This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:Manual of Style. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Clarification on the use of a hyphen or an en dash for "Academy Award winning"
I was recently doing page clean-up with AWB where I (at AWB's suggestion) changed "Academy Award–winning" (with an en dash) to "Academy Award-winning" (with a hyphen) on the article "Society of the Snow" (see this edit[1]). Nardog noticed my edit and reverted it[2] citing MOS:SUFFIXDASH, which does appear to support the use of an en dash in this situation.
En dash is correct per a straightforward reading of SUFFIXDASH. I would favor efforts to fix this up in the few places mentioned, but I wouldn't advise expecting consistency on application of this relatively niche rule. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 13:53, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
This is much more important when something has an affix (usually a prefix) and the affixing to one word in the multi-word term produces a confusing compound: "anti–American Federalist Party writings" (because "anti-American" is a hyphenated term with its own meaning, not the meaning here). Most such constructions just should be reworded more clearly. Same goes for adjectival temporary compounds that are usually hyphenated but would take an en dash when the modified term is multi-word ("her quitting–Noname Corporation decision"). No reason for such a clumsy construction. Because the en dash seems rather unnecessary for reader comprehension in constructions like "ex–prime minister" or "Academy Award-winning", a hyphen is common in our articles. Does this have implications for whether we should have this rule, or that it should be a rule and not a suggestion, or be changed to apply only when confusion is likely? I'm not sure. PS: The dash is almost completely unattested for some things, such as Proto-Indo-European language, (not "Proto–Indo-European language") despite the existence of Indo-European languages as a separate (related) topic. PIE is treated as a unitary term for its own subject, not a temporary modification of IE. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 04:33, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
I nominate "indeed" for "Instructional and presumptuous language"
Whenever I see "indeed" I reach for the edit button. This assertion of "truth" is inserted, I claim, because the writer wants to convince you of a fact, but they do not have sufficient evidence. Rather than provide the evidence they reach for the bold font: Indeed! It addresses the reader "see this is true"; it is in the category of "note that", "of course" and "naturally". (I suppose not every use is bad and not every word need to be in the section, but calling it out explicitly makes editors aware of the issue). Johnjbarton (talk) 03:47, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
I'm sceptical. Like you say, not every use is bad and not every word that can be used inappropriately needs to be in the section. Gawaon (talk) 07:20, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
Tend to agree. We have many debates like this at WT:WTW, with someone wanting to "ban" a particular word for one of the reasons listed there and the answer is almost always "no" because either there are too many appropriate uses, the term is too infrequent in our material to bother addressing, or both. Stuff like this should just be cleaned up when misuse is encountered. You can search for all occurrences of it in mainspace with insource:indeed, and and take all the WP:GNOMEing time you like to fix those that seem wrongheaded (AWB/JWB can be helpful for such endeavors). A common rightheaded use is to begin a sentence with "Indeed," as a counterpoint to the sentence that preceded it; it's a usage in the same class as "However," and "But," and "Nevertheless," and a few others. Some such uses are wrongheaded, though; depends on the context and the implication. The wrongheaded uses are more often in mid-sentence or sentence-final position as blatant editorializing, e.g. "The hypothesis was disproven, indeed, in 2022.", and "Her decision to leave the company was life-changing indeed." Often these are found in material that badly needs other MOS:TONE revision (like that second example, which is magazine-style writing), and were put there by someone injecting so much inappropriate style that the article or section ends up tagged with (or needing to be tagged with) {{Essay-like}}. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 04:01, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
In conversation (usually written) it’s a form of agreement, used most commonly when agreeing with pertinent facts advanced by another that support an argument both agree with. But in an encyclopedia, away from the talk pages, I cannot imagine that it’s a commonly used, or required, word? Perhaps, in a plot summary, where something that had earlier been suspected is subsequently confirmed…e.g. Sherlock discovers that Mr Barton was indeed the killer”? MapReader (talk) 08:03, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
Might be of interest. Let me know if anything seems missing from (or crazy in) either of them. One is new, the other was a draft languishing in my userspace for a long time:
I'd like to have a discussion about plant description style. Is this a good place or is there a better?
The basic problem with plants is that they are not very uniform and can look very different in different countries, at times to the point where you can readily recognise the plant in your own country but encountering it in another, think you have quite a different species or be doubtful about what it is. That can even be the case if you see it low altitude and encounter it at high altitude.
Because of this variability of plants, Country/Regional Flora descriptions are usually regionally orientated, describing how a plant presents itself in some local region, and depending on the work maybe it might mention variability in a slightly wider context. So a British flora might (but most probably won't) mention differences the plant shows in France, but undoubtedly won't mention differences the plant takes on in Palestine or up a Turkish mountain.
As well as Flora saying contradictory things due to focus on regional variation, they can also mention useful complementary details, or clarify each other where they are ambiguous (as they can sometimes be). For example, the Aegean Flora says Cymbalaria microcalyx is generally pink, but Flora of Turkey says it is white or pink (I've only seen white here). On the other hand, Flora of Turkey says Cymbalaria longipes is completely hairless, whilst the Aegean Flora says it can be hairy, but is hairless by maturity, providing needed clarity. This situation of Floras saying different or complementary things applies to very much every characteristic of a plant, and is why several always need to be used under any circumstance.
Now when it comes to writing a plant description for Wikipedia, Wikipedia is global so the description needs to be from a global perspective, it's not sufficient just to take a single Flora work to use unless it happens to be a work dedicated to a detailed global perspective on the plant. For example, if you write the plant description just utilising the descriptions found in British flora, the accuracy will be a matter of luck, since you'll only be describing the plant's British form and variety. Instead, descriptions need to be written by utilising the accounts of the plant from as many flora from different parts of the world as possible that you have available or can get hold of. It would probably be excessive to reference them all (though that is done in a strict work), but after reading all that you can, you choose a small number that seem to capture everything you've read; so for example you might select a European description, a Middle-Eastern one and an African one, as your references. If it's a more regionally restricted plant such as the E. Mediterranean, you would do similarly, using for example a Greek, Turkish, Middle-Eastern and N. African account. That's only 3 or 4 references, which isn't much at all. Even if they were hypothetically to all say the same thing, which they never do, you'd still need to reference them as having been consulted, because just referencing a regional work doesn't indicate the resulting description has global scope.
The situation then is how to do the description and where to place the references.
The Description should I think avoid as much jargon as possible, because the average person isn't going to understand 'petiole' or 'pedicel' but will be quite happy with 'leaf stalk' or 'flower stalk' (or 'leaf stalk (petiole)' etc), and be, say (as a template but not being prescriptive), three paragraphs, with the 'easy' qualities for people first (plant is tall, dark and handsome), then paragraph 2 the qualities requiring a more experienced or patient eye (e.g. fruits have a wrinkled surface), probably best kept in terser language so that it takes up less space, then paragraph 3 you might have some details about subspecies etc. But in doing this the references very much embrace the entire description.
My recommendation is to provide the references for a botanic description either at the end or start, which is the standard practice in botany, with extra referential inserts at individual moments for any extra points. Repeating the references identically at the end of each paragraph looks clumsy and is not standard botanical practice. Trying to reference each point made would be excruciating as you'll be repeating the same block of references over and over again.
I wonder therefore if there could be something written explicitly about plant descriptions that provides the right workable vision, because at the moment if you use several sources to create a description you're forced to put them at the end and then may get the page labelled as problematic because it's not following the expected style.
An article on a plant would have many other sections, so here we are talking about the globally-relevant botanical description. Meteorquake (talk) 12:42, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
Off-topic: this definitely is not an MoS matter. This is a content and sourcing matter about the phenotypic presentation of plants in different environments. It has nothing to do with writing style at all. The proper venue is WT:BOTANY. To the extent this has anything to do with sensible sectioning of content, it still isn't an MoS matter (nothing at MOS:LAYOUT pertains, as it is about what standardized sections should exist in articles and in what order, and does not address optional sectioning of the main content of the article into what particular sections). That's an information architecture question for the articles in question, and is again something that WT:BOTANY can address, to the extent the matter generalizes to multiple articles within that topical scope; the editors with the most competence at botanical writing will already be concentrated there. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 05:00, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
Perhaps an example of the problem helps to explain matters. If you take an example article where I've created the page with a description (others will add any other sections) it centres around the page getting flagged as deficient with multiple flags for what seem to me to be stylistic motives -
Some artile being flagged for copyediting or other style issues is not a reason to open a WT:MOS discussion; it's a reason to improve the text or layout at the article, or open a discussion at the article's talk page if the reason for the tagging is unclear. There are various grammar and clarity issues in that stub, but the MoS's main talk page is not the place to discuss resolving that. This page is for discussion of how to improve the guideline text, or how to interpret application of the guideline to a particular sort of case. If this page were or minor copyediting issues at particular articles there would be several thousand threads open on it, and our browsers would crash trying to render this page. I've opened a thread for you at Talk:Alcea digitata, fixed most of the copyediting issues (two need input from someone more familiar with the topic), and fixed a lot of other issues in the article. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 20:54, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Template provides some advice about writing plant articles (and covers petiole vs. leaf stalk with "supplemented by plain English to define these terms for a general reader if possible"). Wikipedia:Citing_sources#Inline_citations is probably more relevant than MOS regarding placement of footnotes.
@Meteorquake:, I think you're overestimating how often a description written for a particular species in one regional flora is inaccurate for that species in a different region, and underestimating how often different floras employ different species concepts. Apparently Taraxacum officinale (sensu stricto) doesn't occur in North America (nor in Turkey), but I have never seen any floras covering any region of North America that omit it (they are using a broad species concept, as is the Wikipedia article for the species). Older floras (but as recently as 2005) covering the northwestern United States list Hedera helix as a common invasive species. Newer floras covering the region use a species concept with Hedera hibernica separated from H. helix, with the former as the common invasive, and the latter as fairly uncommon (at least for now).
That isn't to say that regional floras might not mention characters that are invariable among the species in that region (but are variable among the species found in a different region), but if you are consulting multiple floras (especially if written they were written at different points in time) you run the risk of conflating different species concepts. Plantdrew (talk) 22:23, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
@plandrew I'm aware of taxonomic changes etc. But I know British and Turkish plants well and European plants rather generally, consulting a lot of works for each plant I enquire about, and there is far more variability than you might imagine. In the case of Turkey it has a lot of European plants but because it is very mountainous (as are certain other countries, whilst the Aegean is full of islands) there is a lot of scope for variability developing from semi-isolation, and being at the edge of the European continent, adjoining others, tends to be a region where species fray at the edge, whilst a different insect population drives various changes, and the same species on the Asian or Middle-Eastern side has its own semi-disconnection. Obviously we're not talking about globe-trotting aliens which are much more uniform, but plants that are long-established but with a sluggish reproductive travel, which is a lot of plants, exhibit this, especially ones not associated with lowland city-type environments connected by humans, since higher altitude plants are more likely to develop as pockets. It's very apparent as I mentioned because I see Turkish forms of plants I see in Britain and they can be dramatically different in qualities, and the accounts of them I read often reflect this. At any rate, even without that, even just sitting at a desk if you read accounts of the same species in different Flora it becomes clear you have to read several Flora. Meteorquake (talk) 08:34, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
And again this is off-topic here. How broad the scope of an article is and what taxonomy it is relying on is a content and sourcing (mostly WP:DUE) matter, and has nothing to do with style. Please continue this at WT:BOTANY or at a specific article talk page. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 21:29, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
It didn't need to say it twice; I removed one of them. This is covered generally at MOS:DATED. However, that section may be written a bit too stridently. In a construction like the remaining one in the lead at Borlengo it is obviously a shorthand for "in the modern era", and does not seem objectionable. Rewriting it would produce longer and clumsier wording for no clear reader benefit. But this is better discussed at WT:MOSDATE. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 22:02, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
By the way, I originally thought of waiting for a month, but it looks like I don't even need to wait that long. Unless something unusual happens, on February 1 (that is three weeks since I opened the discussion), I will add what I wrote on that discussion page to the MOS-KO page and make a bot request. 172.56.232.202 (talk) 17:50, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
Correction and clarification: (Unless something unusual happens,) I will close the discussion at 23:59, 1 February 2024 (UTC); the edit and the bot request will be made after that. 172.56.232.216 (talk) 04:40, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
I wonder whether maybe there's a broader MOS issue here than just the specific one of whether we should wikilink each separate glyph of non-Latin scripts even in scripts like Hangul for which the glyphs are not words. (Obviously: No.) It seems to me that most uses of the template in question, {{linktext}}, even when used to link actual words, even in English, are going to be violations of MOS:SEAOFBLUE. Why do we have a template that encourages that? —David Eppstein (talk) 07:25, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
Personally, I am even fine with removing every single instance of Linktext regardless of its location and language/script (I would not complain even if the Linktext template itself does not exist, or even if Wikipedia does not provide any link to Wiktionary at all), but I am not proposing that because that could be way too extreme.
Glancing over its use in non-CJK articles (such as Vatican City and Bootstrapping) I see it's often used where a standard [[:wikt:Yourword|]] interwikilink will suffice. I was concerned that it saw legitimate use in linguistics articles, but it's the same generic use in vowel and measure word. It does do the convenient thing of linking to the specific language section in Wiktionary, but otherwise it just wraps what should just be easy markup.
I also noted in the discussion that you should ask for input about other CJK language usage on the language wikiprojects. It seems at a glance that a string of words in a phrase would have little purpose in individually linking out the words, while individually spaced words should be linked with normal interwikilinks as usual. But separating out the non-individually-linked characters in CJK phrases under the template, you'll see how it's actually used. SamuelRiv (talk) 07:37, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
Going to the right section of the Wiktionary article is a good reason. This is another of those MOS:STYLERET matters: both approaches are acceptable, so don't change from {{lang|ja|{{linktext|緑|lang=ja}}}} to {{lang|ja|[[wikt:緑#Japanese|緑]]}} or vice versa for no compelling reason. However, use of that template to do things like {{lang|de|{{linktext |Das |Ewig-Weibliche |zieht |uns |hinan |lang=de}}}} is much more dubious, except in certain linguistic contexts. What we normally want to do is {{lang|de|Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan}} 'The eternal feminine draws us on high'. There is usually no reason to link to a Wiktionary definition of a non-English word, and making a reader go off-site to figure out what something means (much less do it word-by-word) is "reader-hateful". — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 03:27, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
Surely not American-style capitalisation after a colon in British-English articles?
MOS:COLON states, "When what follows the colon is also a complete sentence, start it with a capital letter...". This is American style, but not British. I don't think that this statement is controversial: see for instance Grammarly and our own article Colon (punctuation)#Use of capitals. Wikipedia of course allows both American and British spelling as long as each article is consistent. But it seems awkward to me to have British spelling combined with American punctuation, and I doubt that this was the intention. So I have boldly edited to, "When what follows the colon is also a complete sentence, American style is to start it with a capital letter, but otherwise do not capitalize after a colon except ...". Everybody happy with that? JMCHutchinson (talk) 11:05, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
The Chicago Manual of Style is American. According to your source, it recommends against capitalizing after a colon, unless the colon is followed by two or more complete sentences. DrKay (talk) 11:37, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
[Edit conflict: replying to Dr Kay here] That's a valid objection to how I rephrased the article, but your reversion to the original does not address my issue. Judging from the current text, I suppose that the consensus is not to allow Chicago style in American-English articles. So the text then needs to be just a little more awkward: "When what follows the colon is also a complete sentence, start it with a capital letter if the article is in American English; otherwise do not ...". If there are no further objections I will make this change. JMCHutchinson (talk) 12:20, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
That's clearly not consensus. Current consensus is to capitalize if a complete sentence follows, regardless of the variant of English used. Questioning and possibly changing this consensus would require a wider discussion which hasn't yet taken place. Gawaon (talk) 13:16, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
I for one would object. I don't think capitalization should depend on the variant of English used in an article. Compare the style of quotation marks used: though British English prefers 'half/simple' ones, we use "double ones" throughout. That's not an ENGVAR issue, and neither should capitalization be. Plus our capitalization rules are already complicated enough, without throwing ENGVAR considerings into the mix. Let's avoid that, by all means. Gawaon (talk) 14:07, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
That’s not analogous. Capitalisation after a colon (excet for proper nouns etc) is considered incorrect in British English. It’s not a style option DeCausa (talk) 14:18, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
Isolated instances where the copy editor slipped up shouldn't distract us here. I don't think there is any serious doubt that the style specified by the preponderance of British style guides differs from American practice. The question is how to deal with that on Wikipedia. JMCHutchinson (talk) 15:20, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
Doesn’t the fact that someone has saved these as examples undermine your case, showing how relatively rare they are? That first one, from over twenty years ago is a reprint of a government intelligence document, written by who knows? Not the strongest piece of evidence IMHO. MapReader (talk) 07:31, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
I dislike capping the letter after a colon. Could we compromise and say that either way must be consistent throughout an article? Or ban the capping.Tony(talk) 07:53, 14 January 2024 (UTC) On reflection I prefer the existing provision—though the wording could be improved. Tony(talk)23:20, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
You propose changing to In most cases, a colon works best with a complete grammatical sentence before it. When what follows a colon is a complete sentence, or when it is used in an article title, section heading, or list item, editors may choose whether to capitalize what follows, taking into consideration the existing practice and consistency with related articles. Do not capitalize after a colon in other cases except where doing so is needed for another reason, such as for a proper name. That seems to increase inconsistency across articles, and we should be looking for commonalities.
How would you handle:
The report stated: "There was a 45% reduction in transmission rate."
In a letter to his son, Albert Einstein wrote: "Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving."
Maggie wears a brimmed cap at all times: Strong light often gives her a headache. She also likes the way it looks.DrKay (talk) 09:27, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
Your first two examples count as "segmental colons", which is when a colon introduces speech or a quotation, which may or may not be in inverted commas. As our colon article explains, "British English also capitalizes a new sentence introduced by colon's segmental use." I suppose it is covered in the MOS by "another reason", but it might be helpful to mention explicitly there too if a new guideline is agreed. JMCHutchinson (talk) 09:51, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
The last one should be Maggie wears a brimmed cap at all times: strong light often gives her a headache. She also likes the way it looks. because it's two sentences, one of which happens to have a colon in the middle. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:04, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
Could be interpreted either way, and is hair-splitting we should surely avoid when making rules here. The British segemental-use claim quoted above from our article is not supported with an RS citation, doesn't agree with the #Segemental section it links to (which is entirely and only about formatting of dialogue for plays), and does not agree with anything in the sourcing run I did below, except with regard to such dialogue formatting, so it doesn't have anything to do with the examples above. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 01:54, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
Time for another of my usual stylebook trawls:
New Hart's Rules: The Oxford Style Guide (2014) The word following a colon is not capitalized in British English (unless it is a proper name, of course), but in US English it is often capitalized if it introduces a grammatically complete sentence." But it is just one of various British style guides. It's also making a very broad nationalistic claim of the sort that both NHR and Chicago like to engage in, but which is not actually supportable by much evidence and which few linguists would agree with.
The Chicago Manual of Style simply says: "When a colon introduces two or more sentences ... the first word folowing it is capitalized." So, contrary to popular belief, Chicago doesn't support capitalizing if what follows the colon is just a single sentence.
The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation (US) waffles a bit: "If a complete sentence follows a colon ... it is up to the writer to decide whether to capitalize the first word. Although generally advisable, capitalizing a sentence after a colon is often a judgment call. Note: A capital letter generally does not introduce a simple phrase following a colon."
The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style also waffles: "When a colon introduces a complete sentence, the sentence may begin with a capital letter, depending on the publication's style." So much for the claim that capitalizing after the colon is required/standard in American writing.
Butcher's Copy-editing (UK) does not address the question.
The Cambridge Guide to English Usage (UK) weirdly claims that "Style manuals agree (Chicago Manual, 2003; Oxford Guide to Style, 2002) that the word following the colon stays in lower case, unless it's a formal quotation, slogan or motto." [I.e., specific forms of complete sentence in most cases, though a quotation can be fragmentary, and the rest of the guide does not suggest to convert partial quotations to look like full ones, so this seems to be a blatant oversight.] This is not at all what either of the other cited style guides says.
Oxford Guide to Style (UK) actually says: "Use a colon to introduce direct or paraphrased speech or quoted material more formally or emphatically than a comma would. A capital letter follows. ... A colon may be used optionally in parallel constructions where a semicolon might be equally acceptable", i.e. between two closely related sentences joined into one; the examples OGS show have a capital after the colon when what follows is a complete (short in that case) sentence, but lower-case when it is not. Not only does this contradict the claims made above about British English, this has further implications for WP, because all our material is paraphrase of what the sources say.
Dreyer's English (US): "If what follow a colon is a full sentence, begin that full sentence with a capital letter".
The Handbook of Good English (US) is probably unnecessarily nit-picking: "Do not capitalize a normally lowercase word after a colon unless what follow the conol in a grammatically complete sentence and the colon is bineg ued primarily to introduce trather than to link." ["Link" here meaning link the opening sentence to the one appended with the colon, mirroring wording used later in the book about such clause-splicing with a semicolon.] Why such a "rule" is a bad idea is even stated explicitly by the author without seeming to realized it: "This rule is often difficult to apply whena grammaticallyh complete sentnec efollows a colon, because it is not always easy to decide whether the colon is primialry introducing or linking. Some older punctuation guides ... advise always capitalizing after a colon when what follows is a grammatically complete sentent—a very easy rule to following, but changing American punctuation practices have made it a poor one." This has two weird assertions in it, that it's an old practice that is dwindling, and that unnamed "changing ... practices" make it a poor choice, but neither is in evidence; the book dates to 1991, and style (American or otherwise) has not demonstrably changed on this point, despire the clear desire of the author that it do so. I cannot find an idea about post-colon capitalization that is this specific in any other style guide.
The Oxford English Grammar (UK): "In American usage it is usual for the sentence after the colon to begin with a capital, though occasionally it begins with a lower case letter. British usage prefers lower case."
The Elements of Style (US, 4th ed., 2000): states no rule but illustrates usage in a full sentence after a colon without a capital.
Oxford Guide to Plain English (UK): "After the colon the sentence will usually continue with a lower-case letter." Hardly a rule, but an observation about frequency, and for all know, the intended meaning was "will usually continue with a lower-case letter, except when it is a full sentence or proper name", rather than "will usually continue with a lower-case letter even if it is a full sentence."
The Gregg Reference Manual (US): States no rule, and illustrates both styles throughout.
Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language (UK): States no rule, but illustrates the lower-case style throughout.
Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation : "Use a lowercase letter after a colon (unless the first word is a proper noun) when the colon is used within a sentence, even if it introduces your own independent clause. Capitalize the first word after a colon when the colon introduces more than one sentence, a direct question, or speech in dialogue." This is a significant divergence from CMoS's "
Garner's Modern English Usage (US/UK): "when a complete clause [i.e. something that would be a sentence by itself] follows the colon, authorities are divided on whether the first word should be capitalized. ... [T]he prevalent journalistic practice: the first word is capitalized. But the other view—urging for a lowercase word following the colon—is probably sounder: the lowercase (as in this very sentence) more closely ties the two clauses together. That's the style that's used throughout this book. It's also the house style of The New Yorker .... Although the uppercase convention is a signpost to the reader that a complete sentence is ahead, that signpost generally isn't needed."
I've not bothered looking in a pile of journalism style guides because they generally are intentionally in conflict with each other as a form of "branding", and they diverge radically from encyclopedic style in so many ways that our MoS is based on virtually nothing form them at all (news style, which WP avoids, is driven by expediency and simplicity, not clarity).
I could do a bunch more of this, but it is probably sufficient.
What I gather from this is that there is a lean in British writing toward dropping the capitalization, and a lean (but a decreasing one over time) in American writing to retain it, and a stronger lean in journalism (not tied to a particular country) to prefer the capital. Some writers have tried to draw a distinction relating to different kinds of relationships between the material before and after the colon, and even different lengths of the material after it. Some have claimed "over-exuberantly" that there's what we'd call an ENGVAR difference, but evidence for this idea is both weak and getting increasingly weaker. And some have suggested that the capitalization is on the way out entirely, but evidence doesn't really seem to support this, either.
In short, no MOS:ENGVAR claim can be sustained on this point, nor is there a clear "single overriding encylclopedic purpose" argument to be made here. Garner's observation in GMEU that there are conflicting reasons to prefer one over the other is correct (though his picking a particular side almost certainly has much to do with the fact that he's the primary author of the related material in both Chicago Manual and Chicago Guide). American usage provably does not require the capitalization, and some British publishers (cf. news sources cited in earlier comments) provably do use the capital. Other sources both British and American are noncommittal on the question.
This should simply be left to editorial discretion at the article like most things, and MoS does not need to so prescriptively legislate on it (WP:MOSBLOAT and WP:CREEP). It seems that our present wording of:
When what follows the colon is also a complete sentence, start it with a capital letter, but otherwise do not capitalize after a colon except where doing so is needed for another reason, such as for a proper name.
should change to something like:
If what follows the colon is something normally capitalized (proper name, acronym, quoted sentence, etc.), use a capital letter. For a complete sentence after a colon, capitalization is optional. Use a lowercase letter after the colon otherwise.
If this is too much of a change for consensus to stomach, then a compromise version might be:
If what follows the colon is something normally capitalized (proper name, acronym, quoted sentence, etc.), or multiple complete sentences, use a capital letter. For a single complete sentence after a colon, capitalization is optional. Use a lowercase letter after the colon otherwise.
One thing that seems clear from your very thorough analysis is that the current wording of the MoS isn’t really supported by the sources. MapReader (talk) 22:56, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
Various bits have made their way in over the years because they seemed reasonable at the time (there is a defensible rationale for that choice, it just happens to have another defensible rationale against it, and it's not unsupported in off-site style guides, simply doesn't dominate in them). Sometimes stuff seemed to make sense to add as an abitrary "dispute stopper", and in the early days these were often added prophylactically without evidence of a need for them to stop recurrent disputes about something. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 01:30, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
Jmchutchinson's redraft further above, taking into account the entire paragraph this sentence is found in, could be combined with some of my clarity tweaks above, to produce a total paragraph of:
In most cases, a colon works best with a complete grammatical sentence before it. If what follows the colon is something normally capitalized (proper name, acronym, quoted sentence, etc.), use a capital letter. When a colon is used before a complete sentence, or in an article title, section heading, or list item, editors may choose whether to capitalize the first letter of what follows, taking into consideration the existing practice and consistency with related articles. Do not capitalize after a colon otherwise.
Most of that is existing wording (the stuff about before a colon, the "taking into account", the title/heading/list details, etc.). — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 01:54, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
As the original proposer, I would be happy with SMcCandlish's text. I feel the ENGVAR correlation (at least the absence of capitals in British English) is more marked in the actual texts I encounter than implied from the survey of style guides, but I can't prove that, and it doesn't much matter. At least not if we give our editors this flexibility. JMCHutchinson (talk) 21:18, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
I'm not happy with SMcCandlish's text. Here's better, which differs slightly in substance, as well as being a balanced and clear guide:
"In running text a colon need not be preceded by a complete grammatical sentence, so long as the intent is clear.
A colon capitalizes the first letter in what follows it if that can naturally be read as a complete sentence: otherwise, it normally does not. But when a colon is being used as a separator in an article title, section heading, or list item, consider the need for clarity and for consistency within the article and related articles."
Tony1's proposal differs not slightly but considerably in substance. It essentially goes back to the status quo of insisting on a capital if a full sentence follows. Others of us find this inappropriate given that lower case is usual in British English and, it turns out, also not uncommon in the US. JMCHutchinson (talk) 07:21, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
It does seem to go in that direction. @Tony1: is that the intent? I seem to remember you being Australian, so I'm not sure if this reflects a national-leaning norm not accounted for here (too often these discussions pretend the entire Anglosphere consists of the UK and the US). At any rate, if this were just left to editorial discretion, do you anticipate a recurrent problem? As for the first part (which is original guideline wording, not mine), a blended version might assuage those who lean toward change-resistance: In running text, a colon usually works best with a complete grammatical sentence before it, but this is not necessary when the intent is clear. The "in running text" part is actually important, since the original wording over-states the case and does not account for formatting of lists, etc. The ending part could also blend your concision with the previous RfC consensus about explicit editorial discretion: ... or list item, editors may choose but should consider the need for clarity and for consistency within the article and related articles. That would also change the guideline link from MOS:STYLERET to MOS:ARTCON which makes more sense anyway, and remove the link to WP:CONSISTENT which is about article titles and not actually pertinent here. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 20:31, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
It seems that there is now a consensus to substitute in SMcCandlish's proposed text. Tony is the only clear voice against (plus perhaps Doremo from earlier in the discussion), whereas Gawaon, DrKay, SMcCandlish, DeCausa, myself, and probably MapReader now seem to be in favour of this wording or this sort of change. I will go ahead. Thanks to all for expressing your opinons. JMCHutchinson (talk) 20:41, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
Responses by Tony1
Jmhutchinson, sorry to revert your recent edit: I believe the discussion here is incomplete (it would have been better to ask "Do we all agree that there's consensus for this change? Any further comments?") Earlier you wrote:
"Tony1's proposal differs not slightly but considerably in substance. It essentially goes back to the status quo of insisting on a capital if a full sentence follows. Others of us find this inappropriate given that lower case is usual in British English and, it turns out, also not uncommon in the US."
Let me set out four responses to that:
(i) My text, in which I've tried to be more concise, doesn't "go back to" the status quo. By definition, nothing can go back to what is currently in place. That status quo was an important long-standing provision on the central page of MOS; so let's not lightly assume consensus for change.
(ii) It's simply not true that British English wants a colon never to capitalise what follows it. Consider Fowler, so quintessentially British: In The King's English there's no discussion of this issue, but the examples with a capital include: "Always remember the ancient maxim: Know thyself."
Fowler's own Modern English Usage says nothing against such a capital; nor does Gower in the second edition; nor does Burchfield in the third, and he repeats the example verbatim: "Always remember the ancient maxim: Know thyself."
In the fourth (current) edition, Butterfield is careless and inconsistent. He has picked up the supposed rule somewhere, and writes:
2 ... Note that in British English the word following a colon is not in capitals (unless it is a proper name), but in American English it is capitalized if it introduces a grammatically complete sentence: [... example]
But straight after that he contradicts himself:
3 It is regularly used to introduce examples, as:
Always remember the ancient maxim: Know thyself.
(iii) Wikipedia is beholden to no regional authority for punctuation. It selects on rational grounds from all sources: double quote marks from US practice, and essentially British ways (with US additions) for the en dash. Why should the colon be treated differently?
(iv) I think the text that my long-standing friend SMcCandlish proposed (now prematurely put into MOS) is a bit clunky and needs to give clearer guidance. May I be bold and compare the components of his suggestion and mine?
SMcC: In most cases, a colon works best with a complete grammatical sentence before it.
[Which cases are "most cases"? What guidance is offered?]
Tony: In running text a colon need not be preceded by a complete grammatical sentence, so long as the intent is clear.
[Direct guidance: editors are advised about what is important.]
SMcC: If what follows the colon is something normally capitalized (proper name, acronym, quoted sentence, etc.), use a capital letter.
[A bit loose and wordy? Of course you'd still capitalise then.]
Tony: A colon capitalizes the first letter in what follows it if that can naturally be read as a complete sentence: otherwise, it normally does not.
[Direct guidance without fluff.]
SMcC: When a colon is used before a complete sentence, or in an article title, section heading, or list item, editors may choose whether to capitalize the first letter of what follows, taking into consideration the existing practice and consistency with related articles. Do not capitalize after a colon otherwise.
[Too long, directionless, and without clear motivation, I think. Why conflate the case of a full sentence (in continuous text) with those other cases (titles, headings, lists)? The two contexts are quite different.]
Tony: But when a colon is being used as a separator in an article title, section heading, or list item, consider the need for clarity and for consistency within the article and related articles."
[Along with the preceding excerpt, treats those two distinct contexts separately, and gives distinct clear guidance for each.]
I don't like reverting, and I respect SMcCandlish's knowledge and research. But could we leave it as is, pending full treatment of these and any other relevant points? And let's try to gain genuine consensus on this important matter.
Tony, this discussion had gone cold. You had not responded to SMcCandlish's invitation to further discussion on 17th Jan. and the only other contribution since then was Gawaon's agreement with SMcCandlish's draft on 24th Jan. I rather doubt that this will pick up much further comment now; if the consensus remains against you, I would ask you not to revert again please. Leaving aside whether the precise wording can be improved, the main issue is whether editors should have to use a capital in the specific circumstances in which lower case is usual in British English. SMcCandlish and I have argued that we should allow editors the flexibility to decide for themselves but be consistent within an article. There was already a long discussion here deciding that within titles there should be such flexibility. You argue for imposing consistency. What I would say about that is that the current rule is anyway widely ignored on Wikipedia. For instance I noticed a lower-case example in the FA blurb on the Main Page on 23rd Jan: nobody was bothered by it! JMCHutchinson (talk) 13:01, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
I don’t agree with Tony’s alternative approach and broadly support where SMcC is trying to go. But I think his proposed wording does need a bit more work. What the first sentence is trying to achieve isn’t clear; are there really such grammatical rules for what comes before the colon? Sentence fragments such as “These are as follows:” or “Therefore:” or “My wishlist is:” aren’t uncommon. I also raise an eyebrow at the reference to “related articles” - since when did we ever try to harmonise style or optional usage across multiple articles?? And what is a ‘related article’ anyway? MapReader (talk) 13:36, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
With respect to Tony1, I too think this revert was unjustified and the wording by SMcCandlish, while maybe not perfect, is clearly a step into the right and largely consensual direction and therefore should be restored (which obviously doesn't rule out further improvements and wording twists). As for the objections by Tony and MapReader, I notice that they conflate various issues, including stuff that's unrelated to the current discussion. For example, the rule that broadens the allowed use of capital letters in "article title, section heading, or list item" is the result of a previous RfC and entirely unrelated to the issue here. Likewise, the sentence "In most cases, a colon works best with a complete grammatical sentence before it" is old and was neither added nor modified by the suggested change. I too have some doubts about it, but that should be left for a different discussion, not this one! This one is about capitalization or not, while that sentence is about the use of the colon as such. As for the "consistency with related articles", that only refers to article titles, as the link makes clear. Maybe that could be made clearer, but that wording too is entirely unrelated to the change discussed here; it was neither added nor modified by it. So let's not get sidetracked! Gawaon (talk) 14:09, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
Re: "related articles": Just click the link, MapReader. It's about article titles, namely "When a colon is used ... in an article title". — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 23:47, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
Readers shouldn’t have to click a link to discover that something that appears to be a general provision actually only applies to article titles. It should be explicit from the text. MapReader (talk) 03:33, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
This material has nothing to do with readers, only editors, and they are in fact responsible for learning what the rules actually are by clicking around on WP:P&G-page links to see what they say. That said, I tried a "consistency with related article titles" revision in the samples below. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 23:56, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
'"These are as follows:" or "Therefore:" or "My wishlist is:" aren’t uncommon': They're very uncommon in encyclopedic writing. They're not totally unheard of, though, particlarly as list introductions, so Tony1's "if/as long as the intent is clear" seems reasonable. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 23:56, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
Except it's not quoted at all, in any of those samples, it's being repeated as an aphorism or conventional wisdom, without quotation marks. Capitalization in such a circumstance after a colon appears to be very common, even among writers who otherwise profess not to prefer the capital there, as demonstrated by Tony1's "Know thyself" samples. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 00:00, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
There's no rush to implement anything. To go over Tony1's points, in order:
A blended version might be: "A colon is usually preceded by a complete grammatical sentence, but need not be if the intent is clear." This would keep both the original's clear preference for a complete sentence, and Tony1's somewhat more precise idea of "intent" versus just a loose "in most cases". We don't seem to need to say "In running text", but it could be tacked back onto to the front if it's badly wanted.
If my "If what follows the colon is something normally capitalized (proper name, acronym, quoted sentence, etc.), use a capital letter" is "A bit loose and wordy", it's because I've learned the hard way to never, ever leave open a potential loophole for wikilawyering. Tony1's alternative is a hard requirement to capitalize if what follows the colon is a complete sentence, but there appears to be a consensus here to avoid doing that. It was also even more wordy, and kind of weirdly implied "agency", that "a colon capitalizes" something, but it doesn't; another principle like being a proper name does that). A trimmed version of what I had could be made though: For anything normally capitalized (proper name, quoted sentence, etc.), retain the capital after a colon. This would keep the important point that quoted full sentences should not be decapitalized just because they are after a colon; the entire reason we have MOS:LQ is to avoid falsifying the content of quotations, and it's a principle we've stuck with for over two decades. So, this particular point is non-negotiable from my position. (A semi-recent change in MOS:CONFORM permits such an aleration before an introduction like "said that", but this is dubious and controversial and probably needs an RfC to see whether this has consensus, since it calls into question our entire treament of quotations and the rationale behind it.)
The third bit of material is mostly pre-existing wording, into which "sentence" has been added based on the loose consensus of the above and prior discussions. Tony1's additional points about rationales are already integrated into it. Tony1 asks "Why conflate the case of a full sentence (in continuous text) with those other cases (titles, headings, lists)? The two contexts are quite different." Because the consensus direction in all this discussion is to no longer treat them as different. It's not even my personal preference, which is to always capitalize a full sentence including after a colon. But I'm trying to encapsulate where the community wants to go on this, as best as I can assess it. However, that part can probably be compressed a little more; I tried seven versions, and used the shortest (that doesn't lose anything important) below.
A revision based on the above would look like this:
Version A:
A colon is usually preceded by a complete grammatical sentence, but need not be if the intent is clear. For anything normally capitalized (proper name, quoted sentence, etc.), retain the capital after a colon. In an article title, section heading, or list item, or before a complete sentence, capitalizing after a colon is left to editorial discretion, mindful of existing practice and consistency with related article titles. Use lowercase after a colon otherwise.
However, there is no revision I can do that will get around the issue that this discussion has gone toward not requiring a capital letter after a colon if what follows it is a complete sentence, yet Tony1 wanting that requirement. It is clearly permissible to so capitalize. Let's consider making it recommended, and I would strongly prefer that, and suspect Tony1 would accept it as a compromise. That could be:
Version B:
A colon is usually preceded by a complete grammatical sentence, but need not be if the intent is clear. For anything normally capitalized (proper name, quoted sentence, etc.), retain the capital after a colon. In an article title, section heading, or list item, capitalizing after a colon is left to editorial discretion, mindful of existing practice and consistency with related article titles. Prefer to capitalize the first letter of a complete sentence after a colon. Use lowercase after a colon otherwise.
If this does not meet with rebellion (and remember that this discussion is about changing the existing guideline away from having this requirement, so it requires an affirmative consensus to do that in the first place), then the material could be adjusted to combine related themes and also agree better with more off-site style guides:
Version C:
A colon is usually preceded by a complete grammatical sentence, but need not be if the intent is clear. For anything normally capitalized (proper name, etc.), retain the capital after a colon. Prefer to capitalize the first letter of a complete sentence after a colon, always for multiple sentences or a quoted sentence. In an article title, section heading, or list item, capitalizing after a colon is left to editorial discretion, mindful of existing practice and consistency with related article titles. Use lowercase after a colon otherwise.
We appear to have had a consensus around the option A approach, and I would suggest this should not be abandoned on the back of a single editor’s objection. If we need to seek broader input, that would be preferable to changing a proposal because of unanimity less one. I would however suggest, in all the options and as per my comment above, that “consistency with related articles” needs “in respect of titles” adding after it, for clarity. MapReader (talk) 03:38, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
Mapreader, now make that on the back of at least two editors' objections. Having reviewed this discussion, I conclude that Tony was right to revert a half-cooked revision. It's a pity Tony did not reply earlier to SMcCandlish, who engaged well with the draft that Tony offered; but where is the detailed to-and-fro discussion of astute points in Tony's later contribution? There remain more unsettled matters than "quoted sentences", for heaven's sake. We should see serious concern about this breezy assumption that the relevance of the Fowler–Butterfield Know thyself extends no further than full-sentence "quotations". Keep paddling, I say. You're not there yet! 49.190.56.203 (talk) 03:55, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
If it comes down to it, it may be best to have a follow-up RfC that presents various drafts as choices. The problem with the above discussion is it is very few editors trying to change long-existing guidance and declaring they have "consensus" to do it but with nearly no community input, about something that could affect at least tens of thousands of articles. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 21:02, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
I agree, SMcCandlish. An efficiently and collegially managed RfC would be best, before any change to a long-standing guideline affecting innumerable articles. Drafts A, B, and C (above) are a credit to your wikidiplomacy; but they respond to a tightly circumscribed discussion and present too narrow a range of options. Suggestions:* Any RfC should begin not with prefabricated drafts, but with unhurried consideration of issues. Candidate issues could be listed; and always avoiding premature voting, editors could suggest modifications to that list to uncover genuine core issues for subsequent discussion. I can't initiate that RfC, but I'd be active in it if my participation would be generally accepted here.
It's been my long experience with style-related RfCs that if specific wording revisions and their rationales are not presented then it will simply descend into a no-consensus morass. I'm fine with drafting a fourth option if there is some other identifiable principle that might result in a different rule (and one that isn't obviously going to be rejected, like "never capitalize after a colon no matter what" or "always capitalize after a colon no matter what"; we already have a prior RfC that has rejected both of those positions). — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 23:44, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
Yes, that makes perfect sense also. My main concern was to avoid an excessively narrow range of immutable candidate drafts at the very start. Your A, B, and C (modified now) are good, but they don't differ in their first sentence, for example: "A colon is usually preceded by a complete grammatical sentence, but need not be if the intent is clear."
Let's revisit Tony's initial draft:
In running text a colon need not be preceded by a complete grammatical sentence, so long as the intent is clear. / A colon capitalizes the first letter in what follows it if that can naturally be read as a complete sentence: otherwise, it normally does not. But when a colon is being used as a separator in an article title, section heading, or list item, consider the need for clarity and for consistency within the article and related articles.
This makes no spurious pronouncement about what "usually precedes"; it simply counters a common but obviously false supposition: that what precedes the colon must be (or better, must have the grammatical form of) a complete sentence. The second sentence directly and accurately targets situational capitalisation (like start-of-sentence caps) as opposed to fixed capitalisation ("A colon capitalizes the first letter in what follows it"), an efficiency that might with profit be adopted elsewhere in the sprawl that is WP:MOS. And so on.
I put it to you that no such valuable alternatives should be absent, in presenting an RfC for consideration.
Pragmatically, perhaps your three could be reduced to two polished versions for an RfC (after consideration of opinions already expressed here), and Tony's could be put forward as a third – with suitable links incorporated. Good idea? Any of the three candidate versions could be "improved" through early discussion in the RfC, before any voting begins.
An even better way: Break the text into what are already agreed to be three independent components, for consideration in separate candidate versions: 1. what precedes the colon in running text; 2. capitalisation decisions for what follows the colon in running text; 3. capitalisation decisions for what follows the colon in titles, headings, etc. The RfC could also consider the other material concerning colons, with a view to a cleaner structure (compare how dashes are already treated: as sentential punctuation, and separately in their other roles). 49.190.56.203 (talk) 02:20, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
I too think Option A is best, since we had already largely agreed that capitalization after a colon should become optional for a whole sentence, and now labelling it as "not preferred" would backtrack from that reasonable decision too much. MapReader's complaint could be addressed by writing "and (in article titles) consistency with related articles" or "and (in article titles) consistency with related article titles". I could also live with Option C, but I think it's weak since it's far from clear how to interpret that "allowed, but not preferred" rule it would introduce. For example, if somebody capitalizes all full sentences after a colon in an article that previously consistently lower-cased them, would that change be justified base on that preference rule? It seems it would, but that also means that RETAIN no longer applies to this rule and the wording essentially comes down to "lowercasing full sentences after a colon is possible only if all editors touching an article prefer it so." Not a good thing, I think, and it would give individual editors too much power to make changes that are not improvements. Gawaon (talk) 04:02, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
"would that change be justified": Probably, but not over objections. MoS uses "prefer" wording in many places; it means to default to something unless there's a good reason not to. It doesn't mean that such a good reason can be ignored with impunity, it just means a discussion needs to happen if there's a reason to present. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 21:02, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
But what would be "a good reason" to lower-case in such cases? This is entirely a stylistic question – some use capitals for full sentences after a colon, others lower case. A "good reason" would be some argument for "this sentence specifically needs a lower-cased first letter", but I don't see how such an argument could convincingly be made. This is not about individual sentences, but about our general rule set. This discussion originally went into the direction to allow either style after a colon (while striving for article-wide consistency), which I still consider the most reasonable choice. We could also choose to stick with the old "always capitalize" rule. But "preferably capitalize, unless you have a good reason [???] not to" strikes me as a fairly bad compromise, which resolves nothing and leaves everybody unhappy. Gawaon (talk) 03:27, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
Two good reasons would be a) the material is more clear with the capital, e.g. because the lower-case word starting the sentence seems like it "belongs" to the material to the left of the colon, as it might with a sentence that begins with "But"; b) the material to the right of the colon is two or more sentences, in which case it would arguably be a MOS:ARTCON fault to not capitalize the first of them. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 21:33, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
But now you got it backwards, suggesting "good reasons" to change to a capital instead of the actually needed good reasons not a change to a capital (if your proposal to "preferably capitalize, unless you have a good reason not to" wins out). Gawaon (talk) 07:10, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
Also worth remembering that colons are also used before bulleted or itemised lists, not just sentence phrases or sentences. I was always taught that where the bulleted/itemised points offer alternative ways of completing the sentence started before the colon, then the bullets start with lower case. For example, “The ways that you can do this are: i) this way, or ii) that way. Otherwise, you are sticking a capital letter anomalously in the middle of a sentence. MapReader (talk) 14:35, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
Also I would vote for Option A. I expect nearly everyone will have their own habit concerning whether to capitalise and will not be swayed by a mere recommendation. So a recommendation muddies the waters for no real gain. And, since a recommendation acknowledges that either capital or lower-case is allowed, it seems unnecessary work to try to find a consensus about which is preferred. We could have a vote, which might reduced itself to a trans-Atlantic disagreement, but to me the important point is that both preferences have the support of a significant proportion of us. Incidentally, my interpretation of Tony's arguments is that he wanted consistency, or perhaps not to change the status quo, not that he particularly preferred a capital over lower case. JMCHutchinson (talk) 10:58, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
Does MOS apply to quotations, titles etc.
I don't know if I'm writing in the right place but I came across this edit [4] and I didn't know if this was a Wikipedia policy. In short, a bunch of titles of references on a page included French punctuation (speech marks that look like << >>), because they were in French. Of course provide a translation into English, but I just felt that it seemed a bit nitpicky to "correct" the punctuation of another language, as much as "correcting" its grammar or even vocabulary. I think User:Mazewaxie may have done this on other pages on my watchlist, but I had never checked the edit because it looked like a non-controversial automated edit.
*When quoting text from non-English languages, the outer punctuation should follow the Manual of Style for English quote marks. If there are nested quotations, follow the rules for correct punctuation in that language. If there are multiple styles for a language, the one used by the Wikipedia for that language is preferred unless the punctuation itself is under discussion.
The cynical response "L'auteur aurait dû demander : « à quoi sert-il d'écrire ceci ? » mais ne l'a pas fait" was all he wrote.
Robert Nimmo blurb - at "from the Royal Military College, Duntroon to participate", pls add geocomma after "Duntroon" per Nimmo article and RMC Duntroon (mostly) article. JennyOz (talk) 03:18, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
I agree; the geocomma appears to belong there. However, I don't like mucking around with FA blurbs; could one of the coordinators please chip in? Schwede6604:15, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
Don't quote me on this because I'm out of my depth here, but some Milhist editors and some British and Australian editors sometimes get offended by the second comma if they think of the expression as a proper noun (as here). They won't necessarily fight you over it, but they won't like it. - Dank (push to talk) 04:19, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
JennyOz, i had spent more time than i'd care to admit looking into this, but i don't think this is a case where mos:geocomma applies. mos:geocomma covers "geographical references that include multiple levels of subordinate divisions", and i don't think either "Royal Military College" or "Royal Military College, Duntroon" is necessarily a geographical reference, even though the school has a physical presence. (i also think it would be unusual to consider "Royal Military College" to be a subordinate division of duntroon.) in addition, there is a category named "Royal Military College, Duntroon graduates" that doesn't use a comma after "Duntroon". furthermore, a wikipedia search for "Royal Military College, Duntroon" shows many instances in the prose of articles where a comma is not used after "Duntroon".as a result, i am guessing that "Royal Military College, Duntroon" is simply the name of the organization, which happens to use a comma, so there isn't a need to follow it with a comma if one normally wouldn't have done so had the name of the organization not included one. (Dank's comment suggests that this seems to be the case.) perhaps "University of California, Berkeley" is another such example, where there are a few articles, a few categories, and a number of instances in article prose that do not use a comma after "Berkeley".that all being said, it's possible that i'm wrong, and all the instances referenced above actually need commas added, since i'd normally bet on you being correct. in any case, in this specific instance in the blurb, i think adding a comma wouldn't make the blurb grammatically incorrect, so i have no personal preference either way. i didn't add a comma myself because i had thought the sentence was already correct as is. dying (talk) 04:59, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
Hmm, interesting indeed! Thank you all.Royal Military Academy Sandhurst - doesn't have a comma after Academy whereas RMC Duntroon has a comma after College so one could argue a comma is needed as a parenthetical.(And Dying, I absolutely know that in your much appreciated meticulousness you would have spent time considering this!)We could ask article FA nominator Peacemaker67 to make the call? (I asked PM (a graduate) re comma during the FAC only because at that stage a comma existed in the Early life and education section but not in the lede.I just looked at a few Aust Milhist FAs - drat! some articles do use the comma, some don't. The umbrella FA Australian Defence Force includes one.I merely see consistency with article helpful to ward off errors reports on the day.As my hero would say "As you were gentlemen!" JennyOz (talk) 08:46, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
Yes, it is all very confusing. AFAIK, the reason it isn't just "Royal Military College" is because of the other colleges of the same name. Duntroon was the name of the sheep station it was established on, and the suburb in which it is located now. I can live with the extra comma, frankly, and will add it now. We should probably have some MOS guidance written on this one. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 09:34, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
Use the second comma. It is necessary for all (not just a comma-averse subset of) readers to be able to parse the material with complete certainty. The fact that we have a mis-named category is not evidence of anything other than that we have a category to rename. This is hardly the first time such a matter has come up. The long-standing, unchanged situation is that various people like, as a matter of their personal writing style, to drop commas (the ones marked with square brackets for clarity here) in constructions such as "in London, Ontario[,] the climate ...", "at the Royal Military College, Duntroon[,] he was ...", "died on May 13, 2023[,] at ...", "according to John X. Smith, Jr.[,] this ...", "Sir Xerxes Youill of Zounds, KBE, RBA, RE[,] was ...". Yet there is a consensus to not drop them because their presence makes the material clearer. MOS:COMMAS does not make any "magical exceptions" for any such cases (Always use a pair of commas for this, unless another punctuation mark takes the place of the second comma), and a consensus change in the direction of topical exceptions is extremely unlikely to happen. Especially when in this case another guideline, MOS:GEOCOMMA, is also saying the same thing. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 03:51, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
PS: "We could ask article FA nominator Peacemaker67 to make the call? (I asked PM (a graduate) ...)." No editor WP:OWNs any article (see also WP:VESTED). There have already been far too many instances of WP:FAC regulars trying to allow nominators and/or principal authors of articles to get their way on not complying with guidelines (not policies yet, that I know of) simply on a WP:IDONTLIKEIT basis, and this has to stop. I've even seen one of FAC's most active reviewers resign their FAC work (and greatly reduce all their WP work) because of this nonsense and the drama it generated. Those with close connections to a subject do not get to decide how we have to write about them (think of the WP:COI implication of that!). Not that we'd make a special pleading exception for a particular institution anyway; see also MOS:TM, MOS:INSTITUTIONS, WP:OFFICIALNAME, etc. – over and over again WP is making the same point that particular establishments with their own style peccadilloes do not in any way dictate the style of WP's writing about them. See also failure to gain consensus of previous attempts to make "style carve-outs" for particular entitles like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Ohio State University, etc. There is nothing new under the MoS sun after 20+ years of this stuff. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 11:28, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
I can understand how, sometimes, the comma may not be necessary. This may be one of those cases. If commas were precious handcrafted symbols made of expensive materials, perhaps we would use them more sparingly, but they are not. It is so much easier to use them and use them consistently to aid the reader and to decrease the need for discussion among editors. I can't get worked up about it being a big deal either way, but Wikipedia's style is to use them consistently and I think we should stick with that. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 14:53, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
Yes. Lots of such commas are often considered unnecessary and dropped in off-site writing of various styles, but this is on-WP writing and no one's ever made a compelling argument for an exception to Always use a pair of commas for this, unless another punctuation mark takes the place of the second comma. The clarity the commas provide to a large subset of readers is much more valuable than the tiny bit of "micro-concision" gained by omitting them. As with virtually any style matter that doesn't have serious disruption potential, if someone prefers to write without these commas, no one is likely to make much noise about it; it's something another editor will just clean up later. There's only a problem when someone tries to either go around removing these commas from where they belong, or stonewall other editors who are bringing the material into guideline compliance. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 10:04, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
I've had a go at documenting the above in the guidance. I'm sure it can be improved upon, but it's a start. Feel free to tweak it. Schwede6620:51, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
Looks good to me. (Well, other than that it may not be "nice" to use the recently disputed case when adding material like this; it can come off as rubbing someone's nose in it. I try to find some other example in such cases. An exception would be when an RfC has come to the resolution, in which case it's a better example to use, and in some cases we cite the RfC in a footnote, especially if it was a "big deal" discussion.) That said, whenever I see the code in MoS sections like that, I wonder whether we should abandon the table-based layout of these yes/no examples and just use simpler list formatting. It's a lot of code bloat. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 21:45, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
Schwede66, for some reason, i don't seem to have gotten a ping to this discussion, so i will ping the others in case they didn't receive a notification either: JennyOz, Dank, and Peacemaker67.from my current understanding of the updated version of mos:geocomma, i believe that, in the example sentence "Main Street, U.S.A. is in Disneyland.", mos:geocomma suggests that, after "U.S.A.", a comma should be inserted. is that correct? also, does this mean that mos:geocomma does not apply when the last element in the comma-separated list is either not a geographical element, or not used as a disambiguator? for example, in "Balliol College, Oxford", "Oxford" refers to the university rather than a geographical element, and there doesn't seem to be another balliol college notable enough to be the subject of an article on wikipedia.while we are on the topic, should there be similar guidance regarding commas following names of people? mos:jr actually appears to cover one of the cases noted above by stating that a comma should not be placed before "Jr.", which suggests that one should not be placed after "Jr." either if its sole purpose is to surround the suffix with delimiters. other possibly contentious names include "Charles, Prince of Wales" and "Edward, the Black Prince".by the way, as i may have been the editor in the conversation quoted above who was most skeptical about mos:geocomma (at the time) being applicable to "Royal Military College, Duntroon", i feel like i should mention that although it hadn't even occurred to me that the new wording could be construed as "rubbing someone's nose in it" until the possibility was raised, i do appreciate the consideration. dying (talk) 07:59, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
Mandatory
Is adherence to the MOS mandatory or a preference? I see people going to war over the MOS, even with single edits that are invisible to the readers. The Bannertalk10:46, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
The Banner, I suppose that's their bad for getting bent out of shape. There are good semantic (imo) reasons for it in many cases that I could imagine getting a smidge cranky over, but I'm already too much of a stickler myself. — Remsense诉13:31, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
In the first instance, you followed my edit history to a page I'd previously edited, made a series of unconstructive edits without understanding the context, accused me of edit-warring when I reverted you, and then said I was "becoming historical" when I outed your bad behaviour.
In the second instance, you blundered into a delicate situation looking for trouble when I was trying to make peace between two well-meaning editors. I didn't want to let your bad behaviour distract from the more important issue, so I put you to one side while I dealt with it. If you come to my Talk page looking for trouble, I'll deal with you as I see fit.
In the third instance, I've been testing a script-based solution to the activities of a troublesome and prolific block-evader. The context is explained in the thread you linked above. Discussions are ongoing.
There is no need to change links that are already correct. And that is exactly what you two are doing, with as excuse NOPIPE. The Bannertalk15:45, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
What does that red cross mean, up there next to [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|Mozart]]? Do you see that the form of link that Surtsicna prefers, and that I prefer, and that the manual prefers, is like the green link below it, while the form that you keep reverting to is the red one with the big red cross next to it?
I think you are confused with policies. Guidelines are (strong) advice. Not mandatory as policies. And there is no reason the correct links that are already correct. The Bannertalk17:46, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
That argument can be made, but it's definitely worse to revert them, since you're editwarring over trivia and making the material as least a fraction worse (by the rubric of the three related guidelines cited here). — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 09:52, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
This has already been asked and answered. If they are against three guidelines, they are not "correct"; they just happen to be incorrect in a way that isn't utterly broken. There's a difference between "kinda works" and "works properly", between "not a fatal practice" and "a best practice", between "okay" and "ideal". Please absorb this. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 00:36, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
I've been thinking about this a little more. I think the way I look at it is that no actions are mandatory here, but some are (effectively) prohibited - or at least, strongly discouraged. What that means in this context is that nobody is obliged to change N to Y, but anyone is free to do so if they choose; and nobody should change Y to N without a very good reason.
To answer the base question, no one has to follow MoS (or follow any other guideline of any kind) to edit here. They only have to abide by policy. However, it is disruptive to thwart guideline application by either going around changing compliant material to be non-compliant or editwarring against later editors who are making non-compliant material be compliant (both unconstructive activities have resulted in sanctions before). No one "owns" their edits here, and all content you or anyone else puts into WP is subject to policy-compliant later editing by other users. All that said, there is an actual problem here to fix: MOS:NOPIPE should not read "do not use a piped link where it is possible to use a redirected term" as if it were a policy, but should instead say something more like "under most conditions, do not use a piped link where it is possible to use a redirected term", or more concisely "prefer a redirected term over a piped link", or something else that leaves at least a little room for editorial judgment (e.g. when the redirected term is darned certain to be something that should never have its own article). The material already explicitly cross-references the WP:NOTBROKEN guideline. Even when such a change should be made, it's important that editors not go around robotically "fixing" things that aren't necessarily faulty, at least not blindly and especially not as the whole edit itself instead of as part of a more substantive reader-facing change or a fix that is editor-facing but actually necessary (this "bundling" of such changes is covered in the human-editing portion of WP:COSMETICBOT). Anyway, the point being: MoS being over-explicit with language like "do not" shouldn't be interpreted as elevating it to a policy-level requirement. MoS shouldn't be using that kind of language except where reiterating/applying a policy requirement or a technical (including accessibility) one. PS: Something from the related user-talk thread: "do not do something" means "fix it when you see it done" is correct, and if the wording were adjusted to something like "usually do not do something" then "usually fix it when you run into it" would be correct; WP:CONTENTAGE is an "argument to avoid" fallacy; no material is exempt from WP:P&G compliance simply because it's not newly added today (or last week, or last year). — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 09:59, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
To answer the base question, no one has to follow MoS (or follow any other guideline of any kind) to edit here.
I think the base question needs interpretation in the light of The Banner's other remarks. I think he's really asking: "Can I persistently revert other editors' work if I prefer to disregard the Manual of Style?"
All that said, there is an actual problem here to fix: MOS:NOPIPE should not read "do not use a piped link where it is possible to use a redirected term" as if it were a policy, but should instead say something more like "under most conditions, do not use a piped link where it is possible to use a redirected term", or more concisely "prefer a redirected term over a piped link", or something else that leaves at least a little room for editorial judgment (e.g. when the redirected term is darned certain to be something that should never have its own article).
I wouldn't oppose any of those suggestions. But isn't there already a subtext that guidelines will have exceptions, and disagreements should be resolved with intelligent cooperation? I've been avoiding changing links like [[2014 Scottish independence referendum|Scottish independence referendum]], for example, because, while MOS:NOPIPE would seem to apply, it's quite possible that a second Scottish independence referendum might occur. If it did, the latter part of that link might no longer be a valid redirect to the former.
Even when such a change should be made, it's important that editors not go around robotically "fixing" things that aren't necessarily faulty, at least not blindly and especially not as the whole edit itself instead of as part of a more substantive reader-facing change or a fix that is editor-facing but actually necessary (this "bundling" of such changes is covered in the human-editing portion of WP:COSMETICBOT).
While I agree that edits shouldn't be made "robotically" and "blindly", I don't see these changes as purely cosmetic in the sense that WP:COSMETICBOT intends, which is why I don't mark them as "minor". Links are fundamental to the way the encyclopedia is wired up, they affect every page, and I think a more rational and holistic approach to linking would benefit the project as a whole.
I think the base question needs interpretation in the light of The Banner's other remarks. I think he's really asking: "Can I persistently revert other editors' work if I prefer to disregard the Manual of Style?" As in: Can I straight ignore objections of others and invent a new rule (it being mandatory)??? And about the cosmic changes: no reader will see your changes. The Bannertalk15:35, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
I haven't invented any new rules, I don't think anything here is mandatory, and we're discussing your objections. I also paused my use of Nardog's script as soon as Ritchie333 asked me to, pending further discussion. I'm very keen to continue that discussion in the hope of finding a mutually acceptable way to proceed. Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 16:04, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
It is not so much my objections (I voice them) but the way NOPIPE is used and enforced. But there are more people jumping up and down about how NOPIPE is used. Not only me or Ritchie333. But these objections were ignored with a claim on the mandatory character of NOPIPE. The Bannertalk16:16, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
What do you object to specifically in "the way NOPIPE is used and enforced", and how does that differ from the way any other MoS guideline is "used and enforced"? Who are the other people whose objections are being ignored? If there are enough of them, you may have a case to rewrite the relevant guidelines. I pointed out in August or September that you were the only editor reverting my edits. There have been three cases this month in at least five hundred examples, and one of them self-reverted after I explained my position. Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 22:27, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
Did you read it? As it starts with Do not "fix" links to redirects that are not broken. So, why do you fix links that are not broken? The Bannertalk00:45, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
Look, I know English isn't your first language, but I'm sure you understand that when you omit words from a sentence, its meaning may change. So, "don't paint the bathroom walls green" doesn't mean the same thing as "don't paint walls green", or "don't paint the bathroom", or even "paint the bathroom walls". The sentence do not "fix" links to redirects that are not broken contains specific information about the kinds of links ("links to redirects") that shouldn't be "fixed", and the guideline gives examples of the ways in which they shouldn't be "fixed". There isn't an equivalent guideline saying "don't fix piped links" because the manual of style says redirects are preferred. There isn't a guideline that says "malformed but functional links shouldn't be edited".
I'd like to ask you the same question though. Why do you "fix" links that are not broken? You clearly don't feel that functional links shouldn't be edited, because your edit here changed the format of functioning links without changing the displayed text or the target pages. It's just that it did so in a way that's discouraged by the guideline you cited in your edit summary.
What do you mean? I know that your English is good but not perfect, so I'm willing to believe that you may have misunderstood the guideline you cited. What I'm not willing to believe is that you think omitting the words "to redirects" from the sentence you quoted doesn't alter the meaning of that sentence.
Could you answer a few of the questions I've put to you above? It might help clarify your objections.
What do you object to specifically in "the way NOPIPE is used and enforced"?
How does that differ from the way any other MoS guideline is "used and enforced"?
Why do you "fix" links that are not broken?
What does that red cross mean, up there ↑ next to [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|Mozart]]?
No, if you start questioning my mastering of the language and get personal, I am done. There is no consensus that NOPIPE is mandatory (due to low number of participants I do not dare to say that there is consensus the other way.) And you have already resumed your campaign of fixing links that do not need fixing. Again you ignore the discussion, so why should I spend time on a discussion if you ignore it anyway? by now, I start thinking about an RFC.... The Bannertalk18:27, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
In that case, let me leave you with something to think about. The page that's now at "Henry VIII" used to be at "Henry VIII of England". Somebody thought it would be a good idea to "correct" all the links to [[Henry VIII]] into piped links: [[Henry VIII of England|Henry VIII]]. Then "Henry VIII of England" was moved to "Henry VIII", and instead of pointing directly to "Henry VIII" as they would have done, all those links (there are thousands) now go via a redirect at Henry VIII of England. 6,257 pages currently make use of that redirect. If you think direct links really are preferable, you might like to look through that list and turn those piped redirects back into [[Henry VIII]]. I promise, I won't intervene.
Jean-de-Nivelle is entirely correct on this: The sentence do not "fix" links to redirects that are not broken contains specific information about the kinds of links ("links to redirects") that shouldn't be "fixed", and the guideline gives examples of the ways in which they shouldn't be "fixed". There isn't an equivalent guideline saying "don't fix piped links" because the manual of style says redirects are preferred. There isn't a guideline that says "malformed but functional links shouldn't be edited". Failure to understand this at first is one thing, but persistently misapplying the material, after one has been corrected on the matter, as if it meant "don't fix any fix piped links even if malformed or unhelpful", when the entire point of that MoS passage is fixing poor piped links and preferring redirects, would be disruptive. If this is really the basis for the insistent reversion behavior, then this is rather concerning. The Banner: "if [insert tone complaint here], I am done." If you are done, then the reverting should stop. The edits are compliant with the guidelines, even if some of us might find them not required or not very important, or maybe even annoying if not done as part of a more substantive edit. You've raised a lengthy and rather venty complaint here, and from what I can tell a grand total of zero editors agree with you, so it is time to WP:DROPTHESTICK and stop revert-warring. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 00:36, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
"Can I persistently revert other editors' work if I prefer to disregard the Manual of Style?" is a clear "no". Doing enough of that ends up at ANI. "isn't there already a subtext that guidelines will have exceptions, and disagreements should be resolved with intelligent cooperation?" Sure, but never underestimate the willingness of some people to wikilawyer, especially if they encounter a word like "must". "a more rational and holistic approach to linking would benefit the project as a whole" That generally sounds good, but "holistic" has no real definition in this context, and a lot of editors are concerned with overlinking, and many also with trivial changes hitting their watchlists over and over again; I'm simply advising caution here. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 00:12, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
"holistic" has no real definition in this context: I think I could come up with one, but perhaps this isn't the moment for it.
a lot of editors are concerned with overlinking: I'm one of them, but this issue purely concerns the format of the links in question, not their number. I often reduce overlinking as I go.
and many also with trivial changes hitting their watchlists over and over again: I'm aware of the potential for that, having seen some of the opposition to JackkBrown's activities. I'm actually surprised how few objections there have been. My feeling is that most people don't see these edits as trivial, or just don't care either way.
I'm simply advising caution here.: Understood. I would actually welcome a broader discussion of some of the issues involved in this situation, but I'm not trying to provoke one. Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 01:32, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
My thoughts are very much that, no the MOS isn't "manditory", and there are certainly edge cases where it's not suitable, but you usually need a good reason to either ignore, or usurp the MOS. Lee Vilenski(talk • contribs)12:52, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
I will take this a step further… one should not disrupt articles by repeatedly reverting other editors… regardless of whether you are following or disregarding the MOS. Edit warring is NEVER correct.
Instead, go to the talk page, and discuss the situation. There ARE times when it is appropriate to make an exception to the MOS… BUT, those are very rare. It is hard, and takes patience and a cooperative attitude to convince other editors that an exception should made in a given situation. Finally, even if you are sure you were correct… accept reality when you have lost the argument. Blueboar (talk) 00:58, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
WP:BRD: Bold-Revert-Discuss. You make a change that violates WP:NOPIPE and if I feel it could mess up the creation of a future article from the redirect (the kind of links that should not be "fixed") then I will revert you. You can then put your case on the talk page, knowing that at least one editor disagrees with you so you will need to establish consensus. This is not edit warring; it is our usual editing process. Hawkeye7(discuss)02:10, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
Just chiming in to agree with Jean-de-Nivelle and SMcCandlish. Please don't continue to make edits or reverts contrary to the Manual of Style to conform to your preferred form of link. At some point, that might cross the line into being viewed as a pattern of disruption and would become sanctionable. You would be within your rights to open a discussion to change the MoS to align more closely with your view on this topic, but I suspect that it would be a futile undertaking. Mathglot (talk) 08:20, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
"Please don't continue to make edits or reverts contrary to the Manual of Style to conform to your preferred form of link."
There's a bit of a mixed bag there, with some edits having multiple types of link changes, but the common theme, which I'm sure was the point of your post, is that there are a whole bunch of willful WP:NOPIPE violations there by The Banner, and as they were perfectly okay before those edits, the edits were in no way an improvement to the articles in question for the reader, and go against guideline, whether you respect guidelines or not.
In addition, this isn't only, or even primarily, about ignoring WP:NOPIPE because it is "only a guideline"; much more important, in my view, is that WP:DISRUPTION is involved, and WP:CONSENSUS is policy, and that is the main issue here. I believe Blueboar was first to mention this above, but it bears repeating: besides any only-a-guideline issue, editors here are expected to edit collaboratively, and above all, build an encyclopedia. Every word in this discussion, and every minute spent by editor-builders patiently explaining (now, perhaps, less patiently) to a single editor why they should stop doing what they are doing, is one more word and one more minute not spent building an encyclopedia. At some indeterminate point, that shifts from discussion and consensus-seeking, and shies into WP:DISRUPTION, and that can lead to a WP:BLOCK, even an indefinite one if it doesn't stop.
@The Banner: what perplexes me is that you choose to pop up on a page you've never edited before just over half an hour after I'd edited it, to violate precisely the guidelines we've been discussing in this thread. You did something very similar here in September. Do you really think anyone will believe it's coincidental?
Thank you for confirming that you are following me around. Sorry that I do not have the time or the interest to treat you the same as you treat me. But I will do my best to improve the encyclopedia to give the readers the best reader experience. Unfortunately, solving links to disambiguation pages means creating a lot of piping, if I can I will provide a direct link to the intended target. The Bannertalk00:49, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
At some indefinable point above, this discussion seems to have shifted from one about interpretation of the MOS guideline about piped links, and how mandatory guidelines are, into being more about the conduct of one editor, as I alluded to in my "hill to die on" comment above. I believe the behavioral component of it belongs not here, but at the user talk page, and accordingly, I have raised this discussion to address it. Mathglot (talk) 07:42, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
Tense switching and MOS:TENSE
Curious to get some opinions on the MOS:TENSE verbiage as it applies to a subject. Generally, we follow the good advice to treat things in present tense save for the historical stuff, which we leave in the past. My question falls as to whether it's better to just stick with one when the alternative is tense-switching repeatedly. The MOS gives Dún Aonghasa is the ruin of a prehistoric Irish cliff fort. Its original shape was presumably oval or D-shaped, but parts of the cliff and fort have since collapsed into the sea. as an example, but as a single occasion it's not really that disruptive. The issue I see is more in cases of something like computer technology, where we're talking about a discontinued product that was sold or offered in specific configurations. Those machines and configurations still exist, but in the case of iMac G3#Release, the result is that you get three tense shifts in five sentences in a single paragraph, and even worse as you go. To me, sticking with historical makes it read much better, short of rearranging the entire section or turning it from prose to bullets or something to avoid the issue. Thoughts? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchstalk19:54, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
I agree that section on iMacs is quite confusingly written. (The new iMacs have no fan... about something released a quarter-century ago is quite jarring.) It either needs to be a description of what design decisions were taken at the time, or a description of the components of the (still extant) machines, in present tense. Currently it is a muddle of the two. As written, I agree it would be easier to shift it into past tense (e.g., "These models were released without a fan..."--Trystan (talk) 02:13, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
No "the" with Inuit
As this guidance from the government of Canada says, since Inuit is already plural (Inuk is singular) and because it already means "the people", phrases such as "the Inuit" and "Inuit people" are grammatically incorrect and I think we could reflect it in a footnote somewhere in MOS as a case of irregular plurals and/or article usage. Unfortunately I can see a lot of that usage by typing "the Inuit" or "Inuit people" in the search tool, including in Inuit topics.
Hi. Today I reverted an edit by an editor who had changed a title of several bands so the The in the title was changed to the in the article John Miles (musician). I reverted them based on MOS:5, which states:
Always capitalized: When using title case, the following words should be capitalized:
The first and last word of the title (e.g. A Home to Go Back To)
It was reverted back by the editor quoting MOS:THEBAND which states:
Mid-sentence, per the MoS main page, the word the should in general not be capitalized in continuous prose, e.g.:
Wings featured Paul McCartney from the Beatles and Denny Laine from the Moody Blues.
I had not seen this part if MOS before so fair play. However is this not a contradiction? Should we not link MOS:THEBAND as an exception? Davidstewartharvey (talk) 17:15, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
It seems to me that it makes the most sense of that articles covering topics that are occurring in or based in America should generally be written in American English, and articles covering topics that are occurring in or based in the UK or other countries were British English is predominant should generally be written with British English, and that this sentiment should be reflected in the MOS. Comments or questions on this proposition would be most welcome here.
Thanks, Lighthumormonger (talk) 17:04, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
I'm proposing that we remove or replace the following from MOS:VAR:
The Arbitration Committee has expressed the principle that "When either of two styles is acceptable it is inappropriate for a Wikipedia editor to change from one style to another unless there is some substantial reason for the change."[a]
ArbCom does not have authority over content, and so their words should not have such a prominent place in a manual of style that governs Wikipedia content. In addition, while a minor point, the quote is nearing 20 years old(!) and feels a bit out of place in a 2024 manual of style.
I'd propose that we remove the quote, as the next sentence beginning "Edit-warring over style ..." seems to cover this topic well enough. However, we could instead replace the quote with a regular old sentence that says the same thing. Ed[talk][OMT] 19:15, 23 January 2024 (UTC) Ed[talk][OMT]19:15, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
That is correct. But for the same reasoning, it's strange to see them quoted as an authority now in 2024. Hence the proposal to remove or replace with similar wording. Ed[talk][OMT]20:35, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
I would agree with this. It is actually outside of ArbCom's remit to govern content (including internal WP:P&G content – ArbCom doesn't even get to rewrite WP:ARBPOL itself). While the underlying point of that material is a behavioral one about edit-warring (which was central to the case in question), the wording taken in its most literal way and out of that specific context is actually a serious over-reach of ArbCom's authority. It would be better for MoS, as a community document, to present the same idea (which appears to have longstanding community consensus), just not as an ancient ArbCom quote. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 07:29, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
I feel that they were probably summarizing guidelines or practice at the time rather than trying to write policy by fiat, but either way, since this page is the guideline and is supposed to document the practice, quoting ArbCom directly seems a bit circular, yeah. --Aquillion (talk) 11:26, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
Oppose change In this case, Arbcom is not ruling in favour of a particular style. Their point is a behavioural one; that making such changes without a good reason is disruptive. This seems well-established in cases such as WP:CITEVAR and infoboxes. As conflict over such matters can end up before Arbcom, it's good for editors to understand the risk. Andrew🐉(talk) 22:19, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
No, it's a behavioural point. Circularity is irrelevant as our rules are based on consensus and practice rather than authority. The key point here is that Arbcom was on board with this consensus and their enforcement of it is a significant part of our practice. Editors should therefore understand that it's not a rule that they may lightly ignore and so it's good that we make this clear. Andrew🐉(talk) 19:37, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
Oppose change ArbCom does have authority to rule in content; it has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors. And their ruling is authoritative, as opposed to most of the MOS. Hawkeye7(discuss)23:59, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
It's been claimed that BLPs that have "regarded/considered as one of the greatest/best X of all-time/his generation" are unencyclopedic and appear to be indiscriminately removed[11][12][13] with a request to re-write the words are in quotes with attribution as per MOS:PUFFERY.
None of these BLPs have stated the subject is "the best/greatest" but state they're regarded/considered as one of the greatest/best players of all-time/his generation" which is consistent with what's included in BLPs such as Lionel Messi, Diego Maradona, Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, Tiger Woods, Serena Williams, Usain Bolt and many others.
MOS:PUFFERY states: "Words such as these are often used without attribution to promote the subject of an article, while neither imparting nor plainly summarizing verifiable information". My understanding is that the use of stating that the subject is regarded/considered as the "best/greatest" citing RS is within the policy and guidance as opposed to claiming the subject IS the "best/greatest". Even in the Bob Dylan article, which is cited as an example, states he is "Generally regarded as one of the greatest songwriters ever". RevertBob (talk) 10:10, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
Well, it also has to comply with WP:DUE policy. Some random music journalist saying that Neil Peart was one of the greatest rock drummers of all time is not sufficient; what is sufficient is a large number of high-quality sources on music (not random bloggers) saying something like this, and his presence in top-lists at such publications, so that the clear reliable-source consensus is that he was one of the best. You will run into opposition to such labelling if the DUE test is not well-met, and may still run into it anyway even if it is, because it is categorically better to demonstrate to the reader that someone was a great, by listing their awards and other accomplishments (including top-lists from notable publications), rather than tell the reader that various sources say they were one of the greats, which always raises the question of whether sources have been WP:CHERRYPICKed and thus are not a DUE selection. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 23:13, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
The issue with including top-lists from notable publications is then those also get removed with the claim of being trivial. So to use Neil Peart as a hypothetical example: if DUE was met with independent, reliable sources on the topic of music [i.e. not a blog and high-quality source(s)]. Is it unreasonable for the article to then say:"Considered one of the greatest rock drummers of all-time,[insert source(s)] Peart earned numerous awards for his musical performances, including an induction into the Modern Drummer Readers Poll Hall of Fame in 1983 at the age of thirty, making him the youngest person ever so honoured."[insert source(s)] RevertBob (talk) 13:49, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
Yes. Various of our biographical articles are written this way, but the sourcing has to be particularly strong (WP:EXCEPTIONAL). Some editors are apt to disagree with it anyway, for the "show don't tell" reason I gave above. [Yes, that was a Rush lyrics reference; couldn't resist.] This sort of question might really be better asked over at WT:FAC: "Under what sourcing circumstances would the Featured Article reviewers accept a claim like 'considered one of the greatest [occupational speciality here]'?" PS: "top-lists from notable publications ... also get removed with the claim of being trivial" – Well, that's not defensible, since they're obviously not trivial when the awarders are notable and pertinent. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 05:41, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
Just to clarify, did you mean yes it's reasonable/no it's not unreasonable?
Your contributions have certainly been helpful in providing more clarify! FYI, my knowledge of drummers doesn't extend beyond Keith Moon and Ringo Starr. I don't think editors should just be able to subjective disagree and remove content within the policy and guidelines as per WP:IDONTLIKEIT. It would be good for consistency to be applied and for the goalposts to not be keep being moved (that was a footballing pun).
It's certainly not a fringe theory or extraordinary claim for Alan Shearer to be widely regarded as one of the greatest strikers of all-time or for Mohammed Salah to be regarded as one of the best players of his generation or for Raymond Kopa for be considered one of the best footballers of all-time. High-quality sourcing would support that. RevertBob (talk) 09:09, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
I mean "yes, it's reasonable". Though, as noted, others are still likely to object to it, because it is hard to sufficiently source, is not necessary, and another approach of showing instead of telling, if often (usually?) better. "Consistency" will never be applied on something like this, because every bio is different and ultimately the writing at each is determined by consensus on an article by article basis. The exact claim will vary by subject, the sourcing level and quality will, and so will the meaningfulness of the claim (there's a big difference between the claim that Babe Ruth was the greatest 20th-century baseball player (perhaps of all time), and Joe Schmoe being hailed by disc golf magazines and websites as the top player of a sport with few players and little public interest. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 22:59, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
When I reverted some of these edits, my edit summary was "Please re-write this puffery in quotes with attribution, per MOS:PUFFERY". The policy literally says, "without attribution", and the example given shows the puffery in quotation marks. All that RevertBob needed to do was follow the policy. Magnolia677 (talk) 20:50, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
The policy is referencing using the phrase as being referred as "is" (a claim of act) rather than "considered" or "regarded" (an opinion) i.e. "I am the greatest bird ever!" Even the Bob Dylan article which is referred in the policy has the following in the lead without attribution: "Generally regarded as one of the greatest songwriters ever". RevertBob (talk) 21:50, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
"Generally/widely regarded" is one of those WP:EXCEPTIONAL claims that requires exceptional sourcing. I don't really know if taht standard is met at the Dylan article. Being able to find potentially dubious usage in one article does not make it magically permissible everywhere (WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS). Ultimately, it really comes down to a consensus on a per-article basis. E.g., at an article like Kopa's, how many sources are making such a claim and what is their quality? If we have two sources of reasonable quality, it's probably better to attribute them directly ("according to"); if we have two of low quality, omit it; if we have 50 and many are high-quality, then maybe it's a "generally regarded". (Obviously don't WP:OVERCITE 50 sources; rather, cite the best ones and list the others in a talk page discussion to convince other editors that "generally regarded" is permissible). And did you do what I suggested? Namely: This sort of question might really be better asked over at WT:FAC: "Under what sourcing circumstances would the Featured Article reviewers accept a claim like 'considered one of the greatest [occupational speciality here]'?"? — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 22:59, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
I have no beef with "the greatest", or "best kicker in the history of soccer", or "most epic player ever". My request is that it be attributed and in quotation marks; it cannot be in Wikipedia's voice. That is the essence of this policy. Magnolia677 (talk) 23:11, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
The thing is, we summarise what sources say. If we have a lot of citations that specifically say that this person is "the best" or "one of the best", then the prose should use these sources, maybe specifically quote them, or just comment on them, but our lede should summarise that information, which quite often ends with that phrasing. Lee Vilenski(talk • contribs)23:16, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
SMcCandlish I didn't do what you suggested as the point of contention isn't over whether these can be included or not but a consistent approach of how the content should be added. The issue is, what is the the problem with something being "regarded" or "considered" as something in Wikipedia's voice according to the policy, Magnolia677? It's an objective statement of sources rather than the subjective term of referring to something as "the best/greatest" without the words "regarded" or "considered" preceding it. I'm not trying to make an OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument here but it doesn't seem to have been raised as an issue by other editors on dozens or hundreds of other articles within sport, film, music or other topics (e.g. Messi, Brando, Dylan and many others) where this format is currently used which would appear to suggest a community consensus that it's acceptable. As Lee Vilenski has said it's a summary/paraphrasing of the information in the source. If it's a list then the subject is regarded/considered "one of the greatest..." Adding a quote would suggest that's what's quoted in the source which it isn't.
An alternate approach would be to find one very reliable source, and say, -> Sports Illustrated has called him "the greatest player of 1990". Magnolia677 (talk) 20:16, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
That's also a valid approach. There are multiple ways to come at this sort of thing (and I'm not the one who needs convincinging, RevertBob). My personal take is that there is a general and loose consensus that something like "considered one of the greatest" is permissible, but only with a number of high-quality sources, but that despite this general it's-okay feeling, there is no rule requiring it, and various editors aren't comfortable with it, so it's going to come down to a per-article editorial consensus. That is apt to be a butt-pain sometimes, but I'm not sure there's really a way around it. PS: RevertBob, please don't insert blank lines between your reply and what you're replying to (MOS:LISTGAPS). — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 23:32, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
He was 25th in Bleachers Report, 22nd in SI, 34th in FourFourTwo and 22nd in Give Me Sport - you could make the argument that it'd be cherrypicking to select one. However, even if one was selected then it'd get removed as trivial which to be fair using the policy can be argued as being used to "promote the subject of an article" whereas simply stating he's "regarded as one of the greatest players of all-time" is "imparting nor plainly summarizing verifiable information". RevertBob (talk) 20:49, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
I am curious whether some of those talking about “attribution” mean to say WP:INTEXT attribution. Reasonable claims (eg, at Tiger Woods: Woods is widely regarded as one of the greatest golfers of all time and is one of the most famous athletes in modern history) don’t need more attribution than a one or two strong citations, especially in the lead (which is where I think we’re all really talking about). My main concerns for this type of writing are that a) we don’t say such things in Wikipedia’s voice, and b) we source them clearly. Including explicit quotes is arguably better, but full quotes and in-text attribution can really weigh down the writing, and I really wouldn’t want to push aside multiple strong sources just to provide in-text attribution from one of them, Magnolia677. MOS:PUFFERY should not be an anchor holding us back from describing some of our most important biographical subjects clearly with strong, decisive prose. Of course these kinds of “puffy” statements should be given this leniency only where their claim is largely uncontroversial (NB, not where the statement has been subject to controversy based on hard-line anti-puffery patrollers).
Consider also the counterpoint at Adolf Hitler, whose lead includes: The historian and biographer Ian Kershaw describes Hitler as "the embodiment of modern political evil"., a statement sensibly attributed to a leading Hitler historian, whose inclusion in the lead is not likely to be an erroneous distraction for the reader. But in that context, I actually suggest going further, and noting Kershaw’s place in the field would better inform the reader. — HTGS (talk)03:32, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
On a lot of those articles it already had that information and I simply added a supporting source - whether this was correct or not, my intention was to improve those articles and I wasn't intending to be disruptive. After reading into it a bit more, I've tried to be more selective about which articles to add it but it seems Magnolia677 is removing this content from every article that has it stating that it needs to be attributed which doesn't seem to be the case on any other articles. Anyway, to use a football term, I'd like to play the ball, not the player so if we could stay on the topic of discussing the policy and possibly reach a consensus rather than passing judgement of editing history. I've also had the courtesy of not canvassing other editors who may agree with my position. RevertBob (talk) 20:49, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
I agree with @HTGS. Sometimes a fact feels exceedingly positive, but is still basically just a fact. When it's true that any particular superlative is commonly used to describe a given subject, then we should just say that and get on with the rest of the article. It does not make sense, and it is not encyclopedic, to write "Elvis Presley was called 'the greatest performer' by Alice, Bob, Chris, Dave, Eve, Frank, and many others.[1][2][3][4][5][6]" Just say he has been called the greatest and move on. If it's DUE, it should be in the article, and you should no more try to downplay that as "only the opinion" of a list of individually named experts than you should write that climate change is believed to be real by a list of individually named experts. INTEXT attribution is for content that can be accurately presented as being the view of only a handful of people. A statement like Sports Illustrated called him "the greatest player of 1990" is appropriate when that is an unusual comment. It is not appropriate if we could name a dozen periodicals and a hundred individuals that said the same thing, or when it's not just 1990, but also a statement that was true over the course of multiple years.
These disputes generally involve content that some editor consider to be subjective or opinion-based, by which they really mean "not actually true". Thus, we see editors who are squeamish about saying "has been called the best runner" but who are perfectly comfortable saying "is the fastest sprinter" (even though "best" and "fastest" are basically the same thing for sprinters). I think this is partly because of some editors' personal biases/ways of looking at the world, but also because we have done a poor job of communicating the need for articles to assert facts about opinions. It is a fact that certain individuals/artworks/whatever are considered the best/greatest/most important by a number of relevant experts that is too large for INTEXT attribution to be appropriate. In such cases (which should not happen in millions of articles, but which should probably happen in thousands of them), we really should use Wikipedia:A simple formulation and simply say that it's true that reliable sources say that a lot about this subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:59, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
This is my point WhatamIdoing, just writing someone is "considered/regarded as one of the greatest" is a lot simpler "imparting nor plainly summarizing verifiable information" than complicating it with an incomplete list of Tom, Dick, Harry or others have ranked him in such a position of all-time which could be argued as to "promote the subject of an article". RevertBob (talk) 20:49, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
No we're not: Roy Keane and Eden Hazard (if you've watched top-flight English or Spanish football then you'd know who he is) are "regarded as one of the greatest players of his generation" where Messi and Maradona are "widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all-time". There's a big difference. RevertBob (talk) 22:38, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
Generations don't come in "exact years". Neither do ages, eons, epochs, eras, or periods. Don't mistake fuzziness for wrongness. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:40, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
I certainly appreciate where you’re coming from Magnolia, but I feel that those questions are easily addressable in a way that still informs the reader of a subject’s standing in their field. It’s not really a standard usable in practical ways, but I use the rule of thumb that we don’t paraphrase to anything that would be disagreeable to the average informed reader. If challenged, it should not be hard to convert phrasing to be more specific. Many average readers may be unaware of Tom Bingham, but readers who do know of him would rarely disagree with the statement: On his death in 2010, he was described as the greatest judge of his generation.
Maybe a similar attitude to phrasing would be helpful in those articles? I do think each article will always present its own challenge, and it is better to be specific where it gives the reader more context.
Eg: I like that Hazard’s lead reads: Known for his creativity, dribbling, passing and vision, he is regarded as one of the best players of his generation, but I don’t see “vision” in either source and creativity seems less important to the sources than attack (goal.com: Hazard is widely regarded as one of the best attacking players of his generation) or dribbling (ibid: … is, without any qualms, one of the best dribblers of this generation.), so I would cut those without sourcing. If pressed, the claim of “one of best players of his gen” seems less well-supported than “one of best dribblers of his gen”. It’s also not hard to find similar sources that support the claim (eg, [19]). — HTGS (talk)00:56, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
The fact that you are not the biggest football fan is not the article's problem. Not every person's who's widely considered great is going to be immediately recognizable to you. AryKun (talk) 15:55, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
One other distinction. Those types of phrases like "Mike is considered to be one of the best dart players of all time" imply that they are widely considered to have such a quality. And if true, such is information about what the relevant public thinks rather than puffery. Not just that somebody found a few people/sources that said it. So if 3 truly reliable sources say "Mike is one of the best dart players of all time" that does not support it, it just says that three people think that way and anything more than that would be synthesis. If they all say "Mike is considered to be one of the best dart players of all time" IMO that does support it because they are reporting on what the relevant public thinks. North8000 (talk) 21:36, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
I could find a reliable source to say just about anything...that is why we have that gatekeeper WP:VNOT. Why don't we just stick to the facts and let readers decide who is the greatest? Magnolia677 (talk) 22:34, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
Because sometimes the relevant fact is that the subject is generally considered the greatest at something. I couldn't tell you who was considered the greatest (e.g.,) Mexican politician, and even if you listed all of his accomplishments, I would still not be in a position to decide for myself whether he was generally considered the greatest. I could only decide whether his accomplishments seem impressive to me. Both public reception and expert reactions are facts. They happen to be facts about opinions, but they are still facts, and they should be reported like any other fact. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:45, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
Yes, and that's generally done. The problem is that even if you provide a stack of impressive scholarly works, all of which contain the exact sentence "He is widely considered the greatest ____ of all time", you have editors who personally hate this fact and want it removed from the article. It just subjectively feels wrong to them, no matter how well-supported or obviously justified anyone else thinks it is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:47, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
Indeed. Good evidence of this is that Neil Peart makes no mention of the fact that he's widely considered one of the greatest rock drummers of all time, despite that consideration in sources that matter for such an assessment being an easily established fact. I'm pretty certain that the article used to have such a statement, so someone's gone on the warpath to remove it, and make our article poorer, in suggesting that Peart is just one of a zillion random notable rock drummers instead of the overwhelmingly influential and respected figure he remains, even posthumously, in his field. That omission has made me care more about this question when I did not much care ("let it just be decided on a case-by-case basis") when the matter was opened. The closest the Peart articles gets to any of this is body-buried statement that "USA Today's writers compared him favorably with other top-shelf rock drummers. He was 'considered one of the best rock drummers of all time, alongside' [various other names dropped here]." But this is silly, since USA Today is not a reliable source on such matters, and much better sources consistently evaluate Peart as one of the greatest in his genre. (The USA Today bit might be retainable as part of a much longer string of such accolades, but it doesn't make much sense on its own.) I'm at a loss for how this article ended up in the state it's in. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 03:23, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
There's a wrinkle, too, which someone at WT:V brought up (someone who says in effect that they're not interested in getting involved in a WT:MOS discussion directly) that there's a difference between WP on the one hand summarizing often emphatic sources then saying in WP's own voice that "X was one of the greatest foo of period", versus on the other hand saying "X is widely considered one of the greatest foo of period" based on the same source material. Most editors seem to prefer the hedging of the second formulation, but that editor suggested that this is WP:OR if sources do not use wording that literally is or paraphasally amounts to "widely considered". This was a new one on me. That is, some editors might actually prefer the first and more emphatic but also more challengable and "surprising" statement as technically better-verifiable with sources that just declare the subject "one of the greatest foo" instead of themselves using hedging language. I don't think I agree with this take, but it is worth mentioning. For my part, I think it's entirely reasonable as part of a WP:DUE analysis for WP editors to come to a conclusion to use something like "widely considered" based on the preponderance of the available high-quality RS (i.e. based on wide consideration), and to avoid declaring "was one of the greatest" as an unquestionable fact rather than as a widely considered opinion found in the source material. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 03:11, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
On that point, I think that the "widely considered" style should also be accepted in connection with smaller versions of such a claim: someone or something could easily "considered the greatest" by a particular group of people, even if that view is not generally held outside the group. A person could be the greatest influence in a particular art movement, or among a small ethnic group, without being known at all outside the group. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:53, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
PUFFERY is relative rather than absolute, no term will always or never be puffery. Anything that focused on the words outside of their specific and unique context is misguided. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 06:19, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
RfC on the use of regarded/considered as one of the greatest/best X of all-time/generation
MOS:PUFFERY states: "Words such as these are often used without attribution to promote the subject of an article, while neither imparting nor plainly summarizing verifiable information".
Request for comment on if "regarded/considered as one of the greatest/best X of all-time/his generation" can be used in Wikipedia's voice without attribution providing there's appropriate supporting reliable sources. RevertBob (talk) 22:25, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
Generally yes, as long as the sourcing is several and high-quality (and the citations need not be in the lead if already in the body for the same/similar claim). That it, it needs to be attributed in the sense of cited inline in the article to multiple highly reliable sources on the questions, but need not be attributed in the lead more directly with something like "According to Rolling Stone, Spin, the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, and Billboard ...". In the article body, it would be more appropriate to attribute direct quotations, to "show rather than tell". I noted above in previous discussion that someone or other (I think at WT:NOR) raised a distinction between us saying "X was one of the greatest ..." and X is widely regarded as one of the greatest ...", and actually agued to prefer the former unless sources actually used the wording "widely regarded". But I think that's backward; "widely regarded" is a WP:DUE assessment of the source material, made by us editorially, while just claiming "X was one of the greatest ..." in WP's own voice would be asserting a subjective evaluation (albeit a common and reliably sourceable one) as if an objective fact, and that will not do. WP already uses phrasing like "widely regarded", "generally agreed among scientists", "there is a scientified consensus that", and so on when it comes to WP:FRINGE claims, so there is no magical reason that the same would not apply to assessments of this other sort. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 02:30, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
It can be used is the optimal word. In the body of an article, it should state this, and then give prose examples of the places when it was noted with sources. In the lede, there should be a part of the article that states this with the sourcing. The biggest issue we face (when sourced), is "Mo Salah is regarded as the best frisbee player of all time" and then unattributed sources. We need to prefix such a statement with prose examples of exactly what people say. Lee Vilenski(talk • contribs)08:14, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
Yes, Wikipedia articles can and should assert facts, including facts about opinions (both the "public opinion" and the "expert opinion" type). Yes, Wikipedia articles can and should use WP:INTEXT attribution correctly, which means using it when reporting an unusual or speaker-specific opinion ("Oliver Odd and Ulte Unusual said...") or when contrasting views ("The economists think this, but the philosophers think something else") but not using in-text attribution when reporting a widely held opinion (e.g., "According to every single person in the world, Paul Popular was very popular"). I add in particular that the lead might need a relatively vague and imprecise statement (e.g., "widely considered one of the greatest players") as an accurate summary of the body of the article. If the body of the article has multiple sentences reporting that various people/sources gush about how great the player is, then the lead might have a simple, high-level summary that has neither Wikipedia:Attribution (of the [1] type) nor Wikipedia:Intext attribution (of the "according to Alice and Bob and Carol and David" type). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:49, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
Literally as you’ve written it, no, because the statement you have provided is a comparative judgement (i.e. not merely that the article subject is good, or excellent, but that is better than all or most of its contemporary comparators), and that can only be established by direct, authoritative, citation from a reliable source in order not to be editor OR or SYNTH. If there are reliable sources to support the statement, then attribution is both possible and desirable. MapReader (talk) 18:14, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
Preferably, I'd rather have those phrases/statements be used (in Wiki-voice without attribution) only for the most obvious cases (using the examples from the discussion above: Lionel Messi, Diego Maradona, Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, Tiger Woods, Serena Williams, Usain Bolt, etc). I oppose the usage of "in/of [his/her/their] generation" (in wiki-voice without attribution), because the statement is vague and has an appearance of WP:RECENCY bias. Some1 (talk) 20:47, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
Yes, but multiple sources (like, 3+) should be needed. If it has coverage in multiple sources, then it is likely due. However, such a claim should have multiple good sources per WP:EXTRAORDINARY. "Regarded/considered," of course, since it's a statement of opinion. (As opposed to flat-out "is the best x of their y") 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 01:12, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
Yes: it should be used when the claim is made so often that it would be inadequate to attribute it in prose. For instance, I imagine you could find well over 100 high-quality sources that describe Usain Bolt as one of the best sprinters (or athletes or sportspeople) of all time. It would then be undue to pick out one such source and say "sports commentator Joe Bloggs said in 2013 that Bolt was 'the best sprinter the world has ever seen'". Instead, Usain Bolt currently leads: "[Bolt is] widely considered to be the greatest sprinter of all time". Terms that are usually puffery are not always so, and we still take care not to say in Wikipedia's voice "Bolt is the greatest sprinter of all time". — Bilorv (talk) 23:43, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
Question Does can be used in Wikipedia's voice without attribution refer to WP:INTEXT attribution (e.g. "Mr. Smith stated...") or supplying a citation to a reliable source? For citations, the WP:V policy says:
...any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supportsthe material. Any material that needs an inline citation but does not have one may be removed.
As for use of "regarded/considered", the more relevant guideline is MOS:WEASEL:
Words to watch: some people say, many scholars state, it is believed/regarded/considered...The examples above are not automatically weasel words. They may also be used in the lead section of an article or in a topic sentence of a paragraph, and the article body or the rest of the paragraph can supply attribution. Likewise, views that are properly attributed to a reliable source may use similar expressions, if those expressions accurately represent the opinions of the source.
Neutrality issues apart, there are other ways in-text attribution can mislead. The sentence below suggests The New York Times has alone made this important discovery: According to The New York Times, the sun will set in the west this evening.
Already allowed. The MOS says that it is just a guideline and should not be applied rigidly. I don't see the need to add yet another disclaimer. Words to watch are not banned words, and editors can use common sense to decide if something is puffery or just an acknowledgement of someone's reputation (like Shakespeare). HansVonStuttgart (talk) 09:53, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
Yes – note a vote! but placing the argument that the use of stating that the subject is regarded/considered as the "best/greatest" citing RS is within the policy and guidance as opposed to claiming the subject IS the "best/greatest". RevertBob (talk) 22:27, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
Plurals
I think MOS:PLURALS should be updated to better reflect North American usage. I'm American, and I've been noticing things like "As it toured Europe for the first time..." at Nirvana and "Because of conflicts with its record label..." at Metallica, uses that sound completely wrong. We need to add something about how it's "Nirvana is" but "they are" here. Esszet (talk) 16:15, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
The section already says, regarding collective nouns, "In North American English, these words are almost invariably treated as singular". What would you propose adding? Nikkimaria (talk) 16:20, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
Something like "When referring to the members of the group, however, they is generally preferred over it; thus "I spoke to the committee and they told me..." Esszet (talk) 16:31, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
But that would appear to conflict with recommended American usage? Whereas in British English, usage is more relaxed and it is common to hear both singular and plural used in both formal and informal contexts (indeed, the example given in the MoS, that it is always “England are playing…” isn’t correct as a search on “England is playing” among British media sites will quickly confirm. I was taught that singular is preferred when the group is acting in unison - so “the team is playing well today” or “the team has just scored”, but plural when the group is in conflict or at variance - so “the team are at each other’s throats” or “the team are all over the place tonight”. Which is related to what you are suggesting - group as a unit is singular, but group as a collection of individuals is plural. But that’s British usage, not American, and I’m not convinced that this guideline is widely observed nowadays, anyway. MapReader (talk) 17:48, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
Yes, when you use the noun itself, it's almost always the singular (we would say "a number of them are...", however), but when you use pronouns, they is generally preferred. It may not be completely logical, but then again, neither is "the team are". As a North American, I'm telling you, saying "it told me" in reference to "the committee" is completely wrong, we apparently need to update the MOS to reflect that. Esszet (talk) 17:58, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
I'm a North American, too, and do not agree with you; it depends strongly on the context and the implication. Any time someone comes here with an "X is completely wrong" attitude, most especially with a nationalistic bent to it, we have little choice but to take this as purely subjective linguistic prescription, which is basically a crank position. The worst period of disruption MoS has ever been through was caused by someone with this "only what I like is possibly ever correct in American English" attitude, and we not need a repeat of that. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 00:03, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
Did you notice that I said "generally preferred" and not "mandatory" or even much more common"? The "completely wrong" referred to that specific example (and you appear to agree, you said we should say "the band said they were tired..."), and I'm not a nationalistic crank by any means (just look at Trump), you misunderstood my argument and jumped to a completely unwarranted conclusion. I've heard about MOS wars, and you appear to be quite battle-weary, maybe you take a break for a while. Esszet (talk) 02:00, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Let's quote you (Esszet) directly: As a North American, I'm telling you, saying "it told me" in reference to "the committee" is completely wrong, we apparently need to update the MOS to reflect that. I'm also North American I do not agree with this. It's an argument to (personal) authority as an arbiter of what is "correct" versus "wrong" in North American English, and it's a bogus argument along prescriptivist lines with regard to American and North American English (the latter often cannot be generalized about anyway, as Canadian usage is palpably shifting on many matters back toward British due to the influences of a variety of national style guides and dictionaries and other works over the last two generations or so). If you were at a committee meeting and the individual committee members (even unanimously) told you X, then they told you X; you were told something by persons. If the committee as a body sent you a letter that collectively informed you of X, then it told you X; you were told by a body. This is normal usage within the US and more broadly. Where this differs regionally is in average handling of less clear-cut cases. AmEng tends toward "it" in reference to bands and companies and boards and such, while BrEng leans toward "they", but usage of both depending on the context is easily findable regardless of country of publication. Some examples from the top of relevant search results:
Here's BBC News referring to the EU [20], the UK Parliament and a UK political party [21], a company [22], a fraternal organization [23][24], a local government commission [25][26], an awards jury [27], a some bands [28][29][30] all as "it". The first and third band examples also use "they", depending on context.
Here's the same UK source again, now referring to the EU [31], the EC [32], the UK House of Commons [33], the UK Supreme Court [34], a UK government agency [35], a UK government commission [36], a company [37][38], a legal jury [39], a band [40] all as "they". (The House of Commons case is rare, same with House of Lords, because "the House of" calls for a singular.)
Moving on, let's pick USA Today, here referring to the US Supreme Court [41], a federal appellate court [42], a Congressional committee [43], a "team" of regulators [44], a state government department [45], a law-enforcement agency [46], a whole city government [47], a city board of commissioners [48][49], a company [50][51], a band [52][53], all as "they". (The Senate and the House of Representatives are rarely given "they" for the same reason as the House of Commons.)
Here's the same US paper referring to the US Senate [54], a congressional committee [55], a federal agency [56], the US Supreme Court [57], a state government department [58], a law-enforcement agency [59], an entire city government [60], a city council/board [61][62], a company [63][64], a band [65][66] and many more, all as "it".
The band ones veer back and forth between "they" and "it" in both UK and US articles, depending on context, and this also tends to be the case with companies and other bodies. Any claim that either approach "is completely wrong" in either dialect for any of these things is firmly disprovable with a few minutes on Google News. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 04:11, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
Is this really an issue with plural usage or rather using persoanl vs. impersonal pronouns in collective reference to groups of people? older ≠ wiser18:04, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
This stems from a discussion at the Metallica talk page (Talk:Metallica#It/They). I, for one, agree that changing to "they", their", etc. would conflict with recommended American usage and just appear inconsistent, especially if we were still going to use "Metallica is...". As an example, "Metallica recorded its second studio album, Ride the Lightning..." is perfectly acceptable, where "James Hetfield performing with the band during their tour for Load in 1996" is not based on current sourced differences in grammar from British English. Esszet used "We went on tour with it..." in their argument, but I feel like that's a poor example, as we would simply change to "the band" or its actual name to make the phrase sound better and maintain consistency rather than use "them"; even above, Esszet has said "When referring to the members of the group, however...", even though we're talking about the group as a whole here. I feel like we need to have several strong sources presented that clearly shows wide usage of "they", their", etc. – not including for proper nouns that are plural in form – if we are to make this pretty significant change to MOS and this article rather than just the word of one person, however strongly they might feel about it. 4TheWynne(talk•contribs)04:18, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
We do not need a change on this. MoS is correct about the general dialectal preference, but this does not somehow erase the contextual distinction between a band or any group doing something as a unit and doing something as individuals who happen to be in the group, and shades in between. Use common sense. When a band, for example, is talking about their experiences on the road, these are human experiences, and a plural makes sense. When it/they have issued a joint statement, it's perfectly fine treat them as a singular unit. There is nothing at all broken about "Metallica recorded its second studio album ....". There's no cause of any kind to change "James Hetfield performing with the band during its tour for Load in 1996" to use "their". It would be perfectly reasonable, however, to write "The 2024 tour plans were postponed because the band said they were exhausted and needed to spend more time with their families." (Individuals get exhausted and have families, collective entities do not.) PS: WP doesn't care what style guide (if any) a band's webmaster is following when writing on their own blog; they are not following our style guide and we are not following theirs. If we changed any of the MoS wording at all on this, it should maybe be to soften "In North American English, these words are almost invariably treated as singular" to say something more like "are usually treated". — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 00:03, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
Wouldn't matter, then, since WP is written in semi-formal English, not "how I talk on the bus" English. PS: In doing the above source review, one thing that lept out at me was that the frequent material quoting various spokespeople from either direct speech or written material in their own words, showed no consistency of any kind; bodies like Supreme Courts and Houses of [X] that in formal writing usually take "it/its" where frequently given a "they/them/their" (especially when disapproving of something, probably a personal blame implication), while bodies like boards and committees and councils that seem more often in professional writing to take the plural form were frequently given the singular, probably as a "faceless officialdom" implication. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 04:27, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
RfC: It/They in North American English
To speakers of North American English: this may sound stupid, but for all of our British, Aussie, and Kiwi friends out there, which of the following sounds more natural?
Completely depends on the context and implication as discussed above. This question is also disingenuous, because the nominator is trying to change a particular band article, nothing about a committee, and different sentences in that article are and should be worded differently, due to whether the material is about the band collectively or about bandmembers as people. Furthermore, it is not proper to open an RfC in mid-discussion (especially not about a trivial matter on which you are not getting agreement from anyone). This should be closed as premature at best. RfCs consume community editorial time and energy, and need to happen after regular discussion has failed to come to a clear answer. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 00:06, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
Excuse me, but I was trying to word the question as simply as possible. The underlying grammatical structure is identical, and I was not trying to mislead anyone. I started an RfC because I thought it was what I was supposed to do. I read WP:PROPOSAL without reading Wikipedia:How to contribute to Wikipedia guidance, and I apologize for that. I guess close it, and we'll continue waiting. Esszet (talk) 01:15, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
The proposal process is for introducing new draft policies and guidelines (and usually done at WP:VPPRO and "advertised" at WP:VPPOL or vice versa). RfC is usually used for making minor changes to extant policies and guidelines, but not right in the middle of an ongoing discussion. It's for when discussion has failed to come to a clear conclusion and needs to do so (or has come to a conclusion that the community needs to affirmatively do something with, like decide whether to make it part of a policy.) You've been here 11+ years; surely you know by now that RfCs are time-consuming and not triggered for every minor argument. And RfCs are for making internal decisions, not for doing WP:OR on what dialectal norms are; that's a matter for source research, if we needed an answer to this question, which we don't, since we've already known for a long time that one dialect group leans one way, and the other the opposite way, with both contextually flexible on it. PS: The RfC is sorely confusing anyway, since it purports to ask about NAmEng usage, but then specifically solicits the input of everyone but NAmEng users (British, Aussie, and Kiwi); we have no reason to care what non-NAm people think is more natural in a dialect that isn't theirs. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 04:30, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
Jesus Christ. This is my first (and last) time doing anything with the MOS, I assumed it was necessary because the MOS is held to a higher standard, bit you know what? Do whatever the fuck you guys want. There's no point wasting my time in a dark corner of the internet like this. Esszet (talk) 00:05, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
What's with the angry victim posture? You openened an RfC (about trivia) in mid-discussion and it's been suggested that was inappropriate, and shown what appropriate RfC uses are. The RfC asked us to answer a question that's not pertinent to our purposes here and asked the wrong audience for the question anyway. You wondered about WP:PROPOSAL process, and have been informed what it's for and where it usually happens. What exactly is the problem? If you do something other editors find confusing or unhelpful, they'll say so. That doesn't mean you're being put-upon or mistreated. And what "higher standard" (of what) do you think is not being applied here? — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 05:40, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
I would say that starting under a subheading should be the normal practice. It demonstrates that there has been prior discussion, as required by RFCBEFORE; it links the two together so that the first may easily be referred to from the sacond (as in as I noted earlier in this discussion) and also in a manner that means that one won't be archived independently of the other; and avoids accusations of WP:MULTI. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:36, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, though sometimes done separately, especially if an earlier dicussion has wound down and is long, and/or way up near the page top with lots of intervening threads. Just seems like something we don't need a rule about. :-) — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 01:37, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
Pointless Rfc. I'm interested in the general topic, but I won't up- or down-vote this, because after 30+ days and a cast of thousands weighing in, what do we have? We have a consensus on how to treat the word committee wrt sg/pl agreement. So, the next word in the dictionary after committee that is a collective noun that might have an issue with this type of AE/BE distinction is council, as in : "The council [have / has] decided to implement new policies." I'm going to take a nap, now. Somebody please ping me when this is over, so I can start an Rfc about council. Or, maybe "Cream" (the band) is a better example, and it comes soon after council, and maybe they are handled differently. Oops: maybe it is handled differently? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 00:22, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
I set out my understanding of the ‘correct’ position on British English above. But taking your question as written, asking what sounds more “natural” to an (one) experienced user of written English, “they told me” sounds more natural, and would be the form chosen most often at least in spoken English, and probably not uncommonly in writing. But had you replaced “…told me” with “…decided”, I would answer “it decided” sounds more natural for written English, and probably spoken English as well, at least in a formal context. And as someone who’s been a councillor for many years, it’s wording I have used and heard very frequently. As to why there’s a difference, I can only surmise that being ‘told’ something by a committee conjures up an image of a group of people whereas something being decided makes one think of a decision making body. MapReader (talk) 04:45, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
RFC: Imperial/U.S. customary units in astronomy object infobox
My position is that the MOS doesn't support automatically collapsed infoboxes except under specific circumstances; the general position is "Collapsible templates should not conceal article content by default upon page loading".
The fifth paragraph of the section gives one exemption for infoboxes, stating that "A few infoboxes also use pre-collapsed sections for infrequently accessed details." I don't believe this provision applies to the examples above, both of which use use template:infobox historic building. The same template is used with all relevant parameters un-collapsed in several 'good' and 'featured' articles (e.g. Cragside and Ham House), so it's difficult to argue that they're considered "infrequently accessed". A.D.Hope (talk) 10:36, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
Yes, it does. This is a compromise, agreed locally, for information that otherwise should not be in the infobox at all - heritage listing registration dates and such, spread over many lines. Unfortunately, like the unbelievably useless UNESCO world heritage site template (ok its not as bad as that), the template:infobox historic building has been overrun by editors who think Wikipedia is a database rather than an encyclopaedia. Johnbod (talk) 12:45, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
I'm not unsympathetic to your position, Johnbod, but I don't think the consensus is with you on heritage listings. Template:infobox historic site is used in many 'good' and 'featured' articles, and besides the two mentioned above I don't think any collapse those parameters, which implies a consensus against doing so. Nevertheless, a proper discussion of the issue at template talk:infobox historic site would be worthwhile and help settle the issue one way or the other. For what it's worth, I'm not sure if I agree on removing all the listing information, but I do think it should be condensed from a box to a single line.
It's also worth noting that the heritage listing is not the only collapsed parameter in these cases – the type, location, co-ordinates, building date, builder, architectural style, and owner parameters are also collapsed. A.D.Hope (talk) 13:14, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
On the point of examples, it's worth considering others such as Belton House, Bramshill House and Buckingham Palace. All are FA, none have infoboxes. You could equally well write one with a collapsed infobox, indeed I could collapse the one at Cragside. The point is that the presence, absence, or collapsed or un-collapsed state, of the infobox is wholly secondary to whether or not the article is well-written, comprehensive, well-researched, neutral, stable and compliant with Wikipedia's copyright policy. The secondary issue of whether, or how, an infobox should be used is better left to an article's main contributors. Trying to impose a "standard" approach through MoS will, in my view, alienate editors and work to the detriment of readers. KJP1 (talk) 21:08, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
I'd generally take the view that, where an optional feature is included in an article, it should follow MOS. A given article might work with or without a table, for example, but if a table is included it shouldn't be bright red so as to comply with MOS:COLOUR. In a similar way, the MOS has rules about collapsing which apply to infoboxes. A.D.Hope (talk) 21:24, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
Yep. Collapsing content has accessibility and usability issues; it's why we don't do it to the content per se, just to crap that's not really necessary like navboxes. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 06:58, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
Now that I am trying to mediate the infobox issue at Montacute House, I will add my opinion on collapsing of infoboxes in general. It is my opinion that collapsing an infobox as a compromise between having an infobox and not having an infobox is a compromise that leaves everyone equally unhappy. It is therefore anti-utilitarian because it results in more dissatisfaction than choosing one way or the other. So my question is whether we should add a statement that the use of a collapsed infobox as a compromise between having an infobox and not having an infobox is discouraged. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:47, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
Robert - just as a thought - if the compromise leaves 100% of editors 50% happy, is this actually a worse outcome than leaving 50% of editors 100% happy, and 50% of editors 100% unhappy? KJP1 (talk) 08:33, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
A worsening MOS:DASH issue (causing mounting WP:CONSISTENT problems)
At some point (I don't have the patience to history-dig for it), we lost the line-item in MOS:DASH that said something along the lines of using an en dash between the name parts of merged jurisdictions and other compound/merged/commingled/spanning/encompassing entities and things (other than, mostly, corporations, the post-merger/acquisition names of which take rather random forms like "DaimerChrysler" and "KPMG Peat Marwick" and so on). This principle was consistently used numerous times for establishing various article names, such as
What brought this to my notice was an RM at Talk:Carson–Newman University to convert the en dash to a hyphen, in a case where this is a merged entity of institutions individually named Carson and Newman, not a case of a unitary insititution having been named after two people.
Ever since the MOS:DASH wording changed along the way somewhere, various cases that called for, or at least originally called for, en dash are now at hyphens. Some examples include:
Locus of the problem: The remaining MoS wording that seems applicable is only this: Generally, use a hyphen in compounded proper names of single entities. ... Wilkes-Barre, a single city named after two people, but Minneapolis–Saint Paul, an area encompassing two cities.
The latter point of this seems to still vaguely suggest using, e.g., Gilgit–Baltistan, Moravian–Silesian Region, Carson–Newman University, etc., but it is too unclear to reliably result in this at RM. People just see "Generally, use a hyphen in compounded proper names of single entities", without regard for the intent (or at least former intent) for the products of merging to be en-dash treated. The seizing upon this first part is so firm for some editors that the second just gets ignored, and we end up with titles like Mount Carmel-Mitchells Brook-St. Catherines and Long Harbour-Mount Arlington Heights and Grand Falls-Windsor which are akin to Minneapolis–Saint Paul (combined name for a fused area encompassing multiple individually named places) not to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania (always one place, that happens to be named after two people).
Even the "Generally" in that wording now no longer makes sense, because the case in which it didn't apply is now so obscured as to be almost missing.
So, we have something of a WP:CONSISTENT policy crisis that has developed over the last few years, with various articles on subjects of this merged/commingled/spanning nature being at en-dash titles and various of them at hyphen titles, and people willy-nilly RMing them at cross purposes to each other, with different moves concluding for conflicting results (plus sometimes just some manual moves, and sometimes pages simply having been at one or the other format the entire time without being moved). A prominent recent example is AFL–CIO being stable at that title for years, on the basis of the merged-entities reasoning, then suddenly moved to AFL-CIO on the preferences of a total of three editors.
We really need to settle one way or the other on this, and record it clearly in MOS:DASH.
PS: There are also a handful of outright errors, like:
Regarding names of major universities (for example), why wouldn't we give deference to the formatting on their own letterhead (whether hyphen or en, spaced out or not, depending on font), just as we give deference to random corporate branding like "DaimlerChrysler"? SamuelRiv (talk) 06:07, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
Because the MoS specifically recommends this style. As I noted at the Carson–Newman RM, the only reason most websites avoid using en dashes in their style guides is that it's not on a standard keyboard. But Wikipedia has its own style guide, which doesn't defer to external style guides used by other publications. See also MOS:CONFORM; we always normalize dashes, apostrophes, quotation marks, all caps, etc. InfiniteNexus (talk) 06:12, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
That seems like a massive assumption that they "only" use a hyphen because it's not on the standard keyboard. Additionally, some of these universities are two names, which MOS:DASH suggests we should stylize with a hyphen. I fail to see why we should rely on an assumption towards en dashes when all reliable source indicate the commonname and desired name uses a hyphen. glman (talk) 14:13, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
It's not a matter of "deference". Names like DaimlerChrysler and KPMG Peat Marwick do not involve "horizontal lines", so the question never arises for them. If we had "Daimler[- or –]Chrysler", then it would. At least until recently, the decision would have been "Daimler–Chrysler" as a merger em dash. But the way MoS has drifted from clarity on this matter over the years, it would now be about a 50/50 toss-up, some arguing for consistency with other en-dashed names of merged entities, and some arguing for consitency with hyphenated ones of the same sort, when all of them in this class should be using the same style. I'm not even sure I care which direction it goes in, as long as one is picked and recorded clearly in MoS so the conflict stops. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 07:17, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
Well, yes, they are completely different cases, but both call for en dashes for different reasons, the first because it serves and is named for multiple cities, the second because it's a merger of a Carson institution and a Newman institution. Or least both used to call for en dashes, but MOS:DASH has gotten confusingly messed with over time so that the second of these categories is no longer clear (the first still is, despite someone arguing below to keep the hyphen in the university name). — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 07:17, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
@InfiniteNexus: The point of this thread is that the MOS:DASH material has become so muddled that it's unlikely that such an RM would conclude with a consensus, and if it did it would be on a very split basis that pits one "consistency" and against another, because the guideline material no longer offers the clarity required to be certain. Anyone can spin it to mean what they want it to mean, and cite the "precedents" in RM history that agree with them. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 07:17, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
I think the rule "use en-dash if two entities merged, hyphen if it was named after two persons/entities from the start" is entirely impractical, needlessly hard to follow, and confusing to readers, so I'm not sad that that line item was lost (assuming it ever existed, which I don't know). A rule I know that's way easier to follow and makes (for me) more sense is to use an en-dash if one of component parts consists of multiple words (e.g. Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Grand Falls–Windsor), but not otherwise (e.g. Gilgit-Baltistan, Moravian-Silesian Region). Let's not multiply the en-dashes without good reason. Gawaon (talk) 16:46, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
A rule I know that's way easier to follow and makes (for me) more sense is to use an en-dash if one of component parts consists of multiple words. I'm sorry but this makes no sense, why would this be a rule? WP:MOS makes absolutely no mention of this. YorkshireExpat (talk) 21:06, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
It used to; I'm not sure what happened to that. But it's a different kind of en dash usage not relevant to the sort under discussion here. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 07:17, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
Rather than try to shoehorn this into the reply chain, I'll point out here that the official Representation Order for Canadian federal electoral district uses emdashes, not endashes, between geographical entities. Moving them all to endashes would often be erroneous. G. Timothy Walton (talk) 20:00, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
Nope, it's just an arbitrary style choice, not even consistently followed by the responsible agency, much less anyone else. I demonstrate this clearly below in a sub-thread. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 07:17, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
Generally, use a hyphen in compounded proper names of single entities. I think discussion ends here. Carson–Newman University is a single entity, including compounded names, so it gets a hyphen. The fact that it wasn't a single entity in the past is neither here nor there; WP:MOS makes no reference to that. Why should the history of a university determine the current naming? The argument for University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is entirely different. Urbana–Champaign is a metropolitan area comprising multiple single entities, and that's why it gets the endash. Why WP:CONSISTENT should apply here is anyone's guess. Certainly there should be no mass RM based on that policy.
However, I might go further. For Urbana–Champaign, which is not a single entity, we can do what we wish and render that in our own style. For the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, a single entity, the people who run it choose to render it in that style, with a hyphen. More importantly (for WP:ARTICLE) secondary sources render it in that style. It is arrogance to say that we know better, and we will change how it is rendered for our purposes. YorkshireExpat (talk) 21:05, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
That's confusingly inconsistent with regard to Urbana[– or -]Champaign, and is exactly the opposite of the intent of all of MOS:DASH, MOS:ARTCON, and WP:CONSISTENT policy. To the extent that argument for "University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign" with a hyphen has a kind of logic to it, it is contradicted by other logics. The university's name is exactly like that of Seattle–Tacoma Airport; it indicates a two-city service/coverage area, which calls for an en dash. The above is exactly what I mean by people latching onto the first half of the "Generally, use ..." rule and ignoring the rest of it. This happens because the wording has gotten unclear. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 07:17, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
Well I think I've been perfectly clear. Nowhere in policy does it say that names of entities after merger get endashes. Nowhere does it say anything about component parts consisting of multiple words. I'm going by what it says now. I don't think my second argument is confusingly inconsistent. For the institution it's all about how sources render the name, and replicating the style that the sources use (WP:STICKTOTHESOURCE). Otherwise it's single vs multiple entities. YorkshireExpat (talk) 19:20, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
This is my thinking as well. A single entity, such as a school or corporation, is akin to a hyphenated surname resulting from a marriage. It should be a hyphen. Whether or not a company is named for two people who co-founded the company at one point in time, or the company is named for two previously independent predecessors, it's still one company named after two things, not an alliance of still independent entities. The Baden-Württemberg principle. Another example is Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, named for the three predecessor studios, but a single, hyphenated, entity. oknazevad (talk) 21:35, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
Well, that is definitely one interpretation/preference that has grown over the last several years due to the wording here becoming unclear. That perception used to be in the minority, maybe it's now in the majority; I'm not really sure. But various editors do not agree with that interpretation, and there remains a conflict, with RMs concluding for opposite results due to whichever "camp" shows up and comments more at that particular move discussion. Maybe we just need to RfC this to pick one option or the other and record it more clearly? — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 01:35, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
Right, writing Baden–Württemberg or Metro–Goldwyn–Mayer would be absurd. So SMcCandlish's original conjecture (that this would be a generally usable and useful rule) can be considered refuted. Gawaon (talk) 03:49, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
"Gawaon doesn't like it" isn't a refutation, it's just you being firmly in one of the "camps of interpretation" already clearly identified. If there was general agreement that this use of the en dash was an absurdity, then the entire first block of examples posted above could never have existed. We have two competing views on this, and no clear resolution on getting past it. I think an RfC on what the wording should be about this kind of case is probably in order, to settle it one way or the other clearly, though I have not drafted one yet. I kind of figured that would be the case when I opened this, but it was worth checking to see if there was already a clear resolution. When the first comment, from InfiniteNexus, is pretty much diametrically opposite yours, that's not a good sign for there already being agreement. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 04:20, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
Sure, but how many examples of Baden–Württemberg or Metro–Goldwyn–Mayer with en-dashes can you find out there in the wild, especially in WP:RS? I know that "Wikipedia does it differently from all the rest of the world" is a theoretically possible policy, it just doesn't sound like a very well-conceived one. I'm not opposed to an RfC, but would still like to point out that the other "camp" you mention doesn't seem to exist outside of our little bubble. Gawaon (talk) 05:51, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
The infrequency of it is definitely an argument against doing it (though statistical analysis of this is not very practical since ngrams, Google Scholar, etc., treat – and - as equivalent). An argument for doing it is rule simplicity: any time names of two entites are run together with a horizontal line, use the en dash not the hyphen. [shrug]. I'm not a partisan on this issue, but I'm interested in the question being resolved clearly so that we no longer have two diametrically conflicting article titling patterns for such cases. Assuming the hyphen were preferred for such cases, we would still have the question to resolve of whether Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area being retained with an endash as multi-city juridictional label should also result in Champaign–Urbana Courier, Champaign–Urbana Challenger, and University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign for consistency with that, or instead produce Champaign-Urbana Courier, Champaign-Urbana Challenger, and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for consistency with other "single entities" that are "named after" multiple things. This is one of numerous cases of warring consistencies. Then there's Center Point–Urbana Community School District in the middle. Is that a multi-city jursidiction that takes an en dash or a single entity that takes a hyphen? It could qualify as either, so how do we rewrite the MoS item clearly enough to pick one or the other for such a case? I'm pretty good at the challenges of clear policy writing, but this one is thorny. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 17:34, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
I'd give all of those hyphens personally. Also love that fact that the Champaign–Urbana Courier was previously owned by Lindsay–Schaub Newspapers :D (which is inconsistently rendered in that article, but I'd also give a hyphen btw). They're all proper names. YorkshireExpat (talk) 21:51, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
Whether "they're all proper names" is completely irrelevant; the question is which line to use between the proper names, in which contexts. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 03:41, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
YorkshireExpat: The entire point of this thread is that the wording has become confused over time and is subject to "warring interpretations", so just insisting that you have an intepretation of its currently messy state isn't exactly telling us anything. Everyone has an intepretation, and they conflict. More to the point of what you said, nothing about style matters on WP is ever about what the sources are doing (or we literally could not have our own style guide at all, and would always have to do, on every style question of every kind, exactly what 50.0000001% or more of the sources were doing – the common-style fallacy), except where we explicitly state otherwise, and that pretty much is only when it comes to one single thing: whether to capitalize something (see top of MOS:CAPS). That's a special rule the community adopted to (mostly) put an edit to disruptive squabbles over capitalization. If WP's MoS was to just use hyphens any time they are the dominant punctuation, then we'd simply delete almost everything in the MOS:DASH section and use hyphens for almost everything, because the bulk of publishers (mostly in news) have abandoned hyphen vs. dash distinctions that are preserved predominantly in academic-leaning writing, and the former no longer use dashes for any function at all other than a form of parenthetical punctuatiion – like this. WP:STICKTOTHESOURCE is entirely and only about facts, not internal style decisions about how we choose to write about the facts. Confusion to the contrary is fairly common, but it is still a confusion. If your idea that WP had to follow the most common style were correct, the only style guide that WP could ever have would be just a tiny document addressing a handful of MediaWiki technical limitations, with style otherwise being just determined by majority use in sources. Of course, WP is not actually written that way, we have a large style guide, and we have a policy at WP:NOT#NEWS that Wikipedia is not written in news style. One upshot of this is that a style that dominates in news material but not in academic and other non-news material is not a style we'll adopt (unless we have a good reason to do so as determined by project-internal consensus for some other particular reason). — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 01:35, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
If the standard is boiled down to single vs multiple entities (the wording is pretty clear and mentions neither mergers nor multiple words as brought up in this discussion) then it's quite simple to follow (far easier than requiring a history of the entity(ies) involved) and conveys information about the nature of the construction of the thing that is being written about (this would be entirely lost with the multiple words thing). That's why I think it should stay as it is, perhaps with some better examples to clear up this confusion in the future.
The thing about WP:COMMONNAME was only ever a secondary argument from me anyway, so I'm happy to concede that, despite the arrogance involved in retitling an institution, not to mention the assumptions made when doing that. YorkshireExpat (talk) 18:40, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
It's just a house-style matter. Names of things (like whether to "obey" silly trademark stylizations, whether to abbreviate things like "Incorporated" and "Limited" in company names (and whether with or without a trailing "." and whether or not preceded by a comma), whether to capitalize a leading "the" or include it at all, whether to put spaces between initials, etc., etc., are all arbitrary style decisions that vary from publisher to publisher. You can wish all you want that it were not so, but it provably is so. Using silly argument to emotion tactics like bemoaning things as "arrogance" are not going to convince anyone of anything, and just make you look like a crank PoV pusher of entirely subjective prescritivist notions. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 03:41, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
Well, yes, the "MoS hasn't seemed clear" issue is what this is about. It needs to be clear, but there's clearly not agreement on what it should say, and there are a lot classes to consider. Not an easy RfC to whip up, but I'll put it on my list. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 02:45, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
Moving reply here so as not to put a large block of links in the main thread above: G. Timothy Walton above asserts: the official Representation Order for Canadian federal electoral district uses emdashes, not endashes, between geographical entities. Moving them all to endashes would often be erroneous..
Nah, it is easily demonstrable that which horizontal line to use is just a completely arbitrary house-style choice, and we do not follow the Canadian government's house style, nor they ours. More to the point, they don't follow their own, anyway. The Canadian government is not consistent at all on an unspaced em dash, even within the same agency – the one responsible for administring electoral districts – and for the same electoral district; cf. their official usage here, which is unspaced double hyphens (an old typewriting convention standing in for an en dash, with an em dash represented by three), and their equally official usage here, which is an unspaced en dash not an em dash. This idea that these districts "officially" require an em dash seems to be an assumption about what what is done in a particular webpage or other document without any regard to what's done in others, in reference to the same districts. And it wouldn't matter anyway, since WP doesn't follow some other entity's house style even when it's "official".
Other agencies use whatever they want; e.g.: Library of Parliament uses spaced hyphens for this [67][68]; Statistics Canada uses unspaced double-hyphens again [69], and same at main Canada.ca government site [70][71]; Parliament of Canada prefers the unspaced em dash [72], and ditto for Elections Ontario [73] and Public Prosecution Service [74]; Federal Redistribution uses unspaced en dash [75] as does the government's Canada Gazette[76], but not always (here with unspaced em dash [77]); the City of Toronto uses an unspaced hyphen [78]; Legislative Assembly of Ontario uses unspaced en dash and unspaced hyphen in same document [79].
Independent source usage generally doesn't follow this alleged but disproven em dash convention, either: Ontario Community Health Profiles Partnership uses unspaced double-hyphen [80], GeoCoder uses unspaced hyphen [81], University of Calgary Canadian Elections Database confusingly uses unspaced double-hyphen for federal [82] and unspaced hyphen for provincial [83], StudentVote.ca uses unspaced em dash [84], Toronto.com (combined website of the newspapers The North York Mirror, Scarborough Mirror and Etobicoke Guardian) uses unspaced hyphen [85], Canada Gazette sometimes uses unspaced em dash [86], but otherwise unspaced en dash [87]; CBC News uses unspaced hyphen [88], and so do The Globe and Mailhttps://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-toronto-election-results-map/], Toronto District School Board [89], Global News[90], CTV News[91], CityNews[92], and Canadian National Multilingual News Group [93]; Toronto Star uses the unspaced em dash [94] or unspaced hyphen [95] on different pages; Simon Fraser University uses spaced hyphen [96]; Ontario Public School Boards Association uses mostly spaced en dash, some unspaced em dash, and at least one case of hyphen spaced on one side, all in the same document [97].
This is all just from the first page of search results on the same electoral district. Clearly demonstrates this is entirely a house-style choice, with some (both within and without the government) not caring at all which one it is even from page-to-page on the same site, sometimes not even on the same page. WP has no reason at all to do anything but follow it's own MOS:DASH rule, which calls for Toronto–Danforth with an unspaced en dash, with parenthetical disambiguation as needed for multiple districts. The idea of ever trying to disambiguate these just by which tiny little horizontal line they have in them is not even vaguely practical. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 07:17, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
I agree with this; it makes the most sense from the perspective that we are trying to write an encyclopedia that our readers can generally understand, and I would support clarifying TIES and COMMONALITY to make this clearer. BilledMammal (talk) 22:17, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
It seems to me that the key words in this question are "synonymous" and "non-proper". Some varieties of English contain words that are not synonymous with their closest equivalent in other varieties of English and that, while they are loan words, are proper within their ENGVAR. For example, Québécois as a term is not fully synonymous with "Quebecker", which may linked explain why the linked article has the title it does.
The terminology used in the WP:HQRS on a topic will typically reflect the formal register of the ENGVAR associated with the topic and, where other terms are not fully synonymous, should generally be reflected in enwiki articles. As I see it, this isn't a matter of "overriding" COMMONALITY, but of defining where it ends and TIES begins. Newimpartial (talk) 17:42, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
How are editors supposed to determine which terms are non-synonymous, or which terms are most prevalent within an ENGVAR? Does the mere existence of some HQRS using one local term mean that term should be preferred even if the vast majority of HQRS use the more recognizable term? JoelleJay (talk) 20:39, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
As I understand it, editors are supposed to follow HQRS in general - reading for content, accepting distinctions that are documented in the literature and treating ad synonyms terms that are treated in the literature as synonyms. In my experience, hit counts from search engines are of little if any use in making such evaluations. Newimpartial (talk) 00:08, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
According to this discussion, a transparent background is applied to quote boxes in article space because of the guidelines established in MOS:BLOCKQUOTE and MOS:COLOR. I think this choice makes the pages using this template look cluttered and visually appalling. Furthermore, as pointed out by @Belbury, these models have been employed in over 22,000 times across Wikipedia, which means the current orientation is interfering with readability in many places. I would like to suggest that article space quote boxes should have a guideline that encourages neutral tones, such as the default grey colour (#F9F9F9). As a last argument to support this change, I will also cite @Light show: "Light background colors can make a document more visually appealing by adding a layer of design and sophistication, which can make the text more engaging to readers [...] large pages of black and white text can be monotonous to read, so having some light background colors for block quotes with borders can break this monotony, making the reading experience more pleasant and less tiresome". GustavoCza (talk • contribs) 01:46, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
I too was very surprised to see such a major change (affecting many thousands of articles, including FAs) implemented without either discussion or notice. I just don't think such wide-reaching changes should be made unilaterally. The wording says "Block quotations using a colored background are also discouraged". It doesn't say why, nor does it actually prohibit their use. I completely understand the need for style conventions. I also get that colored boxes may cause accessibility issues. But to overturn a approach that has been widely used for many years without any discussion doesn't seem the right way to go. KJP1 (talk) 07:23, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
I'm not really involved with that, but I think you could simply revert the style change to the {{quote box}} background and wait what happens (second step of the WP:BRD process). Gawaon (talk) 08:08, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
That seems like a simple move, even for a technical numpty like me. But I note the template is used on 803,000 pages! I'd prefer that the editor who made the change self-reverted. And then we could have a discussion about the whys and wherefores and whatever else. KJP1 (talk) 10:36, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
I don't think there is anything broken about the current template, which displays a transparent background in article space, per two MOS guidelines. I have been told in the past by administrators that BRD does not apply to templates (something I do not believe, but I taste good with ketchup, so I do not meddle in the affairs of administrators), so I am reluctant to self-revert in this case. I think the discussion here should determine if there is a community consensus to change our MOS guidelines, specifically: do not use colored text or background unless its status is also indicated using another method, such as an accessible symbol matched to a legend, or footnote labels (MOS:COLOR) and Block quotations using a colored background are also discouraged (MOS:BLOCKQUOTE). – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:27, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
I don't think that line from MOS:COLOR applies to the question of the template's default colour, as that grey isn't communicating the "status" of anything. It's the same shade of grey you get around an image thumbnail or infobox. It generally seems to be the case that when Wikipedia floats something in a box at the side of an article, that box gets an #F9F9F9 background. Belbury (talk) 14:13, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
I am following this thread and am willing to modify the template once the guidance here on the MOS page(s) has/have been clarified. If neutral background colors are acceptable in some situations, I'm fine with MOS explicitly allowing a neutral background color for {{quote box}} and similar block content in article space, as suggested above. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:26, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
A full rainbow of background colours are already acceptable "in some situations" under the part of MOS:COLOR that you're quoting! It allows background colours that communicate information so long as that information is also indicated using another method.
I could imagine an article that interleaved multiple quotes from two different sources (perhaps a green paper and a white paper), and used background colours in addition to in-text attribution to distinguish them as an aid to readability.
MOS:COLOR doesn't appear to take a view at all on the background colour for infoboxes, navboxes, thumbnails, graphs and so on. I don't know if the recurring design for all of these (#F9F9F9 with a 1px #AAAAAA border) is part of a higher level Wikimedia style document. Belbury (talk) 09:12, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
I too think that MOS:BLOCKQUOTE doesn't apply to quote boxes, since blockquotes are part of the normal article text, while quote boxes are outside of it – like images, say. So the white background requirement doesn't apply, and the change to the styling should be reverted. Gawaon (talk) 17:33, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
I don't think any change to the MOS is needed for the sake of the issue at hand apart from maybe an explanatory note that quote boxes are not block quotes under the MOS, which is how everyone here apart from Jonesey95 seems to understand it (myself included).
However, the root cause of the problem is that we've been sticking our heads in the sand in regard to the use of quote boxes for nearly a decade now. I previously raised the issue back in 2017, and SMcCandlish explained that the lack of mention stemmed from wishful thinking that it'd make quote boxes go away, which it didn't. I'm not updated on the issue, and the last major discussion I'm aware of is the 2016 RfC, where there was consensus against pull quotes but not much agreement on what other uses of quote boxes are appropriate. It's such a lack of agreement that's preventing them from being documented in the MoS. Has there been any attempt in the intervening years to find some agreement on this? --Paul_012 (talk) 17:26, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
I like the suggestion that we distinguish between a quote box, which is closer to an image, and block quotes which are part of the main text. Can that work? KJP1 (talk) 20:48, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
Quote boxes are not block quotes, but a form of sidebar, which typically (for images, infoboxes, navboxes, etc.) have at least a slightly different background color. However, the vast majority of uses of quote boxes in our articles are inappropriate per one or more policies and should be converted into normal block quotes. People do it because they like stylizing things, but it draws a gross amount of attention to a particular party's statement versus that of other parties (that fails WP:UNDUE), or in article on a particular author/speaker, document, etc., draws a gross amount of attention to some WP editor's personally selected "most important" or "favorite" part, which fails both WP:NPOV generally and WP:NOR, in the vast majorityof cases.
We probably should have an RfC about this, well "advertised" at the relevant policy pages and at WP:VPPOL. Most of the objections to pull quotes also apply to highlighted quotes of any other kind. What has happened is that pull quotes were community deprecated, so people insistent on injecting undue "decorated" quotes all over the place, have been evading it by using quoted content that technically isn't a pull quote because it does not repeat material already quoted inline in the main text. Literally the only way to tell the difference is to read every word of the article from top to bottom and see whether the decorated quote material is or is not unique on the page (and that might change at any time anyway). This is clearly a pattern of WP:LAWYER / WP:GAMING, and it needs to stop. Legitimate uses of templates like this in mainspace are extremely rare, and zero of them are actually necessary. There is not a single case that could not be replaced by an in-context block quote (and many are so short they should not be in block quotes at all, but inline quotations in quotation marks). I'm gratified to see that the quote-boxing has been replaced by normal blockquotation at various articles on famous speeches. This is a move in the right direction, presenting the material encyclopedically both as to contextual placement in the article and as to visual presentation, instead of doing it like a magazine or a click-bait website. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 22:42, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
Absolutely fine with a wider RFC, but is there not sufficient consensus to revert to the status quo, while we have the discussion? KJP1 (talk) 09:57, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
""decorated" quotes" I don't mind having quote boxes in the articles, the same way i don't mind having a thumbnail to provide some additional context. It's much more annoying that everything thinks their own color/border is more important than everyone else's.
The quote box template has more styling commands than I can count. Whereas a few behavior switches with accompanying standardized styles in classes should be all that is needed. (which is not to say that i think they should all be gray, I think that our gray is horrible as a text background and not suited for pieces of text like this [nor for captions of thumbs honestly]). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:42, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
Essay suggestion: "How to ignore the MOS"
Of course, we have learned—or are still trying our best—to internalize that the MOS is a set of guidelines, and there are exceptions of some quantity to nearly every prescription therein. Especially regarding the niche-er points with tables and markup, I like the idea of surveying pages that clearly, intentionally contravene points of the MOS, but
It is done intentionally
It is done for a compelling reason, possibly one very particular to that article's topic,
It works; moreover, it works for everyone, and following the MOS would likely make the article obviously worse to read.
I know this is going to be more subjective than most collaborative ideas on here—it's coloring outside the lines, but I think it's possible to create something educational, right? Remsense诉03:57, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
What goal are you trying to achieve by doing this? More to illustrate the sort of case that, when editors come across it, they should understand the point and leave it alone; to encourage editors to recognize circumstances where they should do this; to explain to them how to do this; or something else? One way of looking at is that if you're seeing cases where it's been done nondisruptively and successfully, then maybe no help is needed from the guidelines, but maybe that isn't the case. Largoplazo (talk) 04:57, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
Largely the first two reasons you gave. (I realize many editors might read a headline like this and have heart palpitations because someone's trying to be clever again—I promise, I'm not actually interested in guideline-flaunting for its own sake.) Maybe "exceptions that prove the rule" are equally in order? Remsense诉05:03, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
I wouldn't really title it like that. The key point is what to do when you believe that the MOS and core policy (NPOV, OR, or V) or higher-priority policies (BLP, FRINGE, MEDRS) come into contradiction. Those policies do override the MOS in situations where they actually, genuinely come into direct conflict; however, caution should be exercised before assuming that that's the case in any specific instance, because the MOS is usually written with an eye towards core policies anyway and because what seems like a sufficiently clear-cut V or NPOV issue as to override the MOS to you may not seem so clear to anyone else. I think a good rule of thumb is that if the contradiction you've identified is narrow and specific then you might have a case, although you still have to convince people if anyone objects; but if you have some sweeping objection to an entire aspect of the MOS (eg. "using BCE anywhere is obviously POV!") then it's usually safe to assume that the community considered that when writing the MOS and didn't agree with you. --Aquillion (talk) 05:48, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
If I'm being honest, I did a clickbait. My tongue was lodged firmly in my cheek, I wouldn't pick this title either. Remsense诉05:50, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
I have some difficulty in working out the point of Spelling § International organizations. As written, it is non-prescriptive, at least explicitly, and therefore seems out of place in the MoS.
Given this, the natural reading to me is an implicit extension of an MOS:TIES-style principle to articles with a strong ties to international organizations. I may have missed an explicit statement of such a policy in this connexion, but, if I have not, and am nevertheless right, it would be good to be clearer. Docentation (talk) 04:15, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
The point of MOS:SPELLING might simply be to describe the proper use of different varieties of English. But in that case why mention international organizations? Whether or not the World Bank uses US English does not change how US English is spelled.
If the point of MOS:SPELLING is to list acceptable varieties of English,
it is both incomplete and redundant: it says nothing about Pakistani or Malaysian spelling in English; and nearly all the varieties of English it mentions are listed at MOS:ENGVAR or MOS:TIES;
the inclusion of international organizations’ preferred varieties of English remains inexplicable—whether some international odganizarion uses a variety doesn’t change how that variety is actually spelled; and
any such purpose, as far as I can tell, remains implicit given the wording of the page.
I therefore remain of the view that listing international organizations’ preferred variants only is useful as part of the style guide if that gives some guide as to which variant to use. Accordingly I think either
the section should be deleted, or
it should be made explicit that strong ties to an international organisation listed give reason to use its preferred variety of English.
The point is to make clear that articles about these international organizations use the style used by those organisations for their own publications and internal documentation, and do not necessarily follow the style of the country in which their HQ is located. MapReader (talk) 17:48, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
I agree that that’s the only plausible point of the section—otherwise, it seems to be pointless. But is that explicitly stated anywhere? Docentation (talk) 23:43, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
The other question is whether it's even relevant for us. We don't otherwise follow any organization's style guide when writing about them – so why should we make an exception here? Gawaon (talk) 07:19, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
Adopting the same variety of English as an international organization is articles about it is rather less deferential than adopting the style guide wholesale. It seems to me that extending MOS:TIES to international organizations is more analogous to using the right national variety of English when there are strong national ties. Docentation (talk) 18:35, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
I agree. And it avoids an ultimately futile argument as to which style to use for an organization like the UN, which exists above national boundaries. MapReader (talk) 21:42, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
I really wish we didn't need inline spacing templates like {{-?}} and {{'s}}. It feels like they're just trying to compensate for bad kerning that browsers ought to be handling automatically. Sdkbtalk04:58, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
Italics for foreign words that refer to the article's topic?
I am currently working on an article about a Malagasy zebu-wrestling sport. Its names are tolon'omby and savika—Malagasy words. Should they be italicized and/or use the lang template throughout the article? What about the bolded first uses in the lede? Zanahary (talk) 22:42, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
Use {{lang-mg}} and {{lang}} as appropriate for any Malagasy text in an en.wiki article so that screen readers pronounce the text correctly. Use bold markup where approriate.
That policy says it should be done for foreign phrases, which I think is natural, but does it apply to single words, when the word itself is not the article's topic? Quick search gave me mehndi, bedhaya, buda, debtera. Zanahary (talk) 07:24, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
when the word itself is not the article's topic What? If the article title is not the article topic, one of them needs to change so that the article title is the article topic.
In the section organization section, there's the text If an article has at least four section headings, a navigable table of contents appears automatically, just after the lead. This appears to have been removed in newer versions of Wikipedia, as the table of contents was moved to the left of the article. I'm not sure how to address this text, so I welcome other editors to take a look. —Panamitsu(talk)09:23, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
@Chatul: It's skin-dependent. Vector 2022 puts the TOC in the sidebar; all other skins put it between the lead section text and the first heading. Logged-out users get Vector 2022. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:24, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
Does the manual of style take any stance on parenthetical citations within an explanatory note?
A post by an editor at Help talk:Shortened footnotes[98] objects to an example because it "seems to maintain that parenthetical references are still allowed inside explanatory notes. That might have been true at some stage, but WP:PAREN now says "deprecated on Wikipedia"." If this is true, that example should be removed, but after looking through the RFC this appears not to be so. {{harv}} still has several thousand uses, and pages like the Holy Roman Empire article seem compliant with the Manual of Style. The documentation for {{harv}} should also be updated. Template:Harvard citation/doc should either make clear that the template is now meant for explanatory notes, or state that its usage is deprecated outright. Regards, Rjjiii (talk) 02:35, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
Haven't closely followed this, but it may be possible to finesse this by the simple measure of using {{harvnb}} insted of {{harv}} in some of these cases. I've replied at the thread and given one example of how to do this for the § 5 example. Not sure to what extent that is extensible to other examples, as I haven't examined them. Mathglot (talk) 03:06, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
It is INLINE parenthetical referencing that is deprecated, not parenthetical referencing per se. When {{harv}} is used within a <ref>....</ref> pair there is nothing wrong with it. It is however more work when you consider that {{sfn}} does the same job with less typing! Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:22, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
@JackkBrown: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Wikipedia:Manual of Style, it is not a help desk. I don't see how your problem is related to the Manual of Style.
Quotation marks and internal links: visually identical examples
Apart from the colour, the "correct" and "incorrect" examples under Quotation marks and internal links both display identically and behave identically when I click them. So the only way to compare them is to open up the section for editing. Maybe include a code snippet for each? Not necessarily the whole fragment—I'm thinking perhaps just [[" "]] and "[[ ]]" so things don't get too cluttered.
In the correct example, the quotation marks are outside of the linked title, while in the incorrect one they are part of the link text. If you look closely, you should see it. Gawaon (talk) 13:42, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
OK, scrub that. The difference is visible in the app. I had to take a screenshot then zoom in. Apologies. I might add something about them showing in the link colour in one and in the surrounding text colour in the other. Musiconeologist (talk) 15:31, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
I've now made the change, before seeing the replies. I decided it was minor enough to just do it. Feel free to change it if something else would be better. Edit: I've since changed it, to a brief comment noting whether the quotes are the same colour as the link or as the surrounding text in each case. Musiconeologist (talk) 14:24, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
I took the liberty to revert that since I think that your earlier version (with the code examples) was actually more helpful. Gawaon (talk) 17:40, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
According to this rule, if a valid English translation exists it must be used, but in the case of "Parmigiano Reggiano" the situation becomes very complicated. In order, a user changed the name of the page ("Parmesan") to "Parmigiano Reggiano"; I deleted his changes, but after further investigation, and based mainly on the sentence (on the page) "Outside the EU, the name "Parmesan" can legally be used for similar cheeses, with only the full Italian name unambiguously referring to PDO Parmigiano Reggiano.", I was wondering whether, since "Parmesan" outside Europe is almost always a bad imitation, it's wrong to write Parmesan under the ingredients of Italian foods; this might make them less authentic. JacktheBrown (talk) 05:10, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
I think the current situation is fine. The Italian name is given in the lead sentence and is a redirect to the article, but it shouldn't be printed in bold, as it's not a "common name" widely used in English. And it shouldn't be the main article title, for the same reason. Gawaon (talk) 06:26, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
I guess that depends on where you are? I checked the websites of three major UK supermarkets, and all of them sell under the label "Parmigiano Reggiano". I remember the 'Parmesan' moniker from decades back, but it's now uncommon; typing a search and all three supermarket sites redirect to Parmigiano; on one the Parmesan name doesn't appear and on the other two it is only used for a couple of products, lower graded usually grated cheese. It's not really used nowadays for the whole cheese or solid pieces of it. MapReader (talk) 06:42, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
@MapReader: also in my opinion. If we came to the conclusion to change the title, we would have to change all the "Parmesan" (to "Parmigiano Reggiano") from thousands of articles, I see this as very difficult. JacktheBrown (talk) 06:47, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
Yes, but establish the correct position and over time WP will conform; meanwhile the redirects will do the job. Defending the current position with arguments based on merit is fine, but retaining an incorrect or unsupported position (and IMHO using 'Parmesan' as the article title is now just wrong) simply because changing it leads to some work isn't really acceptable. MapReader (talk) 07:01, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
I wonder if this usage persists in North America? There is a similar issue over "Swiss cheese" which is not made in Switzerland and "Emmenthal" which is a PDO in Europe. @Johnbod:, who may be able to advise but may choose not to get back into this culture war again. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 08:56, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
Yes, "Parmesan" in US, Australia etc can be locally made. It's just a style of cheese there. Certainly in the US "parmesan" would be the dominant name. This is covered in the current article. There's two different topics covered in this article. I think they should be split out: an article on the global generic style under "Parmesan" and another "Parmigiano Reggiano" covering the "real" stuff. If it's left as currently written "Parmiagiano Reggiano" wouldn't be a correct name for this article. DeCausa (talk) 09:10, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
@MapReader Isn't that just supermarkets trying to make their parmesan sound special and non-generic, though? Or trying to avoid saying that it's parmesan since people think of that as a low-quality grated thing? They'll avoid the everyday word if there's an alternative that sounds worth paying more for. I don't think supermarket usage is a particularly good guide. Musiconeologist (talk) 13:09, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
Of the names mentioned so far, parmesan is the only one I'm familiar with, but I haven't checked whether it's usually in upper or lower case. (I think cheddar cheese is usually lower case and not really associated with the place any more.) Musiconeologist (talk) 13:14, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
Checked and they're both uppercase, or were in 2005 (the date of my Oxford Spelling Dictionary edition. They may have moved to lowercase by now.) Musiconeologist (talk) 13:25, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
I don’t think so. You only hear very elderly people taking about Parmesan nowadays; it dates back to the Delia Smith era when cooking anything foreign was adventurous and the brave pioneers bought a pot of grated second rate Italian cheese to sprinkle on their Spag Bol. The next generation are rather more familiar with international travel and international food, and happy to call things by their proper names. MapReader (talk) 19:33, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
@MapReader Steady on. I'm only 61 . . . ! Last time I went to an Italian restaurant I was asked if I wanted Parmesan. I'm not at all happy with this stereotype. It could be considered quite ageist. (I'm trying not to consider it that way, but not succeeding very well.)
What I'm finding online is a fair number of articles which try to explain Parmesan as a generic name for things which aren't strictly Parmigiano Reggiano and distinguish the two. Also one about Parmigiano Reggiano having an advertising campaign to promote that as "the only real Parmesan", which rings alarm bells for me.
Hence why I think DeCausa has a point that really the material needs splitting into two articles, particularly if Parmesan is actually still ‘a thing’ in the US. MapReader (talk) 21:24, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
I really agree with MapReader. Today we hear very little about "Parmesan", and it might happen that if a non-native Italian speaker (e.g. resident of Louisiana) reads "Parmesan" on an Italian food page, he might think it's an American ingredient, creating a huge misunderstanding and misinformation about Italian cuisine (an American would never want misunderstandings about the culture of his state, e.g. Louisiana, so it would be right to respect us Italians too). Of course, as already written, it's not enough to rename the page, but all the words "Parmesan" must be changed to "Parmigiano Reggiano", otherwise it would be even worse and create even more confusion and misinformation. This definitely requires the help of a bot; we are in luck, because "Parmigiano Reggiano" is capitalised, so the bot in question cannot make a mistake, and it would only be a profound act of indifference not to do so if consensus is reached. JacktheBrown (talk) 20:08, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
DeCausa makes a valid point above, however - the current article covers both the historic, genuine Italian product and the fake American knock off stuff. There should definitely be an article about Parmigiano - using the American title for this information is clealry inappropriate - and in that article maybe there’d be a cross link and single sentence mentioning the fact that in some English speaking countries, the term Parmesan is used to describe a pale imitation product. If Parmesan is still a particularly significant US product, then it would be notable enough for its own article. MapReader (talk) 20:42, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
I agree. There are two kinds of cheese: "Parmigiano Reggiano" (a controlled name only from a specific place in Italy) and "Parmesan" (the cheap American knock-off, often sold as a white powdery cheese-like substance). The differences between these are maybe larger than between Parmigiano Reggiano and Grana Padano. They are separate enough that we should have two separate articles for them. Then there would be no dispute over the name. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:50, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
If there's a place that only allows "Parmesan" to refer to cheese from the province of Parma, we could mention that in either or both articles, but that doesn't change the basic facts that there are two distinct types of cheese and we should have articles on types of cheese not on commonly-conflated names of cheese per WP:NOTDICT. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:17, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
Comment - first of all, this is not the appropriate venue to be having this discussion, at least if you expect some binding result to emerge from it. If someone wants to propose splitting, then a discussion at Talk:Parmesan Is in order, and similarly an RM for a proposed move. I don't see any questions here that rise to needing clarification at MOS level. As for the question itself, I'm surprised at the suggestion that "Parmesan" is obsolete or only used by old people. I live in the UK and I'm not sure I recall anyone saying Parmigiano, informally in conversation and also Italian restaurants still seem to generally offer it as Parmesan. Perhaps the packaging on supermarket cheese does say that though, if only for legal reasons. A thorough analysis of sources would be required in any case. — Amakuru (talk) 22:22, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
Agreed. There's actually a thread opened on this at Talk: Parmesan (which I've just posted to) which was opened in January. Someone should just close this thread and note the continuation there. DeCausa (talk) 22:41, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
"Manual of Style/Gender identity" Examples
In the MOS, it uses the example "The article about The Wachowskis, for example, is better without any pre-coming-out photos since the way they looked is not well known as they shied away from public appearances.", yet their article does include pre-coming-out photos, should the images in the article be removed, or should a new example be found? Thanks, Icandostuff! (talk) 03:45, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
Honestly, I don't think any specific example is required for this guideline—what it means should be obvious to the reader. Remsense诉03:48, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
MOS orphan sidebar category: languages
Currently the MOS sidebar template "By topic area" includes "Regional", which links to vaguely language-related and language-region cross-topics. However, the MOS has significant subpages on specific languages which are very difficult to find on main page navigation -- basically I have to guess. Furthermore, there is no corresponding Category:Wikipedia Manual of Style (languages) (or similar, something like which can be made immediately).
There's a lot of potential disentangling and cleanup to do between region, language, and culture guidelines (or not); or some could be referred back to subpages of WP:WikiProject Languages instead of here as P&G. Regardless, all MOS pages need to be somehow findable, because usually it seems people don't even realize they exist. SamuelRiv (talk) 22:18, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
Per MOS:TYPOFIX "insignificant spelling and typographic errors should simply be silently corrected". But, what if the error is in a title being cited? Correcting the error is going to make it hard to find that article if the link changes. E.g. "Neflix star returns to his West Sussex roots". Clearly Neflix means Netflix, at Timothy Innes, and I know some would correct that, but I'm not sure. Thanks for your thoughts. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 21:45, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
As the OP wrote, correcting the typo makes it more difficult to find the article if the link changes and it needs to be found again. I would not correct but give some inline comment <!-- not a typo --> or {{not a typo}}. Other readers will figure out the meaning just as you did. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 23:35, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
@Facu-el Millo:"correct it and have a hidden comment next to the ref that clarifies what the actual title is." I like that. It hides the error. It doesn't require a disruptive {{sic}}. If at some point in the future it needs to be searched for again, the original will be easy to find. I'd probably put it in hidden text right next to the word that was corrected. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 02:11, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
@Davidships, Popcornfud, Michael Bednarek, and Facu-el Millo: Based on what seems like a consensus above, I propose the following change to the MoS. At the end of the paragraph that ends "be silently corrected (for example, correct basicly to basically).", we could add the sentence If there is a typo in the title of a source, the source could be hard to find after the typo has been corrected, so when correcting the typo, add a hidden note (<!-- -->) near the error to indicate the original text. I hate to add anything which makes the MoS longer and more complicated, but is this worth the distraction? What think you? SchreiberBike | ⌨ 11:41, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
Comment: Where the ability to find the ref is not compromised because there is an underlying URL (as in this example), this is not necessary; otherwise a [sic] would seem more appropriate. But I am just a passing editor, so I leave this to those with broader persective on MOS. - Davidships (talk) 12:06, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
I think this is such a rare borderline case that it doesn't deserve to be mentioned. I also have some doubts that it's really necessary. Presumably, when the original URL disappears, people will just enter it into the Wayback Machine and hopefully retrieve it there. If not, they may google it, but search engines are fairly tolerant of misspellings and I suppose the typo-corrected title may be nearly as findable as the original one. Maybe more so, if the publisher had in the meantime spotted and corrected the typo. Gawaon (talk) 12:54, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
@SchreiberBike I think it's too specific—it's OK to draw attention to it as a issue to be aware of when editing, and maybe suggest possibilities for handling it, but prescribing which to choose seems premature. Something like One way to handle this is . . . seems better. Musiconeologist (talk) 13:47, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
That is, the recommendation would be to bear the issue in mind when correcting a title. Use of a hidden note would be an example rather than a guideline. Musiconeologist (talk) 13:55, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
I agree with the notion that a source may be harder to find the the typo is silently correct, but a hidden note cannot be the best solution to this. This matter would be relevant not only to editors like us but also to several external users (e.g. non-Wiki researches) who will not even be aware that such a hidden note exists. The format of such notes will also be wildly inconsistent. The simplest solution here, in my opinion, would be to leave the typos as-is. They are not in the prose text, so they don't really hurt anyone except maybe AWB typo searchers; a [sic], either unlinked ({{sic|pronounciation|nolink=yes}}) or hidden ({{sic|pronounciation|hide=yes}}) would solve even that. IceWelder [✉] 05:55, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
I have to say I think you're right. The typo is part of the information about the source or about how to find it (depending whose typo it is), so a correct citation includes the typo. Hiding the typo, or leaving the reader to guess whether it's ours or not, would be putting aesthetics before accuracy. Musiconeologist (talk) 10:09, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
We do allow silently correcting harmless typos (MOS:TYPOFIX), that was the starting point of the discussion. Hopefully, reliable sources won't often have typos in titles, but if they do, there is no reason to treat them differently from any other typo. Gawaon (talk) 10:18, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
I'm a confirmed gnome and I've got a collection of delicious errors that I go through every once in a while to make corrections. In the past I would mark errors in titles with {{sic}}, but then other editors would correct them with the explanation "insignificant spelling and typographic errors should simply be silently corrected" and not leave any sign of the original error. This is a small problem as a percentage, but there are at least thousands, and a surprising number of the errors are in quality sources. (Over the last day I've made corrections linking MOS:TITLETYPOCON 61 times, 35 of them for twelvth.) I agree that a hidden note is not a perfect solution, but it's the best I've seen so far. Thank you. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 12:51, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
I think the point here is that in a title, it's not necessarily an "insignificant typo" (in the words of that section) and not necessarily 100% harmless. So there can be a reason to treat the individual typo differently when editing. (I'm saying that a reason has been given in the discussion, based on the reader's potential needs, and that it's made me change my mind.) But the situation doesn't need treating differently in our advice, since it's a matter of judgement about a specific typo. It's treated the same in that the editor uses their own judgement as to whether it's significant. But the outcome of their judgement might be different for the particular case. Musiconeologist (talk) 12:53, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
I've boldly added the shortcut MOS:TITLETYPOCON to the top of this discussion to make it easy to link to this consensus without adding clutter to the Manual of Style. I've only seen that done once before, so I'm not sure if others will agree that this is helpful. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 12:10, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
Guidance on --> vs → (right arrow)
What is the WP:MOS policy on usage of --> vs → ( aka right-arrow / U+2192 ) ?
Benefits of →
More readable / better contrast / better scaling
More accessible (screen readers will read "right-arrow" unicode description)
more concise
better alignment consistency — some reader's typeface will render '-->' out of alignment making it unclear.
Using --> to represent an arrow is ugly and ridiculous, → is also obviously preferable in my mind to simply > in situations like denoting the historical evolution of words in linguistics articles. Remsense诉23:56, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
i was trying to be generous and i couldn't have said it better myself. the more cleanup I do, the uglier --> looks Tonymetz💬00:01, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
It's also problematic for technical reasons, as many parsers may get confused when there are loose angle brackets that aren't part of a HTML tag. Remsense诉00:03, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
On that matter, imagine a portion of an article which has been commented out using <!--...-->. If there are true right-arrows within that portion, all is fine; but if there are two hyphena and a greater-than, these will cause normal display to resume earlier than intended. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:22, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
Some observations on the six edits:
The Dutch railway services one I would question, the arrows imply a one-way service - is there no corresponding service in the other direction? If it's bidirectional, use an en-dash; if it's one-way, add a note explicitly saying so - a parenthesis like (one-way service) is sufficient.
The PITX2 and HOXD13 ones are valid, since the titles of the cited works do use a → character at those positions.
The Adrenocorticotropic hormone one is questionable, since the page reached by that URL does not contain the word "PROOPIOMELANOCORTIN" at all - either the URL is wrong or the title is wrong. I'm not familiar with the field, so cannot decide.
The Arosi language one is possibly valid, but I don't know enough about linguistic theory to know if the right-arrow is some kind of relational operator or not.
The Eldorado Mountain one goes against WP:EL - the URL should take you to the actual verifying text, readers should not be expected to perform their own searches. It's not even as if no suitable URL exists - I found Eldorado Mountain Rock Climbing and Eldorado Canyon State Park Rock Climbing quite easily. If those links are used instead, there is no need for reader instructions.
To sum up: using --> is generally to be avoided, but simply replacing it with right-arrow is not always correct - it's a case-by-case decision. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:36, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
Re: Dutch railway—I also think an en dash is sufficient, but may prefer U+2194↔LEFT RIGHT ARROW, what do you think? Remsense诉12:52, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
the page reached by that URL does not contain the word "PROOPIOMELANOCORTIN" at all - either the URL is wrong or the title is wrong. I'm not familiar with the field, so cannot decide.It's at the top of the page, directly under the title, stylized "pro-opiomelanocortin". JoelleJay (talk) 02:40, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
hyphens for titles
We should be allowed to use hyphens for titles because it causes fewer problems. This is what Geiger-Marsden article URL is
OK then. Change the rule so that we can use hyphens. They look the same to humans, it's only the computer who can tell the difference. Why is this such a big deal? Kurzon (talk) 13:27, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
It's like commas and periods. If you're not sensitized to the tiny difference, you might say they look the same. But the distinction matters a lot, though I'm not saying that that the dash-hyphen (or dash–hyphen) distinction carries quite the same import. EEng14:00, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
Well, I imagine someone in France might be more interested in French–Canadian politics than French-Canadian politics, say.
The visual difference shouldn't be tiny in a font that distinguishes properly: a hyphen is usually half the length of an en dash. But we're typically editing in a monospaced font, which makes it a lot less visible. So an editing preference that automatically converts double hyphens to en dashes and a triple ones to em dashes when saving might be helpful. I'm not sure where one makes the feature request for that. Musiconeologist (talk) 17:15, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
Because they were originally invented for use in Latin, corresponding to phonemic distinctions in Latin! Ofc ditto C and G for completeness's sake. Their use then apparently continued in the language until... it says 2777 AUC here, wow! How auspicious. Remsense诉15:37, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
Wikipedia editors are reluctant to use their power to influence English usage in this way (i.e., deprecating the en-dash for joining equal terms). Possibly the only punctuation issues where enwiki does put its thumb on the scale are date formats and the use of "logical punctuation" for quotations. Newimpartial (talk) 12:41, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
I'd add that (i) it's an essentially universal convention among publishers, (ii) using the wrong one changes the meaning and thereby removes or adds information, and (iii) using the wrong one gives the text an amateurish appearance. Discussions like this one arise because in the past, the choice of -/–/— was taken care of by printers and publishers, so authors had less need to know about it: it was just part of printing well-presented text. The different meanings looked different, without the reader necessarily being conscious of why.
A hyphen joins two things, an en dash juxtaposes them, and an em dash separates them—which is how the different lengths make it look. (I think it's partly from a hyphen being narrower than a normal space and an em dash being wider, so one pulls the words together and the other pushes them apart, while an en dash does neither.)Musiconeologist (talk) 18:10, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
Well here I am talking about presentation, namely the URL. But also a hyphen is easier to type, there's a key for it. Kurzon (talk) 11:42, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
Lifespan tags are dates in parenthesis which contain the birth and death dates of a person. For example: (1 January 1900 – 1 January 2000).
The start and end dates should be divided by an en dash, and not a hyphen or em dash.
If the lifespan tags are of the subject of the article, the en dash should be separated with spaces: (1 January 1900 – 1 January 2000), not (1 January 1900–1 January 2000)
If the lifespan tags appear in another part of an article, such as being used to give the birth and death date of a person who is not the subject of the article, the dates should be divided with an en dash, but the en dash should not be spaced apart, and should only include the year, not the month and/or day: (1900–2000).
Lifespan tags should be included in the short description, but only the years: Chinese encyclopedia writer (1900–2000). Except if the article is of a holder of a highly important office position, such as Abraham Lincoln, where the years serving in office are placed instead of lifespan tags.
If one date is not known, then where the date would go should be replaced with a question mark (?): (? — 1 January 2000; this also goes for the short description.
If the subject is Living, then put b., followed by their birth date: (b. 1 January 1900.
Lifespan tags should be included after the article title in set index articles
Lifespan tags can be used to disambiguate article titles, but only as a last resort. Use occupational titles before lifespan tags, which should be placed after the occupational title, separated with a comma (,): John Doe (businessman, 1900–2000), not John Doe (1900–2000).
Isn't most of this covered by MOS:DATERANGE? And I think the abbreviation "b." should (almost) never be used for "born". And the em dash in your "date is not known" example is wrong. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 01:21, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
I also think this is largely redundant and not needed. Also, some of it is in conflict with current best practices – for example, short descriptions typically don't include the years of life, unless needed for disambiguation. Which is for the better, as they are meant to be short, after all. Gawaon (talk) 07:33, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
Per WP:SDDATES, vital year ranges are not only used where required for disambiguation: As long as the formatting criteria are met, biographies of non-living people, articles on specific publications, and dated historical events generally benefit from dating, but since the description should be kept short, other information may need to take precedence. ... For historical biographies, specific dates such as "1750–1810" are preferred over "18th-century" for clarity.Graham (talk) 05:47, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
The proposal above that "Lifespan tags should be included in the short description" is a far more sweeping injunction than the mild and conditional opening of WP:SDDATES, Dates or date ranges are encouraged when they enhance the short description as an annotation or improve disambiguation and is contrary to the observations you quoted (generally benefit from dating, but since the description should be kept short, other information may need to take precedence). NebY (talk) 13:12, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
En dash spacing is to do with whether the dates themselves contain spaces/punctuation and therefore need more separation, not with where they appear.I feel this is a bad idea—it potentially adds another layer of confusion, with similar information appearing in different places and people religiously applying elements of it in situations where they should be using their own judgement. Probably via bots and with no regard to the article's existing style . . .Also the (businessman, 1900–2000) example implies to me that those are the years when he was a businessman, so I'd want to find a less ambiguous alternative like (businessman; 1900–2000) or an unambiguous one like (1900–2000), businessman. Which would, of course, get corrected back by someone who couldn't see the ambiguity.Overall I think it's unwise—people should be using the existing advice plus common sense, in my opinion. Musiconeologist (talk) 09:19, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
While I realize it's not part of the MOS, I'm curious about other editors' thoughts on Wikipedia:The problem with false titles, an essay that was created a couple months back. The essay basically states we should be using articles ("the" mainly) before nouns. The essay and the author purport that the construction "The documentary follows American songwriter Bob Dylan" is incorrect while "The documentary follows the American songwriter Bob Dylan" is correct. I (and others, based on activity I've seen on my watch list) feel the latter is incorrect, but I wanted to see what editors more versed in style guidance have to say about it. ~~ Jessintime (talk) 16:19, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
This essay was actually created more than a year ago, but was moved following a moving discussion a couple of months ago.
It's an opinion essay. Editors will either be persuaded by the arguments of the essay or they won't. I personally don't feel this is a matter for the MOS, per WP:MOSBLOAT. Popcornfud (talk) 17:17, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
Everyone must write in exactly my dialect of English. Everyone who uses a slightly different dialect with different usage of articles is incorrect and I demand that we immediately fix all articles in our articles to conform with my dialect.
To be clear: in my dialect, unlike the essay author's, there is absolutely nothing wrong with "The documentary follows American songwriter Bob Dylan". "Bob Dylan" does not take an article by itself, and "American songwriter" is a noun adjunct, not a standalone noun. In phrases with noun adjuncts, the article goes with the modified noun, not the adjunct: in "the chicken soup bowl", "the" modifies "bowl", not "chicken" or "soup". Because "Bob Dylan" does not take an article, "American songwriter Bob Dylan" also does not take an article.
I too think that there is nothing wrong with not using an article in such cases, it's just a stylistic choice. Hence the problem with the essay may be that its own title is false. Gawaon (talk) 18:24, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
My concern is that editors, like Popcornfud from above, have been going around adding "the" to articles unnecessarily based on that essay. ~~ Jessintime (talk) 18:25, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
For readers like me, a change of register to a more objective and neutral one. The literal meaning is the same, but is only part of what's communicated. But I suspect that whether there's a difference depends on which variety of English the reader uses. Musiconeologist (talk) 20:27, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
To me there's nothing unobjective or non-neutral about omitting the article. This sort of phrasing is merely a convenient way of sandwiching in a brief explanation: "American songwriter Bob Dylan" is a shorter way of writing something like "Bob Dylan, who happens to be an American songwriter". In contrast, to me, writing "the American songwriter Bob Dylan" comes across as the more opinionated, "Bob Dylan, the only American songwriter worthy of being called THE American songwriter". —David Eppstein (talk) 21:40, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
That's interesting. There's a definite difference in how we read it, then. I'm sure it must be regional. It's hard to put my finger on. The closest I've got is that I hear the version without the as inviting the reader to have an opinion about the information or draw an inference from it. It's quite subtle though, and not always there. What is always there is a feeling that it's slightly too journalistic in tone. (NB this is all from the POV of my own BrE usage.) The emphasis that you mention isn't there at all for me, and is pretty much excluded by the lack of commas around Bob Dylan.So we can't win: there are two different defaults. The one that someone uses will sound neutral to them, and the other will carry some emphasis. Different varieties of English do have slightly different grammar, and that's probably what we're up against here. Musiconeologist (talk) 22:09, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
Well, to me it's a matter of: to what does the "the" attach? It can't be Bob Dylan, because personal names don't take articles, so it must be "the American songwriter". And if it's attached that way, it must be a parallel phrase, two noun phrases used to repeatedly describe the same person: "bon vivant, raconteur, man about town". And what could "the American songwriter" mean as a standalone noun phrase, but a person worthy of being called "the" American songwriter?
In contrast, as I said above, in "American songwriter Bob Dylan" without an article and without a comma, "American songwriter" is just a noun adjunct, a descriptive phrase in the grammatical form of a noun but used as an adjective. It doesn't take "the" because that kind of phrase doesn't take an article, and it doesn't have any meaning beyond being a descriptive phrase saying that the person to whom it attaches is an American songwriter. You might be more likely to use this phrasing for people less famous than Bob Dylan who actually need an explanation, "American sports climber "Bob" Dillon Countryman", a different person with a different description. You could equally well write "an American sports climber, "Bob" Dillon Countryman", with an article and a comma, but the article is indefinite, the grammar is different, and you're just using more words and more pauses to mean the same thing. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:20, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
I really can't get my head around how "the American songwriter Bob Dylan" carries this meaning for you. It should be identical to the function of "the" in sentences such as "Harrison Ford appears in the film Star Wars" (which does not suggest that Star Wars is the only thing worthy of being called a film) or "Susan took the dog, Rex, for a walk" (ditto). Surely you wouldn't remove "the" from those sentences...? Popcornfud (talk) 22:27, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
I wouldn't write them with that grammar. "Harrison Ford appeared in a film, Star Wars", or "Harrison Ford appeared in Star Wars, the film" (as in, the film version of Star Wars, not some other version) but to me "the film Star Wars" with no comma is outright ungrammatical, a miscapitalization of "the film star wars" meaning a certain sequence of wars involving film stars. And "Susan took her dog, Rex, for a walk" (again, with a comma: two parallel noun phrases) or maybe "Susan took a dog, Rex for a walk". I might use "the dog, Rex" only in a situation where "the dog" could be used by itself, because there is only one dog (in the context of the sentence; maybe it is set in a house where there is only one dog). —David Eppstein (talk) 22:52, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
Forgive me, but if you think the sentence "Harrison Ford appears in the film Star Wars" is ungrammatical, I don't really know where to proceed in this conversation... Popcornfud (talk) 23:14, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
The particular songwriter who is Bob Dylan! Nothing more than that. Not "the only songwriter, who is Bob Dylan". The attaches to songwriter, and Bob Dylan specifies which one is meant by the. Musiconeologist (talk) 22:33, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
To mean "The particular songwriter who is Bob Dylan" I would have to write "the songwriter named Bob Dylan" or some such phrasing that makes "songwriter" the main noun. In "the songwriter, Bob Dylan" the two nouns are parallel and in "songwriter Bob Dylan" the first one is an adjunct to the second. In the phrasing with two parallel nouns, each has to be able to stand on its own, so to use a definite article "the songwriter" would have to be unambiguous. And an adjunct cannot take an article. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:01, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
What you're explaining makes perfect sense—it just differs from the structure my own brain uses to parse the sentence. The songwriter→ "Ah, right, that's probably the subject then, but I still need to know what the means" → "It means that one". Musiconeologist (talk) 23:20, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
To clarify the structure: Without commas, I read it as (the (songwriter who is Bob Dylan)), not as (the songwriter)(who is Bob Dylan). Musiconeologist (talk) 23:06, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
I became aware of this issue a few days ago, when someone commented that the version without the was American rather than British usage. In an edit summary, I think. To me (British) it feels uncomfortable in normal writing, and probably wrong, but commonly used in journalese. Like the habit of replacing and with a comma: breaking the grammar to save a word that is needed for the sentence to flow properly. It feels like writing part of the sentence in note form. (These are my thoughts without looking at the essay. So they're not influenced by it, but don't take it into account either.)I'm not sure it's strictly incorrect in BrE, but I definitely dislike it.Update: I've read the essay now, and I pretty much agree with all of it, except that I wonder whether AmE is different. It seems to be saying the same thing I did above. Maybe I feel the "sensationalising" aspect less strongly than the author. Musiconeologist (talk) 18:47, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
I've seen it suggested before that false titles are more widely accepted in AmE, but I don't know if it's true. It could be... But I've also found major American organizations that advise against it, such as the New York Times and Garner's Modern English Usage. Popcornfud (talk) 19:01, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
Sometimes people who use one variety of English just assume that a feature they don't like must belong to another variety, so it's hard to say. I might well be doing that myself. Musiconeologist (talk) 19:09, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
I'd say that the American songwriter Bob Dylan means the Bob Dylan who's an American songwriter or The American songwriter who's called Bob Dylan. To imply there was only one American songwriter you'd need a comma after songwriter. Musiconeologist (talk) 19:04, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
The information at WP:FALSETITLE is persuasive for me to look up to it as a style guide, similar to the fashion of other essays like WP:RECEPTION or WP:ELEVAR (both of which I use personally as style guides for my writing). FALSETITLE is not an official policy but editors who deem it useful can look up to it as a style guide. Regional differences might arise, so the issue can be discussed in certain WikiProjects in order to gain consensus on a Project-level (For instance all articles within Wikipedia:WikiProject Taylor Swift follow FALSETITLE, as do recently-promoted FAs of David Bowie albums like The Next Day or Low). Ippantekina (talk) 02:26, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
This worries me. As Musiconeologist observed above: "So we can't win: there are two different defaults." For some people the use of such article-less expressions is entirely natural, for others it's slightly non-standard and journalistic. However, WP:FALSETITLE frames it as if there's only one right way, the other being wrong. It claims "False titles originated in newspaper writing" which is unsourced (or weakly sourced) and may be wrong, and it boldly concludes that this usage is "inappropriate for an encylopedia". Which is nonsense from the viewpoint of those for which this usage is standard. Yes, I know that the article is labelled as an "essay", but it still is in the Wikipedia namespace, and apparently some WikiProjects treat it as gospel from which deviations are not allowed. While actually it misrepresents mere opinions as facts. I think we should seriously consider moving it out of the Wikipedia namespace (and deleting the WP:FALSETITLE shortcut) to preventing this kind of thing from happening in the future. Gawaon (talk) 06:37, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
WP shortcuts to userspace are acceptable, so the shortcut should probably be kept. If you want to argue for userfication of the essay, you'd probably need to WP:MFD it. Maybe see if there's any other support for that here first before starting an MFD. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:48, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
Does a template exist that displays something like "This essay might be specific to some regional varieties of English and not others. The opinions expressed might be widely accepted by users of one variety but not by users of another"? (Assuming the difference is regional.) Musiconeologist (talk) 09:16, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
This is frustrating. I created this essay a year ago in my user namespace purely as a way to explain why I remove false titles, which I can link to in edit summaries. This version of the essay contained a disclaimer assuring people that if they were not persuaded by my argument then they could revert my removal of a false title and I would respect the WP:STATUSQUO. I do not see false titles as a big issue.
Two months ago, someone kicked up a fuss about my linking to the essay using WP shortcuts, saying this should only be done with essays in Wikipedia namespace. I therefore moved it into Wikipedia namespace. I then removed the status-quo disclaimer after someone told me namespace essays shouldn't use first-person language. A move discussion then followed in which the consensus seemed to find that it didn't need to have been moved from my userspace in the first place. Shrug. The whole thing seems to have become a molehill-mountain situation. Popcornfud (talk) 09:56, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, I would appreciate that too! Like I said, having it in the Wikipedia namespace, where it can easily be interpreted as (at least) semi-official advice, worries me somewhat. Gawaon (talk) 10:32, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
I kind of hoped that the banner at the top saying "this is an opinion and not Wikipedia policy" etc would alleviate that risk.
If the real controversy here is not actually my essay, but whether opinion-essays in the "wrong" namespace might be misinterpreted as policy, then maybe there should be a different debate happening about that.
In any case, I'll look into moving the essay back as it was never my intention to have it in Wikipedia namespace in the first place. Popcornfud (talk) 10:44, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
I feel there are a couple of underlying issues, and neither of them is really about your essay. One is people wanting to edit by rigid rules, when good editing is about getting a feel for subtleties of the language and and weighing up their effect in a given situation, and the other is a tendency to treat shortcuts as if they were citations to a legal document rather than just a convenient way to find things. Musiconeologist (talk) 13:58, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
I'd like to clarify that by "we can't win" I just meant that someone aiming to choose the always-correct form is doomed to fail since either is wrong for some people. I didn't mean "we who must decide a policy or take some action". I was exploring the usage question. Musiconeologist (talk) 13:41, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
It seems like this discussion already de-escalated, but I'm curious if there's any precedent for style controversies to be handled on a WikiProject by WikiProject basis. (For my own part, I'm starting to suspect that the trends in usage are in fact region-based.) Clarinetguy097 (talk) 17:42, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
I don't understand why some are so worked up by this essay when there is already a banner saying explicitly "This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines" right at the top, as well as a status-quo disclaimer at the bottom. This belongs to a plethora of similar existing essays and I don't see a valid reason to "delete it from the Wikipedia namespace". I see some interpretations that this essay (sort of) "frames that false title is completely wrong (or similar)", which are awful miscomprehensions of what it is trying to say. Ippantekina (talk) 16:22, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
Well, it says that anyone who doesn't follow its advice writes in a style "that's inappropriate for an encylopedia". That's a fairly strong wording, which can cause strong reactions. Gawaon (talk) 16:40, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
I have a feeling that we should try not to stir those up again, though . . . I'm very glad things have calmed down. (I wouldn't have replied to the original query if I'd realised what was going to kick off.) Musiconeologist (talk) 16:54, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
Background: Based on MOS:ELLIPSES, I had edited one of my own sentences, placing a fourth period inside the closing quotation mark because that is what I thought MOS:ELLIPSIS instructed. But it just did not look right to me.
I consulted Garner's Modern English Usage (4th ed.) and searched the Wikipedia Manual of Style. I found MOS:LQ, which naturally agrees with Garner.
I therefore added one period and an explanatory sentence to the MOS:ELLIPSES section, as follows.
Before edit: Jones wrote: "These stories amaze me. The facts suffer so frightfully ..."
After edit: Jones wrote: "These stories amaze me. The facts suffer so frightfully ...". (Note that the period ending the sentence should be placed outside the quotation mark; see MOS:LQ.)
I've undone your edit, since I think this requires further discussion. Especially since the quoted example spans multiple sentences, I think it should rather be written as "These stories amaze me. The facts suffer so frightfully ...." – three periods marking the omission, and the fourth marking the end of the sentence, which supposedly happens in the quoted text too, and can therefore be enclosed in the quotation marks. Gawaon (talk) 18:20, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
This is a good question. Or rather, the question is: why would one ever need an ellipsis at the end of the quotation, if logical style is used. If one writes "These stories amaze me. The facts suffer so frightfully". (with the period after the quote mark), this already indicates that the final period is not part of the quote. Hence no ellipsis is needed, even if the original sentence continues. Gawaon (talk) 18:32, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
Perhaps my understanding is flawed.
Which of the following is correct?
"... and the use of experienced, second-level reviewers to conduct fully independent exams to evaluate the criterion validity of actual veterans' evaluations..."
"... and the use of experienced, second-level reviewers to conduct fully independent exams to evaluate the criterion validity of actual veterans' evaluations...".
"... and the use of experienced, second-level reviewers to conduct fully independent exams to evaluate the criterion validity of actual veterans' evaluations...."
"... and the use of experienced, second-level reviewers to conduct fully independent exams to evaluate the criterion validity of actual veterans' evaluations."
Note: The quoted text occurs in the middle of a long sentence, i.e., the sentence continues after the word, evaluations.
If that's supposed to be a quote within a paragraph, no ellipsis is needed at either side. Put in context, it might read: Some experts recommend "the use of experienced, second-level reviewers to conduct fully independent exams to evaluate the criterion validity of actual veterans' evaluations".
More interesting is the case that one wants to set it as a blockquote. It's too short for that, but we can ignore that. In a blockquote, there are no quotation marks and it's hence not possible to put anything "outside the quotation marks", so some kind of quote-final ellipsis seems necessary. Personally I'd tend to put four periods here (three for the ellipsis, one to end the sentence), though admittedly that's not what the MOS currently seems to recommend:
The use of experienced, second-level reviewers to conduct fully independent exams to evaluate the criterion validity of actual veterans' evaluations....
True as far as the punctuation is concerned, but there is still no need for an ellipsis, which will usually only be needed in the middle of quotations. I'm afraid MOS:ELLIPSES is in pretty bad shape since it doesn't reflect that and rather works with toy examples which have nothing to do with encyclopedic usage. Gawaon (talk) 22:14, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
MapReader, regarding your latest edit: consider the text right after the example, which says: "Place terminal punctuation after an ellipsis only if it is textually important, as is often the case with exclamation marks and question marks but rarely with periods." Nevertheless adding a period here contracts this recommendation and makes the example contradictory. I would suggest you self-revert until this is resolved. Gawaon (talk) 18:40, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
Separating the two quotation marks is textually important, to avoid “sentence one…””sentence two”, which is clunky and clumsy. But if it’s all one continuous quote, it would be better (and probably meet both of our needs) if the middle quotation marks were removed and the sentences run together, separated by the ellipsis. My edit is better than what was there before, but the latter would be better still. MapReader (talk) 19:10, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
Hmm, my understanding is that the two examples are indeed meant as two examples that are completely unrelated to each other. If there was just one quote, surely one would write something like "sentence one ... sentence two" without intervening quotation marks. Gawaon (talk) 20:07, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
This part is right: the fourth [dot] marking the end of the sentence, which supposedly happens in the quoted text too, and can therefore be enclosed in the quotation marks. If the original read, e.g., "... The facts suffer so frightfully at the hands of Johnson and his writing.", the "." is part of the original material, so can properly be included inside the quotation. If the quoted text ended in a period, why would we include an ellipsis? Because material has been editorially removed from the original quoted material (in my example case, it's the "at the hands of Johnson and his writing" string). Which of the following is correct? Depends on the original material. In most cases, this will be valid: "... and the use of experienced, second-level reviewers to conduct fully independent exams to evaluate the criterion validity of actual veterans' evaluations...." unless the original material actually ended with "evaluations." There would not be a true need for ... veterans' evaluations ...". unless for some reason the original material did not end with "." after the elided material, perhaps because it had "!" or "?", or because it was itself terminated originally with "...", or was a title/headline/caption/table header/etc. with no terminal punctuation at all. However, using ... veterans' evaluations ...". doesn't actually break anything, and there might be a preference for this the more fragementary the quoted material is. If it's 20% of a sentence, I would probably go with that, but if the quote is 90% of a sentence and just lopped off an extraneous parenthetical comment (especially an inline parenethetical citation in an academic paper), I would be more inclined to use ... veterans' evaluations ...." which suggests a "complete thought", as it were.
I'll repeat what I always say: LQ is not difficult in any way, and people need to stop trying to manufacture ways to make it difficult. Include inside the quotation marks only the content (including puncutation) of the original quoted material and do not change it (except as noted later here); do not include inside the quotation marks content (including punctuation) that is not in the original quoted material, and that includes changing one puncutation mark to another (this is principally how LQ differs from typical British styles, which do permit such "silent" alterations, as in {{"'Not today,' he said", with "." altered to ","). If it is editorially desirable to change content inside the punctuation, this is done with [square-bracketed] insertions, or in the case of ellision with "...". The ultra-academic, usually redundant style "[...]" is not necessary, except when the quoted material contains its own original "...". That's really all there is to it.
avoid “sentence one…””sentence two”: Yes, there is no reason to ever do that. If you were quotating the same material, you'd just fuse the quotations: "Sentence one .... Sentence two.", if the first is a fragment; but it would be "Sentence one. ... Sentence two.", if two complete sentences were quoted with intevening material elided.) If you were quoting two different parties and thus couldn't merge them into one quote, they would be separated, and probably have introductory clauses making it clear which speaker/writer is which.
PS: If anyone's still not clear why it's "evaluations ..." not " evaluations...", it's because the latter indicates a truncated word not a truncated passage. The ambiguity doesn't really come up with a word like "evaluations" but does with words like "which" and "there" and "as", for which longer words exist like "whichever" and "therefore" and "aside", which could have been truncated. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 23:28, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
PPS, regarding If one writes "These stories amaze me. The facts suffer so frightfully". (with the period after the quote mark), this already indicates that the final period is not part of the quote. Hence no ellipsis is needed, even if the original sentence continues. Doing it that way would not an error, but it depends on editors and readers alike being 100% involved with LQ, which is obvioiusly not the reality. Various of our editors just DGaF and write however they like, leaving it to other editors to clean up after them later, so our readers (who even notice such puncuation matters at all) cannot depend entirely on the terminal "." having been placed correctly (and various of them would not pick up any implication from the placement anyway). When just quoting an isolated fragment like "Johson called it a 'disaster' in a press conference two days later", this really doesn't matter, but when quoting one or more full sentences followed by a fragment it is sensible (and zero cost/harm of any kind) to make it clear to the reader than the entire quoted material is ending with a fragment: "These stories amaze me. The facts suffer so frightfully ...." It is better to let the reader know that something is a fragment when they cannot already be entirely certain of this from other clues. Always remember that our goal is to communicate as clearly as we can, not to reduce our typography to the shortest imaginable output; this is not a "coding elegance" contest among hackers. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 23:39, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
Thank you, I have a much better understanding now. The sentence I wrote in another article that launched me down this rabbit hole was "20% of a sentence" so it's good to know I got it right the first time. Mark D Worthen PsyD(talk)[he/him]01:32, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
Is there a Manual of Style on Election Percentages?
This isn't an attempt to relitigate--I promise!--but just curious why all the examples under this policy take the form of rendered dialogue, without also using example quotes and context from newspapers, academic journals, magazines, encyclopedias, etc. This may be part of the confusion for some editors, especially those from North America (an MOS essay mentions that the aesthetic style is used mostly in North America...). Thank you. Caro7200 (talk) 19:14, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
Oh crap, not again. Look, it's very simple: if the punctuation is part of the quoted text, it goes inside the quote marks; if it's not, it goes outside. That's all. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:35, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
For complete sentences, but not sentence fragments. It’s ‘the critic said the film was “great”. ‘, even if in the original text the sentence ended “. . . great.” MapReader (talk) 19:54, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
*The following final items never take section headings:
**Internal links organized into navigational boxes
**Stub templates, if needed
**Authority control metadata, if needed, using {{Authority control}} (distinguishes uses of the same name for two subjects, or multiple names for one subject)
**Categories, which should be the very last material in the article's source code
I just removed a problematic sentence from an article ("Let's delve deeper into the various characteristics and cultural symbols of deep clothing together"). Which part of MoS or another page or essay can I mention to tell the editor who add it that this is bad style? Piotrus at Hanyang| reply here03:01, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
Clarification on foreign language quotes and suggestion to add examples.
Hi, I am confused by the guidance on foreign-language quotations and I think some examples are needed. For example, I am trying to quote the phrase "Verwaltungsgemeinschaft Freie Stadt Danzig" with an English translation of "Administrative Association of the Free City of Danzig" in the article Free City of Danzig Government in Exile. Should the English or the German version come first? Should the English version include quote marks? If not, how do I separate the English phrase from the rest of the text? Should the German text by italicised in the quote marks? For example, which if any of these are acceptable after "von Prince was convicted in Switzerland for forging a passport and a number plate that he claimed were validly issued by the ..."
"Administrative Association of the Free City of Danzig" (German: Verwaltungsgemeinschaft Freie Stadt Danzig).
"Administrative Association of the Free City of Danzig" (German: "Verwaltungsgemeinschaft Freie Stadt Danzig").
Administrative Association of the Free City of Danzig (German: "Verwaltungsgemeinschaft Freie Stadt Danzig").
German: "Verwaltungsgemeinschaft Freie Stadt Danzig" (Administrative Association of the Free City of Danzig).
(I took the liberty of numbering your list.) I would use any of nos. 1 to 3 your examples, but omit the quotation marks for either language. If pressed, I'd prefer a modified #3:
Administrative Association of the Free City of Danzig (German: Verwaltungsgemeinschaft Freie Stadt Danzig)
It is a proper noun and proper nouns in a foreign language are not italicized as such. However, they are italicized if they are provided as a translation of a phrase or word already used in English. There's no need for quote marks for either the English or German words any more than for other proper noun phrases. Which to use first depends on which is more common in English language reliable sources. I'd suggest either:
Administrative Association of the Free City of Danzig (German: Verwaltungsgemeinschaft Freie Stadt Danzig).
or
Verwaltungsgemeinschaft Freie Stadt Danzig (Administrative Association of the Free City of Danzig).
This is in the context of a micronation where the "Administrative Association of the Free City of Danzig" doesn't actually exist. It's just a thing a person claims to belong to. Does that not make it not a proper noun or change your advice at all? Safes007 (talk) 04:27, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
Nope, the International Association of SchreiberBikers is properly capitalized despite not existing. Sometimes pretend names are enclosed in quote marks to indicate that those words only exist in a person's mind or writing, but that should be clear from the text. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 19:04, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
Epigraphs and opening quotations vis à vis pull quotes
MOS:PQ is pretty clear in its explanation of why pull quotes are considered undesirable in an encyclopedia, as they are a form of editorializing, produces out-of-context and undue emphasis, and may lead the reader to conclusions not supported in the material. However, a gray area seems to lie in quotations that haven't been pulled from the article text, but are still placed at the head of a section without being contextualized in prose first. The inciting example for this particular thread is currently at Higgs boson § Gauge invariant theories and symmetries:
"It is only slightly overstating the case to say that physics is the study of symmetry" – Philip Anderson, Nobel Prize Physics[1]
Gauge invariant theories are theories which have a useful feature; some kinds of changes to the value of certain items do not make any difference to the outcomes or the measurements we make. An example: changing voltages in an electromagnet by +100 volts does not cause any change to the magnetic field it produces. Similarly, measuring the speed of light in vacuum seems to give the identical result, whatever the location in time and space, and whatever the local gravitational field.
The issue is I actually rather like this section! It's well-written if a bit quirky, and the quote concerns an important theme of the article in a way that doesn't seem overly egregious. But is it adequately encyclopedic? I'm not sure. What is an encyclopedia, again?
In any case, I feel it's odd for the MoS to explicitly address pull quotes but not these quotes generally. Remsense诉05:19, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
Some word of caution against using epigraphs would probably be advisable. Though personally I think that neither pull quotes nor epigraphs (essentially the difference seems to be just one of formatting and possibly placement) are totally unsuitable for an encyclopedia, as long as they are used sparingly, with careful editorial judgement. Gawaon (talk) 05:56, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
I suppose I would consider adding an explicit note that WP:PQ doesn't cover epigraphs at-large? That way it's easier to view cases on their own merits rather than potentially pointing to WP:PQ for something it analogizes but doesn't say. Remsense诉06:21, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
References
^From P.W. Anderson (1972) "More is different", Science.
"left" places an image to the left, "right" (which is the default) to the right. But I suppose you know that already. So what's the question? Gawaon (talk) 13:16, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
One of the most important things to know about Jack is they use Wikipedia on their phone. They are seemingly unaware of what Wikipedia is like outside the mobile app, which is interesting and thought-provoking. Remsense诉13:41, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
@Remsense: I'm aware of this, but using Wikipedia only on a mobile device seems much better to me, because I can zoom in and then, like an eagle, immediately notice all the errors and things that need to be improved. Note: I use both the website and the app. JacktheBrown (talk) 13:43, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
My bad, that wasn't meant as a dig at you to be clear. I genuinely do think it's interesting to try to fully consider an editor with that kind of relationship with the site. Remsense诉13:45, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
@Remsense: it's important to consider that young readers, and not only, use almost exclusively their mobile devices to read Wikipedia pages (I think). JacktheBrown (talk) 13:53, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
Oh, so you mean |left and |right as in [[File:Example.jpg|thumb|left|An example on the left]]. If you had said that at the start of this thread, we wouldn't have been wasting time (I had thought that you meant in image captions like "From left to right: Smith, Jones, Brown and Foobar"). Anyway, as shown at WP:EIS#Location, these options control which margin the image is placed against; and when |thumb is specified (see WP:EIS#Type), |right is the default. So altering |thumb|right to |thumb makes absolutely no difference; but altering |thumb|left to |thumb will move the image from being against the left margin to being against the right margin. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:59, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
Hi, I've seen MOS:TIES as interpreted to mean article titles should only use the name in that (local) variety of English. So Bangalore is argued to be possibly Bengaluru because that's what it is in Indian English but not all English. I think this is incorrect, with TIES meaning spelling/grammar/specific generic vocabulary? If I am correct, can therefore "orthography"/ "spelling" etc be added to
An article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation should use the (formal, not colloquial) English orthography of that nation
or some other clarification, that it doesn't mean article titles, such as places, should use the local name.
That move request failed, as far as I can see, because of insufficient evidence that Bengaluru actually is the more commonly used name, whether in India or outside of it. So it's not a TIES issue. Gawaon (talk) 13:27, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
I am aware it did not pass, but on less known RMs it may be enough, eventually legitimising the argument, so just asking that the text be more specific. While you state the RM stated there wasn't evidence in and out of India, TIES was used to say "we don't need to consider out of India at all". DankJae14:35, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
MOS:TIES is a section of the "Manual of Style" which is a guideline. Article titles are governed by"Article titles" which is a policy. So I think the issue should be settled in the "Article titles" policy and the "Manual of Style" should be adjusted so that normally the place name used in the running text of articles agrees with the title of the relevant Wikipedia article, no matter whether the text is in the article about the place, or some other article that refers to the place. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:31, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
That said, it seems to me that articles on topics that are strongly connected to a local variety of English should use the best title in that variety of English, e.g., Québécois people. The principle is correctly understood as applying to word choice, not just orthography, IMO. Newimpartial (talk) 14:53, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
Noted, can that be added? so it can be clearer justification to use local titles, place-names etc. DankJae16:19, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
I think this might require more discussion. In my view, MOS:COMMONALITY should normally trump MOS:TIES, with the latter being mostly relevant in cases where there is no COMMONALITY. In any case, there have already been tons of discussions about these issues and they aren't easy to resolve. So any addition will require careful vetting to ensure it doesn't break the existing consensus. Gawaon (talk) 16:44, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
I agree that any addition will require vetting, but I don't agree that MOS:COMMONALITY should normally trump TIES, at least not in cases where national varieties of English offer specific and clearly-defined terms that generally used in WP:HQRS to talk about the relevant concepts or phenomena. I also haven't seen any evidence that the community endorses the nearest equivalent term in US or UK English in such cases, which is what COMMONALITY advocates are usually asking for.
Well, actually, in my own view the third bullet of COMMONALITY - to include a gloss - does set out the relevant guidance in such instances, but that isn't what editors typically mean when they want COMMONALITY to be the deciding principle. Newimpartial (talk) 17:07, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
Interesting case. Congratulations to the creators of that new Wikipedia! I wonder whether it might be possible to special-case all-caps "MOS:", since interlanguage links are by convention nearly always lower-case ("mos:")? Gawaon (talk) 05:31, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
Great suggestion @Gawaon. I totally agree with you. The Moore language is a big language In Africa, spoken across multiple countries with more than 11 million speakers. Having the wikipedia created with mos.wikipedia.org would be very useful. Shahadusadik (talk) 09:52, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
I know, I suppose it could be a special "hack" for just this one special case – of course, the software (MediaWiki) would have to be modified to support it. But what's the alternative? And especially, is there a practical alternative? (I would accept it as a given that mos.wikipedia.org is going to come.) Gawaon (talk) 15:24, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
Pppery's suggestion "English Wikipedia to convert its pseudo-namespace for MOS into a full namespace" looks practical. Existing links in policy pages, edit summaries and discussions should all work, though interwiki linking from en: to mos: would have to be done in some unusual way. enwiki's range of search selections would have to be expanded - is the code so good that would happen automatically? - and we'd be lucky if that was all, but it's a more elegant evolution than the deep-cludge alternatives. NebY (talk) 16:04, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
I agree with this; at this point it would cause too much disruption for us to switch over, and I suspect that we aren't going to be linking to the Moore language very often, considering it has taken over twenty years for it to get a Wikipedia. BilledMammal (talk) 10:04, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
Though this wouldn't fix past edit summaries, could we rename it "Style" and mass-replace /(\[\[)MOS(:.*?[\]\])/i with $1Style$2 throughout the content? Largoplazo (talk) 18:36, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
I fear that would re-date all the talk-page and project archives, again, and be a long annoyance to editors who accidentally use the old shortcuts – but any solution's going to be somewhat annoying. NebY (talk) 12:34, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
Seems like we should change all our shortcuts. We need (a) a new shortcut prefix that is not an ISO language code and (b) should ask the Mossi language editors nicely whether we can create a few soft redirects at mos:DAB and mos:DASH and so on that point back to enwiki, to be deleted after a reasonable adjustment period. Hacks that continue to make MOS:DASH work as a redirect while mos:DASH is an interwiki are too confusing in the long run, I prefer a clean solution to one that allows us to lazily mostly continue doing what we used to do. (The whole issue comes from the fact that : has too many functions, it is the interwiki separator, the namespace separator and a legal character in page titles). —Kusma (talk) 08:28, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
Five years ago I said that whoever came up with the idea of separate WP: and MOS: namespaces should be shot[99]. At the time I was kidding. But I'm not kidding anymore. EEng09:48, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
Is the use of quote box in article to highlight certain contents considered pull quote?
A user argued that use of quote box within the article does not constitute a "pull quote" within the context of MOS:PQ, because it is not repeating something in the article. Although, the editorial intent is obviously Wikipedia editor's desire to accentuate and bring more attention to that part than rest of the article, so I believe it is considered pull quote for the intent of the guideline. Please help with the interpretation of the meaning of "pull quote" as used on Wikipedia as used in Boy_Scouts_of_America#ProgramGraywalls (talk) 16:47, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
Yes, repeating something or displaying it prominently obviously needs to consider additional NPOV concerns. Remsense诉14:47, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
A pull quote is an extract pulled from the material within which it's embedded to highlight it. A quotation from an outside source is not a pull quote, it's just a quote, even if it's given special emphasis. However, making arbitrary quotes in articles pretty is not advisable. See, for example, the documentation at {{Quote box}}. Largoplazo (talk) 15:25, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
People have been repeating this stuff about POV for years and it's thoughtless nonsense. Judgment must be exercised, and the use cases are limited, but a highlighted quote need be POV no more than does a block quote in the article proper, or a photo caption. EEng20:57, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
I thought the point was that choosing to highlight a particular quote is itself POV, not just providing it for verification or illustration purposes but giving it undue emphasis. It's perhaps the same as MOS:NOTETHAT; beginning a sentence in an article with "Note that" implies that what immediately follows should is merits note—as though the rest of the article doesn't so much. In both cases, we should let the reader assess the significance of each piece of information given in the article without cuing them as to what we think deserves special attention by them. Largoplazo (talk) 21:23, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
It's POV if it's POV, and its undue if its undue. We make editorial decisions about what to include or not include, what to put in the lead or not put in the lead, what to emphasize or not emphasize, all the time. Quote boxes are just one more such decision. EEng14:16, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
It matters a bit more than those elements because highlighted quotes are a bit more distinctive than them, is what I think the common sense idea is. Remsense诉21:00, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
Despite your indentation I think you're addressing me. Yes, a highlighted quote is more distinctive than the other situations I mentioned, and that's wh, as I said earlier, use cases for highlighted quotes are limited. But they're not nonexistent as some people claim. EEng14:15, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
No. Its not a pull quote, unless its repeating part of the article. Such "non-pulled" quote boxes are used in WP:FA and there is a current discussion at WP:VPP approving their good use in WP articles. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:42, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
I would like to propose, should the entirely of the Manual of Style be policy? It is apparent that it and its subpages are cited everyday and is followed by everyone, like other policies. ToadetteEdit!23:45, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
Thing is, policies, generally speaking, have consequences for not following them. Nobody needs to follow or even know about the MOS to contribute. Only when there's reversions of attempts by others to get articles in line with the MOS are there potential consequence (for disruption). I think that's the kind of answer you're looking for, sorry if you already knew all this. Primergrey (talk) 00:38, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
The distinction between policies and guidelines is not really super-clear; most things you can say about one, you can say about the other. See WP:P&G and note how most of it refers to both policies and guidelines without really making a distinction.
But basically the MOS doesn't deal with the same sort of thing that policies deal with. Policies are about procedures, behaviors, stuff like that. They're not really about formatting and word choices.
See Wikipedia:List of policies and look at the six categories at the top. The only one that's even close is "Content", and that's about the sort of material that ought to appear in Wikipedia at all, not about how it's styled. --Trovatore (talk) 00:40, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
Hi. I have been seeing editors removing former from short descriptions on corporate articles, using the essay WP:SDAVOID as the reasoning. I wonder if other editors believe the same as me as this madness, as leaving defunct companies with short descriptions without it is inaccurate. For example Cavenham Foods or Tudor Crisps who have been defunct for quite some time. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 05:31, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
Short descriptions are supposed to give extremely brief descriptions for the purpose of disambiguation. I don't see time-specific descriptors as critical for that, so I'm in favor of keeping them out. It's not misleading to omit the information. Popcornfud (talk) 06:16, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, leaving it out seems fine (and indeed preferable) to me too. That there is an article about a company doesn't imply it still exists, so there is no need for such qualifiers. Gawaon (talk) 06:42, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
The short description for Canaan reads "Region in the ancient Near East". It isn't implying that Canaan exists now, it's just identifying it as what it was when it was. The same goes for products and corporations. Just understand the SD to be explaining not what the topic is but what it is-or-was. Largoplazo (talk) 09:39, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
"was" vs "is" for Wikipedia articles about human remains
I previously opened a thread about this topic here: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Archaeology#"was"_vs_"is"_for_individual_ancient_human_skeletons, but I think here is more appropriate. Looking at the articles listed at Category:Homo sapiens fossils (which is misleadingly titled, including remains from the last few thousand years which definitely aren't fossils), it seems to be the standard for Wikipedia articles about individual human skeletons, mummies and the like to describe them as human remains in the present tense, rather than as deceased humans in the past tense. Examples of this include for example, Cheddar Man, Ötzi, and The Younger Lady. Is this correct according to the MOS? As noted in the WT:ARCHAEOLOGY discussion the idea of describing Native American remains in the present tense like this has received pushback. I don't have a strong opinion about which way should be preferred, but I think there should be consistency regarding the way the remains of all deceased humans should be described. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:37, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
Arlington Springs Man is on my watchlist, and there's been some recent back-and-forth in the edit history around that question. Currently, it reads:
Arlington Springs Man was a Paleo-Indian whose remains were found in 1959 on Santa Rosa Island...
The alternate version that's been proposed (via edits) is:
Arlington Springs Man is the skeleton of a Paleo-Indian which was found in 1959 on Santa Rosa Island
I found @GreenC:'s edit summary thought-provoking and convincing: "They are the remains of an individual human being and needs to be treated as such. This is not an article about a dinosaur, rock, or woolly mammoth. This is why NAGPRA exists to deal with the dehumanizing of Indian ancestors as merely relics or old bones stored in a warehouse."Schazjmd(talk)22:45, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
My point is that the remains of Native Americans shouldn't be treated any different than those of other humans. If we are going to have a standard of describing Native American humans remains as "was a person" rather than "is skeleton/mummy" then this should be broadly applied to all articles about human remains. As far as I can tell, this "was a person" has so far only been inconsistently applied to Native American articles, for example the Incan mummy articles Aconcagua mummy, Mummy Juanita and Plomo Mummy are all in the present tense. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:54, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
I agree with all human remains being treated consistently in article leads. I just found the edit summary persuasive that it's more respectful to recognize that they were a person. Schazjmd(talk)23:09, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
The difference is some old remains nobody claims/cares anymore as an ancestor or relative, and some do. Personally I think all these articles should be framed foremost as about a person because it makes for a better and more accurate article, given that perspective. Many of these articles are poorly written they get confused on this moving back and forth about bones or person sort of willy nilly with no compass. Sometimes a sentence might concern the remains, sometimes not, you need to know when to use which. The lead sentence framing concerns a person is the main compass direction, because that is why remains are studied, to learn about the person and their culture. The remains are only one aspect of the person. This is borne out when you read these articles, they concern much more than the remains. The articles concern the life of the individual, as learned through the remains. -- GreenC23:12, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
I don't think consistency is very important here. If Native Americans prefer that their ancestors be talked about a certain way (I have no idea), then why wouldn't we respect that? On the other hand, that doesn't mean we should talk about remains like Cheddar Man or Ötzi—that don't come from an Indigenous/settler-colonial context—in the same way.
I usually use the present tense for purely pedantic reasons, i.e. to avoid anachronisms. Sentences like Arlington Springs Man was a Paleo-Indian [...] are factually incorrect: there was nobody called "Arlington Springs Man" in the past and nobody who considered themselves "Paleo-Indian". In my experience this overwhelmingly how archaeologists and other scientists that study human remains talk about them, for what that's worth.
If the concern is dehumanisation, an (admittedly quite awkward) compromise could be something like Arlington Springs Man is the name given to a Native American man [...]. I do disagree with GreenC above: these articles are first and foremost about the remains of a person, not the person. We can infer some things about the latter from the former but it is not accurate, and potentially offensive, to write as if we can narrate a person's life from their bones. – Joe (talk) 09:14, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
Arlington Springs Man has the Note after his name in the lead sentence: "His historical name is unknown. A moniker was invented as a means of identification." You could say "Arlington Springs Man is a moniker for a Native American man .. " but this is overly fussy and already obvious to 99% of readers, a Note serves that purpose fine. There is some guideline somewhere that advises against this sort of thing, say what it is sufficiently for understanding, don't qualify too much in the lead sentence, we are writing for a general audience. See WP:LEAD for the purpose of the lead and how to write a good lead section. -- GreenC15:46, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
If we're talking about a person who has died, it's past tense. If we're talking about remains that still exist its present tense. Am I missing some nuance here? I don't see why it's different to anything or anyone else. For most people we don't talk about their still existing remains once they die, but in these cases we are. Canterbury Tailtalk11:43, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
It concerns the framing and topic creation of the lead sentence:
"Ötzi is the natural mummy of a man" (lead sentence)
This is incorrect. The article frames the name "Ötzi" as the remains, and not a moniker for the once-living man. Nevertheless, throughout the rest of the article, it refers to "him" and "he". The article is thus confused as to what the name Ötzi refers to, indeed what the topic of the article is: a person, or human remains. The lead sentence could more accurately say "Ötzi was a Bronze-age man whose mummified remains.."
"Kennewick Man was an ancient Indigenous American man whose skeletal remains were found .." (lead sentence)
This is correct. The primary topic of the article concerns a man, his life, environment, culture .. of which the remains are an aspect of that man's life and death.
We have many articles that frame individual people as physical objects in the lead sentence. -- GreenC15:22, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
What do you mean by "correct" and "incorrect" here? Looking through the first couple of pages of Google Scholar results for "Ötzi", almost all of them primarily discuss a "mummy", "corpse", or "iceman", rather than a person. Are they incorrect? – Joe (talk) 08:07, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
Well, of course both are "correct", but we need to choose the best option for a general purpose general reader encyclopedia. We are not writing a journal article. Wikipedia articles cover all aspects of the person including their remains but not limited to their remains. -- GreenC15:11, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
"Modern-day Israel" vs. "Palestine" when only for reader geographical reference
The Arab–Israeli conflict is designated as a contentious topic with special editing restrictions. Editing and discussing this topic is restricted to extended confirmed users. You are not logged in, so you are not extended confirmed. Your account is extended confirmeddoes not have the extended confirmed flag, but you are an administrator, so your account is extended confirmed by default.
While doing recent changes patrol, I recently saw a drive-by IP edit changing a page that referred to a historical place as being in "modern-day Israel" to say "occupied Palestine" that I wasn't sure how to respond to. Someone else reverted it, and while that was probably the most straightforward and reasonable response, it did get me thinking, and I've poked around in the MOS itself and the archives here without much luck: has there ever been any sort of discussion on the appropriate terminology to use between modern-day Israel/present-day Israel/etc. and Palestine, as in the geographical region, when the description is a purely geographic one to describe to the reader where something was or is? Kinsio (talk ★ contribs)14:34, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
I'd say that when it comes to describing the geographic location, modern-day Israel / modern-day West Bank / modern-day Gaza Strip (or similar) are the straightforward terms to use, depending on which one it is. Palestine as a unified territory existed only from 1920 to 1948 (Mandatory Palestine), so using the term to refer to anything earlier than that would be an anachronism. Gawaon (talk) 15:05, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
@Gawaon (and cc @Chipmunkdavis and Chatul): I guess I'm not quite articulating clearly what I'm asking here. I get that the modern-day forms are the most straightforward. I guess what I'm really wondering is, would describing something (with no particular reason to be associated with a particular present-day state as such) as located in Palestine, clarifying perhaps with a link to Palestine (region), be considered something to avoid? That's how I refer to things colloquially and I'm not sure if that'd be considered a potential issue in an article. Kinsio (talk ★ contribs)15:32, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
I agree with this. It is unlikely it provides much clarity to readers, as even if they do know about the geographical usage of Palestine that doesn't mean they expect it to be the default meaning. 'Geographic areas' which stem from historical polities tend to cause these issues with ambiguity when modern polities take the older name. Macedonia (region) is another example that still causes political disputes today. CMD (talk) 15:54, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
"Modern-day X"/"Present-day X" are not uncommon phrases. I don't think there is anything particularly unique about application (or not) to Israel/Palestine (although considerations regarding borders may add complications as they do in some other parts of the world). Troy for example, states it is "an ancient city located in present-day Hisarlık, Turkey." CMD (talk) 15:10, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
I'm so close to making my signature something like Kinsiois XC, I promise, you guys. This keeps happening, I guess people are willing to click on contribs to see my account is new but not on talk to see the notice about this I put there. I'm even the one who put that ECR warning at the beginning of this section 😭 Kinsio (talk ★ contribs)18:59, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
It's fine, I know it's not intentional haha. I think I did come up with a way that makes sense to draw attention to this in my signature though, do you think this will help? Kinsio(talk ★ contribs ★ rights)19:24, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
Re Kinsio's would describing something (with no particular reason to be associated with a particular present-day state as such) as located in Palestine, clarifying perhaps with a link to Palestine (region), be considered something to avoid?: If you want to refer to the time and place of Mandatory Palestine, use that name and link. I think Palestine without adornment is too ambiguous. I think for before then, the name to use is Ottoman Syria. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:35, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
Ottoman Syria is not a good designation for the later Ottoman period. From the 1880s onwards the Vilayet of Syria was all east of the Jordan River. For at least a century before that, "Palestine" was the most common designation in European sources. It's true that "Syria" was also used, but the extent of "Syria" was much broader, approximately what would be called the Levant today, and "Palestine" was the southern part, as in this 1794 map. Also see Jacotin's 1799 map, published 1818. A correct designation is "Ottoman Palestine", but the "Ottoman" part is redundant as there was no Palestine apart from the Ottoman one. Zerotalk07:44, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
I'd add a "citation needed" to the claim that "For at least a century before that, "Palestine" was the most common designation in European sources." And even if true, how relevant would it be? I'd say that the locally used name is more relevant than what people in other countries used. Hence, in addition to the "modern-day" equivalents, it's probably most reasonable to use the official Ottoman designations for the Ottoman area. Gawaon (talk) 08:53, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
Actually we are supposed to use common English names where available. That's why articles have "Rome" and not "Roma". Go to Google Books and search for "Palestine" in the 19th century. 18th century too. Also try "Palästina" for German sources (which is what the Zionist movement called it). Also try "Syria and Palestine" and "Palestine and Syria" to check if they were considered equivalent. (Most times Palestine was considered a part of Syria, but often they were considered separate.) Zerotalk13:10, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
Maybe just go by what (scholarly) sources say? If they say located in what is today Israel, then go with that and if it says in Palestine then that and wikilink appropriately, Palestine or Palestine or Palestine. Ottoman Palestine is quite common in sources. Also fairly common is Roman Palestine (Syria Palaestina) One phrase that can cause trouble is "historic(al) Palestine", might be as well to avoid that. Selfstudier (talk) 10:16, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
Change "foreign-language" to "non-English language"?
Of course "foreign-language" is a common adjective to mean "in a language other than English" and that's fine, but it also looks a bit odd in the guidelines of an international internet encyclopedia? "non-English language" is clunkier I'll admit, but it's also more precise in a way that seemingly doesn't cost much. Should we consider changing it on policy and guideline pages?
(I'm fairly sure it shouldn't be non–English language or non-English-language even as an adjective, right? Those both look ridiculous.)Remsense诉05:28, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
Agree. “Foreign” presupposes where the reader is, which isn’t appropriate for an international encyclopaedia. MapReader (talk) 07:08, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
My concern is that "non-English" might exclude the English-based creoles like Nigerian Pidgin; we should treat these creoles as we would treat any other non-English language, as English speakers tend to be unable to understand them. BilledMammal (talk) 08:28, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
I think it is fairly safe to say that no one would have this as their public definition of "English language", right? Remsense诉08:37, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
Right, so how does "foreign language" do better with that ambiguity? I would think it does worse. There's no definite boundaries between any two lects you can define. Remsense诉08:54, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
I would agree if it were a big deal to fix. Plus, it is a little bit broken—we all know what a lot of words *should* mean, but that doesn't mean we can't seek to further improve our word choices. Remsense诉08:50, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
Agree. 'Foreign' is not necessarily the same as non-English even when you assume the reader/editor is in a country where English is the most commonly spoken language. Many countries where English is the norm were colonised and had/have indigenous languages of their own, which would be odd to call 'foreign'. FropFrop (talk) 09:04, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
You aren't wrong. We can simplify most of this, avoiding "non-English language". In this main MoS page, nearly all uses of "foreign" are either to qualify a noun other than "language" ("foreign words", "foreign text") or in the adjectival "foreign-language" to qualify a noun. In the former cases, just replace "foreign" with "non-English". In the latter, replace "foreign-language" with "non-English", omitting "language". A couple of cases are tricky because they link to sections currently titled "Foreign languages" on other MoS pages. Those can be dealt with in turn but is there anything objectionable about my proposal to make the first round of substitutions forthwith? Even to the extent that I could argue that, pragmatically, readers will know what we mean, "non-English" is better.
Finally, for the noun phrase "foreign language(s)", "language(s) other than English" seems more natural than "non-English language(s)". Largoplazo (talk) 11:43, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
Given that there is clearly a general consensus here to move away from the politico-geographic, not linguistic, term "foreign", I will edit this and related material to effectuate the change. This will also involve creating shortcuts that don't use "FOREIGN", and requires conforming edits to a bunch of other pages that touch on the same sort of material, or which make reference to these sections by name. I have about half of it done in other browser tabs, but I also have a wicked cold right now, so my attention and patience are a little drained. Give it a bit of time. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 04:20, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
Parenthetical plural(s)?
It seems that the particular constructions referred to as "parenthetical plurals" by style guides—e.g. when posting thread(s),—have never been discussed here before, which is a bit shocking. Here's a quick pitch for why we should consider explicitly deprecating their use in article(s):
They are almost entirely useless, and usually do not clarify any ambiguity. This is the case for WP:AND/OR but stronger. Use of a plural form to indicate "any number of" is usually completely fine, and when it's not there's usually a broader problem with the structure of your sentence.
Something something, brackets can create problems for wikitext, somehow.
While neither AMA nor Chicago explicitly disallow parenthetical plurals, they both firmly suggest that you should never have to use them.
WP:MOSBLOAT. Have you found yourself wasting time debating this point with other editors -- time that would be saved by a new MOS provision? EEng16:07, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
I see it considerably often, but you're totally right in that no one's ever actually insisted as to require a guideline enshrining consensus. Remsense诉16:17, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
Same here. If we felt a need to mention it, it could be a single short sentence at MOS:AND/OR, but per EEng it doesn't seem necessary to do so at all. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 04:40, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
Citations within quotes?
This is a bit confusing, so let me try to give an example.
Suppose we have a book, A Great Book by Joe Sixpack, that says something like this:
The sky is blue.[15]
Then at the end of the book is a list of sources, including one for footnote 15. Let's call this "The Original Source". So we have a book by Sixpack that cites "The Original Source".
Now we want to quote from A Great Book in a Wikipedia article. And we do so like this, preserving not just the quote, but Sixpack's source citation too:
In his book A Great Book, Sixpack says that "The sky is blue.[1]"[2]
I find this awkward and unnecessary. I would leave out the citation to "The Original Source". Verifiability is still preserved, because a curious reader can look up Sixpack and from there find The Original Source. Does this seem right?
Redrose64 is right, of course, but it's also true that (a) you might as well look at Original Source to see if it meets our own standards (it usually will, if A Great Book is published by a good publisher), and (b) if it's easy to access Original Source it's worth taking a look at that too. At least once that I recall I've found that Joe Sixpack misinterpreted Original Source. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:57, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
Citations are not part of the quoted material. They go at the end of the introductory material immediately before the block quotation, never inside the quotation. This is one of the most common formatting errors on Wikipedia.
In the constructed example above, we have no reason to block-quote some other person saying that the orignal source said something; either the intermediary source is reliable enough, or it is not. If it is, the usual method of doing this is to indicate what original source the intermediary source is quoting, simply to help the reader assess the source's reliability for themself, and to help them find the original if they don't have access to the intermediary (which may be paywalled or otherwise non-easy to get at). But if a block quotation is needed, it will be of the original material, not someone claming that the original material exists. E.g.:
This approach will revolutionize developmentally appropriate models across content areas, by means of synergizing bottom-up inquiry across cognitive and affective domains, through which we will evolve brain-compatible paradigms throughout multiple modalities.
However, Persson's assessment has been challenged by Ann N. Tety and D. Prezenz,[4] according to whom ....
In the above, if we had access to Una Persson's original publication, there would be no reason to cite the A. Humon intermediary source at all. But for some material (e.g. obscure journals not indexed on sites we have access to through The Wikipedia Library, sometimes intermediate-source citations are the best that we can do, at least for now.
PS: For a block quotation that lacks any kind of introductory material to which to attach the citation, the {{blockquote}} template provides some sourcing parameters that will put attribution after the block quote. But this should almost never be done in an actual encyclopedia article. Just create introductory material to provide context. Injecting context-free big quotations is virtually always a WP:NPOV problem, serving to promote some particular author's viewpoint unduly and without any clear reason that the reader can intuit. The main exception is when quoting notable speeches of famed orators like MLK in an article section about the speech, or key lyrics from a song at the song's article, that sort of thing, where the context is already clear. The template's attribution/source parameters should not be redundantly used along with a regular citation, nor used in lieu of one. (Some editors have a bad habit of assuming that if a template supports the possibility of doing something that it should or must be done.) — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 05:07, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
^Humon, A. (2024). A Critical Appraisal of the Philosophy of Una Persson. Some Damn Press. p. 123. Quoting: Persson, Una (1959). "The Epistemology of intra-disciplinary approaches to pseudo-Manichaeanism". Proceedings of the Obfustcatory Omphaloskepsis Society. 12 (2): 12–13.
This week I took a long time to learn how to enable a first-line indentation and I would like to float the possibility of improving the sentence under 'Indentation' which cites two templates to enable other editors to learn how to use them more quickly. Would anyone be willing to mentor me if I tried to improve it to achieve this objective? For the record, I should disclose that I am new to templates.John Desmond (talk) 15:09, 20 June 2024 (UTC) .
Some of my friends, yesterday I suspect that John Desmond refers to a common practice in printed books where the first line of a paragraph is indented by one or two em. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:40, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
Yep. The only reason to ever do this is when illustrating the original layout of something, as an end in itself, e.g. in an article about this history of document formatting; or when preserving the exact formatting of a poem that was written with an unusual whitespace structure on purpose. To do the latter, use <poem> markup. To just do the former, to the first line without regard to formatting of subquent lines in the rest of the paragraph, start the paragraph with {{in5}}. But this should certainly not be done to cause first-line-indented paragraphs in general WP prose; it simply is not WP style.
PS: That edit by John Desmond was also wrongheaded in several other ways. First off, block quotations (which also, on WP, do not take first-line indentation) should be marked up with {{blockquote}} (MOS:BQ), not list markup (abuse of list markup to get visual indentation is covered at MOS:LIST and MOS:ACCESS). Second, block quotations do not take quotation marks (MOS:BQ). Third, shorter quotations that are done inline instead of as blocks, and which do take quotation marks, do not take single-quotes but double (MOS:QUOTEMARKS). Fourth, editorial additions like "[Emphasis in the original.]" take square not round brackets (MOS:QUOTE), but for a block quote are better done as part of the introductory clause rather than part of the block quote, when this is feasible. Fifth, use {{sic}} instead of manual markup. Sixth, for semantic emphasis, use {{em}} not ''bare italics'' (MOS:EMPH). — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 05:23, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
Hyphenation
We're discussing the wording of a sentence in Wikipedia:Wikipedians#Number of editors on its talk page. (Y'all come, if you want, but that's not my question for you.)
It started off as "higher-volume experienced editors", which is correct. It is presently "more-experienced editors". I wouldn't (in American English) put a hyphen there, but is it actually wrong, or just unnecessary? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:11, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
Well it depends on whether you want editors with more experience to join or if you just want some additional old lags. [As in "ten more-experienced editors" v "ten more ... experienced editors"]. That do? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 23:43, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
JMF is correct. That particular sort of hyphen is sometimes unnecessary, but only if the meaning could not be altered or become ambiguous by its removal. There are many constructions in which such ambiguity will exist for at least some readers, so the hyphen should be retainined in such cases, or the entire construction rewritten. "I prefer a more flavo[u]rful soup than plain chicken stock" needs no hyphen after "more" because no ambiguity is plausible. In "I would prefer to have more-flavo[u]rful soups in my diet", the version with no hyphen will mean (to many if not most readers) "I would prefer to have more soups in my diet, and that they be flavo[u]rful", while the version with the hyphen means (to everyone) "I would prefer that the soups in my diet were more flavo[u]rful". — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 06:44, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
Since the nineteenth century, a 'race deterioration' has been repeatedly predicted as a result of the excessive multiplication of less gifted people (Galton 1869; see also Fig. 9.1). Nevertheless, the educational and qualification level of people in the industrialized countries has risen strongly. The fact that the 'test intelligence' has also significantly increased (Flynn 2013), is difficult to explain for supporters of the dysgenic thesis: they suspect that the 'phenotypic intelligence' has increased for environmental reasons, while the 'genotypic quality' secretly decreases (Lynn 1996, p. 111). There is neither evidence nor proof for this theory.
I tried to engage on the talk page, suggesting for instance that we might replace the incomplete inline citations with ellipses, but was met with insistence that this quote be paraphrased, despite the fact that we do not (as far as I'm aware) paraphrase within refs.
So my question to the community is whether the best practice in a case like this would be to
1) include the quote as written,
2) include the quote but replace inline citations with ellipses,
I can't judge whether the quote is useful in general, but assuming it is, I would suggest option 2 (replace the inline citations with ellipses). Gawaon (talk) 19:45, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
Another option is to write "(citations omitted)" outside of the quote. Compared to using ellipses, this has the advantage of making it clear that the quoted sentences were sequential in the original, with no important statements omitted and no deceptive juxtapositions created. It also lets readers know that citations are available to be chased down if needed. Jruderman (talk) 01:06, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
I went to make this change but ran into two snags. First, the template {{cite book}} automatically puts quote marks around the entire quote parameter. This is suboptimal, but I guess we can write "[citations omitted]" (with square brackets) if it has to be inside the quote marks. The second problem is that WP:FOOTQUOTE calls for exact quotations, so I'm now less certain that leaving out the citations is within policy. Nevertheless, I still think this is the clearest way to present the quote, so I'll probably make this change in a few days unless this discussion moves in another direction. Jruderman (talk) 07:04, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
You could put it in square brackets after the page number. However, it's also my understanding that any omission needs to be marked using an ellipsis (both following our own conventions and common style guides), so you'll need these ellipses regardless of whether or not you add that comment. Frankly, since we're writing for a general audience and few to none readers will care for the reason of the omission anyway, I'd tend to just use the ellipses without further explanation. Gawaon (talk) 07:47, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
You guys are worrying too much. No ellipses needed. See this [100] CMOS FAQ. (which also disposes of the "It also lets readers know that citations are available to be chased down if needed" argument as well, appealing as that one is.) EEng08:14, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
A point in support of the "No ellipses needed" position: we're only having this discussion because we're quoting a book written with in-text citation style. If it had been written using footnote style, omitting the footnote numbers would be uncontroversial. Jruderman (talk) 08:42, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
The FAQ entry refers only to footnotes, though. Footnotes are generally omitted, since in fact, there is no good way to NOT omit them. In-text citations are a different thing though. Yes, it's kinda ironical that these need to be treated differently even though the difference is ultimately just one of layout, but there you go. Footnotes can be omitted without comment, parenthetical notes (whether or not they contain literature references or anything else) need an ellipsis to mark the omission. I have yet to see a style guide, CMOS included, that would say anything else. Gawaon (talk) 10:19, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
parenthetical notes (whether or not they contain literature references or anything else) need an ellipsis – Disagree. If we're quoting source S1, which has parentheticals which do nothing beyond citing sources Sx, Sy, and Sz, and Sx,y,z themselves are not part of what S1 is discussing (S1 weighing their relative reliability, for example), then the parentheticals can be silently dopped. Adding (citations omitted) after the quotation (or putting that in our own footnote citation to S1) might or might not be a good idea depending on subtle considerations.
Let me point something out. If S1 simply read:
The sun is very big, but the moon is not as big (Smith, 1999).
We'd quote that without the parenthetical with no twinge of conscious. But we're apparently having this conversation because S1 reads ...
The sun is very big (Jones 1995) but the moon is not as big (Smith, 1999).
I agree it's a good practice to silently omit inline citations in quotations, but I think there is enough doubt and diverse practice in the editor community that it would be good to include something in the "Manual of Style". Jc3s5h (talk) 13:36, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
The "sin" thing is a rhetorical question, right? Ellipses at the start or end of a quote generally aren't needed, because nobody will assume that the original starts/ends there. But omissions in the middle are marked, that's what's ... is for. Of course, depending on how you quote, you won't need any ellipsis, for example, writing Current consensus is that "the sun is very big", while "the moon is not as big".[1] would be perfectly fine. Gawaon (talk) 15:42, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
An ellipsis shows where something of the author's text has been omitted. A parenthetical citation isn't that, any more than a superscript note number is. EEng17:37, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
I don't think we're even talking about the possibility of including the full citation in a quote, especially if using the quote parameter of one of the citation templates. I think we're talking about whether we can silently omit a footnote number or parenthetical citation, while omitting the full bibliographic entry.
A topic for another day would be what if the author quotes one of the same sources that's cited by the Wikipedia article? Jc3s5h (talk) 16:08, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
Footnote numbers can be silently omitted, we have already established that and I don't think there's disagreement on that front. Omitting citations in parenthesis will require either an ellipsis or maybe an "citation(s) omitted" after the quotation or page number. Either option seems acceptable, but personally I'd point out that even several ellipses will be shorter than a "citation(s) omitted" comment. Gawaon (talk) 16:44, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
I'd prefer ["citation(s) omitted]" because ellipsis leave the reader wondering if what was omitted might have changed the meaning. Of course, if you don't read the source yourself, you're still trusting the editor to copy correctly. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:10, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
Exactly. Also, the "citations omitted" can be relegated to our citation, thus.[1] That should make everyone happy. EEng17:37, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
Fair enough, though omitting something in such a way that it significantly changes the meaning is not allowed by any citation style. Gawaon (talk) 18:04, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
Well DUH, of course. But I think what Jc3s5h more means is, ellipses signal that something of substance was omitted -- some detail not germane to the purposes of our article, for example -- so the interested reader can go chase that down in the original if he wants. How disappointing to find that it's just a parenthetical citation -- something which, if the publisher had a different house style for calling out citations (superscript numbers, for example), would have been omitted in complete silence. When you quote someone it's assumed you're not necessarily reproducing all the citational apparatus your source relied on -- your reader will have to go to your source in order to find out exactly what that is. It's not part of the source's words in the same way that, well, their words are. EEng20:11, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
I really like your solution, EEng. I'm going to implement this. We'll see if the editor who originally removed the quote feels the need to drag this out further Generalrelative (talk) 20:46, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
Tend to agree. However, I would not get in a big dispute with someone about replacing the inline citations with ellipses. What we don't want, either way, is to include inline citations in quoted material if we are not informing the reader of the details of those cited sources. Sometimes it is actually better to do exactly that, with something like <ref>{{cite journal |...}}<br />Citing:{{bulleted list |1={{Cite book |...}} |2={{Cite journal |...}} |3={{Cite book |...}} }}</ref> (or using one of the multi-source citation templates). This is most important in cases such as: a) the source being cited is not from a known subject-matter expert, but is relying on sources that are and which are ultimately of more in-depth importance to citation-checking readers; b) the source being cited is summarizing a debate and we care more about the sides in that debate and who is behind them than in the summary of them; or c) the citations behind the material are ones we are already using for other purposes in the same article (in which case we would better secondarily cite them in that compound ciation with {{harvp|...}} or one of its variants, instead of repeating the entire citations). — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 06:59, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
"By default, write articles in the present tense..." and "Generally, use past tense only for past events, and for subjects that are dead or no longer meaningfully exist."
The page gives an example: "The PDP-10 is a mainframe computer family manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation from 1966 into the 1980s."
There is a big discrepancy concerning tense in articles about old computers (Vintage computer). One issue is if they "meaningfully exist". Consider some one-of-a-kind computers:
The IAS machine is intact and exists in the collection of the Smithsonian (I saw it on display in 1967), but it is no longer on display and doesn't work.
ENIAC - all (or almost all) of the parts of ENIAC exist, but they are spread out among several museums and displays (I've seem most of the parts.)
BINAC - I don't think any of this computer still exists.
Then there are computers of which many were made. There are several non-working examples (e.g. UNIVAC I) in museums (Computer History Museum and others). There are even a few working examples. The Living Computers: Museum + Labs had quite a few computers that were made decades ago and are still working.
If there's even one existing working example the guidance is pretty clear. Use present tense. There's even a strong case for non-working examples if their historic value is "meaningful" enough, but that's not so cut and dry. Primergrey (talk) 18:17, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
And regarding the automobile articles, the Ford ones are about models that do exist. The others are about companies that do not. Primergrey (talk) 18:21, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
For computers, I'd say that "no longer meaningfully exist" should be interpreted as "no working exemplars exist". If a running computer exists somewhere, its article should be in present tense, otherwise past tense. Indefatigable (talk) 18:18, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
It isn't always easy to tell if there is a running example somewhere. And when there is, they are usually in a collection to demonstrate it - it is not doing productive work anymore. Bubba73You talkin' to me?21:33, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
Does it have to be doing productive work? Various sorts of steam engines are lovingly restored, maintained and displayed in all their gleaming, puffing glory; each one definitely exists though few are doing anything productive. NebY (talk) 00:59, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
The oldest computers had little concept of the time of day. But more recent models came to depend more and more on time of day. Many of these middle-aged computers still "work" but won't work correctly because Y2K messed them up and rather than fix them, they were retired. Perhaps the most widespread examples are (were?) the earlier members of the IBM PC line. So they only work if you lie about the date. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:39, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
Sometimes people only work if you lie about the date they'll be paid (or how much, their prospects and working conditions, what you'll do to their families, that sort of thing). NebY (talk) 16:35, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
And, as an example, the page uses present tense for the family of PDP-10 computers manufactured from 1966 to the 1980s. It is very unlikely that any particular one of them is still running and doing productive work, but the recently closed Living Computer Museum had five working ones. Bubba73You talkin' to me?00:51, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
Size and power costs make it unlikely that historical computers are doing productive work. But if I can go to a museum and see a complete one, even in a non-working state then I would definitely say that computer "is". Same for mostly complete (say 80-90%) machines. Less than that gets murky. Parts spread over different locations is probably "was" but may be gathered back into a (near) whole machine again. But there isn't any real consequence of getting this wrong. So, I'd just say that any machine physically near complete (say 80% or better) in a single location, working or not is a computer still in existence and anything else is no longer in existence. For the borderline cases, flip a coin and move on with life. Stepho talk02:07, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
Most often the name of a computer refers to the definition of its architecture. There are no "PDP-10" computers, but there are the KA-10, KI-10, etc. But there are books that describe the architecture of the PDP-10, and those books exist. Some architectures never existed. The general rule is that events (in the past) are past tense. Computers were designed, introduced, sold, rented, and such, in the past. Note, for example, that Shakespeare's plays are present tense, even though he is dead, and even though one might not be being performed. Since the written form exists, they should be present tense. And if the documentation for a computer architecture exists, it should be present tense. If no processors exist, and no documentation exists, it could be less obvious. But best then to just write in terms of an event. The Burroughs B5500 was designed and sold by the Burroughs corporation. That works even if none exist. Gah4 (talk) 02:39, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
Published works are treated under their own special guideline; they are not general cases from which to extrapolate. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 07:02, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
Generally, use present tense, since the machines almost always still exist somewhere in operating form. We should only use past tense for something totally defunct or no longer meaningfully existent. For some of the examples given above, like BINAC and some other defunct unique machines, past tense would be appropriate. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 07:04, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
Recent harmful changes
I noticed that some long-standing wording was recently changed by User:Remsense, without any clear motivation to do so and without any consensus established to make the changes. The most relevant diff is this. I find the revised text to be much less clear and much less useful. I suggest that the change be reverted. Other edits by the same editor may also be questionable.
Another harmful change was made by User:Altenmann, not a native speaker of English but nevertheless one who feels confident enough to declare that there is "no such thing" as using "she" generically. They removed the text again, which seems purely disruptive. This relevant information should be restored to the article.
If any of my edits are not evident improvements, I apologize and agree they should be reverted. I've taken care not to make trifling changes, only those that present the guidelines cleanly and concisely without changing their meaning. Some word choices may require explanation on my part, but intrinsically is saying a lot about the content of topics, while necessarily only concerns the process of describing them, which seems more appropriate. Remsense诉13:44, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
Honestly, they are more wordy and not really an improvement. Good edits to the MoS, except for those that are specifically intending to introduce a new guideline, almost invariably reduce the number of characters. MapReader (talk) 15:08, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
Agreed. Most of my other edits to MoS pages are in line with this, but I couldn't quite figure out how to rephrase this one in fewer characters in the moment. Remsense诉15:09, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
Concerning removal of generic she, which is coded as [[generic she|generic ''she'']], I think the explanation at the target wikilink is inadequate and we should do better if we are to retain this language. generic she is a redirect to Gender neutrality in languages with gendered third-person pronouns#Generic she which dumps the reader at the "Generic he" section because "Generic she" is an anchor for that subsection. Upon reading the article, it is a struggle to find anything about generic she. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:29, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
My apologies about generic she: the wikilink was misleading; I merely requested reliable source about generic she. Of course I am nonnative speaker, so I wanted to read about "generic she" and found that the wikilink "generic she" does not lead to the information about it. Now I fixed the wikilink "generic she". - Altenmann>talk17:36, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
The article section to which generic she redirects needs to be updated to account for activistic writing in which traditional/obsolete "generic he" is intentionally replaced with an equal-but-opposite "generic she" just to make a point. This is actually quite common among a certain set of leftist writers over the last generation or so, and should be accounted for. However, it's not something WP should ever be doing in its own voice. Just use gender-neutralized sentence structures (often simply converting to a plural form is sufficient, in enabling a generic they/them/their construction). — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 07:23, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
Too many (mostly older) editors and readers disagree with using that if it can practically be avoided (i.e., if you do that, someone will probably change it later). And it usually can be avoided, with virtually no effort, when not writing about trans/enby subjects. There is no reason to write "For this conference, an author will have their paper peer-reviewed twice" when "For this conference, authors will have their papers peer-reviewed twice" will do better (as will a number of other alternatives like "All papers are peer-reviewed twice before being approved for this conference", etc., etc.). The rewritten versions will not make any reader mentally rebel in mid-sentence, unlike the singular-they version. WP is not a platform for advocacy or enforcement of any still-in-progress language change / usage shift, especially one that is heavily politicized in the real world. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 17:38, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
Should orthographical variations be mentioned in place names
I think it has to depend on the history of the orthographies in question. For one particular case, MOS:ZH says that alternate/historical romanizations of Chinese place names generally shouldn't be used, even if they appear as a part of other proper names: e.g. Tsingtao Brewery Co., Ltd. is located in Qingdao, Shandong.Remsense诉07:22, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
It's not historical but it isn't commonly used outside of a minority group essentially. It's Pokeno, which instead of using a macron is sometimes spelt as Pookeno but I can't find any reliable source that actually uses this spelling. Mayhap it is more akin to dialectal variations. Traumnovelle (talk) 07:30, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
And "I can't find any reliable source that actually uses this spelling" already indicates that we should not mention it. "Some rando on the Internet spells it funny" is not something we ever need to contemplate encyclopedically. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 07:10, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
It is mentioned in a reliable source as being used by a minority/officially. But reliable sources continue to use standard orthography. [101]Traumnovelle (talk) 07:12, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
Well, an "official" claim that cannot be independently verified at all is just as unencyclopedic, I would think. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 16:36, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
Sometimes, if they have been widely used historically or are widely used now? From a MoS point of view, I guess that means we should not have a general rule. Better figure out what works best for each article. —Kusma (talk) 16:48, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
Articles referring to themselves
Is there any policy relating to articles referring to themselves in prose? Such as "This article is about…"? ꧁Zanahary꧂00:13, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
Do you have any convenient way to avoid self-reference in situations where an article describes multiple notational conventions and then goes on to say that our article uses one particular choice of these notations? For that matter, would you care to describe how our standard wording on hatnotes and disambiguation page footers ("This disambiguation page lists...") might be rewritten to avoid self-reference, and why such a rewrite would be an improvement? —David Eppstein (talk) 00:43, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
Maybe I’m misreading your tone David Eppstein, but I am only asking a question, because I don’t know its answer.
Disambiguation pages are already self-referential, since their titles refer to their natures as pages. Articles are typically not. Antisemitism's early footnote about "anti-Semitism" may be an example for your question, if I understand it correctly. ꧁Zanahary꧂01:00, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
I’m saying that it is not. It explains the choice of notation among some options without referring to the article. ꧁Zanahary꧂02:51, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
As an example for the question Do you have any convenient way to avoid self-reference in situations where an article describes multiple notational conventions and then goes on to say that our article uses one particular choice of these notations?. The reason for the article’s choice is implied without saying “This article uses…” ꧁Zanahary꧂02:52, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
The article's choice may be entirely arbitrary, but still a choice must be made for consistency. It is often better to inform readers what choice has been made than to let them guess. An example: in dihedral group (a technical concept in mathematics), there are two different common and standard notations, where the notation D6 would mean one group to geometers and a different group to algebraists. (It's not a good situation but we can't change it.) Unlike your hyphenation example, if you just see the notation D6 without an explanation, there is no way of telling which convention it uses. We have to use one, so we tell the readers which one we are using. The sentence saying so begins "This article uses the geometric convention".
As for tone: this thread had the tone of encouraging rules-warriors to chime in and strictly forbid all uses of self-reference, even in such cases. I wanted to provide a counterpoint. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:06, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
"If the article title is merely descriptive—such as Electrical characteristics of dynamic loudspeakers—the title does not need to appear verbatim in the main text. Similarly, if the page is a list, do not introduce the list as "This is a list of X" or "This list of Xs.....Avoid constructions like "[Subject] refers to..." or "...is a word for..." ". Nikkimaria (talk) 04:24, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
A bit of caution: if an article is about a word, then "...is a word for..." or "...is a word for...", etc. is almost always inavoidable. Schlemiel, Oy vey, Mazel tov... (unless forced to jump artificial hoops) - Altenmann>talk06:40, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
I don't feel there's any problem with an explanatory footnote explaining something about the article, just as hatnotes do. It's just the text—the actual article—that shouldn't. Largoplazo (talk) 21:21, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
In that particular case, the best place was a footnote because the issue is worth noting but uncontroversial, but I'm not sure that's always the case. I can imagine a situation in which it's necessary to surface the issue to the reader more openly, and then mention as an aside that the remainder of the article adopts the such-and-such convention. And that might be best done in the text. I don't see why it's such a big deal. EEng23:04, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
The simple way to avoid that selfref would be to just delete the closing "this article follows Macmillan[M]: 122n15 in correcting those dates, each of which carries this annotation". Since all the dates in question bear this footnote, and the footnote explains the situation, that closing bit is not strictly necessary. However, it's actually clearer with it present, and such clarifying selfrefs are not verboten in the first place. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 17:22, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
Thing is, not all dates in the article are adjusted, because most don't need adjusting. So the purpose of the note, and its closing, to tell that reader how he can determine which specific dates were adjusted i.e. it's those that carry the note. EEng21:10, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
@EEng, I think the confusion comes from people thinking that SELFREF goes well beyond what it actually says. SELFREF says not to write "This Wikipedia article discusses...", but the prohibition is on including the word Wikipedia. SELFREF directly says that articles may refer to themselves; they just can't refer to Wikipedia. "This article discusses..." is acceptable, and so is the footnote that you link. This section of SELFREF has a little blue box that says:
Y This article discusses...
N This Wikipedia article discusses...
A plain old "This article" is officially endorsed by the style guideline. [User:WhatamIdoing|WhatamIdoing]] (talk) 18:43, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
Another place I find problems with that is when articles say something like "As described in the previous paragraph..." or "As in the illustration at right...". Well, of course, articles can be edited, so if someone changes the previous paragraph or the image, stuff like that will become nonsensical, and whoever does that edit might not know to update or remove those references to whatever they're editing. SeraphimbladeTalk to me02:41, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
MOS:SEEIMAGE applies; it was originally written because of accessibility concerns, but mobiles and other narrow-screen devices have shown us that images might not be displayed where they were expected to be. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:40, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
I think this is a case where it's more heuristic than anything: there's absolutely nothing wrong in itself with having "see §XYZ" in running text; however, if one really feels the need to include that, there might be a deeper problem with the piece's structure. Remsense诉02:55, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
To comment on this entire thread at once: This is generally covered at WP:SELFREF. More specifically, we make use of explicit selfrefs, of the "this article" sort, pretty often. E.g., they are virtually required by WP:LISTCRITERIA for explaining the inclusion criteria of a non-exhaustive list. Many of them in non-list articles can be avoided by sensible writing, but not all of them can, and that is okay. Cross-reference selfrefs like "See X" or "covered in § SectionName" or "illustrated below" or whatever, can often be avoided by using contextually embedded links, but not always, and that's also okay. They should be marked up with {{crossreference}} (shortcuts {{crossref}} or {{xref}}) if they go from one article to another, or with {{crossreference|printworthy=yes|...}} (short form: {{crossref|pw=y|...}}) if within the same article. Next, if it's helpful to say "below" or "above", then do it, though often just contextually linking to a section or anchor obviates that. Anyone who feels the urge to radically restructure an article by moving entire sections around has an affirmative duty to reread the article again and make sure they've not made a hash of it. But we should not use "left" or "right" in reference to content blocks, because rendering positions of such elements can change due to browser behavior, especially on mobile devices. PS: "X is a word for Y" it not almost unavoidable in articles about terminology. Various other constructions often work much better, though they may differ widely by context, e.g.: "X, in archaeology, is the principle that Y"; "X is a French loan-word that in English usage conveys Y, though literally meaning 'Z' in French"; "X is a neologism coined in 2013 by Jay Randome Bloggeur to mock the socio-political stances of Y"; and so on. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 17:22, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
Can we add this to WP:LANGVAR
This comes up all the time with association football. Can we put it in to formalize that articles written in Canadian, American, or Australian English will use "Soccer" while those in British English will use "football". I see it changed back and forth so often, so while it technically is covered through LANGVAR, having it listed as a specific example can make it cut and dry. RedPatch (talk) 17:58, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
The problem is that Wikipedia is an international encyclopaedia with an international audience. When I (Australian) think of "football" I think of Australian rules football. Australians from some other states think of rugby. Americans think of grid iron. Brits think of association football. We are all utterly convinced that our local name is the correct name and that the others are all wrong. So, calling it "football" is simply not feasible. Stepho talk21:44, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
Tense of verbs referring to current, ongoing events
Greetings, all. The Manual of Style contains this direction: "By default, write articles in the present tense, including those covering works of fiction and products or works that have been discontinued. Generally, use past tense only for past events, and for subjects that are dead or no longer meaningfully exist."
Yet, a number of biographical articles about living peopleuse the present perfect tense when referring to persons currently serving in various capacities of public life. E.g. "George has served since July 10, 2024," which, at the very least creates confusion between an ongoing situation and a past one.
I propose we move to the use of the present perfect continuous tense (also known as the present perfect progressive tense), which would result in a clear and unambiguous presentation:
Personally, I think the first option reads much better than the second. Not confusing or ambiguous in any way. Perfectly normal English. No idea if this is a WP:ENGVAR issue, but that's certainly what I'd write (I write in British English). -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:33, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
I write in American English and I agree that for the example provided, "has served" is preferable to "has been serving". Either would be acceptable, but I don't see a reason to encourage the latter, nor do I see how the former is ambiguous. If it was a past situation, would it not be, "George served from July 10, 2024 until..."? DonIago (talk) 14:01, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
What do you mean "it reads much better"? This is not about aesthetics, but about clarity. We're talking about current, ongoing events, exactly what the relevant MoS section is about. "Have [verb in past tense]" is unnecessarily ambiguous. Simple present would suffice. But since it has through some back handed way become the norm to use "has served" for people in public life, a turn that smells of puffery, as well, I'm suggesting something simple and sensible. It's a compromise between the simple present tense and the peacock. -The Gnome (talk) 16:57, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
"Has served" is not in the past tense and creates no ambiguity. Someone who has served in a position since February is unambiguously still in that position. There is no need to change "has served" to "has been serving", and parsimony weighs against it. AlsoWukai (talk) 18:28, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
I really have no idea why you think there is a lack of clarity or any puffery in "has served", which is completely normal English. Mystifying. -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:38, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
While we're talking specifically about "persons currently serving in various capacities of public life", how about dropping the whole "serving" idea entirely? It's meaningless excess:
"George has been serving as chairman of Globcorp since 2014" --> "George has been chairman of Globcorp since 2014"
"George has served as chairman" --> "George has been chairman"
Agree. I could not support more strongly the entire elimination of the verb "to serve" in all these cases, which are the ones that gave cause for this submission. "Keith Starmer is the prime minister." No deference, no confusion. -The Gnome (talk) 16:57, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
This is addressed at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#Statements likely to become outdated (MOS:CURRENT), which begins Except on pages that are inherently time-sensitive and updated regularly and has among its examples "not she is the current director but she became director on 1 January 2024". Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch#Relative time references has the example The information that "The current president, Alberto Fernández, took office in 2019", or "Alberto Fernández has been president since 2019", is better rendered "Alberto Fernández became president in 2019". Saying that George was appointed, elected, took office or merely became foo on 10 July 2024 will remain correct even when George eventually suffers termination or promotion, and works without any value-laden terms such as "serve" or "tyrannise". NebY (talk) 13:56, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
I concur also. At some point, we probably do need to directly address the "served as" language in particular, because disputation about this has been frequently recurrent for many years (i.e., it passes the WP:MOSBLOAT test). But it's something that belongs in MOS:WTW, not the main MOS page or MOS:BIO, because it's not a general editing principle, really, but a trivial matter of a particular biased and unhelpful wording choice. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 16:56, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
The Gnome, were you perhaps thinking that "present tense" in this rule meant "specifically and exclusively the simple present"? It doesn't. Any present-tense form is acceptable under this rule. That means you can – when appropriate to the content – use the simple present, present perfect, present continuous, or present perfect continuous and still be in compliance with this rule. Perhaps a more accurate rule would be "use the verb tense that accurately reflects time; do not say that 'He is born in the 19th century' or that 'He will be born in the 19th century'; also, do not say that 'Algebra was a branch of mathematics', as if that's not still true at the present time." We aren't trying to restrict brilliant prose with this rule; we're trying to get people not to use the present tense for long-dead people or the past tense for still-living ones. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:57, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
The mere fact that you are, rightfully, trying to clarify the application of the proper tense shows that interpreting the "meaning" of the term "present tense" leads to speculation. There is no endorsement of "any" present-tense form; if it were so, the definition would be different, i.e. "any present-tense form." All we have is simply "present tense," which leads to the simple present-tense.
Nonetheless, interesting proposals have been submitted above that could allow us to escape the vagueness. What do you think? -The Gnome (talk) 20:09, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
For reasons already given above by others, several of these present variants are not desirable because they lead to "and this continues to the present moment" implications which may not actually be true except in an article that is being very actively edited on a daily basis. And the WP:MOSBLOAT sniff test is not passed by verbiage like WhatamIdoing suggested; editors are not actually likely to write something like "is born in the 19th century" or "will be born in the 19th century", so we have no reason to include such example verbiage in this guideline (in fact, we have a clear rationale to exclude it). No one seems to be confused by the meaning of this section other than one editor, and other editors here have already clarified to that person what the meaning really is, so there is no actual problem to resolve. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 02:55, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
I have added wikilinks to Present tense and Past tense#English to reduce the risk of confusion about what these terms means. I agree that otherwise the text of the section doesn't need to be changed. However, maybe the examples could be extended to include a few cases of the present perfect and other non-simple tense forms? Gawaon (talk) 04:09, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
My comment is I don't see what the problem is. Use present tense the mos says, and so why the complaint when the present tense is used? Perfect simple or perfect continuous would be decided by the context, but they are both present tenses. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 05:26, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
I agree with that. My point was that the examples in MOS:TENSE use the simple present six times and the simple past four times (if I counted correctly). Other variants such as perfect or continuous/progressive forms aren't used at all. Adding a few reasonable examples of their usage wouldn't hurt. Gawaon (talk) 06:28, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
By default, write articles in the present tense applies most of all to the opening of an article, as the examples demonstrate. It doesn't mean we write the whole article in the present tense. Elsewhere we have The Ford Model Tis an automobile that was produced ..., and our BLPs are almost entirely in the past tense after the initial "<Subject> is". NebY (talk) 11:31, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
Would the participants in this discussion find worthwhile a Request for Comments on the issue? I'm thinking that the matter of the peacock verbiage, e.g. "served," which was pointed out here, is important enough to lend support to an RfC. -The Gnome (talk) 15:10, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
ArbCom quote on changes between styles
I'm inclined to agree that we shouldn't overtly cite ArbCom in-text, since policy is set by a consensus of editors and not by ArbCom; but I think that the When either of two styles is acceptable it is inappropriate for a Wikipedia editor to change from one style to another unless there is some substantial reason for the change quote reasonably expresses current consensus, so we can just move it to the voice of the MOS. I also think that a footnote about the ArbCom cases is useful for historical reasons. (Also, I forgot to mention, I added "generally" to it because I feel that the voice of the MOS should generally be less rigidly declarative than an ArbCom decision and because having it as a quote put it at a remove - just changing it to the MOS-voice without adding that would have seemed like it was being made into an absolute red-line requirement, which I don't think it was or is.) --Aquillion (talk) 20:23, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
Improvement to advice about embedded section anchors
To find out how many inlinks there are to the old section title and what articles have them, you can execute this advanced searchthis advanced search, changing article to the name of the article, and oldsection to the old section title. If there are only a small number of links to the old section title, it's better to just update them..
I recently noticed that a bunch of users have added unneeded embedded section anchors after renaming a section header, presumably because they don't know how to find out if there are any articles that link to the old section title or not, and if so, how many of them there are. Imho, embedded section anchors should only be added when necessary, as they create squirrely wikicode which may mystify other editors, or discourage them from making further changes to the section header which may be warranted. To reduce the scope of this issue, increase transparency about section inlinks, and limit the number of unneeded embedded anchors being created especially when there are no incoming links at all (a good proportion of them), I added the note. (A secondary problem, much less serious imho, is users using the problematic, unsubsted version identified at MOS:SECTIONANCHOR as resulting in undesirable behavior.)
I would appreciate additional eyeballs on this note, both the wording as well as any comments on the generic advanced search terms. I am aware that the search doesn't include everything (notably, will not find links from articles using {{slink}} to target it) or exclude (nowiki's, html comments) but I am trying to keep the input search term field simple-looking enough that a user unfamiliar with advanced search won't be afraid to try it, so it's kind of a balancing act how complex to make it. That said, if there's anything egregiously missing or wrong with it, or if it can be significantly improved without degrading usability, please do comment, or just adjust it. Adding @PrimeHunter, Sdkb, Trialpears, Qwerfjkl, Colin M, Quiddity, and Rjjiii:. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 23:13, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for adding this tip! Marginally related, is there some way to find all broken section anchors pointing to some article? I would find that extremely helpful in order to improve the integration of a page that has underdone a lot of reorganization over time so that this method of looking for broken section links by name is not practical. Gawaon (talk) 06:08, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
@Mathglot: If you go to the link and then change the terms to what you want before clicking search it finds all links to that section in articles, but if you edit the link and go to it directly, it searches in all pages. Is that fine? – 2804:F1...A9:64C1 (talk) 03:51, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
Not entirely sure I understand; are you trying to draw a distinction between searching only articles (i.e., main space) and searching all namespaces (articles, Talk pages, User pages, Wikipedia project pages and so on)? If so, we can do that by adding search term :all and perhaps we should. I've updated the search link in the explanatory note to search all namespaces, pending any objections or other comments on this aspect of it. Mathglot (talk) 04:07, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
I meant that the link included profile=all, so editing the link itself would result in searching all pages (any namespace), but going to the link and then editing the terms and clicking search would result in searching only in articles.
Anyways, now the :all is not* doing anything, try for example, searching for :all linksto:"Banana" insource:/[[|]Banana\#/ vs without the :all (but with all namespaces selected).
(edit conflict) The problem is not in the link, but in your example. If you choose an article name which has no links outside mainspace, like Banana, then the correct behavior is that there is no difference with or without the :all search term. Try an example like "Vichy France" which has some inlinks from mainspace, as well as other namespaces.
Secondly, although that will actually work correctly, even without a section name, this whole issue is part of the clarification of section § Section headings in the MOS, so really applies more to that case. For that, you can try examples like "Vichy France#Collaborationnistes". (ec) Mathglot (talk) 04:42, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for that; I must've been assuming the wrong functionality for :all; I need to look at that again. Your workaround works, but should be doable without it, assuming there is a search prefix or pseudo-term that activates that; let me check. If you know what it is, please post it. Mathglot (talk) 04:51, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
Oops, of course it is; the colon goes at the end in every search term, don't know how that happened. Will go fix that. Mathglot (talk) 04:58, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
Adding that sentence about searching redirects as well looks like an improvement to me. Even if there's a way to do that via advanced search (instead of What links here), Cirrus doesn't support alternation, so you can't have the union of two searches in one query, afaik; plus, that might get into "too complex" territory even if we could, so I think your approach is the right one, here. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 21:17, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
Working out the best cross-namespace way to do this will be good, as would including advice about it somewhere. I would suggest making this be a "Help:" page or a section at a pre-existing one, and then cross-referencing it from MoS, rather than making it part of MoS (how to search for links of various sorts is not an MoS matter in and of itself). After it is worked out, using it to fix all links to MoS and other guideline and policy sections, and then removing no-longer-needed anchor tags and anchor spans inside headings in these pages would be a boon. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 05:27, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
Maybe, but the body text in the MoS is already pretty technical: "Before changing a heading, consider whether you might be breaking existing links to it. If there are many links to the old title,[i] create an anchor with that title to ensure that these still work."
Could you spell out what would it say? I had a quick look at the discussions you linked to which were quite long. 2 had closings. They seemed to br inconclusive. DeCausa (talk) 15:43, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
That may not be as good and workable a principle as it seems. In other situations, we've had accusations that sources were selected so that their terminology would be used. In this one, we may also find that RSs on slavery/enslavement in general have shifted to a different extent than sources on specific areas and/or periods eg Ancient Greece or Rome. NebY (talk) 17:28, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
Yeah… Not sure if this is a case of “venue shopping” (the two threads were started by different people), but it is never productive to have two threads about the same issue at different venues at the same time. Suggest we close this thread and continue over at VP(p). Blueboar (talk) 12:16, 24 July 2024 (UTC)
Confusing lead images
Hello! I was recently made aware that there is a consensus within the Middle-earth WikiProject to not use lead images in certain articles unless the images were created by J.R.R. Tolkien. (Please see the character pages Gandalf, Saruman and Frodo Baggins for examples). The reason is that they do not want to give undue weight to one particular interpretation of a character that originated in literature and was therefore not depicted visually.
This (in my view) goes against the MOS guidelines to (A) "give readers visual confirmation that they've arrived at the right page" and to (B) "avoid lead images that readers would not expect to see there." (For example, I feel that the lead image on the Gandalf page violates both of these guidelines.) Additionally, the MOS states that lead images should be "technically well-produced" and that it is "common for the lead image to be representative because it provides a visual association for the topic, and allow readers to quickly assess if they have arrived at the right page." I find some of the Middle-earth articles to be problematic in relation to these guidelines as well.
I'm also wondering why the WikiProject is allowed to make this call. Other pages for literary characters that have film versions use lead images from the films, such as Harry Potter, Katniss Everdeen, and Jay Gatsby. In the case of Gandalf, a film still could be used, or one of the paintings created of him by a professional artist. It strikes me as strange that a WikiProject can dictate such an important part of article content and presentation, especially because lead images are not exclusive to Middle-earth articles.
On the narrow question of whether a Wikiproject can "make this call", a Wikiproject is a collection of editors interested in a particular topic or set of articles. They have no unique competency to "dictate" anything, but they are nonetheless appropriate places for a consensus among editors to be formed, and that consensus can be referred to support article editing. WP:Consensus can change of course, either at that Wikiproject or through a wider community process, but it is quite normal for Wikiprojects to work out some standard editing expectations among their particular article scope. CMD (talk) 08:14, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
@Wafflewombat: Without actually looking into the history here, I would imagine that at some point there was a lot of dispute, even edit-warring, concerning which image should be the lead image. Sometimes, people can't agree, and it falls to a neutral observer to assist on determining a consensus upon which all can agree - even though, for some people, such consensus won't necessarily be the desired outcome. So it may well be that a firm decision was made to permit only the Tolkein images. Naturally, some people will have objected, and may still do so, but at least we can point to a particular discussion and say "it was agreed here". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:51, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
I think many of the same considerations as in Wikipedia:Historical portraits and pictures (on ahistorical interpretations of people for whom we have no contemporary image) apply. Illustrations and portraits should not be included merely to decorate articles; they should serve an encyclopedic purpose by informing readers. When we have reason to believe that an image is vacuous, misleading, or uninformative, we should not use it. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:11, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
Using images from major interpretations of the LOTR (such as films or illustrations from official editions) doesn't seem likely to be vacuous or misleading. Restricting illustrations to only those by Tolkien himself seems to me to be grounded in a purist/proscriptivist approach, that there is only one correct interpretation of these characters, rather than neutrally describing the character as it has been portrayed. The result is that the articles linked above either have no depiction of the character or one that is not well-suited to a lead image, and the informative value of the lead suffers.
WikiProjects do good work, but this an issue that could benefit from broader discussion and consensus. I don't see anything unique about LOTR characters that would require a fundamentally different approach than any other article on a fictional character with myriad interpretations.--Trystan (talk) 18:30, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
Reconsider ellipsis ... vs … preference
Summary ( as of 16:22, 22 April 2024 (UTC))
motion to decide on ellipsis & curly quotes together -- ⛔declined by consensus .
decision on favoring … over {... — 🟨pending.
suggestion: a bot to replace ... with … should be simple even over 100k + articles
motion to keep ...(status quo):
keep ... because it is easier to type
keep because it renders more nicely
suggestion to avoid mixing styles
a motion to use a template instead (see below) and move style debate over to the template implementation
Support for … (unicode ellipsis, U+2026) is widespread now. The decision to prefer ... over …[104] was made 15-20 years ago when unicode support was nascent.[105]
Benefits of … (unicode ellipsis)
More accessible — screen readers can read "ellipsis" properly
more compact & readable. Better line breaks
renders with better fidelity using font glyph
scales better when zooming & with high-DPI devices like mobile phones
easier to parse (distinct unicode representation for character)
Eh, I'm not so sure about that. Curly quotes have drawbacks (e.g. being 'keyed', being more frequent to the degree where I would argue the extra byte substantially increases page sizes on average) that U+2026…HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS does not. Remsense诉18:36, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
I agree with Gawaon's 1st sentiment that curly quotation marks/apostrophes should be discussed in the same vein as ellipses. Both deal with the distinction of ASCII representation vs. extended character maps. I don't think that their multi-byte effect on increased page size is of any concern. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:49, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
The big BIG advantage of requiring straight quotes and period ... ellipses is that it doesn't allow yet another gratuitous style variation for gnomes to slow-war over. It looks fine, it works, it contributes to having a clean readable style instead of a fussy special-character-elaborated one. Why get rid of those advantages? —David Eppstein (talk) 06:57, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
Though I said the opposite above, I think it might indeed make most sense to limit this to the ellipsis issue for now, since it would be a relatively small change – much smaller than changing the rules for quotes and apostrophes. So if this is changed now, the quote issue could possibly be reconsidered in a year or two, then taking into account the experience with the ellipsis change.
For the ellipsis, there are two possibilities:
Allowing both ... and … as equally valid options. Very easy change, but with the disadvantage that usage in any given page could then be mixed, annoying the typographically aware. Though the visible difference between ... and … is small (much smaller than "quotes" vs. “quotes”, I'd say – in fact, in our standard font I can hardly see it), so that shouldn't matter very much. Also, to prevent "slow-warring", we could make the rule that changing ... to … is allowed, but changing in the opposite direction is not. In that way, pages would slowly evolved in the typographically correct direction.
Requiring, from now on, that … is used, and deprecating ..., just like MOS:DASH has deprecated the use of single or double hyphens instead of dashes. This would ensure that there is a single standard all pages are meant to adhere to, so totally eliminating the risk of edit warring. The disadvantage, of course, is that there are 100,000s of pages (at least) that currently don't adhere to that standard. I suppose a bot could help with that change, but it would still be a giant task to bring them in adherence.
Personally I think option 1. would be fine, while 2. daunts me a bit because of the size of the required changes. Gawaon (talk) 07:39, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
Well, option 1 wouldn't have to be "implemented", it would just be an option for editors to choose from now on. Gawaon (talk) 06:06, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
Bad idea. The point of an MoS is to be as consistent as possible. And changes would have to be implemented regardless; if you don't do anything, AWB, bots, and other automated tools will just continue changing them. InfiniteNexus (talk) 06:10, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
I have no real preference for one or the other, but I oppose the change. It wouldn't be too much work for a bot to change all of one to another. Still I see no reason to mess with what's been working. Actually, I do prefer the three dots. Anyone can type ... and the … requires a bit more effort, and … displays differently depending on the font used, so sometimes looks odd. Mixed use looks sloppy and I really want to avoid that. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 11:48, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
I'm wary of creating yet another challenge for new editors who want to do the right thing – we want to keep them. NebY (talk) 14:26, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
I would support mandating the unicode ellipsis. Adding this to the MOS wouldn't create any burden to new users – gnomes would simply bring articles into conformity over time. Graham11 (talk) 03:36, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
More likely some bot operator is going to get it into their head that this must be done immediately!!1! and make our watchlists unusable for several days while they crank through all the Wikipedia articles at a rate of several per second. How about let's don't. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:16, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
If the Unicode ellipsis is better for screenreaders, we should go for it. Just add an ellipsis option to the usual dash scripts. —Kusma (talk) 19:28, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
Is there any more reason to believe that it is better for screenreaders than to believe that it is worse for screenreaders? One could equally well write, if it is worse for screenreaders, then we should continue to eschew it. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:03, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
On a quick Google, I have found some accessibility blogs that advocate use of the ellipsis character over three dots. I have no idea how important it is in practice. —Kusma (talk) 20:19, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
There seems to be a lot of helpful , ongoing discussion here. Could I ask for a partner to help manage the discussion and determine consensus? I don't know fully how to proceed and it's an important topic to make a decision on. Tonymetz💬22:47, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
Hmm? I spoke out in favour of allowing … too, at least as alternative. I think having some kind of formal close on this wouldn't be bad. Of course, Tonymetz and we others involved in the discussion can't do it. Gawaon (talk) 05:53, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
Require semantically/typographically correct ellipsis per accessibility issues. Allow someone to type in three periods for convenience, but keep it deprecated and have semi-automated tools and bots change this as long as they are making other changes as well. Change all page and category titles as well with redirects from three dots. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯23:07, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
As a screen reader user, I've never heard of these accessibility issues ... screen readers can read three dots fine. It really doesn't need a mass change here. Graham87 (talk) 07:54, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
How mean of you. You've just taken away some gnome's purpose in life. (For those playing along at home, we've now got two Graham's Grahams in the conversation.) EEng13:59, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
Usually happens to me on Facebook. I'll correct some glaring typo in a meme-post, only to misspell or mispunctuate something in my own comment, and of course suffer a dogpile of derision! — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 17:45, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
Graham's law says that the rate of hot air escaping from a talk page discussion is inversely proportional to the square root of the weight of the arguments contained within. Hawkeye7(discuss)03:54, 12 June 2024 (UTC)}
Oppose any change - three dots is fine and easier to write. Then again, if it's not onerous to make a bot that turns every instance of ... into … after every single edit that includes ..., I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. BoldGnome (talk) 02:57, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
Notes
^
In some cases the obvious name is already taken, e.g.,
Allow either ... or …. I agree with the (minor) advantages of using the unicode character, but changing it everywhere seems like a huge waste of time and effort. We should just be agnostic about it, IMO. Nosferattus (talk) 18:14, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
The problem with "allow either" is that in some fonts they look very different from each other. Having "..." and "…" near each other looks pretty bad to me. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 20:46, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
The … glyph is virtually illegible to many of us with poor eyesight, and offers zero advantages of any kind. It's not something easily typed, it saves no space/bandwidth that we actually need saved, it will not be consitently treated in searches, and it is vastly worse for legibility. It also doesn't look consistent in all typefaces when combined with .: …. It really has nothing going for it at all. Just because the Unicode Consortium for its own internal reasons decided to create a codepoint for something doesn't make it magically the best thing for WP to use for its own purposes. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 06:26, 13 July 2024 (UTC) PS: The "more accessible" claim could be "something going for it", but if and only if there is actual proof that screen readers have some kind of problem with "..." (the three periods version). I've never encountered any evidence to suggest this, much less any to suggest that the pre-composed "…" character is superior in this regard, but that's a question for which the MOS:ACCESS regulars should be consulted. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 17:49, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
When you say "virtually illegible", you mean in monospace fonts, right? In other fonts, … and ... should (and do) mostly look fairly similar. Gawaon (talk) 07:24, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
MOS:HEAD says that sentence case should be used for section headings. But I'm never sure what to do with section headings that begin with years - should the first letter after the year be capitalised or not? e.g. should it be
The first. For this purpose, "2000" is the first word. Maybe it would help to illustrate this application of sentence case with a sentence that starts with a number (though it breaks the rule against doing so)? 24 flamingos escape.24 Flamingos escape. NebY (talk) 10:34, 31 July 2024 (UTC)
Text produced by templates
I can't figure out if the MOS applies to text produced by templates, and if so, what special provisions exist. Most templates do not produce full grammatical sentences rather abbreviated text. For example the large corpus of external link templates. Like {{IMDb name}} produces "Marlon Brando at IMDb" and not "Marlon Brando at the IMDb" which is the recommended way per MOS:INSTITUTION, and to be grammatically correct. There are 100s if not 1000s of examples like this producing abbreviated text.
I'm not currently seeking opinions, but am looking for help to find existing MOS, guidelines or discussions. -- GreenC02:18, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
I think the "full sentence" would be "Marlon Brando at IMDb.com" which is why it why it was shortened without the ".com" part. Gonnym (talk) 06:56, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
a) Neither ("MB at" or "MB at the") are full sentences, and whether they are or not has no bearing on the matter the OP raised. b) MOS:INSTITUTION doesn't require "the" before the name ("… at the Yale University"?) -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 07:31, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
Re: b): Unless it's part of the name: "The University of Calgary". Though I see that it really addresses capitalization, not grammatical articles. —DocWatson42 (talk) 08:18, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
The general point, however, that templates should be configured to generate output that conforms with the MoS is an entirely sound one. MapReader (talk) 16:23, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
Of course templates should conform to the MOS. This is the first I've ever heard of somebody suggesting that they not conform. That probably explains why, at least AFAIK, nowhere do we have some explicit statement that "this all applies to template output, too". It's simply generally assumed that it's the case, so there's nothing to cite for you.
I don't see what's so grammatically correct about "Marlon Brando at the IMDb"; I think most people wouldnt talk or write that way. If you are trying to say that the "the" is required because it's the Internet Movie Database, then maybe, maybe if it were written out like that, a preceding "the" might be cool. But surely few people call IMDb by the original, long name. Otherwise we'd have to talk about "the NASA launching another rocket". — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits)20:55, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
Yes, the use of "the" depends on common usage. People say "the BBC" but they don't say "the NASA", even though both "the British Broadcasting Corporation" and "the National Aeronautics and Space Administration" use "the" when written in full. So just "at IMDb" is fine because no one (I think?) says "the IMDb". Popcornfud (talk) 22:07, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
It can be confusing whether or not to use the definite article before acronyms. Sometimes it's very subtle: when writing about railway companies in the UK, pre-1948 railway acronyms usually take the definite article, post-1948 railway acronyms don't. So we might have "the GWR", which refers to the Great Western Railway of 1835-1947, and "GWR" which refers to Great Western Railway (train operating company), created in 1996 but which only adoped that name in 2015. Similarly, there are "the LNER" of 1923-1947, and "LNER" of 2018 on. I don't think that we can (or should) write a one-size-fits-all rule. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:23, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
Yep, like I said, common usage. Why is it "the White House" but just "Bush House"? Why is it "the Eiffel Tower" but just "Tokyo Tower"? No reason, no logic, just common usage. Popcornfud (talk) 23:47, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
I'll leave it to the experts to give the definitive answer but it is important to know whether the article is about "I voted" (in which case "(sticker)" would be a disambiguator that may be redundant unless there are other "I voted" articles) -or- about the sticker (in which case, the "I voted" is an adjectival phrase and the word "sticker" should not be in parentheses). 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 09:53, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
The article is about the sticker, but the title should match the (correct) usage found in the first sentence: It's an "I Voted" sticker. "I Voted Sticker" should then redirect to that. Largoplazo (talk) 16:18, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
MOS:SEMICOLON
According to the semicolon article, the semicolon is one of the least understood punctuation marks, and is not frequently used. Therefore, I'm of the opinion that semicolons should be used sparingly, and only when an alternative sentence structure is clumsy. Should MOS:SEMICOLON be updated to give this advice?
In addition, on any introduction pages to Wikipedia, such as Help:Introduction_to_Wikipedia and Wikipedia:Five_pillars, I think that the semicolons should be removed in order to make the pages more accessible to potential new editors. I've already updated those pages, one of which has been reverted so far.
I thought I'd ask for opinions and guidance here before making any more changes.
We should not encourage such use of comma splices (thanks for the diffs, Johnuniq), whether by setting such a poor example or by amending MOS:SEMICOLON. As the current Fowler's says, the semicolon is extremely useful, though it is the punctuation mark "least in evidence to anyone riffling through the pages of a modern novel." NebY (talk) 10:58, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
Admittedly I'm a priori certain that this is not a good idea. That said, I think the flaw in your specific argument here. Assuming it's true: just because many people do not generally demonstrate a working understanding of the semicolon when writing, does not mean they are confused by it when reading, or even that it is not helpful to them when reading.
What's more: new editors do literally everything wrong—frankly, if for one reason or another a semicolon encounter scares someone off, then I'm certain that in its absence another hangup would take its place. Writing is never going to be easy, and many norms are as they are for very good reasons after centuries of iteration. Remsense ‥ 诉11:14, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
There may be a minor ENGVAR-ish dynamic going on here. I have the impression that British teachers, or perhaps even more particularly English-as-a-second-language teachers in Continental Europe, have this prejudice against semicolons, but it is not widespread in the States.
To be sure, it's possible to overuse semicolons. When you first learn about them you want to put them everywhere. It gets to be a bit of a lazy habit, almost a rhythm of writing to put sentences in pairs and connect them with semicolons, irrespective of whether the two ideas being joined are really closely related.
But the fact that they can be misused is not a reason to avoid using them when they are helpful, and I don't think they cause readers any trouble worth consideration at all. --Trovatore (talk) 23:02, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
No, don’t do any further such edits. Punctuation use should be correct, for sure, but you don’t edit articles simply because of personal preference for or avoidance of certain forms of punctuation. MapReader (talk) 04:32, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
Biographical entries
I have long wondered why any entry of a biographical nature manages to list the dates of service or position in government in a particular order. Personally, especially for deceased persons, I would prefer to have the dates of life itself at the top of the order, instead of any honorific or notable achievement which may or may not reflect the most notable of many possibilities. I think this is also supportive of first valuing others as human beings and necessarily descriptive of any subset of time in which a position is held. Maybe this is not the place to raise the question, and I have no idea if this is already discussed in some other style guide that mandates the current practice. But I am amenable to follow the topic wherever it is listed. Wikipedia has become a very valued resource for me who grew up spending hours upon hours as a child reading printed Encyclopedias done by World Book or Encyclopedia Britannica. 65.129.144.172 (talk) 04:48, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
I think you are talking about listings in the infobox? So for example, at Winston Churchill, his infobox lists his political details (as prime minister), then his personal details, then his military service.
If that’s what you mean, the more appropriate forum is probably Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Infoboxes, to discuss infobox layout in general, but it may also be that for the specific type of bios you’re talking about, most decisions have been made at Template:Infobox officeholder, where you could ask about that specific infobox on the talk page (Template talk:Infobox officeholder). I would imagine that editors of that infobox believe the political info will be more pressing for readers than the personal info, but you would have to dig through the archives to see whether that decision has even been discussed explicitly.
I will say that I don’t know the answer to any of these questions, but I have found that the layout of politicians’ infoboxes are often more complex than they need to be, and less helpful than they could be—mostly as a consequence of trying to include too much, relative to other biographies. — HTGS (talk)05:54, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
We and first-person pronouns
While first-person pronouns are considered poor writing for an encyclopedia, MOS:WE currently allows exceptions for the figurative we in history and science articles. A brief search in this page's archives didn't turn up any recent discussions on this, so I'd like to see whether it's still supported by the community. I believe this is outdated now that Wikipedia's voice has developed and it's not good practice for writing in an encyclopedic tone, even if it's often used in this fashion in primary and secondary sources. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 00:24, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
I would only keep we in a quote if I were quoting a full statement; otherwise, a we statement can otherwise be summarized or quoted in part and changing we to they. voorts (talk/contributions) 01:45, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
Using the portion of a quote with "we" in it is going to be essential to the meaning in some cases, clearly inappropriate in some others and somewhere between the two in the majority. Thryduulf (talk) 03:27, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
I think that there's a difference between "encyclopedic" and "stiff", and insistence on stiffness does not suit the project. "We now know that Venus is a planet" is fine, and more comfortable than "It is now known that Venus is a planet." -- Nat Gertler (talk) 01:01, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
I don't have a violent objection to We now know that Venus is a planet, but between that and Venus is now known to be a planet, I'd probably pick the latter. I don't think it's stiff, just slightly less chatty, and chatty is kind of bad for an encyclopedia. --Trovatore (talk) 01:37, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
The construction We used to believe X, but now we know Y is vague and informal. Our goal is to summarize what reliable sources say, not dissertate in asides to the reader. To use your Venus example, an article should instead say: The scientist Carl Sagan discovered that Venus is a planet in 2040.voorts (talk/contributions) 01:43, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
I find the we constructions to be stiff-sounding. Maybe I'm associating it with the "Royal We". Also, not to get hung up on an example, but presumably the first sentence of the article would be "Venus is a planet..." so there wouldn't be a need to craft the big surprise part way through. Primergrey (talk) 01:47, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
I'm certainly not expecting this to be in the lede of the entry on Venus; more along the lines of "While we now know that Venus is a planet, in Shakespeare's day it was commonly assumed to be a star, and thus his references to..." -- Nat Gertler (talk) 04:15, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
The opening clause is extraneous and this can be rephrased more formally: Shakespeare, like his contemporaries, believed Venus was a star, and thus he referred to ...
To my reading, "we" is common and suitably formal in mathematics articles. I see it in a lot of FA-class articles, but I don't have a sense of new vs. old work. I'm a non-expert, but I would suggest consulting the WikiProject before moving ahead with a broad change. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 02:58, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
That's not how I'd interpret the guidance, which reads "While opinions vary on the most edifying style, authors should generally strike a balance between bare lists of facts and formulae, and relying too much on addressing the reader directly and referring to "we".Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 03:46, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
You beat me to it. I don't think anything more prescriptive than a recommendation should be adopted in general either. It just isn't possible to cover all the circumstances which may arise. Zerotalk03:49, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
Was your use of first-person plural intentional, or merely an example of how this grammatical form is so natural that one doesn't even notice when one is using it?
I don't see a strong reason for discouraging it, but as doing so has been adopted for years as a house style within Wikipedia (including in mathematics articles as discussed above) I also don't see a strong reason for lifting that discouragement. I don't think it should be forbidden. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:46, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
I'm not particularly fond of the Venus construction given earlier, but completely prohibiting such things would be counterproductive IMO. At the end of the day it's rare in enwp and doesn't hurt anyone, and as Firefangledfeathers points out mathematicians are accustomed to such verbiage. ― novov(tc)10:40, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
"We now know" begs questions – who are "we" – and isn't in our usual Wikivoice. I'd rather we described it as acceptable but best avoided in scientific writing, rather than simply acceptable. But yes, we have worse: Afterwards, we pass a car retail company and a petrol station on our left, with some allotments and Market Harborough cemetery on our right. ... We also now have to say goodbye to Kelmarsh, and hello to Maidwell... (A508 road). NebY (talk) 11:38, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
Although there are not many cases where it's useful, I don't know if it's really worth explicitly forbidding it, as it's already quite rare and most unjustified uses of it already fall under another interdiction (e.g. We know Venus is a planet is as much a WEASEL as Some have said that Venus is a planet.) — Alien333 (what I did & why I did it wrong) 14:19, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
strongly discouraged may be enough. But to achieve a FA rating first person should be removed, otherwise it is a style fail. Certainly for science articles, where I mostly work on, "we" or "our" or "us" is inappropriate. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:15, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
As far as I can tell, there's broad interest in such a change. Is it time to create the RfC proposing the removal of But some of these words are acceptable in certain figurative uses. and the corresponding examples from the MoS? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:59, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
As David Eppstein said above, the status quo (it's discouraged but not altogether forbidden) seems fine enough. I too see no good reason to forbid it altogether, so I don't think an RfC is called for. Gawaon (talk) 04:54, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
I think the proposal is to make it discouraged across the board, rather than accepted (but not encouraged) in a couple of areas and discouraged everywhere else. I would support such a change. Thryduulf (talk) 11:07, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
Hi, can't remember where the guidance is re page ranges (eg pp. 192–198 v pp. 192–98) and year ranges (eg 1972–1978 v 1972–78). Thank you Cinderella157 (talk) 23:32, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
OK, I boldly changed the unsupported assertion that "it is often preferable to place images of people so that they 'look' towards the text", to an acknowledgement that some people do prefer this, but the more important part of the bullet point is that you shouldn't reverse images to achieve this.
Mandruss reverted me, so let's talk about it.
Why is it "often preferable"? Frankly I think this is just a superstition, or an aesthetic preference that some people do have but which has no actual value for the encyclopedia, beyond not triggering a reaction in the people that have that preference.
Of course a lot of things come down to aesthetic preferences, so if enough people really do have it, then that is an answer in itself. The eye, one might say, wants what it wants. But do enough eyes really want this to justify this (in my opinion irrational) guidance? --Trovatore (talk) 05:56, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
It's because the gaze of the reader will track the gaze in the portrait. So, readers are directed into the text by the faces looking inward. DrKay (talk) 07:06, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
I mean, I understand the theory. I just think it's nonsense. I can recognize a face whichever way it's pointing, and read the text just fine. --Trovatore (talk) 07:10, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
A majority of the community either supports the concept or it doesn't. As I understand it, guidelines are for keeping us all on the same page, all moving in a common direction. Not for accommodating the personal preferences of all editors or even all significant subsets of editors—on relatively inconsequential issues. I think we do too much of that. When a guideline has been watered down to the point of complete impotence, it's time to retire it per CREEP.This was the very meta reason for my revert. While I don't have a strong opinion on this specific issue, it does seem to "feel" better to me when the image subject faces the text. I can't really explain why; it could be because I've lived with this guideline for ten years and it has become imbedded in my DNA; I don't know. If you think the guideline is nonsense, it seems to me the proper action is to seek community consensus to remove it. Or boldly remove it, for that matter, but I doubt that would be accepted. ―Mandruss☎07:34, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
Well, the default position of the MoS on any given issue should be no position. I like the way EEng put it, something like "if the MoS does not need a rule, then the MoS needs to not have a rule" -- I forget the exact wording. Articles do not all have to be the same.
So why do we need a rule on this?
I do agree that, whatever the outcome, we should keep the guidance about not reversing pictures, as that is actively misleading. But we could do that by itself, something straightforward like "do not reverse pictures of persons just to make them 'look' towards the text". --Trovatore (talk) 07:41, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
Articles do not all have to be the same. I would agree with that, but the raison d'être of any style manual is consistency, and any deviation needs to have a better reason than somebody's personal preference. The encyclopedia is more important than any individual's sensitivities—we're not here to please editors—but for some reason we seem to disregard that because people aren't being paid, as if there would be a mass exodus if editors were asked to be team players (there would not). I just smh. ―Mandruss☎08:05, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
To be frank I don't value "consistency" as highly as some do in this context. Would it really detract from Wikipedia to have some photos facing one way and some facing another? I don't think so.
Since 2007[106], portraits looking to the centre has been part of Wikipedia's house style. Even if it's merely an arbitrary aesthetic choice, it's served in that and in quelling potential disputes. There's no point in weakening it with a "some prefer (but do as you please)" explanation. In 2008 we briefly had because the reader's eye will tend to follow their direction[107] but after some to-and-fro that was dropped in favour of the simple It is often preferable to place images of faces so that the face or eyes look toward the text.[108] Justifications in the MOS are often more trouble than they're worth, so if "it is often preferable" is being read as one, it might be better to phrase it as more of an injunction (to normally/generally place etc) than an observation. Has that been an issue since 2008? NebY (talk) 11:43, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
"[I]t's served in that and in quelling potential disputes". What's "that"? Being an arbitrary aesthetic choice? Are arbitrary aesthetic choices good? Really?
Sure - aesthetic choices are all around, from the choice of newspaper fonts to brick colours to logo design, and consistency in their application matters.
EEng's common and sensible response when someone seeks a MOS change is to ask where the status quo is resulting in a problem in our articles or their editing. What problems is this longstanding MOS guidance causing? NebY (talk) 16:40, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
EEng's formulation is not about the status quo; it's about whether we need a rule. If there's no active justification for a rule, that rule should be removed.
My feeling is that you should ordinarily not reverse photos, and you should put them wherever they look best, not artificially put them in a different place just because of this arbitrary shibboleth. --Trovatore (talk) 16:54, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
If you're concerned that people may be reversing photos to make them fit this style guide direction, the MOS does say Do not achieve this by reversing the image.Belbury (talk) 17:44, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
The whole point of manuals of style is to make a decision once about a design style matter, so even if the decision is arbitrary, editors don't have to spend any time on it again. This lets them focus on content. Now it's certainly possible that this specific design choice ought to be revisited in our current world with a large range of viewing widths. Readers might be better served by placing all images on the right, for example, when there is sufficient available viewing space, and centred when there is not, in order to better support flexible layout design that is responsive to the viewing width. isaacl (talk) 17:26, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
In fact, I'd go one step farther than @Isaacl and say that the entire purpose of a style manual is to codify especially the arbitrary stylistic choices that go into collaboratively producing something.
There are plenty of design, editorial, artistic, literary, etc. questions which come down to there being N pretty-much-equally valid options, and you can either pick one/some for the sake of consistency, or decide not to decide and just let anarchy reign. When you pick a lane, that decision goes into the style manual. The other times don't, because it's not helpful to dictate a non-choice as a point of style — which I think is the real crux of @EEng's point about the necessity of non-rules.
The Manual of Style is meant to dictate the choices made for editors, not to legislate the areas where they have the freedom to choose for themselves. There's room for that sort of discussion, and for its documentation, but it shouldn't be cluttering up the MoS. FeRDNYC (talk) 13:34, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
If the entire purpose of our style manual were to codify arbitrary stylistic choices, we would have a much simpler guide for citations, and probably a more complete guide for colours and other arbitrary details. — HTGS (talk)20:01, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
TLDR but this has been discussed many times, and the policy upheld. This is a basic principle of picture placement, which we should follow (and generally have done, for 20+ years). Johnbod (talk) 14:41, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
For what it’s worth, I don’t have strong opinions on whether portraits should face text, but if we do collectively believe that, then we should probably use the word “should”. That would probably resolve Trovatore’s (and my) issue with “it is preferable”. — HTGS (talk)20:02, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
We need an MOS for policies and guidelines. Something along the lines of use must or should, as appropriate, but otherwise don't worry about constantly softening guidance, as WP:IAR exceptions are always presumed to be possible. —Bagumba (talk) 03:50, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
I agree that this guideline, MOS:IM and MOS:PORTRAIT, has been in place for every long time and is widely followed (and, IMO, it's substantially sound). Discussions about language, 'often preferable" vs. 'should', approaches "how many angels" territory – a waste of time. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:40, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
The distinction is whether the MOS actually recommends the first part, or whether it’s saying the first part is just a thing people do, because the MOS has a stance on the second part. If we only care to guide editors on the second, then we may as well remove the first. If we actually care that editors do the first, then we should say so. I don’t care if it’s “Images of people should "look" toward the text” or “Under normal conditions, where other concerns are not raised, images of people should be placed so that they "look" toward the text”, but the current wording sounds like: “Some people like peanut butter; those people who like peanut butter must use the knife that’s designated for peanut butter.” — HTGS (talk)05:31, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
I just disagree that this is preferable. I think it's nonsense. But I have to concede that I haven't seen a lot of people jumping in to agree with me, so not worth pursuing at this time. --Trovatore (talk) 20:33, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
I think "some editors prefer" is weasel-ly, especially since "some editors" doesn't mean much usually. In this case, what is meant is that some editors have a sense of aesthetics and a feel for article layout and others have none. We do however have a guideline of not reversing images just so they face the right way. (A common practice in some newspapers and magazines.) Hawkeye7(discuss)08:48, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
What do you think about removing it? That can be done in the same way as we do on Vector currently (phab:T265947 if you want to review that affair, but please stick to read-only). It would look something like this at the same resolution (my apologies for any back and forthing you may do where you are irritated by where the borders of the images are drawn, since I am imperfect in taking screenshots).
Just looking at the differences in the two screenshots there, and knowing that the needs of blockquoting were originally written for works not intended to be presented on mobile resolutions, I'd say the bar might be necessary/desirable at small resolutions. We might feasibly be able to come up with some other solution, but I don't find that there's enough padding in the current styles to support a good look at a blockquote as a blockquote rather than as Just Another Paragraph in the story we're writing (rather than the story that someone else wrote). And adding more padding might be infeasible lest we be unable to fit any words in the quote on the page. ;) (That said, we set things up a long time ago for a bit more padding and now the desktop skin styles are overriding that unintentionally to be smaller than what we added, so that might also need adjustment.)
The bar has also been there for a very long time. So our users aren't surprised by it these days. (They probably can't meaningfully distinguish a quotation and a pull quotation anyway.)
There are other stylistic differences besides the left bar which may influence the question (particularly, the different fonts selected, but also the slightly increased font size), so you can bring those up, but that's not the most pertinent question.
I can noodle with some other resolutions if we want to see if there's any point where we're happy with the horizontal visual separation of blockquotes from at least paragraphs, but just wanted to get that out there. Above images were taken around 380px width which is absurdly small for most smart phones these days, but we're catering not solely to smart phone users.
(I know that this all sounds fairly positive a review of the bar, but I want to give it a fair shake moreso than a desire to keep it.) Izno (talk) 04:03, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
On Vector, we quickly reversed their addition. But they've been in mobile practically since the mobile website was rolled out, where I think there's sufficient room for debate about their use. Izno (talk) 22:22, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
Never link part of a word, link the whole thing, including the possessive suffix. In fact, as I can tell from your examples that you've noticed, if you use the wikicode [[Batman]]s you'll get Batmans, and if you use [[Batman]]esque you'll get Batmanesque, precisely because linking a partial word wasn't wanted. (Though that technical trick doesn't work for apostrophe-s, but the style rule still applies.) Largoplazo (talk) 12:04, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
@Largoplazo, the apostrophe case is why I'm asking. The technical part of it could be fixed, but I want to make sure that's the right way to go. I've noticed the Batman's example at Help:Wikilinks, where 's is not wikilinked, though it says "This does the right thing for possessive". So what's the right thing? Ponor (talk) 12:12, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
Help:Wikilinks may be wrong. I believe it's wrong. Maybe [[Batman]]'s did produce Batman's when the help page was written. WP:MOS should tell us what's wrong or right, and whether it matters. Ponor (talk) 13:37, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
This is a result of a really really old WM bug. Probably 20+years old. But it only affects editors and readers, so … All the best: RichFarmbrough20:39, 9 September 2024 (UTC).
Planning to initiate another RFC in a few weeks to challenge a 2018 RFC initiated without adequate notice
I just noticed this edit by User:Nikkimaria on 8 October 2023, which linked to a 2018 RFC I had never heard of.
Then I traced the talk page archive for this article and saw why: because User:SMcCandlish initiated a RFC on the village pump on 6 July 2018 and then linked to it on this talk page from a subheader under an earlier heading initiated by User:Netoholic. As User:Netoholic correctly pointed out at the time, this was highly improper. User:Netoholic had merely proposed planning for a RfC, not initiating one immediately.
Even worse, the subheading was worded in a cryptic fashion, "RfC opened at WP:VPPOL". Because this talk page gets so much traffic, it would have been very difficult for WP editors who do not read through every post to this talk page on a daily basis to immediately recognize the importance of what that subheading meant.
It would have been much more fair to all interested editors to give notice of the 2018 RfC under a new heading that clearly and expressly advised that User:SMcCandlish was trying to alter the community consensus on such a hot-button issue, such as "Request for Comment opened on U.S./US debate at village pump". But from the circumstances under which it was initiated, I suspect that developing a true community consensus was not the purpose of the 2018 RfC.
I have reviewed the archived discussion from July 2018. I fully concur with User:Pyxis Solitary's accurate analysis of the situation in response to User:SMcCandlish: "You are trying to push your position down everyone's throat".
As I have argued elsewhere, the Chicago Manual of Style's adoption of the irritating British English tendency to drop periods in abbreviations makes zero sense as a matter of style or policy (which is why other American style guides continue to resist it). I have long suspected that the sloppy tendency of British writers to drop periods arose from the UK's egregious mismanagement of primary and secondary education, perhaps because it wasted too much money on idiotic things like nationalizing healthcare and railways. So there weren't enough resources to go around to adequately train and hire enough teachers to teach British children how to punctuate properly.
California is full of British expats fleeing their nation's decaying educational system in search of greener pastures. American parents are happy to pay a premium to put their kids through college prep schools where they can read Chaucer with a Cambridge alum (as I did as an adolescent).
The RfC discussion is full of dubious statements such as, "half the people I argue with have the style guide". No, they don't. Most people own, learn, and use the style guides appropriate to their occupational fields.
There are over 1.33 million lawyers in the United States. They are drilled in law school on the Bluebook or the ALWD Guide to Legal Citation, which both adhere to the traditional American preference for U.S. over US. As far as I am aware, only three states omit periods in abbreviations in their state court citation styles: Michigan, New York, and Oregon. The rest of the states, the territories, and the federal courts consider those three states to have gone insane on that issue.
The vast majority of American lawyers continue to use U.S. in their personal and professional writing and expect others who work for or with them to do the same. In turn, U.S. continues to be used extensively in American English, because of how lawyers tend to dominate the management ranks of government agencies and also some corporations.
None of these points were raised in the 2018 RfC. I would have definitely raised them immediately, if I had known of the RfC at the time.
In the next two months, I plan to visit a public library to consult a variety of style guides to assess the current style situation in other fields, then initiate an RFC to switch MOS:US back to the pre-2017 version. --Coolcaesar (talk) 17:14, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
To compare major English-language legal style guides: Bluebook uses full stops for every abbrev. term and acronym, including looong ones, as a matter of style. By contrast, the UK's OSCOLA uses no stops for any abbrev or acronyms (and uses commas instead of stops to separate elements of citations). Open-access legal style guides in the US (which see more acceptance now) will either copy an old version of BlueBook (The Indigo Book) or emulate their university publisher style (Maroonbook). For the rest of the Anglosphere (except Canada iirc), it either looks very much like OSCOLA (e.g. AGLC) or a hybrid with some mix of stops.
Fwiw, I learned "U.S." in my school newspaper's MOS because we voted every 2 years on a what newspaper's MOS to use. (A now-ancient version of AP, which has the similar inconsistencies of "U.S. and UK"; the sole reason is "US" looks like the uppercase word "us".) Bluebook and OSCOLA by contrast aim largely for consistency with stops: yes vs no. But note that nobody outside of the respective legal communities uses either style, even though they have extensive style guides for general citations and prose. By contrast, AP, NYT, Chicago, Harvard, MLA, APA, etc all see wide general adoption in the US -- whether by inertia or no, general audience publishers continue to use it or adopt house variants based closely around it. SamuelRiv (talk) 17:41, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
My tldr is that for the millions of lawyers in the U.S. who put stops on everything, there's an equal (or greater?) millions of lawyers in the Commonwealth who put stops on nothing. I sympathize with feeling blindsided by the RfC, but if having ignored the BlueBook is your primary argument, then I can't see how it's not neutralized. SamuelRiv (talk) 17:46, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
I was tempted to quit reading this rambling wall of text at the point where you tied punctuation to health-care policy and railways; but I soldiered on! Then when you said that some US (or U.S.) states judge other states' sanity based on period non-usage, I again was tempted to quit. But I read on to the end. Final analysis: I should have never started, since there's little more here than your personal musings. EEng18:15, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
Why we should focus so much on lawyers? "Law" appears not at all nor "legal" more than three or four times in the RFC, so I know it isn't a reprise of a major subject from that debate. English legal writings today remain full of fossilized languages that goes back pratically to the French. UK barristers even still wear wigs in court. Not the best role models for us in matters of style, in my opinion. Largoplazo (talk) 23:02, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
Some soldiers, yesterday, expressing their opinion about the suggestion that they update their uniforms Barristers wigs are really a kind of hat. You wouldn't expect a soldier, police officer or McDonalds crew to work bareheaded. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:19, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
Yes, but if for some reason anyone proposed that any of those people start wearing wigs, the withering response would be, "Huh? Come join us in the 21st century, please." Which is kind of the point here. EEng23:52, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
Those all serve practical purposes. A McDonald's crew member's hat keeps hair out of other people's food. A soldier's helmet protects from head trauma. Even a policeman's cap provides a visor to shade the eyes. And I do often see police officers without any headgear. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 15:18, 9 September 2024 (UTC)
But many of these people's uniforms are updated every so often. No soldiers or police officers are dressed like their 1900 counterparts. Not sure how often McDonalds updates its outfits but in that case the headwear is designed to keep their hair out of the food. I'm not seeing what purpose a hat on a barrister serves other than to make them a target for mockery. (Which I suppose some might think they deserve.) Largoplazo (talk) 16:41, 9 September 2024 (UTC)
Have you been hiding under a rock? For over five years I have seen article after article making sure we use US over USA or U.S. and this is just now being contested? Sports articles have been complying on a slow but steady basis. Not sure why we would want to change back even though the original RfC was shady. Fyunck(click) (talk) 22:37, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
Indeed. Skipping over the OP’s obvious expertise in winning friends and influencing people, McCandlish et al are right that the tide of change is slowly moving towards not punctuating acronyms. You don’t see such horrors as ‘U.N.E.S.C.O.’ very often nowadays. CNN is an example of a widely-read media source - both within the US and beyond - that now doesn’t use punctuation even for shorter acronyms like ‘US’. But we should note that the current consensus doesn’t outlaw or deprecate ‘U.S.’, but simply requires consistent non-punctuation when there are always-unpunctuated acronyms, like UK or EU, in the same article. Which seems very sensible to me. MapReader (talk) 23:22, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
Circa 1900 "educated" meant knowing the classics (Chaucer, Shakespeare, Homer, etc) and fluent in Latin. Knowledge of engineering, science, etc counted for nothing. So most engineering projects were headed by somebody who knew no engineering but could quote Chaucer. Stepho talk05:52, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
Citation needed! IIRC, Victorian engineering - manufacturing, power generation, chemical, construction; railways, ships, armaments, consumer goods - was still being carried out by people who knew more than a bit about engineering, but Chaucer was rarely studied in UK universities circa 1900, when e.g. Oxford had only recently (and against much resistance) established a faculty of English literature. NebY (talk) 08:58, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
Something about Britishdepravity and the price of private education and healthcare in the US and adolescence? I'm too worried about a lawyer making threats like In the next two months, I plan to visit a public library. NebY (talk) 09:26, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
I just noticed this edit by User:Nikkimaria on 8 October 2023, which linked to a 2018 RFC I had never heard of. ...So, if you're trying to sell us on why this is an emergent crisis requiring swift and decisive action, you're really whiffing it. Explain again how this 11-month-old action, based on a 6-year-old decision by the WP:CABAL, was the product of a deliberate conspiracy to sneak in rushed changes without having to obtain your personal seal of approval? FeRDNYC (talk) 11:09, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
Not sure why about 80% of the OP is devoted to personally bashing me. Some people seem to have too much time on their hands and a bad habit of personalizing style disputes. Instead of blathering on and on about "intent" to open an RfC, just open an RfC. Sheesh.<To get to the meat of the matter, WP style (per MOS:ABBR) is to not use dots in initialisms or acronyms.
We've been tolerating a sometimes-exception of "U.S." because of rather widespread use of it, but the only reason it has that use is that it looks like the word "us" in an ALL-CAPS HEADLINE. Wikipedia never uses those, so there is no real rationale for making a MOS:ABBR exception to avoid "US", which is increasingly common in external source material as well, since fewer and fewer publishers use all-caps headlines and headings. There's sometime an strange assumption that "U.S." is somehow "required" for references to the US government, but this clearly isn't reality; e.g. the US Air Force's official abbreviation is "USAF" not "U.S.A.F." But WP really doesn't care about "officialness" of spellings anyway.
PS: This has nothing of any kind to do with British (and broader Commonwealth) English style of dropping the stops/periods from contraction abbreviations (those that begin and end with the same letters as the full word: Dr, St, Bt or Bart); the major British style guides, that are not house-style of particular news publishers, continue to recommend dots for truncation abbreviations: Prof., Fr., etc.; none of the recommend retaining dots in acronyms and initialisms. The pretense that "U.S." is an "American English" spelling is a silly red herring distraction. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 05:26, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
Minor: worth noting regional differences between em dash/en dash for parenthesis?
I note that the article says the unspaced em dash and spaced en dash can both be used for parenthesis but to keep it consistent within an article.
Is it also worth noting that the former is associated more with American English conversations and the second more with British English conventions?
That may help determine which to use in an article, if an article already uses one form of English over the other. I'm pretty sure I've seen that difference pointed out in an article on here before, though I can't seem to find it at present (from an admittedly brief search). Lewisguile (talk) 08:36, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
Well that article says it's generally the convention but exceptions exist. Then it quotes the Oxford Style Guide, which is already flagged sometimes as "Oxford English" on articles here, because of its known deviations from other "British English" conventions (e.g., "-ize"). That, to me, supports a statement such as "generally, US English uses this but UK English uses that".
At present, the article just suggests it's entirely down to preference, which is more noncommittal that it needs to be and, crucially, may not be very helpful if someone's looking for a quick answer to guide them.
On the other hand, Fowler's Modern English Usage (which I believe remains the main BrEng guide for the general market) describes the principal uses of the em dash as "a single dash used to introduce an explanation or expansion" and "a pair of dashes used to indicate asides and parentheses". It does not stipulate whether it should be spaced or not, but the examples it gives are unspaced. I'm quoting the fourth edition, but it's in line with the first (1926) and all since; the third and fourth say that they are summarising the New Hart's Rules.
But not only would it be untrue to distinguish the unspaced em dash as American, it would introduce yet another source of correction, revert and dissent among editors, offering even the opportunity to argue about which ENGVAR should be RETAINed if spelling doesn't "match" punctuation. Let's not. NebY (talk) 12:44, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
If that's your response, then you still aren't getting it. The article contains a list of books—a bibliography—and not a list of bibliographies. Largoplazo (talk) 16:08, 13 September 2024 (UTC)
Confusing… I would have expected an article with this title to be a list of works BY Grant… not a list of works ABOUT Grant. Blueboar (talk) 12:45, 13 September 2024 (UTC)
Following a confusing pattern just adds to the confusion. Perhaps ALL of these “bibliography of” articles need to be renamed. Blueboar (talk) 18:20, 13 September 2024 (UTC)
The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
There is consensus that ‘serve’, ‘served as’, etc. is acceptable in many contexts without concern for neutrality, and while in other contexts it may be bad writing or poor phrasing, these questions are superseded by the overwhelming consensus that the MOS should not have a rule on this language. — HTGS (talk)03:35, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
In many articles about living persons, and particularly about persons in positions of authority, e.g. member of parliament, corporation CEO, city councilor, etc, the lead paragraph often uses the verb "to serve" in denoting the person's work." E.g. "Ms Smith serves/has been serving/has served as member of the XYZ Board of Directors." In this related discussion, the issue was raised about the potential for meaningless excess in that term's use. (Here's a useful essay on that.) This, of course, applies to biographies about persons no longer living.
Comments are invited on the following options:
A Use any simple form of "to be," e.g. "Smith is Acme Ltd auditor."
B Continue to use "serve" in biographies, e.g. "Smith serves as Acme Ltd auditor."
I would go with B, which does continue to reflect both formal proper, and common, usage, particularly in fields like politics and public office. But both forms are of course perfectly correct and acceptable. MapReader (talk) 19:56, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
Neither. This is not something that needs a broad rule. Either form is acceptable, as are other options. My most common experience is that people use "serve" to capitalize a title while complying with MOS:JOBTITLE, going for "served as President of Aybeeceedia" instead of "was the president of Aybeeceedia", which seems like a silly workaround but whatever. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 22:51, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
A is/was reflects everyday speech. To my ears 'served as' always sounds either pompous or somewhat euphemismistic, he "served as President of Aybeeceedia", but wasn't really 'up to scratch'!Pincrete (talk) 07:00, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Neither per FFF, the euphemism angle is understandable in some cases but this also seems within the bounds of quite common language variation. CMD (talk) 07:12, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Neither – is should be fine most of the time, but synonyms are not forbidden, and the occasional usage of serve, even if maybe a bit pompous and not strictly needed, does no harm. Gawaon (talk) 07:20, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
A is preferable in almost all cases; "serve" is appropriate for military personnel and the like (and also for waiters and tennis players!), but is empty WP:PEACOCKery in other cases. Better to stick to plain English (but hoping this is not something we're going to embody or enforce in yet another MOS rule). Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 08:16, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Neither - both are acceptable. Also, it isn’t a dualistic choice… consider that there are other verbs besides “served” and “was” that might be appropriate. Don’t be formulaic when writing. Blueboar (talk) 12:18, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
A since any variant of "serve" denotes a positive attribute, which goes against WP:NPOV. It's not a neutral verb no matter how many clothes we try to dress it with. The opening paragraph of WP:WTW is explicit: "Certain expressions should be used with caution because they may introduce bias. Strive to eliminate expressions that are flattering, vague, or endorsing of a particular viewpoint." -The Gnome (talk) 14:14, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
It's not positive or negative. Adolf Hitler served as Führer of the Third Reich! Reinhard Heydrich served in the SS. It's completely neutral. I'm mystified as to why anyone should think it was not NPOV. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:44, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Neither because we don't need any more WP:CREEPY rules. He served as president, he was the president, he held the position of president, he worked as president, he became president, he was elected/appointed as president, he took office as president... Any of these will do under most situations. The idea of Public service being a form of service (as in servants, as in the opposite of powerful people seeking their own aggrandizement) is not a form of peacocking, nor is it a euphemism. It may be aspirational (the rest of us hope that the politician will serve the country instead of his own interests), but there's nothing inherently or egregiously non-neutral about it, especially when applied to people who didn't exploit their roles to harm others. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:47, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
No rule needed. Here, there is more than one way to say something, and variety can still make for good, and interesting writing (also, 'serve' is not hard to understand in the example given, rather the NPOV or related arguments are much too strained, when not baffling). As an aside, we should probably not usually write, 'someone is job', rather than, 'someone is broad occupation', followed by where they have served in that occupation. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:07, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
No rule, please. Either one could be at least annoying to too many editors and possibly disruptive if applied to existing text. There are figures in history of whom I wouldn't use "serve" – Caligula served as emperor from AD 37? – but we wouldn't need a MOS rule for that. NebY (talk) 18:16, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Neither, as both are appropriate for many articles and editors can use their heads—even if this freedom results in the occasional awkward lead sentence. As my troublesome nitpick, I actually do think serve has a vaguely positive connotation compared to the bare copula—but I don't think it matters enough, as every word has a web of connotations and none is truly neutral in every situation. Doesn't register as a WP:W2W in any case. Remsense诉18:21, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Neither --- WP:LOCATIONLOCATIONLOCATION, which The Gnome linked in his OP, is my essay, and I'm flattered. However, we don't need a rule on this. My objection to served as is that it's usually surplusage; but it has its uses now and then, and I don't see any kind of flattery or peacock-iness in it. But I will say that, applied to Hilter, it does take some of the edge off to say he "served". That's for sure the wrong word to use for him. EEng19:38, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
This needs to be said: The term "to serve" is being pronounced neutral in this discussion by sundry contributors. Is it really? Because if an ostensibly neutral term cannot be used at the extremes, it cannot be used anywhere. The Hitler example trumps all arguments to the contrary. It cannot be made more clear. -The Gnome (talk) 19:59, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
That sounds a bit extreme. Remsense said it well: no word is truly neutral in every situation. So if that's the thing to aim for, we may as well shut down this website and all go home. Gawaon (talk) 20:03, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
...but...but...this site is one of the few things keeping me from falling asleep at my desk during downtime at work... :| DonIago (talk) 20:08, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
I think us editors are particularly vulnerable to logocentric fallacies—i.e. we're liable to treat the lexical word as the predominant or even only issuer of meaning, while affording phrases, sentences, and other composites no credence to really influence what connotations individual words must themselves possess. Remsense诉20:48, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
I have trouble saying these things in an intelligent way sometimes—in other words I need to try sounding more like pseudo-Kripkenstein than pseudo-Wittgenstein. Remsense 诉19:10, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
if an ostensibly neutral term cannot be used at the extremes, it cannot be used anywhere.[RFC needed]NebY (talk) 20:11, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Neither I have no problem with Richard Nixon saying that he served as the 37th president of the United States from 1969 to 1974. That's not euphemistic and is normal English, even though most presidential historians rank him poorly. Cullen328 (talk) 20:19, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
That’s because some of us are imputing some sense of merit or sacrifice into the term “serve”, which isn’t really there. Serve can mean simply fulfilling a purpose, or function, and there is plenty of common usage where no merit is implicit, such as “serving as a bad example”. MapReader (talk) 04:28, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
So, me saying to someone Thank you for your service, for example to a veteran soldier, denotes nothing positive whatsoever; it is an abject expression of thanks for wearing a uniform, and nothing more. And, logically, I could express the same thankful sentiment to a traitor soldier. -The Gnome (talk) 14:41, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
Really you are making my point for me. Your quoted phrase does, but not because it includes the word “service”. It is positive because of the “thank you”. Had you said “I confirm your service” or “I note your service”, your comment wouldn’t have been received as positive despite the word ‘service’. Whereas, had you said “Thank you for your time in the army” or “Thank you for your work”, that would be received as a positive comment without any need to refer to serving. MapReader (talk) 17:12, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
Either, see wikt:serve#Verb, particularly entries 1.2, 1.4, 8, 12. There are contexts where the word "serve" is non-neutral, such as smiling politely whilst putting meals in front of customers in restaurants despite a torrent of verbal abuse, but the original post gives "Ms Smith serves/has been serving/has served as member of the XYZ Board of Directors." as an example, and that is different from plate-juggling. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:06, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
A or some other neutral alternative that suits the context. "Serves/served/serving" is a WP:NPOV failure, in being promotional and (positively) judgmental language. An argument could possibly be made to retain those terms for military and maybe even governmental functions, but even those uses have their long-term opponents. It's entirely inappropriate for corporate and other misc. organizational (school, team/squad, nonprofit/NGO, etc.) roles. PS: The fact that we have a bunch of articles doing this just means we have a bunch of articles to clean up. Cf. WP:FAITACCOMPLI and WP:NOWORK. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 02:18, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
Comment Sorry to say, but this is yet another RfC out of the blue, with no discussion on how to frame it. There certainly should have been an option C -- a new rule saying either A or B is OK, and D -- meaning nothing new added to MOS at all. This RfC is already a complete mess out of which nothing useful can possibly come. EEng20:20, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
A Is there a specific case where anyone feels that "served as" is better, not just as good? Is it the case that "served as" has WP:NPOV problems in some people's idiolects, but not others? If so, does that mean that it has WP:NPOV problems? McYeee (talk) 01:15, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
That's what consensus is for in the abstract, and the examples proffered to illustrate why served should be generally proscribed have not really attracted consensus. Remsense ‥ 诉01:18, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
I might just be out of my depth here, and I might not have been clear, but I just don't really understand any argument in favor of the usage of "served". I think my preconceived definition of the word is just less neutral than yours. I'll bow out for now. McYeee (talk) 01:32, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
Aye, it's worth making explicit—no one is really saying it's superior in any or as good in all situations, but the MOS is meant to be as frugal as possible. We try to allow editors flexibility in things like word choice as much as possible, and we don't want to tell them what not to do unless it's almost always wrong (roughly, if it's more work to fix than it's good for to allow). See WP:CREEP. Remsense ‥ 诉01:38, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
No rule needed. Both are acceptable depending on context, but this is not the sort of wording choice that the MOS should be forcing on editors. See also WP:CREEP. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:22, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
No rule needed. The claim that "served" is pov in general has no basis. Argue specific cases on the respective talk page, but don't impose a general rule where none is needed. Zerotalk07:54, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Translated blockquote
I wrote Template:Translated blockquote to standardize implementation of Wikipedia:Manual of Style § Non-English quotations. I'm wondering about feedback on appearance. The guideline isn't very specific. I'm particularly wondering about where the language of the quotation should be placed if it is provided. I would further appreciate confirmation of whether the brackets around the translation are appropriate. Those weren't included in most existing examples I found, but I thought they would help clarify that they are a translation and not part of the quote. Once these issues are settled, I propose that the template to be mentioned in the guideline itself. Daask (talk) 20:33, 18 September 2024 (UTC)
I would much prefer the original and its translation to be shown side-by-side, but that's a matter of taste. If a language is shown, it should normally not be linked. IMO the use of brackets is consistent with citation templates. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:59, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
I would appreciate the ability to specify the size of the paragraph indent: on Zhuangzi (book), I've manually set the indent for such facing quotes to 1ic, effectively matching the width of one character. Remsense ‥ 论04:34, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
Test case for article titles with a leading ellipsis
It's a violation of proper accessibility practice. It causes anyone using a screenreader to have to sit through "jay ay en yoo ay ar wy", etc. Aside from that, there's no justification for the all-caps style or the use of colors. It's like something from 1998. Largoplazo (talk) 14:31, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
Colons are used when a main clause has ended in order to indicate that the thought is not finished. When the thought is not finished, they're not used, because it's clear that more will follow. You would never write "Mary Shelly wrote: Frankenstein" and similarly you do not write "Mary Shelly wrote: 'nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.'". If colons were simply to indicate that more is coming, then: they: would: be: everywhere. UsernamesEndedYearsAgo (talk) 23:34, 15 October 2024 (UTC)
The rules are not as strict as you make them to be. Grammar-Monster writes: "(Rule 2) You can use a colon if the quotation is an independent clause ... (You could also use a comma here.)" That applies to your Mary Shelly example too. While I agree that a comma is more common in such cases, the use of a colon is not exactly wrong. They strictly advise a comma only in situations where neither the introduction nor the quotation is an independent clause, and in cases where the quotation is followed by something like "he said" – fair enough, I'd say. Gawaon (talk) 07:20, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
Other more authoritative style guides do: not permit: that. It does: not make: sense to put colons after verbs when the clause is: not complete. Colons indicate: the end of a clause, so having: them in the middle of clauses is: confusing and hard to read. 140.141.192.46 (talk) 12:08, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
If you replaced each of your colons with a comma, it would be equally wrong and confusing. And anyway, we don't strictly follow any external style guide, authoritative or not. We have made our own style guide, and it's right here. Gawaon (talk) 16:45, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
The redirect MOS: HYPHEN has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 December 5 § MOS: HYPHEN until a consensus is reached. Utopes (talk / cont) 04:02, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Korea-related articles § About adding a link to each hangul syllable using Template:Linktext. 172.56.232.220 (talk) 17:48, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
Not done: A change of this magnitude would require consensus and affect a significant number of articles. GSK (talk • edits) 17:58, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)
This article discusses...
This Wikipedia article discusses...
-The Gnome (talk) 14:36, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
.png){kind=link}