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hyphens-for-dashes in sources: to correct or not to correct?

In the entry for the film For lung (as of 2013-01-24T12:47:10), a Hollywood Reporter quote reads (bolding by me), "Any real thought about the nature of duty and the law is swept aside for action, action, and more action-which is average for Lam [...]". Also, the corresponding article title is styled "Fire of Conscience -- Film Review". Are these two instances of hyphens-for-dashes usage to be corrected? Or must they be left alone, because they're integral to the source? – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 13:46, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

There's no problem fixing up punctuation, spelling, italics, etc. We need to be true to what is said, but such details don't affect that. The only question would be changing punctuation that might change the meaning, like adding or removing commas. — kwami (talk) 14:34, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
WP:MOSQUOTE is actually pretty clear on this, it explicitly states that Wikipedia's in-house typography is to be followed for various dashes, even if this means a difference from the original quote. --Jayron32 14:37, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
OK, thanks to both of you. – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 15:57, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Notice of a proposal for WP:PRONUNCIATION

at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Pronunciation. The proposal (I think) is that we change the MOS to recommend moving pronunciations out of the lead. (Personally, and it would seem others agree, I think this is part of a larger problem with clutter per MOS:LEAD that I've tried addressing before.) — kwami (talk) 01:09, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

I am one who disagrees, because pronunciations occupy a very small portion of the space in the lead, but they provide very useful information to readers who wish to read an article orally.
—Wavelength (talk) 17:11, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
I gather that the alternative being proposed is to put the pronunciation in the infobox. Do people not read the infobox orally? Blueboar (talk) 17:59, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
It should go without saying that starting a second conversation here is counterproductive. Post your comments over there, please. Designate (talk) 20:27, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Consistent variety of English: blanket changes

Thread retitled from "Is it proper for an editor...".

How proper is it for an editor to make blanket changes to an article in keeping with WP:CONSISTENCY. For example, if an article uses half "color" and half "colour", but also "center" and perhaps an "armour", would we go back to the first non-stub from however many years prior and decide that everything is BrE or AmE and then change everything accordingly? Or would it be proper to change one word (for example making all "color"s to "colour" for sake of consistency) but retaining the rest (such as "center", so long as that was as its first used spelling). Thank you. -Kai445 (talk) 17:22, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

If it is clear the article has unquestionable national ties, making those changes is non-controversial. But if it is the case that there's no clear indication of national ties, then doing such changes should only be done if consistent with how the first editor set the style, or otherwise seek talk page consensus before making the mass change. And if one is going to change the style of one word, they then should assure other words are similarly changed to that style, though. --MASEM (t) 17:26, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
Sometime the "first non-stub version" concept doesn't provide a clear answer, either because it was inconsistent or because it didn't have any words that clearly indicate a chosen variety. So, it's proper to work toward a consistent style if none has been established (pick one), or toward whatever consistent style has been previously established. The changes should usually be few. Dicklyon (talk) 17:34, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
I am revising the heading of this section from Is it proper for an editor... to Consistent variety of English: blanket changes, in harmony with WP:TPOC, point 13 (Section headings). Please see Microcontent: Headlines and Subject Lines (Alertbox).
—Wavelength (talk) 18:08, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
I prefer the adoption of a uniform system of spelling (such as the one outlined at User:Angr/Unified English Spelling). However, if we are having different varieties of English, then editors can be assisted by a tag indicating the variety chosen for each particular article.
—Wavelength (talk) 18:42, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
There must be just one variety of English per article, not per word. If every center/centre is spelled "centre" and every labor/labour is spelled "labor," it is inconsistent and should be corrected. Use the first non-stub version that uses only one variety of English. If none of the previous versions do, then your own version will be the first, and you get to choose. After all, the whole idea behind ENGVAR is that no one variety of English is better or worthier than the others. Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:16, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
Exactly... conform within the article, not across articles. If there is a reason to use one variety vs another in a specific article, conform that article in accordance with that reason. If not, pick one variety at random and conform. Flip a coin if you have to. The key is that we don't change back and forth once a variety is chosen... stick with whatever variety was chosen unless/until someone gives a good reason to switch (and there is a consensus to change). Blueboar (talk) 18:09, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
I agree with Darkfrog, if you change "color" to "colour", change "center" to "centre", but if you leave "center" as "center", change "colour" to "color". The whole article should conform to one style. Where no other relevant considerations exist the style generally should be determined by the first non-stub version to establish a clear style unless there never was one in which case pick one if need be. JIMp talk·cont 02:52, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Religious titles/honorifics

Hello. We seem to need help with religious titles and honorifics. I please request that we discuss, achieve a consensus and write down guidelines. Please see the talk page of the article Gandhi for more details, regarding a proposed move to Mahatma Gandhi. Here is an excerpt from that conversation:

  • Comment: WP:MoS and current usage. Religious titles derived from formal initiations or high hierarchical functions usually make it to the article's title, e.g. Pope John XXIII, Swami Vivekananda, or Mother Theresa; but this is not true for low-ranking or less known clergy, such as priests or lamas. On the other hand, titles resulting from popular veneration or extolment are inconsistent, e.g. {Saint} Francis of Assisi and {Saint} Paul the Apostle -- but Saint Andrew and Saint Peter. Though WP:COMMONNAME takes precedence, the cases of the Christian apostles show that this is not strictly followed. The honorific Mahatma is the result of popular extolment, but also one with religious meanings.
I think the main issue here is that the common name is also a religious concept, which implies a certain spiritual status (saint, mahatma, mewlana) that is impossible to verify and different from a hierarchical title. Hence the request for debate, consensus and guidelines at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style: is WP:COMMONNAME appropriate in the case of Gandhiji? What about the Christian apostles? What about {Mewlana} Rumi or {Avatar} Meher Baba? Why do popes or the patriarchs of the Catholic Church have their title in their names at Wikipedia? What about leaders of smaller religious organizations in which religious titles are also hierarchical designations, such as {Satguru} Sivaya Subramuniyaswami of Saiva Siddhanta Church? There is no obvious solution. I believe we need to keep in mind common sense, but avoid any subtle Judeo-Christian bias (as in allowing only titles that are familiar to a Western audience due to cognitive bias.) 98.234.105.147 (talk) 23:48, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

An edit in the provisions for ellipses

I have reverted an addition to the page, with this edit summary: "Revert addition of this text to the provisions for ellipses: '(This section does not apply to mathematical notion.)' [sic]; editors, please do not make substantive changes like that without discussing them first; and DO leave informative edit summaries♥". The editor then reverted my reversion, rather than discussing the change; so I reverted the edit again. In my edit summary I use the annotation "[sic]". Given the absence of the definite article ("to [the] mathematical notion"), it is not certain which of the following was intended:

1. (This section does not apply to the mathematical notion.)
2. (This section does not apply to mathematical notation.)

In my own opinion, neither version is warranted. 1 is unnecessary, since the context shows that the "elongated circles" of mathematics are plainly not the topic; and 2 is just not true. Let others have their say also.

NoeticaTea? 01:53, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

But an ellipse does appear in the mathematical notations, rather often. I don't see why we can't have a short notice. -- Taku (talk) 03:10, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
First, you didn't address the problem Noetica pointed out. Second, it would be better to link a section on mathematics that does apply, if there is one. If not, what's the point? Dicklyon (talk) 03:34, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
Well it took a few seconds to find that, so shame on all those who either moaned about its absence or refused to provide it.
I see nothing in the MoS section that justifies the exclusion of mathematical use from the instruction, although some of the provisions are evidently inapplicable. There should probably be a mathematical example added to the MoS section, at least among the exclusions to the rule about spaces before and after the ellipsis, to illustrate that it is included. Kevin McE (talk) 09:48, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
It's hard to know what you mean by this, Kevin: "so shame on all those who either moaned about its absence or refused to provide it". Dicklyon qualified his remark with "that does apply". Of course ellipses feature in mathematical notation, like this for example:

x + 1, x + 2, ..., x + n

No one has denied that! But the WP:MOS treatment of ellipses is relevant to those, so long as they are realised in normal text and not with special markup. So for example, the ellipsis points ought to be "..." (three dots, full stops, periods, full points, or what you will), not "…" (preformed ellipsis character, which is absent from the character sets under the edit window). Normal text is common in such casual mathematical notation; if it were not, a number of provisions at WP:MOS and WP:MOSNUM would be superfluous.
NoeticaTea? 11:05, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
Note that ellipses appear as a subsection of the Punctuation section, so it should be clear that specialized notations of any kind are not meant. But a cross-link to its use in mathematical notation could perhaps be useful. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:35, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
Do what you want, but do something. In its current state it instructs people to add  , or brackets in certain circumstances. I'm pretty sure that this advice doesn't apply to ellipsis mathematical equations. And ellipsis in LaTex have more correct spacing in they are made with "\ldots", so "type three unspaced periods" is incorrect advice and the whole section is misleading? We can link Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Mathematics, but there is no explicit advice for ellipsis, we could make a short section and point people there. If there are other fields with similar problems, we could do the same thing. --Enric Naval (talk) 12:10, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Just in case there's any confusion, there is no rule requiring that anyone discuss changes before making them. It's often wise on pages like this one, but it is not required. Takuya does not need anyone's permission to edit the MoS, just like Noetica did not need anyone's permission to revert the change. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:45, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Dealing With Massive Reference Lists

Is there anything special that needs to be done for massive (100+ long) reference sections? The list at List of dog breeds is already 100 entries long, and if the working copy in my sandbox is anything to go by, will probably have closer to 500 or 600 citations before the listings for each breed is cited. Is there a way to make this list collapsible or otherwise smaller that complies with the MOS? --TKK bark ! 13:41, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

I've articles with 200+ refs, but there's no problem with those. In your specific case, as what you appear to be doing is linking to each of the various kennel clubs' individual breed page, and given that each breed is already notable with its own separate article (it appears), you probably only need to provide references to the general "catalog" page (either a page that lists all the recognized breeds or a search engine page, or something similar) for each kennel club as 6-7 overall references and need not reference each data cell in the table. Between those general references and (supposedly) the specific references on each breed's article, WP:V will be easily met. --MASEM (t) 14:06, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
I'm inclined to agree. For example, I'd use this list as the source for their list – just put this link as a proper reference in the relevant column heading. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:57, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
Genius, I wouldn't have thought of that - I just assumed that every individual cell needed to be cited for some reason. Thank you! --TKK bark ! 15:33, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
After a few hundred citation templates, you would hit the Wikipedia:template limits and have to split the article. If you try to add a single named reference a number of times, you will get an unwieldy amount of backlinks; see {{listref}} for one solution. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 18:22, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
See "List of giant squid specimens and sightings#References" and "List of giant squid specimens and sightings (References)".
—Wavelength (talk) 19:15, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Parenthetical designation(s)

Is there clear guidance on the best practice for designating infobox items which may be either singular or plural? Some infoboxs use the parenthetical (s); sometimes they have a space between the singular form and the (s), and some are displayed without space(s), some use a singular form even though they often have multiple entries, and still others use the plural form even if only one entry is included. WP:PLURALS is mute on the subject, and I think we should have a standard. Comments are needed, thank you.—My76Strat • talk • email • purge 11:18, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

You mean infobox parameters, such as "occupation" in {{infobox person}}? --BDD (talk) 18:47, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
Yes that would be using a singular tense even though multiple entries are possible. {{infobox person}} uses spouse(s), and partner(s) as well. {{Infobox musical artist}} uses "Genre" and "Producer" when they are almost always multiple entries. {{Infobox company}} displays Predecessor(s), Successor(s), and Founder(s). {{Infobox book}} uses Author(s), and Genre(s). I may have been mistaken about some having a space between the parenthesis, as I can not seem to locate one. But otherwise it seems there's no real standard, or I am unaware of it.—My76Strat • talk • email 00:59, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
There's no standard practice as far as I know. If you're making a new one, I'd go with plural forms. Just my opinion, but I think one entry in a plural field doesn't look as strange as several in a singular one. --BDD (talk) 03:58, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
It seems that willy-nilly is the order of the day; then. Thank you.—My76Strat • talk • email 19:09, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Capitalisation of "AT-LARGE" when not the first word of an article title

A large number of article titles use and capitalise the string "AT-LARGE" when it is not the first word of the title, e.g. Georgia's At-large congressional district special election, 1819, New York's At-large congressional seat. An apparently smaller number of articles do not capitalise the string, e.g. Georgia's at-large congressional district special election, 1813. In the text of these articles, I have only seen lowercase "at-large". Does the MOS or some more specific page have a preference for which capitalisation should be used in the titles, and in the texts of the articles? I have posted short notices pointing to this discussion on MOS:CAPS and WP:AT. -sche (talk) 16:47, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

If it's not a proper noun, then it shouldn't be capitalised per WP:NCCAPS. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:59, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for that link, I've left a little pointer there, too. That's what I would have thought—that "at-large" shouldn't be capitalised—but it looks like a lot of page moves will be necessary, in that case. -sche (talk) 17:22, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
It should not be capitalized unless it is the first word of the title. Rreagan007 (talk) 17:21, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
IT depends on whether or not the "at-large" is part of a formal title or not. There are some usages, for example, where the every word in the title of an office may be capitalized, like "Commissioner At-large" and "Commissioner At-Large" and "Commissioner At Large" show up often enough in Google searches to indicate that that specific usage is widespread. However, excepting that specific usage, the "at" in "at-large" should not get special treatment with regard to capitalization, and I agree that the above examples should be lowercase. --Jayron32 17:33, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
I've started moving pages; I'll need to admin to help with Alaska's_At-large_congressional_district#Requested_move. -sche (talk) 23:39, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
Template:ushr may need to be updated to not capitalise "At-large". -sche (talk) 00:14, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
I've moved all of the US ones except the ones I couldn't, which I've listed on the RM/RfM page.

Question at Wikipedia:Editor assistance/Requests#Ethnic edit campaign (European-American, black)

The question was raised at the above board and hasn't received any answer. I was also involved in the reverts, and have been looking for the policy that I common sense applied to do it, that is, "We should use what the source says". I will copy the question here and ask for any input you may have:

I came across an anonymous editor 218.153.88.228 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · what links to user page · COIBot · count · block log · x-wiki · Edit filter search · WHOIS · RDNS · traceroute · ippages.com · robtex.com · tor · StopForumSpam · Google · AboutUs) whose thirteen edits consist entirely of changing "white" to "European-American" "African American" to "black". I reverted them as it seems to be some kind of WP:POV campaign. There was no question of matching sources or any context like that, and no explanation of the edits. Two questions:
Is there a clear WP:MOS or WP:Policy on this? Is there a search to find similar edits to see whether the campaign extends beyond this one anonymous editor? -Colfer2 (talk) 11:25, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Gtwfan52 (talk) 21:55, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

That's a content dispute, not a style matter, and a WP:NPOV and WP:V issue in particular. MOS's stance is to not hyphenate constructions like "African American" (probably one of the most tenuous stances MOS has, given the existence of terms like "hyphenated-American" in everyday usage, indicating a general public expectation that they be hyphenated, and multiple debates here demonstrating that hyphenation is in fact the majority practice in real-world publications like newspaperd and magazines, but whatever...). The case before you is clearly mostly an NPOV matter of racist editing, and should probably be raised over there or at WP:AN/I if it continues. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 06:51, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Significant MOS issues raised at an RFA

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Dirtlawyer1. -- Trevj (talk) 19:56, 10 February 2013 (UTC) (post-note reword, per WP:REFACTOR) -- Trevj (talk) 19:56, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Dear colleagues—I'm sorry I don't contribute much to the style guides nowadays. [...] Thanks. Tony (talk) 06:29, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
Among other things, this guy wants to change the rules so that someone has to discuss substantive changes to the MoS on this talk page before making them. There are those of us here who have taken editors to task for not discussing changes in advance, even though there is currently no rule against it. He also calls the MoS regulars a bunch of cliquish newb-biters (my words). Frankly, though, there are cases in which that is true.
Overall, I'm more intrigued by the idea of a new plan for structured MoS discussions. Again, that's an idea that at least a few of us have toyed with. It sounds precarious, but who knows? Not every precarious idea fails. Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:50, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Does MOS apply to article titles?

This has been refactored out of the #Conflict between MOS:CAPS and MOS thread above, because it is tangential to that topic, and is rehash of an ongoing discussion already underway at at WT:AT.

AFAICT the problem SMcCandlish is highlighting [above is a misunderstand of what the MOS covers. The MOS covers the usage within articles, its prescriptions do not necessarily cover article titles and it should have little to say about article titles because that is an issue for the AT policy and its naming conventions. Whether the capitalisation as proposed in the MOS is followed, or whether the capitalisation as proposed by some projects, comes down to the guidance in the naming conventions not in the MOS. As anyone who has followed the recent debate on the talk page of the AT policy must be aware by now WP:AT is based on weighing up the usage in reliable sources and several other criteria, one of which is the guidance given in the naming convention of capital letters, but that guidance may not be followed in all cases if the capitalisation of article titles about certain fauna, flora, ships or whatever is stylistically different form that in the MOS. -- PBS (talk) 10:20, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

A handful of editors perennially bring up the idea that WP:AT and WP:MOS are in conflict and that MOS doesn't apply to article titles. Their theory has never, ever gained consensus or even any momentum, and depending on just how tendentious they are about it, they even tend to get topic-banned over the matter. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 06:05, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
SMcCandlish I think you are putting words into others mouths and not reflecting what others say. I do not know of anyone who says that WP:AT and WP:MOS are [always] in conflict. The WP:AT is based on weighing up the usage in reliable sources and several other criteria, one of which is the guidance given in the naming convention of capital letters, but it is not the only one and sometimes the guidance giving in the MOS is not followed when selecting a suitable style for an article title. -- PBS (talk) 20:55, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
The only provision at WP:AT for the styling of titles defers to the relevant MoS. Therefore editors should be using the two in tandem when deciding on the article title. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:37, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
I never said anyone thinks MOS and AT are "always" in conflict. Who is putting words in whose mouth? — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 19:50, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
So your view is, if I understand it correctly, that WP:AT, which allows weighing of usage and other criteria, is used to choose the title, e.g. Red-winged Blackbird using caps for "Blackbird", and then the principle of consistency means that "Red-winged Blackbird" is used throughout the article? This is certainly a way round the issue, but there would be less conflict if the MOS took the same sensible stance as WP:AT, noting the need to balance different principles. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:05, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
Why would the capitalization of titles be different than the capitalization of the phrase in running text? In titles we capitalize the first word of every title, and every other word as it appears in running text. What are you talking about PBS? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:34, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
Of course the capitalization of running text wouldn't be done differently than the capitalization of the title; no-one has every suggested this, to my knowledge. In titles we capitalize the first word of every title, and every other word as it appears in running text. – well, this is the point of contention at Wikipedia talk:Article titles#RfC on COMMONSTYLE proposal, where the debate seems about evenly divided to me, certainly with no clear consensus as yet. My interpretation of WP:AT (and PBS's if I understand it) is that you have stated it the wrong way round. In running text we capitalize as in the title, except for the first word which may be lowercased when not at the start of a sentence. First the title, determined by WP:AT, then the running text, determined by the title. It seems a logical order, given that it's the way one writes a new article. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:42, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
Actually, proponents of the perennial "WP:AT and WP:MOS are in conflict and MOS doesn't apply to article titles" nonsense frequently and almost uniformly do in fact suggest that capitalization of the title and capitalization in running text should differ. That's part of why it doesn't make any sense and never gains any traction.

There are those who instead argue that AT "trumps" MOS because it's a policy not a guideline, and thus that MOS should simply be ignored in such a case, regardless of the textual inconsistencies that will result within the article and between the article and other articles. This view badly misunderstands how Wikipedia policy operates, and how policies and guidelines interact and differ (and don't differ). It's a legalistic misinterpretation, a fetishizing of the word "policy". The short version is that the only thing important about AT being tagged with {{policy}} lately (this is actually quite recent) instead of {{guideline}} is that now one should be a bit more certain one is doing the right thing before invoking WP:IAR to get around some problem it may be presenting to your ability to improve the encyclopedia. If this were not the case, all guidelines would have zero effect on policies. Yet we find that WP:COMMONSENSE strongly affects almost all of them, frequently superseding virtually any concern they raise (other than external legal ones from WP:OFFICE like WP:BLP matters). COMMONSENSE is just one example. MOS is another. AT and its naming convention subpages (which are not policies) derive all of their style advice explicitly from MOS and its subpages, and always have. Literally hundreds of archived discussions on those pages have made this abundantly clear. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 06:40, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, I can't speak for PBS, but you're attacking a straw man in my case. Of course the styling of the title and the styling of its use in running text should not be consistently different; if anyone has seriously asserted otherwise (do you have an example?), I'm happy to say that they are wrong. Nor do I care what is called a "policy" and what is called a "guideline". I do care that AT sets out principles to be balanced, which is what I think is the right approach, whereas the MOS has been tending to more prescriptive rules. (An approach which clearly doesn't work: MOS:CT is very precise but didn't prevent some 88,000 bytes of argument over the capitalization of "into" at Talk:Star Trek Into Darkness, resulting in a title not in accordance with MOS:CT.) Peter coxhead (talk) 14:02, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
That one should be taken as a unique case. Largely the arguments in favour of capitalising were due to the ambiguity of the title's structure and whether "into" came after an implied colon, and thus the beginning of a subtitle. Other arguments were that it appears to be the "official" styling, but this is against MOS:TM also. We were holding off on a no consensus to capitalise for a while, before a webcomic brought attention to the discussion and brought with it a barrage of new input. Not a typical case, and thus a bad example. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:06, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
WP:AT defers directly to MOS:CT for capitalisation guidance for composition titles - to my mind, the two should be used in tandem, and not be seen to "trump" one another. WP:AT is about choosing the title, not the styling. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:08, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
"That one should be taken as a unique case. Largely the arguments in favour of capitalising were due to the ambiguity of the title's structure [...]" (Robsinden) – Myself and others disagree with that claim. Also, if it was such a unique case, the whole debate regarding MoS's dubious "shorter than five letters" rule wouldn't exist.
"[...] to my mind, the two should be used in tandem, and not be seen to "trump" one another." (Robsinden) – I agree for that to be desirable, but, again, there's no chance of even approximating that ideal with a MoS that's [in my and others' opinion] out of touch with reality in crucial respects.
Incidentally, work title capitalization is presently hugely inconsistent across the entire website, and similar debates as the one that lead "into darkness" recently are not breaking out on other talk pages largely for two simple reasons: one, many work titles are still styled against what MoS prescribes, and two, where they have been artificially "retrofitted", people either don't care as passionately as the Trekkies did/do or they don't even know that Wikipedia currently [mis]handles work titles like that. – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 16:05, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
But we should be striving for consistency. Per WP:NCCAPS: "Because credibility is a primary objective in the creation of any reference work, and because Wikipedia strives to become a leading (if not the leading) reference work in its genre, formality and an adherence to conventions widely used in the genre are critically important to credibility." Whether or not you agree/disagree with the instructions at WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CT, until there is consensus to change these guidelines, we should be following them. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:09, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
I'm torn. In principle, I agree with that. But, at the very least, I don't see a lot of sense in changing titles that have been styled according to what looks like [semi-]official usage and have stayed like that on here for a long time, only to conform to a controversial part of our MoS that might soon be modified anyway. – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 16:31, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) By the way, I maintain that the current work title capitalization rules stand actually in the way of "credibility" and "[Wikipedia becoming] a leading [...] reference work". – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 16:45, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Then perhaps change should be sought (although I know this is being discussed). Until such time as consensus to change is reached, we should be following the established guidelines. After all, they are supposed to be the result of a consensus decision, so until consensus is changed, they should be considered to be best practice. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:53, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Whilst we may change the MoS to capitalise longer or shorter prepositions, I'm sure we will not be changing the guidelines to recommend that we follow "official" style. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:39, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
@Robsinden – WP:AT is about choosing the title, not the styling. As I have argued elsewhere, there isn't a simple contrast between "title" and "style". Some typographic style carries no meaning (a good example is a choice between "M. R. James" and "M.R. James"). Other typographic style does convey meaning (e.g. in running text the choice between "Brewer's sparrow" and "brewer's sparrow" or "Jack pine" and "jack pine"). WP:AT makes explicit the need to balance different factors (including use in reliable sources); currently the MOS does not, but should where style interacts with meaning. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:50, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
I'm not getting into the birds issue. To my mind, there shouldn't be an exception because of local consensus. But this is a long, ongoing controversial issue, which I personally disagree with. However, the "Brewer" of "Brewer's sparrow" should always be capitalised, as "Brewer" is a proper name. (See the example at WP:NCCAPS#Organisms for "Przewalski's horse") --Rob Sinden (talk) 18:15, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
My comment has nothing to do with the "birds issue" at all. My point was quite different. As you rightly say, the "Brewer" of "Brewer's sparrow" should be capitalized because the sparrow is named after a person called "Brewer" and not after the occupation "brewer". But this fact needs to be sourced; it's not "just styling", it carries meaning. Let me try to make my point again. If a source has "M.R. James" and this is changed to "M. R. James" (or vice versa) in Wikipedia to conform to the MOS, this is pure style. It doesn't need sourcing. Here we can happily use MOS guidance to over-ride the exact format of the source. If a source used for a Wikipedia article has "Brewer's Sparrow" (because it capitalizes common names), we cannot just change this to "Brewer's sparrow" in running text without a source which makes the origin of the name clear because we don't know that it shouldn't be "brewer's sparrow". If we have such a source, then we can make the change (whether we should isn't the issue here). The point I'm making is that it's wrong to treat style as a completely independent factor, as is often done and as you did earlier. Sometimes the MOS alone can rightly be used to over-ride the styling of the source; sometimes the MOS needs to be combined with other evidence if the styling of the source is to be over-ridden, and after balancing the evidence, we may occasionally decide not to go with the MOS. Peter coxhead (talk) 23:35, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
Ha, okay, maybe a birds example wasn't a good one, but absolutely we should follow our MoS, irrespective of what the source says. That's why it's there. And we do know the origin of the name "Brewer's sparrow" and therefore Brewer should be capitalised. I'm not sure where you're coming from. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:07, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
No, we shouldn't blindly follow the style advice in the MOS if it could change the meaning that is in the source. A lot of the discussion over "Star Trek Into Darkness" versus "Star Trek into Darkness" does seem to me very "pointy" (but then I'm not a Trekkie!) but there is a small legitimate point that these two don't quite have the same meaning. The first is closer in meaning to "Star Trek: Into Darkness", i.e. the second two words are more like a subtitle than the second. It's right and proper to weigh this against the advice not to capitalize prepositions of four letters and less. My judgement is that it's not enough to over-ride the general rule, but it's right to at least consider whether changing styles could change meaning. All I'm saying in this thread is, I repeat, that it's often asserted that styling is independent of content/meaning/choice of title, and this is not correct. Often it is; sometimes it's not. When it's not, then different issues have to be weighed against one another.
Brewer's Sparrow: at present the fact that the common name "Brewer's Sparrow" (this capitalization) and the scientific name Spizella breweri refer to the same species is sourced in the article (the first two references use exactly these names). However, the fact that it's named after someone called "Brewer" is not (as far as I can see) sourced in the article. Therefore if an editor wants to change the common name in running text to "Brewer's sparrow" rather than "brewer's sparrow" a source needs to be added. It could be a source which explicitly says that it's named after Brewer, or a source which lower-cases common names as per the MOS style and uses "Brewer's sparrow" with exactly this capitalization. Either will do. Changing from the present "Brewer's Sparrow", which is ambiguous between the two meanings, to "Brewer's sparrow", which is not, requires sourcing. You can't just apply the MOS. That's all I'm saying. Nothing more, nothing less; no secret agenda to either support or oppose the WP:BIRDS current position. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:28, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
Of course, as with any guideline, there can be WP:COMMONSENSE exceptions, but they should be exactly that - exceptions, and thus the guideline should only be overridden if there is good reason and consensus to do so. (Incidentally my position at the Into vs into argument was that we didn't know the meaning, and thus any assumption of meaning was OR/synthesis.) (Oh, and I've added a source for the naming of Brewer's sparrow - I hope it's reliable.) --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:40, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
Ok, well, we seem to understand one another now, even if we may not agree. I would say to your second sentence "Exactly"; so we should be cautious about changing the Wikipedia style from the source style: we need to be sure that it doesn't change the meaning, and if it does, even by a shade, this change of meaning needs to be sourced. It's for that reason that I'm not happy with your first sentence, which I think allows too much latitude for the MOS style to over-ride the source style without the checks that we seem to agree are needed. But it's a difference of emphasis, not deep principle. Peter coxhead (talk) 02:05, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I think it was a mistake to refactor my comment, because it has placed it out of context and my comment was not "tangential to that topic". I would appreciate it if the person who refactored my comment would place it back where it was before it was refactored. -- PBS (talk) 20:55, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

To respond directly to the question in the heading, "Does MOS apply to article titles?", the first heading of the MOS has, for a very long time, been, "Article titles, headings, and sections", so it seems obvious that the consensus view has been that the MOS is, at least, intended to apply to article titles. So the question should really be: are there exceptions to the general rule that the MOS applies to titles, and if so, why?. --Boson (talk) 11:30, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:Article titles#RfC on COMMONSTYLE proposal -- PBS (talk) 14:03, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Titles ending in question marks

I couldn't find this addressed in the archives, though there is advice about Yahoo! and Guess? in /Trademarks/Archive 1 and about "logical punctuation" of quotes on several archived pages.

Is there a preferred treatment for titles of television series, films, books or other titles not enclosed in quotation marks where the title ends in a question mark or an exclamation mark? Consider this sentence from Norma Mendoza-Denton.

Mendoza-Denton was a consultant for the 2005 television program Do You Speak American?.

That looks plain awkward to me, with two marks of punctuation ending the sentence. An earlier version (which I wrote) styled it this way:

Mendoza-Denton was a consultant for the 2005 television program Do You Speak American?

It was perhaps no better, since the sentence ends with a question mark although it is not a question. Another possibility would be to remove the question mark from the title (a la Yahoo), but that seems wrong since the title itself is a yes or no question.

I anticipate that someone will advise re-writing the sentence to put the title earlier in the sentence, but then what of commas?

Mendoza-Denton was a consultant for Do You Speak American?, a 2005 television program.

Adding superfluous phrases is possible, but feels like a bit of a coward's way out.

Mendoza-Denton was a consultant for the 2005 television program Do You Speak American? on PBS.

Cnilep (talk) 06:00, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

  • I'm in favor of rewriting to avoid. It's not "cowardly", it's simply useful. I also see no problem, logically, with "Do You Speak American?, a 2005 television program" or even "The title of the program is Do You Speak American?." They do look a little awkward at first. Constructions like "Stephen King's The Stand" also look and sound awkward because we don't normally follow a possessive with an article, but over time we just get used to the idea, and we do so because we recognize that the title is a discrete unit that contains this punctuation, article or other feature that wouldn't normally be there, and that the title can be tokenized as a variable: "The title is X."; "Stephen King's X". (As an aside, this is closely related to why we use logical quotation here.) At any rate, I for one rewrite when possible to avoid both of these kinds of constructions: "The Stand, the Stephen King novel, predates Do You Speak American?, the PBS series." Or whatever. There's more than one way to reword most awkward constructions. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 06:33, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Yes, they look strange, but this is one of those times when something that looks strange actually is incorrect. Titles that end in question marks do not require further punctuation if they're the last word in the sentence, even if the sentence isn't a question, as in "Last week, I read Do You Like to Like Me?" Using a comma next to a question mark seems to be okay, though. That, it seems, merely looks weird. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:25, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
What I understand from the discussion above is (a) there is no clear preference for how to punctuate such cases, so (b) it is best to avoid the situation where possible. Does that seem like a fair paraphrase? Cnilep (talk) 01:41, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
Nope, that's not what I'm saying. Using two types of terminal punctuation is wrong. Don't put a period after a question mark. However, internal punctuation can correctly be doubled. It is acceptable to put a comma after a question mark. Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:31, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
That is what I understood you to be saying, but it is the opposite of what I understood SMcCandlish to be saying ('I also see no problem, logically, with ... even "The title of the program is Do You Speak American?."') Ergo "no clear preference" that enjoys consensus support among editors. Cnilep (talk) 01:55, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
Oh, I see, you're looking for consensus among contributors to this talk page. You should be looking for consensus among sources. What does it matter if SmC and I don't agree if Chicago and Hart and Oxford all do? They are probably right and one or both of us is probably wrong. I can't seem to find the web source I used for my previous comment, so here are a few more.
Here is one source that quotes the 5.5th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style, but it's a bit bloggy. It says to retain only the "stronger" punctuation mark. That would mean no-additional-comma-no-additional-period [[1]]
This one cites Chicago 16, which is the current version, and it's very clear, but it doesn't seem to address your issue head-on. [[2]]
If you're willing to wait, I can check my print copy of the AMA Style Guide. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:29, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
It's not "the opposite of what I'm saying." I agree that Darkfrog24's interpretation is regarded as correct by many. I'm side-arguing that a case can be made for treating the title, with the "?", as a token/variable, and under this interpretation (which any computer scientist or programmer, or mathematician or some kinds of other logician will agree with, but many others would not), doubled terminal punctuation would be permissible. All my books are in storage while I remodel, and User:Noetica, who also had a massive number of style and grammar books on hand, has been WP:WIKIHOUNDed off the system, so someone else is going to have to do the research to see what offline style guides say, and then see whether consensus here actually cares, because we do not always do what offline style guides say, but rather what best serves our audience. (Hint: as close to zero confusion as possible is a major goal, and here it is an argument for She wrote "Book Title Here?". constructions with a "?" followed by a ".", or as I really suggested trivially rewriting to avoid weird crap like that to start with.  :-) — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 19:49, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Contradiction and divergence between MOS:CT and MOS:MUSIC

It seems at some point there has been local consensus at MOS:MUSIC#Capitalization to deviate from the MoS given at MOS:CT regarding composition titles that include parentheses. I would invite interested editors to contribute at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Contradiction and divergence at MOS:MUSIC. --Rob Sinden (talk) 11:35, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Italics in page title that shouldn't be there but can't be removed.

Stephanie Fearon has an italicised title (it should not do) but I can't work out how this was achieved. I've checked for the {{italic title}} template in the article but couldn't find anything obviously causing the italicised title in the page code. Am just asking here to see if anyone can shed any light on this and explain how to fix it. Mabalu (talk) 11:58, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Fixed it; the problem was the album infobox further down the article, which always makes the title italic unless you add a parameter to change it. Victor Yus (talk) 12:10, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
Thanks! That explains that, much appreciated. Mabalu (talk) 12:18, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Templates and internal consistency of national varieties of English

I recently changed Forty Martyrs of England and Wales to have a consistent spelling of the word "canonize/canonise" throughout.[3] It seemed a little counter-intuitive to use -ize in an article on a British topic, but since the topic pre-dates standardization of either British or American spelling, I figured it would be okay, and from my understanding both spellings are actually acceptable in British English, just -ise is more common. Also, the very first version of the article had been written with the -ize spelling. I was soon reverted rather sloppily, though.[4] This revert ignored all the places in the article where -ize was still in use, and reintroduced inconsistency to the article. I then fixed this with another edit to remove all but one instance of -ize.[5] The remaining instance is, unfortunately, part of Template:Infobox martyrs, which uses the "American spelling" in every article in which it is used. Any idea how to get around this? elvenscout742 (talk) 08:09, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

One of the two styles of British English acceptable in Wikipedia uses "Oxford spelling"; the template {{British English Oxford spelling}} can be placed on the talk page to indicate that this style is in use. (It's my preferred style for articles I start.) The topic clearly has a strong national connection; the first editor was actually from the Channel Islands as far as I can tell. So it would be reasonable either to use {{British English}} or {{British English Oxford spelling}}. Given that the article Canonization uses the "z" spelling as does the infobox template, the most sensible course seems to me to use "ize" spelling throughout and put {{British English Oxford spelling}} on the talk page:
  • The "British English" part fits national connection and first editor.
  • The "Oxford spelling" part ensures consistency of spelling of the key word "canonize" with other relevant WP articles.
Anyway, that's my opinion! Peter coxhead (talk) 10:39, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
I agree: consistent use of British English, Oxford spelling (en-GB-oed) is the most sensible. Since the template uses "-ize", the topic is British, the original version of the article used the -ize spelling, and American English also uses the -ize spelling; this provides consistency and satisfies WP:COMMONALITY, WP:RETAIN, and WP:TIES. --Boson (talk) 12:05, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
I concur with one correction. It's not that "One of the two styles of British English is acceptable on Wikipedia." It's "Both of the two British styles are acceptable on Wikipedia." This subject does indeed have strong national ties and should be addressed in correct British English. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:31, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
Actually if you look this isn't what I wrote, which was "One of the two styles of British English acceptable on Wikipedia"; your insertion of "is" makes a difference. Naturally I agree with your second sentence. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:45, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
I see it now. I correct my correction. There was no incorrectness to correct. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:25, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
One problem with using Oxford spelling (also my own natural preference) is that a high proportion of Americans think only -ise is British English, & if they see an -ize will go on to Americanize all other spellings. WP:ENGVAR could do with a big block notice cautioning against this. Johnbod (talk) 03:55, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
MOS doesn't need any big block notices about anything. :-/ — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 10:39, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
Yes, it is important to put the template on the pages I've found. A note at WP:ENGVAR might help; I've certainly had "colour" changed to "color" in spite of the Oxford spelling notice. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:45, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
As an aside, the ultimate solution to this is probably technical (perhaps a template, e.g canon{{ev|ox|ize}}, that is translated on-the-fly for logged-in users (i.e. most active editors who even know about ENGVAR). American editors would see it in American English, and British editors who hate the Oxford z wouldn't see that spelling, and thus neither would be tempted to "fix" the article to use all American spellings or all non-Oxford British spellings. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 10:39, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
Spellings could certainly be "fixed" in this way, but there's much more to American vs British English than this. There are distinct differences in syntax, such as the use of "that" and "which", the use of adverbs such as "likely", or the presence or absence of definite articles in certain constructions. See for example this series of edits to see how text written (mostly by me) in British English with American spellings can be made more in line with contemporary American English. It would be very confusing to see text clearly written in British English with just the spellings changed to American, or vice versa, and would be more likely to invite inappropriate copy-editing. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:42, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Quotation marks in section headings

Hi there, I was wondering if someone could advise me please. MOS:HEADINGS states that, when naming section headers, the provisions under WP:TITLE also apply, one of which is not to enclose titles in quotes. But what about when a section discusses, say, a single TV episode or song? Per MOS:QUOTEMARKS, the titles of these kinds of works are usually contained within quotation marks.
I'm asking specifically about this article, which contains three section each about three different TV episodes. I naturally put the titles of these episodes in quotes in the section headers, but now, having reread MOS:HEADINGS, I'm not so sure that this was the correct move. There is also a section about a related TV series, the header for which is in italics. Is this okay?
I can find a couple of high profile featured articles that included both quotation marks and italics in their section headers (e.g. The Beatles and Michael Jackson), so I'm a little unsure about whether I have been fulfiling the MOS or not. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks very much in advance. A Thousand Doors (talk | contribs) 15:21, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

This is a bit off topic, but I would suggest removing the pointer to WP:TITLE in MOS:HEADINGS... The provision against quotation marks in in WP:TITLE has more to do with technical problems than it does with style issues (placing an article title in quotes apparently causes problems with the way in which Wikipedia's programming works, and makes searching for the title problematic). Headings, however, do not have the same technical problems with quotes, and so the issue is purely stylistic. Blueboar (talk) 15:56, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
Yep, this is actually a correct "bug report". — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 23:08, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

On the applicability of WP:JARGON

Hello.

I posted a proposal to deprecate the disproportionate usage of "initialism" on Wikipedia, which I confess I thought would meet much less resistance, as little more than a mere application of WP:JARGON and supported by WP:V.

I have since lost hope, but I'm still interested in your opinions. Thanks. 219.79.74.254 (talk) 13:24, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

There are two reasons for the resistance...
1)The term "initialism" is not WP:JARGON... it's a common term used outside of Wikipedia.
2) The choice of which term (initialism or acronym) is best used to describe "a name comprised of a group of letters" isn't something that we can make a generalized rule about (which you are attempting to do). The question of whether a specific "name comprised of a group of letters" should be called an initialism or an acronym (or both... or something else entirely) can only be determined on a case by case (article by article) basis.
If you find that an overwhelming number of sources call "XYZ" an acronym, but the Wikipedia article on "XYZ" calls it an initialism (or vise-verse), then it is absolutely appropriate to go to the article talk page, question our term usage and suggest that we change our terminology (and if the sources are mixed in their terminoloty, it is appropriate to suggest that our article include both terms).
However, it is important to understand that the examination of sources to settle the question of whether "XYZ" should be called an acronym vs an initialism has absolutely no impact on the question of whether "ABC" should be called an acromym vs. an initialism. Determining what to call "ABC" requires its own, unique examination of a different, unique set of sources. Blueboar (talk) 14:33, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
Indeed. There is a second issue that we, as editors, are writing in our native language. So, for example, even if the majority of sources say that a person was born in Leningrad, we might nevertheless decide to say the person was born in St. Petersburg (at the same time, we would probably not talk about the St. Petersburg Blockade). As editors, we are free to use the English words that we feel convey the correct meaning to the reader. With "acronym" and "initialism" it is primarily an issue of word choice. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:55, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
I agree entirely with Blueboar's first point and see no need to go further. I hope that the undiscussed changes made to the Manual of Style and its subpages here and here will be reverted. Modal Jig (talk) 15:21, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
I was obviously looking for opinions of people who have *not* already made their views clear. You know, a bit of fresh air, and perhaps examples of what WP:JARGON applies to, if not to initialism. 219.79.91.119 (talk) 23:19, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

@CBM: "we, as editors, are writing in our native language"? Are we? I'm not... and I presume I'm still welcome. This is not the English speaking people Encyclopedia, nor the English World Encyclopedia, it is the English version of the Worldwide Encyclopedia that everyone can edit. Even if from Portugal, and a native speaker/writer of Portuguese. That issue aside, I think you, and Blueboar, are mostly correct over the rest. - Nabla (talk) 00:05, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Which pages are people arguing about? The Oxford English Dictionary says, "Initialisms are abbreviations that consist of the initial (first) letters of words and that are pronounced as separate letters when they are spoken." That's also what Wiktionary says. Even so, the definition for acronym seems to indicate that those words which are initialisms are also acronyms. Thus, BBC, FBI, and CIA are initialisms and acronyms. SCUBA and WYSIWYG are just acronyms. It seems like squares and quadrilaterals. All squares are quadrilaterals, though not all quadrilaterals are squares. Banaticus (talk) 06:38, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
Do we have a dictionary that gives letter sequences such as "BBC" and "FBI" as examples of acronyms. My impression is that dictionaries give examples like radar and snafu and define an acronym as a word that is made up of initial letters, word implying that it is pronounced according to normal pronunciation rules for words. I would tend to say that "acronym" is sometimes used in an extended sense to include initialisms and that this usage is considered by some to be erroneous. --Boson (talk) 07:47, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
Most sources seem to suggest "initialism" is a subset of "acronym". "Acronym" is certainly overwhelmingly used that inclusively, especially since "initialism" is a language geek jargon term not in widespread use (just in wide enough use to not really fall victim to WP:JARGON...barely). — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 10:03, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Proposal to prevent recurrent editwarring and confusion by adjusting "Era style" section in MOS:NUM

Because of examples like the incessant editwar at History of physics as reported at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#Another BC vs BCE edit war, where the MoS's wishy-washiness at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#Era style is leading to protracted editwarring, and cases like Celtiberians where use of "BC" lead to confusing absurdity (the Celtiberian culture entirely pre-dated Christianity, so this religion and the dating nomenclature used by it is completely irrelevant to the WP article in question, as they are in articles on various world religions, and, well, anything not involving Christianity as an important aspect of the topic), I propose that this section needs to be reworded to provide clearer advice.

I propose that its first three lines be changed from:

  • By default, years are numbered according to the Western Dionysian era (also referred to as the Common Era).
    • AD and BC are the traditional ways of referring to these eras. CE and BCE are common in some scholarly and religious writing. Either convention may be appropriate.
      • Do not change the established era style in an article unless there are reasons specific to its content. Seek consensus on the talk page before making the change. Open the discussion under a subhead that uses the word "era". Briefly state why the style is inappropriate for the article in question. A personal or categorical preference for one era style over the other is not justification for making a change.

to

  • By default, years are numbered according to the Western Dionysian Era, also referred to as the Common Era.
    • While AD and BC are traditional ways of referring to dates within and before this era, respectively, CE and BCE have become increasingly common in scholarly works, non-Christian religious writing, and other material in which Christianity is not a central topic. Either convention may be appropriate in a particular article.
      • Do not change the established era style in an article unless there are reasons specific to its content. The most common reason is whether or not Christianity has strong ties to the article topic. As with any potentially controversial change, it is recommended that editors seek consensus on the talk page before making the change. Open the discussion under a subheading that uses the word "era". Briefly state why the current style is inappropriate for the article in question. A personal preference for one era style over the other, or a categorical preference that is not tied to the content of the article or the nature of its subject, is not justification for making a change.

(Aside from making the obvious change to advise against BC/AD in articles unconnected to Christianity and BCE/CE in articles that are clearly connected to Christianity, it fixes a few minor wording problems as well.)

I would like to invite community commentary on this idea, the goal of which is to reduce confusion, prevent editwars, and head off attempts by fans of one style or the other to effectively WP:OWN dating topics by being the first major contributors to go around sticking dates in innumerable stub articles. There are usually good reasons to use one style or the other, and reducing this to a first major contributor "land grab" is not helpful to the project. Please note that the wording does not suggest that BE/BCE is the default, it simply minimizes the extant strong implication that AD/BC is the default, a position that has never reached consensus at all and has always met with stiff opposition, on many bases, from conflict with the standard used in almost all modern scientific and many if not most academic non-science reliable sources, to blatant religious offensiveness to non-Christians, an obvious WP:NPOV and WP:BIAS problem. The change would not give blanket license to force, say, History of Spain or Roman Britain to BCE/CE dating, even if it turned out that most modern, in-print publications were doing so (which is doubtful outside of archaeology, but that's not the point), since Christianity is an important aspect of both of those topics. It would, however, prevent early editors from forever saddling topics like History of China, Machu Picchu, Julius Caesar, etc., with AD/BC dates inappropriately simply because they got there first. The proposed change is intended to be non-trivial but balanced, and respectful of the valid reasons for using either style appropriately. The change is inspired by the spirit of WP:ENGVAR, which is centered on a national variety of English having "strong ties" to the article subject.

Note that this draft language and is expected to be tweaked as the discussion progresses. Please do not reflexively toss up an "Oppose" !vote because of a disagreement with a word or two (nor knee-jerk support because you like part of it but are having to forcey ourself to ignore part of it that could be problematic). A poll/survey is not even needed at this stage, but a consensus discussion on how best to address the obvious and sometimes silly problems the current wording is calling and the more serious protracted editwars resulting from them. Please do not post counter-proposals, but work toward consensus on a single proposal everyone can agree to.
— SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 14:16, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

  • I don't have much preference myself, though I would note that nearly all topics in the BC(E) era are unconnected to Christianity, and for nearly all of the AD/CE era we would normally just use the year number on its own, so it looks like this proposal would effectively make BCE/CE the default, except in the narrow subject area of first-century Christianity. Victor Yus (talk) 14:29, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
    • Actually, it would make AD/BC the default for nearly all Western topics that span the 1 BC / AD 1 line in any way. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 16:36, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
      • I misunderstand your proposal then. Except perhaps for huge subjects like the history of Rome, which developed strong links to Christianity later on, virtually nothing or no-one in 1 BC/1 AD, or for quite a long time after it (by which time we stop specifying AD/CE anyway), had such links. Victor Yus (talk) 20:18, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Surely this proposal has no chance of success, and it is wasting everybody's time to post it so widely? It is highly prescriptive and the proposed wording makes it entirely clear that "By default, years are numbered according to ... Common Era". To say this wording would reduce edit-warring is a joke; it would hugely inflame it, removing the relatively objective "first mover" test, and replacing it with "Briefly state why the style is inappropriate for the article in question" - ha! In my experience the level of era-wars is steadily falling, & I believe the present policy doesn't need changing. If it did, probably the best way would be to just specify some areas as by default BCE (China, History of science etc etc) and some as by default BC (European history, Western philosophy) etc, leaving others open as now. But that would also open a can of worms, though not as a big a one as this proposal. Johnbod (talk) 14:41, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose - The nominator seems to be the one originally pushing the concept that AD and BC be segregated from BCE / CE on the basis of Christianity. The reasons why AD and BC are traditional and widely established, and have always been more popular in English usage, do not really lend themselves to such a neat segregation. BCE with the extraneous E is the Johnny-come-lately here, and the one more associated with a type of activism always seeking to portray itself magnifiedly, as the new standard or norm to be imposed, with little authority to do so other than a supposed appeal toward 'politically correct' sentiments that in honesty are not that widely shared. This eventually makes the 'silent majority' less silent. Really, the compromise policy in effect since 2005, where followed, has done a superb job of keeping down the edit wars, and does not need fixing, except to make it even clearer for the few cases like ('History of Physics') where it seems some legalist wants to deliberately misinterpret the guideline by parsing each phrase word by word to death as if it were a crucially important constitutional amendment, to arrive at the opposite intended result. Til Eulenspiegel /talk/ 15:58, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
  • I have no idea where you get that "accusation" or whatever you want to call it; I rarely ever mention BC/AD and BCE/CE issues, and was certainly not the first to suggest the patently obvious tie to Christianity, not here and not in the "real world"; the BCE/CE standard was created in the first place because of BC/AD's overwhelming ties to Christianity. But my participation is irrelevant anyway; even if I were the main proponent of the idea for some time that would have no bearing on whether or not the idea was a good one. Please stick to logical rationales instead of ad hominem, please. Whether BCE and CE are more recent than BC and AD as terms is irrelevant. "You" is also more recent than "thou", but we do not use "thou". "Activism"? That sounds like an accusation of WP:ADVOCACY, which is a bad faith accusation? Care to needlelessly personalize the discussion any further? What exactly is your problem, and why can you not stick to the issue instead of verbally assaulting me personally? Legalist? Why are you now verbally attacking a third editor with labels you provde no evidence in support of? — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 16:36, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

−

I am sorry to see that you interpreted my response as an ad hominem against you, but I assure you it was all really intended to be an counterargument against the argument itself, not singling any editors out. The 'legalist' arguments I was referring to were not yours, but those of other editors on History of Physics, so no offense to you was intended. But as long as you have given me a chance to elaborate further: the newer appearance of BCE and its often contentious struggle to win acceptance as an alternative to the longer-established BC, justifies the characterization of "activism" in its promotion. CE vs AD is less of an issue as noted since both are avoided wherever possible. But the extra E on BC for many people is nothing but a flag flying, to let you know that whoever put it their is "flying their flag". It communicates no other useful information beyond "BC". There has been wide agreement to tolerate the flag as equally acceptable as no flag, for those who want to fly it, to give editors more options. But it goes to a whole other level when people start prescriptively insisting that everyone else has to fly the flag too. Til Eulenspiegel /talk/
  • I oppose the proposal and the thought process that apparently inspires it: the English language should be cleansed of words that were coined in an era with different sensibilities than modern "Western" (whatever that means) popular or scholarly opinion. I also think it would increase edit warring because it depends on qualitative judgements about the degree to which Christianity is related to an article, rather than the relatively objective criterion about when notation was first introduced into an article (although even that can be argued; maybe the first introduction was inconsistent, maybe there was consensus to change it but the consensus was poorly documented, etc.)Jc3s5h (talk) 16:05, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Is it even a good idea to reduce edit wars on this? If an editor is so void of self-discipline as to edit war on something this insignificant, perhaps a fast train to blocksville is their best outcome. However, if there is to be a change, the discussion should be on smaller increments. Proposing specific wording at this stage is self-defeating. The underlying priorities should be discussed first. What are the concerns that need to be addressed. It is obvious that any answer that creates winners and losers just won't fly. LeadSongDog come howl! 16:15, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose because I do not think the new wording changes anything. Both wordings are clear: the current style should be used unless there is a strong reason to change it. In both the old and new wording case, an article that uses BC/AD would not be changed unless there is a context-specific reason not to use it. A mere lack of relation to Chrstianity is not a reason for change under either the old or new wording; the reasons for change need to be more significant than that (e.g. an article on a religion other than Christianity). Since History of China and Machu Picchu have extremely little to do with religious studies, there is no reason to change whatever the existing style is for those articles (I have not looked). If the new wording is meant to say that a mere lack of relation to Christianity is an acceptable reason, on its own, to change the style, then this should be stated in a completely explicit manner. I do not think the proposed wording is sufficient if that is the goal. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:32, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
I think this edit by the proposer suggests the proposer intends to use the change, if adopted, as a license to change to CE/BCE on any article that lacks links to Christianity. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:35, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I see. If that is the plan, I think the proposed wording should just say "Only use BC/AD for articles with a clear link to Christianity" (I am no speculating on the chances of such a proposal gaining consensus, but at least it would make clear what the intention of the change). The current proposed wording does not, in my opinion, authorize such changes if the only reason for the change is a lack of relationship to Christianity. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:09, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose -- old wording was clear, new wording places too much weight on Christianity as the deciding factor. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 16:40, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose per preceding comment by SarekOfVulcan. It's misplaced to turn a style convention into a religious statement. Cynwolfe (talk) 18:18, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
  • It seems like the proposed wording would lead to endless talk page debates about how "Christian" a topic was (and I'm sure a book could be written about how Christianity has affected the history of physics), but one in which there would be a thumb on the scale towards changing things to BCE/CE. The current language seems to have worked well for a long time, I don't see the need to change it. Tdslk (talk) 18:20, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Regretfully oppose Although I personally agree with SMcCandlish that there should be a "thumb on the scale towards changing things to BCE/CE", altering the MOS to favour one view rather than another in an area which is so clearly disputed isn't the way to achieve the respected consensus necessary for MOS to serve its purpose. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:40, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment and Request Please look at this Rfc's entry on, for example, Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Religion and philosophy and compare it to other Rfc entries. Would you please add a brief summary of the issue at hand, followed by a sig, immediately below the Rfc request, so as to allow readability of the various Rfc pages? Thank you in advance. KillerChihuahua 19:37, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I think you're a little ahead of the curve on this one, McCandlish. Some day, maybe, but most academics I know are okay with "BC" ... they just read it as "before the Christian era". And most people these days avoid either AD or CE whenever possible. - Dank (push to talk) 10:29, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Following others, really not sure about the focus on links to Christianity, which seems in the proposal – and in the Celtiberian edit & summary – to be meant relatively literally and reductively. The BC/AD terminology, while undoubtedly western-centric, has long not had much to do with the religion of Christianity per se. N-HH talk/edits 12:30, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Support; "Before Christ" and "In the Year of Our Lord" are completely biased and wholly inappropriate in a non-religious context. Powers T 14:29, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
I find odd this idea that BC and AD are more appropriate when writing about Christianity. If anything, that seems to be the time when they are in fact inappropriate, since in that context the question of the year of Christ's birth may well be relevant (and the BC/AD thing is misleading as to which year that was). Victor Yus (talk) 15:06, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) If it's is inappropriate, then why is it widely used in non-Christian topics? Example google books googel scholar. Wikipedia is not a platform to right WP:GREATWRONGS. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:11, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
So why do we use the Roman/Nordic pagan religious names for the days of the week and the months in a "non-religious context"? Oh right, because those religions are virtually dead in 2013? And that matters because...? As an atheist, I understand that both are equally mythological and AD/BC don't irk me any more than Thursday, January or Saturday. Crumpled Fire (talk) 01:58, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Pair of Questions. Two of us were having a discussion on this very topic at Talk:Hebrew calendar recently. Old wording or new, a couple of obvious questions occurred to me (and maybe him) with respect to this, namely:
    1. How high is the threshold for unless there are reasons specific to its content? I'm inclined to think, for example, that nearly any article on Judaism topics has presumptive "reasons specific to its content". (Just to quash a whole discussion here, let's say I'm not talking about Judaism relating to Christianity, or any of that—just straight Judaism topics.) But I don't know.
    2. Is there a statute of limitations? Hebrew calendar was started in BC/AD, then was changed about eight years ago. The consensus discussion at the time favored BCE/CE over BC/AD. Still, while I favor BCE/CE here, even I would have to admit that the consensus at the time seems a little on the narrow side. (I wasn't there; I had to look at archives.) Now the first question here may make that change kosher anyway, but in general terms: If an article was changed a long time ago, possibly contrary to this guidance, but has been stable for the whole period since, who has the burden of proof? The one who would restore BC/AD (because it should not have been changed in the first place), or the one who would retain BCE/CE (because it has been stable)? StevenJ81 (talk) 17:05, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
      Some admins do favor a statute of limitations as showing a consensus was established. Although I personally think that favors pointy editing of less travelled articles to sneak such things under the radar & a bright line rule would serve us better, they have a point where editors have let the matter drop.

      The Hebrew calendar article discussion should be held there, but 'SoL' doesn't apply: editors have continually been going back and forth since that non-consensus "consensus"; hence, my renewal of the discussion. (The better point there is that the subject matter is a calendar used by Jews and the readership will be relatively more Jewish with more strongly-held opinions by the editors involved – BCE/CE may be a better fit.)  — LlywelynII 20:37, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Strongly Oppose. In fact, if anything, the proposal should be the precise opposite:

    (a) BC/AD is massively more common (and simply more appropriate) when referencing the Dionysian era;
    (b) BCE/CE is pointy, distracting, and should be generally discounted;
    (c) except when a non-Christian religious tradition has a strong(er) tie to the article topic.

    Academic preciousness and distaste for Christianity is no reason for us to put our thumbs on the culture's scales (howevermuch we, as presumably active and involved editors, may inordinately represent that establishment). The pages that have this style argument will have them, consensus will develop, and that will be much better all around than attempts at antireligiously-based prescriptivism. — LlywelynII 20:08, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose. How many times is a POV-pusher going to try to change this guideline to their benefit? And your arguments are ridiculous. If we need to use "Common Era" for articles about non-Christian subjects, should we also refer to Thursday (Thor's day) as "Common Day 4" and January (Janus' month) as "Common Month 1" in articles about societies that have no connection to Norse or Roman polytheistic religion? Ponder this and get back to me. Crumpled Fire (talk) 01:52, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
I happen to agree that this proposal should be opposed, but you might like to re-consider "POV-pusher" and "their benefit". Please WP:AGF and let's not get into the style of argument that regularly disfigures the MOS talk pages. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:18, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
Hard for me not to assume his motives with this edit (in clear violation of the current guideline) immediately preceding this proposal. Crumpled Fire (talk) 13:19, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. On every other issue, someone eventually grabs a megaphone, turns it up to eleven, and yells "common usage"; however on this issue we have a blind spot. Wikipedia does not write for the academic/research audience; we write for a common/typical/average audience, and I doubt that such an audience would be aware of what (something like) 123 BCE means. I don't believe academic readers would be surprised, or in the least discombobulated to see BC/AD in our articles, and accordingly I can see no overriding benefit to Wikipedia in the use of BCE/CE (but I can see plenty of disadvantages). To end these debates, if someone were to propose:
Use BC/AD, not BCE/CE.
I would gladly support it.
GFHandel ♬  20:09, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I'm fine with the current guidance (although clarifications of the two questions I asked above would be welcome). I would not be fine with Maestro Handel's recommendation above, unless LlewelynII's exemption for articles substantially concerning non-Christian religions is incorporated.
And Crumpled Fire, I'm sorry, but the "Thursday" analogy does not hold up. While anno domini on its face means "the Year of the Lord", it is nearly always rendered in English as "the year of our Lord". Accordingly anno domini is standing in for anno domini nostri [Jesu Christi]. Writing about Jewish topics has not used AD/BC styling for years; it always uses CE/BCE, even (Maestro Handel) when written for lay audiences. StevenJ81 (talk) 20:57, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
You start by saying my "Thursday" analogy does not hold up, but then go on a complete tangent that does not even attempt to justify what you've said. And yes, anno Domini literally means "In the year of [the/our] Lord", but so does Thursday literally mean "Thor's day". You don't believe the day belongs to Thor, neither do I, and neither do either of us believe 2013 is the year of the Lord Jesus Christ. And yes I realize that Jewish topics use BCE/CE, but you can thank western political correctness for that. Quakers replace the pagan-named weekdays with secular alternatives for similar religiously-motivated reasons, but I don't see Wikipedia pushing for their use on Quaker-related articles or on articles with no Roman/Norse pagan associations. So, what exactly is the problem with my analogy again? Crumpled Fire (talk) 02:34, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Regretfully oppose. As much as I would like to see the balance shift towards CE/BCE, this proposal is premature (there is not enough support for CE/BCE yet) and I am afraid the text would encourage too many unproductive discussions. Hans Adler 22:32, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The new text presupposes that the terms BC and AD are inherently Christian rather than terms of convenience that happen to have Christian terminiology. That may even be true, but that's not the point. The purview of the MoS is not to advance or suppress any particular theory of English but rather to provide guidance on correct English usage appropriate to an online encyclopedia: Because both the BC/AD and b.c.e/c.e. systems are equally correct regardless of article topic, we should use the established first-major-contributor rule. If the language itself changes, then the MoS can be updated to reflect English as it is, not English as anyone thinks it should be. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:49, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Sorry, I'm with LlywelynII on this. BCE just seems to be the latest move in political correctness against the apparent Christian orthodoxy, and I can't understand how this managed to creep into Wikipedia vocabulary seeing that it's really quite fringe – from my anecdotal experience, nobody knows what CE/BCE even means, let alone what it stands for. -- Ohconfucius ping / poke 01:47, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose - per SarekOfVulcan, Adler, and others. --Noleander (talk) 20:03, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment - The assertion that BCE/CE is somehow 'anti-Christian' does not square with my experience at all. The one place in my experience where there's a conscious and intentional use of BCE/CE is at church - our pastor uses it, and a lot of the educational materials we use in small groups use BCE/CE. But then, the narrative tends to be driven by conservatives, who maintain a relentless drum-beat of that they are somehow oppressed in the US. Guettarda (talk) 15:37, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
As a liberal-minded atheist, I would concur that it is Christians who should be the most supportive of BCE/CE, because if Jesus existed he was most certainly not born in 1 BC or 1 AD. For Christians to say that they are in "in the year of Our Lord 2,013" is inaccurate from their POV, so Common/Christian Era could a reasonable alternative for them. For people like myself and everyone else, however, AD/BC are much more practically appealing, have a historical rather than revisionist context, and present overall less bias than BCE/CE because they are the naturally-occurring acronyms associated with the Dionysian era. As I mentioned previously, if we don't use the Quaker-led secularized namesakes for the pagan-named weekdays and months, there's no reason we should be using the Jewish/academian-led secularized namesakes for the Christian-named year system, especially when the "Common Era" still hinges on Exiguus' POV about when Jesus was born, not to mention a Western-centered division of history. So while its entire point is to appear more neutral, it is in fact less so than BC/AD.Crumpled Fire (talk) 19:46, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose Are you trying to exacerbate edit wars? You mention ENGVAR, which is a good argument for the status quo. Stick with the established style and don't revert it—that's a good, stable policy on language variants and it's a good course to continue on dates. I don't buy the "strong ties" argument, because BC and AD are frequently used in secular contexts. It's ceremonial deism, if you will, and doesn't imply religious belief. Leave this alone. --BDD (talk) 00:52, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The only place I have ever seen using BCE/CE is WP, supposedly we do not set naming standards, we follow them; Quite secondary to that, I understand referring to "christ" may be uncomfortable to some, but I never understood how come those get to accept a dating system starting on his birth as "common". So, it is offensive to have "christ" in the date naming, but it is not offensive to imply that the whole world - Portugal, Argentina, Ghana, Thailand, Samoa, Christians, Hindus, Atheists, Agnostics, ... - the whole world! started some "common era when t/The c/Christ was born"? Get a really common calendar, and I might use it (start at 6 September 1522, when the Magalhães/Elcano expedition finish? ;-) - Nabla (talk) 21:07, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
A modest proposal: adopt the Hebrew calendar for all uses on Wikipedia, both in and out of articles. Having been stable for millennia and used (by Jews) around the world, it's an excellent dating system for an international encyclopedia. --BDD (talk) 04:04, 5 Adar 5773 (UTC)
That's an idea :-) A curiosity: interestingly, and likely because I was now primed to see it, today I first noticed a (nice) site - megalithic.co.uk - using BCE/CE. Not surprisingly it is History related. - Nabla (talk) 19:50, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Oppose because none of it makes any sense to me and i'm only here because RFC Bot sent me an invitation however the majority of people here believe it will not be beneficial and these are the people who have an idea of it so who am i to question those who understand? MIVP - (Can I Help?) (Maybe a bit of tea for thought?) 16:38, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

  • Oppose under WP:POLICY 'Verbosity is not a reliable defense against misinterpretation'. I don't see the change would be in the least helpful or useful, in fact I just see it as causing trouble.Dmcq (talk) 12:07, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Alt suggestion - make it a display choice

This wording is longer and would lead to more arguments. Also, much like yards v Metres or ENGVAR there is a very good reason to stick to first mover advantage, not only is it simple but it keeps it consistent with those systems. What we really should do is make this a user option and allow people to choose whether Wikipedia displays to them as AD/BC or CE/BCE. That would be simpler and fundamentalists on both sides would have won. Ideally we'd also do this with ENGVAR and measurements. Mediawiki has the technology for this - it is used on the Chinese WP to display one of three different character sets. We should deploy that on EN wiki. ϢereSpielChequers 00:16, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

But what if, like me, you prefer BC for European topics and BCE for eg Chines and Indian ones? Or am I just being difficult? Actually this would calm down those who get excited over such matters, if they were registered and ever managed to find the option on preferences. Plus there'll be fun with references to the Boundary Commission for England and others..... Johnbod (talk) 00:34, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
My impression is that we have far more people who have a preferred system than people like you who actually prefer both in relevant context and current policy is a compromise that avoids either side losing. If I'm wrong and lots of people like using both systems then we could also have an option of display raw version. ϢereSpielChequers 00:55, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
Once upon a time there was a recommendation to link dates, so that users could have a preference on their format (21 February 2013 vs. February 21, 2013 vs. 2013-02-21 vs. ...). For some years now we don't do that. I can't remember why... anyone?... - Nabla (talk) 12:03, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
Because articles are cached, and so non-logged in users of the website (i.e., most people) would see the article that exists in the wikitext. Dates were hence displaying inconsistently because they were inconsistent in the wikitext. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers/Date autoformatting. --Izno (talk) 13:53, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
Thank you. Do you think that is likely to happen to someting as WereSpielChequers suggested? Probably depends strongly on the "how", I bet. Not sure if I'd support their idea, but it is interesting, and it is conceivable to have some automagical detection of AD/CE dates... so it is worth the thought. - Nabla (talk) 22:39, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
I'd agree with Izon that the technical issues with CE/AD auto-formatting are likely to be the same as those of date auto-formatting; as well as caching, there's the issue that it only would benefit a small number of readers - people logged into a reader account (perhaps a percent or so at most), who already care about the distinction, and know that they can set a preference. We should probably avoid implementing specialised content features to satisfy a small proportion of "power users", in general.
One other concern raised during the dates discussion seems relevant - we assume people can handle variant styles of vocabulary, grammar and style comfortably, rather than trying to auto-convert spellings and punctuation to perceived "preferred style"; why is this particular thing different? Andrew Gray (talk) 09:28, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
Hear hear! This whole thing is a storm in a teacup and has boiled over into a storm in a less savory vessel. It is a manifestation of Parkinson's law of triviality. I would say forget all about it, but I know that the relevant correspondents love this sort of thing tooo much to pay any attention. JonRichfield (talk) 10:52, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
We don't require that everyone who has an account uses it for editing. If we offer features such as preferences between AD/BC and CE/BCE then just like watchlists, those who want that feature can have a free user account and make a preference - whether they edit or not. ϢereSpielChequers 12:23, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
Sure, I just don't think they will do so :-). We know that readers don't tend to create accounts (compare our unique-reader figures with the number of accounts, even without correcting for vandal account creation) and we equally know that most accounts don't have any specific preferences set (I don't have the stats for this to hand, but Oliver ran some numbers a while back, and they weren't great). People aren't likely to know it's a thing they can set, either, unless they run across it.
As a result, we'd still have the same background noise of people seeing whatever is default and "helpfully correcting" the text, or complaining about it; we'd still have to spend time bickering about it, and people would still edit-war over what they feel the "default" version would be. I'm just not sure this would save any time or reduce conflict for more than a very small number of users, whilst inevitably adding system complexity (and potentially increased markup-complexity, even worse). Andrew Gray (talk) 13:14, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
One big difference. If we make this change then when we come across a wp:ERA warrer we can point them towards a solution that works for them. Now we can't. ϢereSpielChequers 15:11, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

*Good grief... What on Earth are we to do when we inevitably run out of inflammatory inconsequentialities to belabour each other with, instead of getting some work done? I prefer the CE and BCE convention myself, simply because it is accurately descriptive and one of the operative terms in the description happens to be "Common". However, I grew up using the terms BC and AD, so I am comfortable with them. I strongly oppose using any other standard dating convention in English in discussing topics where they are not specifically relevant; for instance BP is appropriate in palaeontology and certain branches of remote archaeology, and Muslim and Judaic calendars dates might well prove convenient in certain historical and religious contexts, but to predicate the choice of convention on sentiment where everybody's sentimental attachment is someone else's sentimental abhorrence is futile, on some people's ignorance when they cannote even look up BCE or CE on WP when they actually are in WP, and on religious topics where the topics are not at issue, and in fact completely irrelevant, does no one's faith any favours. In case anyone's literacy does extend to such competence, we could blue-link BCE and CE to accommodate them; if it does not extend blue links, we don't need to accommodate them. Personally I am not much bothered with the wording as it stands, and quite happy with the proposed change, but I think I must go along with Peter coxhead, simply in the light of the nauseating outpouring of venom foregoing (and no doubt to follow). JonRichfield (talk) 08:52, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

I pretty much share your feeling (so much energy spent on this, for sooo many years). Also I feel fine with either system. The main difference is that I clearly favour BC/AD, because I fail to see the logic in BCE/CE. Please understand I do not want to stir up any controversy, I am only seeking knowledge with my question (and so, please answer on my talk page if you think it is better), and I am asking you because you highlighted it: What is the "common" thing in a calendar whose reference point is the birth of Jesus of Nazareth? Lets look at him as just another influential man - let's not discuss if he is anything more than that. How come the birth of that man (politician, activist) is a "common" reference? - Nabla (talk) 23:11, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
Hi Nabla, the fact that the year dot (what would that be in BCE/CE anyone?) is (isn't reeealllyyy of course, but never mind that) the date of the birth of Jesus is not relevant. Some people would bleed, or cause a lot of other, no doubt saner, people to bleed even more on that account no doubt, but that is neither here nor there. I refer all interested parties to Henry IV part 1: "GLENDOWER ... at my nativity The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes, Of burning cressets; and at my birth The frame and huge foundation of the earth Shaked like a coward. HOTSPUR Why, so it would have done at the same season, if your mother's cat had but kittened, though yourself had never been born." In this matter users of BCE/CE adopt the indifference of the mother's cat. We don't care who got born when; we are confident that on every single day in the last several thousand years someone got born and that most references to most dates are in in blithe indifference to their births. The keyword is "common". If without any preparatory discussion, you were to say to any schooled first- or second-worlder and in fact most schooled third-worlders as well: "On 5 June 2012 there was the last transit of Venus until 10–11 December 2117." most of them wouldn't know what you were talking about, but none of them would doubt which dates you are talking about. And none of them would spontaneously cross themselves, genuflect, and say: "Heaven be praised! 2012 days and five months and five days after the birth of..." etc. None would say: "Blasphemer! that is not the date relative to the birth of... (pick someone, anyone you like)." Or suppose for example we had chosen the year in which lions supposedly became extinct in Western Europe; it would not have any effect on our calendar worth mentioning; in fact, possibly none at all. That was a closer event to year dot than the originally assumed date of the birth of Jesus, so the AC/DC date is even less worthy of reverence on that score than the BCE/CE. In short, not only don't I care who got born when, I don't even care what happened when. None of those dates have anything material to do with anyone's religion or any particular event of scientific or historic significance, and if they did, what the bleep would that have to do with a common era? If tomorrow someone persuaded the entire world to use the same calendar starting with the explosion at the Gadget, I would growl about the nuisance and cost of making the changes to the established common standard and existing publications (the mind boggles...), but that would be that. The reason for referring to "common" is that "common" and fixed are what count in this matter, not who, what or when, or even right or wrong. And accordingly, when Dionysius was shown to have got it wrong, even the Christian church did not contemplate any correction. Then again, when we deal with ancient history, we use such notations as BP. Any complaints about BP, anyone? What? Not even that it derogates the sacred birth of anyone in particular? Am I getting through? Cheers. JonRichfield (talk) 13:10, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
Using several different languages (I am counting english, old (Shakespeare's) english, and a quite mysterious AC/DC - Portuguese? Spanish? - presumably for BC/AD), rambling about kittens and their mother cats... no it does not help at all. I've read through 2 times, trying to get through. I think I got a few points, the main one being: the reference itself is not relevant, the relevant thing is only that it is know to all. And the reference is no ones birth, the reference is the reference, period, and we all know the reference, fine. I still fail to see how there is a common era started on that reference. - Nabla (talk) 13:51, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
Ah yes, the holy AC/BC! Sorry bout that! Natural confusion in context. Too many years of dealing with alphabet soup, I reckon. Why BCE/CE? Probably no one would have thought of it, simply because it didn't materially matter. But some people cared enough to start a row; there always is someone looking for chips to fill vacant shoulders, and what better than religion, whether the chip has anything to do with any religion or not? So someone (bless his innocent heart!) thought to coin a neutral term that no one could object to. And no one did. But they could object to the absence of other references that had not been there in the first place, and would have been wrong even if they had been. Don't tell me you are hoping for material and relevant logic in this matter? There isn't any. There is no need for any. Read Aesop's fable about the wolf and the lamb. Read Mr Dooley's thoughts about obliging folks and fighting. If we ignore it long enough and use BCE/CE long enough it will go away because the guys who are insisting on the notation that they were taught in Sunday school, don't read and mostly their kids won't either. If we stick to BD/AD, it won't, because the whole pot will keep getting stirred. There are more wooden spoons than wooden heads need for that. JonRichfield (talk) 14:34, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
I am truly sorry for asking. - Nabla (talk) 21:49, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
Oh, and my apologies, I almost forgot, some hardy blasphemers against the sacred reality of the Flat Earth insist on observing the idea that anyone who accepts the stupid ideas of time zones and international date lines (let alone summer time! All those ideas are demonstrably idiotic and unpractical, whether the Earth actually is flat, hollow, round or Moebius) must accept that each date starts at a different time for nearly every person on Earth. It is hard to think of any field that has spawned more stupidities than our notations for our calendars and clocks, unless it is something like homeopathy or astrology. Viva UTC! JonRichfield (talk) 13:33, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
Re: "In this matter users of BCE/CE adopt the indifference of the mother's cat." Is this groupthink or for real? Til Eulenspiegel /talk/ 14:59, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
With mental apologies to Eric Blair, there is more (or sometimes maybe less) to standardisation than groupthink -- or would you tolerate "groupthink for real"? Anyway, why should it be groupthink to use BCE/CE, but not groupthink to use AD/BC? JonRichfield (talk) 17:29, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
  • For what it's worth, the English Wiktionary has a system of templates that allows people to choose whether dates are displayed as BC or BCE, so that is technically feasible—the difficult thing is catching instances where people should have used the templates (or some other switch mechanism) but didn't (not just in entries but in other templates). -sche (talk) 22:39, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

WP:MOSIM - lead image on the right even if a face image away from text?

Hello, all. Another editor and I would like some clarification on WP:MOSIM. I've been suggesting at Talk:Ludwig Adolph Timotheus Radlkofer#Image placement that since the MOS states we must begin each article with a right-aligned image, it has always been my impression that this is true even in cases where the lead image is of a person where facing away from the text when placed on the right, even though another provision of MOSIM is that it is often preferable to place face images so that they look into the text. The other editor in the discussion suggests that neither provision trumps the other and he can place the lead image on the left since it looks into the text that way. If consensus is for the former position, even though it may be widely understood, perhaps adding "unless it is the lead image or in an infobox" clause to the face image point to MOSIM would be a good measure. Cheers, Rkitko (talk) 14:17, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Personally I would normally place all lead images to the right but there are some exceptions in the spirit of WP:IAR. It doesn't matter too much in an article with low views like this. I certainly wouldn't ever have two sandwiched images at the top as here - that is the bigger problem imo. Johnbod (talk) 17:11, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) My understanding is this:
  • If an image is intended to be used in the lead section, as the first or primary image in the article, meant to illustrate the subject, it should always be right-aligned (on the upper right corner).
  • Preferably, all images should face the center of the page. That is, right aligned images should have the subjects eyes/gaze/face looking to the left, and vise-versa.
  • If there are multiple equal quality images which illustrate the subject, we should favor the one where the image is looking correctly.
  • If there is only one image for use in an article, or if there are multiple images, but one image is clearly of superior quality, we should use that one as the first image even if it looks the wrong way. That is, if we have only one good image, and it is looking to the right, we still use it in the upper right corner of the page as the primary image. We should not replace a good image with a bad one merely to make it "look" the right way, nor should we left-align the first image to do the same, nor should we alter the original (make a mirror image) to look the same. That is, the preference for center-looking images is followed where convenient, but not slavishly so where it would conflict with other style and/or quality concerns.
That's how I understand current practice. --Jayron32 17:18, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Translation of patronymics

A quietly perennial topic has popped back up at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Wales#Lead sentences in Welsh history bios, but has nothing in particular to do with Welsh, and trying to set a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS there will be, as usual in such cases, pointless or worse. In broadened terms, the issue is whether genuinely patronymic names should be glossed (translated) into English at some point in the article on the topic (I have to assert that the answer is an obvious "yes"), and if so, how. (The discussion at that project has already moved past "whether" into "how".) There are multiple proposals for how to do this, none of them mutually exclusive:

  1. Lead sentence: X patronymic Y (X son of Y) – code: '''X patronymic Y''' (X son of Y).   Exact appearance will necessarily vary on a case-by-case basis, as determined by pre-existing style rules (and we probably needn't give all of these kinds of examples, though doing so might not hurt):
    • Typical usage, when the translation is just a translation: X patronymic Y (X son of Y) – code: '''X patronymic Y''' (X son of Y)
    • When English translation is also a common name for the subject in its own right in reliable sources: X patronymic Y (X son of Y) – code: '''X patronymic Y''' ('''X son of Y''')
    • At first usage, non-bolded, e.g. when the patronymic name is not the article title or a common name for the subject: X patronymic Y (X son of Y) – code: X patronymic Y (X son of Y)
    • Where the anglicized form is the most common form in English-language sources, and the form in the original language is relevant to include: X son of Y (FOOian: X patronymic Y) – code: '''X son of Y''' ([[FOO language|FOOian]]: ''X patronymic Y'')
    • Same, but original language form is also common in English sources: X son of Y (FOOian: X patronymic Y) – code: '''X son of Y''' ([[FOO language|FOOian]]: '''''X patronymic Y''''')
  2. {{FOOname|X|Y}}, hatnote at the top of the aritcle, which would render something like: This is a FOO name. It means "X son of Y". (An existing example is the {{Welsh name}} template, which handles "daughter of" cases as well.)
  3. With an HTML comment so only editors see it: X patronymic Y<!--X son of Y-->
  4. Add the gloss to {{Infobox:FOO-bio}} (if such an infobox template exists for that language/culture); it could be done simply by adding a parenthetical to the |name= or by adding a new parameter.

The lead sentence form X patronymic Y (English: "X son of Y") has also been proposed, but does not agree with how we handle translation into English generally.

— SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 22:33, 20 February 2013 (UTC) Updated: 23:27, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

  • I suggest that MOS state that option #1 should be the default, and to the extent we need to cover the options if at all, that #2 is a permissible alternative, that #4 should be done in addition where possible, but that #3 is pointless. It should also be made clear that nothing of the sort is done for names that are simply derived from and may look like patronymics (like mine!) but which are not actual patronymics (my father was not named "Candlish"). — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 22:33, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
    PS: Technically, glosses should always be given in single quotation marks – X patronymic Y ('X son of Y') – but MOS doesn't say this yet, and this would not be a special case, so it should not be handled differently from other glosses. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 22:57, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment: For #1, is the (English: ...) really necessary? Only necessary for the first time but not repetitions? (See, e.g., this edit of Hywel Dda.)

    Myself, I would prefer the default to be X son of Y (FOO: X patronymic Y) for explanatory and stylistic reasons. You seemed to support that at the Welsh discussion, but I understand people feel it might be confusing or run afoul of Common Name issues. In the absence of that, I would prefer X patronymic Y ("X son of Y") without the need to specify that the patently English text is, in fact, English.

    Any thoughts on smart/dumb quotes? — LlywelynII 22:58, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

  • #1, now that is seems to have been changed and matches my request in the comment above. — LlywelynII 23:03, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
I just fixed the "English:..." bit, above, and noted that it would conflict with our existing handling of translations. (I accidentally pasted in the "English:..." version from the old variant of the thread at the Welsh project rather than the later, corrected version, when reopening the RfC here for broader input.) "Smart" a.k.a. "curly" quotes are already deprecated by MOS:PUNCT (they interfere with searches). Whether X son of Y (FOO: X patronymic Y) order is okay is an article-by-article, case-by-case WP:COMMONNAME issue, not a style matter. I've modified point #1 above to account for this. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 23:11, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
I'd've kept the single quotes that have now disappeared from the translation, but I'm loathe to add still more alternatives now... — LlywelynII 23:58, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
I would too, but as I already noted, MOS is not currently recommending that style around glosses (translations). It should, but we should not cloud this discussion with that independent issue. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 10:31, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
  • [Comment]. @ SMcCandlish You mention that this is a perennial topic. Would you be kind enough to link to previous discussions. Thanks. You note there are multiple proposals. One proposal made but not noted above is for the status quo i.e. The lead sentence to begin: "X patronymic Y (xxxx–xxxx) was ...". Reasons for this include WP:UCN, MOS:BOLDTITLE (“If an article's title is a formal or widely accepted name for the subject, display it in bold as early as possible in the first sentence”), MOS:LEADALT (Non-English titles) (“Although Wikipedia's naming convention guidelines recommend the use of English, there are instances where the subject of an article is best known in English-speaking sources by its non-English name.”) and WP:BEGIN (“Redundancy must be kept to a minimum in the first sentence.”) The subject's ancestry should be noted early on in the Lead. Thus, noting "X patronymic Y (X son of Y) (xxxx–xxxx) was the son of C." is redundant. Also, these proposals will affect pages on many Scottish and Irish articles. I'm happy to notify WP:SCOT and WP:IE for their input, unless you'd rather do that yourself. Daicaregos (talk) 15:49, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
If people are being notified, WP:ARAB, WP:JEW, WP:NORSE, and WP:ICELAND should probably be on the list. I see WP:ICELAND uses a hatnote. And will the policy cover Russian patronymics? —JerryFriedman (Talk) 21:40, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
Good additions to the list of projects to invite, yes. The Russian case is one of the things this discussion will need to address. I would say "no", because Russian patronymics are not used in lieu of surnames, as I understand it, but as a form of middle name. To use Herostratus's example, Nikolai Ivanovich Borza is not referred to as Nikolai Ivanovich, implying that Ivanovich is a surname (family name). A translation isn't really necessary here, especially not in the lead. As the existence of Icelandic, Welsh, etc., hatnotes indicates, the principal issue is that forms like Math vab Mathonwy or Kenneth mac Alpin are ambiguous to people not familiar with the patronymic systems in question, and this isn't true of a Russian name like Nikolai Ivanovich Borza. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 10:31, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
I have notified those Wikiprojects, and those of WP:Sweden, WP:Norway and WP:Denmark. Daicaregos (talk) 11:44, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
I notified WB:ISLAM too, since it seems more lively than WP:ARAB. —JerryFriedman (Talk)
@Daicaregos: I'm not inclined to dig up such old discussions, because per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS they don't dictate how we handle this more broadly at MOS (it's not a perennial discussion here, it just pops up in various places again and again; the above suggestions of projects to solicit input from is a good start (please do notify them, including JerryFriedman's additions), and their own talk archives and the talk pages of articles within their scope are the best places to look for old discussions of the topic, if you're so inclined. Secondly, the entire problem is that each little insular "micro-consensus" of people who care mostly about one specific topic area (nationality, language, etc.) or even one specific article keep coming to contradictory conclusions. Third, I honestly just don't have the time anyway. I already addressed the "status quo" option has have been intrinsically rejected by discussion moving past it into continued detailed discussion of a need to do something consistent with patronymics, not pretend there's no issue to resolve. I.e., there has already been a clear failure to arrive at a consensus that the status quo is a viable option. Yes, "X patronymic Y (X son of Y) (xxxx–xxxx) was the son of C." would clearly be redundant, and if anyone wrote that another editor would fix it, since the translation of the patronymic already gives the progeny–parent relationship. Why bring that up? If someone wrote "Het Achterhuis (first published in English as Anne Frank: The Diary of Young Girl) is the diary of Anne Frank, written when she was a young girl..." someone would fix that too. Let's not wander into WP:CREEP land. None of the pages you cite and quote militate against providing an English translation, only against putting the article title at the translation and changing its lead sentence to favor the translation over the commonly-used-in-English native version. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 10:31, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
I had assumed you were referring to perennial discussions here. That would be why I couldn't find them then – no worries. As to rejecting the status quo option – that would relate to a single discussion, would it not? i.e. a good example of WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, which we are attempting to avoid by having this discussion centrally, here. Therefore, the untranslated Lead should still be considered a legitimate option, which participants may reject if they wish. Daicaregos (talk) 11:55, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
  • I don't have an opinion regarding X ab Y, but I sure don't want to see "Nikolai Ivanovich Borza" rendered as "Nikolai Borza, son of Ivan" or anything like that. If you want to do that you had better drop a note at WikiProject Russia, but I hope your blast shields are up. Herostratus (talk) 21:59, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
No one proposed that, and there wouldn't be any point, since a patronymic as a middle name doesn't introduce any kind of ambiguity or confusion that anyone cares about.  :-) — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 10:31, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
  • I believe WP:RS and WP:OP are reasonably easy to understand. Don't translate a person's name unless that is done outside of Wikipedia in reliable sources. If you find a reliable source with reasonable weight then fine, use it. If you can't then don't make one up, and don't use some blog or something like that as a source either. And I don't think it is in the least obvious that we should include things that are 'obvious' to some editors. Dmcq (talk) 11:55, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
  • #3, X is not the son of any old Y, he would be the son of Y son of Z, which is better described in the article text. For example: “Gruffydd ap Llywelyn (c. 1198 – 1 March 1244) was the first born son of Llywelyn the Great ("Llywelyn Fawr").” Providing a translation immediately after the subject's name leads to redundancy, and would be less informative should the sentence have to be re-cast. Daicaregos (talk) 08:45, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

WP:NCCAPS → "shorter than five letters" rule

With regards to this and this, and in general, isn't this whole "shorter than five letters" notion leading to inconsistent, illogical results? And where does it come from? (like, what's the reference work for [English-language and otherwise] title capitalization out there?)

I mean, as is, when in mid-title, it produces things like this:

"than", "from", "till", "Until" – ... from ... Until... looks weird, does it not?

To conform to this, From Dusk Till Dawn had [rightly] just been changed to From Dusk till Dawn – problem is, it seems to be spelled From Dusk Till Dawn virtually everywhere else (a similar case would be Stranger than Fiction vs. IMDb's Stranger Than Fiction);

also, it's still Wait Until Dark, although "until" is just a one-letter-longer variant form of "till".

But if "till" were changed to "Till", we'd still have the lowercase "from", making for constructions like ... from ... Until... and ... from ... Till....

Changing "Until" to lowercase in turn would then be at variance with a whole host of other five-letters-or-longer prepositions and conjunctions.

Seriously, what the heck? I'm confused out of my mind... – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 15:15, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

As a followup, more contradictory examples:
My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean
vs.
Someone to Watch Over Me
Somewhere Over the Rainbow
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Frost Over the World
Please, someone knowledgeable (What's the basis for the"shorter than five letters" rule? Where does it come from? Sources?) comment. While I do have a preference
– Honestly, don't the lowercased variations look downright weird to you, too? Like, did you ever see "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" given as "... over ..."? –,
I'm ready to put that aside if presented with logical and consistent guidelines. As is, it's confusing (I didn't change My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean to ... Over ... out of spite, but simply because I had its spelling elsewhere and entries like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in mind) and handled inconsistently. – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 19:46, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
The correct approach is to defer to common usage, and spell things the way the rest of the world spells them. Anything else is original research and is prohibited in wikipedia. Apteva (talk) 20:03, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
We've always imposed local capitalization rules, regardless of how they are capitalized in the original or other sources. That's what MOS:CT is about. I tend to agree wth this editor (whose name I can't type) that this particular rule is on shaky ground.—Kww(talk) 20:10, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
I'm in favor of styling the caps consistently, but yeah, I think the 5-letter rule needs to be improved. Either an explicit list of words (and usages, for words that might be prepositions sometimes and other parts of speech others), or an explicit list of exceptions to the 5-letter rule, if the first list is unwieldy. -- JHunterJ (talk) 20:50, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
House style guidelines are not original research. -- JHunterJ (talk) 20:51, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
I for one will not wilfully go directly against the MoS in its current form (though, I might again by mistake). However, if the powers that be are insisting on sticking to that rule, I think the uninformed readers and editors deserve an explanation as to why the Encyclopædia Britannica, IMDb, AllRovi, Rotten Tomatoes, blu-ray.com, IGN, NNDB, Amazon, cduniverse.com, The New York Times, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, Time magazine, the marketing divisions of film studios and countless others supposedly have got it so wrong. – ὁ οἶστρος (or, romanized, "ho oistros") (talk) 21:05, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
It's possibly a British/American English thing. All those sources are American, but the British Film Institute opts for lower capitalisation: BFI. Betty Logan (talk) 21:15, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
Variations in style need not be explained as errors. Dicklyon (talk) 21:25, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
Styles vary. Among guides that resemble ours on this four-letter rule are this and this and this. Dicklyon (talk) 21:13, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for the links. However, two weren't searchable and within the excerpts of the third that were accessible I couldn't find any pertaining sections. There certainly must be a stronger case for that choice, right? How [and when] was it arrived at in the first place? Was it ever properly hashed out with broad participation? – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 22:00, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
The first gives the rule

Capitalize the main words in a title and the first and last word, but do not capitalize a, the, to, or prepositions and conjunctions of fewer than five letters when they occur in the middle of the title.

It goes on to say that "The Moon is Down" is wrong because is, though a short word is an important word, and that "Travels With Charley" is wrong. I would hasten to add that the advice, though, is to Hemingway or Steinbeck and to the publisher - were they to have chosen a capital letter, we would be constrained to report that error, in my opinion, although we would not be constrained to use all capitals, as many books do for their titles.
The second uses the rule to "Capitalize significant words in titles", and here the advice given is to people like wikipedia editors, where the advise is not on how to construct a title, but how to report a title, although the advice on "importance" I would say is more easily determined by the creator of the work. It says

The classic system is to capitalize the initial letters of the first and last words of a title or subtitle, as well as all major (or "significant") words. Do not capitalize articles (a, an, the), conjunctions (and, but, if) or short prepositions (at, in, on, of) unless they begin the title.

The third gives the sage advice that

The use of capital, or uppercase, letters is determined by custom. They are used to call attention to certain words, such as proper nouns and the first word of a sentence.

and goes on to say

Capitalize the initial letters of the first and last words of the title of a book, an article, a play, or a film, as well as all major words in the title. Do not capitalize articles (a, an, the) or coordinating conjunctions (and, but, for, or, nor, yet, so), unless they bigin or end the title (The Lives of a Cell). Capitalize propositions within titles only when they contain more than four letters (Between, Within, Until, After), unless you are following a style that recommends otherwise.

This advice appears to apply both to originators and reports of works. Apteva (talk) 23:10, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
Down in "The Moon is Down" is an adjective, not a preposition. I.e., down is serving the same function as red in the construction the moon is red. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 01:18, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
Betty Logan, the BFI is an interesting find. On the other hand, a quick [and doubtlessly superficial] perusing of other British organs – such as The Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, The Guardian and The Independent – showed no support for the "shorter than five letters" rule. – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 22:00, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
Where the MOS can become OR is if no one writes "Somewhere over the Rainbow", and only Wikipedia writes it that way, that clearly is OR. Ditto if no one changes all caps in RUBBER SOUL to Rubber Soul, that is also OR. WP reports what the world does, and is, without making things up, which is what OR is. Apteva (talk) 22:38, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
It would be best not to keep confusing the content policy WP:NOR with styling guidelines; and this song is an odd case, since its actual title is Over the Rainbow. And it does appear in some sources with lower case "over", not rarely. And you're not seriously proposing that we use all caps in Rubber Soul, are you? Dicklyon (talk) 23:26, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
The thing to do when you find such inconsistencies is just to work on them. It is not surprising that WP still has lots of style inconsistencies. The MOS provides the guidance for which way to go to make things better. For example, Gerschwin's Someone to Watch over Me can be moved to lower-case over, which is not rare in reliable sources. See the first sentence of MOS:CAPS, which is what distinguishes our style from some others. Dicklyon (talk) 23:34, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
There are two problems with that though - first does it appear to accurately represent the actual title, and second while some books use "over" instead of "Over", "Over" is the preferred choice. But that is misleading because Someone to Watch Over Me is a popular book title, used by perhaps dozens of authors. Click on the Ngram links at the bottom, and try to even find references to Gershwin in any of the more recent citations. Apteva (talk) 01:00, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
Since Google Ngram Viewer is all about quantity (not quality), I don't see how this would be a suitable tool for establishing guidelines. Like, there are also significant instances of
"Neandertal" (treacherous, as the eponymous German valley [today] actually is spelled "Neandertal")
vs.
"Neanderthal" or
"miniscule"
vs.
"minuscule".
The BFI, the lonely major source brought up that seems to use lowercasing for prepositions such as "over", also is not consistent with Wikipedia's MoS; e.g.,
Wait until Dark
vs.
Wait Until Dark. – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 12:57, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

What I find interesting about all these style guides is that the question isn't really what to do with four character prepositions, it's what to do with five-and-longer ones. I think all of them would have "over" be in lower case, but some of them simply say that prepositions should be in lower case, and give no different rule for longer ones.—Kww(talk) 15:13, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

The more important rule is to capitalize "significant words" in a title. As to NGRAMs, that is a title issue, not a MOS issue. Apteva (talk) 05:22, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

While I personally think we should just go the IMDb way (as ungainly as some of the titles there look) and style everything according to the guidelines used there, to take JHunterJ up on his proposal, how about modifying WP:NCCAPS to accommodate for these spelling versions?:

[proposed by ὁ οἶστρος:]

  • From Dusk till Dawn (covered by current policy)
  • Wait until Dark (not covered by current policy)
  • Stranger than Fiction (covered by current policy)
  • My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean / One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (not covered by current policy)
  • 20000 Leagues Under the Sea (covered by current policy)
  • Once Upon a Time in America (not covered by current policy)
  • Girl Walks into a Bar (covered by current policy) – not sure it shouldn't be "Into", though (even if it looks as ugly as "Is")
  • The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain (not covered by current policy)
  • It Came from Outer Space (covered by current policy)
  • From Russia with Love (covered by current policy)

[proposed by JHunterJ:]

  • Blue Like Jazz (not covered by current policy)
  • Bridge Over Troubled Water (not covered by current policy)
  • Alternate From Dusk Till Dawn (not covered by current policy)
  • 33⅓ Revolutions Per Monkee (not covered by current policy)
  • Star Trek Into Darkness (not covered by current policy)
  • [add your own examples]

Would be a compromise / hybrid of "both worlds": even more lowercasing but at the same time allowing for some exceptions to avoid counter-intuitive "butt-ugliness". – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 12:49, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

The proper title of the last is logically Star Trek: Into Darkness (regardless what IMDb says - it is not a reliable source), so the "into" would be capitalized regardless of this debate (first or last word of a title or subtitle). SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 01:22, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
Added an alternate result for From Dusk Till Dawn, and added Bridge Over Troubled Water, Blue Like Jazz, and 33⅓ Revolutions Per Monkee. We can sort the List of English prepositions into "capitalized (when used as a preposition, as long as it's not the first or last word in a title or subtitle)" and "uncapitalized (unless it's either not used as a preposition or the first or last word in a title or subtitle)" -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:40, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
Seems to me you're advocating the IMDb model. I'd be all for that, the only constructions looking rather weird there that I can think of off the top of my head would be
... from ... Until... and
... from ... Till....
(as already mentioned in my very first post). Also, there's the question of "into" vs. "Into". Case for the former: it's just "in" and "to" put together; case for the latter: "Upon" and the like (but then, at IMDb, it's "Up" vs. "in"). Good idea about using that list. – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 14:29, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. I don't mean to advocate for deferring all of our titles to the IMDb's choice of caps. If we coincidentally land there, that's fine though. I don't think we should worry about which tiny words were assembled into which short words; the short words are now different enough and can't be simply replaced with their bits. Added one more: "Into Darkness" appears to be a subtitle in the new Star Trek film, even if they've made the weird call to omit a colon or hyphen or anything else. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:58, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
I would not prefer IMDb's capitalization because it's IMDb, but because that seems to be the standard used, well, almost everywhere (if someone has the answer, I'd still like to know where they have borrowed it from).
Under Getting Started > Submission Guides > Title Formats (section Capitalization and character sets), they merely state:
"English language words which must begin with a lower-case letter are: an and as at by for from in of on or the to with".
It doesn't get simpler than that. Granted, it's a bit nonchalantly / loosely worded, omitting clarifications such as "unless they begin or end a title" (although that's implicitly taken into account), but I'm sure there are some Wikipedians who could elegantly and comprehensively incorporate the principles behind it into the existing MoS, while keeping it clear and readily accessible for everybody.
I suggest either adopting that approach in whole (which would cover everything JHunterJ would like to see) or amending it by adding
till,
until,
into,
onto and
than (but not Then)
to their list and be done with it (good-bye, "shorter than five letters" rule).
(By the way, browsing the database, you will find that IMDb is not always applying their own compass consistently, either, but in virtually every case that's just a matter of erroneous submissions that are open for correction – in the few cases where it's deliberate, then that's because they also do respect how the creators want their work spelled.) – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 19:31, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
I see; I had misunderstood the IMDb suggestion, sorry! Yes, I'd be fine adopting their list, or adopting a similar list (such as your additions). I think I'd capitalize Till and Until and Than, but I've got no heartburn if WP decides to lowercase them. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:33, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
That's the way I saw it, too. Actually, that's the reason all this started, as I – unwitting of the "shorter than five letters" rule – wanted to move From Noon till Three to From Noon Till Three. Meanwhile (primarily because of the unsightliness of "... from ... Till/Until ...", as in Lora from Morning Till Evening), I'd lowercase those few words. But crossing a Bridge over Troubled Water? I don't see that. – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 20:09, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Commment. This discussion seems to be quite film-centric, and maybe isn't taking fully into account the requirements of other projects that have prominent usage of composition titles, but surely we should be discussing any changes in terms of published style guides, and which we should take our lead from, rather than in terms of what other websites do. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:49, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

But surely we are not restricted to published styles guides as the only input to this discussion. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:52, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure. Isn't there an element of making up our own rules for the English language if we just copy what others do (or seem to do), rather than following established guidelines for usage? I guess it could be seen as WP:SYNTHESIS. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:58, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
Establish guidelines contradict each other, so we'll have to "make up our rules" (or make up our minds) regardless, no one's suggesting we "just" copy what others seem to do, and style guidelines are not encyclopedia articles, so it can't be seen as WP:OR. Also, the problems above also include musical compositions/ -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:50, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
Yes, but we should be debating this in terms of the contradictions between the style guides and which established style we should adopt, not look to other websites to see what they do, without knowing their reasoning behind it (unless of course they have a published style guide). We don't know why the BFI or IMDB make the decisions they do. For all we know they could use a completely arbitrary system, so we shouldn't be following them. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:29, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
I disagree. We should be debating this in terms of what makes the most sense (or best improvement) for Wikipedia. If a hypothetically arbitrary system makes the most sense for WP or results in the most improvement, we should use it. -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:49, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
That's just anarchy!  :) Should we start using arbitrary systems of punctuation and spelling too? We need to ensure our style guide has some basis in established usage. Whether that proves to be slavishly following one manual, or cherrypicking between different manuals, that's fine by me, but we shouldn't be inventing our own rules without seeking a precedent. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:58, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
I doubt any system (capitalization, spelling, or punctuation) that makes sense for WP will be arbitrary, and none of the systems under discussion are arbitrary or without precedent. -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:18, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
Well, there is a suggestion above to copy what IMDB do, but also to add a few four letter prepositions, but not all of them, and there is no mention of phrasal verbs (which is what brought me to this discussion!). This seems pretty arbitrary and doesn't seem to follow any of the accepted precedents for title capitalisation. I wasn't party to earlier discussions regarding the current style guideline, but they seem to have been well considered, and to me, the proposed changes seem whimsical. Any changes should be considered more widely, and we should seek broad input from other projects, particularly literature and language projects, rather than base the changes on what an internet movie database (that we don't even trust as a reliable source) use for their criteria of titling films, then adding a few arbitrarily chosen prepositions of our own. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:40, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
No one's suggesting any change to the way we handle phrasal verbs (we continue to capitalize them in all cases). This discussion is just around prepositions, but without any arbitrariness (no one's suggesting we cast lots to see which prepositions are capitalized). -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:21, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

To respond to the original post, I have no idea where the "five letter" so-called rule came from, and disagree with it (and wonder who added it, with what supposed consensus), but it's a moot point. We don't change the titles of published works, last I looked, if they are consistently done a particular way. Now, if movie posters for From Dusk Till Dawn sometimes spelled it "till", we'd have a case for applying MOS's lower-casing rule, but otherwise we don't. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 02:25, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Actually, we ignore the capitalization used in the work and all reliable sources in favor of our own MOS, and not doing so would be an even harder change to get through.—Kww(talk) 02:52, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
I think SMcCandlish's point is that we typically do something like what MOS:TM makes explicit: editors should choose among styles already in use (not invent new ones) and choose the style that most closely resembles standard English. It makes as much sense for composition titles as for trademarks, perhaps. Dicklyon (talk) 05:46, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
Read again. He's saying we wouldn't apply our MOS rule to write "Dusk till Dawn" unless the movie posters used it inconsistently. That's just not the case.—Kww(talk) 06:17, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
Well, I won't try to speak for him. But I'm unclear on what you're saying. Are you stating your opinion of what we should do, or an interpretation of what we do do? In terms of "styles already in use", "till" is certainly out there, though maybe not in movie posters, which isn't were MOS:TM would suggest we look. If he really meant we should restrict to what we find on movie posters, I'd say, no, that's not what MOS suggests, nor what we do. Dicklyon (talk) 06:38, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
I was using posters as an example (add in press releases, reviews, IMDb listing, DVD cover, etc., etc.) If the title of the work is consistently spelled/capitalized/punctuated one way, why would we change it? I haven't seen anyone move Inglourious Basterds to a "correctly spelled" article name. On this micro-issue, I can only speak to what I do personally, which is name a work according to how it is spelled, if that's consistent, but if it hasn't been consistent and thus there is no "official" name, change it to what MOS prefers. I have not paid any attention to what others have been doing with such titles. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 01:15, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
Spelling and styling are two different issues. Of course we shouldn't change a spelling, but as far as style goes we follow our own MOS for capitalisation of composition titles per MOS:CT, regardless of the published capitalisation. --Rob Sinden (talk) 11:45, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
Not everyone entirely agrees that they are different issues. If you look at our most noisy and fractious perennial disputes here, you'll see that quite a few of them (most recently dashes vs. hyphens) come about because not everyone agrees they're distinguishable concerns in all cases. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 22:30, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, as shown at the very beginning of this section, Wikipedians, such as many of those assessing RMs, for example, clearly do not follow what you put forward, but instead point out that the MoS was "quite clear about this" – and why should they not?, as the MoS is clear on that point, only that it advocates, well, [at the very least] questionable rules for that point to begin with, in my opinion. (and, yeah, I won't contest the fine by the style police for the æsthetically challenged overuse in close succession of words deriving from the same root, and will instead only point at myself)

(Incidentally, I don't see a need for opening the can of worms – as I don't think it's as clear-cut as some seem convinced – of where the line between style and substance, the formal and the material, is to be drawn.)

There seems to be agreement (among the few participants in this discussion) that the current title capitalization rules are insufficient / subpar. So, where to go from here? What formal steps are there to be taken? While I don't know my way around the procedural parts of Wikipedia, what I can do is repeat, sum up and juxtapose the three options currently on the discoursive table, so that it can be presented in a bit less unwieldy and more neatly fashion for further consideration (although it's certainly not meant to replace the much more detailed and comprehensive debate proper).

But first, let me object to the claim that what's proposed here were film-centric approaches. I dont see that at all. To me – and I've yet to hear a cogent argument contradicting this –, work titles are work titles are work titles (yeah, we style TV series titles differently from episode titles, but you get the gist), and the rules suggested can be applied (and are widely applied) unreservedly to songs, sheet music, books, articles, video games, what have you (again, see the [short, unrepresentative and unsystematic] laundry list of publications I give a few posts above this one) – and for all, there are some quirky specimens that elude easy classification, that therefore can be controversial and for which there has to be made a case-by-case decision on how to represent them. (Like, is it "Se7en" or "Seven"?) Sure, I mostly (but not exclusively, as correctly indicated by JHunterJ) use[d] film titles for illustrative purposes here, but I might just as well have chosen song or poem or declaration or manifesto titles.

Oh, and, please, no more accusations of me wanting "whimsical" solutions:

For one, adding to JHunterJ's voice, it's been declared here numerous times before that the MoS is its very own, independent entity that draws non-exclusive inspiration heavily from a multitude of renowned – and sometimes conflicting – normative guides without following, adopting and adapting everything from all or any particular one of them (whether that's right / appropriate / wise or not is another matter to be examined separately).

Apart from that, it's obvious to anyone who really read what I wrote that I amply, over and over, many, many [many, many, ...] times repeatedly expressly declared that I would like to see authoritative sources on the matter and certainly wouldn't mind the MoS to be grounded on such.

There has been some chiming in, but I'm still mostly left in the dark as to what (singular or plural) both Wikipedia's MoS and the breadth of respected publications I enumerated base their capitalization on – and since the former goes against virtually all of the latter (and at times even against the BFI, the sole "contrarian" in the mix), if anything, it seems to me, it's the current practice at Wikipedia that might be termed "whimsical"...

IMDb serves as just one widely recognized and vastly influential (irrespective of what one personally might think of them) exponent that uses a way of displaying titles that (assuming – and conceivably incorrectly so – that it's everywhere identical down to the minutiæ) seems to be the predominant one the world over (it also makes sense to look at what IMDb does in light of the fact that they surely must obsess over spelling, as it's a, no, the vital part of their business, on which hinges quite everything for them).

Anyway, here are the three main types of capitalization rules weighed so far (NB: what follows is not worded in a manner fit for inclusion into the MoS; it's still about gauging the what? before taking on the how?, though shots at drafting something usable are naturally always welcome):

  1. what's current in Wikipedia's MoS (whencever it came) (let's dub it [prep] prop 1)
    • includes the mysterious "shorter than five letters" rule
    • renders ... from ... till... and ... from ... Until...
  2. as, for instance, seen at IMDb, but actually used (perhaps in variations) by a whole host of on- and offline publications (see the "few" examples I've given) ([prep] prop 2)
    • save for their position at the beginning or end of a title, these English-language words must begin with a lower-case letter:
      a, an, and, as, at, by, for, from, in, of, on, or, the, to, with
    • renders ... from ... Till... and ... from ... Until...
  3. "third way" (And maybe there is an established published guide advocating this style, too, who knows? – I, for one, don't know.) ([prep] prop 3)
    • save for their position at the beginning or end of a title, these English-language words must begin with a lower-case letter:
      a, an, and, as, at, by, for, from, in, into, of, on, onto, or, than, the, till, to, until, with
    • renders ... from ... till... and ... from ... until...

Or, by way of examples:

  1. [prep] prop 1
    • It's a Wonderful Life
    • I Was an Adventuress
    • The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
    • As Good as It Gets
    • Right at Your Door
    • City by the Sea
    • Thank You for Smoking
    • It Came from Outer Space
    • Singin' in the Rain
    • Girl Walks into a Bar
    • Lawrence of Arabia
    • Strangers on a Train
    • They're onto Us
    • Live Free or Die Hard
    • Stranger than Fiction
    • Lonely Are the Brave
    • Lora from Morning till Evening
    • Last Train to Freo
    • Wait Until Dark
    • From Russia with Love
    • One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
    • 20000 Leagues Under the Sea
    • The Englishman Who Went up a Hill But Came down a Mountain
    • Once upon a Time in America
    • (And Then There Were None)
  2. [prep] prop 2
    • It's a Wonderful Life
    • I Was an Adventuress
    • The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
    • As Good as It Gets
    • Right at Your Door
    • City by the Sea
    • Thank You for Smoking
    • It Came from Outer Space
    • Singin' in the Rain
    • Girl Walks Into a Bar
    • Lawrence of Arabia
    • Strangers on a Train
    • They're Onto Us
    • Live Free or Die Hard
    • Stranger Than Fiction
    • Lonely Are the Brave
    • Lora from Morning Till Evening
    • Last Train to Freo
    • Wait Until Dark
    • From Russia with Love
    • One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
    • 20000 Leagues Under the Sea
    • The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain
    • Once Upon a Time in America
    • (And Then There Were None)
  3. [prep] prop 3
    • It's a Wonderful Life
    • I Was an Adventuress
    • The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
    • As Good as It Gets
    • Right at Your Door
    • City by the Sea
    • Thank You for Smoking
    • It Came from Outer Space
    • Singin' in the Rain
    • Girl Walks into a Bar
    • Lawrence of Arabia
    • Strangers on a Train
    • They're onto Us
    • Live Free or Die Hard
    • Stranger than Fiction
    • Lonely Are the Brave
    • Lora from Morning till Evening
    • Last Train to Freo
    • Wait until Dark
    • From Russia with Love
    • One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
    • 20000 Leagues Under the Sea
    • The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain
    • Once Upon a Time in America
    • (And Then There Were None)

Still open (well, for the person adding it, anyway):
[added by ὁ οἶστρος:]

  • unto, as in Night unto Night / Night Unto Night
  • vs / vs. / versus, as in Tucker and Dale vs Evil

[add what else comes to mind] – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 18:40, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

  • Comment - The rule about lowercasing prepositions in composition titles originally came from The Chicago Manual of Style. Its rule states that all prepositions are lowercased unless the first or last word of the title/heading, or if part of a phrasal verb. However, The Associated Press modifies this rule and lowercases only those words that have less than five letters. Wikipedia currently follows that modification. I don't have a CMoS subscription, but I learned about these rules here. -- Scjessey (talk) 19:45, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
As I mention above, "We need to ensure our style guide has some basis in established usage". Therefore if it seems we are following the style of The Associated Press then this is fine by me. If we decide to change this and follow another style guide then this is fine by me also. However, we should not be arbitrarily inventing our own style guide without following an established precedent. --Rob Sinden (talk) 11:22, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment: I think the easiest and simplest way to deal with this issue is to, for films, books, musical comps - in short any piece of creative work produced by a person or company, simply follow the choice of the creator (with possible exception for the likes of TH13TEEN, where stylised as should be used). As an encyclopedia, surely our ultimate aim is to be as accurate as possible to reflect, firstly, official and verifiable sources, and secondly, real world usage. douts (talk) 14:36, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
    With all due respect, that's a terrible idea. Manuals of style exist for a very good reason. How many times, for example, have you seen the track listing on an album cover be in all uppercase? Or all lowercase, for that matter? We need a guide and we need to stick to it. -- Scjessey (talk) 14:46, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
    Sorry, maybe I should have made it clearer. I was suggesting using the creators choice for article titles only. Also, with regard to song titles - listings on album covers may indeed sometimes be in all caps (often a marketing choice made by the production company, not the artists themselves), however on the official websites of the artists, they are normally (no doubt with a few exceptions) listed in lowercase. see this and this. Also, I'm by no means suggesting throwing out the MOS completely, however, this particular 5 letter or less rule seems to be causing much more trouble than its worth. douts (talk) 15:04, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
    No, we are talking about the same thing. All composition titles, basically. Anything that can end up as an article title should be subject to MOS guidelines, or there will end up being article move wars all the time. -- Scjessey (talk) 15:09, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
    Fair point - but also as such, the MOS needs to, and must allow us to achieve our goal here. To be as accurate as feasibly possible. At present, this rule is preventing us from doing that. The Into Darkness issue is a perfect example of that failing - official sources and real world usage uses an uppercase I, yet this guideline is saying we should use a lowercase i. Therefore we are failing in our aim of being accurate, and as such, the guideline must be changed. douts (talk) 16:45, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
    The point of the MoS is to achieve consistency. Inconsistencies arise because different countries, publications, individuals may use a different style to each other, or no style at all, intentionally or not intentionally. In order to achieve clarity, we should be applying a consistent style, regardless of how others may report it. We're not being inaccurate by doing this, as Wikipedia is our publication, so we apply our style, just like a newspaper or other publication will apply theirs. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:52, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
    The trouble is, using Into Darkness as an example again, applying our style as it is now suggests an entirely different meaning than the one suggested by the official title. There needs to be a way that we can apply our style without creating this issue. douts (talk) 18:17, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
    That is not the case. Only some people think the meaning is changed. Many do not agree with you. Even Paramount uses the title as part of a sentence. Clearly it is meant to be read as a complete title with no pauses. And there is absolutely no way we are going to change MOS just because some people at one article think the guideline is wrong. -- Scjessey (talk) 18:23, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
    This whole section is not about just one article. – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 19:36, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
    Yes, the Star Trek issue is best left at the correct talk page. It has already been discussed at length there, and we shouldn't be WP:POINTY here just to accommodate the one article. --Rob Sinden (talk) 20:14, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Some quick thoughts. Scjessey, thanks for the link. However, according to your source, "[...], The Associated Press would have you capitalize prepositions and conjunctions if they are four or more letters long." [bolding by me] – or in other words, the AP propagates (again, according to dailywritingtips.com) a "shorter than four letters rule" (which is not what WP:MoS currently prescribes), resulting in ... Into ..., ... Over ... and ... Upon ... (just like as seen at IMDb etc.), but also in ... From ... and ... With ... (unlike what's at IMDb etc.); but then again, maybe those rules are more intricate and dailywritingtips.com simply conveys them wrongly. This wouldn't surprise me, as they also feature this:

"Sentence case, or down style, is one method, preferred by many print and online publications and recommended by the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. The only two rules are the two rules mentioned above: Capitalize the first word and all proper nouns. Everything else is in lowercase. For example: Why it’s never too late to learn grammar (all words lowercased except “Why”—first word in title)"

This seems to be misrepresenting APA in general or is at the very least confusing, as it doesn't mention APA's approach to titles. While I couldn't find much of anything useful concerning major style guides with unrestricted access online, I did stumble upon this (see p. 48). Recommending for titles what they call "Headline-Style Capitalization", the APA actually seems to say (what follows is out of the 2011 edition of the Pocket Guide to APA Style, an inofficial sorta "Reader's Digest" version of the real thing),

"[...]; capitalize all other words except articles, to (as part of an infinitive phrase), and conjunctions or prepositions of three or fewer letters." [again, bolding by me]

This again gives [among others] the weird ... From ... and ... With ... constructs (again, if represented accurately by that source).

Robsinden wrote, "we should not be arbitrarily inventing our own style guide". To basically repeat what I wrote several times before: If we already are following an amalgamation of several style guides (it does not seem to be "CMoS + AP", though), I don't see any methodological difference between that and my "proposition 3" (whether I would actually prefer that to what IMDb and others do, I'm not yet sure myself). – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 18:46, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

I think "shorter than 4 letters" would be an ideal solution to resolve these problems - I can't think of many cases where there would be much contention over uppercase or lowercase for 2 or 3 letter words. douts (talk) 18:54, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment: The way I learned it, length is never a factor. All prepositions are always lowercase unless not being used as prepositions (as “onto” in “They’re Onto Us”). —Frungi (talk) 19:03, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
    I don't think this ("to be onto sb/sth", that is) qualifies. See here for an illustrative discussion on the matter. Therein contained is also a funny and memorable example helping to make clear the distinction (those easily offended may stop reading now):
    Come On Eileen vs. Come on Eileen
    (the former should technically sport a comma after "On", but often, "title givers" are rather sloppy with punctuation)
    Thusly, the capitalization of a single letter serves to convey two different meanings for an otherwise identical title (also something for the "capitalization is purley a style issue, and the way something is styled is always independent of its content, wherefore talk of 'right' and 'wrong' shall not be tolerated in this context" crowd to ponder on). – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 14:39, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
    By the way, this is how the folks at MusicBrainz profess to handle things (which seems to be in between "proposition 2" – or "preposition proposition [2]", if one wants to emphasize the focus on prepositions – and "[prep] prop 3"), though, while they somewhat explain their rationale, they don't provide any sources. – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 14:41, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
    Indeed, the Chicago Manual of Style method of simply lowercasing all prepositions that aren't the first or last in a title/heading (or a phrasal verb) would seem to be the easiest system to adopt. -- Scjessey (talk) 19:59, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
    I'm happy with that - it's an established and respected style guide. As long as we follow one of them... (And if fewer than four is also in wide usage by an established style guide, that would be acceptable too - my comments were related to when people seemed to be in favour of following the IMDB system without considering whether they were following an established guide). But yes, maybe we should seek consistency with ONE style guide, rather than cherrypicking from a variety of different guides. --Rob Sinden (talk) 20:14, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
    The IMDB system is a non-starter anyway, because we are talking about all composition titles. Books, films, plays, albums, songs, pamphlets, magazines, bits of legislation, whatever. -- Scjessey (talk) 20:20, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
    "[The CMoS] would seem to be the easiest system to adopt" (Scjessey) ... and would be at variance with how most titles (save for a few academic papers, maybe) are spelled in the overwhelming majority of "publishing-level" instances. (Rob Sinden: "[...] my comments were related to when people seemed to be in favour of following the IMDB [sic] system without considering whether they were following an established guide" – who are these people?) – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 20:34, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
    Scjessey, how would the system behind IMDb be a "non-starter"? If IMDb used CMoS, would CMoS then become a non-starter, only because a film site uses it?
    (I'm sure you don't mean ill, but what you are doing is putting up and tearing down straw men, instead of addressing what I actually wrote.
    It's not about IMDb only, it's not about IMDb per se, it's not about a film-centric approach – a plethora of on- and offline publishers use that way of capitalizing, they certainly do not base it on IMDb, their output comprises the widest imaginable range of work titles.
    Not only did I spell out all of that in a clear and nuanced way the very first time around, no, I also explicitly repeated those points that were already worded rather unambiguously to begin with several times.) – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 23:34, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
  • I support amending the rule to cover all prepositions. The idea of capitalizing long prepositions is just a carry-over of the old convention of capitalizing all important words in all texts. It's a silly rule, as having X letters does not make a prep important, and we no longer cap anything else because it's important. — kwami (talk) 20:49, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
    I'd go for that, too. It's definitely a more sensible, and less arbitrary sounding rule. Being in the CMOS is enough to make it at least a candidate. Dicklyon (talk) 22:10, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
    It sure is a valid candidate, but while the CMoS is held in high regard and of great import to many areas, I just can't see that its influence extends significantly to capitalization of titles. Before another of those unfounded "you want a film-only solution" charges is hurled, take a look at the table of contents of this (Hal Leonard Corporation) or this (Music Sales Group). There's a myriad of real-world examples such as these where IMDb-like capitalization is applied (I'd of course still would like to know what all those are based on). Can you point to a smiliar breadth (many publications) and depth (quality publications) with regards to CMoS capitalization? (Also, are you guys / gals positive that the CMoS really says what you think it says? That's an honest question, as I personally don't have access to a copy and therefore have to rely on second-hand sources – and, as shown farther up, those can be wrong.)
    Yes, it does. CMoS 16th ed.: "8.155: Capitalization of titles of works—general principles. Titles mentioned or cited in text or notes are usually capitalized headline-style (...) 8.157: Principles of headline-style capitalization (...) 3. Lowercase prepositions, regardless of length [except phrasal verbs and Latin expressions like De Facto, In Vitro, etc.] (...) 4. Lowercase the conjunctions and, but, for, or, and nor. 5. Lowercase to [always] and lowercase as in any grammatical function." --Enric Naval (talk) 00:38, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
    Thanks for that, Enric Naval. I can't support choosing CMoS for title capitalization, then. In addition to many titles among the kind listed above, countless others, containing prepositions such as ... about ..., ... against ..., ... beneath ..., ... between ..., ... beyond ..., ... past ... and so forth, would look weird and be out of sync with common usage as well. – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 12:22, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
    WP:COMMONNAME has nothing to do with the style of a page title. I think using CMoS is a great idea, and I would throw my full support behind that. -- Scjessey (talk) 17:20, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
    You can go around framing your opinions as apodictically as you want, that doesn't mean the matter is as clear-cut as you think it is. Also, being actually used certainly doesn't disqualify any styles nor any guides advocating them. – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 21:04, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
    Indeed, there is an attempt to explicitly remove that confusion, via the RFC now open at WP:AT#RfC on COMMONSTYLE proposal. A majority of respondents agree that we should explicitly state in TITLE that the MOS is the guideline for article title styling, which is how we have always done it, and is the implicit point underlying most of this discussion. Some users don't think it's put clearly enough, and a few want to be able to let majority of sources determine title styling, but that is a very marginal idea, as it conflict with the whole idea of WP having any kind of consistent styling. Dicklyon (talk) 18:10, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
    You're not saying I am arguing against consistency, are you? No matter what one thinks of [the exact location of] the substance–style divide, why should "consistency" and "wide distribution" necessarily be mutually exclusive, why should the former not have preceded the latter? Ever thought about the possibility that there actually might be a reason for the apparent prevalence of the style used by IMDb and many, many others, that there might be a system behind that practice? I'm still waiting for the style experts here to tell me where that style was adopted from (then we could finally use the proper name, as many people seem to find it difficult to distinguish between "do as IMDb does because it's IMDb" and "let's find out what style guide IMDb follows and examine said style guide further") – a style that's been around way before IMDb even came into existence. Instead of just saying "I don't care if it's popular, we don't do popular around here!" (and thereby dismissing a view that isn't even held in this debate – at least not by me), one could be asking "Why is it popular? Might there be an authoritative style guide behind it?" You can have a style that's popular and systematic and therefore consistent, if it's well founded, ya know? – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 21:04, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
    So, what do we have so far? Current MoS (capitalization rules of unclear origin), AP, APA and CMoS? What does the MLA say? What's the style guide governing "my" above "proposition 2"? What's the respective stance of other style guides? – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 21:15, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
    Since determining the look of work titles throughout Wikipedia shouldn't be decided upon easily, does anybody know how to bring this to the attention of actual publishers, database operators, archivists, ... in all kinds of fields? – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 21:27, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
    Posted a notification of this discussion over at the talk pages for MoS:CAPS / MoS:CT (Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters), WP:NCCAPS (Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (capitalization)) and WP:AT / WP:NC / WP:TITLE (Wikipedia talk:Article titles). – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 08:29, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
I don't get why this is even a discussion for titles where we can see the author's intent? Does Wikipedia really support overriding the CREATOR of the title just to follow some silly rule? For example, there are many movies that are lowercase everything. Should Wikipedia capitalize that...thus changing the creator's work just beause it is a main word in the title? That is asinine. Who the hell is ANY Wikipedia contributor to decide what the author, producer, etc. wanted?74.67.106.1 (talk) 11:31, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
I agree with this sentiment. The name of a book, film, song, or other such work is whatever the author has chosen to name it. If Quentin Tarantino names his movie, FrOm dUsK TiLl dAwN, that is its name. That should be the overriding governing principle for names of these kinds of things, to the extent that it can be determined from, for example, the movie poster, titles, record jacket, and so forth. A recent example that I came across is Straight On till Morning (album). The article has an image of the album cover, on which "Till" is quite clearly capitalized. bd2412 T 02:16, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
You mean like Se7en and eXistenZ? See MOS:TM. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:59, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
MOS:TM refers to trademarks. Although titles of works may be subject to trademark registration and use, they are not, by themselves, trademarks and should not be subject to guidelines governing product names intended to signify brand ownership, as opposed to titles merely reflecting the artistic choice of the author of a creative work. bd2412 T 04:00, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
There's a huge difference between a title where its capitalization may not be exactly in line with normal capitalization rules for English but otherwise still readable in running prose; and then capitalization that makes reading prose difficult. We should avoid the latter case at all times (as noted by MOS:TM) but the former, we should stick with what is most official unless there is nothing assuredly official, in which case we should default to proper English capitalization (which the 5-letter rule is not always true). --MASEM (t) 14:43, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

And just to demonstrate the point [6]. --MASEM (t) 05:58, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

(ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 13:23, 30 January 2013 (UTC):)
To unify two discussions basically dealing with the same issues, the following was transferred here from its original location at the talk page for MoS:CAPS:

4-letter prepositions in composition titles

WP:CT is clear that only prepositions of five letters or more should have their first letter capitalized, but I've never seen an uncapitalized four-letter preposition in a title that didn't look wrong. The aforementioned Star Trek RM touches on this; it's definitely against CT, but it just looks sloppy and doesn't appear that way in most sources. I'm not the type to prefer source styling over MOS styling, though, so would anyone be amenable to expanding CT to capitalize four-letter prepositions? And don't tell me how much work that would entail—just whether it would be right or wrong, please. --BDD (talk) 17:33, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

It would suffer from the same problem with different words, such as "with" and "from" (View from the Top, It Came from Beneath the Sea, The Man with the Golden Gun, etc.) I think an explicit list is in order if the rule is to be changed, capitalizing some four-letter prepositions and leaving others uncapitalized. Maybe even capitalize some three-letter prepositions, as we already do in 33⅓ Revolutions Per Monkee. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:40, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
Glad to see someone's talking about this. We've digressed on the "Into" argument regarding Star Trek, and we've opened a whole new can of worms. If, as some sources are suggesting, "into" becomes part of a phrasal verb, should it be capitalised according to the MOS? As far as we can see, it should. If that is the case, there are many articles (see a massive list of examples in the Star Trek discussion, some of which qualify) that may also need the "into" capitalised. Might it be wise for us to discuss the existence of phrasal verbs, and how this affects capitalisation? drewmunn (talk) 12:56, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
Can you provide an example of a phrasal verb using "into"? (The Star Trek problem, IMO, is not one of phrasal-verbness, but instead stems from the use of a subtitle "Into Darkness" without the normal colon or dash or other indication; clever marketing, perhaps, but lousy style; as a sentence, "Star trek into darkness" doesn't work so well, so "Star Trek into Darkness" doesn't either, but neither does "Star Trek Into Darkness"; I'd go with "Star Trek: Into Darkness", and ignore their marketing style. But I realize that perspective is probably just one of many in that discussion.) -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:08, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
Crash into Me and I'm into Something Good are two examples of the word being used as particles of the verb and should be capitalized, but aren't. There are many more. I also found Run Into the Light as one example of "into" being capitalized in a title, yet I'm not really sure it should be since it does look like it's being used as a preposition there. --DocNox (talk) 23:55, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
Whay should "Crash into Me" be capitalised? I don't think this is a phrasal verb. The verb is "to crash", "into" is just the preposition. Not sure about "I'm into Something Good" though - maybe in this context "to be into" is a phrasal verb. "Run into the Light" shouldn't be capitalised though, unless it is about a chance encounter with the light! --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:00, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Be careful as to what is a phrasal verb and what isn't. "Trek into" wouldn't be a phrasal verb. In this example, "trek" is the verb, and "into" the preposition. However, "run into", as in accidentally meet some one, would be a phrasal verb, and in this example "into" should be capitalised in a composition title. However if you "ran into" a shop to get something, this is not a phrasal verb. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:10, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
The fact is it can be interpreted either way and without context we have no way of knowing which is really meant. I doubt the filmmakers even thought about it this much. --DocNox (talk) 23:55, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
The purpose of Wikipedia: think deeply over decisions made in a split second. It's a bit like taking a literature qualification again. drewmunn (talk) 07:22, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
As far as a general phrasal verb goes, "trek into" isn't one. I'm not talking about specifically Star Trek - that's a more complicated problem. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:00, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
Having read what you've put forward so far, it's straightened stuff out for me a little more. I agree now that "trek into" in it's pure form probably can't be a phrasal verb; as you say, it doesn't really have extra meaning when combined. "Star Trek Into", however, probably could be, if you take it to mean the franchise gets dark. However, as you said, that complex and not really for this discussion. I know it's simplistic and probably too broad, but as suggested earlier by BDD, could we expand CT to cover "Into"? As suggested by JHunterJ, I don't think all 4-letter prepositions need CT, but some, specifically "into" could probably do with it. It would deal with all cases without the argument on a case-by-case basis. drewmunn (talk) 09:11, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
But what would be the justification for tmaking a special exception for "into"? Surely it should follow the same rules as every other preposition. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:15, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
Other than avoiding arguments such as the Star Trek one, I have nothing. drewmunn (talk) 09:17, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
The suggestion at WT:MOS#WP:NCCAPS → "shorter than five letters" rule is to abandon the letter-counting approach to preposition capitalization and instead identify which prepositions get capitalized and which don't. It wouldn't be a "special exception" for any of them. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:30, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
I wasn't aware of that discussion, but I'm against the proposed changes! --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:42, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
The current letter-focused guideline causes many problems and needs improvement. Whether we have special exceptions to letter-counting or skip the letter count entirely yields the same result. What's the downside? -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:54, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
I've just looked through the proposal, and think that, with a little refinement, it'd be a major improvement over the current system. drewmunn (talk) 13:58, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
If it is an established system of usage of the English language, then it's fine, but editors seem to be cobbling together rules based on examples given on other websites, rather than respecting long established guidelines of usage. We should be discussing which guideline to follow in these cases, not make up our own. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:05, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
Our manual of style is indeed assembled by editors, but we're not basing it on examples from other websites (although we are using other websites as well as other sources to inform the guidelines). -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:53, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

I remember some rule from somewhere (sorry, that's not helpful to anyone), that prepositions with more than one syllable should be capitalized. Thus, "from" and "with" (examples given above) are both one syllable long, while "into" (the other example from above), "wherefore" (although, this exceeds WP's 5-letter rule) are two syllables and should be capitalized. Would this be helpful in this debate, and would it be a helpful rule in Wikipedia MOS? The word "into" is unusual for being two syllables rather than one for its letter length. Also, does anyone know where this rule comes from? — al-Shimoni (talk) 02:27, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

A follow-up on my last (and perhaps my last comment and this should be moved to a separate thread of its own). I was looking at other four-letter English prepositions. "Upon" is a four letter preposition, but two syllables, and I noticed that it is, so-far that I have observed, consistently capitalized in wiki articles (for example, the multiple "Once Upon a Time" articles). Four-letter two-syllable prepositions include: amid (a+mid), atop (a+top), into (a shortened compound preposition), onto (shortened compound preposition), over, unto (formed by analogy of "until", a shortened compound preposition), and upon (a shortened compound preposition). The reason I point out the shortened compound prepositions is that WP asks to capitalize the first word of compound prepositions (regardless of length). That they are shortened forms, however, makes that WP rule no longer applicable (at least, as currently written). But, it seems that since 1) all the two-syllable four-letter prepositions (except over) appear to come from compounds, and 2) their two-syllable nature seems to make them want to be capitalized (and there seems to be a rule somewhere that says one should capitalize such — see previous comment by me), then a rule could easily and reasonably be created to say they should be capitalized. As a note, there are no three or shorter letter prepositions with more than one syllable.
Proposal: Perhaps we should amend the sentence in the article which says "Prepositions that contain five letters or more (During, Through, About, Until, etc.)" to read as "Prepositions that contain five letters or more (During, Through, About, Until, etc.), or more than one syllable."
Thoughts?
— al-Shimoni (talk) 03:17, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
I like it – and I don't: there are problems. Would you mind if I copied this whole section (or parts of it) over to the ["older", longer] discussion at WT:MoS and replied to you there? That way, everything would be centrally in one place – and a place where probably more people stop by than here. – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 23:32, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
I haven't had time to read this through thoroughly, but from your last comment, I think we're getting somewhere. I agree with your observation of compound prepositions, and I think it warrants a look into. As for your proposal, I think it covers the purpose well. It may need some streamlining, but in essence I think it's good. drewmunn (talk) 12:30, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
I only just now noticed this section deals with the same issue I first brought up last November here. Everyone's input over there obviously welcome. (Crossed out because I realized the discussion I started is already mentioned and linked further up by JHunterJ. The invitation to head over to and join me at that WT:MoS section obviously still stands. Sorry for the redundancy.) – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 19:42, 27 January 2013 (UTC) (ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 22:57, 28 January 2013 (UTC))
Is there an established style guideline that supports the theory that a two-syllable preposition is a compound preposition, or is this just synthesis? --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:13, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
Except for "over", all the English 4 letter prepositions that I've seen have been shortened/contracted compounds. But being shortened, they are no longer two distinct words, thus the WP:MOS rule about a compound preposition may not apply. "Over" — from every source I have seen — originates as a single preposition (cognate to German "über"). The list of two-syllable four-letter prepositions is quite short (listed above). There are no two-syllable three-letter, 2-syll two-letter, nor (obviously) 2-syll single-letter prepositions. Capitalizing 5+ letter preps, or 2+ syllable preps would cover much of the words in dispute. — al-Shimoni (talk) 06:35, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
Again, would the contributors here mind if I copied this over to WT:MoS, so we'd have everything in one place? I and others could just comment on your points there and link to here to get the context, but this would obviously be very cumbersome. Since I'd copy, not cut, you still could continue debating here if that's what you prefer, but I don't know if my action would be considered impolite or seen as an attempt to hijack your thread. Thoughts? – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 09:32, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
I'm all for copying it over, and nobody seems to be against it, so go ahead. Stick a referral link in here so we can get to the other conversation and hopefully get things moving on both fronts. drewmunn talk 10:00, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

al-Shimoni, your wording "Prepositions that contain five letters or more (During, Through, About, Until, etc.), or more than one syllable." would improve some titles (in my opinion), but also bring about renderings such as these:

Stranger than Fiction,
From Dusk till Dawn (while this spelling has grown on me personally, it's still at variance with widest and [semi-]official usage),
The Englishman Who Went up a Hill But Came down a Mountain or
33⅓ Revolutions per Monkee

(And what about like? Am I mistaken in my belief, that while it technically consists of two syllables, in practice – like, when employing poetic meters – it counts as one-syllable word? So how to treat it?)

Not to mention that your theory isn't style guide-sourced [yet] – and so far, neither are my [prep] props 2 and 3 (nor our MoS's current policy, for that matter).

I was mulling over and going through conceptions along the lines or "word-width" / "number of 'slim' characters", but I ran into trouble there as well – and, again, I couldn't find any authoritative guides propping up such gedankenexperiments.

Further, the crux with such "mechanistic" rules is that they don't account for "inner-language logic" / innate relationships between words (over–under, up–down, from–till/until etc.), therefore suffering themselves from a kind of "inconsistency".

While I personally don't like everything about it, I'm in the process of coming around to advocating the syle employed here (see the TOC there), above given as [prep] prop 2, also used by IMDb and seemingly the de-facto standard in professional-level publications the world over – obviously under the condition that we can establish its origin / trace it back to a suitable source. If we achieve that, then, in my opinion, this would represent the best of both worlds: it would be a systematic, sourced solution, and it would be reflective of widest common authoritative real-life usage. – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 13:33, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

What system do you think the Dylan TOC follows and which titles do you think it affects? --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:40, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
I still don't know its name or origin. For how titles are affected, see the above three lists (out of them, it's [prep] prop 2) – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 13:53, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
So which titles specifically are you drawing our attention to from the Dylan songbook? --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:56, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
Both links from farther up (the other is this) were actually more meant as objection to CMoS, which lowercases all prepositions, while the books cited differentiate (meaning, "To Be Alone with You" or "Falling in Love with Love" wouldn't change, but, with CMoS, there's no more "Down Along the Cove" or "I've Got You Under My Skin"). As for being at variance with the "shorter than five letters" rule currently in use here, "Walkin' Down the Line" could be pointed to; in the other book, there's "Do Nothin' Till You Hear from Me". (By the way, the Dylan songbook isn't entirely consistent, either, like, by having "I am a Lonesome Hobo". And one could could also ask, why is it with, but Without?)
Don't song titles have their own (simple) capitalization rule separate from movie and book titles? Specifically, I understand the rule for song titles is along the lines of capitalize the first letter of every word, regardless of semantic function (so even definite and indefinite articles are always capt). I have not looked but, I am guessing WP's MOS completely ignores this industry convention and throws all titles under the same rules. — al-Shimoni (talk) 23:44, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
MOS:CT capitalizes songs like anything else. In practice, that rule is followed on Wikipedia and off Wikipedia, to my knowledge. Art LaPella (talk) 00:19, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
  • I think it may be time for an RFC. With Star Trek into Darkness moved to Star Trek Into Darkness, the article (after rather extensive discussion) and the MOS are in conflict. Normally that means you change the article, but there seems to be broad dissatisfaction with the status quo, so it may be time to change the MOS instead. The only thing I'm not sure about at this point is how to propose a change. Should we just add to the current wording and say that prepositions of multiple syllables will also get capitalized? --BDD (talk) 16:17, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
Star Trek Into Darkness is a unique case, and we shouldn't be getting all excited and changing the MoS purely on the basis of this. A lot of the arguments were based on whether or not "Into Darkness" was a subtitle: there was a lot of opposition to the suggestion that it was a running phrase. If we do change the MoS, it should be on a more solid grounding, and we shouldn't be trying to change the MoS to accommodate one title. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:20, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
How is it a unique case, apart from the volume of discussion it provoked? Presumably you mean that we were capitalizing the title differently than virtually any other source. But that's the case in almost every other similar composition title; "Moves like Jagger" is just one that instantly springs to mind. The intent is not to change the MOS to accommodate one title, but to improve many titles. --BDD (talk) 17:19, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
It's a unique case, because the main argument is down to whether "Into Darkness" is an implied subtitle or not. The majority of editors seem to think that it is, that's why the capitalisation has stuck. We're not likely to have the same argument about, say, "Step into Christmas". --Rob Sinden (talk) 23:07, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
I disagree. It’s one possible argument, yes, but the main argument is that no one uses a lowercase ‘I’ in this title. See my following previous comment. —Frungi (talk) 00:33, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
I also disagree (and it doesn't hinge on being a minority–majority thing, anyway) – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 13:01, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Sorry if this has been discussed already, but this is a long section… The way I see it, we should follow the MOS unless it conflicts with real-world use. The MOS should list an explicit exception for if no or scarce reliable sources use the style dictated by the MOS, or if a non-standard style is overwhelmingly used. This includes which words are and are not capitalized. —Frungi (talk) 17:49, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Frungi, in essence, this is like saying (for illustrative purposes just addressing one example of one facet of the issue), "we should leave in place the rules that prescribe to write ... over ..., but every time a title containing that word actually comes up (e.g., One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest – see how Warner Bros. sytle it in their press material for the Blu-ray Disc release), we should make an exception and switch to ... Over ..., since that's the way it's spelled the real world over". If you actually agree with the last part of that sentence, it would make a lof of a lot more sense to instead change our MoS (likely best to yet-to-be-sourced [prep] prop 2, in my opinion). – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 13:01, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
But this is in direct contradiction of WP:NCCAPS which says "Wikipedia strives to become a leading (if not the leading) reference work in its genre, formality and an adherence to conventions widely used in the genre are critically important to credibility". As we can see from recent coverage in the media, our credibility has brought into question. If we'd have stuck to our MOS, this wouldn't have been an issue. --Rob Sinden (talk) 08:58, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
Rob Sinden, if our MoS weren't at variance with "the world at large", this truly wouldn't have been an issue. I'm all for sticking to the MoS, but for that we first must make sure we have something worth sticking to (I'm just talking about the work title capitalization rules part of the MoS, obviously, although that doesn't mean the rest – comprising, no doubt, a great many valuable content – is already perfect, either). – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 13:01, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Into, Onto, Upon, Off of are all compound adpositions. The fact that they are shortened (space removed) does not suddenly make them not-compound adpositions. Where do the rules state that compound adpositions without spaces are exempt from the "capitalize the first letter of the compound adposotion rule?" The first word in the compound preposition INTO is INTO. This is the most literal interpretation of the rule you can take. The rule did not state "take the first letter of the first word ""when the compound preposition is more than one word." People who believed this were interpreting the rule incorrectly. http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/594/02/ All compound adpositions should be capitalized, but especially Into and Onto in certain circumstances. Words like amid and until are trickier, and there needs to be more research. I'm not comfortable saying they are compound prepositions because a and un cannot be used as prepositions alone. To clarify why this is - [I Ran the Door] [I Ran in the Door] [I Ran to the Door] [I Ran Into the Door] Notice: [(I Ran in)(to the Door)] doesnt even really make sense. It means you ran up to a door and stopped next to it. [(I Ran into the Store)] and [(I Ran in the Store)] mean the same thing. This class of words are more important than standard prepositions. Into is part of the verb because INTO is what you did, not ran. You should be consulting experts and not laymen with manuals to derive your rules. If you don't understand WHY a rule works the way it works, you shouldn't be advocating it just because the manual says so. Anyone who was advocating Star Trek into Darkness, because a manual says so, needs to go back and learn the grammar behind how the rules are formed. This situation mirrors HG Wells Time Machine. The Eloy follow the war sirens but they have no idea why. Then they get slaughtered. In this case people are advocating following rules, but nobody knows why the rule exists. If you can't explain WHY the rule is the way it is, go back and research more. In short: Onto and Into should be capitalized in titles, regardless of other rules, but especially when the presence of to changes the meaning of the sentence. They involve motion and they are compound prepositions. All compound prepositions (even the ones with spaces removed) should be capitalized, but ESPECIALLY when removing to changes the meaning of the sentence or fragment. "Star Trek in Darkness" is not synonymous with "Star Trek Into Darkness", thus Into should be capitalized. It would be moronic to claim that "The Empire: Strikes Back" should be punctuated that way just because Empire is bigger on the poster. The same rule would apply to Run in the Park and Run Into the Park. But not Run in to the Store and Run in the Store. The MOS is wrong if it does not take these situations into account. Rules like how many letters a word has are inadequate, broken, and harmful to Wikipedia. Xkcdreader (talk) 13:20, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

"Into is part of the verb because INTO is what you did, not ran." (Xkcdreader)
↔
"In "We're adding on a wing at the back of the building," "on" is really part of the verb, while in "We're adding a porch onto the house," "onto" is a simple preposition. This contrast points to a fairly important and general rule: Simple prepositions can combine with verbs, but compound prepositions cannot." (from a page invoked by you, Xkcdreader)
Xkcdreader, please explain.
Further, in addition to ... into ..., ... onto ..., ... upon ..., among other things, there's also the question of what to do why with ... down ..., ... from ..., ... like ..., ... over ..., ... per ..., ... than ..., ... till ..., ... until ..., ... up ..., ... with .... What about those? – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 14:34, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment WP:NCCAPS is a naming convention is is not part of WP:MOS but part of WP:AT. If a naming convention contents is going to be discussed surly the place to do it is either on the talk page AT of the AT policy or on the talk page of its naming convention? Why discuss it on an unrelated guideline page? -- PBS (talk)
WP:NCCAPS defers to MOS:CT when discussing composition titles. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:32, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
How do you come to that conclusion? -- PBS (talk) 18:18, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
Per WP:NCCAPS: "In general, each word in English titles of books, films, and other works takes an initial capital, except for articles ("a", "an", "the"), the word "to" as part of an infinitive, prepositions and coordinating conjunctions shorter than five letters (e.g., "on", "from", "and", "with"), unless they begin or end a title or subtitle. Examples: A New Kind of Science, Ghost in the Shell, To Be or Not to Be, The World We Live In. For details, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (capital letters)#Composition titles." --Rob Sinden (talk) 19:00, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
And that guidance says "For the style guideline on capitalization in article titles, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization)." point is that Naming conventions cover article titles, the guidance in the MOS my be useful but it is the AT policy and its naming conventions that should be followed by decide on article titles. If the MOS guidelines contradict AT policy or its naming conventions then the MOS guideline should be placed to one side. -- PBS (talk) 10:25, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
That's just a hat note, in case you've come here looking for the naming conventions by typing MOS:CAPS rather than WP:NCCAPS. But there's no issue - the two do not contradict each other anyway. WP:NCCAPS says to use the capitalisation rules for composition titles, briefly defines them "in general", then points you to MOS:CT for further detailed information on these rules. The two are complementary. --Rob Sinden (talk) 10:45, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
PBS, whatever the technicalities (can't you have that jurisdiction fight elsewhere?), this debate (predating a similar one included above) was opened by me here, thinking [perhaps wrongly] this was where most people would stumble by. I've meanwhile posted notifications at many other talk pages, not just at WT:AT, WT:NCCAPS or WT:MoSCAPS, but also at WT:FILM, WT:MoSFILM etc. pp. (by the way, notification postings at additional pages affected by work title guidelines and policies obviously welcome on my part) So, if you wanna move this, please have to courtesy to hunt all those down and change them (just posting a redirect here won't do, as that'll get auto-archived). How about instead discussing content / the issue at hand? – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 13:30, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

[Prep] Prop 2

As there has been little progress here lately and – with regards to the present state of affairs – I've already said (sometimes more than once) most of what there was to be said on my part, and since the amount of time that I can dedicate to discussing this will be limited for the nonce (while keeping up what I mostly do at Wikipedia anyway: reading and some WikiGnoming), [save for some major new developments] there likely won't be many more postings from me on this going forward. I'll take WT:MoS off my watchlist, so if anyone'd like to address me over something, please do so via my talk page, as otherwise I won't be aware of it.

Now, I'm sure you couldn't care less whether I'm sticking around or not; the reason I'm writing this is because the majority of the admittedly few people commenting do seem to be unsatisfied with the status quo of our MoS's work title capitalization rules, the disagreement apparently being mainly not on the that [we change them], but on the how [we change them]. So I hereby express my hope that someone will pick up the cause and prevent this section from being auto-archived after seven days (maybe there's a tag to achieve that, but I wouldn't know what it's called, nor whether I'd be authorized to use it).

My own opinion on what to go with oscillated between what I ended up calling "[prep] prop 2" and "[prep] prop 3". Since then, I've come around to favoring [prep] prop 2 – not because I personally like every aspect of it, but because, to me, it appears to be most in tune with real-world use by far (for all kinds of work titles). For although following CMoS's advice certainly would make for the simplest and, in a way, most logical prescriptions (correction: that title actually belongs to the method that capitalizes all words in a title, à la "Across The Alley From The Alamo" – just as ugly as what CMoS does, but much more prevalent) (all prepositions, regardless of length or other criteria, are lower-cased), that's just not what's done by the brunt of the major authoritative publishers (of newspapers, magazines, [fiction and non-fiction] books, sheet music, press material etc. pp.) out there. I predict even more challenges to the validity and jurisdiction of our MoS if we were to replace the "shorter than five letters" rule with CMoS's "lower-case all prepositions". And, I mean, anecdotally, An Essay concerning Human Understanding anyone? That just doesn't correspond to actual usage. And I guess I needn't really mention that the whole Star Trek Into Débâcle (and that one link given was before the tidings of the xkcd comic strip hit that talk page) would not have happened, had [prep] prop 2 been in effect (and, pre-emptively, no, it wasn't merely about whether or not the second part can be seen as an implied subtitle – see this whole discussion for illustrative purposes; and does anybody really believe that if From Dusk Till Dawn was released today the backlash would be any different from what went down in the Star Trek situation?). I'm not saying [prep] prop 2 will never lead to problems, but the number of instances would be greatly reduced. Also, with the MoS's capitalization rules being more in harmony with reality, a large chunk of the currently constant "who trumps whom" (WP:AT ↔ WP:MoS and so forth) bickering could be dispensed with as well.

Granted, save for someone suddenly stepping forward (sadly hasn't happened so far), if we were to go down that road, we might well have to resign ourselves to the fact (if it is a fact) that there either, a), really is no good style guide which this seemingly widest-of-all way of capitalizing work titles is grounded on, or that, b), it does exist but could potentially remain elusive for a very long time, pending a find.

By a), I mean it's conceivable for [prep] prop 2 to have developed from a general "capitalize important words" into what is today the de-facto standard, really (this is pure speculation, obviously). If so, isn't there a case to be made for something that has become a sorta benchmark, a best practice (leading to often quasi-[semi-]official title styling), passed on as a tradition, even if probably mostly without the knowledge where it's originated from / what it's based on? I mean, it's here, does it really devaluate the result if its genesis is shrouded in darkness? Think of it as a customary usage argument, think of customary law in jurisprudence, where something can become "law" / can gain [quasi-]legal status by mere continued constant application, no matter the roots. And what's more important for a guide, reliably demonstrable usage or a halfway-decently sourced set of rules that no one uses outside Wikipedia? (and I ain't so sure the MoS as is is implicitly well sourced on every point in the first place, though it's hard to tell since hardly any actual references are given anywhere)

I would very much prefer the circumstances to be different and have both, wide practical usage and a solid theoretical foundation said wide usage is based on, but, alas, the latter seems unattainable for the time being.

However, since there is an abundance of reliable, published sources that use the style of [prep] prop 2, therefore indirectly confirming its existence (precisely by applying that style / showing it "in action"), I'm confident its inclusion would not constitute original research.

In short, I hereby would like to recommend the adoption of the principles stated in [prep] prop 2 (while naturally retaining grammatically justified and explicated constructional exceptions, such as capitalizing on etc. when part of a phrasal verb). – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 14:40, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

for ease of reference, in repetition of a passage further up, this is what [prep] prop 2 says:

save for their position at the beginning or end of a title, these English-language words must begin with a lower-case letter:
a, an, and, as, at, by, for, from, in, of, on, or, the, to, with
(see also the list with examples)

—added by Frungi (talk) 19:44, 15 February 2013 (UTC) / ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 09:13, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Should there be no or not enough or not yet enough support for this approach to work title capitalization, I'd appreciate it if someone kept this debate alive and saw it through to its conclusion. – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 14:40, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I support that proposition, as I think it is the best of the three. However, I also feel that the choice of the author of a work to capitalize the first letter of a proposition in the title chosen by that author for his work should override the niceties of style preferences for capitalization. bd2412 T 19:13, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
Comment: I don’t see how original research is or could be a factor here. The MOS only exists for internal consistency, so our style rules can be whatever consensus demands. But I think that no matter what’s decided here, external consistency on a case-by-case basis is more important—if a particular orthography (capitalization, etc.) of a given title is overwhelmingly used outside of Wikipedia, then it should be so in Wikipedia; if not, or if many sources disagree, we use our own style. There is already precedent for this on Wikipedia, but currently we call them “exceptions” rather than the rule; I think it should be the rule. —Frungi (talk) 19:54, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
It could be seen as WP:OR if we invent a style guide that does not take precedent from an established external style guideline. And I think with regard to making the exception the rule, we should be very careful, as it makes the guideline less defined. Consensus can always override the guideline to make an exception, but if you have a guideline that is open to interpretation (what constitutes "overwhelming"?) it will just cause more arguments. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:10, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
I don’t understand. A house style guide is not a reference work. Our MOS does not list sources—if OR was a concern, this would be mandatory. (Added 23:29, 24 February 2013 (UTC): Not to mention that many editors, including you, often don’t mention any external guides when making suggestions, such as yours here.)
To the rest of your post, you make a good point. But don’t we have the same questions when dealing with WP:COMMONNAME? And that’s a well established part of policy. —Frungi (talk) 00:15, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
In that particular case, no-one seems to be able to find a style guide that makes provision for that particular case. If you look at my other comments on that page, I think I've brought up precedents and outside style guidelines at least 4-5 times. I think it's important that we follow established conventions, and other guidelines that are in common usage (like CMoS, etc) are a good starting point. We need to make sure we understand the reasons for capitalisation and non-capitalisation before we start !voting on something that may or may not have been made up arbitrarily (the OR part of my argument). --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:40, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
All such rules are made up arbitrarily. But that aside, is it merely a matter of personal preference, or do the MOS or policy say somewhere that we need outside precedence for our own house style rules (and if so, why doesn’t the MOS cite precedence?)? Because if it’s the latter, then that’s kind of an important rule and it should be made more prominent. Also, please address my question about this specific case—don’t the concerns you brought up also apply to an established part of policy, WP:COMMONNAME? —Frungi (talk) 18:52, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
I don't know whether or not it is a Wikipedia "rule", but to my mind, we should be looking to outside style guidelines for direction so that we aren't making up a MoS that is completely unique to Wikipedia. Please be more specific regarding WP:COMMONNAME. --Rob Sinden (talk) 12:46, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
Okay, so it’s personal opinion. While I respect that, I don’t think it’s okay to push your own views of how our MOS should work as if they’re WIkipedia’s views of how its MOS should work—WP:NOR applies to article content, not to every aspect of the project.
To the main issue: Maybe I misunderstood, but I thought you objected to the concept of using a prevalent style or orthography (e.g. k.d. lang and iPod instead of K.D. Lang and Ipod) because we can’t exactly quantify that, even though WP:COMMONNAME is a very similar concept. But if it was my wording that you took issue with, you’re probably right, and I’d be happy to see some suggestions. —Frungi (talk) 18:14, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
I'm not trying to push my own views! I'm not talking about my views, I'm saying that we need to be careful when picking a new MoS that it has some basis in accepted usage - i.e. we choose to follow the Chicago Manual of Style, or whatever. And as k.d. lang is not a composition title, she's not for discussion here. But no, for the record, I do not approve of blanketly copying the published orthography. But that is also not being discussed here - we're discussing whether to change the rules we have for which prepositions are capitalised and which are not. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:18, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
I apologize for my accusation. So what is the basis for insisting on basing our MOS off of external sources?
I thought we were discussing my suggestion in my comment at the top of this thread: using the most common orthography for a proper noun, if there is one, per (or similarly to) COMMONNAME. And those names I used were examples of proper nouns, which CTs are as well. Do you disapprove of COMMONNAME as well, and if not, why this and not that? —Frungi (talk) 19:28, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
Comment: I really think there should be a provision that weighs the common name above the style guide. As an encyclopedia, Wikipedia should be documenting titles the way they are used by the authors and press not restyling them to be consistent with itself. The style guide should only come into play if the common names are represented in various different and conflicting ways. That said, prop2 seems to be the one I like the best. I don't think rules and decisions should be made by such a small group of people. There has to be a way to get more eyes. Xkcdreader (talk) 23:44, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
Think more carefully and you will change your mind. Firstly, there is nothing forbidding common names, misspellings, misnomers etc in redirs. Secondly, finding the article by entering via a redir is transparent to the user. Thirdly, common names are not common; the biologically correct name is; it is used world wide. Common names are always changing in spelling, usage and region. Most organisms don't have common names and most common names refer to more than one organism. Most common names are in one language, and accordingly open to charges of tendentiousness and prejudice. Read common name if you fail to understand. JonRichfield (talk) 13:57, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
Per WP:NCCAPS: "Because credibility is a primary objective in the creation of any reference work, and because Wikipedia strives to become a leading (if not the leading) reference work in its genre, formality and an adherence to conventions widely used in the genre are critically important to credibility." --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:10, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
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