Talk:Halls of residence

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[edit] Naming

It seems that residence hall is much more common than hall of residence (at least outside of the UK). Is this significant disparity due to the large number of colleges in the US? Why not put the article at the most common usage? --Minesweeper 13:08, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Written by a UK author, from a UK link. Do we have policy that as America has more of everything that these sort of pages should be moved to their American names? Secretlondon 13:15, Dec 12, 2003 (UTC)

Our policy is to use common names. It doesn't have to do with politics. --Jiang | Talk 21:51, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

"residence hall" is the overwhelming winner: [1][2]. --Jiang | Talk 05:11, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Please use the "move this page" function. "So what" is not an argument against the move. --Jiang | Talk 08:09, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Pigsonthewing, stop moving this page without discussing. Please state here on this page why you think this page should be an expecption to current WP policy. --Jiang | Talk 08:19, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)

  • "Pigsonthewing, stop moving this page without discussing" Aside from the fact that that's just what you've been doing; who are you to give orders? I'm not suggesting that this page should be an exception; it should adhere to current policy. Andy Mabbett 20:13, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)
You cannot hijack the page history and claim the work for your own. That's plagarism. If you move, you need to move using the "move this page" function. I would not be engaging in a copy and past war with you if you bothered to move the page using the proper mechanisms. This kind of moving can never be tolerated. How does the title you prefer adhere to current policy? Cite it. --Jiang | Talk 20:21, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)

One is the common name in the UK, one is the common name in the US. As there is more of the US the US will win on a google count. Secretlondon 20:14, Dec 13, 2003 (UTC)

How about the entire British commonwealth? There are more countries than the US and UK. What do they use in Canada? --Jiang | Talk 20:21, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)
They use 'residence hall' in Canada, 'hall of residence' in India and Australia, and New Zealand. In .de, 'hall of residence' is also the more common term, slightly. (but that's not english speaking). I think by that 'hall of residence' should win - it seems to be North America vs everyone else. Morwen 12:55, Dec 14, 2003 (UTC)
Also, note that many of the hits for 'residence hall' are as names of halls. In the UK, at least in my experience, they tend to rarely use 'Hall of Residence' as part of a name. My halls were 'Montefiore House'. I think this needs to be taken into account. Morwen 12:59, Dec 14, 2003 (UTC)

Yes, my point - American uses are not common by default. But they dont usually put hall of residence as part of a name in the US either (e.g. Roble Hall, Lagunita Hall at Stanford, and Bowles Hall, Stern Hall, Foohill Student Housing here at Berkeley). Scroll to the bottom and you'll see the word "residence" is ommitted here too: [3]. The 2, 5, 6, 7, 9 th links on a google search use 'hall of residence' as part of a name, compared with only one link (the first) for 'residence hall.' --Jiang | Talk 13:11, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)

So, what weight of evidence that this is the term used in the rest of the commonwealth, do you need to agree to keeping this page were it was originally created? Was my summary enough or do you want figures? Morwen 23:34, Dec 14, 2003 (UTC)

We're talking about which one is more common - so what is the number of students in countries that use 'hall of residence' than the number of students in countries that use 'residence hall'? We'll just take English-speaking countries into account since only people fluent in English would be expected to look up stuff in this encyclopedia. --Jiang | Talk 02:21, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

A google search only prooves that there are more web pages on American universities than in the rest of the world. what a surprise. Please don't use google as an ultimate guide to life the universe and everything. Mintguy

We just call them "residences," at least at UWO. Most are "X Hall," but some are "House" and sometimes "Court," but they are just residences to me. Adam Bishop 02:40, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Then what do you suggest we use? --Jiang | Talk
And you if you're moving it, move it to the singular form, not the plural. --Jiang | Talk 02:51, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be best to merge with dormitory. Dysprosia 03:00, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Halls is correct. FWIW in a straight comparison between "halls of residence" and "hall of residence" on Google, Halls wins by 5:1. People refer to "staying in halls" not "staying in the hall". It's like trousers vs trouser. Mintguy 03:07, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Firstly, in British English, halls of residence are not the same as dormitories. Secondly, halls of residence is far more common usage than hall of residence. Finally, this isn't about common usage. It's about American v. British usage. According to Google, rappel is far more common than Abseil, but the article is at abseil because it that is where the original author decided to put it. The same applies to all the pages listed at Wikipedia:Articles using British English titles. You can't go round changing BE usage to AE usage in titles any more than you can of spelling within articles. Angela. 03:15, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Well, I would say "staying in residence"...our residences are virtually never referred to as "halls" at all, they are usually called by some shortened form of their name, or just as "res" or "residence." Adam Bishop 03:17, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

My understanding is that the discussion was about wether or not to merge with dormatory. There is a distinction in the applied defininations of the two words as dormatories function with little or no student support functions housed within the building and residence halls commonly have a staff of both students and professionals that follow and educational curriculum of sorts. It is my opinion to keep to seperate definations. As for the debate surrounding the difference between halls of residence and residence halls, colleges and unversities function very differently in different countries and therefore I think two different entries explaining how the different systems function but linking to the others would be most appropriate.-- 3 July 2005 04:59 (UTC)

For users of British English, dormitory has a different connotation - lets keep the distinctions clear. As for 'hall' vs 'halls': there has been an increase in the use of the latter over the last 20 years, in the University of Nottingham, but I still hear both "I am living in hall this year" and the less logical "I am living in halls this year". Ian

[edit] Sharing

At my university's (University of Southampton) halls; there was no sharing at all that I was aware of. Perhaps this is another regional thing? Morwen 14:17, Dec 20, 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Some

"being an unknown, undetermined, or unspecified unit or thing; being one, a part, or an unspecified number of something; being at least one -- used to indicate that a logical proposition is asserted only of a subclass or certain members of the class denoted by the term which it modifies " [4]. Besides which, no evidence has been offered that "many" have shared rooms. In my experience (which I'm not claiming as exhaustive; unlike, it seems, others), only a couple of very many hals have had a very small number of shared rooms. Andy Mabbett 14:19, 20 Dec 2003 (UTC)

[edit] British usage

Halls of residence or halls in British english usage refers predominantly to a student accommodation block. The likelihood (although not always the case) is that this would have individual rooms, although may well have shared kitchen or bathroom facilities. To my mind, that differs from the US usage of the term dormitory, although perhaps someone will correct me if I'm wrong. I've updated the article, and removed the proposed merge template since the discussion has gone on some time and no consensus has been reached. └ UkPaolo/TALK┐ 10:32, 14 December 2005 (UTC)