Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 64

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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.

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Preferred grammatical tense

It would be useful to provide an explanation of when to use past, present and future tense, since most articles appear to have somewhat serious problems maintaining a unified voice. It would also help when describing ambiguous items (plotlines for books and television shows, persons who have not yet died, technological developments, etc.) so that their articles (long ones in particular) remain concise and coherent. Ess 09:40, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Seconded. In particular, I do not think that the habit of switching to present tense in describing an historical event is good encyclopedial practice. (E.g. 'In 18xx, John Doe was promoted to colonel... When the war breaks out, Doe is put in charge of the defense of...'.) This is not bad in an historical essay or novel; but I do not think it is found in any other major encyclopaedia.--JoergenB 22:07, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I feel that the removal of the section on Date and Time was a little cavalier. See: [1] It appears that it was assumed the section was about how to format Times and Dates, when it was actually about tenses, unless I'm not finding the correct link referred to in the edits.

I find lots of problems in articles mentioning things that "are happening" or "will be happening", which I think we need guidlines for. And that one section is the only guideline I've found so far. x 20:00, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I would like to add a new section that clearly provides some guidlines regarding tenses. I don't see anything specific in the MOS or it's Talk or Talk Archives about this, and the section that sort of gave an outline was a bit vague, and hard to find at best (and recently has been removed). Any suggestions or comments? x 20:19, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I support the effort, or rather, I support those willing to make the effort. It would be useful guidance for those seeking it (in fact, probably more useful than most of the guidance we have now — which is saying something).

It might be useful to begin discussion of a new proposal on this matter in a new section at the bottom of the page (more attention). Neonumbers 11:23, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Plural Abbreviations and Initialisms

Are we to to apostrophes or not to make abbreviations plural? For instance, SMCs/SMC's. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Todd gallagher (talk • contribs)

Generally, the answer is no. I thought there was something in the Manual about it, but I couldn’t find anything. --Rob Kennedy 03:57, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Per English plural, suggest we add "Abbreviations are made plural by adding -s or -es. Abbreviations whose plural would be ambiguous if only an -s were added can be pluralized by adding -'s " along with some examples to the Manual. Rillian 16:41, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

What’s an example of an abbreviation that would be ambiguous if it didn’t have an apostrophe? Is it still ambiguous when it’s used in a sentence? That’s my only issue with your suggestion. --Rob Kennedy 23:13, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Two cases come to mind: single letters/symbols (Compare "Mind your ps and qs" with "Mind your p's and q's") and abbreviations where the plural version with an "s" is the same as another abreviation, e.g the plural of the abreviation for Special Administrative Region would be SARs, which could be confused with abbreviation for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). However, the latter case should be easily solved by the wording of the sentence/context and would not normally need an apostrophe. Instead of "ambiguous", how about "misleading"? Rillian 00:47, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

But "p" and "q" aren’t really abbreviations. They’re letters. And single letters are about the only things I think should be made plural with apostrophe-s.

Are administrative regions and respiratory syndromes frequently discussed in the same article? Are there any real-world examples where the apostrophe rule has meant the difference between two legitimate meanings of a sentence for someone who was actually paying a reasonable amount of attention while reading the surrounding text? I can understand how someone who is just skimming an article, looking at the capitalized words, might get confused, but I don’t think we’re writing style rules for those people.

If we can’t think of any real examples, then I don’t want to complicate the style rule with unnecessary exceptions. --Rob Kennedy 03:57, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Two writing peeves

I'm not sure that these belong in the MoS, but they're definitely tendencies that I think make WP harder to read:

Parenthesis mayhem - Perhaps some editors feel that if they add something in parens it's not really a "full" edit or something. IMO it's bad style. Obviously some parenthetical remarks are truly off the main course of the sentence or graf, but these are rare. I recall one writer who said that using parens is like whispering, dashes like shouting, and that too much whispering would make others suspicious. (I forget what happens with too much shouting; maybe they become annoyed.) As you can see I don't always eschew parens, but I think we need to gently encourage people to avoid them. Examples:

[2]: This article is about the torture method. For the (related, but much milder) technique used in BDSM, see Strappado bondage - probably a non-native English speaker, judging by the rest of the article

[3]: The Tuck' (a.k.a. The Snow Bowl) (Raider fans refer to it as The Snow Job) (January 19, 2002, Oakland Raiders vs. New England Patriots, AFC Divisional Playoff Game)

2.Conditional to mean past - I understand this in conversation. "The Patriots would go on to win the Super Bowl," because from the frame of reference we're talking about, they hadn't yet done so. But for encyclopedia entries this is almost always unnecessary and makes the article harder for both native and non-native speakers to read. Obviously there are some cases where it's unquestionably warranted, particularly for hypotheticals. Tom Brady moved his arm forward because he thought he would be able to get off a pass. But IMO the conditional is way overused and we should be encouraging clearer use of the past for past events.

I'm open to criticism of my criticism, but I think both these style guidelines would be worth gentle suggestions to new editors. Not sure where to put them, though. Regards, PhilipR 03:30, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Hear, hear, good fellow! I strongly concur with your comments about the use of the conditional to describe past events. I suspect that some editors are accustomed to hearing television announcers use this formation, and think that it is appropriate. To me, it sounds, as the Americans would say, "high fallutin'". It is overly fussy, and is unnecessary. The simple past tense works so much better for describing past events, and is better understood by readers whose first language is not English. I change this usage 95% of the time that I find it, and only once have I run into any opposition. In that case, the editor and I discussed the question at some length, and I think that in the end he saw my point. Is there an appropriate way of working this into the Manual? Ground Zero | t 13:41, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Quoting bullet lists

If a source document contains a bullet list, how should I indicate that I am quoting it exactly? I suppose I could start each item with ** instead of * to get extra indentation, but I'm not sure that would convey to readers that it is a quotation. --Gerry Ashton 21:09, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

You could give the source before the list, and put it in a blockquote. This is also robust, as the markup specifies that it's quoted.

From Smith et al:

foo
bar

baz

blah
duh

zort

Which shows the correct hierarchy of metasyntactic variables. --Slashme 09:27, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

The perfect compromise

The obvious thing to do is to adopt the happy compromise that is Canadian spelling. In Canada, we have "labour organizations" and "tire centres", which cannot exist in the US or UK. By taking a little from US spelling and some from UK spelling, we have achieved perfection in English-language spelling, and are happy to export our creation to the rest of the world in order to achieve the unity of English-speaking peoples. Wikipedia can help bring this vision of linguistic utopia into being by ruthlessly enforcing the use of Canadian spelling and brutally crushing any dissent.

Well, it's just a suggestion. Ground Zero | t 13:50, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Fixed px size for images

Note: there is currently a vote and/or discussion going on at Wikipedia talk:Image use policy about removing the recommendation not to use fixed pixel sizes for images. Shinobu 07:24, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Template:cquote is up for deletion

Template:cquote, which formats block quotations as a table with purple quotation marks linked to image pages, has been proposed for deletion. Please vote or comment at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2006 December 12#Template:Cquote. —Michael Z. 2006-12-13 17:18 Z

New template for external images

A while back some editors started to develop a new way to implement external images. By now we have finished the template.

The size of this template is variable to fit better with other templates in the article. The link to the image is always given with a description of its content. This description is basically an interpretation and for this reason it has to be sourced with a link to the website(in accordance with all guidelines for the use of websites as sources). Both reference styles are possible. It is optional to affix additional unlinked text after the linked description, possibly a legend for maps in foreign languages and so on. It is advised to use redundancy (2-3 links for the same subject) so we don't loose information in case we have to face troubles with the image link of a website(it can get blocked, the url changes or the site shuts down,...). It is possible to add up to 20 image links with the templates on the right side. If you have more, start a new template and please let it be known here that there is an article with more than 20 external image links.

The older version on the left is still functional and the same rules apply to it, but it is advised to use the new version with its significant icons. The old version has no limit to the number of image links. The specific icon for external image links can also be inserted manually prior to the link:

I suggest to integrate it into the manual of style. Wandalstouring 18:35, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

'Cross-English' terms, and 'politicking the lexicon'

I have read the style guidelines regarding English dialects in articles.

However, if a term is used in one dialect that refers to a geographical location where another dialect is (most usually) used, then, is it good style to retain the term appropriate to the article's dialect, or to that geographical location's (most general) dialect?

One example is at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest-Lasting_Light_bulbs

Where the section reads:

"The fifth longest-lasting light bulb was in a washroom at the Martin & Newby Electrical Shop in Ipswich, England. Given its shape and design, it was thought to date from the 1930s. It burned out in January 2001."

Here, a 'washroom' is described as the location of a light-bulb in a shop in Ipswich, England. In English English, such a room would be described as a 'lavatory', 'toilet', or some-such (these terms seem to be class-determined also!). So, would it be appropriate to leave the article 'as is', or to make some sort of alteration to that term?

This raises a significant worry for me - one close to my heart:

The unhyphenated form of 'cooperation' (etc) is in widespread US-usage, as contrasted to the hyphenated form 'co-operation'.

This latter form is, both, in widespread use in (the rest of) the English-speaking (and not-usually English) world and has a significantly different meaning than that used in (certainly in contemporary) US usage.

(See, for example, the 'International Co-operative Alliance' publications.)

With the (now) numerically-dominant use of US English, the unhyphenated form 'cooperation' is now, for example, even the (UK-based) Oxford English Dictionary's prefered usage: the certainty being (my fear) that the meaning of the hyphenated form will (eventually) be replaced by that of the unhyphenated form.

What would be/is the Wikipedia style-guide response to all this? - an example of politicking the lexicon?

Thanks!

john courtneidge John courtneidge 17:53, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

If the first major contributor to an article about light bulbs wrote in the US dialect of English, that dialect should be used throughout, even when refering to light bulbs located in England. --Gerry Ashton 18:20, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

What’s the difference between cooperation and co-operation? Do they mean anything other than "working together." I wasn’t aware that the OED expressed any form of preference for the words it catalogs. --Rob Kennedy 19:34, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

The difference between cooperation and co-operation is not a dialectal one in my mind. I always hyphenate adjacent identical vowels between a prefix and a base even though I'm American in order to avoid confusion (e.g., anti-inflation). So I think that we ought to spell things in a way that confuses people the least. Hyphenation is one thing, but British spelling tends to be unphonetic. For example, catalogue is pronounced [kætəlɔg], so why would you put a -ue at the end of the word?? It isn't pronounced [kætəlɔguε]. There is no valid reason for the spelling. Another example would be moustache, in which the o serves no purpose other than to confuse ESL speakers. American's write it as mustache.--Best Username Ever 02:17, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

To clsrify the tangential spelling discussion, Noah Webster, in his "Blue Book", set out to separate American English from British English by getting rid of what he saw to be unnecessary letters. He got rid of the "u" in "color", "favor", etc., the "o" in "foetus", etc., and the the "a" in "haemophilia", "encyclopaedia", etc. Americans took to it. As for the primary discussion, it's true that Americans also do not use any kind of marker when using words such as "cooperation", even though it may cause a different phonetic reading of the word. Also, in American English, the word "cooperation" or "cooperate" is treated exactly the same whether it means to band together for a common cause or to simultaneously operate machines. Words such as "anti-inflation" are optionally hyphenated in American English, but due to having a distinct prefix such as "anti", "pro", "contra", etc. Another point of difference is that Americans always use a hyphen when the second term is capitalized: eg., always "un-American", while British writers will sometimes use "unAmerican". Cain47 06:54, 13 February 2007 (UTC)Cain47

MoS on Quotations

The Manual of Style section on Quotations looks old, it makes no mention of any of the newer Templates which add various quotation functionality, such as shaded boxes, pull quotes, etc... This conservative section is now being used by a small but vocal minority to delete certain quotation templates, such as Template:Cquote. Yet, we have about half a dozen or more quote templates being widely used. This is confusing and leading to style war conflicts because this MoS page tells users to use "blockquote", with no mention of any of the newer quote templates. -- Stbalbach 02:20, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

A half-dozen different styles is not a good idea. —Centrx→talk • 02:45, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Please let's reach a consensus to trim category:quotation templates down and give it a logical arrangement. —Gennaro Prota ^•Talk 04:56, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Opinion needed on title fix

Hi guys,

I thought that you could reply to this before I could even figure out something making sense: we have two articles, Red carpet and Red Carpet, whose titles only differ in their capitalization. Furthermore the former article has an Other meanings section for what should actually be a dab page. Could you suggest a suitable arrangement for the whole thing? Thanks. —Gennaro Prota ^•Talk 18:55, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd quickly rename the software Red Carpet (software) and use the "other meanings" section to create a dab page. As for the "Red carpet" article, a title for that is slightly less obvious; how about Red carpet (hospitality) or perhaps the more intuitive Red carpet treatment? – Kieran T ^(talk) 19:33, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Makes sense to me (preference for "Red carpet treatment"). Objections anyone? —Gennaro Prota ^•Talk 19:47, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

From dictionary search, "red-carpet" seems the most common spelling. On second thought, I'm not sure whether we should limit the entry to "treatment"; in the end this could be more suitable for wiktionary, at least for now, where the reference to the 20th Century Limited is nothing more than what can normally be found in a dictionary's etymology section. —Gennaro Prota ^•Talk 12:10, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Abbreviation capitalization

I believe that abbreviations should be capitalized, such as E.I.S. (Entry Into Service), F.B.I. (Federal Bureau of Investigation), T.S.A. (Transportation Security Administration), C.S.A. (Customer Service Agent), etc. It is proper American grammar to capitalize such items. I have been argued with for the past week regarding fleet tables on Airline pages that have been the same for some time now, but now someone decides to step in. I have been editing for about a year now, and I have contributed alot to the airline pages. I am reconsidering whether I should do so now because of all the flaws Wikipedia really has. There definately needs to be some major reconsiderations on how this website is ran as well as policies on how to correctly layout pages, such as Airline pages. I believe we should create a model page on how airline pages should be layed out, and how items in the page should be identified.--Golich17 04:23, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Except for the fact that every single "example" you just cited, other than "entry into service", is a proper noun. Please put forth a better argument for contravening the standard rules of English grammar.--chris.lawson 04:36, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually in standard English, acronyms are capitalized, except for those which have entered common use as words (e.g. radar, not RaDAR). So, it should be E.I.S., not E.i.s. However, "Entry Into Service" is not a proper noun, so when it's spelled out, it shouldn't be capitalized. DB (talk) 21:18, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Note that on Wikipedia, where it is an acronym, not an abbreviation, the periods/dots between the letters are to be excluded, so NASA not N.A.S.A.. Unless I'm much mistaken (correct me if I'm wrong), that's the current guideline. Neonumbers 03:20, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

As someone on the other side of Golich's argument, I'm fairly certain what he's trying to say is basically what Dbinder said, but backwards -- that because it exists as a capitalised acronym, the spelled-out phrase should also be capitalised. I agree completely with Dbinder's logic; namely, when a non-proper-noun acronym is spelled out, it should follow standard rules of grammar and be left lowercase.--chris.lawson 17:18, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Proper nouns (like Central Intelligence Agency) are to be capitalized. Common nouns (like radar cross section, or RCS) are not, even if you make an acronym out of it. -Amatulic 01:01, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Capitalized abbreviations/acronyms or not, I hope we can agree to leave off the full stops. They're just clutter. None of this has anything to do with grammar, by the way. Strad 17:43, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I’m not sure I agree. There are various two-letter abbreviations that I prefer to see with periods: U.S., U.N., a.m., p.m. AP style calls for periods on A.D. and B.C., too, but I’m not too attached to those. --Rob Kennedy 03:42, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I concur with Rob Kennedy's position. This is one of the areas where American English has diverged significantly from Commonwealth English. Americans like myself are trained to always put periods in U.S., U.N., etc. especially in formal usage. For example, the United States Reports (in which are published the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States) are always cited as U.S. (with the periods). --Coolcaesar 05:28, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, traditional English grammar is that abbreviations have dots in them, unless the last letter of the abbreviation is the same as the word it's abbreviating, so, e.g., B.A., N.A.S.A., but Mr, Mrs, Mt, St.

However, modern English seems to have moved into no dots, like NASA, NCEA, BJAODN, which is what we have adopted on Wikipedia. Once upon a time, U.S. was an exception, but I'm not sure if that's still the case. For all it's worth, we could flip a coin and decide this (old rules or new rules?), but as it happens, we went with no dots (which was well before I started editing Wikipedia). I think no dots looks better (maybe because I'm just used to it that way). Neonumbers 09:23, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Attributed blockquotes?

What is the standard style for blockquotes with an attribution?

I mean things like:

We have traversed more than 100,000 li (50,000 kilometers) of immense waterspaces and have beheld in the ocean huge waves like mountains rising in the sky, and we have set eyes on barbarian regions far away hidden in a blue transparency of light vapors, while our sails, loftily unfurled like clouds day and night, continued their course (as rapidly) as a star, traversing those savage waves as if we were treading a public thoroughfare…

— (Tablet erected by Zhen He, Changle, Fujian, 1432. Louise Levathes

Please update the MoS accordingly. Shinobu 14:20, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Is this an in-text quote or an epigraph? We don't have a guideline for epigraphs, admittedly—mostly because they're not really meant to be used in any great number—but, in-text, the quote can be introduced with the source. For example:

According to a tablet erected by Zhen He around 1432 in Changle, Fujian:

We have traversed more than 100,000 li (50,000 kilometers) of immense waterspaces and have beheld in the ocean huge waves like mountains rising in the sky, and we have set eyes on barbarian regions far away hidden in a blue transparency of light vapors, while our sails, loftily unfurled like clouds day and night, continued their course (as rapidly) as a star, traversing those savage waves as if we were treading a public thoroughfare…

Kirill Lokshin 17:24, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

That is actually easier to read, thanks. I'll try if such a solution works in the article. Shinobu 21:51, 28 December 2006 (UTC) Unfortunately, no not really. I can't think of a way to put the attribution into the introductory paragraph without yielding a rather "clunky" result. I'll think about it some more. Shinobu 21:58, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Fair use

The end of Fair use has begun: Wikipedia:WikiProject Stop fair use --ROBERTO DAN 17:45, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Manual of style bitrot

After watching this page on and off for 2 years, I've noticed a repeating pattern: quite often style guidelines that were established through lengthy discussions are revised or removed entirely with minimal or non-existant discussion. In most cases I have seen, this decreases the quality of the guidelines rather than improving them. The main problem seems to be that once discussion of a topic has run its course and the discussion is archived, it is no longer evident that edits to a particular topic may be overriding consensus established previously. Of course, we all know that consensus can change (the straight quotation marks rule for example), but in many cases these edits do not reflect consensus, but merely the opinion of one editor who may not be aware of previous discussion(s). I'm not sure what the solution to this problem is other than recommending that no significant changes be allowed to the manual of style without discussion on the talk page (which will hopefully cause previous discussions to be brought up for consideration). This may sound draconian, but at this point I think pretty much every word of the manual of style has been disected, discussed, vetted, and rehashed multiple times. These guidelines have a long and voluminous history that in many cases new editors are just not aware of. I feel like the years of discussion that have gone into crafting these guidelines should count for something. Call me a stodgey stalwart standing in the way of wiki-progress if you must, but it seems to me like these guidelines should be a bit less subject to random edits. Any thoughts on this? Kaldari 08:02, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Another helpful change might be to include rationales directly in the text. This would explain the reasons to users who would otherwise "know better", and also would lead to more people being convinced to follow a particular style recommendation and elucidate exceptions to it. This should be done for all guidelines and policies, anyway. —Centrx→talk • 08:24, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I certainly agree. And I also agree that including rationales in the text might help. Maybe a Manual of Style for the Manuals of Style might help (joke, not serious). Seriously, though, I follow what you're saying. Neonumbers 03:06, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Or perhaps a permanent link to the discussion where the consensus was formed, either in the text or a comment? Apart from that, I would appreciate it if a few instances of this bitrot were provided, so I can see for myself whether this is an issue or not. Shinobu 21:49, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

The permanent link would certainly help. However, in many cases, there does not appear to be any original discussion, merely references to an ever-receding consensus; some of the most controversial parts of this guideline seem to have been written in by one or two editors without consultation. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:25, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

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