is essential reading for all students...". Yet the one about Philosophical Investigations has "Wittgenstein and the Philosophical Investigations will take the student through the text without getting bogged down in scholarly detail", which although logically correct is arguably somewhat harder to make sense of. The bibliography in the latter book can't even agree with itself, romanising the primary work for vol 2 of a commentary by Baker and Hacker, and using all italics for volume 1. Wikipedia hasn't reversed the italics when it could with Tractatus in G. E. M. Anscombe#Selected bibliography, but then if a respected academic publisher like Routledge can't be consistent, what chance for Wikipedia (or indeed Wikipedia)?

If there were a guideline, I think it should be "When citing a work where part of the title is already in italics, reverse the italics to roman provided the context or typeface makes it perfectly clear that the roman text is part of the title", so that would cover lists and most footnotes and where, as in the article "Soundtrack from the Film More", the title is clearly marked out or delimited by the bold font in the lead. That means you couldn't do better in that article than at the moment. --Cedders^tk 11:12, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

We don't use a lot of underlining in Wikipedia, but there might be instances where that might be the best solution. For example, if there were no article, and you were using italics to indicate Soundtrack from the Film More, it wouldn't be clear that More is part of the title rather than the surrounding text. Would Soundtrack from the Film More or Accounts of the sinking of RMS Titanic or Company on Broadway work better (than Soundtrack from the Film More or Accounts of the sinking of RMS Titanic or Company on Broadway) ? Is this something where unusual cases are left to the best discretion of the editors, rather than a series of detailed rules? —— Shakescene (talk) 20:11, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to discourage underlining unless the context desperately requires it. The look on the page is usually bad, especially if there are a few occurrences, and underlines cut through the low-hanging letters. Tony (talk) 01:59, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I'll second that. Also, even though trends have now changed, there's still a strong association with hyperlinks, which is another reason for websites to avoid the use of underlining for other purposes. PL290 (talk) 08:32, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Maybe a dumb question, but shouldn't it just be Soundtrack from the Film More as that is the album's title versus it being a statement about the soundtrack? I.E. in the case of "The album Soundtrack from the Film More is..." it would all be italics, but if you talking about the "the soundtrack used in the film More" then only the film would be italics. ?-- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 13:00, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I think it's best left as it is. Flipping between italic and roman is a recognized convention despite sometimes (often?) appearing slightly strange. It preserves the necessary distinction. If the film were called Studio we would end up with Soundtrack from the Film Studio which would be open to misinterpretation! PL290 (talk) 13:16, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Avoiding implication of ISO 8601

A recent pair of edits removed mention of ISO 8601 except for the following passage (recent insertion underlined):

• "Years outside the range 1583 through 9999, or dates in any calendar except the Gregorian calendar, do not comply with the ISO 8601 standard."

Because of the other changes removing mention of ISO 8601, this passage is now largely irrelevant here, unless it's intended to imply that some sections of Wikipedia (long lists, etc.) do use the ISO 8601 standard, and I thought the point of the recent pair of edits was to remove any such implication.

This sort of low-level detail (about which international organization has standardized which format on which year set) may be appropriate for Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers), but it's way overkill at the top level of the manual of style. It is also true that Wikipedia has not adopted the date format standardized by the United Nations Working Party on Facilitation of International Trade Procedures (another YYYY-MM-DD format, but one without the restriction about 1583), but we don't need to mention that here either. Another advantage of removing mention of ISO 8601 from this page is that the "ISO! not ISO!" bickering will tend to move to WT:MOSNUM, a page that is a better forum for it.

Anyway, since the previous edit boldly removed implications of ISO 8601 elsewhere on this page, I was bold and removed this implication as well. Further comments and improvements are welcome. Eubulides (talk) 16:38, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Green text

The MOS pages use some kind of green-letter format for example text whether correct or incorrect. Would it be helpful to use a different color (red perhaps) for "bad" examples? Maybe something like:

Incorrect:	October, 1976; October of 1976
Correct:	October 1976

Obviously we wouldn't rely exclusively on this because some people are color-blind, but I think everyone else would be able to find answers a bit more quickly this way. — CharlotteWebb 14:28, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

That's what the guideline says, that color alone should never be used to convey meaning. We actually had a pretty cool discussion about this very issue not long ago, but I for one would like to hear your specific ideas. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:48, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

And it has just now been sent to the archives. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:17, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Here's a direct link to the archived discussion. See A. di M.'s sandbox, too. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 13:55, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

What a remarkable coincidence. How specific do I need to be? I think a good start would be to actually define classes such as the following:

.example-good { font-family: Georgia, serif; color: #006F00; }
.example-bad { font-family: Georgia, serif; color: #8F0000; } //optionally add  "text-decoration:line-through;", shrug

Then remove the redundant style attributes from the {{xt}} template or whatever spawns to replace it. This would be better than manually specifying the font and color (or strike-through or whatever) manually because:

1. It would save bandwidth, sending fewer bytes down the tubes.
2. It would allow customization via user monobook.css, etc. pages if somebody has a serious issue with the colors or font. For example, somebody might have only partial colorblindness and wish to change the red and green to some other complimentary colors which they can still distinguish.

I really don't care about the exact details as long as the default styles look sufficiently different on my screen. — CharlotteWebb 14:38, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Good idea. Actually, when I coded {{xt}} a while ago (with my old account) I meant to eventually ask to move the style from the template itself to Common.css after it became widely used, but I had forgotten about that. As for red text for incorrect examples, I don't think there's anything wrong with that, provided that it is still possible to tell which examples are correct and which aren't without relying on the colour alone. If no-one objects in 24 hours, I'm going to be bold and use {{!xt}} on the MoS. ___A. di M. 21:01, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Went ahead and asked that. ___A. di M. 21:16, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't object to the template being available, but as you say that these need to be distinguished by more than colour, would it be useful to use the fairly common shorthand in many style guides of using an asterisk (*) to mark incorrect uses? --Cedders^tk 11:16, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

I had proposed doing that (but with a cross instead of the asterisk), but it was rejected on the grounds that it would clutter the page. And by "more than colour" I meant that the sentences mentioning incorrect examples should explicitly say they are incorrect. They already do, but if someone after the introduction of the colour coding starts eliminating the "not"s before red examples on the grounds that they're redundant, that'll be a Bad Thing (but I think it's unlikely that it happen). ___A. di M. 12:00, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Just a head count, bearing in mind that polling is not a substitute for discussion: considering this and the original thread, I count four three opposes to different formatting for incorrect examples (Users Sssoul, J, Miremare and Tony), and six supports (Users A. di M., Darkfrog24, Headbomb, Greg L, CharlotteWebb and myself). At least some of the opposition has, I hope, been resolved by avoiding strikethrough and by mandating that colour never be used as the sole way of distinguishing incorrect examples. Other opposition seems to be based on a general dislike of clutter, which can be minimised by avoiding underlines, checkmarks, and so on. It's not clear to me how many of the opposes would still hold for the present suggestion, which matches what I think was agreed on by the end of the previous thread. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 12:53, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

... sorry if what i wrote was so easy to misunderstand, but that's not at all what i meant. i might be an "oppose" anyway but not for the reasons stated Sssoul (talk) 14:29, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

(Disclaimer: jumping in without reading the archive; but anyway, consensus can change...) I'm not personally keen on asterisks and the like for this purpose. The word "Not" is already there; surely anything we add to that for emphasis needs to be far more immediate than an asterisk/dagger which can have various (e.g. footnote) meanings and rely too much on knowledge of a convention. We obviously can't rely on colour for the cited reason so anything else seems bound to add content, but I think that shouldn't be ruled out too quickly on grounds of "clutter". In my opinion, Y and N have a lot going for them and are ideally suited for this purpose - in fact, they are so explicit that the words Not", "Incorrect" etc. could be removed, reducing clutter. PL290 (talk) 13:05, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Not entirely. We'd need new templates besides {{Y}} and {{N}}, as neither has alt text specified with the image. Using an image alone creates a problem with accessibility. —C.Fred (talk) 13:39, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Good point, but that should be easy enough to set up. Let's see what people think of the principle. PL290 (talk) 14:00, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

BTW, no-one is suggesting to rely on colour; only continuing using the current wordings like "Write this, not that", only that the two colours will be different: "Write this, not that". I don't think the latter can possibly be worse than the former for any person. I'm going to do that on the MoS if no-one objects. This uses templates, so should consensus form to add check marks, strike-throughs, or whatnot, they could always be added later. ___A. di M. 14:39, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

About those icons, PL, I actually think we will have more people browsing with images disabled than browsing while color-blind—or using a gray-scale monitor etc. Furthermore I think we should avoid using in-line images when plain text will serve the same purpose, see ✔, ✗! — CharlotteWebb 15:00, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Images disabled: alt text meets that; grayscale: strikingly different shape meets that; inline: well, perhaps it's not really inline for the cases we have in mind? Not flowing text, more a table or list:

October, 1976; October of 1976	N
October 1976	Y

PL290 (talk) 15:30, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

That's not what I meant, but whatever. I'm not saying we need a table, only that there is no compelling reason to use the image-icons in loco verborum given the alternative of using semantically identical text. I guess if you really wanted the icons you could use ✔ and ✗ for the alt attribute so text-only browsers/modes will grasp the same linguistic subtlety, beyond a bogstandard "yes" or "no". — CharlotteWebb 19:48, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

I do not feel that Y and N or symbols of any kind would be a good substitute for "incorrect" and "but not." Words are better. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:02, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree, actually. The only thing I specifically advocated was to use varying colors for the example text (in addition to what labels are already present). I'm only saying image-icons may be the worst sort of label we could choose, and that relying on these alone would arguably be worse than relying on text-color alone, etc. — CharlotteWebb 16:33, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Then there is only one thing that stands in our way! The MoS specifically discourages red/green distinctions, preferring violet/orange because fewer people are color blind do it. Show of hands, who thinks we should put this red/green anyway and/or remove that restriction? Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:39, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

It says, "Do not use color alone to convey information" [emphasis in the original]. As for that shade of orange it suggests, it is too bright here, so I guess that on monitors with a lower gamma than mine (e.g. Tony's) it'll be nearly illegible. Someone should pick a darker colour for that. ___A. di M. 08:42, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Outlining problematic parts of articles: The French Wikipedia

I noticed the following item in the "Violences urbaines" article of the French Wikipedia, where some sentences were actually underlined. One sentence, underlined in red, caught my attention, not because of its content but because of how the editor(s) noted the sentence's alleged lack of a neutral point of view: by underlining the controversial sentence and putting a superscript notice of the npov concern. Here is the text, which was in the form of a template (ok, two templates, one of which may have involved references):{{non neutre|La stigmatisation du chômage en tant que source de la violence est cependant contestable, notamment parce qu'elle se fonde souvent sur la [[discrimination]] peut-être trop rapide de l'[[oisiveté]], ce qui témoigne d'une certaine façon d'un renversement historique du principe selon lequel les classes laborieuses sont des classes dangereuses}}. *Le développement en conséquence d'une économie parallèle, comprenant notamment le trafic de [[drogue]]s et le commerce de divers matériels volés. {{Reference necessary|La concurrence entre bandes a favorisé un accroissement de la circulation d'armes.}}

Here's how it reads in English Wikipedia: {{non neutre|La stigmatisation du chômage en tant que source de la violence est cependant contestable, notamment parce qu'elle se fonde souvent sur la [[discrimination]] peut-être trop rapide de l'[[oisiveté]], ce qui témoigne d'une certaine façon d'un renversement historique du principe selon lequel les classes laborieuses sont des classes dangereuses}}.

• Le développement en conséquence d'une économie parallèle, comprenant notamment le trafic de drogues et le commerce de divers matériels volés.

—  Rickyrab | Talk 21:11, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

See here for how it looks in French Wikipedia; note the underlined sentences. I wonder if you think this is a good idea. — Rickyrab | Talk 21:21, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Looks awful. Ça ne vaut pas la peine. —— Shakescene (talk) 00:42, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Let me expand very briefly on that. Not everyone's going to agree what's fair summary and what's uncited assertion or expression of a Point of View. For an example of where it's hard to tell, see The Bronx#Since 1914 (or any article about a current politician or campaign): much of the material is footnoted, but not everyone will agree with all of it. If the French method were used, it would be an ugly sea of underlines, with a strong motive for people to remove underlines or add more, so the ever-changing underlines would not really add useful information for the bewildered reader. The War of 1812 is constantly being visited by those who think that it should declare that one particular side lost or won, and they'd be underlining constantly. —— Shakescene (talk) 00:49, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Let me also add that while I don't think it would work here for the reasons I gave, it's certainly an interesting idea and worthy enough for the French to try it. So I'm not criticizing Rickyrab for bringing it up. (However, since it concerns citations and NPOV as well as appearance, perhaps it should be raised at another Talk or Proposal page, like WP:Village pump (policy), WP:Village pump (proposals) or the various projects and working groups on Verifiability and Neutral Point of View.) —— Shakescene (talk) 01:11, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, like the rest of WP.fr, it looks awful. Tony (talk) 01:30, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

En-dashes in phone numbers

I just ran across 867‒5309/Jenny. I see that the thingy in the middle of the phone number is not specifically treated under hyphens or dashes. I'd like to urge using hyphens, to match with just about every other computer system out there dealing with phone numbers. Does this make sense? Thanks. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:19, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

In principle that'd be a figure dash, but I fear some fonts might lack a glyph for it and some browsers might use a brain-dead replacement such as an empty box. Which character do other reliable sources in English use for that horizontal line in the number? ___A. di M. 22:10, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

AFAIK, an unspaced hyphen is used in the North American Numbering Plan. In fact, whenever an unspaced hyphen is (incorrectly) used for a date range, the iPhone automatically puts a link to dial it as a phone number. oknazevad (talk) 23:37, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

The official North American Numbering Plan website uses Unicode U+002D Hyphen-Minus. --Jc3s5h (talk) 23:54, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

I often dislike seeing hyphens, en-dashes and em-dashes in the wrong place, but I think the principle here has to be what's easily accessible on most people's keyboards. (I use Alt-0150 and Alt-0151 all the time, but that's not what I mean by easily-accessible, nor is the Symbols menu available under the edit box but not the search box or the average reader's address bar). I have the same attitude towards ß [German terminal "ss", or Alt-0223] and the umlauted form of anything that's also commonly written with a following "e" instead of the Umlaut [e.g. ü, or Alt-0252, for ue, as in Führer vs Fuehrer]. Anything that makes it harder to enter, find or link to the title of an article, section, category, template, or any other piece of Wikipedia should be clearly discouraged—just as the software should have been made case-insensitive, oh say, about ten years ago. See: without the conscious intention of making any kind of point, I just used both a hyphen and an em-dash. "867-5309/Jenny" is already tricky enough to enter for those who don't know the accepted convention for this dual title. What's good style for the prose of the body text can easily be less than ideal for the titles of anything that people might want to search for or link to. My apologies to those not on Windows who don't use Alt+0000, but those codes all translate to ASCII which can no doubt be pulled up some other way on your OS or browser. —— Shakescene (talk) 05:20, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't have a big problem with accented characters -- while they're annoying, they're obviously correct. Hyphen vs hyphen-minusfigure-dash, otoh, just leads to confusion, IMHO.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:49, 1 October 2009 (UTC) (Random note -- I learned Alt-0243 just so I could properly greet people on Diane Duane's Young Wizards forum. :-) Dai stihó! )

For the record, Unicode U+002D Hyphen-Minus is equal to ASCII 2D, hyphen or minus or simply the character to the right of 0 (zero) and left of = (equal) on a QWERTY keyboard. They're all just a hyphen (see also ASCII#Unicode and C0 Controls and Basic Latin), which is also the typographer's standard for phone numbers, not any other special character. Sswonk (talk) 23:46, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

There also exists a U+2010 HYPHEN character, but no-one ever actually uses it because in all fonts where the hyphen and the minus sign are different (which I think includes all proportional fonts), the hyphen-minus looks like the former. ___A. di M. 09:41, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like it's safe to change these back to keyboard-style hyphens on sight, then, huh? Is there enough consensus to put this into the MOS? --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:14, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

I would think, and hope so.— Dædαlus ^Contribs 21:26, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it's worth the hassle (or the busybodylike intrusiveness) to correct unusual dashes within the body of an article's text, although different formattings of "867-5309" might well mean that searches for one format would miss other versions (867–5309, 867—5309, etc.) not even known about. But in titles (provided all the requirements of WP:MOVE were met), section headers, category names (if any include telephone numbers), etc., I think semi-silent correction on sight would be justified.

But, as someone who actually likes “curly quotation-marks”, I understand why "straight quotation-marks" are strongly preferred, and in some cases required, in Wikipedia: because of the limited English-language keyboard. I guess I didn't have the patience to stop the enthusiasts for hyper-correct dashes from imposing exactly the opposite requirement for hyphens and dashes: moving away from easily-found hyphens in the date ranges of article, section and category titles to en–dashes and figure-dashes. That said, it's probably a good idea to set up a very informal Request for Comments here (as a subsection of this section), so that those who want the figure-dash in telephone numbers won't feel they were unfairly sidestepped. —— Shakescene (talk) 00:38, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

• I've been advised by an onlooker that there is an international standard for writing phone numbers. It is ITU E.123. [14]. To fix their typos and sloppy expression, it's: "The grouping of digits in telephone numbers should be by means of spaces, unless an explicit symbol (e.g. the hyphen) is agreed on for procedural purposes." It goes on to say "Only spaces should be used in an international number.", but whether this second sentence means that spaces must be used in international numbers, or spaces but not symbols may be used, or spaces may be used, but never symbols, is hard to make out. It kind of degrades the authority of the ITU, doesn't it. Tony (talk) 00:50, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Request for comment - dashes in article titles

Should article titles use the standard hyphen for ease of searching, regardless of the style used within the article? SarekOfVulcan (talk) 04:11, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

• Is this another anti-en-dash push? There's nothing "standard" about hyphens. This matter has been resolved for article names and, more recently, for category names. Tony (talk) 04:31, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
  • This issue has been discussed over and over again. If a dash is used in the title, then a hyphen redirect should be created to help searching; I don't see why this issue when the original discussion concerned quite something else. Dabomb87 (talk) 13:27, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
  • I think the RfC should be limited to the original topic of discussion: should phone numbers have figure dashes? Dabomb87 (talk) 13:34, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
    • If the official numbering plan uses U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS (i.e. the hyphen found on the keyboard), so should we. Anyway, the original question was about a fictional phone number in a song title, and a few seconds' googling says that the hyphen-minus is used in that song title, too. --___A. di M. 15:25, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
• NO. There shouldn't be any discrepencies between titles and main body text. That means 1-555-333-2342 is written as exactly that, and Bose–Einstein condensates is written as exactly that. This RfC is useless. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 16:10, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
• Use figure dashes I am in favor of using figure dashes (that's why they exist) with appropriate redirects from hyphens and en- and em-dashes. For what it's worth, I think it is very important to be consistent, though. If one article on a phone number uses figure dashes, they all should and (to contradict the original interlocutor), if the title of the article is "XXX-XXXX" then we should use - (the hyphen) throughout the article and not use the hyphen in the title but the figure dash in the body of the article. Does anyone know of any users having a problem with articles entitled with figure dashes, or is this speculative? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:39, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

You don't get the unilateral ability to move something you don't have consensus for. It doesn't work that way, I'm currently seeking administrative assistance to warn you of this fact and fix your error.— Dædαlus ^Contribs 06:10, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Right Anyone just joining in, this was settled on my talk; it was a simple error. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:50, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

It's even been settled in favour of en dashes for category names (recent RfC). Tony (talk) 07:06, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Really? Citation needed. When was there consensus that telephone-numbers-as-categories should include en-dashes? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:47, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

No, for article text, article names and category names, vertically consistent per the MoS. Although the MoS (and no other general style guide I can think of) specifies phone number punctuation, I think an en dash would look odd. Nowadays, it's either (1) spaced (0428 689 8823), less often hyphenated (0428-689-8823), or in many online forms (whatever the technical word), completely unspaced (04286898823). En dashes poke out a bit much, don't they? (0428–689–8823) The purpose of the punctuation is to join the elements, not to indicate that they're in opposition or elements of a range, yes? Tony (talk) 08:14, 14 October 2009 (UTC) Given the diversity of formats used and the number of telecom jurisdictions and companies, it's not something I'd get upset about; as along as there's vertical consistency. Tony (talk) 08:16, 14 October 2009 (UTC) Please see my comment in the section above concerning ITU E.123. Tony (talk) 00:50, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

In the U.S., one almost never sees anything but regular hyphens separating parts of an ordinary phone number: 732-555-9032. If I saw one with spaces, I would not immediately know that it was a phone number. I do not think that Wikipedia should adopt spaces exclusively for phone numbers. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:42, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

In Canada, unless you use regular hypens, no one will know what you are talking about, since spaces, periods, etc DO NOT represent phone numbers. So the standard phone number is " (123) 456-7890 ext. 9876 " Since it appears from Tony1's comments that Europeans use dashes/hypens too, it should be standardized on the ASCII minus sign / hypen / dash. 76.66.194.183 (talk) 13:23, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Quoting from above, which confirmed what I already knew:

The official North American Numbering Plan website uses Unicode U+002D Hyphen-Minus. --Jc3s5h (talk) 23:54, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Therefore, we must use a U+002D hyphen for North American phone numbers, not a figure dash, nor a space (which is apparently standard for European phone numbers), as to do otherwise would misrepresent the number as it assigned by the proper authority. Accuracy is more important than typographic considerations. oknazevad (talk) 20:39, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

{{TOCleft}}/{{TOCright}}

Are there specific guidelines on the use of these formats. There is an editor (User:Algorithme) who is changing the standard format to TOCleft and TOCright in any article he edits with the edit summary "looks better" [15]. IMO unconventional formats do not generally look better, as they detract from the stylistic unity of pages in the project overall and are confusing to readers, but I can't find specific MoS guidelines on this. Edit wars over which format "looks better" must obviously be avoided, if only because it is impossible to rationally debate such preferences. Paul B (talk) 14:55, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

I should go back and look at WP:Layout, but there are times when left and right alignment of a contents box can have other reasons, such as Information Boxes and various medallion-like templates that hang along the right-hand side to navigate to related articles (e.g. the top-right navigation templates for "Network Neutrality" or "Elections in New York"). —— Shakescene (talk) 18:43, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Interesting. LegitimateAndEvenCompelling‎ (talk · contribs) tried to do the same thing today on over two dozen articles, which have been reverted. The templates themselves explicitly state they should NOT be used just for aesthetic reasons, but they "should only be used in cases where the TOC gets in the way of other content or is detrimental to the layout of the page; it should not simply be used for aesthetics since it tampers with the standard appearance of articles." Help:Section#Floating the TOC also discusses, and notes it should be used rarely and again, not for "beautification", as LegitimateAndEvenCompelling‎ called it. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 18:52, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

I had to laugh when reading this. First we state that the templates should not be used for aesthetic reasons. Then we state we can use them "in cases where the TOC gets in the way of other content or is detrimental to the layout of the page." Please explain how the second reasons to use the templates is not different from aesthetic reasons. Frankly, they are the same thing.

Then we have the common, "confusion" of readers. Tell me, how does a reader get confused reading a single article? Do they automatically get lost because they see a TOC on the left or is it only when they see it on the right? Who are these readers that are so easily confused and has any editor every found one? If so, let's put that bugger in a museum because it would be one simple wacko that can't read a page.

What is certain is there is no law all must abide by on Wikipedia. In reality, the MOS is just as flexible as everything else and things change over time. They are particularly flexible when such silly reasoning as you can't use it for aesthetic reasons, but you can if things are just getting in the way or to improve format. --^StormRider 19:02, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

"gets in the way of other content" would indicate that for some reason the ToC is covering content in the article or otherwise hindering viewing. It is also occasionally used in articles with massive ToCs that are better floated than limited (primarily really long lists). Aesthetic reasons is floating it because someone thinks it looks "prettier" or mistakenly believes the whitespace to the side of a ToC is somehow bad. Wikipedia has standards of organization and viewing, the same as any other encyclopedia or the like. It can be confusing to readers to have articles randomly jumping from the ToC being on one side or other, or randomly changing format. One could argue that because the MoS is "flexible" you can just change any article you like to use whatever fonts and colors you prefer because its just "aesthetic" and who cares about that. Consistency between articles makes it easier for readers and editors alike, and improves the overall flow of content. It also just plain out looks more professional and is just a plain basic tenet of web usability and good web site design. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 19:23, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

I believe there is an accessibility issue with forcing the TOC left or right – can anybody check up on this? Dabomb87 (talk) 01:02, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

I just came to know about the issue. My intention with a floating Table of Contents is occupying less room, for practical (accessibility) and aesthetic reasons. I have an rsi, and it is very uncomfortable for me having to overuse my limbs to read long articles. Some articles do not have extensive headlines or titles which make a floating toc inconvenient. As my monitor is not as big as I would it to be, the void space besides the default toc is a waste to me. --Algorithme (talk) 11:36, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Both should be strictly discouraged unless there is some pressing layout problem, such as stacking issues with lede templates. Quite why Algorithme thinks edit warring over this is a good idea is beyond me, but it puzzles me that someone who purports to have a legitimate accessibility problem with the TOC was using a lame reason like "looks better" in the edit summaries rather than the reason he's given here. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 12:15, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

To Dabomb87 - there's no accessibility issue because the code will semantically be the same with or without floating TOC, so screen readers won't be affected. However I think I've read somewhere that if a user wants to change the TOC layout, they can simply edit their own Monobook CSS file. In my opinion, one user shouldn't be deciding for all the other users what "looks better". Laurent (talk) 13:28, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually, floated TOCs are usually moved out of the normal placement (the template is typically moved to the top of the article, or halfway through the lede), which would affect the page's semantics. At the very least we should be discouraging this. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 14:11, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Confusion of readers is a cop-out and does not exist. Readers are not infantile, but actually literate individuals capable of reading a TOC regardless of its position on a page. I see no difference between aethetics and "proper" placement. If we follow common sense the result will be positive on all articles. Is uniformity a good thing? Of course, but at times common sense will lead to a different placement on some pages. What we absolutely do not need are TOC police that run around forcing everyone to meet their personal idea of how things must be. There are no rules and no golden calf that every article must observe and worship. Let's just try to remember that the objective is excellent articles. The MoS guides, but never dictates. -^StormRider 20:19, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

That is not in itself a genuine argument for moving the TOC around. There may always be exceptions, but that does not imply that we should not endeavour to present a suggested layout which is consistent and accessible. I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen a TOC override which was genuinely the best thing for the page, as opposed to a random secession from the MoS on the grounds that someone felt like it. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 23:09, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

In general there is no reason to move the TOC from its default location. Efforts to make a page "look better" in this way usually only lead to improvements for some editors, while making the page look worse for others. So unless there is some truly exceptional issue, the TOCleft and TOCright templates should not be used on articles. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:14, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't know if we are disagreeing with one another. You seem to want to emphasize a top-down approach and "thou shalt not..." I choose to say the same thing, but from a position that there may be exceptions (maybe that is a bottom-up approach?). Editors should just use their head i.e. have a reason why you implement a TOC right/left command. When an editor does use it, don't break an axe forcing a reversion. Just ask why. In my opinion, I hate long white areas in articles. By the time you have bypassed the TOC and finally arrived at the article, you have lost the value of the TOC because it cannot be seen. TOC should be of value to the article; if not, they are unnecessary fluff. The objective is functionality and to facilitate; when I review articles I use that as one of my standards. If someone has used a TOC left/right command, I evaluate on how functional the result is. I ask what else they were trying to achieve. I do not revert simply because the editor says...it looks better. It is an issue of common sense and an understanding that there are no rules.

The manner in which I explain myself throws editors that prefer that all "T"s are crossed and "i"s dotted into a tizzy fit. It is viewed as too loose, without control, and too much potential for chaos. It get that. But I also know that is a personal problem and has nothing to do with me and my edits, but is a personal preference. It floats their boat better...it looks better to them. Regardless, at the end of the day it is fundamentally about reading. No one will ever get confused (I reject that trite phrase entirely because it is balderdash), no readers gets lost. Can the article be read easily? If the answer is yes, then editors have met the standard we are seeking and the case is closed. -^StormRider 01:12, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I think that the situations where the TOC should be floated right or left in articles are extremely rare. Just having white space beside the TOC is no reason to move it, especially because what looks like white space to one person may not look like much to another person. Edits such as this, with a rationale of "looks better", are inappropriate. If we wanted the TOC to be moved to the side on a routine basis, we would implement that in the skin itself, not via TOCright templates. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:26, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Manual of Style is no longer marked as part of the Manual of Style

Wikipedia:WikiProject Manual of Style (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as part of the Manual of Style. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:01, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Related is no longer marked as part of the Manual of Style

Wikipedia:Related (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as part of the Manual of Style. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:02, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Taxobox usage is no longer marked as part of the Manual of Style

Wikipedia:Taxobox usage (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as part of the Manual of Style. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:02, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, if you go to the documentation for Taxobox (WP:Taxobox usage), it still says that it's part of the Manual of Style. I'm not quite sure what Thorstein Veblen would have said about his eponymous 'bot. —— Shakescene (talk) 19:03, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Music/MUSTARD has been marked as part of the Manual of Style

Wikipedia:WikiProject Music/MUSTARD (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, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

mr / mr. / mrs. / ms , etc..

I haven't been able to find a guideline regarding the use of "Mr." in articles. The use of titles Mr and Mrs are common in British references, but less common in American references. For this reason, to represent a non-American-centric neutral point of view, I would think articles such as Tony Blair should refer to him as "Mr Blair" instead of "Blair". But in this article he is referred to variously as "Blair", "Mr Blair" and "Mr. Blair". This should probably be made consistent. Indeed, I would think there should be something in the Manual of Style.. thanks. 137.82.175.12 (talk) 17:11, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

The period is not used in British English when an abbreviation ends with the last letter of its expansion, as in Mister, but it is in American English. So he's Mr Blair not Mr. Blair. OTOH, I don't see why you can't just call him Tony Blair or Blair, and IIRC some guideline discourage the unnecessary use of titles. ___A. di M. 17:14, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

here's the pertinent section of the "biographies" MoS. Sssoul (talk) 17:26, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Common American journalistic practice is complicated by three exceptions: (1) The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and several other (usually "quality") newspapers still give "courtesy titles" such as Mr. in subsequent references to someone after giving his (or her) full name; (2) the President of the United States is usually called "Mr. Bush" or "Mr. Obama", regardless of the publication's or outlet's political views; (3) the subject of an obituary is also often (if a little stuffily) called "Mr. Jones" or "Ms. Smith". An occasional fourth exception is when courtesy titles are used to distinguish people with the same last name, e.g. Mr. Brown from Mrs. Brown or Lt. Rodriguez from Dr. Rodriguez. —— Shakescene (talk) 20:56, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't really know why people keep mentioning the stylistic practices of newspapers, unless it's because they're easy to find. WP is not a newspaper; we have rather different concerns from those of journalists. British journalistic practice is to use courtesy titles quite frequently, but not British encyclopedic practice, at least if I recall correctly. I'll take a look at my copy of Brittanica when I get home. --Trovatore (talk) 21:42, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

For such a good newspaper, why does the NYT have such an execrable house style? They're the only ones to cling to 1990's, for example. Tony (talk) 12:34, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

WP:Update

Starting with the October Update, policy changes will be at WP:Update/1 and changes to Category:General style guidelines will be at WP:Update/2. The idea is to stick to "just the facts" on changes to the General style guidelines, and let the policy changes be a bit more raucous and open to interpretation. As always, I welcome input on how to make the Update work better. - Dank (push to talk) 20:53, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Why this bifurcation? Tony (talk) 10:37, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Until the end of August, my audience was mostly the people who tended to already keep up with policy and/or the General style guidelines. Now more people are interested, and I'm going to be doing a couple of reports at the end of each month in the Signpost. If I'm saying something about policy in general, I don't want to confuse a more general audience by giving them a link to a mixed page of policy and guidelines. - Dank (push to talk) 12:12, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Also, I'm now looking at the talk pages and edit histories, selecting page versions (for a few pages a month), and doing it 3 times a month ... it's a lot more work, and I probably can't devote that kind of time to the General style guidelines. I'd rather just do them the same way I always have, diffing from the last version of one month to the next. - Dank (push to talk) 12:25, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Is three times a month sustainable for you? And is it necessary for the readers? I got burnt out doing that job even once a month. I'm concerned that the changes be expressed in as simple and short a way as possible. The whole idea is to minimise readers' feeling that the guides and policies are an impenetrable jungle, far too large and complex ever to grasp. Tony (talk) 12:31, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I think it's probably necessary to look at the pages 3 times and give people a heads-up about what needs attention if I'm going to be selecting page versions near the end of the month and defending my choices ... but the data is sparse, I probably need a couple more months of feedback before I'll know for sure. I want the process to be as simple as possible (but no simpler, per Einstein). And yes, I used to just throw in pretty much every change, but with the bigger audience, I need to pay more attention to making things shorter, snappier and more interesting. This month, for instance, I've stopped reporting on small changes to section names. - Dank (push to talk) 15:15, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Please. There is always the feeling that you'll be criticised if you leave something out that someone thinks is their pet clause. But I think one has to be hard-headed about it and risk that. Anything that you have missed that someone points out and you think is important enough can either be slipped in later or included in the next update. It's a moving target. I think that the more editors at large who need to know about a change, the more you might provide the actual detail; the more specialised or minor the changes, the more you might consider summarising or pointing to the location with a note "minor changes to blah"; or something between those extremes. Even really important changes can sometimes be summarised, with the link if someone wants to know the fine details. This is just a suggestion as to how detail might be controlled. Tony (talk) 15:43, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Indirect style

A lot of the MoS seems to be written in an indirect style:

"The following types of quoting should not be used:"
"Quotations are enclosed within double quotes."
"Capitals are not used for emphasis on Wikipedia."

rather than the stronger and more direct:

"Do not use the following types of quoting:"
"Enclose quotations within double quotes."
"Do not use capitals for emphasis."

Was this a conscious decision? All other things being equal, the second style seems better to me. 81.129.129.192 (talk) 19:54, 24 October 2009 (UTC).

You may prefer User:Tony1/Beginners'_guide_to_the_Manual_of_Style. Tony (talk) 02:47, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

The less direct style is also a by-product of the MoS's status as a gudeline, not policy, and therefore not absolutely required. (Though, as has been discussed before, many treat it as "the rules".) oknazevad (talk) 22:44, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree with our anonymous contributor entirely. The MoS should be phrased in the imperative. It is telling people what to do, not describing the nature of the style. Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:56, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Does MOS have a statement on dashes used to begin quote cites?

I didn't think that this page should be used as a Help Desk. (I also knew when I clicked on the discussion tab that I would find hundreds of archives of past discussions; there's some stress.) To that end, I've looked for days through MOS sections on quotes, citing, hyphens and dashes, associated sub-articles, and the various Help Desks (I couldn't find one addressing MOS issues) for a reference on how to use a dash to begin a quote cite. I have two examples of what I'm talking about, please see the quote boxes in the articles at Kowloon Walled City Cultural depictions and Babylon 5 Concept.

The issue seemed minor until I started reading GA and FA nomination/candidacy/review discussions. The use of the dash/hyphen "stuck out like a sore thumb" to me as I learn to prepare an article for a GA (re)-nomination. So I tried to learn how to do dashes/hyphens "right", MOS-style (how am I doing so far?).

It seems agreed among editors that you use an em dash to begin a quote cite. This I can buy, I've seen it that way in dead-tree publications. However, when reading through MOS on hyphens, en and em dashes, I cannot figure out if such an em dash used to start a quote cite is spaced or un-spaced. While I believe un-spaced is the right answer, I don't think belief is enough to satisfy either GA reviewers or those other editors who believe it should be spaced.

It's the spacing issue, not the use of em dashes themselves, that led me to inquire. MOS states (paraphrasing), "All em dashes shall be un-spaced". But when I see them used to start quote cites, it's about 50/50. (In other contexts it's also about 50/50, but I now have to go around fixing them per MOS; see what you've made me do?).

Note, while going over the issue I find the greatest irony in the fact that MOS states (in a rare display of absolutism), "Do not use substitutes for em or en dashes, such as the combination of two hyphens (--)". Still, editors themselves frequently use the double hyphen in this way that I'm concerned about to sign their own comments.

If I haven't missed it, and it's truly not there in MOS, I believe a sentence should be added to the em dash sub-section such as, "Use un-spaced em dashes to begin a quote cite", and an appropriate example be added as well.

If it is there and I missed it, then I think a clarification should be added to the em dash sub-section specifying where the info can be found.

(OT to this section: While researching this post, I wrote an objection in an above discussion on the editorial use of square brackets that I would like to draw your attention to.) —Aladdin Sane (talk) 17:25, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Use of square brackets

Currently, the third example for square brackets is this:

To make the grammar work: She said that "[she] would not allow this" – where her original statement was "I would not allow this". (Generally, though, it is better to begin the quotation after the problematic word: She said that she "would not allow this.")

I don't think this is the best example for how to use brackets to make the grammar work. I would use something along the lines of the following (it could be an additional example, instead):

For example, if referring to someone's statement "I hate to do laundry," one could properly write: She "hate[s] to do laundry."

I think this is a better illustration because, as the current example itself explains, starting off a quote with brackets is usually not necessary. But, I didn't want to unilaterally change the manual of style. Agnosticaphid (talk) 06:46, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I like it. And it removes the incorrect "that." Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:53, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

How is it incorrect? Strad (talk) 16:39, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I have a suspect as to why Darkfrog24 thought that: "that" would be incorrect if it were direct discourse, i.e. She said, "I would not allow this." (Note that the period is inside the quotation marks.) In She said that "[she] would not allow this"., OTOH, that's indirect discourse incorporating a partial quote; drop the quotation marks and the brackets, and it's evident that it's a subordinate clause. (BTW, it'd be She said that she "hate[s] to do laundry". with the period outside, because we're not quoting a full sentence.) ___A. di M. 17:19, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I see. The original "that" only looked like it was incorrect because a "that" right before a set of quotation marks so often is. Kind of like how an uppercase "up" or "in" in a title case header can look incorrect, but it is correct if it's acting as an adverb. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:46, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

An adverb? Huh? There's nothing wrong with "that" in the original; but I like the proposed replacement. Tony (talk) 01:33, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

As in "Signing Up for Fun" or "Bringing In the Corn." Ordinarily, "up" and "in" would be lowercase because they're usually acting as prepositions, but in these two cases, they're acting as adverbs. To someone used to putting the prepositions in lowercase, "Up" and "In" might look incorrect, but they're not. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:53, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

It seemed like everyone agreed that it was a good replacement, so I replaced the example. I believe I properly placed the punctuation outside of the quotation marks. (The rules here about that confuse me sometimes since I'm from the US; feel free to fix it if it's wrong.) Of course, if people think it's better with both illustrations, go ahead and add the old one back. Agnosticaphid (talk) 20:41, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry to jump in, I must have missed something massive in this section of the conversation (or perhaps others I have not read). The statements She "hate[s] to do laundry" and She said that "[she] hate[s] to do laundry" are not the same at all, given the original quote, "I hate to do laundry". Stylisticly, we all seem to agree that Agnosticaphid's style is superior to the original example cited in the MOS. However, the meaning is massively changed, and I thought that this was not allowed in quoting direct quotes. Please, if I'm wrong about this, point out to me where I am wrong, because I do get confused sometimes, I may have missed something too subtle for my brain. I spend a lot of time on WP between edits staring at The Treachery of Images.

Both in real life, and in editing an encyclopedia article, I do not believe I am allowed to interpret others' meaning, but merely to report fairly their statements. Because someone said that they hate to do laundry does not mean that they hate to do laundry. Maybe it's just because I'm some person whose had adequate significant others to know the difference between a statement of a fact and a fact that I see the difference this way. But I'm reminded of the Fair Witness example described so many years ago: I may not say that "the house is white" merely because it's white on this side. —Aladdin Sane (talk) 05:31, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry to interrupt the conversation again. If this is the wrong place to complain that the MOS now allows the meaning of a direct quote to be changed in favor of style, could someone please point me to the proper place where I may file a complaint about the issue? Thanks! —Aladdin Sane (talk) 00:03, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Colour coding

It struck me as a little odd that the MoS says "shades of red and green should not both be used as color codes in the same image" and yet it uses red and green to colour-code the examples in its own text. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.129.129.192 (talk) 19:43, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I noticed that too. I also noticed earlier in the section, "Do not use color alone to convey information (color coding)" [emphasis in original]. I also scrolled through the document and noticed that color alone is never used in the text. "Pretty good," I thought. —Aladdin Sane (talk) 06:03, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it's been recently discussed above and in the sections linked therein. As long as the colour is only ever assistive, and that a colour-blind individual can still get all the information they need, no-one is any worse off. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 06:12, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

That's not how I read it. I read it as saying: (i) Don't use colour alone; (ii) Don't use red versus green at all. 86.134.30.163 (talk) 12:47, 25 October 2009 (UTC).

why would there be a prohibition against using red and green in the same image at all? it means "don't rely on colour alone to convey information" (and anyway the way the colours are used in the MoS examples isn't an "in an image"). Sssoul (talk) 13:27, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

I assume "image" is the wrong word. Any guideline that appies to colour coding in an "image" surely applies to text too, so that's how I read it. There is no prohibition against using red and green together. There is a prohibition, according to the MoS, against using red and green together to convey colour-coded information. Look at it again. Two points are made: (i) "Do not use color alone to convey information" (ii) "If it is necessary to use colors, try to choose colors that are unambiguous ... shades of red and green should not both be used as color codes". This means that if you choose colours (in addition to other methods, since you should not use colours alone), then you should not in any case choose red versus green. The guide therefore violates its own guideline. 86.134.30.163 (talk) 13:41, 25 October 2009 (UTC).

Second thoughts.... The "If it is necessary to use colors..." wording is not great because it makes it sound as if colour-coding is an unusual last resort, which it clearly isn't. I wonder, actually, if this whole passage is really trying to say something like: "Do not use color alone to convey information unless it is unavoidable. If it is absolutely necessary to use color alone, choose colors that are unambiguous (such as orange and violet) when viewed by a person with red-green color blindness (the most common type)." Dunno. 86.134.30.163 (talk) 13:52, 25 October 2009 (UTC).

Yeah, I've always interpreted it that way. (BTW, I think that shade of orange is waaay too pale for use as text on white background; would anyone propose a darker pair of colours?) ___A. di M. 14:11, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

• My thoughts exactly about the orange. Let's be very careful about readability for everyone, and seek feedback from users with a range of platforms, puters, browsers, before acting. Tony (talk) 15:48, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Just a try... black, teal, maroon, blue link, red link, interwiki link, visited link. ___A. di M. 16:13, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
    • I took a snapshot of the above post and ran it through http://www.colblindor.com/coblis-color-blindness-simulator/. Black, teal, maroon, blue links, red links, and purple (visited) links are all easily distinguishable with normal vision, green weakness, green blindness, red weakness and red blindness, but teal and interwiki links are somewhat close, even with normal vision. (Blue weakness, blue blindness and monocromacy (i.e. total colour blindness) are found in less than 0.01% of the population, and there's no way we can help total colour blind readers anyway.) Meanwhile I'm going to replace the suggestion as they are obviously better than violet (too similar to visited links) and orange (too pale); this doesn't mean I'm not open to even better suggestions. ___A. di M. 16:37, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but then there's the issue that red is code for "stop," while orange and violet are not. It's more obvious and self-explanatory than other colors would be. Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:58, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

And while we're changing it, if everyone agree that the interpretation explained above is correct, I suggest we fix the wording so that it actually says what it's supposed to mean, rather than something else. 86.138.43.84 (talk) 20:12, 25 October 2009 (UTC).

Just as long as we're not accused of encouraging a reduction in accessibility. Usability guidelines say that interfaces should be accessible with respect to colour. I'm sure it's been mentioned somewhere that Wikipedia should strive to be compliant with the W3C guidelines. The guidelines mention this issue in several places, including but not limited to:

• G14: Ensuring that information conveyed by color differences is also available in text
• G122: Including a text cue whenever color cues are used
• G182: Ensuring that additional visual cues are available when text color differences are used to convey information
• G183: Using a contrast ratio of 3:1 with surrounding text and providing additional visual cues on focus for links or controls where color alone is used to identify them.

I think we should avoid colours that are already used on wikis to signify links, external links, etc. I think orange and violet are hard to read and ugly on a monitor. Your thoughts? Tony (talk) 10:17, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I think the MoS should rather give an example than a one-size-fits-all solution. For example, now it suggests teal and maroon, which is usually fine, except in contexts which also contain interwiki links whose colour is so close to teal. Also, a colour which is fine if used for text can be way too dark for use as a background, and vice versa. After all, the cases where we have to rely on colours to express meaning will be so rare that they can (and should) be discussed on a per-case basis. ___A. di M. 11:03, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

BTW, our default colour for internal links are too dark according to WCAG 2.0, as our links are identified by colour alone although registered users can choose to have them underlined, and the contrast ratio between them and the surrounding text (black) is about 2.038. (External links and red links are bright enough, at contrast ratios of 3.759 and 3.796 respectively.) To have the same hue but sufficient brightness, they would have to be this colour. If there's anyone else who gives a damn about that, we could change that in common.css. ___A. di M. 15:35, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Quick confirm on en dash in street address range

House at 23–25 Prout Street (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

I am looking for confirmation that an en dash is used between numbers in street addresses that list a range, such as the title of the article linked above. Sswonk (talk) 04:02, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Yep. Tony (talk) 04:09, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Great, thanks Tony. Sswonk (talk) 04:27, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Image sizes - current text is confusing

The current text says:

• A picture may benefit from a size other than the default. The "upright=1.4" option (or "|frameless|upright=1.4" for plain pictures) resizes an image to about 250 pixels wide by default; making the number larger or smaller changes the image size accordingly. An image should generally be no more than 500 pixels tall and 400 pixels wide, so it can be comfortably displayed next to the text on the smallest displays in common use; an image can be wider if it uses the "center" or "none" options to stand alone. The {{Wide image}} and {{Tall image}} templates display images that would otherwise be unreasonably wide or tall. Examples where adjusting the size may be appropriate include, but are not limited to, the following: [list follows] ....

This is unsatisfactory in a number of respects:

1. It does not mention the normal way of forcing a picture size, by giving a fixed px figure.
2. It does not clearly mention the implications for those with non-default thumb preferences set of using the upright multiple system.
3. For those with a 300px thumb preference set, any picture using an upright multiple larger than 1.33 will automatically breach the 400px width limit given; at 250px any multiple over 1.6 will breach it, and so on. The example using a 1.4 upright multiple means a 420px wide image for those with preferences set at 300px.

I would suggest replacing the passage with the draft below, still using the 180 thumb default for now, though when 220px finally comes through it will need adjusting for that. Added or altered text is bolded:

Revised draft

• A picture may benefit from a size other than the default. There are two main ways of doing this. Adding a fixed pixel width is done by adding a parameter such as "|250px|". Alternatively the "upright=1.3" option (or "|frameless|upright=1.3" for plain pictures) resizes an image to about 235 pixels wide for those using the default size; making the number larger or smaller changes the image size accordingly. However for those with a non-default thumb size set, the effect will be to multiply their chosen size by the scaling factor. For example, those with the largest preference option of 300px set will see an "upright=1.3" image as 390 pixels wide. An image should generally be no more than 500 pixels tall and 400 pixels wide, so it can be comfortably displayed next to the text on the smallest displays in common use; an image can be wider if it uses the "center" or "none" options to stand alone. The {{Wide image}} and {{Tall image}} templates display images that would otherwise be unreasonably wide or tall. Examples where adjusting the size may be appropriate include, but are not limited to, the following: [list as before] ....

Johnbod (talk) 16:28, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

• You might consider taking a look at the concise version of the MoS, [[16]]. Is that clearer? Tony (talk) 16:46, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

It covers the normal fixing method, which is certainly better, and the full examples of image formatting given are better, but it does not cover the interaction of the two methods. It uses an example of 1.67 scaling, which results in a 501px image at a 300 setting. Where are we with the default size change btw? Does anyone know? Johnbod (talk) 17:23, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

The "concise version" is actually longer than what's in the MoS now. And the wording proposed above is too complicated. How about the following change instead? It attempts to take all the above comments into account. The idea is to replace this:

'The "upright=1.4" option (or "|frameless|upright=1.4" for plain pictures) resizes an image to about 250 pixels wide by default; making the number larger or smaller changes the image size accordingly.'

with this:

'An option like "|220px|" resizes the image to the specified width in pixels, and "upright=1.2" (or "|frameless|upright=1.2" for plain pictures) resizes an image to approximately the given multiple of the user's preferred width, which works out to 220 pixels for those on the default setting.'

I don't know what the status of the default size change, but when that happens obviously the wording in MOS:IMAGES and lots of other places will have to change accordingly. Eubulides (talk) 22:30, 23 October 2009 (UTC) (Updated 00:49, 24 October 2009 (UTC) in response to comments below.)

Too complicated? This is the MoS! Repeating "an option" seems unnecessary & rather vague, & I don't think "by default" clearly conveys "for those on the default setting". I'm certainly not wedded to my wording, but I do think the interaction of the two methods should be explained. Unfortunately WP:IMG SIZE just passes the buck back here "A picture may benefit from a size other than the default; see the Manual of Style for guidance", and Wikipedia:Layout#Images does not cover this either, so there appears to be nowhere other than here covering the matter. The "concise version" is slightly longer in making the basic points, but much clearer; it would be a good idea to start with a version of this and add to it here. Johnbod (talk) 23:56, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

The MoS should be simple when possible, and it's possible here. I edited the draft to remove the duplicate "an option" and to change "by default" to "for those on the default setting". WP:PIC #Thumbnail sizes talks about this issue at some length, and that's why both the current and the proposed text links to that part of WP:PIC; for example, you can click on the "px" in the proposed text. Eubulides (talk) 00:49, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

In fact that doesn't mention the clash between upright multiples and fixed pixel sizes at all, which obviously it should. It says "Factors greater than about 3.0 can generate large images that cause problems with some browsers", completely neglecting to mention that a multiple of 3.0 will give any image a width of 900px for those with a 300 setting. It also mentions the upright method first, which in my view it should not; fixed absolute widths are clearly the most commonly used method, and likely to remain so. There seems an element of denial here. Johnbod (talk) 02:06, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Those are reasonable points, though there are countervailing arguments as well. But surely that discussion is better suited for that talk page, not here. I don't see how it directly affects what should go here. Eubulides (talk) 02:42, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Well you raised that page! All those commenting so far seem agreed(?) that my first point above should go in. That the examples given should not lead to oversize images for those with high preferences seems reasonable, and that this page, as the primary reference on the topic, should mention the "clashing" effect the two methods have. Of course the tutorial should cover this also. There is indeed more that could be said on the matter, but the current arrangement of completely ignoring the prioblem seems untenable. Perhaps we should now wait awhile to see what others think. Johnbod (talk) 04:05, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Your first point is covered in the text that I proposed, which has the important advantage of brevity. I don't see any advantage to the longer proposal. Eubulides (talk) 00:26, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Since we have not reached agreement & things have gone quiet, I have inserted Eubilides' wording (but still using 180 default) as an interim measure.[17] Perhaps when the default size change goes through there will be renewed interest in the issue. Johnbod (talk) 03:10, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

The multiplier method

← Kind of agree. I think the "multiplier" method was introduced recently, and I'm not sure it makes much sense. Personally, I'd like something like this: 1) The size of an image is specified in pixels; if no size is given, a default such as 200px for "plain" thumbnails and 150px for "upright" ones is assumed; 2) users, instead of choosing a default size, choose a multiplier: for example, if one chooses a multiplier of 125%, pictures which are shown as 200px to unlogged readers are shown as 250px, and so on. ___A. di M. 10:01, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

The multiplier method should be scrapped immediately. It is there just to serve the desires of a few WPians who preference their default size, and grew in a period in which editors were—for some reason—discouraged from using non-default (usually larger) image sizes. IMO, if a logged-in WPian sets a pref of 300 for thumbnails, they should not be faced with a 600px image that is inserted as "upright=2.0" (rather than twice the default pixel size, i.e., 180 × 2 = 360px); instead, where editors have used a larger-than-default size for a particular image, it should be displayed to all at that size, since the editors have used their judgment WRT detail, raw size, relevance, quality, and the surrounding text/images. In fact, as for date prefs in the old days of date-autoformatting, is a very bad idea for us editors to set prefs so we see things differently from what is displayed for our readers. Apart from this, cluttering up the style and policy pages with explanations of both systems is a disadvantage: no wonder editors shy away from image maintenance.

I also want to alert users to the fiction I've seen around that all resizings should be the same throughout an article. Noooooo. They need individual judgement.

Rob Haskell, a WikiMedia developer, has been at meetings all of last week, and has undertaken to deal with Bugzilla matters in the coming week. CTO Brion Vibber has given the OK for the 180px default to be raised to 220px. Tony (talk) 10:35, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid you've misunderstood me. Sorry, I should have been clearer. I agree that the |upright= method isn't very useful. I meant that in the user preferences, it'd make more sense if one had a choice, instead (or as well as) specifying the size in pixels for thumbnails with no size given, of choosing a factor by which to scale all pictures. The point is that the only reason I can imagine for using another size than the default is someone having an unusually low or unusually high screen resolution, or someone having a slow connection. Their issues apply to all images, not only those for which a non-default size was chosen. What might look good to the editor choosing an image size might look bad to a reader viewing the page with a very different resolution than the editor's. It's supposed to be up to editors to pick a size which looks OK at all resolutions, say, from 800px to 1280px, but usually they fail to do that. ___A. di M. 13:45, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

(ec) I agree the multiplier method should be scrapped, or saved for special situations, though I can't think of any myself. But while we have it we should address its problems in guidelines, which we don't yet, and also change the situation where it is the only method mentioned here, and the first method mentioned in trhe picture tutorial. I imagine after the default thumb debate people will want to wait a while before another big change debate on image sizes. Of course those who have used the multiplier will now have to readjust all or most of their images when the default goes up. I have suggested at Talk:Castle, which has several images over 4 1/2 inches wide on my screen, that they use this opportunity to revert to the old system. Thanks for the update on the default change. Johnbod (talk) 13:53, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

One comment: The issue on date formatting and whether we should see what unregistered uses sees is one thing, as there are a limited number of situations for that to iterate through and it affects basic reading of the text, and it becomes relatively easy to check those various aspects. But, in terms of image size and placement, the last thing we as WP editors should be doing is to try to force the placement of images on the page. There are way too many devices, screen resolutions, reading configurations, etc. to be assured that one editor's opinion of pixel-perfect placement will work for all other millions of WP readers. We should not be using the tools that allow us to add images to use this try to get something that is astetically pleasing, but instead to be as functional as possible. This doesn't mean we can't use non default image sizes to highlight a more critical image (say, a map that would be unreadable at 180px but fine at 300px), to move an image to the left when the previous paragraph already has an image to the right, and the like. We have to be aware that there are likely going to be situations where, despite how well we think we've avoided it, someone will still see overlapping images or the like. Basically, we should not be worried about tuning the size, location and placement of images on a page to make the page look good, as A. di M. points out, there's always going to be a case where it will come out bad. The best we can do is aim to have a basic set of rules of thumb for placement, and then let authors decide when images need to be a set size to assure that details are apparent that are needed to understand the article in a standalone manner. --MASEM (t) 14:09, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Maybe we could suggest that editors who actually are changing the size for some excellent reason include that as a comment connected to the image. All to often I'll see images all set to some seemingly random size like 256px or 327px. It seems that some editors have their own personal preferences, maybe due to their unique hardware and they simply include that for all images that they include. Also some editors seem to think that all image in an article need to be the same size. So if the first one is at 350px, then all images must use that. So without individual justifications, I'll likely reset to the default most images that don't have a size that makes sense. This is kind of like editors who leave white space in an article for no apparent reason and leave a comment there simply saying 'for formatting, please leave'. When you remove the white space, it looks just fine, or maybe even better! Vegaswikian (talk) 19:33, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

"What might look good to the editor choosing an image size might look bad to a reader viewing the page with a very different resolution" That is exactly what the multiplier method is for. It allows the editor to say that one image should be a bit bigger, and one a bit smaller, than usual, without worrying what the "usual" is. And it works much better when trying to display the same Wikipedia article on devices of different resolutions. It can be misused, of course, just as all image layout can be misused: but when used judiciously it works better than the straight-pixel method, because it scales to different display resolutions better than the straight-pixel method does. I would prefer something better than the multiplier method: I'd like to be able to say things like "scale this image to 25% of the width and 20% of the height of the window, but in no case narrower than 20 ems wide"; but until we can get something really good like that, the multiplier method is often the best approach we have. (Sometimes the straight-pixel method is better too, of course.) Eubulides (talk) 00:26, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

So when is the straight pixel method better, and when is the multiplier method better? Is the notion of "the usual" you talk of different or more predictable for different displays, in a way that, say, 230px is not? I'm still grappling with why the multiplier "works much better when trying to display the same Wikipedia article on devices of different resolutions". How can is be "misused", in particular? I think our editors are a loss to understand why we have two systems: I certainly am. Tony (talk) 02:52, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

To be fair, it does cope better in the situation where eg all the images are at default size except one or two at at a slight scaling - say 1.1 or 1.2. That should work about as well for everyone regardless of setting. Unfortunately most scaling examples I see (perhaps because they jump out) are at scaling factors of 1.5, 2, or above, where the effects are far more drastic. It does also solve the situation where an editor makes the image "larger" by fixing at 230px, thus making it actually smaller for those with 250 or 300 set as preference - this is certainly common. If the "uplift" was additive not multiplicatory - "default + 40px" etc, it would work better. Placing the new default more in the middle of the range of preference options (150-300, but does anyone really use 150?) will ease the situation somewhat, once all the poor multiple-using editors have gone round and adjusted all their settings. Johnbod (talk) 03:15, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Johnbod that the multiplier effect works best with multipliers that are relatively subtle and are not that far from 1. (We might disagree as to the boundary between subtle and non-subtle, but that's more of a judgment call.) Straight pixel sizing, in contrast, has problems in the subtle range between 150px and 300px, due to undesirable interactions with default-sized images. Eubulides (talk) 03:43, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

IMO: Straight pixel sizing should only be used for the main infobox image (to force a Wikiproject standard) or any other standard image use across numerous pages, and for figures that contain text and other features that could be difficult to read (IMO, falling below a 10pt font size at the 220px level) and needs to be enlarged. Multipliers should be used for images that significantly fall outside typical aspect rations, anywhere from, say, 2:1 (widescreen films) through 1:2 (book /movie posters, etc.); otherwise, stick to "thumb".--MASEM (t) 03:18, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Gaga performing at a restaurant, during the early days of her career

Gaga performing at the New Kids on the Block: Live tour.

OK, this is why editors need to scrutinise every image in an article. I've rendered both as plain "thumb" (default), currently 180px, soon to be raised to 220px. See what I mean? The thumb default is not a magic, "natural" solution, Masem. Many images need to be resized (the first one here probably needs to be forced down in most contexts (as in the article Lady Gaga, where it was set at 150px, although I upsized it a little. This is also why the multiplier method simply multiplies the too-big or too-small problem for some default-sized pics. Eubulides, if the conservative use of factors is wise for the use of the multiplier method, why is this advice not included at the MoS and at WP:IUP, with a "be cautious in using more than ?1.2"? Tony (talk) 04:46, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

• Tony, could you please pick images that are not quite so tasteless? The ones you chose (shall we say) discourage sober discussion. That being said, adding upright to the first image solves the problem fairly well, and if you want finer grained control over Gaga's appearance (I certainly don't :-) you can fiddle with the upright factors of both images. Eubulides (talk) 04:57, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

• I don't know if its this example or true for all, but there is little actual information in those pics. They are free content, and great to adorn an article, but they (seemingly) are unnecessary to understand an article. If there is a point to those pics, even at 180px it seems to suggest it well - Gaga once danced at bar, and she has rather extravagant stage outfits. Raising the thumbs to 220px helps, but even at how the second pic is in the current Gaga article, at 240px, I don't see any details that become clearer than at 180px.
• I'm not saying we need to be hardnosed and create a bright line on when you can size differently than "thumb", and editorial decisions should overrule all with each image scrutinized, but I would think that most images do not need to move away from "thumb" until small details become critical (eg text captions), and then using the upright param as necessary for images outside of typical aspect rations. --MASEM (t) 05:54, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

• • Looking a bit more at this, there's another idea for advice here, and that is we want the area that each picture takes up, by default, to be roughly equal and balanced, save for certain set cases, those being infobox and other consistency elements for articles, and for the small font issue. Take the two Gaga images; first is roughly 1100x1400, the second is 900 x 600. Now, assuming no other images in the article body, I would say it's up to the editor to decide what image should be given the "thumb" size, and then use the upscale param to balance the areas. If I were to have the first image as my thumb at 220px, then it will end up 220 x 280 px. This would scale the other picture to about 300 x 200 to have the same order of pixels, and we get this situation.

• • Flip it around, make the second image default to 220px (ending up 220 x 146px), and the first image should be scaled to 154 x 196, and you get this.

IMO, in both cases, the images now feel balanced, which is what I believe's Tony's concerned about. I'm sure the upright option can come into play here, but my point, better explained, is that save for any images that have fine detail that need a fixed size, we should still aim to use thumbs, but use the upright param to help balance the area of relative pictures. Given an article with mostly 4:3 images, that's not an image, but one with a mix of horizontal and vertical, then it's up to the editor to decide which gets the thumb approach (selecting more vertical images to get thumbs will always give more image area in the end). And as such, this is mostly an asethics rule -if the user feels one image does need to be significantly less area, that's fine too. --MASEM (t) 06:10, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

After Eubulides has opted for a war on two fronts, similar issues, but more detailed, are being discussed at Wikipedia_talk:Picture_tutorial#Image_size_text_needs_revising. No sexy pics please, that is a family page :}. Johnbod (talk) 00:57, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Are they sexy? I hadn't noticed. Masem, why should images normally occupy the same area in an article? I see no reason to impose consistency of width or area on images: they are all different. Tony (talk) 10:23, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Use of stylised as

In many articles there is the following format for the first sentence of the article (this is taken from the Npower (UK) page):

"Npower (stylised as npower) is a UK-based electricity and natural gas supply company, formerly known as Innogy plc."

I and MrStalker have had a discussion on the "stylised as" part of this (here), with the agreement between us that it is better not included in the first sentence, because of the break-up of the flow. There are many more examples of this "stylised as" feature – see this search for the world stylised.

So, could we have some more opinions please? One possibility is to use footnotes, so as to include the information, but not break up the flow of the sentence; see my sandbox for how this would look. If we come to a conclusion, it can be added to the MoS. Darth Newdar ^talk 14:30, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it breaks up the flow, any more than including real names in biographical articles does. After all, the last word before "is a UK based ..." is the name of the company. =) Powers ^T 15:55, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree that it breaks up the flow. Sometimes it's necessary (e.g., when the stylized form is the most common or notable in prose, e.g., e.e. cummings), but often it's not. There typically is no need in the lead sentence to discuss stylization, etymology, alternative forms (including incorrect forms!), etc., etc.; that sort of thing can be put later in the lead, or in a Terminology section, as needed. Eubulides (talk) 16:19, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

So would you get rid of it completely, or would you include it somewhere? Darth Newdar ^talk 16:48, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

If the stylized form is notable, it should appear somewhere. As a somewhat extreme example, Daylight saving time has an entire section Terminology talking about "daylight saving time", "daylight savings time", "daylight time", "summer time", "spring forward", etc.; that level of detail is far too much for the lead (much less the lead sentence) but it's entirely appropriate for the body. Another option is to put the etymology/stylization etc. into a box off to the side, as is done for Chiropractic. Eubulides (talk) 17:33, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

In the cases I cite above, there is no way we can make a whole section out of the stylised form – after saying that "Npower stylises its name as npower", what more can you say? To put it in a little box like the Chiropractic example, would, in my opinion, look plain odd. Darth Newdar ^talk 19:31, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

For that particular case, since the lead infobox has a large logo showing "npower", it's not necessary to repeat the "npower" in the lead sentence. Any details about the lower-casedness of the logo can be put into the History section, which talks about the name and the "Npower" brand (or shouldn't that be "npower"? a reliable source is needed here). Eubulides (talk) 20:02, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I disagree. It is best to provide common alternate names right in the first line. At the very least, it lets people know that they've found the right article. I don't find that it breaks up the flow.

Here's an example: "William Jefferson 'Bill' Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III, August 19, 1946)[1] was the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001." Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:41, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

That very example undercuts the claim made for it. Nobody goes to that article looking for "William Jefferson Blythe III". Nobody looks at that article and wonders "Hmm, is this the right guy? Oh yeah! his other name is Blythe! He's the one I'm looking for!" Clinton's alternate names are put in there because of a tradition in biographies of giving the full given name for persons in leads, but these names are not necessary, and they definitely break up the flow. The most important thing about Bill Clinton is that he's an ex-president, but the poor reader has to wade through a relatively-unimportant "William", and a "Jefferson", and another "William", and another "Jefferson", and a "Blythe", and a "III", and an "August 19, 1946", before the reader finally comes to any fact that's at all important enough to be worth mentioning in the lead, much less the lead sentence. Rather than using Bill Clinton as an example, let's turn to a higher-quality article that's more relevant to Npower. Harry S. Truman begins with a simple "Harry S. Truman ..." without going into unimportant trivia about orthography, like how the period in his name is optional. The trivia about the period is saved for later in the article. And the trivia about "npower" should be similar. Eubulides (talk) 04:33, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I suppose one must recognise a difference between different names and names that only differ in spelling details. There is also a difference between the name you are born with, the name you become well-known with, and the name you have now (or when you die). Take those peers, for example, who become known without a title or with a different title. Lord North's lead may be cumbersome, but it would be wrong to just omit his title. Still, there is always room for improvement; Viscount Castlereagh's lead was handled rather well. Waltham, The Duke of 14:46, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

The "stylised as" feature it doesn't matter as much as a person's name, because it's only a stylisation of the name, rather than being particularly different, so the reader definitely doesn't need to be told in the first sentence. Eubulides: you would include the stylisation (if at all) as text outside the lead, rather than a footnote, or similar? Darth Newdar ^talk 08:44, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, for the Npower example, I'd put it outside the lead somewhere. Other examples might differ, depending on the notability of the stylization. Eubulides (talk) 08:51, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the general consensus here. You might consider putting it in a footnote, or in the first sentence of the body (outside the lead), or omitting it entirely. The first sentence of the lead should be fairly concise, and trivial orthographic details are not worth the disruption of flow. —Werson (talk) 02:43, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

The main problem is: what does stylised mean, and can it mean different things? I don't like it. Tony (talk) 03:26, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Reword to prefer minus-key on numeric keypad

The paragraph "Minus signs" fails to mention the 40-year standard of the minus-key on a numeric keypad, which is what the Wikipedia MediaWiki system uses for negative numbers. The paragraph should be re-written to prefer the keypad minus-sign but allow "&minus;" in some cases:

Minus signs // "Do not use an en dash for negative signs and subtraction operators: the preferred sign is the minus-key on the numeric keypad of a computer keyboard (same as the hyphen), which has been a keyboard standard for over 40 years, and it is also the result generated by Wikipedia, as in subtracting 9 - 10: {{#expr: 9 - 10}} (to yield "-1"). The unicode character for the minus sign (&minus; as "−") could be used for some display purposes. However, the hyphen is preferred when searching a page for negative numbers (matches keypad "-"), or when calculating negative results in a template, or when sorting numbers."

The use of "&minus;" has led to templates generating unusable negative-numbers which will not match a numeric-keypad search, and will NOT sort numerically in sortable tables specified using class="wikitable sortable". However, the MOS standard could be changed later to prefer &minus when the world's keyboards change most numeric keypads, but I don't think that should be stated in the MOS, because of the decades of waiting. -Wikid77 (talk) 08:32, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Ah, so you use a full keyboard, not one on a laptop? Tony (talk) 09:58, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

• I use both; that's why I knew the keypad-minus is still the same as the hyphen (as it has been for 5 decades). Any word on when the keyboard standards will put a separate minus-key and stop allowing the hyphen? I couldn't find anything planned for the next several years. -Wikid77 (talk) 11:12, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

  They won't ever do this, because the HYPHEN-MINUS is used by most software for the subtraction and negative sign; this is a left-over of the times when there was no MINUS SIGN character, as there was no proportional computer font, so a hyphen and a minus would look alike, and there was a very limited number of available code points. (Typesetting programs such as TeX had—and have—ways to distinguish "math mode" where the HYPHEN-MINUS is rendered as a minus sign and "text mode" where it's a hyphen. Now MediaWiki's <math> does turn HYPHEN-MINUSes into minus signs, but it has so many warts that I seldom use it except in PNG mode.) ___A. di M. 15:55, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

• Thanks, I suspected that would be the case. So, we need a hybrid solution: a hyphen-minus that appears to be a unicode minus, not by changing the searchable/sortable value, but merely by changing the font, and hence new template {{msym}} to show a hyphen-minus as appearing similar to a unicode minus. For font choices:

• Arial font: a + b - c * d
• Georgia font: a + b - c * d
• Garamond font: a + b - c * d
• Courier font: a + b - c * d
• Helvetica font: a + b - c * d
• Symbol font: a + b - c * d

I have selected Courier as the default font to simulate a unicode-minus character's appearance when displayed by new template {{msym}}. -Wikid77 (talk) 22:19, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

No, that's simply not going to work. Some browsers allow overriding of the font proposed by Wikipedia. Some platforms don't have the font proposed by Wikipedia and use a substitute, or use a different size because they don't have the proposed size. You are not going to find a matching font for the pseudo-minus sign for every font that a user may be using. I am afraid we will have to live with this problem. Hans Adler 23:45, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

• Courier font is universal & works everywhere. -Wikid77 11:45, 3 Nov 2009

The Courier hyphen in the sample above looks nowhere near the minus sign. This simply can't work, a hyphen character is not a minus. — Emil J. 11:54, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Furthermore, &minus; provides semantic information that a plain hyphen—whatever the font—does not. It might even be the case (I don't know) that blind users who use screen readers may benefit from this additional semantic information.

For reference, I tried (on Safari 4.0.3) to search for a minus sign using a hyphen character (in fact, I used this very minus: −), and it failed to find it. So there is a real problem; but I think that the right solution is to change how web browsers search within pages. Ozob (talk) 00:13, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

• I agree, that in a few years, there will be some search-options that treat hyphen or &minus as the same, but not now. Also, the sight-impaired already know hyphen-minus. -Wikid77 11:45, 3 Nov 2009

I don't really see what is the problem here. If you cannot search for "-123", just search for "123". Please don't break something that isn't broken. The examples in {{msym}} look bad and a proper minus sign looks good on my browser. (And, by the way, "*" isn't a multiplication sign.) — Miym (talk) 00:28, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

• But it is broken: Are you saying, when can't search for "the" search for "he"? Also, &minus will not sort in numeric order, and the online world uses hyphen for negative numbers. -Wikid77 11:45, 3 Nov 2009

• Your argument means that we cannot use non-ASCII characters anywhere. —Werson (talk) 12:32, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely not. Use a minus sign where a minus sign is correct, and a hyphen when a hyphen is correct. Using a hyphen as a minus sign in prose is wrong and unacceptable with the current state of technology. —Werson (talk) 01:18, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

• In that case, use {{msym}} to appear as a "minus sign". Wikid77 11:45, 3 Nov 2009

No. Hyphens are hyphens, minuses are minuses. -2 is not −2. The first is horribly ugly, and incorrect (or at the very least, extremely poor typography), while the later is super pretty and correct. It's especially bad in superscripted form 2^-2 vs. 2⁻². If templates can't sort because of the minus, then update the template with a sort key. Also, {{msym}} is shorter than a real minus sign (I use DejaVu Sans since you can distinguish easily between all latin and greek characters and you can see very clearly the difference). Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 03:52, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Agree. Please don't use substitutes for the minus sign. Tony (talk) 12:07, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Poor example

I don't think the following example is good

Correct: 12 h shift

In normal flowing text, such as one would expect to find in an encyclopedia, I would never abbreviate "hour" to "h" in this phrase. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.152.168.210 (talk) 03:02, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

It's common in the sciences. But maybe you're right, it's less familiar to others. Can you think of a better example? Tony (talk) 12:01, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

• The use of "h" is rare, in general (often "hr"). Perhaps use a more common situation, such as for 8-by-10 photos. However, it is a good idea to also add examples that occur in the sciences, so add 2 examples:

Correct: 8-by-10 in, or 8x10 in (when 8 by 10 inches)

Correct: 15 ml test tube

Anyone not familiar, could click the wikilink for "test tube" if needing help with scientific subjects. -Wikid77 (talk) 13:51, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

What happened to the Possessives section?

This section seems to have been rewritten from what was there for the past 5 years or so, and it doesn't seem to be an improvement. In particular, the section on possessives of singular nouns ending in s now makes no sense whatsoever. Whereas the previous instructions were based on common usage in writing and explained the difference between classical names and modern names, the current instructions are based entirely on most common pronunciation, which is totally subjective and inconsistent and can't be verified. Additionally, one of the examples given is wrong (Moses's). Furthermore, no one knows what the heck a /ɪz/ is. Can I revert this back to what was there at the beginning of August? Kaldari (talk) 00:56, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I think it is OK; it explains that there are three different editorial styles, and that each articles should pick one. On the other hand, why is this in a section called "grammar"? Grammar should say when to use a possessive, not how to spell it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:27, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

... er ... i'm not thrilled with the section as it now stands either, but the example given is "Moses' leadership", not "Moses's" (and neither would be "incorrect", even if one or the other doesn't match your personal usage); and International phonetic alphabet is quite widely used, so it's not the case that "no one knows what the heck a /ɪz/ is". there was quite a lot of discussion about the current wording - see here, here and here - so i doubt a reversion to the previous version would be accepted, but of course suggestions for improvements can always be discussed. Sssoul (talk) 10:38, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I think it's complete overkill: so many examples. See User:Tony1/Beginners'_guide_to_the_Manual_of_Style#Possessives.2A.E2.80.89.2A the short version. Tony (talk) 12:02, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Also in the "grammar" section. If you want to call it grammar, you could describe things like the choice between: "I asked about your putting it in the grammar section" and "I asked about you putting it in the grammar section", and similar fine points. Although the "grammar" section of the Chicago manual is often deried, at least the CMOS puts the spelling of possessives into the "spelling" chapter. Anyway, I'll stop complaining about this pet peeve now. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:14, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Noun plus -ing (asked about you putting) is a problematic issue. CMOS edges towards saying it's cumbersome, but can't quite make up its mind as usual; but the truth is, it's only sometimes cumbersome, as in the example you gave. "Look at the birds flying south" ... it would be pedantic to say "Look at the birds' flying south". Tony (talk) 12:21, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I was thinking of examples where the choice whether to use a possessive does not affect the meaning. "Look at the birds flying south" means to look at birds; "Look at the birds' flying south" means to look at an abstract object, namely the flying of birds to the south. But both "I asked about you putting it in the oven" and "I asked about your putting it in the oven" refer to the same abstract thing, namely the act when you put it in the oven. So the choice of "you" or "your" is more of a style or tone issue.

A similar example is the choice between "I stopped him from eating it for a week" and "I stopped him eating it for a week", where the "from" is optional. I recognize this example as an American/British distinction, but I don't know whether the "your eating" distinction is that way. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:08, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

"Look at the birds' flying south" would be more than pedantic - it would be wrong. in that sentence "flying south" is a participle modifying "birds", not a gerund, and it doesn't want a possessive form, any more than "have you seen Clarence wearing high heels" does. but in "let's talk about your flying to Florida every week at the company's expense", "flying every week" is a gerund, so the possessive works.

isn't at least part of the trouble the fact that not everything "gerundizes" gracefully: "I asked about you/your putting it in the grammar section" are both awkward compared with "your placement of it in the grammar section" or "your decision to put it in the grammar section" "I asked why you put it in the grammar section", but is it the possessive's fault? Sssoul (talk) 14:15, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

• I don't understand trad. grammar terms much. I use Hallidayan systemic functional grammar. Sssoul, what I really want to know is what makes the expression awkward, and what makes it OK. I still can't work it out. "Your placement of it" isn't gerundised at all, is it? It's just a nominal group. In any case, "Your placing it in the grammar section" would be neater, yes? Tony (talk) 15:16, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) smile - okay how about this: when the ~ing word (or phrase) is a noun, possessive+noun is normal: their fighting all the time gets on my nerves. (that's a gerund.)

when the ~ing word (or phrase) is a modifier, nonpossessive noun+modifier is normal: a pig wearing lipstick is still a pig. (that's a participle modifying the noun.)

sometimes it could be either: she heard the dogs barking/the dogs' barking. Sssoul (talk) 15:29, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

ps: "'Your placement of it' isn't gerundised at all, is it?" correct

"In any case, 'Your placing it in the grammar section' would be neater, yes?" ... that's matter of opinion, apparently; the point i was trying to make is that sometimes gerund phrases are awkward whether or not there's a possessive involved. are inherently awkward whether there's a possessive involved with them or not. to me the plain old noun phrase "your decision to place it placement of it in the grammar section" is more graceful than trying to make "putting it in the grammar section" serve as a noun. Sssoul (talk) 15:29, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

But you've changed the theme of the phrase. Now it's a decision. Tony (talk) 15:32, 4 November 2009 (UTC) PS Will think about what you've said above; way past bed-time for now. Tony (talk) 15:34, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

apologies: i've struck out some of what i wrote above in frantic haste - it doesn't hold water, isn't what i was actually trying to convey, etc. Tony1, maybe we should pursue it on our talk pages, if you're interested? Sssoul (talk) 17:44, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

• Geez, you guys get distracted easily. OK, so if I'm supposed to decide whether or not to add an 's' based on how the possessive is pronounced, where can I look up how the possessive is pronounced??? Even pronunciation dictionaries don't show this. As far as I know, ALL possessives ending in 's' can be pronounced two different ways, so that leaves us with no guidance whatsoever (and a lot of useless text). And the reason why Moses' house is a terrible example (sorry I spelled it wrong originally), is that it is being shown as an example of a case in which the extra /s/ is never pronounced. This is certainly not the case. Indeed, the reason why Moses' house isn't written with an extra 's' is because it is a "classical name", not because of anything to do with the pronunciation. So the example is confusing at best, totally incorrect at worst. Kaldari (talk) 15:42, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Some people do pronounce it as three syllables. That is partly why the rules for spelling it are unsettled. Tony (talk) 15:52, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Exactly! That's why it makes no sense for it to be given as an example of a case in which it is always pronounced the same as the non-possessive (as two sylables). Kaldari (talk) 15:54, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

It looks like the changes to the longstanding wording were made without consensus and under dubious logic according to the previous discussions linked above. One rational given was that our guidelines gave unclear guidance on what to do with "These are Doris'[s] copies of Morris'[s] books on Socrates'[s] and Descartes'[s] philosophies." The guidance to be consistent is only supposed to apply to a single name within an article. So the correct solution is "These are Doris's copies of Morris's books on Socrates' and Descartes' philosophies." This is consistant with our underlying priniciple to reflect the most common spellings actually used. Basing spelling on what someone thinks is the most common pronunciation is useless guidance, as no one person can possibly know what the most common pronunciation of the possessive is unless they conduct a one-man world-wide study with a tape recorder. Kaldari (talk) 15:54, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

as noted above (and as you saw if you looked at the archived discussions) i am not a big fan of the current wording, but i think you're misunderstanding the intent of "Option 3": it doesn't say anything about basing the spelling/punctation on "the most common pronunciation"; the idea is that it should be based on the pronunciation that a given article's editors decide on. i agree that that's not helpful in cases where there's dispute or uncertainty. but other people seem to feel it's worth a try until real problems arise with it, and maybe they're right.

meanwhile, i disagree that there's any single "correct solution" to the spelling/punctuation of possessives ending in 's'; that's why the Wikipedia MoS accepts more than one approach.

as for the Moses example: as you note, all possessives ending in 's' can be pronounced two different ways, so all the examples of Option 3 need to be understood as meaning "for people who pronounce them this way", and that should be made clearer in the wording. meanwhile, the convention of using apostrophe-only with "classical or Biblical names" isn't all that popular, and it doesn't seem constructive to try to impose it as a Wikipedia-wide standard. Sssoul (talk) 16:20, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Newcomers to this issue can follow these links to previous discussions.

• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108#Possessive apostrophes
• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108#Recent changes to the .22Possessives.22_section
• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108#Possessives: section revised after recent discussion
• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108#Possessives still need clarifying

-- Wavelength (talk) 20:31, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

thanks Wavelength - i provided links to (most of) those in my first post in this section, but i probably didn't highlight them sufficiently. (actually there's one more as well, which i've taken the liberty of adding to your post - hope that's okay.) the archived discussions also have links to even earlier discussions, which are also worthwhile if the history that led to the three current options is of interest. Sssoul (talk) 21:31, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) would something like this be a better description of the three options:

• For the possessive of singular nouns ending with just one s (sounded as /s/ or /z/), there are three practices:

• 1. Add 's: James's house, Sam Hodges's son, Jan Hus's life, Moses's leadership.
• 2. Add just an apostrophe: James' house, Sam Hodges' son, Jan Hus' life, Moses' leadership.
• 3. Add either 's or just an apostrophe, depending on how the possessive is pronounced. Add only an apostrophe if the possessive is pronounced the same way as the non-possessive name; add 's if the possessive has an additional /ɪz/ at the end: Brahms' music or Brahms's music, Morris' work or Morris's work, Dos Passos' novels or Dos Passos's novels. Since there are two possible pronunciations in every case, if there is disagreement over the pronunciation of a possessive, the choice should be discussed and one form adopted consistently in an article. (Possessives of certain classical and biblical names may have traditional forms which may be deemed as taking precedence: Jesus' answer and Xerxes' expeditions, but Zeus's anger; and in some cases – particularly possessives of inanimate objects – rewording may be an option: the location of Vilnius, the old bus route, the moons of Mars.)
  

• Whichever of the above three options is chosen, it must be applied consistently within an article.

i personally would prefer a different recommendation for Option 3, but i think the above reflects what people were saying they wanted, and i hope it's clear enough. Sssoul (talk) 08:12, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

The new text looks good, Sssoul. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:18, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

As for the old discussion, Kaldari, yes a consensus was reached in accordance with Wikipedia's standards. But as so often happens in these cases, days and weeks of talking it out can cause us to lose sight of how things would look to a reader viewing it straight. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:18, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

"The old bus route" ... how is that a rewording of an awkward possessive? "The moons of Mars" sounds more like the title of a Beatles song than a nominal group you'd normally use. Tony (talk) 14:51, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I seemed to get why "the bus's old route" would be awkward. You may be thinking of the 1972 song found on side two, track four. Sorry...I'll butt out now. —Aladdin Sane (talk) 15:12, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

right: "the old bus route" is an option to "the bus's old route", just like "the moons of Mars" is an option to "Mars's moons". and it doesn't say those are rewordings of "awkward possessives", just that rewording may sometimes be an option – for example, an option to fighting over whether it should say "Mars'" or "Mars's". Sssoul (talk) 15:35, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) so ... should that proposed revision be instated? Sssoul (talk) 06:38, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

• • "The bus's old route" means somthing different from "The old bus route" ... quite different. On "The moons of Mars" ... oh well, I'd try to say something different, according to context, like "The two Martian moons", but I guess it's OK. IMO, there are far too many examples. I know that Noetica wanted to cover every permutation and combination, and did so with extraordinary precision, fine logician that he is; but somehow it seems like overkill, a daunting read for all but the most hardy linguists. Who is our readership? Tony (talk) 11:45, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I prefer to have even more detail than Noetica would, but he has tried to accommodate editors who have been affected by alliteracy. (See the second last paragraph ["Well, I myself ..."] of his message to me at 09:40, 18 June 2009.) I say that reading becomes easier with practice. Incidentally, the three options in Sssoul's version should be indented from the other two points listed.

-- Wavelength (talk) 20:07, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

[I am correcting my punctuation, from square brackets to parentheses. -- Wavelength (talk) 20:28, 6 November 2009 (UTC)]

Concur that "bus route" and "bus's route" may not be precisely interchangeable (second implying that it is the specific route of one specific old bus), but "moons of Mars" sounds like something right out of a ninth-grade science class on the solar system. It's 100% in my book. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:40, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

the "Hodges" example is probably unnecessary, and i don't think three egs per option is overkill or particularly daunting. shall we skip Hodges?

as for the possessives of inanimate objects: right, "the old bus route" might not always be precisely interchangeable with "the bus's old route". so shall we just leave out the bus example, or does someone have a substitute to propose? (and by the way, in my dialect it would be very hard to come up with an example where "the bus's anything" would be acceptable ... but that's a different issue.) Sssoul (talk) 13:48, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Monitor resolutions

Is there a policy for a standard resolution pages should be formatted to in Wiki? Also in the Girona FC article, it has a lot of breaks (<br>) in the "History" section, to drop the following "Current squad" section down. Is this best practice or should they be deleted? --Jimbo^[online] 13:45, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

To the first part of your question — no, there's no standard resolution. Right now I'm working on a display with a width of 1920 pixels; on the other hand, there are people who regularly read (and sometimes even edit!) Wikipedia from their itty-bitty mobile devices. In general, if an article overuses (or misuses) graphics and markup to the point where it displays poorly at all but a narrow range of resolutions, then the article's editors are probably getting too cute with their layout. Wikipedia isn't a paper document, and we should never assume a fixed page size or layout. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:00, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

See Wapedia. -- Wavelength (talk) 19:08, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, but we have to be aware that readers may want to print articles for offline use. The consequence of that is we have to do our best to make the information presented is legible in that format. In particular, it is unwise to rely on the argument "readers can always click on the image to see it larger" as a justification for sizing maps and charts so small that their information cannot be read. --RexxS (talk) 15:00, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Hard to understand

I think the following passage is a bit muddled and hard to follow:

Textual information should be entered as text rather than as an image. Text in images is not searchable, and can be slow to download; the image is unlikely to be read as text by devices for the visually impaired. Text may be colored and decorated with CSS tags and templates. Even if the problems can be worked around, as by including a caption or internal information, editors should still consider whether fancy text really adds anything useful. Any important text in an image should also appear in the image's alt text, caption, or other nearby text.

1. I don't understand "Even if the problems can be worked around, as by including a caption or internal information ...". What "problems" is this referring to? What does "internal information" mean?

2. I don't understand if "fancy text" refers to text in images or text not in images.

3. Because of its position in context, "Text may be colored and decorated with CSS tags and templates" reads at first as if "text" means "text in images", whereas presumably it means text not in images; in other words, you can use these devices to avoid having to put text in images. 86.161.40.253 (talk) 18:50, 11 November 2009 (UTC).

I am pretty sure that "Text in images" here refers to pictures—jpgs, etc—of text rather than keyboard-entry text. For example, an image of the New York Times logo would be legible to a person reading with his or her eyes, but it wouldn't show up in a CTRL-F search for "New York." How do you think we can express this more clearly? Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:31, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

For logos, you must stick to the graphics produced by the company, for copyright reasons. For annotations, I agree that text is clearer, as factors like anti-aliasing and artefacts can break up the outlines of characters. I like {{Annotated image}}: it's clearer; editors can scale the text and image parts independently; it's easier to internationalise (I "sold" it to a Dutch WP editor, and the Dutch version is used widely) See examples at Template:Annotated image/doc/Samples.

I'm aware of one pitfall, although it's mainly about using one browser in the right way (IE of course). --Philcha (talk) 15:11, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. I agree that the wording was hard to follow, and tried to improve it. Eubulides (talk) 20:21, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi, Eubulides, I agree that your change is an improvement. However, it also highlights more strongly the fact that it does not clarify when it applies or where. For example:

• An image will often need to preserve embedded text (i.e. as pixels rather than characters) in identifications of cover and other pages of books, in posters, game box art, film shots, etc.
• In these cases compliance with copyright will usually require embedded text to be preserved.
• On the other hand text in diagrams should be presented as characters rather than pixels, for a long list of reasons, including: greater clarity (no problems with anti-aliasing and image artefacts); easy of re-scaling; easy of internationalisation; better illegibility for readers who have visual difficulties but are not functionally blind.
• Presentation of text as characters rather than pixels generally applies to images created by WP editors, as external image content (e.g. diagrams) will usually require embedded text to be preserved, for compliance with copyright.

These only the cases that I thought of fairy quickly. It would be useful for other editors to identify other cases that needed to be considered. Then we'll be in a good position to produce a guideline that occurs the ground well and links to other guidelines and policies such as copyright. --Philcha (talk) 21:34, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree that an image often needs to preserve embedded text, and your examples of book covers etc. are good ones; but I'm afraid I don't understand the point about copyright. For example, File:Autism's False Prophets frontcover.jpeg is a copyrighted book cover used (via fair use) in Autism's False Prophets. Suppose we cropped away the bottom third of that image, so that the resulting image omits the text "BAD SCIENCE, RISKY MEDICINE ...", and suppose the article shows the cropped image instead. How would that violate copyright? Eubulides (talk) 00:31, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

More picky comments

From the MoS:

"Do not use color alone to convey information (color coding). Such information is not accessible to people with color blindness, on black-and-white printouts, on older computer displays with fewer colors, on monochrome displays (PDAs, cell phones), and so on.

"If it is necessary to use colors, try to choose colors that are unambiguous (such as maroon and teal) when viewed by a person with red-green color blindness (the most common type). In general, this means that shades of red and green should not both be used as color codes in the same image. Viewing the page with Vischeck can help determine whether the colors should be altered.

"It is certainly desirable to use color as an aid for those who can see it, but the information should still be accessible without it."

Some of these comments were raised before, but the thread got turned into a debate about something else, so they were never actioned:

1. The words "in the same image" seem redundant because any rules that apply to colour-coding in "images" presumably also apply to text.

2. Once #1 is fixed, the problem arises that, depending on interpretation, the MoS violates its own guidelines by using red/green coding. One way to recover would be to assume that "If it is necessary to use colors" means "If it is necessary to use colors alone". However, it doesn't actually say this, and it's not clear if that's really what's meant.

3. "If it is necessary to" seems if anything to be discouraging the use of colour-coding, yet the guideline later says it's "desirable". Again, the resolution depends on whether or not "If it is necessary to use colors" is supposed to means "If it is necessary to use colors alone".

Sorry for these picky comments! 86.161.40.253 (talk) 20:17, 11 November 2009 (UTC).

There's no need to apologize: the comments are quite apropos, and the wording was confusing. I tried to clarify it while retaining what I understand to be the intent. Thanks for bringing this up. Eubulides (talk) 20:30, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

See WP:COLORS and Category:Articles with images not understandable by color blind users. -- Wavelength (talk) 21:14, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Question

I was warned by Caspian blue at here. See my reverts, please. [18], [19], and [20]. I only edited per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Korean)#Sea of Japan (East Sea) and Wikipedia:MoS#Section name. It is true that, as Caspian blue pointed out, there is no mention that using the "Sea of Japan (East Sea)" for a heading is prohibited, but at the same time there is no mention that the using of it for a section or a subsection name is permitted. I thought the subsection name "Sea of Japan or East Sea naming dispute" was not appropriate because Sea of Japan (East Sea) was already used in a preceding sentence and section names should not explicitly refer to higher-level headings. Did I miss something or do something wrong? Please point out and clarify if my understanding of MoS is not good enough. Of course I am fully aware that I did three reverts and have to be careful. Thank you. Oda Mari (talk) 15:09, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

i've weighed in over there, but this should be discussed on that article's talk page. thanks Sssoul (talk) 09:11, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Did I misinterpret Mos? I thought the section name "Geographic dispute" was a higher level heading and it already told readers that the section was about disputes. Please specify exactly where did I make a mistake. Thank you. Oda Mari (talk) 10:00, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

yes, in my opinion you've misinterpreted WP:Manual_of_Style#Section_headings, or at any rate overlooked the statement "unless doing so is shorter or clearer" (my emphasis). the fact that this is a naming dispute, not a geographic dispute, needs to be clear; and (per Wikipedia:Naming conventions) both names need to be given in this kind of article.

that said, the whole sub-section might fit better under "miscellaneous issues", since it's a naming dispute, not a geographic dispute. but please move this discussion to that article's talk page, since that's where it belongs. thanks Sssoul (talk) 10:24, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Single quotation marks

The section on quotation Wikipedia:MOS#Quotation_marks states that 'Search engines may not find quotations within single quotes...' If this is true, it mean that this technical issues de facto does not allow to write articles in a variance of British English. Please see here American_and_British_English_differences#Punctuation. What should this technical issue be that would not allow this? I suggest the following text instead:

Double or single

Quotations are enclosed within double quotes (e.g., Bob said: "Jim ate the apple."). Quotations within quotations are enclosed within single quotes (e.g., Bob said: "Did Jim say 'I ate the apple' after he left?"). Variances of British English in the use of quotation marks must be done consistently throughout the article.

Mootros (talk) 06:46, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

... my understanding is that Wikipedia does not use UK conventions with quotation marks, regardless of WP:ENGVAR. i have no idea what the "technical issue" bit is referring to, though, and i agree that it sounds a bit silly. maybe it could be rephrased or omitted, but i'm not aware of any consensus for adopting UK quotation-mark conventions. Sssoul (talk) 07:18, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

My bias is towards British styles, but the American one is better in my opinion because it reduces the odds of quotation-marks getting confused with nearby or enclosed apostrophes. However, unlike spelling, I don't think the Manual of Style has an equivalent of ENGVAR for punctuation: it uses neither the pure U.S. version nor the pure British one, but its own "logical" rules, at least for quotations. For one thing, practical considerations favour using the "straight" quotation marks (single and double) found on computer keyboards rather than the prettier and less-ambiguous "inverted commas" ("sixes and nines") curving into and out of the quotation. What I don't understand is why the same logic doesn't apply to hyphens and dashes since computer keyboards don't have single keys for en-dashes, em-dashes and "minus-hyphens" (or whatever they're called). —— Shakescene (talk) 07:44, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

On my Mac keyboard an en-dash is no harder to type than a straight double quote: hold down option and press the hyphen key for an en-dash, hold down shift and press the single-quote key for a double quote. The em dash and curly quotes are not much harder. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:56, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Maybe I'm missing some equivalent trick with Windows (with Alt or Control); but if I'm missing it, I can guarantee that 90% of users (the ones who even know the distinction) won't know it, so it's something not to be assumed — more likely its contrary should be assumed. (And believe me, Macs are not the computers upon which Wikipedia is most-read.) I use Alt+0149, Alt+0150, Alt+0151, etc. (by the way, my own screen's too small to make out most of the symbols at 100% so I've blown up the attached table to 150%.) —— Shakescene (talk) 00:09, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

code	symbol
Alt+0145	‘
Alt+0146	’
Alt+0147	“
Alt+0148	”
Alt+0149	•
Alt+0150	–
Alt+0151	—

­­­:Can you explain what is meant by "variances of British English"? Powers ^T 14:30, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

1. Does not British English accept either single or double quotations as equally correct?

2. Any changes to the MoS should be in the imperative, not the indicative. We're telling people what to do, not telling them what we've seen other people do, and we should own that: "Use double quotes," not "Double quotes are used."

3. The MoS should follow ENGVAR for punctuation, treating U.S. and British conventions equally. I prefer the American style because it doesn't make the eye trip over apostrophes, but I don't think that the British style is so ungainly that it would interfere with Wikipedia's mission.

4. If there is a bona-fide technical problem with single quotes, not a minor annoyance that people are dressing up as a bona-fide technical problem, then we should favor double for the time being. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:59, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, British English accepts either single or double quotations as equally correct. However, it is imperative that this is used consistently: i.e. only one style is possible in an article. Mootros (talk) 13:43, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

So it's not as if the Wikipedia MoS forces British writers to use a system that is considered incorrect in their variety of English. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:14, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, kind of, but not really: There are basically two side to the argument, the "contemporary" version (ie The Economist, The Times, The Guardian's style etc.) on one side, and Fowler and Co with The King's English (a benchmark still in print!) on the other side. Both sides would argue to have the correct version. A sanction of either would mean that one side could not have their "correct" version and would therefore need to rely on an "incorrect" one. I personally think there cannot be an imperative here, because British English itself does not make this imperative, except for consistency. Mootros (talk) 17:37, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

So it's not like the serial comma in American English, in which case most sources agree that either way as fine so long as the writer is consistent, but rather that British English is divided into camps. Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:21, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Subsequent uses of names

I refer to the convention that once a person's been mentioned in an article, that person is referred to thereafter by last name only. I found a guideline on this at WP:LASTNAME which in fact relates only to biographies. I'm seeking responses to the suggestion that we encourage editors to use their judgement to make exceptions to this rule, in unusual cases where it brings greater clarity; an example being an article where a large number of people are introduced, making it difficult for the reader to keep track of who's who. An instance has arisen where this appears to be the case: these edits were made, giving rise to this discussion on the article talk page, leading to the suggestion being made here. What are people's thoughts on this? As things stand, it seems we should either state the exception in MoS or remove the edits. PL290 (talk) 19:23, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Regarding the specific article, the edits shouldn't stand either way. The article is currently inconsistent: it doesn't follow the surnames-only convention and it doesn't repeat the first name consistently.

Regarding the guideline, editors are always free to ignore all rules and so when an article would be improved by the addition of given names, editors are free to do it. The added value must be clear, however, or the edits won't stand up to future assessments. I don't think we need to describe specific exceptions, but that's based on my opinion that surnames-only is usually quite clear and I don't want to encourage more exceptions.

I was surprised to learn that the surname-only convention is described on the biographies page. Given that WP:NAMES and other shortcuts point to that page, should we infer that the guideline applies to more than biopgraphies? If so, perhaps we should add a blurb on this page that points to the description on WP:NAMES. — John Cardinal (talk) 23:14, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I had never heard of this guideline & find it (if applied to all articles) far too prescriptive, not widely followed, and not reflective of much academic practice. Editors should be left to make their own choices. It is not clear if the quideline is supposed to cover only the subjects of biographies (when it actually does make sense) or everybody mentioned in them. The stated reason "The use of the given name gives the impression that the writer knows the subject personally, which, even if true, is not relevant" clearly only applies to a small subset of all articles. Johnbod (talk) 15:15, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Music terminology has been marked as part of the Manual of Style

Wikipedia:WikiProject Music terminology (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) 02:00, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

This notice appears to have been prompted by an inadvertent error: while changing an {{inactive}} tag to {{historic}} on that page, someone changed a link to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (music) to a transclusion of said page. I have changed it back to a link. Maralia (talk) 17:34, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Section Headings

Has anyone notice that when you add a new section, the text is layout as (for example):

two equal signs, a space, header text, another space, and then two more equal signs.

But you have editors (especially admins) who editwars on removing the spaces saying that it is the law of manual style.

In this document it clearly states it is optional, but when the wiki software, itself, creates the spaces, then for consistency, all should have spaces. It makes sense since it is better to identify headers! -- Roger Zoel 01:25, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

There is no need for consistency here. It does not affect the appearance of the article or anything else. Do you really have examples of admins edit warring over this? —Finell 05:33, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm assuming that RogerZoel is talking about the difference between ==Title== and == Title ==. I'm not sure that there is editwarring over formatting, but it should be noted that when bots clean up references and markup they will add spaces. RogerZoel seems to have a specific problem with a few editors on a few pages, I would suggest that RogerZoel stops worrying about adding spaces. Darrenhusted (talk) 13:26, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

LOL, who is worrying? PLEASE! I'm just advocating for a new user. I just think that those who seem to have "the power" can arbitrate what is rule of law and what is not when no such action is needed in this situation. It's one thing when someone does good faith editing and then called a dumbass or idiot because they didn't follow the MOS. Then when you call them on it, "it's a matter of consistency" is their response. They don't need to belittle the new user of it, and surely not to assert their admin powers and accuse the user of edit warring and promise a threat of being block. Wikipedia is not this way. Grow up admins! -- Roger Zoel 22:01, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

And some bots eliminate spaces, which likewise makes no difference in the final rendered page. I responded to the rest of Roger Zoel's post on his talk page. —Finell 00:29, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Tour names in Italics

I am having a disagreement with another user on whether to put concert tour names in Italics or not. Wikipedia:Manual of Style (titles) is not very clear on concert tour titles. The article section in question is Sakis Rouvas#Tours. Since they are technically titles, they should be in italics. It would seem that concert tours would fall under "Works of art and artifice" on WP:MOS (titles), so therefore should be in italics. But the other user is arguing that because other Tour articles/sections are not in italics, these titles should not be either. I pointed out WP:Other stuff exists but she is adamant on the fact that it is not a big deal since other articles that do not have them in italics are GA or FA articles. Any insight on this problem would be appreciated. Greekboy (talk) 02:01, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I am not aware of any real world precedent for italicizing the names of concert tours, so I doubt that we would do so on Wikipedia. —Finell 00:32, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

I remember considering this problem once too. I decided that although there was a theoretical case for italicising tour names (other than purely descriptive names like "European Tour" or whatever), in practice it seemed unnecessary. 81.152.168.31 (talk) 01:37, 20 November 2009 (UTC).

Upper case or lower case letter (e.g., the Treaty that has been mentioned before by its proper name is meant here )

We are currently discussing a topic here that might be of broader interest. A solution here at the MOS should increase consistency across our articles.

I try to sum up briefly: The Treaty of Lisbon is discussed in an article and often referred to as the Treaty, when exactly this treaty (the Treaty of Lisbon) is meant. The question is whether it should be the treaty instead. One position is that, at least in legal texts, it is common practice to use the upper case letter. The other position (hope I get this right) is that this is an anaphoric reference which should be written in lower case letters.

Has this been discussed before; is there already a guideline; or do we need to go through this? Tomeasy _{T C} 11:34, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Personally I don't buy the anaphoric argument at all. In the article, it describes a literary style or device used in two instances: 1) Fiction, as in Dickens, 2) Persuasive speaking (AKA POV) as in Churchill. Neither seems appropriate for an encyclopedia article. Again, speaking for myself personally, I would use the upper case when referring to the specific Treaty, as opposed to "a treaty" in general, just because "specific editor likes specificity". —Aladdin Sane (talk) 03:47, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

"Anaphoric" is here used in the sense described in the article Anaphora (linguistics), which states In linguistics, anaphora is an instance of an expression referring to another. Loosely, an anaphor is the mirror of an antecedent. For instance, if you write "The Treaty of Lisbon, which was signed over a year ago, will come into effect in December; this historic agreement is the culmination of many years of effort." the terms which, this historic agreement and it are anaphors. It should make no difference (in normal English usage) if you replace "this historic agreement" with "this treaty" or "the treaty". If "treaty" were used as a proper name (like "the Queen" or "the President" it would not refer to a different entity when used in a different treaty. Anaphors, on the other hand, do refer to different entities in different texts, usually something mentioned recently in the text (including the title). Legal (and similar) usage is different. There, I believe, it is customary to capitalize the terms for the specific referents ("hereinafter called the Buyer", "the Treaty", "the Member States", etc.) --Boson (talk) 07:25, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

It seems to me that although people would probably understand that you were referring to "the Treaty of Lisbon" the second time you wrote "the treaty," it could be ambiguous. What if there was an article about a certain treaty that referred in passing to another treaty? I think the best tactic would be to write The Treaty of Lisbon ("Treaty") was signed in ____. But, as the person above me observed, this is very similar to legal usage, and I know wikipedia's not a courthouse. Agnosticaphid (talk) 21:58, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I would use "the treaty" or "the Treaty of Lisbon" but not "the Treaty". We are not writing German here; nouns are not capitalized, and "the treaty" is just a normal noun phrase. There's no need to invoke complicated rhetorical terms for what it is: it's a noun. If you want an abbreviated form of a too-long proper name, call it Lisbon or Joe or something, but not Treaty nor even The Treaty. And if you've already referred nearby to a different treaty, then capitalization isn't going to help reduce any ambiguity, so you'll have to spell out the full name anyway. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:36, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree with David Eppstein. Also, we writing English, not legalese. There is no ambiguity in "this treaty" or "the treaty" where only one treaty is being discussed. Using "a treaty", on the other hand, would be unclear, and would be incorrect if referring to the one treaty under discussion. —Finell 04:36, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

@David. That's also how I understood the issue at first. However, I think, it has yet one more twist. You can argue that the Treaty is not "just a normal noun" as you claim, but a shorthand form of the proper noun The Treaty of Lisbon, as opposed to talking about a treaty. The point is that you might be talking about treaties in general and thereby use the words the treaty, which would be written just like that - also according to the rule that you oppose. Therefore, this rule would add clarity by discriminating the shorthand form of the proper noun from the truely "normal noun". The question is just, do we want to make such a subtle distinction, or shall we opt for a rule that is much easier to comprehend and to exert.

However, I agree with you that the capital T does not help to avoid confusion if a second treaty was introduced to which you would have to refer as the Treaty as well. Tomeasy _{T C} 16:02, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I have to go with the lowercase crowd on this one. "Treaty of Lisbon" but "the treaty." In addition to the other reasons already mentioned, a capital T looks presumptuous to me. The treaty should stand on its own value and its own meaning without being puffed up with unnecessary lettering. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:04, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Have we come to a decision here? if I was a bit keen, I would say that consensus is not to use the capital T. Tomeasy _{T C} 08:17, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Capitalization of Titles

The "2 Article titles, headings, and sections" portion of the manual of style is somewhat confusing. Here are some thoughts on the issue.

Wiki's are a fairly new phenomenon. As such, they should be subservant to standard conventions just like anything else. Almost since the invention of the printing press, all major words in titles have almost always been capitalized. To divert from such a long history of usage seems to be a bad idea.

Also, I noticed that the title "Wikipedia:Manual of Style" actually appears to be wrong according to Wikipedia's own standards. In this case, Manual of Style is not a proper name; it is a generic noun. In other words, it is "a" manual of style, and not "the" manual of style. Therefore, it appears that the title should actually be "Wikipedia:manual of style". Notice also that the abbreviation is stated as being MOS or MoS. That, in and of itself, also appears to lack consistency. Shouldn't it be Mos or just mos?

Further, IMHO, it seems more prudent to state that if the sub-titles or section headings don't end in "......", then it isn't a sentence or lead-in phrase, and it is a title that should be capitalized in the normal manner. —Preceding unsigned comment added by KitchM (talk • contribs) 16:33, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's the case that "since the invention of the printing press, all major words in titles have almost always been capitalized". The UK practice appears to be not to capitalize major words, only the first letter of the first word. There was a previous discussion about why Style in Manual of Style is capitalized – search the talk page archives. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 16:42, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Jacklee. Title-style capitalization and sentence-style capitalization are both correct and proper forms. Personally, I don't mind either style so long as the article is consistent. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:02, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

For what it is worth, the Canadian Press Style Guide, which is widely used in Canadian media, recommends the same style as the Wikipedia Manual. I think that that KithcM's view is based on what s/he is familiar with, as opposed to "standard conventions... since the invention of the printing press." Ground Zero | t 16:19, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Size of superscript text

In the past I've noticed one or two instances of small superscripted font used for <ref> tags. In other words:

<small><ref>...</ref></small>

On my browser, the resulting text is scarcely legible, and with some numerals not legible at all, so I've tended to remove the <small> tags where I've seen them. I just came across Monarchy of Canada, which has masses of references formatted in this way and otherwise seems a fairly well put-together article. What do others think about this style of formatting? Can you read it clearly? Should it be deprecated and put back to normal size font when encountered? 86.134.43.204 (talk) 22:03, 18 November 2009 (UTC).

No. Darrenhusted (talk) 22:21, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Can you read all of the superscripts clearly? 86.134.43.204 (talk) 22:47, 18 November 2009 (UTC).

I understood that what goes in 'ref' tags is at 90% normal size in the first place. Am I mistaken, or not drawing a fine enough distinction? If everything in 'ref' tags goes 90% anyway, I'm missing the point of adding the 'small' tag. —Aladdin Sane (talk) 22:30, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't know the exact ratio but superscripted "ref" text is, by default, quite clearly smaller than normal text. I assume the size was chosen as a compromise between wanting to make the text fairly unobtrusive and wanting to ensure that it's legible. Like you, I do not understand the point of the "small" tag in addition. IMO all such text should be the same size, and if the view is that it needs to be smaller (which I anyway don't agree with), that should be done at a "template level", when the "ref" tag is interpreted and translated. 86.134.43.204 (talk) 22:52, 18 November 2009 (UTC).

On the page that you link to I can read everything fine. I say "no" because tags aren't added to refs lightly, if some has formatted the text in that manner then the may be a simple reason, one which may not be obvious. The subscript <small> could be there for an invisible reason. And ^FYI that is superscript. Darrenhusted (talk) 23:22, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

It probably hardly matters, but I don't understand your last sentence. I know what superscripts and subscripts are. The "small" tag is, in itself, neither subscript nor superscript. It simply makes the font size smaller. 86.134.43.204 (talk) 00:00, 19 November 2009 (UTC).

If the text is made smaller, and thus sits below the line of the normal font size then is is subscript, not superscript. ^Superscript is a different bit of code. But the small tag makes text sit below the normal size font line. The difference is important. There is no point making a complaint then dismissing the correct term when it is pointed out. Darrenhusted (talk) 13:20, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I still have no idea what your point is or why you think my use of terminology is incorrect. Don't bother trying to explain further, it doesn't seem worth it. 81.152.168.31 (talk) 18:35, 19 November 2009 (UTC).

The problem is, it's an undocumented reason. I went through the talk page and archives and didn't find discussion about it. That said, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I don't see the need to clean every reference in the article of the small tags, I don't see that much gained in the name of standardization, and if many new references are added, people with the article on the watchlist will get the ref tags inside small tags. —C.Fred (talk) 23:32, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it", yes, but for me it is broke (specifically, illegible). However, it's interesting that Darrenhusted can read it OK. I presume that the person who formatted the refs that way could also read it OK. Thing is, I have a very standard XP + IE setup, that I imagine is shared by tens of millions of other PC users. 86.134.43.204 (talk). —Preceding undated comment added 23:57, 18 November 2009 (UTC).

I have five different browsers, and there no problem in any. Darrenhusted (talk) 13:20, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

My Compaq FS7600 screen is so small that I can barely make out commas from periods (full-stops), but I didn't see anything too unusual at Monarchy of Canada, except for this: The article separates footnotes that explain things in the text from straight "citations" of sources, with two series of numbers beginning at 1. The small "n" in front of some superscripts must refer to the explanatory notes, as opposed to the citations. And some of the notes refer to supporting citations below them. I don't have time now to explore this in detail, but I strongly suspect the sizing issue has something to do with this rather unusual set-up. Other articles have tried using letters instead of numbers for the non-citation-type footnotes; see, e.g., List of World Series champions. Compare it with the list of teams at the bottom of Major League Baseball, where the whole numbered list of team changes (separate from the standard References section) is in small type. —— Shakescene (talk) 01:51, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't think there's any technical reason why the notes/citations split necessitates the use of a small font. I just tested a short section of it without the "small" tags (preview only!) and it seems to work just as well. It's curious, though, that you also "didn't see anything too unusual", which I assume means the superscripts aren't noticeably incredibly tiny and illegible for you either. I'm beginning to wonder if it's a problem only I'm seeing. Out of interest, I'll leave a note on the article's talk page asking why it was done. 86.134.43.204 (talk) 02:50, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

It may be that the numbers look OK to me because they're about the right proportion to the text, while the normal Wikipedia footnote-superscript is a bit large. On the other hand, the letter "n" does look tiny, and were it more than one letter (a word, phrase or sentence), it would be hard for me to read. [If I had the time, patience and expertise, I might be moved to convert all those n-footnotes (numerical tags) to letters to reduce all that confusion (i.e. something roughly analogous to the hierarchy at List of World Series champions), but I don't know the "#tag" template's syntax or protocol.] —— Shakescene (talk) 04:14, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I notice that on articles where the <small> formatting is not used around references, the inline citation tags push the lines of text apart, compared to lines that don't have inline tags. On articles where the <small> formatting is employed, the line spacing is consistent throughout the article. --Ħ MIESIANIACAL 03:27, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Right. Are the superscripts clearly legible for you too, Miesianiacal? 86.134.43.204 (talk) 03:50, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, quite. --Ħ MIESIANIACAL 04:14, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

If there are any problems with the footnote size (though I don't think there are), they should be resolved across the site through CSS at MediaWiki talk:Common.css, not forced with markup. —Werson (talk) 04:46, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't know if it's a problem, per say, but from my perspective the <small> formatted inline tags actually make the articles look much better; consistent line spacing is more tidy and professional. --Ħ MIESIANIACAL 15:34, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Werson; we should avoid the extra markup. If the CSS isn't right or can be improved, we should change that. — John Cardinal (talk) 21:00, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I also agree with Werson. Ideally we shouldn't be making ad hoc solutions on a per-article basis. There should be an agreed Wikipedia-wide standard for the tags in question. 81.152.168.31 (talk) 01:33, 20 November 2009 (UTC).

How does one go about it, then? --Ħ MIESIANIACAL 14:18, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

One goes about it by, first, not using explicit markup such as <small> to format references, and second, if you feel that the formatting of references could be improved, taking it to the Mediawiki page linked to by Werson. In case it isn't clear, my opinion on this specific case is that the <small> tags should be removed. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:37, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

New user sees problem, cannot edit

Hi, apparently I cannot edit this page, so can someone fix the "approx." in the section "Do not use unwarranted abbreviations"? It seems like it should be red if it follows the pattern that all of the rest of the page does. -Nuclear Lunch Detected —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nuclear Lunch Detected (talk • contribs) 05:45, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Bibliography title format standardization

The format of the titles of bibliography articles are frankly a mess. Titles are formatted as "John Doe bibliography", "Bibliography of John Doe", "List of works by John Doe", "Works of John Doe''" and many others. They need standardized.

I propose that these titles be standardized in the "John Doe bibliography" format. This follows the same format used for filmographies and discographies and both of these categories have virtually universal formatting.

Some specialized bibliographies (e.g. List of short stories by Isaac Asimov) will not be able to use the format but most (e.g. Bibliography of Isaac Asimov) will benefit from the standardization. It will also become easier to search for a bibliography with standard formatting.--Marcus Brute (talk) 19:15, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

There are some problems here, but I don't think renaming them all "Jane Doe bibliography" is the solution. When I hear the phrase "Jane Doe bibliography", it is a bit unclear if there are books both by Doe and about Doe. With the phrase "List of works", it is absolutely clear that the only works included are those written by Doe. Perhaps "bibliography" should be reserved for lists that contain both? Awadewit (talk) 19:32, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Since the category is called "Bibliographies by author" and "John Doe bibliography" and "Bibliography of John Doe" were already by far the most common formats with no complaints, I think the implied consensus is that ambiguity over the word "bibliography" is negligible. Futhermore, your same logic could be as easily applied to filmographies with people wondering if Alfred Hitchcock filmography refers to films by Alfred Hitchcock or about Alfred Hitchcock. Since bibliography can refer to both "by" and "about", that would mean that a bibliography article could contain sections with both types, not that it must.--Marcus Brute (talk) 22:50, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

On a separate note, bibliography specifically establishes that the article is about written works whereas "list of works" could refer to absolutely anything the person has done.--Marcus Brute (talk) 22:52, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you that "bibliography" implies "written works", which is why it does not work for people like William Blake or Andy Warhol, who worked in a variety of media - for them "List of works" is the better phrase. Awadewit (talk) 22:58, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

A "bibliography" is not always a list of written works by its subject; in fact, I would argue that it is most often a list of written works about or pertinent to the study of its subject. I am also slightly bothered by its use for the work of authors such as Shakespeare (a small part of my brain says "Shakespeare did not write books, he wrote works that were compiled in book form") although I admit this is completely irrational and should be ignored :) Fvasconcellos (t·c) 23:24, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

bibliography at dictionary.com Awadewit (talk) 23:27, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, my point exactly; "X Y bibliography" introduces ambiguity. (That's how I see it, anyway.) Fvasconcellos (t·c) 23:34, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

How does "list of works" not introduce ambiguity?--Marcus Brute (talk) 00:03, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

(restarted indents) While I can see a precedent clearly exists with the naming conventions of filmographies and discographies, most of these would seem to be list class articles and therefore should be named using WP:LISTNAME. "The name or title of the list should simply be List of _ _". Oldag07 (talk) 03:21, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

"List of works" is perfectly clear and adequate for most of these pages. If there is any ambiguity then "List of literary works by X" will do. I don't see the point of making everything conform to some central directive in any case. --Folantin (talk) 10:46, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

What of the article that have previously gone by the title "bibliography." Shall those be changed to "list of works"?--Marcus Brute (talk) 23:51, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

This discussion is ongoing, so why have you mass moved all the articles to xxx bibliography already? They should be moved back until something is resolved. Heck, you've even invited WP:BOOKS to come along and discuss it, but only after you moved them all.[21] Matthewedwards :  Chat  00:46, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

My 2¢ is that "List of works of", or "Bibliography of" is more correct, grammatically, than anything else that is used, and fits in with what WP:NCLL says, as well as WP:LISTNAME and WP:LOW. Also, this discussion is at the wrong place. It should be at WT:NC or WT:NCLL, not the MOS. Matthewedwards :  Chat  01:05, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

"John Doe bibliography" is ungrammatical, in that it uses a proper noun as an adjective (and therefore always sounds wrong), and its meaning in Wikipedia is always ambiguous. "List of works" (or, to be more specific, "List of books", "List of writings", "List of poems", "List of paintings", etc.) is appropriate for works by one author. "References" or "Sources" are the best terms to use on Wikipedia for what is called a "bibliography" in a term paper or thesis. —Finell 04:49, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

List of works by ... is my preferred option as modern authors often do not restrain to only one format. Take for example Richard Dawkins who has books, movies, TV documentaries, and so on. The List of works by is much more versatile and useful. This is different from music or filmmakers whose work are generally confined to one format. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 20:26, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

It would appear that no consensus exists to move all of the pages to "X Bibliography" - what should we do about the 70+ articles Marcus Brute moved? Awadewit (talk) 16:18, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I wanted to pipe in quickly (sorry I got here late). I prefer the "Bibliography of..." format if only because I can begin to type "Bibliography of..." in the search field and see some options. I think "List of works by..." is also a viable possibility, but only where a preferred alternative to "Bibliography". I vote for restoring original titles where appropriate. --Midnightdreary (talk) 13:50, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and I should note that I react the same way as Awadewit when I hear "Jane Doe bibliography", as per her first comment above. --Midnightdreary (talk) 13:51, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Brackets, Template:Convert, and quotations

The following text currently appears in the Waco, Texas article inside a direct quotation (rendered as it appears, not with acutal code):

They have about 400 acres (1.6 km²) planted

The acres and conversion is done with {{convert|400|acre|km2}}. However, the conversion is not part of the quotation. Is this presentation acceptable, or should it be set off in square brackets to show that the conversion was not part of the quotation? If it is set off, are only square brackets required, or should it be brackets and parens, i.e., "400 acres [(1.6 km²)]"? I don't see a standard option in convert for this situation, but I can't believe it's the first time it's come up. —C.Fred (talk) 17:54, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

In this specific case, you could write "They have about 400 acres planted" (1.6km²). Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:50, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

En and em dashes spacing

I don't come to MOS often as it is usually a minefield of information and as a practical editor best avoided since it changes by whim, I just try to write good English. However I have a small point to make.

In MOS:EMDASH and MOS:ENDASH there is no mention of how the spaces should be coded. It does say that one can choose whether to use spaces or not if the article is consistent, and absolutely rules out my own favoured style of no space before but a space after. But I can live with that. But I think it needs to be clearer on what kind of space, i.e. a breaking or non breaking space.

I found a nice idiom the other day when editing an article, which is (assuming one is using spaces around the dashes) to put a non-breaking space at the start, but a normal breaking space at the end. This was in a biography so was the birth and death dates of the person. It seems sensible to me, it will not then break immediately before the dash for the birth date, but it can break after it for the death date. It's an idiom I intend to adopt.

Nothing is said about using non breaking spaces at WP:EMDASH or WP:ENDASH. I think it should. Something brief of course, but to say if they should be used one side, either side, or not at all.

Best wishes Si Trew (talk) 07:18, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Some people use non-breaking spaces, although I fear that a few browsers distort the space before, making it appear thinner than the normal space after then en dash. Unsure.

It's a choice between unspaced em dashes—and spaced en dashes – and it doesn't really matter which you choose.

I'm sorry to hear you find the MoS troublesome. Perhaps we should aim for greater stability. Tony (talk) 12:51, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

It is a nice suggestion for an optional way to space dashes, but I don't think that we should make it into a rule. ST brings up a good point, however. I've spent some time looking for a page on how to code things on Wikipedia and I have never found one. Perhaps a link to one from the MoS would be helpful. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:53, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Caps in templates

Resolved

 – Just a pointer to another talk page.

If any watchers here know the right answer, please respond to the question I posted on the WP:CAPS talk page, linked here. Sswonk (talk) 22:45, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Hawaii/Manual of Style has been marked as part of the Manual of Style

Wikipedia:WikiProject Hawaii/Manual of Style (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) 02:00, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

As discussed several times before, this will keep happening, unless the system and protocol change, until five hundred WikiProjects have each adopted a Manual of Style and tacked it onto the main one. In theory, I suppose, an editor who happens to be writing about a Hawai'ian fish or dish, or ruler or writer or regiment, or (especially) Living Person is meant to take due heed of all the projects that have adopted (or will adopt) his or her article and conform that article to their standards, which have now become incorporated into the Manual of Style (currently showing over two hundred sub-pages and associated pages). In practice, this will mean that few editors will even bother to notice.

NB to Hawaiian Project editors: we're not picking on you: MoS regulars react this way to every new WikiProject guideline that the 'bots add to the Manual of Style.

—— Shakescene (talk) 09:10, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

It is pure madness to allow any old page to self-appoint to MoS. No standards, no protocols, nothing. Could be a load of codswallop, for all we know. Has anyone looked? Tony (talk) 13:00, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I just read it. It's not very exciting; mostly it concerns the use of special characters when referring to Hawaiian places or names. Agnosticaphid (talk) 18:07, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

So should we force projects to actually propose their style guides at this space before it's marked? It seems like that's the simple solution... Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 18:24, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

That would be the sane option, DWF. The key to it is at the MoS category page, which needs to clearly state that consensus should be gathered at the category talk page first. Tony (talk) 10:44, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Non-flag test case of WP:MOSICON at TfD

Resolved

 – Just an FYI.

Re: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (icons): Inline-in-prose use of icons is being tested in a TfD on the use of templates to insert strings of "Stargate" symbols into articles on the TV shows. We mostly see this guideline applied with regard to flags; its application to non-flag icons is likely to be of interest to editors here. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:43, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Question for en-dash experts

Re: this:

Spacing: All disjunctive en dashes are unspaced, except when there is a space within either one or both of the items (the New York – Sydney flight; the New Zealand – South Africa grand final; June 3, 1888 – August 18, 1940, but June–August 1940).

This is a piddly point, but one I have come up against a surprising number of times in the past few weeks: What if one of the items is internally hyphenated? Examples:'

• Is it Scranton–Wilkes-Barre metropolitan area or Scranton – Wilkes-Barre metropolitan area?
• Is it Guinea-Bissau–Senegal border or Guinea-Bissau – Senegal border?

Thanks in advance for any input. — Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:07, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Um, speaking for my eyes alone, ya' gotta' space those, or I can't tell the disjunction, and will misread what you meant. —Aladdin Sane (talk) 22:32, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

For another one of these in mathematics, the Birch–Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture (though it's more usually called the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture), I've only ever seen it without spaces. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:37, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I looked in Google Scholar for all instances of "Guinea-Bissau–Senegal border" (with any punctuation) and found four instances: two with two hyphens (obviously bogus), one with a hyphen and a slash (which clearly violates Wikipedia's style rule for slashes) and one (PDF) punctuated with hyphen and endash as the current Manual of Style requires. Nobody put spaces around any of the punctuation. So, for this particular example, the only scholarly usage consistent with the Wikipedia style manual is with hyphen and endash, and no spaces. Eubulides (talk) 00:46, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes. The New England Journal of Medicine, for instance, uses hyphen and unspaced en dash (one of few scholarly publications to apply this rule very strictly). Fvasconcellos (t·c) 01:03, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

It should be unspaced. Another use of an en-dash is to take the place of a hyphen when one or both elements is hyphenated; in these situations, the en-dash is unspaced. —Finell 02:45, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, unspaced, since there's no space in either element. Tony (talk) 07:45, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Unspaced per Tony. There's no space in either the first "A-B" or second "C" element, thus A-B–C. (Gell-Mann–Nishijima formula). Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 08:39, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

More about square brackets....

The following discussion, which I initiated, was archived but it was not resolved. It appears in Archive 110.

(the pertinent part of the old discussion follows):

Use of square brackets

Currently, the third example for square brackets is this:

To make the grammar work: She said that "[she] would not allow this" – where her original statement was "I would not allow this". (Generally, though, it is better to begin the quotation after the problematic word: She said that she "would not allow this.")

I don't think this is the best example for how to use brackets to make the grammar work. I would use something along the lines of the following (it could be an additional example, instead):

For example, if referring to someone's statement "I hate to do laundry," one could properly write: She "hate[s] to do laundry."

I think this is a better illustration because, as the current example itself explains, starting off a quote with brackets is usually not necessary. But, I didn't want to unilaterally change the manual of style. Agnosticaphid (talk) 06:46, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

. . .

It seemed like everyone agreed that it was a good replacement, so I replaced the example. I believe I properly placed the punctuation outside of the quotation marks. (The rules here about that confuse me sometimes since I'm from the US; feel free to fix it if it's wrong.) Of course, if people think it's better with both illustrations, go ahead and add the old one back. Agnosticaphid (talk) 20:41, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry to jump in, I must have missed something massive in this section of the conversation (or perhaps others I have not read). The statements She "hate[s] to do laundry" and She said that "[she] hate[s] to do laundry" are not the same at all, given the original quote, "I hate to do laundry". Stylisticly, we all seem to agree that Agnosticaphid's style is superior to the original example cited in the MOS. However, the meaning is massively changed, and I thought that this was not allowed in quoting direct quotes. Please, if I'm wrong about this, point out to me where I am wrong, because I do get confused sometimes, I may have missed something too subtle for my brain. I spend a lot of time on WP between edits staring at The Treachery of Images.

Both in real life, and in editing an encyclopedia article, I do not believe I am allowed to interpret others' meaning, but merely to report fairly their statements. Because someone said that they hate to do laundry does not mean that they hate to do laundry. Maybe it's just because I'm some person whose had adequate significant others to know the difference between a statement of a fact and a fact that I see the difference this way. But I'm reminded of the Fair Witness example described so many years ago: I may not say that "the house is white" merely because it's white on this side. —Aladdin Sane (talk) 05:31, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry to interrupt the conversation again. If this is the wrong place to complain that the MOS now allows the meaning of a direct quote to be changed in favor of style, could someone please point me to the proper place where I may file a complaint about the issue? Thanks! —Aladdin Sane (talk) 00:03, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

[end old discussion]

I believe Aladdin Sane's point is at least worthy of discussion. It seems that Aladdin Sane thinks that the meaning of "I hate to do laundry" is changed when it is stated as: She "hate[s] to do laundry." The example is too non-encyclopedic/abstract for a useful discussion of Aladdin's point. Supposing instead the situation was:

Some quote exists where Hillary Clinton says, "I hate to do laundry." Would it be appropriate to include in the Hillary Clinton article (if referenced) a line that says: Ms. Clinton "hate[s] to do laundry"?

I believe it would. It's hard for me to understand how this qualifies as "interpret[ing]" Ms. Clinton's statement. It seems that Aladdin Sane believes that to quote in such a way fails to convey that the information was self-reported, and thus perhaps unreliable. But, isn't that why direct quotations are accompanied by citations to their source? I fail to see how writing

Ms. Clinton has previously stated that she "hate[s] to do laundry."

really adds anything to the statement if the quote was already accompanied by a citation that shows the information is self-reported. At any rate, there is really no reason whatsoever to write

Ms. Clinton has previously stated that "[she] hate[s] to do laundry."

when the immediately-preceding example would suffice. As I stated, there's not really ever a reason to begin a quotation with an entire word in brackets.

(I'm sure, in my haste, that I've improperly placed some of the punctuation in all these examples.)

Agnosticaphid (talk) 00:47, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I think I'm addressing a different point here, but when I read "Ms. Clinton has previously stated that '[she] hate[s] to do laundry,'" I tend to interpret Ms. Clinton's words as referring to some other woman (otherwise, why would Ms. Clinton say "[she]"?). So I would think that in general replacing "I" with "[she]" in a quote changes its meaning. —Bkell (talk) 21:53, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

There is no a reason that I can think of for beginning a quotation with a bracketed word; you can always put the grammatically correct word before the quotation and begin the quotation with the next word. While altering a quotation and using brackets to indicate the alteration is permissible, it is often (although not always) preferable to avoid altering the quotation by rewriting what surrounds the quotation or by quoting less. In this instance, the problem is easily avoided: Ms. Clinton previously admitted, "I hate to do laundry." On the other hand, a personal pronoun should never be ambiguous because its antecedent should be clear. I also notice a trend to excessive use of past perfect tense when simple past tense is both correct and more concise. —Finell 05:08, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

This may be true, but it is even more concise to just write Ms. Clinton "hate[s] to do laundry." The disagreement revolved around whether that was a proper modification of the quote "I hate to do laundry." Agnosticaphid (talk) 19:55, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I have to concur with Agnosticaphid. We should not give "[She]..." as a usage example, and should actually very clearly deprecate such usage, meanwhile something like "hate[s]..." is a perfectly useful and illustrative example of proper usage. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:47, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Example for elements in conjunction and hyphens?

Currently WP:ENDASH says:

"If the elements operate in conjunction, rather than independently, use a hyphen."

I'm afraid I don't know what that sentence means. Could someone give an example (which we could add to that sentence)? Eubulides (talk) 21:01, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

• How about "Franco-Russian peace treaty"? "Franco-" operates in conjunction with "Russian" and is not self-standing. On the other hand, it would be "France–Russia peace treaty". Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:07, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Thanks for clarifying. The previous sentence already ends "but a hyphen is used in Sino-Japanese trade, in which Sino-, being a prefix, lacks lexical independence". Is this intended to be an example of the more-general rule in the next sentence? (If so, we should move the example to after the rule, as it's confusing the way it is.) Eubulides (talk) 00:32, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
    • Yes, I assume it's meant to be an example. I think you're right that it should be clarified. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 00:39, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

An example is that a singer-songwriter list would list singer-songwriters, whereas a singer–songwriter list would list singers and songwriters. Right? --___A. di M. 15:54, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Obvious nicknames in the article lead

I'm curious about what seems like a very common practice of including obvious nicknames, like Bill for William, in an article lead. For instance, Robert William "Bob" Barker in the Bob Barker article. Bob is a common nickname for Robert; putting it in there doesn't add anything, and it kind of sounds trite and silly. It would make sense to do if Robert were Barker's middle name, or if "Bob" were a nickname for something other than Robert, but it seems we do it all the time. Is there a guideline that recommends this usage? Croctotheface (talk) 20:23, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

To interject a point that was missed in this discussion, not everyone named "Robert" goes by a nick at all, and not all nicks for "Robert" are "Bob" (cf. Rob, Robbie, Robby, Bobby, Bobbie, Bert, Berty, Bertie, etc.) Even the ignorance/ESL issues raised below aside, there is no reason to expect any "obvious" nickname to actually be obvious. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:22, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I, as an editor, fail to assume that my reader knows anything of the subject of the article. To that end, when I see a "common nickname" up front as in the example you cite, I find it not in the least bit silly, but instead a way other editors used to indicate to that reader that they indeed may have actually landed at the right article among 6,908,522 articles. Anything less is, I feel, contemptuous of the reader with "little or no knowledge of the subject". When I weigh my contempt for the ignorant reader against that reader's quest for knowledge, the balance of possibilities for good editorship always lands on the side of the "reader with little or no knowledge" of the subject. So I think identifying details belong in the article, and often as up front as possible. A common nickname for the person or thing is one such detail, to my mind.

Also, in the particular example you cite, if the nickname were removed, the name of the subject of the article would then (apparently) contradict the article's title, again, speaking for the reader with "little or no knowledge" of the subject. —Aladdin Sane (talk) 20:44, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

By way of example, what about Don Cherry (ice hockey)? The current lead has Donald Stewart "Grapes" Cherry. Is Don for Donald a sufficiently obvious nickname? If not, then Donald Stewart "Don" "Grapes" Cherry looks rather awkward; should it be recast as Donald Stewart "Don" Cherry, also known as "Grapes"? —C.Fred (talk) 21:08, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I think that's a great example, in that the second formulation there is really clunky and just not good writing. In response to Aladdin, I think that your thought process assumes almost complete ignorance--in a literal sense--on the part of the reader. Forget about knowledge of the article subject; if someone doesn't know that Don is a nickname for Donald or that Bob is a nickname for Robert, then that reader would likely need definitions for all but the most basic English words. It doesn't require knowledge of Bob Barker to understand that Bob comes from Robert. Croctotheface (talk) 06:50, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

The first line of an article should give the subject's full and proper name. In addition to other reasons, the way that child naming practices have changed over the past century, it is reasonable for a reader to wonder whether "Bob" really is short for "Robert" or whether "Bob" actually is the subject's legal name. I've met enough "just 'Kate'"s in my life. The flipside of that is that while I wouldn't put "Bob" down for every single subject named "Robert," Bob Barker is best known by his nickname, so the "Bob" is appropriate. Also, while most readers might know that "Bob" is a nickname for "Robert," they might not know whether a particular Robert is known as "Bob," "Rob," or "Robby," whether a particular William is known as "Bill" or "Will," etc. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:12, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

That's where the interplay of the article title (common name) and lead (formal name) comes in. The article title tells they're best known as Don Cherry, Bob Barker, and Drew Carey; reading the bold text on the first line of the article tells me they're Donald, Robert, and Drew. It also covers the odd situations like Grapes and Elizabeth Dole, whose intro reads Mary Elizabeth Hanford "Liddy" Dole. The combination of intro and lead line tell me her common name, nickname, birth name and that she uses her maiden name as a middle name—all in seven words. (Admittedly, the last two require some knowledge of naming conventions that might be beyond the average, but the information is presented succinctly in the lead and quickly confirmed by the Early life section.) —C.Fred (talk) 16:14, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you agree with me or not, C.Fred, but I think you do, since your logic strongly supports my position. Nobody would fail to understand that Barker is "Bob" and not "Rob" or something else after reading the article title and intro. If we're saying that we need to cover all our bases in the intro, then wouldn't that mean that we'd need to put every nickname in the lead? What if Barker went by both Bob and Rob? Robert William "Bob/Rob" Barker? That can't be right. Croctotheface (talk) 03:52, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Whatever happened of the principle that if you need to say something relevant in a letter you don't solely write it on the envelope, if you need to say something relevant in a Usenet post you don't solely write it on the subject line, and so on? --___A. di M. 15:48, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I think that the nicknames, regardless of whether or not they are obvious ("Bob" would be the equivalent of "Grapes" or "Poodle-Decapitator" here), should be included in the lead if the subjects of those leads are known by them. I also think that the MoS does not need to have a rule one way or the other about whether or not the nicknames should be there. What it might be able to use, if it can be shown to be necessary, is a line about how best to present nicknames in complicated cases, such as Donald Stewart "Don" Cherry, also known as "Grapes." Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:42, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, there are some issues with that, in particular the fact that someone like Bill Clinton has tons of nicknames; do they all need to go in the first line of the article? Why should any of them? Croctotheface (talk) 12:25, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

This is covered by a simple examination of our policy of weighting material against reliable sources, together with a small degree of talent in writing good prose. The reason we have William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is that despite the nickname being informal it is the name for him exclusively by practically every reliable source, and because it's more elegant and concise than William Jefferson Clinton, commonly known as Bill Clinton. The reason we do not have Jonathan "Jon" Ross is because no RS uses that name for him. It's not a case of "covering our bases": it's a case of presenting the subject's common names, as defined by secondary coverage, in the most elegant manner possible. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 16:05, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

The "commonly known as Bill Clinton" clause would, of course, be silly as well. What I'm saying we should do is dispense with the notion that we need to mention "Bill" in the first line of the article. The fact that it's a common nickname for William, along with the fact that it's in the article title, infobox, and will be used in other places in the article, completely prevents any possible confusion that any reader who can understand English will have. What value do we add by saying "Bill" in the first five words? I contend that it makes us look kind of silly, as it suggests either that we editors don't understand that Bill is a nickname for William, or that we expect our readers don't understand that themselves. Croctotheface (talk) 12:25, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I think we should never assume our readers will know that Bob is short for Robert, or that Bill is short for William. Yes, it's something most people who have grown up in the UK or the US will know, but there are literally hundreds of millions of people for whom English is a second language. I don't think including "Bill" in the first five words makes us look silly—I think it makes us look sensitive to our diverse readership. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 14:19, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Amen. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 14:25, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Concur. In those rare cases in which adding a nickname would be unnecessary or silly-looking, we can just leave it out. However, I'd like to reiterate that we're better off not making a rule one way or the other about this. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:41, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I agree with this completely. I don't want there to be a rule against it; I just wanted to know whether there was a rule favoring it.

As far as not assuming our readers know that Bill is short for William, I think that's kind of a curious assumption to avoid making, considering that we make so many other assumptions of our readers. We don't wikilink common English words, and the Clinton article makes reference to, in the second paragraph of the lead alone: centrism, economic expansion, balanced budgets, a federal surplus, and his being acquitted in 1998. None of those terms are wikilinked, and if you add in stuff that is, it becomes an even greater list of topics that are likely to be unfamiliar to a reader who doesn't know about Bill/William. If we're not going to assume readers understand that Bill is short for William, then we should be defining every single one of those words in excruciating detail, since those ignorant readers likely won't have a clue what any of them mean. Beyond that, shouldn't we specifically mention that Bill is short for William? In Clinton's case, wouldn't it be possible that some reader could think it refers to signing bills into law as president and governor? That's likely to be the first dictionary definition that would seem relevant to his biography, after all.

Again, my point here is not to say that we must excoriate all such mentions from the encyclopedia, just that there are cases where they don't particularly make sense, and that we need not do this when those cases arise. Croctotheface (talk) 03:23, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

The difference between centrism and Bill is that only the former is an ordinary English word that could be found in a dictionary. I know engineers from non-English speaking backgrounds who can happily talk about gas chromatography, metabolic flux and carbon catabolite repression, but I doubt they'd know that Bill is short for William. I guess it's really a bit of cultural knowledge—and a person can be educated and literate in the English language without knowing it. I take your point about signing bills and I don't know the answer, though it does reinforce what we all seem to agree on: that we shouldn't make a rule about this. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 14:02, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

As for whether there's a rule already, my gut reaction is to tell you that no there isn't a rule, just a custom and general principles good writing. Neither WP:LEAD nor WP:BOLP nor WP:NAME mentions names and nicknames in this way. However, WP:SURNAME says to do it the way I've said, mentioning nicknames in passing. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:00, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

So Bill Clinton should not be referred to by his common name in the lede of the article? Honestly? Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 20:39, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Correct. The article title should be the common name and the article's opening paragraph should include his full, legal name (and probably a reference to William Jefferson Blythe III). The rest of the article should use his surname alone, as is proper.Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:01, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

That is plainly nonsensical, and helps nobody. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 15:03, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Okay, let me clear up what I was saying: First off, ESL readers are best served by Wikipedia's using proper, correct and clear English, not by dumbing things down. Taking this in mind, 1. it is reasonable to assume that most readers capable of reading Wikipedia articles in English will either know that "Bill" is short for "William," etc. or be able to figure it out as part of their reading-in-English learning experience. I didn't know that "Pepe" was short for "Jose" until a short while ago, but that doesn't mean that all our Spanish articles should cater to me. However, 2. it is not reasonable to assume that any reader knows whether the article subject's legal name is "Bill" or "William" in any particular case. Some people do name their children "Bill" or "Kate" (or "Bette" or "Lisa" or any of the million shorts for "Elizabeth") on their birth certificates. Therefore, even if the subject is known publicly as "Bill Clinton" or "Bill Bryson," the leading line should list the subject's full, legal name. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:43, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

And again, this helps nobody. Calling William Jefferson Clinton "Bill" is not "dumbing things down"; it's the name used for him by every reliable source going. Such false formality just looks pretentious, although frankly from some of the discussion above it seems like this is actually desirable to some. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:18, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

A few things seem to have gotten disconnected here. I am saying that opening an article on Bill Clinton with "William Jefferson 'Bill' Clinton" is right and proper not because ESL readers need to be told that "Bill" is short for "William"—they don't, at least not in an article that just happens to be about someone named William—but rather because using the subject's legal name and nickname in quotes in the opening line constitutes good encyclopedic writing. In other words, the opening line should say "William Jefferson Clinton" not because an ESL reader might not know that this is his legal name but because any reader might not know that this is his legal name.

Yes, "Bill Clinton" is the name by which he's best known. That's why the title of the article is "Bill Clinton" and not "William Jefferson Clinton," "President Billy 42" or "William Jefferson Blythe III." However, "Bill Clinton" isn't his legal name and the opening line of the article is a good place to tell the readers what is. The rest of the article should refer to him not as "Bill Clinton" or as "William Jefferson Clinton" but rather as just "Clinton." It isn't false formality. It's true formality. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:03, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I have to very strongly concur with Darkfrog24 on this issue. The way Willie Mosconi has been done, for example, is perfectly normal for Wikipedia, and it would be weird and jarring to see it done with his nickname first and some follow-on explanation as to what his full name was. For people whose entire name has been replaced by a pseudonym (Wavy Gravy, Redd Foxx, whatever), I can see some need for flexibility in approach, but not for something as simple as Bill Clinton. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:19, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I have to say that I am completely confused about where Darkfrog24 actually stands on the issue here. But just to hit a few replies: first, I think that for non-obvious nicknames (for instance, Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby) it makes sense to throw the nickname in the middle of the full name like that. For obvious nicknames, it looks terrible. It isn't "good encyclopedic writing"; it's clunky, spell-out-the-obvious writing. I doubt we can find any major newspapers or magazines that routinely use this style, and for good reason. Croctotheface (talk) 04:57, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I believe that "William Jefferson 'Bill' Clinton" is the best way to open an encyclopedia article on Bill Clinton. Think about it. If someone's reading an encyclopedia article, then that person is looking for basic information. The name is the most basic part of it, so it goes first. While it may be obvious to most English speakers that "Bill" in general is usually short for "William," we should not assume that it is obvious to any reader that any given person named William is also known as Bill or vice versa, not even for very famous subjects.

While "William Jefferson 'Bill' Clinton" doesn't look bad to me, "William Jefferson Clinton, called 'Bill'" and "William Jefferson Clinton" by itself don't look bad to me either. That's why I don't think we need to have a rule about this. It is only that "William Jefferson 'Bill' Clinton" is the best of a few decent options. Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:57, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

That article has "Bill Clinton" in large type right on top in the article name. It's in the infobox as well. if "Bill" somehow wouldn't show up anywhere else in the article (it shows up 40+ other times in Bill Clinton), then OK, work it in somehow. I guess there isn't much left to discuss here, except that I feel like the rationales in favor of including the obvious nicknames this way all depend on assuming people will somehow miss the obvious unless we spell it out for them.

Anyway, there's no rule about it, I certainly don't intend to go around taking these out of every article, my question is answered, time to move on. Thanks to all for the input. Croctotheface (talk) 08:27, 8 December 2009 (UTC)