Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 101

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Quote clarification required

The MoS states:

A long quote (more than four lines

What exactly does this mean? Four lines on an iPhone, or four lines on my 30" monitor? I believe it might mean "sentences", but I am not so sure. Clarity is needed, as well as some guidelines for flexibility in use. For instance, there are times where a single-line quotation should be blocked, if it is of importance.

Maury (talk) 17:14, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Last discussion was WT:Manual_of_Style/Archive_100#Blockquote for emphasis. Does that help? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 03:01, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Image placement: Inline or gallery

I noticed that some articles have an image gallery at the bottom while others put images inline with the text. I find that inline with the text improves readability and the gallery often lacks captions. Is there or should there be a guideline about this? Gallery example Inline example Thanks, Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 18:55, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Layout#Images has all the information you need. One tip, however: when you make such comparisons, it is best to use diffs for both parts; the archive will make no sense if the gallery is removed from the article at a later time. For a diff of the current version, click on "Permanent link" in the toolbox (sidebar on the left). Waltham, The Duke of 00:07, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Linking bolded words

Something bugs me about the policy of not linking initial bolded words. Articles say things like

The Battle of Bettendorf was a battle fought in the year 2691.

instead of

The Battle of Bettendorf was fought in the year 2691.

Xmith's theorem is a theorem first proved by John Xmith in 1792.

instead of

Xmith's theorem was first proved by John Xmith in 1792.

The policy necessitates redundant words, and those sometimes appear stupid. If the battle of Bettendorf was actually a public debate about whether miniskirts should be worn on Sundays, so that the word "battle" is merely a metaphor, then that needs to be stated, but to say that a battle is a battle and and theorem is a theorem seems like needless extra words that convey no information and sometimes insult the reader. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:15, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

On the other hand, the vivid difference in color may overwhelm the signal of the bold text. This will differ from system to system, and from reader to reader; but it is better avoided. I'm not sure that battle and theorem should be linked in these cases; does the link add much? If it doesn't, take out the repetition and the link together. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:20, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Agreed with Sept. Editors often find clever ways around the redundancy, and it's important not to lose the "signal", as Sept says. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 21:19, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Anderson entirely. Don't link dictionary terms, please. TONY (talk) 00:34, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

"Theorem" has a very specific meaning in mathematics, which is often not appreciated by non-mathematicians. I would have linked it in this context. Hesperian 00:38, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I think there is a certain flexibility to linking at first instance; a link can be placed at a slightly later point, especially if it matches with the context there. Waltham, The Duke of 23:32, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Kodster

User:Kodster is using AWB to remove html code and insert diacritics. Not sure how I feel about this in every case, but I reverted the edit he just made to WP:MoS, and left this message on his talk page:

We prefer the html code to the diacritic or typographer's symbol for a number of symbols. I'm not positive that the diacritic ring that you inserted is one of them, but it probably is. The reasons are that html is likely to be preserved when the text is copied outside Wikipedia, and the diacritic is not; also, it is nearly impossible to look at those little circles and figure out what they are without the html code. I'll revert, but feel free to come talk about it on our talk page.

- Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 01:28, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

(copied from my talk page) Oh sure, I just used Auto Wiki Browser, and it did that automatically. Guess I didn't notice! Thanks for pointing that out and reverting it. I'll try to be a little more careful next time. :) Cheers, Kodster (You talkin' to me?) (Stuff I messed up) 01:29, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Bot being made, to convert " &emdash; " to "&emdash;"

I've requested approval for a task for my bot, which would convert " &emdash; " to "&emdash;", in article mainspace. It would use AWB, and I would do it by looking through "What transcludes page" - Template:Cite journal, then all the other cite templates, followed by Template:Unreferenced. It may not get every single article, but a large majority of them. What are the thoughts of others here? The request is here. Steve Crossin (talk) (review) 10:15, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I fully support this, as I've grown tired of doing it manually. · AndonicO ^Engage. 10:36, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Why do people key it in fully like this? Why not convert all to the symbol? — TONY (talk) 10:46, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

To make a point obvious to most of us: because some people prefer the full form, to be sure what they are getting; in some systems it becomes habitual to do so. Changing style by bots is disruptive; please stop suggesting it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:39, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

No, please do suggest it, more and more. We need to tighten up the use of these signs. MOS now expresses pretty well the way they should be used, and we need only follow it. Proper usage of these items, like so much proper usage, makes for a smoother, clearer reading experience, even if a reader happens to be only subliminally aware of their function.

In some cases an mdash might be used as a minus sign, and then what this bot does would be a mistake. (In that case the &emdash; should be changed to &minus ; and the spaces before and after left intact, except that when the minus sign indicates a negative number rather than subtraction of one thing from another, then there should be no space after it.) Michael Hardy (talk) 23:02, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

No no, never an em dash: an eN dash may be used in place of a minus sign, but mathematicians much favour the minus sign, which lies between en dash and hyphen in length. A hyphen is not acceptable to signify the minus. TONY (talk) 02:17, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

It should be done as a series of manual AWB runs. If it is in some cases being used as a minus, this is wrong, not to mention rare if it is actually ocurring at all, and it not looking right any longer is a signal to editors to fix it. But I agree with Hardy that if it can be actually corrected in the AWB run it should be. Also (in answer to Tony), it should be entered as a character entity code like that because in many fonts the hyphens, en dashes and em dashes (and minuses) are completely or nearly indistinguishable, and the only way for many editors (myself included) to be certain that the correct character is being used is to use the entity code instead of the raw Unicode character. I make the conversion manually any time I encounter a Unicode en or em dash while editing, actually. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:36, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

...And I do the opposite. (I also substitute double spacing after full stops with single; I know it's irrelevant, but the double spacing is completely, utterly useless.) The long name is too intrusive in the edit window; if you want to see if you have a hyphen or an en dash, I suggest using preview. Em dashes can be told apart.

In any event, I'd like to note another erroneous usage of em dashes: in lists. En dashes should be used there, but dash usage is not given much attention by most editors. For Unicorn's sake, even in the Good Articles list there are em dashes... Whose idea that was, I wonder. Waltham, The Duke of 01:56, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, agree with His Grace. I know Sandy has raised this matter at least once. On the en-dash article-title matter, when the ridiculous proscription against en dashes in those titles was expunged last year (about time, too), a few hardy souls ran the line that it would cause technical difficulties in search, etc; this was roundly scotched by several experts who convinced us with their up-to-date knowledge. It's in the MOSNUM talk archives somewhere. TONY (talk) 02:17, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Such confidence! I disagree.

First, if you want the HTML mnemonic entity this is not "&emdash;" but "—".

Secondly, I loathe no-space em dashes in the browser window. The web, as you may recall, is not paper. The ways in which it isn't include: (i) most browsers don't know that you can wrap immediately in front of or immediately after an unspaced em dash, and their ignorance results in immensely jagged right edges where a spaced dash would allow wrapping. (ii) Browsers don't know that apparently unspaced em dashes need a judicious application of thin spaces if they're not (at least in certain widely-used fonts) going to attach themselves to those characters that have wide midriffs.

Hooray for spaced em dashes! I shall continue to use them. -- Hoary (talk) 09:27, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Hoary, what's wrong, then, with a spaced en dash? That's what MOS prescribes if you want to space it. TONY (talk) 11:00, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Nothing wrong with them that I can see. If you fire volleys of them at me, I'll say that they don't appeal to me all that much – but they don't bother me either. -- Hoary (talk) 11:11, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Since the Manual of Style is a guideline, you are perfectly free to use spaced em dashes in the articles you write. It would be bad etiquette, however, to change unspaced em dashes to spaced ones, considering that it is the former option that the Manual supports, and for good reason. Jagged edges or not, it is better for a word to wrap with the following em dash, because the alternative is to have lines beginning with stray dashes. That is not good style by anyone's standards. Besides, it makes for an easier reading experience to allow readers to see interruption in a sentence before the visual break of a line change. Don't mess with flow, please. :-) Waltham, The Duke of 00:19, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

You say that to have lines beginning with stray dashes [...] is not good style by anyone's standards. It's perfectly fine style by my own (which may of course be debased). Chicago 13th ed (the one I happen to possess here) doesn't seem to say anything on the matter. Which typographers' or (more pertinently) web designer's style guide does say this? -- Hoary (talk) 09:06, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I guess I was carried away there. But it seemed perfectly obvious to me that most people would object to having a line start with a dash. Apart from that, I think my other points are still valid. As far as dash usage in general is concerned, I believe that most manuals are not very consistent on the matter... At least so I hear. Wikipedia has to make its conventions. Waltham, The Duke of 14:15, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Funny, it had never occurred to me that they might object to it. Time permitting, I'll try to locate my copy of Hart's Rules and see what that says.

My own underinformed guess is that bizarre rules are invented arbitrarily. A few years ago, every word processor manual wittered away about how to avoid, or how to set the degree of enthusiasm for avoidance of, "widows" and "orphans". (Perhaps they still do but I no longer bother to look.) Yes, the WP page sternly says "Widows are considered sloppy typography and should be avoided." Where the hell did that notion come from? I've always suspected that some harmless drone working on WordStar or similar dreamt it up, and that it was then unthinkingly copied to WordPerfect, etc. I note that that article cites something called The Elements of Typographic Style; if that work (which I don't know) is inspired by those old fools Strunk and White I'd expect it to contain any amount of horse manure. -- Hoary (talk) 14:33, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

You might look at Strunk and White again; they do much less twittering about punctuation than (for instance) we do. I do not recall their mentioning widows or orphans; they are guidelines for effective prose, to which this page is largely irrelevant.

Widows and orphans are nineteenth-century shibboleths; partly marks of conspicuous consumption, being easier to avoid with a variable-spacing machine and lots of pages to absorb white space than for a country editor. The justification was that a couple words isolated by a column break were easier to misplace, and harder for the reader to follow, than an extract of more than a line. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:07, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Style ruling needed: "British Isles" / "Britain and Ireland"

Hi, all. Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but here goes.
I see that there's an ongoing dispute about correct usage.

"The dispute appears to be over whether "British Isles" or "Britain and Ireland" should be used."
- from a post by Neıl 8 May 2008 at the second of the two references following.

There appear to be two editors who are very interested in this issue, but several others have also posted about it.
Previous discussion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Blind_reversion_of_edits.2C_despite_earlier_warnings and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive414#Wikistalking

I've looked for a definite and consistent guideline on this but haven't found one. I'd like to see discussion, resulting in a definite guideline being added to the appropriate page in the WP:MOS, and (probably) in the pages of relevant Wikiprojects.
Disclaimer: I have not been involved in this dispute in any way, and have no interest whatsoever in however it may shake out -- I'm just trying to attain Wiki-peace and consistency.
-- Writtenonsand (talk) 14:33, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

My experience is not sufficient, but there's a general point I want to mention. This might be an issue that looks hard but turns out to be easy. See the lead section of British Isles naming dispute, and in particular the last paragraph, that gives a Google search showing that "British Isles" is widely used nowadays in both senses, either including or excluding the Republic of Ireland. If that's true, then the approach that modern style guides take is: when one of the phrases used to describe something is likely to be misunderstood half the time (regardless of the reasons or trends), don't pick that phrase. Choose a phrase everyone understands (such as "Britain and Ireland" or "British Islands and Ireland"), at least until a clear winner emerges in the battle for ownership of the disputed phrase. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 15:46, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

The British Isles encompasses more than just Britian and Ireland. The Isle of Mann, for example, is neither part of Britian nor Ireland. JIMp_talk·cont 01:58, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, "British Islands and Ireland" is probably a safe alternative for what "British Isles" meant before 1922 (and some would say still does). - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 03:32, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I disagree - though it is used in legislation with a specific legal meaning it is completely unfamiliar to most British people and will just confuse readers. Johnbod (talk) 04:02, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I have to admit I am not uninvolved, because I have personally had an edit criticized for using "British Isles" (including Ireland). With that disclaimer, I would like to register my disapproval of any ban of "British Isles". I believe the sense excluding Ireland is marginal. The one including Ireland is unlikely to lead to confusion, at least for North Americans. Before I read about it on Wikipedia, the phrase "British Islands" was unknown to me, and my suspicion is most North Americans, on seeing it, will assume it is a mistake for "British Isles". Joeldl (talk) 04:25, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

So will most British people. Johnbod (talk) 04:30, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

British Isles is a geographic term not a political one. The Islands of Britain, Ireland, and all of the thousand or so smaller islands in the archipelago are the "British isles." it has nothing to do with which states occupy any of the islands. "Britain" is the island that contains England, Scotland and Wales, but strictly none of the lesser islands. "Great Britain" is the political union of England, Wales and Scotland, and therefore includes outlying islands of Britain, but not Ireland. The "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" is the political entity (formerly United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland) which changed in 1922. Xandar (talk) 16:01, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

My apologies, I looked quickly and saw that "British Islands" got 412K Google hits and seemed to have a consistent definition, but consensus here seems to be that it's not a useful phrase. I'll know better than to say anything about BrEng again :) Anyway...my point was that there might be a quick, style-based solution here: never use British Isles, since the Google search I referred to above shows that that phrase is widely used both to include and to exclude the Republic of Ireland, and as a general policy, we don't deliberately choose to use phrases which are likely to be misunderstood when there are alternatives. If this is a POV issue rather than a style issue, and I have a feeling it is, then you'll get faster results by taking it to a page like The NPOV Noticeboard. Btw, when you go there, be sure to repeat the phrase "lesser island" as applied above (apparently) to Ireland, and then count the seconds til someone refers to the "lesser island" of Britain :) - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 17:05, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree with that - "British Isles" is a geographic term, which does include Ireland, but which some Irish object to and don't use. I don't know who uses it to exclude Ireland? The problem is there is no alternative with wide acceptance - Atlantic Archipelago has certainly not caught on. This is very well trampled ground here - see the proposed guideling Wikipedia:British Isles. It doesn't really matter what you use anyway, as eventually someone like Bardcom will come along and change it. Johnbod (talk) 17:17, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

"well trampled ground"...Right, and if someone comes along here to start an NPOV war, I feel somewhat optimistic that we'll be able to show them the door (which may mean that WT:MOS is the place to discuss certain NPOV issues, because you can never get rid of these battles on policy pages...hm, I hadn't thought of that, I'll cogitate on this). My very small point is that British Isles says:

Encyclopædia Britannica, the Oxford University Press - publishers of the Oxford English Dictionary - and the UK Hydrographic Office (publisher of Admiralty charts) have all occasionally used the term "British Isles and Ireland" (with Britannica and Oxford contradicting their own definitions of the "British Isles")

and the phrase "British Isles and Ireland" gets over 50K Google hits, so there is clearly confusion in the air. If the confusion all by itself is a reason to avoid the phrase, then we nicely avoid a trip to some place like WP:POVN.

"British Isles" alone gets 22.5 million, the great majority of which will include Ireland. But the real problem is the lack of a satisfactory alternative. Actually I only get 24,300 for "British Isles and Ireland". Johnbod (talk) 01:38, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

And now for something completely different. I undented there because the formatting that {{quote}} uses doesn't look right if the main text is indented. I reached to type my usual "←" to acknowledge the undent, and then decided that this has officially become silly, unless people really are using indentation in the same way that messageboards use it. That is, if a single indent (for instance) in the middle of a long thread still means to people around here "I'm replying to the last person who posted without any indentation, not to the message right above me", then warning people about undenting makes sense. But I never see that, or I'm not aware that that's going on; when Wikipedians want to be very clear that they're responding to a specific post and not to the whole thread, they generally insert their response immediately under that post. Does anyone around here use "messageboard indentation" style in their indents? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 17:44, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Current guidelines state that discussion is threaded. The exact quotation is "Use indentation to clearly indicate who you are replying to, as with usual threaded discussions." In my opinion, what you did is fine if there is really only one main thread of discussion (a few diversions along the way are fine). If the discussion is more complex, though, with multiple branching threads throughout, it's imperative that the threading remain clear. Powers ^T 15:28, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I wasn't aware that people do this often in article or style discussions, although it might be more common in policy discussions. I'll keep an eye out and keep asking. IMO, if few people do something, then it doesn't matter that it would be easier to follow the discussion if they did, and if the guidelines say something different, they should be changed. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 17:28, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

So you support letting people be confusing if they want to be confusing? Sometimes our guidelines are proscriptive rather than descriptive, especially in cases where setting them based on current practice is untenable. Powers ^T 17:56, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

If 60% don't do it and 40% do, then we should remind people from time to time what "messageboard indentation" is, and hope that that helps. If 95% of people don't do it, then we should save everyone some time and give up on trying to force it. Life's too short. Clearly, the reason that most people don't, on Wikipedia, is that they don't think they have to; they can simply insert their reply directly under the message they want to reply to. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 18:41, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I've found standard threading to be fairly common; I'm not sure what you mean by "most people don't". Powers ^T 23:30, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Translating terms

I've noticed that the usual wikipedia style seems to be only translating the subject of an article in its first line, for example, Shaposhnikov Yevgeniy Ivanovich (Russian: Шапошников Евгений Иванович) would only appear in the article on Yevgeniy Shaposhnikov, not, for example, in the article on the Soviet Air Forces. Is this a currently applicable guideline or merely common, but uncodified, practice? Buckshot06 (talk) 11:20, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

No merely about it. Guidelines exist to record Wikipedia common practice; guidelines not supported by the broad consensus of practice are cruft. (Common practice, codified or not, can be altered by discussion on individual pages, of course; that's what {{guideline}} is phrased for.

As for this instance, I would not include the Cyrillic for every Russian name in Soviet Air Forces; so there would have to be some special reason to include it for Shaposhnikov. (Those marshals, unlike Shaposhnikov, who have no article, have at least a colorable reason, although you may find some articles if you adjust surname last and make links.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:49, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Journalistic vs academic values

Well, three times in 24 hours the question has come up whether to favor academic or journalistic values. This might be another case where I'm weighing in on a question where my experience (especially with article reviewing) is not sufficient to say anything useful; we'll see. I have no idea what the outcome of this discussion will be; people seem to be all over the place on this one. I could be wrong, but I believe this could be the core of an issue that Sept and Gimmetrow have recently raised at Talk:Roman Catholic Church.

At WT:Manual_of_Style_(capital_letters)#Gabriel, we'd like to know if there's anything wrong with this text, which has been there for a while, I think:

The personal name of individual mythical creatures is capitalized (the angel Gabriel). [fixed quote 00:38, 14 May 2008 (UTC)]

It's claimed that there is nothing wrong with referring to an important figure to some Christians, Jews and Muslims as "mythical" because of this disclaimer (yes, it's a disclaimer in article-space, or the closest thing I've seen on WP) in the article Christian mythology:

Note on religion and mythology:
In its academic sense, the word myth simply means "a traditional story", whether true or false. (—OED, Princeton Wordnet) Unless otherwise noted, the words mythology and myth are here used for sacred and traditional narratives, with no implication that any belief so embodied is itself either true or false.

"mythical" has special problems, but leaving that aside, the words "myth" and "mythology" really are used differently in different contexts. Some academics assert (I don't really believe it, but that's not the point) that "myth" does not carry any judgment about whether something is true or not, and those sources were consulted in this article. Journalists use the word "mythology" differently; I know that because AP Stylebook gives "Capitalize the proper names of pagan and mythological gods and goddesses: Neptune, Thor, Venus, etc", and the first definition in Websters Online is "an allegorical narrative". That's one huge advantage of looking at words from a journalistic rather than an academic viewpoint; in American English at least, you can often get a quick answer, because Chicago and AP Stylebook are both the result of a long-time process of consensus-gathering among, ultimately, hundreds of thousands of writers. (I can't say anything about BrEng.) There's no such thing as a "consensus of all authors", although if you subjectively (and perhaps arbitrarily) narrow your focus, you can sometimes drill down to find consensus among a specific set of academics.

But we can't throw academic values overboard just because academic research is hard, because Wikipedia is based on academic values every bit as much as journalistic ones; it's a question of figuring out which values take precedence when there is conflict. So, in the current question, should we favor academic values or journalistic values, and why? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 14:47, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

P.S. Someone changed the text at WP:Manual_of_Style_(capital_letters) today, but it could easily change back, so the question is still valid. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 18:16, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

The text you quoted is not the text that has been there for the past few months. Anyway:

"Journalists use the word "mythology" differently; I know that because AP Stylebook gives "Capitalize the proper names of pagan and mythological gods and goddesses: Neptune, Thor, Venus, etc", and the first definition in Websters Online is "an allegorical narrative"". How do either of those things support your conclusion? Ilkali (talk) 22:12, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

"Allegorical" means "symbolic", not real. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 00:38, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Some myths may be argued to be allegories, especially in some renderings, but as a definition Websters' is terrible. The AP examples can all be described as both pagan and mythological; there might be some that could be said to be one but not the other. Johnbod (talk) 20:54, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

But it did not refer to the angel Gabriel is "mythical", but rather it says he is among

mythical creatures or supernatural beings

Michael Hardy (talk) 00:13, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Quite right guys, I copied one of the newer versions by mistake. I just replaced the quote with the one that has actually been there for months, the one that called Gabriel "mythical". - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 00:38, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

On the general point, I would oppose making journalese our standard. It currently has a different set of flaws that the pretentious nonsense of Fowler's day; but it's not clear that it's any better than it was. (And applying CMOS to the particular case of Church may be a WP:ENGVAR violation, as some have suggested; it is certainly applying a generalization to a particular, very knotty, instance.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:23, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't completely go along with the hard and fast distinction made here between journalists' and academics' "values". The registers overlap considerably. TONY (talk) 01:57, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, I don't have anything to say that always applies, Tony, but this may be a helpful way to frame the question. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 03:01, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

A significant minority of Wikipedia's editors who follow Commonwealth English often reject the notion that they are anywhere near reaching consensus on language issues. The same was true of a signficant minority of American writers in the 60s and 70s. I don't know if the reason is the same, but maybe it is. American style guidelines from the 60s read as if they were written by priggish schoolmarms. There was a big rebellion, and today, Chicago and AP Stylebook don't represent anything I would call either "elitism" or "journalese"; they are the product of long and wide consensus-building processes. Chicago is more complicated because it tries to represent consensus among groups that haven't reached any consensus among themselves (academicians, journalists, etc), so occasionally its guidance comes across as arbitrary. Still, they rely on an enormous bank of professional copyeditors, and that process has been going on for a while, and most American writers think that Chicago generally gets things right. AP Stylebook focuses on what has worked well in newspapers, magazines and (nowadays) blogs, and its guidance usually does represent consensus, but of a smaller group than Chicago tries to represent.

Whether the Brits are on a similar journey that will eventually lead to similar conclusions, I don't know. Written American English will never be as easy and universally understood (among native speakers) as French or German, because they (especially the French) have taken this approach for centuries while Americans are working on decades, and their dictionaries are much smaller, and they don't have the whole world trying to co-opt their language. Still, I think American writers have more or less arrived at mindsets that seem to me to be closer to the French and Germans than the British; for instance, American writers who hope to have a broad readership prefer to follow one set of orthography rules. Even American writers who have never heard of Chicago or AP Stylebook tend to comply, or try to, because they see the footprint these guides leave behind.

This doesn't apply, of course, to many academics and professionals, if they tend to read and write within just one specialty or profession, but that's another conversation. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 22:54, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

PBS's edit

I did a quick copyedit on PBS's excellent recent addition. My only two goals were to make it say the same thing in fewer words, and to change "as you would find it in other reliable verifiable English sources" to "in English-language dictionaries and encyclopedias". From reading PBS's discussion above, I think he definitely didn't want people to be able to pick names out of any source, he wants them to follow proper usage, and I completely agree. I didn't change "If the foreign phrase or word does not appear often in English, then avoid using it (see Wikipedia:Avoid neologisms)." WP:Avoid neologisms doesn't talk about translation issues, so that might not be the right link. How about this? "If a descriptive foreign phrase or word does not appear often in English, then translate it." - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 20:00, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Why was it an "excellent" addition if you had to copy-edit it? TONY (talk) 01:27, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm glad you asked, because it was excellent in several different ways. First, this was a change that PBS has wanted to make for a while, and he was very patient, because several people asked for that. For myself, I wanted him to go slow because non-English orthography in Wikipedia is never going to be a settled issue; it's always going to be a contest between people who speak different languages, so I wanted to give everyone time to weigh in. Second, he was careful to match the language to the results of the debates at WP:NAME and WP:UE, rather than trying to slide in his personal preferences. And third, he left the language on the talk page for over a week so that we could copyedit it if we wanted to. There wasn't anything terribly wrong with it, I just decided at the last minute that there were a few phrases that could be deleted without changing the meaning. I could be wrong, of course. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 02:53, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Orthography ... spelling? I hope it's in AmEng, which is the established variety for MoS. TONY (talk) 10:42, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

The subject of the addition is spelling in article space. Remember that? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:51, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Avoid neologisms -- I was thinking of words that are commonly used in a foreign language but not often in English (with or without anglicization) to describe something, for example négationnisme/negationism.[1] --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 22:03, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

WP:NEO is kind of dense reading, and I'm not sure that people would be any closer to knowing what you want after they had read it. If you want to leave people free to make their own interpretation, what you wrote works fine. If you want to give them more guidance, you have mentioned WP:NCGN#Widely_accepted_name; that would work too. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 01:22, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

OK, What I will do is add something to WP:NEO about translations of foreign phrases, (because some people who contribute to this encyclopedia in English who's mother tongue is some other language can easily do this in good faith without knowing that they are creating a neologism as for words like négationnisme) and when it is bedded in I'll come back to this section. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 08:33, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

That works too, and then I'd prefer that the section in WP:MOS link directly to the new section you're creating, rather than inviting people to wander around in WP:NEO. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 13:07, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Multiple columns in {{reflist}} deemed bad

"Howzat for a provocative headline, eh?" — superluser_tc

There have been some discussion on Template talk:Reflist about whether to remove multicolumn support from {{reflist}}. The simple solution would be to remove support for it in the reflist template, however, some users suggested it might be better to have a policy change? (I'm guessing they where referring to MoS?). So if you have any thoughts about that please consider taking part in the discussion.
— Apis (talk) 21:42, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Logical quotation

Arthur said that "the situation is deplorable." – in this sentence, does the period belong in or outside the quotes if the period was part of the quoted text? WP:MOS#Quotation marks seems contradictary as it states that the period should be inside when it "is part of the quoted text" and outside when "a sentence fragment is quoted". Epbr123 (talk) 00:07, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

If it's stated or implied that Arthur put a period after deplorable, or would have if he had written down what he said, then the period comes first; otherwise not. I dredged the WT:MoS archives on this recently, so if you're unconvinced, see WT:How_to_copy-edit#Logical_quotation. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 00:13, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Nothing about implied. If the dot is there in the original and the quote starts a WP sentence, yes, inside. If the quote starts within a WP sentence, outside. If the quote ends without punctuation in the original —in the middle of the quoted sentence—ellipsis dots are required. TONY (talk) 01:26, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

The distinction between starting a WP sentence or not isn't so clear cut in my reading of the guidelines. For example, isn't this example OK? Trevor said, "I hate it when goats come into my yard." — Dulcem (talk) 01:36, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

No. TONY (talk) 01:38, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

If Arthur was speaking rather than writing, then an "implied" period is the only kind of period Arthur could give us. But the way Tony is framing it is right. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 02:05, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

OK, what about, Arthur said, "I hate it when goats come into my yard. They are so smelly." Here we've got two sentences quoted. Does it make a difference? — Dulcem (talk) 02:12, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Tony knows quite a lot about Wikipedian usage, and I do remember seeing that in FAs, although that's not what I'm used to seeing. For instance, the Guardian's online style guide says:

quotation marks
Use double quotes at the start and end of a quoted section, with single quotes for quoted words within that section. Place full points and commas inside the quotes for a complete quoted sentence; otherwise the point comes outside:

"Anna said, 'Your style guide needs updating,' and I said, 'I agree.' "

- Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 02:18, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

That seems much more logical than the "logical" style we have now. — Dulcem (talk) 04:54, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. There is no reason to inject a comma into quotespace when it can just as easily sit outside. Ilkali (talk) 06:37, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Arthur said something.
Arthur said "I hate it when goats come into my yard; they are so smelly".

I don't mind the preceding comma—said,—but it's fine without, isn't it? The thing about the final period is that if you want to highlight that "smelly" isn't the end of the quoted sentence, do this:

Arthur said "I hate it when goats come into my yard; they are so smelly ...".

Otherwise, the default is the assumption that it is the end of a sentence, or it simply doesn't matter in the context. TONY (talk) 10:40, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Is the example at WP:MOS#Quotation marks wrong? – Arthur said, "The situation is deplorable." Epbr123 (talk) 11:43, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Agreed that different people seem to do different things, but I have to sit this one out, because I suck at Commonwealth English. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 14:12, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

What is this "Commonwealth English" that you claim people "follow" (supernatural religion?)? Canada is a Commonwealth country: do Canadians use CE? India is, too. TONY (talk) 14:15, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, am I saying something offensive? What term do you use for what is sometimes abbreviated "AmEng" and "BrEng" around here? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 14:40, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

No Dank, there's not a molecule of you that could be offensive (leave that up to me). Sorry if my comment came over as brusque. CE has been bandied about as a blanket term for all varieties of English that are not North American or British. I know it's convenient, but I question its meaning. TONY (talk) 14:47, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Last time this term came up, somebody (as I recall, Tony) had objected to BrEng as a slight to the independent Englishes of the Dominions; Commonwealth was preferred as covering all of them and English English too. I don't mind being politically correct on this point, but it would be nice if there were consensus on what correctitude would be. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:05, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Both of you are right, I think; there's no such thing as Commonwealth English or BrEng, and I just hadn't caught on yet. Both American English and North American English (AmEng seems to mean the latter around here, but I generally avoid it as ambiguous) do mean something, and not because we're dealing with just one or two countries, but because writers over here have largely decided that they want it to mean something, that is, the forces that congeal consensus on the kinds of things that show up in Chicago and AP Stylebook have been winning over the forces of individualism for several decades now. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 17:12, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Those who value external Manuals of Style may wish to consider CMOS §6.10:

According to what is sometimes called the British style (set forth in The Oxford Guide to Style [the successor to Hart’s Rules; see bibliog. 1.1]), a style also followed in other English-speaking countries, only those punctuation points that appeared in the original material should be included within the quotation marks; all others follow the closing quotation marks. This system, which requires extreme authorial precision and occasional decisions by the editor or typesetter, works best with single quotation marks. (The British tend to use double quotation marks only for quotations within quotations.)

This is no evidence for the refinement presently under discussion; is there a source for it? (And the general advice is sound; WP editors are not known for "extreme authorial precision". We also recomend double quotation marks.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:17, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Names as names

What is the proper way to render a pen name, stage name, or nickname of an individual in a situation such as this?

Boz was a pen name used by Charles Dickens.
"Boz" was a pen name used by Charles Dickens.
Boz was a pen name used by Charles Dickens.

In a sense, this seems to be an instance of a word being discussed as a word, and that it should thus be italicized. But I'm not sure; maybe names are names and don't require any sort of punctuation even in "words-as-words" usages. Is there any difference in the example above and these versions?

Charles Dickens was dubbed Boz by his brother.
Charles Dickens was dubbed "Boz" by his brother.
Charles Dickens was dubbed Boz by his brother.

Thanks for any help! — Dulcem (talk) 01:00, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Although people can come up with all kinds of clear and easy-to-follow rules, there is no chance that all good editors will agree on this one, so my vote is that either is fine. I go with quotes whenever it is stated or implied that someone is saying something, as in the "dubbed" example. When you see a single skilled editor switching back and forth, the difference tends to be that the quotes have more of a sense of "so he says" or "let's call it this". WP:PUNC (in WP:MOS) and scare quotes may be helpful - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 04:14, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Although there might be disagreement about whether quotation marks or italics should be used, not using either is not an option. Personally, I prefer to restrict usage of quotation marks to as few uses as possible except for quotations, and since italics are used for words as words anyway, I should definitely suggest italics for the first case. It is about the second one that I am unsure; this seems to fall under Dan's description of "whenever it is stated or implied that someone is saying something", therefore quotation marks look perfectly acceptable. Waltham, The Duke of 23:27, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Regarding "not using either is not an option", agreed, in the examples given. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 23:37, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

In your opinions, would the same distinction hold in the following three cases?

In 1979, Sarkisian changed her name to Cher.
In 1979, Sarkisian took the name Cher.
In 1979, Sarkisian started calling herself "Cher".

I'm uncomfortable adding any sort of emphasis to the first example, as you wouldn't write "The bank robber's name was 'Jesse James.'" You'd leave James's name unmarked. This is what is making me look slightly askance at any sort of distinguishing punctuation or style at all, as names are names and perhaps don't need to be marked out in a special way. Thanks again for the responses thus far. — Dulcem (talk) 23:44, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Cher doesn't need italics since the link is a clue that you're referring to the word rather than what the word means. (This used to be in WP:MOS but isn't there now; not sure where it went.) - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 00:59, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

That opens another can of worms over whether wikiliking something counts as some form of marking it. I'd rather know what the answer would be in all cases, not just if the name is wikilinked. So, ignoring the wikilinks, what form is preferred? — Dulcem (talk) 01:18, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I doubt that wikilinking marks as a word. We want to wikilink "Sonny Bono was married to Cher." I agree with Dank that it is an arguable matter, depending on context, which is preferred; I think I would use quotes in the first example under Boz and italicize the second. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:25, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Agreed with Sept that wikilinking doesn't definitively mark a word-as-word, but it suggests that there is something special about the word, which I feel is good enough to keep "Sarkisian changed her name to Cher" from sounding odd without italics or quotation marks, and WP:MoS used to say this. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 03:13, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

If that were the case, are people marking ordinary dates as somehow special by autoformatting, i.e., linking, them? (We still can't seem to get WikiMedia to decouple the two functions.) TONY (talk) 09:53, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I still do not believe that Cher should be left unmarked. Your example about Jesse James, Dulcem, has the distinction that it was his real name, and not an alias or nickname; this is a distinction that had escaped me so far, but which I believe is a meaningful one. We never mark real names, but pseudonames are... Well, they are fake. Waltham, The Duke of 14:43, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Point taken about James. But if Sarkisian is changing her name legally to Cher, doesn't that count as a non-fake name? — Dulcem (talk) 00:56, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Did we reach any consensus here on whether there are times that a wikilink makes italics or quotes unnecessary? I didn't get why this was taken out of WP:MOS; was it too precise, or not precise enough? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 17:21, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

As I see it, Wiki-links should not influence in the least the quality of the prose and of the formatting thereof. They are just navigational tools, not formatting options. Printed pages, for one thing, do not display links at all, so their usage would make no difference there anyway. Waltham, The Duke of 09:02, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Images

We have several desirable features for images (that they alternate left right and left; that they begin with a right; and so on.) It would be nice if all of them could be implemented for every article, but sometimes they can't be.

I don't see any reason, however, to have the requirement to face inward trump all the others; I can think of at least one image (the Cambridge statue of Newton "voyaging through the strange seas of Thought, alone") which should face outwards. But since people want to stress it, I've put it first. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:22, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

You're displaying more good sense than are the rulemongers.

I'd draw your attention to this nugget:

Since faces are not perfectly symmetrical, it is generally inadvisable to use photo-editing software to reverse a right-facing portrait image; however, some editors employ this controversial technique when it does not alter obvious non-symmetrical features, such as Mikhail Gorbachev's birthmark, or make text in the image unreadable.

which I suppose I could summarize as There's no rule against falsification but you shouldn't do it where it will easily be noticed by even the moderately observant.

"It is generally inadvisable" my orifice. If an image is worth inclusion, presumably that's because it would be informative. Assuming that WP wants to purvey information rather than misinformation, the particular image shouldn't be faked. (And the feebleness of the motive for this fakery makes the fakery ridiculous as well as wrong.) -- Hoary (talk) 09:22, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Agreed with Hoary. What page is that on? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 14:00, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

On the very page we're discussing right here. -- Hoary (talk) 14:13, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I have always skipped past discussions of images, but I agree, I can't see any reason for the WP:MoS to take a stand in favor of falsification of any kind. I follow that this was one of those "we can't be any better than the world" arguments; newspapers routinely flip photos (or used to; are they better-behaved these days?) But a flipped photo is a lie for editorial convenience; we can at least be better than that. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 14:45, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Looks like this does not represent consensus. (Since someone wrote this, there may not be consensus to condemn flipping either.) I will remove. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:57, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Looking at it again, it may have been intended as a statement of fact {"Some editors do this"), or even a weak condemnation, not a favoring. But I still see no reason to keep something so bland. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:00, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

You may well be right here. But context is (expectations are) important here. By delivering such a mild tut-tut, it seems to indicate that this is OK behavior. Well ... let's just zap it. (Although there may be rare contexts for the clearly announced, reasoned, flipping of images.) -- Hoary (talk) 15:35, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Indeed; this could apply in articles on art, especially discussing the reversal of images in copies in prints and so on. But as it is, the text should go, and be replaced with a ban, unless there is a good reason for the reversal, and it is clearly mentioned in the caption. Johnbod (talk) 16:14, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I can think of many cases (probably most even) when flipping images would be perfectly acceptable. So don't put in any general rule against it at least.
— Apis (talk) 11:38, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

For example? Johnbod (talk) 13:57, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm also curious. Note that the present text would permit substantial photo-shopping, including flipping, if it is acknowledged, and is of service to the reader; but I don't see why flipping would be. (Flipping the picture of a symmetrical object, like undecorated pottery, would be largely harmless; but, by the same token, why bother?) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:42, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Alright, here are some examples:

A big cat	Tea plantation in Sri Lanka.	Nice cup of tea	There is even text on this one, although not visible at sub 300px.
Loris!	A little cat	A helicopter	A chimpanzee!
Really fast train	A Sphinx

I guess there could be situations where you'd prefer not to flip the car, but as long as it's clear it's been flipped I can't see any problem with it. If that isn't enough, I don't think a photographer would think twice about flipping, cropping or photoshopping an image before releasing it, so we usually don't have any control or way to verify this anyway. =/ (And yes, I don't have anything against the current text)
— Apis (talk) 18:50, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Are these examples of images that could be flipped? The car hasn't been. I suppose animals are mostly pretty symetrical, at least to a human view, but I don't personally approve of flipping landscapes at all. As the policy says, if there is a reason & it is in the caption, you can still do it. Johnbod (talk) 19:38, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, non of them are flipped as far as I know, but I wouldn't mind if someone did it for some reason. Why not flip the tea plantation picture, it's a generic tea plantation? :)
— Apis (talk) 19:47, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

I mean, I have never done it and I don't know if it's being done, but if the tiger had been facing the other way for example, then it would have been hard to use in the info box for the tiger article, and I would have considered flipping it for that. Is that bad for some reason? I think there are valid reasons for doing it (and for not doing it in other cases) so it shouldn't be any specific rule against it, thats all. :)
— Apis (talk) 21:38, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

It depends whether you think authenticity and accuracy are more important than layout in WP. Suppose you actually lived on the tea plantation? Once you start that, you'll be flipping buildings and people, and Chinese writing because no-one can read it anyway. The Sphinx is not symmetrical (any longer anyway) and the detector and dominar are fair-use, which I imagine is another issue. No doubt we have many pre-flipped pics on WP, but where we can we should discourage it, imho. Johnbod (talk) 21:44, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Darye, flipping this image would probably be really bad (e.g. positioning of objects and people are likely to be of ceremonial importance)

I definitely agree that there are many cases when flipping would be bad! (added a tea ceremony example) I just think it is OK in many instances as well. Photographs isn't particularly authentic to begin with: the photographer begins distorting what a human observer would see the moment he takes the picture. Hes excluding anything outside the photo, changes lighting and color, distorts proportions and can use many other effects. He might even have arranged the picture, and the image might convey an entirely different message when taken out of it's real context. As long as it is clear that the image has been flipped (etc) I don't think there would be much harm in many cases, but it should always be done carefully. (I probably wouldn't mind even if I lived at that plantation, but I might be a bad example. I don't know anything about Florida copyright law, but I wouldn't have thought that was a problem).
— Apis (talk) 22:19, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

The colors of the helicopter aren't symmetrical either, I guess it depends on the circumstances whether the colorpattern is important?
— Apis (talk) 22:26, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Minus

Regarding today's edit in WP:DASH: is a fourth dash necessary? (hyphens, en-dashes, em-dashes, minus signs). Here's a minus sign: −, and here's an en-dash: –. Other than the minus being higher by just a hair, I see no difference at all in Firefox or IE. Yes, I see what WP:MOSNUM says, but WP:DASH came first. What's the rationale for making rules that concern nearly invisible differences? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 01:29, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Please, in the name of all that's holy, don't let this turn into a long WT:MOSNUM debate...I just want to nail down the general principle, to see if there are or aren't valid reasons for making style rules concerning things which are invisible or nearly invisible to the reader. I'll ask over at WP:MATHEMATICS as well. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 01:39, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Well logic would dictate that people use minus signs when they mean a minus sign. You don't mean x raised to the power of en dash 2, but x raised to the power of minus 2, so why write the former? As for practical reasons, when you use templates (who usually go with minus signs since that is what is meant), the minus and the en dash are vertically unaligned. See 2.234×10⁻⁴m²kg^–4 vs. 2.234×10⁻⁴m²kg⁻⁴. Also, you can see that the en dash overlaps with some characters at certain zoom levels (compare the 4s and you'll see that the dashes overlaps while the minus doesn't (I use firefox in 1280x800 )). Headbomb (ταλκ · κοντριβς) 01:53, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

You're right, I can see the difference in the exponents...good point. I withdraw the objection. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 01:59, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

More practical to tell us how to key it in. I think I know, but since on Safari in WP's default font, both seem exactly the same—even when zoomed in hugely—it's hard to confirm. TONY (talk) 02:08, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

See this picture. This is the largest zoom level where there is still overlap between the 4 and the en dash. You can also clearly see that the minus and the dash are unaligned. Headbomb (ταλκ · κοντριβς) 02:16, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

OK. TONY (talk) 15:36, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Ordinals

Is there any particular reason why it is written that ordinals should not be written in superscript? It is the correct, traditional way to write 2^nd - not 2nd. Who decided this? It is open to discussion? EuroSong ^talk 18:49, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

The short answer, in American English, that Chicago says so, in section 9.8. This is a sufficient answer for some pages and not for others.

The longer answer is a lot more interesting...why have style guidelines at all? They can be useful when orthography (at the level of "encyclopedic writing", whatever that is) has changed over the last 20 years, because many of the sources our editors read will be 20 years old, and many of them (us!) went to school 20 years ago. 2^nd might be an example; I used to see that a lot more often than I do now.

Describing modern, professional English usage ~~Making a recommendation~~ can also be useful when we see confusion over some issue that isn't all that important to us but is important to some editors, because their experience has led them to believe that one way is right and everything else is wrong. (This may apply to 2^nd, too.) I think Sept disagrees with me on this, but personally, it doesn't bother me if an editor (not Sept) thinks my judgment sucks and I'm being arrogant to offer a guideline. Well, it does bother me, but it bothers me less than if two editors who have to work together a lot have a falling out over language issues, which happens more than you'd think, because language issues are very hard, and often cause misunderstandings. When we notice particular points that tend to be divisive, we might be able to save a few relationships and help the encyclopedia by giving specific guidance. ~~even though that pretty much guarantees that people will call us bad names.~~

Making a recommendation can do readers a favor by giving writers fewer options. Most prolific writers on Wikipedia are actually really talented, at writing in a particular style that matches what they're used to. On the other hand, they don't know what readers from all over the world, or from different educational backgrounds, are expecting. Style guidelines help to democratize the encyclopedia.

:One thing that style guidelines are not good at: they don't appeal to people who don't do much writing. Without that context, people will probably think we have no idea what we're talking about, and there's not a lot we can do about that.

- Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 20:43, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

We have lots of issues where some editors think their way is right and everything else is wrong. In some cases, the editors agree with the consensus of the English-speaking world and therefore are right; but I don't think most of the cases Dank is thinking of come under this.

Lots of cases arise where writers of good English differ, but some of our editors still insist that their way is the only correct one. The most common of these are Anglo-American differences in spelling and grammar (colour, gotten), and we had a long plague of them on both sides of the AD/BC vs. CE/BCE; on both our guidance is to leave an established style alone. The others should be treated in the same spirit. We are, in fact, written by many people; we have agreed to leave signs of this (the use of Harvard referencing in some, but not all, articles is more visible than anything MOS discusses); we should be willing to do so.

Ordinal superscripts come under this; they may be falling out of use, but they may also have been eclipsed by the inability of most typewriters to do them. If they are becoming obsolete, in time Wikipedia will stop using them without any superscript police; we can be patient. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 13:48, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

No, tiny squishy ordinals are hard to read on a computer screen, especially by those who don't have as good a system as you do. They're quite unnecessary and in many contexts look bad. They should be deprecated, NOW. TONY (talk) 15:35, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
- No, Tony, this is not a place to enshrine your prejudices. Squashy or not, learn to leave well enough alone; I'm not sure what this fixation on squashiness signifies — on the other hand, I really don't care. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:00, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

We can stay on this particular point (ordinals) for the sake of specificity if you like, Sept, or we can move to a larger discussion. My position is that both of you have things to say that are not only valid, but necessary to the future health of Wikipedia, but the signal gets lost in the noise when you feud. Tony, could you sit this one out for a sec? Sept, let's develop this theme fully and see where it goes. You have seen things happen at FAC that you don't like. You feel that our style guidelines are too extensive by an order of magnitude, that they lure us to put on paper hats and tell people how to write? You believe that this wastes a lot of people-hours at the level of FAC, and suppresses new contributions? Do I have this right? What do you think of my points above?

This fairly well expresses my view, although I would have phrased somewhat more moderately. If you mean points outside the paragraph I am replying to, please list them. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:22, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

And, if I could ask a favor, let's restrict this discussion just to American usage, since we're lucky enough to have our "rebellious" phase largely behind us, and since that's all I'm competent to talk about. What's wrong with Chicago, in your view? There is still work to do around the edges, but basic language and orthography rules for professional American English are largely settled. If following Chicago is going to help people get a job or get a paper published, how in the heck are we hurting them by letting them know what it says, and even better, by letting them know when and why Chicago differs from what's needed on Wikipedia? I agree that there is occasional friction on Wikipedia with particular style editors and with particular guidance, but in the WP:GAU survey, 31 out of 31 editors wanted more language and style input in general from reviewers. Everything I see suggests that American Wikipedians generally want our input, and they're very happy that we're doing what we're doing. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 19:35, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I decline to restrict this to American usage; we are an international Wikipedia, and one of our recurrent problems is the good soul who would like to enforce American, or Australian, or Oxbridge English, often because it knows no better.
We are not a remedial writing course. Considering the condition of much of our writing, and the provincial judgments at FA, this is just as well.
Chicago has two potential problems, and its appearances here show that it has managed each of them at times:
- Sometimes it is not American usage, but an arbitrary decision not yet ratified by consensus.
- Sometimes it is only American usage, not any other national variety.
There would be no problem (except verbosity), with listing what Chicago says on each issue; that would be a move towards getting MOS to supply reasons for doing X (and reasons for doing some alternative Y) which would be a large step towards making it useful.
I thought I was part of that survey, and I certainly did not agree. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:22, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm headed out for supper, but a quick correction: it was 35 out of 35 articles, but 31 out of 31 editors. Certainly your opinion counts, Sept, but no, you weren't in the WP:GAU survey, unless I made a mistake; I just searched for "Anderson" and "Sept" at WP:GAU. The point of the survey was to take every article from the lower half of the GAN list at a particular time, which was the approach I took to aim for randomness. I was quite surprised by that result, and then I realized that the people who show up complaining on style guidelines pages (including myself, of course) might not be representative of editors as whole. That in no way means that the people who complain don't have important things to say; only that the problem of disaffection may not be as widespread as I thought before I did the survey. It is of course possible that people were just being nice for no reason, as people sometimes are, or that they were being nice because they wanted to pass their WP:GAN, but many of the articles got their thumbs up or thumbs down before the review was over, and there were a lot of thumbs-downs, so I don't think we can discount all the answers, certainly. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 22:26, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I need to focus on my review of Cold fusion for a few days, but I'll come back to this. Just to clear up a few points:

When I said "it doesn't bother me if an editor thinks my judgment sucks", I was referring to any editor, not Sept, and I've fixed that to make it clear.
Some of the wikiprojects have, in effect, seconded what Sept is saying, by backing away to some extent from the GA/FA process and from reliance on style guidelines. That's why I put the question in the WP:GAU survey asking if people wanted more or less feedback. I certainly didn't establish that everyone loves Wikipedia's style guidelines and Wikipedia's reviewers, but I think the response is sufficient to answer the simple question of whether revolution or evolution is desired; there's no generalized call for revolution. And even if there were, Nature and Wikipedia abhor a vacuum, and if we threw out reviewers and style guidelines wholesale, something would soon take their place, and almost certainly something or someone cruftier than what we've got now. So unless someone wants to do a more comprehensive or careful survey, I'm not going to support the idea, which Sept might or might not support, of throwing out 90% of the style guidelines and starting over. Let's just take it page by page.
And...doesn't the preference of the people I surveyed make sense? They would prefer to go with what they know, write the best they can, and then have other people do the work of pointing out things that differ from common practice or from style guidelines. Seems efficient to me, if it works, and they seem to be saying that it's working, for them.
The thing that Wikipedia does so much better than academia is to lower barriers to entry, but I agree with Sept that we could do a much better job of this, and a big part of this would be to stop saying "trust us, we know what we're talking about"; this is very un-Wikipedian. We can't overload the guidelines themselves, but certainly we can say on the talk pages where we got this stuff, who likes it and why, and index the information to make it easy to find.
I'm not asking for us to focus on what Americans want; that's just too American for words. I'm saying that's all I'm competent to do, and I am always happy to see country-specific, well-documented information on style guidelines talk pages. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 18:50, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Added a strikeout above for clarity. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 21:52, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

I am with Septentrionalis, if an article has developed with superscripts then leave them alone. We need clear guidelines when different styles could cause confusion (for example single quotes inside double quotes), but for things like "2^nd or 2nd" as there is no confusion, I say go with whatever the local consensus is, and failing that stick with the first contributor to the article, so that each article is internally consistent (and there is a simple rule to stop edit warring) -- just as we do for national varieties of English. At a practical issue though, one has to consider the limitations placed on dates by the Autoformatting and linking of dates, which its self seems to be a mechanism to reduce conflict between editors that is of little practical use for most readers, as they are unlikely to have Wikipedia accounts let alone bother to set their account preferences. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 06:26, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Comparing matters of pure formatting with the (mostly linguistic in nature) national varieties is rather unfortunate, in my opinion. This is an issue of formatting, and therefore we ought to treat it as such. What do ordinal superscripts manage? To make letters smaller and harder to read, and to increase the gap between their line and the one above, creating inelegant inconsistencies within paragraphs. If you have in mind any advantages which would counter-balance these problems, I should certainly be delighted to hear and discuss them. But I rather doubt it. Waltham, The Duke of 06:53, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree entirely with His Grace. Dank, CMOS varies from crap to excellent, and in many places contravenes its own guidelines; I don't know why you'd want to set it up on an altar and pray to it. Here, where the text can be displayed quite small, it's usually inappropriate, and always unnecessary. It's also harder work in the edit box. They should not be permitted. TONY (talk) 09:25, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

What Wikipedians do better than academicians, journalists, professionals and even bloggers is to lower the barriers to collaborative writing. (Our advantage over bloggers is providing the guaranteed readers; that lowers the barrier to getting your stuff actually read.) I will support everything that lowers barriers and respects what our writers actually want, and oppose everything that raises barriers.

Philip, you're with WP:MILHIST, one of Wikipedia's most successful wikiprojects. If you're saying that in WP:MILHIST articles, the way that respected military historians write is always acceptable in WP:MILHIST articles, I support that. Wikipedia is at its most powerful and most charming when articles about military history read like articles written by military historians. When I read an article about Agatha Christie novels, I want to smell the English country gardens. When I read a math article, I want to see the kind of blunt elegance I remember from my math days. So, I'm with you there.

But here's the problem: who's going to tell us how military historians write? Just coming up with an approximate description of professional American usage, which is what Chicago tries to do, is hard enough. The problem is that most of the time, people who want to run off and do things their own way are just embarrassing themselves. (Not in front of me, I don't care, but in front of their peers.) Let's take "2nd": the first 30 Google hits I get on "military 2nd" (which I believe would pick up 2^nd) are 30-0 in favor of not superscripting. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I should be looking at 1000 hits, or looking more closely at military history sources to answer this question. But if it's true that "2nd" is much more common these days, then my position is that we don't do anyone any favors by telling them that 2^nd is just fine; that's shirking our responsibility to help people become better writers, make a living, write papers that get accepted, impress their peers, or whatever other reasons people like to write in Wikipedia. It's also just a flat-out lie to tell someone that some kind of rare usage is not a problem, because we have no power or authority to make it not a problem. Editors get reverted all the time, and if most of the likely contributors to their articles think that "2nd" looks better than "2^nd", then they're probably going to lose the battle to keep "2^nd", and we're not doing them any favors if we tell them they won't.

Tony, you don't need to worry that I'll worship Chigago. One of the joys of writing for Wikipedia is that we don't have to try to sell something as consensus that couldn't possibly be consensus; Chicago is a business, and they have to pretend to professors and students and New Yorker writers and novelists that one of set of guidelines will work for all of them, which couldn't possibly be true. See the current discussion at WT:MOSCAPS; some of Chicago's capitalization guidelines are just silly. But this is fantastic: while Chicago is stuck trying to defend the status quo, we can run circles around them, and come off as much more practical and modern than they are. Who knows...we might get wider acceptance among people who write online for our style guidelines than Chicago, if we work hard and we document how we differ and why we think we're superior. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 19:07, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

One possible solution would be to use the Wikipeida recommended house style as laid out in the MOS unless the majority of cited sources in an article use a different style in which case seek a local consensus over which style to use. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk)

I'm happy with the idea of being influenced by the sources, that's a very good idea: we need to read before we speak. But surely some sources will be 100 years old, some won't be in English, some will be written atrociously but should be sources because they have useful information, and some will be written over or under the heads of our readership, or be written for a specialized readership. Before we carve something into stone, could you pick an example where you like what the sources say more than you like what our style guidelines say, and let's try to work out the principles from the examples? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 18:25, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Should article titles conform to naming conventions?

There are many pages in the "naming conventions" category. It seems to me that if there's a page that concerns article titles that is optional, then it shouldn't be in the cat. I changed WP:MOS to say that article titles should conform to the cat; Kotniski changed it back to the single page WP:Naming conventions. Thoughts? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 15:56, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

I changed it because when I clicked that link looking for information (see above), it took me to the wrong place (an encyclopedia category). Maybe it should point to Category:Wikipedia naming conventions if you want a category there?--Kotniski (talk) 17:13, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Oops! - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 17:29, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Re: Images

At WP:MOS#Images, it states Do not place left-aligned images directly below second-level (===) headings, as this disconnects the heading from the text it precedes. Instead, either right-align the image, remove it, or move it to another relevant location. Would this also apply to headers lower than second-level?--十八 00:11, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes. The point is that only first-level (==) headings have a horizontal bar to link the heading to the text; all other section levels depend crucially on the text being directly under its heading. Strad (talk) 01:41, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Very quick question about times

Do I need to put a.m. in front of every time in the article? Or can I assume the reader knows from a one-time deal? "Bleh happened at 8:15 a.m. Blah happened at 8:17. Blargh happened at 8:23." -- VegitaU (talk) 20:43, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I think once is enough in a case like this. Just use common sense.--Kotniski (talk) 10:24, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Or else just use 24H notation and totally avoid ambiguity. 08:15 means 8:15am, 20:15 means 8:15pm Roger (talk) 12:16, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that's what I decided to do. Thanks. -- VegitaU (talk) 12:44, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Subheadings instead of DLs

There are a lot of definition lists in the guideline, formatted with wikitext semicolons and colons. While this does provide a clear format, the HTML document structure tends to be broken:

Wikitext definition lists get interrupted by line spaces in the the wikitext, so they don't maintain correct structure.

Replacing these with subheadings formatted with more equals signs (=) would:

Provide consistent structure.
Allow finer-grained linking when we want to be pedantic about some point of style.
Allow finer-grained editing of the guideline.
Probably make the wikitext clearer and easier to edit with paragraphs, instead of tightly-stacked DD list items.

Any objections to converting most of the guideline from DLs to subheadings? —Michael Z. 2008-05-26 19:43 z

Which section would you like to change? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 19:52, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I was looking at Quotation marks in WP:PUNC#Punctuation, and specifically thinking of how many discussions I would have liked to have linked to "Other matters", but I see that much of the guideline may be able to benefit in the same way. —Michael Z. 2008-05-26 20:37 z

The only reason I can see not to do that is that we could wind up with 50 subheadings and headings, and each of them would have to be a distinct phrase to avoid confusion when linking. The text size is nearly the same at the "====" level. But it seems worth the extra bookkeeping, to me, to allow people to link to specific guidelines; any objections? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 01:07, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

There are anchors one can place so that one can directly link to a point in a page, without it necessarily being marked as a heading. I think you write <span id=Name/> and you use that name as a section heading when linking (like this: [[Page#Name]]). Waltham, The Duke of 05:10, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

That's right. Purists prefer a space before the slash, and Name should be in quotes. I wish people used those tags in archives more often for easy linking. But on a non-archived page, my preference would be to keep things visible; it limits the effectiveness of something that lets you link if you can't tell just by looking at the page that you can link to it. The leading semicolon looks like this:

leading semicolon

and the subheadings that can be linked to look like this:

subheading with 4 equals signs

subheading with 5 equals signs

So 5 equals signs makes a nice substitution for the semicolon if we want to preserve font size. If we want to follow the guideline to always nest subheadings "correctly" (but hey, we don't need to follow no stinkin' guidelines in WP-space), then we want 4 equals signs to follow a subheading of 3 equals signs. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 15:28, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

"Don't follow style guidelines on project space" should be extremely relative, in my opinion, but I think in this case you are right; the table of contents will not know the difference, the font will remain the same, and there will be no confusion amongst editors, because this is not one of the pages supposed to be edited much anyway. Waltham, The Duke of 17:37, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I like your logic, and I wouldn't mind writing that down somewhere as a guideline about style guidelines: feel free to use subheadings with four or five equals signs, depending on what font size you want, as a useful way of allowing people to link to particular sections of the style guidelines. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 18:31, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Superiors scientific even for endnotes

I just noticed that Wikipedia superiors used to indicate endnotes are set in a scientific style. If I wanted to square x, I would type x². But if I wanted to cite a source for x, I should write x.² The latter aligns with the ascender line and is set 50% smaller than x. Unfortunately, the former adds leading to some lines, but not others. See this PDF for more information.—Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 06:15, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

"But if I wanted to cite a source for x, I should write x.²". Shouldn't you use <ref> tags? And incidentally, the superscripted numbers yielded by said tags are in <sup> tags, like your first example.

What are you suggesting be changed? Ilkali (talk) 08:25, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

If I used a <ref> tag, it would be x,^[1] which presents the same problem as using <sup> tags. If we used a smaller superscript number that wasn't placed so high on the line, it wouldn't ruin the line spacing (leading). I think those brackets should probably go, too.—Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 14:41, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, it'd be a matter of changing the CSS, and I'm not sure that's something that can be done lightly. I see there's already a 'line-height: 1em' property, which seems to make everything look fine on my browser. Making the superscripts smaller might bring legibility problems. Ilkali (talk) 15:06, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I just browsed an entry in Firefox, and I see that the extra leading must be an issue with Internet Explorer. I think I'm looking at the CSS right now. It says that the body text size is 11 pt. I think we should increase it to 12 pt. and then shrink the superiors. I notice that a line of text here is about 116 characters without spaces with a screen resolution of 1024 by 768. With an infobox, it's about 77 characters. The ideal length for a line is about 40 characters. Anything over 75 is really hard to read. The most legible sites either use a larger font size or narrow the text block by placing columns to the side of the text. We should also use a serif typeface for body text. San-serif type styles like Arial are hard to read.—Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 18:42, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

This isn't really the kind of thing the MoS is supposed to deal with - it's more focused on article content. Anyway, font sizes and such are properties of skins. I'm not sure how you'd go about petitioning to have the properties of any given skin changed, but an acceptable alternative might be to define your own user style customisations. Ilkali (talk) 19:19, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

OK. I just posted my concerns at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Typographical Problems with Wikipedia.—Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 23:35, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

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