Wikipedia:Manual of Style (India-related articles)

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These guidelines deal with the naming of India-related articles. Please follow the conventions below. If you disagree with any of the conventions, please discuss in the talk page.

To write and edit India-related articles, please follow the conventions below. Note

Contents

[edit] Purpose

The purpose of this manual is to create style guidelines for editing articles related to the country of India in the English Wikipedia to conform to a neutral encyclopedic standard, as well as to make things easier to read by following a consistent format. This manual also states the conventions to be followed for writing the names in Indic scripts. The following rules do not claim to be the last word. One way is often as good as another, but if everyone follows minimum standards, Wikipedia will be easier to read and use, not to mention easier to write and edit. This manual is open to all proposals, discussion, and editing.

[edit] Scope

[edit] Languages of origin

This convention should be applied to any language spoken in the Indian subcontinent that is written in an Indic script. The major languages are: Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Konkani (when written in Kannada or Devanagari scripts), Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Pali, Punjabi (when written in Gurmukhi script), Sanskrit, Sinhala, Tamil, Telugu.

The following languages are of Indic origin, but will usually be written in non-Indic scripts, usually derived from Arabic (see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Arabic). This convention will normally apply to them only when transliterating from writings in an Indic script: Urdu, Kashmiri, Punjabi (western), Sindhi.

Several languages may be written in Indic scripts, but are not themselves Indic languages. Some aspects of this convention may apply to them, but they may have their own conventions. They include Tibetan, Burmese, Thai, Khmer, Lao, Javanese.

[edit] Subject matter covered

This standard is recommended for use in articles in the following fields;

  • Towns, Cities, Districts, States, Protected areas and all other places within the political boundary of India.
  • All companies, organisations and factories which have their headquarters located in India.
  • All persons who are born in India or Undivided British India or have taken citizenship of India.
  • Religions originating in India, including Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism. Articles on Buddhism may follow this convention, or that of other languages, depending on the language of origin.
  • Mythology of India.
  • Historical articles and historical place names of India, including especially history prior to 1800.

[edit] Basic India conventions

  • Use only British English spellings as per the guidelines for India related pages.
  • All units should be metric (SI) units. Imperial equivalents should be given alongside in brackets.
  • Use the Indian numbering system of lakhs and crores. Give their equivalence (millions/ billions) alongside.
  • For monetary figures, use the Indian numbering system but also give its US dollar equivalence in brackets.

[edit] Geographic articles

[edit] Disambiguation of place names

This is the current naming convention

Articles on places in India go under [[placename]]. When disambiguation is needed, articles go under [[Cityname, State]] (e.g., Bilaspur, Himachal Pradesh). For cities that shares its name with other countries (e.g., Hyderabad) the disambiguation style preferred is Hyderabad (India).

This is another proposed addition to the naming convention

Articles on settlements in India follow the dab-layout rules used by all other settlements around the world, i.e. use comma not brackets. When disambiguation is needed, articles go under [[Cityname, Specifier]] where Specifier can be "India", a state name or a district name.

A place or an area within a city must have in the following format. Place name, City name. eg Esplanade, Kolkata.

[edit] Districts

In many cases a district and its headquarters share the same name. For example, Mysore is the name of a city, district and division. For such cases, contents of the district should be added to Mysore district and the division should be added to Mysore division. Thus Mysore will be having only matter relating to the city. However all three should be linked in the respective articles. Please note: the word district should be with a small d.

[edit] Biographical articles

See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies)

While the article title should generally be the name by which the subject is most commonly known, the subject's full name should be given in the lead paragraph, if known. It is common to give the maiden surname of women better known under their married name. For people who are best known by a pseudonym, the legal name should usually appear first in the article, followed closely by the pseudonym. Follow this practice even if the article itself is titled with the pseudonym. Alternatively, the legal name can appear in apposition to the pseudonym. Generally, titles and honorifics should not be used either in the article body or when naming an article. However, exceptions may apply to individuals who are widely known by an honorific name or with a title. Examples are Mahatma Gandhi where Mahatma is an honorific, Sri Chand where 'Sri' is a title, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada where Swami and Prabhupada are honorific, and Chandrasekharendra Saraswati Kanchi Mahaswamigal where Kanchi Mahaswamigal is an honorific. Academic and professional titles (such as "Doctor" or "Professor") should not be used before the name in the initial sentence or in other uses of the person's name, however attainmet of these titles should be included in the article text instead. After the initial mention of any name, the person may be referred to by surname only. The person may be referred to by their first name in the case of royalty, or as "Prince/ss/Yuvraj/Yuvrani First Name” or as “The Maharaja”, “The Maharani”, etc. Biographies of living persons should begin in the present tense; biographies of deceased persons should begin in the past tense. If a person is living but has retired, use the present tense "is a former" rather than the past tense "was". Redirects should be used for other forms of an individual's name.

[edit] Naming and transliteration

Each Indic article should be named according to its primary transliteration, if this can be clearly established. If a primary transliteration cannot be clearly established, then the article should be labelled with a simplified transliteration.

Informal transliterations should not be used for article titles, unless they can be justified as being the primary transliteration used in English. If a transliteration's status as primary cannot be justified or verified, then it should be corrected and replaced by a simplified transliteration. A redirect should then be left in its place. Redirects should also be created for the more common alternative spelling forms.

Where alternative spellings or informal transliterations are in widespread use, a limited number of the most common ones should be listed at the top of the main article.

If the formal transliteration differs from the article title, it should be included once in the introductory section of the article for reference. The name in the original script may also be included, for further reference. See below for advice on formatting these.

[edit] Primary transliteration

A word has a primary transliteration if at least 75% of all references in wider usage have the same transliteration. Primary transliterations may sometimes be less accurate than other transliterations.

[edit] Formal transliteration

A formal transliteration preserves all phonetic information in the original script, and should be used where unambiguous transliteration is needed. The preferred formal transliteration is the standardised ISO 15919 transliteration scheme for Indic scripts. This system uses the Latin alphabet (the Roman script) with additional diacritic symbols to represent Indic scripts accurately. For Sanskrit, IAST is preferred, which differs from ISO 15919 only in a very few points.

See this concise table for aid in transliteration.

[edit] Simplified transliteration

A simplified transliteration scheme is used to produce an easy-to-read version of the formal transliteration. The simplified transliteration aims to convert the formal transliteration into a Latin script form that agrees as far as possible with English writing conventions. This means that Indic letters that have no Latin equivalent are merged with the closest Latin equivalent. The simplified transliteration is also included with the formal transliteration at the transliteration transliteration table .

The formal transliteration can be used for all Wikis written with Latin based scripts. The simplified transliteration however may be suitable only for the English Wikipedia.

[edit] Formatting

Use the {{lang}} tag to mark non-English strings. When giving a term in its native script, provide the ISO 639-2 code (if unavailable, ISO 639-3) to identify the language. Example:

{{lang|ta|தமிழ்}}, {{lang|hi|हिन्दी}}
தமிழ், हिन्दी

Giving a term in ISO 15919 transliteration, simply add "-Latn" (the ISO 15924 code for the Latin alphabet) to the language code:

''{{lang|ta-Latn|tamiḻ}}, {{lang|hi-Latn|hindī}}''
tamiḻ, hindī

Use {{IAST}} only for Sanskrit terms:

{{lang|sa|संस्कृतम्}} ''{{IAST|saṃskṛtam}}''
संस्कृतम् saṃskṛtam

[edit] Preferred format for introducing the article subject

Ideally, when introducing an article that is covered by this policy, IPA pronunciations (with audio pronunciation if possible) and transliterations of the Indic script should be included. The format is:

Simplified Transliteration ([English IPA text]; Language: Indic Text, ISO Transliteration, [Indic IPA text] [?]) ...

A special {{indic}} template has been made to take care of formatting issues.

Use this format when you have the original script text, transliteration, IPA and audio pronunciation file.

'''Simplified Transliteration''' ({{indic | lang=Language code | defaultipa=English IPA text | defaultaudio=Audio file.ogg | indic=Indic Text | trans=ISO Transliteration | indicipa=Indic IPA text | indicaudio=Audio file.ogg }}) ...
Example
'''Sikhism''' ({{indic|lang=pa|defaultipa='siːkɪz(ə)m|defaultaudio=Seekism.ogg|indic=ਸਿੱਖੀ|trans=sikkhī|indicipa='sɪk.kʰiː| indicaudio=Sikkhi.ogg}}) is a...
Sikhism (['siːkɪz(ə)m]; Punjabi: ਸਿੱਖੀ, sikkhī, ['sɪk.kʰiː] [?]) is a...

[edit] Without audio

Use this when you have the original script text, transliteration and IPA but do not have the audio pronunciation. This is likely to be the most used format.

'''Simplified Transliteration''' ({{indic | lang=Language code | defaultipa=English IPA text | indic=Indic Text | trans=ISO Transliteration | indicipa=Indic IPA text }}) ...
Example
'''Mumbai''' ({{indic|lang=mr|defaultipa=mumbəi|indic=मुंबई|trans=mumbaī}}) is a...
Mumbai (IPA: [mumbəi]; Marathi: मुंबई, mumbaī [?]) is a...

[edit] Linking to other Indian Language Wikipedias

Use interwiki links to link to the equivalent article on the other Indian Language Wikipedias. Additionally, there is generally no need to use inline links to the equivalent other Indian Language Wikipedias article for any words in an article. If a word is important enough to warrant a link, it will have an article here, in which case a standard link is sufficient. Linking of the name of Indian people in his/her mother tongue Wikipedia can be done. For example a page beginning

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Gujarati: મોહનદાસ કરમચંદ ગાંધી, IAST: mohandās karamcand gāndhī, IPA: [mohən̪d̪as kərəmtʃən̪d̪ gan̪d̪ʱi]) (October 2, 1869 – January 30, 1948) was a ...

can be written as

[[gu:મોહનદાસ કરમચંદ ગાંધી]]


[edit] Other versions

If both the English and Indic pronunciation are the same (likely if the Indic word isn't used in English) then ignore the indicipa parameter. If you don't have audio files, you can simply leave those parameters out. For full details of what the template can do, see Template:Indic.

[edit] Other articles

[edit] Modern names and terms

Personal, organisation, and company names in current and recent usage should generally be romanized according to the nameholder's preference, if that can be established. However, this convention may be appropriately applied to them in certain contexts. These include;

  • when it is necessary to accurately or unambiguously transliterate from original text, or to indicate original pronunciation,
  • when it is necessary to maintain consistency in the article

[edit] See also