Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Alpha Archive 4

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Paragraph length

CMOS is, I believe, the source for "no one-sentence paragraphs". It condems them as "journalistic"; the idea is that a succession of single-sentence paragraphs reads like a bullet-list and not like an article. That should not be a blanket ban, of course, but something to avoid. I learned back in high school that ideal paragraph length was about 3–4 sentences, but that isn't really a useful rule—two huge complex sentences could make for a pretty long paragraph. —Tkinias 16:51, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'd go with 'no short one-sentence paragraphs'.
Or better, no runs of several one sentence paragraphs in a row.
Usually groups of short sentences can be combined into one bigger paragraph.
A single very short paragraph, set all by itself, may look unusual, and should be used only when it is appropriate, but it is not as bad as several short single-sentence paragraphs in a row -- which may look like a bulleted list -- while one short paragraph might very well be needed for topics on which there is very little data, however a very long sentence (whatever the complexity or inter-relatedness of the ideas it expresses) can often be separated into several short sentences, without decreasing and usually in fact increasing its readability, thus avoiding another 'bad' form of single-sentence paragraphs. Pedant 11:58, 2004 Dec 12 (UTC)


People's titles in article intro

Really trival question here, but it wouldn't hurt to have an answer, and I've failed to find it so far.

The article about a person generally leads off with the person's name and a brief description of who this is. Sometimes the name as given here includes an honorific title, such as Sir or Dr. or Baron. Sometimes not.

My inclination would be to use the title for [Sir] Francis Drake or [Baron] Manfred von Richthofen, but not for [Dr.] Dorothy L. Sayers. This is current usage in those three articles, but has not always been. My choice is not because of the silly Victorian convention that physicians, having adopted a title that belongs to learned people qualified to teach others, are entitled to exclusive use of the title in preference to inferior beings such as Dr. Samuel Johnson and Dr. Benjamin Franklin; it's personal whim. But is there a stylke on it, and should there be?

Should Dr be treated as a salutaton like Mr? If so, then don't include it. I'm leaning towards not doing so.
What about suffixes? eg
Howard Brush Dean, III, M.D. --Jiang 04:00, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Pictures, Categories, and so forth

I am crossposting this comment to Wikipedia:Village Pump and Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style.

I have been advised that the manual of style says unambiguously that articles with single pictures must have the picture at the very top of the article, aligned to the right. I have no particular problem with this as a general guideline. At the moment, however, when this is done to article with categories, it results in an extremely ugly article. I have been advised that this will probably be corrected at some point in the near future (although have seen no evidence that this is the case, aside from Raul654's assertion that Mr. Starling will "doubtless" do this.) In many cases, it is perfectly easy to move the picture down so that it is even with the second paragraph of the article. In most of these cases, this looks perfectly fine. It also means that we don't have absolutely hideous articles until whenever it is that the problem with categories gets fixed. For moving the pictures in several articles down a few lines, I have been accused of doing "serious damage" to wikipedia, because now people will have to "fix" all these articles so that they don't contain the ultimate indignity of having pictures slightly lower in the article than the manual of style says they should be. My feeling is that this is insane pedantry, but what is the general feeling on this? john k 06:06, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

For readers, the discussion can be found at User_talk:Raul654#Articles_with_pictures_in_categories. What John was doing was going through large numbers of articles and moving the picture down further into the article, breaking convention in order to fix (what appears to be) a transitory problem with the Wiki software. →Raul654 06:24, Jun 1, 2004 (UTC)
This is accurate, if slanted (my own comments were also slanted, of course). BTW, is there any discussion in the archives as to the particular convention under discussion? I couldn't find anything, but I only looked through pretty quickly, mostly looking at the TOCs. john k 06:28, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
John, just take it easey. You are over-dramatizing this whole thing, it’s a technical problem, and it’ll be resolved in a few days. Until then, just have patience, and instead of wasting your energy like this, you could work on making the articles better. This is really pointless, it's a tehnical problem, not a problem of standards. --GeneralPatton 06:57, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I agree that the issue itself is not especially important. Which is why it's upsetting to be accused of doing "major damage" to wikipedia. I'd like to have some explanation as to why this convention you two have been arguing for is so important that it warrants such expostulations. All I was doing was going through articles and adding categories, and trying to make sure that doing so did not result in the article looking like crap. You are the ones who decided to chew me out about it, and accuse me of doing serious damage to wikipedia. Who's "over-dramatizing" here? john k 07:04, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
First, I should point out that he didn't say you were doing "major damage", he said what you were doing was "more damaging" than the technical issue you seek to correct. This is literally true- the effort to standarize a large number of articles once the issue is corrected is going to take higher than the effort to quash the bug itself. Second, it sets a *very* bad example when someone just decides to disregard the manual of style. Trying to get it changed is one thing, but disregarding it is entirely different. →Raul654 07:17, Jun 1, 2004 (UTC)

To what extent is the manual of style followed? I'm sure we can find many, many, many ways in which the manual of style is disregarded in hundreds upon hundreds of articles. I'd also add that all manual of style items are not created equal - I'd like to know where this particular convention arose from - as I said before, I can find no discussion of it in the archives of this talk page. A convention is only a convention insofar as it is supported by some kind of consensus. Just because someone or other put something into the manual of style does not make it a genuine convention. john k 07:41, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

While I happen to agree that it's better not to change the articles in this case (since a technological fix should be soon forthcoming, if not already), I don't see this rule ("Articles with a single picture should have that picture at the top of the article, right aligned.") as hard-and-fast anyway. It was added by Raul654 only recently, without any discussion that I can find. It also doesn't make sense in any number of articles where an image is better placed next to the text referencing it (e.g.: monochromator). -- DrBob 00:05, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Ha! So Raul added it himself recently? And he was giving me a hard time for not following a silly rule that he made up himself without any discussion? That's just ridiculous. At any rate, there really wasn't any need for me to move the pictures, since the technical issue has been fixed now, but at the same time, I don't see that moving the pictures has caused any problem that now needs to be fixed - Pictures look absolutely fine next to the second paragraph, and this "rule" is clearly just an eruption of analness. I'm going to remove it from the manual of style. john k 07:50, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I did add the section in question (I thought I already mentioned that - if not, sorry, yes I did). It was added after problems with the picture at Douglas MacArthur, specifically, over left or right alignment. You can see the talk page there for discussion. →Raul654 08:04, Jun 6, 2004 (UTC)

On further checking, the discussion took place on this very page. You can see the first page diff here. →Raul654 08:17, Jun 6, 2004 (UTC)


I am quite sure this problem is solved soon - it's not only the pictures which create that problem, but also the very popular Infoboxes. Instead of temporarily moving down the pic/infobox or move the pic to the left we can also abstain from adding the category temporarily until the glitches of the new software version are fixed - this also gives some time to think about what categories we want to add. andy 08:01, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
There is a user CSS fix to this problem currently listed on the Meta bug report/comment list. It's under [1]. blankfaze | ?? 16:12, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
This shouldn't be a problem now that categories have moved to the bottom of articles rather than being in the way of images at the top. Angela. 00:06, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Right. So who should fix all the damage that John did by moving those images around? →Raul654 23:34, Jun 14, 2004 (UTC)

. In most of these cases, this looks perfectly fine. It also means that we don't have absolutely hideous articles until whenever it is that the problem with categories gets fixed. For moving the pictures in several articles down a few lines, I have been accused of doing "serious damage" to wikipedia, because now people will have to "fix" all these articles so that they don't contain the ultimate indignity of having pictures slightly lower in the article than the manual of style says they should be. My feeling is that this is insane pedantry, but what is the general feeling on this? john k 06:06, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

For readers, the discussion can be found at User_talk:Raul654#Articles_with_pictures_in_categories. What John was doing was going through large numbers of articles and moving the picture down further into the article, breaking convention in order to fix (what appears to be) a transitory problem with the Wiki software. →Raul654 06:24, Jun 1, 2004 (UTC)
This is accurate, if slanted (my own comments were also slanted, of course). BTW, is there any discussion in the archives as to the particular convention under discussion? I couldn't find anything, but I only looked through pretty quickly, mostly looking at the TOCs. john k 06:28, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
John, just take it easey. You are over-dramatizing this whole thing, it’s a technical problem, and it’ll be resolved in a few days. Until then, just have patience, and instead of wasting your energy like this, you could work on making the articles better. This is really pointless, it's a tehnical problem, not a problem of standards. --GeneralPatton 06:57, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I agree that the issue itself is not especially important. Which is why it's upsetting to be accused of doing "major damage" to wikipedia. I'd like to have some explanation as to why this convention you two have been arguing for is so important that it warrants such expostulations. All I was doing was going through articles and adding categories, and trying to make sure that doing so did not result in the article looking like crap. You are the ones who decided to chew me out about it, and accuse me of doing serious damage to wikipedia. Who's "over-dramatizing" here? john k 07:04, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
First, I should point out that he didn't say you were doing "major damage", he said what you were doing was "more damaging" than the technical issue you seek to correct. This is literally true- the effort to standarize a large number of articles once the issue is corrected is going to take higher than the effort to quash the bug itself. Second, it sets a *very* bad example when someone just decides to disregard the manual of style. Trying to get it changed is one thing, but disregarding it is entirely different. →Raul654 07:17, Jun 1, 2004 (UTC)

To what extent is the manual of style followed? I'm sure we can find many, many, many ways in which the manual of style is disregarded in hundreds upon hundreds of articles. I'd also add that all manual of style items are not created equal - I'd like to know where this particular convention arose from - as I said before, I can find no discussion of it in the archives of this talk page. A convention is only a convention insofar as it is supported by some kind of consensus. Just because someone or other put something into the manual of style does not make it a genuine convention. john k 07:41, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

While I happen to agree that it's better not to change the articles in this case (since a technological fix should be soon forthcoming, if not already), I don't see this rule ("Articles with a single picture should have that picture at the top of the article, right aligned.") as hard-and-fast anyway. It was added by Raul654 only recently, without any discussion that I can find. It also doesn't make sense in any number of articles where an image is better placed next to the text referencing it (e.g.: monochromator). -- DrBob 00:05, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Ha! So Raul added it himself recently? And he was giving me a hard time for not following a silly rule that he made up himself without any discussion? That's just ridiculous. At any rate, there really wasn't any need for me to move the pictures, since the technical issue has been fixed now, but at the same time, I don't see that moving the pictures has caused any problem that now needs to be fixed - Pictures look absolutely fine next to the second paragraph, and this "rule" is clearly just an eruption of analness. I'm going to remove it from the manual of style. john k 07:50, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I did add the section in question (I thought I already mentioned that - if not, sorry, yes I did). It was added after problems with the picture at Douglas MacArthur, specifically, over left or right alignment. You can see the talk page there for discussion. →Raul654 08:04, Jun 6, 2004 (UTC)

On further checking, the discussion took place on this very page. You can see the first page diff here. →Raul654 08:17, Jun 6, 2004 (UTC)


I am quite sure this problem is solved soon - it's not only the pictures which create that problem, but also the very popular Infoboxes. Instead of temporarily moving down the pic/infobox or move the pic to the left we can also abstain from adding the category temporarily until the glitches of the new software version are fixed - this also gives some time to think about what categories we want to add. andy 08:01, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
There is a user CSS fix to this problem currently listed on the Meta bug report/comment list. It's under [2]. blankfaze | ?? 16:12, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
This shouldn't be a problem now that categories have moved to the bottom of articles rather than being in the way of images at the top. Angela. 00:06, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Right. So who should fix all the damage that John did by moving those images around? →Raul654 23:34, Jun 14, 2004 (UTC)


Proposal up for quick vote: italics

I would like to add the following under the section titled Italics: That foreign words always be italicized (not quoted, bold, etc.) Sean Kelly 05:51, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I don't think that's needed. Maurreen 06:04, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Fair enough. Just something I've seen a lot in writing that I feel helps create clarity, especially when the subject is a foreign word. I found it helpful to use when editing the page Reinheitsgebot, since some German words like Mass are not cognates. It also just seems to make sense, but I can see how it's just a personal preference. Sean Kelly 18:17, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I just had a colleague told that Chicago (or maybe it was another university press house style—I haven't personally verified it in CMOS) states that a foreign word used repeatedly is only italicized on the first occurrence, unless its sense would be lost otherwise (e.g., Fr. colon, in reference to a person of European blood born and resident in a colony, which is a somewhat different meaning from the English word). When ambiguity would result, however, italics should always be used. —Tkinias 20:34, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
If the word is in another alphabet (for example, Greek), it should, of course, never be italicized just because it's in a foreign language. Transliterations, though, should be in italics. (Always? Or is a transliteration the same as any other foreign word?) -[[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 23:25, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Here's what my Chicago (15th ed.) says; "7.51 Italics. Italics are used for isolated words and phrases in a foreign language if they are likely to be unfamiliar to readers...7.54 Familiar foreign words. Foreign words and phrases familiar to most readers and listed in Webster are not italicized if used in an English context; they should be spelled as in Webster. German nouns, if in Webster, are lowercased. If confusion might arise, however, foreign terms are best italicized and spelled as in the original language...7.55 Italics at first occurence. If a foreign word not listed in an English dictionary is used repeatedly throughout a work, it need be italicized only on its first occurrence. If it appears only rarely, however, italics may be retained." In any case, bold, quotation marks, and such are inappropriate, and I'd favor putting that in the Manual of Style. — [[User:Knowledge Seeker|Knowledge Seeker দ (talk)]] 23:23, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

That sounds right. My proposal wasn't so much to make italics manditory, but rather to prevent unnecessary bolding and quotation marks. Sean Kelly 10:41, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind seeing [User:Sean Kelly|Sean Kelly]]'s suggestion implemented. I've changed quoted words to italics often enough in editing articles. It does seem to be a common departure from normal usage. The note from Chicago is also a good one. Jallan 03:26, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Quotes and foreign language words

From the village pump

I remember having seen guidelines and/or discussions relative to:

  • Quotes should be avoided as the opening pararaph(s) of an article, but rather be placed below in the article body or at the end.
  • Foreign language words should be italicized. What about places' and people's names? What about titles? What about the translation/transliteration/original wording of the title in a foreign language within the definition paragraph?

With the multiplication of guideline and talk pages, I cannot find these references. Could anyone help me spotting them? If no such discussion/guideline really exist, where should they be started? Thanks. olivier 13:36, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

So far as I know from the books, loan words in English should be printed in italicized while underlined when handwriting. Since we can do nothing about the titles ( can we change the style of titles? ) I think it's alright for titles not to be italicized. But inside the articals, all foreign words should be in italicized, be they definition or anything ( it maybe troublesome, but makes them look more standard ). Like the people's names or places' names from foreign languages ( like from Chinese or other ) should be in italicized. --Gboy 14:37, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)
The trouble is some foreign words are so adapted that they are treated like English words like kamikaze, tyhoon, samurai and so on. -- Taku

For titles: ==Titles <i>can be italicized</i>== or in text:'''''Italicized'''''. Alex756 15:27, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I think Olivier means the title of the page. --Gboy 16:00, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I think you might be looking for the Wikipedia:Manual of style. --Camembert

Regarding contractions

I'd like to add a few lines to the manual about contractions. In nearly all cases, except when quoting directly, contractions (for example, don't instead of do not, can't instead of cannot, won't instead of will not) should be avoided. Somewhere else on some remote manual of Wiki-style there's something about avoiding abbreviations such as "eg" instead of "for example," er, for example. Any objections? Exploding Boy 07:21, Jun 6, 2004 (UTC)

Hmmm, a toughie. There's a good argument for avoiding contractions because it makes the text sounds less casual - but it can be offputting for readers, especially for pop culture topics, where formality is borderline comical. I guess I can go either way. Stan 13:06, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Not using contractions does not make one sound automatically formal. It's the vocabularly and sentence structure that makes people sound pompous. We do not write in slang when we discuss slang. --Jiang 08:43, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Agreed. We're told to avoid contractions in formal essay writing/academic papers. I don't see how this encyclopedia should be an expception. --Jiang 03:01, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Object. The blanket rule against contractions in formal writing is disappearing, and it makes little sense to me that Wikipedia should be a standard-bearer for a dying style. This is a new medium, and it should have a modern style, which includes the use of contractions when appropriate. And while I don't want to make a slippery-slope argument, what other rules of proscriptive grammar would you wish to put in the Manual as well? The 'rule' against dangling prepositions, perhaps? As Winston Churchill said, "That is the type of arrant pedantry up with which we shall not put."
I disagree with a proposed rule against abbreviations as well. Read some of our chemistry articles before trying to claim that converting every "ml" to "millilit(er/re)s" will improve the article--it won't. --TreyHarris 03:57, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

That's why I said "in most cases." On the subject of contractions, however, and speaking as a grad student, I don't see it the use of contractions in formal writing becoming more common at all. No formal academic work I've ever seen has included them. Exploding Boy 08:22, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

I don't think there should be an across-the-board recommendation. It very much depends on the subject of the article whether contractions are appropriate or not. Wikipedia does not aspire to emulate academic English (thankfully, since much of it is almost unreadable unless one is steeped in discipline-specific jargon). older≠wiser 11:38, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Nevertheless, the intent is to be formal, isn't it? Contractions just seem to casual for this type of writing. Exploding Boy 14:27, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I agree and withdraw my previous objection. I thought that for some articles a more informal tone might be appropriate, but I could not think of any examples. older≠wiser 14:47, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Ok, let's make a few things here. Contractions and abbreviations are two different things. Km is an abbreviation of kilometer, not a contraction. Contractions use apostrophes ('). Don't, won't, can't, isn't - these are contractions. I would support an entry in the manual of style that says: "In general, we prefer formal writing. Therefore, contractions are discouraged." End of story. Short, sweet, and hard to misunderstand. →Raul654 07:21, Jun 9, 2004 (UTC)
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