Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Trademarks/Archive 16

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Proposal: Condition for "deliberate" branding

After seeing the deadmau5 and big.LITTLE controversies, I would like to propose the addition of one more condition to MOS:TM:

Follow standard English text formatting and capitalization rules, even if the trademark owner considers nonstandard formatting "official", as long as this is a style already in widespread use by reliable sources (rather than inventing a new one), the nonstandard formatting is purely superfluous, and the new formatting would not compromise the ability for readers to identify the meaning and/or humor of the mark as discussed by reliable sources.

In this case, deadmau5 would be covered because it is intended as a form of Leetspeak (given the context; he is an electronic musician and an avid gamer) and is written more like a screen name, and "deadmaus" is not a style in widespread use by reliable sources). Ke$ha would not be allowed because the dollar sign is superfluous (and "Kesha", as documented, is used by sources as much as Ke$ha). big.LITTLE would be allowed because the formatting is deliberate to emphasize how the process works, and because it is (unfortunately) in widespread use by reliable sources. ViperSnake151  Talk  17:20, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Would it matter, in your estimation, if the difference disambiguates the title from others? That is obviously not the case for deadmau5 and Ke$ha (there being no other deadmaus and no more notable Kesha), but for a topic like S1m0ne, does it matter that there is one filmed officially named S1m0ne and a different film officially named Simone?

Also, I am also curious as to how helping readers to "identify the meaning and/or humor of the mark" would play into this, with the one and zero in S1m0ne serving to underscore the film being about a digitally generated person (a "person" who is literally ones and zeros), with the ! in P!nk presumably signifying the excitement the singer's uptempo music is intended to deliver, with the $ in Ke$ha representing the singer's determination to not be taken advantage of financially, and with the 3 in Numb3rs representing the show being about the manipulation of actual numbers. Compared to these uses, the "5" in deadmau5 is meaningless (nothing is signified by the number 5 other than it being leet), and titles like Se7en, Tech N9ne, and Th1rteen R3asons Why merely interpolate numbers into text already containing the spelled-out number, with no additional meaning. bd2412 T 18:31, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

That's my concern as well - any editor invested enough in trying to get the vanity version of a name will be able to pull sources to show how the vanity version has meaning and/or humor. "Numb3rs" is a clear case where there is meaning to the 3, but I doubt one can necessarily find as clear sourcing for vanity spellings as the other examples. It's too subjective a metric. --MASEM (t) 18:38, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

I concede that. I searched for a bit for sourced explaining why "P!nk" uses an exclamation mark, and could find none. I would certainly support a provision giving substantially more weight to reliably sourced explanations of meaning. bd2412 T 18:55, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

(On the presumption that we don't get good conclusion on the above RFC) I'd accept a solution based on this idea, where a vanity name could be used if 1) a clear majority of high quality sources use the name regularly and 2) there is reliable sourcing to explain the origins of that vanity name (giving weight to it for encyclopedic information). That would make something like "Numb3rs" or "S#!* My Father Says", okay, while "Ke$ha" not (it might meet #2, but fails #1 on source majority). --MASEM (t) 19:10, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

How would you feel about weighing disambiguation into that? Such a factor would make no difference for titles like "Ke$ha" or albums named Th1rt3en (since there are already two with the same spelling), but would be a point in favor of "P!nk", "S1m0ne", and "Numb3rs". The set of factors I would propose looking at would be 1) "official" usage, including consistency of usage over time by the artist/author; 2) usage in reliable sources (I'm not sure that we should be separating out "high quality" sources for pop culture targets, but I am not opposed to giving them greater weight); 3) a reliably sourced explanation of meaning with respect to the usage other than just style for the sake of style; 4) serving to disambiguate from a primary topic or other topics with the usual spelling. I would also point out with respect to disambiguation that the title with the original spelling is often better in line with WP:CONCISE, although again this is not the case with Ke$ha versus Kesha. bd2412 T 19:26, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Well, I'm taking this from the POV of how we should refer to a title that has a vanity spelling across all of WP, not just for article titling; this is the inconsistency that's the core of the RFC. Thus, "Numb3rs" is fine for meeting the two points I suggest above, and by happenstance helps disambiguation, and that's how it should be called across every WP article. On the other hand, "P!nk", while it would help disambiguation, fails the tests I suggest, and thus it is better to have it as "Pink" throughout WP even though this creates the name conflict (though of course, I'd expect "P!nk" to redirect appropriately). So I'd rather not see disambiguation needs as a reason to use a vanity name. --MASEM (t) 19:36, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps this is a bit of a miscommunication - I am only thinking about article titles here, not usage in running text (frankly, I think the latter is well nigh ungovernable). In fact, I would go further and distinguish between use in running text, and use in tables and so forth. For example, in Diane Farr, the lede says that she was in "Numb3rs", while the table listing her works says "Numbers"; I would have that the other way around (although I would also concede that there is a good case for internal consistency). But to me, that is completely divorced from the question of what to title the article itself, since we already allow for many differentiations in linking to a title (for example, some articles refer to manual labor, and others to manual labour, depending on their regional scope). bd2412 T 20:02, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

If, with respect to proper names and titles, we don't harmonize TITLE and MOSTM, we are going to remain in an endless cycle of conflict here. Outside of technical limitiations with page naming by the Wikimedia software, the title used on the article page should match what is used at running prose anywhere else. In terms of common, non-proper words, however, which are very unlikely to fall under this vanity spelling issue, the style those terms are presented should be based on the context (most likely regional, but may be other distinctions). --MASEM (t) 20:18, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

It is already policy, per MOS:ENGVAR, that we should use styles that differ from article titles, where this usage is regionally appropriate. For example, we are not about to go into all of the articles on U.S. specific topics and change links to manual labor to correspond with the article title, manual labour. We also have a million "authors", most of whom have little awareness of our house style, and the number of new links (and even unlinked uses, which are much harder to find) oustrips our ability to keep up. This is comparable to disambiguation links - the disambig project buckled down and fixed over 10,000 links this month, and still ended up falling farther behind (and disambig links are actual errors that need to be fixed). While a uniformity of style is a nice thought, it is much farther down the priority list than fixing actual errors like typos, misstatements of fact, and disambiguation links. bd2412 T 20:41, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

ENGVAR's advice should not apply to proper names (with limited exception), going by the arguments above for why we should be sticking to the vanity spelling, in that there is only one proper name that we can give a title or work. (The exception might be something like "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone"/"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" where there is a different English title used in two different English regions) It belies the reasoning here to say that the article title should different from how it is presented in prose, and vice versa. If we're going to title the article "Numb3rs" , then editors should be using "Numb3rs" whenever they refer to the show. Yes, there's the disamb link issue, but that exists with any solution we pick or come to, and thus not a concern here. That is why these two guidelines needs to work together for this purpose, and thus the need to make sure that if we do end up using vanity spelling, there's a clear reason for it. I would not use vanity spelling just because it happens to resolve some disambiguation issue without considering the rest of issues that might introduce. --MASEM (t) 21:00, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Of course, if we were going strictly be WP:ENGVAR, we would use "the original spelling" for proper names, and for "titles of works such as books, films, or songs" we would use "the spelling of the edition consulted" (i.e., the author's spelling). bd2412 T 21:08, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

The hypothetical, when applied to vanity titles and ENGVAR, is that if a vanity title has source support (this test we're talking about), is there ever a case where it might not be used that way in a English-speaking region? That is, for these specific proper names which do no really result from "regional" spelling differences, going to be spelled differently in other regions? My guess is , likely not, so we're still at the idea that what is set for the title should be what is used in all running prose elsewhere in WP givne that there will never be a case where the region or content of the article will affect how these vanity names are spelled. --MASEM (t) 21:35, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

I'll agree with your idea of adding "as discussed by reliable sources" to the end of this. ViperSnake151  Talk  20:29, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

I think that's entirely fair. Is this proposition, in your view, aimed more at use of style in running text, or at article titles? bd2412 T 20:41, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Section break

Going by the discussion above, let me make amends:

• Trademarks should follow standard English text formatting and/or capitalization rules, even if the trademark owner considers nonstandard formatting "official", when such a style is prevalent among reliable, English-language sources (rather than inventing a new one), or the formatting otherwise carries no symbolism.
• It may be acceptable to keep certain forms of nonstandard formatting if it is contextually reasonable, its removal would compromise the ability for readers to identify the meaning and humor of the mark as discussed or implied by reliable sources, if it would help disambiguate the article from similarly named subjects, or if its a commonly recognizable style.
  • Numb3rs is acceptable because there is humor to the use of a "3", as the show involves themes of mathematics. However, it must not be capitalized because it is superfluous.
  • Deadmau5 is acceptable because a majority of sources use the name, "Deadmaus" is an invented style, and the style has a humor and origin discussed by reliable sources (it was coined when he was unable to use "deadmouse" as a screen name because it was too long)
  • S1m0ne is acceptable because there is humor to the title (the titular character is virtual), and it disambiguates from the similarly-named but otherwise unrelated Simone
  • big.LITTLE is acceptable because there is humor to the mark, and a majority of sources use this nonstandard formatting.
  • @midnight is acceptable because there is humor to the title (as it resembles a Twitter username, specifically, the formatting used for mentioning a user on the service, due to the nature of the program)
  • ASUS is unacceptable because "ASUS" is not an acronym, making its capitalization superfluous.
  • Ke$ha is unacceptable, even though many sources use "Ke$ha", because some sources do use "Kesha" instead and there is no reported justification for the dollar sign.

I basically made WP:COMMONNAME officially be an override in selected cases. "Contextually reasonable" means when nonstandard formatting is justified due to the type of work or subject, which means we can be a bit looser on stage names/band names. I also changed it to use "prevalent among reliable, English-language sources" instead of "widespread", as that wording is also used in COMMONNAME. ViperSnake151  Talk  18:46, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

I do think this is much better, and gets us closer to an accurate real world reflection of how these names are likely to be perceived. We still have an unresolved divide, I think, over the question of whether substitutions of non-letters for letters constitutes a difference in style or a difference in spelling. For example, the mobile banking application Numbrs is clearly "Numbers" mines the "e", but we don't "fix" the spelling and call it Numbers (app). If an author substituted an some other letter in an intentional misspelling (e.g. Numbrrs, Numburs, Numbbrs) we would probably not consider it a style difference either. Similarly, we do not generally treat titles like Gr8 Story, One 4 U, or Nothing Compares 2 U, as style differences, merely because the phoneme is the same, but why should the identity of the phoneme distinguish what is spelling from what is style? I would completely agree that matters of capitalization are purely style, and am not particularly opposed to treating the $ in Ke$ha that way as well (the symbol is basically an S with a line through it), but I am still unconvinced that we should treat the substitution of a number for a letter as a matter of style more than as a matter of spelling.

On a separate note, I continue to think that the author's own consistency is an important factor. I think that Seven (film) is at the correct title (and should not be at Se7en) precisely because the movie poster itself clearly says "Seven", not "Se7en". By contrast, the authors of Numb3rs have been consistent in their presentation of that spelling in materials related to the series (i.e. the "Crunching Numb3rs" commentaries), even though they have not been consistent in their use of capitalization. I would take that distinction as a reason to say that Se7en is just a stylized version of what the authors also present as Seven, while Numb3rs is the spelling of the name of the show, period. bd2412 T 19:48, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Just as a note, there is specific humor in deadmau5's name. All those that are listed above still follow my proposed 2 step requirement: a (near) majority of high level sources using the name, and there's a sourcable reason to use the special name. Ideally (again, presuming that the RFC does not have consensus either way), I'd like to see this come out more as a type of casebook "these names have been deemed appropriate by the WP community" with a table and link to the appropriate discussions/decisions as that would then minimize all past discussions, and provide a central place for referencing between both TITLE and MOSTM. --MASEM (t) 21:25, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

I've always thought that it would be a good idea to have a single-resource record of precedents - that's the lawyer in me. I don't mean to say, by the way, that we should never use an unorthodox spelling/styling (if we ever resolve that distinction) unless there is a sourced explanation for a specific message being sent by that usage. I think these are factors to be weighed. The presence of such an explanation makes a stronger case for its usage; the absence of it makes a weaker case. For example, I could find no source stating why the "7" appears in "Se7en", or the "1" and "3" in either of the "Th1rt3en" albums (the numerical relationship is obvious, but no deeper meaning beyond that), and as I mentioned before, I could find nothing for P!nk. bd2412 T 23:44, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Note: there is nothing ambiguous with Kesha, so Kesha (singer) is also unnecessary. bd2412 T 23:45, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Now, regarding sourcing, even though I list big.LITTLE as being acceptable, I don't think it is even under this reform, because there is currently no sourced commentary on why the name is written the way it is. ViperSnake151  Talk  06:36, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Quick question: what about the cases--such as eBay and iPad/iPhone/iTunes--in which the unconventional spelling is prevalent in all reliable sources, but there is no given explanation as to the origins of the name? How would those be treated? SciGal (talk) 17:07, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

How I would read all this:

• When a new proper name that doesn't follow standard English spelling or casing is introduced, MOSTM is consulted for the clean version, but...
• If there is a different version that of that name (based on spelling or casing) that is used by a majority of sources, and with weight given a strong indication of why that name is presented that way, then we would use that version.

Thus, in the case of eBay or iPod, the name is set as those cases by the first test (MOSTM) and would not change from the second test. All other cases that Viper's identified above would also fit this scheme (in that the MOSTM version is overriden by the strong sourcing for things like deadmau5, etc.) --MASEM (t) 18:44, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Could you provide links to the sources (or point out the relevant section of the articles) that explain why iPod and eBay are capitalised that way? Mitch Ames (talk) 09:42, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

These wouldn't fall under the condition of having to be shown to be readily used in sources (even though they are) and why they are named that way; the reason those names are used like that come from MOSTM, which allows for the "first letter lowercase" case. The source suggestion is for using names that otherwise would not follow the MOSTM rules. --MASEM (t) 16:18, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

The "Trademarks that begin with a lowercase letter" section will still be in play. I consider those to be reasonable, plus they pass the WP:COMMONNAME test. ViperSnake151  Talk  18:45, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Just to add, this is basically saying that when it comes to odd characters and casing (aka "styling") that MOSTM should have preference, but there is space for reasonable exceptions when the sourcing clearly backs those (clear widespread use and explanation for that use). And I also believe we need a page to document the exceptions that have been reviewed by consensus as challenging those would be equivalent to making a WP:PEREN suggestion. --MASEM (t) 18:56, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Odd casing is styling, but are odd "characters"? Would MOSTM require renaming a hypothetical Numbbrs? Does it apply to phonetic substitutions like Gr8 Story, or only to substitutions that are not phonetic equivalents? bd2412 T 20:46, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Should be only on strict phonetic dissonance (eg "Numb3rs" would be "wrong" by MOSTM and corrected by the second sourcing aspect; "Numbbrs" wouldn't be touched by MOSTM as it's phonetically correct). --MASEM (t) 20:49, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

I suppose, then, we would determine the "clean" version by reference to what reliable sources use in place of the stylized version? bd2412 T 20:58, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

That's sorta a hand-in-hand test with the sourcing, so yes. I would want to have some guidelines/process that says how to figure out if there is an alternate way to say a proper name that has these dissonante phonetic characters, as we shouldn't be pulling something from out of nowhere if there's no sourced way or "obvious" way to do it. --MASEM (t) 21:07, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

I don't think I'd want the linchpin to be a value judgment of whether the author intended any meaning, although I do think that it's a reasonable issue to include in the discussion. I don't think that a weird looking style that is barely used in high-level sources shouldn't get used because we judge there to be humor or whatever in it. Likewise, if we didn't find there to be meaning in, say, "eBay," but every source uses it, we should use it as well. That said, I do think that this notion describes why we seem more OK with nonstandard looking styles that seem to convey meaning compared to those that don't. I think there could be something similar to this adopted, but I wouldn't want to see precisely this language in the guideline. Croctotheface (talk) 03:25, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Seems like an improvement, though I think the word "humor" is misused. I don't find any of the examples given humorous. The styles are meaningful, though. I do worry that the choice relies on being able to find out what the purpose behind a style is, even if that style is widely used. I think wide usage should be sufficient cause, and trump any analysis of meaning. We shouldn't have to prove that JQK stands for Joe's Quality Kumquats in order to consider it an acronym, since it's not pronounceable. The fictional acronym AEQSIM, though, is not as obvious, but we shouldn't be prevented from using all-caps if that's the way sources use it – even if we don't know what it stands for. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 12:52, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

To be clear, again, I'm suggesting that we only need the sources when the name that editors want to use goes against the suggested MOSTM naming approach ("eBay" fits fine into MOSTM, and as long as AEQSIM (whatever that it) is clearly an acronym within its fictional work, it can say like that). We're talking about what are likely the minority of cases where the preferring styling of a name is counter to MOSTM but can be shown prevalent in the sources and has a reason for that. The latter part prevents us from just doing propagation of a marketing gimmick or the like, particularly in the case if the sourcing used to show it widespread aren't as broad as other cases. --MASEM (t) 15:27, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Masem, I see what you want to do; it's similar to including the subsection "Name" in articles about places in the Geography portal. SciGal (talk) 13:55, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

My only concern with that is this: Examples such as eBay and iPod could still be challenged under your proposal because of the lack of reliable sources that details the origins of the name. SciGal (talk) 13:52, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

But again, those drop out from the MOSTM rules, and thus do not require sourcing; it is one of the "generalized exceptions" of MOSTM. The sourcing would be needed if the name styling desired did not follow MOSTM or those "generalized exceptions". Mind you, any time you can help provide highlights on why something is names or styled a certain way - following MOSTM or not - that's useful information. We're just talking about when there's reasonable justification to make exceptions from MOSTM. (And as a note, you don't need an explicit "Name" section in an article to show what a name means, but it should be information that has been located and included in the article). --MASEM (t) 15:23, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

The fact that this formatting is used by the majority of sources trumps any other argument. ViperSnake151  Talk  15:39, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Well, Id have to check MOSTM's archives, but I'm sure that the "iPod" generalized exception in MOSTM was added because for terms like that it was common throughout sourcing to use it like that. I'm specifically looking at cases where the style used in the vast majority of sources does not match the MOSTM stylization rules (eg like Numb3rs). --MASEM (t) 15:50, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

eBay and iPod both were added to MOS:TM after a debate over whether they should be used as in the vast majority of reliable sources or they should be “Ebay" and "Ipod” to conform to MOS:TM. On February 11, 2006, the first instance of both appeared on MOS:TM. Immediately, it started an edit war. That change and edit war sparked a conversation about them the next day. On February 20, 2006, the current wording of MOS:TM in regards to eBay and iPod was added. It was modified within 15 minutes. Since then, both eBay and iPod have occurred on virtually every page of MOS:TM talk pages, either as an example of why certain cases should be included under MOS:TM or as a question of why they have been accepted under MOS:TM. SciGal (talk) 13:42, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Just in general, I think that the closest thing to our practice is to outsource the decision to high-level sources. I wouldn't be comfortable with a flat out "WP:Commonstyle" standard, but I'd be pretty comfortable with "WP:Commonstyleamonghighlevelsources". I still think that the best way to go would be to say that all of these issues are fair game for discussion, that standard English can encompass weird-looking styles, and to encourage editors to use this guideline for general rules and as a jumping-off point to discuss difficult cases. But I guess these feelings aren't shared by many others. Croctotheface (talk) 18:19, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

I agree that when it comes to considering a style supported by sources that differs from MOSTM's rules, the majority use in high level sources (eg national/international papers and magazines) is critical. Local or narrow-focused sources will often favor the stylized name but we shouldn't use that unless that style bubbles up to when the name is used in higher sources. I'd rather though have editors start with the thinking "Okay, this name is a weird style that is not how MOS:TM outlines, let me find the sourcing that backs up why we should have this style instead of MOSTM" rather than "Screw MOSTM, I'm doing it this way". And of course, we need a casebook page for all agreed variations from MOSTM that have been shown to meet the consensus sourcing aspect as to avoid repeats. --MASEM (t) 18:38, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

I still think that our starting point for a title should be "what does the author call it", and any steps away from that should be justified by a proliferation of sources using an alternative. bd2412 T 18:43, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

But we already don't work like that. Eg, we don't use Ke$ha despite the that is her choice and that there is sourcing (including some, but not a majority) of high level sources that use it; same reason we don't use "Se7en". Now, if the author states something to the effect "I'm naming it this way because..." (eg why the 3 in Numb3rs or the 5 in deadmau5) and that style is supported by high-level sources, then we can use that, but that works on the concept that we consider the authors intent for the odd name and how well high-level sources have taken that up, rather than just going on the author adopting a weird style that few reuse if just to draw attention to themselves. --MASEM (t) 18:56, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

"Se7en" is not even consistently used by the authors. As for others, accurately reflecting reality should be our starting point, until there is a reason to move away from that. bd2412 T 19:13, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

No, because sometimes these names are chosen for purely promotional purposes, and we should not be promoting those if few other sources use that same approach. This is why using high level sources to judge if an author's desired name has actually stuck is more appropriate and would follow all the same reasoning we use throughout the rest of WP. If high level sources have adopted the author's choice, that's a good starting point to justify that, but if they routinely ignore the author's choice, then there's no reason for us to follow the author either. --MASEM (t) 19:25, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

High level sources routinely ignoring the author's choice would be an example of a factor prompting us to also ignore the author's choice. bd2412 T 19:37, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Which is why I'm saying that if one is considering using a vanity name over one that would otherwise meet MOSTM, the point of determining if that's a reasonable step should be looking at high-level sources first, instead of, as you put it, what the author intended. --MASEM (t) 19:43, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

High level sources still make mistakes, and are much more likely to make a mistake as to the title than the author of the work. Also, some works with unconventional names never even make it into high level sources. Consider the following monstrosity: Suzukake no Ki no Michi de "Kimi no Hohoemi o Yume ni Miru" to Itte Shimattara Bokutachi no Kankei wa Dō Kawatte Shimau no ka, Bokunari ni Nan-nichi ka Kangaeta Ue de no Yaya Kihazukashii Ketsuron no Yō na Mono. That is an actual article title, and although there was a discussion proposing to move it to something shorter (a move that I supported), consensus was against the move, and it was kept at this title. It was kept because there were no sources consistently offering a viable alternative - in my opinion because the song was so unremarkable in popularity that sources never bothered to come up with a short form, because no one reported on it a second time. Wouldn't it be odd for an unpopular work to be in a better position to keep its unconventional title merely because it fails to draw the attention of high level sources? bd2412 T 19:54, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Except there's no issue with that title under MOSTM terms; the song's a foreign work so the title in the romanized version of the language (including all accent marks) isn't a "vanity spelling" that is the issue here - it meets all readability aspects. If anything, that title is something that falls squarely under COMMONNAME, which has its own advice on sourcing. I'm speaking here specifically on the issue of vanity spelling that would affect readability and whether high level sources use that or not. --MASEM (t) 20:01, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

We have discussed this "readability" issue before. I would be glad to consider any empirical evidence published in reliable sources that you can present in support of the claim that the unconventional spellings used in the handful of disputed cases have any effect on readability. bd2412 T 20:17, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

I've offered my own experience seeing "Sunn 0)))" and having problems reading sentences that include that, until I learned what that was. MOS:TM is all geared to this. It could be plain common sense understanding that we are a worldwide audience and not one that is only seeped in Western culture. (And there's plenty of studies on how when l33t speak started to seep into schools that the generation gap was having trouble communicating, eg [1]) --MASEM (t) 20:26, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

"Sunn 0)))" is a particularly unusual case, since the "0)))" doesn't substitute for anything. In fact, I just found another one - 1nce Again. That presents more of a readability issue, since it's the title is apparently intended to be read as "Once Again" but looks more like "Ince Again"; however, this is a phonetic substitution like One 4 U. It also seems to have little coverage in high level sources, and I can't find any calling it anything else. As for l33t speak confounding teachers, the article doesn't really talk about the kind of letter substitution at issue here, but with phonetic shortcuts of the sort found in titles like R U the Girl, U + Ur Hand, and Cuz I Can, which we have already agreed are not subject to being changed here. If we're not going to "correct" these, I continue to see little point in "correcting" Numb3rs and S1m0ne (for which the "0" at least is a phonetic substitution). bd2412 T 20:45, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

No, in "S1m0ne" it is "S one m zero ne" (if it was a letter "O", that would be different) "1nce Again" is also bad since that comes out phoenetically "One-nce Again" (a far stretch compared to, say, "boyz" vs "boys"). The key point that that article shows is that if you throw something that is not traditionally standard english, you will have a possible communication problem. And that's why we have to trend carefully with vanity spells.

But let me restate - assuming the above RFC closes as no consensus, I do agree a solution that says that deviations from MOSTM's approach that are based on a style variation that are 1) widely used in a majority of high-level sources and 2) has a good reason why that style was picked are acceptable to use (thus allowing Numb3rs with no question). --MASEM (t) 20:59, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Masem... you keep talking about this in terms of western vs. non-western... but as bd2412's chart above demonstrated, the cultural phenomenon of l33t speak is not unique to the west. I think you may come closer to the mark when you say that this is a generational issue.

As someone over 50, I too find l33t speak difficult to decipher. However, that is exactly why I argue so strongly that the article should use the vanity styling (especially in the title) and NOT be transposed into "normal English" characters... When I come across a name like "Sunn0)))" or "S1m0ne" in the real world, I turn to Wikipedia to tell me what sort of animals "Sunn 0)))" and "S1m0ne" are and how those "vanity names" are pronounced (ideally in the first few sentences). But here's the thing... If I suddenly find myself being redirected to a title in "normal" characters, I actually get more confused ... I am not sure if I ended up at the correct article. As an older user, I actually find MOS:TM a disservice... its much harder for me to find what I am looking for when the article title is "de-vanitied" into "normal" characters. Blueboar (talk) 22:07, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Would it be somewhat less of a shock for you to look for Ke$ha and P!nk and find Kesha and Pink (singer), than for you to look for Sunn O))), S1m0ne, and Numb3rs and find Sunn (band), Simone (2002 film), and Numbers (TV series)? I would think that the substitution of a $ for an s, at least, would be transparent enough that you would hardly notice it. bd2412 T 22:25, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

That confusion makes no sense give that by our MOS and the like, the first sentence of the lead will say what the vanity or non-vanity spelling is of the name. (Practical example, Ke$ha goes to Kesha that says, first line "Kesha Rose Sebert (born March 1, 1987),[1] known by her stage name Kesha (pronounced /ˈkɛʃə/), stylized as Ke$ha, is an American singer-songwriter and rapper.") Regardless of vanity or non-vanity spelling approach, we're going to say the alternate way in the lead sentence, so that confusion is non-existent.

Alluding to what BD2412 says, there's also the "ease" of going one direct, translating a vanity name to its nonvanity version due to a semi-standard approach this is done with - "1" or "!" for "i", "0" for "o", "$" or "5" for "s" , etc; add that if you are fully aware of what the vanity name is, you are more than likely to know what the non-vanity style is. The reverse, going from a non-vanity to a vanity name, is not easy at all without a priori knowledge of what the vanity name is. Thus, using the vanity name when that vanity name is not used by a majority of high-level sources is going to cause more problems that using the non-vanity name. --MASEM (t) 22:50, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

thumb|right|200px|Title card of "Numb3rs". thumb|right|200px|Logo of singer "P!nk". thumb|right|200px|Logo of singer "Ke$ha".

I think that raises another question, although one which I have no idea how we would go about answering. Are our readers more likely to be coming to these articles because they saw the name of the artist or the work in a "high level source", or are they more likely to be coming to these articles because they saw the work itself as portrayed on one of these images? I suspect the latter, but doubt that this can be proven. bd2412 T 00:08, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

We don't know, so we have to go for the broadest option that covers the bases. Part of the solution is already covered by redirects and disambiguations which can allow searching on either version to get to the proper article. But again, remember we're also talking about how the terms are out there in regular prose. This is probably another reason that justifies the requirements of high-level sources is that if a term with a vanity name is being mentioned in a different article, the reason for that mention is likely going to be based on a source, and thus if high-level sources regularly use the vanity term, it would make it appropriate to use throughout WP. But if it is a vanity spelling not regularly accepted by sources, we should avoid that and use the non-vanity version. --MASEM (t) 00:16, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

That's essentially what I have been saying all along... this isn't about what the artist or the fans want.... its about how to best help those who have seen a name in print and want to find out more about it. That's our target audience. The question that underlies all of this is this: is it more likely that our target audience will have seen the vanity styling or the non-vanity styling? While we can't know for certain what any single individual may have seen... looking at the sources can give us an indication of what the typical target audience members is likely to have seen (and thus what they are likely to expect the title of our article to be.) It's the best way to ensure we meet our goal of presenting information to the uninformed, and broadening the information of the partially informed. Blueboar (talk) 01:21, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure we generally support having redirects to help users find an article from any variant spellings or styling that we know of. Is that not doing the job somehow? If you really want to support "what they are likely to expect the title of our article to be" you'd need to get inside the heads of the readers; but I think most don't have any expectation of what our style guidelines are going to be, and will not be unsettled by an un-vanity style. Dicklyon (talk) 02:44, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

bd2412, I think that readers might come to the articles both ways.

Dicklyon, I think that the redirects are doing their jobs; I know that I occasionally have to add a keyword or two to find precisely what I am looking for. SciGal (talk) 11:40, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Section break 2

To clarify, as long as we find ourselves at an impass of whether TITLE or MOSTM take precedence for names, this , to me, is the thought process that we should be used to decide not only the title of the topic in question but also how it should presented in any prose throughout WP:

1. COMMONNAME is used to figure out the core name we plan to use, ignoring any strange styling. That is, this is where we decide to use "Kesha" or "Ke$ha" over "Kesha Rose Sebert" as the common name.
2. MOSTM is used to determine how to remove vanity aspects of the name to be presented, if such elements are used. HOWEVER, if this is a case where consensus agrees that the following combination of elements justify the non-MOSTM version, then this version should be used.
   • A vast majority of high-level (and ideally independent and secondary) sources use the vanity name over the non-vanity version (as appears to be the case for "Numb3rs", in contrast to "Se7en" or "Ke$ha" where it is clearly split)
   • There is sourced justification for why the name is presented in that fashion (the 3 for "Numb3rs", the 5 in "deadmau5")
3. Any case where there has been consensus discussion for whether the MOSTM or non-MOSTM version of a name has been done should be added to some page - like "WP:MOSTM/Naming Casebook" - so that the right name to use and the reasoning previous determined is well documented. This step is there specifically to avoid repeated attempts of moving the title back and forth, as well as aiding content writers to know how to refer to the title.

Importantly, this is meant to make COMMONNAME/TITLE work together with MOSTM, so that the page title is the same (minus any disambiguation) as the way the name is expected to be presented in running prose - unifying these two policy/guidelines. It still gives weight to sourcing when it is clear "everyone" is using a specific style that our MOSTM would not recommend, but the way I wrote out the steps still put weight on ignoring the vanity spelling when it is not a widely accepted thing in favor of readability. This does reflect how we in all other areas of WP put more emphasis on third-party and secondary sourcing over first-party and primary works - just because person X says it should be one way, if no one else picks up on that, we should be reflecting the latter, not the former. Hence why defaulting to MOSTM unless clear majority use in sources can be shown.

I think this is still the essence of the language written above, however, exactly how to translate that to policy and guideline, I'm not sure yet. --MASEM (t) 18:23, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

I agree with those points, but I continue to think that there are two other factors to be considered - not decisive items, necessarily, but legitimate points to weigh in making a title determination.

The first is disambiguation. "Kesha" is a unique name, so requires no disambiguator. By contrast "Simone" is a disambiguation page, which includes multiple films. WP:AT prefers "natural disambiguation" over adding a parenthetical, so if the choice is between using the unconventional orthography or adding a parenthetical disambiguator, this should weigh somewhat in favor of keeping the original title.

The second is consistency of use by the artist/author. If the owner or user of the name is inconsistent about using the unconventional orthography, this should count against our using it. For example, the official theatrical release poster for Se7en clearly reads Seven, so audiences are probably as likely to look for the conventional spelling as for the unconventional. bd2412 T 18:42, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

On the first point, if the goal here is to unify TITLE and MOSTM, then we have to be aware that while TITLE's goal of using natural disambiguation is good, it is at odds here, and I would think that because the benefit is better to get this unification done, I'd rather go against natural disambiguation if we're being consistent throughout all other prose and the like. For example, say that we had a problem with collision at Kesha (more than just the one hatnote presently deals with). While "Ke$ha" would be viable, all signs of the above discussions point that we would be using "Kesha" in prose and for titling, and it would not make sense to use "Ke$ha" as the page title to avoid that. Of course, "Ke$ha" can be a direct to "Kesha (singer)" if that were the case, and we already have a disambiguation bot that informations users if they link to a disamb. page to correct them. So no, I think we should avoid considering considering disambiguation issue here for sake of avoiding the larger problem of TITLE/MOSTM conflict. The question is, how many cases might this happen at? I can't think of any immediately present case that these rules agree on (eg "Numb3rs" would be the proper title, avoiding the current "Numbers (TV show)") where this is an issue. I can see it as a possible third point to consider in addition to the sourcing points above, but if the only reason to adopt a vanity spelling is to avoid the paranthetical title and this isn't one well-backed by sources, ehh, that's not good.

On the second point - I would definitely say that if there is a vanity style that comes from some sources but not from the author/creator or used by them consistently, that's definitely a point against using the vanity style. That sorta ties in to the opposite consideration of the "reason for the vanity" - if there's no reason given, and it didn't come from the creator or author, that's really a good sign it's just promotional and not meant to be "content", and a reason to avoid it. --MASEM (t) 20:55, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

And it looks like Kesha herself makes handling her case much easier... :) --MASEM (t) 22:19, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

That article seems to confirm that Ke$ha has been under the wrong title for a while now as both the article and her Twitter feed confirm the 70% of reliable sources favoring Ke$ha. Under your proposal, both Ms. Kesha naming herself Ke$ha and the change back to Kesha would have to be explained. If she did not find that the origins of Ke$sha was of interest to Wikipedia, to readers of magazines and newspapers, or to her fans, she is not going to explain why she chose one over the other. Under either Croctotheface's or even my proposal, the Ke$ha name would be admissible as it appears about 70% of the time in reliable sources. SciGal (talk) 12:30, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

"Ke$ha" was a problem before - from my understanding of the various arguments to move - that the %age of sources wasn't consider a significant majority of them or included a fair number of high quality sources. That is, 70% wasn't sufficient to say that was a majority of sources. (the "Numb3rs" case has it much closer to 90%). Hence why "Kesha" is what we used. Of course, this name change can all be described in the text and we shouldn't hide the old "Ke$ha" name since sources will use that. --MASEM (t) 14:09, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Still, under your proposal, both name changes have to be explained, even if she did not feel that explaining the origins of Ke$ha was of no interest to Wikipedians. SciGal (talk) 16:51, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

The "artist has explained their reason" concept, alone, is not sufficient to qualify the use of that styling under my scheme - it is meant as an added bit of push in considering what the majority of sources used if that factor might not be convincing enough. In other words, if before her name change she explained what the dollar sign meant, that might have been a factor in the consensus of using the 70% of majority sources to use the "Ke$ha" name. But without that, and considering the breakdown of how many top level sources did not use "Ke$ha", that it was decided to stay at "Kesha". I want to stress that these aren't objective measures but should be points that all participants in a naming discussion should be considering and that the closer reviews, if the conditions are met well-enough to use the stylized name, as I've written them. --MASEM (t) 17:09, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

So what you're saying is, you prefer 90% RS to decide if it the exception? i can agree with that. Lucia Black (talk) 17:14, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

It's hard to put an exact number, because it also depends on how many high level sources are doing it. I can see a situation where a musical group has a stylized name that sources like, say Rolling Stone or Entertainment Weekly use, but with repeated use in the New York Times, LA Times, Wall Street Journal as the non-stylized name; these latter sources will likely be in minority to the music-based ones, but they are our high-level sources. This is a case that perhaps the added push of "why we chose this style" might help swing consensus but I'd err on using what the high-level sources use - the non-stylized version. However, I would have a hard time showing an example of this case to begin with and may be completely hypothetical. And to add, I don't want to make it a numbers game, since it's going to be based on ghits and that number will change nearly every time you do a search. But there is definitely a clear difference when using ghits between a use that is 90% or more consistent across the board, and a use that is 70% consistent across the board, hence why that's a reasonable target for consensus to consider. --MASEM (t) 17:32, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Masem, I think that you may have misunderstood me. Under your proposal, editors have to find where the creator of a work or an artist discussed the origins of the name to reporters from high-level sources, which includes EW and Rolling Stone as they are mainstream magazines. If the name changes for any reason, that reason also has to be given in interviews in reliable sources. Many times, the explanation that could prevent arguments is not there, as, generally, the spelling of proper nouns is not likely to be challenged.

Also, 70%, under any circumstance, indicates supermajority. To me, 90% suggest near universality; 70% allows for instances in the sources where there is a spelling mistake or a where a reporter decides to unilaterally change the name to fit his or her bias. SciGal (talk) 18:27, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

I agree with that. Why would Rolling Stone or Entertainment Weekly be at any lower level than any newspaper? They are both well-established and reliable sources. I think the difference between a "low level" source and a high level source would be more like low level sources being blogs, websites of questionable editorial consistency, one-off books, and small-circulation newspapers, and high-level sources being any widely well-established and widely distributed newspapers and magazines, well-established professionally run news websites, and books by acknowledged experts. bd2412 T 18:30, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

My own proposal states, "Editors should first see which style is prevalent and use the style that is most commonly used by reliable sources as defined by Wikipedia." That eliminates false sources such as product boxes, Twitter feeds (unless they have been defined by WP), TV title cards; it also allows for instances where you have a prevalent unconventional name but no details as to the origin given in high-level sources. SciGal (talk) 18:40, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

The reason I don't want to spell out numbers but instead focus on "clear majority of high level, independent sources" is that what is that majority is going to be very dependent on how the search was done. If I do a search on a vanity and non-vanity term in google and get 70% of the hits on the vanity term, that may be a majority but there's no consideration of what the number of blog and promotional sources are - in general, these types of sources will bias towards the vanity term, so that 70% could be artificially high if we're just trying to figure out the ratio for high-level sourcing; that ratio could drop to 50% or less if one went through to prune the results. On the other hand if that ratio started at 90%, I would not expect it to drop that much even with pruning. Alternatively if one did a fair survey of 100-some established high-level sources, and came out with 70% using the vanity name, that's a much better number to claim a clear majority of sources to use the vanity name.

And to address the other point about Rolling Stone/etc., that's why I consider independent sources important here. The music-related publications are not purely 100% unbiased in covering musical acts and will be more likely prone to use vanity spelling compared to a newspaper like the NYTimes. This is not to say they are not reliable sources, just not the best sources when determining the most common name . (Same would be true of using Variety or Hollywood Reporter for movies, etc.) Of course, this also depends if the higher-level sources are covering this - if a band is only covered up to the level of Rolling Stone (eg clearly notable, highly reliable) and not in higher sources, then that's a consideration to be made. That again points to how to determine the "clear majority in high-level, independent sources" is to consider all the issues involved. --MASEM (t) 19:13, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Even under your proposal, editors who insist on standard English usage still can ignore both the 90% usage in high-level sources and MOS. They could use the 10% usage of a more standard English name as proof that the unconventional name is not the real name and cite those sources in their arguments. As for MOS in general and MOS:TM specifically, ignoring MOS has happened before. The main point of contention over the Harry S. Truman National Historic Site was Harry S. Truman's middle initial. Under MOS in general, it could have been addressed under MOS:PERIOD or WP:INITS, not MOS:TM. die Tageszeitung's main point of contention was the capitalization of the German article "die"; it could have been addressed through WP:DEFINITE, MOS:CAPS, or under a translated version of German WP's MOS. Trim (computing)'s numbers could have been addressed using WP:JARGON or Typography

As for the name's origins, the editors who insist on standard English usage also can insist that every unconventional name's origin is explained, regardless of its usage under MOS:TM. In the case of eBay and iPod, they would not be acceptable as there are no high-level reliable sources that backtheir usage cited in the articles. SciGal (talk) 18:56, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Correction on my part: eBay does list the origins of the name itself, but not the choice of eBay over Ebay or EBay. For the iPad/iPod/iPhone/iTunes group, the i- prefix is explained in iMac but not in any of the members of the group. Once again, the choice of i- over I- is not given. SciGal (talk) 19:02, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

What I'm presenting are not objective measures, but what, when a naming conflict over vanity styles comes up between MOSTM and sources, should be considered subjective considerations for consensus to build arguments on to support one name over the other. So yes, in a discussion, I can totally see some editors saying because 10% use a different style we should use that. In such a case, I'd really hope that the rest of consensus agrees that's a weak argument and the closer considers that in light of these two recommendations on what sourcing should be present. So a "10% of sources" argument is a very weak claim; at the same time, "70% of ghits" is also not a strong claim. And if it is the case that there's clearly no consensus (between sources, or between WP editors in that discussion) it should default to the MOSTM until a better argument for the change can be presented. --MASEM (t) 19:12, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Also please note under this scheme, "iPod" and "eBay" are NOT names that would be challenged (through the demonstration of sources or origin) - they meet MOSTM's system to start. These should be not be examples of discussion here, compared to things like Ke$ha or Numb3rs. --MASEM (t) 19:15, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Re: "high level sources", do you think that any media source is really unbiased in how it covers these things? Perhaps the likes of the Wall Street Journal want to project, as part of their marketable image, being dismissive of pop culture stylings. bd2412 T 19:25, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

(ec) True, no source is truly lacking bias - they are serving their customers and so will report things that their readers are interested in, including the pop culture. But, they are also known as respected sources (particularly things like NYTimes and WSJ) so using them as metrics to judge how the name is used in high-level sources is reasonable. Of course, if this band is mentioned dozens of times in Rolling Stone and many other sources all using the vanity name, and only mentioned once in NYTimes/WSJ, and without that vanity name, that's probably a case to consider the vanity name having the majority of sources, ignoring the one outlier. --MASEM (t) 19:35, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

If someone keeps arguing that editors should use a name that is used only 10% of the time, the other editors might just give up arguing and let the belligerent editor the last word, regardless of consensus that states otherwise.SciGal (talk) 19:29, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

That's called beating a dead horse, particularly if they're the only one on that side of the argument, and that's a behavioral issue. And closers will recognize that when closing such discussions. --MASEM (t) 19:35, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Masem, apparently we disagree whether to use the sources or to use unconventional names only if the origins could be explained. How about a compromise? Suppose there is a separate section of under MOS:TM entitled "Mainstream usage of unconventional spellings and stylings". Under that section, a paragraph reads,

At times, a name with a nonstandard English spelling is used prevalently (at least 70% of the time and most likely 90% of the time) in the reliable sources defined by Wikipedia. Under the second paragraph of this section (see above), the name can be challenged if it does not meet standards under MOS:TM. To prevent this, follow this procedure:

• See if the name is explained in reliable sources. If so, add an explanation describing how the name originated.
• If there is no explanation, then use the style that is most prevalently used by the reliable sources. Keep in mind that Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, advertisements, and promotional articles are to be used under certain circumstances and generally are not considered reliable sources.

SciGal (talk) 19:29, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

I purposely don't want to see hard number on what the majority is, it should remain "clear majority in independent high-level sources" along with if reasoning for the name can be explained by sources. It is a subjective enough statement to set a basis for argument. To set hard numbers creates a framework that can be gamed. We can suggest that one way to show a clear majority is to consider if 90% of the ghits give the vanity name, for example, but there might be other arguments. --MASEM (t) 19:38, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

I think that an explanation for the name should be a factor, but not an end-all. I would say, for example, something more like 70% plus an explanation, or 90% with no explanation. bd2412 T 19:55, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

That's a completely reasonable approach, using the justification of the name as a "swing !vote" in the consensus building process. --MASEM (t) 20:21, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

That sounds good to me. I can get on board with that since articles are checked for original research and the reliability of sources in the cases of explanations, and, hopefully, closers catch disruptive editors who are gaming MOS:TM to support their views in cases without explanations. SciGal (talk) 19:25, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, how did the rest of the proposal sound to you? SciGal (talk) 19:28, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm going to rewrite what you had SciGal, but I encouraging any wording improvements: (this would appear on MOSTM, but I expect TITLE to drop a link to this)

At times, a proper name using nonstandard English spelling, casing, or characters that would otherwise conflict with the above ((MOSTM)) guidelines may be frequently used by reliable sources. Such names should be avoided for both titling and within prose unless it can be shown by consensus agreement that the nonstandard name is consistently used by a clear majority of high level, independent sources. Other factors, such as having a sourced reason why the originator of the nonstandard name has picked that style, should also be considered as allowance to use the nonstandard name. If sources do not consistently use the nonstandard name, the more standard name as determined by the guidelines above should be used. The results of consensus discussions should be documented at WP:MOSTM/Casebook to avoid future debates. Irregardless of which name is chosen, redirects, disambiguation pages, and hatnotes should be used to direct readers using the alternate spellings to the correct page, and these alternate versions should be described in the article's lead (eg, Numb3rs, pronounced "Numbers", is...)

AGain, wording is nowhere near refined but just to get the ideas I want out there. --MASEM (t) 21:02, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Three things that I can think of:

1. It sounds more formal than what I had, which is an improvement. It also covers most of my unvoiced concerns through this process (i.e., the fact that titles of works are considered proper nouns, the use of the word "stylized as" in the lead).

2. Having a MOS:TM casebook does sound like a good idea. That, however, might be an issue for the wider WP community to decide.

3. My only real concern about the proposal is the editors who will use sources that are in the clear minority and the sentence starting with "If sources do not consistently use the nonstandard name,..." to justify changing the spelling of a unconventional name that has 70%-99.9999% usage in the sources. (They could also use the phrase, "Such names should be avoided for both titling and within prose" as justification.) That, however, probably will not stop no matter what we do.

That said, the proposal should limit arguments. SciGal (talk) 21:37, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

There might be need for a second paragraph as a guideline of "how to determine what is consistent use..." and then say, here's good evidence to show this is the case, but it strictly would be guideline "advice", and that ultimately it is consensus that determines this. Again, if one person sticks in the mud about his 10% and no one sides with him, that's becomes beating a dead horse and there's other ways (expected WP behavior) to deal with that. --MASEM (t) 21:59, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

That sounds good; I still think that a reminder that Twitter and the like are not generally reliable should be included in that proposed second paragraph. (Sometimes, people need the reminder; I know I do.)

I noticed something about your proposal last night after I turned off my computer, though. I don't think that Numb3rs should be used in the last sentence. It may come across as MOS:TM being changed to accommodate the latest disagreement over the guideline, and that sentiment could defeat the purpose of the change. In the event that you want to use an example that is not listed in MOS:TM, you can use "skISk8Parkz" in the part about the lead. SciGal (talk) 09:55, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

I would prefer to use an actual article as an example, and would suggest 1nce Again, which has not been the subject of any recent dispute. I don't see any reason not to begin an MOS:TM casebook right away; the issue for the community would be how much weight to give it. bd2412 T 12:24, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

We can start the casebook now with cases like deadmau5 and Kesha and Seven, where I know that 1) they fit this scheme (both ways) and 2) there has been discussion about it. That way, that should lock those away from any future challenges. And the issue is not so much to put this to the test but if this is a fair way to unify TITLE and MOSTM so that once decide on "deadmau5" over "deadmaus" the rest of WP knows how to use the name in prose. --MASEM (t) 15:03, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

I doubt we can ever really lock anything away from future challenges (consensus can change), but I think it is worth nothing them as references for other title disputes. bd2412 T 03:28, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, but it will avoid "selective amnesia" that can occur in such discussions especially for when the agreed named is the non-standard English version; the casebook would link to the discussions where hopefully the sourcing had been reviewed in depth to assure the name is right. There are still means to challenge this, but I would argue that such naming considerations fall under the same idea as WP:PEREN, that there really has to be a good reason to revisit that. --MASEM (t) 03:42, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

If consensus changes or if verifiable evidence that contradicts the name's known origins is added, we can create a separate column or section in the casebook to accommodate those articles. There, we can add the rationale behind the reversion to standard English next to (or under the name of, depending on the layout of the casebook) the article in question. This is similar to GA reassessments and FA reviews. SciGal (talk) 21:08, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

• No one's going to wade through all of this. It's not a "tl;dr" problem per se – people have not been overly tumid – it's just gone on too long with too many subthreads and wanderings. If you're zeroing in on something that can be written as a proposal, then please do so and have that be its own thread. This particular spot I'm commenting at looks like the tail end of some side passage in a meerkat warren of discussion.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  13:51, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Policy regarding how trademarking is discussed in articles?

The style guide is very clear as to how branded names will be rendered, but is there a policy about how trademarking is dealt with on a larger level? Examples: "Kleenex is a brand name for a variety of paper-based products such as facial tissue..." "KitchenAid is an American home appliance brand owned by Whirlpool Corporation." If these two articles are a good model, is it is generally best to mention the trademark in the first sentence? And is evidence of trademark required? What about situations where a trademark and its' generic term are somewhat synonymous, with the generic term being more inclusive, but the trademark name is more famous? Which of these should be the official subject of the page, and how much treatment should the other get within that page? (I'm thinking of a case where two pages were merged, with the trademark being the official topic, and the question of how to treat trademarking and how to address the rest of the generic field is now at play - but I don't want to bias the discussion by naming the page!) If there is already a set of policies about this, please point me to it! Thanks! --Karinpower (talk) 01:31, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

(sorry, accidental duplicate. Not sure how to delete the section header)

Sorry about taking so long to get to you. I'll try to answer your questions.

• First, in the examples that you have listed, Kleenex and KitchenAid would be the subjects of the articles as the articles are discussing specific products with commonly recognizable names. Medicines have their own naming conventions. That said, you need to keep in mind that using a trademarked name to refer to multiple products of the same type, such as Kleenex for all facial tissues, does weaken the trademark owners' ability to use that name exclusively for their product. (If I got that wrong, somebody, please, let me know!) In the Kleenex case, the editors there wrote a separate article for other facial tissue products. Maybe you could go that route for the article about the generic class.
• Second, evidence of trademarks is not required to be in the articles unless you are mentioning a medication.
• Third, it seems like there is no section in MOS:TM discussing the use of generic terms for trademarks within articles. That has bothered me for a while now. Other style guides do have a section that addresses the issue. I know that the 1997 ACS Style Guide and the 2013 AP Stylebook (two of the several style guides that ours is based on) has stated that writers should use generic terms when referring to a product unless you have to refer to the trademark itself. I also know that there has been a discussion about developing our own guidelines regarding the use of generic terms in articles about trademarked products in the past. The consensus seemed to be that WP should avoid using trademarks in a generic way as an "editorial obligation" (words of several members of that conversation), although they could not agree whether to use the actual trademark or a generic term to describe products in an article. Maybe that could be a point of discussion here?

SciGal (talk) 21:57, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Potential proposal

In an attempt to resolve the conflict between MOS:TM and TITLE, some of us (Masem, bd2412, and myself) came up with this potential proposal that would be written as a separate section of MOS:TM's main page:

At times, a proper name using nonstandard English spelling, casing, or characters that would otherwise conflict with the above ((MOSTM)) guidelines may be frequently used by reliable sources. Such names should be avoided for both titling and within prose unless it can be shown by consensus agreement that the nonstandard name is consistently used by a clear majority of high level, independent sources. Other factors, such as having a sourced reason why the originator of the nonstandard name has picked that style, should also be considered as allowance to use the nonstandard name. If sources do not consistently use the nonstandard name, the more standard name as determined by the guidelines above should be used. The results of consensus discussions should be documented at WP:MOSTM/Casebook to avoid future debates. Irrespective of which name is chosen, redirects, disambiguation pages, and hatnotes should be used to direct readers using the alternate spellings to the correct page, and these alternate versions should be described in the article's lead (eg, 1nce Again, pronounced "Once Again", is...)

We also have been discussing how to write the MOS:TM Casebook.

Any comments? SciGal (talk) 23:39, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Will have to think on this more, but I think it's going to lead to an enormous amount of tendentious battlegrounding. It's got a lot of wiggle-room in it, and POV-pushing obsessives have a tendency to fudge the facts to make their opinion seem closer to Truth. There has to be a better way to get at the difference between Deadmau5 (because he never, ever spells it Deadmaus and Numb3rs (which really should be at that title, because it's the formal title of published work, a completely independent reason for using it) vs. Ke$ha (even she doesn't consistently use the $), and Seven (Se7en was only used in some marketing materials) and Client (the band; the И in CLIEИT doesn't appear on every single release). I think the key thing is consistent intentional usage that is mirrored in numerous reliable sources (there's no point saying "most" or whatever such sources; no one is going to produce an exhaustive survey of sources with a statistical analysis, so it's just something for people to get contentious and tendentious about). An annoying problem of WP:AT being a policy with its own culture is that there's a section there we call WP:OFFICIALNAME that people incorrectly take to mean "official names are meaningless on Wikipedia". We'll, they're not, and the policy doesn't say that. They're just not necessarily and always the #1 concern. For MOS, it can often be the case that the official name of something is precisely what we use, especially if there's a statement by the originator of the name that the standard-English variant is intentionally being avoided. Before brains melt, no this does not mean you get to go move an en-dashed, bi-city airport name to the version using a hyphen because you think the official name on corporate paperwork seems to be using a hyphen. Quote a statement by their board of directors saying "we hate en-dashes and ask that no one them in referring to this airport", THEN maybe you have a case. Anyway, if the official name does something like use a 3 instead of an E, we don't really care whether random entertainment industry journalists obey that preference 100% of the time; the existence of small percentage of otherwise reliable sources that refer to that guy as "Deadmaus" doesn't affect our decision to use Deadmau5.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  00:51, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

The wording can definitely be tightened up. It's very passive voice-y. Let me try; this edit is designed to be entirely for wording and should not be taken as my endorsement of the text.

Sometimes, a proper name that appears to conflict with the above ((MOSTM)) guidelines is frequently used by reliable sources. Editors should avoid using such a name unless it is consistently used by a clear majority of high level, independent sources. If sources do not consistently use the nonstandard style, editors should use the style that most resembles standard English. The results of consensus discussions should be documented at WP:MOSTM/Casebook to avoid future debates. Irrespective of which name is chosen, redirects, disambiguation pages, and hatnotes should be used to direct readers using the alternate spellings to the correct page, and these alternate versions should be described in the article's lead (eg, 1nce Again, pronounced "Once Again", is...)

I actually made two substantive changes here: I changed the mentions of "name" or "nonstandard name" to "style," since this is a style guideline, not a naming guideline. Second, I removed the "sourced reason" stuff because I had trouble finding a way to phrase it that wasn't clunky. I'd want to make a few changes. First, we should clarify whether the "sourced reason" rationale does or does not first depend on "clear majority of high level independent sources" or not. I suspect that the consensus here is that the linchpin is what high-level sources do, and if so, we should make that clear. If the "sourced reason" stuff would let us use names that high-level sources almost never do…I don't think that describes the practice in the field. I'd prefer, instead of the "sourced reason" stuff, to say that editors may consider any factor they consider relevant to readers, but that the bar needs to be very high to use a nonstandard style that high-level sources do not use. Second, we should define high-level sources. I'd like to define them as something like "sources that are written for a general readership and that pay a great deal of attention to copy editing." I'd also give more weight to sources whose style guides are emulated by other reliable publications (AP is the best example.) Third, I'd really prefer to work in something that gives a nod to my argument that something like Deadmau5 that is used pretty much universally by high-level sources kinda is standard English.

All told, I think that this change, when we iron it out, will improve the encyclopedia and its MOS. Well done so far, everyone. Croctotheface (talk) 09:33, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Here's a less redundant version, but I suspect that objections are still going to be raised. (And note that passive voice is perfectly fine in documents like these, laying out principles and best practices, not giving step-by-step instructions. This is MOS, not a how-to document, but maybe the voice change isn't going to be important.) As with yours, "this edit is designed to be entirely for wording and should not be taken as my endorsement of the text":

Sometimes, a proper name that appears to conflict with the above ((MOSTM)) guidelines is frequently used by reliable sources. Editors should avoid using such a name unless it is consistently used by a clear majority of high level, independent sources. Otherwise, use the style that most resembles standard English. The results of consensus discussions should be documented at WP:MOSTM/Casebook to avoid future debates. Irrespective of which name is chosen, redirects, disambiguation pages, and hatnotes should be used to direct readers using the alternate spellings to the correct page, and these alternate versions should be described in the article's lead (eg, 1nce Again, pronounced "Once Again", is...)

My first objection without even thinking hard on this is that "use the style that most resembles standard English" is an invitation to WP:NOR dogfights about subjective notions of resemblance, to language norms that vary regionally and by register of usage. My second objection woudl be taht the "nonstandard English spelling, casing, or characters" wording was important, because WP:SSF-pushers will seek out every possible loophole to exploit ("No, this section doesn't say explicitly that it applies to lower-casing, so it doesn't!"), and we can't have that.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  21:44, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Okay, what happens now since the RfC has been archived while still listed on the AN/RFC board? SciGal (talk) 18:34, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

iPhone 5S/5s requested move issue

Talk:IPhone 5S#Requested move: While surely it wasn't intended that way, this RM would seem to jump the gun on a proposal still under consensus consideration here.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:34, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Agree, the proposer certainly should not have opened an RM, on some kind of pre-emptive measure, when no such measure is even allowed. So the RM is entirely invalid, and should be closed accordingly, as it has no basis in facts, and users are wrongly !voting on something they shouldn't be. It comes across as forum shopping (WP:FORUMSHOP) as a way of trying to achieve invalid pagemoves – can an admin please enforce the real guidelines and close it accordingly under invalid premise. Jimthing (talk) 17:12, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Simulating logos

I've noticed that the macy's example has been changed back and forth a bit recently which got me to thinking should we have some an explicit guideline against mimicking logos using html or tricky unicode. It's sort of implied by both the standard English text formatting, and the special characters generals rules, but I wonder if something like this might be useful:

• Avoid using wiki-markup, html markup, or combining unicode characters to simulate a logo. Do not expect positioning tricks to work across all browsers or screen readers, and some computers may not probably display unicode tricks.
  • avoid: macy^⭑s, macy​⃰s
  • instead, use: Macy's

PaleAqua (talk) 07:04, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

I rather think it's pointless to simulate logos using any text. Capitalization, coloring, typeface, special symbols and other style elements are particular to specific graphical representations of a trademark and are generally not applied in "naked" copy, including books, newspapers and other media we frequently use as sources. No reliable sources use "Macy*s" in plain text so there's no reason to include it as a possible spelling. In the same vein, eBay now has a logo that uses all lowercase, but because this is not a different spelling and hasn't changed the way the trademark is written in plain text, it shouldn't be used in an article and doesn't even need to be called out in the lead. These are cases where an image of the logo itself is the best way to illustrate these stylistic elements, where they can be shown exactly as they are used. I hashed this out somewhat with Despatche and The Stick Man on the Pepsi talkpage (specifically in regard to using these logo simulations in MOS:BOLDSYN), but we failed to reach consensus. Ibadibam (talk) 23:50, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

I don't have any strong feelings about this one way or another. I was just unsatisfied with the reasons for removing such stuff. I'll just voice my support for a standard of some sort and back out of this discussion. TheStickMan^[✆Talk] 00:29, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

From what I have seen, Macy's only uses the logo macy*s at the very beginning and end of commercials and in a prominent location in printed ads. When referring to itself, the company uses Macy's, even in ads and commercials. Pepsi does the same thing; pepsi is used only in commercials and ads, but when the company refers to itself, it uses Pepsi. SciGal (talk) 23:18, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

When you say they use "macy*s" and "pepsi", are you referring to plain text with an asterisk and no capital letters, or graphical logos that are partially simulated by the text "macy*s" and "pepsi"? Ibadibam (talk) 23:58, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm referring to the graphical logos in the ads. I've seen Macy's and Pepsi, like the vast majority of reliable sources, use the "Macy's" and "Pepsi" plain text when referring to themselves in commercials, printed ads, the fine print of ads, press releases, the terms of use in the Pepsi Experience Points program, in the title bar of Pepsi's and Macy's web sites, etc. SciGal (talk) 17:10, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Hey, guys, these two links might help. SciGal (talk) 12:35, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, but those guidelines cover the use of images of logos, whereas this discussion is about using text to simulate those images in the article body. Ibadibam (talk) 18:33, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

I thought that those guidelines would cover simulating logos as you are using the text and symbols from a logo. Simulated logos may be considered a derivative work. SciGal (talk) 12:32, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Yet another case for developing a WP:COMMONSTYLE guideline... I think there may be a (week) argument for saying that the logo version ("macy*s" and "pepsi") are the official names of these companies... however, as WP:AT states... Wikipedia does not always use the official name. Instead, we follow usage in reliable sources. Since a significant majority of reliable sources use "Macy's" and "Pepsi" when talking about these companies... so should we. Blueboar (talk) 12:34, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Again, the idea that there's a rule conflict between WP:AT and WP:MOS is imaginary, and pushing the at every possible opportunity won't change that. The reason MOS says not to do that to a company name like "Macy's" is because the cutesy styling it's not helpful for our readers. Even if a majority of sources actually did honor the "macy^★s" styling (e.g. due to some fad, or because the company started filing nuisance lawsuits about it and most publishers didn't want to waste money fighting them even though they'd win, or whatever), MOS would still be completely justified in saying "don't do that here". Style is not an WP:RS matter [once the underlying fact of what the name is has been determined, obviously an RS matter], it's a WP:ENC matter. WP:AT may also say "don't do it in titles" and use reliable sourcing as a reason, but it's not really necessary; MOS already has this covered. And I think the majority of people commenting here disagree with your rede of AT, anyway; it does not anywhere impose style rules, much less use RS as an excuse to do so. Pushing and pushing and pushing that misreading is not going to magically make it more accurate. A "common style" guideline would be the worst WP:Specialist style fallacy nightmare imaginable. One might as well just delete MOS entirely, and then start getting rid of WP:COI, WP:NPOV, WP:FRINGE, etc.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  21:32, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

No, really, this is related to the conflict between AT and MOS. People get caught up in article titles and forget about how it relates to the use of the title throughout the rest of WP - in running prose on the article page and in other articles. This incongruity is a problem, and why we need to consider more than just the local page but all of WP in making these decisions. --MASEM (t) 21:39, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

I think we're talking past each other (and I was principally objecting to Blueboar's motion). Yes, people do get caught up in titling and forget about content a lot, but that's not an actual conflict between AT and MOS, it's just cognitive dissonance, a can't-see-the-forest-for-the-trees problem. It's foolhardy for us to allow an argument here to indulge in this "it's a conflict and AT trumps MOS" nonsense without correction. I've addressed some of this above. We don't need any rationale in AT to come to conclusions at MOS for what to do with, say, Deadmau5. MOS is perfectly capable of using reliable sources to determine that pretty much no one on earth uses "Deadmaus" for that guy, any more than Flickr's real name is Flicker just styled funny, yet the band Client's name really is Client, not CLIEИT. MOS has to do this all day every day, without any input from AT, since not everything with a funny name that will be mentioned in WP content has its own article, to trigger AT concerns in the first place. After we use RS to determined what the name is, style is entirely an MOS matter. AT clearly defers to MOS on style matters – I count 8 times, in hatnotes, in running text, in footnotes explaining where AT got its own wording from (!!!) and once in "See also". Now, go watchlist AT, because someone will probably be inspired to go try to delete these MOS references. >;-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:02, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

No, there is a conflict that does involve people assume AT trumps MOS, because there are people that do not want MOS to determine style after they have determined a name. MOS normalizes a lot of things for the purposes of readability and accessability, and the conflict arises when AT-based editors go "but that's how 99% of the sources show the title". I'm not saying that either way is right, but there is a disconnect between the two pages and a need to have a unification of the approach that applies to both titles and in-prose text. --MASEM (t) 23:55, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Oh, sure, but that's a PEBKAC problem, a conflict between WP policy and those endtir's minds, not a conflict between AT and MOS. The unifiation of the approach is that AT does and must continue to defer to MOS on style. There's really nothing more complicated to it on that. If MOS was supposed to be our style guide only sometimes, but not when someone doesn't like it, we wouldn't bother having it.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  09:05, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Still not sure how this involves titles except tangentially. The type of logo / trademark simulation I'm talking about is stuff like using positioning tricks, unicode combining characters etc. to match graphical or text graphical logos inline in body text. Several of which aren't even possible in title. This seemed like a de-facto implicit guideline given some of the recent edits to the page and wondered if it might make sense to make an more explicit guideline to avoid such tricks. PaleAqua (talk) 00:24, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

PaleAqua, Ibadibam, The Stick Man, and SMcCandlish, exactly where are editors attempting to use the "macy*s" and "pepsi" simulated logos: in the title, in the lede, or throughout the article? SciGal (talk) 15:16, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

The macy*s case is old old old—revision number 5 to the trademarks guideline. It doesn't appear to have been motivated by any discussion at the article itself, although it came up shortly thereafter after a contested move. The pepsi case deals specifically with whether a text simulation of the logo should be included in the lead as a WP:BOLDSYN case, so it has a bit less to do with general usage and more to do with the scope of the lead. Ibadibam (talk) 18:38, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Seems like there is not much need to make it explicit. I was mostly motivated by seeing the MOS/TM changes and remembering earlier discussions. PaleAqua (talk) 22:42, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Two things: First, the reason I asked about the usage was that I was under the impression that editors were currently trying to use "macy*s" and "pepsi" in the articles. If someone was attempting to use them throughout the articles, then other editors definitely would have to step in as both usages violate WP:V, WP:NPOV and WP:NOR.

Second, I actually agree with both of you. We should use what the sources say, which in these cases are Macy's and Pepsi. Also, we editors might have to add a restriction about using positioning and coding tricks to simulate logos if it starts to get out of hand. SciGal (talk) 13:21, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

We don't rely much on sources for style, because too many sources do whatever they think looks cool. We just avoid virtually all of this stuff, and go with plain English. Exceptions are really rare, and mostly come down to the "eBay" and 'iPhone" case, where the use very easy, and is nearly 100% uniform in sources. There are a few things like Mötley Crüe that may still need to be cleaned up; it's just heavy metal umlaut styling, and has no actual linguistic effect, so it has to go, or next you know it someone's going to want to do Google everywhere.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  09:05, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm wondering if you misunderstood me. When I talk about using the sources, I'm not talking about using the exact colors or fonts; I am talking about using the actual characters that the sources use. The use of colors and fonts in texts are already covered here. As for spelling, I can use SciGal, ScⁱGαl, or ^S_c^i_Ga_l, but that does not change the fact that my user name is spelled "S-c-i-G-a-l" with no spaces. (In that second example, it would be SciGαl if it is used it consistently everywhere; otherwise, it would be SciGal.) SciGal (talk) 13:30, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

To clarify what I mean, I was taught that style is separate from spelling. Style consists of colors, fonts, special symbols (like you see when you click on "Symbols" in the pull-down box under the edit page), etc. Spelling usually consists of letters (both capitals and lowercase), numbers, and punctuation. Styles are arbitrary; spelling, especially of proper names, isn't. (For your curiosity, while researching what other MOSs said about unconventional spellings, I learned that Gregg's Reference Manual's seventh edition (page 289) recommended the use of all caps for titles only for advertising purposes or to replace underscores and italics in business correspondence. Generally, I agree with the use of proper capitalization, unless the use of all caps is consistent in all RS.) SciGal (talk) 14:23, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

From a legal perspective, capitalization is also part of style. A non-graphical trademark consists of a combination of letters and is protected in all forms of capitalization. Hence PepsiCo does not have separate trademarks for "Pepsi", "PEPSI" and "pepsi" (although they do have graphical trademarks that add style to the word, including these lettercases. There is a fundamental difference between capitalization and other style elements, which is that it's built into the standard character set and can be rendered by any browser without needing special markup (although css can be used to accomplish this, incidentally), but I don't think that makes it exempt. Standard English capitalization should be followed unless there's absolutely no support for it in RS, like "PlayStation" vs "Playstation". Ibadibam (talk) 21:58, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

SciGal: Yes to all three cases, to the extent they're tried any more at all (we've been forestalling most of them because MOS:TM's doing its job). It was out of hand a long time ago, not today. That I know of...  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  09:05, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

PaleAqua: I agree that, yes, it would be nice to explicitly say "don't do that", but how is MOS not already clear about this? PS: Most of us have no prolbme with a lead reading '''XYZ''' (styled <u>X</u><sup>y</sup>''Z'') is..., if it seems really important to note (once!) the stylization of the name in "official" materials. But this can't be done in running text, nor in titles, nor as the name in the bold part of the lead.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  09:05, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

I think WP:LEADCLUTTER means that there is a problem with that. Bulking up the article text with "(styled X^yZ)" just isn't necessary when an infobox image of the logo can demonstrate this styling in its proper context, with all style elements represented. I'd like to think that we can trust Wikipedia readers to understand that Time and TIME are the same magazine and we don't need to explicitly state in the first sentence of the article that its cover uses the latter style. Ibadibam (talk) 21:58, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

I agree with SMcCandlish, by having a simple comment in the lead of articles that need to make such stylisation clear, eg. "The iPhone 5S (branded and marketed with a small 's' as iPhone 5s) is a smartphone by Apple Inc.". It's the clearest, simplest, and most concise method to deal with the issue without having to use the stylised method throughout articles at the whim of companies and their branding choices, especially where photos cannot be used and/or said photos are often not enough to stop the continual editing behaviour of editors on pages, especially when the photos may not make the stylisation clear. Of course people know it's the same product, but it doesn't stop them misediting pages to wrongly reflect branding typographical choices they think are right, even though the WP guidelines make it clear they are not. Jimthing (talk) 17:25, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Something has been omitted

The guideline currently states:

• When deciding how to format a trademark, editors should choose among styles already in use by sources (not invent new ones) and choose the style that most closely resembles standard English, regardless of the preference of the trademark owner.

What seems to be missing is any guidance about situations where the "styles already in use by sources" don't "resemble standard English"? Thoughts? Blueboar (talk) 13:09, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Uhh, we've been discussing that. ViperSnake151  Talk  23:31, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

You already known my position (my preference of going with the sources) and the compromise in case one unconventional English spelling is used almost as much as the standard English spelling. SciGal (talk) 12:08, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

RFC to resolve conflict between MOS:TM, MOS:CT WP:TITLETM WP:RS WP:COMMONNAME

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.

General consensus seems to be to use a mixture of the policies to get the title of the page. The actual title should respect COMMONNAME and RS, while styling should follow MOS:TM, unless the vast majority of reliable sources (ie. 90-odd%) agree to use a different styling, with no uneven weighting on official or unofficial sources. Therefore, there is support to keep the current wording of MOS:TM. --Mdann52talk to me! 15:31, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

---

I was recently the uninvolved closer for a WP:ANRFC request regarding the television show "NUMB3RS" and if the title of our article should be "Numb3rs", "NUMB3RS", or "Numbers (TV series)". MOS is a guideline. RS is a policy. There are split decisions all over the wiki for following MOS vs RS/Primary. I have no personal horse in this race, but I think this is something that should probably be given a closer look by the wider community to see if the conflict between the two directions can be resolved. Making things slightly more complicated, in light of the Manning controversy, MOS appears to be given weight above its status as a guideline.

Question 1 Does MOS or RS take priority for determining article titles. Question 2 When evaluating sources, what weight are given to sources such as the WP:PRIMARY show/album/company itself, IMDB, TvGuide, AllMusic, Amazon etc.

Extended content

A few examples of articles where the conflict has either been discussed locally, or just to show the various outcomes Numbers_(TV_series) (vs Numb3rs or NUMB3RS) Talk:Numbers_(TV_series)#RfC:_What_should_we_call_this_article.3F Kesha vs Ke$ha Seven (film) vs "Se7en" Talk:Seven_(film)/Archive_1#Old_requested_move Korn vs KoЯn Wham! Yahoo! A-ha k.d. lang (vs KD Lang) Additional article titles added after creation of RFC *Salt-n-Pepa Salt N' Pepper Boyz II Men Boyz n the Hood Toys "R" Us Deadmau5 Tech N9ne A few of the prior discussions I found during my closing Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Trademarks/Archive_11#Stylization_vs._reliable_sources Manual_of_Style/Trademarks/Archive_11#Non-standard_titles_and_.22stylized.22_renditions I will be placing some notifications of this RFC at various noticeboards and forums that I think may be interested. Gaijin42 (talk) 16:04, 7 February 2014 (UTC) Survey MOS Per Masem's excellent arguments below. wikilinks and mentions of the topic on pages other than the article itself are unable to have explanatory text. It also aids in global accessibility, and accessibility for those with disabilities. Gaijin42 (talk) 16:49, 7 February 2014 (UTC) Room for revising i don't necessarily believe the MOS is completely flawed, but there is a sense of WP:OWN to when we can make exceptions and when we can "recognize" room for exceptions. This MOS (or at least the people who claim they are following the MOS) is/are against what reliable primary sources have to say. And in the end, "WE" are defining what is acceptable, and thats just far too subjective.Lucia Black (talk) 16:54, 7 February 2014 (UTC) MOS, obviously. If we sourced for style, we wouldn't need an MOS, and Wikipedia would be incredibly inconsistent. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:59, 7 February 2014 (UTC) CN then MOS but on the understanding, as I've tried to outline below, that CN is determining the "content" (and thus depends on RS) while the MOS is "presentation" and applies after RS's have been used. To explain this in policy/guideline might require changes there. --MASEM (t) 17:06, 7 February 2014 (UTC) MOS, with occasional, commonsense exceptions. We rightly rely on reliable sources for content, but style is determined in house. This is the point of a manual of style. If this results in us looking foolish, perhaps we revisit specific parts of the MOS, or make an IAR exception. But saying we have to following the stylization of reliable sources commits the specialist style fallacy, and is a fool's errand in the first place, since different sources follow their own style guides anyway. --BDD (talk) 18:13, 7 February 2014 (UTC) MOS and RS are not in conflict since RS doesn't talk about styling. MOS does talk about how to weigh information from sources, for example in MOS:TM; we sometimes make exceptions, like k.d. lang (K. D. Lang's registered trademark), but it's not clear why in this case and I wouldn't want to see that turn into a tide of styling per people's random vanity trademark styles and such. Dicklyon (talk) 18:44, 7 February 2014 (UTC) Article titles should use the most common name used in reliable sources, following the principle of least surprise. If no most common name can be established, or if technical limitations prevent its use, the name suggested by the manual of style should be used.  Sandstein  21:36, 7 February 2014 (UTC) MOS Needs Revision for two reasons. One, titles of books, computer programs, magazines, radio programs, TV shows, movies, web pages, operas, and plays do get flagged for violation of MOS:TM. Under most style manuals (CMOS, APA, and Turbian; implied for MLA Handbook, MLA Style Manual, AP Stylebook, and MHRA), changing those names is not permissible. (An exception is made for capitalizations and ampersands). That includes the use of special characters that are reproduced using computer software. Second, if an author or a creator of a work uses a nonstandard English spelling, the Wikipedia editor is forced to prove that the nonstandard English was intentional. In some cases, that may not be possible, especially if the author or creator does not mention his or her inspiration for the title. That uncertainty may tempt some editors to conduct original research, which is not permissible under WP policy. SciGal (talk) 22:32, 7 February 2014 (UTC) I just thought of a third reason: Several editors have raised concerns about the possibility of trademark infringement. If you want read these concerns, see the above section and read here, here, and here. (For that last one, Wikimedia Foundation Community Liaison Maggie Dennis came to the editors for a policy regarding traditional trademarks. The consensus seemed to be that WP should not use trademarks in a generic way as an “editorial obligation” [words of several members of that conversation], but there was a disagreement over whether to use the actual trademark or a generic term to describe products in an article.) SciGal (talk) 17:53, 10 February 2014 (UTC) Also, strict adherence to MOS:TM's second paragraph can force editors to violate WP's core content policies. If a subject discussed in RS has a nonstandard official English name, editors can be forced to use a standard English spelling that occurs in a minority of sources. This is in spite of the majority of the reliable sources verifying the nonstandard English version. In addition, editors can be forced to add unsourced material such as the word "stylized". All three violations does cause edit wars and weakens the encyclopedia. A revision to bring MOS:TM's second paragraph would help in limiting edit wars. SciGal (talk) 12:42, 26 March 2014 (UTC) Also, as for reliable sources, I think that user-edited sources, such as personal blogs and IMDB, should not be considered. (Caveat: Professional blogs associated with members of the scientific community and academia should be considered reliable sources.) TV Guide is frequently a good source for reviews of TV shows. Allmusic and Amazon may not be the best sources as they tend to either play music (Allmusic) or sell books and music (Amazon). SciGal (talk) 22:47, 7 February 2014 (UTC) Modification here, Amazon can be a good reliable source should one need publication or release information. SciGal (talk) 17:53, 10 February 2014 (UTC) MOS, then COMMONNAME RS doesn't even enter into this. Chris Troutman (talk) 05:28, 8 February 2014 (UTC) Common name The case of Star Trek Into Darkness showed that the MOS lacks consensus, is disruptive, lame and too bureaucratic. Andrew (talk) 10:22, 8 February 2014 (UTC) UCN decides what the name is; then MOSTM decides how to style it. There is a difference between style and content; specific to this discussion, there's a difference between style and naming. WP:Commonname is designed to answer what the name is whereas MOSTM is designed to answer how to style that name. So, for instance, editors are free to argue that the dollar sign is an intractable part of Kesha's name; therefore naming guidelines call for us to use "Ke$ha". However, if the dollar sign is not an intractable part of her name (which it doesn't seem to be to me, and editors at the Kesha article seem to agree), then it's a style question, which is what this guideline is meant to address. Croctotheface (talk) 10:26, 8 February 2014 (UTC) Wikipedia:Article titles is the policy and I believe it covers most situations, including those relating to trademarks: WP:TITLETM. WP:RS has been brought into this debate erroneously, as that is a guideline on how to identify reliable sources - there is no conflict between that guideline and any other guideline or policy regarding naming of articles: we use reliable sources to help inform us of the most appropriate title, and WP:RS helps guide us to which sources may be considerable reliable or not. Having agreed on the most appropriate name for the article using Wikipedia:Article titles, the MoS guidelines will then assist in the formatting of those names where Wikipedia:Article titles is not clear. If there is any conflict between a title guideline and Wikipedia:Article titles, then Wikipedia:Article titles takes precedence as that is the policy. If there is a specific conflict between pages, then please identify them so that, per WP:POLCON, we can attempt to resolve the matter. As regards Numb3rs, that is how the article should be presented per WP:TITLETM and WP:COMMONNAME - that is policy. Plenty of evidence was put forward during the discussion to show that Numb3rs is the common name as used by just about every reliable source on the planet. There is no policy or guideline that anywhere suggests a name should be changed. I think there has been a misunderstanding regarding the difference between "standard English text" (the number 3 is standard English text) and "graphic logos" (the number 3 is not a logo). Additionally, per WP:NATURAL, a title without disambiguation brackets is preferred over one using brackets. What should not be used is NUMB3RS, as such usage is not common, while Numb3rs is. Indeed, any use of "Numbers" is clearly wrong, as that is not the name of the show. Using a number in a name is OK, per 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaii Five-0, Blake's 7, etc. I would change it myself, but as there has been a recently closed discussion, that would be controversial, so I suggest that a discussion is held again, and is closed by someone who knows policy. SilkTork ✔Tea time 11:34, 8 February 2014 (UTC) This pretty much sums it up; that is how I would have closed the previous discussion. — Edokter (talk) — 11:51, 8 February 2014 (UTC) RS then MOS... Following the reliable sources on what names to use in an article is a fundamental concept on Wikipedia. Of course, not all sources should be given equal weight when determining how they present the name. It is appropriate to give a lot more weight to how the name is presented in high-end reliable sources (Rolling Stone magazine, NYT, BBC, etc.) and very little weight (or no weight at all) to low-end sources (fan websites, facebook pages, etc). That said, the MOS preference for "standard lettering" is an appropriate tie-breaker... if the sources (especially the high-end sources) are mixed in their usage, I would have no problem with using the MOS to settle the question. HOWEVER... when the sources are not mixed... when a significant majority of sources (especially high-end sources) routinely present a name in a particular way, then that is how Wikipedia should present it. Editors should not impose our own preferences as to what is "correct" or "silly" or "pure vanity" over what the sources do. Blueboar (talk) 15:43, 8 February 2014 (UTC) MOS basically, with COMMONNAME (and/or RS) used to determine the name but not the typography or layout or color. RS is of limited use for matters of typography. COMMONNAME and RS (which will generally track each other I would think) are for determining whether an entity is called (say) "Robert's Auto Parts" or "Bob's Auto Parts". Once that's determined, MOS comes in on the matter of whether it's "Bob's Auto Parts" or "Bob*s Auto Parts" or "BoB!S aUtO pArTs!!!!!" or whatever (hint: it's "Bob's Auto Parts"). It's impossible to get down in the weeds of advertising people's typography. We can't do it anyway; we can't do colors, or script fonts, or 90-point text, or coke bottles, or whatever; we can only do a narrow range of characters. So let's not try. But even if we could, I have limited interest in the Wikipedia being jerked around by people wanting to use leet or whatever to render their product names. I'm not opposed to an occasional case-by-case exception in extraordinary cases. Herostratus (talk) 20:33, 8 February 2014 (UTC) First RS for the content (e.g. Kesha, not Kesha Sebert) then TM for how to style it (Kesha, not Ke$ha). Paul Erik (talk)(contribs) 21:22, 8 February 2014 (UTC) MOS. Other sites have their own manual of style, but ours trumps theirs when we're writing here. Reliable sources certainly tell us the common name, but the MOS tells us how to style it. As WP:TITLE states, we should ignore primary sources when choosing styling. However, TITLE also gives us a few exceptions to the MOS, which does set up a conflict between them. In all but the most obvious cases, we should probably defer to the MOS. I read WP:TITLETM as protection against removing the stylization from eBay and Boyz n the Hood, which are clearly established and uncontroversial. If any good-faith doubt exists, refer to the MOS. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 22:30, 8 February 2014 (UTC) MOS for style such as capitalization, punctuation, glyph variants or substitutions for example Я vs "R" in Toys "R" US, capitalization etc. CN should determine content not style. Agree with many of the comments above that talk about the separation of style vs. content. Consistency in style and readability are important. PaleAqua (talk) 20:00, 9 February 2014 (UTC) WP:TITLE + MOS per SilkTork's explanation. SilkTork pretty much said everything I would have to say on the matter, so I won't bother repeating it. :) Kaldari (talk) 23:39, 9 February 2014 (UTC) CN then MOS - If people realized how little the common name differs from the MOS-advised one, this would be much less contentious. Side note: How is a discussion on the WP:MOS talk page that hundreds of MOS devotees have watchlisted supposed to represent a fair view? Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 02:11, 11 February 2014 (UTC) The discussion is transposed into WP:CENT and I posted notifications on multiple other talk pages and noticeboards to try and balance that out.However, if there is some other locatoin that you think should be notified, feel free. Gaijin42 (talk) 02:18, 11 February 2014 (UTC) Makes sense. Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 02:46, 11 February 2014 (UTC) Once the CN has been decided then I believe in the case of trademarks WP:TITLETM takes over. How I read TITLETM is that the title should follow this MOS page unless it has been proved that the TM is the most common usage in independent sources. I also do not believe there is nothing stopping us from having the article at the trademarked title, if the usage is proven, and for the body of the article to then follow MOS:TM for the readability issues that have been brought up. --Jnorton7558 (talk) 21:50, 13 February 2014 (UTC) Generally, reliable sources, as WP:RS is a reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally important part of our policies and guidelines. Red Slash 02:59, 17 February 2014 (UTC) COMMONNAME and accurate names should trump MOS every time. MOS shouldn't be Wikipedia's fall-back excuse to say "fuck off" to accuracy. Half of MOS is barely functional, the other half is a cesspool of inconsistency, blatant contradiction, and vagueness ripe for misinterpretation...on some days, it makes New Orleans look good.--ColonelHenry (talk) 05:50, 18 February 2014 (UTC) For stage names of artists and titles of creative works actual stage name/title as the presumptive common name unless this is clearly rejected by a substantial majority of reliable sources. bd2412 T 19:40, 19 February 2014 (UTC) See also WP:STAGENAME. --Rob Sinden (talk) 10:44, 20 February 2014 (UTC) MoS is default, COMONNAME should be used only in exceptional circumstances, and RS doesn't apply. Stylization should not apply to article titles without an exceptionally compelling reason. Separation of presentation and content and all that. Curly Turkey (gobble) 05:35, 10 March 2014 (UTC) MOS should cover all instances where names have been styled. Words are for reading and so using dollar signs in place of the "S"; upside-down letters; numbers substituted for letters, and the turned around "R" or any symbols that are at odds with how they are supposed to be pronounced, and I would apply the definition of "logos" (ie graphics or diagrams) to these. Capitalisation and the like are thus all style matters and should abide by the MOS. Diacritics in titles of articles for foreign subjects used natively for correct pronunciations are orthographic elements and not style and the glyphs ought not to be stripped. -- Ohc ¡digame! 14:05, 18 March 2014 (UTC) MOS, which is not actually in conflict with RS or with AT/UCN/NC. WP:RS absolutely cannot be used to dictate style; that's absurd. We follow the sources on encyclopedic facts; we do not let external publications with their own internal style guidelines (or whims) tell us what to do with ours. There's an essay at WP:Specialist style fallacy demonstrating about 20 different logic fallacies one has to engage in to believe that RS override the MOS. The bits above about RS being "important" so they trump MOS, or AT should "trump" MOS because MOS is "just a guideline" are fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of the question and how these documents interrelate. WP:AT, its policy subsections like WP:UCN (a.k.a WP:COMMONNAME) and WP:TITLETM, and AT's naming conventions (NC) sub-guidelines, necessarily derive all of their style rules from MOS, and necessarily defer to it on such questions, the same way that a programmer defers to a programming language specification. No one has ever made the argument that MOS is "superior to" AT or RS; it's a completely different sort of thing, and such a comparison is meaningless. In particular, UCN and MOS are not conflicted, because UCN, through relying upon RSs, determines for us what the name of something "is" for our article titling purposes, while MOS tells us how to style it and treat it grammatically within our encyclopedia in the best interests of our readers. What RS tells us, that is important to us encyclopedically, is what the name(s) of something is/are, in what contexts, according to whom, and how reliable this information is. The sources may also incidentally tell us something about the style, such as that the singer Kesha professionally spelled her name "Ke$ha" for a while and mostly did so consistently. A fact like this may be (and often is) worth noting in the lead for reader clarity, but it does not magically dictate how we style anything. Your mechanic does not override your tax attorney when it comes to how to pay for your car without serious financial or even legal consequences; but the attorney does not contradict the mechanic on engine maintenance, even though both are talking about your car, and the views of the tax attorney may be "more important" within that authority's area of actual expertise. With regard to the dispute over Numb3rs, just because someone offers an opinion that they believe is grounded in MOS does not mean they are doing so accurately. No one who understands MOS would have argued for naming that article Numbers (TV series) on the basis of the available facts, even if we'd do this by default perhaps; there are no sources that RS and AT/UCN would recognize that even suggest the title is really Numbers and that it's just stylized Numb3rs for marketing purposes. People got confused by the case of Seven (film), erroneously believing that the "real name" of the movie was Se7en but MOS somehow "dictated" Seven. But the version with the numeral was simply a stylization used on some marketing materials, including the posters in some places. Completely distinguishable cases. In the Star Trek Into Darkness case, pretty much the entire world was uncertain what the intent was and how the film would be titled up on release. Those insisting on inserting a colon were not making an MOS-based argument, even if they said they were, but an WP:OR/WP:CRYSTAL-based one. A similar not-really-MOS-at-all argument that $#*! My Dad Says should be at Shit My Dad Says (TV series} because that's how many of us would say this out loud. Absolutely nothing in MOS can be read as supporting such a view; it's unadulterated OR. For all we know, the studio execs themselves call it Crap My Dad Says. Contrast Penn & Teller: Bullshit!; the network itself bowdlerizes this as Bullsh*t or Bull**** in their listings and publications, as do some squeamish reliable sources, but the show itself does not. But $#*! My Dad Says is in exactly the opposite situation. PS: Also, Opposition to MOS generally comes from people who have not gotten their way in some protracted and pointless style dispute; if MOS were weakened or eliminated they probably would have "won", but this indicates no problem with MOS. MOS exists to forestall style disputes in the first place, and prevent intractable pushers of certain stylistic points of view at odds with the rest of the project from browbeating others into silence over such minutiae matters. It does this admirably, many times per day without most of us realizing it. The fact that a few squabbles break out here and there is generally indicative of individuals' failures to recognize that they have not gained or changed consensus in favor of some pet-peeve style matter they are pushing and sometimes even WP:BATTLEGROUNDing about. The heat and noise are not generating themselves, now are they?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼  12:53, 23 March 2014 (UTC) MOS and RS are not in conflict since RS doesn't [normally] talk about styling. per Dicklyon. Regards, Sun Creator(talk) 13:22, 5 April 2014 (UTC) &MOS, understanding MOS as avoid symbols or unusual or stylized letter combinations. The basic reason is accessibility and consistency. DGG ( talk ) 18:43, 7 April 2014 (UTC) Comment. WP:COMMONNAME does not conflict with the WP:MOS, they are complimentary, dealing with separate aspects of a title. WP:UE tells you to use English, and WP:TITLEFORMAT (both also part of WP:AT) refers you to the MOS for capitalisation and the like in most cases, as it should. We shouldn't be referring to sources for aspects of style - if we did this, we may as well disregard the whole WP:MOS. It defeats the point. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:18, 7 February 2014 (UTC) Actually, the MOS:TM guideline directly conflicts with the WP:TITLE policy. In such cases, policy trumpt guideline. However most MOS guidelines lack information on how to handle article titles. What is important to note is that titles of TV series should not primarely be viewed as a trademark, but as a tilte of an artistic work. In that field, there is a tendency to use the stylized title. — Edokter (talk) — 16:52, 7 February 2014 (UTC) Can you point out where you think the conflict is? For most of the WP:TITLEFORMAT section, it actually directs you to the MOS on which format to use for article titles. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:57, 7 February 2014 (UTC) Article titles follow standard English text formatting in the case of trademarks, unless the trademarked spelling is demonstrably the most common usage in sources independent of the owner of the trademark. This is pulled directly from WP:TITLE (WP:TITLETM section). — Edokter (talk) — 17:20, 7 February 2014 (UTC) Depending on how this goes we may need to play with that phrase since that I think is the problematic place, particularly that while TITLE is policy, it only applies to titling pages and doesn't reflect all prose like MOS:TM is meant to. --MASEM (t) 17:35, 7 February 2014 (UTC) My point earlier on this page and below is that COMMONNAME (TITLE) and MOS:TM have no conflict if you consider them the counterparts of content and presentation, respectively. Using RS's to determine the right name (ignoning the vaniety aspect of its spelling) is step one, determining how to present vanity spelling for maximum reability is the second step. That's the problem I see in many of these discussions is that too many of them merge the concepts of CN and MOS:TM and leads to endless debate. There is a clear line between these two that can be put down and remove any issues of which trumps which, as the two deal with very different things. But, to note, this requires you to consider that in choosing the commonname name, any vanity-type spellings are grouped into the same "option" compared to stage-vs-full name, or US vs UK spelling, or other choices that come up at CN debates. This is, I will admit, not as clear a point in the policy/guideline and may be considered somewhat novel, but it does provide a clear solution to simplify all naming discussions that involve vanity spellings. --MASEM (t) 17:01, 7 February 2014 (UTC) As I've tried to explain above, this MOS (like all MOS) is aimed to make the text of vanity spells of trademarked names readable for the largest possible audience of English readers. Where RS's come in is determining the COMMONNAME (in examples above, this is using the name Kesha/Ke$ha over her given name). The other thing to remember here is that COMMONNAME/RS only apply to the titling of the page about that topic, while MOS:TM applies to all instances of that name across prose of Wikipedia. So in process, first RS's should be used to chose the best common name, but once a common name is selected, then the conditions of MOS:TM should be applied to remove any vanity characters that get in the way of making the term readable in the way (or a way) the term will be pronounced, as to aid all readers and those with screen readers. Any alternate ways that the name is presented can be easily outlined in the first sentence of the lead. As long as it is understood that COMMONNAME selection is to determine which name to use ignoring the notion of vanity spellings, and MOS:TM details how to objectively normalize these to maximize readability, then all the cases given fall out without problem. The situation only because aggravated when people that have a vested interest in the topic want to see it in the "vanity" form without understanding that people on the other side of the globe may have no idea how to read that vanity spelling. --MASEM (t) 16:22, 7 February 2014 (UTC) My personal feeling is much in line with yours. Very good distinction between the article title and how the mark is used elsewhere in wiki. How about the punctuation? It probably won't confuse human readers, but certainly could make screen readers puke. Due to some confusion at ANRFC there was potentially another closer Edokter who said he would have come to the opposite conclusion to myself, since a preponderance of RS brought up as part of the initial RFC (Amazon, Imdb, TvGuide, etc) use the Numb3rs format. (Although in my personal searching I did find many others using standard spelling. [2] [3] [4] Gaijin42 (talk) 16:30, 7 February 2014 (UTC) Something like Yahoo! or Wham!, where it is being used as one would normally expect, no issues; if it's used as like in "P!nk" (instead of Pink (singer), that's a problem. The thing to keep in mind in relationship to MOS and RSs is that thoughout all parts of our MOS (not just this one but anywhere in MOS:) we commonly go against aspects of reliable sources to fit our needs to be a global English encyclopedia, which is a far different audience than what most RS's aim for (which is, primarily, Western audiences). --MASEM (t) 16:34, 7 February 2014 (UTC) I disagree simply because thats impossible. WP:MOSTM/WP:COMMONNAME/WP:OFFICIALNAME can't possibly cater everyone, and theres going to be areas where we can't do a thing about it. Example if one uses hacker caps such as "GhOsT" instead of "Ghost". even with audio, the difference wont help. See, the problem with masem's "we can just add a redirect, we can just clarify on the first sentence" defense is that it goes both ways. We can easily say the same thing the other way around. I'm not saying this MOSTM is useless, but it attempts to trump everything else. This MOS are not based on the principles of the other policies. And i believe we have to make room for the policies to override the MOS when possible. If primary sources use "Numb3rs" consistently (as in every sentence the name is mentioned) instead of just introducing the stylized name and then using the standard pronunciation, then that would mean that the sources consider Numb3rs as the standard spelling, and not just a mock-up official name. Here's an example: Tails Character originally was Miles "Tails" Prower because the official trademark was Miles "Tails" Prower, but he was more commonly referred to as "Tails" consistently in the sources despite introducing him as 'Miles "Tails" Prower". Here the common name trumps the trademark. right now, MOSTM trumps other policies and claims its what wikipedia wants, but its the only MOS out there that uses this standard (and that's probably because there can't be any other standard). I believe MOSTM should know its place, that its just an MOS. Keep in mind, Wikipedia is a reflection of the world (in a sense, dont quote me on this to prove a point). So we bring in all the reliable sources, and they are the ones that help build the article. but the problem is when one MOS tries to make us ignore what the sources are saying. Which is why i believe we are "lying" to the readers when we choose a vague name over what is universally known.Lucia Black (talk) 16:37, 7 February 2014 (UTC) I think you miss the point Lucia. 'Miles "Tails" Prower' vs "Tails" is a WP:COMMONNAME/WP:OFFICIALNAME issue, and has absolutely nothing to do with the WP:MOS. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:41, 7 February 2014 (UTC) "See, the problem with masem's "we can just add a redirect, we can just clarify on the first sentence" defense is that it goes both ways. We can easily say the same thing the other way around." No we can't. On the article, yes, we can have the first line to say "Numb3rs (pronounced "Numbers") is a television show..." and that would seem to clear it up, but if I have to reference the name of the show on any other page of WP, the user is not going to have that information. That's why when it comes to vanity spellings, we should be completely avoiding them except to explain they exist on the topic's page, as well as to assist in any redirects. We're maximizing readability while staying true to the facts of the sources. --MASEM (t) 16:43, 7 February 2014 (UTC) Re: ...but if I have to reference the name of the show on any other page of WP, the user is not going to have that information. - Why not ... It would be quite simple to add the parenthetical explanation about pronunciation to any article that mentions the TV show... For example, the bio article about David Krumholtz (one of the stars), could easily say: From 2005 to 2010, Krumholtz stared in the TV show Numb3rs (pronounced "Numbers"). I don't think it is necessary to do this... but we certainly could do it. Blueboar (talk) 16:35, 8 February 2014 (UTC) It would be necessary (to maximize readability including for screenreaders), and that would be incredibly unwieldy in terms of writing tight prose. Arguably one could do "...stared in the TV show [[Numb3rs|Numbers]]..." as well, which to the reader is less a problem, but still is a pain to keep enforced for writers. The MOS approach also helps there because it's easy to know how to "spell" the term to be linked without too much effort since we're normalizing to English, not to what RS's say and what a consensus might have determined. --MASEM (t) 16:40, 8 February 2014 (UTC) No we're not if we choose one over what the world considers to be universal. We're trying to apply "common sense" in an area that is heavily based on sources. And your explanation of how the user isn't going to have that information isn't helping your case at all, and makes little sense. Also, i understand we should avoid them but only where its possible, not in a such a way where we become ignorant.Lucia Black (talk) 16:49, 7 February 2014 (UTC) I don't see how WP:RS fits into this discussion. Obviously, we can't use something like K3sha or kOrN as a title, because these titles are not used by any sources at all. However, there is no doubt that the titles at issue appear in at least some sources that would be considered reliable (i.e., reliable enough that we could cite them in an article as teh source for the proposition that this is a name of the entity in question). bd2412 T 17:07, 7 February 2014 (UTC) The argument in the Numb3rs case in particular was that that was the spelling the sources used, and moving away from that spelling was WP:OR etc. In that particular case, I think there are alternate (more?) reliable sources that we can go to, as IMDB, Amazon etc are not considered reliable anywhere else but that is how that policy is involved. Gaijin42 (talk) 17:10, 7 February 2014 (UTC) Reliable sourcing comes into play from WP:TITLE/WP:COMMONNAME. --MASEM (t) 17:11, 7 February 2014 (UTC) But if you think about it, If MOSTM just tries to trump them, when it comes to naming conventions, why even have them? Keep in mind, this MOS only affects the primary topic, it doesn't affect episode titles in a list of episodes, track list titles of an album, etc. but even so, there are two distinct principles. the ones who want to maximize reading, and those who are worried about using the "least" known name will imply that it is. Thats the problem with not associating WP:COMMONNAME/WP:TITLE with WP:MOSTM. You dont associate it with them you have no problem about any implications this MOS does, but if you do, its clear as day.Lucia Black (talk) 17:30, 7 February 2014 (UTC) This MOS effects every use of the term in mainspace, not just in titling, though I think your point is that things like episode names and song titles are not trademark terms (which is correct, but also a point of issue if TM should go beyond just trademark/brand/service names.) --MASEM (t) 17:38, 7 February 2014 (UTC) Arguably, MOS should apply even more strongly when its not an actual trademark, since the actual trademark is legally saying there is an official name. If we are overriding that, we should certainly override style when its 'just the style. Gaijin42 (talk) 17:41, 7 February 2014 (UTC) i'm still leaning toward reworking the MOS. try too hard to be absolute isn't going anywhere, and i feel theres another side to this that some of you regulars haven't been saying.Lucia Black (talk) 18:06, 7 February 2014 (UTC) @Gaijin42, other documents besides a trademark registration can legally indicate an official name. For example, a copyright registration, like this one and this one. bd2412 T 18:19, 7 February 2014 (UTC) No argument there. My point was that this conflict seems to also exist into areas that are pure style, and not subject to any TM/copyright etc, but the way the MOS is worded, the MOS seems to apply only to things that do have "official" stamps, but not those that don't. Gaijin42 (talk) 18:23, 7 February 2014 (UTC) The MOS:TM, by its terms, only applies to trademarks, and not to other things that have "official" stamps. Of course, general provisions of the MOS apply generally. bd2412 T 18:45, 7 February 2014 (UTC) When I came here, I thought that MOS:TM was for trademarks only; that is the way that the guideline reads. How titles could be even considered trademarks is beyond me. SciGal (talk) 22:39, 7 February 2014 (UTC) As for the Numb3rs/Numbers debate, this may be of interest. SciGal (talk) 22:38, 7 February 2014 (UTC) (interposed comment) Oh! I get it now. I was pronouncing it "num-three-ers" to myself. So if I was wrong about that, what about someone from Chad? Hmmmm... Herostratus (talk) 20:42, 8 February 2014 (UTC) Titles used in trade are trademarks, whether registered or not. In the case of "NUMB3ERS", it is a registered trademark of Paramount Pictures Corporation, since first use in trade in 2005. The question of how we should style it is dealt with by MOS:TM. We don't set it in all caps. We look at how others do it, and pick the one that's most like normal English. If we decided to use "Numbers" it's because other reliable sources do so. No mystery there. Dicklyon (talk) 01:13, 8 February 2014 (UTC) SciGal, Here's the thing with the Numbers/Numb3rs/NUMB3RS question. First off, there are indeed sources that use "Numbers." A quick search found me theNew York Times and TV Guide. Second, it seems like you're frustrated that the question, when asked on the article talk page, wasn't answered the way you wanted it answered. Now, you seem to want to come here and change guidelines and policies so that other editors will feel compelled to switch over to your position. Generally, that's not a successful way to go. Already, editors could've chosen to ignore this guideline if they wanted. And, perhaps appropriately, even if you succeed in changing the guideline to say whatever you want it to, editors could then choose to ignore that under IAR. Im my experience, Wikipedia generally standardizes weird styles much less than high-level sources do, at least based on my experience. My rule of thumb is to trust that the editors who made those decisions had good reasons, or at least quasi-reasonable ones, and not to get in their face about it. It's made my editing experience here much more pleasant. Croctotheface (talk) 10:45, 8 February 2014 (UTC) @Dicklyon, the question should not be whether they happen to be registered as trademarks, but whether that is what they are recognized as by readers. Most people think of titles as titles, and trademarks as brands for products found on store shelves. As a trademark attorney, I can assure you that "titles used in trade" are not trademarks, which is why, for example, there can be a Pink Floyd song titled "Learning to Fly", and also a Tom Petty song titled "Learning to Fly" without legal conflict. No one is going to think that Pink Floyd wrote the Tom Petty song just because the titles are identical, whereas a chip company that starts selling its own product branded as "Cheetos" is likely to be confused for the original Frito-Lay product. bd2412 T 15:04, 13 February 2014 (UTC) "whether that is what they are recognized as by readers." And considering who we consider to be the lowest common denominator for en.wiki's readership, they will not have seen the term before so no, they will not recognize it. If this was 'us.wiki', focusing only on US topics, yes, that would be a fair guess, but not for the global en.wiki. --MASEM (t) 15:08, 13 February 2014 (UTC) I don't think that focusing so intently on the word "trademark" gets you the best reading of this guideline. The concepts and consensus that formed MOSTM could very well be informative when it comes to how we treat style questions generally. When MOSTM was first written, if I remember correctly, the "Thirtysomething" example was already being bandied about. That's certainly something that is more "title of a creative work" than it is "trademark" even though it's probably both things. I think that the "this is more creative than it is commercial" argument is available to editors when discussing what style to use, though. Croctotheface (talk) 00:40, 14 February 2014 (UTC) To comment on SciGal's !vote above, there is no requirement that our MOS must follow anything printed in other MOSes; we are completely free to manufacture our own MOS to suit our needs. Obviously it makes no sense for us to go completely off kilt with our MOS from others, but because we serve a vaster audience than any of those, we are free to adapt our MOS to meet the global readership, compared to MOS developed for specific readership segments. --MASEM (t) 01:26, 8 February 2014 (UTC) And this is where i believe we're using a sense of original research. we the editors are making bigger claims than what Wikipedia itself is saying. we have rules, but only rules to make articles more efficient, this MOS is far different, and it claims to make bigger things. and thats why people are voting on the guideline over the policy. which doesn't make sense. And yes, reliable sources play the outcome of what title we use per WP:COMMONNAME, whatever name is more well known allows us to use it. So if sources use "Ghost" more than "gHoSt" it will allow us to determine the right one. To me, this MOS is trying to override that process, when reliable third-party sources define the standard english, and CHOOSE to ignore them. Again, ignoring that WP:COMMONNAME/WP:TITLE are all part of naming conventions and so does this MOS. Even if we had room to say "the 3 in Numb3rs is a glorified "e". That still doesn't change the fact that sources consider it as a integral part of the title. Just because Deadmau5 is pronounced "Dead-mouse" and obviously the 5 is a glorified "s". it doesn't change the fact that sources provide what they consider standard english. the MOS at the moment considers "Deadmau5" and "deadmaus" the same title, and the same with "Numb3rs" and "Numbers". and thats simply not the case. both pronounced the same, but one obliviously plays more recognition to another. Especially with Nubmers when it creates natural disambiguation. And trust me, the MOS doesn't "maximize" readers. Even if one were to source that some aspects of a title are glorified letters, its really not the point of it. How convenient that we can find sources to excuse why we don't use these type of spelling, but when its the other way around, its ignored. i'll say it again, this MOS needs revision. and although i'm the minority at the moment, thats simply because i'm discussing it for now. throughout the past, this has been an issue.Lucia Black (talk) 07:19, 8 February 2014 (UTC) Recognition should be second to readability, given the ability for redirects and lead sentences to clarify recognition quickly. And yes MOSes are supposed to maximize readibility by adhering to a standard convention to the work to avoid tricking the reader, that's the whole point of a MOS for any publication. --MASEM (t) 07:32, 8 February 2014 (UTC) but look at the rules that are based off of "readability"? MOSes shouldn't override policy. and this is what it does, no matter how many times you say it does, you will not convince me of this. And the only one tricking the reader, is this MOS.Lucia Black (talk) 07:36, 8 February 2014 (UTC) What provisions of policy are you thinking the MOS conflicts with? Dicklyon (talk) 08:51, 8 February 2014 (UTC) Dicklyon, Crototheface, and Masem, I think that you have missed one very important fact: the creators of the show, Cheryl Heuton and Nick Falacci titled it Numb3rs, not the network. I also think that you are not considering that the authors you cite as proof that Numbers is the correct name for the series either can make a spelling mistake, can be in a rhythm that they do not think about what they are typing, or can hate the title of the show and use the Numbers spelling. In TV Guide's case, the vast majority of articles which use the Numbers spelling could be linked to three authors. In the New York Times case, that is a rare spelling. That is why, since December 31, 2004 (the date the article was created), editors chose to ignore MOS:TM. (Actually, MOS:TM at that time covered only trademarks and not titles of works.) Moreover, I think that the Numb3rs/Numbers debate has boiled down to a matter of "Numb3rs is the name of the series since it was a concept that the creators pitched to the network. The vast majority of reliable sources use it, and it should be used here. As for the few that use a more standard spelling, we accept that they could have made a good faith error." versus "Numb3rs is a "silly" "vanity spelling" that the network designed "to make the title look cool" and to promote the show. Since the network did not make the change during the production process, we need to change it ourselves so that it does not look so weird". This does two things. One, it ignores the fact that the creators of the series did name the show Numb3rs. Second, an inaccurate name does not benefit the readers who would like to see accurate information about the series and can lead them to question Wikipedia's accuracy on other topics. SciGal (talk) 14:30, 8 February 2014 (UTC) Given that at some point (first sentence of a proper lead paragraph) we are going to call it by the name the creators wanted to use ("Numbers, stylized as NUMB3RS...") we are not trivializing their choice; in fact, if this particular styling is one that can be sourced to say why it was picked (if I remember from above, they wanted to use l33t speak for the name), that can be brought up again in the show's development section. But there's no requirement that if a show or anyone else opts for a vanity spelling that we have to follow it as long as we're clear that the vanity spelling exists. --MASEM (t) 14:52, 8 February 2014 (UTC) There's a difference between Numbers stylized as "Numb3rs", and Numb3rs (pronounced as "Numbers") and thats how we present what title is it most recognized for. Whats being trivialized isn't their choice, its what the sources have confirmed to being the more common and well-accepted name. And its Original research to claim that sources don't cater to the average reader. And its simply impossible for Wikipedia to cater to the below-average, and it shouldn't. This is a big deal, this is why WP:COMMONNAME takes its place.. Although a stylistic choice, stating "stlized as" means that the "proper" name is "Numbers" not "Numb3rs". which again, is up to debate right now. Deadmau5 was an easy choice, but we had to jump hoops with you, just to let it slide.Lucia Black (talk) 15:06, 8 February 2014 (UTC) We're a global work, readability needs to trump recognizability to serve that goal. --MASEM (t) 15:17, 8 February 2014 (UTC) To SilkTork's !vote no one has said numbers in titles are bad: the three you give - 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaii Five-0, Blake's 7 - are completely in line. The key is that in those titles, the numbers are pronounced as given: it is "seventy seven sunset strip", "hawaii five oh" and "blakes seven", so that's fine. However "Numb3rs" is not pronounced "numb three rs", as that vanity spelling would imply, and that's a point of issue for people who may be familiar with English but not Western contemporary shows. Using vanity spellings harms readership's understanding if they are initially unfamiliar with the term of work. MOS:TM is clearly more focused on these issues than just the aspect of using numbers in a title. Its about using characters in the English alphabet in a manner completely unexpected from their normal English use (3 for e, ! for i, $ for s, etc.) that is not going to be obvious for all English readers --MASEM (t) 15:17, 8 February 2014 (UTC) thats not true. its easy to adapt on the first sentence once clarified.Lucia Black (talk) 15:19, 8 February 2014 (UTC) That only can be done on the one article about the work; it fails for any other article where that name may likely come up; this is why it is a global issue about readability and not just how it looks on one page. --MASEM (t) 15:26, 8 February 2014 (UTC) No. its done because the name Deadmau5 was used consistently. In any other work that met the exact same situation should be acceptable. I dont believe exceptiosn without reason should be used solely for one series. if it is likely to occur again then we must allow it. Numb3rs also fits in well. its not like the sources introduce the tv series as "numb3rs" but then choose to use "Numbers" throughout the source, unlike "Ke$ha" where its more of a hassle to identify Kesha with a $ instead of an s. Numb3rs is accepted as standard english by the sources.Lucia Black (talk) 15:34, 8 February 2014 (UTC) "Deadmau5" was fine because as you argued there are enough sources that also name him "dead mau five", in addition to "dead mouse". --MASEM (t) 16:12, 8 February 2014 (UTC) What about Nothing Compares 2 U (which, as noted before, is not a trademark)? Is it not arbitrary to permit the number substitution in that case, and deny it in others? What about Gr8 Designs for Gr8 Girls? Lordz of Brooklyn, misspelling a common word with a "z", and Encyclopædia Britannica with it's title dipthong? bd2412 T 17:43, 8 February 2014 (UTC) The dipthong is fine because that's actually a character from the original langauge just as we would not omit non-English accents like Ç or ė. (We would of course have the "de-accented" version as redirects). As for those other cases, while seeming out of place, phonetic they equate to how you would normally pronounce those names, as to come to a basic rule of thumb. --MASEM (t) 18:44, 8 February 2014 (UTC) BUt guess who was the only one who opposed before hand? The idea of the name being interchangeable to dead-mau-five and dead-mouse was rather slim, but evident enough for you to drop it. but we still had a strong consensus for it to not even bother, but we did it for the sake of moving on. so please keep that in mind whenever we refer to deadmau5. either way, the majority of the reasoning was because it was so universally accepted as deadmau5 even though officially pronounced dead-mouse. And look at the article, it does not state that "deadmau5" can also be pronounced as "dead-mau-5" just because it was cited to be mispronounced. and thats another key detail, that even if mispronounced, its still recognizable. and this could apply to Nub3rs, although never officially revealed to be mispronounced as Numb-three-ers (which if you grew up with mispronouncing names, its not that hard to say), it falls in the exact same category. For the record, we didn't really even use a source to verify through reliable sources that it could be pronounced that way, but it has been pronounced that way in the past. I'm not saying the MOS should be abolished, but the MOS tends to be "absolute" when theres clear ammount of leeway, just like blueboar has stated.Lucia Black (talk) 16:51, 8 February 2014 (UTC) Comment on all caps: I suspect there may be some merit in making a clearer distinction between all caps as a stylisation, and other embellishments such as digits instead of letters (Numb3rs), unusual punctuation (P!nk), or unusual capitalisation. All caps is quite a common typographic style, for example on signs, in newspaper headlines, and such capitalisation is not considered "stylisation". At what point do we decide that all caps is a "stylisation" that it is appropriate to explicitly note in the article (eg "Pepsi (...formerly stylised in uppercase as PEPSI)"). Does the name need to be included in a logo (like Pepsi's), or in a TV title card (Numbers), or written with a distinctive non-standard manner, as with last two letters in the band KISS? Some companies such as Sony, have their name in upper case in their logo, but we don't mention stylisation on that article. Should we? What about Dell, whose logo is upper case and has a distinctively rotated E, or Samsung with no horizontal bar in the A? I suspect that in the majority of cases where all caps is used in stylisation of a name that is is not a reason to use all caps in an article, except that it may be appropriate to mention that stylisation (Use–mention distinction). In short - I can't see that NUMB3RS would ever be acceptable as an article title or for general usage in articles.Mitch Ames (talk) 10:54, 9 February 2014 (UTC) Allc aps is a trivial matter, it doesn't really change the scheme of the title. there is no other "Pepsi" for us to care about whether "PEPSI" is a better choice, same with all the other examples you've given, but considering that all caps is more of a way to capture the readers eye, more than a trademark to represent the subject, people will use all-caps in every day life, not just in titles or trademarks. so its not something that just influences trademark. However, if it is an acronym such as KISS and sources universally accept it, than it can be in all-caps. But thats only if theres enough reason to use it AND the sources universally accept it. so even though KISS is acceptable because its an acronym for "Knights in Satan's Service" sources don't accept it. which is why i believe this MOS needs to be refined.Lucia Black (talk) 11:02, 9 February 2014 (UTC) KISS is a stylisation in their logo, not an acronym, according to the article. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:01, 10 February 2014 (UTC) last time i saw the article, it had it. its been awhile but regardless, there are times when an acronym can be overlooked despite MOSTM allowing it and thats because sources choose the common name. and here, we may think "Numb3rs" and "NUmbers" are the same thing, but keep in mind, that only works when you're using the human mind (sort of speak), think tech wise and how much Wikipedia does to not have original thought and it would "need" to associate them as two different titles, not one that is stylized as the other.Lucia Black (talk) 14:02, 10 February 2014 (UTC) We're not saying its the same thing. To the lowest-common denominator reader - the one that may have enough English to use Wikipedia (at ~high school level, roughly) and without knowledge of pop culture - they are two different things; one is clearly an English world, one is a weird series of characters. They will have no problem understanding the word "Numbers" in any context without help, while "Numb3rs" will confuse them. Hence the reason to avoid. --MASEM (t) 14:51, 10 February 2014 (UTC) and thats where things get subjective, that's how WE interpret the titles not how. Numb3rs will not confuse them.Lucia Black (talk) 14:57, 10 February 2014 (UTC) That's not a subjective statement. "Numb3rs" will be confusing to those with some but not complete knowledge of English and with lack of Western culture, as well as to screen reader software. --MASEM (t) 15:14, 10 February 2014 (UTC) Not entirely, the fact that there already is a logo present in the article, already helps. Asking why 3 replaces E, wouldn't be confusing even for those who aren't familiar with english.Lucia Black (talk) 15:20, 10 February 2014 (UTC) But we're talking across all WP article space, not just the article about the show. That logo won't be there on the actors' pages, etc. Clarity in context, assuming there's no other context for the term at all, needs to be assured for readability. --MASEM (t) 15:25, 10 February 2014 (UTC) THe logo helps in showing that "Numb3rs is the actual name of the media" and this is common for other works. And considering sources prefer "Numb3rs" as the standard english, so keep in mind that this sis something still available for a large portion of the titles. And keep in mind, although confirmed Numb3rs to use a vriant of "l33t", not all l33t/leet is accepted in english, and the fact that it is accepted in sources for Numb3rs, shows alot.Lucia Black (talk) 15:35, 10 February 2014 (UTC) You didn't read what I said. What about on pages like Rob Morrow where (like it is presently) "Numb3rs" is used instead of "Numbers". You can't put the logo on that page, so there's no context to understand what "Numb3rs" is supposed to be read or the like. That will confuse our lowest-common denominator reader, and that's why MOS:TM, which applies globally, tells us to avoid. --MASEM (t) 15:42, 10 February 2014 (UTC) But how bad is it? i get that we need to do that when the line between both names are blurred. but not when one is accepted universally, and thats something this MOS has to take account of. Because if its accepted universally with that title, even those who aren't new to it will eventually get confused the second time around when they know more of that particular media or person OUTSIDE of wikipedia. Thats something we have to consider. This is why controversy rises. this is for the reason why Deadmau5 was an issue, and as much as you like yuo claim you were the consensus changing vote, it wasn't, just the fastest way to get it done.Lucia Black (talk) 15:46, 10 February 2014 (UTC) Amazon, IMDB etc are not "sources". Actual high quality sources use "Numbers". [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] Gaijin42 (talk) 15:47, 10 February 2014 (UTC) Ok, so now that you're going for that route argument, are you saying that high quality sources ACTUALLY Matters? or are you trying to end the discussion? we do have to stay consistent. if you want to use sources as much as i do, stay accountable for the outcome when it does go against the MOS.Lucia Black (talk) 15:50, 10 February 2014 (UTC) No, Im still saying we should follow MOS. Probably for the same reasons the high quality sources did. But I am saying that the counter argument is based on a false assumption and therefore should be assessed in that light. (in the case of numbers at least). Gaijin, with the exception of the Variety article, you cited the same four articles that Rob Sinden cited as "proof" that Numb3rs is spelled Numbers. The thing is, every source tag the articles as Numb3rs. SciGal (talk) 17:58, 10 February 2014 (UTC) Funny how you didn't bring up Deadmau5 sources. and again, this is still an issue. So, again i say, stay consistent, and stay firm to your own reasoning, don't play the other way around, because you can only be on one side, and for me my side is to modify the MOS. its still useful, but not completely.Lucia Black (talk) 15:59, 10 February 2014 (UTC) Deadmau5 fits the pattern if you talk about pronunciation, going on the good faith statement that you said that people call the artist, verbally "dead mau five" at times (in addition to the more common "dead mouse"). If that is not true, then we have to fix deadmau5 to go to deadmaus to be correct. --MASEM (t) 16:25, 10 February 2014 (UTC) It appears that people that pronounce the "five" are generally considered idiots and called out for it widely. But if the guy pronounced it that way himself in a verifiable reliable source, it can probably sneak by on a technicality. (but we should then be saying in the article that he pronounces it that way. Gaijin42 (talk) 16:29, 10 February 2014 (UTC) (edit conflict)so what i mentioned a few months ago suddenly matters? look...i'm not arguing for the sake of arguing, but there is a clear sign of how advantageous some of you get when it comes to the usage of the MOS. there is clear room for modification, and Deadmau5 (dead-mau-5) is never officially confirmed by the people, but its easy enough to refer to him as Deadmau5 which is what i argued in the past, if we're going to allow numbers in it should be where its in a specific place in a title that allows assumption of a name. For example if a series was called "3lite" one can easily assume "three-lite" but if it means "Elite" thats another thing. Which deadmau5 i at first referred to him as Dead-mau-5 as i'm sure many have, but certain titles allow that. whats stopping other series from adopting similar typography and fans accidentally refer it to that. Keep in mind Deadmau5 still isn't reliably confirmed to have people refer to him as that, but the assumption that its the name he intended is there. You know who you're really calling an idiot Gaijin? the people who are generally for the MOS as they want this for those who might get confused on how "Numb3rs" might be pronounced "Numbers". Deadmau5 being pronounced dead mau five isn't a stretch, but is it still acceptable?stay consistent and be careful with what you are saying because it will go back to haunt you. and yes, i'll be the one to bring it up, like i did just now. So don't call people idiots to those who refer to him as deadmau5. no more "on the fence", whatever reasoning you use, be sure that it helps your case. no more STONEWALLingLucia Black (talk) 16:51, 10 February 2014 (UTC) I called nobody an idiot. I said they those people are called idiots, by others, which is very simple to confirm with a quick google search [10] [11]. Speaking of coming back to haunt you, strongly implying that everyone that disagrees with you on this thread is an idiot is a blatant WP:NPA that is quite foolish for one with your history at ANI. Gaijin42 (talk) 16:59, 10 February 2014 (UTC) Your own comments will come back to haunt you when they get called out. if you don't like that phrase, then let me use another one. Your words are a double-edge sword. Regardless, that's not how you said it, and there's no atoning for it unless you actually admit it was a mistake on your part (don't use NPA, you're the one who said it). And already you're already not preaching what you preach (a specific word you already know) by A) bring up something completely irrelevant, B) exagerrating by saying "no one" agrees with me, when there is a mix bag in the survey and here. just because their not discussing doesn't mean there vote was empty. So don't go spreading what was a mistake from you to begin with. next time bite the bullet and clarify without hassling others of lack of clarity on your part. Those who pronounce dead-mau-five aren't considered idiots (even to the real community) although its true that they quickly clarify that its pronounced Dead-mouse. but those who don't hear the name verbally for a while might stick with it anyways. Either way, deadmouse and dead-mau-five is interchangeable. reliably confirmed that people pronounce it dead-mau-five? no. but common sense dictates its physically possible and it is true, just not verifiable truth. but not the reason why Deadmau5's title remains, and thats something that some people agree with me. Like i said, completely modifiable for the MOS. there's definitely room for modifying.Lucia Black (talk) 17:10, 10 February 2014 (UTC) Arbitrary break Masem, you mentioned screen readers a couple of times here and I think a couple of times in the archives. (Don't hold me to the statement about the archives.) Do you think that readability might be a software issue for screen readers? Here's why I'm asking. Suppose you standardized every nonstandard English spelling on every page of Wikipedia. What about the nonstandard usage on the rest of the Internet? Standardizing Wikipedia does not eliminate the nonstandard usage online. SciGal (talk) 17:58, 10 February 2014 (UTC) We should not care what the rest of the internet does, for one thing, in part that much of the content created on the Internet is by Western media and not aimed at a global audience - we are. But as to the point, a visually-impared reader looking for "Numbers" will find our article, and as the way we have it set, the first sentence they will hear from their software is "numbers (stylized as "Numb3rs") is...", so they will now know that if they encounter however their screen-reader spits out "Numb3rs" audibly, they can connect that to "Numbers". This is another reason why pronunciation is a critical point; if these people overhear the name of the show in conversation, they would assume it is named "Numbers" and recognize it like that and will be able to search for it easily as well as understand it in context of prose elsewhere on WP, since no one pronounces it 'numb-three-rs". --MASEM (t) 18:05, 10 February 2014 (UTC) I wonder how the closed captioning and Audio description or Descriptive Video Service of "Numb3rs" dealt with the issue. Gaijin42 (talk) 18:11, 10 February 2014 (UTC) They manage to deal with a wide range of words with weird spellings and diacritics, I think they can be taught to recognize a few TV show/band names, if it's important. bd2412 T 18:15, 10 February 2014 (UTC) Are you talking about on wiki, or in the show itself (SAP etc). On-wiki, diacritics are actually probably helpful. A screenreader could use them to help in pronunciation. But this raises a good point. We are inconsistent in article titles in foreign names. Non latin ones get converted no matter what (Cryllic, Asian, etc) . Some diacritics or special characters are kept in the title/URL Tomás Ó Fiaich Some of them are fairly complex and unreadable Þórður Guðjónsson. If one considers Leet a language and the replacements as actual letters... shrug. In any case, I hold to my close and opinion on "Numbers" since the RS argument backs up the MOS argument. Deadmau5 is a more complicated issue. I will be interested to see how this discussion is closed, and what the ramifications of it look like. Gaijin42 (talk) 18:28, 10 February 2014 (UTC) I am sure there is a way technically that we can include phonetic codings that a screen-reader can use for not only diacritics but when talking about vanity spellings (whichever way we go, there will be at least one point where we are going to call "Numbers" "Numb3rs" to highlight the vaniety name); it probably involves some CSS to recognize a screen reader viewer and use CSS to include that. Even if that was possible, if we did not go by MOS:TM we would have to make sure editors include that code in every place that name is used in mainspace. MOS:TM prevents editors from having to hunt this down just because they happen to include the name of a work that has a vanity spelling by removing the need to even use vanity spelling in all but the article about that work itself. --MASEM (t) 18:39, 10 February 2014 (UTC) Even phonetic can't cover it all in wikipedia, there are areas where it just can't support such as Hacker caps, and other variants, even if we choose to avoid trademark names in every way possible, it can't avoid the calrification. Even using "Numb-three-ers". the blind person can't tell, same with Deadmau5, even if made clear that its spelled deadmau5, they wont differentiate "mou" from "mau" sort of speak. so we can't clarif even when we're doing it alongside the extreme absolute of this MOS.Lucia Black (talk) 18:45, 10 February 2014 (UTC) Sure it can. I don't know enough of all the mechanics, but I do know that CSS allows injection of material that would be specific to a screen reader compared to a standard visual browser. As such: If we decided to let the RS's run choices, we would have "Numb3rs" used throughout, and we would have a template that evokes CSS so that the screen reader would likely be instructed to say "Numbers" even though its visually presented as "Numb3rs". On the then "Numb3rs" page, we would also likely add screen-reader only text that goes "presented as n u m b three r s", so they know there's a vanity spelling there. If we decided to go by MOS:TM, then the only place affected would be on the "Numbers" page, and again go "presented as n u m b three r s", so that vanity spelling is still there. However, the last one only requires that code in one place, the other solution requires its use through out WP where the term is used. I'd know as a mainspace editor which version I'd want to deal with. --MASEM (t) 18:50, 10 February 2014 (UTC) Screen reader css : http://webaim.org/techniques/css/invisiblecontent/ Gaijin42 (talk) 18:54, 10 February 2014 (UTC) If it can be done, who am i to complain, as long as we do allow more leeway for sources to make the definitive vote if high quality sources indeed cover it. Such as deadmau5.Lucia Black (talk) 20:26, 10 February 2014 (UTC) Because it would be an editing nightmare to include that at all points across WP, while following the MOS would only require it one place. --MASEM (t) 20:39, 10 February 2014 (UTC) There are editing burdens either way. If the article in this case is at Numb3rs, then any article referencing and linking to it can do that with exactly that link. However, the article can't be at Numbers because that means something else, so an article referencing the TV series will either have Numb3rs (which redirects to Numbers (TV series), or someone must go in and pipe the link to [[Numbers (TV series)|Numbers]], so that it links to the TV series without showing the disambiguator. Furthermore, I don't know if anyone is patrolling all of the redirects, but as long as they exist, editors who don't know about these MOS principles (which is probably the majority of people who edit Wikipedia) will keep making links to Numb3rs and P!nk and Ke$ha anyway (or, in the former two cases, just linking to the wrong places, Numbers, which redirects to Number, and Pink, the color). If people are linking to Numb3rs and P!nk and Ke$ha, I'm not sure it's worth any effort to fix that on an ongoing basis, when we have actual erroneous links (like disambiguation links and real misspellings) to deal with anyway. bd2412 T 21:35, 10 February 2014 (UTC) I would figure an average editor who edits articles to add links, will see after preview/saving that "Numbers" is not the desired page and will go back to edit it right. On the other hand, the average editor will not likely remember that there are screen readers out there, so the fact the "Numb3rs" link lacks the screen reader help will not be obvious to them. And yes, I'm sure there are bots that can be made to insert the required text for screen readers whenever these terms appear. From a technical view, whichever way we go, we can cope, but from a more editor-centric view, the non-vanity version is more preferred. --MASEM (t) 23:55, 11 February 2014 (UTC) Masem, honestly, I think that it would be a lot easier to include a bot on an article page to translate non-conventional titles than to change the spelling of a title of a work in every single Wikipedia page. First, that would allow us to recognize the name used in reliable sources, especially in cases where the sources heavily favor a non-conventional spelling, while allowing screen readers to more readily read the text. Second, if you did change the spelling of a title of a work in Wikipedia, you might as well change it on all Wikipedia sister sites which include the title. Besides, personally, I would rather copy and paste a template for a bot in a page since I do it with citation templates than to violate WP:VERIFY. SciGal (talk) 14:47, 13 February 2014 (UTC) @Masem, I know from arduous personal experience that the "average" editor does not even bother to check their links, which is why the disambiguation project must make tens of thousands of fixes every month, and is still falling farther and farther behind. bd2412 T 14:58, 13 February 2014 (UTC) The "3" in Numb3rs is there for a reason. SciGal (talk) 23:34, 11 February 2014 (UTC) Here's the thing with "Numb3rs" as a singular case. There was a discussion at that page. The decision was not to use the 3. There are plenty of arguments that could've won the day in favor of using the 3. I think there's actually a pretty reasonable case for using the 3, and even though I tend to hew pretty strongly toward standardization, I wouldn't be upset if the pro-3 arguments won out. The fact is that a consensus of editors at that article seemed to think that the rationale behind this guideline makes sense and should determine what style to use. If they didn't think that, there's IAR, or even just the notion of "commonsense exceptions" that's built into every guideline. You seem to want to change the guideline specifically so it would require changing this one result, then use the guideline like a hammer to demolish the consensus to use "Numbers" without the 3. I dislike Masem's notion that this guideline should be "enforced," and I dislike the implication that we should change the guideline to say what you want to say and then "enforce" that. It seems like the arguments surrounding individual cases, cases that might be difficult, would not change much. Croctotheface (talk) 00:16, 14 February 2014 (UTC) Our MOS should not be open to IAR - it is a tool to standardize presentation and style across the whole work. We expect a specific type of punctuation, we expect only limited styles of dates, we require conformity of reference style within an article, etc. There is no way it to evoke IAR to avoid or changes those, because the MOS is meant to be a mechanical application. That said, yes, it should not be enforced blindly - edit warring over MOS issues is stupid and trivial and a waste of time. But I would reasonably expect that if one editor makes a change against the MOS (AGF), the reverting editor would point to the correct MOS and the editor changing will understand why their change was reverted and learn was the MOS outlines. Granted when it comes to vanity spelling, our MOS is aimed to rid ourselves of unpronounced or mis-pronounced characters in names. What this means is that there is room for discussion on the finer points of whether in a vanity spelling if the characters are contributing phonetically to the name, or at least in some cases. Similarly, like the "Oliver!" or "fun." case if the extra punctuation is contributing or confusing or not. There is some leeway, but 90% of the heated conversations over naming involving vanity names are not of this sort (eg like "Numb3rs" where the 3 is clearly a mis-pronounced character). That is what we should be trying to figure out how to avoid, and that rests on whether TITLE or MOS has more applicability. --MASEM (t) 02:57, 14 February 2014 (UTC) Croctotheface, here's why I want to change MOS:TM. It's not just about Numb3rs; it's the means that I realized that the guideline is such a huge problem on Wikipedia. There are several editors who do want others to forget IAR and "commonsense exceptions" and to change names that are not mentioned in the reliable sources to suit their personal preferences. Those editors hide behind MOS:TM to impose their preferences on the editors who work on the articles. That can cause editors who have used reliable sources to violate WP:VERIFY. In the RfC on Numb3rs' case, there was a tie in the survey. Edokter was waiting for the word to close the RfC, but Gaijin went ahead and did it before Edokter. Like Edokter said earlier, he would have moved it back to Numb3rs because of the usage in reliable sources and because Numb3rs is the common name cited in reliable sources. There was no census, and Gaijin thought that the argument could be settled in the RfC above. Also, do you realize that both standardized spelling and defining reliable sources are perennial proposals which Wikipedians tend to reject, but MOS:TMers tend to want? SciGal (talk) 09:29, 14 February 2014 (UTC) MOS is not about personal preference (it specifically there to remove it) to any specific name, while any discussion involving RS and naming can and has has boiled down to personal preferences and splitting the sources to get the result they want. Again, most of the discussions I've seen involving TITLE vs MOS issues with vanity names are because people that have a interest in the topic whose title is under discussion do not like the name being off the one they feel is the "real" name (the vanity spelling version nearly all the time). The MOS does have places where one can chose one version or another, like US vs UK spelling, but the endpoint of either choice does not create potential confusion with the readers as long as the choice within a single article is both logical (you'd not discuss The Beatles with US spelling) and internally consistent in an article. "Color" vs "Colour", or "realize" vs "realise" doesn't affect readability since both are the same word and a 12th grade English reader should be aware of these spelling differences and even if they don't the intent/pronunciation is clear. --MASEM (t) 14:49, 14 February 2014 (UTC) We do, however, use British spelling for articles on UK topics, and American spelling for articles on American topics. Is it so strange, then, that we would use what could be called "pop culture" spelling for pop culture topics? If the people most familiar with a musician or a film or a TV series will be familiar with its unorthodox spelling, isn't the use of that spelling for the benefit of the likely community of interest similar to the use of regional spelling for the likely community of interest? bd2412 T 15:26, 14 February 2014 (UTC) The presumption I set forth is that any reader with the lowest-common denominator of reading level (roughly high school level) we expect will know that US and UK spell things differently, and even if they don't, the spelling variation still produces a word that can be phonetically understood. The "pop culture" spelling is not something one can expect that one with high school level education will readily understand. --MASEM (t) 15:49, 14 February 2014 (UTC) Do you have any evidence that people with a high school education would not understand the "pop culture" spelling? That seems to be the cohort for which pop culture would be best known. bd2412 T 15:57, 14 February 2014 (UTC) I'm talking whatever the educational equivalent is to high school across the globe. What that is in places like Africa, Asia, or the like will have the educational merits but not the culture that Western schools have. --MASEM (t) 15:59, 14 February 2014 (UTC) You guys do realize that eBay and iPod came up--again--while we have been debating the issue before it went to RfC here? Also, right this second, this can plausibly happen: Someone can come here and edit eBay's title to read Ebay. That person could then edit eBay's lead to read "Ebay (stylized as eBay) is..." and cite MOS:TM and article titling conventions in the edit summary as the rationale for the change. Until someone points out eBay's exception under MOS:TM or until that editor accepts the general consensus regarding eBay, that editor would be protected under MOS:TM's second paragraph, in spite of the fact that the edits violate WP:VERIFY, WP:TITLE, and WP:CONSENSUS. SciGal (talk) 14:34, 15 February 2014 (UTC) If they made that change and cited MOSTM, they are absolutely wrong in what MOSTM says and with what TITLE even suggests. This is a situation we cannot change - people will misread or edit without checking. MOSTM does not "protect" that edit as you claim. --MASEM (t) 14:46, 15 February 2014 (UTC) I said "until someone points out eBay's exception under MOS:TM or until that editor accepts the general consensus regarding eBay". (The errant editor may be busted within five minutes of that post.) Also, the protection until the bust is in these statements: "When deciding how to format a trademark, editors should choose among styles already in use by sources (not invent new ones) and choose the style that most closely resembles standard English, regardless of the preference of the trademark owner. This practice helps ensure consistency in language and avoids drawing undue attention to some subjects rather than others." (emphasis mine) "Follow standard English text formatting and capitalization rules, even if the trademark owner considers nonstandard formatting "official",..." Yes, the errant editors would be completely wrong. Yet, the errant editors easily could cite the above sections of MOS:TM as "proof" for standardization and use them to insist that we follow their preference (Ebay) and not the spelling that we have agreed on and that is in the reliable sources (eBay). SciGal (talk) 20:51, 15 February 2014 (UTC) And they would be completely wrong, taking one line out of context and not reading the whole guideline. That's not a problem with TITLE vs MOSTM, that's a problem with an editor's comprehension. And while I would say that if it's not clear that the whole MOSTM needs to be read before it should be applied, that's not an issue that we can resolve, as any policy or guideline can be midread and taken out of context in as similar way. So this line of logic is not helpful to resolve the larger issue. --MASEM (t) 03:52, 16 February 2014 (UTC) MOS:TM has been cited in Clamp {manga artists), Flow, the video game, List of Sailor Moon Super S episodes, HIStory: Past, Present, and Future, Book 1, GIPS, the Volkswagen Group, TeX, the 2010 film Red, Born This Way, 500 Days of Summer, Students for Liberty, Google+, NOVA, ratiopharm Ulm, and NASA. That is just a few instances where MOS:TM is cited. SciGal (talk) 23:05, 17 February 2014 (UTC) @Masem, re: "I'm talking whatever the educational equivalent is to high school across the globe. What that is in places like Africa, Asia, or the like will have the educational merits but not the culture that Western schools have." I asked if you have any evidence to support your view, not a restatement of your self-certain guess that you are right. Are you proposing that Western "educational merits" actually precede Western pop culture? What evidence do you have, at all, that Numb3rs or P!nk will not actually be more intelligible to residents of countries where the first thing to reach their shores from "Western countries" tends to be Western pop culture? bd2412 T 02:06, 16 February 2014 (UTC) You said "That [high school] seems to be the cohort for which pop culture would be best known." That's only applies to areas of the world where there is regular mass media and pop culture. That's primarily Western countries. And the first things to reach their countries is going to be core educational topics like math, science, and the like, not what our television programs and pop singers are, considering the lack of wealth and technical expansion in many areas of Africa, South America, and Asia. It is systematic bias to assume our pop culture will be prevalent throughout the world. And that's common sense and just being aware of what poor communities in 3rd world countries do on limited educational budgets. --MASEM (t) 03:43, 16 February 2014 (UTC) I have to disagree. The non-western world tends pay very close attention to western pop culture. Pop-culture (especially American pop-culture) is one of the west's greatest exports, and its prevalence is one of the main causes of resentment against the west (often seen as a new form of colonialism). More importantly for our discussion, the non-western world is likely to be even more accepting of "stylized" names... for the obvious reason that they don't know (or care) that such stylizations are stylizations. To the non-western world, the stylized name is simply the way the name is written. Indeed, if we were to include non-western (and potentially non-english) sources in our assessment of whether there is a COMMONNAME (indicating both recognizably and naturalness), these sources are more likely to support using the "stylized" name than they do using a non-stylized "correction" of the name. Non-westerners may well recognize the character string "Numb3rs" as being the name of an American TV show... but may not realize that the "3" in that name is a stylized "E"... These people will be confused if we don't use the "3". Blueboar (talk) 15:18, 16 February 2014 (UTC) Some, but not all. We are looking to present titles for maximum comprehension, so even if we could assume schools in some parts of the world, like India and SW Asia - which I will agree are more readily accepting of Western pop culture - will have no problems, that simple is not true of all schools. Since our goal is global readership we cannot make that assumption that all schools that teach English will have a significant influence from Western pop culture. Making that assumption creates a systematic bias. --MASEM (t) 15:57, 16 February 2014 (UTC) For those of you who insist on the current form of MOS:TM, here's something from this link: Wikipedia and its Manual of Style, article titles policy, and related guidance draw primarily upon reliable generalist sources for editing guidelines. These sources include style guides (like the current editions of The Chicago Manual of Style, The Oxford Guide to Style (ex-Hart's Rules) and, importantly, The New Oxford Dictionary for Scientific Writers and Editors, Fowler's Modern English Usage, Strunk & White's The Elements of Style, the MLA Handbook, the AP Stylebook, etc.), dictionaries and other encyclopedias, as well as observation of what is most commonly done in reliable general publications like newspapers and non-specialist magazines and websites, and even in refereed academic journals that broadly cover multiple fields (e.g. Science and Nature). (Yes, I realize that the link is talking about the specialist style fallacy.) I mentioned the quote because, I think, sometimes during this debate, some editors forget the origins of our MOS. As it stands right now, the style guides and other sources listed above are much more lenient in allowing unconventional uses than our own MOS. SciGal (talk) 17:23, 20 February 2014 (UTC) As I understand it, the purpose of this AfC. it is not to determine what our current policies and guidelines say, it is to determine what they ought to say. We can change guidelines and even policies if there is sufficient consensus; the purpose here is to decide if we should do that. On that question, I think the current practice in fact to be the best compromise, & I see no reason to change it. (I think the present status is pretty clear that we do not follow stylization unless there is an overwhelming reason, and the best reason is that only the stylized form will be generally recognized if both forms will be recognized, the plain form should be used. ) All of this bickering over the MOS is the worst aspect of determining things by consensus--copyediting is by its nature an arbitrary convention, and is best determined by some sort of authoritative pronouncement, since it only matters that it be consistent enough that nobody has to think about it. DGG ( talk ) 03:09, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Does it apply to political parties?

FYI, there is a debate at Talk:Internet Party and MANA Movement#Article title as to whether this guideline applies to the names of political parties. Nurg (talk) 11:18, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

I have proposed to move the article to "Internet Party and Mana Movement" using WP:TRADEMARK as the rationale. Ground Zero | t 21:33, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Sorry to come in late on this; I was kind of waiting for someone else to weigh in. I have a question for you: Which usage is prevalent in the reliable sources outside of the Mana Movement's official sites (e.g., the New York Times, the New Zealand Herald): MANA or Mana? SciGal (talk) 22:56, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I doubt that the NYT would have covered this. New Zealand media haven't landed on one format or the other:Radio NZ uses "Mana", as do the Rotorua Daily Post which is part of the NZ Herald group, NZTV, and NZ's National Business Review. The Dominion Post's stuff.co.nz portal uses "Mana". Some other news sources (but fewer by my count) use "MANA". Ground Zero | t 17:01, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Use-v-mention and name-v-reference

In an article whose topic is something whose name has a wacky official form used by its owner, I think it is highly appropriate to mention the wacky official form. This mention should be parenthetical and in the opening sentence of the article. This mention is not to endorse it, and does not mean it should be used as the article title, or elsewhere in the article, or when alluding to the subject in another article. It is also appropriate to redirect (or hatnote or dab-link) from the wacky official form to the article.

For example, Time (magazine):

• the article begins "Time (often written in all-caps as TIME) is an American weekly news magazine [...]" One might quibble with the wikilinking of "all-caps", but otherwise I think it's appropriate.
• TIME redirects to Time (magazine). Again appropriate; people rarely refer to time as "TIME".

jnestorius^(talk) 14:55, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

My first question is whether the name really is "often" written in all-caps... It certainly seems to be the case that Time magazine (usually) writes its name in all caps when referring to itself... but what about other sources? How do reliable sources that are independent of the company present the magazine's name when writing about the magazine? Doing the usual quick google news search, it seems that it is actually quite rare for other sources to use the all-caps stylization. That tells me that the parenthetical remark is actually inaccurate. The name isn't "often" written in all-caps... the best we can say is that it is "occasionally" written in all-caps.

As for the redirect... I have no problem with existence of TIME as a redirect. It is not at all unreasonable to assume that readers might look for the article by typing the all-caps "TIME" into the search box, and so it is appropriate to have a redirect with that stylization, pointing to our article Time (magazine). Blueboar (talk) 13:24, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Requested move for CityPASS

A move request discussion is taking place at Talk:CityPASS and is related to the MOS trademark standards on this page. Please share your comments at the aformentioned link. Thanks. –Dream out loud (talk) 17:23, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Requested move

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus to move the page at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 17:50, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

---

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Trademarks → Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Title stylizations – (Suggested new title, other options are welcome). Originally this article was about the usage of trademarks in Wikipedia, like Kiss (band)'s KISS (which is pronounced "/Kiss/" and not "/Key/ /Ai/ /Es/ /Es/", or to avoid legal signs, or avoid decorative titles like Se7en, etc.). But with time this guidelines has started to be used over and over in RM discussions that has nothing to do with the legal meaning of trademark, or non-trademarked titles (1, 2, there are other examples of non-trademarked cases.) This page is constanlty cited as "Per MOS:TM we shouldn't use such style, such decoration, or special characters in titles." If the community is using it for other uses than trademarks (™, ®, or SM) it has to be renamed to a less confusing title. © Tbhotch^™ (en-2.5). 05:30, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

• Support - In a recent RM on an article about a political party, one user repeatedly stated that the discussion had nothing to do with trademarks even though I had quoted the part where the guide applies to organizations. (See above.) Ground Zero | t 11:40, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
• Concern - bordering on oppose... This guideline is supposed to be limited to trademarks. If it is being used to support arguments in non-trademark related RMs then it is being misused.

That said, if it does turn out that there is consensus for this guideline to be broadened beyond just trademark related titles, then it must be seriously amended to bring it in line with our WP:Article titles policy. It especially needs to better account for the WP:UCRN section of the policy. Having a style guideline that says to do one thing, and a policy that says to do another simply causes confusion and argument. We can not have a guideline that potentially conflicts with policy. Blueboar (talk) 12:38, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Why would we distinguish between a company that has trademarked its magazine TIME and a social club that calls itself, but not trademarked, "THE $MILE ¢LUB"? In both cases, they are using nonstandard stylization to make their names stand out. What is it about trademarking that should change Wikipedia's treatment of the name? Ground Zero | t 12:50, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

We don't care what the company or organization uses (see WP:Official name)... my concern is how reliable sources (that are independent of the subject) present the name when discussing the company or organization. If a significant majority of reliable sources routinely refer to the club with the stylization "THE $MILE ¢LUB" then we know that this stylization is more than just a "vanity styling" on the part of the club... we know that the stylization is considered part of the most recognizable name for the club. Wikipedia policy is to follow the sources in such cases. If, on the other hand, sources routinely refer to it as "The Smile Club" then (again following the sources) that is what Wikipedia should do. Blueboar (talk) 14:45, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

But this goes back to the fact that CN covers what the base name should be (independent of style), and how we should style that (once the base name is determined), with the understanding that the style of the name is something that we should look to sources to. Remember, we're talking more than page titles here which is where CN's sourcing aspects are concerned - we're talking about all parts of prose on a page, which is why this has grown beyond just trademarks. --MASEM (t) 14:02, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose per Blueboar. Our top concern should be reflecting how sources reliably refer to a topic -- inventing our own names to fit constructed rules just creates confusion.--Yaksar (let's chat) 16:31, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose move as presented, but would support the basic concept that this page has moved past just dealing with trademarks. This page is not just about titles of pages, as the name suggests, but applies to any time a trademark is used in the body of text. But as pointed out, the use of this page to decide stylizing rules for any proper name in running prose has become a defacto practice and thus should have a name to reflect that. We do need to understand there's a balance between WP:CN which might dictate a proper stylized name based on source use, but that is something that I think from past discussions and watching it used in practice, can generally be safely handled case-by-case discussions, or otherwise would be the subject of a larger discussion to establish language to guide editors better. --MASEM (t) 17:27, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
• Support. Wikipedia is here to present information and sometimes that information gets stylised. If there are guidelines regarding the way stylisations should be handled then those guidelines should be applied. Gregkaye ✍♪ 20:55, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose. This style guide is suppose to apply to both titles and the text in the bodies of articles. Renaming it to "title stylizations" would be incorrect. Zzyzx11 (talk) 05:05, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
• Related Tangent In light of this discussion and my own feeling of unease over the years that we have been applying this only by analogy to titles – that it does not even mention it is applicable to titles – and mostly deals with what to do in running text, and with much of it having no application to titles (so we are left reading between the lines), I took a stab at drafting a dedicated guideline. I;ve attempted to take the lessons from here, from WP:AT, as well as looking at a boatload of past discussions in the archives here and in RM discussions where this guidelines has been mentioned, to boil down some standards. Totally open to discussion, changes, a complete revamp, rejection. See User:Fuhghettaboutit/Wikipedia:Title stylization. Even if this never takes off under any form, what might be useful is the list of many examples I've gathered of application and exceptions.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:43, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
  • Please keep in mind that this page (and your draft) are not limited to titles, they apply to all uses of proper names in prose. There are probably a few limited exceptions where the title has to be renamed due to software conflicts (eg no "/" characters). Hence the name "Title stylization" is not accurate. "Proper name stylization" would apply better. --MASEM (t) 03:44, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

• The very idea is that this has been applied to titles when it is not tailored to do so, and the draft's intent is to be specific to titles and not prose. They are meant to coexist. I did not intend the draft as a proposed replacement of this page, but to take titles out of its remit.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:00, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

• The whole issue of several past discussions is that TM has always applied to prose, and WP:AT/WP:CN applied to titles. They need to be handled the same, save where the software gets in the way. To keep how the stylization in the title and in the prose separate will not resolve the issue identified above in the naming request in the first place. --MASEM (t) 04:04, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

• Yes, people have taken MOS:TM, which by its content is addressed to prose, and over time began to use it as a guideline for style title naming conventions even though much if its text is not germane to titles, and also applied it outside of just trademarks despite the title (thus the rename request). I have no idea what you mean when you say WP:AT applies to titles and TM applies to prose. The whole reason we might want a dedicated guidelines is that this is addressed to prose but is being used for stylization of titles that WP:AT does not cover, which is why in the first place, over time, we turned here. We have many naming convention guidelines that give specific guidance for issues implicated by, but not covered at WP:AT.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:58, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

• The selected article title and the prose of that same article (as well as prose that refers to that article topic elsewhere) should be consistent. It doesn't make sense if we are using "Deadmau5" for the article title and "Deadmaus" for the prose body, for example. We need to unify these two - not necessarily as a single policy /guideline, but so that they work hand in hand. As I've described before, WP:AT should be the choice of words, such as using "k.d. lang" over "Kathryn Dawn Lang", neither which involve MOS/style issues. This guideline should be how that title is styled in the actual article title and in the prose (eg using "k.d. lang" instead of "K.D. Lang") which is an immediate style. Now I know there's issues how much this guideline should prescribe over sources on this last point, but that's separate from the suggested page title for this one. But these need to be unified otherwise this renaming is meaningless. --MASEM (t) 05:14, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose; frankly I think this should be moved in the opposite direction, with the guideline being expressly limited to article content (i.e. usage of names in running text), and leaving article titles to be dealt with by the existing policy alone. bd2412 T 03:53, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

If you're suggesting that some things should be styled differently in titles than in running text, that seems like an odd style. Why? Dicklyon (talk) 05:30, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Not at all. There are plenty of articles where the formal title of the topic is long or difficult, so a different version (a shorthand, for example) is used in the running text throughout the article. bd2412 T 11:52, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Different situation; there is definitely reason for long titles like Dr. Strangelove to shorten for discussion within the text. Regardless, if there was a case that there was a long title that used a non-standard styling in the part that would be shortened in prose, that aspect from this guideline would still apply to keep the styling in the full long title and the shortened prose form the same. --MASEM (t) 15:16, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

The basis for the difference is still readability. A long title is less readable because of its length, but is used as the title because it is the actual name of the subject. A stylized title might similarly be difficult to read in running text, but remain appropriate for the article title itself. bd2412 T 15:27, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

No, that doesn't make any sense; if it is decide the title should use a certain style, that should be held to the prose, hence why the style to chose in the prose must be considered in the titling. The shortening of a title is a separate consideration, and standard practice. --MASEM (t) 17:33, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

We should title our articles with the correct names of things, not with names others make up for readability. it is in the prose that readability concerns arise. There is no reason to impose a strict rule of matching the title style to the prose style when the reason for the difference almost certainly will be referenced in the first line of the article (e.g. "Topic Name (stylized as ToPiC NaMe)...". bd2412 T 16:40, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

The reason we "strip" (to an extent) unique styling approaches in the body is to make things easier to read and find in the article of the body, and since people will use that prose to search for topics, it needs to be consistent; this style also aids in making it easy for readers to search for the easiest way to type in a stylized name. This is also true when we talk about term A (That may be stylized) in article B, and provide a link to A's article there; the prose will be the stripped stylized name but the article title will be different. This uniformity must be between title and prose. --MASEM (t) 18:01, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Nah, not really. If it works for short forms, there's no reason why it wouldn't work for stylized forms, so there's no "must" about it. As for searching for titles, redirects are cheap. bd2412 T 18:04, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

No, it doesn't. Consistency both within an article and throughout WP is key (that's why we have MOSes in the first place). A reader might skip the lead, which nearly is the only play the style and de-styled versions are presented together, and jump into the body of the article, and thus be confused. It also makes us look silly if we have taken careful care to use one form of a name through an article and the title stands out as different. It is a sloppy approach just so that some people can be happy with a fancy name used in exactly one place. Note that this is not preventing stylized titles to be used if they are clearly the published preference (as per Deadmau5) and discussions can still be made to negotiate the different between COMMONNAME and this. But that needs to be a coordinated decision. --MASEM (t) 18:16, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

If that were true, we would be spelling out every abbreviated title in the body of the article on that subject. Also, the idea that readers will skip the lede and then be confused by an unstylized version of the title in the body of the article is absurd. I have never heard of any such confusion. bd2412 T 16:21, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose – we can work on clarifying MOS:CT if necessary, to clarify when it has precedence over MOS:TM, but I expect it will include similar provisions. In many cases band names and album titles actually are trademarks, often registered; like "k.d. lang" is a registered trademark of Kathryn Dawn Lang. Dicklyon (talk) 04:15, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
• Comment. This discussion has implications for a very significant number of articles and applications of the manual of style. I'd suggest that this discussion be more widely advertised to draw opinions from those who don't have WP:RM or WP:MOS-TM on their watchlists. Dekimasuよ! 16:22, 24 October 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose as proposed, because this is not just about titles. It's about names, and it applies within the body of articles, not just in titles. (Per Zzyzx11 above.) —BarrelProof (talk) 19:41, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

---

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Follow up discussion

While there was no consensus to move the page... I think we still need to address the underlying issue that it raised. People are citing this guideline in non-trademark related RMs. That wasn't the intent of the guideline... so we need to figure out how to resolve that issue. One possible solution would be to create a new guideline to deal with the issue of stylized names (in general)... perhaps calling it: WP:MOS/Stylized names. However, I can see how there is some degree of overlap (many stylized names are trademarked) and thus the potential for conflict and confusion. So I thought I would ask... what is the initial reaction to creating such a guideline? Pitfalls? Benefits? Please discuss. Blueboar (talk) 19:02, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

• I think that it is a mistake to presume that guidelines clearly directed to the use of terms in running text should be at all applicable to article titles. bd2412 T 19:26, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
  • Article titles are part of the running text since they also are the names of link targets, and having inconsistencies makes no sense when we have consistency within articles across all other parts of the MOS. --MASEM (t) 20:51, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
    • We have solutions for that - redirects and piped links. Compare Central Intelligence Agency, spelled out in the title but generally referred to as "CIA" both in running text in the article, and in literally thousands of other articles that discuss the agency. bd2412 T 21:28, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

If someone finds the reasoning here persuasive for a related issue, and if it's ambiguous whether MOSTM was designed to apply, shouldn't it be OK for people to cite it and OK for others to say "I don't think it applies and here's why"? Remember, we're supposed to discuss, not vote. and even if we are voting, the idea isn't to develop a highly technical set of rules in order to "not count" certain votes. Croctotheface (talk) 17:00, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Proposed change

The guideline currently advises us to:

• Avoid using special characters that are not pronounced, are included purely for decoration, or simply substitute for English words (e.g., ♥ used for "love") or for normal punctuation.

Which I would mostly agree with. I say mostly because, I think we should make an exception when a significant majority of reliable sources (that are independent of the subject) consistently include the special character when discussing the subject/topic. This does not happen often (usually reliable sources reject "vanity stylings"), but it does happen occasionally. So, I would propose:

• Avoid using special characters that are not pronounced, are included purely for decoration, or simply substitute for English words (e.g., ♥ used for "love") or for normal punctuation, unless a significant majority of reliable sources that are independent of the subject consistently include the special character when discussing the subject. (bolding used here just to highlight the proposed addition).

Please discuss. Blueboar (talk) 14:25, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

I would prefer a higher threshold than "significant majority", which is vague and will be taken by fans to mean a bare majority. Something like an "overwhelming majority" would be more in the spirit of how we tend to de-emphasize decorative styling. Dicklyon (talk) 19:45, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Exactly. This proposal is on track but probably goes too far, in my opinion. Andrewa (talk) 06:54, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

I think that this proposal is too vague. We need some specific examples in order to understand where you think exceptions would be appropriate. Ground Zero | t 07:30, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Consider the case of the tourism slogan I♥️NY, which I've seen written "I Love NY" or sometimes "I (heart) NY". How do we determine if the ♥️ should be used or if it should stay at I Love NY. Almost every story I see on the name includes the styled version at least once, but then mostly use "I Love NY" throughout the body. I'm not sure that just including the character is enough of a requirement. PaleAqua (talk) 08:39, 26 January 2015 (UTC) Edit to clarify. PaleAqua (talk) 16:25, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

In which case, the sources do not consistently use the symbol.

As for the suggestion of "overwhelming" as a substitute... I would be OK with that... The reason I used the term "significant" is that the term gives us more flexibility... allowing us to take the issue of source quality into account, as well as source quantity (We can give more weight to sources of significant quality, given the subject matter, even if they are in the minority)... but, as I said, I am open to alternatives. My real point with this proposal is that there are times when Wikipedia is silly to avoid using a name just because it has a symbol.

• Note: There are accessibility issues with regard to the use of such symbols. A quick reading of WP:NOSYMBOLS might help inform some opinions here. People who use screen readers may not be able to understand the special symbols, regardless of what the majority of sources say. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 16:03, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

I actually disagree... most people come to Wikipedia because they have read about a topic in a source outside of Wikipedia, and they want to know more. The same is true for who are dependent on screen readers... they come across the stylized name (as rendered by their screen reader) when "reading" external sources... and they will come come to Wikipedia in order to learn more. So even if the reader garbles the rendering of the stylized name... the person using the reader is already familiar with that garbled rendering. The user will expect their screen reader to give the same rendering it did when "reading" the sources. Blueboar (talk) 22:48, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

I've never used a screen reader, so I have no expertise here—I was just pointing to an existing guideline that addresses these characters—but I'm confused what you mean when you say that users of screen readers will be familiar with the garbled renderings of these symbols, and why we would not attempt to degarble the readings to make our content more accessible. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 23:24, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Suppose there is a pop singer who goes by the L33t stylized stage name "J3mie" and presented that way by high end sources (such as Rolling Stone magazine) ... screen readers may erroneously render this as "J-three-me" (instead of "Gemmy"). However, they will consistently render it as "J-three-me".

Now... picture a vision impaired user who relies on a screen reader. He "reads" (with the assistance of the screen reader) an article on the Rolling Stone magazine website that mentions this singer... So he turns to Wikipedia to find out more.

Remember, he is going to have to use his screen reader to find the WP article he is looking for... which means he will search for an article that his screen reader renders the way it did in Rolling Stone: ie as "J-three-me". If we "change" the title to Gemmy (singer) in order to avoid using the L33t spelling... the screen reader will not render the title as this vision impaired user expects. By using J3mie we actually make it easier for this user to find the information that he is looking for - we make Wikipedia more accessible - because it allows his screen reader to be consistent between Wikipedia and Rolling Stone. Blueboar (talk) 01:18, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

I would take that further and suggest that we can establish parameters by which the reading of the term will be whatever we tell the screen reader to make it - "J-three-me", "Jemmy", "Jemmy (singer)" - and that we can give the user the ability to select a preference as to how the title is read. bd2412 T 01:30, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

If you guys have an angle that has accessibility in mind, consider me shuttin-up. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 02:27, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

I have no experience with screen readers, but I have been thinking about the accessibility issue for the past couple of days. I decided to look into it, and I learned quite a bit. First, we do not always known which screen readers may be used; there are many types available to the public. That can affect how much of the text and what parts of the text are read (and what parts make sense). Most screen readers tend to misread many common English abbreviations and symbols. Most screen readers tend to mispronounce abbreviations and ignore Unicode for foreign language characters. They do not always read punctuation, foreign characters, and mathematical symbols accurately. Most do not read currency amounts accurately. For example, a representation of $4.5B (USD) might be read "dollar 4-5-b-U-S-D" instead of "4-point-5 billion American dollars".

Here at Wikipedia, we tend to resolve most of those issues through Unicode and our MOS, but some of the issues cannot be resolved by those methods. To improve accessibility, we could go one of several routes. We could:

• include a read-aloud feature for those pages on top of those pages;
• link to a pronunciation in a sound file, in Wikitionary or in the International Phonetic Alphabet;
• use some sort of alt text like we do with abbreviations;
• a way to include the pronunciation immediately following each instance of the word; or
• decide that all non-mathematical and non-scientific symbols and all foreign language are decorations that can be ignored by the screen readers and risk sacrificing verifiability as a result. SciGal (talk) 17:57, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Exclamations

Recently in the world of children's TV articles, for instance here, there's been some discussion about how subjects that have punctuation in their trademarked logos should be represented in article titles. I don't see any real mention in MOS:TM of how punctuation in trademarks should be addressed. Do we refer to Wonder Pets as "Wonder Pets" or as "Wonder Pets!"? Does this carry over to the article title? Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 20:02, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure if I can add anything in here, you can disregard it if so, but I wanted to include the fact that Yo Gabba Gabba!, All Grown Up!, Teen Titans Go!, Go, Diego, Go!, Wham!, etc. use it and this might be of use when deciding what to say. Thank you for reading! Momsandy (talk) 20:04, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Editors at Wham! have made the questionable choice to refer to the group as Wham! throughout the article. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 21:43, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

There seems to be a consensus of sorts that this is questionable! By which (;-> I mean we should note well that the RM Wham!->Wham was closed as no consensus. [12] But that was some time ago. See also Talk:Wham!#Capitalization but that's even longer ago and not directly about the exclamation mark, but relevant. Andrewa (talk) 15:25, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

I suspect that the exclamation mark is helpful in most if not all of these cases, both in the text and in the title. It seems to be a common form of natural disambiguation. It also seems to me that this is a significant exception to the guideline if we adopt it, and should be explicitly mentioned in the guideline. Interested in other views. Andrewa (talk) 17:28, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

• This is quite simple to me.... First we determine the article title per WP:AT. With that in mind...

1) a trademarked name can be considered the WP:Official name of the show, but...

2) (as is explained at WP:COMMONNAME) we don't necessarily use the official name as our article title.

What our article title policy says to do is this: Examine reliable sources (especially secondary sources that are independent of the subject)... If a significant majority of the sources include the exclamation point when they discuss the show, then we should do so as well... if a significant majority don't, then neither should we... and if the sources are mixed, I would err on the side of not using them.
Once we have determined the styling of the article title, we should generally use the same styling in the text (it's kind of silly to use one styling in the title and another in the text). Of course, there are always exceptions to every broad generalized rule (and simple common sense can tell us when to make an exception). Blueboar (talk) 18:00, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Agree, and well put. And that's exactly the logic that has been followed at Talk:Wham!#Capitalization, where the decision was apparently to decapitalise but to retain the exclamation mark... in fact the exclamation mark was not even questioned by the (two only) contributors. Andrewa (talk) 15:25, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

There are other Whams, so maybe there was a silent choice to include the exclamation because it is a natural disambiguation (I don't understand the inclusion of the exclamation in the prose content beyond the bolded name in the lead, though). I also see the value of the exclamation for the movie Airplane!. There is, however, only one Yo Gabba Gabba, one Wonder Pets and one Go, Diego, Go. I am also reminded of another similar motion to rename articles, where a number of articles with "and" in the title moved to articles containing ampersands instead. Fanboy and Chum Chum was moved to Fanboy & Chum Chum, for instance. At the time it was a move I did not oppose because it was not inconsistent with MOS:AMP, but with hindsight, I'd like to have my position challenged by you all. (Note also Sam & Cat) Cyphoidbomb (talk) 18:36, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Agree that this is the likely (and valid) logic behind the decision at Wham!. So my question is: Does the current guideline give all the help it should in deciding these cases? WP:IAR should be a last resort. Andrewa (talk) 04:58, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

If an exclamation point or ampersand is part of the title, then it is part of the title. It would be POV for us to come up with new titles for existing works, just because we might disagree with their actual title. bd2412 T 18:13, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

BD, I still don't think the issue is clear—from where do we derive "the title"? From the logo? From the production company's website instead of from secondary sources? I would imagine that some publications would freely convert ampersands to "ands" or vice versa to better match their style guidelines, so couldn't we? MOS:QUOTE allows us to make changes for typographic conformity, even with direct quotations. If a movie title appears on a poster all in caps, is that how we should present it in our article title? And then should we include stylizations like Ma$e instead of Mase or Se7en or does this only apply to ampersands and exclamations? (Tangential: I just remembered one other noteworthy exclamation example: Aaahh!!! Real Monsters.) Cyphoidbomb (talk) 18:50, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

I think we need to look at the underlying policies. We want our encyclopedia to be accurate and informative. We prefer secondary sources because they are unbiased - if a person claims to have been the uncredited true inventor of the iPhone, that may be an untrustworthy claim; if a reliable news outlet reports the same information, then it is more likely to be true. However, does this apply to stage names and names of works? If an author writes a novel and titles it "Bob & Joe", and consistently refers to it as such a secondary source reporting the title as "Bob and Joe" is not correcting a fact about which the original author might have been mistaken or misleading. The author is not merely saying that the title is "Bob & Joe" while objectively knowing that it is "Bob and Joe". It's just not the type of information that is susceptible to being corrected by a secondary source. Furthermore, if a secondary source changes titles to accommodate its own style guide, then it is intentionally changing true information to false information convenient to its own preferences. This is no better than a secondary source having an editorial rule that it will consider Steven Chu to be the inventor of the Scroll Lock key, and therefore reporting that as a fact. bd2412 T 19:10, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

You're asserting that changing the style of a title makes it "false"; how far are you taking this? Replacement of "&" by "and" makes it false? Changing capitalization makes it false? Turning a rotated letter the right way around makes it false? I don't think that's what our policies of verifiability and reliable sources are about. Dicklyon (talk) 01:58, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

It's not a question of "true" vs "false" - or even "accurate" vs. "inaccurate". It's often more a question of "more accurate" vs. "less accurate". Blueboar (talk) 02:45, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Re: My revert of recent change on MOS:TM

I reverted SMcCandlish's recent change to MOS:TM due to the lack of consensus on the topic as exhibited by the arguments over at WP:AT and WT:MOS. Did I do the right thing? SciGal (talk) 15:11, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

I think the revert is justified... I agree that the discussions over at AT and MOS do not support SMC's change. The simple fact is, there is a lot of disagreement about how to deal with stylized names (especially L33t spellings).

I would put it this way... it isn't so much that SMC's edit goes against consensus... its that currently we have NO CONSENSUS about how to deal with stylized names... Some feel we should defer to reliable sources when it comes to the presentation of stylized names (an extension of the COMMONNAME principle) ... others disagree and think we should set and follow our own style rules (regardless of what the sources do). That is a fundamental difference of opinion that goes far beyond just this section, and we need to reach consensus on that fundamental difference of opinion (if we can) first. Then we can figure out how to amend this guideline to better reflect whatever the new consensus is. Blueboar (talk) 16:23, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Minor clarifications in the "General rules" section

I propose some minor clarifications to WP:Manual of Style/Trademarks#General rules, to forestall the recurrence of quite a number of repetitive, pointless debates that waste large amounts of editorial time. Namely, amend this passage:

• Avoid using special characters that are not pronounced, are included purely for decoration, or simply substitute for English words (e.g., ♥ used for "love") or for normal punctuation. In the article about a trademark, it is acceptable to use decorative characters the first time the trademark appears, but thereafter, an alternative that follows the standard rules of punctuation should be used:
  • avoid: macy^*s, skate., [ yellow tail ], Se7en, Alien³, Toys Я Us
  • instead, use: Macy's, Skate, Yellow Tail, Seven, Alien 3, Toys "R" Us

New version (here with additions marked up like this, for discussion clarity):

• Avoid using special characters that are not pronounced, are included purely for decoration, or simply substitute for English words or spelling thereof (e.g., "♥" used for "love", "!" used for "i") or for normal punctuation. Similarly, avoid special stylization, such as superscripting or boldface, in an attempt to emulate a trademark. In the article about a trademark, it is acceptable to use decorative characters the first time the trademark appears, but thereafter, an alternative that follows the standard rules of spelling and punctuation should be used:
  • avoid: macy^*s, skate., [ yellow tail ], Se7en, Alien³, Toys Я Us
  • instead, use: Macy's, Skate, Yellow Tail, Seven, Alien 3, Toys "R" Us
  • Conventionally, Wikipedia articles usually give the normal English spelling, followed by a note such as "(stylized as ...)" with the stylized version, then revert to using normal English.

I made this change already, but it was reverted by @SciGal:, with the edit summary "There is a lack of consensus about this per WP:AT and WT:MOS#MOS_vs_source_styles". However, this appears to be a) another example of the confusion, dispelled approximately a dozen times per month, that WP:AT and WP:MOS are in conflict (and it doesn't cite anything specific at WP:AT that relates to this at all); and b) a case of mistaking a partially relevant discussion in one place as some kind of WP:FILIBUSTER against WP:BOLD editing in any related topic elsewhere. Regardless, I'm opening the D part of WP:BRD, because these changes need to be made.

The changes perform the following functions:

1. Clarify that cutesy symbols are covered by this guideline, generally and not just in some overly specific type of case. They already were definitely covered (see e.g., ♥ used for "love", which was in the original wording), but the wording suggested incorrectly that they were only covered when they substituted for entire words. Such an odd limitation is not the case and never has been. See failed RM proposal at Talk:Pink (singer) that concluded the other day, for a very recent case applying the rule to symbolic stand-ins for specific letters, not just whole words. There are many previous ones. The change also necessarily provides a second example of this, illustrating the point. (Given the closure of the "P!nk" move proposal, I have used "!" used for "i" in the proposed text instead of my original example, "0" used for "o", from an earlier rock band RM discussion that also concluded against the stylization.) This is not actually a change to MOS:TM rules, just clearer wording of how MOS:TM is already interpreted and implemented. This is clear, further, from the fact that macy^*s and Se7en – all cases of symbolic substitution of single characters not whole words – were already included in the original text; these examples actually dominate the section.
2. Describe in words, not just examples that some may not examine closely, that one of our rules is to not use special stylization such as superscripting (e.g., "Alien³") in an attempt to emulate a trademark. This, too, is simply clarifying what the guideline already advises, and codifying years of common WP practice; it does not actually change the MOS:TM rules, only makes them easier to understand.
3. Describe actual common WP practice in handling "styled as" cases. When the original passage was written, no convention had developed, but one very clearly has developed in the last couple of years, and it is the one I described, namely giving the normal-English spelling, and following this with a "styled as" parenthetical note. As with the first two points, this does not actually substantively change any rules promulgated by MOS:TM, it just observes what we're already doing, our "best practices". This is precisely what guidelines and policies are supposed to do, per the lead section of WP:POLICY.

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  09:19, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

• Endlessly repeating "there is no conflict" when lots of other editors feel that there is a conflict is not productive. However, there is a simple solution that will make even the appearance of conflict disappear: Have this guideline take COMMONNAME and similar policy statement into account. With that in mind, I could live with the proposed clarification if we also add the clarification I proposed above: "...unless a significant majority of reliable sources that are independent of the subject consistently include the special character or spelling when discussing the subject." The simple fact is, the inclusion of special characters is very rare, but it is occasionally appropriate. Blueboar (talk) 12:29, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, I would like to say two things:

1. I'm pretty sure that the discussions here (listed on 16 pages of archives), at WP:AT, and at WT:MOS#MOS_vs_source_styles have been discussions about the topic. That is why I reverted your edit.
2. I would have to oppose your proposal for the same reasoning as Blueboar. Your suggested proposal makes no exceptions for cases in which independent, reliable sources verify the use of an unconventional English spelling (e.g., the perpetual deadmau5 because of its use of leet). Editors who work with the sources in those articles would find themselves arguing with those who have cited your suggested guideline as the rationale behind using a standard English spelling throughout the article and in the article's title. That, and edit wars related to the arguing, is what we are trying to stop through discussion and consensus. SciGal (talk) 14:03, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

I've had quite a long time to think about Blueboar's "rider", and I understand and sympathize with the reasoning behind it. I have serious misgivings about it. Why it might cause more strife than it would solve is because the only reason editors working with sources in an article conflict with editors citing MOS [that's a false dichotomy by the way, an insinuation that people who care about MOS don't cite sources or write articles, and all the MOS regulars are really tired of that ad hominem] when the name is sometimes stylized in some way, is because they think COMMONNAME applies to style. If they just accepted that it didn't, then there would be no more such arguments (or, rather, very short ones, and far fewer). Thus, clarifying a little bit against that confusion, as my series of edits did, means less of such strife. Blueboar's "significant majority of reliable sources that are independent of the subject consistently include the special character or spelling" addition is liable to increase, not decrease perception that COMMONNAME allows for any and all style quirks, and lead to people over-involved in advocating a particular style variance doing enormous piles of cherry-picking "research" to assemble long lists of RS that use the style they want, while no one sane will have the time or patience to refute them. I know for a fact this will happen because it already happens, refuting it one case we probably all remember was excruciating, those pushing it were so entrenched several of them quit when the RfC didn't go their way after my debunking, and lots of people will hate me forever for it, despite consensus agreeing with my evidence and reasoning. Who on earth would volunteer for that worse-than-thankless duty now?

So, as the only two holding up my set of changes, how would you address that? In the interim, I feel that WP:BRD has been fully satisfied (and then some) to reinstate several of these changes that don't directly relate to the issues you raised. If you want to object to something in them, please have clear rationales and address the specific exact wording you have concerns about. My tolerance and (see WP:VPPOL#RfC: elevation of Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle to guideline status) the community's for mis-use of BRD to WP:FILIBUSTER is drawing to a close. I will make each in a separate edit.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:14, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Never mind. I see you put your rider in [13] (claiming it had consensus when the discussion about it was inconclusive), and did so without my text, but had already agreed that my text was okay as long as yours was included too. So, I'm declaring this a consensus to include my wording, per 'I could live with the proposed clarification if we also add the clarification I proposed above: "...unless a significant majority of reliable sources that are independent of the subject consistently include the [stylization]..."' (Blueboar), and 'same reasoning as Blueboar ... make... exception... for cases in which independent, reliable sources verify the use of', and no other objections or concerns being raised by anyone. Glad we came to agreement after all. I still predict that this rider is going to cause more strife than it solves, but we can deal with that later, I guess.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:24, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

SMC... A question about your recent addition to the "special characters" section:

• Conventionally, Wikipedia articles usually give the normal English spelling, as used in the article title, followed by a note such as "(stylized as ...)" with the stylized version, then revert to using normal English.

I am confused by this... when "a significant majority of reliable sources that are independent of the subject consistently include stylization as part of a name"... wouldn't that styling be the "normal English spelling" for the name? It would certainly be used as the title of the article per COMMONNAME.

For example, suppose there was a band that stylized their name as "B!ngo" (pronounced: Bingo). If a significant majority of independent sources all used the exclamation point when discussing this band, we would use use B!ngo as our article title (per COMMONNAME). "B!ngo" would also be the normal way of referring to the band, and thus the normal English Spelling. I am sure you don't intend people to write: "B!ngo (stylized as B!ngo)" in the lede ... but that is how your addition reads. I agree that when we don't use the stylized version of a name (wich would be the majority of cases), having a "stylized as..." in a parenthetical makes sense. But it does not make sense when the stylized version is the COMMONNAME. Blueboar (talk) 15:04, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

I agree almost entirely with all of SMC's suggestions--except possibly this one. There are some special cases where the term is so widely used that it would be clearer to use it throughout the article. But they're in the minority, and the problem is how to specify them without endless disputes on each individual example. It might be simpler to have a general rule. DGG ( talk ) 23:59, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

For the record... I agree that it is relatively rare that a stylized name is so widely used that source usage would indicate that wikipedia would use it as both our article title and in the running text (but it does happen... deadmau5 has become the typical example)... and I also agree that except for these relatively rare situations our usual practice is to use the non-stylized version in both our article title and in the running text. And I also agree that when we use the non-stylized version in both our article title and the running text, the usual (and to my mind best) practice is to note the stylized version in a parenthetical in the lede sentence. I think that is what SMC was trying to indicate with his addition (SMC... correct me if I have your intent wrong). If so... my concern is not really with the addition itself, but simply with how it was phrased. We can work on that. Blueboar (talk) 11:47, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, that sounds right. I meant that if we've decided the "real"/COMMONNAME actually is, e.g. deadmau5, and to not treat it as a stylization of Deadmaus, then it would be used in the title, and throughout the article with no "stylization" note. If it's not the title, it should be used once, probably in the lead in a parenthetical, and not throughout the article. The minor confusion was just a result of e-text palimpsest, with my original wording not meshing right with the addition of the RS clause. I still really hope that's not going to lead to flood of fanboy attempts to renaming 100s of articles....  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  17:50, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

OK... then I think we are on the same page. Let's figure out how to say all that in clearer language, and we can add it. Blueboar (talk) 18:14, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

No hurry. I got sidetracked by your interesting post over at WT:MOS, and now I'm sleepy. :-) I'm also chiller, though.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:30, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Logo templates at TfD

FYI

 – Link to relevant discussion elsewhere.

This multi-template TfD is liable to be of interest to those who care, pro or con, about inline use of typographical effects: Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2015 June 25#Templates: TeX, LaTeX, LaTeX2e.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:23, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Saints Row IV

MOS question—thought I'd start here. Saints Row IV uses the regnal number in its official title, but most of the sources used in the article refer to the game as "Saints Row 4" or "SR4" while they might use "IV" when introducing the game or in its headline. I did the same—used "IV" in the lede but used "Saints Row 4" throughout the article, but this was recently challenged for being inconsistent. Is there any precedent for how to handle this, or does it need to just pick one common name and stick to it throughout? I thought this would be more of a trademark stylization issue, but let me know if there's a more fitting MOS page or venue to consider. – czar 18:29, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't see this an issue for this guideline since Roman numerals, while less common, are still considered to be standard English. This would have been more applicable if the name was something like Saintd Row FOUR or FoUr.--174.91.187.234 (talk) 19:46, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Agreed - roman numerals are standard English usage in this context... so MOS/TM does not really apply. This is really a matter of determining whether there is a COMMONNAME usage. If so, use that... if not (and the sources are mixed), then it is simply an editorial choice, which can be determined by WP:Consensus... I would suggest filing a WP:RM, to get the consensus of a wide range of editors. Blueboar (talk) 12:39, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

There's a point here, though. In any cases where the sources are not consistent, we should default to using arabic not roman numerals except in contexts were roman is universally used by convention (e.g. actual regnal numbers, pertaining to people's names). This should not actually arise for titles of published works, since we can simply look at their published titles; but there are plenty of cases where it does come up. World War II is at that title not World War 2 or Second World War because of WP:COMMONNAME. We expect a "follow the sources" result here, but WP:AT only governs titles. It would make sense to have (at MOS:NUM, not MOS:TM) a corresponding rule.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  00:16, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

• I've proposed (yesterday; I forgot to save the comment above until now) a WP:MOSNUM clarification on this sort of thing, at WT:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#Advice on arabic vs. roman vs. spelled-out numbers for series and sequences.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  00:18, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Case endings

• Best state the policy about adding inflections such as case endings to tradenames. The only example in this article is the plural "Rolexes". In some highly inflected languages, appending case endings may be unavoidable: e.g. fi:Microsoft (Finnish) contains the forms: Microsoftin, Microsoftista, Microsoftille, Scott Bakerin, World Wide Webiin, IBM:lle, IBM PC:n, DOS:lle, etc: see Finnish grammar#Cases. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 10:19, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

Isn't this already covered by Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English)? Blueboar (talk) 13:33, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

Example

MOS:TM#General rules has been cited here as requiring the use of ™ or ® whenever the brand name of a drug is mentioned. Could the example be clarified or replaced? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:06, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

The current text advises:

• Do not use the ™ and ® symbols, or similar, in either article text or citations, unless unavoidably necessary for context (for instance, to distinguish between generic and brand names for drugs).

I can see no reason for the "unless ..." clause because neither the ™ nor ® symbols are satisfactory means of distinguishing between generic and brand names, particularly as they may be ignored by assistive technology. Such use can never be "unavoidably necessary" as we can always use a prose formulation such as "Aspirin (branded version) has property X; whereas aspirin (generic version) has property Y". In the absence of any need for the exception, we should remove it as suggested in WP:CREEP. --RexxS (talk) 10:43, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

This strikes me as yet another situation where we should apply: "unless a significant majority of reliable sources that are independent of the subject consistently include the special character when discussing the subject." In other words... these symbols should be treated exactly the same as any other "special character". Blueboar (talk) 12:00, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

I boldly removed "(for instance, to distinguish between generic and brand names for drugs)" in this dif- generally not an issue with drugs - cases like "aspirin" are rare and even then aspirin has no TM in the US. This example will probably create more confusion than clarity. Might be more useful to use examples of kleenex/Kleenex® or xerox/Xerox® - in each case the first instance in general discussions of facial tissue or copiers; the second being used only when the specific brand is being discussed - for the purposes of clarity. Jytdog (talk) 12:35, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Wouldn't just be better to use tissue vs Kleenex or copy/photocopy/copier vs Xerox. Not sure should use the brand names in a generic case if there is another word that is just as good. Only case I could see is if the trademark happened to be a common word. Not sure that there are anything but extremely exceptional cases that would need the ™ or ® symbols. PaleAqua (talk) 14:33, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

@Blueboar: No, we have a different consensus for dealing with trademarks: "When deciding how to format a trademark, editors should choose among styles already in use by sources (not invent new ones) and then choose the style that most closely resembles standard English, regardless of the preference of the trademark owner." That leads us to advise a bright line: stick with words for trademarked terms (standard English), rather than adding these glyphs, no matter whether sources use them or not. The injunction "Do not use the ™ and ® symbols" is far more useful in resolving editorial conflicts than one that suggests somebody has to judge what "a significant majority of reliable sources that are independent of the subject" constitutes. --RexxS (talk) 16:13, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Even if we had a "follow the sources" as a general rule for drug names, we would end up omitting the trademark symbols. Independent reliable sources normally omit the ® symbol for drugs, and nobody uses ™ for them (because brand names are always registered trademarks).

To solve the accessibility problem, we might want to recommend "Kleenex brand facial tissue" instead of "Kleenex®". This is also typical and encouraged by trademark lawyers: A trademark is always an adjective, so it's bad grammar to talk about "a Kleenex®"; you can only talk about "Kleenex® brand" or "a Kleenex® facial tissue". "I used a Kleenex®" makes as little grammatical sense as "I used a white" or "I used a soft". WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:12, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

No argument with any of that... my only point was that should independent sources ever routinely include one of these symbols when discussing a product (which I agree would be highly unlikely), then we should follow the sources and do so as well. The symbol would be considered a "special character" like the 5 in Deadmou5. Blueboar (talk) 12:50, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Not even slightly comparable cases. These symbols are not part of names; the are an extraneous-to-the-name legalism. This "let external concerns always override MOS and other WP guidelines and policies" stuff has already gone too far in too many places.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:09, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

The idea that we should rarely ever use these special characters makes perfect sense for the reasons given by others, but I wanted to emphasize that we should strongly avoid using a brand name in a generic sense, unless we are directly quoting someone, or the brand name has a common meaning as an English word. So it would be perfectly acceptable to refer to the fuel known as coke but we should not refer to someone drinking a soft drink as drinking coke unless they were, in fact, drinking Coca-Cola, and then we could refer to it as drinking a Coke. Likewise, as mentioned above, don't use Kleenex to refer to facial tissues, Tylenol to refer to acetaminophen, Xerox to refer to photocopies or photocopiers or the verb to copy. There may be some exceptions to this, however, as some words have become so common that their use in a generic sense may be unavoidable. For example, the word "Dumpster" is a brand name but the term is often used for any similar trash or recycling container (at least in some English-speaking countries), and Google might refer to the company or to the verb that refers to initiating an internet search. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  07:47, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Overall good point and we should include it in some wording or other. There's not even a reason to use "Google" as a verb or adjective, unless a specifically-Google search is specifically meant.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:11, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

People can sometimes be heard to say they are going to Google something, which may or may not mean they will use the Google search engine to look something up; but they might use an alternative search engine instead, especially if they have a different search engine set as their default. For now, the Oxford dictionary folks recognize google as a verb, but the definition involves using the Google search engine. I'm more concerned with trademark dilution as improper use of trademarked terms could cause issues for the Wikipedia Foundation, which really doesn't need to be spending resources to deal with lawyers bent on protecting their respective companies' trademarks. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  08:57, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

That, however, is a legal issue, not a style issue. Blueboar (talk) 11:19, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

True, but the style guide should not tell users to do something in a manner that causes legal issues -- to do so would be self-defeating. I'm not saying there is a huge crisis in this regard as fair use covers the use of copyrighted and trademarked terms when the use is descriptive, but care should still be taken to avoid misusing trademarked terms when other language can be used. This is really off the point of the original question, however, and can be resolved (if resolution is needed) on another day. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  12:49, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

I would agree that MOS/TM should avoid telling users to do something that might cause legal issues... but we don't necessarily need to explicitly tell them NOT to do it. Since the issue is not a style issue, we can leave it to other policies and guidelines cover it. But yeah... this is a side issue and we should get back to the original question. Blueboar (talk) 13:14, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Of course we know that people often say "I googled that", but so what? It's not WP's job to mimic techno-slang. If we refer to a Google search it should be specifically a Google search, not a Web search in general. MOSTM may need to address this point in particular, along with not using "coke" to mean "soft drink", etc. We don't need a legal reason, it's just not encyclopedic writing. The fact that OED collects and defines slang and other neologisms among other words (being a dictionary, that's it's purpose) doesn't magically make slang and neologisms proper, formal writing in an encyclopedic context. OED has an entry for "ain't", too.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  00:21, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Ain't that a right proper word? ;) I'da sworn it was. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  06:55, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Question on how this discussion relates to ENGVAR... if we add something on this, would it still allow the UK noun "a hoover" or the UK verb "to hoover", or would we have to default to the US variants: "vacuum cleaner" and "to vacuum"? Blueboar (talk) 01:45, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Only if you equally accept Coke as a genericized trademark. "Y'all want some coke to drink?" "Sure, I'll have a Dr Pepper" is a perfectly normal, intelligible conversation in some (Southern) parts of the US. Neither "to hoover" nor "some coke" seems to appear in relevant news sources, so I don't think we should accept either (for reasons of formal encyclopedic WP:TONE). WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:32, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Except that "southern" is a regional variation (a dialect of US English)... not a national variation... and our ENGVAR policy relates to national variations. Blueboar (talk) 13:38, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

An example to add

JIRA seems a good example to add to this MOS section, assuming the current RM to decapitalise does not go ahead. See Wikipedia talk:Article titles#A perfect example and discuss there (and feel free to comment at the relisted RM of course). Andrewa (talk) 16:28, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

• WAIT - Please don't edit the guideline (or the WP:AT policy) while the RM is still in progress. Blueboar (talk) 16:50, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Why not? That would only happen if we quickly obtained a strong consensus at the policy talk page... in which case it would be very helpful to the RM to make the policy change without delay. I think that's highly unlikely, but if it happens it's the way to go. Andrewa (talk) 19:23, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Note also that I have not suggested starting a discussion here (I've just bolded the relevant word above), let alone modifying the MOS before the policy page... the policy talk page comes first. This is just a heads-up. Discuss the specific case at the RM, and the general issues at the policy talk page. Don't clutter the RM with general policy discussion, nor the policy talk page with arguments that are better made at the RM. Andrewa (talk) 19:45, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Finally, all please note WP:mxt. Andrewa (talk) 19:23, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

big.LITTLE

I removed recent addition of big.LITTLE (which is not even the article title) from the line item about KISS and Time magazine, because "big.LITTLE" is too controversial; there have been at least three RMs, two of them back-to-back. And it's not the same kind of example anyway ("made up style not in use" does not apply to the rest of the entries at that line item).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  00:36, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Cyrillic letter titles

Are Cyrillic lettered titles acceptable? see Talk:Choba B CCCP -- 70.51.46.39 (talk) 07:17, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

:wumpscut:

Hi, I just came across the article :wumpscut:, given as an example at the bottom of Template:Italic title/doc. My initial reaction is that we should cover it as:

• Wumpscut (stylised as ":wumpscut:") in the lead, and use Wumpscut throughout.

But would like to hear other thoughts. ‑‑Yodin^T 16:53, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

I agree that Wumpscut is the way to write the name, like Amazon and CMJ New Music Report do. Dicklyon (talk) 17:58, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Same here. I love that band, and have them as ":wumpscut:" in my playlist, but that's a rivethead style swagger in my private reality tunnel, and has nothing to do with encyclopedic writing and neutral presentation of commercial entities without aping their marketing and PR quirks.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:19, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Just finished fixing all the articles that link there! Cheers Dicklyon & SMcCandlish :D ‑‑Yodin^T 14:17, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Non-registered board game name

The board game Take the Test was always packaged and labelled as TAKE THE TEST. Although not registered, I am assuming that actual use qualifies it as a trademark, so that this policy should apply and the article title should be Take the Test. Do others agree? Batternut (talk) 12:40, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Yep, completely agree. ‑‑Yodin^T 13:25, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

I would take the advice here that if a brand name is not trademark but otherwise the way the product is marketed, the same style rules apply. (My understanding is that arguments can erupt when you have one form of a brand name that's actually filed as a trademark and other forms that are not and may be more MOS-compliant, but editors would say "But the trademark is this!" The ultimate goal is to avoid difficult-to-read names in running prose, trademarked or not. --MASEM (t) 15:11, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

How it is packaged isn't important... what's important is how it is referred to in independent reliable sources. Blueboar (talk) 20:41, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Using plc (not PLC) after British company names

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Abbreviations#Widely used abbreviation for public limited company

Someone recently changed MOS:ABBR to permit "plc", in imitation of the preference of particular companies. This appears to conflict with: a) MOS:TM on not emulating trademark stylization, b) WP:MOS on treatment of acronyms, c) the rest of MOS:ABBR on treatment of acronyms, and d) MOS:CAPS on treatment of acronyms.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  01:29, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Grammar Rules

Why are grammar rules ignored for trade marks? Any word beginning with a lower case letter should be capitalized at the start of a sentence. What is the reason that this is handled differently for trade marks beginning with a lower-case letter? 217.248.9.204 (talk) 03:55, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

See the discussion two sections above this one. "Any word beginning with a lower case letter should be capitalized at the start of a sentence" is true on Wikipedia; either capitalize it, or rewrite to avoid starting the sentence without a capital letter, by moving the trademark. The latter approach is probably preferable for "strong marks" like iPod.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  06:17, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

I know that some style guides would change 'iPod' to 'Ipod' if at the start of the sentence. The same goes for 'eBay' → 'Ebay' and the like. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 01:11, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Applying WP:TRADEMARK to non-competition entities

I have always interpreted the direction to use standard English capitalization as applying generally, and not just to private businesses. This issue seems to be coming up again at Talk:Ion_rapid_transit#Change_title_to_ION_..._Waterloo_Region_shows_it_as_ION.2C_not_Ion where an editor thinks that it does not apply because an all-caps version of the name is used by a municipality. Comments welcome there. We may want to clarify the policy. Ground Zero | t 19:47, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

I always ask: how does the typical reliable source that is independent of the subject capitalize it? If most independent sources capitalize, we should do as well. If most independent sources do not, then neither should we. Blueboar (talk) 20:37, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Is that policy? Nonetheless, I have added four links at the discussion page. Ground Zero | t 22:04, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Policy would be verifiability and using what is presented in reliable resources. What Blueboar could also be referring to is this. SciGal (talk) 16:03, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

We don't need to play this "pretend I can produce an actually defensible statistical analysis of source usage frequency" game. Just follow the guidelines (MOS:TM and MOS:CAPS and MOS:ABBR; three guidelines that concur are not mistaken and are not lying to you): Do not mimic ALL-CAPS logos (nor all-lowercase ones; Ion's actual logo says "ion"). If it's not an acronym, it's not all-capped. If it is an acronym, it gets all-caps, and no dots. Thus Sony, not "SONY", and PDP-10 not "P.D.P.-10" or "pdp-10". I have no idea why anyone would insist on doing hours or days of research (the search methodology of which anyone is apt to question as suspect for cherrypicking) into what other publishers are doing via their own house styles; the results of it would be irrelevant because their house styles are not our house style). Just doing what the guidelines say obviates the entire time-wasting scenario. We need a source analysis for a style matter only when something weird is happening, and when we're not sure what we should do. That was the case when it first became "a thing" to do something like "iPod". Publishers rebelled, and insisted on "IPod", "I-Pod", etc., and then slowly came around and settled on permitting "iPod" in their pages, within reason. Style guides eventually compensated with rules like "it's okay for a trademark to be camelcased like that, but either give the first letter capitalized at the beginning of a sentence of rewrite to avoid starting with the trademark", and whathaveyou. And today this is no longer weird and people don't have their brain fall out on the floor about it any longer. But there is nothing weird or unusual or questionable about Ion, the rapid transit topic, to begin with. Not an acronym, not all-caps.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  06:01, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

There seems to be a lot of focus here on logos. Sony calls itself 'Sony' on their website, and in legal documents. How a company styles their name in plain text should be our primary consideration, not their logo's appearance. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 01:14, 14 August 2017 (UTC)