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Further information: Category talk:Songs written by Jewel (singer) § Jewel vs. "Jewel Kilcher, professionally known as Jewel"

Editor Richhoncho and I seem to have reached an impasse on this style issue. This arose in the context of musician categories. Many musicians are commonly known by names other than their full legal names, and I think category descriptions ought to use these names. Richhoncho believes we need to show artists' legal names as well as their "stage" names, and he would have:

  • Songs written or co-written by Jewel Kilcher, professionally known as Jewel (singer).
  • Songs written or co-written by Chancelor Bennett, known professionally as Chance the Rapper.
  • Songs written or co-written by Ian Fraser Kilmister, professionally known as Lemmy.

I think these should instead be:

  • This category contains songs written or co-written by Jewel.
  • This category contains songs written or co-written by Chance the Rapper.
  • This category contains songs written or co-written by Lemmy.

In my view, WP:COMMONNAME implies that a person should be referred to by the name most commonly used in independent and reliable sources, which is almost always the same as the article's name (without a disambiguation parenthetical, obviously). I think a subject's full name, when it differs from her common name, should typically only be mentioned in that subject's biography.

As far as I know, that's what's done in article space: Ruth Bader Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court by Bill Clinton, not William Jefferson Clinton. Jay Z discography talks about Jay Z, not Jay Z, the stage name of Shawn Corey Carter. Lady Gaga videography makes no mention of the fact that Lady Gaga's "real" name is Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta; if a full-length, featured article about an artist's discography doesn't need to mention her legal name, surely, a category description—something intended to be much shorter—ought to leave it out as well?

Thanks in advance for any input. Rebbing 22:40, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Additional question: Richhoncho has clarified that he thinks the disambiguation parenthetical needs to be in the descriptive prose, so we would have: "This category contains songs written by Jewel Kilcher, professionally known as Jewel (singer)." In my view, this is not acceptable, as Jewel Kilcher has never been known as "Jewel (singer)." A newspaper article would write about Jewel or Madonna, not "Jewel (singer)" or "Madonna (entertainer)." Rebbing 23:37, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Two suggestions, feel free to reject:
  • Songs written or co-written by Jewel Kilcher, professionally known as Jewel. Certainly no need for disambiguation as it's referring to the person not the article. If it was pointing to the article as reference, then you'd say something like "For more information, see Jewel (singer)."
  • Songs written or co-written by Jewel, credited as Jewel Kilcher. Focuses on "common name" but offers the additional information of full name under which writing credits are typically given but not always transparent on Wikipedia. --StarcheerspeaksnewslostwarsTalk to me 00:09, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
It has to be the first version, "Jewel" has never written a song, that's a marketing name for the singer/entertainer. Jewel Kilcher wrote the songs. The fact they are one and the same needs to be explained. I note I have not been piping properly and that gives me something to correct! NB I never said that it should not be piped. --Richhoncho (talk) 00:26, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
By the same argument, "Bill Clinton" never signed anything into law. Rebbing 00:33, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
What name is shown on the sheet music? It's normally at the top right of the first page of score. --Redrose64 (talk) 07:39, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
@Redrose64:. Because Jewel is such a common term I searched Lady Gaga and in every instance on official sheet music where the name of the author was given it was given as Stefani Germanotta. This is continued at her royalty collection agency, BMI]. This is standard practice, and as I understand it, a legal requirement that the author of a work is credited as such. If songs were only written and recorded by the singer/named artists there would be no need for WP to explain the different names. This is totally different to the "Bill Clinton" example being rolled out as an analogy. Cheers. --Richhoncho (talk) 09:05, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
OK, you're confirming what I had assumed. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:09, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
@Redrose64: While it's apparently common practice, I don't believe there's any legal requirement behind it. See 17 U.S.C. § 401(b)(3), which says that a copyright notice shall include "the name of the owner of copyright in the work, or an abbreviation by which the name can be recognized, or a generally known alternative designation of the owner," e.g.., a stage name. I looked through my sheet music, and I found three artists being credited under their stage names in the scores: Alicia Keys (Alicia Augello Cook), Ashlee Simpson (Ashley Nicolle Simpson Næss; Ashlee Simpson is explicitly identified as a stage name by her article), and Shakira (first name of Shakira Ripoll). Rebbing 12:41, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
I created the Alecia Keys and Ashlee Simpson songwriting categories and neither of them make reference to "other names" in any way, shape or form. It wasn't necessary. Mentioning those two categories in this discussion is missing the point of the discussion. Jay Z is often credited as Shawn Carter (or S. Carter) and it does not seem that ridiculous to make a mention in the article and the songwriting category (other categories are not relevant and never have been). You have confirmed immediately below this post that some kind of explanation is necessary where there is a discrepancy between credited name and stage name. I do not see what you are now arguing. That leaves us with a discussion with what the wording in the songwriting categories should be when there is notable divergence between birth name and stage name (I assume nobody is going to bring up Tony -v- Anthony etc). I say, quite correctly, that people write songs and not marketing names, in the example of Kilcher and Lady Gaga I have proven this, in the case of Shakira, you have proven that there are exceptions. Do I need to look at more examples to prove my point? --Richhoncho (talk) 13:58, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
You miss my point. You said above that it's standard practice for artists to be credited under their legal names and that this is a legal requirement. But, as I've shown, this is not the case: some artists are credited under their legal names, some under their stage names. Both are common; there is no legal requirement one way or another. Rebbing 15:08, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
The second version would be fine by me. I don't think the first option is unreasonable, but it seems to me to be inconsistent with how artists are referred to in articles about their songs. Rebbing 00:33, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
The descriptions (or notes, as they are often called) to categories should certainly contain any information necessary to avoid common confusions. I can't see any reason not to - frankly almost no-one ever looks at them anyway. You are not talking about the full legal name, but the form of their name they use in their credits, often different. "Songs written or co-written by Jewel, credited as Jewel Kilcher" is better - "Songs written or co-written by Jewel Kilcher, professionally known as Jewel" is no good, as she presumably uses both names "professionally", one as a stage name & the other for her copyrights & credits. Other wordings are possible. In such cases I'd personally be open to disambiguated category names. Johnbod (talk) 13:03, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

No, per WP:COMMONNAME. Yes, it seems complicated when we're dealing with artists, and artists formerly known as (RIP Prince). But are we really going to move Category:Joseph Stalin to Category:Joseph Jughashvili? Heck, if we went by birth names, we'd have to move the categories of nearly every Pope since Pope Saint Peter (Category:Peter the Apostle). Oh, wait, he was originally named Simon, even that doesn't work. o_O -- Kendrick7talk 15:54, 28 May 2016 (UTC) All the flowers that you planted, momma, in the back yard, just use common names, ooh ooh ooh ahhh

MOSBIO proposal needs more participation

Seeking more participation for my proposal at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biographies#A slight expansion of MOS:JR.

The proposal has been quiet for 10 days, stalemated around a relatively minor detail. To wit: After considering the recent changes to MOS:JR, which established a default of no comma in John Doe Jr., which of the following surname-first forms should be preferred: Doe, John Jr. or Doe, John, Jr.?

Your participation is needed. If you !vote, please first read all of the discussion, including that in the "Extended discussion" subsection. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:40, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

MoS RfC notice

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please participate in the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Images#Proposed repeal of WP:NOETHNICGALLERIES. It is a proposal to vacate the previous consensus reached in the February 2016 RfC that resulted in the creation of the MOS:NOETHNICGALLERIES provision at MOS:IMAGES, and also relates thematically to Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 127#RfC: Ethnicity in infoboxes (all of these discussions are ultimately about using infoboxes to identify individuals as members of particular ethnicities, and this relates also to MOS:IDENTITY).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  17:09, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Request for Comment: Quotes and italics (at MoS:Comics)

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

This discussion seems to be going around in circles—it could use some input from editors outside of WP:COMICS. The discussion is regarding whether we should use italics or quotemarks for ongoing features. The discussion is a Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Comics#Request for Comment: Quotes and italics. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 22:31, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Question about template shortcuts

Should templates not be consistent and not be different from page to page?

I have a question: Why are there template shortcuts? E.g., is it okay if one page uses {{not to be confused with}}, another uses {{confuse}}, and another uses {{confused}}, all of which are the same template? Many templates have many shortcuts, and I think it is rather confusing and messy.

If I am going to add a template to a page, which name of the template do I use?
―PapíDimmi (talk) 02:20, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Why are there template shortcuts? Convenience; same reason there are page shortcuts, like WP:MOS. It’s much quicker and simpler to type {{cn}} or {{fact}} than {{Citation needed}}. You do have a point, though, that multiple in-use names for things can be confusing.
As for which name you should use… that’s the whole point of shortcuts: it doesn’t matter. They all mean the same thing. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 03:37, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
Shortcuts for Wikipedia namespace articles are merely redirects; they do not interfere with anything. The same templates are used with different names throughout articles, which makes it messy and confusing. Would it not be better if all templates in all articles were the same? Besides, readers can get confused by the shortcut and not understand what the template does when editing the source.
―PapíDimmi (talk) 03:52, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
You are wrong: A template "shortcut" is in fact a redirect. --Izno (talk) 11:22, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
I am aware of that, but some articles use some shortcuts and other articles use other shortcuts. There is a rule that we should link to the actual article and not a redirect, but why is there not a rule that we should use the full name of the template?
―PapíDimmi (talk) 21:07, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
There's no "rule" that we should link to the article title and not a redirect. There are often good reasons to link to a redirect; see WP:NOTBROKEN. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:04, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
@Peter coxhead: I thought that redirects serve as a way for people to find the correct article if they do not go to the exact link of the article. I have seen on many other wikis that linking to redirects is prohibited, therefore I thought that it was prohibited on Wikipedia as well. Since redirects might often change, I thought it was good practice to link to the actual article rather than a redirect to the article, as doing otherwise may lead to the link leading to a broken redirect. Still, I, personally, think that it is messy to use a bunch of different names for the same template, as well as linking to redirects as opposed to the actual name of the article.
―PapíDimmi (talk) 22:28, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
I thought that redirects serve as a way for people to find the correct article if they do not go to the exact link of the article. Just so. And the “correct article” may change over time, with merges and splits and new articles. That’s one of the good reasons to intentionally link to a redirect (which may in fact redirect to a subsection of the appropriate article). As for broken redirects, it’s best practice to use tools like Special:WhatLinksHere to ensure that doesn’t happen.
But back to your original question. Basically, we have different names for some templates because editors have gotten used to using different names for them. You can of course feel free to recommend deletion for any you find unnecessary at WP:XfD. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 23:17, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
Often the templates were once different, but someone noticed that they performed the same task, and consolidated them. Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:24, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
If an article links to an article and uses the correct title rather than a redirect, it will turn into a redirect if the article it links to is renamed, but if it links to a redirect page, it will turn into a broken redirect. Therefore, it is better to link to the actual article, is it not?
―PapíDimmi (talk) 01:40, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
Not always, for the reasons explained above. When an article is moved, it's the responsibility of the mover to fix any double redirects. Peter coxhead (talk) 05:48, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

MOS RfC notice: Former names of transgender people, in the lead of bio articles

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please comment at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biographies#RfC: Allow inclusion of former names in lead section of biographies covering transgender and non-binary people. There are multiple proposals on the table to refine wording that emerged from Village Pump discussions on the matter last year.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:49, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Google whasname?

I know there is a google page that allows you to track word usage in sources through the years, and compare it to similar text usages (it's very handy when trying to resolve move discussions)... I have used it several times before... but not in a while... and now I can't remember what the hell it's actually called. Any help? Blueboar (talk) 20:45, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

https://books.google.com/ngrams EEng 20:46, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
That's it... Thanks (kicking myself for not remembering that). Blueboar (talk) 21:04, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
What does this have to do with the Manual of Style? (Also: /r/tipofmytongue.)
―PapíDimmi (talk) 21:32, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
nothing directly... But indirectly, an n-gram search can often show how style has changed over time (or how it is in the process of changing today). Blueboar (talk) 22:51, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
Yes, but use with caution. You can very easily produce grossly misleading statistics with this thing (and anyone experienced with the tool will notice). The date ranges often need to be constrained to stick to modern usage (e.g. 1980s onward, sometimes even more recent, depending on the question at hand). When comparing lowercase vs. capitalized, tricks have to be used to prevent it giving results from Headings Capitalized in Title Case, e.g. by prefixing words like "a", "the" or "of", in lowercase, that would very frequently appear before the intended search term if used in running prose, and do multiple such tests to ensure the results are consistent and not flukes. And so on. We really need to write up a WP:NGRAMS page on how to use and not use this tool. It has other vagaries. E.g., it does not work at all on material containing commas (there doesn't even seem to be a way to escape-code them). Also, one can sometimes input not-terribly-rare constructions into it and get zero or near-zero results, yet get fair numbers of results for genuine rarities, showing that the data set is woefully incomplete and not always statistically significant. I'm not privy to exactly what the selection criteria have been for generating the corpora that it uses, but it appears to focus heavily on public domain works, which means it has a broad and high-quality data set for old material (early 1920s and older), but narrower and worse source data for newer material. Statistical significance can also be affected in two other ways: Raw frequency (it will draw you a graph that looks impressive but might be based on a grand total of two sources), and the default graph smoothing, which distorts the data more and more the fewer the sources are, and/or the more inconsistent it is. And so on. I would love to pick the brain of someone who worked significantly on that project at Google to find out what all the issues with it are. And the corpora have not been updated since 2012 (for some of them, and 2008 for others). All that said, it is good for things where two or more variants, without punctuation other than hyphens, are common (Muammar Qadaffi, Muammar Gadaffi, Muammar al Qadaffi, Muammar al Gadaffi, Muammar al-Qadaffi, etc.).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:41, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
The n-grams ended in 2008, fading further back into the mists of history with each passing hour. I've asked before and nobody has answered, why did they stop then? There must have been a reason from google. It was a good tool but seems dated now. Randy Kryn 15:49, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
It's sure not a good tool for investigating recentisms. I wonder whether 2008 is enough for assessing how much (early) Wikipedia has affected usage in books. Dicklyon (talk) 22:35, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
Did someone spell Gaddafi? But Google never forgets..... does it? Martinevans123 (talk) 22:53, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

For example, should [[America]]'s (America's) or [[America|America's]] (America's) be used?

I have looked far and wide in the manual of style and its subpages, but I cannot find any information on this (there are so many policies).

Are there any rules on this?

I, personally, prefer the first example, as it is much more easy to write and read in the source editor; however, I guess the latter looks better when reading the article.
―PapíDimmi (talk) 19:01, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

I'm sure this was discussed a few weeks ago, possibly on a user talk page - IIRC somebody was being pulled up for altering one form to the other. Don't recall which way they were going though. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:22, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
Well, we do need an answer. I guess there are no policies about this? There should be. This needs to be resolved! Bring justice to Wikipedia!
―PapíDimmi (talk) 20:19, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
Keep looking. There was definitely a long, ridiculous discussion on this within the last six months or so. EEng 20:48, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
It is pretty strange that Wikipedia, which has so many policies that is is impossible to read them all, does not seem to have any information on this. It may have information on this in a policy article; however, I have read all policies about links, apostrophes, possessives, etc., and I have not found anything. Also, @EEng and @Redrose64, I have no idea where this “long discussion” took place. I would appreciate if someone could give me the link, if you find it (I cannot, though, as I have no clue about this discussion).
―PapíDimmi (talk) 10:13, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
  • See WP:PIPE. This isn't a style matter, really, since it doesn't affect the output for readers, it's just a code efficiency issue. There's no practical difference between the two except for editors, and any experienced editor will compress [[America|America's]] down to [[America]]'s on sight. (That said, if you're using "America's" to mean "the United States'", you're making a mistake.  :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:22, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
No, there's a difference -- look closely at the rendered output. I found the discussion I was thinking of -- Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Linking/Archive_18#Saxon_genitive_and_piping -- and had forgotten that it was I, apparently, who put the final dismissive kabosh on it. (Any discussion that starts with someone fussing about the "Saxon genetive" can't lead to anything worthwhile.) My standard reasoning for why MOS should not opine on many things is at User:EEng#A_rolling_stone_gathers_no_MOS. EEng 12:54, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Based on reviewing previous discussion, it appears that the "rule" is that the style should be consistent within an article; so if an article is inconsistent, changing some links to make it consistent is a good thing. But changing from one consistent style to another is frowned on, and is a waste of time at this point when different editors have different opinions of which is preferred and might be moving things in opposite directions. This is why having the MOS express a preference would be a good thing (and yes it is an MOS issue as it affects how the link renders). Dicklyon (talk) 15:10, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Violently disagree. If we don't need a MOS rule on something, then we need to not have a MOS rule on that thing, because there's way too much MOSbloat as it is. And unless there's definite evidence that editors are wasting time litigating and relitigating this on multiple articles, then we don't need a rule. EEng 16:41, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Ideally this should be fixed in the rendering engine. Has this ever been discussed? Is there a reason it can't easily be done? Pburka (talk) 19:24, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

WP:BIKESHEDDING. There's no such thing as something that can "easily be done" -- the system is much too complicated and there's too much at stake. Maybe it would have been better had a different decision been made 15 years ago (though not everyone agrees on that -- see the discussion I linked earlier) but it's too late now. It works the way it works, it's easy to get whichever form of output you want via one syntax or the other, there's no evidence this is causing a problem, and there are much much more important things we need from developers. This is a complete waste of time over something trivial. EEng 22:00, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
Bike shed?? "Don't go too fast, but I go pretty far.... " Martinevans123 (talk) 22:13, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
I had assumed that everyone would agree that linking partial words looks awkward and that we should prefer to link full words. However, after reading that discussion I'm reminded that there are more opinions around here than dreamt of in my philosophies. Pburka (talk) 23:26, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
Welcome to Wikipedia. EEng 23:59, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

In areas of minutiae that don't affect what readers see, I ask this question: Is the editing community spending a ton of time arguing about it? If so, I support a guideline just to put an end to the massive misuse of editor resources. If we are not spending tons of time on it, I tend to oppose a guideline per WP:CREEP. To my knowledge, this issue falls into the latter category, which is not to say that there will not always be local, many times heated skirmishes among lower-experience editors. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:12, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

Well, at the risk of repeating myself, I again offer my personal guidelines for when not to have a MOS rule -- User:EEng#A_rolling_stone_gathers_no_MOS. I note again, however, that this does affect what the reader sees (though in such a retiring way that apparently both you and McCandlish failed to see it.) EEng 01:14, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

Exclamation mark in proper name used as punctuation?

Our Wham! article mostly treats the name of the duo as though the "!" was not there (freely writing "Wham!'s" and so on), which I think is the right way to go, but then it includes the sentence

The Chinese opted for Wham!

Without a period after it, does this not look to anyone else like the exclamation mark is used to express surprise or some other emotion at the Chinese government's decision? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 13:11, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

The exclamation mark is simply stylistic and shouldn't be included in running text. The Yahoo and Seven (1995 film) articles are a good examples of how to handle this. However, this opinion may be somewhat controversial, especially among music editors (see deadmau5). Pburka (talk) 14:52, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Trademarks. —sroc 💬 05:20, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

Expand the wording in MOS:POPCULT

Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) § Expand the wording in MOS:POPCULT
 – By BrightRoundCircle. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:10, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

MOS:POPCULT currently states:

"these sections ["in popular culture" sections] are frequently just lists of appearances and mentions, many of them unencyclopedically trivial"

There is no further information of what separates significant coverage from trivial coverage. This is explained in Wikipedia:"In_popular_culture"_content#Good_and_bad_popular_culture_references:

(1) "Although some references may be plainly verified by primary sources, this does not demonstrate the significance of the reference."
(2) "a cultural references section [...] should be reserved for major, in-depth treatments of the subject that have had lasting significance"

I would very much like the first quote, and if possible the second quote, to be part of the policy. Otherwise, it's very hard to understand what "unencyclopedically trivial" means, and further elaboration is needed. There are very good contributors who have been contributing to Wikipedia for years who believe a primary source is a valid source for "in popular culture" material, and that minor, trivial coverage is valid. "In popular culture" mentions should have sources that show the significance of the reference, not just a verification that the reference exists, and adding (1) and (2) to the policy will greatly clarify this position. BrightRoundCircle (talk) 18:01, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

The proposer is currently trying to argue for this same interpretation in an AFD that is still open; posting this here simultaneously smacks of WP:FORUMSHOPPING and an attempt to legislate the AFD's end result due to their failure to gain a consensus for their interpretation in that discussion. postdlf (talk) 18:07, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
This is a global Wikipedia policy that applies to thousands of articles. That one specific article aside, what do you think about the policy? BrightRoundCircle (talk) 18:12, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
One of the items you cite is a vague guideline, and the other is a personal essay. Where are you getting global Wikipedia policy that applies to thousands of articles from? ‑ Iridescent 18:14, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
How many articles do you think MOS:POPCULT applies to? BrightRoundCircle (talk) 18:18, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
Oh, sorry, it's a guideline, not a policy. Still applies to thousands of articles though. Is this the wrong place to discuss guidelines? BrightRoundCircle (talk) 18:20, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
Theoretically this page is for discussion of guidelines as well as policy, but realistically any change to the MOS which isn't discussed at WT:MOS is just going to be reverted. Changing the MOS would be a lot of work for minimal benefit; it's explicitly not policy for a reason, just "this is how we generally do things" guidance, and there's certainly no rule that any article is expected to follow the MOS nor is there ever likely to be one. ‑ Iridescent 18:35, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
The MOS:POPCULT guideline (and not-guidelines (1) and (2) that I mentioned) are linked to WP:PRIMARY. I want to emphasize the following:
"Do not analyze, evaluate, interpret, or synthesize material found in a primary source yourself; instead, refer to reliable secondary sources that do so. Do not base an entire article on primary sources, and be cautious about basing large passages on them."
In particular, I'd like this policy (WP:PRIMARY) to be clarified in the guideline (MOS:POPCULT) the way it is clarified in the essay in sentences (1) and (2). For example, someone finds a song that contain the lyrics "dinosaur". They want to add this song to dinosaurs in popular culture. Judging by WP:PRIMARY, this is analysis or synthesis. Some Wikipedians would argue this: "the song contains the lyric "dinosaur", and songs are part of popular culture, therefore it is a reference to dinosaurs in popular culture, and it is adequate to use a primary source to add this information to the article." Adding this information to the article should require a secondary source that not only notes that the song exists and that it has lyrics about dinosaurs, but also that the song is significant to dinosaurs in popular culture in some way. This is what (1) and (2) clarify.
If this is the wrong place to discuss this, should it be discussed on WT:MOS? BrightRoundCircle (talk) 18:58, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
That would be a good place to discuss it, yes. --Izno (talk) 19:31, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
I have created a RfC on the topic. BrightRoundCircle (talk) 15:28, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

Tense shift?

I was just reading Grand Theft Auto (film), whose opening paragraph said before I made a slight tweak

It was Howard's feature film directorial debut and features himself as Sam Freeman and Nancy Morgan as Paula Powers in the leading roles

The sentence is overwritten anyway, but of concern here is the "It was ... and features". Obviously saying "It is Howard's feature film directorial debut" would not make sense now that Howard has directed other films, and the current wording is only a problem if one things really hard about it, but wouldn't "and featured" be better in this case?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:46, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

“Is” and “features” or “was” and “featured.” “Was” and “featured” makes no sense grammatically, as far as I am aware.
―PapíDimmi (talk) 19:04, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
I think the tense change is OK in English. It would be more jarring in some other languages. But the debut is in the past, whereas the featuring is ongoing.
The worse problem is the misuse of "himself". Just "him" is correct; "himself" is an error. --Trovatore (talk) 19:23, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
Agreed with Trovatore. The tense change is an illusion. The "was" and the "features" refer to two different things. Comparable construction: "My dog died last year, and is buried behind my garden." If anyone thinks such a construction will be awkward, they can fork it into two sentences.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:19, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
@Trovatore: I knew that was the worse problem. That was why I had already corrected it before posting here. I quoted the earlier version of the sentence to emphasize that I definitely wasn't imagining things with regard to the sentence being poorly constructed. But yeah, I can basically see what you and SMcCandlish are talking about. I guess I was just reminded of the Frasier episode where the title character read a limerick about himself in a bathroom stall "There once was a man, Frasier Crane, who says he can feel your pain". But the problem with that is really that the implication of the first part is that Frasier no longer "is", but the latter part is in the present tense. :P Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 13:23, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
I think a comma would be appropriate there. “It was …, and it features ….” Makes more sense to me than combining a historical event and a description in the same clause. (If anyone disagrees, please note that I edited the article accordingly.) —67.14.236.50 (talk) 22:49, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

There is currently an MOS-related RM discussion at TALK:Universal Grammar. Primergrey (talk) 23:45, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Question about template:definition needed

Why does this inline maintenance tag wikilink to MoS? {{definition needed|date=June 2016}}

Looks like this[definition needed] when in use. How is this helpful? Ping me back. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 23:42, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Style

I might not be spotting it anywhere in the MOS or at Wikipedia:Piped link, but which is preferred: [[Single-stock futures|SSF]]s or [[Single-stock futures|SSFs]] ? I never received a response at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking. ɱ (talk) · vbm · coi) 16:16, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

I think when you're already piping the link, the former is preferable (spell-checking, mostly). --Izno (talk) 17:28, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
@Izno: Can we note this in the MOS please? ɱ (talk) · vbm · coi) 18:15, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
Is there a reason you think that it is necessary? --Izno (talk) 18:43, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
The two forms render identically, so it's not an MOS issue at all, I think. Pburka (talk) 22:23, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
There are JavaScripts that change it to the latter when they do other Common Fixes. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 23:48, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Comma Rules: I did not see on comma a rule on separating independent clauses.

John hit Bill, and Bill screamed. But not: John, and Bill screamed. And not: John jumped, and screamed. Compound subjects & predicates are not separated internally by a comma. Should these rules be added to the list? Also it appears that editors have the useless habit of setting off prepositional phrases with commas. Should there be a rule about not separating prepositional phrases with commas unless there is some other rule which demands it? (PeacePeace (talk) 20:46, 22 June 2016 (UTC))

We don't prescribe grammatical rules, these can vary like WP:ENGVAR. But I suggest that everybody should read Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:26, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
That book looks like a fun read. Thanks for telling me about it. (PeacePeace (talk) 20:19, 23 June 2016 (UTC))

RfC: Title formatting (italics vs quotations) for recurring features

What formatting should be used for recurring features within other packages (TV shows, magazines, newspaper inserts)? Italics, quotemarks, captialization, other? Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 21:39, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

Rationale

This came up at MOS:COMICS, and it turns out that it's an issue throughout Wikipedia. For example:

Some things to keep in mind:

  • Whether a feature occurs within another package or not is incidental, as such feature can and are repackaged:
    • TV segments can be lifted from their original shows and used as filler between other shows
    • The Japanese comics series Ranma ½ was a recurring feature in the comics magazine Weekly Shōnen Sunday in Japan, but the content was repackaged as an independent comic book in the US.

In the above cases, should we flip-flop between quotemarks and italics for identical content depending on publication format?

  • Context: this came up over a disagreement over the title formatting of the comic strip Little Annie Fanny.

Discussion

We should use italics for recurring features in all cases—the physical packaging should be irrelevant, as it is often treated so. Anything else is instruction creep and would bring up endless corner cases to argue about. There is no advantage to
  • The "CT opens an RFC" episode of "Curly Turkey's Endless Griping" in issue No. 45 of WikipediMOS
over
  • The "CT opens an RFC" episode of Curly Turkey's Endless Griping in issue No. 45 of WikipediMOS
while in the latter, we don't have to keep in mind whether Curly Turkey's Endless Griping appears within or without something (the answer to which may be "both"). Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 21:39, 17 June 2016 (UTC)
  1. Like a series name, the name of a repeating feature names a whole series of contributions rather than an individual contribution on a particular day, so it should be treated like a series (i.e. italicized).
  2. Like an episode name, the name of a repeating feature names something hierarchically below a series, so it should be treated like an episode (i.e. quotemarked).
Formatting like a series (italicized) would have the advantage of allowing a consistent rule for formatting the name of a particular day's / issue's instance of the repeating feature (quotemarked).
--Boson (talk) 13:00, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
Finally some recognition that the guidance isn't clear. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 22:30, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Block quotes

Hi SMcCandlish, that section has always been problematic because it's based on a narrow view of what a pull quote is and how it should be used (or, if you prefer, the section narrows itself to pull quotes). I see it violated all the time, including by me, so it can't be said to have consensus. That's why I removed "and variants" because it extended the section to unnamed templates that people might be using quite happily. SarahSV (talk) 21:51, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Tooltip needed/capitalization?

For "number" (No.), does it need to be written as No. as the example says in MOS:NUMBERSIGN or can it be written as No. as the preface of the section says? Also, does No. necessarily need to be capitalized if it does not begin a new sentence? As in "They were defeated by the no. 1 team in the country." Benhen1997 14:16, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

To answer the second part of the question, I take it to mean always "No. 1" not "no. 1". Primergrey (talk) 23:28, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Are editions of major works also major works?

There is some previous discussion at WP:Help desk#Style questions go where? (permalink).

If a video game has a “Game of the Year Edition,” or an album has a “Collector’s Edition,” or a movie has a “Director’s Cut” release, should the edition name be italicized as well (per MOS:T#Major works)? Is “Game of the Year Edition” considered a partial title, part of the name of the major work, for instance Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception: Game of the Year Edition? (If so, should we also say “they released a Game of the Year Edition”?) A brief internal search shows italics (and even capitalization) inconsistently applied to such labels, at least in video game articles:

  • Call of Duty 2 does not italicize “Special Edition” or “Game of the Year Edition,” and doesn’t even capitalize “a collector’s edition” or “the mobile version”.
  • The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind italicizes “Game of the Year Edition” both with the game title (with and without a preceding colon) and on its own, but not “Special Edition Soundtrack.”
  • Batman: Arkham Asylum has “Game of the Year edition” roman with a small E, but italicizes “a Collector’s Edition.”

One of the goals of the Manual of Style is to encourage consistency across WIkipedia. To that end, should MOS:T#Major works be edited to address this? What should it say? —67.14.236.50 (talk) 22:29, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

  • Here’s my own answer: Personally, I’d advise against treating any “edition” label as a part of the work title proper unless there isn’t any doubt that it is a separate creative work: the Payday 2 demo, Doom Game of the Year edition, but Dead Island Definitive Edition or Blade Runner: The Final Cut. Also, lone edition names should not be treated as proper names unless they’re being used non-generically to refer to a distinct creative work: the collector’s edition comes with a plush Cyberdemon, and a director’s cut was released the next year, but the Director’s Cut changes the whole tone of the film.
    I’m not going to push this position; I’ll be more than happy with any reasoned approach. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 23:10, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
  • Does this need clarification? Titles are italicized and if the phrase is part of the title, it is similarly italicized. Usually it's best to avoid long awkward titles, in which case I would reference it as the "Game of the Year" edition (without italics). Depends how you're using the phrase. The above examples make sense prima facie, save for the Batman collector's edition example, which shouldn't be italicized. I am no longer watching this page—ping if you'd like a response czar 23:18, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
    @Czar: How is it determined what is or isn’t part of the work title? If a phrase is added on to the end of the title, does that become part of it regardless of whether the work is changed? —67.14.236.50 (talk) 23:27, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
    As with all titles, we follow the lead of our secondary sources. If they are italicizing "Game of the Year" as a subtitle, we do too. If there is confusion as to whether it's part of the title, local consensus on the talk page should figure it out, and WT:VG is a good subsequent forum. czar 23:45, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
    I think 67.14.236.50 said it absolutely correctly. Walter Görlitz (talk) 04:43, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
    @Walter Görlitz: Thanks! But are you referring to my proposed solution, or my reply to Czar? —67.14.236.50 (talk) 04:44, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
    Pretty much everything you wrote was spot on. Walter Görlitz (talk) 05:10, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
  • Eliminate all coverage of video games by deleting the articles, because debates over trivia like titles of special editions and genres takes up huge amounts of editor time, including at ANI, for no reason. EEng 05:08, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
    @EEng: Frustrated joking aside, what do you think we could do for a genuine solution to that problem? —67.14.236.50 (talk) 01:35, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
    OK, I apologize for making light of an issue that's truly causing trouble for you. I don't have an answer. Sorry. EEng 02:45, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
    From your comment, I’d assumed it was causing trouble for you. But now I’m confused as to why you posted at all. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 05:16, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
    No direct problem for me, but I've seen huge amounts of time wasted dealing with genre and title warrior at ANI. EEng 20:49, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
  • If we don’t get more responses here, I’ll try making a bold edit to MOS:T#Major works in the next few days, something along the lines of my earlier suggestion. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 03:19, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
    RFCs customarily run for 30 days. Given the lack of response, that would indicate a "no consensus", and where dealing with a guideline, usually means "no consensus to enact a change". You should probably also advertise this RFC at WT:MOSITALICS and WT:Manual of Style/Titles. --Izno (talk) 11:00, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
    Good point; done. But as far as I’m aware, a lack of consensus also means it’s open to WP:BRD to attempt to find a consensus. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 00:00, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
    "No consensus" means that there is no change—do as we have been doing. It's not a license for a free-for-all. czar 04:48, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
    @Czar: No one said anything about a free-for-all, and that’s not what WP:BRD is, either. There hasn’t been enough discussion or activity about this to make any kind of final determination about consensus, other than that we don’t have one yet. And I want to emphasize that: We don’t have one yet. So let’s find one. How do you propose we do that? I’m open to suggestions. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 22:23, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
    As I said above, I don't think the MoS needs to be clarified—these cases are fine as currently presented (save for what appears to be a mistake in the Batman article, but writing a MoS statement to fix that would be taking a bulldozer to an anthill) czar 22:31, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
    Three articles formatting the same text three different ways (italicized or roman, capitalized or lowercase) doesn’t strike you as inconsistent? And you don’t think a bit of guidance on that would be beneficial? —67.14.236.50 (talk) 22:39, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
    Nope—editions are not consistently common nouns or proper nouns or independent creative works. For example, see the last paragraph of Saints Row IV#Release and downloadable content, which covers most of the scenarios. The main idea is to follow the sources, to use common/proper noun capitalization similar to how we use Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biographies titles, and to italicize separate creative works. I can't see how standardizing would help here—it's more about how it's used in the sentence... czar 06:43, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
    @Czar: This is about clarifying what a separate creative work is. If we only followed the sources on such matters, we would have no need whatsoever for MOS:T, or for WP editors to distinguish between major works and minor works—we’d let the sources decide whether to put a given book title in quotes, or to italicize a song title. But I don’t think we do that, since MOS:T is still around. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 22:58, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

"Clarify" here looks a lot like "typify". You could do the same thing for books known as "second editions" or albums with "remastered" in their subtitles—it will wholly depend on what they're called in the sources and not on a top-down MoS solution. Also mind that our own manual of style is derived from other manuals of style and it's not like our conventions came apropos of nothing. I fear I'll be repeating myself if there is no new evidence to consider, so this is where I'll bow out czar 23:28, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

@Czar: Then I shall genuinely thank you for sharing your considered opinion, even if I disagree with parts of it. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 23:47, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

MOS:TV "overhaul" planned

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Below is a copy of a notice, and my response to it, posted at WP:Village pump (policy). I think this should involve considerable input from MoS watchers in general, or all kinds of unintended effects could result, most likely WP:LOCALCONSENSUS-based forking of advice – on things like date formatting, WP:CRYSTAL treatment of future episodes/seasons, in-universe writing, etc. – from various sections in the main MoS, its subpages, and other guidelines. I doubt there would be any intent to do that, but we've seen it happen repeatedly before with regard to comics and several other media.

This is just a notice that members of the Television project are considering overhauling and rewriting our MOS, headed up by myself. Nothing is happening until August 2016, but there is a discussion regarding interest in the endeavor which you can find here, and add your signature if you would like to be a part of the effort. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 01:14, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up, but please note that MOS:TV is a Wikipedia guideline, not an owned page, a wikiproject advice essay, of WikiProject Television, so it's not appropriate to call it "[y]our MOS". It's part of the MoS. What it says affects a large number of articles that are not entirely within the scope of WikiProject Television, and it's important that it not start PoV-forking away from things like MOS:NUM, etc..  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:21, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:33, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Moot

The Moot Hall, Keswick, a place for moot points to be duly mooted. There are lots of Moot Halls for mooting in England.

"see if a rewrite can make the issue moot" – is this an American usage? In English usage a moot point is a point that is or can be mooted – i.e. debatable, but the word is used as though it means the opposite on the MoS page. Best find another word if it means one thing on one side of the Atlantic and the reverse on the other. Tim riley talk 09:48, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Indeed. Martinevans123 (talk) 09:54, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
Good catch. I changed it to "see if a rewrite can settle the issue" which is what I think the American usage means; as noted above the original wording means "see if a rewrite can make the issue debatable" in British English, which doesn't make sense here. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:58, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
The revision is welcome. Even in Am Eng usage the sense was not clear. A moot point is something that is debatable, but doing so leads to no effective resolution. I.e., it is seen as an academic exercise or as a pasttime for those with nothing better to do. older ≠ wiser 10:13, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
It's just a hill you don't want to die on. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:36, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
moot!... an anonymous imageboard cow
@Bkonrad: The term "pastime" has one "t", not two - it's a contraction of "pass time", something that passes the time in between real tasks. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:35, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
Thanks, I do know that. I was typing on my phone and the autocorrect changed it to something entirely different and in my haste to correct it I mispelled it myself. older ≠ wiser 18:37, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
As if anyone would ever want to pass the time in between "real tasks". Martinevans123 (talk) 18:43, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
From American Heritage: "A debatable question, an issue open to argument; also, an irrelevant question, a matter of no importance." So we have two almost opposite meanings. I just avoid the word altogether as it just confuses half the audience I'm communicating to. --NeilN talk to me 22:58, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
FWIW now, this is not a US v UK distinction: the dual, and arguably contradictory, meanings apply in British English just as they appear to in US English. See here and here for online evidence. "Moot" can in fact refer to a point or debate that has become irrelevant or redundant because of some intervening event or revelation in the UK too. Kind of like this one. N-HH talk/edits 09:51, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
Well maybe, in terms of the dictionary. It's just that I've never heard it used in British English that way. Martinevans123 (talk) 16:14, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
Just as a follow-up, I looked in the OED too, whose more detailed entry does include that second meaning, but also suggests it is indeed primarily a North American usage. As for experience, I've always had the opposite, or maybe a half-way house: when I hear people use it, I assume they mean it's a point that, yes, is up for debate but with at least the possible implication that any debate would ultimately be academic and of no practical value. N-HH talk/edits 08:54, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Requesting comments on requested move: ESports

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere; involves long-running capitalization vs. hyphenation disputes.

The present name of the article (on a general topic, professional video-gaming competition) coincides with a commercial trademark (in that market sector).

Over the last year, there have been 6 or so requested moves and other renaming discussions at what is presently Talk:ESports, most of them poorly attended, with mostly WP:ILIKEIT votes, mis-citations of policy where any was mentioned at all, and closure reasoning problems (while only one was an admin close), resulting in the name flipping around all over the place.

I've opened a multi-option, RfC-style requested move at:
     Talk:ESports#Broadly-announced and policy-grounded rename discussion

It presents four potential names, all with some rationale outlines provided.

Input is sought from the community to help arrive at a long-term stable name for this article, based on actual policy and guideline wording, and on treatment in reliable and independent sources (i.e. not blogs or "eSports" marketing).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  15:38, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Request for comments on English pluralization of uncommon non-English terms

Hello all- Looking for input in a discussion regarding the best way to pluralize the German word Stolperstein in that term's article; whether to simply add "s" or use the German plural form Stolpersteine. Discussion here: Talk:Stolperstein#Correct_plural. Thanks in advance for any helpful comments. Eric talk 18:35, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

American English and units

If an article uses American English, should it also use Imperial units?   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  21:24, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

@Dunkleosteus77: Short answer: no, because the U.S. has never used Imperial units.
Imperial units were introduced by the UK after American independence, to replace the King James units previously used, and which the U.S. continued to use, although they are now known as U.S. Customary Units. There are several differences, mainly concerning measures of capacity or volume - for instance, the Imperial system has 20 fluid ounces to the pint, U.S. customary has 16 - and the fluid ounce isn't the same size either (the U.S. fl. oz. is about 4% larger than the Imperial).
See MOS:UNITS. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:28, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
The article should include both American units and SI units in such a case, making use of the convert template to give both values. Even though it may be an article written in American English, that doesn't mean it should not be readily accessible to readers of other varieties of English. The primary units involved in any case should be those named in the cited source material. Rhialto (talk) 08:30, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
Not if it's a scientific article. And no, there's no more than a tendency for US English to be accompanied by US units (and date formats). Variety of English, date format, and US vs international units all have different criteria, I'm afraid. Slightly messy, but overall an excellent outcome years ago by en.WP editors, solving a complicated set of international circumstances. Tony (talk) 08:54, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
Rhialto, the choice of primary units should be consistent throughout the article and not based on the individual sources. {{Convert}} has a way of using the number from the source as its input but also allowing us to choose which number is displayed first using the |order= parameter. Broadly speaking, articles tied to a country should use the units of that country (eg New York should use imperial units and Volkswagen should use metric) and other articles can choose either but must be internally consistent.  Stepho  talk  09:18, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
@Stepho-wrs: New York should not use imperial units. It should use U.S. customary units, which are not the same as Imperial, see my comment above. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:36, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
You are quite correct. New York definitely should use US customary as the primary units. Apologies for my lapse.  Stepho  talk  13:14, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
Concur with Stepho-wrs (as corrected by Redrose64 :-); we have excellent templates for this. Also concur with Tony1: some vague national tie is not an excuse to go on a style rampage against the metric system, as there are contexts in which metric, not US customary, is used even in the US. Sometimes these are even micro-contexts within a larger context that otherwise avoids metric (e.g., pool cue tips are always measured in mm, even though all other cue sports measurements are in US customary in the US, and a mixture of Imperial and metric in the UK, etc.).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:46, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Outline in MOS

Is there any MOS guidelines at all about Outlines? At least one person has suggested that outlines aren't even articles at all so maybe it wouldn't be subject to the MOS at all. I made a suggestion at the Outlines project for various qualities of outlines but I soon realized that there may be no rules about how outlines should be organized (other than people's personal opinions) so I have no idea how would determine a "Featured outline" (if that exists). Wikipedia:Outlines is just an information page which seems odd. There have been a few discussions about outlines in which the following rules at least apply:

  1. Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Historical outline of France - there are no such things as "Historical" outlines as those are just prose and outlines should not have prose in them.
  2. There is a discrepancy about whether or not one can create outlines if the mainspace version does not exist. Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Outlines/Drafts/Outline of accounting law was almost all delete while Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Outlines/Drafts/Outline of forest hydrology seems to be going the opposite way.
  3. There is an ongoing debate about Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Outlines/Drafts/Outline of teaching since teaching redirects to education. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Outlines/Drafts/Outline of biological engineering was a move based on the redirect for the mainspace version.

There was also an argument about the location of outline drafts at Wikipedia:WikiProject Outlines/Drafts/Outline of ancient history but that's not relevant to the MOS. Should we start one if it doesn't exist? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 09:10, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

I would assume that the guidance on stand-alone lists would apply, as the outline page makes it clear that that's what they are. Or am I missing a larger-scope? Primergrey (talk) 13:10, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
  • I'll look into the bigger outline questions; thanks for all those links. They are WP:SAL, and are categorized as articles. If someone wants to force them to somehow not be articles, that's a big RfC or something, and we'd have to create some kind of new categorization system for them, I guess, as with WP:Portals. Anyway, MoS isn't limited to articles, but applies to all reader-facing content, including portals, non-internal templates, the Main page, etc., except where specific variances have been agreed by site-wide consensus. E.g., the lists on the main page have their own special formatting. Another example is that if a particular citation style imported from outside Wikipedia (Harvard, Vancouver, Chicago/Turabian, MLA, MHRA, etc.), requires certain formatting for something, and is consistently used in a particular article, that something can be formatted that "special" way in the citations even if it's not MoS's way (the most common example being not using dots-and-spaces with human initials). [There hasn't been any real debate about that, of which I'm aware, in several years, though it was heated at the time, with a lot of "get rid of all cite styles but WP:CS1!" vs. "get rid of the MoS!" grand-standing and false-dichotomy.] — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:00, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Starting a quotation with ellipsis

An edit of mine to remove an ellipsis at the start of a quotation was reverted. My original edit summary was "rm unnecessary leading ellipsis"; that of the revert was "Unnecessary change: the ellipsis shows the sentence is incomplete". Here's my opinion about ellipses:

  • They are ugly, and should be avoided unless they're necessary (or present in the original).
  • The fact that it's a quotation already implies it's an incomplete extract from the source, unless supporting text indicates that it's complete (or a paraphrase, etc.). Therefore, an ellipsis at the start of a quotation is never necessary (interpreting "never" with the usual pinch of salt).
  • Therefore, a leading ellipsis should always (modulo salt) be removed.

Relevant to this case, the "usual pinch of salt" (i.e. common sense) suggests a leading ellipse where it would be needed to indicate an incomplete sentence. In this case, the fact that the quotation begins with a lower case letter implies an incomplete sentence, so it's still not necessary.

I've reverted the revert, but in the meantime, what do others think of leading ellipses? Hairy Dude (talk) 19:23, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

MOS:ELLIPSIS does give an example that shows a leading ellipsis. Note that the use of   is recommended to prevent improper line breaks. Jay Jor (talk) 21:00, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
The ellipsis was correctly used to indicate that part of the sentence has been omitted (in this case, the leading "But"). I'm not familiar with any style guides which omit the leading ellipsis and instead recommend lower case letters to indicate incomplete sentences. Pburka (talk) 03:27, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
I agree. I think the use of an ellipsis in this case clearly indicates that the sentence quoted is incomplete, and avoids the oddness of a passage of text beginning with a lowercase letter. — SMUconlaw (talk) 09:40, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
The ellipsis should be retained. In fact, because the quotation forms a new sentence, the first letter should be capitalised (... [I]t has to be expressed ...). Even if this were not the case because the quotation already began with a capital letter (e.g., a proper noun), the ellipsis would provide the vital indication that the quotation does not begin at the start of the sentence. —sroc 💬 22:53, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
I share your opinion on this, Hairy Dude, as you've outlined it. I think the ellipsis is quite unnecessary. I'd agree that the quote should begin with "[I]t", though. JG66 (talk) 23:11, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Capitalise it if you must, but please don't put those square brackets in. They denote a phrase, word or letter that is not present in the original quotation but which has been added by way of clarification, as in "... they [the Government] resolved to act". If all that has been done is to flip the case of a letter, there is no change in meaning, so there should be no need for clarification, and so no need for the brackets. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:16, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
"They are ugly" is a non-rationale; this is about accuracy not designerly asethetics. If the original is "I know my dog's foot is sore", this can be quoted entirely, or as "...my dog's foot is sore" (if not starting a new sentence), or "[M]y dog's foot is sore" (if starting a new sentence), or "...[M]y dog's foot is sore" (if starting a new sentence and it's important to stress that leading material has been elided, which it obviously is not in this case). If the letter case is changed, the square brackets are not optional, because its omission falsifies the quotation and misleads the reader. It is not true at all that the square brackets indicate only an insertion of additional material; they indicate any kind of editorial change, including often a shortening, e.g. of "My mean, cheap, bitter so-called superior has put me on a make-work project" -> "My [boss] has put me on a make-work project". Finally, the idea that "[t]he fact that it's a quotation already implies it's an incomplete extract from the source ... [means] an ellipsis at the start of a quotation is never necessary" is misparsing the contextual meaning of "incomplete" here. This interpretation could not possibly be correct, or the ellipsis convention would never have arisen in the first place, yet you will find it in all style guides. They only differ on the fine points, with some journalistic guides permitting the kinds changes Redrose64 advocates, and some high-academic ones being super-persnicketty and demanding square brackets around the ellipses themselves, which farther than MoS will go.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:16, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Translations of foreign awards

Hi, a question has come up at the Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Hyacinth Graf Strachwitz/1 discussion on how to treat foreign names of the various awards:

References

  1. ^ a b Röll 2011, p. 31.

Is there a guideline that would be applicable here? K.e.coffman (talk) 01:04, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

  • There may be no guideline on when the foreign name should not be given, in addition to the English name. No consensus may be applicable. Jay Jor (talk) 20:22, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Not really an MoS matter, more of a WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE one. It's superfluous on en.wiki to provide the German equivalent of the English name of every award received by the biographical article subject, especially since they're linked to articles on the awards that provide the German names. If we provided the German (or whatever) original for every military and other term, article length would bloat dramatically. Imagine if every military title, division name, etc., were given in multiple languages at an article like World War II; it would be practically unreadable. When to provide a translation/transliteration and original at the same time is a judgement call. If this article were to retain both, it would probably be in German first, as the proper name, then an English gloss, and done on the basis that the RS (in English) about these medals usually use the German. If that's not the case, just use the English.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  12:31, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Number signs

Is the use of number sign okay, as in "#3 Stanford" in the template, at 2015 Stanford Cardinal football team? The infobox directly above has No. 3. This creates an inconsistency in the Wikipedia article.

I have seen Wikipedia:Ignore all rules, but I have seen long term Wikipedia editors invoke Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Number signs as if it were completely rigid. In reading it, it sounds completely rigid, except for the one example given otherwise. Thanks, Jay Jor (talk) 00:14, 3 July 2016 (UTC).

Oh, I have also seen somewhere, but can't remember where, something about deviating from guidelines in tables to save room. Jay Jor (talk) 00:42, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Use No. instead of a number sign. Infobox style exceptions are for space issues which isn't much of an issue at all in this case. Primergrey (talk) 01:13, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
@Jay Jor: MOS:NUMERO is not completely rigid, but basically, about the only time that the # sign is acceptable is in issue numbers of comic books. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:25, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
I see some clear guidance at MOS:NUMERO on chart singles and albums: number, Number, No., or #. But # seems to be used very widely indeed for chart records especially, dare I suggest it, for US records. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:24, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
I see it a lot on NASCAR-related pages as well but when I mentioned on that project page that I was changing it whenever I came across it no one voiced any disagreement. Primergrey (talk) 15:18, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the additional info. Interestingly, an internet search for:"#1" "#2" "#3" rank, compared to:"No. 1" "No. 2" "No. 3" rank, on Wikipedia produced about 6,740 results for use of # and 3,440 for No., nearly two to one.[1][2] The same internet searches on the Harvard University website produced about 7,840 results for # and 2,470 for No., greater than three to one.[3][4] There is some effort to change # to No. on Wikipedia. I'm not sure about at Harvard. Jay Jor (talk) 16:14, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ "Google search, # on Wikipedia". Retrieved 3 July 2016.
  2. ^ "Google search, No. on Wikipedia". Retrieved 3 July 2016.
  3. ^ "Google search, # at Harvard Univ. site". Retrieved 3 July 2016.
  4. ^ "Google search, No. at Harvard Univ. site". Retrieved 3 July 2016.
Yeah, general usage outside of Wikipedia (especially for sports) seems to be "#" instead of "No.", does anyone know why we do it this way? ansh666 18:46, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
In the USA, perhaps; but not in the UK. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:41, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
"In the USA, perhaps"? I have not seen a major U.S. university with 4,000 to 20,000 internet search results, as specified above, that isn't three to one or more in favor of #. Is that the explanation, U.K. usage takes precedence over U.S. usage on Wikipedia? Jay Jor (talk) 01:06, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
For topics that are not USA-specific, USA practice should not dictate the style. This is MOS:ENGVAR. Until Twitter, many people had never heard of the # symbol, or they had seen it on their telephones but did not know what it meant or was called; there are still telephone services in the UK which advise customers to "key in the account number and then press the square key" - by "the square key" they mean #. By contrast, "No." is widely understood in many English-speaking countries. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:24, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
Even "topics that are not USA-specific" may still be in American English, if that's the established variety at that article. This strikes me as not exactly an ENGVAR issue, though, since # versus No. is not a question of either spelling or word choice, in the usual sense.
Still, I'm a bit taken aback by the idea that the # sign should not be used in ranking teams. "No." really looks very strange to me in that context. "No. 3 Alabama". No what? What are you saying no to? Maybe we should find some other notation, say the bare number in parentheses? --Trovatore (talk) 08:40, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
U.S. college sports rankings, NASCAR (auto racing) driver rankings, etc., seem very "USA specific", yet some still insist on the use of "No." There can also be rankings, jersery numbers and car numbers, leading to something like, "John Q. Public, No. 23 on the #4 Tigers team ..." Jay Jor (talk) 11:40, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
And per the MOS, it should be "No." anyway, so people will see "Number" on hover. nyuszika7h (talk) 08:27, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
Likewise, # would show "number" on hover. Jay Jor (talk) 11:40, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

RFC: Which romanization system should be used for pre-division Korean topics?

MOS:KOREA currently says:

In general, use the Revised Romanization system for articles with topics about South Korea and topics about Korea before the division. Use McCune–Reischauer (not the DPRK's official variant) for topics about North Korea.

Should this be replaced with

In general, use the Revised Romanization system for articles with topics about South Korea. Use McCune–Reischauer (not the DPRK's official variant) for topics about North Korea and topics about Korea before the division.

?
06:17, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Comments on romanization

  • Support per WP:RS. Historical topics are addressed in scholarly sources, which prefer MR. It doesn't really matter that "the South Korean government, and ... modern South Korean English-language newspapers, travel guides, etc." prefer RR. Koreans themselves and probably most immigrants there are familiar with both systems; WP articles about historical Korea are not written for South Koreans in particular. The RM process for affected articles, as noted, will also auto-fix lots of missing redirects, and the articles themselves will present the variant spellings (and the real Korean). I'm not swayed by the "some people will omit the diacritics" thing; that's true of every language in which there are diacritics, but we still use them.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  18:36, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose. If I understand this proposal correctly, there was a city called "Pusan" before 1945, at which point it became "Busan." No RS uses a cutoff date like this. MR without diacritics doesn't measure up to the level of accuracy one expects in an encyclopedia. The MR diacritics are used by academics, but few of our readers are familiar with breves and the other odd marks that this system uses. My main concern is less about the merits of one system over the other than that we should have a consistent system of some kind. There must be thousands of articles that would have to be moved to conform with this proposal. First show me you can move a high profile article like Joseon or Goryeo. We don't want an MOS that's out of step with almost every single Korea-related article that we have. Gulangyu (talk) 08:34, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
    Threaded discussion about this comment has been refactored to the #Threaded discussion section below.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:32, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
  • I'm not entirely sure how all this works/will work, but on the grounds others have mentioned (almost everything I've seen uses MR), I'd also add my support to using MR for pre-1945 subjects... 2Q (talk) 19:16, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

Previous relevant discussions are here, here and here.

Put simply, a previous RFC without much participation resulted in the wording being altered, a follow-up RM saw significantly greater opposition, and after the RM closed User:Gulangyu unilaterally reverted the change to MOS. Further discussion (primarily between myself and User:SMcCandlish) came to the conclusion that a new RFC, at a more prominent venue, with a lot more WikiProjects being notified, would be required to establish a clearer consensus one way or the other.

Summary of points for and against the proposed change. Sorry if I have forgotten some or misinterpreted the opinions expressed by other users. I requested input on how this RFC should be worded, and neither side was forthcoming with suggestions.

The points in favour of the change are:

  • McCune–Reischauer (MR) is preferred in the majority of scholarly sources and other English-language reliable sources on historical topics.
  • While both MR and Revised Romanization (RR) have broad acceptance and recognizability, there is currently a dearth of redirects from MR spellings. RMs resulting from the proposed change would largely solve this problem.
  • RR contains several elements that are not based on English phonetics, and so are difficult for native English-speakers not already familiar with Korean to read.

The points against the change are:

  • RR is officially endorsed by the South Korean government, and so has broader use in modern South Korean English-language newspapers, travel guides, etc.
  • MR contains diacritics, which may lead to encoding problems, as well as inconsistencies if editors choose not to follow MOS strictly, and leave out the diacritics.
  • The change would necessitate a large number of RMs. (Edits to article text would also be required, but many/most of the articles in question contain significant grammatical and spelling issues, and need to be largely rewritten anyway.)

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:17, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

I don't understand why we re-open the same question which was at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Korea-related_articles#RfC: Which romanization system should be used for pre-division Korean topics?. I think we may continue the discussion at the spot unless it gets a broader attention here. But I don't think so. --Cheol (talk) 06:49, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Despite your edit summary, this is not forum-shopping. The only previous discussion of the matter ended in my favour, so I have no motivation to engage in forum-shopping. This is to establish a firmer consensus, and was already agreed to by several other users. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 07:02, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, when there's back-and-forth with "consensus changing" willy-nilly depending on which handful of the same people showed up this time, it's necessary to use a higher-profile venue, and draw more attention to the question (see, e.g., the thread below thing one – same issue exactly).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  18:36, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Hijiri 88 and Gulangyu discussion about Gulangyu's !vote
Why then are you not saying we should remove RR entirely and use MR across the board, because this is what most English-language RSs do? Of the "thousands" of articles that would need to be moved, the vast majority also need to have virtually their entire texts rewritten to remove the OR, poor grammar and misspellings of plain English words. Simply saying that a lot of articles currently conform to the current wording of MOS is not enough, because the vast majority of those articles don't conform to any other aspects of MOS, or any or PAGs for that matter. Moreover, you have already been called out for turning this on its head -- you opposed the Baekje RM because it was away from the status quo, and now you are saying that we need to move "high profile" articles (which oddly enough have pretty low hit counts) before we amend the MOS accordingly. The logic simply isn't there -- such RMs would fail, because MOS currently favours "Goryeo" and "Joseon", even though outside of Wikipedia the majority of sources favour "Koryŏ" and "Chosŏn", but when someone recommends changing the MOS according to common English usage, you say that RMs need to come first. If you really believed this, you wouldn't have taken the opposite position last time such an RM took place. You really need to understand that unless MOS is amended, all such RMs are doomed to failure because other people will do what you did on the Baekje RM and claim that RMs can't be used to overrule the status quo, and to realize that what you are saying doesn't make any sense. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 12:05, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
And your characterization of the proposal makes equally little sense. By the same logic, under the current wording, until 1945 there was a city called "Pyeongyang" and in 1945 its name changed to "P'yŏngyang". The problem with the proposed wording is still there in the version you unilaterally restored after the last RFC. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 12:11, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
When I wrote the diff you are linking to, I didn't realize you had revised the MOS. At the time of the Baekje RM, the MOS was phrased as you wanted it. But you couldn't move the article anyway. I have nothing against doing the RFC first. I simply notice that we have already been down this road. Since it doesn't seem to lead anywhere, I suggest an alternative. The MOS should reflect consensus in the project. How the articles are currently titled is a big part of that. Gulangyu (talk) 13:57, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
You are dodging the question. You made a completely bizarre and irrational point that, if made in a more prominent place that (like Korean topics and MOS) was subject to discretionary sanctions, would leave you open to a potential ban, and I called you out on it. How do you justify saying If I understand this proposal correctly, there was a city called "Pusan" before 1945, at which point it became "Busan." No RS uses a cutoff date like this. to attack my preferred MOS wording, when your version has exactly the same problem when it comes to articles on "North Korean" topics that existed before 1945? Both versions of the wording have "a cutoff date like this", so it is clear that you are not actually interested in what RSs have to say. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:43, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Adjective or pronoun?

I was just looking at David Levy's recent edit to the Manual of Style, in the Grammar and usage section, Posessives sub-section, and while I agree with David that the added phrase was unnecessary, I wonder why its is listed under Pronouns. I had always thought of my, your, his, her, its, our, and their as possessive adjectives, not possessive pronouns. Mine, yours, his, hers, ours, yours, and theirs are possessive pronouns.  – Corinne (talk) 04:09, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

They all seem like pronouns to me. But I suppose linguistic categorizations can vary. This page says "Possessive pronouns include my, mine, our, ours, its, his, her, hers, their, theirs, your and yours", which makes sense to me. Dicklyon (talk) 04:44, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
They are traditionally called "possessive pronouns" in English. But there are a lot of uses that strike me as clearly adjectival. In "my car", the word my does not substitute a noun, but modifies one, which is what adjectives do. Even in "the car is mine", it is still acting as an adjective, this time in the predicate adjective position.
On the other hand, in "I don't like your car; let's take mine", the word mine is finally substituting for a noun, so it makes sense to call it a pronoun.
I think it's largely a matter of tradition. In some other languages, these words are usually called "possessive adjectives" (or rather the translation in that language), and this makes more sense to me generally, though as I say some less common uses are most easily understood as pronominal. --Trovatore (talk) 04:55, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
(e.c.) They don't function like adjectives. Not at all. They're deictics, like "my father's" and "whose", and of a slightly different type, "the", "a", and "this", etc. They qualify the thing in terms of speaker-now, a point of reference in relation to the speaker/writer in the present. Since word-classes are very fuzzy in all languages, it would be safer to minimise the use of terms standing for supposed classes: they risk misleading simplistically rather than clarifying. Tony (talk) 05:00, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
So the deixis article is interesting; thanks for the pointer. Still, I don't see how this makes the words not adjectives. Sure, their semantics is relative to the speaker, but they still modify nouns, which is what adjectives do, and the sentences transform pretty much the way sentences with adjectives do (with "my" changing to "mine" in the "tonic position" or whatever it's called). --Trovatore (talk) 05:04, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
Yes, they are adjectives, or at least function as adjectives (It's a matter of subtle semantics which description is correct). Most parts of speech can function as other parts of speech. "House" is a noun and "buying" a verb, but in the phrase "house buying", "house" functions as an adjective and "buying" as a noun. Possessives are cases of nouns, so "John's" is a noun, which functions as an adjective in "John's umbrella". "My" is to "me" exactly as "John's" is to "John", so in the same way as "John's" is a noun, "my" is a pronoun. Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (talk) 06:01, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
Hmm, I'm not too convinced. "House buying" is what I would call apposition rather than an adjectival use of "house" (note that you can't make it a predicate adjective; *the buying is house doesn't work at all).
In many languages, these words decline as adjectives, agreeing with gender and number, which is not true for genitives of nouns. So to the extent that you like your categories to work cross-linguistically, that's another point in favor of seeing the words as possessive adjectives. Admittedly it doesn't apply if you consider English in isolation. --Trovatore (talk) 06:20, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
I can't see any similarity between "house buying" and appositions. In an apposition, the two phrases refer to the same thing; you could leave one out and the sentence still means essentially the same thing. "house" and "buying" don't relate to each other that way. Rather, "house" modifies "buying". What kind of buying are we doing? House buying. (btw, I used "buying" to make a stronger point about role-switching words, but the point of an adjectival noun is perhaps more clear with "house painter".
That's an interesting observation about nouns not being usable as predicate adjectives. But it doesn't seem to stop them from modifying nouns directly.
Likewise, the treatment of the equivalent words in other languages to English so-called possessive pronouns is food for thought. Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (talk) 03:10, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
I think our apposition article is incomplete. It's my understanding that the noun-noun pattern, when the first noun modifies the second, the first noun is said to be used "appositively". But I could be wrong; I probably picked that up from alt.usage.english, which has a lot of smart people on it but they're not always right. Still, I don't consider the first noun to be an adjective. --Trovatore (talk) 04:13, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
Trovatore: you want to look at noun adjunct (though the article's not very good). Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 23:43, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
Ah, thanks, that does look useful. --Trovatore (talk) 00:33, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
I did once start writing a terminological footnote about the different terms used by different grammarians, but I don't think I ever got round to adding it to any of the articles, because it got too long and complicated. I think words like my are now generally treated as the genitive/possessive case of the personal pronoun. I believe older grammars sometimes called them possessive adjectives, and some may have called them determiners (determinatives); like (other) determiners, they precede any adjectives. --Boson (talk) 06:04, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
Good my friend, art thou certain? --Trovatore (talk) 06:07, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
Bliss be upon you!--Boson (talk) 06:23, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
PS: Quirk et al. (A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language) talk about the genitive of the personal pronoun, calling my the determinative genitive and mine the independent genitive. Huddleston and Pullum (The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language) talk of the dependent and independent genitive of the personal pronoun. Huddleston and Payne (Chapter 5 of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language) say this:
  • "The dependent and independent genitives are often analysed in traditional grammar as 'possessive adjectives' and 'possessive pronouns', respectively, but we find this an unsatisfactory way of handling the difference between the two sets of forms. Both are genitive forms of the personal pronouns, and my and mine are both pronouns, just as I and me are. As pronouns they are heads of NPs: my and mine are genitive NPs, like such expressions as Kim's or the doctor's, which can replace them. ... in Type II [the subject of a gerund-participial, as in 'No one objected to my joining the party'] an adjective analysis makes no sense at all."
--Boson (talk) 06:47, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
Very interesting... I agree with Bryan Henderson that "Most parts of speech can function as other parts of speech", which makes English an interesting and flexible language. I read a book (can't remember the title now) in which the author argued that English was gradually approaching the kind of language that Chinese is – with no verb tenses, words that can function in several ways, etc. I found quite interesting Trovatore's argument that in "The car is mine", "mine" seems to function as a predicate adjective. I had never thought of it that way. I had always thought of "mine" as exclusively a pronoun. I had always thought of these words in terms of what they replace, and since "mine" replaces a noun or noun phrase such as "my car", it makes "mine" a pronoun, and since "her" cannot stand alone, always modifies a noun, is similar to other adjectives ("big car", "blue car", "expensive car"), and can only replace something like "Mary's", and I thought of "Mary's" as adjectival, it followed that "her" was adjectival, but Bryan's pointing out that "most parts of speech can function as other parts of speech", I can see the validity of his statement,
Possessives are cases of nouns, so "John's" is a noun, which functions as an adjective in "John's umbrella".
But one could argue that while this statement is correct, since "his" replaces "John's" when "John's" is functioning as an adjective and not when it is functioning as a possessive noun, in the sentence "That's his umbrella", "his" is adjectival (i.e., an adjective). When "his" replaces "John's" when "John's is functioning as a pronoun, as in "Whose umbrella is that? It's John's." – , "his" is a pronoun ("Whose umbrella is that? It's his."). I thought a distinguishing characteristic was that words like my, your, his, her, our and their cannot stand alone, while mine, yours, his, hers, ours and theirs can stand alone – because they are quasi-nouns.
I was puzzled by two things in the Cambridge Grammar quoted by Boson:
1) "As pronouns they are heads of NPs". I think that's a strange thing to say. In the sentence "Mine is the green one", "Mine" is the noun phrase. I think saying it heads the noun phrase is weird. In the sentence "My notebook is the green one", O.K., you could say my "heads" the noun phrase "my notebook", but it certainly cannot stand alone. You can't say "My is the green one".
2) The other thing I found strange is this:
"...in Type II [the subject of a gerund-participial, as in 'No one objected to my joining the party'] an adjective analysis makes no sense at all."
I thought the reason "my" is used (instead of the object prounoun "me") is because "joining" is a gerund – the participle of the verb functioning as a noun – so it makes perfect sense to use an adjective – "my" –  to modify the gerund (or, actually, the gerund phrase "joining the party"). Could someone please explain "an adjectival analysis makes no sense at all"? (I'm assuming that "an adjectival analysis" is referring to "my"; if it isn't, then I don't understand the sentence.)
I can understand calling "my", etc., as determinative or dependent [because they cannot stand alone and must precede a noun] pronouns and "mine", etc., the independent pronouns. So (sigh) I guess I have to let go the phrase "possessive adjectives" and start calling my, your, etc., "determinative (or dependent) pronouns". But I just realized that that phrase does not give any indication of possessiveness. Hmm.  – Corinne (talk) 16:54, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
(1) Head is a linguistic term meaning the main word in a phrase, the obligatory part that can in some cases be modified by other parts of the phrase. John's and mine, being heads, can potentially be used alone, whereas my cannot. The head usually controls agreement, etc. (so you say "our notebook is"). When Huddleston uses the word head, (AIUI) he is saying that mine can replace John's in "This is John's", but not in "This is John's notebook" (in contemporary English).
(2) I can't really speak for Huddleston, but I think he would analyse "my joining the party" as a non-finite clause; joining has an object and it can be modified by an adverb, rather than an adjective ("my recently joining the party"); if you interpret joining as a "noun" modified by an adjective, you would presumably arrive at "my recent joining of the party" (which is a different construction). I am, of course, guessing what Huddleston's explanation would be, and ignoring the possibly more intuitive "me recently joining the party".
(3) The indication of possessiveness is in the genitive case, just as "the king" has no indication of possessiveness, but the genitive in "the king's" does.
--Boson (talk) 20:11, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
Fantastic material, but almost wasted here. This kind of stuff and the sources behind it should be integrated into our mostly terrible articles about the English language (where we even have them). A large number of grammar and linguistics articles have a short section on English, which might be WP:SPLITable per WP:SPINOUT and WP:SUMMARY, and some don't even have that, just a few comments on English in there. Still others are incorrectly written entirely with reference to English and need to be moved to an "...in English" title, with a general linguistics article written about the topic in their place.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:25, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
  • The discussion above shows just how misleading it is to stick to traditional word categories. They might be ok at the early stages of learning a foreign language, but after that they become incapable of showing people how to analyse text, or of helping them to write/speak better.

    Someone above is citing the Cambridge Grammar"—not a reliable source, in my view, unless the aim is to force traditional categories down our throats (and let's recall that anglophones have a long history of forcing Latin grammar down the throat of English, damaging our understanding of English).

    Trovatore: Just because a word modifies a noun doesn't subsume it into a one-size-fits-all class of "adjective". The obvious example is "the fast train": is it the train that travels at high speed (let's say, epithet, for want of a better term), or is it the no-stops train (classifier)? If it's the no-stops train, you can't call it "very fast": the grammar is different. A deictic element indicates whether or not some specific subset of the thing is intended; adjectives do not do that. Tony (talk) 08:46, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Hmm, maybe, I'll have to think about that one. I still think it's relevant that other Western European languages decline these words like adjectives in terms of number/gender/case. Just because we don't have those sorts of declensions in English doesn't mean (I think, at least) that we shouldn't look at evidence from related languages, as illuminatory of the "deep structure" or something, not sure that's exactly the right term. --Trovatore (talk) 08:50, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
Tony, I don't recognise your characterization of the Cambridge Grammar at all. It definitely does not force traditional grammar down anybody's throats. A problem that some people may have with the Cambridge GEL is, perhaps, that it is more rigorous than most traditional grammars in distinguishing between word categories and the function of words and phrases in the sentence. --Boson (talk) 21:52, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Another view is that my, etc. in a noun phrase like "my old car" is a determiner. Singular common noun phrases in English normally require a determiner, which can be a, the, this, that, etc. or a possessive noun phrase, including a noun or pronoun. A major error being made above is to treat grammatical terminology as theory-free; it's not. Different word classes are used in different approaches.
Whatever my is, it's not sensibly treated as an adjective; adjectives as a class of word can be modified by words like very or by adverbs. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:19, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
Indeed. This is one of the problems I had with my draft of a footnote explaining the different terminology. I stopped when I had written about a page, because of the difficulty of (concisely) taking account of the the different conceptual frameworks. As I wrote above, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language is fairly strict about not conflating functions and word categories. In this case, they distinguish between the lexical category determinatives (including words like a, the, this, that, all, both) and the determiner function, including not only the basic determiners (as in the tie) but also, for instance, genitive NPs (as in my tie). They write "Determinatives (or phrases headed by them) constitute the most basic kind of determiner, but not all determiners have this form, ... Conversely, most determinatives can occur in one or more functions besides that of determiner ...." I think the (traditional) conflation of lexical category and function comes out quite clearly in the above discussion. --Boson (talk) 11:16, 13 July 2016 (UTC) PS: As well as typically being gradable (greener, very green) and typically modified by adverbs ("my ideas are remarkably furious"), adjectives can typically be used attributively ("my green idea") and predicatively ("my idea is green"). And adjectives follow determiners ("a green idea", "my green ideas"). --Boson (talk) 14:49, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

History of discussion of MOS:U.S. and MOS:NOTUSA and WP:NOTUSA

Could those familiar with the history of discussion on the Manual of Style (MOS) help document the history of the discussion around US/U.S. and USA/United States? This is what I have found so far from the archives (plus a relatively recent village pump discussion):

There are probably more discussions about MOS:U.S., WP:NOTUSA and MOS:NOTUSA, particularly in the period from 2007 to 2013. Can anyone add to the above? Carcharoth (talk) 05:55, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

ENGVAR on old articles?

Consider an article that is created and exists for some time in a non-specific state, then is edited to ENGVAR #X and stays in that way for some years. Is it than correct to add a new langvar-specific word, to label the article as "ENGVAR #Y" because the new word is in language #Y and "the article was originally created by "a #Y-ian editor"? Should the article then be edited to convert all the #X to #Y as it had previously "become muddled"?

I recognise the concept of an article being created in one version and then keeping it, but does it inherit ENGVAR solely because the creating editor usually works in a particular language version (but this time didn't use a specific word, or label it)? Andy Dingley (talk) 09:30, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

In such a situation, it is best to discuss the issue on the article's talk page, and see if there a consensus for adopting one language version (or another). Blueboar (talk) 10:53, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
I have little optimism then. It has already been labelled as #Y, and by an editor who has a long track record of intransigence. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:36, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
Which article are you concerned with in this case? oknazevad (talk) 12:55, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
Realise that the spirit of ENGVAR is to avoid any changing between varieties. If a variety has been stable for years, it should likely be left alone, barring any WP:TIES. RGloucester — ☎ 14:33, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
↑ this. If the article has been stable and consistent with version X for a long time, even if the original editor might have preferred Y, the stable version using X should be kept. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:47, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
I would regard the long period of stability as implicit consensus for that language. Hence, as others pointed out, it should remain in that language - barring a new, explicit, consensus. But it should be consistent within itself.  Stepho  talk  10:09, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
The problem with that is defining how long a "long period of stability" has to be. The sensible solution in muddied cases is to have the discussion on the talk page with a view to finding a consensus among the participants - you can always call an RfC if there's deadlock. --RexxS (talk) 20:17, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
If we are talking about weeks or months then there is room for interpretation of "long period". But Andy said "some years", implying considerable more than one or two years - which surely counts as a long time.  Stepho  talk  02:02, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
The strict answer to the original question is that the article should be regularised to ENGVAR #X, not because of any period of stability, but because of "use the variety found in the first post-stub revision that introduced an identifiable variety" per MOS:RETAIN. But if you want to start taking in account "periods of stability" of "some years", how would you reconcile an article that used ENGVAR #X for some years, then used ENGVAR #Y for some years? Do you pick the one with the longer "period of stability" or the one that was introduced first, even if its stability was shorter? That way lies chaos. --RexxS (talk) 19:41, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
Concur with RGloucester and RexxS. If the article, in ancient stub state, had no clear ENGVAR, it does not matter at all what the supposed intent or expectation was of the original editor. See WP:OWN, WP:VESTED, WP:MERCILESS. Articles here do not have authors, they have a collective editorship of everyone on the project. If the subset of that editorial pool who have edited the article numbers only 1, that doesn't magically give that editor more editorial control.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  13:30, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Question about applicability of MOS:JR to non-biographical article titles

MOS:BIO was recently modified via an RfC to amend MOS:JR. In its current form, the guideline explains that "Omission of the comma before Jr., Jr, or Jnr, and Sr., Sr, or Snr, is preferred." Although MOS:BIO applies to "biographical articles and in biographical information in other articles," how should we approach situations where MOS:JR conflicts with a topic-specific naming convention? Here are two specific examples where MOS:JR conflicts with a topic-specific convention and/or WP:TITLE:

In other words, I am seeking community input about the applicability of MOS:JR to the titles of non-biographical articles. Best, -- Notecardforfree (talk) 20:36, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

Are some legal sites more official than others? Because this one shows it styled differently, in what looks like a copy of an official-ish supreme court doc; they use 2 commas (which I'd prefer to 1, but not to 0), and partial all-caps (which I hope we won't consider). It's also done with 0 commas in this book. Looks like style variation is not unusual in citing legal cases, going by this one example anyway. As for the film, 4 of the 10 Google Books hits here do it without the comma; seems like a common enough style variation that there would be no reason not to go with our house style on that one. So it might make sense to move WP:JR out of BIO and up to a more general place. Dicklyon (talk) 22:39, 26 July 2016 (UTC)
@Dicklyon: I stand corrected -- the official title uses a comma before and after the "Jr." in the name of the petitioner. To answer your first question, the "official" version of the case is the one that appears in the United States Reports (in volume 276 at page 394). Although different style conventions will sometimes omit punctuation, MOS:LAW tries to resolve any such inconsistencies (when creating article titles) by following the conventions of the jurisdiction that published the case. My opinion is that when creating titles for articles about published works, we should utilize the stylistic conventions of the title as it appears in the work itself; I think that if we were to change the appearance of titles by superimposing our own style conventions, we would cause unnecessary confusion among readers. By way of analogy, I do not think we should modify the capitalization of anyone lived in a pretty how town. I don't disagree with the application of MOS:JR to the titles of biographical articles, but I don't think we should expand the guideline so that it modifies the titles of non-biographical articles. Best, -- Notecardforfree (talk) 23:12, 26 July 2016 (UTC)
Since you changed what I responded to (and moved the article), I added back the original with strikeout; I hope this meets with your agreement. Dicklyon (talk) 01:59, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
Wouldn’t WP:COMMONNAME and MOS:TM apply here? If sources (especially primary sources) use the comma, we use the comma. If they don’t, we don’t. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 00:32, 27 July 2016 (UTC)
In general, they do apply. However, WP:TITLE also defers to topic-specific conventions when applicable. For example, WP:ETHNICGROUP states that derogatory names for ethnic groups should not be used as article titles, even if the derogatory term is used by a majority of sources. In the case of MOS:LAW, reliable sources usually use so many different variations that it is better to defer to the title that appears in official publications from that jurisdiction (maintaining fidelity with an official title also helps avoid confusion about parties that were involved in a case; see WP:BLPCRIME). -- Notecardforfree (talk) 03:57, 27 July 2016 (UTC)
COMMONNAME does not actually apply to style matters at all. Nothing in it suggests this. I have to go over this so often, I've written a page about it here. MOS:TM, however, applies broadly, and is how most WP:RMs about weird stylizations are settled.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  13:54, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
Can you articulate the potential confusion between the following two titles?
J. W. Hampton, Jr., & Co. v. United States
J. W. Hampton Jr. & Co. v. United States
―Mandruss ☎ 01:36, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
If we apply a criterion like MOS:TM, we'd pick a style that is in use and is close to WP style. That would be without the commas. I see no confusion. Dicklyon (talk) 02:04, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
I wouldn't see any potential for confusion if you eliminated all punctuation, and we're stopping well short of that.
J. W. Hampton, Jr., & Co. v. United States
J W Hampton Jr & Co v United States
It's pretty clear to me that those are the same case; there is no essential meaning lost. So I don't see how a confusion argument holds any water. If those two commas are style elements, which so far appears to be the community view, they are as insignificant as the font. I have no issue with exceptions to WP:JR, but I feel they need better justification than I've seen so far in this discussion. ―Mandruss ☎ 02:14, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
I agree with this logic. But whatever else we do, choosing from among punctuation styles that are "in use" is still a good idea (like what MOS:TM says). In American English, we would always, or almost always, use periods after abbreviations such as Co, Jr, and v. In British English they omit periods more, but this case is not much written about in British English, being an American case, so let's go with J. W. Hampton Jr. & Co. v. United States. Dicklyon (talk) 06:18, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
In Australian English, the full stop is not used in contractions. So since "Junior" ends with an "r", no full stop is required. Hawkeye7 (talk) 07:54, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
I wouldn't begin to suggest that we go any farther than WP:JR with this; i.e., omitting those one or two commas. That was only to illustrate a point. ―Mandruss ☎ 01:23, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Small details are important -- in the law, they can be vital. I don't necessarily think readers will be confused about the meaning of the title if we omit punctuation, but I do think that readers could potentially become confused about (1) the official form of the case's title and (2) punctuation conventions for the legal citation system that is used in the case's jurisdiction (compare, e.g., punctuation conventions for Bluebook and OSCOLA). But getting back to the original question in this discussion, I am interested in hearing reasons why MOS:JR should be applied to non-biographical article titles. -- Notecardforfree (talk) 08:38, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

My only answer is: For the same reason as the biographical article titles. And the articles about a bridge, a national historical park, a street, etc., which are not bio articles but whose names include the names of people. Sort of like legal cases, wouldn't you say? Granted, Wikipedia usually also has bio articles about the named individuals, but matching those titles was not the rationale for omitting the comma for the non-bio articles. The rationale was that the comma is a style element rather than essential meaning. The sole opponent of those non-bio moves made a very fervent and recurring argument very similar to yours: Wikipedia should include the comma because it's on the side of the building, or on the sign, or in some reliable sources that they deemed more authoritative than the rest. We should include it because it's part of the name, they insisted. Their argument failed every time, as I've told you elsewhere. I simply feel that Wikipedia benefits from being consistent on this style issue across the board, with any exceptions limited to those required by law, which we've yet to identify. I also think it's generally a bad idea for any reader to view or use Wikipedia as an authority on anything, form or substance.
I totally get that you feel legal cases should be treated with more gravitas than bridges and streets, but I feel that's your perspective speaking and the general population doesn't care nearly as much. Wikipedia is a general-audience encyclopedia, not a specialized legal reference site, and law students and scholars should keep that in mind when they use it—or edit it. ―Mandruss ☎ 01:47, 30 July 2016 (UTC)
@Mandruss: I apologize for taking so long to respond to your last comment -- I've been away from a computer for a little while. I think we are going to have to agree to disagree about whether the names of bridges, streets, legal cases, etc. include "biographical information". I agree that we should use a consistent style for for biographical articles, and I am totally in favor of applying MOS:JR to titles of articles about people, but when the article is about a geographic feature or a movie with a name in it (for example), then I think we should defer to subject-specific naming conventions. I also agree that information in Wikipedia should be taken with a grain of salt, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't aspire to build the most accurate encyclopedia possible, and with respect to the titles of legal articles, I think it is in the best interest of readers to utilize article titles that adopt the citation conventions of the jurisdiction in which the case was published. -- Notecardforfree (talk) 01:41, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
I don't see why the same "build the most accurate encyclopedia possible" argument wouldn't apply to people's names, too, and yet WP:JR rejects that argument. The argument hangs on the word "accurate", and the consensus view is that omission of the comma does not decrease accuracy in any type of name or title, not even a little. I concur with that consensus view; I get that you do not. I was hoping for more participation here. You and I are not going to settle this alone, and the worst possible outcome would be ongoing dispute of this issue at article level. It may need an RfC. ―Mandruss ☎ 02:34, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
The initial RfC on Jr. comma use in biographical articles was quite close, with many editors in favor of keeping the comma. The closer recommended keeping the comma in older or featured articles. That common sense aside, to "build the most accurate encyclopedia possible" we should continue to use the real names of TV shows or movies. The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., a now defunct television show, is given as an example. Since this is the real name of the TV show, and already a featured article, as an encyclopedia we should continue to reflect that now historic usage and not pretend the original name of the show doesn't exist. In the legal realm, what about things like Two Pesos, Inc. v. Taco Cabana, Inc.? Randy Kryn 11:16, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
@Randy Kryn: I agree with your assessment regarding the use of "real names." I think we should apply the same principle to legal articles, including articles about legal cases. For the example you provided, Two Pesos, Inc. v. Taco Cabana, Inc., the current title of the article is the official title used by the Supreme Court of the United States. See Volume 505 of the United States Reports at p. 763. -- Notecardforfree (talk) 16:13, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
The comma used before 'Jr' is not part of the name, merely part of the styling, just as with the full stop after 'Jr', or the full stop after 'Mr', or the use of commas to seperate postnominals (e.g. 'Bt, PC'). There is no reason to treat this matter any differently from any of these cases. The idea that there is a fundamental difference in 'Bt CH PC' and 'Bt., CH, PC' is a nonsense, just as much as this is a nonsense. RGloucester — ☎ 16:44, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
This is a good point; we've long rejected this idea that to have an accurate name we must use a styling consistent with the subject's use. Lego vs. LEGO, etc. I'm not aware of any problems this has caused. It's a very tired argument. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 16:48, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
Concur with DickLyon, RGloucester, and Mandruss that including or omitting commas with things like "Jr." and "Inc." or "Ltd" is purely a style matter and has nothing to do with encyclopedic accuracy, in this example or any I can contemplate without coming up with silly fictions. (Let's posit an imaginary lawsuit between "ABC Inc." and "ABC, Inc." I would bet a large pile of money that no court would accept a case under such unclear party-name designation, but would disambiguate clearly in some manner. Since no state in the US anyway will issue two conflicting corporate registrations that only differ by this comma, the only possible such case in US jurisprudence would be federal, and thus they would probably disambiguate by state of registration.) In point of fact, if you go over legal style guides, you find that the expectations with regard to such punctuation are variable by both location and publication date, and are simply arbitrary. Thus, there is no "it's official!" case to be made here. It's just another run-of-the-mill WP:Specialized-style fallacy. The very same case will be rendered differently in different legal contexts even in the same national legal system, and even if it weren't, WP has no reason to care, because WP has it's own style guide and isn't following some external legal style guide. The idea "Small details are important -- in the law, they can be vital" is true within certain contextual bounds; it's fallacious to suppose that is it always true in every possible way, and it is demonstrably not true with regard to punctuation in case names, which themselves are often heavily abbreviated in legal citations anyway.

While I favor giving the titles of published works like novels, TV series, even non-fiction books, verbatim to a reasonable extent (i.e., ignoring stylistic quirks of cover-art marketing and promotional posters – see MOS:TM for numerous examples, like Alien 3 not "Alien3"), court cases are not creative works, and should be treated the same way as other manuscript materials, subject to MoS style normalization. While I would not remove the comma from The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. (unless the copyright holder reissues Blu-rays of it without the comma, amounting to a formal re-titling, a republication under a modified title we can use), there is no problem whatsoever in removing commas from "J. W. Hampton, Jr. & Co. v. United States" or "J. W. Hampton, Jr., & Co. v. United States". And no, it has nothing at all do with removing the periods/stops from that construction, either after the initials or after the other abbreviations.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  13:54, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Question about emphasis

Should punctuation be included when emphasizing a word or sentence?

Example: “I am yelling!”
Should the exclamation mark be strong (or bold)?

Another example: “I am not doing that!”
Should the exclamation mark be emphasized (or italic type)?
―PapíDimmi (talk | contribs) 20:21, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Apply the same logic as MOS:LQ. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:50, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
I’m curious what prompted this question. I’d say we shouldn’t be using emphasis in articles in the first place, but a live example would help. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 00:38, 27 July 2016 (UTC)
No, it shouldn't, per MOS:ITAL § Effect on nearby punctuation. – nyuszika7h (talk) 09:50, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
Concur with Nyuszika7H; this is already covered. Even if it weren't, I would agree with the anony's concerns/questions, and would have to point out that “I am not doing that!” is fiction-style writing, not encyclopedic, and further that italicizing the exclamation point is redundant brow-beating; the very fact that it's an exclamation already presupposes emphasis by nature of what an exclamation is.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  13:59, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

New section for video and other file types

I just made changes that I think are conservative but I wanted to raise the change and issue here as documentation.

This manual of style contains a section on "images". There is no style guide for including other types of files in Wikipedia articles. Lately there has been more interest in certain files types, including videos, and I thought that there should be more guidance in this manual.

I changed "images" from being a top-level section heading to being a subsection of a section heading called "media files". Right now, this new "media files" section only has two subsections, those being the old "images" section and a new "Other media files" section. In the new section I only briefly wrote that other types of media files may be included with consensus. This is not the strongest or most comprehensive summary of the discussion, but at least it is accurate and non-controversial. If anyone would like to further develop the manual of style for video and other files then please do so here, and also consider developing policy at WP:Videos.

I added this in response to some community discussions about including video in articles. Anyone may see these discussions at

Thanks to @Francis Schonken: and @Ricky81682: for closing these RfCs. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:02, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Tx for the ping. I extensively pruned your new additions (while they didn't exactly read as style guidance: imho this elaborate page shouldn't contain digressions like "Most commonly, editors use pictures as illustrations", etc), but kept the new section title, and other media files subsection.
Support making the style guidance for videos and sound files a bit more specific than what I did, but propose this should rather follow talk page discussion (if anything more specific needs to be said on these kinds of media files), than precede it. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:08, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
I don't know the process here enough but could we consider starting Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Video as a proposal (or in draftspace at Draft:Manual of Style/Video or something) more akin to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images? I think it's worth fleshing out into more detail but I don't think it's ready to be a formal part of the MOS at the moment. What is the process for MOS section additions? Is it expand the current one and then spin-off or create a spin-off and then get formally added? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 23:09, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
Ricky81682 I would say expand text within this guide then spin it off after it becomes a few sentences. I looked at the images guide. Much of what could be said about images can be said about video, so maybe there should be a Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Media for general use among images, video, audio, text files, and the new interactive tools like maps. Once the common elements are established, the particular points of each file type can be put in their own pages. I would regret starting video documentation if it mostly was a copy of images, and right now, I think most of what needs to be said about video is in that image documentation. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:00, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
Beware also wandering very far into how-to territory; we have other pages for that. And no we don't need a /Video MoS subpage; there isn't enough video-specific material to warrant such a split.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:00, 15 July 2016 (UTC)
I agree, though we might want to consider renaming Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Media and expand into videos and such on that page.  Wikipedian Sign Language Paine  20:27, 15 July 2016 (UTC)
That does sounds like a good idea.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  14:00, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Composition titles advice consolidation

Time for some long-overdue consolidation of the material on titles of works, presently scattered across several pages. We have an entire MoS subpage for this material, at WP:Manual of Style/Titles (MOS:TITLES), but are not using it properly/consistently. In some cases, for some aspects of title styling, we're treating it as the main page for this, and using {{Main}} to cross-reference it on other pages. In some other cases, we're treating it as just some summary page, with the details in a different page, and cross-referencing that page to those other pages to get the details. This is obviously confusing and impractical.

Are there any issues that this cleanup would raise? I'd meant to get around to this since May 2014, but it's just been sitting on the back burner.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:50, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Novel pronouns

What is the position on people who want to be referred to by a specific pronoun that is novel, i.e. not in major dictionaries? Something like "zie says this; xie thinks that". Should be clarified in MOS, along with the info about how to refer to transgender people. Equinox ◑ 04:22, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

It's not encyclopedic English, confusing to readers, and violates WP:NPOV by allowing third parties to dictate to WP how WP may write about them. It shouldn't be used here except in quotations. Rewrite to avoid, usually by inserting the surname ("Johnson then moved to Dallas ...") or a descriptive noun ("In 2015, the singer released a third album ..."). Agreed this should be covered in MOS:IDENTITY.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  13:26, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
However, the existing policy ("Gender identity: Give precedence to self-designation") also apparently "violates WP:NPOV by allowing third parties to dictate to WP how WP may write about them". Equinox ◑ 07:14, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
I agree with SMcCandlish here that neologistic pronouns should be avoided through rewrites when possible. Use singular they if unavoidable. Wikipedia tries to balance respect for individuals (see WP:HARM and BLP) with NPOV. When if comes to BLPs, the individuals have some say about self-identifying information (e.g. ethnicity, gender, religion, and sexual orientation) where the individual is the most authoritative source on the matter. EvergreenFir (talk) 07:19, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
Concur that singular they is also useful in such a case. The distinction MOS has to draw as a style guide is that "self-identifying information" is a factual matter, not how-may-we-write matter (it's ultimately a WP:NPOV- and WP:NOR-grounded separation of content and presentation matter). It might be a verifiable fact (in an interview in a secondary-source publication, or in WP:ABOUTSELF material like a celebrity's own website, that a bio subject, in their personal and professional life, wants to be referred to by the made-up pronoun "zirmit" (I claim dibs on that one!), but that doesn't obligate Wikipedia editors in any way. Someone else probably wants to be referred to as a god or prophet, but we would not do so in Wikipedia's voice, either, even if we report the sourced fact of the assertion of alleged divinity. We can walk the line of not contradicting a personal pronoun choice without explicitly jumping on the bandwagon to support it, by simply writing around it, just as we can craft an article on a new religious movement's leader without flat-out denying that they are the prophet they claim to be, or appearing to support the claim.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:58, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
I deeply dislike singular they in the encyclopedic register, when referring to a specific person, but I agree with the rest. I suppose there might be a situation where singular they with a specific person as referent is the least of evils, but I don't know what it would be. --Trovatore (talk) 08:10, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
David Crystal once gave the example of "anyone can have a drink if ___ want(s)". Equinox ◑ 16:51, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
I said when the referent is a specific person, not "anyone". Honestly I'm not that fond of singular they referred to "anyone" either, but it's much less jarring than singular they referred to a specific identified person. --Trovatore (talk) 18:16, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Use of "aviatrix"

A discussion on the use of the word "aviatrix" has been started at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Aviation#"Aviatrix", which may interest users who watch this page. —Granger (talk · contribs) 02:12, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Notice of discussions regarding updates to MOS:TV

This is just a notification to a series of discussions that are taking place regarding updates to MOS:TV, of which editors may have an interest. You can find more information about the initiative and the discussions, here. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 03:31, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

RFC on unifying "OS X" and "macOS"

Since Apple Inc. announced the rename of OS X to macOS, Wikipedia articles use both OS X and macOS to indicate the operating system used by Apple computers.

Shall we unify it, and if unified, which name shall we use?

NasssaNser 05:40, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

  • Comment I've alerted the WT:VG project to this as this question had come up relatively recently. I am sure there are more projects that should be notifed too (like the software project). --MASEM (t) 05:53, 16 August 2016 (UTC)
  • Keep the term used at the release of the game. It will make verifiability easier, and will require no change to older articles. Diego (talk) 08:08, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
  • For a second I misread the RfC and was wondering why Wikipedia had two articles for the same OS, and why that mattered for WP:VG. But I think Diego's opinion makes the most sense. Those older games weren't released on MacOS, they were released on OS X, a slight technical difference but one we should make, and which is the path of least resistance and change to boot. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 13:05, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
  • Concur with using the name of the OS that was current at the time of the game's release (or its release for that OS, rather – as with Linux, Mac release dates are sometimes years after original PC/console release). It would be directly misleading to say that a game was released for "macOS" if it was actually released for OS X and may not even run on macOS (this is actually even more of a concern for older games released for Mac OS X, which later became OS X, then apparently macOS). The situation is similar to Windows NT becoming Windows 2000, then Windows XP, then Windows 7 through 10. The underlying core OS is really the same thing, modified over time, but we would not refer to Windows 10 as "Windows XP 10", or "Windows 2000 10", or "Windows NT 10". The idea that there are a whole bunch of Windows operating systems (Windows Server aside), and only one Apple computer OS, is essentially false in two countervailing senses at the same time.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:08, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
  • Agree with the preceding. Quick-reference link: countervail ―Mandruss ☎ 08:17, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Notification of proposal to make Help:Hidden text a guideline

The RfC is at Help talk:Hidden text #RfC on status of this page. --RexxS (talk) 14:30, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

I have started a discussion about the use of Google translate links in citations and external links sections. Please comment there. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:24, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Invisible comments

I'm concerned that the section Invisible comments provides insufficient guidance on the appropriate use of hidden comments. According to WP:SS, the {{main article}} template in this section indicates that the section is a summary of the Help:Hidden text page, which goes into detail about appropriate and inappropriate uses, but this section fails to summarise much of the salient advice there. I propose therefore that the sentences:

  • "Invisible comments are useful for flagging an issue or leaving instructions about part of the text, where this is more convenient than raising the matter on the talk page. They should be used judiciously, because they can clutter the wiki source for other editors."

should be replaced by:

  • "Invisible comments are useful for alerting other editors to issues such as common mistakes that regularly occur in the article, a section title being the target of an incoming link, or pointing to a discussion that established a consensus relating to the article. They should not be used to instruct other editors not to perform certain edits, although where existing consensus is against making such an edit, they may usefully draw the editor's attention to that. Avoid adding too many invisible comments because they can clutter the wiki source for other editors."

I feel that provides a more comprehensive summary of the advice at Help:Hidden text, and is closer to the spirit of its guidance. In particular, I don't think that the idea of "leaving instructions ... where it's more convenient than raising the matter on the talk page" is at all clear. The prevailing opinion as I understand it is not to use invisible text as a substitute for using the talk page, and that instructions for other editors are not a collegial way of working. The advice at Help:Hidden text is far more nuanced and detailed, and far less open to misinterpretation than the current section here and I believe that the guidance here would be improved if it became a better summary. --RexxS (talk) 12:48, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

  • Hidden comments are helpful. In one article where people keep changing a transliteration, I've added information about why not to change it. In another, where people kept expanding a certain paragraph (the UK para in FGM), I added a request to expand the dedicated article instead. WikiProjects add information about best practice. There's no need to gain special consensus for issues that may not be obvious to new editors (new to the page, as well as new to Wikipedia). SarahSV (talk) 16:32, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
A similar situation applies to many of the articles for episodes of Futurama, where IP editors keep changing the episode number to reflect airing order versus production order, in violation of broad consensus. The IPs aren't going to check the Talk page. DonIago (talk) 17:11, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
Some hidden comments are useful. I'm sure the Futurama problems are much reduced by having a hidden comment pointing to that broad consensus, for example. The proposed changes here would not in any way discourage editors from pointing out common mistakes such as Sarah and Doniago mention. In fact they would be encouraged because of 'common mistakes' being specifically mentioned. I personally find them very useful in list articles/sections to remind editors of the inclusion criteria. But are all hidden comments useful? I think not. Unfortunately, this section at present gives no guidance that common mistakes should be flagged, nor on the value of indicating incoming links to sections, as common examples of use. It also fails to remind editors not to use hidden comments to enforce their own personal preferences. This section would benefit from the greater degree of clarity appropriate for any project-wide guideline. --RexxS (talk) 20:53, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
  • I strongly concur with this suggested edit. I also strongly concur with SarahSV's and Doniago's points, and would have made essentially the same ones myself (with different particular examples, like the notes at Eight-ball to stop adding local "bar pool" rules to the section on the world standardized rules; those bad edits and their reversion make up a near majority of edits to that article in recent years). But the draft actually already accounted for these concerns, as RexxS points out.

    This change is needed, because we're seeing an increased amount of strife generated by HTML comments attempting to serve an illegitimate WP:FAITACCOMPLI and WP:OWN function – including a recent WP:ARCA filing (unresolved, and liable to lead to further conflict, probably a WP:RFARB case, since the Arbs seem to feel the issue is outside the scope of the original RFARB case under which the ARCA action was sought). This has been a problem for a long time, and it's worsening because some WP:FACTIONs have figured out they can (so far) get away with using them as a WP:GAMING tool. It's much, much easier for MoS to address this with a tiny change than to engage in several months of protracted dispute at ArbCom and other WP:DRAMAboards. As MoS's lead itself says, when faced with an intractable dispute, see if you can write around it to make it moot. That can sometimes apply as well to internal guideline matters as to actual encyclopedic content output.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:58, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

NOTICE: RfC which alters a sentence of this page

Moot -- withdrawn, mainly for complaints about venue. We'll have a set of RfC's over here instead. Herostratus (talk) 13:32, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

There is an RfC regarding quote templates, which proposes a substituting part of WP:BLOCKQUOTE (which is part of this pasge) with different text. The RfC is here:

Template talk:Pull quote#Request for comments on use and documentation

and users are requested to chime in as able. The RfC is there because most of the changes are to Template:Pull quote, but for this to work a sentence also has to be changed here at WP:MOS, so heads up.

The proposed WP:MOS change is to allow {{cquote}} and {{rquote}} for normal use (which they are used that way anyway), specifically to delete this sentence:

Do not enclose block quotations in quotation marks (and especially avoid decorative quotation marks in normal use, such as those provided by the {{pull quote}} a.k.a. {{cquote}} template, which are reserved for pull quotes).

and replace it with

{{Cquote}} and {{rquote}} are alternatives to {{quote}} which enclose the quote in large quotation marks..

Editors should see Template talk:Pull quote#Request for comments on use and documentation to see the change in context and the arguments for an against and to make their voices heard. Herostratus (talk) 15:20, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

  • This is basically a bogus RfC that is trying to undo years of consensus at MoS against abuse of pull quote templates and decoration for decoration's sake, by pulling a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS move by fans of decorative quotes to change a template and its documentation to contradict the guideline, and to permit use of the template in ways that violate WP:NPOV and WP:UNDUE policies. Unbelievable.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:57, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
If you would confine your arguments to one place (Template talk:Pull quote#Request for comments on use and documentation), that would be useful, as doing it here just muddies up what is supposed to be a simple pointer notice. Herostratus (talk) 13:57, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

"MOS:IE"

Filpro, what does the the IE in the new shortcut MOS:IE stand for? EEng 06:03, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

I was planning on it for being used for "Indian English" because of User:Filpro/script/IE. Would this shortcut be okay to use? Filpro (talk) 06:06, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
Without commenting on whether the shortcut itself is okay, I wouldn't advertise it in the MoS as it's not terribly intuitive. Graham (talk) 06:10, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
Now removed from MoS. Filpro (talk) 06:14, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
Bill Gates thanks you. EEng 06:21, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, I thought this had something to do with working around Internet Explorer bugs.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  12:28, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Sandwiching

I believe the rule relating to sandwiching on the Wikipedia:Manual of Style needs to be amended. The current rule is immediately below.

  • Avoid sandwiching text between two images that face each other, and between an image and an infobox or similar.

I would like it replaced with something along the lines of the following.

  • Avoid sandwiching text between two images that face each other, and between an image and an infobox or similar, except when none of the images is wider than 220px and adding the additional image is desirable because it highlights a quote that sums up the essence of the information about the page.
"For us there is no valid definition of socialism other than the abolition of the exploitation of one human being by another." - Che Guevara

This is in relation to my wish to place a 220px wide image of Che Guevara at the top left hand side of the Socialism page with a notable quote that sums up the essence and appeal of socialism: "For us there is no valid definition of socialism other than the abolition of the exploitation of one human being by another." I believe this improves the page. In my opinion this modestly sized image does not cause any aesthetic harm to the page and if anything improves the appearance, as you can judge by pasting the code used to create the image in this section onto the Socialism page just below the header and sidebar code and hitting the ‘Show preview' button. The default 220px thumbnail width allows this quote to fit well underneath it whereas anything much smaller would not look good.

You might not think it necessary to change the sandwiching rule, but you might believe this image of Che Guevara and the quote is of sufficient import to invoke the Wikipedia:Ignore all rules rule and support the use of this image/quote on this page in said manner on the grounds that doing so improves this page. If so please say so on theTalk:Socialism#Sandwiching images in lead page so a consensus can be reached that favors the addition of this image/quote on this page in this manner. Thank you for taking the time to read this comment. CodeBadger (talk) 05:50, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

  • The problem (or one of many, anyway) with this proposal is the inherent difficulty in settling on the "quote that sums up the essence of the information about the page". In the case at hand, for example, I always felt that this was the quote that best sums of socialism:
The difference between capitalism and socialism is that under capitalism man exploits man, while under socialism it's just the opposite.
EEng 06:26, 23 August 2016 (UTC)
An excellent quote I have to say. It would be up to the editors who are interested in a particular article to reach a consensus as to what is the best quote. CodeBadger (talk) 05:41, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
Gave me a chuckle. Good one.  Rules of enpagement Paine  20:09, 23 August 2016 (UTC)
  • No, we're not going to amend MOS to enable you to do something very silly and unorthodox in one – or heaven forbid, more – articles. Even good intentions can cause sandwiching and this is a very good rationale for the present catch-all wording that makes no exceptions. Sandwiching is undesirable and if that conflicts with a "desirable" idea you had in mind, then you need to think of something else. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 22:58, 23 August 2016 (UTC)
Um, that's a pretty harsh response to a new editor (500 edits) who maybe doesn't have a big-picture perspective yet. EEng 04:34, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
Doesn't seem silly to me, while if we never challenged the prevailing orthodoxy we would never have progressed from the Dark Ages. Did you paste the code into the Socialism page and hit the 'Show preview' button as suggested to see what it looks like? If so what do you think it looks like? You seem to think sandwiching is inherently bad, but why is that? So long as the image is not too big (sensibly limited to a width of 220px) the text is not sandwiched enough to cause a problem. In fact it is easier to read a page which has narrow columns rather than wide columns. It seems to me that the rule relating to sandwiching is too restrictive and needs to be amended as suggested in order to improve Wikipedia. CodeBadger (talk) 05:41, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
  • No, I don't agree that a change is needed. Sandwiching text is even less desirable in these days of very variable screen sizes on mobile devices, whose owners don't always want to view the mobile version. There's far too much sandwiching in articles. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:02, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
  • The motivating example actually seems like an attempt to add a pull quote by other means. An image that "highlights a quote that sums up the essence of the ... page" is just a pull quote masquerading as an illustration. Pull quotes are generally discouraged in main space articles. Hiding a pull quote in an image caption does not improve the article. Pburka (talk) 15:43, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
  • Looking at the version of the article with the image added, the article's introductory text is squished to an awkward column 2 or 3 words wide. I think the style advice to avoid sandwiching is good advice. While the quote is certainly evocative, I don't think it is very helpful as a starting point for the article. While there may be instances where sandwiching is warranted, I can't imagine it would ever be appropriate for the lead sentence.--Trystan (talk) 18:51, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
Thank you all for your comments. I don't think it is a pull quote as this quote is not in the main article. I don't think the squeezing of the text at the top of the article is a problem so long as the image is not wider than 220px, while narrowing the text column near the top of the article makes it easier for people to get into reading it as it's easier to read narrow columns than wide columns. As for people who want to view a Wikipedia article on a small mobile they can use the mobile version of the Wikipedia article, while mobile devices now allow one to easily enlarge the non-mobile version of the article and move it around. It seems to me that if the quote sums up the essence of the article or a key point then it's ok if it leads the article. The current restriction on sandwiching seems too restrictive. We can limit the proposed sandwiching to the top of articles for one image/quote. The new rule could read as follows:
  • Avoid sandwiching text between two images that face each other, and between an image and an infobox or similar, except when none of the images is wider than 220px and adding the additional image to the top left corner of the article is desirable because it highlights a quote that sums up the essence of the information about the article or a key point.
Perhaps we could add the Che image/quote to the top of the Socialism article for a week and get other people to have a look and see what they think? That would include other editors as well as our friends and relatives. It seems to me that we have nothing to lose by doing so and much to gain. CodeBadger (talk) 06:00, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
OK, look, your enthusiasm is admirable, but there's not going to be a special exception written into the rules for the very narrow situation of essential-quote-as-image-caption-at-top-of-article-opposite-infobox, and anyway there's a more fundamental problem here, which is that you're never going to get agreement on an "essential" quotation on a subject like socialism. EEng 06:29, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
  • If the quote is really essential to the article, is should be in the article text. WP:CAPTION indicates that captions should identify the subject of the image, which a quote does not do. If you feel that this quote is critical to understanding socialism, you should try to incorporate it into the text instead of an image caption. Pburka (talk) 18:44, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for your replies guys. It seems that the consensus is that my sandwiching idea sucks. Thank you Pburka for your idea about incorporating the quote into the text. Cheers. CodeBadger (talk) 08:38, 26 August 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose, and I object to the WP:FORUMSHOPPING. This is just another attempt to do an end run around the RfC above about decorative quotation boxes. Address to WP:NPOV and other policy concerns about them in the RfC. Until you can do that, there is no basis whatsoever to try to wedge in "gimme quote boxes" stuff, much less under the guise of technical adjustments to the image-sandwiching section. It may well be that something needs to be said there about image sizes, but that has nothing to do with framing of out-of-context quotations, against MOS:BQ.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:24, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
Oh, FFS calm down. The OP is a new user with a naive idea. There's no forum shopping or end run or anything else. And the OP's withdrawn the proposal, so why are you chiming in with all this gesticulation and hyperbole? Must you hold forth on everything? Did someone swap in regular for your decaf? Crickey! EEng 14:44, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
@Stanton: As the person who initially objected to the addition of the Che photo and quotation at Talk:Socialism § Sandwiching images in lead (which is what led to this discussion), I can assure you that CodeBadger had no intention of getting caught up in the {{quote box}} controversy. As EEng said, this is just a new user with a naïve idea (and no one here has suggested otherwise). That being said, this was an inadvertent demonstration of some of the problems caused by these quote boxes. Graham (talk) 15:38, 2 September 2016 (UTC)
I'm entirely calm, and it's minced "for fuck's sake" exclamations that seem un-calm to me. As I said, we might need to adjust the wording about image sizes, but doing so does not involve any rider about quote boxes.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:15, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

Merger discussion

The bot archived /Archive_182#Composition_titles_advice_consolidation before it got any response. For the record, "Yes, please!" Scattering this all over the place doesn't help anyone. While at it, there might be value in separating the "whether" from the "how": there are various places and reasons to use italics, or title case, or sentence case; these reasons could be given independently from examples showing what these are and what markup creates them. LeadSongDog come howl! 19:41, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

@LeadSongDog: Right. There were no objections raised, so I was just going to continue doing it (carefully) as time permits. It's rather painstaking.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:29, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
Happy to see it being addressed. I've elsewhere expressed my reasons for preferring sentence case over title case in citing such minor works as news articles, so I won't repeat those arguments here. Whether one agrees, disagrees, or maintains neutrality on that question, it can only be an improvement to have the MOS guidance rendered coherent. Discussion of guidance changes should likely be deferred until that effort is done. Thank you. LeadSongDog come howl! 18:50, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
Understood. The consolidation would just be a consolidation without substantive changes, or fits would be pitched.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:13, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Be kind to those blind

Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Do not use capitals for emphasis Is woefully incomplete in my opinion. It only reflects the aesthetic effect of italic text opposed to the functional effect intended by emphasis. As of this posting, the entire section currently reads as follows:

Do not use capitals for emphasis

Use italics, not capitals, to denote emphasis.

Incorrect: It is not only a LITTLE learning that is dangerous.
Correct: It is not only a little learning that is dangerous.

I propose modifying the section to mention the functional effect of italic emphasis, with included links, as follows:

Do not use capitals for emphasis
Further information: MOS:EMPHASIS

Instead of capitals, use italics for emphasis, generated by the <em>...</em> element in HTML (see HTML in wikitext) or template {{em|...}} in wiki markup (see template's documentation).

Incorrect: It is not only a LITTLE learning that is dangerous.
Correct: It is not only a little learning that is dangerous.

Thank you for considering these changes.--John Cline (talk) 22:51, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

John is right to bring attention to the difference between <i>...</i> and <em>...</em>. It's not just an issue for screen readers, either. There's a fuller exposition of why it's a good idea to properly mark up text that has more meaning than just presentation at:
for those interested. --RexxS (talk) 23:38, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
User:Graham87 may wish to comment.—Wavelength (talk) 23:38, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
This is irrelevant to the majority of screen reader users, as the most widely used screen readers don't take font attributes (e.g. bold, underlining, italic) into account at all. Also, Wavelength, your attempt to ping me didn't work; I suspect you had an edit conflict when you composed your message. I only found out about this thread because of an offwiki notification by Tony1. Graham87 13:20, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
Thank you, User:Graham87, for alerting me. I received both alerts.
—Wavelength (talk) 13:38, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
Thank you, User:Tony1, for your assistance.
—Wavelength (talk) 14:41, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

As nobody seems to be disagreeing with the thrust of John's suggestion I've gone ahead and updated the section on "Do not use capitals for emphasis" to use {{em}}. Taking into account Graham's comments above, I've also updated the section on "Emphasis" to more accurately explain the reasons for using <em>...</em>. --RexxS (talk) 17:17, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

I belatedly very strongly support this; I'd meant to fix that years ago, when I created the {{em}} template, and just forgot.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:15, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

In ranges that might otherwise be expressed with to or through

"The en dash in a range is always unspaced, except when at least one endpoint of the range includes at least one space." - erm, why?! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Turkeyphant (talk • contribs) 12:34, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Turkeyphant See MOS:DATERANGE.  – Corinne (talk) 00:37, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
Well, that link just repeats the same rule in a different way. The reason for the rule is aesthetic. (And in fact that's the reason for a lot of formatting rules -- not something about "correctness", but rather what reads well and looks good.) For example:
Charles Robert Darwin (1809–1882) was an English naturalist
looks fine. But if you add the full dates:
Charles Robert Darwin (12 February 1809–19 April 1882) was an English naturalist
with no space around the dash you see how the "1809–19" are pulled together by the dash, as if they're the two things being related to each other -- the other stuff to the left and right is marginalized. But adding a space
Charles Robert Darwin (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist
makes it look much more balanced. EEng 20:06, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
A similar (but not identical) procedure is applied in the order of operations in mathematics and computer programming.
—Wavelength (talk) 20:34, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Most style, grammar, spelling, punctuation and other usage matters are arbitrary. WP does it it because other academic style guides do it (Chicago, Oxford, Scientific Style and Format, etc., etc.). The ones that do not are journalistic (or for school children). In virtually all news house style manuals, the very existence itself of the en dash is denied; they'll tell you there is "a" dash, and show you an em dash, after which they all part ways and recommend conflicting usage, because they pride themselves on being distinctive from their competition. The historical background is that the careful, methodical typesetting of book (including encyclopedia) printing has had en, em and other dashes (3-em, etc.) for ages, but the news printers (especially in the days of manual type) were all about expediency, often having to produce multiple editions per day, so they eliminated whatever they could get away with. This is also why journalism style tends to write things like "On 2 July 2017 the sun will explode" instead of "On 2 July 2017, the Sun will explode", and drops many other commas that are found in a more formal, deliberate register that is meant to be read in depth, not scanned for a few seconds. But we can actually thank them for one thing: the dropping of the unnecessary dots in upper-case acronyms and initialisms; the last time you saw "U.S.S.R." was probably long before the USSR ceased to exist as such. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:26, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Opinion needed on a possible page move

Please visit and comment here:

Many thanks.

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 06:55, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Using non-Courier New monospaced fonts for code, preformatted text, etc.

Are the rules of using a non-Courier New monospaced fonts used for Code, preformatted text, etc. like Consolas, Everson Mono, Lucida Console, Lucida Sans Typewriter, Dejavu Sans Mono, etc. 46.130.128.129 (talk) 10:54, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

@46.130.128.129: It's not clear what your asking, nor what context you are thinking of. Setting a specific font is not a good idea, because we have no idea what fonts someone may have installed. In most cases it should simply be set to font-family: monospace; so that people see it in whatever their browser-default monospace font it, or a custom one they have set (I use one intended for coders that better distinguishes between 1, l, and I than most of them do, for example).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  13:14, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
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