Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 23

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Contents

Image description guideline

I see no guideline on the description of images, so if such a protocol exists, please forgive me. I notice a great disparity in the description of images on Wikipedia, and would appreciate if this matter was even loosely regulated, be it for the sake of consistency.

Usually, image captions aren't ended with a period, however they may contain several sentences. Following are several examples of captions using commonly accepted rules.

Here is a boring caption
Here is a boring caption
Here is a boring caption. Here is another one
Here is a boring caption. Here is another one

As for the image summary, unique to Wikipedia, perhaps it should follow the same rule, with the image source indicated in italicized parentheses, if applicable. See the following example.

Picture of Wikipedia's possible mascot. It is reading books and a Web site (Wikipedia)

Thank you for your input,

Grumpy Troll 21:39, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't see a need for instruction creep here, jguk 21:47, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
Ideally a caption should be a complete sentence that ends with a punctuation mark. See Wikipedia:Captions. These guidelines already exist; they're just recorded elsewhere. -Aranel ("Sarah") 13:30, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
I thank you for your answer. Grumpy Troll (talk) 13:44, 9 August 2005 (UTC).

Proper hyphen/mdash usage?

Is there a Wikipedia standard to proper use of the — character? Is it...

  1. Lorem ipsum — dolor sit amet
  2. Lorem ipsum—dolor sit amet
  3. Lorem ipsum - dolor sit amet (i.e. use the normal vanilla hyphen)

I personally favor the first convention but I'm not convinced that I am correct for doing so. --Bletch 23:01, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dashes) — boredzo (✍) 05:32, August 8, 2005 (UTC)

Movie/DVD easter egg inclusion?

I was thinking it would be cool if we had a section at the end of a movie's article stating wether it has easter eggs and if so what they are. -Indolering

Reversion war

There seems to be something of a battle over whether to refer to U.S. usage/UK usage or American usage/British usage. I have added in what I think is correct term, which neither of the combatants were using. That is American english and British english. BTW Irish usage actually is called Hiberno-English!!! I've added it in too. That way readers of the page can go to the actual pages and find out what those darn things actually are. FearÉIREANN\(caint) 17:41, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Did you intend to lowercase English? If so, why? Maurreen (talk) 19:45, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Pronouns beginning sections

One point of bad style that I've seen in a number of articles is the failure to reintroduce subjects properly in new sections. For example, they might do like this:

Face

Chickoomunga's face is big. He likes to eat cherries.

Social standing

He's very elite in his society. (Better: Chickoomunga is very elite in his society, or Society has given Chickoomunga an elite position.)

The concept is that a section shouldn't really read like a continuation of previous stuff; to some extent, it should stand on its own. I don't think the use of pronouns beginning section should be strictly disallowed, but at least recommended against. Deco 21:18, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree that starting a new section with a pronoun is bad writing style. Have you found others disagree with you? I don't think the point of the MoS is to detail English language "best practices". The point of the MoS is to provide guidance where there might be multiple approaches which would be "OK" in English, but where the community finds value in standardizing on a single approach. Chuck 22:57, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
Actually, I reckon it's both. There's a guideline in headings that basically says keep headings simple. This is a similar concept, I reckon. btw, I agree with the pronoun not starting a section. Neonumbers 08:21, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
My point was that the MoS is not a place to provide writing lessons, it is a place where we agree on things that may provide dispute. If Deco is finding people reverting him when he changes pronouns back to nouns at the beginning of sections, then we might need it mentioned in the MoS. If he is just pointing out a standard on which there is no debate, then we probably don't need it cluttering the MoS. The MoS doesn't, for example, discuss noun-verb agreement. Chuck 16:26, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Economist style guide

Has a lot of good pointers. Good resource.

http://www.economist.com/research/StyleGuide/ Jacoplane 02:25, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

"See also"

This was recently added: "+ Notice that, consistent with the policy of Wikipedia:Lists, See also list items are not capitalized unless the word normally would be, such as, in the above example, Internet." Was there any discussion about this? Maurreen (talk) 03:06, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

It was already implied by the example already in use on the page for many, many months:
==See also==
* [[Internet troll]]
* [[flaming]]
and also, policy should be consistent with each other, so Wikipedia:Manual of Style should be consistent with the policy of Wikipedia:Lists, which is a Wikipedia guideline that has long been in place. —Lowellian (reply) 10:53, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

Contractions

The Manual of Style states:

In general, formal writing is preferred. Therefore, avoid excessive use of contractions — such as don't, can't, won't, would've, they'd, and so on — unless they occur in a quotation.

Every manual of style I have seen has outright banned contractions (except within quotations) in formal writing. What does "excessive" mean? Two contractions? Three contractions? Four contractions? Suppose we said that it is four. Then three contractions are allowable within an article? Personally, I think that just makes the rare contractions within an article look even more glaring, hurting the stylistic presentation of the article even more, to have one or two contractions scattered throughout an article. Would people object to an outright ban on contractions to clarify the issue? When are contractions ever useful in encyclopedic writing? —Lowellian (reply) 11:10, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, okay, I see. A note: looking through the history, I see now that the language was changed from:

In general, formal writing is preferred. Therefore, avoid contractions — such as don't, can't and won't, except when you are quoting directly.

to:

In general, formal writing is preferred. Therefore, avoid excessive use of contractions — such as don't, can't, won't, would've, they'd, and so on — unless they occur in a quotation.

on a July 6 edit [1]. —Lowellian (reply) 19:03, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

German eszet

I can't find any discussion to settle a question that arose on United States of Europe and occurs elsewhere. Is there a policy on the use of German eszet (AKA ß, AKA szlig) in English Wikipedia? I understand that many Latin characters with diacritics are used in English texts, but the use of eszet seems gratuitous. It's my understanding that it's not used in all forms of German. I've never seen it in an English text except where eszet itself is being explained. English users will not use it to search for Strauss, for example, and how man native English speakers know how to pronounce it? 2%, maybe? The capper is the opening of Franz Josef Strauß: "Dr. h.c. Franz Josef Strauß (spelled Strauss in English)..." This is English. --Tysto 21:37, 2005 August 22 (UTC)

I say use the dominant name for that person, and link the ß. There's precedent for this, isn't there? ~~ N (t/c) 22:02, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
No accented characters in en: without a damn good reason. — Xiong熊talk* 22:53, 2005 August 22 (UTC)
ß is not an accented character. I'm very much for using ß and redirecting from the ss version of the name, simply because it's *wrong* to write words with ss instead of ß. Regarding "It's my understanding that it's not used in all forms of German.": Granted, the Swiss Germans don't use it, but that's their choice, and frankly - there's just a lot more Germans and Austrians than Swiss Germans, anyway. ;) — ナイトスタリオン ㇳ–ㇰ — 06:40, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
So Swiss who speak German would never use eszet, but we English speakers are obliged to? --Tysto 18:38, 2005 August 23 (UTC)
There is an easier rule: Swiss names are spelt with double s, German names with ß (where that is correct). The Bavarian Franz Josef certainly is a Strauß and should be spelt that way. Richard Strauss wrote his name with a double s, but Johann Strauß used an ß. So should we. Arbor 07:02, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

We should use English names in the English Wikipedia. Johann Strauss is the spelling used in English - therefore the English Wikipedia should use that spelling. Otherwise we'll get to the absurdity that all Greeks, Russians, Arabs, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, etc. have their articles at places that are meaningless squiggles to an English-reader, jguk 07:42, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

The current official spelling rules in Germany do not longer use ß. It is replaced by ss. −Woodstone 07:45:55, 2005-08-23 (UTC)
That's simply wrong. Read ß or German spelling reform of 1996 for more information. Arbor 09:03, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

We should no more use non-English letters like ß than we should use Chinese characters in ordinary text or article titles. The initial paragraph of an article can (and should) give the name as it was used the name's owner, but the title should be the English name, and although it is debatable whether certain diacritics can be counted as English, ß is decidedly on the side of not English. For precedent, þ was recently moved back to thorn (letter), and þ has a much stronger claim to being an "English letter" than ß does. Nohat 07:50, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

If it doesn't have an ß, does that mean it's mißpelled? --Wetman 08:31, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
My perſonal preference would be to uſe long S's wherever þey belong, in Engliſh text or in German. On þe oþer hænd, until ſuch time as þey cæn be ædded directly from a ſtændard keyboard, þey probably ought not to be made compulſory in þe Engliſh Wikipedia. I generally favour unæccented characters over æccented ones and Engliſh over foreign ſpellings, and find þe impoſition of foreign names ænd ſpellings ræþer annoying. -- Smerdis of Tlön 19:22, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

ß proposal

Based on these comments, virtually none of which called me dirty names, I propose this as a standard:

When referring to German words that use the eszet (ß), render it in English as "ss" and follow the first time with the German form of the word: "Franz Josef Strauss (spelled Strauß in German)." Note that the use of ß is not universal in the German language (see Switzerland and Liechtenstein under ß), that its usage has changed in recent years (see German spelling reform of 1996), and that not all versions of the same name use it (Franz Josef Strauß, but Levi Strauss), so be sure of your usage. Where such a word appears in the title of the article, use the English form (ss) for the main page and create a redirect from the German form (Franz Josef Strauß --> Franz Josef Strauss).

This naturally raises other questions (Goebbels v. Göbbels; Mueller v. Müller) which must be dealt with in the same section, but should not be a consideration in your comments at the moment. Also, I should have mentioned before: Basil Fawlty rules are in effect. --Tysto 14:54, 2005 August 25 (UTC)

First, a tweak: We could just follow the shorter style used at (say) Lenin or Mao:

Franz Josef Strauss (German: Strauß) was the …

However, I am in the “allow ß” camp. I prefer the German spelling (it is in roman type, unlike Mao and Lenin), obviously with a pronunciation (which is needed anyway—pronouncing the first S is no easier than pronouncing the last ß). That would come out as

Franz Josef Strauß (/ʃtraʊs/) was the…

On a related note, Goebbels should not be moved to Göbbels (that is not how he is spelt) and Richard Strauss should of course remain where he is, too. Likewise, not all Muellers are Müllers or vice versa. Why throw away all that wonderful information? It is easy to “dumb down” the data for a user agent and display all Müllers as Mueller or Muller or whatever transliteration is desired (there are web browsers who do that for you). But we cannot go the other way. So the data needs to distinguish Richard Strauss and Franz Josef Strauß, and we should be happy that there are editors who care about such things. Arbor 07:33, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
ß is not a latin character, it is a modified latin character not used in english, the language of this encyclopedia. My opinion is that it does not belong in the primary title of a page, or anywhere on the page except when referencing the original german spelling. Redirects are OK, since we use them to improve accessibility (increase the odds that when someone searches a variant, they end up at the right page.) Chuck 16:25, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
I agree with Chuck. To a vast majority of English readers, ß is just a meaningless squiggle. See my proposal at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English). As for in the text itself, the German name should be given in the first paragraph, but the English name should be used throughout the text. This is in line with the convention used for names in non-Latin writing systems, and seems applicable here, as the concern about non-Latin writing systems being inscrutable to most English readers also applies to ß. Nohat 20:51, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

My vote is for ss in the title, correct spelling given as soon as possible in the text. We are trying to write an encyclopaedia for English-speaking non-specialists: we aim to be accurate (object=encyclopaedia), but we are not necessarily normative (audience=non-specialists). The information we convey is in the article text and images, not the title. Let us expend proportionate amounts of work per word on article text and title! Physchim62 02:44, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Chuck, Nohat, and Physchim62 -- do not use ß in article titles -- do provie the speeling using ß (where appropraite) promptly near the start of the article. Possibly provide redirects from the fom using ß. DES (talk) 00:07, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

I seem to be in the minority here (no big deal). Some comments: (1) The rule shouldn't be specific to article titles—it should appeal to body text as well. So the rule should be to “Transliterate ß to ss. Where this concerns an article title, provide the German spelling near the start of the page.” (2) I would still much prefer to see this solved by Mediawiki. Serving up all ß as ss for English clients by default is easy, but those who care can switch it off. (3) Playing around with google's search engine indicates that it changes Gauß to Gauss tacitly (lots of pattern matching packages can do that automatically). Does Mediawiki do this as well, or can it easily be coerced into this behavior? (There aren't enough Wikipedia pages to test this on, so I don't know.) This would avoid the need for redirects (and a MOS entry to that effect). Arbor 06:02, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
I don't think we want to do this. For example, we should be able to have an article ß on the character itself; that should not be interpreted as SS. Bad enough that we are stuck with all initial letters becoming capitals, let's not do something that makes even more titles impossible. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:53, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
To sum up (and ignoring my own dissenting voice, which seems to be singular), we just need to be precise about what a letter in the roman alphabet is, and what a diacritic is (the current discussions at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English) seem to simply overlook ß, which is certainly in the roman alphabet, but whose meaning seems to be too opaque for the English reader. So, while in general we should be happy to include (natively) correct spellings as long as the extra dots and squiggles can be ignored (preferring Erdős over Erdos), this does not apply to ß, which we transliterate to ss (but suggest redirection and correct spelling of proper names which are article titles in the first paragraph, as with all other transliterations). While mulling this over, at staying with the Strauß example, a minor point about pronunciation struck me as well. I think the following is proper:

Franz Josef Strauss (German: Strauß /ʃtraʊs/) was the…

But should there be an English pronunciation as well? I don't think anybody in the anglosphere says /ʃtraʊs/, do they? Would that mean we ought to write something like this:

Franz Josef Strauss (/strɔ:s/, German: Strauß /ʃtraʊs/) was the…

I quite like this. (It really doesn't have much to do with ß… sorry) Arbor 09:23, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

FWIW, Merriam-Webster gives /ʃtraʊs/ first (including an audio pronunciation), followed by /straʊs/. OED doesn't have Strauss, but gives Strausian as /straʊsɪən/. I can't find any English dictionaries that give /strɔ:s/. But the point in general is valid, and English pronunciations should, in general, be given separately from native pronunciations. A particularly alarming trend is the inclusion of audio files of a native pronunciation of various words names, with the implied assumption that English speakers should attempt to imitate this. Nohat 17:07, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Pronunciation guides aside, I think we do have consensus on the use of "ss" in titles and articles, followed by the German in parentheses (with Arbor's tweak. I'll add it to the MoS. --Tysto 07:04, 2005 August 30 (UTC)

Interesting detail: have a look at Strauss, a disambiguation page. I would assume that here, the various ßs serve a good purpose, don't they? (There is an explanatory first paragraph noting that -ss is the common English spelling.) I don't think we want to transliterate those. Well frankly, I am confused as to what to think. Arbor 08:34, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
An anonymous user and AxSkov have now twice changed the ß on the disambiguation page for Strauss to ss. Look at the ss version and the ß version. As I explained in the previous paragraph, I have no strong feelings about this, but I assume that for disambiguation purposes the variant spellings contain useful information that oughtn't be removed. For example, I always disambiguate between the two famous Strauss and Strauß composers using their spelling, not their first names (or their birthdays). I know that Strauss wrote Salome and Strauß wrote An der schönen blauen Donau, but I don't always remember which of them is Johann (actually, there are two Johanns...). Others may use other methods of disambiguation, but since the page is supposed to be a navigational aid, I cannot see what we win by removing information that would be valid for the task. (Moreover, the introductory paragraph makes it clear that the original spelling is given “to facilitate disambiguation”) Anyway, I would be happy to see some opinions on this. Clearly, some pages need the ß, like ß itself, and I am unsure about Strauss. Arbor 07:40, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
(Copied from User talk:AxSkov#Strauss reversion)
I've been discussing this issue on Naming conventions (use English). From what I've read on Proper names my changes adhere to those rules mentioned in that article. I also made those changes due to the fact that many of the Strauss article names listed use 'ss' rather than 'ß' in their titles. (Note: I have also made some other minor changes to the Strauss article.)
The letter 'ß' is a meaningless character to an English speaker. Regarding the spelling of the two Strauss names Arbor mentioned, they are both always spelt with 'ss' in English, and hence English doesn't differentiate between the names by using 'ss' in one and 'ß' in the other. The article still mentions that some German speakers spell some of those names with 'ß'. If someone reverts the Strauss article without fixing the wikilinks, then all I'll do is fix those wikilinks until this issue is resolved (which it may never be). – AxSkov (☏) 09:09, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
Maybe we could do something like this: ”Johann Strauss I (German: Strauß) Senior, the Elder, Father (1804–1849)”. Thus we would inlude the original spelling for those who actually use it to disambiguate. Arbor 10:44, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
OK. This idea sounds good, so as far as I'm concerned go ahead and make the changes. – AxSkov (☏) 11:08, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Extended ß proposal

Let's stir up the hornets' nest a bit more. The bit about the German eszett (currently in the « National varieties of English » topic, weirdly) should be extended to other ligatures. You see, the eszett isn't a letter per se, it is a ligature, a standard way of combining two letters (in this case two 's') in a single glyph. Whether ligatures are treated separately or not in lexicographic ordering seems to be a varying national preference. Some ligatures are universally considered to be purely typographical, such as "fi", "fl", "ffi", "ffl". But that is not so for others.
  1. Breton has no "c" but has the ligatures "ch" and "c'h". The order is as quoted: « chug, c’hoar » (juice, sister). Oddly, there are no Unicode slots for those, it seems, which makes it a non-problem.
  2. Croatian uses the DZ (DZ, Dz, dz), DŽ (DŽ, Dž, dž), LJ (LJ, Lj, lj) and NJ (NJ, Nj, nj) ligatures, which each come in three forms!
  3. Danish and Norwegian use the AE ligature (Æ, æ). It is treated as a letter coming right after Z: "...Z, Æ, Ø, Å". Danish also uses the AE-acute (Ǽ, ǽ) and there is an AE-macron out there (Ǣ, ǣ). Since English also uses that ligature, it is a non-problem.
  4. Dutch uses the "IJ" ligature (IJ, ij), but different dictionaries place it in various slots —almost never after the I, however. Proper case is « IJmuiden, IJpolder, IJmeer, IJssemeer ».
  5. French uses the Æ and Œ ligatures, the latter much more frequently than the former. Lexicographic ordering breaks them down, so you have « caducée, cæcum, cafard » (caduceus, cæcum, cockroach). Proper case is, for example, « Œuvre ». Since English also uses those ligatures (although the œ is rare), they are a non-problem.
  6. German, as already mentioned, uses the eszett to represent the "ss" ligature, which is particularly problematic in English because it doesn't even look like a double-s.
  7. Several languages use the "AA" ligature (Å, å). Danish and Norwegian place "Aa" along with "Å" as the last letter in the alphabet. In Swedish, the sequence is "...Z, Å, Ä, Ö", where Ä serves as the Danish/Norwegian Æ.
  8. Spanish, until the 1987 reform by the Real Academia Española, has the "ll", "ch" and "rr" ligatures. The alphabet runs "...C, CH, D...L, LL, M, N, Ñ, O..." —note that the rr ligature is not treated as a separate letter. Neither of the three ligatures warrants a Unicode slot, which makes them a non-problem.
So, to sum up, the German eszett bit should be broadened as follows:
  • When referring to Latin-alphabet foreign words that use a non-English ligature such as the Dutch IJ or the German eszett (ß), render it in English as the un-ligatured form (e.g. "IJ", "ss") and follow the first time with the foreign form of the word: "IJmuiden (Dutch: IJmuiden)...", "Franz Josef Strauss (German: Strauß)...".
    • The English ligatures Æ and Œ are fine and should not be un-ligatured for the article title (e.g. Æthelred, fœtus).
    • Note that the use of some ligatures is not universal (see Switzerland and Liechtenstein under ß, for example), that its usage may have changed in recent years in some cases (e.g. German spelling reform of 1996, Spelling reform of the Spanish language), and that not all versions of the same name use it (e.g. Franz Josef Strauß, but Levi Strauss), so be sure of your usage.
    • Be careful of case when the broken-down ligature leads a sentence or link; the Dutch IJmeer, for example, should be IJmeer and not Ijmeer (although a redirect from the latter is also needed).
    • Where such a word appears in the title of the article, use the English form (e.g. ß --> ss) for the main page and create a redirect from the foreign form(s) (Franz Josef Strauß --> Franz Josef Strauss).
Urhixidur 17:11, 2005 August 31 (UTC)
I've got a better idea for a guideline: "Use English in the English-language Wikipedia", jguk 18:17, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
Yes! If we decide to be explicit and generalize the guidance for ß to include all non-English characters, then that's fine with me also. By the way, either Urhixidur or the Wikipedia is confused about the difference between letters and ligatures. According to the ß article, for example, it is not a ligature, although it is descended from a ligature. Also, the English Æ is not a ligature, it is an archaic letter (also descended from a ligature) no longer used in the language. We shouldn't use Old English in the wikipedia any more than we should use German. Chuck 19:41, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
The confusion over the ligature-ness of the German ß would be mine. Still, as far as Wikipedia titles go, it is treated like a ligature, is it not? We could rephrase the first bullet slightly to accommodate the point, I guess (« ...that use a non-English ligature or ligature-like character such as... »). We have no choice to keep using English archaic characters such as the Æ since it is still in use (e.g. Encyclopædia Britannica), and stands for things that need entries, such as George William Russell's pen name. All that the MoS guidance does is help in the correct transcription of ligature-like characters, and in particular the non-obvious German eszett. Urhixidur 17:13, 2005 September 2 (UTC)
I have tried to collect some information about diacritics and other funny symbols (like ß) at Wikipedia:Proper names. Please have a look at it. There is some clean-up left to do, since I cribbed the information from various places on Wikipedia-EN. As to “Use English”—it's really not such an easy rule as some of the contributors here suggest. Is Encyclopædia Britannica English? Is Ægir? I have several English maths text books and books about the history of maths that set Paul Erdős with the Hungarian double acute accent. Should Wikipedia do this as well? I don't say I know the answers to those questions, or that they are obvious. But they are fair questions, and the axiom “use English”, though helpful, doesn't resolve them. Arbor 06:01, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't see how the use of an Old English letter in a 250 year old trade name should influence our discussion about what letters are used in English today. We should write it "Encyclopedia Britannica", just like we don't use all caps or the trademark sign when referring to REALTORs, although we do discuss the all caps version in the article. The English language alphabet people learn in school does not contain ß, æ, or ő, because they are not english letters. I don't see why this seems such a problem to you: ß and ő have never been used in English. Æ is no longer used. Chuck 07:02, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Incidentally, and to keep with the Monty Python-references User:Tysto started this thread with, we do set SPAM in all caps. (::starts humming::) Arbor 07:49, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

German spelling is for de:articles. Same for the rest of the raft. Mao is Mao, Aesop is Aesop. This is en:, which should be renamed am: and restricted to American spelling; let the Brits have their own project, then we can each establish actual consistent styles. As soon as you cross the line from talking about the man to talking about how his name is properly spelled, you are no longer in an American-language reference work; you're in a cross-language project. I would endorse, though not actively support, a multilingual gadget that did all sorts of nifty translations, transliterations, and spelling in different alphabets and character sets, with nice big bold highlighting of proper names in the language in which they originate.

(By the way, I have three different IPA fonts installed, and I still can't read IPA pronunciations on WP.)

Meanwhile, this is not de:. — Xiong熊talk* 08:17, 2005 September 1 (UTC)

I strongly agree with Chuck and Xiong above, characters not in normal english use should not be used in article titles. This includes Æ, Œ, ß, and ő and most of the other non-standard-english glyphs discussed in this thread. DES (talk) 17:28, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to point out that the proposed extended guideline matches pre-existing usage, as far as I can tell. Most of the responses seen here seem objections to the already-in-the-MoS guidelines concerning the eszett. What of the proposed extension to IJ, Æ, and Œ? Please respond by either a) spelling out the modified extended guideline, or b) stating your preference for the MoS remaining mum on the subject.

Urhixidur 16:33, 2005 September 5 (UTC)

I honestly can’t believe it! The (almost complete) lack of diacritics in modern English seems to make native speakers thereof quite ignorant. It’s a matter of politeness and respect to write proper names in their native form, if possible (that’s no problem with Unicode) and understandable (i.e. in the same script). A foreign name is not an English word. That means names in Latin script should remain unchanged and be used in that form for the article titles (redirects mandatory). Therefore it should read:

Franz Josef Strauß (/ʃtraʊs/, English: Strauss) …
Vladimir Putin (Russian: Владимир Путин) …

Eszett is hardly more a ligature than ä, ö and ü in German. The umlauts were vowels with small es on top originally and are still decomposed thusly. Therefore, if you used ss instead of ß, you would consequently also have to write e.g.

Gerhard Schroeder (German: Schröder) …

because otherwise clueless people would incorrectly write “Schroder”. (There are border cases like Händel.) Of course the Swiss don’t use ß anymore, but there a still proper Swiss names containing it.

One transliteration or rather transcription method has to be selected for each script other than the Latin, of course, where only transcriptions are also language-dependent. If you started to do so for Latin-script names you would open a can of worms for you would have to transcribe more than just diacritics, e.g. *“Shvartsenegger”, *“Ineshtine” or *“Novittski”, although the English orthography is quite etymological in general (the correct spelling is still “doppelgänger” AFAIK). In return the rest of us¹ keeps writing “Bush” instead of “Busch”, “Buch(e)”, “Busz” or “Buš”. Centuries ago it was common to use local variants of (latinised) names throughout Europe, though, which can still be seen with place names and the pope (e.g. Ioannes, Johannes, Joan, Jonas, János, Giovanni, John, Jean, Juan, Jan, Ivan, João, …).

¹ Actually there are some East European languages/countries where it is common to transcribe foreign names like “Džordž Buš”, which is probably due to a very phonemic use of the script—something that can’t be said about English. Christoph Päper 02:39, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

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