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"earned" a degree or "received" a degree

Not too long ago, I was reverted for changing a line in a biographical article from "earned a degree" to "received a degree". This has stuck in the back of my mind since. I always say "received" since "earned" makes a judgment about the merit of the person having the degree. There are certainly people who have degrees who did the bare minimum to get it, or had their degree conferred on nonacademic merits (some college athletes come to mind). I don't think it is Wikipedia's place to deem a degree "earned", and would propose that our guidelines should prefer merely saying someone has "received" a degree unless we are quoting a source that specifies that they "earned" a degree, or detailing the academic achievements by which they did so. BD2412 T 17:23, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Awarded a degree, surely? Betty Logan (talk) 18:24, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
The normal English is 'took', as in "he took a first in Greats". Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:00, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
But 'received' seems fine too; the awarding would be done by the college. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:06, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
Americans don't "take" degrees; that is British English and sounds like theft to me. In American English either received or earned is fine; "graduated with" is also common, as is "was awarded". Its all a matter of what sounds right to an editor, so the reversion was probably just a disagreement in style. StarryGrandma (talk) 19:21, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
Also the "earned" is as in earned a paycheck - no merit involved, just completed the requirements. StarryGrandma (talk) 19:24, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
Sometimes people receive a degree even though they didn't formally complete the requirements, in that they were allowed to skate through classes by lax professors. From the sources that usually report such biographical details, although we can guess that the degree was earned, we never really know. There are also people who receive a paycheck without completing the requirements to earn it. BD2412 T 20:52, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
"Awarded" sounds a bit too colloquial to me. If we were writing from the standpoint of the institution, I would thing, "conferred" would be better. But either way we would then have to word these so that the subject was awarded the degree by the institution rather than our current common usage of received (or earned) the degree from the institution. BD2412 T 20:58, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
I think we are dealing with WP:ENGVAR here, saying the same words but meaning different things. The English-speaking people divided by our common language. StarryGrandma (talk) 21:27, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
I agree. "Received a degree" states a much more readily observable fact than "earned a degree". If someone has a diploma on the wall then, unless it's a counterfeit, I can conclude they received it, but only people who were in their vicinity at the time will be able to say with any confidence whether they earned it. Largoplazo (talk) 21:31, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
I prefer "earned" whether or not it was with the minimum marks (many wooden spooners work hard). But I would prefer if the MOS was not overly prescriptive. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:00, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
I mean, "earned" is just a common way of saying the thing, there's no implication of merit. One can earn a twenty-year prison sentence for instance, and that construction is common. One can earn a $100,000 salary even if she doesn't do much. One can earn a trip to the disabled list with an injury. And so on. You're defining "earned" too narrowly. It's all good, and the usual procedure for stuff like this is just use the the term you think best, give other writers the same courtesy, and if someone changes your word, either just roll your eyes and mutter "oh, brother" to yourself, or -- as is your perfect right -- roll it back and invite her to go to the talk page and convince us that her term is an improvement, and good luck with that. Herostratus (talk) 00:48, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
“Earned” irks me too, and I often change it, but we’re not going to prescribe something like that in the MOS. — HTGS (talk) 17:46, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
I thought degrees were “conferred”. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 17:54, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
The university (or the Archbishop of Canterbury) confers the degrees, but this is from the perspective of the student. Hawkeye7 (discuss)
  • What Herostratus said. This is a point of general English writing, and MOS doesn't opine on such stuff unless it's been a serious source of conflict (on WP). See WP:MOSBLOAT. EEng 18:15, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
  • An alternative I sometimes use (particularly for terminal degrees) is "completed". You can also say "graduated with". There are lots of alternatives and MOS shouldn't prescribe one. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:56, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
    Sometimes I'm deliberately varying the wording to avoid repetition. Prescribing one form would have an adverse impact on the quality of the prose. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:14, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
    You know, that's a great point for any of these "let's make a rule" discussions. I've added it to WP:MOSBLOAT [1]. EEng 21:00, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
    Yep.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:35, 25 December 2022 (UTC)
    terminal degree – Yikes! I am reminded of when the incomparable Herb Caen pointed out, 50 years ago, that the Alameda County chapter of the American Cancer Society was located near the Oakland Airport on ...
Ready???
Terminal Boulevard
EEng 22:07, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
Does it have to be any of awarded/earned/received/whatevs? I usually just say "has a degree" if the subject comes up. --Vometia (talk) 09:51, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
Has doesn't work if you want to give the year the person got it. EEng 14:09, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

In the US, one will sometimes see employment ads that require applicants to have an "earned" degree. I think this is to distinguish those degrees that one obtains the normal way, by attending classes and perhaps doing supervised research, from honorary degrees, awarded because a person has become prominent in some way. Jc3s5h (talk) 22:19, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

Meryl Streep being graduated from Harvard. "Thanks for the sheepskin! Now I gotta go peruse the want ads!"
Are there really that many honorary degree recipients reading the want ads? EEng 01:25, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
I suppose this also bears on the debate over "graduated from Harvard" vs "was graduated from Harvard". The latter was considered technically correct (in the days of prescriptive grammar). "Graduated from" is an exception, almost a sport, from the usual construction for these matters... we don't say "she elected to Congress" for instance. Being elected, appointed, arrested, hired, etc. are things done to you. For some reason, being graduated is considered different I guess. But that's silly IMO. You can meet all the requirements such that you will automatically get promoted to Mook 2nd Class, but we still say "she was promoted to Mook 2nd Class", not "she promoted to Mook to 2nd class". Sorry, but you have a 4.0 grade average, but somebody else has to sign the forms actually graduating you, and maybe they won't if you're a felon or something. Conversely, things that you really do do yourself are more direct: "she shot at". For some reason getting a degree has migrated from the "she was appointed to" section of the forest to the "she threw to" part. Why I don't know. Herostratus (talk) 06:59, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
If it makes you feel any better, OED attests graduate as a v. intransitive, "To take a university degree" as early as 1807 (then calls out application to high schools as specifically US usage). EEng 01:18, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
I would consider "earned a degree" to "received a degree" to be synonyms and therefore equally valid. "Graduated from XXX" would also be valid. As usual, I consider flipping between equally valid synonyms as editors changing the article to suit their own personal style/locale and discourage such changes - in the spirit of WP:RETAIN. "took a degree" sounds weird to my Australian ears, as though the university wasn't going to give it to them unless they forced it somehow - is that an American or UK thing? For the "earned" vs "easy course", well, as long as they fulfilled the course requirements then it was earned - it doesn't have to be a hard earned thing. And any mention of an honorary degree must have the word "honorary" mentioned - therefore the reader will automatically know that the degree is a gift to the receiver done without fulfilling the usual requirements (coursework, submitted papers/thesis, etc).  Stepho  talk  01:55, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
Re 'took' - To me this is the same extremely common usage as in "take a chance", "a sabbatical" or "the bus" - indeed, "take an exam" (when not "sitting" one). And in AmEng Billy Strayhorn wasn't forcing New York to give him a whole subway line. But AusEng? Davidships (talk) 13:57, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
  • They have different meanings. It depends on whether you want the person to be the grammatical actor ("earned") or the recipient ("received"). When I help research-grant applicants to make their career look good, I opt for actor (in control, worked hard). I don't really care which is used in a BLP article. What I hate is the spin-word "served", as in "he served as secretary for defence (we all know that politicians serve themselves on the greasy pole). It's sprinkled all over articles on businesspeople and politicians. Tony (talk) 12:54, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
    WP:AREYOUBEINGSERVED. EEng 14:02, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
    Yeah, I undo "served" every time I run into it in wiki-voice.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:35, 25 December 2022 (UTC)
    Good. Vladimir Putin serves as president of Russia. Erk. Tony (talk) 08:22, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
    I, frankly, do not have a clue what is wrong with "served as"! It's absolutely standard English (certainly British English; no idea about American English) in any walk of life, has been for at least a century or two, and I for one would most definitely use it. It's not in any way a "spin-word". So if you change it you are deleting a perfectly sensible and normal term and probably annoying the person who wrote it. -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:14, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
    Yes, I'd say "served" is fine for political, public, charitable, and some institutional roles, plus of course military ones. I think it's less appropriate for business ones. And degrees are taken, received, conferred if you must, but "earned" is best avoided, although there might be some truth in saying eg: "Evelyn Waugh earned a third-class degree in History (I think) at Oxford...." (ie did no work at all). Johnbod (talk) 16:45, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
    Fully concur with User:Necrothesp and User:Johnbod. If you look at Google Ngram Viewer, "served as" has been very common in English since the 1940s. If you then hit the toggle for the underlying corpus (from which the data is extracted) to limit the graph to American English and then toggle over to British English, it's clear that the phrase has always been much more common in American English and only became commonplace in British English during the 1980s. I think this is because most Americans have traditionally held public service in high regard. --Coolcaesar (talk) 16:28, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
    All kind of biased and otherwise crappy writing has been common in English (especially American English) in recent decades. That doesn't magically make it encyclopedic writing. We owe it to our readers to do better.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:31, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
    I respectfully disagree. If you dislike the term "served as", you're not reading broadly enough.
    The quality of British English has been gradually deteriorating for decades due to the atrocious mismanagement of the UK educational system. (I have long suspected that the decline began with Clement Attlee.) The Financial Times just ran a damning story by Tim Harford about how the UK is a broken country in so many ways, with incomes at the 10th percentile lower than in Slovenia and with courts, schools, and hospitals falling apart. (Search Google News for the key words "Life in the UK".)
    In contrast, American K-12 education still works reasonably well for the vast majority of students. That's why the United States has college admissions scandals, because there are way too many above-average (but not brilliant) high school graduates competing for admission to elite research universities. (The brilliant ones don't need to cheat, of course.) Not everyone who earns graduate degrees from those universities can become professors, so many graduates end up teaching high school English and train their students to write to the level of quality expected at those universities. It's a virtuous cycle. --Coolcaesar (talk) 15:22, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Propose moving the shortcut MOS:COMPNOW and WP:COMPNOW to the section "Verb Tense".

Both MOS:COMPNOW and WP:COMPNOW currently are shortcuts that take the reader to the page Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Computing (failed proposal). And although the page proposal failed for technical reasons, the section about "tense" is still a sound principle and is supported by the wording within MOS:TENSE which states By default, write articles in the present tense, including those covering works of fiction... and products or works that have been discontinued.

I may also suggest moving some of the wording from MOS:COMPNOW to this MOS as well. Such as Always use present tense for verbs that describe genres, types and classes, even if the subject of the description (e.g. program, library, device) no longer exists, is discontinued or is unsupported/unmaintained. JOJ Hutton 10:40, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

How is this not already covered by "and products or works that have been discontinued"? A discontinued program, library, device, etc., is a product or work that has been discontinued.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:04, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
That's a fair question and you're right. It already says "products". Perhaps a merger of the two statements to make it clear that unsupported websites, online stores, and other services are included in the MOS.--JOJ Hutton 10:50, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
I always use MOS:TENSE when I make edits. As well as I know, MOS:COMPNOW came when I was sitting next to a running PDP-10, and reading it in the past tense. I then asked about it. But even the current IBM z/ systems were once past tense. Some people have a hard time with this. But even more, I don't understand the title WP:Manual of Style/Computing (failed proposal). There might have been a failed proposal, but for the whole page? Gah4 (talk) 02:37, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Clarifications on captions format

MOS:CAPTION says: The text of captions should not be specially formatted, except in ways that would apply if it occurred in the main text (e.g., italics for the Latin name of a species). Does this imply that manual centering (which anyway doesn't work properly in thumb captions), using boldface to imitate "a caption title", hard-coded line breaks and so on are also forbidden? For example, this edit obviously violates MOS:REFSPACE and MOS:SMALL; but are {{center}} and ''' there also against MOS:CAPTION in general? And what about adding obvious interface remarks like <small>(click to enlarge)</small> here? Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 20:44, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

I would say all of that hooey should be eschewed. This is not a blog for people to be doing random stylistic decoration in to suit their passing whims.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:09, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
It doesn't imply it, Mikhail Ryazanov, it explicitly says "should not be". Phooey on the hooey, make it go kablooey. DMacks (talk) 01:58, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
OK, so my interpretation that {{center}} is among the things that "should not be" was correct. The problem is that I've tried to explain all this to Epipelagic, but without much success. That user withdrew from the conversation but apparently continues doing same things, even reverting other users trying to remove such stuff...
And do we actually have anything that says to avoid hard-coded line-breaks (<br/>), except maybe in tables, where they help prevent columns spreading to unreadable widths? WP:MOS § Controlling line breaks only discusses when and how to prevent breaks. H:BR is purely technical. And WP:NEWLINE is about a different thing (source-code formatting). — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 00:51, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

MOS:GEOCOMMA needs a better example

Assuming I even understand MOS:GEOCOMMA, the example provided is not very useful. The example is that the sentence He travels through North Carolina before reaching Chattanooga, Oklahoma, where he alights needs its final comma - but that would be true in this case even if the place name did not contain a comma. What about changing it to He travels through North Carolina before staying in Chattanooga, Oklahoma, for the night? It seems strange to see a final comma there, but maybe that's just the nature of this (in my mind) odd guideline. Korny O'Near (talk) 16:25, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

So, this is not a peculiarity of geographic place names, it's a standard part of English grammar known as Parenthesis (rhetoric). As that article explains, it is a "explanatory or qualifying word, clause, or sentence inserted into a passage". In this case, the word "Oklahoma" is clarifying the word "Chattanooga", and as such it is a parenthetical. Depending on certain conditions, parenthetical phrases may be set aside with round brackets (confusingly also called "parenthesis" often) or it may be set aside with commas. Per Parenthesis (rhetoric) again, "Parenthetical expressions are usually delimited by round or square brackets, dashes, or commas." The MOS generally doesn't need to always explain every common aspect of English grammar. --Jayron32 14:18, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
All true, Jayron, but you seem to be missing Korny's valid point. Imagine our example were He travels through North Carolina before reaching his destination, where he alights. In this case, we expect the comma before "where" anyway, so our attempt to provide an illuminating example is sub-optimal (as it says nothing). My opinion is that Korny's suggestion is a good, helpful alternative and Corny (or anybody else) should feel free to make the replacement. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 15:42, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
And I know see Korny has already done just that. Time for my nap. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 15:44, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Why refer to trans people with their preferred pronoun?

I believe it is a simple question that shall not hurt anyone answering. "Why? Which scientific study claims we shouldn't refer them with their birth pronouns? Why would Wikipedia, claiming neutral point of view to be its point of view, would comply to an absolutely unneutral and biologically incorrect point of view?" is what I'm asking. Non lex rex (talk) 09:38, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

What would a scientific study have to do with whether we should be considerate of people?
The point of using people's preferred pronouns is that biology is no longer held to be the only consideration. There's also psychology and, once people have transitioned, appearance and social conduct. And if we're talking about, for example, this person, is the fact that he was born with a vagina or that he has XX chromosomes [notes 1] really going to be the foremost consideration in discussing him? If you were reporting on an incident involving this guy you witnessed on the street, you'd say "him". To call him "she" would involve you knowing things about him that you'd be extremely unlikely to know.
A perhaps more Wikipedia-like response is that it's because it's the practice that reliable sources are following. It would be non-neutral to do otherwise. Largoplazo (talk) 10:30, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
Because at the end of the day it's just common human decency to call people what they want to be called and not call them what they don't want to be called. Canterbury Tail talk 13:56, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Notes

  1. ^ These are assumptions I'm making here. It's also possible that he was born with undeveloped or ambiguous genitalia or that his chromosomes were something other than XX or XY. Even people's biological sex isn't that cut and dried. There are more than two scenarios.

A proposal to normalize dating systems

I would like to propose that we have a standard use of BCE/CE for the dating system in the style guide rather than BC/AD, given the obvious Christian reference and bias in that dating standard. As a non-Christian I find it offensive that the Christian system is considered "standard" on Wikipedia which is supposed to be an unbiased source of information. It's ridiculous to read articles about the history of places like Africa and Asia using the Christian dating system. BCE/CE is common on many articles in Wikipedia and I believe that it should be the standard. Thank you. Eupnevma (talk) 22:56, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Do you mean BCE/CE? BCE/BC are synonyms, not the two parts of any one system. DMacks (talk) 23:13, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
Sorry--I mistyped. Yes, that's what I mean. Eupnevma (talk) 23:19, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
@Eupnevma: This was recently brought up at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#Era: Use of Common Era as preferable to Anno Domini? and has been discussed many times before. Please review that conversation. SchreiberBike | ⌨  23:19, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
Yep, agreeing with talk:SchreiberBike. This has been brought up many times before and has always been shot down in flames. Mostly because A) many readers use BC/AD in everyday life and don't know what BCE/CE is and B) BCE/CE is based on the same event as the BC/AD system, so you are not actually changing anything, just whitewashing it. WP uses BC/AD simply because it is the date system used by the majority of English readers.  Stepho  talk  00:00, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

I’ve always found this line of reasoning confusing- BC/AD is based on the actual fact of Jesus’s birth, a set date- you cannot take offence form this. What I can see one taking offence from, though, is the idea that the literal “common era” of humanity began the moment that Jesus was born. Surely it is more offensive to claim that it was the birth of Jesus that sparked the beginning of the new era of human history as a whole, rather than just stating a fact that an event happened after or before Jesus’s birth. 222Boarbot78 (talk) 22:44, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Nobody knows exactly when Jesus was born, and common estimates are that he was born somewhere between 4 and 6 BC. And if there's any difference between the part of this that you find acceptable and the part of this you take issue with, I can't see it. I accept as a fait accompli that his nominal birth date has become the frame of reference around which the common international calendar system has been based, but we don't need to continue explicitly invoking him with "before Christ" or, even worse, "Anno Domini", which is rather offensive to all those—the majority of humanity—who don't consider him lord of anything. Not necessarily any more offensive than "God bless you" is when said to an atheist who has just sneezed, but, still. I'm not sure that "common era" makes a lot of sense—it seems to mean more that it's the current era of what has become the common calendar—but it's still better than invoking a lord that most people don't accept as one. Largoplazo (talk) 23:01, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
Just want to chime in with my usual claptrap -- that we should use one style or the other. I personally prefer BCE/CE, because it saves us the cognitive dissonance of saying "Jesus was born in 4 B.C." which is obviously a bit of a logical conundrum. That said, happy to go with consensus. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 23:09, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
This gives an interesting twist to the notion of pre-existence (just trying to out-claptrap @Dumuzid). –Austronesier (talk) 23:18, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
The term BC might be relatively innocuous, but AD is offensive to many who are not Christian. had it been Post Jesus (PJ) rather than Anno Domini then you might have had a point. He, if he existed, was definitely not my lord. Plus, there's that Pesky discrepancy of the zero point. --Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 23:33, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
I sympathize, but Wikipedia is not the place to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. Blueboar (talk) 23:54, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
Most people associate AD with "Lord" about as much as they associate Wednesday with Odin. --Trovatore (talk) 00:02, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
Not that there's nothing to that. After all, the The Marvel Super Heroes weeknight cartoon series in 1966 featured a different hero each night of the week. Monday was Captain America's day, Tuesday was The Hulk's day, Wednesday was Iron Man's day—and Thursday was Thor's day. 😄 Really, it was. But, still, you're sort of right—except when a date is spelled out in full on a ceremonial document with "Anno Domini" spelled out. (Didn't mean to keep you in suspense: Friday was Namor's day. Namor, whom no one ever heard from again until the MCU resurrected him for The Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.) Largoplazo (talk) 00:41, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday merely have eponyms who are mythological figures, they do not say "The Lord Odin's Day", etc., and if they did say that, I imagine they would've been dropped some time in the middle ages. BC is more equivalent to those, merely citing a name. On the other hand, as Chatul says, "AD" incorporates the "Lord". Not being well versed in Latin I'm not sure of any nuance here, but it certainly sounds bad, and being spammed into articles that have nothing at all to do with Christianity or the western world seems quite off to me, and potentially offensive. —DIYeditor (talk) 13:49, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
It incorporates "Lord" in a fixed phrase, in Latin, then abbreviated to an initialism. I think a perusal of etymological fallacy might be of some use here. It's a pretty big stretch to suggest that writers using AD in this stereotyped manner are invoking the Lord. Even if they do believe in the lordship of Jesus, that's still unlikely to be what they mean when they use AD. --Trovatore (talk) 17:40, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
If Wikipedia were not the place to right some of the great wrongs there would be little to no effort to increase articles on women or various minority groups left out of the history books... I just don't think AfroCrowd would agree with you. https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2023/02/09/celebrating-eight-years-of-afrocrowd-diversifying-wikipedia/ Eupnevma (talk) 01:21, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
  • We have discussed this question many, many times. Every time it gets discussed the eventual outcome has always been the same: There is no consensus for mandating one dating style over the others, and a weak but affirmative consensus for saying that it should be determined on an article by article basis. Is there any evidence that this consensus has changed? Blueboar (talk) 23:44, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
    What does it mean to determine it "article by article"? Are there some articles for which the religious terms are justified (eg Christian-themed articles) and some in which it is not (all other articles)? Eupnevma (talk) 01:16, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
    It's along the lines of WP:RETAIN (which is for variety of English, but similar considerations apply). Basically you leave it the way it is in a given article, unless you can get consensus at that article to change it. There aren't many reasons that come to my mind as a good argument to change it at a particular article, but if you think of one, you can raise it on the article's talk page. --Trovatore (talk) 02:40, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
    Thank you for your response. Eupnevma (talk) 16:57, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
"Are there some articles for which the religious terms are justified (eg Christian-themed articles)"
By the same reasoning, the English days of the week should only be used in articles on Norse mythology and January should only have that name in articles about Roman gods. We use BC/AD on Wikipedia because those are the terms used by the average person.
For what its worth, Christian scholars tend to use BCE/CE. But scholars always seem to use different terminology than normal people.  Stepho  talk  05:40, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
The manual says Years are denoted by AD and BC or, equivalently, CE and BCE. That seems to put both styles on as equal a footing as possible. Your proposal seems to want only BCE/CE, unless you're merely saying that the order of the designations should be switched. Using BC/AD shouldn't by itself introduce bias or even definitely indicate such bias. I wonder at how many people are really offended by the ostensibly religious implication, as I'm not offended at learning different eral styles and using them, and actually having converted BC... to BCE... when appropriate. If they are offended, why they would be mollified by a mere relabeling that still leaves us using the Christian calendar, which might be appropriate to more places than you think, since there are sizeable Christian minorities, and even majorities, in countries in Africa and Asia. Dhtwiki (talk) 06:31, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
For the obvious reason. What you are missing is that nobody is offended by using a religious criterion to choose the epoch for the calendar. They are offended by a name for the epoch that is an assertion of believe in that religion. Whether the offense justifies changing MOS is a separaste issue, but please stop pretending that the offense is due to the choice of epoch rather than the name. --Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 13:23, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for your thoughtful response. From https://www.antidote.info/en/blog/reports/bc-and-ad-bce-and-ce-whats-difference#:~:text=An%20important%20reason%20for%20adopting,origins%20of%20BC%20and%20AD. "An important reason for adopting BCE/CE is religious neutrality. Since the Gregorian calendar has superseded other calendars to become the international standard, members of non-Christian groups may object to the explicitly Christian origins of BC and AD. Particularly problematic is AD (“in the year of the Lord”), and its unavoidable implication that the Lord in question is Jesus Christ." Given that around 31% of the world's population is Christian, and that Wikipedia is without doubt an international site. It is pushing a Christian point-of-view to use these dates. Arguing otherwise is simply one's own unconscious bias based. Eupnevma (talk) 17:02, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
  • I find no compelling reason to standardize if the world outside of Wikipedia, in common usage, is not likewise standardized. Wikipedia reflects what its source material does; and I find that both systems are in use and the BC/AD system is used as much, if not more than, the BCE/CE system. Since they are both in use in the source material, then both should be in use at Wikipedia (with the standard caveat that individual articles are internally consistent, that we default to the earliest standard established in the article, that we don't needlessly switch between the two, etc.) --Jayron32 17:07, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

This is not a discussion forum. Unless someone has a proposal for a change to the Manual of Style that they think has a reasonable chance of gaining consensus (and past experience says they don't), let's let this end. SchreiberBike | ⌨  03:03, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Speaking as a Jew, I hope that usage will evolve away from from overtly Christian religious references in how we describe years, but that is a change that can only made gradually in the manuals of styles of the reliable sources that we cite. I do want to refute the assertion that "Domini" is more religious than "Christ" as if Christ was the surname of Jesus of Nazareth. That is incorrect and he was not known as "Christ" during his lifetime. "Christ" is the Greek term for "the anointed one", equivalent to "the messiah" and is a religious honorific applied to him after his death. If Jesus was asked his name at a Roman checkpoint, he certainly would not have answered with any version of "Jesus Christ" in any language. As for being "offended", I am not at all offended because these terms are ubiquitous and it takes far worse than this to offend me. But I do wish that these overtly Christian dating abbreviations would be removed from articles that have nothing at all to do with Christianity. Cullen328 (talk) 03:47, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

As long as the "Common Era" begins with the purported birth of Christ, you're still subscribing to the Christian dating system, just trying to pretend you're not by altering the letters used with it! Which is frankly bizarre and pointless. The use of BC/AD is far more established in the English-speaking world than BCE/CE, used by most English-speaking people, and should be retained. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:44, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Sorry to prolong things, but I prefer CE because it acknowledges that this is the way we have always done it, but that it is *not* actually specifically timed to the birth of a person who may or may not have existed. While it certainly retains the Christian echo, as you say, I think it is admirable in the fact that it admits it's not really chronologically pinpointed to anything. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 15:48, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

MOS:SLASH when the subject name includes one

Several articles across Wikipedia are for topics which include a slash in their name - examples include AC/DC, Aoraki / Mount Cook, Good cop/bad cop and several others listed at Wikipedia:Articles with slashes in title. Do we need clarity in MOS:SLASH that slashes in article titles are fine if there so happens to be a slash in the most suitable name for the article's subject? Turnagra (talk) 07:45, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

A slash reduces the suitability of an article title for the reasons detailed in MOS:SLASH (see also WP:DERRY) but it doesn't make the title unsuitable; if the other arguments for the title are sufficiently strong we will still use a slash. I believe the current wording is fine. BilledMammal (talk) 09:16, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
You've cited MOS:SLASH as reason to move away from the title even when all other reasons have been extinguished, so clearly the wording is still ambiguous. This is also a very different case than WP:DERRY as we're talking about times when a slash forms part of the name it's usually known as, not where we're combining distinct names of our own accord. Turnagra (talk) 09:34, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
All other things being equal MOS:SLASH is a reason to not use the title with the slash, although I'm not sure I've been involved in such a discussion; I believe other arguments like WP:CONCISE have also applied.
We didn't invent Derry/Londonderry; it is used outside of Wikipedia. BilledMammal (talk) 10:01, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
Note: I've opened an RM for Good cop/bad cop, as I don't believe the use of the slash is appropriate there. BilledMammal (talk) 11:27, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

What next for The Gambia?

An RfC has been closed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Africa#RfC: Name of the small country nestled within Senegal for the question of how to capitalize the when referring to the African country T(t)he Gambia. The conclusion was "rough consensus in favor of C", which was "The Gambia (capital The)".

It looks like a "rough consensus" does mean it's time to change several hundred article titles which include "the gambia", and the thousands of other uses. I've been watching this slow edit war for years and I'm ready to see this resolved. I'm willing to do the work, but I've got little time to spare, so I'd appreciate help, especially from someone with page mover permissions.

I'm hoping this will not be the place to relitigate the decision. If someone wants to do that, go to Wikipedia:Closing discussions#Challenging other closures.

I'm bringing this up here and not at WP:THE because that is about the start of article titles and not use in the middle of a sentence or a title. Also, not at Talk:The Gambia because this will apply to many other articles.

I'm pinging everyone who's been involved in this topic lately. @AbstractIllusions, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, AjaxSmack, Andrewdwilliams, Aotearoa, Atamari, BarrelProof, Battlekow, BevoLJ, BilledMammal, Blue sam3, Brigade Piron, Bsherr, Cinderella157, Curbon7, DavidWBrooks, Dicklyon, Ed Poor, El C, FyzixFighter, Geekdiva, Godric on Leave, GoodDay, Iusenospace, Janweh64, Jao, Jimfbleak, Joeyconnick, Kaldari, LaundryPizza03, Lesgles, Libhye, and Midtempo-abg: @Mx. Granger, Necrothesp, Ortizesp, Panam2014, Pathawi, Pathawi, Popcornfud, Power~enwiki, Roger 8 Roger, Sanderling~nlwiki, Sigehelmus, SMcCandlish, SnowFire, Stephen G. Brown, Tamsier, Tony1, Vic Park, and Xyzzyva:

I'm also notifying:

What do we do next? Thank you, SchreiberBike | ⌨  03:54, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

RFC result, must be carried out. GoodDay (talk) 03:54, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
Helpful as always, GoodDay. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 09:17, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
I'm sure someone over at WP:AWBREQ or WP:BOTREQ can help with changing display links if needed. Once the pages are moved, WP:CFDS can be used to speedy rename the categories. Gonnym (talk) 19:19, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Aside: I haven't yet seen or read this discussion, but just for interest, The Gambia, The Netherlands, The Hague and The Bahamas came up as examples in an incredibly-long series of debates (over several years, a couple of page moves, and nearly 125k of Talk) about "Bronx" vs "the Bronx" vs "The Bronx", here: Talk:The_Bronx/Name and capitalization.

Regards —— Shakescene (talk) 19:33, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Cancel that

After further discussion, the close has been changed to "No consensus". That's reasonable, but unfortunate; mixed use will continue and Wikipedia will look sloppy. I think either option would be better than what we have. My grapes are sour. I've struck out the request above. SchreiberBike | ⌨  23:57, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Saves me the trouble of opening a thread at AN about it (because it pretty obviously did not conclude with a consensus for The Gambia in midsentence, no matter what the original close said).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:38, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

First and third questions on the FAQ use inconsistent reasoning

The first question on the FAQ says that we use straight quotation marks because they are easier to type, even though curly quotes are considered smarter. The third question on the FAQ says that we use different characters for different kinds of hyphens/dashes because it's smarter even though the hyphen (-) is easiest to type. Why the inconsistency?? Georgia guy (talk) 18:25, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

The main rationale for using straight quotes is that using curly ones changes search results. We revist this from time to time.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:01, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
User:SMcCandlish, that is simply the reason for the first question. I'm not simply discussion it. I'm discussing the inconsistent rules used in the first and third questions. Georgia guy (talk) 18:57, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
I'm not sure why you want a simplistic, reductionist approach to this. Different consensus discussions weight things differently; you must know this by now. Ease of typing is one reason in favor of straight quotes, but the main one is something else, already covered above, and the main argument for curly quotes was simply aesthetic preference (weak argument). In the other case, ease of typing was a reason in favor of just using hyphens for every case of "horizontal line" punctuation, but did not surmount the unrelated reasons to use dashes (and minus) and use them correctly.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:07, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Patriation § improper use of {{quote box}}

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Patriation § improper use of {{quote box}}. —Joeyconnick (talk) 01:38, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Romanisation and italicisation of titles

Should article titles that use romanised terms have said term in italics? And should the title be in sentence case? Examples:

  1. Kuban Oblast or Kuban oblast (Russian: Кубанская область, romanized: Kubanskaya oblast')
  2. Alexandropol Uezd or Alexandropol uezd (Russian: Александропольский уезд, romanized: Alexandropolskiy uezd')

For context, an oblast is a type of Russian province and an uezd is a type of obsolete Russian county. I'm not sure if there's a consensus among authors, but the style I have seen in English academia is to write the romanised term in italics and lowercase – here's an example from The Republic of Armenia: From London to Sèvres, February–August 1920 Volume 3:

  1. "… in the mountainous sector of the former Elisavetpol uezd (county)." p. 161
  2. "The Kurdish chieftains of Olti, the smallest of the four counties (okrug) of the former Kars oblast, …" p. 296

Thanks, – Olympian loquere 04:17, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Really it should use {{lang|ru|oblast}} (substitute some other language code in place of ru as needed). Mostly that stuff should be in lower case, except when the actual name of the place is normally capitalized as, e.g., Kuban Oblast. That's a matter for source research; if it's near-uniformly capitalized in sources, then capitalize it on Wikipedia; if it's usually lower-case in sources, or sources are broadly mixed in their treatement, use lowercase on Wikipedia. (See first paragraph of MOS:CAPS.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:48, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Naming ships

I tried searching for MOS:SHIPNAME and got a redlink. There is, however, a pertinent page under WP:SHIPNAME. Should a redirection be created for this? Muzilon (talk) 07:19, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

No, because it's not part of the Manual of Style. Canterbury Tail talk 13:59, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
Then why is it not part of the MOS? Muzilon (talk) 04:41, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
"Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships)" is linked to in "Wikipedia:Article titles". "Wikipedia:Article titles" is listed in the infobox in this article as a related guideline. I have added a link in the Names subsection. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:34, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
Let me rephrase: should we then create a redirection for MOS:SHIPNAME to MOS:NAT? Muzilon (talk) 03:32, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

WP:ENDASH

WP:ENDASH says that we must use endash and not hyphens in article titles, such as Geiger-Marsden experiments. However, when I copy the URL of that article and paste it somewhere else, I get this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geiger%E2%80%93Marsden_experiments It's kinda ugly, so I changed the endash to a hyphen, then someone reverted that changed and told me about WP:ENDASH. Why is it important to use endash when you can barely tell the difference between that and a hyphen? Does it mess up some algorithm? Kurzon (talk) 21:24, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Beautiful URLs are low priority. However, whenever an article title contains an en-dash, we should create a redirect with a hyphen. And in this particular case there is one, so you can use the URL of the redirect https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Geiger-Marsden_experiments. Indefatigable (talk) 21:44, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
There's even a bot that creates the corresponding hyphen redirect when an endashed title exists. Anomie⚔ 11:42, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

Section title dispute

User:BurgeoningContracting disputes my renaming sections titled "People" to "People and fictional characters". This disagreement began at User:Clarityfiend#Carlton - People and is now here for third-party resolution, as we are deadlocked. Clarityfiend (talk) Clarityfiend (talk) 05:24, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

The disagreement in question can be found here: User talk:Clarityfiend#Carlton - People BurgeoningContracting 05:55, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
There is now a dispute resolution entry in the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard, please see WP:Dispute resolution noticeboard#Carlton (disambiguation). BurgeoningContracting 10:29, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
Closed after lack of further action by BurgeoningContracting. Clarityfiend (talk) 05:40, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

MOS:COMMONALITY

How strong is the preference for using vocabulary common to all varieties of English, particularly in cases when MOS:TIES applies? I raise the question because I have noticed some push back to using vocabulary common to all varieties of English at times, such as when replacing 4 lakh with 400,000, among other examples.

If the preference is intended to be very strong - that we should take all reasonable opportunities for commonality, to avoid issues like MOS:NOFORCELINK - should we strengthen the language used to make this clear? BilledMammal (talk) 01:16, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

While some words (elevator/lift; truck/lorry) are relatively well known, I am concerned that most of our readers would not be able to guess what a lakh is. Perhaps if it's kept, it would benefit from a parenthetical explanation: "four lakh (400,000)". WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:44, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
Think of the readers. An article that is only likely to be read by Indian readers (eg, for most Bollywood movies) can happily use India specific words like lahk to list the profits and viewer count. The first time I came across lahk I had to spend time researching it - which for me was a distraction. On more general articles, avoid culture specific words because it limits your readership.  Stepho  talk  04:33, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
It's lakh mate. There is a policy/guideline about lakhs and crores somewhere. Johnbod (talk) 04:42, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
Yes, at MOS:INDIA: "You may use the Indian numbering system of lakhs and crores but should give their equivalents in millions/billions in parentheses. Use a non-breaking space in such circumstances, e.g.: 21{{nbsp}}crore and always link the first occurrence of the word." Johnbod (talk) 04:47, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
There are three; MOS:COMMONALITY, which uses Crore as an example of a word that is not preferred, MOS:LAKH/MOS:CRORE, which also discourages its use on the grounds of COMMONALITY, and MOS:INDIA as you say. Regarding glossing, I'm not convinced by the benefits; except when unavoidable (such as when there is no common term) I believe it negatively affects the flow of the article and makes it harder to read. BilledMammal (talk) 05:09, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
Isn't the purpose to write articles that can be read by anyone? Articles on most Bollywood movies might be primarily read by Indian readers, but that doesn't mean we should make it less accessible for non-Indian readers when there is a common term we can use. BilledMammal (talk) 05:09, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
Most Indian editors think naturally in lakh and crores, which are used by all popular Indian media, & perhaps would have as much difficulting converting them as we do the other way. And of course they haven't read our policy pages. Johnbod (talk) 05:15, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
It's not surprising that editors use the terms they are most familiar with, but correcting that to align with the term that almost all readers will understand is what gnoming edits are for.
I also would be very surprised if Indian readers had difficulty understanding the equivalent of Lakh and Crore; there can be no issue interpreting the numerical versions, and there is significant use of thousand and million in Indian sources, as well as significant use by Indians in their searches. In comparison, searches by the rest of the world show very little use of Lakh or Crore. BilledMammal (talk) 05:26, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
I'm sure you live in a world of surprises (that link doesn't work for me). I think science and global economics are conducted in Western numbers in India, but not business let alone Bollywood figures or voting numbers etc. It's probably rather similar to the metric system in the US - most Americans have some idea what grams are, if only from school, but in my experience kilometres and weather in degrees centigrade are not well understood. Johnbod (talk) 13:42, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
“Not well understood” where? I live in an English speaking country, was taught centigrade and metric measurements back at school in the 1970s, see them everyday on weather forecasts on TV and radio, whereas the occasional references to Fahrenheit have me searching for online conversion sites to make sense of this measurement system that my grandparents used. WP is a global encyclopaedia for English-speakers, let’s recognise that! MapReader (talk) 15:12, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
Yes, you don't live in the US then. I did specify America. Johnbod (talk) 15:33, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
I'm not sure why it isn't working, but it does demonstrate significant use of thousand and million. BilledMammal (talk) 15:29, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
I think there's a very real risk that any push for MOS:COMMONALITY over MOS:TIES in specific circumstances risks implying (and to be clear, I'm not saying that it's the intent) that certain varieties of English aren't as valid as other types, which isn't a path I think we should be going down. I feel like MOS:TIES should take precedent when there is a clear link to a specific place, and that if there are terms which may not be familiar to speakers of other forms of English then they should be followed by an explanation or another term in parentheses to help with commonality, as other users above have already suggested. Turnagra (talk) 08:51, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
I think the answer is an RfC asking whether we should make it clear that ties takes precedent over commonality, or if we should make the reverse true. BilledMammal (talk) 15:29, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
I can't see a clear answer emerging from that. Johnbod (talk) 16:03, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
I suspect there will be, and given that resolving this point of contention one way or the other would be very beneficial, I think it is worth having the discussion. BilledMammal (talk) 16:06, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure that the result will either be unclear, as Johnbod suggests, or it will be a case of Americans imposing their view on others. Given the distribution of editors, a simple majority vote could impose US spelling everywhere, and this wouldn't be very different. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:04, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
I don't think that Americans imposing their view on others will be an issue, but how would you suggest wording the proposal to address the risk of that? BilledMammal (talk) 01:18, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
I come to this conclusion from two basic facts:
  • People don't like to feel stupid (and that goes double for Wikipedia editors).
  • Most Americans (=our biggest group of editors) – and by extension, most of our active editors – are unfamiliar with lakh/crore counting systems.
This means that no matter what the actual words are, a significant percentage of editors will react to the question as if you wrote "Shall we use <words that make you feel stupid> in an article, or not?", and the result of such RFCs is always to prevent people from feeling stupid.
Think about why you started this discussion. It wasn't because you felt happy when you read that article, right? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:18, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
I think the MOS as written provides a pretty clear path here: In articles where using lakh/crore would be relevant or contextually important, they may be used; but also include a conversion to Western numbers and a link to the article for crore or lakh on at least the first use in the article, and perhaps for subsequent uses.
In my opinion, the most relevant part of the MOS is MOS:LAKH/MOS:CRORE, since it was written exactly for this purpose; then WP:TIES, since they will primarily see use on articles related to India and written in Indian English; then WP:COMMONALITY, since it articulates that using common terms is a preference, not a requirement.
This means that determining "where using lakh/crore would be relevant or contextually important" is still up to editorial consensus. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 20:45, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
@PhotogenicScientist, I think that's a very good summary. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:05, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
The issue is that isn't how it is used; editors cite WP:TIES as a reason to use Lakh and Crore, and make no argument for why lakh/crore is relevant or contextually important beyond WP:TIES.
Perhaps the following question:
How should MOS:COMMONALITY be interpreted in relation to MOS:TIES?

A: Universally accepted terms should always be used, even for topics where TIES applies, unless the national variety is contextually important to the topic.
B: Universally accepted terms should only be used when TIES does not apply.

Using the examples from MOS:COMMONALITY, under proposal A topics with ties to Britain and America will use glasses rather than spectacles and eyeglasses respectively, and topics with ties to India will use ten million rather than one crore. An example of an exception where national varieties should be used due to being contextually important to the topic would be 100 Crore Club.

Under proposal B topics with ties to Britain and America will always use spectacles and eyeglasses respectively, while topics with ties to India will use one crore.

If there is a consensus for either option then MOS:ENGVAR will be updated to reflect this.

BilledMammal (talk) 01:18, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
Let's not try to change the MOS if your problem can be solved by reading it as-is. For the example of the lakhs and crores, I think my explanation above should suffice. A few reasons I can think of where lakh/crore may be considered relevant to an article:
  • Article is about an Indian person/place/topic, and is written in Indian English (or another English variations that might typically use lakh/crore, if there are any), AND
  • A number of reliable sources cited in the article use lakhs and crores in their text (that number being somewhere between "most of them" and "a few of them"; in edge cases, maybe just 1 source)
That, I think, would be sufficient grounds to justify use of lakh/crore, at a minimum. Then it's still up to all editors interested in a page to come to a consensus on whether or not those units should be used. Remember, MOS:LAKH explicitly says their use is discouraged, generally. If anyone still gives you trouble about it, they need a good reason to. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 02:11, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
I largely disagree that that would be sufficient reason to justify use of lakh/crore, and amounts to suggesting that ties overrules commonality. Based on that, I continue to believe that a discussion on modifying the MOS is necessary; either to make it clear that ties does overrule commonality, or that commonality overrules ties. BilledMammal (talk) 02:48, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
I mean, WP:TIES says national variants of English "should" be used, while WP:COMMONALITY says that universal terms are "preferred." IMO "should" is stronger language, especially in the context of a linguistic style guide. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 03:08, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
In practice lakhs and crores are only ever seen in articles on firmly South Asian subjects - if added to other articles they last no time at all. I'm not reallly sure there is a problem here, or what it is. We don't seem to have a problem with using miles in some local geographical articles, and km others, mainly by country, and sometimes with a conversion, but often not. The case is pretty similar. Johnbod (talk) 04:16, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
What I see the issue as is that we're trying to write a global encyclopedia, and using words limited to a subset of English speakers when alternatives used by all English speakers exist detracts from this - miles and kilometers differ because there are not globally used alternatives to them (although in such cases conversion should always be included, and as far as I know almost always is)
I understand if you disagree with that, but do you have any comments on the proposed RfC itself before I open it? BilledMammal (talk) 04:21, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
BM, have you considered including an option with no change to the status quo? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 04:32, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
I did, but decided against it; it appears that people have different opinions on what the status quo is, with some believing that the policy already supports A, and others believing the policy already supports B, but none really in between. I don't think that providing an explicit option to continue this ambiguity is helpful, and the chance of an RfC finding a consensus - in any direction - tends to go down as more options are provided. BilledMammal (talk) 04:39, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
During this RFC before, we've had at least two participants suggest that the status quo is fine. I hear you on the risk of a no consensus result. In my experience, the pro-status-quo crowd on MOS-related RFCs is a vocal one, and they're likely to add in that option anyway. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 04:50, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
That is true; I've added one, but I hope that isn't the result as the current ambiguous situation is not ideal. BilledMammal (talk) 04:58, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
On second thoughts, removed it again. The editors in support of the status quo are instead arguing in support of their interpretation of the status quo, which aligns with one of the two options provided. Given that, and our inability to define what the status quo is, I don't think it makes sense to include that as the third option. BilledMammal (talk) 05:02, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
I may have misread their comments. @PhotogenicScientist and Johnbod: thoughts on a "status quo" option for the RFC? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 05:05, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
I'm less clear on what Johnbod is supporting, but PhotogenicScientist seems to be supporting option B - although they do appear to believe that they are supporting the status quo.
However, since the status quo is disputed, and providing a status quo option will split the !vote of those who already believe their option is the status quo and those who want their option to be the status quo, I just don't see providing the option as helpful - better to encourage voters to explicitly state what they support, regardless of their beliefs on its current status, and reduce the chance of an accidental and incorrect "no consensus" result. BilledMammal (talk) 05:10, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
Don't forget to post a message at WP:INDIA, since they are the ones most likely to be affected by the results.  Stepho  talk  07:05, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
I think if we notify any national WikiProject with a relation to WP:TIES we should notify all such WikiProjects. BilledMammal (talk) 12:25, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
@Firefangledfeathers see my response to Roger 8 Roger below. I think WP:TIES applies primarily to grammar and spelling of regional variants, but can be applied to include regional terms contextually, especially in cases where there is no exact synonym for a regional term. I think the MOS is fine as-is, but wouldn't necessarily be opposed to small changes to make that interpretation clearer - such as an explicit mention of "grammar and spelling" to TIES, or a mention of exact synonym cases in COMMONALITY.
Bagumba's example below reminds me of why changing the MOS to make it more explicit might not be the best idea - I hadn't considered the example of "freshman/sophomore/junior/senior" vs "First/Second/Third/Fourth year." And I'm sure there are other cases of exact or nearly-exact synonyms like this one where using the regional term is perfectly fine, perhaps even better. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 13:53, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
I feel like the options you've proposed in this would present a false dichotomy. This doesn't strike me as something where it's reasonable (or indeed practical) to say definitively that we should always do one thing or the other. I think the issue at hand is more along the lines of whether MOS:COMMONALITY or MOS:TIES takes precedence when the two are in contradiction. At the very least, there could be benefit in another option along the lines of explaining region-specific language - I suspect there would be more than a few people who would be totally fine with more accurate and region-specific language being used per MOS:TIES so long as it's explained on first use in the article. Turnagra (talk) 08:50, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
MOS:COMMONALITY or MOS:TIES do not contradict. The problem is the assumption they do. WP is not here to promote any particular national or regional style of English, meaning that is not the point of TIES. Use a regional word, that is not understood elsewhere, only if there is no other word available that is more widely understood. Imagine we are talking about only one country, say England. Within that country there will be many regional variations of style and vocabulary, but unless there is a clear reason not to, any text is written in what is often called the King's English/BBC English - because everyone will understand it even if they don't use it in their daily life. A regionally specific word should be used only if no other non-regional word exists that means the same. Using the regional word instead is only done if that word is being promoted in some way. More is being made of TIES than it warrants. Besides those rare times where only a regional word has the correct meaning, TIES is there for minor spelling, word and grammar variations - color-colour, pavement-sidewalk - that do not create not confusing to any English speakers. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 10:16, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
Well put Roger 8 Roger. We should be using formal English on WP and deviations therefrom do not aid comprehension but merely promote regional differences. Whereas in everyday speech I might say "Thou's nowt but a bairn" in formal prose you would use "You are only a child". In adopting regional preferences are we being inclusive, or doing a grave disservice to our readers? Many people use Wikipedia to learn English, and finding a local usage reinforced may not assist them in communicating to a truly international audience. All IMHO of course! Martin of Sheffield (talk) 10:26, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
This is exactly what I'm meaning when I talk earlier about how this would lead to us treating some variations of English as "more English than others", which I think is a dangerous path to go down. Turnagra (talk) 17:29, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
I think you hit upon something important here: A regionally specific word should be used only if no other non-regional word exists that means the same (emphasis mine). If there's ever a regional word (or antiquated word, as in your example @Martin of Sheffield) that can be replaced with a more common/modern English word that means the exact same thing, I can't think of a reason why we shouldn't do that. For the example in the MOS of "eyeglasses" vs "spectacles", "glasses" could replace both of them as it performs the same function as a word.
For the specific Indian numbering example, lakh and crore are distinct units of measurement with no direct analogue in Western numbers, so doing away with them everywhere wouldn't be the right solution. But, MOS:LAKH already exists, so... shrug.
TIES is there for minor spelling, word and grammar variations... that do not create not confusing to any English speakers - I also agree with this sentiment, and I think that's apparent from the current wording of this section. Perhaps WP:COMMONALITY could be updated to clarify the "exact synonym" case, though. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 13:44, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

I recently found that MOS:TIES was useful when, for a U.S. topic, I needed to refer to a student being in the eighth grade, and third form or Year 9 weren't really COMMONALITY options, and it'd be awkward to continually gloss the terms as we progress to other school grades on the same page. Sure, COMMONALITY should generally be preferred, but the artistry is that TIES still might be the better option, depending on the specific situation.—Bagumba (talk) 11:56, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Agreed; when there isn't a common term then we need to choose one, and then WP:TIES makes sense - none of the options proposed here would change that. BilledMammal (talk) 12:25, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
There is a simple way to make TIES and COMMONALITY not contradict. Apply both at the same time. It is OK to use country/regional terminology where appropriate … just be prepared to include parenthetical explanations (using more common terminology) for the benefit of readers who might not be familiar with that terminology. It isn’t one or the other… do both. Blueboar (talk) 12:56, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
TIES is a way to determine whether English written properly or some other (formerly) colonial version is the governing standard for the article in question. COMMONALITY directs towards using those words or phrases where this decision is academic since the same usage is commonplace across English-speaking peoples. So there isn’t any conflict? MapReader (talk) 14:37, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
Perhaps a better school example would be whether a page with U.S. ties should be using freshman and sophomore instead of the understandable, but less common and more verbose, first-year and second-year student —Bagumba (talk) 15:36, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
I think TIES could also do with a review. It is causing unnecessary confusion. If its intent is to cater for fairly minor differences between regional English variants, and the sources that back the article text, as I think it is, then that should be made clearer. Just that small upgrade would solve a lot of problems. Mention should also be made that the style and tone expected is encyclopedic, which would root out a lot of the regional casual or quirky language that is being justified now by quoting TIES. Despite what many people try to make out, English around the world is remarkably uniform. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 06:42, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
@Roger 8 Roger could you clarify what you mean by that, and provide an example? I suspect I know, but I don't want to put words in your mouth. Turnagra (talk) 07:18, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
How do you figure that "eyeglasses" has fallen out of use let alone that it did so century ago? A quick check of the Lenscrafters website should disabuse you of that notion.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 19:11, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
I can't recall hearing it being used by Americans in reality or media (with a modern setting). The Lenscrafters website is hardly a general source. Are you claiming it is the normal American term? Oddly, google searches show it is a common term on sales websites in the UK, whereas no one would ever use it in normal speech. Johnbod (talk) 03:30, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
Lol @ eyeglasses! Where else on the body needs glasses? MapReader (talk) 19:24, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
The lips? Blueboar (talk) 19:32, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
Turnagra, I was talking generally, with nothing specific in mind. There was an example further up using Yorkshire English. Perfectly acceptable in context but not in a formal setting like an encyclopedia where we'd use child, not bairn/barn. Child exists, thus establishing COMMONALITY, and TIES doesn't allow for child's use, although as I said, clarifying the guidelines would be helpful. I wasn't talking about Aotearora if you were thinking I was. In answer to your earlier comment, I think you are missing the point in suggesting WP should not favour one style of English over another: it does, formal encyclopedic English comes before informal casual English from anywhere. Anyway, this is sliding off topic, so let's get back on course. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 19:53, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
Maybe biscuits/cookies would be a fair example. Cookie exists in both AmEng and BrEng, and using biscuit to refer to something that doesn't look like this kind of biscuit is confusing to about half of our readers. But should we excise the unfamiliar (to some readers) use of biscuit to refer to this other kind of biscuit? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:14, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
In BrEng "cookie" is a specific sub-type of biscuit (big, flat, round, very sweet & rather soft) and can only be used for those. Johnbod (talk) 03:34, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
I've opened the RfC, as discussion on the proposed RfC appears to have petered out; it can be found here. BilledMammal (talk) 03:46, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Captions § Italics for (left) and (right)

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Captions § Italics for (left) and (right). {{u|Sdkb}} talk 17:40, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Discussion on correct romanization in Chinese history articles

Information icon There is currently a discussion that may interest you. Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese)#Historical names of Chinese places is debating which romanization system articles on Chinese history topics should use. Please join the discussion. Thank you. SilverStar54 (talk) 22:46, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Question regarding mos:ethnicity

Does MOS:ETHNICITY only apply regarding biographies of persons, or can it apply to other forms of articles aswell? Specifically in regards to an article about a battle where a small portion of the fighting force is of another ethnicity but not notable to the battles notability. Ola Tønningsberg (talk) 19:17, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

@Ola Tønningsberg I think this is probably a more complicated problem than MOS:ETHNICITY is supposed to solve (i.e. that of overemphasis in lead sections). It would help to have specific example, but yes, I suspect that mentioning the ethnicity of a small part of a force too early in an article would probably be undue emphasis. — HTGS (talk) 05:11, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
@Ola Tønningsberg See Crimean Tatars at Battle of Zenta for instance. TaylorKobeRift (talk) 00:23, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for the reply @TaylorKobeRift. How would you go ahead with 2004 Nazran raid in the lead where it says some ingush militants participated in the battle? In my opinion this gives undue weight and it would be much better moving this designation right below to the "attack" section. The opening line looks ridicoulous at the moment. Ola Tønningsberg (talk) 13:16, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
I @Ola Tønningsberg I would advise asking the more pertinent talk page that is Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history, they may be able to assist you. TaylorKobeRift (talk) 16:20, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Requesting inputs

Disallowing use of the ʻokina in Chinese romanized article titles

Kwamikagami, who uses the label kwami, has been renaming articles about Chinese topics so that ʻokinas (ʻ) replace apostrophes (') such as this edit where Kwamikagami moved page Yang-style t'ai chi ch'uan to Yang-style tʻai chi chʻüan. There was discussion at Talk:Cheng_Man-ch'ing#Wrong_apostrophe in which Kwamikagami/kwami stated It's Wade-Giles transcription. Their symbol for aspiration is covered by the Unicode character for okina. It's not an apostrophe: that would mean that "Ch'ing" is a contraction.

As the Wade-Giles article indicates it is a romanization system for Mandarin Chinese that was completed in 1892 & that in mainland China Wade–Giles has been mostly replaced by the Hanyu Pinyin romanization system, which was officially adopted in 1958 with some exceptions. According to the Hanyu Pinyin article, The apostrophe (') [...] is used before a syllable starting with a vowel (a, o, or e) in a multiple-syllable word, unless the syllable starts the word or immediately follows a hyphen or other dash. Thus in modern romanization of Chinese, the apostrophe is used instead of the ʻokina.

I am familiar with both the ʻokina from having lived in Hawaiʻi for fourteen years & with Tai Chi (also Tajiquan and T'ai Chi) having studied it for twelve years. In my anecdotal experience, the use of the ʻokina is clearly the exception in texts on the latter subject. It appears to me that the use of the ʻokina in such article titles is clearly a violation of WP:COMMONNAME.

I want to propose that MOS:Okina be extended to article titles in general so that we avoid punctuation that is hard to type or enter when it is not part of the common name. As per WP:RFC#BEFORE, I am opening a discussion here before opening an RfC. Peaceray (talk) 17:09, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

+1 Support, for the reasons given above and at Talk:Cheng_Man-ch'ing#Wrong_apostrophe, where I wikilink to show that Wade-Giles also accepts use of the straight apostrophe.. Note that these edits adding ʻokina were made both to article titles and to links of these articles in other articles. Note also that in the above quote, even kwami drops the ʻ from "okina". – •Raven  .talk 17:44, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
The apostrophe in pinyin does something completely different from the spiritus asper in Wade-Giles. Apostrophes are widely used instead of the asper, but old scholarly standard is the asper. I don't see the relevance of okinas here, as far as I know they relate to Hawaiian. —Kusma (talk) 18:40, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
So opposethe proposal. —Kusma (talk) 18:41, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
Thinking about it more, the presence of apostrophes as syllable separators in pinyin is a good reason not to use apostrophes as sound modifiers in Wade-Giles. —Kusma (talk) 18:55, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
So are you saying that we should omit the apostrophes altogether?
Also, ʻokina is just the Hawaiian name for this letter. That's irrelevant for us. It's not as if only English can use the letter 'H' just because we call it aitch. — kwami (talk) 20:02, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
Spiritus asper is a redirect to rough breathing. According to that article it generally refers to ̔ (U+0314) but can also refer to the ʻ character commonly known as the ʻokina. As the article indicates:

The character, or those with similar shape such as U+02BB ʻ MODIFIER LETTER TURNED COMMA, have also been used for a similar sound by Thomas Wade (and others) in the Wade–Giles system of romanization for Mandarin Chinese. Herbert Giles and others have used a left (opening) curved single quotation mark for the same purpose; the apostrophe, backtick, and visually similar characters are often seen as well.

In your rename to Yang-style tʻai chi chʻüan, you used ʻ, which is the same character as ʻokina. Since I believe ʻokina is the more common name for the character, I will continue to use it. Although I recognize that you would prefer spiritus asper, it is an ambiguous term, & ʻokina is not.
Why do I believe ʻokina is more common than rough breathing? Well, I invite folks to have a look at their relative page views. ʻOkina is viewed far more often than Rough breathing.
  • "Pageviews Analysis for ʻOkina and Rough breathing". pageviews.wmcloud.org. Retrieved 2023-03-26.
Peaceray (talk) 20:47, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
I am going to hark back to the rough breathing article that states Herbert Giles and others have used a left (opening) curved single quotation mark for the same purpose; the apostrophe, backtick, and visually similar characters are often seen as well.
I find it absurd that some advocate abandoning WP:COMMONNAME in favor of the linguistic dogmatic adherence to Wade–Giles, a romanization system that has been superseded, & for which the vast majority of users & editors cannot determine how to enter a particular diacritic on a typical English keyboard. Peaceray (talk) 21:08, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
The WP:COMMONNAME often is one that does not conform to any system. For example, Taipei would be Taibei in Hanyu pinyin and Tʻaipei in Wade-Giles. Personal names in Wade-Giles also typically do not use a spiritus asper/apostrophe (last I checked, Taiwanese passports still worked like that). In the example above, I would go for taijiquan over tʻai chi chʻüan since (as you observe) nobody uses Wade-Giles (and certainly nobody uses correct Wade-Giles). —Kusma (talk) 07:40, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
One problem is for readers typing the title link in. Using the straight "typewriter (or ASCII) apostrophe" makes that easier, and it's also non-typeset standard, including on the Web — as you can see from pages like Best Tai Chi Books and Amazon's list of T'ai Chi Ch'uan books. Notice that the typeset covers of those books generally don't use ʻokina, but the typeset-apostrophe resembling a right-single-quotation mark.
Also, the Ukrainian Г tends to be pronounced softer than the Russian Г (e.g. 'Serhei' instead of 'Sergei'), but we do not therefore shun the use of it in either language; likewise French and English J as in 'journal'. That Pinyin and Wade-Giles use apostrophe differently is true — though they still both use it — but those systems also represent different sounds by given alphabetic characters... should we therefore avoid using those letters in one or the other? – •Raven  .talk 21:56, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
Support, as per the discussion nominator; violates WP:COMMONNAME. Harder to type, searching becomes harder. -- Ham105 (talk) 19:08, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
Makes no difference in searching. — kwami (talk) 20:02, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
Typing in the link with ʻokina is harder, not accustomed use for typing, and at Talk:Cheng_Man-ch'ing#Wrong_apostrophe I showed how your moves disabled original redirects (with straight apostrophes) by making them double-redirects — ironically, to target articles which had no punctuation other than hyphen. Xqbot fixed those after a while; but why break them even temporarily, instead of copying rather than moving the redirects — which would not have broken anything? – •Raven  .talk 21:29, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

The point here is that the spiritus asper is a letter, not a punctuation mark. As such, it should be encoded in Unicode as a letter. That may be ʻ, or ʼ, or ꞌ if you prefer it straight. — kwami (talk) 20:06, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Modifier letter apostrophe (ʼ); is also not "punctuation", and it matches those typeset books. The ASCII apostrophe serves the same purpose for non-typeset text, and, critically, for reader keyboards. – •Raven  .talk 22:09, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Support in general; while I currently live in Taiwan (which doesn't use the apostrophe at all), the fact that Hanyu Pinyin needs the apostrophe to separate syllables properly means that I'd prefer to have the restriction in place for ease of access. - Penwhale | dance in the air and follow his steps 16:19, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Do not use an apostrophe for a character that is not functioning as an apostrophe, and do not use an ʻokina for a character that is not an ʻokina. If the modifier letter apostrophe is functionally appropriate for this language set—that is, this character behaves more like a letter than an apostrophe—then that should be used, especially as it is right-hand, not left-hand like the ʻokina. The long-term solution should be to create a template similar to {{okina}}, but for this purpose; I do not believe MOS:OKINA is the place to rule over this problem. — HTGS (talk) 21:41, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

That template would be {{hamza}} (ʼ). As for "Do not use an apostrophe for a character that is not functioning as an apostrophe" — an apostrophe can have any of multiple functions: see Apostrophe#Use in transliteration: "Furthermore, an apostrophe may be used to indicate a glottal stop in transliterations." – •Raven  .talk 22:20, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
{{Hamza}} may be fine. If editors of these sorts of articles are happy to use the same template, then don’t create a new one. My intuition is that a) there may come a point where use of hamza differs from how we want to use the Chinese character, and b) templates are cheap. As for the MOS suggesting that apostrophes are fine, that’s fine, it wouldn’t be the first time I disagreed with some small part of the MOS. I don’t understand an ounce of Chinese, but I think it’s preferable to use a semantic character over one that is not. (Like an N-dash – vs a minus sign −.) — HTGS (talk) 23:22, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
"there may come a point where use of hamza differs" — Many widely used templates have warnings about that wide use, which request no change without discussion; there would be time to change templates.
"... how we want to use the Chinese character..." — But of course we are discussing which Western character to use in English-language text for transliteration of spoken Chinese. None of these are written-Chinese characters. – •Raven  .talk 23:43, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
HTGS, considering WP:COMMONNAME, what would you then suggest we use for titles when the apostrophe is commonly used? Peaceray (talk) 22:34, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
In evidence of WP:COMMONNAME, these secondary-source book covers found via Tai chi classics: [2] [3] [4] [5]. – •Raven  .talk 23:36, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
Those certainly do look like hamzas, but they don’t look like okinas. If Chinese speaking editors feel that apostrophes make more sense, then use those. I was merely saying that if a character does not function like an apostrophe then we should prefer the character it acts like; of course for print, and visually, there is no difference. — HTGS (talk) 01:22, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
Again, "function like an apostrophe" needs to take into account how many ways the apostrophe does already function, particularly in transcriptions. See Harbeck, James (October 29, 2015). "The wacky world of apostrophes, explained: Why is there apostrophe in O'Hara? Is it tai chi or t'ai chi? And what's up with Hallowe'en?". The Week. Washington, D.C. Retrieved 2023-03-27.: "To indicate aspiration. Aspiration is like saying a little 'h' after a letter. In English, we sometimes do it without thinking (like after the t in top but not the t in stop), but it doesn't make a difference in the meaning. In some other languages, it does make a difference. We often represent it with h when we're transliterating those languages — such as Thai. But occasionally we use… yes… the apostrophe. The Wade-Giles system of transliteration for Mandarin Chinese did this. It's why there's one in t'ai chi (or two in the full name, t'ai chi ch'uan). But that's no longer the standard way to write Mandarin Chinese in Roman letters. The official system is Pinyin, which spells t'ai chi as taiji. So in English, many people just throw up their hands — slowly, gracefully (this is t'ai chi, after all) — and write tai chi." – •Raven  .talk 01:37, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
The only place where I have ever seen consistent use of correct Wade-Giles with aspiration marks was the National Palace Museum in Tʻai-pei. I oppose making a rule to prohibit the use of ʻ, but I wouldn't be surprised if the WP:COMMONNAME almost always comes out without any marks at all, either in bastardised Wade-Giles or in pinyin. —Kusma (talk) 07:48, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
We have such templates: either {{asper}} for a traditional form or the semantically superior {{wg-apos}}. Ping Beland, who worked on consistency for Wade-Giles, for awareness. —Kusma (talk) 07:42, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
@Beland: would you like to look this issue over and offer opinions/suggestions? – •Raven  .talk 10:54, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
Well, it would certainly be easier to use the ASCII apostrophe for all Chinese romanization. There's an argument for doing that if it's generally an acceptable variant for Wade-Giles, or as a result of combining MOS:STRAIGHT with the curved quote character Giles and others used. We don't use the ASCII apostrophe for Polynesian languages, though, because there seems to be a strong consensus to use the real non-punctuation letters. I don't have a strong opinion, so I leave it to the subject-matter experts to determine what should be done for any given Chinese romanization. I'd just say:
  • WP:COMMONNAME does mean that titles won't use any particular romanization system consistently, or sometimes any at all. If there is a consensus to set a default system for cases where actual English usage is rare or too varied to declare a clear preference, that seems fine. Picking one that uses ASCII apostrophes or none at all for a default for both titles and article text would make things easier, but again I leave it to subject-matter experts to decide if that's appropriate.
  • Article bodies should use {{wg-apos}} for Wade-Giles transcriptions, in case consensus changes about what character to use. That's what we used on Wade–Giles due to lack of consensus on the talk page there. (It looks like I forgot to update MOS:APOSTROPHE when I updated Wade–Giles, but I just did so.) I'm constantly finding and correcting words that don't follow Wikipedia standards for how to use apostrophes, ʻokinas and friends, prime marks, backticks, accent marks, and quote marks. Articles with Chinese, Arabic, and Greek text are still a bit of a mess because it's difficult for language non-experts to know which of several systems or characters is being used, and thus whether or not whether the right characters are being used. Using a template that specifies the system in use makes it easy to tell that the correct character is being used, and makes it easier to verify the spelling.
  • If the common English name is (somewhat unusually) written in the article body with a template (like {{wg-apos}}) then as MOS:APOSTROPHE has advised for a long time, the title should directly use whatever character is in that template. In order to prevent this from causing problems for searchers (whether using Wikipedia's internal search engine or an external search engines) who type the ASCII apostrophe, we always make a redirect from the ASCII version of the title per WP:TITLESPECIALCHARACTERS. This seems to work fine for Polynesian languages, and once an article and those linked from it are all converted to use the proper characters it's beautifully consistent and professional-looking. It should work fine for Chinese systems as long as we have a relatively stable consensus about which character each template should use. (If that ever changes we'd need to move a bunch of articles, but if the correct template is used in the body at least they'd be easy to find.)
-- Beland (talk) 21:52, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
Thank you! Currently the WP:TSC paragraph in question reads:
Similarly, various apostrophe(-like) variants (’ ʻ ʾ ʿ ᾿ ῾ ‘ ’ c), should generally not be used in page titles. A common exception is the simple apostrophe character (', same glyph as the single quotation mark) itself (e.g. Anthony d'Offay), which should, however, be used sparingly (e.g. Quran instead of Qur'an and Bismarck (apple) instead of Malus domestica 'Bismarck'). If, exceptionally, other variants are used, a redirect with the apostrophe variant should be created (e.g. 'Elisiva Fusipala Tauki'onetuku redirects to ʻElisiva Fusipala Taukiʻonetuku).
I note the word "exceptionally". – •Raven  .talk 03:01, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
Support the proposal (oppose the use of the ʻokina for Chinese romanization). The ʻokina is a character from Polynesian orthographies and its appropriate use is there. Can anyone point to an example of U+02BB being used in a reliable source to encode Wade-Giles or Hànyǔ pīnyīn text? That would seem to be a reasonable requirement for introducing it into Wikipedia's Chinese romanizations. Wade-Giles has been written with a variety of apostrophe-like characters and it is not Wikipedia's job to lead a standardization, especially using a character from another script that has not been used in this way before. Hànyǔ pīnyīn does have a standard (Chinese national standard GB/T16159—2012) and while it does not seem to prescribe the shape of its obligatory apostrophe, the printed document uses something like U+2019 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK where it occurs in examples (i.e. 6.1.9.1 and 6.6.2), which is different in shape to the ʻokina. This PDF of Chinese national standard GB/T28039—2011 for personal names encodes the apostrophe as U+2019 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK, though that document displays on my system using a fallback font which means I wouldn't rely too much on it. And in practice the ASCII apostrophe is also very common in Hànyǔ pīnyīn text. (BTW a lot of this discussion has wandered off-topic into the best way to represent the WG aspiration mark and the HYPY syllable separation mark; I have opinions about that but they're off-topic as this proposal is just to rule out one very poor option.) Matt's talk 07:35, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
Comment It would help those of us who are not familiar with Chinese Romanization or Polynesian transliteration if the Wikipedia article on 'okina included information on its use beyond Polynesian languages -- or if it was used only for those languages. BTW, while I don't claim to be competent in Mandarin, from what I've read I was under the impression that words in Mandarin & its related languages were all monosyllabic. (NB -- not taking a stand for or against the proposal, just pointing out my ignorance & the lack of help from the first reference I consulted.) -- llywrch (talk) 05:30, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

MOS:GEOCOMMA question

Bringing attention to an editor's question on this sub-page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Contents#Geographic_References Regards, Rjjiii (talk) 05:42, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Recent change to MOS:GEO

@CactiStaccingCrane: In your recent edit ([6]), you changed the last sentence of MOS:GEO:

−
To be clear, you may sometimes need to mention the current name of the area (for example "in what is now France"), especially if no English name exists for that area in the relevant historical period.
+
Mention the current name of that area is acceptable, especially if no English name exists for that area in the relevant historical period.

I was going to just correct the grammar there (add “of” after “Mention”), but I can’t quite figure out exactly what you intended, especially as the meaning is now changed. Given the new meaning, I think what you want is “Use of”, not so much “Mention”? — HTGS (talk) 00:46, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

I presume "mentioning" was meant. isaacl (talk) 01:17, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, that's a typo by me. I should be more careful with my edits. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 10:22, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Template talk:Infobox military conflict#RfC on "supported by" being used with the belligerent parameter

Please contribute. Cinderella157 (talk) 23:51, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

MOS:SIC and changes to initial capitalization in quotes

Currently MOS:SIC says "If there is a significant error in the original, follow it with {{sic}} (producing [sic] ) to show that the error was not made by Wikipedia. However, insignificant spelling and typographic errors should simply be silently corrected (for example, correct basicly to basically)." I'd like to add something like "This includes changing the initial capitalization of a quote, as long as this does not change the meaning of the quoted text (for example, quoting The interpretation was clear can be rendered in running text as The reviewer concluded that 'the interpretation was clear', rather than The reviewer concluded that '[t]he interpretation was clear'."

This suggestion was prompted by Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, which includes "The Sun's editor, Charles Anderson Dana, favorably received Church's editorial, deeming it "[r]eal literature". He also said that it "[m]ight be a good idea to reprint [the editorial] every Christmas ... ". This seems ugly and unnecessary. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 09:41, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

I think this is already covered by MOS:CONFORM (near the bottom, just before "Attribution". Mitch Ames (talk) 12:36, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
Thank you! That's what I was looking for. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:39, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
Emphasizing that guideline's provision that it's not normally necessary to make capitalization changes explicit. EEng 17:32, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

REFPUNCT and efn

Should MOS:REFPUNCT explicitly mention {{efn}} and similar, as well as <ref>...</ref>? This is a sample edit to move the footnote after the punctuation, but if an editor (eg Ereunetes) were to follow the link to REFPUNCT, it might not be immediately obvious that it applies to {{efn}} as well as <ref>...</ref>. Mitch Ames (talk) 03:45, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Support. Indeed the section could do with a rewrite since it suggests that ref tags can be used for explanatory footnotes, which is a deprecated practice (unless the inconvenient "note tag" method is used, which seems rare nowadays). --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 10:11, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
Where is it documented to use, e.g., {{efn}}, rather than <ref>...</ref> for explanatory notes? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 12:59, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
As I am pilloried here I must say that my Terrible Mistake was just that. I am currently suffering from complications after cataract surgery and have trouble seeing small objects like full stops and commas on the monitor (not to mention difficulty positioning the cursor). So please pity an old Wikipedian. I promise to be more careful in future. But I was aware of MOS:REFPUNCT. Please don't make more of it than it is worth. As for the difference between efns and sfns (I seldom use the latter, by the way, but I have enthusiastically switched to efn, whereas I used to abuse the group=note version of ref. No doubt another reason to pillory me? Ereunetes (talk) 17:59, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
Re ref being deprecated for explanatory notes: [citation needed]. On the other hand, I definitely agree that efn should be after punctuation the same as ref. Same also goes for {{ran}}. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:35, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
Agree with DE. I prefer to use efn for non-citation footnotes, but the distinction between citation and footnote is not always so clear. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 18:43, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
I am getting befuddled here. I always used to put the refs after the punctuation. But people like Mitch Ames (or his bot) recently kept correcting me. So I have recently made a point of placing my full stops and commas after the ref or efn (which I think should be treated the same; otherwise it gets too confusing. And by the way, even though efn should be preferred for commentary, there should be refs placed inside them where appropriate). Can you please make up your mind? Ereunetes (talk) 23:17, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
Footnotes after punctuation looks strange to me, but it is the wiki house style and I try to adhere to it. Have you warned Mitch Ames that what he is doing is disruptive? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 16:27, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
My mind is pretty made up. Could you give an example of MA or his bot "correcting" by putting either refs or efns before punctuation? We agree on refs being recommended for commentary footnotes. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 17:41, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Foreign names

What if the topic of the article itself is something without an English word, e.g., a snaphane? As of now, "Snaphane" in the title is written without italics, but in the article itself, italics are used.--Marginataen (talk) 10:43, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

I boldly made the change. If there's disagreement, let's discuss on that talk page. SchreiberBike | ⌨  12:16, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

Q: How to capitalize (or not) the shortened version of pre-kindergarten in a section title?

In a section title (where sentence case is supposed to be used), which of the following is proper:

  1. === Private Pre-K, elementary and middle schools ===
  2. === Private pre-K, elementary and middle schools ===
  3. === Private Pre-k, elementary and middle schools ===
  4. === Private pre-k, elementary and middle schools ===

If I use the long version, I presume this would be correct:

  • === Private pre-kindergarten, elementary and middle schools ===

 — Archer1234 (t·c) 13:05, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

The Pre-kindergarten page is a bit inconsistent using both Pre-K and pre-K, but never pre-k. I'd go with pre-K or avoid the contraction all together. pburka (talk) 13:32, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
Use pre-K. The K is a one-letter acronym.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:06, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
Agree with SMcCandlish. Tony (talk) 12:03, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

R(o)uble

This is a continuation of a discussion that began at Talk:Ruble.

There is a dispute over what spelling should be considered a regional variant.

My position is that "ruble" is specific to American English and that "rouble" is the international standard owing to it's use by such organizations as the European Central Bank and Goznak.

I would like to propose that the MOS recommend "rouble" except when an article is explicitly written in American English. 109.144.77.107 (talk) 10:26, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Isn't this just a bog-standard WP:ENGVAR issue? Or would you like rouble/ruble to be added to the examples at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Spelling? —Kusma (talk) 10:36, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
The latter, it has traditionally been considered a normal ENGVAR issue on Wikipedia, but this does not seem explicit enough as there are ongoing difficulties (see the latest discussion @ talk:Ruble). For example the page ruble is largely in British English, yet it has an American English title. 109.144.77.107 (talk) 12:19, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
It seems best to settle the discussion how to present the page ruble at Talk:Ruble. —Kusma (talk) 12:41, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
This question was settled definitively at talk:Rouble#Request for comment less than six months ago. This is going precisely nowhere. I may be wrong but this is highly reminiscent of the obsession of a certain banned editor. Either way, it is a ridiculous waste of time to try to reopen it here. WP:SNOWCLOSE. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 15:07, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
As the person who started the debate over at Talk:Ruble, I agree with @Kusma's suggestion about keeping the conversation there. NotReallySoroka (talk) 15:21, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
Yep, this is just forum-shopping to rehash something already settled at Talk:Rouble#Request for comment recently, and any follow-on proposals should be at the same talk page.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:41, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Do we have a place where we can bring concerns about MOS issues within an article? I'm concerned about overlinking in an article, where an editor sees the need to link "fried egg" and "Denmark" etc. ("leftover" too--I was surprised to find we have an article on that simple dictionary term) and is edit warring over it. It's not a matter for ANI, really. I don't know whether to just revert, leave a "vandalism re:MOS" warning, or what. I think I'm going to leave the warning, but the more important point is that the editor needs to understand the importance of the MOS, and likely needs to hear it from someone other than me. Does WP:MOSN exist, in parallel with RSN and BLPN? Thanks, Drmies (talk) 01:08, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

@Drmies: Well, don't call it "vandalism"; that would be uncivil, and the user clearly doesn't mean to do harm but thinks they're helping. I would just revert it per MOS:OVERLINK, and hopefully they'll get the hint. PS: WT:MOS basically is the MoS noticeboard and has always served that purpose as well as discussion of making edits to MoS itself. I guess MOSN should redirect to it for anyone who guesses at that.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:36, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Technical language

This section of the MoS claims that editors should try to make technical topics understandable to as many readers as possible and to minimize jargon or at least explain it. What if wikilinks showed the short descriptions of articles when they are highlighted so readers can understand what the linked term means without having to visit the linked article? This way editors won't have to come up with explanations within the article text. The short descriptions of articles covering technical topics can be made simple enough to make readers understand what the linked topics are about. For example, a link to peralkaline rock could show "Igneous rocks which have a deficiency of aluminium" when highlighted. A similar idea exists for inline citations. Volcanoguy 07:42, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

This is already possible. Use the {{efn}} mechanism and when you hover over the footnote reference a tooltip comes up with the contents. See for example Hartley Colliery disaster where if you hover your mouse over the fourth paragraph of the section "Hester Pit" you will see definitions of "stoppings" and "traps" appear under note [b] and [c] respectively. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 08:05, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
In principle, the first sentence or two of the article should provide this summary. Short descriptions suffer from a silly limit of just 40 characters. Wikipedia talk:Short description/Archive 9#Length – 40 or 90 characters?? so are usually too terse for your purpose.) 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 08:31, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Massive spree of undiscussed changes by CactiStaccingCrane

There has recently been an overwhelming slew of completely undiscussed alterations [7] made by CactiStaccingCrane, who seems bent on wholly remaking MoS in their own personal idiom.

CactiStaccingCrane, please see Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines and become aware that this document, like any P&G page, should be edited with great care, generally after discussion (except in the case of trivial copyediting), and with an experienced eye toward problems that could be caused by altering long-standing wording. WP:Policy writing is hard, and writing MoS is harder than usual in that sphere because of the number of other guidelines and policies that MoS interacts with, and the fact that a change to a single MoS line-item can effectively result in a need to make changes in many thousands of pages and/or move around hundreds or more of them.

I'm certain that you mean well, but you seem almost completely unaware that a large portion of MoS's nitpicks, including a lot of highly specific wording and fine hair-splitting in examples, are based on results of previous discussions, both here and frequently at WP:RM.

It is my position that this entire raft of changes should be mass-reverted back to the stable version [8] before CactiStaccingCrane began acting like this is some school paper they were asked to help trim.

I have no doubt that some of the simpler copyediting-oriented changes are good and would be acceptable to just about everyone, but just the most recent change [9] is so wrong-headed in so many ways I hardly know where to begin. It borders on perverse.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:34, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

I've been carried away with my edits. I've reverted all my changes and move the currently newest version to the sandbox. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 07:09, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
I agree with SMcCandlish. I didn't like that new opening, so I'm glad it's been reverted. I did notice a few good copy-edits lower down. Best done in small increments. Tony (talk) 09:16, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Proposal: Allow use of % for percentages in non-technical articles

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Proposal: Allow use of % for percentages in non-technical articles. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 21:25, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

Changing policy on the transliteration of Korean names

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Korean) § Changing of naming conventions. :3 F4U (they/it) 01:34, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Permanent restriction on changes to the MOS (or subsidiaries like MOS:NUM) by IP editors and new editors

Is there any credible reason why IP editors or new editors may make arbitrary changes to the MOS? In every case I have seen, the edit has been vandalism, disruption or block evasion. I invite comments on a proposal to make this series of articles restricted to confirmed editors. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 10:37, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Because occasionally they make constructive edits that improve the MOS and Wikipedia. A LOT of editors watch this page, the vandalism and disruptive edits are quickly caught and reverted. Blueboar (talk) 11:36, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
I think I agree with Blueboar. Tony (talk) 12:02, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
I can see that there is no obvious consensus so I'll consider the proposal closed. What led to this is an edit by a strongly suspected sock to MOSNUM which has had to be let stand (and the discussion about it) pending the outcome of an SPI investigation that is currently in the backlog. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 13:30, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

A question on MOS:COMMONALITY - number of regions or population?

MOS:COMMONALITY states When more than one variant spelling exists within a national variety of English, the most commonly used current variant should usually be preferred. With that in mind, I'm currently in a discussion with another editor about the spelling of "theatre" vs "theater" in a non-regional article. The disagreement is around what "most commonly used" means. I'm taking it as MOS:S's regional varieties where 5 different regions use "-re" while one, the USA, uses "-er". The other user, however, believes that most common should refer to the sheer population, in which case the USA wins as it has a greater population than all other regions combined. However, in my mind, if this were the case American English would usually always be the default (except on regional articles) across all en.Wikipedia as its population will always win out against other regions combined. Furthermore, according to MOS:S, both spellings are used in the USA (though "-er" is more popular), but as it doesn't specify how big of a population uses either, it's impossible to tell if the population of people saying "-er" actually is greater than other English varieties combined. Thoughts? — Czello (music) 19:55, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Not really, the USA has a population of around 333 million, India has a population of 1,300 million. Returning to the theatre/theater issue though, even within the USA there is a growing, yet still minority, spelling as theatre. The first note to theatre says: Originally spelled theatre and teatre. From around 1550 to 1700 or later, the most common spelling was theater. Between 1720 and 1750, theater was dropped in British English, but was either retained or revived in American English (Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, 2009, CD-ROM: ISBN 978-0-19-956383-8). Recent dictionaries of American English list theatre as a less common variant, e.g., Random House Webster's College Dictionary (1991); The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition (2006); New Oxford American Dictionary, third edition (2010); Merriam-Webster Dictionary (2011). Martin of Sheffield (talk) 20:38, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
Ah, I didn't include India as it wasn't listed at MOS:S. Do they say "theatre"? — Czello (music) 07:09, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

I don't follow the argument at all. The quoted text is talking about variant spellings within a particular variety. How would a cross-variety comparison be relevant to that text? --Trovatore (talk) 21:44, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
The point being that a simplistic US=theater, <rest of the world>=theatre doesn't hold water. In this particular case the USA assumption is not a good case to build arguments upon. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 21:56, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
No, that's not the point at all. The point is that both editors (Czello and his/her interlocutor) seem to have completely misunderstood the guideline. COMMONALITY doesn't apply to theatre/theater, because there is no spelling commonly used in all varieties. Rather, the controlling guideline, for an article without "strong national ties" is WP:RETAIN. --Trovatore (talk) 21:59, 24 April 2023 (UTC) Actually I seem to have misread your comment here. I still don't think "theatre" is common enough in AmEng to use COMMONALITY, though. It does show up in the States, but mostly in the (proper) names of venues that want to be posh. --Trovatore (talk) 22:04, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
Your struck comment is actually correct - we do both appear to have misread the original guideline. Thanks, I hadn't encountered WP:RETAIN before. — Czello (music) 07:13, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
As to the question of what ENGVAR (of which COMMONALITY is a part) implies for whatever article you're talking about, it would depend on what variety the article is written in. Just because it's a "non-regional article" doesn't mean it can't have an English variety, controlled by WP:RETAIN. If it's in American English, then use "theater"; if it's in (say) British English, use "theatre". --Trovatore (talk) 21:46, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
Whenever you started adding up the numbers to see which is bigger, you are really applying a "might is right" argument - not cool. And any good statistician or advert man can rearrange the numbers to support either side (as your argument showed for counting regions vs population). So it's neither fair, nor objective. As said above, MOS:COMMONALITY is meant to find a common term that both parties are happy with, not a club to bludgeon the other party with. As per WP:ENGVAR, if the article has strong ties only to the US then use the most common US term. If it has strong ties to only the UK then use the most common British term. Otherwise we apply WP:RETAIN which says keep using whichever dialect of English was first applied to the article unless there is consensus to change.  Stepho  talk  23:30, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Collective singular

I have recently seen more and more misuse of the collective singular in American English and now it's becoming rampant on Wikipedia. But I don't want to start making edits without consensus.

Words such as "group," "band," "audience," "militia," and others that are a collection of elements are singular nouns that require a singular verb, e.g. "the group is," "the band wants," etc. Only when the members of these groups stop acting as a unit and start acting as individuals can this change. For example, "The band is going to play a concert" is correct, however, if each member is going to play separately, now we have "The band are going to play their own compositions." While this is technically correct, it's clearer to refer directly to the elements of the collective and say "The members of the band are going to play their own compositions."

"Deep Purple is an English rock band" is correct, NOT "Deep Purple are..."

I understand that this is less strict in British English. A good discussion can be found at Grammarly. There are a few ambiguous cases where it could go either way and those are fine. But in clear situations where it's a question of correct or incorrect grammar, the correct use should be expected. RogerBPennJr (talk) 19:00, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

As Deep Purple are an English band, the article would use British English (WP:ENGVAR), in which that phrasing is not an error. No opinion on making the change in articles specifically designated as having been written in American English.--Trystan (talk) 19:49, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
Valid point. RogerBPennJr (talk) 21:12, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
This is wholly an variety of English thing, so which is used depends on the variety of English used in an article, which often times is a matter of the nationality of the subject. So your example regarding Deep Purple is completely wrong, because as a British band the article on Deep Purple uses British English, where the plural verb is correct. oknazevad (talk) 19:49, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
While this is true in the Deep Purple example (I chose a bad one), that was just one example. I have seen this in numerous places, not just British articles. I also didn't realize that the wiki language choice didn't differentiate (US English and British English are usually treated as separate languages). So thanks for making me aware. My real intention here wasn't to point out bad examples but to clarify the position on this, especially going forward as this becomes more and more common (not just on Wikipedia). It may be that due to the international nature of the Internet, Netflix, etc, languages are becoming blended. I have noticed much more use of British names, spellings, and expressions here in the US, and my daughter, who is online daily with several English friends reports that they are seeing the same there. RogerBPennJr (talk) 21:33, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
¶ I'm far more troubled by a trend that I fear may have no answer: the use of "they" and "their" when referring to a single person. For (hypothetical) example, "When a President is elected, they must face Congress" or "No author likes unfair criticism of their work".
Apparently, examples of this can be found as far back as George Washington's written prose, so it's hardly a new usage, even if formally disapproved of. And most of the alternatives where the subject could be of either sex, are just as awkward and ugly, for example, "[s]he", "s/he", "his or her" or "her/his". "It" is neuter, but applying it to any human person is just demeaning ("the professor delivered its lecture...")
On the other hand, a Sporcle quiz about woman authors once asked readers to match each author with their work, which prompted me to point out that (whatever one's philosophy or politics) in every case it would be her work. (Sporcle did change their title.)
—— Shakescene (talk) 20:14, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
The usage goes back quite a way before Washington! Cheers, all. Dumuzid (talk) 21:42, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
I totally agree with you! And yes, "it" would be correct if you're neither a he or a she, but that is a little inhuman. Unfortunately, the neutral singular when gender is unknown, as in most Romance/Germanic languages, is the masculine. But that's been contended since the '60s. However, the use of they/them in its place is just plain confusing. In many cases I have a hard time following the meaning of a writing or conversation when this happens. I guess we need a whole new word. RogerBPennJr (talk) 21:43, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
And is, arguably, a hangover from the days of thou and thine as the formal version of you and yours. And well enough established in common usage now, particularly as a solution to the gendering problem, that it would be fruitless to howl at the moon about it. Meanwhile the British English position on the plural for collective bodies is misrepresented above as always demanding the plural, whereas in reality the British English position is more nuanced. Where the action is collective and unanimous, singular usage (as per American English) is usually seen as correct, such as “the team is playing well” or “ the committee is united in condemning this decision”. However where the members of the collective are at odds, or acting individually, then plural is the correct approach. For example, “the committee are split as to how to proceed” or “the team are all over the place tonight”. MapReader (talk) 22:48, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
Err, "thou" and "thine" are not a "formal version of you and yours". They are the second person singular. English adopted a T-V distinction in the later middle ages, see T–V_distinction#English and the use of the plural form spread from one's superiors to everyone over the course of 500–600 years. This of course was only in standard English, use of the "T" form persists in regional dialects. A variant of it has been observed that uses "you" as the singular and "yous" as a plural! In passing, the use of "T" for the divinity was an intentional choice by the KJV translators, it emphasised the personal relationship of the individual to God, as of a child with his father. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 07:38, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
The spelling ye is actually a rendition of þe (thee in more modern orthography), with the Thorn replaced by the more readily available y after movable type became relevant.
The KJV of the Hebrew scriptures is unavoidably anomalous in that it translates the plural[a] אֱלֹהִים (Elohim, transl. God[a]) in the singular.
If it goeth back over 250 years, then it isn't a "trend", 'tis established English. Thou art entitled to thy feelings, of course, but to me, "troubled" seemeth an overreaction, and it leadeth me to wonder whether thou art troubled by the way people now use "you" in the singular instead of "thou" the way they're supposed to and have stopped conjugating their verbs correctly! Largoplazo (talk) 23:35, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Notes

  1. ^ a b Elohim is plural, but used with singular verb forms when referring to the Deity.

Reconciling MOS:TENSE and closure of a business

I've always taken MOS:TENSE to mean we should prefer language such as Acme Company is a former ... over Acme Company was ... in our articles about past businesses. Is there some additional guidance not in MOS:TENSE or should we add an example if this is indeed a case where one should use past tense? For a recent example, see First Republic Bank (there is also a MOS:TENSE discussion on the talk page). —Locke Cole • t • c 17:47, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

Per MOS:TENSE "Generally, use past tense only for past events, and for subjects that are dead or no longer meaningfully exist." (bold mine) If the business doesn't meaningfully exist anymore, guidance is currently clear and unambiguous: use past tense. --Jayron32 18:18, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
In the case of First Republic Bank, I think I was getting hung up on the no longer meaningfully exist for something that was sold and closed less than 24 hours ago. I think it's further muddied by the fact that, despite being purchased, JP Morgan Chase is saying you can still use the First Republic app, still visit First Republic branches, still work with employees at First Republic, and so on (see here). Are we at a point where we can say First Republic Bank no longer meaningfully exist[s]? That's the ambiguous part for me. —Locke Cole • t • c 19:26, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
Well, then that is the problem. The policy is fairly clear, but we have a case of unclear application. No change of the policy is going to fix that. Does First Republic still meaningfully exist? Depends on what you mean by "meaningfully" and "exist". You're going to need to work that out via consensus discussion at the talk page, and no policy exists, or will ever exist, that will allow you to bypass the hard work of talking to people and convincing them you are right (and more importantly, of listening to people and being willing to be convinced that they are right). --Jayron32 11:12, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
Yes: if current existence is ambiguous, either "was" or "is" could be used. If it clearly doesn't exist now, "was" is needed; if it clearly does exist now, "is". Tony (talk) 12:48, 3 May 2023 (UTC)
Thank you both for your feedback, I think I'll leave well enough alone on this specific instance. —Locke Cole • t • c 15:29, 3 May 2023 (UTC)
I read that announcement from JP Morgan Chase as saying that all those FR branches and such are now Chase branches etc but the switchover in branding will take time. I've had similar changeovers happen with banks I've used in the past. Old brand things continue to work but are slowly updated/replaced with new ones after buyouts/mergers.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 03:51, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
In that situation it’s often helpful to clarify specifics at the outset: X was a company … as of [some date], some branches of X are still in operation under the X brand. — HTGS (talk) 06:00, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Word joiners to prevent unwanted line breaks

I've noticed that putting an opening parenthesis or bracket after a double straight quotation mark can produce an unwanted line break. Since this is a common combination of characters, should we be requiring that all quotations that open with a bracketed or parenthetical word/phrase have {{wj}} placed between them? For example, without a joiner, some sentences might appear as:

  • The program was criticized primarily because "
    [the equipment] was selected for its low price".

But when typed as "{{wj}}[:

  • The program was criticized primarily because
    "[the equipment] was selected for its low price".

Note that {{wj}} is apparently not needed for closing brackets, or for single straight quotation marks (apostrophes). (It's also not needed for curly brackets, but of course we don't use those on Wikipedia.) — Will • B [talk] 00:55, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

Seems like it would be easier to do it this way:
  • The program was criticized primarily because the equipment "was selected for its low price".
--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:09, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
Okay well yeah, this specific example was basically just made up in a hurry, and it's not a very good one; in retrospect I should've just used lorem impsum. So, y'know, pretend I picked an example where it actually makes sense lol. — Will • B [talk] 14:11, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
I can't think of any example where it would make sense to start a quotation with such an amended phrasing. If you are already having to change the wording or add explanatory text, just leave that part out of the quotation and make it part of the sentence leading in to the quoted material. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 15:53, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
I generally agree actually, though there may be edge cases where changing the tense in the first quoted word is clearer than excluding that word from the quotation. But it's not just editorial replacements that this affects—for instance, the Manual of Style gives this example where changes in capitalization are explicitly noted (though it also says that using brackets around letters in this way is not required):
  • The program was criticized primarily because "[t]he equipment was selected for its low price", according to LaVesque.
It also gives an example where the first word is in parentheses:
  • He rose to address the meeting: "(Ahem) ... Ladies and gentlemen, welcome!"
— Will • B [talk] 16:39, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
1) changing a tense would usually only require changing the ending (changing "covers" to "cover[ed]"), so it wouldn't start the quoted material, 2) if the use of brackets around capitalization changes isn't required, how is it a problem?, 3) I can think of no reason why "ahem" would be written in parentheses here in the first place. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 17:02, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
  1. I agree that "cover[ed]" is preferable to "[covered]". But in addition to irregular verbs like "come" → "[came]", whole-word bracketing is also necessary when dropping -ing (e.g. "leading" → "[lead]"). And when we want it clear that a particular root word was used, we wouldn't exclude it from the quotation simply to avoid brackets.
  2. I generally prefer not to bracket capitalization changes, but it's nevertheless permissible according to the MoS. Seems like either we should ban first-word bracketing altogether (which I doubt we want), or advise people to use {{wj}} when it is being done.
  3. That "(Ahem)" quote is just another random example I pulled from the MoS. In any case, it's definitely a lot more common for quotes to begin with brackets than with parentheses.
For what it's worth, of the first fifteen films listed as featured articles, six of them have one or more instances where the first word of a quotation is bracketed, including one where the line broke incorrectly (on my browser). The brackets may not be necessary for all of them, but my point is that this isn't an uncommon occurrence. — Will • B [talk] 00:38, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
I looked at several of those and all such instances I found were either easily rectified by moving the start of the quoted material or were instances where the quotation wasn't really needed and the material would work better if it were a paraphrase. Basically, starting quoted material with a changed word just comes off as bad writing. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 03:17, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Manual of Style rewrite proposals

For the "Section organization" section, it is more concise and clear to copy from Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout directly and make a few changes.

Section organization

Shortcut
Main page: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout

Certain standardized templates and wikicode that are not sections go at the very top of the article, before the content of the lead section, and in the following order:

An article's content should begin with an introductory lead section – a concise summary of the article – which is never divided into sections (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section). The remainder of the article is typically divided into sections. If an article has at least four section headings, a navigable table of contents appears automatically, just after the lead.

Infoboxes, images, and related content in the lead section must be right-aligned.

If the topic of a section is covered in more detail in a dedicated article (see Wikipedia:Summary style), insert {{main|Article name}} or {{further|Article name}} immediately under the section heading.

Additional material (some optional) may appear in order after the main body of the article, as explained in detail in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout § Standard appendices and footers:

The following final items never take section headings:

Stand-alone list articles have additional layout considerations, as explained in Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists.

– CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 10:38, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

I will try to make incremental changes as Tony1 has suggested. CC: SMcCandlish. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 10:41, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
Does anyone objects to my proposal? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 09:13, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
@CactiStaccingCrane: I think this would be an improvement, both in being more concise and in precisely mirroring the more detailed version at MOS:LAYOUT. It would be worth studying the main-MoS version, MOS:SO, and make sure that every point in it is actually covered at MOS:LAYOUT. We want to make sure there hasn't been any tiny WP:POLICYFORK between them. If there's a detail missing from MOS:LAYOUT, I would just merge it in from MOS:SO, then replace MOS:SO with your summary of MOS:LAYOUT, above.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:33, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Conflicting styles for names of laws

There presently exists either conflicting instructions for how to style the names of laws (i.e. "the Constitution Act, 1982") or no clear acknowledgement of an exception for Canada-themed articles. Presently, MOS:NAT includes court case names as words that should be italicized. But, there is nothing about the names of acts of parliament/laws, implying those should not be italicized. MOS:LAW#Canada just says "The Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation [...] is the most commonly cited guide." But, that's not a clear statement that that governs in-Wiki style; nor that that's what we ought to follow in editing Canada-related Wikipedia articles. (And, how would that work when it's a Canadian law being referred to in an article about, say, New Zealand? Or in an article covering a broad topic like Immigration law, where laws in different countries might be named?) MOS:CANLAW just says, "in Canada, per the McGill Guide, titles of acts are italicized", which, again, isn't a clear instruction about what to do in Wikipedia.

I began a discussion about this here: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Text formatting#Conflicting styles. By my interpretation of it, there was a weak consensus that things need to be spelled out more definitively. So, perhaps that can be done here? ₪ MIESIANIACAL 00:08, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

For a US perspective, we italicize the names of court rulings, though not their dates or locations — e.g., Texas v. White, 74 U.S. (7 Wall.) 700 (1869) — and also not the names or locations of statutes — e.g., the Voting Rights Act of 1965 a.k.a. An Act to enforce the fifteenth amendment of the Constitution of the United States, and for other purposes, 79 Stat. 437; or the USA PATRIOT Act a.k.a. Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act of 2001, 115 Stat. 272. – •Raven  .talk 02:12, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
I don’t see this as a problem, any more than different spellings between US and Commonwealth articles is a problem. We have Labour Standards Acts in Canada; the US may have Labor Standards Acts. And yet Wikipedians deal with it just fine. And, the McGill Guide isn’t just proprietary; it’s an attempt to describe the customary usage of the legal profession and courts in Canada. It both reflects standard usage, and guides it. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 03:58, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
How is it not problematic on, say, Abdication of Edward VIII, for example? The one article names laws from South Africa, the Irish Free State, the UK, and Canada. Are you saying it's going to be acceptable to italicize just "Succession to the Throne Act 1937" and leave all the other law names in plain text? --₪ MIESIANIACAL 16:01, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
Yes, but, that doesn't really clarify what's to be done with the names of Canadian laws. Do we italicize or not? And, if yes, how can we make that more clear in the MoS? --₪ MIESIANIACAL 16:01, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
We should centralize discussion of this in one location. —Joeyconnick (talk) 18:34, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
Indeed. That's why I came here. The other discussions puttered out after not much input; those talk pages don't seem to be as active as this one and (I think) I've put notes at all of them directing anyone in those hinterlands to come here. That said... Is there a better place than this? --₪ MIESIANIACAL 23:47, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
How are these acts and laws styled by, say, historians who write about them? Blueboar (talk) 00:03, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
I would have appreciated an @-mention since I am clearly one of the people you mention at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Text formatting#Conflicting styles who has "corrected" you. Or at least a mention of having started this discussion on the Talk:Canadian Confederation page would have been nice.
I've alerted Wikipedia talk:Canadian Wikipedians' notice board. —Joeyconnick (talk) 03:00, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
I thought I'd left a notice of this discussion at the end of that discussion, which you would see, since you got involved at that discussion. However, your comment above implied I did not leave said notice there and, sure enough, I didn't. I've added one now. There was no deliberate effort made to exclude you. --₪ MIESIANIACAL 03:44, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
Fair enough 🙂
There are definitely several places where this could be discussed, that's for sure. —Joeyconnick (talk) 03:59, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
If we italicise statutory laws in Canadian articles, it would be the only example of a style decision we enact by country. We don’t, for example, apply MOS:LOGICAL by geography, and an unitalicised law would not be confusing to Canadian readers, so I don’t see a particular need for this carve out . This style decision is also only applied by legal style guides in Canada, and is not even universally applicable there (unlike how “colour” is universal in England, etc). See also, Wikipedia:Specialized-style fallacy.
However, if other editors disagree, and hold that this style should regionalise per wp:TIES, then the other questions are simple: only italicise statutes in articles that are expressly Canadian. Do not italicise a statute because it is Canadian, but do italicise all statutes in Canadian-styled articles. — HTGS (talk) 00:30, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
That's all very reasonable. However, to clarify, again using the example of Abdication of Edward VIII, which employs Canadian spelling (making it "Canadian-styled"?), covers a Canadian topic, and includes the name of a Canadian law, you would not italicize the name of the Canadian law there because the article is not expressly Canadian (it's also Irish, South African, British, etc). Is that correct? --₪ MIESIANIACAL 03:49, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
I can’t see that Abdication of Edward VIII is written in Canadian style, and I don’t see any reason that it should be. But assuming it were, and if we agreed that Canadian articles get this particular style applied, then all legislation should be italicised, not merely the Canadian law; if the article is not Canadian, then no legislation should be italicised (though case law would be). Think of this as a style that applies to the page, not to the word. — HTGS (talk) 10:34, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
Just to clarify, the Canadian legal style isn't to just italicise Canadian statutes; it's to italicise all statutes and international treaties, regardless of source. And to repeat the point I made above, this is not just the McGill guide making it up; this is standard style, across Canada. For an example, take a look at this Supreme Court of Canada decision: R v Keegstra, and scroll down to the "Statutes and Regulations Cited". (I've picked the Keegstra case because it's got federal and provincial laws, international treaties, and laws from other countries, all italicised regardless of source, so it's a good example of Canadian style, in my opinion. If you look at any other SCC case, you'll see the same style, or cases from other courts on the www.CanLII.org case collection, you'll find the same usage.)
In my view, as mentioned up above in relation to Commonwealth spelling, this is just a specific example of a style that has a strong connection to articles about a particular country: Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Strong_national_ties_to_a_topic. Just as a particular spelling or date style may have a strong connection to a particular country, so too this issue. It's got a strong connection to articles about Canada and should be followed, in my opinion. A simple guide would be if the article already has a "use Canadian English" tag. If that's the case, then all references to statutes and treaties would be italicised, regardless of source. If it's an article that's got a strong connection to some other country, say New Zealand, then we would use New Zealand style, even if the article cites a Canadian law.
And I disagree with the statement above that "it would be the only example of a style decision we enact by country". There are already style guides for different countries, including things like spelling and dates, but other differences as well:
Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Ireland-related articles
Wikipedia:Manual of Style/India-related articles
Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Canada-related articles
Wikipedia:Manual of Style/France- and French-related articles
One of the strengths about Wikipedia, in my opinion, is that the Manual of Style accomodates diversity, so that it's not an American encyclopedia, or a British encyclopedia. The style guide for spelling and dates is an illustration of that. Adding a clause to the Manual of Style/Canadian articles that says statutes and treaties are italicised would be one more example of an acceptance of diversity, which I think is important in an encyclopedia that prides itself on universal global appeal. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 00:14, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
One final point: italicisation of case names is not universal to all legal systems. For example, here's a link to a recent decision of the French Conseil constitutionnel. You'll see that the case name is not italicised, simply underlined: Décision n° 2023-1039 QPC. Italics are used in the case for quotations. Does that mean that in discussing a French court decision, we should italicise it on Wikipedia because that's the common law style? Or do we respect diversity in legal style amongst countries? Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 00:35, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
Well, what I wrote was that Abdication of Edward VIII uses Canadian spelling. I put a question mark beside "Canadian-styled", in brackets, because I'm not entirely certain whether or not it's the spelling that makes an article "Canadian-styled". Regardless, the concern remains: If there's to be a particular way of styling the names of Canadian laws, what does one do in an article that covers a topic that's pertinent to multiple countries and names both Canadian and non-Canadian laws?
I'm not against italicizing the names of Canadian laws, per se. But, I have already identified one example of a problem with treating the names of one country's laws one way and all the rest another way. --₪ MIESIANIACAL 18:03, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
Already addressed upthread: if the article has a strong connection to Canada, use Canadian style for all statutes and treaties. If it's got a strong connection to another country, use that country's style. Sure, there will be judgment calls on certain articles, but for the most part, it's pretty clear whether an article has a strong connection to one country or another. The article on "Abdication of Edward VIII" affects several different countries, and if everyone of them except Canada uses the non-italics style and only Canada uses italic-style, then the majority governs. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 18:14, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
Response to this comment: "I can’t see that Abdication of Edward VIII is written in Canadian style, and I don’t see any reason that it should be." I believe that the point Miesianiacal is making is that the Abdication article isn't just a British article. (But I don't want to put words in your mouth, Mies, so if I've not stated your position properly, please correct me.) As the first sentence of the article states, it's about a constitutional crisis that affected the entire Empire, not just the UK, and there are numerous references to the other Dominions, including Canada, and their laws. It's an article that has a strong connection both to the UK, and to the Dominions that retained the monarch as their head of state. In that case, as suggested above, then majority/consensus would govern. If most of the countries listed in the article don't italicise, then the article doesn't italicise. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 18:18, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
"Think of this as a style that applies to the page, not to the word." Precisely. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 18:26, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
Just realised that there's another piece of the puzzle that I don't think is mentioned: we already have different style recommendations for legal matters from different countries, as set out here: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Legal. I don't see this as much different; we accept that there will be different legal styles for different countries. 19:22, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
Yes, you interpreted my concern correcly: there are articles out there that cover topics related to numerous countries. That's why I asked above if we're saying articles that discuss only a Canadian topic or topics should have any law names italicized. Otherwise, render them in plain text. Which is all fine. My only question now is: how can we more clearly communicate this in the MoS? Shouls WP:ITALIC contain an instruction to see MOS:LAW for country-specific styling (perhaps under MOS:NAT#Names and titles)? Should the "In Canada" section at MOS:LAW state essentially what we've just determined above? --₪ MIESIANIACAL 21:43, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
And also articles like Demise of the Crown and Accession Council. I think we should put it in the general MOS/Legal and also the MOS/Canadian. How about something like this for MOS/Legal:
"There are also two specific wikipedia articles which may be of assistance: Case citation: Canada and Citation of Canadian legislation."
"In addition, for articles which are primarily about Canada, the titles of all legislation are italicised, including all Canadian statutes and also non-Canadian statutes, such as international treaties and statutes from other countries."
And then something similar for MOS/Canadian.
I would suggest leaving this discussion up for a week to see if anyone has any concerns, before adding it to the MOS/Legal and MOS/Canadian. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 00:10, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
Yes, that's good for MOS:LEGAL. I also think the final sentence at MOS:CANLAW should be edited to say something similar, e.g. "in Canada, per the McGill Guide, titles of acts are italicized. For Wikipedia articles primarily about Canada, the titles of all legislation are italicised, including all Canadian statutes and also non-Canadian statutes, such as international treaties and statutes from other countries." Additionally, a link to MOS:CANLAW should be added at MOS:NAT and, perhaps, at MOS:LEGAL#In Canada, as well.
Agreed on keeping this open for a while longer. Editing the MoS feels rather formidable; I'd prefer to be certain about support for edits before they're made. --₪ MIESIANIACAL 17:57, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
I am normally more focused on content than format but Wikisource cares and a discussion of this type seems like an excellent place to ask if I am correct in thinking that since the repatriation of the Constitution Canadian law, certainly Quebec law, is becoming a hybrid civil law code system? Could someone point me at some resources on this? i sm particularly interested in the personhood of that river. Is that under Innu jurisdiction? Please put any responses.on my talk page as I don't want to hijack this thread more than I already have. Is there a portal somewhere? I am mostly working on disentangling the common and civil law systems, so not necessarily Canadian, but not excluding that given the Innu question. Elinruby (talk) 21:32, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
I will come to your talk page to discuss. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 00:10, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
I don't know why the discussion is so long. For every article we should choose the English language version to use, then apply its legal style guidelines. If an article refers to laws from other countries, for example if a Canadian article refers to a law in the U.S., we use a Canadian legal style guide for citing foreign laws. That may differ from how we would cite it in a U.S. article. TFD (talk) 02:01, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
I think it's a mistake to allow or demand that the styling of some article elements should follow local customs. Wikipedia sets its own standards (e.g. caps for 4 or 5 letter prepositions), and those standards, easy to inspect in the Wikipedia's MoS, help editors and avoid surprises in readers. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 23:53, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
Except Wikipedia already has a policy that some style elements should follow local customs. The US v Commonwealth spelling is a clear example of that, as is the variation in date styles: MDY v DMY, as set out at MOS:ENGVAR. As well, MOS/LEGAL already accepts that there will be variations in legal style requirements depending on the country in question. For example, cites to the US Supreme Court put the year in parentheses at the end; cites to Canadian Supreme Court cases put the year in parentheses right after the style of cause (for the first series of the Supreme Court Reports; square brackets are used for the seccond series). Once it's accepted that there is no single uniform style, then it's not a sufficient argument to say there should be uniformity. The use of italics in Canadian statute citations is extremely well-established as a style convention in Canadian law. Why is allowing the date in round parentheses after the style of cause okay in Canada articles, even though it's different from US legal style, but italics for statutes is not? Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 02:01, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
Don't italicize names of laws/statues/constitutions/treaties. Do italicize case names. This isn't difficult. It's not a style WP invented; it's imported from Chicago and most other style guides.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:08, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
So Wikipedia uses US style guides for all purposes? How about spelling? Does Wikipedia use Websters for all purposes? Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 03:25, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
And in any event, WP:MOS/Legal already recognises that there are different styles for legal citations, depending on the country; Chicago does not govern for all countries. And, in skimming through that section, I just noticed something in the Australia section which I had missed: "A citation to an Australian Act of Parliament should begin with the short title of the Act in italics". That means that WP:MOS has already recognised that italics should be used for statute names in Australia. I therefore don't see what the rationale is for saying italics should not be used for statutes in Canadian articles. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 04:19, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
Or it's another "I found this in some style guide I like better" injection by someone without any discussion or consensus behind it. The main point of Wikipedia having a style guide is producing general consistency across articles (aside from unwavering linguistic variation like the -our/-or ENGVAR split). Importing italicization variances that are at odds with each other, from style guides that have had nothing to do with MoS and its development, is antithetical to MoS's purpose. What happens when some style guide in New Zealand or whatever is published that says song titles should go in italics but albums should take quotation marks? Do you expect us to reverse site-wide practice for every musical act with an NZ connection?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:20, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Discussion regarding MOS:DL

Information icon There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking regarding collapsible sections and MOS:DL. The thread is DL, sections, and mobile readers. Thank you. Folly Mox (talk) 21:59, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Romanization of Ukrainian

I’ve posted an RFC at Wikipedia talk:Romanization of Ukrainian#RFC: Romanization of Ukrainian as a guideline in the Manual of Style. —Michael Z. 03:10, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Capitalization of "the Strait", "the Bay", etc.

Some articles, such as Strait of Gibraltar and Chesapeake Bay, capitalize phrases such as "the Strait" and "the Bay", apparently viewing them as proper nouns, shortenings of the full name. On the other hand, Strait of Magellan and Hudson Bay refer to "the strait" and "the bay" as common nouns. Some articles are internally inconsistent: for example, San Francisco Bay is about evenly split between "the Bay" and "the bay", and similarly for Strait of Hormuz.

The most relevant part of the Manual of Style seems to be Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Proper names versus generic terms. That section specifically calls out "the City" (meaning the City of London) as an exception when using the term to distinguish the City of London from London (which can also be described by the common noun "city"). But that exception implies that the general rule is that such phrases should not be capitalized.

It seems to me that, in general, phrases such as "the strait", "the bay", "the gulf", and so on are common nouns and should not be capitalized, even when used in reference to a geographical feature that happens to include the common noun in its proper name (such as the Strait of Gibraltar, Chesapeake Bay, or the Gulf of Mexico). Because that is the general rule, exceptions to the rule should require an objective rationale.

So I'm really asking two questions here:

  1. Am I correct in my understanding of the general rule, that phrases such as these should be uncapitalized by default?
  2. Is there an objective guideline to identify exceptions? (In other words, what gives Chesapeake Bay the privilege of being "the Bay" while Hudson Bay has to be just "the bay"?)

—Bkell (talk) 17:10, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

I somehow missed MOS:GEOUNITS earlier; this is a fuller guideline. It does not explicitly mention purely geographic terms such as straits and bays, but it seems clear that they are covered in the same way. I would still be interested in understanding a guideline to identify exceptions. —Bkell (talk) 17:46, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

@Bkell: Like so many things it's hard to make a clear rule. The thing we can do, without too much struggle, is make articles internally consistent. Beyond that, it is a big it depends. The Cape or the Gulf, in an article where it's clear that the topic is Cape Horn or the Gulf of Mexico, seem to me properly capitalized. (Even the Cape buffalo is typically capitalized.) The canyon or the river, where it is equally clearly talking about a specific canyon or river, perhaps because there are so many rivers and canyons, seem best lower case. In between it depends. Use your good judgement and if there's disagreement discuss it on the talk page; if it goes beyond that, I tend to let it go, because I am rarely in the mood to argue. SchreiberBike | ⌨  19:14, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
I wouldn't try to make a rule more specific that what MOSCAPS already has, which has to do with treatment in sources. Contrast "the straight" with "the cape". That doesn't mean their might not be some context in which "the Straight" or "the cape" would be appropriate, but it gives you a pretty clear idea of what sources typically do. Probably most uses of "the Cape" are for the Cape of Good Hope, per these stats. Straight is more mixed, less likely to be used as a proper name. Bay is similar to straight; often capped by locals to whom the bay is "the Bay", but not nearly consistently so, so WP should user lowercase. Dicklyon (talk) 22:00, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
Our MOS tends towards minimizing capitalization, and I find the capital Bs in Chesapeake Bay to be awkwardly informal or pompous. Either it's a nickname (in which case it shouldn't be used in formal writing), or it's descriptive, in which case it shouldn't be capitalized. (I note that it's not even consistently capitalized within the article.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by pburka (talk • contribs)
Here more stats about "Bay". Most of the caps are for proper names of the form "Bay of X" or for "Bay Area", which as far as I can tell usually means the San Francisco Bay Area, but sometimes is used for the Tampa Bay Area and others. For just "the Bay", I'd agree that caps are not needed and therefor not appropriate in WP style. Dicklyon (talk) 00:05, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
Yes, it is correct that the whole point of Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Proper names versus generic terms and its provision of an odd, rare exception or two means that the general rule is "bay" and "cape". We could not possibly insert into that section every such term that is sometimes over-capitalized; we have a general rule for the very reason that doing the former would be tedious and impractical to even attempt.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:16, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

This sort of shortened form of a fuller name has been discussed before and rejected. Words like bay and cape are descriptive nouns that are made specific to a particular referent by the definite article (the). They are not proper nouns. Capitalising them would fall to MOS:SIGNIFCAPS - and we don't do that. Cinderella157 (talk) 03:36, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

K to ℃ conversion policy?

The usage of K & ℃ in History of superconductivity is stylistically erratic. Either the metric conversion template is used, or parentheses, and eventually K is used exclusively or nearly so. Is there a policy for this trailing off...? (The conversion template seems to me to be a no brainer.) kencf0618 (talk) 03:31, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

I would probably raise this at WT:MOSNUM with some specific wording recommendations. The relevant guideline section is MOS:CONVERSIONS over there, but it only seems to address converting when different units are used geographically (e.g. US and metric), while not requiring this for science topics. When it is done, we would want it to be done consistently, following the general MoS principle to be consistent within the same article, but the section does not actually say that and it probably should. The broader oversight is that we also routinely convert when a unit is likely to be unfamiliar to a substantial number of readers (e.g. cubits or ells), but the guideline doesn't say that either. An argument can probably be made that Kelvin qualfies as broadly unfamiliar, but even if it doesn't we should be addressing units that do.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:04, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
It largely seem to be a stylistic choice. Thanks! kencf0618 (talk) 18:11, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Feedback requested at 'Cisgender'

A discussion is taking place about whether the central topic of the article Cisgender should be changed. Issues of MOS:LEAD and MOS:WAW are involved. Your feedback would be appreciated at this discussion. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 04:50, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

Trademarked brands that have become pseudo-synonymous with a term

I think we need a guideline for trademarked brands that have become pseudo-synonymous with a term. There is a dispute that has been going on on the talk page for the redirect for the term Realtor. In the US, Realtor is often incorrectly used as a synonym for real estate agent. I can't find any guideline to apply but it is clear that this term is not a correct synonym despite popular usage.

Similarly,

And as you can see, we have no consistency. Some redirect to the generic product, some redirect to the brand.

Clarification in MOS would be good. Toddst1 (talk) 13:16, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Genericization of trademarks is a natural part of language evolution. If we do develop a policy around it, we shouldn't base it on a prescriptivist approach. Common usage isn't correct or incorrect, it just is.--Trystan (talk) 14:15, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
Aside from the National Association of Realtors getting all pissy when you call them real estate agents, what is the actual difference? Subway calls their employees "sandwich artists", but there's no difference between that and "sandwich makers". How is "realtor" vs "real estate agent" different? --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 18:05, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
The difference is that it's their brand and they mean it to aid in their marketing of themselves as practitioners of distinction. Being accorded the right to brand oneself a Realtor is meant to serve as a mark of professional achievement and merit, like "certified public accountant". Largoplazo (talk) 18:11, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
But a CPA doesn't get upset when they are called an accountant. What is the difference? --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 18:17, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
I don't recall hearing of NAR members objecting to being called "real estate agents", only to non-NAR-member agents being called "realtors". Also not sure how it's relevant to the question. Do you want to clarify? I haven't been following the discussion at the page and can't really claim I'm interested enough to do so, so if it's something from that discussion, maybe summarize. --Trovatore (talk) 18:24, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
  1. ^ Canadian Oxford dictionary (2. ed.). Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford Univ. Pr. 2004. p. 1287. ISBN 0195418166. realtor noun N Amer. a real estate agent
  • Whether a trademark has actually become genericized or not is a legal matter that is settled (on a per-jurisdiction basis) by a court of competent jurisdiction there. None of the above examples are actually genericized in any jurisdiction I'm aware of (unlike aspirin, which is probably genericized everywhere). Where we have an article on the brand, the term should go there. Where we do not, it should go to the general topic, and the fact that it's a trademark should be covered somewhere in the general-trademark article. We are making some legal mistakes in a few places, that probably open WMF to litigatory liability under US and perhaps other trademark law. E.g. Frisbee should be moved to Flying disc, no matter how often people call them all "Frisbees" regardless of brand, and the lead sentence should absolutely not be presenting "frisbee" in lower case as a generic term. It is correct in later presenting "Frisbee" as a trademark, with details on the trademark holder. There really should probably be an article at Frisbee that is about the brand, or at least it should redirect to Wham-O as one of their brands.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:39, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Strange Titling of Diaspora Articles

Some diaspora articles follow really strange naming conventions. A lot of articles follow the "List of Lebanese people in Brazil" naming convention of mentioning a people in country. While the articles are intended to list Lebanese–Brazilians, this isn't very clear, as the title also seems imply any sort of Lebanese person in within the boundaries of Brazil could apply, and honestly listing every notable Lebanese person on vacation in Brazil seems frivolous. I moved a couple articles, such as the aforementioned List of Lebanese Brazilians, however when I noticed there was a couple dozen of these types of articles just within Lebanese diaspora I figured I should bring it up in a couple places before I moved anymore.

I've already left comments on WP:Lebanon and WP:Ethnic Groups but iits been a couple days without any responses so I figured opening a thread here would be a good idea. FlalfTalk 16:13, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

@Flalf: This is more of a WT:AT or WT:NCET question. MoS doesn't really deal with article titles except in as much as a style matter that would apply to body text also applies to the title.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:55, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Hair space or thin space after dash in block quotations?

§ Other uses (em dash only) states that for block quotations, it's best to put a hair space after the attribution em dash. It also says that "most of Wikipedia's quotation templates with attribution-related parameters already provide this formatting". While {{cquote}} and {{quote frame}} do indeed use a hair space, {{blockquote}}—the primary template for block quotations—uses a thin space. As far as I can tell, it's never used a hair space. Am I missing something? Which is correct? — ⁠Will ⁠• ⁠B [talk] 20:26, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

The template is wrong. It should be a hair space. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:11, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
Alrighty, thanks. Fixed now. — Will • B [talk] 03:58, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

clarification on MOS:US and MOS:NOTUSA

I read MOS:US carefully. It allows for the use of US as an abbreviation for United States of America but not USA as an abbreviation (except in actual quotes, as noted). Is this correct? Also, it seems that editors are divided on whether to change USA to United States while others change it to US, all within identical or similar article context. And if it is indeed correct, what was the rationale for allowing US and not USA. Thanks for any of the rationale on this. L.Smithfield (talk) 05:47, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Correct, generally do not use "USA'. Also, it seems that editors are divided on whether to change USA to United States while others change it to US: Is that your personal experience, as it's not explicitly in the MOS. As for the USA rationale, you can try using the "Search archives" at the top of this talk page. (Unfortunately, those supporting discussions are generally not footnoted in actual guidelines)—Bagumba (talk) 06:52, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification (in keeping with MOS:NOTUSA). I looked (searched) through as much of the archives as I could and I could not find a relevant discussion of why US is allowed and USA is not. So, I sort of assume that this issue was decided a very (very) long time ago, and might be lost to history. Also, there is no real guidance of whether US is preferred over United States; and yes, from my experiences viewing many articles, there is no clear pattern as to why one of these might be chosen over the other. One might think that a rationale for choosing between US and United States might be to use the spelled out version wherever possible and to only use the abbreviated version (that is US) where space is restricted or at a premium of some sort (table column, other). But no, there does not seem to be a pattern that fits a space-available hypothesis. Both are used in both space-constrained places and otherwise. Any other comments or information is welcomed. L.Smithfield (talk) 11:00, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
Speaking for myself, I find USA to be somewhat ... "informal" for lack of a better word. It seems to me that US is in a bit higher register. On the other hand USA is associated with sporting events, with patriotic display, and with the newspaper USA Today (the last uses it almost as an affectation). (It occurs to me that it might actually be reasonable to reexamine allowing USA in specifically sporting contexts.) --Trovatore (talk) 21:18, 3 May 2023 (UTC)
I've often wondered about this myself, and have never found an explanation. For me, "US" is more informal than "USA" and not what I would expect to see in a reference work. DuncanHill (talk) 22:05, 3 May 2023 (UTC)
I struggled a bit with the word "informal" as used to describe USA . Maybe it's not quite what I mean. Maybe "flowery" or "affected"? Or, sometimes, informal, as in the sports and patriotic contexts I mentioned. But when speaking in a matter-of-fact, dry tone, you say "United States" and "US", not "United States of America" and "USA".
Or at least you do in the US :-) . Could be a Yank/Brit difference here. --Trovatore (talk) 22:12, 3 May 2023 (UTC)
Wikipedia has a manual of style. One purpose of a manual of style is standardization, that way people don't sometimes see US and sometimes see USA and wonder if there's a difference. At some point long ago a decision was made to standardize on US or U.S. (people have strong feelings about those and we couldn't standardize on one of them). There doesn't have to be a big difference between them or a strong reason for one or the other. As to what to change it to, it depends on context. Use your good judgement and if anyone disagrees discuss it on the talk page or let them win a battle because it's not that important. SchreiberBike | ⌨  22:20, 3 May 2023 (UTC)
We're generally not huge on cross-article standardization for its own sake, and I certainly wouldn't have wanted to ban USA just for standardization. I find that USA has an odd tone that (pace Duncan) I would not expect to find in a reference work, and that's a good reason not to use it. --Trovatore (talk) 22:30, 3 May 2023 (UTC)
I agree about the tone. I'm American and live in the United States. I associate "USA" with expressions of patriotism, affection, ceremony. The title of the newspaper "USA Today" conveys to me a sense of "This is our home." I think of "the good ol' USA!" and the lyrics "Good morning, USA" (American Dad) and "God bless the USA!" (Lee Greenwood). It's marked; "US" is unmarked. In addition, "USA" is never used as an adjective, unless perhaps someone is being ironic or dramatic. It's "US interests", "US industry", etc., never "USA interests" or "USA industry". Largoplazo (talk) 10:58, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
Agreed on all of that. "USA" is loaded.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:04, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
For myself, I tend to find the response above by SchreiberBike compelling. Although I was curious about why US was chosen over USA, I agree with SchreiberBike that a MOS standard on one of them is better than both being used and people wondering what is up with that. OK, so the decision was made long enough time ago that we do not quite have the discussion about it handy to reference. If it was a long discussion (which it probably was), maybe we do not want to read all of that anyway. At some point we need to have faith that editors of the long past weighed the options (carefully) and came up with the best compromise. In the present case it turned out to be US over USA. I am fine with what they decided. Thanks to SchreiberBike for apparently having some insight into the past decision. As for what to replace any USA instances with (since there does not seem to be an existing consensus or guidance), I am tending to go with the 'space-available' sort of rationale; that is, if space is available spell out United States and if not use US (except that use within quotes are sacrosanct as per usual, and any other relevant existing MOS:US guidelines). That seems reasonable to me. Thanks for all of the comments. Any additional comments are still welcomed. L.Smithfield (talk) 23:49, 3 May 2023 (UTC)
We really don't generally have standard forms just to have standard forms. See ENGVAR and STYLEVAR and so on. That said, I agree it's possible that that was the original rationale, long ago.
But I doubt it. I think it's more likely to have been the "tone" issue I called out. --Trovatore (talk) 01:55, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
I've seen it said outside of WP to only use "U.S." as an adjective, not as a noun, so that's what I follow if writing new text. —Bagumba (talk) 02:28, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

I think an older version of MOS:NOTUSA said that USA could be confused for United States Army. Purely as personal observation, "US" seems to be the preference in current use in the world, with "U.S." running a distant second and "USA"/"U.S.A as outdated forms.  Stepho  talk  01:25, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Agreed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:04, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Relist Template talk:Infobox military conflict#RfC on "supported by" being used with the belligerent parameter

Relisted for further input. Cinderella157 (talk) 11:56, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

positional phrasing in articles, such as "see below"

Is there any style guidance for phrases such as "see below" in article space? It's clearly discouraged for images, but I haven't found anything about text in particular. I find it problematic, because an editor may in good faith move sections around without noticing that this impacts the usefulness of a positional phrase in another part of the article. If there's a style entry about it, I'll follow that rather than my gut. ~TPW 14:39, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

I'd try to link to the appropriate section with helpful piped text that flows with the prose, and try to avoid "see there", if possible. —Bagumba (talk) 07:13, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
Nevertheless, it's often important in long, complex articles, and it is often much less confusing to the reader to explicitly refer to later (or earlier) material rather than to pipe a link that appears to be to a different article. Editors who "in good faith move sections around" have an affirmative duty to clean up after any mess they make; it's just part of being a responsible, competent editor. If "(see below)" or "(see § 18th century, below)" sorts of crossreferences were not permissible, we would not have {{Crossreference}}.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:23, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
In ye olden dayz, it mattered whether the piece of text you were referring to was "above" or "below" the reference. Since the advent of hypertext, it doesn't matter anymore if they are "above" or "below", because the hyperlink takes you straight there. Precisely because someone may move things around, my take is to just wikilink the section (or anchor, as the case may be), and don't introduce "above's" and "belows" that don't help anybody get there faster, and might need to be altered later, without improving the page, just keeping it from being mistaken. One way to avoid the appearance of a link destination being in a different article is to use {{section link}}. Mathglot (talk) 04:10, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
Not every internal cross-reference is to a section, nor are these techniques at cross purposes anyway, as they can be effectively combined: "(see § Widgets, below)". And I think you fundamentally misunderstand how humans generally process documents. Leaping around the page without any idea whether you're going backward/up or forward/down in the overall document flow is disorienting to the reader. I'm a [semi-retired] Web usability specialist; I've done this kind of stuff for a living pretty much since the Web existed. Even understanding where readers' eyes are most likely to track is important, along with related concerns like avoiding left-floated images pushing headings inward, etc.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:17, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
The MOS frequently uses "above" and "below". See, for example MOS:UNDERLINK: Relevant connections to the subject of another article that will help readers understand the article more fully (see the example below). Hawkeye7 (discuss) 06:36, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
Yes, this "but it may someday move" argument is a red herring. If that kind of reasoning held here, then a tremendous number of things we do would become verboten by the same reasoning. (Most obviously: using an inline citation immediately after the text we're citing it for, creating a close relationship between the material and the citation. It's a fact of editing that later incautious editors may insert new material between the original material and the citation for it, making it look like the new material is cited to that source, and even that the old material doesn't have one. But we just fix it. That's how WP works: just fix it, and try not to break it in the first place by being a cautious editor who checks for unintended consequences before moving on.)

Another way to put this: The desire to force editors to stop using "(see below)"-style crossreferences is a solution in search of a problem, and prescribing something about it in MOS would be objectionable WP:CREEP and WP:MOSBLOAT. If after 20-odd years MoS and WP have done just fine without a prescription against this, and editors are not presently fighting to the virtual death over it, then there is no demonstrable cause for us to start legislating about it. The guidelines are to describe best practice, not force a change in long-accepted practice.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:17, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

An important use of "below" or "following" is to give a reference before a list or diagram (such as a cladogram) that follows, e.g. something like "As of DATE, SOURCE accepted the following species:REF". Peter coxhead (talk) 09:17, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

From Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Manual of Style

I nominated {{Use}} (a redirect to {{American English}}) at RfD earlier today, one suggestion in the discussion was to convert it into a wrapper for the various use xx template ({{Use mdy dates}}, {{Use British English}}, etc) to be used in the form e.g. {{use|mdy dates}}. I figure editors here are the most likely to have opinions on whether this would be useful/desirable/possible/etc. Please leave any comments at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 July 20#Template:Use to keep discussion in one place. Thryduulf (talk) 21:41, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Note: since WikiProject Manual of Style is inactive, I have quoted that section here. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 16:58, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

@Edward-Woodrow thank you. Thryduulf (talk) 20:26, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
Yep, good idea.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:05, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Changing the MOS:ENGVAR and MOS:DATEFORMAT of an article basically no one watches

What do we think of changing (for what I think are sensible reasons) the ENGVAR and DATEFORMAT at an article, after posting a proposal to do so on its talk page but getting no response because there are probably no active watchlisters? I don't want to sit on this forever, but I also don't want to jump the gun. I'm speaking of Tartan Day and Talk:Tartan Day#Change to non-US ENGVAR and date format. In short, the reasons are that the article shouldn't be in US English and date format because the topic is not closely associated with the US; using US spelling and date style in this one article is jarringly inconsistent with usage at Tartan and Highland dress and Scottish clan and etc.; and the inconsistent formatting and spelling needlessly complicate porting sources and merging content between related articles.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:29, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

This note has lead to some further comment, which solves the issue for Tartan Day, but as a general rule, if there's no objection to a proposal after a week, I go ahead and make the change. A few times someone has objected after that, but many more times the job is done and I can move on to other things. I usually include something like "If this proposal is supported, or if there's no objection, I'll go ahead and make the changes in about a week." SchreiberBike | ⌨  19:46, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
Sounds reasonable. I'll try that approach if something like this comes up again.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:07, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
Yes, that's the way. Someone may object later, but you can't be criticised. Johnbod (talk) 22:38, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

"Vis-à-vis" vis-à-vis "Versus", "vs.", etc.

Whilst this doesn't rise to the heights of the Comprised Of Affair, "Versus", etc. are oft misused; it's sloppy writing. A search of our archives offers numerous examples (whereas the proper usage of "Vis-à-vis" is, I am happy to report, going strong). Accuracy is encyclopedic. kencf0618 (talk) 03:16, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

AFter trawling through all the online dictionaries of any repute, I have to conclude that they are synonymous when used in the senses of 'as contrasting with', 'in comparison to/with', 'as an/the alternative of/to'. The meaning 'in relation to' is uncommon for versus but very common for (in some dictionaries the primary definition of) vis-à-vis. Versus has the additional fairly related meaning of 'against' (in the sense of two opposing parties), while the rarer vis-à-vis (which is arguably not fully assimilated into English as it is often written italicized as a Frenchism) does not, but has quite number of mostly unrelated meanings including 'fact-to-face', 'toward[s]', 'loveseat', 'date or escort', 'counterpart', and the [non-furniture sense of] 'tête-à-tête'. I would use versus for the senses 'as contrasting with', 'in comparison to/with', 'as an/the alternative of/to', simply for concision and its greater familiarity to the average reader, but probably vis-à-vis for the 'in relation to' sense for which versus is uncommon (or just write in relation to, honestly). But this isn't the place to make a prescriptivist argument that versus "doesn't" or "shouldn't" mean 'in constrast with' and the like because of its origin or pre-modern usage patterns, if that's where you're coming from. If you've found instances in articles that seem confusing, e.g. where 'in relation to' is meant, you can just edit them.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:25, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
Look up vis-à-vis in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Maybe this expression is still used in North America but on this side of the pond it is essentially obsolete. Google ngram suggests[10] minimal usage anywhere, tbh. Given that it has two possible meanings, it is really not usable in a section title. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 10:12, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
To me (eastern US), "vis-à-vis" means "with respect to", "in relation to" ("He shared his opinions vis-à-vis the economy") while "versus" means "in contrast to", "in opposition to", or "against". Completely unrelated meanings. I never knew that people confuse them in the manner of, say, "flout" and "flaunt". Aside from that, "vis-à-vis" is rare while "versus" is common. Largoplazo (talk) 10:49, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
Concur with User:Kencf0618 and User:Largoplazo on this one. The distinction between the meanings of the two terms is quite clear. I rarely see them confused with each other, though it does happen. --Coolcaesar (talk) 14:11, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
Thank you, all, for the thorough discussion. In all the time I've been nitpicking this, if memory serves my edits have been reverted twice. I'm not going to make a fuss of it, much less wage holy war. kencf0618 (talk)
That kind of attitude is not allowed at Talk:MOS. Please leave and never return. EEng 20:14, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
These newbies! Maybe with another 10 or 15 years here, Ken would learn how to behave. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 11:06, 29 July 2023 (UTC)
We could block him until he agrees to be more combative. EEng 15:14, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

"The Right Honourable"

I've noticed that the infoboxes for most UK members of parliament contain the honorific "The Right Honourable" above the name. See for example Jeremy Corbyn, Theresa May, Enoch Powell. As far as I've found, in fact, they all do unless the figure has a "higher" title, e.g. Oswald Mosley. However MOS:PREFIX states:

In general, honorific prefixes and suffixes should not be included, but may be discussed in the article. In particular, this applies to:

Am I missing something here? Is there a consensus somewhere that we make an exception for infoboxes? If so, I haven't found it in the archives. Should the guideline be amended, or should the prefix be removed from the infoboxes? Generalrelative (talk) 01:08, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

The template for the officeholder infobox has a field for "honorific_prefix" as the very first field in the template:
{{{honorific_prefix}}}
{{{name}}}
{{{honorific_suffix}}}
I assume that the MOS directive is meant to keep an article from being littered with honorifics, but the infobox is the formal summary about the individual; the "tombstone" info, and therefore a single use of the honorific at the beginning of the infobox makes sense to me. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 01:32, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. I'd prefer if there were more clarity on this though. If there is agreement that titles like "The Right Honourable" should be in infoboxes, I'd suggest that we should amend the language in MOS:PREFIX to say so, as it does immediately below in MOS:SIR. As it stands, the guideline appears to proscribe it.
I'll say that to my eye this looks a bit like title spamming, though I understand that that may be a cultural bias I have as an American. Broadly, I've noticed that there does seem to be significantly more emphasis on honorary titles in the infoboxes of UK figures, and those of some other nations, than US ones (where e.g. all judges are technically "The Honorable" but even the bios of Supreme Court Justices do not included such prefixes).
On the surface, I suppose it might be fine if bios of figures from the UK and other nations emphasize titles where US ones don't, if that's something that editors who focus on these figures are concerned with, but I wonder if it might better serve the interests of the encyclopedia, and the purpose of this MOS, if we had a bit more standardization –– or just observed the MOS:PREFIX guideline as written –– across the board. Generalrelative (talk) 03:50, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
It's actually quite common outside the US. "Rt. Hon" is used in Canada for the PM and the Chief Justice of Canada, "Hon" for federal Cabinet ministers. Other countries do the same: Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, and South Africa, just to name a few. It's also common with religious leaders, including in the US: Popes, patriarchs, archbishops, presiding bishops, bishops, cardinals, and other ministers in non-hierarchical churches.
I hope you won't take this the wrong way, but frequently in MOS discussions, an argument for "standardisation" means "do it the way we do in the US". See just higher up in this Talk page for a discussion about the use of italics in Canadian legal articles, and "standardisation" = US style.
My view is that Wikipedia is, and bills itself, as an international encyclopedia in English, not an American encyclopedia. That's why different spellings, and dates, and other stylistic conventions vary with the country that an article is about. Diversity of style is an expression of an international encyclopedia. This issue of honorifics is just another example, in my view. If US posters don't want to use honorifics, because that's not their style in their republican (small-r) tradition, so be it. But that doesn't mean that the US preference should bar the usage of honorifics in articles about leaders of other countries, that do not share that US tradition. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 16:08, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
And I just noticed that today's featured article, about an American Jesuit, does use the honorific in the infobox: Enoch Fenwick. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 21:37, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
Let's try to refocus here. I accept that it was me who started making cultural comparisons, but my point was never that there are zero bios of Americans with honorifics in the infobox.
My essential point is that default usage of "The Right Honourable" in the infoboxes of British MPs appears to go against MOS:PREFIX, which states explicitly that this title should not be included except when discussing it in the article body. Our options then are:
  1. Amend the guideline to say that infobox mentions of "The Right Honourable" are cool (as is done for "noble" titles in MOS:SIR)
  2. Remove the prefixes
  3. Agree to WP:IAR in this case
All of these are potentially fine. My purpose was to point out that we appear to be doing #3 by default. Generalrelative (talk) 22:10, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

For the correct use see The Right Honourable#In the House of Commons. Briefly: ordinary MPs are called "honourable" within the chamber to try to keep debates civilised. "Right Honourable" is only applied to those MPs who are also members of the Privy Council. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 07:51, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

The difference being that "the Right Honourable" is also used outside the chamber for Privy Councillors. The guidelines only refer to the first line of the article. They do not refer to infoboxes, where we tend to use the correct style. Incidentally, use of the Rt Hon has nothing to do with having a higher title. You can be "The Right Honourable Sir". Mosley wasn't a Privy Councillor, so didn't have the prefix. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:06, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
We make our own manual of style. We respect our sources for facts, but not for style. We do not write "On January 3rd..." even if all our sources do for instance. (Granted, what the outside world does is an important point, tho; just not a decisive one.)
Anybody can call anyone anything and so what. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords (or however they do it) is no basis for a system of nomenclature that we are bound to use. No need to emphasize them more than we feel we must.
Two thirds of the Anglosphere are Americans. Plus there are hella Indians too, but I'd doubt if they're much inclined to use aristocratic honorifics. Most ESL readers I would also suppose. If true, that means the people using them regularly are like 25% of facile English speakers. Herostratus (talk) 21:54, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
These honorifics should be recorded somewhere in the articles on these people, though I'm not sure the infobox is the best place, and I am sure that WP should not be referring to them this way in running prose. It's not WP's job to declare someone hono[u]rable ("right" or otherwise), but it is WP's job in part to annotate where conventional titles apply to people because of their positions. At a guess, I would think we should do for offices like MP what we are doing for hereditary titles, religious officies, etc. If that means consistent presentation in the infobox, then it does, but if it doesn't then conform to how we treat honorifics in other subjects.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:00, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Dashes in empty table cells

Table cells with no value often have a dash in them, but I don't see anything in MOS:DASH about that, like whether en and em dashes are equally OK, depending on cell size, or whatever. One editor was recently changing en dash to hyphen in empty cells, using AWB, which I questioned; he wants to know if there's anything written about a preference. Dicklyon (talk) 17:52, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

A recommendation from The Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition, § 3.65): "If a column head does not apply to one of the entries in the stub, the cell should either be left blank or, better, filled in by an em dash or three unspaced ellipsis dots." Doremo (talk) 18:10, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
A recommendation from Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (4th edition, § 3.68): "If a cell cannot be filled because data were not obtained or are not reported, insert a dash in that cell ...." (The examples imply that this is an em dash.) Doremo (talk) 18:16, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
That's pretty typically what I see. But also en dash in a lot, esp. in narrow columns where entries are mostly single-digit numbers. Hyphens are sometimes found, too, and think it would be good for us to guide away from that toward a dash of one sort or another. Dicklyon (talk) 19:30, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
I think that when you see a hyphen, it's someone trying their best, but not knowing how to put in a proper dash. WhatamIdoing (talk) 13:46, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
The symbols are directly beneath the edit box. It's no excuse for sub-professional writing. Tony (talk) 05:21, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
Tony, I appreciate your high standards, but I also think most editors just have no idea that the en dash even exists, since so many styles, esp. on the web, use a hyphen/minus glyph to stand for an en dash. So, "no excuse" seems a bit harsh, tough their "best" is sub-par. Where it gets interesting is with editors who are familiar with dashes and the MOS yet argue for a hyphen where an en dash is what a pro would use. Pretty much the same ones who say no diacritics, since they don't see those on their keyboards, either. I see them all on my Mac keyboard, since I studied up on the keyboard layout when it came out, 39 years ago. Dicklyon (talk) 05:38, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
Not everyone uses RefToolbar. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 15:11, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
Usually, yes, but what brought me here was a user with a script designed to replace those dashes with hyphens. He wanted to know if there's a consensus written somewhere. Sounds like we have it (except that en vs em is up in the air). Dicklyon (talk) 05:02, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
An en dash generally looks a little too small for my taste (on my browser, with my skin, etc.), but a hyphen looks very much too small. I wouldn't necessarily change from an en to an em dash, but I frequently change hyphens to em-dashes, especially in discographies. The guidance at WP:DISCOGSTYLE never made it to MOS status, but the sample tables there explicity indicate that "—" denotes a recording that did not chart or was not released in that territory (that is, an em dash). That's become my standard indicator since then, or even before then (ca. 2011); anything else (except, of course, {{n/a}}) catches my eye as "wrong". — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 23:18, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
I generally agree, except that this came up in a table with mostly 1-digit entries, in which case the width of an en dash looks like a better fit. If people prefer to standardize on em dash, that's OK, too. In any case, this validates my pushback on hyphen. Dicklyon (talk) 05:16, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
And part of the problem is that there are lots of fonts where the hyphen and the en dash are barely distinguishable. I use a font where they're quite distinct, so I'm more sensitive to these differences than many readers and editors. Dicklyon (talk) 05:44, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
Adjacent to this matter, let's talk principles of web accessibility—which, among other things, call for the elimination of empty cells in data tables. Not that there's any hope of achieving real accessibility for screenreader users with tables on Wikipedia edited by thousands of people unfamiliar with the principles, but it's good to try. A dash isn't going to be read, nor are hyphens, daggers, asterisks, and so forth. It would be useful to have a set of templates, maybe {{cell no entry}}, {{cell not available}}, {{cell statistically insignificant}}, one for the case, I forget what it's called, where a number isn't reported because the population it refers to is so small that it would risk revealing personal information for members of that group, and so forth, which display a chosen symbol (can be a dash by default) and the corresponding words to be read by a screenreader. Example:
{{cell no entry}}
yields
<span aria-label="no entry">—</span>
while
{{cell no entry|*}}
yields
<span aria-label="no entry">*</span>
Largoplazo (talk) 01:12, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
Good idea. And those could be substituted in by a bot, I expect. Dicklyon (talk) 05:16, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
I think that span without a role will not be read aloud by most screen readers. Have you tested that? Also, at the risk of sounding stupid, wouldn't the words be the most accessible? For example, "no entry", "unknown", "not available", "none", "no data", or whatever fits the table's content best. In any case, this doesn't seem like something where the MoS should prescribe a specific solution. Regards, Rjjiii (talk) 04:08, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
En dashes would be the ideal. Tony (talk) 10:09, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
Personally, I'm OK with flexibility here. The em dash looks better (to me) in wide fields. Can you say why you think en dash would be the ideal? Dicklyon (talk) 05:40, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
In narrow columns the em dash can look a bit lumpy and disruptive. Tony (talk) 07:00, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
I like the suggestion of a {{cell no entry}} template. That's the right thing to do, and could easily be implemented in a script, to take effect whenever more substantial changes are being made to the article. Colonies Chris (talk) 12:32, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
Em dash would be the ideal. No opinion on templates for lack of entry. —Anomalocaris (talk) 05:29, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
I usually use an en dash for this, because we use en dashes widely for many purposes, but reserve em dashes for a limited number of specified uses. But I don't have a strong feeling on the matter otherwise, except against robotically repalcing dashes with hyphens, which certainly look too small, and which aren't intended for this kind of purpose (they are joiners of compounds). I could see specifying to use an em dash or an en dash for this purpose. And I think it should be specified (WP:MOSBLOAT notwithstanding), if we have evidence that people are going to editwar or WP:MEATBOT about it. MoS's no. 2 purpose (after ensuring consistent and sensible presentation to the readers) is preventing or at least ending arbitrary "style fights" among editors. It's fine to have a template like {{cell no entry}} but that still requires us to settle on what that template should output by default (and whether it should even have an option to vary from that default). It should do something sensible and consistent. I just don't personally care much whether it is en dash or em dash, as long as it's not hyphen. And certainly not *, which implies a footnote that people will go looking for in vain.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:31, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Why not mandate the use of, e.g., {{n/a}}, and let style changes be in a single place? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 10:00, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Manned/Human Spaceflight

I may not be the first person to bring this up, but I'm sure as part of a refresher, some of my ideas will resonate with others here. Some of the new terminology being used vis-a-vis NASA and human spaceflight seems to be a polarizing and somewhat controversial topic among space enthusiasts in this day and age. I also realize this is NASA's new, preferred expression more so than that of Wikipedians who happen to frequently write about NASA and space exploration. While I can appreciate the use of "crewed" (and also sometimes "piloted") as a more gender-inclusive version of "manned," it does also sound kind of excessive in a lot of respects. Even during the latter half of the 20th century, female pilots and workers/scientists at NASA still used "Manned," whether or not they regarded it as sexist. Should manned be permanently and almost entirely replaced by crewed? Maybe not.

While I'm more than in favor of bringing in more diverse groups of people to organizations like NASA and elsewhere, I really think this (gender identity/identity politics) issue should be left alone. Also, while NASA is largely doing the right thing to appeal to more (especially marginalized) groups of people, I personally think they are making a bit too big a deal about this, especially when NASA should still be focused on endeavors like cooperation with groups such as ESA, CSA and JSA, as well as competition with the Chinese Space Program and what's left of the Russian Space Program. Wiscipidier (talk) 22:49, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

You're right; you're not the first person to bring this up. There was, for example, an RfC in 2019, and another short discussion in 2021. And while I, personally, might not change "manned" to "crewed" when I'm working on an article, I certainly wouldn't permanently and almost entirely replace "manned" with "crewed", for fear of being disruptive. Someone else might (either or both), though, which would be rather consistent with that RfC (although it actually only dealt with the MoS), and if they did, I wouldn't revert. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 21:16, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Phrasing of exception to British rule about treating organizations as plural.

Pol098 implemented a change [11] of:

In British English, such words are sometimes treated as singular, but more often treated as plural, according to context. Exceptionally, names of towns and countries usually take singular verbs (unless they are being used to refer to a team or company by that name, or when discussing actions of that entity's government).

to

In British English, such words are sometimes treated as singular, but more often treated as plural, according to context. Names of towns and countries usually take singular verbs, but exceptionally, for example when used to refer to a team or company by that name, or when discussing actions of that entity's government, plural is used.

Which is better? —DIYeditor (talk) 17:54, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

I think we're agreed on what actually happens, but the wording was bad: "Exceptionally, names of towns and countries usually take singular verbs". Singular is not exceptional, it's the norm. And "exceptionally" and "usually" in the same sentence are confusing and contradictory. Before seeing this discussion I made a change that may be acceptable to all concerned; but the clause I quote is definitely wrong. Before seeing this comment I edited the article back to what I had written, with an extra clarification (which I don't really think is needed) that it's regional. Best wishes, Pol098 (talk) 18:09, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
Treating an organization as singular is the exception to the rule in British English, not the norm. —DIYeditor (talk) 18:14, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
I still think we agree on the facts, it's just the words. In British English, would you agree that "the names of towns and countries" (which are not collective nouns) usually take singular verbs (this bit is not about organisations, we've left that subject)? Or am I getting confused? It would help if someone else would comment. For the time being I've experimented with adding a paragraph break. Best wishes, Pol098 (talk) 19:37, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
I think this ENGVAR claim is bogus to begin with. I've been reading almost exclusively British-published material for the last 3 months, on a daily basis, and this alleged habit of British English "more often treat[ing] as plural" the names of organisations has not been in evidence. It seems to vary widely by the preferences of the writer and by the nature of the organisation in question, and even the nature of the sentence (is it saying something about the organisation as a collective of individuals with opinions and making choices and so on, or is it about an official position taken by the organisation as an entity?).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:35, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
When I moved to America in 1989, it was one of the first and most glaring differences I noticed between British and American English. I'd been reading American fiction for a long time so I shouldn't have been surprised; I was probably partly bilingual already (bi-langvarial?). What surprised me was how universally Americans corrected the plural to the singular. So I suspect you're right to say it's sometimes right in UK English to use the singular, but it would be wrong to have a rule that denied the plural was ever valid. My own, now somewhat polluted, recollection is that companies are almost always plural, since that's the context in which I recall noticing it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:48, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
It may well vary for companies nowadays, but for national teams the difference is stark. Comparing "England are playing Australia" v."England is playing Australia" in leading news outlets, the British ones (BBC, Times, Telegraph, Guardian, Sky Sport as well as the tabloids and regionals) are unanimously plural. Considering other EngVar, Indian media are almost consistently singular; Australian, New Zealand and West Indian media differ between titles, though mostly singular. Surprisingly, I also found "are" used in CNN International. Davidships (talk) 15:47, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, sports jargon seems to be "its own thing", and it varies more nationally (even where one might expect some "Commonwealth English" commonality). But I don't think this really translates into a broad generalization (e.g., about companies, not-for-profit organisations, etc.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:08, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
The Engvar claim which you described above as "bogus" specifically encompasses both teams and companies. It's certainly not so in relation to teams. For companies and the like, I agree that BrEng does vary considerably by writer and context - and sometimes also skewed a bit, at least colloquially, where there is a non-plural added "s" (eg Tescos/Tesco's, or W H Smiths/W H Smith's).Davidships (talk) 11:14, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
I agree. I still regularly read British commentary on sports and the use of the plural for teams is universal. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:50, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
Just as one point of reference, the Guardian style guide has a specific entry about plurals for companies, sports and bands (under "singular or plural?" https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-s)
It's definitely something that varies in British English, but is more fixed in American English. Popcornfud (talk) 12:59, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

WQHS-DT

Bde1982 and I are in disagreement on the correct possessive for a passage in WQHS-DT involving a company name.

Which of these is correct?

Channel Communications's aggressiveness with WCLQ-TV

or

Channel Communications' aggressiveness with WCLQ-TV

Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 20:43, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

@Sammi Brie: MOS:'S describes this:

For the possessive of singular nouns, including proper names and words ending in s, add 's (my daughter's achievement, my niece's wedding, Cortez's men, the boss's office, Illinois's largest employer, Descartes's philosophy, Verreaux's eagle).

—Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 20:48, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
Thank you, @Tenryuu; this is what I had suspected, but I wanted to tag the user since he reverted my retention of the MOS:'S-compliant usage. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 20:50, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
Worth mentioning that "correct" in this context only means "complying with the MOS", it does not necessarily mean grammatically correct for all variants of the English Language. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 21:18, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
Also worth noting that MOS:'S goes on to say that where this rule produces awkward pronunciation, in this case "channel communicationziz", rewording should be considered. Perhaps something like The aggressive approach by Channel Communications towards WCLQ-TV failed to yield a positive return.... Davidships (talk) 21:52, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
How is that pronuncation awkward?--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 22:40, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
@Davidships didn't say that it was awkward, just that if the rule does produce awkward pronunciation, rewording should be considered. Also, what sounds awkward varies from person to person and from one part of the country to another. In this case if a resident of Cleveland said it sounded awkward to them, I'd take their word for it. If it sounded wrong to someone both ways, then rewording is a good option. SchreiberBike | ⌨  01:56, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
But it doesn't produce an awkward pronunciation, so why bring it up, just to muddy the water?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:51, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Channel Communications's (so weird!) can only begin to be justified if Channel Communications functions as an ordinary singular when it is used in a sentence. And indeed, that's how it works at the company's website: "Channel Communications uses state and federal funds to help local towns and villages with engineering design ...". But is functioning as a singular sufficient to make that s's a proper genitive ending? No. If it were sufficient, why shouldn't the WP article The Bahamas have "The Bahamas's booming economy [led to it becoming a beacon for immigrants]", instead of "The Bahamas' booming economy" as at present? For that matter, the WP article McDonald's treats McDonald's, quite rightly, as an ordinary noun in the nominative or the accusative: so by close analogy the genitive should be McDonald's's, right? Wrong. Too silly.
Editors here should give rational guidance that reflects actual usage. The problem case is not covered in WP:MOS, nor adequately at Apostrophe to which MOS explicitly directs users: "For thorough treatment of the English possessive, see Apostrophe." This MOS page therefore needs adjustment; and so does Apostrophe, which has acquired substandard and unevidenced alterations over the years. 49.190.56.203 (talk) 08:57, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
There is a simple rule: if when speaking you would add "-ez", then write "'s" (as in Jamesez book => "James's book"). Just because "actual usage" in some parts of the world reflects mis-understanding or over-compensation (see also Greengrocer's apostrophe) does not mean we have to accept sloppy writing. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 10:01, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
Whatever the MOS does say, the MOS should be written to avoid absurdities such as adding 's in cases where it isn't going to be pronounced. I think it's fair to say that virtually nobody is going to say "Channel Communicationziz", that nobody should say that, and it's just plain dumb to add a suffix that implies that it should be pronounced. Even more absurd is to hold that the possessive of the name of the restaurant chain Denny's should be "Denny's's", both bad in writing and implying a pronunciation that doesn't exist. "Denny's's gross revenue in 2022 was ..."—no. The best treatment for the two names should be "Capital Communications'" and "Denny's'". The latter still looks strange, sure, but at least it matches the pronunciation.
For an MOS guideline to say, basically, "If our guideline produces stupid results, the answer is not to revise the guidelines but to avoid having to apply it" seems an acknowledgement that the guideline is bad. Largoplazo (talk) 11:17, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
JMF: Yes, there is that simple rule. It is not at all universally accepted. It would settle things for Channel Communications, but not for the genitive (possessive) of McDonald's. An almost universal unstated assumption (can you find a style guide that states it?): there should never be a further possessive apostrophe applied immediately after a possessive ending, just as (irrationally) there is never a further period (full stop) immediately after a period that marks abbreviation: like this, etc..
Largoplazo: see above. You write:
The best treatment for the two names should be "Capital Communications'" and "Denny's'". The latter still looks strange, sure, but at least it matches the pronunciation.
If you say so. But that's not how anyone proficient in real-world English for publication does it. Find us a respectably published source, or a style guide, that uses or recommends Denny's' or McDonald's'. Rewriting may be a cowardly way out, and not always available (we sometimes need to transcribe what people say). The sort of thing we usually find in print:
KFC's fries are like McDonald's but with chicken flavour.
While McDonald's's can be seen in print, it's not common. Can anyone find an instance of McDonald's' in print? I tried.
49.190.56.203 (talk) 01:12, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
It'll be rare because a) most of the material that would write about the fries at McDonald's are going to be news-style material (which doesn't follow the consistent-apostrophe-s rule [yet?] except at a few particular publishers; it's mostly an academic-style-guides matter at this point), and b) most writers would write around the awkardness (e.g., as I did in this sentence by using "the fries at McDonald's").  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:01, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Blond/e? (informal RfC)

"Blonde/blond" is the only (or one of a very few) gendered adjectives in English (it can also be a noun" "Blond man" and "blonde woman" is correct (and like it or not this remains strong, according to this Ngram. "The blonde woman..." (or just "the blonde...", when referring to a woman) is correct, we do it, no problem there.

But what about objects, and persons of unknown gender, or collections of people? "Blond/e-colored wood...", "The blond/e person"..., "Many blond/e people in the crowd"... how is that handled? As near as I can tell, there's no rule in English. So what do we do?

(This is important for the article Blond, but probably comes up very very rarely anywhere else. Maybe in "The Nazi blond/e Aryan ideal" or something".}

So, what to do, what to do? I'm seeing five choices:

  • A) Nothing. Rare. Don't need a rule. Let the person writing the passage decide, but stay consistent within articles.
  • B) Blond in all such cases.
  • C) Blonde in all such cases.
  • D) Avoid. Use "fair-haired" or "light colored" or what have you in all such cases.
  • Other, specify. "Blond/e" or "Blondx" or whatever. Coinflip, I don't know. (Thread creator is Herostratus (talk).)

Poll (I f'get what you're supposed to call this section)

  • C, blonde. It's 50-50, so why not give the women pride of place in this rare instance when we can. More below. Herostratus (talk) 21:31, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
  • A, we don't need to interfere here. Blond is a more American spelling and blonde is more preferred in British English in general for all uses. However it's not a hard and fast rule. Whomever writes it in an article first then just stay consistent and don't change English variations. Canterbury Tail talk 22:01, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
    I don't think that that's true (willing to be corrected), so it would not be a WP:ENGVAR issue. I think. Herostratus (talk) 16:43, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
  • A, mostly, until you get to the stay consistent within articles part, which is not what's happening in blond. That article looks okay (based on a quick skim through), so let's not create a new rule that requires us to screw up that page. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 22:28, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
    That article has been WP:BRD'd back to always using its original term ("blond") for all unspecified-gender cases, which is what is basically always done (and should be) for internal-consistency in cases like this. Herostratus (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 19:25, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
    (*sigh*) — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 20:58, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
    What? What'd I do? Herostratus (talk) 20:45, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
  • A. We definitely do not need a rule on this, since it is not something people frequently edit-war over. See any dictionary: blonde is feminine, blond is masculine. Just for concision reasons, use blond when the context is generic.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:13, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
    Similarly, generic "he" is more concise then "they" or "she", and also historically very common in our historical sources, maybe we should use that when gender is unknown? Herostratus (talk) 16:43, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
    The preponderance of style guides that MoS is based on now recommend against "generic he"; they don't recommend against "generic blond".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:54, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
    That's right. Thus we are thrown back on our resources. Herostratus (talk) 20:50, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
    This point is that WP does not "lead the charge" on any form of language reformation. The community has been over this to death-and-beyond many times, most obviously in how we write about trans and nonbinary people, but in various other ways as well (including actress, generic he/his/him, etc.) Unless and until the style guides that MoS is based on mostly decide to use one spelling or the other and to avoid gendered spellings, and to avoid defaulting to male gendered spellings, MoS and WP should not be taking some kind of language-change activistic position on the matter. Most especially not prescriptively, since editors will just disobey it, pointedly. We're supposed to be describing not forcing practice. Going with blonde as the default would even conflict with previous loose consensus to default toward actor, aviator, etc. That is, when we do go, or lean, toward choosing one form over another, it is the form that does not have feminizing add-ons like -ess, -trix, or in this case -e.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:46, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
  • A As long as an article is consistent throughout with using blond / blonde, we don't need another rule per WP:MOSBLOAT. Masterhatch (talk) 16:40, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
  • I agree with A on general small-MoS principles, but if we did want to have a rule, it should be B. "Blonde" is only for a (female) person (a blonde woman has blond hair). --Trovatore (talk) 18:27, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
    Not according to Webster ("She has blonde hair like her dad; Two of the boys are blond like their dad.") For people. For things, it does say to use blond. Herostratus (talk) 08:45, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
    That doesn't make much sense to me, given that hair is a thing and is not people. --Trovatore (talk) 00:10, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
  • A. Something this trivial really doesn't need to be codified in the MoS. So long as it's consistent I don't particularly care. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 01:30, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
  • A, because we all have better things to do. Or WP:CREEP, if it has to be something. Mathglot (talk) 03:57, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
  • A. Choice A sort of already includes the other possibilities. I do not think that a hard rule is required, at least not yet. The current practice seems adequate for the time being. --L.Smithfield (talk) 10:29, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

Extended ran... er, exposition, that's it, exposition

OK, Got to put on our male ally hats so we can mansplain which one best shows being awake to the need to not imply women are in an inferior position. Right? But how? Let's see... first of all I think it needs do be either "Blonde" or "Blonde". The other choices are kind of forced, except A, which basically will devolve to B because... well, uh, tube steak soire, if you get my drift. The article Blond uses the male term. Coincidence? Maybe. We see that in the Actor/Actress debate. The argument is between keeping it is, or using "Actor" for all thespians... erasing the profession of actress and forcing all thespians to use the male term. Might as well go back to generic "he" then. We could use the term "Actress" for all thespians -- it's a wiki, we can do what we want. But proposing this literally -- literally -- causes editors' brains to pop out their skulls and go running around the room apparently. You can't demote Tom Hanks to being an Actress! Alright, I'm not seriously proposing that, we do have to follow the outside world to some degree.

But with "blonde/blond" we don't have that problem! Right? Either term can be used for people of unknown gender and it doesn't jar. 50/50, so why not give the women a win for once? Sounds like being awake to the needs of women, right?. So, blonde, q.e.d.

But wait! "Blonde" as a noun, in the outside world, is overwhelmingly applied to women. "The lawyer and a tall blond walked into the room." Even with the misspelling, what gender do you think the writer intends to imply? Isn't that going along with the patriarchal notion that a man would be described by his occupation, a woman by her appearance? Cannot have that!. So, using "blonde" assumes that for hair color description of a person of unknown gender, we are implying that describing this appearance point, we are assuming it's probably a women, because after all that is the gender that it is fit and proper to be to describe so. Patriarchy! So, blond, q.e.d

But wait! Go the drugstore (not right now) and look at the hair color aisle. Lots and lots of blonde dyes aimed at women, none at men (maybe one). For the men, it's color some of the grey, get that senior vice president look. For the women, it's more to look pretty. It's true! So here we're talking about, not men describing women but womenwanting to have fair hair -- hella women. Are they bubble-brained bimbos concerned mainly with appearance? We're talkin lot of women, isn't that kind of harsh? Should a woman be ashamed to want to be pretty? And should we deliberately ignore the agency of these women? Ignore that fact that -- like it or not -- more people are blonde than blond? I don't think so. So, blonde, q.e.d.

Well, I'm tired, can't stay awake anymore. But when I wake up, I hope to be fully awake, to read the discussion (if any) by other awake people (well, you kind of have to be to participate in the discussion) It's a very complicated issue, that would tax even Kant (altho, granted, mind-numbingly unimportant, except for the one article). Herostratus (talk) 21:31, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

She reached into her bag and slid a photograph across the desk, a five-by-three glazed still. It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.

—Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely (via EEng)

The TL;DR for the above detailed gollywogging is: 1) Both blonde and blond are both used regularly in real life, 2) unlike actor/actress, waiter/waitress where I suppose we must default to stuffing unspecified-gender persons under the male term, we don't have to do that here -- either will do -- and 3) why not, this one time when we can stuff unspecified-gender persons under the female term, why not allow women to see their gender as the default, this once? Mnmh? Plus, 4) other reasons. Thus, blonde. (Herostratus (talk) 19:15, 16 June 2023 (UTC))

See the passage to the right ->. Must -- or can -- an editor convert that to blond (if it wasn't a quote)? Reversing the gender of the person in the photo (whose gender is not specified). Isn't that misleading the reader, on purpose? Herostratus (talk) 19:32, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

No, because you must never tweak a direct quote if you're using it as a quote. Canterbury Tail talk 20:35, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
True, but you could have "Smith's work in hair science, though, was regularly interrupted by series of blond fans coming through his lab." "Jones regularly spoke of the blonde, blue-eyed ideal he hought mankind should strive for" "Williams generally used what he called blonde-colored wood for his creations". And so forth. Herostratus (talk) 20:43, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
This seems like a quibble. It's quite obvious that the subject of the photograph is a woman, even if it's not stated in so many words. --Trovatore (talk) 18:52, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Is "no." or "#" meant to be used on comic issues?

For citations on comic books with volume and issue numbers, are we meant to use the number sign, the number abbreviation, or is that up to the editor?

  • MOS:POUND says: An exception is issue numbers of comic books, which unlike for other periodicals are conventionally given in general text in the form #1, unless a volume is also given, in which case write volume two, number seven or Vol. 2, No. 7.
  • MOS:COMICSVOLUME says: Where a comic-book series has been published in a number of volumes — Legion of Superheroes, for instance, has had five volumes — the specific series should be referred to by volume number, as indicated by the indicia of the series, not by year of first issue being published or by first series or second series. The preferred styling for this is Title, vol. 2, #1.

Thanks, Rjjiii (talk) 06:44, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

MOS:POUND should be followed, and MOS:COMICSVOLUME edited to comply with it and resolve this accidental WP:POLICYFORK. The whole point is that "#23" is a short-hand that is pervasive in the comics sphere, but if you are going with long-hand notation in something like "Vol. 2, No. 23" you are already out of the short-hand territory. Don't mix the styles half-and-half. And our citation templates are not going to support "#" anyway. Using "#23" style is more for running prose, not for citations to issues.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:18, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Thanks SMcCandlish. While digging into this, you seem to be the last editor involved in forming these policies who is still active.
My concern is just with the citations as I am updating {{comic strip reference}} so that it can finally be merged with {{cite comic}}. You say our citation templates are not going to support "#" but that is actually what got me here. The {{cite comic}} template is rather basic in some ways will take either "1" or "#1" as a parameter. As of now, it doesn't really format the input and (as suggested by WP:CMOS#CITESTYLE) many editors have stashed a pound sign in there.
To borrow a citation from Crystal Frasier (7 July 2023), I see these as both valid:
  • Crystal Frasier (a). "Untitled" Venus Envy, no. 2 (January 30, 2004). Official website of Venus Envy (webcomic). Archived from the original on November 12, 2020.
  • Crystal Frasier (a). "Untitled" Venus Envy, no. 2 (January 30, 2004). Official website of Venus Envy (webcomic). Archived from the original on November 12, 2020.
Rjjiii (talk) 06:42, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
It would still be weird to see output of "Vol. 3, #2", in a mixed style like that. Really, I would think that citation templates should always emit "No. 2" regardless of the |issue= input being "2" or "#2", because we want citations to be consistent with each other across the article. Again, the "#2" shorthand is more for running text, like "Superman #2 at a grade of 92 sold for US$80,000 in an auction in Dubai in 2023" or whatever. It's not meant for citations, which are a formal presentation of consistent publication data.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:57, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Awesome, that's how {{comic strip reference}} currently handles it.
{{comic strip reference| Writer = [[Greg Rucka|Rucka, Greg]] | Penciller = [[David Lopez (artist)|Lopez, David]] | Title = [[Wonder Woman]] | Volume =2 | Story = Affirmative Defense | Issue = #220 | date = Oct. 2005 | Publisher=DC Comics }} generates:
Rucka, Greg (w), Lopez, David (p). "Affirmative Defense" Wonder Woman, vol. 2, no. 220 (Oct. 2005). DC Comics. Rjjiii (talk) 07:17, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
I concur that the pound sign should be used as that is the common way of noting comic book issues in my experience. BOZ (talk) 14:09, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

With regards to crimes

Not sure if there's anything more specific here (tried searching, only got 'legal' listed first, but this isn't about court cases)... so, I don't know if there's anything already established, or not, in which case it's just random and how authors happen to write articles, but... when there's incidents, where murder is involved particularly, I noticed a pernicious pattern, where nationality is only mentioned if the perpetrator isn't from the same country, with those born there just having an age attached, usually... are there guidelines about that, and if not, shouldn't there be? I think it promotes a certain xenophobia in doing this, and I realize news sites already do it a lot, which is why it may be reflected here, but surely information should be consistent, so even if it's the country's same nationality it should be mentioned, or none should be at all... it's seriously insidious as it is as of now, by implication a far-right undercurrent... and, surely, the least an encyclopedia can be is consistent (which, I assume, is where 'mos' comes in), if nothing else... 92.18.125.136 (talk) 11:36, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

MOS:ETHNICITY would apply. Peaceray (talk) 14:21, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
So... does this apply in these cases? "Ethnicity, religion, or sexuality should generally not be in the lead unless relevant to the subject's notability. Similarly, neither previous nationalities nor the country of birth should be mentioned in the lead unless relevant to the subject's notability.
And, magically, for all the same-nationality crimes it's not notable, and the reverse? Well, it's discriminatory and just not consistent... and this site should seriously not merely derive notability from the desire of the far right to blame whole populations for the actions of individuals, which many articles are currently feeding into...
92.18.125.136 (talk) 19:37, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
Do you have some specific cases in mind? It's hard to be certain what it is you're objecting to without examples. The could be cases where mentioning the nationality is important, e.g. in the case of a hate-crime against people of that nationality.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:50, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
No, I meant the nationality of the perpetrator, not victims... see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westroads_Mall_shooting - where it doesn't say at all, until later on clarifies below (born in uk, but to american parents, so clearly shouldn't blame the nationality, in some editors' minds it seems...)
Then, linked in the same article due to being similar circumstances... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Munich_shooting - and, so, apparently, this time editors seem to totally want to blame iran (despite literally being born in germany)... also the article linked below it in the previous page...
You get the picture... this is pretty much the state of all such articles on the site, which I think only serves to inflame racial tensions for no reasons whatsoever (and it's one thing for tabloids funded by hateful billionaires to do it... but an encyclopedia that strives for neutrality, really?) 92.10.153.30 (talk) 17:00, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
I'm generally sceptical of arguments which take two examples and use them to state a vague conclusion about the entirety of Wikipedia. So as a Brit, I went looking through our recent list of terrorist attacks, and found...not much to support your ethnicity argument, if I'm being honest? 2017 London Bridge attack, 2017 Westminster attack, 7 July 2005 London bombings, Manchester Arena bombing, Liverpool Women's Hospital bombing, 2017 Finsbury Park attack, Murder of Jo Cox, Murder of Lee Rigby. Only the last mentions the ethnicity of the attackers in the lead, and even then only at the end of the second paragraph. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 20:16, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, this seems like something to bring up at Talk:2016 Munich shooting, etc., on a case-by-case basis.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:59, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
AirshipJungleman29, this might be, then, either not an issue for uk articles, or possibly more likely there wasn't a need to specify because the cause (still at the beginning) was deemed to be islamic extremism, which might not be specifically ethnic, but certainly related, and would possibly raise the issue of religion (how e.g. Finsbury's and Cox's murderers aren't described similarly, motive-wise, in any way)... either way, SMcCandlish, I brought this up here because case by case would obviously be quite tedious, and surely there should be some MOS in relation if there isn't already? As it is, then, is it just how editors randomly happen to write the articles? (Although, as mentioned, I could bring up more examples, but generally my impression was that, internationally at least (or, maybe, non-religious), there seemed to be differences between local and foreign... it would be better if there was a MOS agreed on, though...) 92.10.153.30 (talk) 01:48, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
Well, it's difficult to know what to address or how. Maybe if you laid out a clear nutshell description of the problem, diffs to examples, and proposed wording to implement.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:59, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
If a criminal is a "local" national, we don't need to mention that. But if they are foreign, that is noteworthy very early on in the article. The same applies to eg actors and politicians. You won't get a policy change to stop that. Johnbod (talk) 02:07, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Clarifying MOS:RETAIN

I wonder if there's a good way to clarify this: "When an English variety's consistent usage has been established in an article, maintain it in the absence of consensus to the contrary." I've repeatedly run into arguments along the lines that because an article has a previously established usage already, that it should not be changed, even though there's a consensus discussion open with reasons for a change presented; it's as if the existence of an established usage is believed by a few editors to short-circuit the consensus [re-]formation process. In worse cases, I've run into arguments that because Editor X established the original usage in the article, they therefore have more say in what the usage should be going forward. And we also seem to have lost the bit that any of this only applies to the first non-stub version of the article anyway.

The intents have always been twofold: A) Don't change a consistently used ENGVAR or other style variant (after the stub stage), without establishing a consensus to do it; and B) fall back on retaining the original style if a consensus cannot be reached. But there is nothing "magically special" about either the original style or the editor who chose it. This seems to have gotten muddled and mostly lost or at least confused in the last several years. And some of this may also apply to other *VAR guidelines. And it's problematic that MOS:STYLEVAR and MOS:ENGVAR (which contains RETAIN) are so widely separated when the latter is a subset rule of the former; they should be back-to-back.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:39, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

I think part of the reason to have a rule against change of style or language variety is just stability. Of course ties to a given country should override this -- your example above should never have been in US English, as you said. But if an article about some town in Asia or minor asteroid or obscure beetle is written in langvar X, it should stay that way, simply because that settles the question and we don't waste our breath on it. I don't want someone who says "90% of the beetles in this family are in UK English, so for consistency they all should be" to have any way to gain traction. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:24, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
Hmm. Nothing I posted has much to do with your latter concern. Anyone can still bring up a cross-topical consistency argument, and it will either win favo[u]r or not (hell, I even used that as a rationale in the Tartan Day change you seem to otherwise approve of). The MoS material in question doesn't address this at all, and still would not after revision in directions I'm hinting at. If someone does/did bring up such a rationale at a particular page, that won't have anything at all to with either the development level of the article, or the "I have special privileges on the page" ownership notions of whoever got there first (the two issues I'm trying to address above). What you've posted with "that settles the question" is directly against the clear wording and intent of the guideline (even in its currently muddled state), which is that if you think the ENGVAR currently used is unhelpful you should open a consensus discussion to change it (which would not be possible if the ENGVAR were permanently settled by the first editor).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:15, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
(ec) A lot of editors (including me) tend to be conservative on this, to avoid zillions of pointless arguments. I don't agree with your last two sentences, as a matter of observing what happens. For the majority of articles the choice of style is either a) pretty obvious, given "strong national ties", or b) a matter of first-come-first-served happenstance. Start tampering with b) and we'll be doing nothing else. Cases where there can be a discussion worth having are few (though you may have hit on one with Tartan Day). For me, the difficult bit is "established" - as when an article starts life in one version (typically BR Eng), then is gradually partly or wholly converted to Am Eng over time, mostly I think out of sheer f****** ignorance. Then someone comes along & converts the rest to the "established" style, saying it has been like that for X months or years with no one complaining. Either way, I can't see myself supporting a change, or not in the direction you seem to want to go. Large parts of WP are slowly drifting into American anyway; you should be content with this. Johnbod (talk) 01:27, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
But I'm not arguing for more Americanisms, and randomly injecting more of them in the wrong places doesn't make me "content". Nor am I arguing at all for more instability, but rather for clearer language that "I got here first, so my voice matters more" is not correct (WP:OWN, WP:VESTED), and that creating a two-sentence "article" doesn't count as an established article with an established style (which MoS was actually quite clear about for a very, very long time – someone changed it semi-recently without consensus, though I'm not inclined to go digging in page history to find out who and blame them by name). I don't know what you mean by "I don't agree with your last two sentences", since nothing you said in response has anything to do with former advice having gone missing or gotten muddled, or with the two closely-related *VAR passages being too widely separated in the page.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:08, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
Sorry, I meant the last 2 sentences of your 1st para: "In worse cases, I've run into arguments that because Editor X established the original usage in the article, they therefore have more say in what the usage should be going forward. And we also seem to have lost the bit that any of this only applies to the first non-stub version of the article anyway." I'm fine with reinstating the non-stub point, but I see it still being respected. It's "I got here first, so I got here first", and that's not WP:OWN. But usually the person who got there first left years ago, but others like me will want to WP:RETAIN. You still seem to want change rather than extra clarity, but I don't know what exactly... Johnbod (talk) 02:27, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
I have no idea what 'It's "I got here first, so I got here first", and that's not WP:OWN' is supposed to mean. Either you are or you are not making a case (as too often I see people try to make) that their voice means more than everyone else's in the discussion because of their earlier edits to the article. If you are making that kind of argument, then it's OWN; if you're not, then it's not responsive to the problem I raised. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:55, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
Oh dear! Try my first comment again. Since nobody else seems much interested in this, I won't re-explain for now. Johnbod (talk) 04:47, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Dashes and Austria-Hungary

A rather WP:LAME discussion regarding dashes is ongoing at Austria-Hungary. This page specifically uses "Austria-Hungary" as an example where a hyphen should be used (MOS:DUALNATIONALITIES) but the factual accuracy of the MOS' justification for so doing has been questioned (heresy?). Comment from people who specialise in style and punctuation would be welcome at Talk:Austria-Hungary. Furius (talk) 21:57, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

I have no view on hyphen v. endash there. However, the statement in MOS:DUALNATIONALITIES that "the hyphenated Austria-Hungary was the name of a single jurisdiction during its 1867–1918 existence" is inaccurate and should be corrected. With the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, two states (Austria and Hungary) were created out of the former Austrian Empire with separate jurisdictions, linked only by a common monarch, a common militry supreme command and a common foreign diplomatic service. They operated in almost all aspects as independent states. See, for example, Pearson, Raymond (2005). "Hungary:A State Truncated, A Nation Dismembered". Europe and Ethnicity: The First World War and Contemporary Ethnic Conflict. p. 88.: According to the new [1867] constitution, all governmental functions other than the supreme military, diplomatic and dynastic competencies (which were reserved as imperial) were devolved under the separate jurisdictions of 'Cisleithania' (Austria) and 'Transleithania' (Hungary). DeCausa (talk) 22:33, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
Then let's correct or just remove the history claims, without changing the advice. MoS doesn't need historical reasons for recommending something; many of its recommendations are arbitrary and just exist to forestall "stylewarring" (though in this case it exists to be consistent with the rest of the dash rules, which are derived from the preponderance of the academic-leaning style guides).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:12, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
I'm one of those that couldn't care less about whether it's a hyphen or ndash and don't think it's important. I think accuracy about history is important however. DeCausa (talk) 06:45, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
On the contary, as long as this page specially singles out Austria-Hungary as an example, this is the place where the discussion should be held, and a resolution reached here to change it here, before a change is made there. I don't feel terribly strongly about it myself. WP:COMMONNAME applies and whatever resolution is reached should involve applying consistent treatment across North Rhine-Westphalia, Rheinland-Palatinate, Winston-Salem, etc. Largoplazo (talk) 16:37, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
No, I don't think that's right. The MOS is ultimately about principles. The talk page for AH is the right place to discuss how the principle should apply to the specific case. Also, the conversation is well in progress now and watchers of this page have been notified of it. Nothing is gained by shutting it down there and restarting it here. Furius (talk) 17:06, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
Well, it's shut there now, so clearly I was wrong... I like the example of Rheinland-Palatinate. It's in no way an edge case, being obviously a single state, so it illustrates the underlying principle clearly. Furius (talk) 21:05, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
As the closer of the A-H RM, I think it should be removed from this section of the MoS. I think DeCausa had a valid argument both here and in the RM that, at the very least, the MoS may be inaccurate. The point of examples is to provide clarity by, well, example of how the principles at hand work. We shouldn't be in a position where people are arguing directly per an MoS example where the applicability of the related principle is the thing being discussed; as I said closing the RM, that's the tail wagging the dog. Sceptre (talk) 17:35, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
  • Regarding this edit by BarrelProof. This doesn't resolve the issue I have raised, which is the statement that Austria-Hungary was the name of a single jurisdiction during its 1867–1918 existence is misleading/incorrect. Another reason for it being hyphenated needs to be stated (if it is to be retained as an example). DeCausa (talk) 08:28, 30 July 2023 (UTC)
    I agree with DeCausa that my edit doesn't do anything to resolve the issues being discussed here. Personally, I think the Austria-Hungary example should be removed from the MoS, because it doesn't seem to have clear consensus support. It especially lacks agreement about its rationale. The MoS is supposed to document what has been agreed and can be used as general guidance, not to document the borderline cases that the community doesn't agree about. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 02:16, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
    I'm going to be WP:BOLD and remove it - which is not to say it can't be an example of use of a hyphen. Just that another reason besides Austria-Hungary was the name of a single jurisdiction during its 1867–1918 existence needs to found because A-H wasn't a single jurisdiction as a matter of fact. DeCausa (talk) 18:00, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

combining two casualty estimates

Would combining two casualty estimates with proper attribution to both sources be considered WP:OR or WP:SYNTH? because one of the sources mention casualties from 1999-mid2002 and the other source mentions casualties from mid2002 to mid 2003. like this:
~13,700–15,700 killed[a] (1999-2003; Janes & IISS)[ref1][ref2] Ola Tønningsberg (talk) 19:57, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
the note specifies the time periods more exactlyOla Tønningsberg (talk) 19:59, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Not a WT:MOS question, more of a WT:OR question.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:57, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Notes

  1. ^ This figure only counts from Aug 1999-Feb. 2002 and Aug. 2002-Aug. 2003

Proposal to capitalize racial descriptors

Under the identity section, I think that racial descriptors like White, Black, and Brown should be capitalized. The archive is 200+ pages, is there a way to search it to see if proposals like this have already been discussed?

Captchacatcher (talk) 04:29, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

MOS:RACECAPS has some links to previous discussions. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:35, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

12- or 24-hour time for military history articles?

User:Iseult has started an RfC at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history#RfC: Use of 12 or 24-hour time. Please discuss there. Jc3s5h (talk) 23:01, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Spacing of en dash between multi-word elements

I'm pretty sure we used to advise a spaced en dash between elements one or more of which is multi-part (Canada – United States relations), but MoS is no longer doing this, and even provides a counter-example of Seifert–van Kampen theorem with no spacing. Was this the result of a consensus discussion, or did someone just randomly change it? Or more to the point, is the unspaced style what consensus wants to see here, regardless how the change got into the guideline? This has come up at Talk:Gaya–Mughalsarai section#Requested move 16 July 2023.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:10, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

I don't think we're using spaces for that. Also please notice "New York–Los Angeles flight", which I think is another counter-example. And there are North Korea–South Korea relations, Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, and Famous Players–Lasky. (For the record, I continue to be irritated by North Rhine-Westphalia, which joins two elements, one of which includes a space, but does the joining with a hyphen. That reminds me of Strunk & White's example of the Chattanooga News-Free Press.) —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 04:34, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
LOL, a "news-free" press. Reminds me of the Victorian-era New York financial firm named "Cheatham & Steele".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:35, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

It should be noted that

Is it okay to include the phrase it should be noted that in MOS:NOTED per WP:PGCHANGE? I see this all the time, and although it is not directly addressing the reader in the imperative mood, it is indirectly telling readers that they should find something notable. I just removed the similar phrase It is thus worth noting how remarkable it is and replaced it with It is exceptional. The sentence in question is unsourced; I think it can be supported, although that presumptuous remark that we must all find "it worthy of noting how remarkable it is" really needed to go. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 17:39, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

I don't know whether there's a policy/guideline against using it, but I think it's poor language. If something wasn't notable, then presumably we wouldn't be talking about it in an article. DonIago (talk) 19:13, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
Policy and guideline pages do not need to be MOS compliant. Even the MOS pages directly address the reader and have things like contractions etc. In articles, however, nuke on sight. Primergrey (talk) 20:27, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
Indeed, my standard edit summary when I remove an instance of this is "Presumably, everything in the article is meant to be noted." Granted, sometimes a point deserves highlighting as a clarification to what precedes it, as a proviso, etc., but in those cases there are better ways to do that.
It isn't exactly an instruction, so some might not consider it to be covered implicitly by the guideline, but it's tantamount to an instruction. It's in the passive mood, "It should be noted", which leads to the question "Who should it be noted by?", to which the response is "by you". It should be covered, so let's make it explicit that it falls within the scope of the guideline, rather than leaving it to editors' interpretation. Largoplazo (talk) 23:20, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
Instructing readers is the wrong mode of address in a Wikipedia article, but it is exactly the right mode of address in the MOS. So a MOS admonition against instructing readers within Wikipedia articles is inappropriate to apply to MOS. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:10, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
Is there a misunderstanding here? Some respondents seem to believe that Nederlandse Leeuw found the phrase "it should be noted that" somewhere in the MOS and is objecting to its use. My understanding is that NL is proposing we add the phrase to the guideline as something not to do in articles. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 02:19, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
It should be noted that we can discuss it in both contexts. :p I (obviously) interpreted it the same way you're understanding it, though I also perhaps didn't pay as much attention to the initial question as I ought to have. DonIago (talk) 02:32, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
  • We shouldn't use it in articles - in my experience it and similar exhortations to the reader are usually diagnostic for a translation from French. Ok in policy pages I suppose. Johnbod (talk) 04:16, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
    Not only is "it should be noted that" not in the imperative mood, it's also not in the "passive mood", not least because no such thing exists. It's a truncated version of a clause in the active voice. A subordinate clause within it, "be noted", is indeed in the passive voice. There's nothing wrong with that: for me, "be noted" would rarely "[lead] to the question 'Who should it be noted by?'", as I'd start by assuming that the agent was unimportant. That the passive can be misused (often by "language experts" desperately attempting to show how bad it can be) doesn't mean that there's anything necessarily wrong with it. But if the writer simply means "Note that", then "Note that" is probably better. -- Hoary (talk) 04:30, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
  • As far as its use in articles, this is already covered in MOS:NOTE. No "note", no "it should be noted", no "interestingly", no "obviously", etc. Primergrey (talk) 05:00, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
    Yes, and David Eppstein and Primergrey are correct that it has nothing to do with how guideline and policy pages are written. They are instructional material by their nature.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:31, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Conflicting guidance with WikiProject:trains

It seems that we have conflicting guidance between MOS:& and Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains/Style advice#Article name. I think that conflict needs to be resolved. Please discuss. Blueboar (talk) 18:34, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Also, please ping the good folks at the trains wikiproject so they know about this discussion. Blueboar (talk) 18:36, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
Popular references to North American railroads often use ampersands (and various other shorthand), but the legal names are generally "and". It's pragmatic as much as anything to always use "and" in article names, with redirects as appropriate. I don't see this as a conflict. Mackensen (talk) 18:55, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
Fully agreed with Mackensen. The ampersand is not part of the legal name for railroads and should not be used in the article title. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 19:14, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
Are there any actual examples of articles where the two would lead to different titles? pburka (talk) 19:26, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
Well, you have Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway vs Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway, also known as ATSF, AT&SF, Santa Fe Railroad, Santa Fe Railway, Santa Fe etc. The first of these is the legal, correct name. A contrary example might be the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, also written as the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad, almost universally known as the Milwaukee Road, which by consensus is the current article title. I'm not aware of a situation where the ampersand would be the COMMONNAME of a railroad. Mackensen (talk) 19:56, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
Surely the most common (unambiguous) name should be used in all cases? Whether the article title uses "&" or "and" is trivia and, as long as the article is internally consistent, of absolutely no consequence to the encyclopaedia whatsoever. Thus if the most common name uses "&" the article should use "&", if the most common name uses "and" the article should use "and". If (and only if) neither is clearly the most common then use whichever is the legal name. Thryduulf (talk) 20:01, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
If (and only if) neither is clearly the most common then use whichever is the legal name The reason for the present guidance is that this is basically the outcome in all cases. Mackensen (talk) 20:04, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Change MOS:DASH hyphen exemption for compounded proper names

This exemption in MOS:ENBETWEEN, generally, use a hyphen in compounded proper names of single entities, is being misinterpreted by editors and used in instances where it wasn't intended to have been, as its phrasing is too ambiguous. For example, MOS:ENBETWEEN should have applied in this recent SAG–AFTRA move discussion, however editors used this exemption to state that a hyphen should be used instead of an en-dash, despite previous consensus at MOS being that this section of the guideline does pertain to this situation of a single organization which contains multiple entities (this is better explained in this previous comment by SMcC). I am proposing and seeking consensus that this move by A. di M. from 2011 be reverted, so that the phrasing is changed back to "Generally, use a hyphen in compounded place names", with the John Lennard-Jones example being moved back to the hyphenated personal names example at the bottom of this section. Happily888 (talk) 06:47, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. The wording's gotten futzed-with enough to produce a new RM result that is directly and starkly contradictory of all the previous similar ones, and this is really obviously not the intended effect. However, this is not the venue for undoing a bad RM closure (and the closer clearly did not understand the arguments being made; it has nothing whatsoever to do with whether SAG–AFTRA is presently a single organization; it is entirely about whether the name is composed of the name of formerly separate entities, which of course it is; otherwise we would simply never use en-dashes in names of organizations, and the guideline would not exist at all in the first place). That venue is WP:MR. This is the proper venue for correcting the guideline wording having become confused.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:30, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
That is to say, it is literally impossible for the closer's reasoning about MoS (or, more precisely, their reasoning about and understanding of the !voters' reasoning about MoS) to be correct. @Wpscatter: You should revert your close and let someone else handle it. Otherwise, this has to go to WP:MR.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:08, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
I'm not reverting my close. You spoke your piece already in the RM. I read it then, and was unconvinced. We clearly interpret the policy differently. If you feel very strongly that it should be reverted, take it to MR. WPscatter t/c 13:42, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
It's not being misinterpreted at all. A merged entity is a single entity with a compounded proper name. It should be a hyphen. The move close is proper and correct. oknazevad (talk) 13:21, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
But if that is the case, then there would be no reason to use an en-dash in an organization name at all, ever. This would mean that articles including Warner–Lambert, Stitzel–Weller, Brown–Forman, AFL–CIO, Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex and ZANU–PF, some of which were formed by mergers whilst others not, should all use hyphens as they all refer to single entities. Clearly this is incorrect and looking back at the guideline's page history clearly shows that the original intention of this section was only to enable hyphenated place names such as Guinea-Bissau and Austria-Hungary, not for all singular entities which was added in this revision in 2011. Whilst the page history shows the intention of this exemption, it is clear from this discussion that the phrasing is ambiguous as editors clearly don't understand what a singular entity is and if your definition is used it would literally be able to refer to almost all uses of en-dashes in Wikipedia, which is why I am proposing that the exemption be changed back to its clearer earlier form. Editors who opposed the move discussion were obviously basing their !votes on a flawed exemption which shouldn't and doesn't apply, as names of merged organizations refer to more than a single entity, and so most were mainly making just WP:IDONTLIKEIT comments. Happily888 (talk) 14:54, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
Yep. Who wants to get the MR started? The very inexperienced (been an editor less than a year) non-admin closer's standoffish reponse here also makes it clear they were WP:SUPERVOTING; closers are not supposed to become "convinced" by anything that sways their personal opinion, they are to summarize and policy-analyze the material presented by the !voters neutrally.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:32, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
Oh please. I did policy-analyze neutrally, and arrived at a different conclusion than you due to our different interpretations of the policy. I'm not sure why "convinced" set off red flags for you here; I don't know what else you would call the process of reading arguments and reaching a conclusion based on them. You believe so strongly that your interpretation is correct and mine is not that you're asking me to revert the close. It should be clear that you're out of line for doing that. And because I refused to comply you're implying that I'm too inexperienced to resolve the issue properly. WPscatter t/c 19:28, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
Whilst I don't doubt that the closer isn't inexperienced, it is generally recommended per WP:RMNAC that non-admin closers be cautious when closing significantly contentious discussions. Whilst any editor is able to close discussions, this move request was clearly contentious and would require an editor to have a very high familiarity with the request's associated policies and guidelines, which a closer may or may not have. Happily888 (talk) 01:33, 30 July 2023 (UTC)
The difference between say, the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex and SAG-AFTRA is that Dallas and Fort Worth (and the other cities and towns in the metroplex) are still separate entities and the metroplex is a grouping of independent entities. SAG-AFTRA on the other hand, is a single union, not an alliance of two separate unions. Like Wilkes-Barre, it is a single entity with two namesakes (the predecessor unions, which no longer exist as independent entities). It's like when someone gets married and adopts a hyphenated name consisting of both spouses' prior surnames. So, yeah, Warner–Lambert having a dash is incorrect, and based on a total incorrect understanding of how the grammar actually works. Same with Sitzel-Weller and Brown-Forman (the person who opened the move request on that one later agreed that they got it wrong because the company was not formed by a merger, but instead just has two namesake founders). oknazevad (talk) 14:40, 29 July 2023 (UTC)
That there are multiple kinds of reasons to use an en dash doesn't mean that the one you personally dislike is wrong.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:59, 29 July 2023 (UTC)
It's not about person like or dislike. It's about consistency of meaning and accuracy of facts. Just because you wrote it with one intent doesn't mean you weren't wrong in your understanding. oknazevad (talk) 03:19, 30 July 2023 (UTC)
This exemption should not be made. Tony (talk) 09:02, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
Just to clarify, I am seeking consensus about if the exemption should be changed and what it should be changed to, as currently it is being misinterpreted or able to be interpreted in multiple ways. It should either be changed back to "Generally, use a hyphen in compounded place names", which was the previous consensus but was changed to current phrasing without discussion, or to something different which clarifies and recommends greater use of hyphens if the consensus has changed, such as "Generally, use a hyphen in compounded proper names of single entities, including mergers of two single entities". Happily888 (talk) 07:46, 12 August 2023 (UTC)
It absolutely should not read "use a hyphen in compounded proper names of single entities, including mergers of two single entities", which is an exact reversal of the current standard, and could cause massive confusion, with it becoming entirely unclear when to use or not use an en dash in a name, and every name with one in it would be subject to move-warring on the basis of someone's opinion of what "single entities, including mergers of two single entities" could encompass.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:46, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

regarding: WP:LANGVAR - When a person of a nationality is referred to in another article

For example, US and Canadian players are referred to as "soccer players", while most other nations use footballer. Let's say for example, there is a page of a European person and they are the uncle of an American soccer player. In the personal section, it says XYZ is the uncle of PERSON, an American ______ player. Should it say "football player" becasue the article is written in British English, or "soccer player" because the term should be tied to the subject it is refering to? RedPatch (talk) 02:37, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Use language consistently thoughout an article; MOS:ARTCON. We do not veer back and forth between dialects as we refer to people or things from different parts of the world in the same article. For something with different names in different dialects, give both at first occurrence, e.g. "association football (soccer)".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:48, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

WP:ALBUM would like our style advice incorporated into the proper style guide

I'm one of the main authors of WP:ALBUMSTYLE and we've discussed on WT:ALBUM a couple of times having this formally added to the style guide under Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Contents#Topic-specific. How do we go about formalizing this style advice? Thanks. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:56, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

@Koavf: First, make sure it doesn't conflict with any extant P&G material. Second, go through it and replace instructions that are redundant with MOS:TITLES or any other guideline or policy, with shorter cross-references to the extant P&G material. Next, copyedit all the material to be in the style of site-wide guidance (e.g. remove references to the wikiproject, especially "we advise" sorts of statements). When it looks like a proper guideline, open a discussion at WP:VPPRO, and "advertise" the thread also at WP:VPPOL and WT:MOS and WT:ALBUMS, clearly named something like "Proposal to elevate what is presently WP:WikiProject Albums/Album article style advice to guideline status as WP:Manual of Style/Albums".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:58, 12 August 2023 (UTC)
@Koavf I am willing to help out with this process if you wanna put a taskforce together. Popcornfud (talk) 12:11, 12 August 2023 (UTC)
Boss. I've got work all day, but I can get started after. Thanks. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 15:24, 12 August 2023 (UTC)
Thumbs up emoji. This gives me a good place to start. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 15:23, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

How to call GNU/Linux?

I couldn't find any recommendations on how to call GNU/Linux. I think they should be added. Orisphera2 (talk) 20:14, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

See MOS:LINUX MrOllie (talk) 20:17, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Proposal to split MOS:GENDERID from Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biography

Comments invited.

Bluerasberry (talk) 19:12, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

@ 2.147.220.73 (talk) 13:52, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

MOS:ENGVAR question: Percent vs. per cent

I am a new editor who noticed the word "percent" commonly used on pages tagged {{use British English}}. I would like to get the opinion of others on whether "percent" is an error in British English or not. The Oxford and Collins Dictionaries both regard "percent" as purely the American form. I Google site searched the major British journals, such as The Times, and found "per cent" was used many times more commonly than "percent" on all of them. I suspect use of "percent" is subliminal penetration into the vernacular from American English and should therefore be avoided in formal literature. 𝔖𝔱𝔬𝔩𝔦𝔱𝔷 (talk) 11:14, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Google NGram Viewer indicates that BrE uses both per cent and (increasingly) percent, but that per cent is more common. (However, percentage, not per centage.) Doremo (talk) 11:28, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
NGram is not entirely reliable because it returns similar results for "colour" vs. "color", and the latter is always considered an error in BrE. I am aware that "percentage" is always written as one word in BrE, this is purely about "per cent" vs. "percent" alone with no suffixes or prefixes. 𝔖𝔱𝔬𝔩𝔦𝔱𝔷 (talk) 11:37, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
You can also run a domain-based search: site:.uk "per cent" (nominally 27.5 million hits) vs. site:.uk "percent" (nominally 36.4 million hits). This is also not entirely reliable (and will vary when the search is re-run), but it indicates that BrE usage is mixed. Doremo (talk) 11:47, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
A lot of these results are not exactly literary standard one would like to see on an encyclopaedia. Vernacular or informal text can diverge significantly from formal literature. The British government style manual states one should not use "percent", likewise the Australian government style manual also explicitly warns against "percent". 𝔖𝔱𝔬𝔩𝔦𝔱𝔷 (talk) 11:52, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
Someone had better warn The Times, The Guardian, the BBC, et al. that they're not up to snuff. :-) Doremo (talk) 12:11, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
These are all outliers in those publications, using site search shows "per cent" is vastly more common in them. Typographical errors do occur and cannot be used to justify them elsewhere. 𝔖𝔱𝔬𝔩𝔦𝔱𝔷 (talk) 12:22, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
Newspapers and broadcast media are not arbiters of correct or encyclopaedic style. Style guides produced by such bodies reflect journalistic practice and "house style". Martin of Sheffield (talk) 12:47, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
Even taking that into account; the Guardian's style guide says "per cent", so does the BBC's. Infact the BBC's goes a step further and says "there is no such thing as a percent". 𝔖𝔱𝔬𝔩𝔦𝔱𝔷 (talk) 13:16, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
You can't rely on the estimated search result numbers by Google. To use the Times as an example, the true results are 398 for "per cent" and 297 for "percent". Theknightwho (talk) 20:04, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
If an article is primarily using British English, yes it should say per cent. That it doesn't is likely because it was either edited by an American, someone whose first language is not English or a badly educated Brit/Australian. If the article is explicitly tagged with the use British English template, it should probably be corrected. If it is not tagged, do not bother. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:37, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
With all due respect, that's quite an assumption of my education based on a single two words... Chaheel Riens (talk) 15:55, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
No clue about your education, but as any fule kno the most common reason for not using the suitable variant of English in line with the rest of an article (or any language with multiple variants for that matter) is that they either natively speak another variant and do not notice the tag. They do not speak English natively at all and so do not understand the difference. Or coming a distant third, they do speak the variant natively and are just unable to spell correctly. That of course could be for any number of reasons, dyslexia, laziness, non-consistent human error, but is most likely because their education was insufficient and they just dont rite proper. Only in death does duty end (talk) 16:14, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
Chizz! That reference takes me back to my childhood. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:01, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
My question was exclusively regarding tagged articles, thank you ^.^ 𝔖𝔱𝔬𝔩𝔦𝔱𝔷 (talk) 13:43, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
This is correct: If an article is primarily using British English, yes it should say per cent. We don't need to have a silly linguistic prescription argument about whether it's really an "error" or not; it is sufficient for MOS:ENGVAR purposes that per cent is vastly preferred over percent in British and most other Commonwealth English dialects.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:27, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
Agreed. Johnbod (talk) 17:36, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

My views (as a BrEng speaker) are that percent and per cent are both valid in British English, which makes this distinct from an issue such as the colour / color split, where color is perceived as wrong in British English. I think we should only be actively going out of our way to make changes when a particular spelling is considered invalid in the relevant variety of English, which doesn't apply in this particular case. It's simply not relevant whether per cent is more common in British English, either - just that percent is not wrong.

Also, as someone who uses the word daily in a professional environment, the statement above that "per cent" is vastly more common is completely incorrect. You can't rely on Google's estimated search result numbers, as they're frequently wildly wrong. Doing a check of the actual numbers (by forcing it to go to the end of the results) shows that percent is about half as common as per cent. Not a major preference at all. Theknightwho (talk) 19:56, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

I never said the search results were iron-cast proof. Please take into account style manuals and such. "Percent" appears to be an example of Deutschlish, the German word is "prozent". English does not typically compound in this way. I suspect its probably an instance of the cultural influence of German immigrants to the United States. 𝔖𝔱𝔬𝔩𝔦𝔱𝔷 (talk) 20:16, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
I know it is far from perfect, but NGram viewer does seem to add to this hypothesis. In US English percent only starts appearing in the 20th century, rapidly taking off for some reason between 1929 and 1937. 𝔖𝔱𝔬𝔩𝔦𝔱𝔷 (talk) 20:29, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
@Stolitz Why do we need to take into account non-WP manuals of style? They aren't arbiters of what is correct English. Just arbiters of what certain editors prefer. That's what makes percent different from color: most speakers don't reject the spelling. The fact is that it doesn't matter if per cent is more common - just that percent is not wrong. Theknightwho (talk) 22:46, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

According to the online OED "percent" is a transitive verb meaning to rate or calculate: "...should be asterisked, questioned, percented, or fully accepted". It also notes "Chiefly U.S.". "per cent" is either and adverb: "recovering from 55 per cent burns" or a noun: "by only three-quarters of a per cent". However, of the listed quotes for the noun, 7 use the "per cent" form and 4 the "percent" form, so all I can deduce is that even the venerable OED is equivocal on this topic. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 20:42, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn't go quite so far as to say "percent" is actually wrong in BrEng but I certainly wouldn't say it was right. It puts my teeth on edge. DuncanHill (talk) 22:58, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

[This is in reply to the entire thread, not just DuncanHill in particular.] It's important to keep in mind that it's not always MoS's job to prescribe a particular "right" answer, but simply to forestall editwarring and round-in-circles "style fight" debates. What we have here at minimum is a 2:1 preference for per cent over percent in BrEng, and BrEng dictionaries and style guides (which do matter – MoS is not written in a vacuum, and is based primarily on four academic-leaning style guides: Chicago, Garner's, New Hart's/Oxford, and Fowler's, the last two of which are British) preferring per cent. This automatically means that the majority our editors who use BrEng, or any variety essentially indistinguishable from it in an encyclopedic register (i.e., nearly every dialect but US and maybe Canadian) are going to prefer per cent, and there is no reason to not let them have it. It would be a different matter if someone did a WP:MEATBOT job and went around wiping out percent in every single article that didn't have a {{Use American English}} template in it. But we don't have this situation to deal with, so this is a rambling dispute about nothing, basically. Just stop editwarring with and vociferously arguing against people who prefer per cent in non-American articles. There are way, way more important things to spend your time on here. PS: If there's some special British context in which professionals heavily favo[u]r percent, maybe an exception would be warranted in tha topic, like it's okay to use DMY dates in US military articles while the rest of the US stuff is likely to be using MDY.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:43, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

The exact proportions of "percent" vs. "per cent" in what counts as British English aren't clear. (As an elderly British editor, I find "per cent" old-fashioned now.) Howeve, it is clear that both are used. In which case, unless there are particularly strong reasons to prefer the spaced version, MOS:COMMONALITY should apply (and MOS:RETAIN). Peter coxhead (talk) 09:04, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
COMMONALITY is about the very worthwhile aim of making things as easily and widely understood as possible. No one's going to be confused by per cent. I agree with SMcCandlish's last post, particularly so this is a rambling dispute about nothing. DeCausa (talk) 09:22, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
COMMONALITY and RETAIN also help to prevent pointless edit changes. In the case that started this, Arthropod, originally there was one occurrence of "percent" and one of "per cent", so RETAIN doesn't apply. As both were acceptable to the editors who generated the material, personally I would apply COMMONALITY, but I agree that it's not an important issue. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:37, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
The reason articles are tagged "use x form of English" is for internal consistency within the article so that the article uses only one form of English exclusively. The evidence provided thus far does not seem to indicate "percent" enjoys widespread approval in British English sources. The lack of explicit support in dictionaries or style manuals means the instances can likely be chalked up to typographical errors or material written by American contributors which was not subsequently edited. 𝔖𝔱𝔬𝔩𝔦𝔱𝔷 (talk) 09:49, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm a reasonably well-educated Australian and I do try to write correctly. However, until last week I would not have been able to tell you which was the British variant and which was American. I'd guess that the average reader (excepting English professors) would be similar. The OP is (probably) technically correct but this is one of those things that most people are happy to ignore and should probably be left alone.  Stepho  talk  10:13, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Stolitz, I'll WP:AGF and assume this isn't just an attempt to hugely boost your post-count or something, but really, it's very clear from the above discussion that both 'percent' and 'per cent' are both in common use in British English, and there is absolutely no need to trawl the encyclopedia changing one to the other. I'd also add, you're clearly over-stepping the mark changing it where it's been used in quotes, and changing it where other language variations, such as Hiberno-English, have been used. Posting here as you blanked the active discussion on your own talk page. BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 10:34, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

I stopped changing it in direct quotations as soon as it was pointed out to me. I have also exclusively restricted myself to editing instances on pages specifically tagged "use British English". 𝔖𝔱𝔬𝔩𝔦𝔱𝔷 (talk) 10:38, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
Just to add to what Bastun says, I was quite surprised to see you all over my watchlist yesterday and today and even more surprised to see this. It seems to me highly inappropriate to proactively being pursuing these mass edits, and only those mass edits, while this discussion is ongoing. Surely, you can find something else to do? There's no urgency (or importance) in making those edits. Is there any reason why you won't pause this? DeCausa (talk) 11:15, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
I do tend to get fixated on individual problems and really have to follow them through until they're finished. I know this is not going to be regarded as a very major issue by many, but it is something that aroused my attention. 𝔖𝔱𝔬𝔩𝔦𝔱𝔷 (talk) 11:17, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
You've opened this thread to ask others of their opinion and while they've been giving it you've ploughed on with your mass edits doing it anyway. That's not cool. DeCausa (talk) 11:35, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
I felt a rough consensus had emerged. I have no intention of spreading it beyond the "Use British English" tag. 𝔖𝔱𝔬𝔩𝔦𝔱𝔷 (talk) 11:38, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
Except where you have done exactly that. BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 12:16, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
I can only assume that page at one point was tagged BrE because it appeared under that tag when I searched. 𝔖𝔱𝔬𝔩𝔦𝔱𝔷 (talk) 12:20, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

The evidence provided thus far does not seem to indicate "percent" enjoys widespread approval in British English sources. The lack of explicit support in dictionaries or style manuals means the instances can likely be chalked up to typographical errors or material written by American contributors which was not subsequently edited. Frankly, the preceding sentence is bullshit. As has been pointed out on your (now deleted) talk page, both forms are in common use even if one is somewhat more prevalent than the other, your google search results are a lot closer than you're making out, and 'percent' is in both Collins and OED. Please see WP:RETAIN and, well - here, have this...

Follow me to join the secret cabal!

Plip! 

BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 12:36, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
"Being in a dictionary" does not support use. It merely reflects that something has been used. DuncanHill (talk) 12:41, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
The Collins page uses an American-accented voice for its examples of use; which does imply they consider it an Americanism. 𝔖𝔱𝔬𝔩𝔦𝔱𝔷 (talk) 12:47, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
And the OED page @Bastun: linked to is for the verb. DuncanHill (talk) 12:50, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
Exactly. Both 'percent' and 'per cent' are used. That's the point. BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 13:39, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
I think you are missing the point somewhat, for the OED "percent" is not the same as "per cent". As noted above ""percent" is a transitive verb meaning to rate or calculate" and "per cent" is the noun or adverb. DuncanHill (talk) 13:54, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
As already noted, of the listed quotes for the noun, 7 use the "per cent" form and 4 the "percent" form, so all I can deduce is that even the venerable OED is equivocal on this topic. It's also trivial to find uses of percent in British English, as the search results shown above attest. Theknightwho (talk) 13:29, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
OED doesn't record only British usage.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:28, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Bayes' theorem

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Bayes' theorem. which is a discussion about the titles of several pages that depart from MOS:'S. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 16:35, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Polls

Is there any rule or standard for the colors that are used for different options in polls in articles? The colors on polls related to elections are understandable. For others, like yes/no type polls, green and red are often used in polls about a topic, but there does not seem to be any consistency in the usage of green and red for yes and no respectively. Are the colors chosen randomly? Also, considering that green and red have opposite symbolic meanings, using them is such polls would be a violation of WP:NPOV right? JonSnow64 (talk) 08:37, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

What about accessibility concerns? Isn't color blindness (including but not limited to red-green color blindness) something we should be taking into account in such situations? --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:23, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
As per MOS:COLOR, that should not be an issue as long as color is not the only thing used to communicate important information. JonSnow64 (talk) 13:58, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

MOS:FLAGS

Hello,

I am currently reviewing Chelsea F.C. 2–4 Bradford City A.F.C. which has been nominated at WP:GA and I wanted to ask about the application of MOS:FLAGS in relation to the match details section. I've seen other articles with and without flag icons so thought it best to find out what feedback I should be providing in the review before I do. My main concern is that the players aren't representing their respective countries when they play for their club so I'm unsure if it is an appropriate use of flag icons or not. Any feedback you can provide would be much appreciated. I know this won't affect the GA process but I'd still like to provide the correct feedback where possible. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 11:12, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

It's the opposite of an appropriate use; in this case, the flags are being used to indicate the citizenship or origin nationalities of the players. From MOS:SPORTFLAG: "Flags should never indicate the player's nationality in a non-sporting sense; flags should only indicate the sportsperson's national squad/team or representative nationality." As both teams are English, there is no use for flag icons here at all.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:56, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for your help. I will pass this feedback on. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 17:48, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
I totally disagree with this assessment. The fact that both clubs involved are English (or to be more precise, affiliated with the English Football Association) has no relevance to whether their players have the same nationality. The flags are not being used to indicate the players’ citizenship, they indicate which sporting nationality they have. This is most obvious due to the fact that we’re talking about players and clubs being English rather than British. There is no such thing as English, Scottish or Welsh citizenship, after all! – PeeJay 12:03, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for bringing your thoughts here PeeJay, it's appreciated. I'll leave the 1992 League Cup as is pending further discussion. I think the issue is that in club matches, none of the players are representing their country. In this case, they are representing Chelsea and Bradford (Man U and Forest in the 92 final) so their nationalities are irrelevant. I was more thinking MOS:FLAGCRUFT when I brought this up but I hadn't thought of SPORTFLAG. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 13:16, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
They may not be representing their nations in a strict sense, but the national breakdown of a football squad is fairly relevant these days. Check out 11v11 for an example of a website that lists the players' nationalities. – PeeJay 13:47, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
"whether their players have the same nationality" and "They may not be representing their nations in a strict sense": Read again: "Flags should never indicate the player's nationality in a non-sporting sense; flags should only indicate the sportsperson's national squad/team or representative nationality." There is nothing equivocal about it. The fact that you're really insistent that this is what you want to do doesn't in any way make it a good idea. Guidelines are not put aside just because someone is loud about it. "the national breakdown of a football squad is fairly relevant these days" – That may be the case, but is resolved by writing text, not by injecting cutesey flag icons.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:05, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
Huh? I'm saying that your argument to remove them makes no sense since the flags already aren't being used to indicate non-sporting nationality. They are being used exactly as MOS:SPORTFLAGS allows. This discussion is moot. – PeeJay 11:53, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
For me, as I said before, the issue was more FLAGCRUFT because we are emphasizing nationality without good reason. It's irrelevant that the goalie is Danish or the midfielder is Scottish or whatever because it's between club X and club Y. In these matches they aren't representing their country and I think that is partly the spirit behind SPORTFLAG but maybe not so much to the letter of it. Perhaps that needs made clearer if that is indeed the intent behind the policy. There are also the issues pointed out below. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 15:14, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
And "Huh?" right back at you. Using flags to indicate the origin nationality of players on an English team is exactly "being used to indicate non-sporting nationality". How can you possibly be confused about this? The very thing you want to do is the no. 1 thing the guideline says not to do, and the primary misuse of flags that it was written to stop people from doing.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:14, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
It's obviously not being used to indicate non-sporting nationality, since "English" is not a nationality in any context other than sport. As I said earlier, there's no such thing as an English passport, so what else could those flags be referring to other than the players' sporting nationalities? You're looking at this arse-backwards. – PeeJay 07:25, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
"English" is certainly a nationality. You are confusing nationality with citizenship. In most states, yes they are the same but not in the UK. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 09:02, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
Okay, that's a semantic issue. Apologies for my poor word choice. Nevertheless, the flags in these articles are not being used to indicate anything other than sporting nationality, so there shouldn't be a problem with regard to MOS:SPORTFLAGS. – PeeJay 10:25, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
Except they don't mention the country. This is a point of MOS:FLAGS, the flag cannot on its own be used to identify anything, it needs to be accompanied by the country because people do not recognise all flags and mouse over isn't an option on many devices. Canterbury Tail talk 14:01, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
I'm not sure that all participants in this discussion are equally conversant with what is meant by representative nationality or sporting nationality for footballers. In the specific contexts of (women's and men's) association football, "sporting nationality" is an attribute of individual players and concerns the national team for which, in essence, they would be playing if they were called up. This attribute of players is typically presented - by Reliable Sources off-wiki - in squad lists/match lists of players for club teams.
When the MOS says, Flags should never indicate the player's nationality in a non-sporting sense; flags should only indicate the sportsperson's national squad/team or representative nationality it is saying that flags should not be used, e.g., to indicate country of origin, or passport nationality, where these differ from a player's national team or representative nationality. It most certainly is not saying that flags should not be used for players except when for matches among national teams - if that were the intended meaning, the guideline text would have to be very different, since the existing text says essentially the opposite. Newimpartial (talk) 14:27, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
Another concern with the use there is that the country names are missing. Flags cannot be used on their own, they need to be accompanied by the country name. The flag on its own cannot be used as the only means to convey the information. Canterbury Tail talk 13:54, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
  • In my view flags are way overused on en.WP, apparently for decorative purposes. This leads to garish infoboxes, and worse, awkwardly wrapped cells in tables. Has anyone given a thought to the fact that most WP readers are seeing this on a small phone screen? Tony (talk) 13:02, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
I think they should just all be removed personally. A 23px flag is frequently unidentifiable anyway, is it the US or Liberia? Australia or New Zealand? Norway or Iceland? It goes on. It's almost always just clutter and serves zero purpose other than as decoration. I'd support a removal to do away with flag icons entirely. They're a solution desperately looking for a problem. Canterbury Tail talk 15:39, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
I agree. As an identifier for a country, it's redundant. It's like writing "People typically have 20 (twenty) baby teeth and 32 (thirty-two) adult teeth." Imagine if we spelled out every number after its digital representation. And it isn't a good identifier, given that people know countries primarily by their names and not by their flags. It's usually a digression, off-topic. Imagine a list of countries through which the Rhine flows: "The Rhine flows through Switzerland (and, by the way, this is what Switzerland's flag looks like), Germany (and, by the way, this is what Germany's flag looks like), ...." The flags add nothing. The only rationale for including them in sports lists is that they're used in sporting events, presumably because at multinational sporting events, there's an element of national pride that's being fed, because the respective teams are using their flags as emblems there, flags are focal points for expressions of national pride, etc. Wikipedia, however, doesn't mention countries for the purpose of stoking the national pride of its readers. Largoplazo (talk) 16:13, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
One other thing that people are missing, MOS:SPORTFLAG is for players. Not for managers, coaches, clerks etc who should not have flags. Canterbury Tail talk 15:57, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Block quotations

MOS:BLOCKQUOTE says that we should use the {{blockquote}} template for long quotations and the documentation of {{quote box}} says that use is not advised in articles. However, the latter is used on 789,000 pages while the former only on 176,000, and articles that use {{quote box}} pass quality assessments such as WP:FAC regularly without any complaint (even though FA's are supposed to be MOS-compliant). Is the MOS out of sync with actual practice? — Charcoal feather (talk) 02:12, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Clearly "not advised in articles" is out of step with actual practice. But the two templates do different things, don't they? "quote box" is for a quotation that you can engage with independently of the main text (like most pictures), whereas "blockquote" is for long quotations which form part of the main text of the article. Furius (talk) 11:36, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
Apparently, this issue was (hotly) debated in 2016, but nothing was actually done about it. — Charcoal feather (talk) 11:48, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
It's been debated a lot, many times. The consensus that was arrived at is that pull quotes are not appropriate in the encyclopedia (they are primarily a magazine style, use to grab attention and to push a particular viewpoint), so templates that are for pull quotes or which are indistinguishable from them, should not be used in our articles. We've also had many previous discussions, including at Village Pump, about doing "fancy" stuff to basic block-quotation markup, and the consensus is no: use the indented-on-both-sides style that has been preferred by mainstream publishers for a century or two. What's happened in the interim is that no one with time on their hands has volunteered to do all the tedious cleanup of replacing {{quote box}} and other pull-quote templates with {{blockquote}} (and just removing entirely any instances that are in fact pull quotes; there are a lot of pseudo-pullquotes that need to be converted into standard blockquotes; I've done many hundreds of them myself, but it's a time-consuming slog). An argument like the above that boils down to "They have not all be cleaned up yet, ergo I WP:WIN and get to use them any time I want in our articles" is WP:FAITACCOMPLI nonsense.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:10, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
I see no consensus prohibiting {{quote box}} in the 2016 RFC. Has there been a follow-up discussion about it? In any case, this is not a "they have not all been cleaned up yet" matter. As noted above, the template is actively (increasingly?) being used and your position appears to be out of step with actual practice. — Charcoal feather (talk) 03:34, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
There's a difference between a quote box and a pull quote, though, isn't there? A pull quote repeats text in the article to draw attention to it and it's clearly undue. But the quote box can also (and mostly seems to be?) used to display ancillary quotations. This is quite common in encyclopedias and textbooks. So, I don't understand why the whole template would be deprecated, rather than a particular use of it. Furius (talk) 10:51, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
To the extent the usage of quote box has shifted, it is because many editors have spent the time to remove inappropriate pull quotes, leaving behind non-pull-quote quotation that should be properly integrated into the prose as block quotations. "This is quite common in encyclopedias" – ‹The template Talkfact is being considered for merging.› [citation needed]. And WP is not bound to mimic the stylistic choices of some other encyclopedia. "and textbooks" – WP:NOT#TEXTBOOK.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:43, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
The statement in the template's documentation that the quote box should not be used in articles goes back at least fifteen years and is out of step with actual practice. I think that statement should be removed. The linked 2016 discussion doesn't fully deprecate pull quotes -- only "in most cases", with an exception for editorial discretion. The close also explicitly says there was no consensus on presentation of other quotes, referring to the section of the discussion that covered {{quotebox}}, among others. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:30, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
That the statement has been there for 15 years is a strong indication of consensus. There is no rule, even a policy, that editors do not routinely break on Wikipedia. This is not a valid argument to get rid of the rules, but to clean up after those editors.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:43, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Neologisms

The article on the neologism and our policy on WP:NEO both agree that a neologism may already have become widely accepted (and even be notable enough for its own article). By contrast this guideline makes the case at MOS:NEO for their general non-acceptability. Should this guide not support out policy and the real world more visibly? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 17:29, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

No. WP:NEO is about creating articles on neologisms, as encyclopedia subjects, so that our readers can learn about them. MOS:NEO is about not using one in Wikipedia's own voice and thereby making the presumption that every reader has already learned it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:39, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
Yes. I just think the current wording here is overly heavy-handed and offputting. For example if some neologism passes WP:GNG and has its own article here, then it seems irresponsible not to use it where relevant. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 16:11, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
Neologisms are frequently not usable in an encyclopedic voice, even when they make it into the dictionary and have stable definitions. "Bling", for example, has been around for a while now, but it's hard to imagine an article in which it could be used naturally in running prose. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:57, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
Right. More specifically, "... then it seems irresponsible not to use it" just doesn't logically follow at all from a neologism being notable enough for its own article (or non-WP:INDISCRIMINATE enough to be covered in some other article). There are all kinds of neologisms, including offensive ones, that are notable simply by way of controversy, humor value, or other reasons that have F-all to do with writing in an encyclopedic tone. I think Steelpillow may be confusing Wikipedia noting that a term exists (e.g. "... sometimes also referred to as whatever[1]"), and just using the term in running text as if it were the normal way to refer to the subject, as if it were everyday English understood by all our readers.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:08, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

MOS:PREFIXDASH

From what I see, the MOS:PREFIXDASH part has been introduced on the basis of at least this discussion from 2010 citing The Chicago Manual of Style. With the example of "pre–World War II", the manual justifies such usage as "space that cannot be besmirched by hyphens because “World War II” is a proper noun". But it also admits that it "is a rather fussy use of the en dash that many people ignore, preferring the hyphen". Indeed, I see several issues with it:

All in all, I believe MOS:PREFIXDASH/SUFFIXDASH should be deprecated and removed per WP:CREEP. Thoughts? Brandmeistertalk 13:28, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

It's possible that this style is old-fashioned, but it was correct typography back when I learned it. Are you suggesting that we shouldn't follow the old-school convention at all, or that we shouldn't care? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:53, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
We shouldn't follow it and remove from our MoS, as it doesn't appear to be universally accepted. This would mean that a host of categories moved from hyphen to dash, such as Category:Anti–nuclear weapons movement should be reverted to hyphens, but I think it is worth it. Brandmeistertalk 22:11, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
So, more like "require the opposite" than "it's not important to be consistent between articles"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:08, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
  • It was in Chicago some time ago, I think, and in MOS's earlier days was heavily advocated by a US-based editor who may not still be here. I think it's a bit weird, but I don't care much if it's kept. In practice it's used only in a small number of instances. Tony (talk) 04:20, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
  • I agree it's weird, but I'm not convinced it's worth changing the MoS. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:59, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
  • Strongly support removal. The use of the endash instead of a hyphen causes endless problems, especially when used in article titles. Cannot cut and paste due to code page issues. Bot issues requiring &ndash; or &#8211; to be used in URLs. When trying to edit an article, it makes it hard to search and replace. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 02:33, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
    Could you elaborate on the code- and bot-based issues you mentioned? I'm not super familiar with the technical aspects around here. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 13:51, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
    AIUI these problems aren't specific to this rule. We'll have those complications if people are allowed to use any kind of dash (or certain other characters, such as &) in article titles. And if you have to write the bot code to cope with one article title, then you save nothing by removing it from some article titles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:52, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
    And I don't buy this argument anyway. For one thing, &#8211 is not URL encoding at all (URL encoding for an en dash would be %E2%80%93). If some technical issue exists, it is certainly not the one that Hawkeye7 is claiming. I use 4 different browsers on a regular basis, and up to 8 for website-testing purposes, and not a single one of them has any trouble handling an en dash in URL. Just try this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada–United_States_relations Your browser may auto-convert to URL encoding (some do, some don't), but it will not fail to handle it, unless you are using such ridiculously old software that WP cannot reasonably be expected to support it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:12, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
  • Support removal. The use of dash makes articles unaccessible to read and edit. A reader cannot simply use the 'find in page' function to search text and is cumbersome to add when editing. It does not make articles easier to understand or readable. Therefore Wp:Creep is a factor as it is adding to Wikipedia's overextensive instructions without giving benefit. This odd usage of en-dash should not be included within Wikipedia's MOS. Carpimaps (talk) 07:34, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
  • No Really? You want to meld Anti–nuclear weapons with Anti-nuclear weapons? You think the difference is trivial? I know, let's stop using commas -- just use periods instead. They look pretty much the same anyway. EEng 01:29, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
    @EEng:, yes, if readers notice the difference between a hyphen and an n-dash, it's a useful distinction. But the variation in the length of these marks between fonts in common use under different operating systems, etc. is such that in practice it's not actually very useful. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:10, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
    the variation in the length of these marks between fonts in common use under different operating systems, etc. is such that in practice it's not actually very usefu[citation needed] EEng 20:02, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
    Using endash might be grammatically correct – though, based on the various style guides it looks like there's no strong consensus – but I think the practical impact of this change to articles/article titles would be minimal. "Anti-nuclear weapons" pretty clearly refers to the position of being against nuclear weapons, not to weapons based on the implied "anti-nuclear" technology. "Pro-civil rights protestors" are pretty clearly protestors who are in favor of civil rights, rather than people protesting for rights who behave in a civil manner. As for proper nouns, I think "pre-Industrial revolution" pretty clearly refers to the time period before the Industrial Revolution, and not to a revolution that happened before industrial (lowercased) times.
    If there are technical issues to be solved by using hyphen vs endash, it might be worth implementing. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 14:03, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
    "Enuf" pretty clearly means "enough", but we don't do that either. EEng 20:02, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
    And "enough" causes no technical issues. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 20:44, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
    If there are technical issues to be solved, as you said. I'm not sure that there are technical issues that this would solve. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:55, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
  • I like this ndash. I also am of the age to have learned this as "proper", but it really helps prime my brain to digest the next unit as a single token. The hyphen binds more tightly than the dash, and implies to me the existence of (using the examples given thus far) "anti-nuclear weapons" detonating from the runaway fission of an anti-nucleus, and the second War in a place called "pre-World". Maybe I'm dumb. Like User:Hawkeye7 above, I do count rather more than five keypresses to input &ndash;, but on my device it's a single long press on the hyphen, which gives me the options of mdash, ndash, middot, and underbar/underscore. I don't know that we necessarily need to mandate an ndash in this usage, but I'm certainly opposed to replacing it with a hyphen, if that is the proposal here. Folly Mox (talk) 07:43, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
  • Remove It's fussy and old-fashioned, not general practice in current style guides, and makes article linking difficult. — The Anome (talk) 08:14, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
    I thought that all article titles containing a dash also had a redirect with a hyphen (wasn't there a bot generating these?), so it shouldn't make linking difficult at all. (Of course, it's no issue at all in the visual editor, because you have options there like searching for the page, pasting in the whole URL for automatic conversion, etc.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:31, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
    They don't; they have to be created manually. WMF has tried and failed to make it seamless. Try it with the Category:Anti-nuclear weapons movement. You'll get the soft redirect page. Note that categories do not redirect the way articles do, so every one of them creates additional, ongoing maintenance work. Ndashes should never be used with categories. The whole ndash thing has been a tragedy from the start. Also: I do not use and do not accept, recognise or respect the Chicago Manual of Style. We have the Australian Commonwealth Style Guide per WP:ENGVAR. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:10, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
  • Keep as I don't see a strong reason to change/remove it. The source for "AP" above is a summary of the guidelines, so this edge case for compounds not being mentioned doesn't mean using hyphens is AP-approved. The source for "Chicago" above is similarly narrowed, an FAQ question. I was able to find a source for MLA that says hyphens between all words is preferred, except for proper nouns, where endash should be used instead. And I found a source for the complete APA guide (that I don't think I can link for copyvio reasons) that had exactly 0 examples of this kind of compound, in either of the sections on hyphens or dashes. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 22:10, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
  • You can’t beat a discussion on which type of dash to use. WP at its best.. MapReader (talk) 14:25, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
    I'd say you've got some stiff competition in #MOS:ENGVAR_question: Percent vs. per cent. EEng 21:14, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
  • Keep. If it's found in Chicago, MLA, and other academic style guides, we should continue to follow suit, since our own style guide is based on those. MoS has adopted virtually nothing from AP Stylebook and we do quite the opposite of what it recommends in many cases, because news style and academic style are very different. WP is not written in news style as a matter of policy (WP:NOT#NEWS).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:02, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
    NOTNEWS is about content. It's about not including everything that is breaking news, nor engaging in celebrity gossip, and being mindful of WP:BLP1E. It's not about writing style. No where in that link is anything about style, because it's a content policy. bay your reasoning here I could just as easily say the section that says Wikipedia is not a scientific journal to say we shouldn't follow MLA styles. That would be a dumb idea, but it's the same flawed reasoning. Writing style is not part of policy for a reason. oknazevad (talk) 01:33, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
    NOTNEWS says "Wikipedia is not written in news style." That sentence of the policy, at least, is about style, not content. WhatamIdoing (talk) 11:01, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
    Indeed, and it's been there for a very long time. I'm surprised how often people miss it. Writing style absolutely is part of policy, just in a simple and broad way, to address the one perennial and tedious problem of people trying to write WP like news because most of them are most used to reading news and get the mistaken impression that it is "the" correct way to write. The details of writing style have been left to guidelines (and, yes, for good reasons).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:56, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
  • Keep – Personally I've found the PREFIXDASH and SUFFIXDASH guidelines quite helpful for clarity, in Wikipedia and in my own personal use. I'm also not convinced that the increased difficulty of typing dashes is very significant for this debate, since we use en/em dashes in so many other situations that everybody agrees are appropriate—I'm sure PREFIXDASH/SUFFIXDASH account for a very small share of dash usage on Wikipedia. (Full disclosure—I'm kind of obsessed with dashes, as a userbox of mine proudly displays. So I'll basically always oppose limiting their use. I'm arguably biased.) — ⁠Will ⁠• ⁠B [talk] 00:19, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
  • Keep – it would just generally make many different categories confusing. Not exactly WP:CREEP if it's a somewhat short section stopping a decent amount of misunderstandings. OfTheUsername (talk) 04:10, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
  • Keep I think that the current practice is sound and useful. Maybe (somehow) this will change in decades to come, but not now. --L.Smithfield (talk) 10:07, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
  • Strong keep A lot of editors don't follow a lot of our policies and guidelines, either because they aren't aware or by accident. Should we get rid of those other guidelines too? Also, this is just good practice recommended by most style guides, including MLA and Chicago. InfiniteNexus (talk) 03:53, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

URLs

Is there a section of the manual of style that explains how website URLs should be capitalized? I haven't turned one up. ~TPW 13:20, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Typically, they aren't. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:25, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
Are you saying that there is no guidance in the manual of style? That's the question I'm hoping to get answered. ~TPW 15:08, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
I believe that the MOS should respect the normalization and syntax published[1][2][3][4] by the IETF, e.g.,
  • Normalize the scheme to lower case
  • Normalize %xx to upper case
  • Normalize the host to lower case
  • Do not change the case of the fragment, path or query unless permitted by a specific scheme
The first three are merely recommendations, but violating the last may break the URI. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 16:52, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
That's probably a good approach, and I'd support something along these lines if proposed, but I won't propose it myself because I don't know what "scheme," "%xx," "host," "fragment," "path," and "query" mean in this context. Perhaps someone with that technical knowledge could restate it in simpler English and propose that addition. ~TPW 18:25, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
The problem is that even if these technical distinctions are carefully stated, well-meaning people are going to routinely screw it up and we'll have broken URLs all over the place for no benefit at all. As I recall there's some bot that goes around changing http: to https: and maybe that's a place to do this. Or maybe no. I really don't see the value. EEng 19:14, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
The Percent (%) is used as an escape for entering hexadecimal code points when a character is not on the keyboard or is not permitted in a URI.
The scheme[1]: 17, 3.1. Scheme  is the part before the colon:

Each URI begins with a scheme name that refers to a specification for assigning identifiers within that scheme.

The authority[1]: 17–22, 3.2. Authority  is the part after the initial two slashes and terminated at the next slash ("/"), question mark ("?"), or number sign ("#") character, or by the end of the URI. The authority most often contains only a case-insensitve host name, but it may start with user information and may terminate with a port number.
The path[1]: 22–23, 3.3. Path  is the part of the URI separated from the authority by a slash and terminated by a question mark ("?"), or number sign ("#") character, or by the end of the URI.
The query[1]: 23–24, 3.4. Query  is the part of the URI beginning with the first question mark ("?") character and terminated by a number sign ("#") character or by the end of the URI.
The fragment[1]: 24–25, 3.5. Fragment  is the part of the URI beginning with the first number sign ("#") character and terminated by the end of the URI. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 20:36, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
A common practice, recommended at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking#Link titles, though it should also be mentioned in MOS:TITLES somewhere, is CamelCasing in the site name to make it easier to visually parse (WashingtonPost.com versus washingtonpost.com). These elements of URLs are case-insensitive for good reason. But that's nothing to do with capitalizing "HTTPS://" or something like that; I don't think anyone thinks that's a good idea. And parts of URLs after the hostname are apt to just break if their case is changed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:54, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks, that's probably just the page I was trying to find. ~TPW 19:28, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Berners-Lee, Tim; Fielding, R.; Masinter, L. (January 2005). Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax. doi:10.17487/RFC3986. STD 66. RFC 3986.
  2. ^ Hoffman, P. (October 2005). The telnet URI Scheme. doi:10.17487/RFC4248. RFC 4248.
  3. ^ Ellermann, F. (April 2010). The 'news' and 'nntp' URI Schemes. doi:10.17487/RFC5538. ISSN 2070-1721. RFC 5538.
  4. ^ Yevstifeyev, M. (June 2011). The 'tn3270' URI Scheme. doi:10.17487/RFC6270. ISSN 2070-1721. RFC 6270.

MOS:LEADIMAGE and edited historic portraits

I'd like some outside input to the discussion currently going on at Talk:Joseph_Stalin about which lead image to use. There's many portraits of him released by the Soviet authorities that, as a standard practice, edited out some of his imperfections before publication (which I believe was done in support of Joseph Stalin's cult of personality). There's also decent unedited photos of him available by foreign photographers. I've argued that if we follow WP:MOSLEAD which stipulates that lead images "should be natural and appropriate representations of the topic" we should stick with unedited photos. But others do not believe the editing was significant enough to block official portraits, or that "what our readers will expect to see" is edited versions. How is MOS:LEADIMAGE properly read, and should we let the current ongoing popular vote be decisive? Machinarium (talk) 09:00, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

The current discussion is at Talk:Joseph Stalin#Rfc on Infobox Image (2023). The issue has been discussed several times on that page, so that link saves a step. SchreiberBike | ⌨  13:13, 5 September 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, I'm happy with any outsiders commenting there. Here I'm not asking for the same discussion, but if MOS:LEADIMAGE is clear enough on this, and also if a popular vote can just overrule Manual of Style? Machinarium (talk) 16:34, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Math and MOS:YOU

I am not clear how the admonition against second-person pronouns applies to math articles like completely positive map. Is the phrase "we say" appropriate? ~TPW 18:25, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Probably not. In the instance where it's used in that article, it's easily fixed by replicating the approach used in the second half of the same sentence. And I've made that fix. Largoplazo (talk) 22:48, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
Agreed. The we/you stuff in mathematics is a rather pedagogical bad habit at odds with MOS:YOU, MOS:TONE, and WP:NOT#TEXTBOOK. I've never seen a case that couldn't be written around (and produce better encyclopedic prose in the process).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:43, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks! My sense was that it should be changed, but I've been bitten in the past for making adjustments to math articles regarding boldface, and I wasn't sure if some obscure rule applied to this as well. ~TPW 13:40, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Decorative blockquote quotation marks

Is there any reason blockquote templates are prohibited from using large decorative quotation marks like {{cquote}} in mainspace? To me it makes it obvious that the indented area is a quote Aaron Liu (talk) 13:48, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Because it 1) is pointless, breaking the material off into such a block already indicates that it is a quote and 2) looks childish. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 16:33, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
Most browsers only render blockquotes as a centered indent, which IMO doesn’t really indicate it is a quote to a reader. The only things telling me that it is a quote is the attribution after the dash. (Obviously I also disagree that it looks childish but I get the idea that people hate it now) Aaron Liu (talk) 16:50, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
Usually there isn't even an attribution after the dash, but just a reference to a source. Nevertheless it's an universal convention in English to use such indented blocks for blockquotes, plus the HTML BLOCKQUOTE element (which is used to produce them) explicitly carries this semantics too. Gawaon (talk) 17:11, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
Yes. "doesn’t really indicate it is a quote to a reader" doesn't make any sense, since block quotations being set off as a block that is indented on both sides has been the dominant style of block quotation across all English-language publishing for over a century. The fact that a few blog packages have decided to inject extraneous giant quotation mark images as their default styling for blockquote is no reason for Wikipedia to do it (nor are blogging and CMS packages consistent about this anyway; many use other styling, like a weird vertical bar on the left, which was borrowed from the reply-quoting style of the now-defunct email app Eurora). Our entire style is sparse and anti-decoration (see e.g. all of WP:IUP, MOS:IMAGES, MOS:ICONS, etc.). Besides, we introduce block quotations with material that indicates that it is a block quotation, e.g. "According to Smith in How to Store Bellybutton Lint:", so the reader already understands. If you run across a confusing case of a block quote that doesn't have any introductory indicator, then just fix it. PS: A <ref> dumped inside a block quote should be moved to the end of the introductory clause, since it is not part of the quoted material. I fix probably 20 of these per week. This is different from block quote templates with em-dash attribution parameters, but those should rarely be used, as they are overly dramatic and may WP:UNDUE-ly draw attention to a particular source's opinion. That style is best used when quoting someone at their own article (Mark Twain, whatever), or quoting a historical figure/document at an article on a historical event (Battle of Culloden, whatever), not for quoting modern secondary sources on general topics (albinism, football, Gaza, etc.).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:24, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
Over the years this has been discussed many times. See the last RfC on the subject at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 219#RfC: Use of Large Quotes in article space, and the Cquote template for an explanation of the reasons. StarryGrandma (talk) 17:16, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
Thanks, I guess I shouldn’t ignore newer results when searching next time. Aaron Liu (talk) 17:52, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Number format for TV articles

There’s an RFC here regarding MOSNUM and the preferred number format for articles about TV programmes and series, in which your contributions would be most welcome. MapReader (talk) 12:43, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

MOS:SECTIONANCHOR and Template:Anchor/doc

I propose that we merge the content currently at Template:Anchor/doc § Rationale for substitution in the header into MOS:SECTIONANCHOR. Specifically, the issue of placing anchors above or below the heading rather than inside the heading is not discussed in MOS:SECTIONANCHOR and should be. Daask (talk) 13:58, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Good idea, though mentioning it in the template documentation is also a good idea.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:05, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

RfC on capitalization after a colon or dash

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters § RfC on capitalization after a colon or dash. Thank you. InfiniteNexus (talk) 17:45, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Serious conflict between MOS:LQ and something added to MOS:CONFORM

When quoting a complete sentence, it is usually recommended to keep the first word capitalized. However, if the quoted passage has been integrated into the surrounding sentence (for example, with an introduction such as "X said that"), the original capital letter may be lower-cased.

This should be replaced with something like When quoting a complete sentence, keep the first word capitalized, and if the quoted passage has been integrated into the surrounding sentence, lead into it with a colon (X wrote: "[Full sentence quoted here.]")

The current terrible advice (I'm not going to diff-dig to try to find out who did this) is in direct conflict with MOS:LQ, the entire point of which is to accurately preserve the presence or absence of original punctuation and capitalization so as not to mislead readers about the exact nature of the material. The practice of lower-casing that this passge added to CONFORM is endorsing sorely misleads the reader, implying strongly but wrongly that the quotation is a fragment and is missing anterior material. It's directly analogous to why we do not permit injection of periods (full stops) at the ends of quoted fragments, wrongly implying that the material ended there when it really has posterior material that we have removed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:04, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Same goes for the line-item right after that: It is normally unnecessary to explicitly note changes in capitalization. However, for more precision, the altered letter may be put inside square brackets: should be replaced with something like Changes in capitalization may be made, with the altered letter put inside square brackets:  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:07, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

MOS:LQ is about "Punctuation inside or outside", not capitalization, so obviously there is no conflict here. Moreover, well-known style guides such as CMOS also allow changing the case of the first letter of a quote to fit the surrounding context. Gawaon (talk) 10:13, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
I believe these examples given are or should be correct:
LaVesque's report stated: "The equipment was selected for its low price. This is the primary reason for criticism of the program."
LaVesque's report said that "the equipment was selected for its low price".
And these would be incorrect:
LaVesque's report said that "the equipment was selected for its low price."
LaVesque's report said that "The equipment was selected for its low price."
Whereas, if we used the traditional style with a comma instead of the colon, this would be correct:
LaVesque's report said, "The equipment was selected for its low price."
My two cents. —DIYeditor (talk) 10:19, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
Nah, this is a WP:POLICYFORK without consensus. It directly conflicts with the entire rationale of MOS:LQ. The single purpose that rule has is ensuring that quotations are not substantively changed in ways that can mislead or confuse readers (or, as a side concern, result in WP:RESUSE of our content that perpetuates blatant misquotation with WP's name all over it). But let's put this another way: Why on earth would anyone want to copy-paste quoted material verbatim, and then rather than just stick a colon in front of it, start monkeying with the content inside it? What possible encyclopedic purpose could that have? What could we possibly gain from doing it? We already know that it can cause confusion and mislead readers about whether the quotation is a complete sentence or not (and result in later misquotations that are taken as if valid), so we already know what some of the costs are. What is the amazing, astoudning up-side to screwing around substantiely with the quoted material, that somehow blows away the costs and concerns of doing it? Quotation verge on sacrosanct around here, and even getting the [legitimate, consensus-agreed] alternations allowed CONFORM, like fixing dashes and removing extraneous spaces and reducing ALL CAPS to another form of emphasis, took a long period of consensus discussion and wrangling. The willy-nilly addition of radical changes to it that conflict with the entire raison d'etre of other parts of MoS is just beyond the pale.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:39, 25 September 2023‎ (UTC)
As Gawaon I don't see how this even relates specifically to MOS:LQ, which is basically just saying use British-style punctuation on quotes. Where does anything say one must quote a complete sentence as a complete sentence rather than as part of the Wikipedia sentence? —DIYeditor (talk) 10:57, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
Huh? It's not about "British" anything. (There is no such thing as a consistent British quotation-punctuation style, BTW. If you actually read British style manuals, and I've read very nearly every one of them published since the late 19th c., there are over ten somewhat variant quote-punctuaating styles advocated by different major UK publishers and producers of UK-oriented style guides, none of them consistent with each other, and all offering conflicting rationales, when they offer a rationale at all). And no one ever said anything about "must quote a complete sentence as a complete sentence". If you want to quote some fragment of a sentence, then do so, but do not fake the reader out and trick them into thinking it's a full sentence, and likewise don't quote actually a full sentence and then alter it to mislead the reader into thinking it's a fragment. WHY, WHY, WHY would anyone ever do that? What possible purpose could it serve? In what way could it ever produce more reliable or more precisely understandable output for our readers? I'm going to keep asking question like this until someone provides an answer that is solidly defensible and somehow overwhelms the central accuracy and clarity concerns that our MoS is built on. Repeat: The entire point of LQ is to not substantively change the quoted material. See also MOS:PMC: Same rule, different wording and a different focus on slightly different bad things to not do, and what good, precise, accurate, confusion-preventing, misquotation-preventing things to do instead. We have three statements of the same rule/principle: do not substantively modify quotations without annotating the modification with square-brackets or ellipses, but it's okay to modify in non-substantive conforming ways like fixing spacing or replacing obsolete glyphs. So, WHY WHY WHY would we even contemplate tolerating an insertion into one these three rules that invalidates the entire rationale of all of them at once?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:49, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
I completely agree with SMcCandlish. This sneaky gradual changing of MOS—without even a mention on the talk-age—is alarming. I suggest the passages involved be reverted to the way they were. Tony (talk) 12:02, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
It certainly doesn't look like a "sneaky gradual changing" though, that's for sure. The criticized sentences are at least one year old. (I didn't check further ago, so I have no idea when they where first added). So I'd say that, whatever else one might say about them, they have withstood the test of time and changing them now will surely require an RfC. Gawaon (talk) 12:10, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
Also, I'd doubt that many editors or style guides would consider a case change of the first word in a quote a "substantial modification". Which is precisely why it's allowed not only by MOS:CONFORM, but also by many other style guides. Gawaon (talk) 12:13, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
Stood the test of time my shiny metal ass, as Bender would say. Bad changes to various guideline pages go unnoticed for longer than that on a pretty regular basis, especially on MoS pages because there are so many of them with so many details, the interplay between which is not apparent to anyone but the most studious (until conflicts arise because of that interplay, which is exactly why this discussion is happening). Sneaky may not be best term, but it is problematic when people make drive-by substantive changes to WP:P&G pages without gaining consensus first, and without serious consideration of how the proposed changes will work with or against other rules. What we have here is a direct conflict between the intent of an addition to CONFORM and all the rest of CONFORM, and LQ, and PMC (and probably something somewhere else, too). That is by definition a POLICYFORK, and there is absolutely no time limit on resolving it. We do not tolerate conflicts between P&G material, no matter how long it takes someone to notice that there is one and bring it up for resolution.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:20, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
I'm with User:DIYeditor: it's entirely normal in quality writing, academic and otherwise, to integrate the start of a quoted sentence into prose without capitalising: Gloucester laments that we are "as flies to wanton boys" to the gods. Some editors might wish to be more informative and do ... we are "[a]s flies to wanton boys", but that is increasingly unusual in professional writing, and mandating it would be very much a case of instruction creep, as well as against the de facto consensus by which either can be used at editorial discretion. UndercoverClassicist T·C 12:32, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
I agree. This is a case where editorial discretion should be allowed; the rare cases where changing capitalization might materially mislead the reader can be dealt with via talk page discussions if necessary. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:02, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
I didn't understand that this (seemingly) small punctuation change was an important topic and only came here because of Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Words to watch#Proposed clarification on scare quotes by User:Herostratus. I don't have a strong opinion or precisely understand what the argument here is about. Unnoticed drive-by bold edits to important pages are a problem and shouldn't be allowed to persevere without good cause. Why wasn't the page being watched when it happened, nobody cared, or the change is too minor? —DIYeditor (talk) 13:54, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
I agree that it’s not a “serious” issue. The effect of the revised wording proposed above, ISTM, is to mandate the use of the colon when full sentences are quoted, and thereby to eliminate usage such as the third example given in CONFORM, The program was criticized primarily because "the equipment was selected for its low price", according to LaVesque., which wouldn’t scan with colon and the comma after the quotation. Is this what we want to do? Editor discretion does seem a better path; provided all the formats are consistent with proper punctuation, it is hard to get excited about the opening capital letter becoming lower case? MapReader (talk) 14:08, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Out of curiosity, I did a search for how that third example I reference above - the one without the colon and with the lower case at the beginning of the quoted sentence - got added into the MoS, and uncovered this edit from January 2018[12]. It would appear that this example - the one that would be outlawed by the proposed revised wording above - was originally EDITED INTO the MoS by one SMcCandlish. Does anyone know what happened to him? ;) Subsequent edits have made the somewhat anal square bracketing of the changed capital letter optional, which seems common sense to me. MapReader (talk) 16:50, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
    If I put an example in there that helped lead to the current snafu, then I'm certainly sorry I did that. Was I badly caffeine deprived? Was it before all three guidelines were otherwise in agreement? What is before I'd absorbed them all and understood how they interrelate? I'm not sure; it's too long ago. What I'm sure of now is that this is a fundamental conflict between 1/10 of one guideline, and the other 9/10s of it plus two related guidelines, and this is a problem. That a few people here don't seem to understand the problem indicates I'm doing a poor job of explaining it, so maybe someone else who understands it can re-explain it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:26, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
    I don’t think there’s a snafu or a significant conflict. LQ is about preserving original punctuation (although not always - for example original commas at the end of a quoted phrase are nevertheless put outside the quote, or omitted, for readability) but I can’t get excited about original capitalisation at the beginning of a quoted sentence. Neither, it seems, can other editors in the discussion above, nor was your former self bothered about it as evidenced by the edit history. And for any editors who might worry about it, the current wording of the MoS permits the square bracketed opening letter, which IMO looks horribly clunky but remains an option at editor discretion. MapReader (talk) 02:49, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
    The clunkiness-avoidance solution is, obviously, to write 'According to Smith: "Full sentence quoted here."' There is no reason to violate the integrity of the quotation by doing 'According to Smith, "full sentence quoted here but with the 'F' changed to lower case for no damned reason."'  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:04, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

I am of the view that quotations should be reproduced fairly faithfully and whether a quote is a complete sentence or sentence fragment. This intrinsically means to not change capitalisation unless this is indicated. I don't particularly see why it should be changed in the case where it is indicated as being permitted. For the following example that permits changing to lowercase:

  • LaVesque's report said that "the equipment was selected for its low price".

It could be written as:

  • LaVesque's report said that "The equipment was selected for its low price".
  • LaVesque's report said that the "equipment was selected for its low price".
  • LaVesque's report said that "[t]he equipment was selected for its low price".

Cinderella157 (talk) 07:18, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

So internal angled quote-marks shouldn't be changed to ' and '? Tony (talk) 09:37, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
Well, that's always been permitted by CONFORM because it's just a glyph substition that doesn't affect the meaning or implication of the content to the reader. PS: The list above is missing LaVesque's report said that: "The equipment was selected for its low price"., which is also fine, and may be preferred by people who don't like following "that" immediately with a capitalized sentence-starting quotation.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:01, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
Add (per MOS:QUOTECOMMA), LaVesque's report said that, "The equipment was selected for its low price". There are lots of ways to skin this cat. :) Cinderella157 (talk) 12:09, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
I was always taught to prefer the direct speech approach where the quoted sentence is complete, as noted by DIYeditor above: LaVesque's report said, "The equipment was selected for its low price." Has it come to be deprecated over the intervening decades? To me, the insertion of a superfluous 'that' in the immediately above examples seems ungrammatical. Davidships (talk) 20:57, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
And double quotes to single quotes, since what was quoted in the original is now a quote within a quote. Cinderella157 (talk) 12:02, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Can we specify a space after "c.", please?

I see too many instances of "c.1936" or the like. Can we please specify here that "c." is followed by a space before the year? BD2412 T 19:56, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

That's already the case. The recommended way is the {{circa}} template which does the right thing: c. 2023. Plus MOS:CIRCA recommends putting a non-breaking space after "very short modifiers such as c., fl., r., b., and d." Gawaon (talk) 20:34, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
As circa is simply a shortened form of a word (circa), specifying that a space should follow it would be tantamount to reminding editors that words generally need to be followed by a space: I think that would be instruction creep. UndercoverClassicist T·C 21:01, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Much as I would like to agree, I see too many actual instances to believe editors understand the need for the space. Moreover, I am concerned that if I start fixing those without a policy to which to point, it will be fought over. BD2412 T 21:52, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Why not just point to MOS:CIRCA and try it? (In my view, it's already there, if maybe not quite as explicit as it could be said.) Gawaon (talk) 22:00, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
I've been fixing those for years and I don't recall any objections that a quick link to MOS:CIRCA hasn't solved. I don't see a need for a change. SchreiberBike | ⌨  22:19, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
I'll give it a go, then. BD2412 T 23:25, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
@BD2412, this sounds like a task ripe for an AWB run. I used the query insource:/ c\.<100-3000>/ to find a bunch of instances of the error, and then the find-and-replace \sc\.(\d{3,4})(\D) →  {{circa|$1}}$2 to change to the preferred format.
Results from the run are here. I ran into a fair number of false positives, including instances where the unspaced format was part of a book title and where c.[number] appeared as part of a legal code or scientific measurement rather than a year. Results within file captions seemed to have the most success, so filtering for that might make the early run faster. There was also some trickiness due to instances where a circa date range was used, often incorrectly (in these cases I generally had to fix it manually to use the {{circa|approx start|approx end}} format). Further, MOS:CIRCA seems to specify that the tooltip is preferred only at the first instance, with later ones able to use |lk=no to suppress it.
Given these factors, I think you'd have to do a fair amount of refining before it'd be possible to make this ironclad enough to turn into a bot task. But if you're willing to check each edit manually, then have at it! Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk 05:57, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
It's even more common to run into non-standard handling of page numbers: "p33", "p.33", "p 33", "pg33", "pg.33", "pg 33", "pg. 33", etc.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:51, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
That's yet another reason to modernize citations to CS1, which I believe fixes page number formatting. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 14:24, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Yes, and I do it all the time, but it's very tedious.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:41, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
I am working through those as well. Tedious, indeed! BD2412 T 18:37, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Would this citation style be deprecated?

I was updating a niche reference template to work on mobile and noticed that it's used in a few articles to create what is probably the deprecated kind of parenthetical footnote as the citation details are in the body text and not the linked footnote. Is this currently accepted? And if not, would it be fine to update the template/documentation to discourage it?

Body text of the article.[Beit-Hallahmi 1992]: 6 

References

  1. [Beit-Hallahmi 1992] Beit-Hallahmi, Benjamin (28 December 1992). Rosen, Roger (ed.). The illustrated encyclopedia of active new religions, sects, and cults (1st ed.). New York: Rosen Pub. Group. ISBN 9780823915057.

Rjjiii (talk) 01:24, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

These aren't parenthetical references, per the definition provided in the deprecation RfC. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:36, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
They look like parenthetical references, except they use brackets and are superscripted. This template, {{listref}} and is sibling {{listref/reflist}}, are certainly bizarre. They create clutter in the citation and in the "References" section – see "Main sources" at List of new religious movements. I don't see how it can be an improvement over the {{sfn}} mechanism.
Body text of the article.[1]
References
  1. ^ Beit-Hallahmi 1992, p. 6.
Sources
-- Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:11, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
Indeed, that is certainly the deprecated WP:PAREN style. The only difference is that a smaller superscript font is used, but the main argument for deprecation was that this style causes needless clutter that interrupts the reading flow. And that's true regardless of the font size. So yes, a warning should be added to the template to point out that such usage is deprecated and existing occurrences should be converted to a different style. Or maybe it's even possible to edit the template in such a way that that happens automatically (making its output looking more like that of {{sfn}}? Gawaon (talk) 06:08, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Nikkimaria, if there is any debate about whether they are deprecated, I'll leave them be and move on. Gawaon, the purpose of the template is probably unclear from that example because it's using the template to do something awkward. The intended use for {{listref}} and similar templates that do not create back-links is either to reuse the same reference so many times that the backlinks would become unmanageable or to create references in a place where backlinks create some technical problem. Regards, Rjjiii (talk) 06:40, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, I see that in the examples you provide the freestyle style of the template is used to create author–year citations in a way that doesn't show up in the documentation and was probably not foreseen by the template creators. So it seems the template itself is not to blame. Still, I think a note such as "Don't use this style to create author–year citation references, which are deprecated" wouldn't hurt. Gawaon (talk) 07:11, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
Tend to agree with Gawaon, but this is really a matter for WT:CITE not WT:MOS.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:37, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

MOS:US

Re: "the use or non-use of periods (full stops) should also be consistent with other country abbreviations in the same article (thus the US, UK, and USSR, not the U.S., UK, and USSR)"

Consider the article that refers to "U.S." dozens or hundreds of times and does not contain abbreviated references to the United Kingdom, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, etc. Then, one day an editor adds a reference to "UK". While the reasonable thing to do would be to change this to "U.K." for consistency with the dozens or hundreds of "U.S.", this is not supported by the above clause; rather, it implies that the dozens or hundreds of "U.S." should be changed to "US". Does this need improvement? ―Mandruss ☎ 13:24, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Thats not what the clause says or implies. It just says it should be consistently one or the other, not a mixture of both. Either changing UK to U.K. OR changing all the U.S. to US would make it compliant. But changing U.S. to US dozens-to-hundreds of times to match one UK would rightly earn a trout. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:34, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
I have never seen U.K., and I think it's fair to say that it amounts to a neologism. Remsense (talk) 19:52, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
More likely it has dropped out of use due to the pressure from journalists. It certainly is not a neologism, unless you consider 60 years "neo". Martin of Sheffield (talk) 22:10, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
No, U.K. is not an accepted format. The point with US/U.S. is that both formats are acceptable in American usage (for example CNN always uses US) and hence when other such unpunctuated forms appear - EU, UK, USSR, GDR, etc, these are always accompanied in the same article by US, not U.S. MapReader (talk) 20:27, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
Honestly, I think that is mostly the correct read, though it may seem inconvenient. Pragmatically, I think the two sensible options are
  • U.S. → US
  • always writing United Kingdom (et al.) in said article.
To me, U.S. implies a rather insular tone, since it is such a particularly American initialism, so if the article adopts a more international scope, US should probably be heavily preferred. Remsense (talk) 19:55, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
Personally, I agree, but so long as editors from the US want their country to remain dotty, the punctuated form is likely to persist as acceptable usage, mostly in U.S.-specific articles where other forms like EU or UK aren’t going to appear. Which is fair enough; call it nostalgia, like clinging onto Fahrenheit ;) MapReader (talk) 20:32, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
Fahrenheit is totally fine for what it is if you ask me, at least it doesn't leave one pausing when trying to end a sentence with °F. :) Remsense (talk) 21:59, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
Agreed with Remsense. This section has never implied or been meant to be intepreted to imply that we would write "U.K." just to avoid changing from "U.S." to "US". "U.K." is almost unheard of in modern source material. And "US" is certainly very, very common in American source material. The idea that a US-English article here must use "U.S." is pure nonsense. So, yes, MOS:US does mean that eventually many on-Wiki uses of "U.S." will go away, but we've always known this, since it is inconsistent with MOS:ABBR more generally, and its off-site use in reliable sources (even American-published ones) is continually declining. MOS:US is basically a temporary bone thrown to old US-based fuddyduddies who keep wanting to write "U.S." (and I say that as an aging American curmudgeon myself). Being permissive with regard to it is okay, as long as it doesn't lead to inconsistency within the same article. When it eventually does, it needs to go. Or, yeah, you can try writing out "United Kingdom", but if you do that over and over again people are going to notice and will object and switch to "UK" and "US", and it's perfectly fine to do so.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:57, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
Agree. Indeed there was a time when you might see things like U.N.E.S.C.O. and U.N.I.C.E.F., but I believe such forms nowadays are archaic? Readers have got used to the idea of acronyms as words in general usage, and no longer need the dots to flag the fact. MapReader (talk) 05:56, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
FYI: what we were taught at school in the 1960s was that acronyms that were pronounced did not get full stops: NATO, UNICEF but abbreviations that were pronounced as letters did get full stops: U.S.A, U.K, E.E.C. Whether the 1960s counts as archaic I leave as an exercise for the reader. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:18, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
It is interesting. I wonder if there's a throughline between modern acronyms and initialisms and say, the abundant use of scribal abbreviation. Remsense (talk) 11:35, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
Only in the sense of not spelling out a well known word or phrase, something which nearly all writing systems do. For instance IVP·OPT·MAX could only mean "Jupiter the greatest and Best" to a Roman and saved an awful lot of plinth space. The modern descendant of scribal abbreviation is surely shorthand. Many of the scribal abbreviations would be indecipherable to a normally literate reader, see the second paragraph of the history section. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 12:01, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
The '60 definitely counts as "old" for our purposes. I don't think MoS-shaping discussions, even the earliest ones, have paid any attention to style-manual material that pre-dates 2000. (By way of comparison, imagine writing a style guide in 1923 but basing it on notions from the era of the US Civil War and the mid-period of Victoria's reign in the UK.) And that pronunciation-based distinction isn't what's found in style guides. (Even ones going back into the '60s as I recall, though I no longer have a big collection of old style guides after moving into a smaller place and downsizing my library. Chicago 12th ed., 1969, is available through Internet Archive Open Library, and already consistently had "NATO" and "USMC", but was not entirely consistent yet, also using "U.S." and "U.K.") Even today there are a tiny number of holdouts among particular publishers' house style manuals that prefer the dots, at least for initialisms sounded out letter-by-letter (The New Yorker may be the only notable one left). Most style guides today recommend no dots for any, regardless whether they're said as words or sounded out as letters. Another vanishingly small number (The New York Times, The New Yorker, and one or another of the British news publishers, I forget which) want to render "word acronyms" in a curious "capitalize the first letter" style, e.g. "Aids", "Unesco", "Nato", "Nasa"; but that's a confusing practice WP would not adopt (both because it masks the fact that they're acronyms and it often applies a leading capital in proper-name style to things that are not proper names, like diseases/conditions). Anyway, the only modern publisher I've seen that would write "F.B.I." but "NATO" (and actually they would use "Nato") is The New Yorker, and they've admitted that the no. 1 form of complaint letter they receive from readers is about their archaic English-language style peccadilloes (which include "coöperate", etc.). The New Yorker has nothing to tell us about how to write encyclopedically in 2023 for a broad audience. Back to the central topic, there are US-based publishers, mostly in news, who prefer "U.S.", but they are fewer all the time. The rationale for it has always been potential confusion with the word "us", but with the near-death of HEADELINES IN ALL-CAPS instead of just in boldface and a bigger font, this is no longer a major concern for such publishers, and it has never been one for WP at all.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:31, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
This American prefers "U.S." and doesn't see much need for arbitrary consistency in the use of dots in country abbreviations (he can't imagine how that benefits readers). He has zero problem with "U.S." and "UK" in the same article. He also has higher priorities than his personal opinions and preferences. If there is so much authoritative support for "US", has there been a concerted effort to change the MoS to support it? Like RfC at VP (I don't think there's enough visibility at MoS for such things)? ―Mandruss ☎ 18:31, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
How much does the archaic preference of a single editor count, when weighed against the established style preferences of authoritative publications around the world? MapReader (talk) 19:06, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
I don't think that's a fair characterization: the question is why acronyms and initialisms should be consistently formatted within an article. I personally think they should, just because it looks awkward when those with different formats are juxtaposed next to each other in a paragraph or table. Remsense聊 19:08, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
It shouldn't count for anything. As I said, I have higher priorities. MOS:US seems currently written as a compromise to appease a certain group of editors, apparently some Americans if the above comments are correct, and it does so to the detriment of the project over all. That seriously needs fixing in my opinion. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:13, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
By the way, and not to put too fine a point on it, I'm not a big proponent of compliance with the major style guides. They have their preferred styles, we can have ours. For example, I've witnessed our MoS deliberately being made to differ from the major dictionaries on certain capitalizations, without much support from major style guides. We conform to outside authoritative references when it suits us. But, given that many editors do think we should defer to the style guides, I view them as merely the most powerful means to an end, that end being simplification of our MoS and site-wide consistency. The current MOS:US satisfies neither. ―Mandruss ☎ 22:05, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
It's also important to realize that dictionaries (major or otherwise) are not anything like style guides. The purpose of a dictionary is simply to record observable usage. For this reason, you will find things in them, like "irregardless", that are near-universally viewed as erroneous, recorded simply because they can be observed to be in usage. "I found it in a dictionary" doesn't mean it's a good idea.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:38, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
Sure, and style guides reflect one educated guy's preferences, or a small consensus within the entity that he works for.</sexism> Call me a populist, I've been called worse. My dictionary of choice shows "irregardless" as nonstandard, so we would obviously avoid it. That all you got? ―Mandruss ☎ 22:51, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
You know darn well there has never been a "correct" English language beyond what people say ("observable usage"); otherwise we would be writing this encyclopedia in the language of Beowulf. The language evolves, the dictionaries evolve with it, and that represents the current correct. So dictionaries are, simultaneously, descriptive and temporally prescriptive. Their function is to document the current state of the art in English vocabulary, and that makes them authoritative sources.
Contrast to style guides, which don't document usage as impassive, neutral observers but seek to dictate it based on their own opinions.
If enough people used "irregardless", it would become standard usage (current correct) no matter how grating it was to the likes of us. The academic grammarians could kick rocks. The language has no shortage of such things already. Why do we say "preventative" but not "preventate"? Shouldn't that be "preventive"? Some people think so, including me, but both "preventive" and "preventative" are standard usage (and Wikipedia says "preventative not punitive").
Why do we say "presentation" but not "preventation"? Alternatively, why do we say "prevention" but not "presention"? Why do we like to add extra syllables to some nouns but not others? Because reasons.
And so on, and so on. The language is a rich, chaotic, glorious mess, full of inconsistencies, contradictions, and broken "rules". That's what happens when you crowdsource a language. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:48, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
I think any worthwhile consensus in a place like WP:MOS (or, if you have to fall back on pragmatics, any lasting consensus) has to rely on both canonicity and logic. Therefore, I don't really think it's worthwhile to lean exclusively on one or the other when making an argument for a particular convention. Remsense聊 23:14, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
As I have pointed out before, writers of formal American English strongly prefer U.S. and will continue to do so because American culture is so legalistic. We're talking about a country where a significant percentage of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were lawyers (more than half for the latter). Everyone gets exposed to the courts one way or another, through getting summoned to sit on a jury, getting dragged into court as a defendant, or just watching television (e.g., court shows and Court TV).
When nonlawyers run things by counsel for approval, counsel insists on "U.S." and not "US". This is why so many government and corporate Web sites use "U.S.", especially for any formal prose that probably was approved by a lawyer.
American legal culture is highly elitist. Graduates of top research universities and top-tier law schools overwhelmingly dominate the professoriate at all American law schools. Most of the top-tier law schools use the Bluebook as their legal citation standard. The Bluebook, the ALWD Guide to Legal Citation, most federal courts, and most state courts all require the use of U.S. for "United States". All first-year law students quickly learn that they must conform their writing to that standard, among many others, if they want to have any chance of earning decent grades, making law review, or getting decent jobs. The students who are unable to conform their writing to any coherent citation standard either don't graduate, don't pass bar exams, or don't have very have successful careers. Their sloppy citations and abbreviations tip off opposing counsel and judges to the fact they're not detail-oriented. Then they get torn apart.
The point is that successful American professionals use "U.S." in their formal writing and they will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, as each new generation conforms to the existing standard in order to get to where they need to go. WP policy is to follow, not lead (see WP:NOT, specifically, WP is not a soapbox or means of promotion). MOS:US and MOS:TIES together constitute a satisfactory compromise between American English and British English on this issue. --Coolcaesar (talk) 00:14, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
That's one viewpoint. Again, this needs to be an RfC at VP. If you can persuade enough editors with that argument, so be it. It's not constructive to limit the debate to self-selected MoS wonks. Plenty of editors would have legitimate opinions to offer about certain MoS issues but don't hang out at MoS. We have other things occupying our time. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:27, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
WP policy is that the editor initiating a significant change to a longstanding consensus version has the burden of showing why change is necessary (see WP:NOCONSENSUS). I'm defending the traditional version. If you feel change is needed on this issue, then feel free to initiate an RfC. --Coolcaesar (talk) 00:53, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
Oh, I didn't mean to suggest that the RfC should be initiated by you or any other supporter of the status quo. But I think there are editors better suited than Mandruss, who is supposedly semi-retired and doesn't wish to invest that much of himself. Probably sucked too far in already. I'd !vote if I saw the RfC, but that's as far as I'll go. ―Mandruss ☎ 01:13, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
As SMcC has pointed out above, in time there may be a point where a consensus to move to common unpunctuated format could be achieved, but every time this comes up it is clear we are still a long way from that. Anyone can start an RfC but I doubt there is much appetite for one among more experienced editors, because most of us can see that the respective opinions would all be set out at length, all of which carry arguments in their favour (such as the one above about current US governmental usage) and the result would be an absence of clear consensus for change. MapReader (talk) 04:23, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
That's why I asked whether this had ever been an RfC at VP, which could easily yield a different result than an RfC here (and higher participation is never a bad thing). I didn't get a reply to that question, but I'm assuming the answer is no. If no editor wants to give it a shot, oh well. I'm semi-retired for a reason. ―Mandruss ☎ 04:34, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
There's a whole lot of stuff to cover up there. In short form: Yes we sometimes make MoS differ from major dictionaries or even our preferred style guides; we do this when (i.e. iff) there is a Wikipedia-specific reason to do it. E.g., the propensity for MOS:LQ to accurately preserve quoted material without "polluting" it with extraneous material (which people would quote further and "blame" on Wikipedia); LQ matches neither typical American style nor, exactly, any of the competing British/Commonwealth styles propounded by various publishers, and was adapted from literary criticism, philosophy, and computer science. "We conform to outside authoritative references when it suits us" is exactly correct, and not a problem. One can call this "crowdsourcing the language" if one likes, but this sense of "crowdsourcing" is how all of WP is created, from our policies (aside from WP:OFFICE legal matters imposed on us externally by WMF) to our content. Sure, if "irregardless" became the dominant usage in English over a long span of time, WP would use it. But it has not, so we don't. It doesn't have anything to do with whether dictionaries include it or not (most of them do now). The style guides MoS is based on, combined with detailed surveys of usage patterns that various of us engage in, together inform us what nascent usages have actually taken hold and might make for a change in our style guidelines (thus singular-they, no comma before "Jr.", no "Jesus'" exception to "'s" any longer, and various other alterations over the years). How American lawyers write is irrelevant to us (except for perhaps things like the official names of legal cases); in the mid-20th century there was a movement to standardize American legal writing in a number of sensible ways, including clearer wording, use of LQ, and several other features, but it failed to gain any traction because the courts themselves started issuing stringent style requirements, and these (through the efforts of successive editions of Black's Law Dictionary, the Blue Book and the Red Book, all written with deep consultation with courts) have become increasingly standardized and ossified into a particular US legal style that is at odds with all other English usage trends on many points. It doesn't tell us anything about how to write English for a general audience. Back to the main subject: "in time there may be a point where a consensus to move to common unpunctuated format could be achieved, but every time this comes up it is clear we are still a long way from that." Yes; if I thought that time had arrived, I would open Mandruss's VPPOL RfC right now. But being open to some continued use of "U.S." when it doesn't cause other problems doesn't mean I'll remain quiet when people suggest introducing new problems like "U.K." just to keep using "U.S." at a particular page where it has come into conflict with the way we treat acronyms more generally.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:33, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Use of green and red in `xt` et al. templates

I think it's outmoded, and it would be a relatively simple swap. This is what the templates look like with simulated deuteranopia red–green color-blindness.

Screenshots

versus replacing green with blue, which gets us

—though of course these are not final selections, I've changed the colors here to #005F7B and #990000. I do notice that's difficult to distinguish links from valid examples, but I'm sure that can be worked out too. Here's the colors as normal:

Remsense聊 21:54, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

"Outmoded" doesn't really make much sense, since this is not a mode (fashion) that has come and gone; it's a solution to a need, that helps most people without harming anyone. Switching to blue would confuse nearly everyone (including those with deuteranopia) into thinking it was a link, and would not work anyway for those with forms of colorblindness that involve blue (you'd be robbing Peter to pay Paul). That said, someone with more experience with MOS:ACCESS and color issues could look into changing the exact luminosity of the green and red used to better distinguish them in various forms of colorblindness.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:03, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
Yes, I would be happy with any change that makes things more accessible, I just wanted to start the conversation. Remsense聊 03:07, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
I've dropped a note about this thread at WT:MOSACCESS so hopefully some of the regulars there will be along shortly. But it's important to keep in mind that before these templates, all this text was just in plain black, and no one's head asplode. They should still be used with clear introductory text that makes it plain whether the example is meant to be positive or negative, since we've known all along that the color "information" of the templates would not be accessible to every reader.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:21, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
thank you kindly! :) Remsense聊 05:07, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Stylizing of product and company names within prose

Little Lord Fontgoofery

If a company or product name is stylized a certain way, do we always match the trademark owner's desired style? For example, I see Gunbroker.com referenced as such in references, but the company's public relations agent changed the styling to match that of how it's used by the company so every single mention within prose reads GunBroker.com. Other examples are trade names like REALTOR, NARCAN and similar that are all in upper cases. Graywalls (talk) 07:53, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Generally no, most especially when it comes to SCREAMING ALL-CAPS, excessive lowercasing, bold or italics in the middle of a name, colorizing, and other font goofery. Covered at MOS:TM. But camelcase like this is frequently used in company names (DaimerlChrysler, etc.), and there's no particular reason to avoid it. It can actually make the trademark easier to parse. And somewhere or other, we actually recommend doing it with domain names in particular, for that reason: TheGuardian.com, NYTimes.com, etc. I wouldn't be worried about it in this case, unless "GunBroker.com" is unattested in sources.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:20, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
"Font goofery"—love that. I agree with SMcCandlish about the screaming: all-caps really interrupts our reading. Acronyms are usually short, but the all-caps we're talking about involves longer strings. Tony (talk) 09:03, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
It's written as "Gunbroker.com" in https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/gunbroker-website-nazi-kkk-memorabilia-sports-team-gun-anti-semitism-racism-hate/542866/ not GunBroker.com it was changed to by the company's PR rep. Graywalls (talk) 09:54, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
I'm seeing usage fairly evenly divided in search results. MOS:TM says 'Trademarks in "CamelCase" are a judgment call; the style may be used where it reflects general usage and makes the trademark more readable; however, usage should be consistent throughout the article.' I don't have any problem with these edits, despite who made them. Largoplazo (talk) 10:34, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
Same here, but it would be a very different matter if they wanted to write "GUNBROKER.com" or "GunBr⌖ker.c⌖m" or "GunBroker.com", or other such nonsense to mimic logo stylization.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:09, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

"Utilize" vs "use"

Hey, I've been occasionally replacing instances of "utilize" with "use"; I think that "utilize" is unnecessarily jargon-y and "use" is just a much better, commonly-used alternative. I wanted to get a rough sense of consensus on this; what are your thoughts? Thanks! — Frostly (talk) 04:22, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Generally, I would agree with such a simplicity and concision change, but there are specialized uses of utilize, so don't be robotic about it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:57, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
I don't think "utilize" is particularly technical but it is usually unnecessarily prolix. "Make use of" is another common way of making "use" longer without adding much meaning. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:11, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
I agree. And let's replace the long-winded "utilisation" with the concise "usage" too. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 07:54, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
Concision is good but let's not be prescriptive: it's something best left to editorial judgement in context. I used to think using use repetitively can be overuse and is of no use. DeCausa (talk) 08:55, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
I too vastly prefer the shorter "use". But beware that "utilize" is perfectly valid English. If you get kick back from your changes then best to leave that article alone.  Stepho  talk  10:00, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
I don't think the Manual of Style should give advice in this matter. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:38, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
Let’s not. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 11:44, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
@SMcCandlish: What are these specialized uses of "utilize"? Popcornfud (talk) 14:21, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
Others already addressed this in part below, but it also can be used to imply effective use, or efficient, or profitable. Just look it up in various major dictionaries.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:27, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
"Utilize" usually appears as a high-falutin' substitute for "use". In that case, replacing it with "use" is a good edit. I don't know if anyone else thinks of it this way, but I think of "utilize", as well as "make use of", as more intentional, perhaps as implying that something is being put to a purpose to which it isn't ordinarily put, or to solve a problem. "Don't use a spoon to eat cake, use a fork" but "he utilized a fork as a pry bar" (though "use" would be OK there as well). I don't think this belongs in the MoS, though. Largoplazo (talk) 11:50, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
That's my understanding as well, that "utilize" originally had a connotation of "use in a way other than the usual purpose". Though I believe any such connotation may have been lost due to overuse. Either way it's not something that belongs in the MOS, per WP:CREEP. oknazevad (talk) 12:38, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
Use would be preferred generally, following WP:COMMONALITY MapReader (talk) 12:29, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
Definitely not something for the MOS, any more than we tell people not to confuse the verbs "to lie" [to tell lies, to lie down] and "to lay" [an egg]. Grammar correction is just a routine part of copyediting.
"Utilize" and "utilization" are examples of franglais (for ex, to use a word is an example of its usage translates to French: utiliser un mot est un exemple de son utilisation). Yes, language changes, develops and absorbs other languages so we don't want to become language police but it is reasonable for an encyclopedia to require a degree of formal English. How else is ChatGPT going to learn to talk proper? . 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 15:55, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
After I left my comment above it occurred to me, indeed, that "utilize" is from French utiliser, which is an ordinary word with the same meaning as "to use". So I was thinking that maybe I should lighten up. But then I remembered that the other ordinary French word for "to use" is employer, and I don't think anyone would disagree that "Don't employ a spoon to eat cake, employ a fork" would be insufferable. Etymology gets us only so far. Largoplazo (talk) 16:33, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
Depends. Does the spoon have a better résumé than the fork? Because if I'm hiring a utensil I want the best candidate for the job. 😉
That said, using it in that fashion is not incorrect English, but it's one of those cases of using a needlessly fancy word when an ordinary one will do. Can be employed to avoid repetition, though. oknazevad (talk) 17:59, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
Haha, I see what you did there. 😄 Largoplazo (talk) 18:34, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

FWIW, this article has a few examples where the connotations of 'utilize' add something to the text that is not carried as well with 'use'. older ≠ wiser 17:59, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

It's a manual of style, not a guide to effective writing. I suspect we already cross the line elsewhere; that's not a reason to make it worse. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:45, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
Not sure if this reply was to something I said. I was not suggesting to make any change to the MOS. A few people above had asked for some examples. That's all. older ≠ wiser 18:51, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
No, it wasn't. Just a reply to the OP. WP:THREAD has its limitations. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:00, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
+1. Popcornfud (talk) 12:15, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
So normally, "use" should be used, but "utilize" may sometimes be utilized to achieve specific connotations not available when "use" is used. —Kusma (talk) 12:36, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
Yep. And it's not something MoS should have a special line-item about. WP:MOSBLOAT.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:10, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

MOS:DUALNATIONALITIES

For dual nationalities, the manual suggests using a hyphen for "people and things" and an en dash for "association"s. What exactly counts as an "association" here? For example, the manual gives the example of a crossing ("border crossing") as an "association", but we could also interpret "crossing" as a "thing", no? And similarly, the manual gives the example of a rivalry ("France–Britain rivalry") as an "association", but "rivalry" is also a noun, which makes it a "thing"...? Thatsme314 (talk) 08:45, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

My view is that an en dash is not wrong in any of these "appositional" contexts. But for dual nationality I normally accept a comma. Tony (talk) 09:01, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
A comma, or a hyphen?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:03, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
Sorry, hyphen. Tony (talk) 11:37, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
"Noun" and "thing" aren't synonyms. "Philosophy" is a noun, but you can't pick up philosophy and hold it like a potato. The "association" stuff is when you are dealing with relations between two entities.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:03, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
You can think of association (with a dash) as allowing reversibility in principle; for example, an "Italian–Swiss border crossing" = "Swiss–Italian border crossing", or a "France–Britain rivalry" = "Britain–France rivalry". This reversibility is not possible with a substantivized thing (with a hyphen); for example, an "Indian-American scientist" ≠ "American-Indian scientist". Doremo (talk) 09:06, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
Not so sure about that; constructions like "British-Indian scientist" (where an American would have said "Indian-British scientist", i.e. a scientist who is a British citizen of Indian descent) are pretty common in British English from what I've seen.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:28, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
True, the colonial relations may blur issues. A better example would be "African-American culture" ≠ "American-African culture". Doremo (talk) 09:41, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
Is that true? To my ears at least "British-Indian scientist" and "Indian-British scientist" sound perfectly symmetrical with respect to being a citizen of descent, with the order being more of a pronuncability and convention thing than anything else : I wonder if Wikipedia would describe my children as "franco-english" or "anglo-french". 2A01:E0A:D60:3500:F8C0:6C77:38AA:8D84 (talk) 14:42, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
Maybe BrE has more variability in this regard. I would expect the modifier German-American for an American of German descent, not American-German, Japanese-American for an American of Japanese descent, and so on. It would never occur to me to reverse the adjective order. Doremo (talk) 15:50, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
And then some! As the hatnote to Anglo-Indian people explains
This page is about Indian people of British origin. For British people of Indian origin, see British Indians. For other uses, see British Indian (disambiguation).
"It's complicated". --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 15:55, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Avoiding "impact" in headings to refer to the aftermath, results, effects, outcomes, consequences, repercussions, legacy, analysis, historical perspectives, reception, controversy, debate, discourse

I think the figurative sense of "impact" to refer to any or all of these things is incompatible with WP:FORMAL. Is there an existing consensus about this specific usage of "impact" in headings/titles? I strongly dislike "Impact" headings in articles. —Alalch E. 20:27, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

@Alalch E.: What replacement(s) would you rather see used? Any and all of the above? Or did you have something more specific in mind? "Impact" seems pretty ingrained, both in everyday usage and on Wikipedia, though there is no rule requiring it, or guideline suggesting it, if course. This might really be a discussion for WT:MOSWTW, if you have an argument that "impact" is somehow non-neutral or otherwise problematic when used in Wikipedia's own voice. But an obvious to me issue is that it's meant as a catch-all term for all those things you listed out in the long thread name. We do not want people to create numerous short (probably often one-item) sections for aftermath, results, effects, outcomes ... controversy, debate, discourse, when all such thematically related material can be put in one section.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:15, 28 October 2023 (UTC)
Impact used in headings and titles as a replacement for the above listed words is not compatible with WP:FORMAL. It's colloquial and WP:NEWSSTYLE. Do you agree? This is not a discussion for WT:MOSWTW because the issue is not with introducing bias. It is also highly imprecise and non-informative to the reader. This is an example of a change which I endorse: Special:Diff/1141684006. I did a similar thing myself several times, for example: Special:Diff/1181360114, Special:Diff/1181071785. Is there an existing consensus about this specific usage of "impact" in headings/titles, i.e. how it should be avoided? If several such subtopics can be bundled in one section, there's never a need for that section to be named "Impact". Usually, that would be "Aftermath". —Alalch E. 11:58, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
Well, what I'm saying above is that "imprecise" is kind of the point. If you want a section for all of "aftermath, results, effects, outcomes, consequences, repercussions, legacy, analysis, historical perspectives, reception, controversy, debate, discourse" to be collected, the title of it would kind of have to be imprecise. Except in the most well-developed articles, it would probably be better to do that than have a tiny "Afertmath" section and a tiny "Legacy" section, and a tiny "Analysis" section, and a tiny "Controversy" section and so forth. As for aftermath, I don't see that much, and I find it much more "informal" and "newsy" than impact. An "Aftermath" heading seems emotive and almost histrionic, like something a tabloid would use. Ultimately, I don't feel really, really strongly about this. Maybe consensus would prefer most of the terms in your list, used more narrowly, and deprecate impact (but hopefully, if we go there, also deprecate aftermath).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:41, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Headings Should Be in Title Case

Withdrawn by creator. See comment near the bottom. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:26, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


Ever Since Elementary School I and many other editors have been taught The Following:

1) Capitalize the first word of the title or heading.
2) Capitalize the last word of the title or heading.
3) All other words are capitalized unless they are conjunctions (and, or, but, nor, yet, so, for), articles (a, an, the), or prepositions (in, to, of, at, by, up, for, off, on).

That is also what it says in these: Gregg Reference Manual Paperback – 1 Dec. 1991, The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law 2015 Library Binding – 14 July 2015, The Chicago Manual of Style Paperback – 8 Mar. 2007, & MLA style


So why does The Wikipedia Manual of style state that all Titles & Headings be in Sentence Case when other Major Manuals of Style say otherwise??? 😎😎PaulGamerBoy360😎😎 (talk) 20:16, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Because other style guides say otherwise, and too much title case makes me feel like old people are shouting at me, to sum it up uncouthly. Remsense聊 20:17, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
see these: Typography 101: A Quick Guide to Headings, Stack Exchange: Capitalization in Headings, Maine's Public Universities: When to Use Title Case, Webucator: How to Capitalize Headings 😎😎PaulGamerBoy360😎😎 (talk) 20:21, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
We can both throw links at each other, my point being that they cancel each other out, because both are recommended by major style guides. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/capitalization/sentence-case — Remsense聊 20:24, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
Those links were ment to be above your comment.
We should change the manual to be different for where the subject of the article is from, From what I can find Title Case is more Common in the U.S. and Sentence Case is more common in the UK. 😎😎PaulGamerBoy360😎😎 (talk) 20:34, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

o:Advantages of sentence case were previously discussed at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 55#Capitalization in Headings and Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Headings/Archive 1#Capitalization in headings. DrKay (talk) 20:33, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes and on both of those links, there is equal support for each style, As I said above we should make the style match the region. 😎😎PaulGamerBoy360😎😎 (talk) 20:37, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
I'm opposed. Looks like change for change's sake with zero improvement in clarity or understanding. With sentence case, it is clear when a word should be lower case or not whereas with title case it is unclear and inconsistent which words (such as Be in the example here) should be lower case. DrKay (talk) 20:48, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
Most readers from the U.S. will be confused & possibly annoyed that heading are in sentence case because our whole lives we have been taught that they should be in Title Case. 😎😎PaulGamerBoy360😎😎 (talk) 20:51, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Lies Miss Snodgrass told you. DrKay (talk) 21:03, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
That Essay is a Lie & completely unsourced. 😎😎PaulGamerBoy360😎😎 (talk) 21:05, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
I can see US readers getting annoyed, but confused? Sentence case is very simple (capital for first word, capital for pronouns, lowercase for the rest). Many contributors speak English as a second (or third or fourth) language at various degrees of fluency. Many of them do weird stuff when attempting to make titles and often capitalise or non-capitalise the wrong words in an inconsistent manner. Keep it simple, keep it easy. Better to adapt to the multicultural world you are in instead of trying to force it to lessons learnt in a particular country long ago.  Stepho  talk  22:48, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
Confused as in: people who are teachers/professors & maybe others will be confused as to how such a major project like Wikipedia doesn't use the Title Case Style as that is what is taught in the US. 😎😎PaulGamerBoy360😎😎 (talk) 22:51, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
Pretty sad if a professor or teacher gets so easily confused. Gonnym (talk) 00:27, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
Oppose because titles and headers are used for inbound links from other pages, so we need predictability among all pages. Unlike WP:ENGVAR that only demands a page be self-consistent, this isn't solely about avoiding an uneasy feeling for some readers. And if there's no universal way even among other style-guides, the proposal is an arbitrary change solely in our own scope to make some feel better and others feel worse. DMacks (talk) 22:37, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
Oppose As DMacks says, there are sound technical reasons for this choice, as it is required by inbound links. Any change would necessitate an enormous amount of work. I realise that Americans will take as further proof of Wikipedia's anti-American bias. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:02, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
Oppose Particularly with how the headings interact in the sidebars, it would just look wrong to Title Case headers (of course, save when the header itself is a proper noun). Add in the change problems mentioned above. --Masem (t) 23:03, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
What about 2 Word Headers? Those look weird in sentence case, that is the main thing that bothers me, could we just make it be Title Case for 2 word Headings? 😎😎PaulGamerBoy360😎😎 (talk) 23:09, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
This isn't a negotiation, and no one has agreed with you so far anyway. It might be time to give this one up. I also find it a bit ironic that someone who's harping on about capitalization for section headings is also very consistently just throwing random capitals in where they don't belong in normal prose. 35.139.154.158 (talk) 23:20, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
I am changing my proposition to having 2 word headings be title case. I Have already given up on all headings being title case, but 2 word headings look weird in sentence case. 😎😎PaulGamerBoy360😎😎 (talk) 23:33, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
Oppose due to the immense workload that this unnecessary change would make, and because sentence case naturally gives better clarity to capitonyms. Also opposedto two word headings in title case since consistency is needed for whatever case is in fact used. I would advise the nominator to stop arguing as there is clearly a large consensus backing up the use of sentence case. Schminnte [talk to me] 23:35, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
I know there is, but it could be new articles, and it could say "if there are only two words in a heading then title case would be acceptable", Emphasis on the "would be" and not "is required". 😎😎PaulGamerBoy360😎😎 (talk) 23:39, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
Once again, consistency is required for things like this, we can't just make a compromise as that is something that would confuse people. Why should we make an exception for two word titles specifically? "Look[ing] weird" is subjective (I see no problem with Sentence heading vs. Title Heading) and not an appropriate rationale. Schminnte [talk to me] 23:46, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
I have withdrawn this proposal 😎😎PaulGamerBoy360😎😎 (talk) 23:50, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
Oppose. I'm an American, and even I don't have any ENGVAR concerns about this. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:40, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
I don't Even Care Anymore 😎😎PaulGamerBoy360😎😎 (talk) 23:42, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Follow-up comments: This is a perennial enough "pet peeve" that we should probably add a line-item about it to MOS:FAQ.

We are also not in a position to take seriously the style ideas of someone who habitually writes like "Ever Since Elementary School ... taught The Following ... all Titles & Headings be in Sentence Case when other Major Manuals of Style say ... be Title Case for 2 word Headings ... don't Even Care Anymore". No "authority" ever "taught" this person to write that way; it's pure idosyncratic personal idiolect, and I would have serious concerns about what sort of material this person is injecting into our articles. A review of just their last couple of days of input in mainspace has shown a whole lot of this overcapitalization among other problems. I'll try raising the issue on their user-talk page, but folks with some editorial time on their hands may want to trawl back though this person's mainspace edits and correct all their errors, including reverting lots of WP:FAITACCOMPLI changes to Headings to Use Title Case Like This before they proposed the idea here and had it rejected.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:48, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

PS: One of the smartest things I've seen said on WP in a long time:

"My impression is that we shouldn't allow users going against a policy to affect how it is written. People going around changing articles against policy isn't a good reason to have that policy be rewritten"
     Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 10:40, 30 October 2023 (UTC) [13]. Slightly copyedited for clarity.

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:27, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Proposed titling guidance for orders of battle (MOS:MIL)

G'day, there is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Military history#Proposed article titling guidance for orders of battle that may be of interest. Please have a read and add your views, and hopefully a consensus can be achieved. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 23:48, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Petition on change.org for English Wikipedia to use curly quotes instead of straight quotes

Answered elsewhere. Bon courage (talk) 18:46, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
And Wikipedia's rules are not determined by external polls at which we have no idea whether anyone participating is a WP editor in good standing.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:06, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I will propose to consider the change.org petition for Wikipedia to change the Manual of Style to require curly quotes instead of straight quotes in articles. --Agusbou2015 (talk) 18:45, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Follow-up comments

WTF is "change.org"? Please ALWAYS include links to mentioned articles or websites. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:52, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
Change.org is an easily manipulable "set up your own voting poll/petition" site.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:23, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
A link to the petition and especially to the "answer elsewhere" would nevertheless be helpful. Gawaon (talk) 11:14, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
I don't think the petition exists; Agusbou2015 was announcing intention to create one. It actually does exist, at "/p/high-ranked-wikipedia-contributers-curly-quotation-marks-in-english-wikipedia" at Change.org (cannot be linked directly because of our URL blacklist), with almost no input, even for a Wikipedia-related petition. As for previous material, see point no. 1 in MOS:FAQ, which is also transcluded at the top of this talk page. Most recent discussion is also still on this talk page, at #Note about quotation marks, and lots and lots of prior discussion can be found by using the archive serach feature near top of this page for keyword "curly".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:21, 2 November 2023 (UTC); revised 11:44, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
You can find the petition Googling: "change.org" wikipedia "curly"
"answer elsewhere" Hyphenation Expert (talk) 11:41, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
(edit conflict) These petitions are basically nonsense. Wikipedia pays no attention to them at all, and we should not, because there is no way to connect votes to users-in-good-standing of Wikipedia, nor connect a single vote to a single user even of just Change.org. And the petitions are of course non-neutral in nature unlike our RfCs (valid ones, anyway), and show only support for an idea not opposition to it. E.g., there is one to try to get Wikipedia to treat ayurveda as real medical science instead of pseudoscience: "/p/wikipedia-we-are-against-wikipedia-s-statement-which-says-ayurveda-is-pseudo-scientific" at Change.org (cannot be linked directly because of our URL blacklist). It has 33,600+ "signatures" (probaly broadly canvassed through campaigning, since there are millions of petitions on Change.org and one would not find this buried item by accident). But untold numbers of people would disagree with it, and there is no measure of them. It's just meaningless noise. There are lots and lots of petitions on Change.org about Wikipedia, almost all of them aimed at pushing a particular PoV agenda. Anyway, the one about curly quotes has a truly trivial 159 "votes".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:44, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

"et al." or "et alia" with or without italics

When used in regular text (i.e. not as a citation), should "et al." or "et alia" be used? Should it be used with or without italics. For example:

  1. Precise definitions are often only accepted by theorists belonging to a certain philosophical movement and are revisionistic according to Søren Overgaard et alia ...
  2. Precise definitions are often only accepted by theorists belonging to a certain philosophical movement and are revisionistic according to Søren Overgaard et alia ...
  3. Precise definitions are often only accepted by theorists belonging to a certain philosophical movement and are revisionistic according to Søren Overgaard et al. ...
  4. Precise definitions are often only accepted by theorists belonging to a certain philosophical movement and are revisionistic according to Søren Overgaard et al. ...

This is being discussed at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Philosophy/archive1. Phlsph7 (talk) 17:56, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Consolidate and clarify non-English orthography advice

I've read through MOS:FOREIGN, MOS:FOREIGNITALIC, WP:Manual of Style#Foreign words (which has no shortcut; it's part of MOS:ITAL), MOS:FOREIGNQUOTE, MOS:FOREIGNITALIC, and MOS:OTHERLANG, and what is conspicuously absent is the instruction to use the capitalization orthography of the original language when presenting non-English text (other than loanwords/loanphrases that have been fully assimilated into English).

This instruction is present in two places (at least):

  • MOS:LIFE has "... foreign-language terms: italicized as such, and capitalized only if the rules of the native language require it."
  • MOS:TITLECAPS has "Capitalization of non-English titles varies by language", with a cross-reference to MOS:FOREIGNTITLE below it: "Capitalization in foreign-language titles varies, even over time within the same language. Retain the style of the original for modern works. For historical works, follow the dominant usage in modern, English-language, reliable sources." (And provides some examples.)
  • The principle is also clearly illustrated at MOS:LEADSENTENCE, which provides the lead sentence from Spanish–American War, including proper casing in English, Spanish, and Filipino.

So, unless there's some principled objection, I plan to add at MOS:FOREIGN something along the lines of Use the capitalization orthography of the original language when presenting non-English terms that have not been fully assimilated into English. This will be consistent with the advice we do have in at least two places, and (more importantly) will be consistent with actual practice. If we want, some examples can be added, such as Festchrift (German capitalizes all nouns) but bratwurst (German loanword assimilated into English); copo americano (Portuguese generally does not capitalize adjectives derived from proper names), but Superliga Nacional de Futebol Americano (proper name spelled that way both in Portuguese and English sources). I don't really think examples are necessary, though I know some editors prefer MoS sections to have some.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:32, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree with this. I wonder if we can also standardize capitalization for translations from non-cased scripts? I tend to prefer sentence case when translating titles and names, but I'm sure someone could hold the opposite position. Remsense聊 20:03, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
That would seem to be a separate discussion. And, yes, I think people will argue the opposite position, that when giving a translation from a caseless language, we should follow the norms of English title case given at MOS:TITLES; i.e., since it's arbitrary in such an instance anyway, follow the default instead of doing something unusual. A third group of editors would (perhaps unhelpfully) argue for doing it differently on a title-by-title basis, following the predominant style used for that specific title in English-language sources.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:02, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Succession box entry for new and abolished positions

In succession boxes, the "before=" and "after=" parameters often have no meaningful values, if the position was its first or last time. In these cases, for new we see "New Position", "(new position)", "(no predecessor)", "(none)", "(-)" and such for "before=", and "Abolished", "Abolished Position", "(Position abolished)", "(abolished)", "(post vacant)" etc. for "after=". Personally, I think the parenthesized lowercase entries make the most sense, not looking like a proper name but explaining why there's not one. Do we have any guidance on this? Should we? Dicklyon (talk) 17:52, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

I'd recommend, if the office holder had no predecessor or successor. The officer holder should have no succession box. GoodDay (talk) 17:59, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
Of course. I apologize for misleading you by putting "and" where I should have said "or". Dicklyon (talk) 19:08, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
This actually should probably be settled on as a prescribed style, then built into the boxes as parameter values that emit that. I.e., detect "none" and perhaps "new", "abolished", and "vacant" (any others to account for?) as values that will emit something in a consistent format, e.g. (none), (new), (abolished), or (vacant), if we agree on this parenthetical style. Throw an error if people try to add randomly made-up annotations. And, yes, if the position only had one holder such that there is neither a predecessor nor a sucessor, then such a template should not be used and would just be pointless visual noise. PS: I'm not even sure "vacant" has a use case. Even if the previous office/title/position holder had been two centuries earlier, that is still a predecessor.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:48, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
Let's see if we can agree on a style first, then worry about the mechanics of how to get there. I recommend lowercase parentheticals, "(new position)", "(abolished)", and similar if other cases such as "(vacant)" or "(none)" are needed for some reason. Dicklyon (talk) 19:25, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
Recommend visual examples (i.e boxes) of proposals. Give us a more direct look at what we're dealing with. GoodDay (talk) 19:42, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
Current version
Preceded by
Created
 Office
2023–2025 		Succeeded by
Abolished

Here's what I see as most common and what I propose (though as noted you wouldn't have a succession box at all if the position has no before or after like this): Dicklyon (talk) 23:58, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Current version
Preceded by
New Position
 Office
2023–2025 		Succeeded by
Abolished
Proposed version
Preceded by
(new position)
 Office
2023–2025 		Succeeded by
(abolished)

@Dicklyon, GoodDay, and SMcCandlish: I think the templates already have a solution for this. Template:s-non can be used in place of the before {{s-bef}} or after {{s-aft}} box. Using the example above it looks like this:

New Position Office
2023–2025 		Abolished

Hope that helps, Rjjiii (talk) 05:25, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Yup, that version looks great. GoodDay (talk) 05:28, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
I agree with the proposed version. The capitalization in the original was weird, and the {{s-non}} stuff is just confusing (maybe not when there are multiple succession boxes for multiple positions indicating a before/then/after relationship between the fields, but one by itself wouldn't make much sense to the reader).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:35, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
@GoodDay and SMcCandlish: are y'all supporting the capitalized version by Rjjiii, or the lowercase parenthetical by me? As far as I can tell, the Template:s-non thing just copies the reason string, so it has no influence on what style the editor uses. It helps, but leaves a question; perhaps sentence case "New position" would be sensible there instead of what Rjjiii showed. Dicklyon (talk) 17:37, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
My primary choice, would be to have 'no succession box' used, if there's no predecessor or successor. But, if we're to have a succession box in those circumstances? then Rjjiii's version is acceptable. GoodDay (talk) 18:34, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
Lowercase parenthetical. The capitalization isn't necessary. But yes, if there are neither a predecessor nor successor, then no such template should be used, since no navigational function can be served by it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:35, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Style for group of articles

We are a group of editors who have been having a discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Date format for year articles on adopting a policy/standard that all articles about generic years (e.g. 1998) should be written using the DMY date format. (For the reasons why, read the discussion itself). I and several other editors do find it beneficial and desirable that such a narrow group of articles consistently use the same format not just within one particular article but across all year articles. However, according to MOS:VAR: "If you believe an alternative style would be more appropriate for a particular article, discuss this at the article's talk page or – if it raises an issue of more general application or with the MoS itself – at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style".

The policy only grants the right to change format based on consensus within one article. As it would take a lot of time to go through individual discussions on all +2000 year articles, I would therefore like to suggest changing the policy in a way that (in very rare cases) allows for establishing a consensus on a place like the village pump to change the date format (or questions about styles in general) on a group of articles, and not just individual ones. I do think this makes sense with regard to years.--Marginataen (talk) 17:00, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

You say that those proposing this change find it beneficial to have conformity between year articles (and not just within a given year article, as is current guidance). Could you elaborate on that and explain precisely what the benefits would be? Blueboar (talk) 18:06, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
I'm likely to be strongly against any change to the policy. Johnbod (talk) 20:39, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
This is a guideline, not a policy. And it's entirely normal for wikiprojects to set some basic style standards for articles within their scope, as long as it a) isn't making up an "anti-rule" that is against site-wide policies or guidelines, b) doesn't conflict with style asserted by other wikiprojects for whom the articles are also in-scope, and c) isn't advanced in a WP:OWN/WP:GANG manner, e.g. to thwart a consensus discussion at a particular article that concludes to diverge from the default style for that category of articles (cf. WP:CONLEVEL). This sort of wikiproject setting of default styles in a category is mostly done with article layout (what sections should typically be present in a football bio, or whatever), determining what to put in topical infoboxes, standardization of tables and charts at similar articles, and so on. (For a rather large collection of such wikiproject style advice material, which has the authority level of essays but is nevertheless generally followed, see WP:WikiProject Football#Manual of style.) But there's no particular reason something like this couldn't apply to the date format in a consistent and programmatic series of articles on years. It's not any different from the consensuses to format them all as the same sort of list, to give them all consistent introductory leads, to have the same trio of infoboxes in the same order, to have the same major sections for Events/Births/Deaths, to all use the section title References (instead of some altenative like Citations, Sources, etc.), and so on. Remember that Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy and we are not here to wikilawyer about rules in a way that impedes working on the encyclopedia. A consensus to treat several hundred near-identical articles in the same category in a consistent matter is not magically invalid because it didn't redundantly happen several hundred times on separate talk pages, article-by-article. Cf. also our WP:RM, WP:CFD, and other processes that support multi-page nominations (which very often involve MoS matters); we systemically permit multi-page consensuses because re-re-re-re-arguing the same thing at hundreds of pages of the same sort would be a stupid waste of editorial time and energy. WP:VPPRO is a perfectly fine venue at which to come to a broad-participation consensus in favor of or against this wikiproject's narrow style consistency idea (though there's been so much workshopping of text in mid-discussion that I suspect it will require a second round). And Johnbod is correct that there is no rationale to make a change to this guideline, or to any policy, in response, any more than we would rewrite MOS:LAYOUT to account for what is said about football/soccer articles at WP:WikiProject Football#Manual of style; wikiprojects have broad latitude to provide consistent style advice as long as it's not directly against site-wide norms that apply to all articles (and the project in this case is not proposing some new date format that MOS:DATE doesn't sanction). (All that said, the football project's section I mentioned should probably be renamed to "#Style advice" to stop implying it is part of the Manual of Style guidelines.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:17, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
I'm not sure that "set some basic style standards for articles within their scope" is the right way of putting this. One would hope that editors who are particularly familiar with and enthusiastic about improving articles within a self-chosen area would provide some optional advice (and we call them WP:Advice pages for this reason), but they're not really "setting standards"; they're just giving us the benefit of their experience. (Also, hopefully not directly contradicting the best advice from other groups, because it's not unusual for an article to be supported by multiple groups. See also the problem with {{drugbox}} and {{chembox}} both being relevant for many articles, and it not always being obvious which one should take priority.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:15, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
I already covered both of those points in my original post ("has the authority level of essays", and "doesn't conflict with style asserted by other wikiprojects for whom the articles are also in-scope"), but okay.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:13, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
I said my piece over at the Village Pump, but... I agree with SMcCandlish that there isn't a problem with some sort of "unified discussion" of a group of articles. However, I do object to the grounds on which this proposal is made. The spirit of ENGVAR (and, in this particular case, DATEVAR) is that discussions on preferred style of English are highly discouraged, and when an over-eager editor goes around trying to impose "consistency" on what is coincidentally the format they're used to, they're told to stop. We just don't do that. And there are good and proper reasons for this that have to do with editor retention: if one editor has an article they maintain with Commonwealth English, and another one with Pakistani English, and another one in Canadian English, Who Cares. Let them be. I haven't found any other rationale other than "DMY is my favorite format and a more global format" which goes directly against the ethos of ENGVAR, where if the first major editor to an article slaps a South African English tag on it, that's how it stays regardless of how global it is or isn't. A general discussion is fine, but it should be for something like how articles on the US Military use DMY because that's what the sources use. No such argument has been provided for year articles. If this precedent goes through, then what's to stop there from being chips in the wall until nothing remains of DATEVAR? We could hold the same vote for articles on electronics, or articles on games, or articles on clothing, and generate ENGVAR flame wars each time where the "losing" side will feel embittered for no reason. SnowFire (talk) 06:19, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
I made a follow-up proposal in VPP which I would suggest as an alternative: if the goal is merely consistency, then the way to keep the truce of ENGVAR is to vote for consistency or not, and if consistency wins, randomly select one of DMY / MDY. That way any sort of ENGVAR debate is avoided. Both formats work, and the "losing" side at least lost to a coin toss rather than not wasting time on an unproductive vote. SnowFire (talk) 06:19, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
Two issues I have with this are a) there doesn't seem to be an established on-wiki way to generate a random result, and b) this "terriblizing" scenario of going topic-by-topic with RfC after RfC to set a date standard is nowhere in sight. Such a category-wide standard has never been proposed before (that I know of), is only being proposed in this particular case because the articles are themselves about dates and people are very apt to navigate from one to another and be subjected to more-jarring-than-usual inconsistency, and there is no reason or rationale to try to impose a similar standard across articles on electronics or clothing. In short, this looks like the fallacious version of the slippery slope argument to me.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:18, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
@SMcCandlish: As I understand you, your assesment is that the discussion on the village pump on whether to establish a standard for using the DMY format consistently across WikiProject Years is completely valid. Not that it is a good idea, but that it is a valid request to discuss on the Village pump as venue. How do we move forwad from here? Marginataen (talk) 09:30, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
Of course it's valid; editorial consensus can be determined on anything (other than to undo WP:OFFICE actions and other legal matters imposed on us externally by WMF), provided the discussion has broad enough input. The discussion as it stands now is kind of a messy one. I don't think it's going to come to a clear consensus. It would probably be necessary to do it again later. And it might still result in no consensus, or a consensus to have no standard, to a consensus to have a standard that isn't the one you favor.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:51, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
All right, with the validity of both the request and the venue for its discussion established, I am considering to start a whole new discussion about it at the village pump since the current one indeed is a mess. Would this be permissible/recommendable, SMcCandlish? Marginataen (talk) 16:06, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
"That which is not forbidden is permitted." As for recommendable, probably not, until the current discussion completely dwindles. Or start a subthread under the existing discussion if you think that would be effective. But just WP:TALKFORKing while the current discussion is still ongoing would probably not be well received.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:54, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Putting an end to using "Caucasian" for white Americans

There is an unfortunate, US-centric trend of using the term Caucasian to refer to white people, especially in medicine. This use is not quite accurate for obvious geographic reasons, but because the term is/was widely used by RS, it's very much NPOV and uncontested by the current standards of MOS:IDENTITY. Examples:

  • Eye color: Studies on Caucasian twins, both fraternal and identical, have shown that eye color over time (referring to an US study)
  • Doctor–patient relationship: According to a study of 618 medical encounters between mainly Caucasian physicians and Caucasian and African American patients... (US, again)
  • Factor V Leiden: Suspicion of factor V Leiden being the cause for any thrombotic event should be considered in any Caucasian patient below the age of 45... (US, of course)

Should we do something to discourage this kind of use, and in fact encourage rewriting the "Caucasian" in sources about e.g. US population genetics and case reports to "white"? The change needed might be as simple as adding example under the use specific terminology part of MOS:IDENTITY, or arguing that it's "Contested vocabulary" using non-American English sources (themselves being a minority, eh). Artoria2e5 🌉 05:24, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

We can't re-interpret sources or what they meant by "Caucasian". Maybe they included people from the archaic racial category which is wide-ranging across multiple continents and could potentially include people from the Caucasus, Middle East, North Africa, and Indian subcontinent, as well as Europe, or perhaps they meant some variety of "white", whatever that means. We need to stick to what the sources say in quoting or paraphrasing them, otherwise would involve some OR/SYNTH. —DIYeditor (talk) 05:39, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
At the very least, we should link to the Caucasian American article on first use if the study explicitly talks about "Caucasian" people in an American context. Oh wait what's that, a redirect?
Look, in many cases, no OR/SYNTH at all is needed to figure out that we aren't talking about Georgia and Armenia.
  • The eye color article's source, doi:10.1001/archopht.1997.01100150661017, directly says "whites" in the abstract. Someone actually bent that into Caucasian to sound fancy.
  • Same goes for DPR article, doi:10.1016/S0277-9536(99)00338-X, right in the abstract.
  • FVL article quote is unsourced, but lower down we have Studies have found that about 5 percent of Caucasians in North America have factor V Leiden. Data have indicated that prevalence of factor V Leiden is greater among Caucasians than minority Americans. That's zero guesswork involved to know it's about "Caucasian Americans". The source PMID 9415695 does use Caucasian for once.
--Artoria2e5 🌉 07:20, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
Considering the first two sources actually use "white", anyone contesting a change to those articles would need to justify it since the "Caucasian" term isn't actually used. As for the third, unfortunately the term is used in the source, so it needs to be used for accuracy here. That said, I would have no qualms about a general statement that the term is dispreferred because it represents an outdated (and throughly discredited) form of pseudoscientific racism. oknazevad (talk) 12:58, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
Re This use is not quite accurate for obvious geographic reasons: "White" is not quite accurate for obvious color reasons. (Very few of us Caucasians/white people are albino.) But words are understood to mean what they're understood to mean, and "Caucasian" isn't a pejorative term. However, I wonder what people these days think "Caucasian" means. When I was a kid (1960s), a resources I had (I think it was a Rand McNally world atlas) presented a tripartite division of the human species: Caucasian, Negroid, and Mongoloid. We generally find a finer categorization today, with the some people classified as "Middle Eastern" or "South Asian", for example. I think that older sources would have counted Middle Easterners and South Asians as Caucasian while newer sources might not. So what "Caucasian" means is going to be inconsistent as one goes from source to source to source. So I agree it isn't a cut-and-dried matter, but I don't think that changing "Caucasian" to "white" would solve that problem. Largoplazo (talk) 12:26, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
Agree here I am also a 60s kid and without doubt the meaning has been refined. When i deal this the I simply use quote marks so its clear its a term from the source Of the 36.3 million people enumerated in 2021, approximately 25.4 million reported being "White", representing 69.8 percent of the population. The major panethnic groups chosen were: "European" (52.5 percent)..... Moxy- 13:13, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
I'm not a 60s kid, but the tripartite racial classification still being taught in China today is basically the same thing (with color-based names), so I get the concern about blurry buckets. I think that quotation marks and a general statement discourage de novo (uh, not-in-the-source) uses of the term is good enough for me. Given current NIH reporting recommendations, the term should die out. --Artoria2e5 🌉 02:08, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
Are you SURE that American English sources are a minority within English sources? Given the proportions of native speakers within and without the US, I wouldn't be so sure.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:21, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
Uhhh Khajidha, I said non-American English sources (themselves being a minority, eh). That means that I believe Am Eng is the majority, and non-Am is the minority. You know what? That's bad punctiation on my part. If it read "non–American-English", it might make more sense. Artoria2e5 🌉 12:57, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
I'm not sure if that would have helped. I was understanding the sentence to say that you were proposing to use sources not in American English to establish the status as contested because Americans are the minority. I'm not sure now if the problem was your phrasing or my brain. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:04, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
The use of "Caucasian" to refer to white people is not US-specific. It's also used in many other countries (it's certainly long been used in the UK). It isn't pejorative and it's no less inaccurate than calling people "white" or "black" or saying "people of colour" (what colour? Does that mean white people are colourless?). It's a commonly used and perfectly acceptable term. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:11, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
From a biological and genetic perspective, the terms Black, Caucasian, Negro and White are all problematical, lumping together people with different genetics and splitting people with similar genetics. For people of mixed ancestry, the terms become positively ludicrous. In the US, a person with mostly European ancestry and a small amount of African ancestry is called Black, which is difficult to explain on any basis other than slave-era prejudice. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 15:05, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
These days, I would actually have said it was precisely the opposite! Mixed-race people often identify as black themselves, even if they have more European than African ancestry. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:09, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
There's also the issue that Africa is culturally and genetically diverse, even if you only look at West Africa; IMHO, our language should respect that. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 15:40, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
Nobody thinks all White people are clones of each other, nor that all Black people are clones of each other. We all know there's genetic (as well as cultural) diversity among both groups. The use of those terms doesn't imply otherwise. Largoplazo (talk) 17:05, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

"Foreign terms": rename a subsection?

Under "Foreign terms", the first subsection is called "No common use in English". This subsection title is genuinely ambiguous, especially in the context of a manual, because the word "No" appears to be prohibiting something. I'm sure the person who wrote it merely wanted to avoid wordy headings, and the topic was so familiar to them that they didn't see the confusion.

Just in the interest of trying to keep it short, I might suggest something like "If not commonly used in English" or "Words not commonly used in English", but my preference is to give up trying to condense the idea, and put "When the word is not commonly used in English".

If a change is made, the subsection that follows it should probably be renamed correspondingly. TooManyFingers (talk) 18:21, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

There isn't any other MoS section that start with "No" and is a rule against something, and if we do have a rule against something, it is not given in the form "No [whatever]".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:40, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
I'm not among those who had planned to read the whole manual just in order to discover the situation you described. I can't imagine I'm alone in that, so your response doesn't seem reasonable to me. And even if it is expected that everyone will just know they have to read the whole manual before reading this part, there are other ambiguities in this heading that make it unclear what it's even referring to, and it's easily fixed. Of course you know what it means, but that isn't really relevant – you were already familiar with it. TooManyFingers (talk) 23:31, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
"No common use in English" is a descriptive phrase and has no verb in it, so it cannot be an instruction. I honestly don't care much whether the wording is tweaked, but none of the suggestions above strike me as improvements. "If not commonly used in English" looks like a fragementary question. "Words not commonly used in English" is too specific, since the material applies to multi-word phrases. "When the word is not commonly used in English" has the same issue.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:36, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

The name might be re-titled too. America is "foreign" where I live. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 12:14, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Doesn't have anything to do with the US. It's about foreign to English, not foreign to a particular geographic location.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:36, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
Then why not say that directly rather than approach it obliquely? I suspect when it was written many many moons ago, the author unconsciously channelled the US phrase "foreign and domestic". Wikipedia is a world-wide encyclopedia, nowhere is "foreign". --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:11, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
Sure, but this is not the MOS for Wikipedia. It's the MOS for en.wiki. That said, I agree "foreign" is not quite precise. --Trovatore (talk) 17:48, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
(As an aside, I think the project of trying to make Wikipedia a single encyclopedia that you can read in multiple languages is a bit overdone sometimes. The different languages are different encyclopedias, between which there is a certain amount of coordination, but there is no need to try to make them all just article-for-article translations of one another.) --Trovatore (talk) 17:51, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
Yes, and what's striking to me here is that this particular material has been stable for years and years, then suddenly out of nowhere two people want to change it (without a good idea for what to change it to), both with rationales that indicate problems understanding the clear meaning of the material, which no one else seems to have any difficulty with.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:09, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
This should resolve it, with a minimal amount of change, and no substantive change.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:09, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
Agree with SMC’s “tweak”. Should resolve the issue. Blueboar (talk) 17:17, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Decoding US Naval Ship Hull Numbers: Format Matters

Hull numbers on US Naval ships serve as unique identifiers, much like personal names. Altering their format or inserting punctuation changes their intended identification. Just as "Bob Ross" is distinct from "Bob-Ross," CVN 77 and CVN-77 represent separate designations. These hull numbers are specifically structured to convey essential information, and any deviation from their intended format leads to potential confusion and inaccuracies. Just as one wouldn't arbitrarily modify a person's name, altering the format of a hull number can distort its precise meaning and hinder effective communication within naval operations, emphasizing the importance of maintaining the correct format for these vital identifiers.

The resulting impact, at a minimum, is a prevalence and perpetuation of incorrect format across the shipyard industry.

All US Naval ship designations should have hyphens removed. 50.231.20.123 (talk) 15:07, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Whoah. Well, USN doesn't agree about the hyphen. For example USS Abbot (DD-629) in the two key official USN-published reference sources:
A choice was made on WP some while back: see WP:SHIPNAME "On Wikipedia, US Navy and US Coast Guard hull numbers are hyphenated (the US Navy itself is not consistent in this respect)".
If you wish to pursue this, I suggest that you raise it at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships. Davidships (talk) 16:11, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
I would add that the rationale from the anon was self-defeating from the outset. If "the shipyard industry" shows "prevalence" of the usage with the hyphens, then it is strong evidence against removing them. And the rant asserts that using hyphens "changes their intended identification ... leads to potential confusion and inaccuracies", but has illustrated no such problems, e.g. two different ships designated "CVN 77" and "CVN-77", respectively, that have to be disambiguated.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:14, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Section-specific terminology hatnotes

Is there any MOS guidance about section specific hatnotes noting linguistic conventions? If not, would it be best to use {{hatnote}} to templatize this guidance on linguistic conventions? — BillHPike (talk, contribs) 20:54, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

@BillHPike: See this for a solution: special:permalink/1181333207#Chinese—Alalch E. 11:39, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
Another tentative application of the same approach: special:permalink/1181358259#References (hatnotes also don't show in the printable version, and a note with this content shouldn't show in the printable version however it may be formatted, in my opinion). —Alalch E. 15:40, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
Why on earth would you use an annoyingly decorative pseudo-hatnote like that? By including what amounts to a big blue "block" icon, it is against MOS:ICONS: "For the purposes of this guideline, icons encompasses ... other decoration, whether produced by small image files, typographic dingbats, emojis, or CSS display manipulation." This is the last of those cases.) The style in question is used by warning templates to flag article problems that readers should be aware of it; it is not for generic cross-referencing. If you want to create a custom hatnote, that is what {{hatnote}} (indented) and {{crossreference}} (not indented) are for.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:20, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
Neither of those solutions which you suggest are good either, because the purpose of hatnotes per WP:HAT is to help readers locate a different article if the one they are at is not the one they're looking for, and this is not such a case. I think that this is good: Special:Diff/1189104552. Just not sure about indenting or not. Maybe unindented but italicized makes the most sense. (Also, I don't agree with you that the generic notice template serves only to flag problems, but we don't have to discuss that, as I don't intend to pursue replicating the above approach.) —Alalch E. 18:57, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

NOWRAP on sports scores

Hi! I'm looking for some input on something that's come up on an article. Following a chat on my talk, it seems as though scores separated with an endash (no spaces) are default wrapping on a specific browser (Edge on Windows 10). I was under the impression that items like 6–4 wouldn't wrap. It doesn't on my browser, but there have been articles with these scores put into {{Nowrap}} tags; which I don't think is usual policy. Can anyone shed s some light on this? Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 15:57, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Of course sports scores (3‍–‍2) should never wrap. Whether {{nbnd}} or {{nowrap}} is used to achieve it is immaterial. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 23:36, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
I think what I'm getting at, is that currently we don't use either in any MOS or style guide. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 07:07, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
We don't need a rule to do the sensible thing. All sorts of things should be no-wrapped to prevent line breaking, and we don't catalogue all of them. Is there some long-term, intractable fight going on, with people revert-warring against no-wrap templating?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:09, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
There is no edit-war going on at all. Just a polite discussion.  Alan  (talk) 10:35, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
Not really. I didn't even know that this dash would wrap. I was just looking for some sort of consensus to update our MOS (such as at MOS:SNOOKER, but also maybe a paragraph here) and make it the suggested formatting. Otherwise we'll just end up with other sports, etc. having the same conversation. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 10:37, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
Because it would be such a small addition, and because the problem could be widespread, I don't think I'm actually going to object to adding this to MOS:NUM in the sport scores and vote tallies section, and I think I saw that someone had already done it anyway. If at least two browser have this issue, and it affects all sports (and votes, and other things formatted like this), then I suppose it's a real enough issue to address it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:33, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
Well spotted. MOS:SCORES says: "To avoid potential line breaks, {{non breaking en dash}}, or {{nbnd}} for short, can be used."  Alan  (talk) 10:51, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
Sure. I'm happy-ish now. It's going to be a bit more processing for pages, but not too bad. I would prefer it to say "should" be used, else we are still leaving it up as a style preference thing, which I don't think it is. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 12:56, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
It depends on context. There is no potential for unwanted line breaks in many sitations, so 'should' seems too strong. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:03, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
I agree with Lee Vilenski. I also think that using "should" is better than using "can" in this case. In what situation is there no potential for unwanted line breaks? Example?  Alan  (talk) 13:42, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
Right near the start of a sentence (or equivalent, e.g. beginning of an infobox parameter or near start of an image caption) and probably in a table column that consists of nothing but scores.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:46, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
Understood - and that's fair enough, but I still don't think that "should" is too strong. "Should" is making a suggestion. "Must" would be too strong in being an instruction. But "can" is very weak.  Alan  (talk) 16:32, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
That would be the start of a paragraph, rather than a sentence. I think suggesting it as "can", has the idea that it could be reverted as not being required, as it isn't wrapping on their display. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 17:53, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
Yep, I mean "paragraph". Derp.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:11, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
It might be better to reword it to say something along the lines of: "A {{non breaking en dash}}, or {{nbnd}} should be used to avoid a potential line break unless a line break is unlikely to occur."  Alan  (talk) 18:57, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
Or better still something like: "A {{non breaking en dash}}, or {{nbnd}} for short, should be used to avoid a potential line break, except where a line break is unlikely to occur, such as at the beginning of an infobox parameter or at the start of a paragraph." in MOS:SCORES  Alan  (talk) 19:22, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
But then it's getting longwinded and WP:CREEPy. We don't go into this detail in other places where nbsp is mentioned.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:11, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
Fair point. So what do you suggest.  Alan  (talk) 08:57, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
Just leave it as "can" or change it to "should" if you really, really think this is necessary (though expect someoen to later revert it as too emphatic), and don't add a bunch of conditional verbiage. We don't need it for any other such case, so we don't need it here. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:41, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
I would be happier having it changed from "can" to "should", which I don't think is too emphatic, and I think Lee Vilenski would agree. But it would be better to get a wider consensus than just the two or three users who have contributed to this discussion.  Alan  (talk) 11:02, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
Help:Line-break handling says that {{nowrap}} is good for short text sections like "10 kg (22 lb)", which should always stay together. This, I think, applies to scores. The MOS says It is sometimes desirable to force a text segment to appear entirely on a single line‍—‌that is, to prevent a line break (line wrap) from occurring anywhere within it. and I think this applies here also.  Alan  (talk) 10:33, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
To clarify, the problem seems to be browser specific. I use Microsoft Edge on Windows 10, but the same occurs, apparently, on an iPad. I'm told that it is not a problem using Firefox. The following table (column headed "plain") will look horrible on some browsers but OK on others. Using {{nowrap}} or {{nbnd}} fixes it:
{{nowrap}} plain {{nbnd}}
{{hyphen}} Text before 6-4 Text before 6-4 N/A
{{ndash}} Text before 6–4 Text before 6–4 Text before 6‍–‍4
{{mdash}} Text before 6—4 Text before 6—4 N/A
 Alan  (talk) 13:41, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
  • Just say "Use {nbnd} to prevent linebreak." That sounds sort of imperative ("Do this!") but also admits a reading where you might not bother with {nbnd} in a situation where you're sure it's not needed ("Do this in order to achieve this goal -- assuming, of course, that the goal is relevant in your situation"). Having said that, I always use {ndash} for ndashes (never the literal – character, nor &ndash;), so actually {nbnd} is easier to type in, so why not just use it for all scores? EEng 03:38, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
    We shouldn't effectively mandate a particular template when there are multiple approaches. E.g. just doing {{nowrap|12–3}} or the alias {{nobr|12–3}} works fine and are both more intuitive/memorable for various editors and clearer in the source code about what is going on (since {{nbnd}} isn't familiar to many editors and not a very intuitive name if you don't already know what it stands for). PS: Some of us are fond of using the actual "–" character since it's right there in the "Wiki markup" section of the built-in editing tools and is concise.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:14, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
    Yeah, well, your mother wears army boots. EEng 03:28, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
    @EEng: Your comment seems to be off-topic and unconstructive. See WP:CIVIL.  Alan  (talk) 09:10, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
    He's just a-kiddin'. I know EEng's humour pretty well by now. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:28, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
    I guess I forgot to say [FBDB]. EEng 11:19, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
    I had to get it from somewhere!  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:28, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
  • I would change the wording to "should use" and suggest any of the valid templates. We shouldn't be enforcing one template when all of them have effectively the same outcome. Joseph2302 (talk) 09:03, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
    So that would mean changing the wording to something like:
    "To avoid potential line breaks, {{nowrap}} should be used around the entire score construction, or use {{non breaking en dash}}, {{nbnd}} for short, between scores."
     Alan  (talk) 09:31, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
    Works for me, even the "should" I was initially skeptical about, since "To avoid potential line breaks" puts a logical rationale/condition on it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:32, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
    I'm happy with the "should" at MOS:SCORES but my reading then is that it would say that to "avoid potential line breaks" you "should" use x or y, but it doesn't say that you should be trying to "avoid potential line breaks". Personally I'm happy with that since some projects may be happy with the potential line breaks, which to me are no big deal. Nigej (talk) 11:03, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
    I agree that 'should' would be preferable to 'can' in whatever the consensus wording ends up as. As mentioned previously the wording in MOS:SCORES – "A {{non breaking en dash}}, or {{nbnd}} for short, should be used to avoid a potential line break, except where a line break is unlikely to occur, such as at the beginning of an infobox parameter or at the start of a paragraph." – appears sensible enough to me. Steveflan (talk) 11:44, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
    Too longwinded. No need for all the detail.  Alan  (talk) 11:57, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
    It's gone quiet in here, so I decided to be WP:BOLD and change MOS:SCORES.  Alan  (talk) 12:03, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
  • All the debating about "should be used" vs. "can be used" is basically mooted by writing simpler and avoiding both, as I did here. The entire-section context of the material, which starts off advising {{ndash}} by default, make it clear that the meaning of the new material is "If the score string is positioned in the text such that a line break might occur in the middle of it, that splitting result would be undesirable, so here is how to prevent that from happening". No "should" or "can" wording is needed at all.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:58, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Real example for NOTRIPLEDASH

If a real, article-based example is needed for MOS:NOTRIPLEDASH, the lead paragraph of Rigging, consisting of one, long sentence with three dashes, is a textbook case:

Rigging comprises the system of ropes, cables and chains, which support a sailing ship or sail boat's masts—standing rigging, including shrouds and stays—and which adjust the position of the vessel's sails and spars to which they are attached—the running rigging, including halyards, braces, sheets and vangs.[1]

Having only passing familiarity with sailing—I do remember spar, and boom vang, but not enough to define them—I am unable to parse that long sentence in one go, and I'm still not sure what the standing rigging and the running rigging are, although I guess I could figure it out if I sat and annotated the sentence. I'll be pointing this out at its Talk page, so it may have changed by the time you read this, but it's a good illustration in the wild of the type of problem triple dashes can cause. Mathglot (talk) 20:23, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Agreed, it was horrible. I've rewritten the lead to use simple sentences and no dashes. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 21:35, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Flagicon next to the tournament title

Hi all.. In Gao Ling#Performance timeline section NguyenDuyAnh1995 added flagicon next to the tournament title. As i know, added flagicon next to tournament name, will make the country or location seem to be of greater significance than the tournament. Per MOS:FLAG said that "flag icons may be relevant in some subject areas, where the subject actually represents that country or nationality – such as military units or national sports teams." The subject in Gao Ling#Performance timeline is the tournament not the country. So i think, per MOS:DECOR and MOS:FLAGCRUFT, the country flag in that section should be remove.. I hope someone can help me.. Thanks. Stvbastian (talk) 04:59, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Agreed that doing that decoration is a poor idea. Flags in sport are used to indicate the sporting nationality of a particular competitor. So, aside from the problem pointed out above of unduly dwelling on the location of events, it has the additional fault of confusingly switching in mid-article from an indicator of something about the player to an indicator of something else entirely, and at first seem to weirdly imly that the player was representing different countries at different events. It's just completely unhelpful.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:21, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for your explanation SMcCandlish. 3 times i reminded NguyenDuyAnh1995 to read and understand the MOS:FLAG, but he was unable to understand the rules. Hopefully with additional explanation from you he can understand. Once again, thank you.. Stvbastian (talk) 08:59, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
Hi, when you “reminded me” of the matter, you did not show any specific violation except that my using of flag icons was “merely decorative” and I replied that they were “informative” which I believe is accurate. If you had quoted “flag icons may be...sport teams” I might have understood the problem, but instead you at the first time used “merely decorative” and other times just “read this” “read this”. Honestly if you believe someone violated something you have to tell what it is, which rule and which regulation, not just throw the whole article and tell people to read that. I will remove the flag icons from the tables, but next time please identify the mistakes first before telling others they are wrong. NguyenDuyAnh1995 (talk) 11:16, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
Hei,, don't act like a fool. You said in your talk page that you have read the rule ([18]. I deliberately included the MOS:FLAG link, so you can click, read, understand, and your knowledge increases. But you continue to brag about your personal opinion which is not based on Wikipedia's rules. This is important to every Wikipedia editors to read more and more about Wikipedia rules especially the Manual of Style. Stvbastian (talk) 11:55, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
NguyenDuyAnh1995 does need to read and understand the relevent guidelines, but name-calling like "fool" is not civil, and is strongly contraindicated in a topic area covered by WP:CTOP (which MoS is: WP:CT/MOS). If someone is making faulty arguments, there are better ways to say that (see first two sections of WP:HOTHEADED for examles).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:43, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
Sorry for saying that. I just feel uncomfortable with NguyenDuyAnh1995 attitude of constantly making excuses, not wanting to increase his knowledge of Wikipedia rules, and only using his personal perspective to edit on Wikipedia. @SMcCandlish Thank you for the useful explanation. Stvbastian (talk) 01:29, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
I read the rule, you read the rule. But in our discussions none of us came up with any mention of "flag icons...sports teams", but only whether the using of flag icons were "merely decorative". You told me that I violated the rule without pointing which it was, and as I might have missed the actual violations while skimming MOS:FLAG, you failed to notice it as well and only brought it up here. Yes, it's important for editors to read about the rule, but it's also important for you to identify the violated rule to inform the "violators" like me, instead of discussing about one rule with me on my talk page and bringing up another one here.NguyenDuyAnh1995 (talk) 03:48, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
They are merely decorative; there is nothing informative about them since they are simply decorating the country name which is already specified textually. We grudgingly permit this for sport competitors for the sole reason that in other media like TV coverage, sports scores in international competition often have countries reduced to flags as identifiers, so a reader who sees something like that and wants more information may actually be aided in our material on a sports event by the flag being present in reference to that competitor (player or team/squad). Names of sports events or venues are not reduced to flags in this manner, so there is no purpose served in our article by festooning a list of events with flags for their locations. It is definitely against MOS:FLAGS and MOS:DECOR, as well as MOS:IMAGERELEVANCE: "Images must be significant and relevant in the topic's context, not primarily decorative"; images are properly used as an "illustrative aid to understanding", a purpose not served by adding flag icons to a list of events.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:43, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for the explanation. Some rules are not easy to understand thoroughly and it doesn't help when the one who accused me of violations the rule said things like "adding flag icons doesn't mean anything because the named of host countries are already included in the names of the tournaments" which is not true in many cases. I admit that sometimes I fail to notice which rules I violated, but explanations like yours are more helpful than giving me the like to articles with "read this" "read this" only.
NguyenDuyAnh1995 (talk) 04:00, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
Too much reasons.. It is clearly stated in first section of MOS:FLAG that said Flag icons may be relevant in some subject areas, the subject actually represents that country or nationality – such as military units or national sports teams.. When i gave u the link then u said already read the link... But what do you do? You said you have read the rule and continously gave your personal preference which is not based on Wikipedia rules. And again just like SMcCandlish said: "You does need to read and understand the relevant guidelines". Reading and understand the rules is important to every Wikipedia editors. And sometimes, when someone asked you to read and understand the guidelines, please do that and stop take examples in articles that don't follow the rules, especially editing just based on your personal understanding... Stvbastian (talk) 07:31, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
You read the rule as well and you had to ask the opinions here about that first section and now you tell me that I should have understood it immediately after reading it? You read that but didn’t bring it up in the discussion or give any thorough explanation like what SMcCandlish did here. For what I know there are advisors and customer services who will explain the rules and regulations for those you have questions about them, not bringing tons of papers or pdf files and tell them to read it. Or when police or authorities announce a resident that they have violated something, do they explain the specific rule that is violated, or did they just throw the whole laws book and ask the “violator” to read and see for themselves what they do wrong? And I’m pretty sure when you cited MOS:FLAG you didn’t notice that I might have violated that first section. That’s why you only brought up “merely decorative” thing.NguyenDuyAnh1995 (talk) 08:09, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
Can we not have the argument? We deprecate the use of flags next to tournament names, and realistically most usage of flags are overkill. Some sports where national teams regularly use flags, or sometimes when people represent a country at an event (although not always), is suitable times to use a flag. Whether or not there has been an edit war to this period is irrelevant. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 10:09, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
I just want to make NguyenDuyAnh1995 understand, because it seems like he fails to understand and looking for too many excuses for his mistakes. Decorative?? Yup thats right.. just like SMcCandlish said "merely decorative; there is nothing informative about them since they are simply decorating the country name which is already specified textually." Just as i explained previously in your talk page. Am i wrong? So, per your edits you violates the MOS:FLAGS and MOS:DECOR, as well as MOS:IMAGERELEVANCE. And don't forget to click, read, and understand the 3 links MOS:FLAGS, MOS:DECOR, and MOS:IMAGERELEVANCE. Thanks Stvbastian (talk) 10:20, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
You still don’t get it, do you? I accept the mistakes as explained by SMcCandlish and removed the icons. The problem is that you didn’t know what I violated as well, and that’s why you discussed about one section of MOS:FLAG on my talk page and came here and talked about another. “Merely decorative”? It tells that Artic Open is in Finland, Syed Modi International is in India and Hylo Open is in Germany, unlike what you said of the place where they being held is already in the name of the tournaments. If you know what I violated, quote the section, not cite the whole article, then come here to ask for opinion about something you did not mention on our discussion and talk like I’m the one who were not unable to understand. NguyenDuyAnh1995 (talk) 11:19, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
Ok, im wrong, you are right. Thanks Stvbastian (talk) 11:36, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
You're not wrong and NguyenDuyAnh1995 is not right. A flag does not "tell that Arctic Open is in Finland"; the word "Finland" does that, and the flag just decorates that name. We have three guidelines (at least) against doing this and NguyenDuyAnh1995 is playing WP:IDONTGETIT games endlessly in hopes that the opposition will just give up and go away instead of keep trying to get him to understand something that he must actually understand by now but is simply defying.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:13, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Currently a bunch of month articles, such as January 1960, have links in section headings, like this: 

==[[January 1]], 1960 (Friday)==

My understanding of MOS:NOSECTIONLINKS is that links in section headings are prohibited, and exceptions are not allowed:

For technical reasons, section headings should:

  • ...
  • Not contain links, especially where only part of a heading is linked.
  • ...

These technical restrictions are necessary to avoid technical complications and are not subject to override by local consensus.

Is my understanding correct here? Should these links be removed from the section headings? —Bkell (talk) 19:51, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

You are correct. Those links are especially non-useful because the calendar at the top already lists all the day-of-year pages, and, well, MOS:OVERLINK (A good question to ask yourself is whether reading the article you're about to link to would help someone understand the article you are linking from).
The links are still there because such articles get such little attention and there are so many of these articles. I have a hard enough time looking through decade or century pages, let alone specific months! — HTGS (talk) 00:04, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
As a reader of February 1960 § February 29, 1960 (Monday), I find the link in the heading quite useful. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 00:39, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
The section header link is wrong if the suggestion is to allow it here and not elsewhere, but the use of a hatnote is too clunky. Maybe there should be a new convention. Remsense留 00:48, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
If the suggestion is that Feb 29 in particular deserves a link, then I think a hat is fine. Better (imo) would be a line of prose, but that suggests at a lot more lines of prose for every section. — HTGS (talk) 00:55, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
HTGS, I agree this is a better solution. Remsense留 01:09, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
What I was trying to say is that MOS:NOSECTIONLINKS is generally a very good rule, but some articles have such a unique structure that links should be allowed. The series of lists under discussion here is not visited in large numbers and their specific design is not going to bleed into general articles. In short: beware of WP:CREEP and allow WP:COMMONSENSE. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:47, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
On some points, I may agree, but this specific style point that is as firm and total as it is for a reason—if a ubiquitous element of the site's layout (section headers) is presented obviously differently only in some articles, this will create endless end-user confusion and lead to endless litigation over where exactly the line is. Carving out exceptions is usually what actually creates WP:CREEP as characterized through the essay; there are simply more consistent options. Remsense留 02:51, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
Please explain how it will create confusion? And where does "litigation" come into it? Deb (talk) 08:55, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
Because section headers will have blue segments on 0.1% of the site's articles and not elsewhere, and there will be a very vague category of articles that allow them, and people will be confused and try to litigate which articles are in that category. Remsense留 09:03, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
You'll find that this is already the case, and people aren't confused. By "litigate", do you mean argue, discuss, dispute or what? We don't do litigation on Wikipedia. Deb (talk) 09:16, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
┌──────────────────────────────┘
This thread exists because people were confused—now that I am aware of it, I am also confused. If such exceptions were actually adhering to the MoS—meaning they would be explicitly written in the MoS rather than just ignoring it—there would be plenty more confusion, because the issue would be more visible, and it would grow. As for my choice of verbiage, I'm going to abstain, because I'm not sure you were actually confused as to what I meant. Remsense留 09:27, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
Michael, how do you justify "some articles have such a unique structure that links should be allowed" when the Manual of Style clearly says "These technical restrictions ... are not subject to override by local consensus"? I don't understand what else that MOS sentence can mean if it isn't saying that exceptions are prohibited. —Bkell (talk) 03:03, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
The MoS is demonstrably wrong here; a link like February 1960#February 29, 1960 (Monday) obviously works without any complications. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:40, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
The likely problem is the links in the headings themselves, not just links to those headings. I can certainly believe that the headings look fine for you on your computer. But are the headers rendered properly for everyone who uses screen readers, for example? SMcCandlish suggests below that the "technical reasons" here might be related to accessibility. Or do links in section headings cause problems for some automated tools? There are many ways that Wikipedia data is used, and the fact that the links don't cause any problems for you personally in the way you use Wikipedia doesn't mean that there are no potential technical issues for other people or for other tools. —Bkell (talk) 03:49, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
I am intentionally not making a MOS:OVERLINK argument here—let's focus on MOS:NOSECTIONLINKS. See MOS:DATELINK, which makes an explicit exception for "intrinsically chronological articles", which seems to indicate that MOS:OVERLINK does not apply to these links in these articles. So it seems to be fine to link to January 1 from the January 1960 article. But my understanding of MOS:NOSECTIONLINKS implies that those links shouldn't be in section headings. —Bkell (talk) 01:28, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
You aren't making an overlink argument because I already explained to you that articles relating to chronology are excluded. On investigation, it appears to me that the original Manual of Style was changed in 2006 to introduce this instruction: "Avoid links within headings." Note - not section headings. Later, somewhere around 2009, it became "Section names should not normally contain links, especially ones that link only part of the heading; they will cause accessibility problems." The nature of these "problems" is not specified. Month articles have existed for many years, certainly before the wording in the MOS changed to what it is now. Whether the specific dates should be linked has also been discussed. The links in the Month articles are very useful to me, because they allow navigation to and from Date articles. Deb (talk) 09:13, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
Trying to make a "grandfather clause" argument for ignoring the Manual of Style is a bit baffling, so I don't know why that's an angle here. Remsense留 09:34, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
I have no idea what you are talking about. Please explain what you mean. I can't have been ignoring it because that "rule" has never been raised previously in relation to the month articles. Deb (talk) 12:38, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
There very definitely is not a "grandfather clause", with regard to MoS or any other policy or guideline. WP:CONTENTAGE is utterly irrelevant to whether something should be edited to comply with P&G rules. WP's rules are updated all the time (for better or worse) and it is simply never ever the case that articles are magically excluded from compliance with them because of how long ago the article was estabished or how long ago something undesirable was first done in it. To put it in really obvious terms, when, say, WP:BLP1E was implemented it immediately applied to all articles and all content in them; there is no provision for violating it based on the violation pre-dating the implementation of the rule. In my 18 years here, I have one time, and one only, seen an attempt to impose a grandfather clause, by an RfC closer. What of course happened in reality was that his desire to see the consensus reached in the close not be applied to old articles was ignored as nonsense by the community, and the implementation in that case is now consistent throughout all our articles. Moving on, the fact that no one raised an issue about substandard formatting at an article that basically no one watchlists is also irrelevant. One cannot, for example, ignore BLP1E policy on an obscure bio simply because it's obscure. Nothing about Wikipedia works that way, ever. Deb has been here even longer than I have, and must understand all that already, so this "I don't get it" stuff is looking rather performative.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:22, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
You said "litigate", a term that refers specifically to legal action. Maybe you mean "Wikilawyering|wikilawyering"? Deb (talk) 12:40, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
See any good dictionary, in which litigate includes non-law definitions like 'dispute'. Even if you don't have such a dictionary, you easily should be able to intuit the general meaning as a metaphor. In very common Wikipedia usage, it refers to time-consuming and adversarial debate. But it's not plausible for you to have been here for 21 years without already understanding that. "I just don't understand" games are not helpful and simply degrade the quality of the discussion and the speed of its resolution.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:22, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

So far in this discussion I haven't seen any rationale for why it is important for links like January 1 to be in section headings specifically. Support has been voiced for having such links in month articles in general, which is fine—I don't think anyone is arguing against that. But I don't understand why those links have to be in the section headings. The month articles already have a calendar at the top with links to every day in the month. If it is important to have these links in each section too, then perhaps we can add a line of prose with the link or a hatnote such as {{See also}}. Why is it so important for the links to be specifically in the section headings? —Bkell (talk) 23:15, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Header links: technical reasons

A question for other editors: I assume that particular bullet is not actually for technical reasons, but just fits nicely into the list there? — HTGS (talk) 00:07, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
Well, there's another bulleted list immediately below containing additional guidelines for section headings "as a matter of consistent style", including a guideline against markup in section headings. Since the rule against links is in the "for technical reasons" list and not the "matter of consistent style" list, I assume that it is for technical reasons. —Bkell (talk) 01:19, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
Do piped links break section linking? I can’t imagine many other technical reasons for such a rule. My presumption has always been that we don’t like it because it looks awful. — HTGS (talk) 01:49, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
I don't know what the technical reasons are, but that certainly doesn't mean that they don't exist. For example, maybe it has something to do with the Wikipedia mobile app or automated tools or accessibility concerns (such as screen readers) or cross-language considerations or some internal data representation or something that I don't even know about. There are a lot of ways that Wikipedia data is used beyond just editing and viewing pages on wikipedia.org on a computer. We should be careful about concluding that there are no technical reasons just because we don't know what they are. —Bkell (talk) 01:57, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
I wasn’t disputing that there are technical reasons, so much as looking for those reasons. If there are still good tech reasons to keep the advice, then I will take that as good reason to be more aggressive in removing links. — HTGS (talk) 04:23, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
There's an accessibility reason, too, though I do not recall the details, and I don't know how long it's been since it was re-examined. Better asked at WT:MOSACCESS where some screen-reader users are regulars and can usually answer such questions pretty quickly.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:32, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
Older versions of the MOS stated:

Avoid links within headings. Depending on settings, some users may not see them clearly. It is much better to put the appropriate link in the first sentence under the header.

This sounds like it was for accessibility, or at least for CSS and browser settings. Of course this was a long time ago (2004). — HTGS (talk) 04:20, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
I see that HTGS has posted at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Accessibility#Links within section headings. I also just posted at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Technical issues caused by links in section headings? —Bkell (talk) 14:39, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
Links in section headers used to cause problems for screen readers, at least JAWS (which was then almost universally used in Windows), where the screen reader would stop reading the section title after encountering a link. That's no longer an issue. Graham87 (talk) 16:44, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
On the mobile site, you need to tap on a heading in order to expand a section and read it. If the heading has links, you have to carefully tap outside of them (in the worst case, you need to tap on the tiny icon on the side). This is uncomfortable and can be unintuitive. Matma Rex talk 17:19, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
Is this true of section headers? I understand you to say that, when you look at an article like March 1965 and you look at the section headed "March 6, 1965 (Saturday)", you can't see the events for that date unless you click on the section header. Is that correct? Deb (talk) 12:31, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
Using the mobile app (Android), the article appears much like on the desktop, with uncollapsed section headings. At the mobile site, each section is collapsed (not when the mobile site is viewed on a desktop), but the uncollapse button is easy to reach, or the string "(weekday)" can be used. So, no technical reason exists. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:59, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
It is not totally broken, but the links do interfere with that functionality. —Bkell (talk) 13:19, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
@Deb That is correct, here's how that article looks on my phone: [19] Matma Rex talk 17:53, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
Okay, I can see why that's a difficulty for you. Deb (talk) 08:48, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
As I pointed out above, after I visited the page in the mobile view, I had no problem to expand a day's section by touching the downwards expand button or the year or the day of the week following the linked date. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:08, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

1) Links in headings are a pain from a user script perspective. One of my user scripts reads wikicode, then tries to use that wikicode to figure out what HTML element to target to add some links or a form or something. I had to write a mini parser with unit tests to make sure this conversion goes smoothly.

2) It is also a pain from a perspective of trying to generate the correct #SectionLinks in the URL. Wikicode markup in section headings can make it hard to guess what the correct #SectionLink will be. Does == [[User:Novem Linguae|Novem Linguae]] == render as #Novem_Linguae or #User:Novem_Linguae? What about if we start doing template transclusions such as == {{u|Novem Linguae}} ==? These are not insurmountable problems, but they add complexity to what could otherwise be a nice, straightforward system. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:11, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae There's no such complication in these cases. We only use the Date as the link, e.g. March 5. Deb (talk) 08:41, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
@Deb, Novem Linguae is giving examples, from personal experience, of some of the complications that arise from having to parse links in section headings. Frankly I find it rather insolent to deny their experience by telling them that such complications do not exist. You seem to be saying that the "simple case" is not hard, but even the simple case requires additional code to handle, and then you have to add code to check that it really is the simple case. For example, in order to ignore the brackets around a link, the code needs to check that the brackets really do form a proper link—it can't just ignore all brackets in a heading. The code probably needs to be able to properly parse piped links if only to make sure that a heading doesn't have them. And I'm sure there are lots of additional edge cases that I am not aware of because I haven't written such code. When someone who has actual experience in writing code to deal with links in section headings tells me that those links are a pain and cause additional complexity, I believe them. —Bkell (talk) 15:49, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
Not at all. What I'm saying is that the examples s/he offered in that particular comment don't correspond to the situation we're discussing. In the second comment, s/he seems to be talking about piped links and I'm not. The first comment doesn't mean anything to me but, if it's only relevant to the relatively few contributors who write user scripts, then it is hardly mainstream. If you can write user scripts, you can fix user scripts. Deb (talk) 16:07, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
That's not an accurate representation of the issue. If something breaks userscripts, that's an issue for script maintainers and users alike. Part of the reason it breaks userscripts is because it's semantically unexpected, the core issue underlying whether links in headers should be allowed or disallowed: this doesn't seem like it should be a thing, it's explicitly proscribed and not a thing anywhere (except in this secret area of the site), so tools are designed with that expectation in mind.
Our options seem to be:
  1. Go with the MOS as written, and find other ways to supply these links, totally removing all links in headers.
  2. Create a specific cutout with some 'unique article content' justification in the MOS, which I think would create far more problems than it solves, as I've argued above, or
  3. Continue with the present "easter egg" approach.
Remsense留 22:53, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
Links in section headers can make section linking problematic and I recall a discussion a few months back when mention was made of these breaking an archive function (archivebot?). They also look awful. There you are, two technical reasons and one not quite so, though it should carry some weight. Neils51 (talk) 05:05, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
Perhaps you could point us to this discussion, and give us an example of how they "make section linking problematic". "They look awful" is neither a technical reason nor an opinion that others share. They look fine to me; in fact, they look helpful because they tell people they can go straight to the article for that date. Deb (talk) 08:43, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
Neils51, may I raise {{Citation needed}}? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:08, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I agree that "they look awful" is not a technical reason, but it is not correct to say that others do not share that opinion. HTGS literally said "it looks awful" earlier in this discussion, and I also hold that view. —Bkell (talk) 23:46, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
Subjectively, I agree. More objectively and substantively: A) linking in a heading also has WP:SEAOFBLUE issues; B) is contrary to the entire purpose of headings (to serve as a content identifier and navigation target, not as key content itself or a navigation launching pad; c) harms WP:REUSE of our content, by encouraging miportant links (and even crucial text that is used for the link) to be put only in a heading (which may get lopped off in various forms of repurposing of our material) and not in the content under it (editors would be apt to remove it from the body text as "redundant"); and d) for the same reason is dangerous in another way, namely the rather carefree attitude of many editors toward re-wording or even removing headings, which could easily eliminate a contextually necessary linked term from the article entirely.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:29, 16 December 2023 (UTC); revised with A–D argument labels for clarity. 17:07, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
It's hard to think of anything less objective than the WP:SEAOFBLUE argument. There has only been one convincing argument in this whole discussion, and that was the potential issue raised by User:Matma Rex. Deb (talk) 16:25, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
Um, no, picking at one argument you don't like when four were provided does not magically dismiss all four. No one is fooled by this sort of pseudo-argument.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:46, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
I assume the four arguments you mention are 1) section linking; 2) accessability; 3) usability on mobile devices; 4) problems of a vote counting script. 1–3 have been shown as incorrect, no. 4 doesn't apply here (nor does SEAOFBLUE). As I wrote before, MOS:NOSECTIONLINKS is generally a very good principle, but its application to some months articles would lead to loss of convenient links or clumsy prose repetition. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:07, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
Why would you assume those are my four arguments, when they are not in my post that Deb is responding to, which contains four arguments? [sigh] As for the arguments you want to talk about intead: No. 1 (section linking) is unclear as to what you mean by it; this entire thread is about "section linking". No. 2 (accessibility) has not been thoroughly explored; one editor's comment about one particular accessibilty issue from a while back and it's lack of applicability any longer to one software package, isn't the only concern that could arise; it all needs more testing by more reader-editors with different screen readers and probably more accessibility issues to work with (e.g. mobility ones that could tie in with the mobile issue that is up next). No. 3 (mobile usability) was not "shown as incorrect"; rather, one editor demonstrated through testing that manipulation of headings was not totally broken, but made confusing and much more difficult; it's not clear at all that such a trade-off is worth it. No. 4 (some script) does seems to have been resolved already.
My points I have gone back and labelled A–D for earlier reference. Point C is the most important one probably, because it's clear that your actual intent, not just a possible side effect in some other case, isn't just to have an allegedly "convenient" link in the header mirror the linked text in the article prose, but actually replace the linked text from the article prose so that it is only in the heading (you miscall it "clumsy prose repetition").  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:07, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Is this edit by Bastun correct? Bastun states that [[Irish people|Irish]] is an absolutely standard link on Irish BLPs, but there is no mention of this at MOS:OVERLINK, which advises against the linking of major examples of nationalities, ethnicities or descent (e.g., British, Japanese, Turkish, African American, Nigerian). Neveselbert also removed the link with this edit. Khiikiat (talk) 22:17, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Looking for examples of such linking, I'm now finding it hard to find any - possibly a bot has been at work? In the particular case of Shane MacGowan, though, there is some controversy over whether he is Irish, English, or both, so linking seems appropriate. BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 12:13, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
Linking may be appropriate, though a link to Irish people is questionable. A more relevant link would be preferable, per WP:LINKRELEVANT. ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 17:43, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
@Bastun and Neveselbert: In the case of the MacGowan article, maybe this would be a better link: [[Irish nationality law#Entitlement by birth, descent, or adoption|Irish]]. Khiikiat (talk) 22:29, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
That seems to go against MOS:EGG. If the link text is "Irish", arguably Irish people or Irish language, or possibly something else from the disambiguation page, should be the most appropriate link target. Gawaon (talk) 23:04, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
Might be fixable with something more specific, e.g. naturalised Irish citizen or whatever. Depends on exactly how it's used in which sentence, I suppose.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:04, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
OVERLINK does say that, but such links are still quite common. I'm not entirely sure if this means we need a bot to go around and clean them up, or whether there is a slowly changing consensus shift toward linking ethnic terms (and when it is done, yes, "Foo people" is the usually correct target unless the ethnicity has a more specific ethnonymic article title). I'm not sure how to establish this other than some kind of painstaking numerical survey of a large number of bios.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:46, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
I'd say that a person's nationality or ethnicity is fairly important for the article about that person, so arguably OVERLINK shouldn't apply there at all (since it says: "Unless a term is particularly relevant to the context in the article"). Gawaon (talk) 21:33, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
I'd say the nationality or ethnicity is important, but would question the need to link it. If it's relating to a commonly known country then Irish, German, English, Australian etc without links are sufficient. Canterbury Tail talk 21:39, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
Even though it may not be important, it is what we call a defining characteristic. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:43, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Twitter or X

When presented with events before the Twitter rebrand, should I replace the word Twitter with X or leave it alone?

Thank you, ItsCheck (talk) 19:40, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Use the name contemporaneous with the event being related. This goes for all entities that have changed their name: Königsberg; Berlin, Ontario; Constantinople; Edmonton Eskimos, Stalingrad, etc. Indefatigable (talk) 03:34, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
Yep. This is not RewritingHistoryPedia. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:53, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
Please also consider carefully if you can avoid mentioning Twitter/X entirely.
For example if something was announced on the front page of The New York Times that might worth noting in the article text, but if someone notable said something on Twitter in most cases it is only important that the article text explain who said what, and it is usually more than enough to leave it to the reference to explain specifically where (ie Twitter) the statement was published. -- 109.79.166.31 (talk) 03:30, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

"Capitalisation(z)of ancient"

Hi, some time ago there was a discussion about the "Capitalisation(z)of ancient". my question would be: is it correct to write "ancient Rome", with lowercase initial (see page Ancient Rome), but is it correct to write "ancient Carthage"? The Punic people page uses the uppercase initial. JackkBrown (talk) 17:09, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Surely it's just whether or not it is a name or a discriptor. Do most sources use upper case to describe items like this? Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 17:22, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
If it's part of the name, as is typically the case with the names we apply to older forms of modern languages, such as Ancient Greek, it should be capitalized, comparable to "Old English" and "Middle English". But as an adjective to refer to a people or a country, such as ancient Greece or the ancient Greeks, it's not part of the name, it's just an adjective, and it shouldn't be capitalized. One doesn't write "in Contemporary Greece" or "in Medieval Greece". Largoplazo (talk) 17:55, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
We treat Carthage as the name of the former city and Ancient Carthage as the proper name of a civilisation. Rome still exists and lowercase "ancient Rome" is interpreted as the word "ancient" attached to Rome. Karthage was destroyed when the civilization ended in 146 BC. I think "ancient Carthage" would give a misleading impression that there is a non-ancient Carthage. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:09, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
Your last sentence leads to me recommend not using "ancient" at all. It was just Carthage. Calling it "Ancient Carthage" or "ancient Carthage" is as though they'd spoken of "acoustic guitars" before there were electric ones. And in speech there's no case anyway, so, if that's the implication, then it's always being implied in speech. Anyway, somehow we get by with just plain "Sumeria" and "Canaan" and "Timbuktoo". Largoplazo (talk) 18:15, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
There is in fact a modern Carthage (municipality), developed as a suburb since the C19, and there was also a Roman city rebuilt on the ruins, which is unlikely to be what people referring to "Ancient Carthage" or "ancient Carthage" are talking about. I'd go with the caps in most, but not all, contexts. Johnbod (talk) 19:16, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
Not to mention all the New Carthages and New New Carthages out there. (Carthage itself meaning "new city"...) —David Eppstein (talk) 20:21, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
I think given all the discussion so far, "Ancient Carthage" should usually be reserved for the civilization, and when referring to the city all attempts to rephrase as needed should be taken first, e.g. the ancient city of Carthage, the site of Carthage in modern Tunisia, etc. etc. – but if 'ancient' and 'Carthage' end up next to each other, the former should remain uncapitalized. Remsense留 21:03, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
"go with the caps in most, but not all, contexts": if that's meant to be a general rule of thumb about such cases, it is contrary to MOS:CAPS: "Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia." In most cases, this capitalization is superfluous because "ancient" (or "medieval" or "modern", etc.) is descriptive not part of a proper name, and we should write ancient Rome, ancient Egypt, medieval London, modern Tokyo, etc., since reliable sources do not consistently capitalize these words in such usage. I.e., only capitalize one of them when the overwhelming majority of RS do so for a particular case, same with any other capitalization question. PS: This is conceptually different from age/era indicators in names of languages; e.g. Old French and Middle Irish, not "old French" and "middle Irish". Same goes for such indicators (as words or prefixes) in formal names of geological, biological, or anthropological ages, like New Stone Age and Neolithic.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:25, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Some stats might help. Dicklyon (talk) 22:52, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, and they appear to strongly indicate "ancient Carthage".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:25, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

apostrophe s after plural singulars

i understand Jess’ and Jess's (of Jess, singular) and Jets’ (of Jets, plural). What is the appropriate possessive form of a singular thing whose title is a plural noun, such as the film Robots, the song "Wildest Dreams", or Star Wars (the film or the franchise)? What if the title ends with a plural noun, like The Lord of the Rings (singular lord, plural rings)? What about cases like the Superhuman Tactical Activities Response Squad, aka S.T.A.R.S., a single unit whose acronym is a plural noun?

Sometimes rephrasing things is an option, but sometimes rephrasing things is awkward or inconvenient or even inaccurate, especially if quoting someone (especially someone speaking rather than writing). Does Wikipedia's or any other manual of style address this type of situation?

--173.67.42.107 (talk) 19:03, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

The Lord of the Rings is a singular object, a single book (etc.). You would never say The Lord of the Rings are a novel full of wonderful ideas, and likewise, you would never write The Lord of the Rings' ideas are wonderful for the reason of the last word in the name being a plural noun. For all these cases, you would treat them like you would treat any singular noun that ends in s: The Lord of the Rings's ideas are wonderful.Remsense留 19:10, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the quick reply. Rephrasing it is! ;-)
Your logic seems sound and unsurprising to me, but The Lord of the Rings’s, "Wildest Dreams"'s, and Star Wars’s just look wrong to me. Singular verbs sound right though. But i have no reliable source to justify either. --173.67.42.107 (talk) 19:29, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
They definitely look a bit unwieldy out of context, but I imagine I could read them in the context of a greater passage and not get caught up or notice them. Definitely you wouldn't want to prefer them as a primary form, but I think they are viable at points. Cheers! Remsense留 19:31, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
Because it's a bit awkward to say, generally editors should seek to reword the sentence: The ideas in The Lord of the Rings have been reused in many other fantasy works. isaacl (talk) 19:52, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
Definitely use "The Lord of the Rings’s", it sounds just so Gollum. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 20:39, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
  • A better solution is to avoid the possessive entirely… and instead try to find a different way to form a sentence that says the same thing. Example: instead of writing “The Lord of the Rings’s plot involves…” write “The plot of The Lord of the Rings involves…” etc. Blueboar (talk) 19:57, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
    For context (and why didn't i mention this before?), i came here wondering if i should edit Star Wars: Visions#Season two, which has Rotten Tomatoes ... reads, "...Star Wars: Visions' second volume is..." and Brett White ... describing the series as "...proof of Star Wars’ legacy..."
    In other words, to rephrase the sentences not to use apostrophes would be to misquote Rotten Tomatoes and Brett White, although Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Original wording says "insignificant spelling and typographic errors should simply be silently corrected". i figured apostrophe-s fell under that category. --173.67.42.107 (talk) 20:37, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
    Wikipedia:Ignore all rules and ignore all rules, but that doesn't mean "don't ask what the rules are."
    i don't intend to change Star Wars’/Star Wars: Visions’ to Star Wars’s/Star Wars: Visions’s, but i probably won't challenge the edits if someone else wants to make them.
    --173.67.42.107 (talk) 20:49, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
    I would leave the quotes wholly alone in this case. You have the right mindset. Remsense留 21:00, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
    This is more of a manual of style issue (that is, a difference between the rule followed by Rotten Tomatoes versus the one agreed upon by the English Wikipedia community) than a typographical error. Unifying quoted text to have a common style for, say, British spelling is traditionally done for consistency. In your examples, since altering the form of the possessive would alter the sound, and as the English Wikipedia community tends to support being very literal about what is placed in quotes, personally I wouldn't change the quoted text. isaacl (talk) 22:59, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
  • If you're directly quoting, just leave the punctuation inside the quotation alone. While it is permissible to monkey with it in very minor ways, per MOS:CONFORM, there is often no reason to do so. If you're not directly quoting, just rewrite to avoid the problematic construction (which is what the quoted author in the former case should have done in the first place).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:28, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Is it OK to use a quote in lieu of a topic sentence?

(This is tangential to MOS, but I can't think of a better place to put this) I'm working on a draft about someone well known for performing tributes, and rather than write a lead paragraph explaining that, I have instead used a quote for this purpose and jumped right into examples. I did this because I like the quote, and because I can't think of a suitable lead paragraph more than one sentence long, but I'm uncomfortable using quotes to supplant original summation, rather than complementing it. Thoughts? Mach61 (talk) 07:16, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Did i not post my reply to this? Apologies if this is a double post.
i'll let more "official" editors give a real answer to your question, but while i find that quote informative, i expect a majority of Wikipedians will deem its tone, you know, too informal, insufficiently encyclopedic and that sort of stuff. It may be more forgivable because it's not actually the lead of the article, or even the first section--it supplements the article without the emphasis of being the introduction. Still, might be better to paraphrase the quote, or extract some of the more direct lines from it. Maybe something like:
According to Patrick Jarenwattananon, Chris Byars pays tribute to "intricately arranged '40s, '50s, '60s" material to "both honor his predecessors and refine some of the ideas".
(The phrase "distinct musicians, who time may have forgotten" reminds me of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch, although i'd have to reread that to see if it's actually relevant to this situation. Plus, you're not the one describing the musicians that way; a quote is a quote, and a cited source is a cited source.)
i fixed 2 typos in your draft.
--173.67.42.107 (talk) 20:09, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
I think it would be better to actually write in your own words what the topic is. A quote can support it, but Wikipedia articles should be unified prose not a string of quotes. Why is this quote the main idea for the whole section, suggesting there would be nother more to say (since the whole topic is merely what this one person says)? Seems WP:UNDUE for that person, especially if the person being quoted is themselves not notable or coming from a uniquely qualified source. DMacks (talk) 20:27, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
I don't think UNDUE is applicable for this style issue, as the quote accurately represents what other RS say (and NPR is reliable). Mach61 (talk) 20:53, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
It is undue, because it is deferring to the exact wording of some non-notable writer instead of summarizing what all the sources say, in our own blended wording. If you're not going to listen to the advice you get when you ask a question like this and are instead going to argue with people who know a lot more about Wikipedia policy and writing style than you do, then why ask the question?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:33, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
I'm having trouble imagining someone being notable enough to be the subject of an article without there being much one can write about the person in a proper lead paragraph. If the person is well known for performing tributes, there must be material that's been written that conveys what it is about the person or the tributes the person has become well known for them, or why the person is writing so many tributes in the first place, and who some of the more noteworthy subjects of them have been. That doesn't mean a quote can't convey some of that: see Richard Avedon, where the lead is short, but it's a conventional one, and it uses a quote to convey Avedon's notedness for his work. Largoplazo (talk) 01:50, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
Yes, exactly, all of that.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:33, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

"The" and periodicals

In open prose, not at the start of a sentence, is it (for example) "the New York Times" or "The New York Times"? If linked, is it "the New York Times", "the New York Times", or "The New York Times"? Seems worthy of site-wide consistency, but I can't find the applicable guideline, if any exists. ―Mandruss ☎ 01:18, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Ought to be The New York Times, if that's the name of the paper/site. GoodDay (talk) 01:23, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
MOS:THETITLE  — Archer (t·c) 01:23, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
Ok, so we are to refer to the title of the article about the periodical, which, I presume, derives from the periodical's self-reference at the top of its cover or front page. But that doesn't address the linking question. ―Mandruss ☎ 01:28, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
We link it with the title of our article on the periodical, capitalized and italicized following the style in that article. So, "The New York Times", but "the San Francisco Chronicle". —David Eppstein (talk) 02:21, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
That's not quite true — we always use italics for newspaper titles even when the newspapers themselves don't, such as the Guardian. We also seem to want to write The Guardian (uppercase The) and not the Guardian even though the Guardian doesn't do that either. Popcornfud (talk) 02:23, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
Practice varies widely but most often I see "I saw it in the New York Times", but "I saw it in The New York Times" is closer to our guidance at MOS:THETITLE. Even if we were to standardize on "I saw it in The New York Times", sometimes it would be lower case, like in "I read the New York Times article" where the is referring to the article not the newspaper. When linked, it should be to the name which would be italicized. SchreiberBike | ⌨  03:10, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
You're absolutely right on the second point and that's something I'm often fixing on Wikipedia — but it's also true for titles of works of art, eg "the Lord of the Rings author". Popcornfud (talk) 04:46, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
Attributive use typically drops the leading The: "McKellen's favorite Lord of the Rings scene". Because our style guide is not making an explicit except for this, the thing to do would be to rewrite: "McKellen's favorite scene in The Lord of the Rings. Same with "In a 2022 New York Times op-ed" → "In a 2022 op-ed in The New York Times." It is possible that MoS should make an attributive-use exception, but that's another discussion to have separately (I lean in the direction of making one, because the attributive use without The is already common in our content and not generally seen as an error.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:53, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
(I don't know why our treatment should be determined by the periodical's graphic designers. Presence or absence of "The" at the top of the cover or front page is a style/layout decision, and it's far more likely the San Francisco Chronicle's founders and higher-ups referred/refer to the paper as "the Chronicle", not "Chronicle". Show me official legal documents where the paper refers to itself as no-The "San Francisco Chronicle".) ―Mandruss ☎ 04:14, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
If I had my way, I'd lowercase the lot of 'em.
I see this as consistent with the general principle of MOS:CAPS, which is that "only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia". The "the" in the New York Times is not capitalized in a substantial majority of sources — the Guardian, for example, doesn't capitalize it, nor any other leading "the"s in periodical names.
I don't think the names of periodicals should be treated in the same was as the titles of works of art, either — so MOS:THETITLE wouldn't apply. For a start, the "substantial majority of independent, reliable sources" doesn't treat periodical titles as akin to the titles of works of art — the Guardian will capitalize The Lord of the Rings, but not the New York Times. Periodicals would instead be covered under MOS:INSTITUTIONS. Popcornfud (talk) 04:44, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

The is clearly an optional part of the name, not consistently capped in sources. See stats for * San Francisco Chronicle and stats for * New York Times, as examples. And just as one would not say "a The Beatles album", one would not say "a The New York Times article" (nor with lowercase the). Even the NYT themselves will use lowercase now and then, as in "Follow the New York Times Opinion section..." and often "a New York Times...". And here are plenty of places where the Chronicle omits The; and they often refer to themselves as "the Chronicle". Dicklyon (talk) 06:02, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Let's start by ignoring what webmasters somewhat casually choose to use for HTML page titles. There is very little chance those are vetted by the respective papers, whose higher-ups have more important things to think about. And we shouldn't allow our treatment to be dictated by webmasters any more than graphic designers. If you want to take a COMMONNAME approach, that isn't it (nor is the current guideline) and it would be more complicated than is warranted imo (maybe impossible). Again, show me legal documents or support one-size-fits-all. (Once again, I've started with an inquiry and gotten myself deeper than I intended.) ―Mandruss ☎ 06:41, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
FWIW, I doubt that ngrams can meaningfully decide any question of this sort, since by definition they pluck phrases out of their contexts, and for this point the grammatical context of the phrase matters. (Maybe ngrams can be helpful in resolving the question of what to call an article by estimating which synonym is more common, but there, context typically matters less, and we can always redirect from the less common name to the more popular one, so there isn't a risk to getting it wrong, really. The issue of what text to put in an article is qualitatively different.) XOR'easter (talk) 16:49, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
As a matter of tradition, the word "the" is far more common in newspapers than magazines. Nobody says or writes "the Forbes" or "the Rolling Stone" (except for "Honey, where's the Forbes?"). This being the case, if there is any room at all for a guideline change, I'd favor carving out a separate guideline for newspapers, to include both article titles and treatment in prose. I'd also support some form – any form – of one-size-fits-all-newspapers. This business of drawing distinctions between papers is, in my opinion, a prime example of Wikipedia's strong tendency to overcomplicate style issues, costs exceeding benefits. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:43, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
Agreed. Simplest solution? Lowercase "the" like MOS:INSTITUTIONS. Popcornfud (talk) 01:32, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Despite all the complaining above out this being over-complicated, by people actively trying to over-complicate it by making convoluted arguments about over-complication (and confusing publications with their publishing companies in the process), there is nothing complicated about this at all.

  1. If the publication's actual name contains "The", then do "in The New York Times".
  2. If its actual name does not contain "The", then leave it lowercase and outside the italics, even if a "the" seems to help in the sentence structure: "in the Los Angeles Times".
  3. That is all, the end.

Same with titles of books, albums, films, TV shows, journals, plays, magazines, songs, poems, etc. If you're not sure which it is for a particular case, then use what our article title is, since other editors have already figured it out for that publication. If the publication is not notable and has no article here, then use it as-found (if the newspaper page says "The Podunk Mercury-Picayune" or says just "Podunk Mercury-Picayune" then you have your answer already, one way or the other). Those looking to forcibly assert a made-up consistency for all-must-have-The or none-may-have-The don't have a sensible argument to make. We don't go around either removing a leading The from, say, book and film titles (Lord of the Rings, Shining) nor do we go around sticking one onto things that aren't actually named that way (our article is not at "The American Civil Liberties Union" or "The PlayStation 5", despite both names being regularly attestable in source material with a leading definite article for syntactic reasons). These are not institutions (corporations, schools, government bodies, nonprofits, etc.), they are publications. Virtually all publications we would ever cite are also the product of institutions. Treating newspapers and their e-equivalents as institutions instead of publications would be an order of magnitude more confusing.

As for San Francisco Chronicle in particular: Show me official legal documents – No. Trying to dig up legal filings from government databases or paper government primary-source materials is WP:OR, and the goofy arguments above about whether we can trust webmasters to get things right when it comes to names also applies to lawyers and other hirelings. If there's any kind of actual doubt about this case at all, there should not be. See their own "Our Company" page[20], which uses the same styling we do, down to the italics placement: Acquired by Hearst in 2000, the San Francisco Chronicle was founded in 1865 by Charles and Michael de Young and has been awarded six Pulitzer Prizes for journalistic excellence. The Chronicle, available in print, e-edition .... See also: [21].  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:05, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Per my previous comments, the name at the top of the front page does not constitute the paper's "actual name". It's a style/layout decision, nothing more. And a more careful reading would show you that I abandoned the "legal documents" argument in favor of one-size-fits-all-newspapers; sorry for changing my mind mid-stream. The futility of trying to determine an "actual name" is a large part of the basis for one-size-fits-all-newspapers. Given your derisive tone, that's where I stopped reading. ―Mandruss ☎ 02:26, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
If you think for some reason that the publication is not using its own actual name at top of the page, check the colophon (usually a small-print inset box on front page, second page, or last page) in a print edition; or check various of the about-us/policy/contact pages in an online version, to find out what they consider the publication name to be when given in plain text. I already did the latter for you in the SF Chronicle case (but you didn't bother to read it). If you can't find it anywhere, then do (as other style guides do) trust the name given at the top of the site or paper, since odds are that it is correct and your assumption that it's not correct is just unnecessary and unfounded OR unless you already have the evidence to back up your contrary suspicion in the first place.
Someone taking the time to examine your argument and present a counter is much less dismissive than your "I stopped reading" just because you're unhappy that your idea wasn't cheered (and which also signals "I don't really care what the eventual outcome is"). No one is victimizing you.
Some arguments really are poor and deserve defiance, such as making a never-The or always-The blanket rule for one very narrow class of publications but confusingly not for others; or making such a rule for all publications across the board, despite it not agreeing with how work titles are handled in the real world or the style guides ours is based on; or extra-confusingly trying to misapply a rule about organizations to a particular class of publications (and no others), out of confusing the publisher with the publication; or ignoring what a publication most pointedly says its name is, absent a compelling reason in that partcular case to think it's just a logo stylization and not the publication name. Any of these would sow far more confusion than they would prevent.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:44, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
Overthink exists. Everything else aside, costs exceed benefits, and that calculation is as much your OR as mine. KISS. ―Mandruss ☎ 04:06, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
I quite agree with all that wording, but find that it applies much better to what I'm saying, and what MOS:THETITLE clearly means and intends: use The if it's part of the actual name of the publication. If you can't tell for sure what the name of the publication is, use what appears at the top of the page. There is nothing further to it.
All these propositions above at cross purposes to each other are the opposite (singly, not just together) of keeping things simple, because they would 1) carve out a "magically special" class of publication (which people would incessantly fight to the death over when it came to online news sites - are they newspapers or not? only if they have a paper edition too? What if they have different editorial boards? What if the corporate ownership has forked? What if the newspaper also publishes a magazine version as The New York Times at least used to? What if ...) to which a rule for all publications somehow doesn't apply; or 2) re-classify one class of publication as a non-publication and as if a publishing institution; or 3) make a one-size-fits-all rule (pro or con with regard to The) for all publications, in a way that conflicts with normal English usage. The result is chaotic crap no matter which of these were imposed. I don't predict consenus for any of them, because they're all confused and excessively prescriptive ideas and they have no "real problem to fix" basis to begin with.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:31, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
Consider the following hypothetical guideline applicable to news publications, whether web, paper, or both.
  • Article title omits any "The". The New York Times moves to New York Times.
  • If common usage includes "the" to a significant degree, include "the" in open prose, uncapitalized. "the Los Angeles Times", but "FiveThirtyEight".
  • If linked, link only the article title. "the Washington Post".
Benefits:
  • Guideline is simple, unambiguous, easily understood.
  • No need to fret about "actual names" (which isn't always as clear-cut as you make it out to be).
  • All article titles are consistent.
  • Readers who notice such details (yes, they exist, including me), aren't left wondering why the differences in treatment. Unless they dig into the guidelines (how many readers know how to do that, and care to?), it just looks like careless and unprofessional inconsistency.
  • No need for editors to check out the article title to know how to write the prose. Admittedly minor, but not insignificant.
Costs:
  • A new guideline. A significant cost? Perhaps, but does it exceed the above benefits? Not in my view.
  • Otherwise, you tell me. There might be skirmishes over "significant degree" in bullet 2, but likely not many. How about a few real-life examples where the above guideline would increase costs significantly?
As for "If it ain't broke, don't fix it", I quite agree with all that wording, but kindly define "broke". If something is unnecessarily complex, it's broke in my book. The difference in treatment between Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post is undeniably an example of complexity, and it's unnecessary. When the editor learning curve is at stake, every bit of added complexity needs to earn its keep through rigorous analysis, and any error should be in the direction of simplicity. ―Mandruss ☎ 13:40, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
I suppose next you're going to tell me "El País" should really be "the Pais"? "Le Monde" should really be "the Monde"? Or are you treating other-language definite articles as somehow different?
What about names of periodicals that use "the" in the middle, such as The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats? Are we supposed to remove the "the" from one of the two things in the title (making the title look like Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats, maybe a great name for a rock band but not actually accurate)? Are we supposed to un-italicize or un-link the second "the"? In The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate do we omit both "The"'s from the linked name, or only the first one? What about other names of periodicals in which the "the" at the start applies only to part of the title, not the whole title, like The Analyst, or, Mathematical Museum?
Your supposed "benefit" that the guideline is simple and easily understood, is not an actual advantage over the current "just use the same form as the Wikipedia article title" which is simple and easily understood even in such cases.
The current style, in which we can just link the title without piping or redirecting, is easier to link and helps discourage gnomes from "fixing" the links. Your proposal has the disadvantage of not doing that. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:42, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
As to other-language definite articles: No, I'm not going to tell you that. You're reading things into the proposed guideline that aren't there. Bullet 1 says, "Article title omits any 'The'." El País and Le Monde have no "The", so nothing would be removed from their titles. Bullet 2 says "If common usage includes "the" to a significant degree, include "the" in open prose, uncapitalized." Do common usages for El País and Le Monde include "the" to a significant degree? I don't know, but I strongly doubt it. So open prose would not include "the" for those cases. And bullet 3 says "If linked, link only the article title."; as we've established, the article titles for El País and Le Monde would be El País and Le Monde, respectively, so our linktext would never be País or Monde.
I hear you saying that it makes little sense to limit the guideline to English-language publication titles. But why object to a literal interpretation of the guideline that addresses all of your practical concerns? I favor doing what works. We wouldn't even need to say, "This applies only to English-language publication titles"; we would simply need to apply the guideline as written.
"The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats is a biannual review journal addressing English literature." How is that a news publication?
Sure, there would be exceptions that need special treatment, as with any guideline. Guidelines are never expected to cover every case in the wiki-universe. That's why we have human editors with advanced brains.
Have I failed to respond to any significant points in your post? If so, feel free to point them out and I'll do my best to do so. ―Mandruss ☎ 09:33, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
Yes, you have failed. You have failed to respond to the substantive issue of how to address periodicals (news or otherwise) whose name starts with "The" (as many do) but for which the initial "The" does not grammatically cover the entire title. I gave three examples, one a newspaper, so you cannot weasel out of this with special pleading that you only intend to describe the style for newspapers and that other kinds of periodicals need an entirely different style guideline. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:34, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
you cannot weasel out of this Ok, I see you're a member of the old school who don't give two shits about civility or common respect. I didn't know that about you; now I do. I'm out. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:28, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
Well, that wasn't a civil response either. Your go-to tactic appears to be "I am frustrating people and meeting resistance which is not deferential to me, therefore I should turn even more dismissive than they were", instead of taking the fact that you are frustrating people as a sign to change your approach.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:47, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
No. Just no. Bullying and aspersions have no place in Wikipedia discussions, period. If you don't believe me, have a look at Wikipedia policy. You won't find an exception for frustrated editors. The difference between his incivility and mine is that mine was based on what he said, not what I believed to be in his mind (see AGF). I don't "weasel", and any editor who has been around me much will tell you that.
One's long tenure does not elevate them to some god class exempting them from behavior standards. If anything, it puts them in a position to set good examples for newer editors. We should "win" debates by the strength of our reasoning, not by driving off opponents who don't care to be around mean-spiritedness. Feel free to collapse as off topic. ―Mandruss ☎ 12:22, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
Substitute "wiggle" or "wriggle", as suits your dialect, for "weasel", and David Eppstein's point is entirely, well, on point.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:48, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
The above proposition by Mandruss is not the things it purports to be ("simple, unambiguous, easily understood, ... consistent") It's is an oversimplification, a Procrustean bed. It ambiguously fails to handle non-English definite articles as mentioned above and likely has other issues. Editors will not understand it and will rebel against it, because it defies near-universal real-world treatment of publication names, conflicts with other guideline principles (namely to include a leading The in cases where independent RS nearly always do so). And it absolutely is not consistent, because it treats one ill-definable class of publications radically differently from all other publication types, for no clearly definable rationale. (And this is particularly silly since the alleged concern about newspaper applies equally to other serial publications including magazines, academic journals, podcasts, etc.).
The only "reason" advanced for this stuff is an alleged difficulty in figuring out what the actual names of a few publications are, but we've already been over this several times now. It is not difficult at all: First, believe what the publication at the top of it is telling you to your face. That is usually the end of it right there. (If it's notable and we have an article on it, just accept that our article title has already been vetted by other editors, and use it.) If for some unusual reason you disbelieve it anyway, see the publication's colophon and other fine print for how it refers to itself in running prose. If that still doesn't help you, see what the majority treatment is of the name in other publications. If in the ultra-rare case all these fail for you, drop the leading "The" since the MOS:THETITLE exception to The-dropping in our article titles only applies to titles of works that clearly have a leading The, and in this odd scenario the fact of one cannot be established. There is nothing "careless and unprofessional" about giving the title of a work with a leading "The" if it properly has one. Show me reliable sources referring to J.R.R. Tolkien's novel Hobbit or the TV show Munsters; These have a leading The, while Charlotte's Web and Battlestar Galactica do not. No one's head ever explodes about this.
Ultimately, none of this really matters for newspaper mentions and citations. The encyclopedia is not broken if it says "in the Podunk News Journal" and {{cite news|...|work=Podunk News Journal|...}} versus "in The Podunk News Journal" and {{cite news|...|work=The Podunk News Journal|...}}; the referent is clear enough regardless. There is no reader- or editor-facing compelling reason to make up and impose a false consistency. PS: "Sure, there would be exceptions that need special treatment" – Mandruss's entire premise seems to be that a handful of cases of the present guideline needing (at least so he thinks) special treament means the guideline is broken and must be replaced. By something he concedes has the same limitation.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:21, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
Guideline is simple, unambiguous, easily understood is not a reader-oriented consideration. SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:37, 30 December 2023 (UTC)
If the publication's actual name contains "The" ... If its actual name does not contain "The" ...
Half of the debate here is that whether a periodical's title contains "The" or merely uses "the" is not always obvious or consistent. Nor is it agreed upon by sources writing about themselves and each other — unlike the titles of works of art. All sources write The Lord of the Rings, but not all sources write The New York Times. Popcornfud (talk) 03:30, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
Already addressed this above. You don't need other sources to tell you that the title of The New York Times is The New York Times instead of New York Times when the publication itself already tells you what its title is both at the top and in all the about-itself material on its website [22][23][24], etc. There is nothing difficult or unsual about any of this. If you want to know what the proper name of, say, some non-newspaper website is, you look at what it says at the top, and if it seems like it might be a logo stylization, look in its plain text materials; we know it's "eBay" not the "ebay" of their present logo because they tell us so [25][26]. If you can't figure it out due to a lack of such plain-text materials, accept the logo version as the name unless there's compelling evidence otherwise. For use in a citation, all that matters really is that it be identifable, since the purpose of citation is finding the source to use it to check our content's verifiability. If the publication is the article subject, then if other editors are convinced by some evidence they have found that the full title of the publication is something else and the page should be moved and its text adjusted, they can present their evidence on the talk page. It's not your problem. When it comes to a newspaper being mentioned attributively in article prose, either form should be identiable enough both forms should work as a link if there's an article on that publication (if one redlinks, redirect it), and if someone else is utterly certain that it should have a The added or removed, they can do that on their own time later. We have lots and lots of articles with mistaken New York Times links in them, people fix them as they run across them, and the sky is not falling. "Ain't broke, don't 'fix' it."  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:44, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
How do you determine the name of the/The Guardian? From the Guardian's perspective, "the" is not part of the name, just as it is not part of the name of the Statue of Liberty. Popcornfud (talk) 04:06, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
It should be The Guardian, with both words capitalized and in italics, since they use the article as part of their name, as visible on top of the website and (I suppose) every print edition. That they use neither italics nor a capitalized article in running text doesn't change that. They have their style guide, we have ours. Gawaon (talk) 04:24, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
And yet, as SmC says above, we do not write The San Francisco Chronicle. Popcornfud (talk) 04:30, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
Yes, and for the same reason: they don't include the article in their name as shown on their website and print editions. It's just the same as with book titles: We write The Lord of the Rings, but the Odyssey. Gawaon (talk) 04:46, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
Right. There's no "and yet" to be had here. San Francisco Guardian does not have a The in its name. How is there any possible confusion about this, and what is its nature?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:31, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
The title of the site in huge letters is The Guardian. The print edition is very, very clearly titled The Guardian [27]. Their domain name is TheGuardian.com. When they write about themselves, they write things like "Support the Guardian", lowercase, as some weird quirk of their own in-house style, along with not putting publication titles in italics. (Though they're not consistent about "the" - see page bottom of their current e-edition, where the exhortation instead reads "Support The Guardian"; the HTML <title> of their homepage has both "the Guardian and "The Guardian" in it). But Wikipedia has its own MoS and does not follow their stylesheet.
They often do the lower-case "the" and no-italics stuff to other publication names, e.g. that of competitor The Economist: "Italy’s ambassador to the UK has criticised the Economist for rehashing old stereotypes after ...". (But lower-casing The is actually against their own published style guide! I checked.)
Their lack (sometimes) of capital T and lack of italics, pursuing their own inconsistent quirks, has nothing to do with the actual name of the publication, much less with how WP should treat it. Here's from their own "About us" page (you may have to manually switch to UK edition to see this): "The Guardian is owned by Guardian Media Group ... the financial and editorial independence of the Guardian ... In short, the Guardian isn’t owned or controlled by advertisers or billionaires. It’s owned by a Trust, ...." (Note the mis-capitalization of "trust" which is not a proper name; they simply are not reliable at all for capitalization style). It's quite clear that the title of the publication includes "the" even if they like down-casing it for some reason. Meanwhile, the title of the US edition does not include that word, and is simply Guardian US; you can see this by switching to US edition and going to "About us" again. Their "the" stylization weirdness in running prose has confused writers about how to refer to them [28][29] – neck-and-neck results.
However, Wikipedians in general are not confused, and pretty consistently use The Guardian, as does our article at The Guardian. So, there is no breakage on Wikipedia to fix by changing MOS:THETITLE. Cf. WP:MOSBLOAT specifically and WP:CREEP generally: we should not add any rule (to MoS especially) unless it is demonstably necessary to resolve long-running editorial conflict over something. Yet there is no interiminable dispute about this (with regard to that newspaper or any other publications).
PS: It is possible that because of the The-less name of Guardian Media Group that they are transitioning to just naming the newspaper Guardian and dropping [T|h]e entirely. But WP:NOT#CRYSTAL, and we will follow WP:COMMONNAME even after that hypothetical change takes place, until we're certain that the name change has been picked up by the majority of independent post-change sources.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:31, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
Entirely possible, but not actually the case. British newspaper titles have a strong preference for beginning with "the"; British company names are exactly the opposite, for various reasons. "The Guardian" has been owned by a "Guardian foo" company since I think 1908. Any transition is a very slow one. Johnbod (talk) 19:52, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
Yes, the transition being dubious, and slow if real, is why I brought up CRYSTAL.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:45, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
The thing is, just because a name uses the definite article doesn't mean it's part of the name, even when it's written in headings and logos and stuff. If that were true, based on its official website, we should insist on writing The White House. You could also say the same thing of, for example, band names. Popcornfud (talk) 09:37, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
The White House (covered by MOS:THEINST) and a band name (covered by MOS:THEMUSIC) are not titles of works, so the WP:THE exception made by MOS:THETITLE for titles of works that start with The doesn't apply to them. You have to read and understand all this P&G material in concert, not pick one line-item you like and try to apply it to things that are not within its scope. Start at MOS:THE. As for "just because a name uses the definite article doesn't mean it's part of the name": when all indications, including the publication's own consistent branding and self-reference, indicate that the "the" (capitalized or not) is essentially a required part of the name (except when used attributively, e.g. "in a New York Times article"), then it's blatant WP:OR to decide on your own that it the "the" is "really" not part of the name. It's worse than OR, since it's actually defying the evidence right in front of our faces, and is also contrary to WP:ABOUTSELF. Maybe more to the overall point here, the vast majority of sources independent of The Guardian refer to it as The Guardian not just Guardian and not the Guardian or the Guardian, so we already have our answer. The only time there's an "I dunno" to solve is when the work in question doesn't clearly specify its own name (or you can't find a facsimile copy to prove it one way or the other) and it is not covered by many if any sources or is treated so inconsistently in them that you can't decide; in that unlikely event, default to WP:THE and omit the word, since the the MOS:THETITLE exception only applies when a leading "The" is demonstrably part of the name. For The Guardian it is, even if they defy their own internal style guide quite often and like to lower-case that "the" for inexplicable reasons.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:45, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Curiosity

I'm curious to know why Futurism is written with an uppercase initial while Minimalism with a lowercase initial. Is there a particular reason? JackkBrown (talk) 07:45, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Because it's called "minimalism"—minimal, small, don't use capital letters? OK, that's a joke. It should be lower-case when describing, say, a choice to own less stuff or to have spare furnishings in one's home. As the name of an art movement, it should be treated like the names of other art movements. I'm not exactly sure what our practice is, if we have a standard one. Expressionism, for example, can't make up its mind. Futurism has a number of instances of "futurism" and "futurist", some of them in quoted material and some of them not. Largoplazo (talk) 09:23, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
@Largoplazo: Since there is a doubt, on the Giorgio Morandi page I decided to write "Minimalism" with a capital letter. JackkBrown (talk) 17:03, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
As a major art movement, WP would capitalize it. This is a consensus that was oddly arrived at back in the 2000s, and of course it directly conflicts with MOS:GENRECAPS, MOS:DOCTCAPS, etc., but we seem stuck with it at least for the time being, inexplicable as it may be. It's particularly absurd when done to non-English terms like French art nouveau which is not capitalized in French (or consistently in English).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:47, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
That's because we follow sources, and because "Impressionist" and "impressionist" and "Renaissance" and "renaissance" have different meanings. Johnbod (talk) 19:01, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
The sources do not do this capitalization consistently, with regard to either arts "movements" or "genres" (and there is not a clear dividing line between those things, though at their extremes some movements are clearly not genres and some genres clearly not movements). Capitalizing the movements conflicts with our MOS:SIGCAPS principle and (either already or eventually) with the MOS:CAPS lead. Nearly as many sources capitalize fiction, film, and other genres as capitalize artistic movements or "schools" within the same spheres (though more for some genres than others, especially more for those with larger fandoms), yet WP does not capitalize genres. The distinction is largely artificial and maybe not very tenable. Next, "impressionist" and "Impressionist" do not at all have different meanings in this context. The fact that "impressionist" can also mean 'entertainer who does impressions' is no more meaningful than the fact that "bear" can mean 'ursine creature' or 'carry; withstand, endure; bring to fruition'. This is an utterly routine disambiguation excercise. We do not write, say, "cervical" in reference to the cervical vertebrae but "Cervical" in reference to the cervix, despite "cervical" having two very different meanings in the human anatomy and medicine context (and we would not do it even if it were common-but-not-universal to do it in the source material; cf. the decision not to capitalize common names of species despite this being common in certain fields like ornithology and to a lesser extent herpetology). Disambiguation is not what capitalization is used for here, despite frequent misuse of it for such signification in non-encyclopedic writing. Next, "Renaissance" is a Western cultural/historical era, neither an art movement nor a genre; "renaissance" in a figurative sense, like "the 1990s renaissance of swing dancing", is an entiredly derived usage from this historical-period one (nor is the derived use always lower-case; cf. Disney Renaissance, though an argument to lower-case that at WP:RM and in its text is probably justified). And "renaissance" without a capital R has no different meaning in the context of Western historical eras, which is why it is fairly often not capitalized. We're already seeing a lot of sources de-capitalizing both "medieval" (or "mediaeval" if you insist on it, which even most of the British no longer do) and "middle ages", over the last maybe two generations of writers. This is part of a general trend in English away from unnecessary capitalization. Unlike with geological/paleontological and anthropological eras (Ordovician, Paleolithic/Palaeolithic), there is much less of an established professional convention to uniformly capitalize historical eras. Wikipedia already treats a lot of them as common-noun phrases. (But not consistently; see e.g. History of China and watch the period names jump back and forth between lower-case and capitalized – why "Tan dynasty" but "Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms", and especially why "Northern and Southern dynasties"?)

Anyway, I'm not calling for an actual referendum on either of these things, and above I'm advising following "Futurism" and "Minimalism" style because that's the current consensus (as long as these are largely classified as movements not genres). I do think this consensus is of dubious longevity, at least over the long haul, because capitalization of both historical eras and arts movements is decreasing over time in the source material.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:06, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

List of dames commander of the Order of the British Empire

List of dames commander of the Order of the British Empire should be changed back to List of Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire -- should never have been changed. Amazing that it went unchallenged thus far. A Dame Commander is never a dame commander. Just as Knight Bachelor is not knight bachelor. Not Marianne Moore style poetry. 96.246.238.31 (talk) 23:14, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

But not when pluralised. Cinderella157 (talk) 01:18, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
Right, "kings" and "popes" and "emperors" at the high end, and "knights" and "bishops" and "barons" at a somewhat lower end, are all lower-case in plural, so "knights commander" would be, too. Same with other compound titles; e.g., the US has had many postmasters general, and the Royal Navy has various commodores second class. MOS:PEOPLETITLES already covers this: we don't capitalize them if they are not directly attached to a person's individual name.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:08, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Hyphenating racial identities, again

Back in 2021, there was a discussion about hyphenating ethno-racial descriptors like "Asian American". There was never a formal closure, but it might reasonably be said that there was either no consensus or consensus to recommend against hyphenation. In June 2022, that guidance was added to MOS:HYPHEN. As far as I can tell, it's been in the MOS ever since.

Given the uncertainty of consensus on this point, I'd appreciate some input on whether the current guideline is supported by consensus and common practice. I'm prompted by some recent page moves conducted by Iljhgtn, whose thoughts I'd like to hear. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 13:49, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

The standard "rule" I follow is no hyphen when used as a noun, hyphen when used as an adjective: thus eg, 'Asian Americans are . . .' and 'the Asian-American history movement . . .'. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:56, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
i came across that "rule" where it is noun vs.adj only according to grammar blog site grammarist, the article can be read here. Iljhgtn (talk) 14:02, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
Well, it's pretty standard grammar that compound adjectives always get a hyphen because they are meant to be read as one thing, not two things, modifying/describing something else . Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:08, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
I'm surprised grammarist hasn't been evaluated at WP:RSP yet. ~TPW 14:09, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
good side point, grammarist sure should be on there. Iljhgtn (talk) 14:18, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
looking at the MOS i concluded that the african american should not be hyphenated. also, seems to be the decision of the APA in 2019 and other guidelines, as well as nearly all african american museums do not use it see here, here, here, here, here, here and literally every single other one that I can find. Iljhgtn (talk) 14:00, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
When it is part of a name, you are not going to use a hyphen. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:05, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
all of those museums also officially give their blessing to the no hyphen more generally, from what I can find, see the educator resource from the National Museum of African American History & Culture. Iljhgtn (talk) 14:23, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Iljhgtn changed more than a dozen article names, and I think such changes should have been discussed. Since our normal, established style is with hyphen (when used as a modifier), those changes only cause inconsistencies. Rsk6400 (talk) 15:37, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

@Rsk6400: That's why we have Wikipedia:Requested moves#Requests to revert undiscussed moves.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:45, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
there was already a inconsistency, it should be corrected on all articles, but i am not going to edit any others right now. Iljhgtn (talk) 15:58, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
Why would we need to go over this yet again? If it's a noun phrase, don't hyphenate: She is an Asian American. If it's a compound adjective, hyphenate: an Asian-American social organization. There's nothing even particular to ethnicities about this; it's how we handle writing in general: Carom billiards uses two cue balls.; a complex cue-ball path.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:04, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
See also the middle entry in this move log. Rsk6400 (talk) 18:18, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
At least it seems American English does not agree with that. all of the African American museums, as well as the American grammar styles APA, MLA, etc., all appear to drop the hyphen for ethnicities at least post-2019 or thereabouts. We may want to distinguish this with an ENGVAR component then too. Iljhgtn (talk) 18:19, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
Well, MoS isn't determined by the APA or MLA house styles (I'm hard-pressed to think of anything at all that we've adopted from either of them in particular), much less those of some particular museums. Two book examples isn't "all". Garner's Modern English Usage (one of the style guides MoS is actually based on) is entirely clear about the noun phrases versus compound adjectives split and makes no special exception for ethno-cultural terms. Same with The Penguin Handbook, the main style guide used for university-level writing in the US. The Chicago Manual of Style (another MoS-formative style guide) does now prefer the unhyphenated form for such terms as a special class, but provides no rationale for why. They say elsewhere that they have switched to a "hyphen minimizing" style, so that is probably the explanation. (MoS, meanwhile, has not; given the breadth of our readership, the meaning precision provided by some hyphens that Chicago now considers optional is more important than the expediency Chicago seems to be moving toward, at least on this particular point.) So we have a conflict in the sources that MoS is actually built from, but no clear reason to prefer Chicago style over Garner style, expecially since the former is inconsistent with all the rest of our practice, and produces reader-confusing constructions.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:45, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
SMcCandlish, sorry to be bringing it up again. Your analysis is at odds with the current guideline. My understanding of the mixed state of external style guideline advice and of the best choice for the MOS matches yours. I'm hoping we walk away with either a clear endorsement of the current guideline or a removal of it. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 18:52, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
The key question to me is, what could we possibly gain from dropping these hyphens? It produces confusing constructions, and is generally incompatible with our entire approach to compound modifiers, but to what end? A "consistency" with some subset of external writers that some editors prefer? Why would we trade actual internal consistency for a half-assed and biased pseudo-consistency with off-site interests, at the expense of clarity to boot? I just don't see a good rationale for doing this. It would make no objective improvement to the encyclopedia, only satisfy a couple of activistic interests who keep trying to conform our style guide to those of organizations they are personally alinged with for socio-political reasons.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:59, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
I agree with most of that, and my disagreement—mainly about the motives of those advocating for the hyphen drop—isn't particularly important. Since we both think the current guideline is unhelpful, why not keep discussing it? There's a fresh multi-page move discussion in which a "per MOS:HYPHEN" argument is likely to win the day, I'm thinking this is the time to question whether the current guideline has enough support to stick around (or if it ever did). Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 20:04, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
The poorly written "magical exception" for ethno-national terms that someone injected in there without a clear consensus has been removed by someone else already. I tracked it to this edit by Caorongjin who says it was their "2nd attempt", so it must have been reverted previously (it was, by Imaginatorium). Cites this archive thread as their rationale for adding this "rule", but that discussion did not come to a consensus in favor of the idea. Four editors favored retaining the hyphen on various grounds ranging from clarity and consistency, to opposition to instruction creep. The supporters of the change were also four, on arguments that range from "a trend" in other style guides (ones with almost no impact on MoS, actually) of dropping the hyphen, a suggestion that the hyphen somehow suggests a bias, a strange claim that "we could definitely use the consistency" when this would just lead to obvious inconsistency with all other compound modifiers, and in one case no rationale but the common-style fallacy. The opener of the question did not take a position on it, and two other editors also commented without taking a clear side. That's hardly a consensus to change long-standing consistent treatment of these modifiers, in ways that would affect the content of tens of thousands of articles and titles of at least several hundred (and the fact that it was in there for over a year without having any actual effect on our content suggests there is no community appetite for it at all). There's yet another whiff of misusing Wikipedia for "culture warrior" language-change-advocacy activities about this.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:58, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
First, thank you for tagging me, as I would not have known this conversation was going on otherwise. This talk page is really hard to follow, tbh. Having said that, I'd appreciate it if you do not dismiss my changes as "magical". I have tried to be clear of intentions and engage in discussion as best as I could; and, as you have noted, I have documented in this (unwieldy) talk page the two times I made a change to the article page. The "2nd attempt", as I described it, was meant to convey that it was taking @Imaginatorium's comments into consideration; I was not intending to convey I was edit warring or anything of that sort.
It is inaccurate to describe dehyphenation as a common-style fallacy, which, as described in that essay, is "flawed reasoning that if a particular typographic stylization turns up commonly in newspapers, blogs, and other popular publications with a less formal register of English usage than the precise language of encyclopedic writing" that is "newsy or bloggy stylization." If this is the case, you are calling MLA, APA, and CMOS popular style guides that are newsy or bloggy (I suppose that can be applied to AP, if you stretch it).
It is also inaccurate to say the previous discussion had 4 oppose and 4 support. Perhaps they can speak for themselves, but the supports seem to include @Bagumba, @Kokopelli7309, @Jurisdicta, @Chumpih, @Almaty, and @Caorongjin (myself). It was also suggested by @Andrewa that my first attempt was a good consensus, and suggested a second attempt. So is that not 6 or 7 who voted in support?
As I see it:
  • The main argument against dehyphenation is English grammar has different rules for adjectival or nominative uses. True… to an extent. English is a living language, making the grammar an evolving set of rules. English grammar has pluralization rules around pronouns as well; but now due to changing arguments around gender identity, there is the use of the singular they. And the (growing) academic consensus is to dehyphenate ethnic descriptors, due to a large extent to the century plus problem of hyphenated American.
  • The main argument in support of dropping the hyphen is around WP:COMMONNAME, both of organizations and of how all of these subjects are discussed in the majority of English-language sources, especially academic sources. This latter point is partly due to the increasing changes in styleguides, academic and otherwise, to attend to these differences; but the dehyphenated forms also predate these changes.
—Caorongjin 💬 08:10, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
right, all the style guides, as well as all institutions (nearly all) that use the phrase "African American" in particular, are dropping the hyphen. this is not a case of "righting great wrongs", but is just wikipedia catching up to the conventions and norms related to the hyphen being dropped in african american.
though honestly, i do not care strongly either way, and will get back to editing other things. this conversation itself is getting unwieldy. Iljhgtn (talk) 11:06, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
Microsoft grammar checking now also marks as an error "African-American" too. with a double underline and something to be corrected for. just hope that we can at least add in to the MOS that it is wrong or incorrect sometimes, and make that distinction, and not leave it in all cases, even though it is only on wikipedia and no where else that it will remain.. for whatever reason we want to retain it here.. Iljhgtn (talk) 11:14, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
Two or three books is not "all". And WP doesn't care what Microsoft thinks is proper writing; their house style is not our house style (nor does a double underline in Word indicate an "error", but rather somoething their software suggests you might want to change; the most common case is two spaces after a period, which is not an error but a style choice.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:25, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
not two or three books, all american style writing books, as well as academic institutions, museums, and other orgs use "African American" not "African-American." But if wikipedia wants to go its own way then it is what it is. Iljhgtn (talk) 13:55, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
If you want to go long-form, I guess we can go long-form. I didn't say you personally were engaging in a WP:CSF, I said one of the respondents in the earlier thread was. The fact that one style guide MoS is based on, CMoS, is going along with the hyphenless form for unrelated reasons (a general shift away from using hyphens the CMoS editors don't consider necessary, for the kind of academics-writing-for-other-academics writing CMoS is principally concerned with) isn't much of a point in favor of the idea; it's coincidence. Two style guides MoS is not based on, APA and MLA, supporting such a change is probably an argument in its favor (though I want to see whether they, too, are dropping other kinds of hyphens), but not a terribly strong one. That's because our reasoning for using the hyphenation is clarity and to a lesser extent consistency, not tradition or popularity. We'd need to see a near-universal dropping of this hyphen to drop it ourselves. I.e., proof that for whatever reason(s), nearly all modern writers had dropped it in spite of the improved clarity of using it and in spite of the blatant inconsistency of dropping it. (It is fair to characterize the idea as a "magical" exception; it's one not grounded in any reasons that have to do with grammar, clarity, or other concerns related to writing well, but rooted in extraneous reasons of being seen as aligned with a particular socio-political stance.)
The ongoing evolution of English has only the slowest and most cautious of effects on WP's own style, which does not change on much of anything unless there it is objectively a writing improvement, or on a more subjective idea that comes at real costs like this one, if there is overwhelming evidence of a change across all of contemporary English writing, including most or all of the style guide ours is based on, not just one of them. A couple of other organizations' house-style manuals don't change anything; their house style is not our house style, by definition. Nor do we care at all about a style guide for newspapers (WP:NOT#NEWS: "Wikipedia is not written in news style."); MoS has borrowed either nothing or very, very close to nothing from AP Stylebook. It took about a decade of on-site debates about growing acceptance for singular-they to turn into actual acceptance of it on Wikipedia (and there are still many editors who would rather write around it), and it didn't happen until after the usage became accepted across CMoS, Garner's, Fowler's, and New Hart's/Oxford, and even then after a tremendous amount of evidence-showing that usage had palpably shifted to support it across all sorts of writing (not just news or a few particular organizations). See also several years of still-ongoing debate about whether we should stop using the phrase "committed suicide" (last result: no consensus reached, despite arguments that closely mirror this case: support for the change in some organizational style guides, some but not overwhelming evidence of general usage change, and activist stance-taking in favor of the change).
COMMONNAMEs of organizations are irrelevant; we don't rewrite organizations' actual names to comply with MoS ideas. (And the implication, that organizations have all dropped the hyphen, is false anyway. Maybe you'd like to write a letter to the Scottish-American Military Society and surely hundreds of others and tell them their own names are wrong and have to change? Next will you write to Bob Callahan and tell him his The Big Book of Irish-American Culture has to be republished under a hyphenless title? Will you tell the Library of Congress it's wrong for using "African-American" as an adjective[30]? And so on.) The fact that hyphenless forms of these terms pre-date some style guides recommending them is obvious and irrelevant; style guides don't recommend imaginary usages, and both news-speak and bureaucratese have been engaged in something like a war against hyphens for about a century. Trying to bring the "hyphenated American" insult that was in vogue from 1890 to 1920 into this is also irrelevant, and contradictory of your 'English is a living language and its usage can change' lynchpin argument. It also makes it clear that, as I suspected, this is some kind of highly Americans-specific WP:GREATWRONGS thing. And one that is easy to argue against: e.g., referring to Obama as "the first African American President" instead of "the first African-American President" actually directly undermines the perception of his Americannness and just helps to feed "birther" conspiracy-theory nonsense about him really being from Kenya. I'm also strongly reminded of various provisions in MoS about not inappropriately stressing ethnicity (or origin-nationality), which the hyphenless usage does, and also reminded of the RfC that removed the |ethnicity= parameter from {{Infobox person}} because it was so often misused for such inappropriate attention-drawing. "The main argument against dehyphenation is English grammar has different rules for ..." - Except no one in either edition of this debate has ever mentioned English grammar "rules" as a rationale, so you're just making stuff up. As for propriety, it was quite inappropriate to push in a change you knew had substantial principled opposition, then do it again after being reverted, and just pseudo-announce the change by editing an archive page virtually no one would ever look at. Even worse is you WP:CANVASSING now by pinging everyone you think is on your side from the old debate, but no one else.
I'm going to repeat my earlier question, because nothing I raised was addressed at all: What could we possibly gain from dropping these hyphens? It produces confusing constructions, and is generally incompatible with our entire approach to compound modifiers, but to what end? A "consistency" with some subset of external writers that some editors prefer? Why would we trade actual internal consistency for a half-assed and biased pseudo-consistency with off-site interests, at the expense of clarity to boot? I just don't see a good rationale for doing this. It would make no objective improvement to the encyclopedia, only satisfy a couple of activistic interests.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:25, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm glad that sneakily added bit has now been removed. The only discussion in 2022 was this remark added to an already archived discussion. Dicklyon (talk) 00:19, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

@Plifal, EEng, Only in death, Tvx1, Blueboar, Khajidha, Firejuggler86, and Mikehawk10: pinging everyone from the previous round of this discussion (2022) that Caorongjin left out in his ping of just people who supported his viewpoint. If we need to RfC this to reach a resolution this time, then we should just do it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:25, 20 September 2023 (UTC) @Red-tailed hawk: re-pinging user whose username changed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:31, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

sounds like resolution one way or the other should be found. the only one i asked about was African American, but a more general rule would cover that one as well. Iljhgtn (talk) 13:57, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Editing-in a new exception to the Wikipedia MOS? What you mean to do (whether you know it or not) is to force Wikipedia editors to change the way they write, when they write in a way that is common for clarity. Such an anti-hyphen move is worse than worthless. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:04, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

  • If one writes "an African-American senator," it refers to a senator who is African American, while if one writes "an African American senator," it would refer to an American senator who is African. Why on Earth would one adopt a rule that banned the use of such a clarifying hyphen? AuH2ORepublican (talk) 21:08, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
    Without revealing on which side I fall in this debate, I'll point out that if one writes "high-school student", it refers to a student in high school, but if one writes "high school student", it would refer to a school school student who's smoked a little weed. Or does it? EEng 21:49, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
    Is the "school school" smoking weed because it's cool cool? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 21:54, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
    Man, you are a COMPLETE BUZZ KILL. EEng 23:20, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
    You'd have hated my college friend group. We used to get high, put on some instrumentals, and criticize each other's grammar. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 00:20, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
    dont ask me. this is not my idea, this is what the USA and the American English speaking world decided. the "righting great wrongs" side of things therefore falls on those that wish to include the hyphen as African-American. Otherwise, there is a change that needs to be made over at African American (currently hyphenless) and many other pages... as of right now, while it might be "wrong" to include the hyphen, it is not our job on wikipedia to "right" such "wrongs", from WP:RGW, "We are, by design, supposed to be "behind the curve". This is because we only report what is verifiable using secondary reliable sources, giving appropriate weight to the balance of informed opinion." Thus, at least as of September 2023. The no hyphen "African American" is what all American English manuals for writing suggest using, as well as every African American Museum in the United states.
    Seems to me that the rule should only apply then for ethnic groups that have a strong United States connection. I don't know if anyone proposed that though? Might be more worthwhile given that there are such strong feelings to the contrary coming from the United Kingdom editors. For what its worth, I am in Richmond, Virginia, so attribute any bias that i might have tied to my geography accordingly. Iljhgtn (talk) 22:36, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
    Repeat: What could we possibly gain from dropping these hyphens? It produces confusing constructions, and is generally incompatible with our entire approach to compound modifiers, but to what end? A "consistency" with some subset of external writers that some editors prefer? Why would we trade actual internal consistency for a half-assed and biased pseudo-consistency with off-site interests, at the expense of clarity to boot? There is no sensible rationale to make some "magically special" carve-out for ethnic terminology in a particular country. That would just compound the confusing inconsistency.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:16, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
    Joking aside, "it would refer to an American senator who is African" is not an idle concern at all. See List of foreign-born United States politicians.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:16, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Slight diversion:Anglo-American, etc.

I not-so-guiltily confess that I haven't had the tima and patience to read through and absorb all of the discussion above, let alone the related discussions elsewhere, but one secondary point (if it hasn't been raised before) is that formulations such as Anglo-American and Franco-American usually demand a hyphen because Anglo and Franco are not usually stand-alone words. [In fact omitting the hyphen in Anglo American would now make that combination refer to an American of Anglophone or non-Hispanic extraction or identity, while an Anglo-American would mean someone who has both English (or British) and American birth, ancestry, citizenship or identity]. This is becoming rarer as combinations such as Italian-American (or Italian American) have gradually supplanted the once-more-common Italo-American. Afro-American was certainly hyphenated, but has given way to African American (or African-American) — which raises at least the possibility of a parallel distinction between Americans born in Africa or whose parents or grandparents were African, and African-Americans (or African Americans) descended from many generations of American-born ancestors. I apologise for any incoherence in my language or logic and I don't know where this would lead in the debates above. —— Shakescene (talk)

No one seems to be proposing to not use hyphens with prefixes such as Anglo-, Franco-, Sino-, etc.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:35, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
MORE THAN A COINCIDENCE??? EEng 07:46, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
Clearly a conspiracy.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:01, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
That is right. If you look at even the African American page, Afro-American is considered acceptable. Again, this isn't my choice one way or the other. Wikipedia follows established trends and manners related to all of these things. i didn't say it was always consistent or made perfect sense, but that is not for us humble editors to decide for the world. Iljhgtn (talk) 12:26, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
You misread and misconstrue the Wikipedia African American article, first it's not an article on English writing, and second, African American as a noun or the subject or title of an article does not get the hyphen, only when it is used as a modifier, see eg the Juneteenth article has African American, when a noun, and African-American _______, when an adjective. ("African Americans were often prohibited . . . African-American memories" - that last part is not talking about "American memories" in general, it is clearly referencing "African-American memories" in particular) -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:32, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
do we spell out that difference between nouns and adjectives in the MOS already? If so where? Iljhgtn (talk) 16:36, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
The MOS section we are talking about is all about modifiers, the textbook modifiers are adjectives and adverbs. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:52, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
frequently i see both "african american" written in articles, even when it is not a modifier. I just wanted clarity in all cases, which is correct to use? If there is no disagreement, and its "noun" (African American) "adjective" (African-American) then we could close this conversation and make sure the MOS just makes that extremely clear. Iljhgtn (talk) 17:08, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
I think most all the time in prose, it will be clear whether its used as in subject/noun, and when it is used in describing/modifying some other subject. And feel free when a noun or subject, to remove the hyphen if you think it's improved, or add hyphen when it is used as a modifier, as needed. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:37, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
The problem is the usage is generally consistent, with the exception of ethnic nomenclature. For instance, you will be hard pressed to find hyphenated usage of "African-American studies" or "Asian-American studies" even though they are being used as adjectives. —Caorongjin 💬 19:02, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
"You will be hard pressed to find ...." - Nope. From very first page of search results: "African and African-American Studies", Kansas U. (note also "African-descended", another modifier) [31]; "Institute for Research in African-American Studies .... The Institute for Research in African-American Studies was established .... The African-American studies curriculum explores the ....", Columbia University [32]; A Companion to African-American Studies by Gordon & Gordon, Wiley Press [33]; "Social Movement Tactics, Organizational Change and the Spread of African-American Studies" by F. Rojas, Social Forces journal; U. of N. Carolina Pr. [34]; "Departmental Conditions and the Emergence of New Disciplines: Two Cases in the Legitimation of African-American Studies", M. L. Small, Theory and Society jnl., Springer [35]; and so on. It is true that universities tend to avoid hyphens in any of their curriculum names, but this isn't particular to ethnic terms, and doesn't have anything to do with encyclopedic writing. It is probably because, firstly, academic institutions' house-style is based on marketing and news writing, which is generally anti-hyphen, and secondly, as someone else observed below, "African[-]American Studies" is itself a noun phrase, so some people aren't sure whether to hyphenate the modifier inside it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:29, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
Are those current usage? Hard pressed to find post c. 2019 when this change seems to have gone mainstream. That is an important timing point. Iljhgtn (talk) 11:50, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
Hard pressed is not the same as impossible. FWIW, my Google search found one entry of "African-American Studies" on the second page (University of Kansas), one on third page (Columbia University), and none until sixth page (University of Central Arkansas). The same query for "Asian-American Studies" returned one as the last entry of the eighth page for Merritt College.
Re: @SMcCandlish and @Alanscottwalker's comment about noun phrase (completely honest question): how are you differentiating between a noun phrase and an adjectival usage? The only noun phrase mentioned thus far is that "XY Studies" is a noun phrase (and the "Studies" should be capitalized, although they have been lowercased in Wikipedia). What about XY… literature, film, history, experiences, culture, society, etc.? —Caorongjin 💬 18:21, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
Ultimately, why care? We have our own style guide for a reason, and there is no compelling rationale to make a "special exception" in it to the general, across-all-topics "hyphenate compound modifiers" rule just become some other publishers who are not us like to make an exception. I'm going to repeat myself yet again, because no one can answer this question so far, much less do it satisfactorily: what could we possibly gain from dropping these hyphens? It produces confusing constructions, and is generally incompatible with our entire approach to compound modifiers, but to what end? A "consistency" with some subset of external writers that some editors prefer? Why would we trade actual internal consistency for a half-assed and biased pseudo-consistency with off-site interests, at the expense of clarity to boot? I just don't see a good rationale for doing this. It would make no objective improvement to the encyclopedia, only satisfy a couple of activistic interests. PS: In answer to your first question, the "African-American" in "African-American [noun here]" noun phrases is a compound modifier and should thus be hyphenated. This is pretty obvious, but some people seem somehow confused by it, even though they don't seem terribly confused when something other than an ethnical label is in question. Who doesn't understand that "curly-coated dog" or "second-stage rocket" are noun phrases that contain compound modifiers?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:49, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
Why care? WP:COMMONNAME
And, honestly, "pretty obvious"... "somehow confused". This is just such a belittling and condescending response. —Caorongjin 💬 21:01, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
Said this before about 1,000 times: COMMONNAME is about what basic name is used for something (e.g. "African[-]American studies" versus "Black studies" versus "Afro-American studies" versus "African diaspora studies", versus etc., etc.), regardless how it is styled; it is not about what style to apply, and it logically cannot be or it would not be possible for WP to have a style manual (at least not one that could ever apply to titles). We would necessarily never do anything but choose the most popular style in the majority of sources. Yet this is not at all how article titling is done on Wikipedia. We every single day apply MoS to article titles, and we expect our title style and our prose style to be in agreement at our articles. You're engaging in what's known as the common-style fallacy, the false assumption that whatever the most common stylization of something is in the sources we happen to have found for it is the style WP must use. Various people in the past have proposed trying to shoehorn style considerations into WP:AT policy, and they have failed every single time.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:18, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
I never said WP:COMMONNAME was the rational for changing WP:MOS. I am saying the debate outside of Wikipedia is or has been siding with no hyphen, and this is reflected in both (1) common usage and (2) academic (and newspaper) style guides. It is because of the latter, external style guides, that I made that change. And it is also because of the academic guidance and usage that I don't see it falling under WP:CSF.
You say WP:MOS is based off of x, y, and z style guides and not k or l. OK. I was not aware of that. But this does not mean that the change is invalid but, rather, that it needs to be discussed. We are clearly of different opinions and, it seems, cannot convince one another otherwise.
You said in a separate post "If we need to RfC this to reach a resolution this time, then we should just do it." Can you please just start an RfC about this (tbh, I am not sure how to do so but can if you point me to the appropriate guidance)? —Caorongjin 💬 08:14, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
I didn't said that you said COMMONNAME was "the rational[e] for changing WP:MOS". You're misusing it as a rationale to change article titles in a way that is incompatible with MoS (not just with a line-item in it, but with its entire treatment of compound modifiers as a class), and that is fallacious and problematic. Yes, I can open an RfC on this, but the currently ongoing discussion should wrap up first, either with a consensus (obviating a need for an RfC) or without one, but we should not have two competing discussions going on at the same time (WP:RFCBEFORE, WP:TALKFORK).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:27, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
i just want to mention that this was not about article titles per se, but about all uses of these hyphens when between ethnic words. i read above a few mentions where it seems like this was just about article titles only. Iljhgtn (talk) 11:16, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
And COMMONNAME has nothing to do with article content anyway. I think you simply do not understand the policies and guidelines enough to be constructive in this discussion. Again, the usage in the prose needs to match the usage in the title, so trying with one hand to make it about title policy is a non-starter, and trying with the other to make it about content guidelines as severable from titles is also a non-starter. I'll repeat myself again: every single day, we apply MoS to article titles as well as to in-article content.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:27, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
its fine to do that, to apply it to both, but i was just saying not to apply (seemingly) to just one or the other. i am on eastern usa time by the way, and just starting my morning. where are you? I feel like were discussing this both when i went to sleep and now first thing in the morning. i will edit other articles now.. Iljhgtn (talk) 11:30, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
Is it possible that some orthography/usage/syntax/mechanics of words in specific combinations is just as clear, without hyphen? Sure, for some readers. Anything is possible, and "African American Studies" because of the combination of capitalization may be just as clear for quite a few readers, but we at Wikipedia have set for ourselves to be writing for the broadest audience possible across all national borders and even whether English is first, second, or third language, and the default hyphen-when-modifier, answers that call, most all the time. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:30, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
i just ask is it for us wikipedia editors to decide? or is the decision made by others? grammar guides? reliable sources? museums and other institutions? Iljhgtn (talk) 20:40, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
I'm finding it hard to believe you're even asking this question. Of course it is for Wikipedia editors to decide, like all other style matters here (and all other matters that pertain to how we build this encyclopedia, with the sole exception of legal requirements imposed by external forces). It would be literally impossible for WP to have its own MoS if we were beholden to external third parties to make style decisions for us. We take their views and the rationales for them into consideration when making our decisions, of course. But so far no consistent rationales are even emerging. Some have exceptionally dubious socio-political claims behind their decision to not hyphenate these particular terms; others have a generally hostile stance to hyphenation in general; and others provide no rationale at all. The rationales are not compatible with each other, and do not (singly or together) somehow overcome our own internal concerns with regard to clarity, precision, and consistency for our readers.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:51, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
"African American Studies" is a noun phrase so what you should be doing is capitalizing [S]tudies, which makes that clear. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:53, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
in the titles of many of these articles would need to change maybe Iljhgtn (talk) 19:56, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
@Alanscottwalker Just a heads up, that is not the style used on Wikipedia. Please use African American studies or African-American studies, per MOS:FIELD. — HTGS (talk) 00:46, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
if that is the case, we really should make that clear in the MOS. that is consistent with my findings @Caorongjin Iljhgtn (talk) 19:11, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
I don't believe that it is standard for universities to write "African-American Studies" without the hyphen; it's use certainly varies, even though it is pretty common to forgo the hyphen in the adjectival phrase when the modified noun is in uppercase (as generally is the case for the word "Studies" in a college faculty or a course name). And as for those who claim that ethnic nomenclatures should never be hyphenated--even when the rules of grammar dictate that they should, as in the case of modifiers--because the elimination of such hyphens somehow makes language more "inclusive," please note that Alabama State University, which is a historically black university and a member of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund (and thus unlikely to be insensitive to the concerns of African Americans), has an "African-American Studies" department with a consistently used hyphen: [36].
Grammar is grammar, and adjectival phrases should be hyphenated, whether one is referring to a "red-tailed hawk" (a species of hawk with a red tail; a "red tailed hawk," on the other hand, would be a red hawk that has a tail), an "English-muffin recipe (a recipe for English muffins; an "English muffin recipe" would be a recipe from England for perhaps blueberry muffins) or "Chinese-American cuisine" (cuisine created by Chinese Americans; "Chinese American cuisine" would be American cuisine as served in China, such as at a Beijing burger joint). AuH2ORepublican (talk) 23:09, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
Just sharing this here in case others have not read it. This has a larger component at play, when the racial/ethnic component is involved only. that is all this discussion entails. And to be clear, this discussion already in the united states seems to have been undertaken, so it is not a WP:RGW to keep the hyphen, in fact, we are "righting" it it seems only if we are keeping the hyphen at this point. all of the perfectly sound grammarian arguments above notwithstanding... [37]https://daily.jstor.org/on-hyphens-and-racial-indicators/ Iljhgtn (talk) 23:29, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
maybe it makes sense to restrict the scope of this further to just racial or ethnic descriptors within the united states. I know the united kingdom readers had strong feelings against, and i do not see anything to think that this should apply to the british english pages, but only american english, and thereby this is an ENGVAR thing too, and does not need to be made universal. Iljhgtn (talk) 23:30, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
FYI, I am not a Brit; I'm American. Do you think that Brits are the only ones who use proper grammar? And the articles from which you removed all hyphens from "African-American" when used as a modifier, both in the title of the article and in its text--without even discussing it with editors, much less obtaining a consensus--were articles about American politics written in American English and edited by Americans. And I doubt very much that Alabama State University has a lot of Brits in its faculty, much less within its African-American Studies department, and they sure rock that intra-modifier hyphen: [38]. AuH2ORepublican (talk) 03:22, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
My understanding is that the main difference in hyphen usage between UK and US English relates to words that are commonly run together or compounded in American English, like midline or readjust, which British English would tend to hyphenate, as mid-line or re-adjust. That isn’t relevant here. Otherwise in both my understanding is that hyphens are typically used for compound adjectives but not compound nouns, so ‘he is an Italian American’ but ‘he is an Italian-American gangster’ and also used when there could otherwise be ambiguity, thus ‘he is a small-businessman’, to avoid it otherwise looking like a comment on his size. (Edit/ other sorts of gangster are of course available, before anyone complains) MapReader (talk) 03:43, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
Yes, all of that is consistent with a detailed read across a bunch of major academic-leaning style guides, on both sides of "the pond" (which is how MOS:HYPHEN arrived at what it says, after all; it's not like WP editors just made it up out of nowhere). Now, long after the fact, a few style guides (only one of which MoS is in part based on, Chicago) want to make an exception, but no clear rationale is provided for doing so, much less one that overrides our precision/clarity needs for our audience.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:34, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
'frequently i see ... "african american" written in articles, even when it is not a modifier.' It's supposed to be written as "African American", no hyphen, when it's not a modifier. How is anyone still confused about this? It's exactly the same as writing "the author is well known" (not a modifier) versus "a well-known author" (modifier). Or "I spent a long time in the organization" (not a modifier), "my long-time association with the organization" (modifier). PS: I don't think we're in a position to take any kind of style advice from someone who doesn't capitalize anything, including "African[-]American".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:15, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
I had a thought today that i do not think has been introduced into this conversation, so let me introduce it.
I think this whole conversation relates to how most sources are now treating "African American" vs. "African-American", which are, or at least can be, two different things.
African American refers to an American that may have some distance African heritage. African-American on the other hand, may refer to relations of the two countries, such as if Uganda were to enter into a pact with the USA over some trade deal, this would be an African-American trade deal. I think this is also addressed in the noun versus adjective discussion above, but I think one refers to actual African country known connections, whereas in the case of many African Americans today, there may be no way to know what "African" lineage the person in question may or may not have, and therefore the fact that they are really not both "African" and "American", these two things are not being merged together or connected, but are in essence one and the same thing. Sorry if I am not making sense... I can try to explain more if needed. Iljhgtn (talk) 13:44, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
African–American with an en dash refers to relations between Africa and the US (see MOS:DASH). And Africa is not a country.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:12, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
Ever since Jesse Jackson popularized the term "African Americans" to refer to the people to whom theretofore had been referred as "blacks" (and, a bit before my time, as "Negroes"), the term has been used in precisely the same way as the terms "Mexican Americans," "Italian Americans," etc., had been used for decades: to describe Americans of (sub-Saharan) African descent. It has nothing to do with relations between the United States of America and the continent of Africa.
And the presence of the hyphen varies based solely on whether or not the term was used as a modifier, not on whether one is talking about a hypothetical "African–American cultural exchange (which, as previously noted, required an "en dash," not a hyphen). The terms "African American" and "African-American" are used in exactly the same way as are "Mexican American," "Mexican-American," "Italian American" and "Italian-American." For example, just as we write that Nomar Garciaparra is a Mexican American and that Selena Gomez is a Mexican-American actress, and that Frank Sinatra was an Italian American and that Joe DiMaggio was an Italian-American ballplayer, we write that Jackie Robinson was an African American and that Diana Ross is an African-American singer. There is absolutely no difference in the usage of those terms, and it makes no sense to try to create a distinction where there isn't one. AuH2ORepublican (talk) 17:51, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
Well said AuH2ORepublican. Cinderella157 (talk) 03:08, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
i dont think my keyboard can even make an en dash. anyone know how to do that on a dell/pc computer? Iljhgtn (talk) 22:58, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
A standard keyboard only provides access to a hyphen. However, text editors (such as the standard WP editing interface) do provide access to extended character sets. On the standard WP interface, both the en-dash an the em-dash have quick access from the section immediately below the editing screen immediately after the text Insert: which appears in bold. Cinderella157 (talk) 03:15, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
And even if you've done something to somehow mess up the built-in Wikipedia interface tools, a "Dell/PC", i.e. any Windows computer, has a built-in program called Character Map. It's very handy, though I prefer the (non-free) program PopChar for access to non-keyboard characters. Also exists for Mac.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:39, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
Or you use the numeric keypad and type Alt+0150. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:59, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
Is Windows the only platform for computers? Tony (talk) 08:02, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
"Is Windows the only platform" - naughty, don't mock the afflicted. :) More seriously: Compose--. for Linux implementations. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 08:58, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
On a Mac, it's even easier: Option-hyphen (Option-Shift-hyphen makes an em dash).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:42, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
am i able to see that "insert" here in this reply? I don't see it. Iljhgtn (talk) 22:56, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
or you just mean when making edits on pages? Iljhgtn (talk) 22:57, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
When making edits on article pages—or here, if you click on "Edit" and not on "Reply." AuH2ORepublican (talk) 23:05, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
Any page you edit. Use Ctrl+F and type in insert in the search box to find it. But this is if you are using the standard classic editing box. If you are using another editor it might be a bit different. Cinderella157 (talk) 23:15, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
Cartoon from Puck, August 9, 1899, by J. S. Pughe. Angry Uncle Sam sees hyphenated voters and demands, "Why should I let these freaks cast whole votes when they are only half Americans?"
Discussing about emdashed Americans seems to be a method for refusing the existence of the Hyphenated-Americans. And pretending that this could depend from whatever Manual of Style appears rather as a kind of blindness from some White-White-Americans, you know these English-Americans whose faces are ranging from pink to red(emdash/endash/hyphen)pink --don't ask why. May be there is some letter soup item about inclusiveness. Pldx1 (talk) 16:03, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
maybe that was the correct use in 1899, but in 2023, the unhyphenated appears to be the widespread use. Iljhgtn (talk) 16:19, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

"UK government" vs "British government"?

This question is being discussed at Talk:Elgin Marbles#UK vs British. Does the Manual of Style makes any distinction or express any preference between these two? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:20, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't personally have a preference but the title of the Prime Minister is Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The government is elected under United Kingdom Local Elections. I'm more bothered about not switching between the two in that article. British might read better for people. Knitsey (talk) 12:43, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
United Kingdom is a subject or (as in your first example) object. British is more common as an adjective. MapReader (talk) 12:47, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Yes, I'd say United Kingdom was a proper noun. But it has been suggested that, in this case, its abbreviation "UK" can also be used as an adjective. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:59, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
I think that’s a practice more common in American English, because the Americans clearly do use ‘US’ as an adjective - for example ‘US Navy’ or ‘US Army’. Whereas it’s the Royal Navy and British Army. If the article is in American English then using UK as an adjective would be more in order than it would for a British English one. MapReader (talk) 18:46, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
That's not an adjective. That's a noun adjunct. May not matter for this discussion, but good to keep these things straight. --Trovatore (talk) 02:13, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
The idea that "UK government" (with or without a capital G) is an Americanism isn't demonstrable, as shown by a quick search for this quoted string in news from the UK [39]. It's quite frequent, and simply not the preference of a few specific publishers such as The Guardian.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:06, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
For what it's worth, the UK Government's Digital Service style guide (www.gov.uk/guidance/style-guide/a-to-z-of-gov-uk-style) says: Use UK and United Kingdom in preference to Britain and British (UK business, UK foreign policy, ambassador and high commissioner). But British embassy, not UK embassy. -- DeFacto (talk). 14:00, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Too bad it doesn't mention "UK government". It doesn't even give those as "e.g."? Martinevans123 (talk) 14:12, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Both "UK government" and "British government" are in widespread common use, and both are used in official sources like gov.uk. In that context, I don't think it would be appropriate for WP to prescriptively pick one over the other. I would say we shouldn't arbitrarily switch between them, but that is more an issue of the problem with elegant variation generally than this specific usage.--Trystan (talk) 15:02, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Yes, Googling on just "https://www.gov.uk" gives 4,910 hits on "British government" and 1,870,000 hits on "UK Government". -- DeFacto (talk). 15:08, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
errrrm, we never use Google hits as the basis for MoS (for a whole host of reasons)? Martinevans123 (talk) 15:11, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
That's as maybe, but it makes an informative contribution to the discussion, that's all. -- DeFacto (talk). 15:22, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Again, as I suggested at Talk:Elgin Marbles, unless we know the reason(s) why each of those cases was used in each particular example, we're really no further forward. I don't think its a case of "UK government wins by 1,865,090, because that's what the gov.uk website says." Martinevans123 (talk) 15:27, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Ah, it does. In the "U" section it says:
UK government
Never HM government.
And in the "G" section it says:
government
Lower case unless it’s a full title. For example: 'UK government', but 'His Majesty’s Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'
Also 'Welsh Government', as it’s the full title.
-- DeFacto (talk). 15:03, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
I see. Well we have no examples of "HM government" and no examples of "Government". So no issues there. But, as Trystan says above, it's probably not appropriate for WP to prescriptively pick one over the other. And certainly not on the basis of advice offered by a single external website? Martinevans123 (talk) 15:09, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
I'd go by the related pages - You've got Parliament of the United Kingdom, Government of the United Kingdom & Monarchy of the United Kingdom. Although, you've also got British royal family. -- GoodDay (talk) 15:33, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
We've also got British Empire, which was kind of when all this Elgin Marbles fuss kicked off? Martinevans123 (talk) 15:39, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Haven't read the bio page. Are there any other governments mentioned? GoodDay (talk) 15:47, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Unsurprisingly we also have Greek government (which redirects anyway). Martinevans123 (talk) 16:17, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
FWIW, that page should re-direct to the Government of Greece page. GoodDay (talk) 16:22, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Retargeted it. Note that Greek Government already pointed to Government of Greece, so this is just a matter of consistency. oknazevad (talk) 16:54, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
As posted on the article talk page, pre 1800 it was the British Government, after 1800 it was changed to UK Government. The events surrounding the Marbles started just before 1800 (if my memory serves me right) but the removal, after the casts were taken, began 1801(?).
I don't know if this [40] is applicable, While many government powers have been delegated to the devolved institutions in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, only the UK Government can speak on behalf of the UK and represent us abroad. Knitsey (talk) 15:53, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
"British" is the standard adjective for the United Kingdom. It should be "British government". The use of "UK" as an adjective is very poor English. You wouldn't say "the France government" or "the Canada government". -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:52, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
That's true. But you would say "US government"? Martinevans123 (talk) 16:15, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Yes, because US is commonly used as an adjective and always has been. You wouldn't, however, say "USA government". -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:27, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
@Necrothesp, just like "UK" then, which is commonly used as an adjective too. Your argument against "UK government" is illogical. -- DeFacto (talk). 17:54, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
@Necrothesp, "British" is one of the standard adjectives. The other is "UK", and neither are poor English. -- DeFacto (talk). 16:21, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
My point is that it is poor English. Bad English is not an excuse for bad English. This is an encyclopaedia, not a populist social media site. -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:27, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
And bad British is not an excuse for bad UK! The article ought to be consistent, where it can be. (but nothing is set in stone, lol) . Martinevans123 (talk) 16:44, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
@Necrothesp, what's poor about using the common adjective "UK" as an, err, adjective? Of Britain and UK even the Guardian's style guide here says: "These terms are synonymous: Britain is the official short form of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Used as adjectives, therefore, British and UK mean the same". -- DeFacto (talk). 17:11, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
We'll have none of those pinko, lefty, subversive grammar ideas here, thankyou very much! Martinevans123 (talk) 17:14, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Yes, as in UK Empire, UK Raj, UK Army, UK Airways, etc. etc..... Martinevans123 (talk) 17:18, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Quite! -- Necrothesp (talk) 17:32, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
There's an obvious difference though between those examples and "UK Government". The latter is in common usage, as "US government" is. The others are not, and are comparable to "US pie", "US Dream", "US football", "US Revolution", and "US Samoa". -- DeFacto (talk). 17:51, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
I maintain that "UK" and "British" are not synonymous. Far from it, in fact. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:27, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
When "the UK" is used as an adjective before a noun, as in "the UK government", it means "the government of the UK" (and there "the UK" is used as a noun). "The British government" can also mean "the government of the UK", so clearly it is synonymous in that case, although it is a more ambiguous way of saying it. -- DeFacto (talk). 16:42, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
Why is it "more ambiguous"? Martinevans123 (talk) 16:57, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
"British government" is ambiguous because "British" has two common meanings:
  1. of or relating to the United Kingdom
  2. of or relating to Britain
The second is the problem as "Britain" has two common meanings too:
  1. an informal name for Great Britain (England, Scotland, and Wales)
  2. an informal name for the United Kingdom (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales)
-- DeFacto (talk). 19:37, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
I would suggest that the phrase "the British government" may be ambiguous in isolation, but that the context in a sentence/ paragraph/ section/ article, etc., will generally help to demote what is being referred to. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:22, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
For my part, I wasn't even sure that "the British government" might sometimes be ambiguous, but rather "British government" without the definite article (which suggests "the government of Britain" rather than the vague "a government in Britain"). I.e., the ambiguity is probably only in constructions like "according to several British government sources" or "subsidized by British governmental funding". And Zacwill's point below about "Spanish government" not being seen as ambiguous despite some self-rule autonomous areas within Spain is valid, so I'm less enthused about my own ambiguity argument now than when I began (and it seems not very persuasive to anyone else anyway). I don't want to die on a hill at all, much less this one. Heh.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:59, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Seeing as "Greek government" is being used in the said-bio page? Then "British government" should likewise, be used. Bring it all into consistency. GoodDay (talk) 16:56, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

@GoodDay, would you insist on using "American government" if the US were involved? Would you similarly eliminate other synonyms in use in the article? -- DeFacto (talk). 17:59, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Depends on what's being used in a page. If "UK government" is used in a page, I would use "US government". If "British government" is being used in a page, I would use "American government". Consistency within the page. GoodDay (talk) 18:01, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
But "American government" isn't how it's usually referred to, by a wide margin[41] (and definitely not a proper name), and would be considered by various people to be some combination of misnomer, ambiguous, or even offensive (mostly to people from Latin American countries who object to use of "America[n]" to refer to the US in particular). While "American government" is not exactly a neologisms and can be attested in sources, it is a far-minority usage and readers may mentally rebel at encountering it, so it should probably be avoided. It is much more important to be clear and neutral than to use precisely parallel constructions that hardly anyone but a linguist would notice.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:52, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
I would favour "UK" [in the modern context, not for pre-1800 matters] because "British" includes "Scottish", but Scotland for some time has had its own devolved (rather unfortunate term) separate Scottish Government. While Scotland is still subject to some UK-wide legalities and regulations that aren't covered by the devolution, it is increasingly self-governing, and "British government" is misleading. It's also more of a descriptive term, not really a proper name like Scottish Government and arguably Government of the United Kingdom (in practice, though I think His Majesty's Government is the official name of it, albeit disused by sources and the public). As a descriptive "British government" phrase, or an alleged proper name "British Government", it is apt to be confusing in some ways to various readers.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:06, 1 December 2023 (UTC); clarified 01:52, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
Thanks, SMcCandlish. I was really only asking about usage at Elgin Marbles. I am guessing that you are offering advice here about usage in general. Are there any aspects at Elgin Marbles, particularly to do with the historical era involved, that might lead you to tailor that advice? Thank you. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:26, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
Sure. For a historical subject the principle to not "rewrite history" would include avoiding confusing anachronisms. Elgin's activity came after the Acts of Union 1800 that established the United Kingdom, but the lead as of this moment confusingly says "Elgin sold them to the British government in that year.... In 1983, the Greek government formally asked the UK government to return them.... The UK government and British Museum declined UNESCO's offer of mediation. In 2021, UNESCO called upon the UK government to resolve the issue at the intergovernmental level." The "UK" version already dominates in the material in reference to both the government and parliament, with a stray instance of "British government" in there that seems to imply it is something different from the UK government but existed at the same time, the way the present UK and Scottish governments/parliaments co-exist. (The presence of "British Museum" in the same material is fine; it's a proper name and no one calls it the "UK Museum".) Should generally be made consistent throughout the article (e.g. "Goethe thought the British government's decision to buy the marbles..." → "Goethe thought the UK government's decision to buy the marbles..."), except here: "In November 1798, the Earl of Elgin ... had approached officials of the British government to inquire ...". In 1798, the UK as such didn't exist yet, so "British" should be retained. But later in the same section, "The excavation and removal was completed in 1812 .... Elgin sold the marbles to the British government for £35,000" should read "UK" not "British", being post-1800.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:52, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
I don’t think the suggestion that using ‘UK-‘ as an adjective for situations after 1800 reflects the most common practice in British English commentary. It’s British English, after all, not UK English. The British Army, the British Royal Family, etc. In the same way as you observe above that American readers would expect to see ‘US Government’ rather than ‘American government’ (the latter nevertheless being not uncommon in British English), British readers would think phrases such as ‘UK Army’ and ‘UK Royal Family’ rather odd constructions, regardless of historical or contemporary geographical accuracy. For the Olympics the country competes as Team GB, and rejected a suggested switch to Team UK, and in either case were the qualifier to be put before the noun as an adjective it would have more commonly been switched to ‘British team’ rather than ‘GB Team’ or ‘UK Team’. MapReader (talk) 06:23, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
Already addressed this: Example text The fact that "British" is casually used more often in various constructions is irrelevant; in this particular construction it's ambiguous and often confusing. It's also irrelevant that various British publishers dont' care are use it anyway, since it provable no done near-universally, and WP is not bound to write about the UK like some particular newspapers choose to write about the UK; we have our own style guide for a reason. The fact that more than on government and parliament exist in [Great] Britain alone is sufficient to not use the confusing term, even if it's common.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:48, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
FWIW, just because Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland have devolved governments, doesn't mean they're no longer governed by the UK/British government. Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland aren't independent. In other words - What the British gov't hands over? the British gov't can take back. GoodDay (talk) 17:03, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
The difference between UK and British lies in including Northern Ireland. The country's name is "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland", so equating the mainland of GB to the whole of the UK can give offence in some quarters. In passing, and I don't want this to become a lengthy debate, why SMcCandlish is "devolved" a "rather unfortunate term"? Power and authority devolve from the national government to constituent parts, the word seems to me to be precise and appropriate. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 17:40, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
Disagree. That's the difference between the proper nouns United Kingdom and Great Britain. But the adjective British is not limited to referring to GB. Its common use in relation UK-wide things is entirely valid. That is clear from the Government's own style-guide, odd though it may seem. My passport has the name of the state in full, and above that - in larger letters - British Passport; and within, all adjectival uses are "British" (excepting, of course, "Britannic Majesty"). I have never heard of NI Unionists objecting to British citizenship or being British nationals. Davidships (talk) 18:46, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
Being very careful here about sensibilities, but NI Republicans can use the term "British" to imply that GB doesn't really care for NI and reinforce claims for a united Ireland. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 20:44, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
The laws and regulations of the UK generally apply also to NI, so "UK government" would be more accurate a term anyway, since some interpretations of "British" exclude NI (even if Davidships might argue that most of them don't). PS: Martin, I called devolved an "unfortunate" term because devolve is also, with a different meaning, the opposte of evolve and in that sense implies a degeneration or retrogression. I get the sense that various of the English (and even some Scots) actually take a bit of delight in this pun as it applies to the devolved Scottish Government. Not something RS would cover propbably, but I've encountered use of it sarcastically in social media. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:52, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
(As far as I can tell, SMcCandlish, in the UK the term "devolution" is used by everyone without the slightest intention or suspicion of a pun.) the other Martin (talk) 11:17, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
So, in a side matter that really has no bearing on the thread, you just randomly feel like calling me a blantant liar that I've seen it used with sarcasm/irony? The fact that you haven't personally run into this usage doesn't mean it doesn't exist. FFS.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:56, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
Not sure that I was intending to "just randomly call you a blantant liar." It was just an observation on my part. We have apparently seen different things, that's all. Martinevans123 (talk) 18:51, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
Your opening phrasing is contestable, not only because of devolution but because the Brexit settlement, built on the Good Friday Agreement, leaves NI still subject to much EU law. But usage isn’t merely about strict geographical or historical accuracy, anyway. MapReader (talk) 06:29, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
SMcCandlish, do you think the WP:MoS needs to say something about the use of "the UK government" and "the British government"? Surely there are times in British history when use of "the UK government" would be anachronistic? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:13, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
It would be anchronistic pre-1800, but MoS need not address it unless it's a frequent bone of contention (MOS:BLOAT). I would think that in any article improperly using "UK government" for something happening in 1745, that pointing out it was anachronistic and changing it to British would not go opposed. And anyway, I don't seem to be changing anyone's mind that using "UK government" instead of "British government" is a better post-1800 option anyway (and am not inclined to argue it any further; I've given the rationales I have and would just be repeating myself annoyingly), so the usage is apt to remain "British" most of the time regardless.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:48, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Aint' this discussion kinda getting off topic? GoodDay (talk) 02:39, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, but just to point out, British government, indeed all things British are things that have something do with the British Isles which includes Northern Ireland. So if anything, it's not NI that would be upset but the Republic. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:38, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
Suggesting that the British government is a government of the British Isles might raise a few eyebrows, if not hackles, in the Republic of Ireland. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 12:31, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
That's my, "if anything" clause above. But the British government still has 'something to do with the British Isles', nonetheless. (I rather doubt most in the Republic care that it's called the British government -- it's little different than calling the Irish government, the 'Irish government' -- although they might not prefer what the term 'British Isles' encompasses.) Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:16, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
At any rate, slightly more on topic, I just don't think anyone is confused by the phrase 'British government', in the present, or in the past 300 years or so. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:54, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
I wholly agree. I just don't see from where all this alleged ambiguity/ confusion is supposed to arise. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:57, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
To spell it out again: For some time now there has been more than one government that is British, and this was also true before the Acts of Union. The time period in which "British government" has had only one possible referent is not the present, and it might (I would have to do some word history investigation to be sure) not even be the majority of the time that "government" has been a term used in Britain. You're depending on every reader interpreting the word "British" to mean "encompassing all of Britain" and never "within Britain", despite the word having multiple meanings. There's less potential confusion when "British government" is preceded by "the", but this will not always be the case. And "UK goverment" (for the 1800-onward period in which it is applicable) is ambiguous in no way to anyone (is precise) and is well-attested in sources, including British ones, even if it isn't the most common way someone would express it over a pint at the pub. It's is better to use clear language than the most common language when the latter may be unclear (especially to people outside a particular country).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:10, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
Errrrm no, I'm depending on every reader (or just most readers) to see a phrase such as "in 1801 the British government" and to realise that this refers to the government of Great Britain (i.e. those guys sat in the Houses of Parliament in Westminster) in 1801. Very sorry if that's asking too much. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:31, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
This is a bit like claiming that Spanish government is an ambiguous term because the various autonomous communities each have their own devolved governments. There is no possibility that someone could see the phrase "British government" and assume that it referred to anything other than the national government seated in Westminster. Zacwill (talk) 00:42, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Since the Elgin Marbles page is using "Greek government"? Then that page should use "British government". Or do ya'll want to have something adopted for the entire Wikipedia, concerning the governments of the UK & USA. GoodDay (talk) 18:03, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

It was my edit here (subsequently reverted by DeFacto) that started this discussion. I have no wish to enact a sitewide policy, but I would prefer to see "British government" in the article, simply because it is a more encyclopedic term. Zacwill (talk) 00:35, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
There's nothing "unencyclopedic" about "UK government", in which "UK" is used adjectively just as "Greek" is being used. The fact that "Greek" is not (in this sense) also used as a noun is irrelevant. A closer comparison would be "New Zealand", a noun phrase that is routinely also used adjectivally ("New Zealand government" or in short form "NZ government"; use of "New Zealander government" is almost unheard of). The fact that "British government" is more commonly used, by writers who care less about potential ambiguity, doesn't mandate that we use it. Not sure how to make this clearer. This ambiguity reason really isn't much different from "United States government" and "US government" (or "U.S. government" if you really insist on that excrescent style) rather than "American government". It's not really material that "American government" and "British government" aren't ambiguous to everyone all the time. There's enough ambiguity for some readers some of the time for us to avoid the problem.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:08, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
As I tried to explain above, the context ought to be sufficient to remove any ambiguity. If "some readers" just ignore the context, and still see ambiguity, they must really be somewhat stupid. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:15, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
Fair enough. I'm inclined to concede on this, though I don't think there should be any editwarring or meatbot activity to force "British" everwhere. But the usage should be consistent in the same article (except don't make it "UK" if it's anachronistic; an article that needs to use a "X government" term for pre-1800 events should probably use "British" consistently and avoid the "UK" construction).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:57, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
Oooooh.... "editwarring or meatbot activity". Criminy! Whatever next. But many thanks for your input. Martinevans123 (talk) 16:39, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
Strange WP:FAITACCOMPLI behaviour sometimes ensues (including from rather random quarters, like very recent editors) when they think there's a "mandate" to prefer one style over another. It happens.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:08, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
I'll try and reign in my recent user meatbots on this one. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:31, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
If they are plump and juicy, set them aside for barbecuing later.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:47, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Regional-specific naming discussion

Hello, a Requested Move discussion is taking place at Talk:Connecticut Panhandle. The gist of the move is moving geographic areas, such as Texas Panhandle to Texas panhandle. While that is not an issue, Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia and Northern Panhandle of West Virginia are an issue. There is some disagreement between a previous discussion over the move of Florida panhandle, Wikipedia's capitalization rules and how they affect this current discussion, and sourced information showing a regional exception to the rule (ie: the Northern and Eastern Panhandles of West Virginia).

Since you all deal with this on a daily basis, it would be helpful to have some eyeballs from MOS to guide the conversation. Thanks...Neutralhomer • Talk • 17:59, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Aged etc

Which format is preferred:

  1. at the age of 88?
  2. at age 88?
  3. aged 88?

Or is there really no preference? And are any of these aligned more with American or British English? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:23, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

No established, specific preference. Even MOS:NUM doesn't address this, even though it addresses how to template-caculate ages from birth dates, and so forth. That said, I think the most editors would agree to use one of the shorter constructions (each of them works better in different sentence structures), since concision is generally a virtue in writing. Why use the longest version when a short one that is just as clear will do? Often even "at 88" will work, though it depends on the wording ("died at 88" is much more of a clear "stock" construction than something like "was incarcerated at 88", which seems to imply an institution designated "88"). There might be a reason to use the long version for clarity in some circumstance, e.g. in a sentence that has a bunch of other numbers in it; maybe some other scenario might come up.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:47, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
I see. And no alignment to Engvar? Martinevans123 (talk) 21:17, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
I haven't run into anyone making ENGVAR arguments about this (which isn't dispositive of anything of course). PS: My own anecdotal sense is that the longer form (like a lot of other longer forms of things) tends to be preferred by older people, and is tied to a sense of formality or ponderance or intellectuality (shades of "elegant variation", which was still being drilled into us as kids as a good way to write when I was growing up).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:49, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
Ah thanks. You evidently don't believe then, that "aged" on its own can convey an unwanted suggestion of elderliness. I've always seen "at age 88" as an Americanism, but that may just be a wholly illogical personal misconception on my part. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:10, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
I don't see "aged" that way, unless used on it's own (with the "age-ed" pronunciation, "He look aged and weary"). I learned to read and write in England, but have been in the US so long my own judg[e]ment on the matter wouldn't be meaningful.

Here's an ngram across English usage generally of all four forms (including the "at 65" shortest form and your three above; I picked "65" since it's often used as a cut-off age for various social programs, etc., so it's common): [42]; confined to just 1980 onward, which is probably more relevant to us: [43]. Switching to the US corpus, we get this version: [44]. And the UK one gives: [45]. Side-by-side comparison shows a strong preference for the two shorest forms, with the longest form being least popular. "At age 65" seems a little bit more popular in American than British usage, but not sigificantly so, and actually popular in neither. "Aged 65" is very common in both. The real difference was an American favo[u]ring of just "at 65" over "aged 65", while it was the other way around in British publications. All that said, this data will have lots of false positives in it favoring "at 65" higher than it deserves in all cases, because of strings like "lived at 65 Waterston Street" and "driving at 65 miles/kilometres per hour". The other three strings are unlikely to have many false positives.

Adding "died" to it is ... interesting. The longer phrase is excluded for having too many words, for starters. In the all-of-English corpus, "died at 65" is in the lead, followed by "died at age 65", and "died age 65" lagging [46]. In the US data, "died at age 65" was the favorite, followed by "died at 65", and then "died aged 65" last [47]. Suprisingly, the "died at age 65" usage doesn't seem to rate in the UK, with "died aged 65" and "died at 65" having rather comparable usage, though with a lot of flux [48].

So, this kinda-sorta suggests a US bias in favo[u]r of the "died at age 65" form, and a UK feeling against it, at least in this specific construction; but this doesn't agree well with the more bare data above showing "at age 65" by itself common in British as well as American usage. Not really sure what to make of that. (Maybe it's more often used by the young in reference to themselves, as in "married at age 25"? Just a guess.) Regardless, I think your feeling that there's something at least American-leaning about "at age 65" is probably correct, even if the usage is blending due to global media. "Aged 65" is arguably a slight Briticism, with just "at 65" being neither. But this is all rather tentative. And I would think they all fall within MOS:COMMONALITY; I doubt any of them would not be understood by anyone fluent in the language.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:33, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

That seems credible to me, but I think there’s an additional layer based on the context. If you’re ascribing someone’s age, then they ‘are’ it, not ‘at’ it. No-one says “I am at age 18”. I would see ‘died aged…’ as the most common usage in the UK, with the ‘aged’ substituting for the verb ‘am/are/was/were’, an adaption from “He dies when he was 65”. When ‘at’ is used tends to be in phrases without the preposition, such as “Votes at 16!” or “You are allowed to drink at 18”, the missing “aged” being implicit. You might find ‘at’ constructions but more commonly where the proposition leads off, hence “at 18, you can vote”, shorthand for “at age 18…” MapReader (talk) 22:20, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
Many thanks for that. I wholly agree that none of the variants are likely to be misunderstood. Yes, the "at 65" form may be equally common on both sides of the Atlantic. But I'd like to invite User:Julietdeltalima to this discussion, if at all possible. They seem to be quite keen on making edits like this one with the edit summary "deleted surplusage" (100 since last November?). If there is no actual policy on this, and it's purely a matter of personal preference, I fear these kinds of edits may be a recipe for disagreement? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:00, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
I always cut back "at the age of ##" to "at age ##" in any circumstance (death, age of school-leaving, etc.), because there's no reason for the "the" and "of". I think people hear newsreaders say it that way and write it unthinkingly. Does anyone miss those words when they're gone? Is the meaning impaired? - Julietdeltalima (talk) 18:55, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
Hello Juliet. Thanks for responding. Yes, I miss them, because I think the longer form is more formal and more correct. I'm really not sure that newsreaders have anything to do with my preference. More to do with my education as a child in the UK. It is just a preference, of course, and I don't see that meaning is lost. But I must admit I was surprised there's no policy or Engvar on this. You do seem a bit over-zealous in your "corrections" though? I assume you know about WP:MEATBOT. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:43, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
I would agree. British English would not generally use 2 (which I think we would see as an Americanism omitting vital words on a par with "wrote him", "a couple pages" and "one hundred twelve"), but it would certainly use 1 or 3 pretty much interchangeably. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:18, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 20 December 2023

In the section "Punctuation inside or outside": "Quotation marks and internal links", the correct and incorrect examples are the same. Grammar-style (talk) 01:40, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, first edit request: The incorrect example currently states:
but should be changed to
Grammar-style (talk) 01:43, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
 Not done: It's subtler than that. The quotation marks are not part of the link in the correct example but are part of the link in the incorrect one. No change is needed for this. —C.Fred (talk) 01:49, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
Grammar-style, not quite. The distinction being illustrated in that section regards the use of wikilinks, not punctuation. Remsense留 01:49, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
Oh, thanks for the clarification. Turns out the info re: punctuation and quotes is in the "Titles of Works" part of the manual. Grammar-style (talk) 02:06, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
See also MOS:LQ. It looks like you were trying to apply the commonly but neither unanimously nor exclusively American puctuation habit of putting terminal punctuation inside the quotation marks as a general approach. If you are doing around doing that on Wikipedia, please stop and undo it. WP only puts terminal punctuation inside quotation marks when that punctuation was part of the original material. If you are quoting "The shop closed at midnight." as part of a larger containing sentence, it's '"The shop closed at midnight", according to the manager.', because the original material contained no comma.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:10, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
Don't worry; I was doing the exact opposite—moving punctuation from inside quotes to outside (specifically in song titles). Grammar-style (talk) 04:01, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
Grand. While you're act it, be on the lookout for silliness like In ''The Tommyknockers,'' ... where people used to the "puctuation inside quotes" habit also mistake our italics or bold markup for quotes and do it there, too.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:24, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
"WP only puts terminal punctuation inside quotation marks when that punctuation was part of the original material"...and only if it's a full quoted sentence, rather than sentence fragment, per LQ. MapReader (talk) 10:23, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Lengthy digression about logical quotation, and MOS:LQ in WP:MOS

Dispute about WP:LQ. One editor claims all points are covered in WT:MOS archives; this is contested by an anonymous commenter
SMcCandlish, it's about time WP:LQ was reviewed and corrected. Does any other respected style manual or publisher really want " 'The shop closed at midnight', according to ..." (where the quoted material had a period at the end)? Show me! New Hart's Rules (NHR) and others would put a comma to represent that period: " 'The shop closed at midnight,' according to ...".

NHR's own example makes this perfectly clear (but here I use WP-style double quotes):

Yes, we will. It’s a good idea.
"Yes, we will. It’s a good idea," he said.

That's industry-standard logical quotation. It's a pity WP:MOS doesn't call for that, instead of its own awkward and anomalous variant. Find us any quide in the league of NHR that supports current WP:MOS practice for logical punctuation.

49.190.56.203 (talk) 05:11, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

You seem to be unaware of "industry standards" outside the US? Actually the New Hart's Rules calls what we use the "traditional British style" and gives as example: Traditional British style would have given: ‘May I suggest’, she said, ‘that you have a bath before supper?’ (2014 ed., p. 163) Other examples, for which they don't even mention that there might be alternatives, are given on p. 161, including Chancellor was ‘convinced that the entire Balfour Declaration policy had been “a colossal blunder”, unjust to the Arabs and impossible of fulfillment in its own terms’. Gawaon (talk) 05:32, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
Wikipedia's rules are the same as the Australian Government Style Manual. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:44, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
Gawaon: On the contrary. I am intimately familiar with standards in and outside of the US. The examples you give from NHR are completely irrelevant to the point I have carefully laid out above. Read again, with care.
Hawkeye7: Wrong. That wretched cobbled-together excuse for an Australian style manual in fact falls into line with NHR. But unlike NHR, it does not first give in raw form the text that is being quoted – essential for complete certainty about the intent. Examples at the point you link to (again I use WP double quote marks):
"It has arrived," said the manager.
"Has it arrived?" asked the manager.
Now, it's possible that the first quoted text here had a comma in the original. The dullards don't say. A period in the original is far more likely to have been intended. What we do know is that the Australian Government Style Manual does not give any example like this:
* "It has arrived", said the manager.
The only examples it gives at the section you link with the comma following the quote mark (setting aside occrurrences in bibliographic material that are not remotely relevant):
Single quotation marks are also known as ‘quote marks’, ‘quotes’, ‘speech marks’ or ‘inverted commas’.
Another use of quotation marks is for words introduced by expressions such as ‘titled’, ‘marked’, ‘the term’ and ‘defined as’.
Many things have been called ‘the new black’, but they usually fade to grey.
His stirring speech, ‘We shall never surrender’, galvanised the UK and its allies. [Quoting the name of a speech.]
Not one of these supports the strange version of logical quotation embedded in WP:MOS all these years. Read again, with care.
49.190.56.203 (talk) 07:01, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
Well, the NRH also has examples such as He asserted that ‘Americans don’t understand history’, and that ‘intervention would be a disaster’. They don't give the original wording, but conceivably it might have been something like Americans don’t understand history, therefore intervention would be a disaster. Our style is at least consistent and easy to follow. Their style, and that of the Australian Government Style Manual, seems to be pure chaos. I'm glad we don't have to attempt to follow them. Gawaon (talk) 07:29, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
Well Gawaon, you quote New Hart's Rules misleadingly and out of context. Here is that material from NHR (2ed, 2014) but with the essential preamble that you omitted (my bold, my underlining):
When a quoted sentence is a short one with no introductory punctuation, the full point is generally placed outside the closing quotation mark:
Cogito, ergo sum means ‘I think, therefore I am’.
He believed in the proverb ‘Dead men tell no tales’.
He asserted that ‘Americans don’t understand history’, and that ‘intervention would be a disaster’.
So your take on the quoted material is manifestly wrong. The four strings in NHR examples that I mark here in bold are declared to be sentences (short ones) in their own right. Read again, but with care.
49.190.56.203 (talk) 21:08, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
And what you're failing to take care to notice is that even in NHR style (which is just one of at least 10 distinguishable ones among different British publishers and institutions) is that "He asserted that 'Americans don't understand history', and that 'intervention would be a disaster'." is actually following the LQ rule to not put that comma inside the first quoted string, though many British and most American publishers would do so. NHR is just weird in having made up a strange exception to logical punctuation, a new "rule" to put the terminal punctuation outside the closing quotation mark if the quoted sentence is short and part of a larger editorial sentence. In over 20 years of style-guide reading I've never seen another promotion of this idea, and it clearly is not logical and not common either. But this is not evidence that NHR doesn't otherwise follow LQ, even if they don't use the term "logical quotation". Gawaon's other quotes from NHR conclusively demonstrate this.

The Australian Government Style Manual is actually quite clear and entirely in synch with logical quotation, other than an example typo:

If the punctuation mark is part of the quoted text, place the punctuation mark before the closing quotation mark. The same rule applies for directly quoted speech followed by the attribution. If the punctuation mark is part of the sentence outside the quoted text, it follows the closing quotation mark. Quoted material can appear as parenthetical information, enclosed in parentheses, dashes or commas. In these cases, place the quotation marks inside the sentence punctuation. If the quotation ends a sentence or is a sentence in its own right, place the final full stop before the final quotation mark.

That it has an singular example that fails to follow its own rules doesn't magically erase the rules, it's simply a typographical error. Even Chicago Manual of Style has some (I reported one, a capitalization error that contradicts their own rule on capital letters and organism names, to their editors back in the 2000s, in the 15th edition, and it is still present in the 17th. This does not make CMoS an unreliable source on a stylistic scope within American publishing, nor mean that their rule in particular is inapplicable, it just means they have a typo in one of their examples.) The .au guide's only divergence (aside from that typo) from any of Wikipedia use on this kind of question is in "Sometimes, there are 2 punctuation marks – one for the quotation and one for the sentence. Decide which is stronger and use it. Don't use both punctuation marks." That generally applies on Wikipedia (and MOS:LQ provides an example of it), but taking a cue from computer science and textual analysis, there are various circumstances in which we would in fact write something like "The Speaker called 'Order!'.", because the emphasis is in the original and is not part of our own dispassionate sentence. Picking the "stronger" one would in fact be an error in encyclopedic writing. This comes up so infrequently we don't even have a rule about it in MOS:LQ. But notably, people do not editwar about it here, because we understand that the point is absolutely clarity to the reader, in an encyclopedic register) not prescriptivist imposition of personal or nationalistic style peccadilloes for their own sake, which appears to be your raison d être here.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:20, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

That latter looks horrendous; the comma is there to break up the material for the reader, and having it inside the quote makes no sense to me. MapReader (talk) 10:25, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
No practicable system for ordinary everyday quotation could ever be perfect. If you're accustomed to what WP:MOS prescribes for example, your reaction is understandable. Let's be aware, however, that the WP:MOS system for LQ is a Wikipedia invention without support from the world's major style manuals. And it leaves ambiguities and uncertainties for the reader, just as all other codifications must.
49.190.56.203 (talk) 21:08, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Arbitrary break 1

This needs to just be listed in WP:PERENNIAL. "LQ is a Wikipedia invention" is patently false, and we've been over this many, many times. Pretty much every 6 months to a year, someone says MOS:LQ is "wrong" and wants to "correct" it, yet the consensus to stick with what we have never budges. If you dig back in the archives, you'll find many previous discussions of this, including one in which I analyized the relevant contents of a large number of style guides on the matter, back when I had a large collection of those taking up an entire 5-shelf bookcase. The short answer is to this is yes: 'Does any other respected style manual or publisher really want "'The shop closed at midnight', according to ..." (where the quoted material had a period at the end)?' As for "Show me!", no. Do your own research, especially since most if it's already been done for you and you can just dig it out of the archives.

Contrary to popular belief, The Chicago Manual of Style also accounts for logical quotation in numerous places (it simply refuses to call it "logical quotation", probably because the term would undermine their favoring of typesetters' quotation, hereafter TQ). It covers the usage of it in computer science, in philosophy, and in textual analysis and criticism (the latter being what much of WP is: our "job" is painstaking analysis of, with a critical and sumarizing eye toward, large amounts of written source material).

I'd forgotten about it entirely, but the essay WP:Logical quotation on Wikipedia covers a lot of this ground, with sources, though it's over a decade old and is missing some key material like Pullum's mentioned below. Also, Here's a bit of proof of one major publisher following LQ: The Times [49]

Commas: keep commas where they should be logically in "broken" sentences. Thus, the comma goes outside in the following example: "The trouble is", he said, "that this is a contentious issue."

Note that punctuation marks go inside the inverted commas [quotation marks] if they relate to the words quoted, outside if they relate to the main sentence, eg, She is going to classes in "health and beauty". If the whole sentence is a quotation, the final point [period] goes inside, eg, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty."

So, the "Show me!" is answered after all. And there are more. See, e.g., University of Sussex [50]:

Anything which is not part of th[e] exact words must be placed outside the quotes, even if ... this means using two sets of quotes because the quotation has been interrupted.

This piece describes both approaches, actually, toward the end, and refers to ours as logical, and advises to prefer it when possible, while noting that various publishers will not permit it because their editors "have been taught the conventional view and adhere to it rigorously" and will engage in "grim opposition". The same grim opposition tediously brought by our anonymous prescriptivist here (who is also engaging in something of a mixture of WP:OR, idiolect, and fallacy of equivocation, changing the meaning of the term "logical quotation" on-the-fly to a new personal definition that includes "Yes, we will. It's a good idea," he said., which is not at all what logical quotation or logical puntuation refers to, in any source anywhere.) The author of the Sussex material, Larry Trask (a notable trans-Atlantic linguist) also cites Geoffrey K. Pullum (another notable trans-Atlantic linguist) on the matter, as correctly observing that use of TQ results in misquotation.

Here's another, Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies [51]:

Punctuation marks are placed inside the quotation marks only if the sense of the punctuation is part of the quotation; this system is referred to as logical quotation. ... When a sentence fragment is quoted, the period [full stop] is outside. ... Within a quotation use the spelling and punctuation of the original.

It takes only a few minutes with Google to find such material, and I don't have all day for it. PS: "[LQ] leaves ambiguities and uncertainties for the reader": It most certainly does not, and elminates those caused by TQ. If you think otherwise, then try to lay out for us all a supposed "ambiguity and uncertainty" caused by LQ, and we'll be happy to disabuse you of the notion. Oh, and be sure to "read again, but with care" since you love telling everyone else to do that.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:46, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

A spirited response, SMcCandlish – but one that misses the point entirely. You appear unable to adduce an example of the sort I was asking for, and instead rail against those who don't like LQ. I'm not one of those! I strongly prefer LQ. But I find that the Wikipedia version of logical quotation stands quirkily apart. WP:LQ gives this example, where the source quoted is a full sentence ending with a full stop: "For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own", said Kennedy. Show us any published source, or any respected style manual other than WP:MOS, putting a comma after the quotation mark where a full sentence is quoted.
I have looked at the sources you mention. I do not find any example of the sort I ask for, which WP:MOS prescribes. Have I missed something? If so, please correct me. If one or two published examples are found, they are surely isolates – or lapses by some editor.
Let me illustrate the pervasiveness of this strange blindspot in Wikipedia style. I'll start by quoting from the highly polemical essay you mention above (you are reported to be responsible for 79.4% of it):
Typesetters' quotation is not American – British, etc. journalism and fiction often use it, too
Here's one example, out of literally millions, of British professional journalism using typesetters' quotation, from a BBC News article on the death of a Hiberno-British sports figure: "Len did a terrific amount for charity," he said.[4] Note ...charity," versus the supposedly expected version: ...charity", which is claimed to be the British style by the proponents of TQ as "American style". There are several other examples in that same piece.
Now, the only quotations in the piece that is referenced there fit perfectly with LQ as it is presented in NHR. Unsurprising, from the BBC. Contrary to the essay's assertion there is no distinguishing evidence to show that TQ is adopted in the article. And if we look at other BBC material, we find that NHR LQ is the norm. This randomly selected BBC article for example includes quotations styled like this (my underlining):
Within days, "Z" had become the symbol of what the Kremlin was calling its "special military operation".
Mr Yefremov insists he is "anti-war".
"I don't know what's going on in their heads," he says. "How could they allow themselves to be fooled? ..."
"I realise now I should have ignored that and driven on," he says. "But I was afraid of being put in jail."
" 'Yes,' the prisoner replied. 'Then someone bring me a mop,' said the colonel. 'We'll turn you into a girl and send your wife the video.'"
BBC uses TQ? Nothing to show that it uses TQ here, or in the article linked in that polemical essay. BBC uses LQ à la Wikipedia? Nope. No one does, except on Wikipedia. BBC uses logical quotation in the NHR manner. That's the industry standard.
I gave just one illustration – easily found – of the confusion, misunderstanding, and poor analysis that underlies WP:LQ. Many others could be shown. You would do well, SMcCandlish, to read with more care. And you would do well to meet a fair challenge fairly, rather than impugning without evidence my own competence in such matters. I too have shelves groaning with style guides, and I read them with unusual care.
49.190.56.203 (talk) 06:36, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
For completeness I should answer this from SMcCandlish, since it involves a direct request to me:
  • PS: "[LQ] leaves ambiguities and uncertainties for the reader": It most certainly does not, and elminates those caused by TQ. If you think otherwise, then try to lay out for us all a supposed "ambiguity and uncertainty" caused by LQ, and we'll be happy to disabuse you of the notion.
First, I am misquoted. What I actually wrote is focused squarely on logical quotation as it is interpreted (defectively, say I) on Wikipedia. With my underlining added:
  • Let's be aware, however, that the WP:MOS system for LQ is a Wikipedia invention without support from the world's major style manuals. And it leaves ambiguities and uncertainties for the reader, just as all other codifications must.
Yes, I added that "all codifications must"; but my challenge concerned WP LQ.
Here are some points concerning excerpts from current WP LQ. Some might apply, with weaker force, against other implementations of LQ (but that's not my concern here):
[Excerpt 1] If the quoted sentence is followed by a clause that should be preceded by a comma, omit the full stop (period) – but other terminal punctuation, such as a question mark or exclamation mark, may be retained.
  • Livingston then said, "It is done", and turned to the people.
The problem: It is unclear from this punctuation whether the words "It is done" are a sentence in the original that is quoted. In fact, readers accustomed to more standard LQ might think an effort has been made to show that it is not a sentence. Other versions of LQ would put the comma inside the quotes if it were a sentence in the original, but outside if it were not.
[Excerpt 2] If the quoted sentence is followed by a clause identifying the speaker, use a comma outside the quotation mark instead of a full stop inside it, but retain any other terminal punctuation, such as question marks.
  • "For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own", said Kennedy.
The problem: (I noted this one earlier.) Same as for Excerpt 1. In fact the quoted material is a full sentence in the original (as the WP wording suggests that it is: "If the quoted sentence ..."); but there's nothing here to even hint that it is.
[Excerpt 3] [...] For the most part, this means treating periods and commas in the same way as question marks: keep them inside the quotation marks if they apply only to the quoted material and outside if they apply to the whole sentence.
  • [...]
  • Correct: Darla said, "Where am I?" (question mark applies to quoted material only)
The problem: What are we to do if we want to quote only that portion of Darla's complete sentence, if it had been this: "Where am I, and who are you?" It's unclear, from the WP wording. Candidate solutions:
  • Darla said, "Where am I". [On one interpretation of the WP wording.]
  • Darla said, "Where am I"? [On another interpretation of the WP wording.]
  • Darla said, "Where am I[?]"
  • Darla said, "Where am I?".
  • Darla said, "Where am I?" [The question mark "[applies] only to the quoted material" and it does occur in the sentence that occurred in the original: just not at that exact point!]
  • Darla said, "Where am I [...]?". [To show, for fidelity with the original, that the question mark occurs in the original and marks the quoted material as a question, and that it occurs later.]
More interpretations and solutions are possible, but this sampling of uncertainties will suffice.
[Excerpt 4] Do not follow quoted words or fragments with commas inside the quotation marks, except where a longer quotation has been broken up and the comma is part of the full quotation.
  • Correct: "I'm happy I can do it one more time, so people can remember me at my best", said Turner.
  • Correct: "I'm happy I can do it one more time," said Turner, "so people can remember me at my best."
  • Correct: "I'm happy", said Turner, "I can do it one more time, so people can remember me at my best."
  • Incorrect: "I'm happy," said Turner, "I can do it one more time, so people can remember me at my best."
The problem: What Tina Turner actually said: "I'm rock 'n' roll, but I'm happy I can do it one more time, so people can remember me at my best." So:
For the first example, same as for Excerpts 1 and 2.
For the second and third examples, in any version of LQ including WP's putting a period inside the quotes would seem to be right only if the whole sentence were being quoted. But is that correct? At least for WP LQ, the matter appears to be unresolved. Certainly the string quoted from Turner could be the material for a full orthographic sentence; but it doesn't make one in the text that is quoted. Nor does it make one in the example; the example in its entirety is the only orthographic sentence in play. Putting the full stop inside leaves it unresolved whether the quoted material is a full sentence in the original; putting it outside would signal (correctly) that it was not a full sentence. WP:LQ gives no example to settle such matters. If it be answered that it's sufficient that the quoted material could make up the material for a full orthographic sentence, this is not made clear. And indeed, it defeats the whole purpose of LQ: to report faithfully how things actually were in the original.

Arbitary break 2

"We'll be happy to disabuse you of the notion"? Go ahead!
Complete fidelity to the original is a mirage. Zealots favouring WP's quirky implementation of logical quotation might need to be reminded of that. Will they act on such a reminder, and reverse the entrenched errors of the past? Somehow I doubt it.
49.190.56.203 (talk) 00:07, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
When you get gently mocked for snidely telling everyone around you to "read with care", then "you would do well" to understand that the thing to not do is double and then triple down on it. And no one cares whether you find something "A spirited response"; WP:NOT#FORUM. The reason I'm bothering to go through all this stuff point-by-point is just to have another talk-archive record dispelling this confused and nationalism-infused stuff in detail yet again. Not for entertainment value; I could be watching a movie right now, instead.
  • "Show me!" Already did. Are you not reading? Let's quote it again (just two random examples, but they suffice): "Within a quotation use the spelling and punctuation of the original." "Anything which is not part of th[e] exact words must be placed outside the quotes".
  • "New Hart's Rules (NHR) and others would put a comma to represent that period": Yes, everyone knows that, and it's completely irrelevant, since that's not LQ and has nothign to with MOS:LQ. Rather, it's the most common British practice, though not universal in British publishing. It's also what's done in TQ, of course. The British styles are mostly a TQ/LQ mixture.
  • 'the source quoted is a full sentence ending with a full stop: "For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own", said Kennedy.' Yes, and this is required by LQ if you're going to continue the sentence after the quote (though some might omit the comma before "said Kennedy"). It is not possible in LQ, by definition (just re-read the above definitions) to put that comma inside the quotation, because it is not found in the original.If you are talking about a quotation style in which that substitution were permissible (without square-bracketing it), you would not be talking about LQ, and this has already been pointed out to you above. Let's please not have to go over this yet again in another round later. If that is where you're angling with this, then you are engaging in equivocation, redefining LQ on-the-fly to mean what you wish it meant instead of what it actually means. There are many quotation styles that would do what you want to with that comma (if I'm reading your intent here right), by putting it inside, including several British ones, but they are not LQ. If this is where you are going then (like previous pundits against MOS:LQ) you're not grasping that LQ and [most] British quotation styles are not the same thing.

    Alternatively, you could instead believe that if LQ quotes a full sentence that it must include the terminal punctuation no matter what, and thus be advocating for something like '"For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own.", said Kennedy.' Or perhaps '""For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own." said Kennedy.' If so, there appear to be no other LQ works and writers who would advocate this, and it is not what WP says to use. I.e., it's a made up "LQ-prime" or something. It just doesn't happen. (Except in a specialized linguistic or other text-analytic situation under which the punctuation within the quoted sentence is itself a subject of the analysis; but that's not really LQ either, but strict presentation of literal strings, also common in computer science when giving command lines, etc. It's not about quoting normal prose or spoken material.)

    LQ, like any quotation style, can just partially-quote material at will, and that means even the elision of a single punctuation mark. The original example quoted above is no more wrong or invalid than '[S]pace science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own", said Kennedy.' Or '"[A]ll technology", according to Kennedy, lacks "conscience of its own".' Literally nothing about LQ (as codified here or anywhere else) precludes removal of quoted material, including terminal punctuation, and I have no idea where you could have even picked up such a notion, if that second of the above two notions is the one you're running with. All that LQ prohibits is injecting material like punctuation into a quotation (without square brackets) that was not part of the original material, or altering in-place the content, including punctuation, that was found there (again, without square brackets, or an ellipsis)

  • You are the one who is not reading clearly. You quote me saying "Typesetters' quotation is not American – British, etc. journalism and fiction often use it, too" and apparently just did not parse that at all, because you follow this with a "smoking gun" quote of a British publisher using TQ – which is exactly what I said they often do, despite American pundits' frequent false claims that LQ and "British style" are the same thing. (In reality, of course, there is no single British style.)
  • "Now, the only quotations in the [BBC] piece ... fit perfectly with LQ as it is presented in NHR .... BBC uses logical quotation in the NHR manner.": This is you engaging in weird equivocation again, changing what a term means to suit what you wish it meant. What NHR advises is not LQ, by definition, because it permits swapping punctuation inside the supposedly directly quoted material. Been over this already. We have absolutely no reason for another round of this if you persist in trying to make arguments about various British punctuation styles that have some elemlents of LQ and some of TQ; that is not what MOS:LQ is about, so it's simply irrelevant. The rest of that material can be skipped, since it's all dependent on your fundamental misunderstanding of what LQ means, your false belief that various things you are linking to like BBC articles are using LQ. (For the record, BBC has and follows its own internal stylesheet, which like those of many other British publishers is a hybrid of TQ and aspects of LQ. The well-cited essay you did not understand at all already covers this (I'm bummed that you didn't understand it because it was written entirely with people like you in mind, with confused ideas about quotation punctuation). Like most of them, BBC style permits replacement of a quotation's terminal period/full-stop with a comma, inside the purportedly quoted material, if the quoting sentence continues, and this is simply not doable in LQ. I'm not sure how many times we really need to go over this.
  • "No one does" - already disproved this above. It would not be possible to quote definitions of LQ (real LQ, as used at WP, not other styles you misunderstand to be LQ) from writers and publishers if there were no writers and publisher using and defining LQ; QED. "That's the industry standard" - Nope. There are at least 10 identifiable slightly different quotation punctuation styles in British publishing, ranging from full LQ to full TQ, and all the rest (which account for the vast majority of British output) being blends that differ from each other on various particulars and the rationales for them. (E.g. BBC News style on this is a little different in philosophy and exact execution from The Guardian style, and both in turn from The Economist style.) Somewhere in the talk archives here, I already did an analysis of them all, and I'm certainly not going to do it again, because it was very tedious.
  • "I gave just one illustration – easily found – of the confusion, misunderstanding, and poor analysis that underlies WP:LQ" - You did absolutely nothing of the sort, and the three faults you list are entirely your own on this matter. You misread something and proved for me what I actually said myself, then you confused NHR and BBC style (which actually subtly diverge from each other on a bit or two, if you study them closely) with each other and much worse with LQ, and "illustrated" nothing other than what has already been said: that British publishers typically use a mixture of TQ and LQ.
  • I don't have to "impugn... [your] competence in such matters"; you're giving a grandstanding performance that clearly demonstrates that you don't fully grasp the subject. Cf. Dunning–Kruger effect: You not only think you know more than you do, you don't know what you don't know, but nevertheless presume to lecture in a haughty manner as if talking to school children, when you badly misunderstand all of the material, both on- and off-site, but simply can't yet realize it. "I too have shelves groaning with style guides, and I read them with unusual care." I believe the former, but the latter is self-evidently not the case. If you read them, you do as the last anti-MOS:LQ flamer, the one who got banned, did: you cherry-pick and misinterpret and novelly synthesize and attempt incorrectly to analysize until you cobble together something you think supports the result you want, instead of understanding and applying what the material actually says and means. This is the very essence of original research.
  • Let's move on to your issues with the MOS:LQ examples: 'It is unclear from this punctuation whether the words "It is done" are a sentence in the original that is quoted.' Yes, and that is not a problem of any kind. It will always be the case in all quotation-punctuation styles. LQ has never purported to be "the system that proves whether something is or is not a fragmentary quotation". No such system exists. What LQ is: "the system that does not misquote a fragment as if it is not one" and also "the system that does not alter the content of the quoted material other than by truncation or by square-bracketed editorial changes or by an ellispsis" (the former simply being a happy result of the latter). TQ's reader-misleading habits of falsely adding terminal punctuation to quoted material that did not have it there, and of replacing terminal punctuation in the original with continuation punctuation inside the quotation marks that better suits the flow of the quoting sentence (instead of putting it outside where it belongs, being non-quote content), are ruled out by LQ.
  • "Other versions of LQ would put the comma inside the quotes if it were a sentence in the original, but outside if it were not." Nope. We're right back to the same idiolect redefinition-to-suit-your-preferences stuff again. There is no such thing as "other versions of LQ". The things you want to call LQ and include under its banner are not and cannot be LQ, by definition. LQ does not permit such alterations. That is the entire and only point of LQ. If you have found a quotation style (like 8 out of 10 British ones) that sometimes permits such alterations, then it is not and cannot be LQ, but is an LQ-influenced style with features of TQ. There is no way around this. There is zero wiggle room of any kind in "Within a quotation use the spelling and punctuation of the original." There is no loophole to explot in "Anything which is not part of th[e] exact words must be placed outside the quotes". You are provably making a mistake, and need to just stop. This is very wearisome to read much less respond to in detail, though it needs to be done so no else who doesn't grok the subject latches onto your faulty arguments and tries to recycle them.
  • "The problem: ... Same as for Excerpt 1. ... the quoted material is a full sentence in the original ... but there's nothing here to even hint that it is." Yes, this is exactly the same as the previous, and again not an actual problem. Now it's become quite clear that you believe that changing the original quotation's full-stop/period into a comma inside the quotation magically "hint[s] that it is ... a full sentence in the original", but of course that is not true. What it tells the reader is that the material contained a comma at that point and [presumably, unless the original was weirdly cut off in mid-sentence] continued with more material, which in that example's case would be a lie. Or for someone entirely and only steeped in TQ (or a British quotation style that is part-TQ) it confusingly means nothing for certain at all: the material might have contained a comma there, or might have contained a period/stop which the editor replaced with a comma, or might have contained neither and a comma was inserted there just for the overall flow of the quoting sentence (the third possibility is permissible in TQ and several but not all British styles that are part-TQ – and all your material so far indicates you are comletely unaware of the last point). So your "solution" solves abosolutely nothing. Under LQ (real LQ, as used by WP and other sources that define LQ – "use the spelling and punctuation of the original" and if "not part of th[e] exact words must be placed outside" – not the LQ/TQ blend style you pretend is LQ but is not), the presence of the comma there means exactly and only that the original had a comma there. If the original did not have a comma there (had other wording, or terminal punctuation), and you need a comma there for the syntax of the quoting sentence, that comma goes outside. This doesn't prove to the user whether the "...has no conscience of its own" quote was a complete sentence, as already noted, but that is okay. No quotation-punctuation system does that when it comes to continuing the quoting sentence past the quoted sentence; your approach certainly does not. If there is a contextual need to do so, the way to do it is an introduced complete quotation: 'According to Kennedy: "For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own."' (However, this is a poor example because of the "poetic" leading For ... construction. That whole example might be better replaced.)
  • "What are we to do if we want to quote only that portion of Darla's complete sentence" - None of what you suggested, but rather 'Darla said, "Where am I ...?"' (see MOS:ELLIPSIS for why). Per the MOS:BLOAT principle, we would never add a rule and example "clarifying" this, since there is no evidence at all of inclarity to anyone (other than you); we do not add material to MoS unless it is in response to a frequently recurrent style conflict. Technically, it would be common enough to run into "Where am I...?" as if "I..." were a truncated word (which is what the lack of space indicates); unspaced ellipses are a frequent divergence introduced by people who don't read MOS:ELLIPSIS, and we just fix it when we run across it. Same with "Where am I [...]?", done out of habit picked up in academic writing; MOS:ELLIPSIS has us avoid the redundant-in-this-case square brackets except when the original quotation contained an ellipsis of its own. Neither of these ellipsis-markup issues pertains to LQ in particular. So, rather than identify a "problem" with LQ or WP's codification of it, you've simply had a question to ask, and rather that just ask it, you went on a text-walling escapade.
  • On "Excerpt 4" (Tina Turner): To your credit, you appear to have found an error by a previous editor, in using a partial-sentence quotation as if it were a complete one. Either the full original should have been used, or we should have gone with different example text. "putting a period inside the quotes would seem to be right only if the whole sentence were being quoted. But is that correct?" - Yes, at least by a strict interpretation of LQ, and the one we mean here. While it is true that the original had a period/stop there even if we only quote part of it, our own rule intends clearly for this not to be done if the material is a fragment, since it misleads (or can, depending on the syntax structure) that the material is a complete sentence. "the quoted material could make up the material for a full orthographic sentence" is definitely not the intent here. "it defeats the whole purpose of LQ": Yes, it would. This example clearly needs to be repaired and I'll do that shortly after I'm done with this reply; thank you for pointing it out, even if we're not going to agree on much else. But finding that someone made a human error in being unfaithful to the source material (probably by way of getting it from some other source that didn't have the full quote) and the example thus needing to be replaced doesn't somehow make the intent or clarity of the MOS:LQ material faulty in any way.
  • "Complete fidelity to the original is a mirage." I'm glad you understand that; wait until you read MOS:CONFORM. And of course this bon mot of yours dispells all the hand-wringing above about removing a period/stop from the end of a quoted full sentence if the quoting sentence continues. "Zealots favouring WP's quirky implementation of logical quotation": The only zealotry in evidence here is yours (though I trust that it will evaporate after you get a better handle on the subject matter), and there is nothing quirky about MOS:LQ; it's entirely in-line with off-site definitions of LQ. What is quirky here is your misunderstanding that various vaguely LQ-influenced and mostly British quotation-punctuation styles are also LQ, when by very definition they cannot be. "the entrenched errors of the past" - You've demonstrated no WP errors of the past (other than a poor example I'm about to replace), but your entire set of arguments (aside from that one about the Turner text) is rife with errors in the present, most of them stemming from lack of understanding of what LQ is and that it is not BBC or other common British quotation style. All of this could have been avoided if you'd simply read previous discussions of LQ in the talk page archives, where this tired "LQ is British" stuff has been rehashed and discarded numerous times already.
I really hope this will be the end of it because this was quite time-consuming.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:32, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Arbitary break 3

Well! You said you would disabuse me of certain notions (which you identify inaccurately through misreading), but instead you abuse me. Pretty well as predicted. Obviously the "conversation" cannot continue, though all points you offer in response to mine could be met with good argument and evidence. You do not allow that I – a staunch supporter of LQ, as it is implemented in the world outside Wikipedia – could have any competence in the matter. Very well! Thank you at least for accepting some corrections to WP:LQ, following our exchange.
My particular contention (for the last time here, I hope): WP:LQ's refusal ever to allow a comma to replace a period at the end of a quoted sentence makes Wikipedia a stark outlier. Wikipedia follows LQ, and I agree that The Times follows LQ. But they follow different versions of LQ – a fact you persist in not seeing. The Times does indeed want that period to be replaced by a comma, as can be easily verified using this Google search on "he said" at the newspaper's site. In the first hundred hits Google shows 20 hits that include ," he said (many with comma verifiably replacing period) and 0 hits that include ", he said (in the Wikipedia manner). This styling detail is absent from the newspaper's style guide (both the version you link to and the current 2022 edition). It is covered in WP:LQ, which flatly contradicts how The Times (along with just about everyone else) actually implements the LQ idea in the real world of publishing.
Wikipedia is irremediably stuck with its own unrealistic house version of LQ. That's firmly entrenched no matter what evidence is produced – as you continue to demonstrate. I don't edit here any more (life's too short); so I'd prefer to accept your suggestion and leave it at that.
49.190.56.203 (talk) 22:29, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
No one is "abusing" you. Identifying where your claimed facts are wrong and your understanding incomplete and your arguments faulty and your approach to others here obnoxious has nothing to do with you as a person (and you're entirely anonymized anyway). I'm not besmirching your person for being in error. I was also in error (since corrected above) in trusting that The Times actually obeyed their own style guide, which they do not. What's different here is I'm immediately realizing and stating that I erred, and adjusting the argument I'm making to compensate (science!), but you do none of that; you just circle back to pushing the same broken premise. "could be met with good argument and evidence" - You present zero. Your previous attempts at this have been refuted. "I – a staunch supporter of LQ" - You are not a supporter of LQ, and do not understand at all what it is; you're a supporter of the LQ/TQ blend used by NHR and BBC News and The Times. "WP:LQ's refusal ever to allow a comma to replace a period at the end of a quoted sentence makes Wikipedia a stark outlier." No, it makes us entirely consistent with the actual definition of LQ, which I will demonstrate again to you below. It also makes us not using typical British quotation style (along with not using the main American one) which I've been saying to you since the start, but you just won't hear it.

"I agree that The Times follows LQ" - Unfortunately, you're agreeing with no one but yourself now. Your quotes of their actual usage show that despite The Times style manual calling for LQ (though they don't label it with that name), in actual practice they do not use it, because they change terminal periods/stops into commas inside the alleged quotation if the quoting sentence continues. Latching onto this as some kind of "proof" that LQ means what you want it to mean isn't tenable. They never called it that, and use of that publication as an example of LQ was an error (though an understandable one, given what their not-abided-by style manual says).

Let's just pore over the definition and application of LQ, with some additional source material:

  • "Punctuation marks are placed inside the quotation marks only if the sense of the punctuation is part of the quotation; this system is referred to as logical quotation. ... When a sentence fragment is quoted, the period [full stop] is outside. ... Within a quotation use the spelling and punctuation of the original." —Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies [52]
  • "Anything which is not part of th[e] exact words must be placed outside the quotes" —Larry Trask, University of Sussex [53]]
  • "Questions of order between inverted commas [quotation marks] and stops [commas, semicolons, and periods/full-stops] are much debated .... There are two schools of thought, which might be called the conventional and the logical. The conventional prefers to put stops within the inverted commas, if it can be done without ambiguity, on the ground that this has a more pleasing appearance. The logical punctuates according to sense, and puts them outside except when they actually form part of the quotation. The conventional system flouts common sense, and it is not easy for the plain man to see what merit it is supposed to have to outweigh that defect." —Fowler's Modern English Usage (2nd ed., H. W. Fowler, ed. Ernest Gowers). This was later butchered by Burchfield (who removed most of Fowler's original wording on everything, in the 3rd edition) to: "All signs of punctuation used with words in quotation marks must be placed according to the sense." That has been widely criticized as too vague to be meaningful, though Burchfield (in his defense) actually picked it up from earlier material.
  • Despite the ambiguity of "according to the sense", Gowers and others provably interpreted it as meaning to follow the LQ rule. "[S]tops should be put in their logical positions. If the stops are part of the sentence quoted, put them within the inverted commas. If they are part of a longer sentence within which the quotation stands, put them outside the inverted commas. If the quotation and the sentence embracing it end together, so that each needs a stop at the same time, do not carry logic to the lengths of putting one inside and one out, but be content with the one outside. ... Many publishers will not have this. They dislike the look of stops outside inverted commas if they can possibly be put inside. Here is an extract from a publisher ... '... placed before the final quotation marks, whether they form part of the original extract or not, provided that no ambiguity is likely to arise as to exactly what is quoted and what is not; this rule may not be as logical as that which insists on placing the punctuation marks strictly according to the sense, but the printed result looks more pleasing and justifies the convention.' But we need not concern ourselves here with questions of taste in printing. The drafter of official letters and memoranda is advised to stick to the principle of placing the punctuation marks according to the sense." —(This is a British author commenting on British publishers and demonstrates that the practices of "many publishers" in that country are not LQ, and specifically diverge from LQ on this point, as you've been told about a dozen times now.)
  • "[U]se quotes as balanced delimiters like parentheses ... 'Jim is going', 'Bill runs', and 'Spock groks'. This is incorrect according to standard American usage (which would put the continuation commas and the final period inside the string quotes); however, it is counter-intuitive ... to mutilate literal strings with characters that don't belong in them. Given the sorts of examples that can come up in discussions of programming, American-style quoting can even be grossly misleading. ... 'new' or 'logical' quoting. ... The Jargon File follows [this] usage throughout." —The Jargon File [54] (published in paperback as The New Hacker's Dictionary, to which The Chicago Manual of Style has deferred on this point with regard to "computer writing" since at least the 15th edition; CMoS illustrates with the example "name your file 'appendix A, v. 10'.", and also observes this same approach in textual analysis, linguistic glosses, and other technical writing, and in philosophy writing, though the CMoS editors like to discourage it in the last of those without any explanation why).
  • "A system of quotation in which terminal punctuation marks are enclosed within a quotation only if the sense of the punctuation is part of the original material being quoted. Logical quotation is similar to but stricter than the common British style of quotation which is based on the sense of the punctuation in the context of the writing in which the quotation is being used (which permits limited insertions of additional punctuation, or alteration of original punctuation, in the quoted content, which logical quotation does not). Some sources (chiefly American) conflate the two terms and styles (e.g., Yagoda 2011)." —Wiktionary [55][56] (Not a reliable source, per WP:UGC, but it's entirely consistent with everyone else on this.)
  • "The second member of a pair of quotation marks should precede any other adjacent mark of punctuation, unless the other mark is a necessary part of the quoted matter: The word means 'cart', not 'horse'. He asked, 'What can we hypothesize about this example?'." —"Style Sheet", Language, journal of the Linguistic Society of America [57]
  • "[A] common designation for th[e] style has been 'logical punctuation.' The best way to grasp this is to look at an example ...: '[I]ronically, given the anecdote about "Tales of the City", PBS is the ONLY widely available channel that has any serious LGBT content; e.g. documentaries such as "Ask Not" and "Out in the Silence".' 'Tales of the City' and 'Out in the Silence' are units—consisting of the words and the quotation marks. Insinuating a period or comma within the unit alters it in a rather underhanded manner." —Ben Yagoda (University of Delaware), "The Rise of 'Logical Punctuation'. The period outside the quotation marks is not a copy error." Slate (2011) [58] (NB: Yagoda is a died-in-the-wool opponent of LQ, but describes it accurately. His only error is mistaking it for "British" style, and his Not One-Off Britishisms blog is entirely devoted to castigating British influences on American usage, so it's no surprise he had this blind spot. He did not look closely at British style and catch that most of them permit within-quote punctuation changes. This misapprehension is common, probably in part due to Yagoda's imprecise article in the first place. Yagoda also claims that Conan O'Brien and the popular music website Pitchfork are devotees of LQ, though since 2011 the latter's editorial policy appears to have changed to permit whatever quotation-punctuation style the writer wants to use, since the material now there is inconsistent.)
  • "Where a quotation forms part of a longer sentence ... the closing quote precedes all punctuation except an exclamation mark, question mark, dash or parenthesis belonging only to the quotation. ... When a quotation is broken by words of the main sentence, and then resumed, the punctuation before the break should follow the closing quote unless it forms part of the quotation" —Butcher's Copy-editing: The Cambridge Handbook for Editors, Copy-editors and Proofreaders (4th ed.). This work tells us flat out exactly where the British style of The Times, BBC News, and several other publishers comes from and why, and demonstrates that it is a different style, not LQ: "The position of the full point depends in theory on whether the quoted sentence is a complete one; as it is impossible to be certain about that without checking the original source, many publishers follow a rule of thumb that the full point precedes the closing quote if the quotation contains a grammatically complete sentence starting with a capital letter .... Authors who are textual scholars may place the full point according to whether it is part of the quotation; so do not make their system consistent without consulting them. American authors place the closing quotes after commas and full points .... When a quotation is broken by words of the main sentence, and then resumed ... in fiction the usual convention is to place the first comma before the first closing quote". This is all precisely what I've told you and what I documented at the essay mentioned above.
  • "Any punctuation normally follows the closing quotation mark. ... Please check thoroughly against the source the accuracy of the text quoted in the manuscript (wording, punctuation, emphasis, capitalisation)" –"Preparing your materials § Formatting style", Journal of Linguistics, Cambridge University Press [59] (Less specific than usual; this seems to be boilerplate text for a lot of Cambridge journals, as the same is found in the others I checked, e.g. English Language and Linguistics. One was a little more specific: "Put commas and sentence-final punctuation marks outside the quotation marks." —"Preparing your materials § General Stylistics", Language in Society [60].)
  • "Use logical quotation. When you place a keyword or other string literal within quotation marks, put punctuation, like commas and periods, outside of the final quotation mark. Correct: 'If you see the message "Authentication Failed", try logging in again. The message shows "Authentication Successful".' Incorrect: 'If you see the message "Authentication Failed," try logging in again. The message shows "Authentication Successful."'" —"Splunk Style Guide § Quotation marks", Splunk (software company), intended to "establish best practices for writing technical documentation". [61]
  • "When a quotation is broken by such insertions as he said, any stop [comma, semicolon, or period/full-stop] or tone symbol [exclamation or question mark] may be an essential part of the first fragment of quotation. ... The true stops should never stand before the second quotation mark except a) when ... complete sentences entirely isolated and independent in grammar are printed as quotations. Even in these, it must be mentioned that the true stops are strictly unnecessary; but if ... used in deference to universal custom, it should be before the quotation mark. b) when a stop is necessary to divide the first fragment of an interrupted quotation from the second. ... The tone symbols should be placed before or after the second quotation mark according as they belong to the quotation or to the containing sentence. If both quotation and containing sentence need a tone symbol, both should be used, with the quotation mark between them." —Fowler & Fowler (1908) The King's English [62]. The "necessary to divide the first framgent ... from the second" part was unclearly worded, but the illustrating example indicates that it means to not remove punctuation that was present in the original serving a grammatical function between two parts that have now been split by the quoter: "'Certainly not;' he exclaimed 'I would have died rather'." F&F's material on this appears to be the "ancestral" implementation that eventually inspired modern LQ, and may have been the first to apply the word "logical" to such a system, though their exact recommendations differed from present-day LQ (and H. W. Fowler's own later material) in recommending no non-original commas in interrupted quotations (e.g. "I wonder" she said aloud "whether I should go to the theatre?"); calling for double question marks if both quotation and quoting sentence were independently questions ("Did you ask 'Where are you going?'?"); and moving quoted periods/full-stops (only) to outside a quotation at the end of the quoting sentence (He said 'I'm done here'.). These three quirks did not catch on.
  • "This book uses the logical quotation system, not the misleading typesetters' quotation system. This means that quoted information does not include any trailing punctuation if the punctuation is not part of the material being quoted. The typesetters' quotation system causes extraneous characters to be placed inside the quotes; this has no affect in poetry but is a serious problem when accuracy is important. The typesetters' quotation system often falsifies quotes (since it includes punctuation not in the quote) and can be disastrously erroneous in code or computer commands. The logical quotation system is widely used in a variety of publications, including The Jargon File, Wikipedia, and the Linguistic Society of America. This book uses standard American (not British) spelling." —Dr. David A. Wheeler (Linux Foundation, IEEE), Secure Programming HOWTO, Chapter 2. Background, §2.10. Document Conventions (2023) [63] (If anyone is tempted to "blame" Wikipedia, guess again. This work since its original 2001 publication has used LQ all along with just with a shorter statement [64] – that's long before WP adopted LQ in 2005.)
  • "No discussion of the illogic of punctuation would be complete without the infamous case of the ordering of a quotation mark with respect to a comma or period. The rule in American publications ... is that when quoted material appears at the end of a phrase or sentence, the closing quotation mark goes outside the comma or period, 'like this,' rather than inside, 'like this'. The practice is patently illogical: the quotation marks enclose a part of the phrase or sentence, and the comma or period signals the end of that entire phrase or sentence .... These acts of civil disobedience [using LQ against editors' preferences] were necessary to make it clear where the punctuation marks went in the examples I was citing. You should do the same if you ever need to discuss quotations or punctuation, if you write for Wikipedia or another tech-friendly platform, or if you have a temperament that is both logical and rebellious. The movement may someday change typographical practice .... But until that day comes, if you write for an edited American publication, be prepared to live with the illogic of putting a period or comma inside quotation marks. —Steven Pinker (Harvard U.), The Sense of Style (2014); he is a Canadian-American pycholinguist and style-guide author.
  • "I generally eschew the peculiarly American convention of moving punctuation within a closing quotation mark. ... Instead, I use the convention that only the stuff being quoted is put within the quotation marks. ... the 'American' convention is, in technical terms, stupid. ... clarity trumps beauty. Moving the punctuation means that when you see a quoted string with some final punctuation, you don’t know if that punctuation is or is not intended to be part of the thing being quoted; it is systematically ambiguous. ... Throughout the text, the American convention of moving punctuation within closing quotation marks (whether or not the punctuation is part of what is being referred to) is dropped in favor of the more logical and consistent convention of placing only the quoted material within the marks." —Stuart M. Shieber (Harvard U.), "When practice and logic conflict, change the practice", The Occasional Pamphlet on Scholarly Communication [65] (he's a computational linguist, and author of the LQ-formatted book The Turing Test, MIT Press, 2004, among other works. Note that this also pre-dates MOS:LQ.)
  • "I was taught to use the American style of quotation, where periods and commas go inside quotation marks even when they don't belong, like 'this.' This style contrasts with 'logical quotation', like what I did just there—keeping the commas and periods where they logically belong." —blogger Brian Tomasik [66] (not a reliable source on writing style, but his meaning of the term is consistent with ours and everyone else's).
  • "Quotation marks should use the logical quotation style for punctuation. Therefore, punctuation (e.g., periods, commas, colons) should be placed outside of the quotation marks, unless specified otherwise in the source material. In other words, This is an 'example'. is the preferred style, not This is an 'example.' " —"Style Guide" § Language, UESPWiki (also obviously not a reliable source on language usage; just noted here as one of many other online-publication examples following LQ and, the point here, defining it the same way we do and everyone else does).
Ergo "LQ, as it is implemented in the world outside Wikipedia" is exactly the same as implemented inside Wikipedia, and your belief to the contrary is disprovable by all relevant sourcing while being supportable by nothing. At a guess, you've been misled by some unreliable sources that confuse LQ and the typical British style, which is mostly-LQ-with-TQ-elements. (An example of someone who did not actually compare LQ to what typical British publishers are really doing would be Yagoda and his blind hatred of British writing. Others are easy to find, e.g. the nonsense written by this blogger [67], who also didn't understand what "according to the sense" meant and thought it referred to a personal sense of propriety or style.) There is but one sourceable definition of LQ, in different wording from various sources, but all in agreement on the substance, and MOS:LQ complies with it entirely. NHR, BBC News and (it turns out) The Times and other publishers you mistakenly believe to be using "versions of LQ" as "implemented in the world" are not using LQ, which has a single, simple definition. Ultimately, none of this discussion about The Times has any relevance of any kind to LQ in general or MOS:LQ in particular. That so much space has been wasted on this is arguably my own fault, because I initially took the publication's style mantual at its word that LQ rules were used by The Times, instead of trusting my instinct to go check. I've corrected my own statement above suggesting that The Times uses LQ, since this is provably wrong when their material is examined; it seems likely that they used it at some point, then drifted away to agree with other UK news. From what I can tell after re-examining a bunch of style guides from UK organizations, the British news publisher that comes closest to LQ is The Economist, but they also do in fact permit substitution of one punctuation mark for another without moving it outside the quotation marks, so they aren't LQ either (though the rationale they offer for doing this differs from that of other publishers). Real LQ is mostly found in academic journals. And WP.

You're entirely correct that WP is firm in its use of LQ; your conclusion that it's "unrealistic" is unsupportable; it's simply not popular among major American and British publishers, though most of the latter lean very close to it. The fact that we've been using LQ without any problem (other than very intermittent fist-shaking from isolated invididuals like you) for over 18 years demonstrates that it is realistic, since WP is real (and approximately the 7th-most-used website in the world, depending on whose stats you prefer), and our use of LQ is real.

"I don't edit here any more"? Then you're just being a time-sucking heckler. See WP:NOT#FORUM and WP:NOTHERE. This used up many more hours of my time, and I hope you'll now give this a rest. Well, in one sense I should thank you, since I found a lot of additional material to use for repairing the damage done to the article Quotation marks in English by a now-topic-banned editor (falsely equating LQ and "British style" among other serious problems); I thought it had been resolved by now, but no one seems to have touched it, so I'll have to clean it up myself.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:07, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Arbitary break 4

I come here because I'm concerned about a perceived long-standing deficiency in WP:LQ, despite my decision some years ago to retire from editing Wikipedia. For my trouble I am indeed abused: " 'I don't edit here any more'? Then you're just being a time-sucking heckler." Shame on you, SMcCandlish. We expect such defensive abuse from partisans when their cherished truths are challenged: not from a fair-minded editor who is actually offered new information.
Yes, new information. As you acknowledge above, you were mistaken all these years about The Times using LQ of the sort Wikipedia does (which you call "logical quotation" tout court). Instead of taking the seriously incomplete specification in their style guide as mere inconclusive evidence, you accept it as proof: "a bit of proof of one major publisher following LQ". Now, if my contributions above don't succeed in transferring more new information to you, it's not my fault. You're demonstrably not reading with sufficient care. But let me help you right now with some further information, about the Australian Government Style Manual (AGSM) – which you appear to have merely skimmed. You write, above:
The Australian Government Style Manual is actually quite clear and entirely in synch with logical quotation, other than an example typo: [...]
Some facts, gained from an attentive reading of their section on quotation marks:
  • Fact 1: There is zero evidence in their examples that they ever want a comma to follow a closing quote mark when the quoted complete sentence ends with a period, which WP:LQ would often require.
  • Fact 2: There is good positive evidence that they want a comma (replacing a period that was present in the quoted complete sentence) preceding a closing quote mark. These examples (or do you think they are all typos?):
‘Yes, that’s all that happened,’ she replied.
‘It has arrived,’ said the manager. [As noted earlier: contrasted directly with / ‘Has it arrived?’ asked the manager.]
‘I have the final figures,’ the manager said. ‘This will ruin our bottom line.’
‘Wow,’ he said.
  • Fact 3: They explicitly signal a departure from what you want to call logical quotation, in release notes produced on transitioning to the online edition. Those notes in their entirety (near the bottom of the section linked to, just before About this page):
Release notes
The digital edition revises advice about punctuation used with quotation marks. It departs from advice in the sixth edition about the position of punctuation and quotation marks in sentences interrupted by expressions, such as ‘they said’.
The sixth edition recommended the comma be placed outside the quotation mark, before the expression. The digital edition recommends the comma be placed inside the quotation mark: the quotation mark comes directly before the expression.
The Content Guide had advice on the use of single and double quotation marks, with which the digital edition is consistent.
My analysis:
  • AGSM is not "quite clear". [From Fact 2: the precise form of the quoted material is not shown; replacing a period with a comma is there for us to infer with some degree of confidence, but it is not stated as a principle where it ought to be; Fact 3: the release notes are incomplete, there being other departures from the provisions of the sixth edition (the last print edition), and the third paragraph of the notes is cryptic in not marking any departure from the sixth edition].
  • AGSM is not "entirely in synch with logical quotation": understood your way, by which the term denotes what is laid out in WP:LQ. It attempts to implement a kind of LQ more broadly understood, which may still usefully be contrasted with typesetter quotation (TQ), which dominates in the US. As I observed earlier, it "falls into line with NHR"; but it does so erratically and approximately, in a parallel but failed attempt at rigorous implementation of LQ broadly construed. [From Facts 1, 2, and 3.]
  • There is no evidence that anything in AGSM's section on quotation marks is a typo that affects interpretation of its policy for quotation marks with other punctuation. [From Fact 2, which shows consistency of treatment in relevant examples.]
Turning to New Hart's Rules, you write above:
But this is not evidence that NHR doesn't otherwise follow LQ, even if they don't use the term "logical quotation".
So according to you, New Hart's Rules does follow LQ (by which you at that point appear to mean effectively the WP:LQ version) except in the NHR provision that you take exception to ("this", in what I quoted from you just now). But in fact it doesn't follow LQ à la WP:LQ, in other ways also. NHR wants to replace a final period at the end of the quoted complete sentence with a comma in cases like this:
"Yes, we will. It’s a good idea," he said. [Where the original had a period after idea.]
As quoted above, and as you are well aware (now, at least). From all this we can see that you equivocate on the term "LQ". For you, it sometimes (usually?) means the Wikipedia way, and sometimes it's broader than that so that NHR's different way counts as LQ but with exactly one limited exception. Your continuation after what I last quoted from you:
But this is not evidence that NHR doesn't otherwise follow LQ, even if they don't use the term "logical quotation". Gawaon's other quotes from NHR conclusively demonstrate this.
In sum: Because of your equivocation, and your sometimes loose treatment of the LQ-related literature that I tease out above, it's not clear how you'd want an interlocutor to use the term "LQ". I prefer to take it as aspirational, as AGSM and NHR and others do: subject to modifications and softening to meet the needs of real writers, editors, and readers. We see a lot of such softening in WP:MOS, but not in WP:LQ. Why not? WP:MOS allows a quoted capital-letter beginning to lose its capital letter (a definite failure to quote exactly), and in this it follows almost universal advice in other guides. WP:LQ, by way of contrast, is extremist and uncompromising. Its implacable resistance to any human-oriented softening at the edges is out of tune with the larger world, including with manuals and publishers who you wrongly thought agreed with the provisions in WP:LQ. Even that spurious bastion of logical quotation (if we interpret in the WP way) the Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies has softened its already inconclusive provisions by removing much detail that was in the PDF you linked to above, in its current guidelines for authors. And anyway, it's trivially easy to find punctuation like this in its articles:
McLeod instead resorted to ‘writing letters to the government, calling on them to bring in provisions.’
... comments that there is not ‘any evidence that he led the emigration.’
... given as a trade good by the British to Indigenous peoples to broker ‘diplomatic relations with First Nations.’
There remain as exemplars only those publishers whose main concern is with the precise detail in strings of characters, within linguistics for example. Of course! They need obsessive accuracy of the WP:LQ kind; but their understandable obsession is no model for a general encyclopedia like Wikipedia to emulate, except where it too is concerned with such detail (in articles on mathematical or textual topics, for example).
Enough, yes? Your work for WP:MOS is mighty impressive, SMcCandlish. And extremely useful. But you have blindspots, and you have seen to it that WP:MOS – the world's best and most influential online style guide by far, in my opinion – has a few more lapses from the expected stratospheric quality than it would otherwise have.
(Enough?)
49.190.56.203 (talk) 07:17, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
"I'm concerned about a perceived long-standing deficiency in WP:LQ": You have tried and tried to demonstrate one and have not been able to do it. You have shown nothing at all other than that MOS:LQ differs on a few points from typical British news punctuation, which everyone but you already understood. And that LQ is not common in the mainstream press, which everyone also already knew. You are not being abused; you are being reminded of WP:NOT#FORUM policy and the WP:NOTHERE principle. You are avowedly no longer an editor here because think being one is a waste of time. That is actually grounds from any admin wandering by to just block your IP address right now as a time-wasting, disgruntled, disruptive interloper. Your opinion about our guideline isn't of any interest here, any more than mine would be a Conservapedia when I am not [never was!] an editor. Most of what you are doing is simply engaging in argument for the "sport" of it, railing on about nit-picks that have no relevance to our guideline language or its interpretation and implementation. "you were mistaken all these years": No, I was mistaken for a little over one day about that publication, and only because they do not actually follow their own style guide. It has zero implication of any kind for this guideline or anything else under discussion. The only consequence it had was some wasted time and verbiage about one newspaper, and me having to concede I'd erred, which is not something I have any problem doing.

You may well be right about Australian Government Style Manual's current edition, but again it does not matter in any way. MOS:LQ is not based on AGSM and our reasons for using LQ have nothing to do with the .au government's preferences. Even the LQ essay does not mention that work, not that the essay is dispositive of anything anyway. However, "The sixth edition recommended the comma be placed outside the quotation mark", indicates that they did formerly probably recommend LQ, so that edition would be interesting to look at. It's fairly likely that version also departed in a TQ-influenced direction by somewhere recommending to change an original period/full-stop into a comma inside the quotation marks when used within a quoting sentence that doesn't end there; but that's basically side-interest trivia about one entity's style guide, not ours.

"So according to you, New Hart's Rules does follow LQ". Not what I said at all; I said that you hadn't demonstrated that they don't. I've since checked, and they don't. So there is nothing further to waste time on with regard to NHR. What you've done here is magically equate my then-uncertainty about what a couple of sources where doing in detail and my supposition that they could be using LQ (which has only one definition) with a) an assumption that everything that various British/Commonwealth publishers are doing with some features of LQ must be "a form of LQ", and b) that MOS:LQ's "form of LQ" is somehow faulty because it doesn't agree with British/Commonwealth usage. This is just an absurd waste of everyone's time, including your own (now I'll quote you back to yourself: "life's too short"). I've engaged in no equivocation of any kind; that's your modus operandi. I've been incorrect in assumptions about what one work is doing, and wondering about what two others might be doing (that they might or might not be using LQ in practice, though it is a term employed by neither of them). You, on the other hand, have attempted to redefine LQ on-the-fly to get at something that boils down to "What NHR and The Times are doing is LQ, which is different from MOS:LQ, therefore WP is wrong and a mis-definition of LQ." That just doesn't work. I've already shown conclusively that our definition of LQ agrees with everyone else's.

"I prefer to take it as aspirational, as AGSM and NHR and others do" - That's just patent falsification. None of the publishers you keep referring to and aligning with ever use the term "logical quotation" or "logical punctuation" for what they do; you've just made it up. Meanwhile, all the publications that do use the term agree with what MOS:LQ says in every aspect (secondarily, various other cited works use the same system without naming it, and it is not the typical British system you favo[u]r).

"subject to modifications and softening to meet the needs of real writers, editors, and readers." There is no demonstrated "need" to use any convention other than MOS:LQ here. All quotation-puncutation styles are simply a preference, with the sole exception of LQ, which serves a purposeful accuracy/precision need. Nothing else in any quotation style is a "need". LQ has served us well, and with no problem other than occasional blowhards who just don't like it showing up and making tedious noise about it, to no effect of any kind but being a time sink. "WP:MOS allows a quoted capital-letter beginning to lose its capital letter": Not without square-bracketing the change. If MoS anywhere says otherwise, this is a recent alteration without consensus and should be reverted (drive-by changes to MoS do happen). "WP:LQ ... is extremist and uncompromising. Its implacable": You can try as many negative-implication adjectives as you like, but this really boils down to "principled, consistent, and not subject to willy-nilly alteration", and this is by design. "resistance to any human-oriented softening at the edges": There is nothing not "human-oriented" about LQ; it is the simplest possible quotation-punctuation system, and it has the most human-oriented purpose such a system can have: making certain that the allegedly quoted material is in fact quoted material and not extraneous interpolations and other undisclosed alterations. "out of tune with the larger world": By design, a whole lot of what WP does is very different from what other publishers do; we have all kinds of policies and guidelines that are not mirrored at newspapers, blogs, book publishers, journals, or even other encyclopedias. "manuals and publishers who you wrongly thought agreed with the provisions in WP:LQ": I've cited others that do, and I've actually checked them. You can't dispel them. The fact that in three cases I supposed that they might also be exemplars and they turned out not to be is just immaterial.

Your "never give up, never surrender" (I would say see WP:TE and WP:DROPTHESTICK, but as a "former editor" you wouldn't care) case that MOS:LQ is somehow wrong or broken cannot be demonstrated in any way. Not a single argument you have raised that is actually on-topic for that question has been borne out. The only thing you've "won" on is that some sources that could in theory have been in the LQ column actually do not belong in that column after all and are just more examples of typical British/Commonwealth usage, which is not LQ. "the Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies has softened ... in its current guidelines for authors" - Even if this were true, it would be irrelevant. MOS:LQ is not based on and does not care about JISS. The only reason it was ever mentioned here, along with other such works I've cited and quoted, was to refute your claim that MOS:LQ's implementation of LQ was invented by WP, and your claim that "LQ" means something other than what MOS:LQ says it does; both your claims are entirely disproved. It doesn't matter at all in any way whether JISS or anyone else stopped using LQ later; the fact remains that LQ as interpreted by WP pre-dates our use of it, and that its definition in other works is consistent with ours, both of which are known to be true. (However, your claim about JISS is wrong anyway. Their current requirements are unmistakeable LQ, they just stopped putting a name on it. "Within a quotation use the spelling and punctuation of the original.", followed by how to use "[sic]", square-bracketed alterations, and ellipses, entirely consistent with MoS's own usage even. No exception of any kind is made. The examples you quoted are one of two things: the "ultra-strict" approach of keeping a quoted fragment's terminal punctuation inside the quotation marks instead of moving it outside (permitted but not required by LQ); or someone following typical British practice of replacing what was orginally a comma with a period/full-stop, to serve the function of the quoting sentence, in which case this would be against JISS's style guide and an error they didn't catch. There's no way to be sure without examining the orginal source material, and I can't imagine anyone caring to do that, since it really has no pertinence to the matter before us.)

"There remain as exemplars only those publishers whose main concern is with the precise detail in strings of characters": Yes, and WP is one of them, because when we claim that something is a direct quotation it is crucial to us and our readers that nothing in it is misrepresented, because readers are going to trust that it is correct and not mangled. I have no idea why this concept is so hard for you to absorb. It does not matter to Wikipedia that various publishers really don't care that they are subtly falsifying quoted material. We do. Even the ultra-nationalistic Chicago Manual of Style allows of LQ's use (though they refuse to use that label) for precision writing, including linguistic glosses, computer code, (grudgingly) philosophy material, and especially textual analysis and criticism. That last is what Wikipedia consists of. It is a work critically analyzing the content of source texts and producing a WP:DUE-balanced summary of (with frequent direct quotations of) that material, for a general audience, with great attention to accuracy (and neutrality). It's an "understandable obsession" in your words. "except where [WP] too is concerned with such detail": Because WP is a critical text-analytic work, it is always concerned with such detail, in every quotation, by definition. Your idea that WP does not "need ... accuracy of the WP:LQ kind" is manifestly incorrect. The fact that you personally like to think of that accuracy as something only for linguists and mathematicians is of no concern or import to anyone here, and creates no obligation on our part. Even CMoS disagrees with you, and they're pretty much the fiercest proponents of TQ on the planet.

"Your work for WP:MOS" - I appreciate, I suppose, your partial approval, but the work that needs to be done with regard to MoS is keeping it stable and making it leaner, nothing further. It is not defective. That so much of my MoS-related time here is spent tring to fend of essesntially well-meaning but completely subjective and often factually faulty demands to change it to suit personal, topical, or populist/conformist/traditionalist/prescriptivist urges is a problem not a desirable outcome. People need to accept that WP, like all major publishers, has a style guide and that some things in it are not what they taughtin school, what they use at work, what they see in their newspaper or novel, and not what they personally prefer. You don't even have to comply with it to write here; you just can't interfere with others making the content comply, or go around changing compliant material to be non-compliant (same goes with all guidelines, not just the style ones). "you have blindspots ... [MoS] has a few more lapses": You've not demonstrated any. "WP:MOS – the world's best and most influential online style guide by far" – This is not in any way a general-purpose style guide for public consumption, and I think your misapprehension that it is has a lot to do with your persistence on this. WP:MOS exists only as an internal stylesheet; it is "house style". It is not an article, it does not purport to be "truth" or "accuracy" about how things should be written outside our mainspace. It is not reader-facing advice. It may have some influence regardless, primarily among other online writers who find features of it useful for their own purposes (primarily for its precision and simplicity), but this is not its intent and creates no obligation (nor is there anything to do about it, since we have no means of making it hidden from the view of people who are not account-registered editors). MoS explicitly declines to address a great number of things – actually the majority of things covered by a comprehensive style guide like NHR or CMoS – because it is not that kind of work. Its only purposes are to ensure consistent and high-quality output for readers (primarily) and to settle recurrent and tedious style disputes among editors (secondarily), leaving all other matters to editorial preference (MOS:STYLEVAR).

"Enough, yes?" I certainly hope so. I don't think I can take any more of this. The whole discussion boils down to: "WP uses something it calls LQ, and other publishers use something I call LQ, so WP is wrong." The other publishers do not call what they use "LQ"; no one does but you, and your "what I prefer" redefinition of it is demonstrably incorrect usage of the term, which has badly confused you from the beginning of the discussion onward and (along with your stubborn insistence on it) wasted everyone's time, energy, and goodwill. "You or someone else said Publication X uses or might use LQ as defined by WP, but it doesn't, ergo WP's LQ is just made up by WP." That's just not rational. I could say 10,000 publications use LQ and be just stupid and wrong about all but one of them, and as long as that one does use LQ with the same meaning WP does and pre-dates WP's use of it, it disproves your claim. "LQ doesn't serve a legitimate purpose on WP and 'needs' to change." It serves the text-analytic accuracy and string-precision purposes even LQ-hater CMoS says it serves, and these are the actual needs of a quotation style at WP; suiting various editors' conflicting punctuation preferences is not a "need" (it's something we do, per MOS:ENGVAR and MOS:CITESTYLE and MOS:DATEVAR and WP:CITESTYLE and etc., only when there is not an encyclopedic reason to prefer one option over another, and for quotation style we definitely have a encyclopedic reason to prefer LQ).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:54, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

The pertinent thing in the collapsed text-wall above has been fixed: the Turner quote which we said was a complete sentence but (proven with the original source) was not has been replaced by another Turner quote that is in fact a complete sentence. Also replaced the potentially confusing Kennedy quote (its leading "For ..." made it look like a fragment) with another non-confusing one from the same speech.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:55, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
And I have just given a reply (a final one, I hope) inside that collapsed text-wall. Thanks for at least fixing those lapses that I pointed out. A tiny improvement. 49.190.56.203 (talk) 22:29, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
More has been added in the collapsed text wall, but it's all rather futile. Enough, now? 49.190.56.203 (talk) 07:17, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
Hopefully.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:54, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Right, incomplete and ragged it must remain. I've made this into its own subsection, with a neutral heading: Lengthy digression about logical quotation, and MOS:LQ in WP:MOS. This will help in linking, when the topic of Wikipedia's articulation of logical quotation next comes up – or in collating links to discussions on the topic in future. 49.190.56.203 (talk) 01:01, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Make Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science/Manual of style into Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Computer science

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see proposal at: Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Make Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science/Manual of style into Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Computer science.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:54, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

"Acronyms in page titles" is mis-placed in an MoS page

The section Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Abbreviations#Acronyms in page titles (also known as MOS:ACROTITLE, WP:NCA, WP:NCACRO) needs to move, and its MOS:ACROTITLE shortcut to no longer be "advertised". This section of narrow interpretation/application of WP:RECOGNIZABLE is entirely and only about article titles and not about article content in any way, so it is not properly part of MoS and has no business being in here. We may apply MoS frequently to WP:RM discussions, because principles that apply to the in-body text generally apply also to titles, but MoS is not the place for title-only rulemaking. We have separate naming-conventions guidelines for a reason. If you showed up today and proposed adding a new section of titles-only rules ("hyphenation in article titles" or whatever) to MoS, you'd be shouted out of the room. I'm not sure why this particular section has survived for so long in the wrong place.

PS: I initially opened this as a thread at WT:MOSACRO, but no one commented at all and it archived without resolution; that page has too few watchlisters. This time I'm posting here, and "advertising" it at WT:AT and WT:NCCAPS and WT:MOSACRO and WT:MOSCAPS.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:19, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Spaces in section headings

Which is correct: "== Words ==" or "==Words=="? Or both? I have seen editors changing one to the other. The MOS pages are inconsistent - see the bottom of Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Layout where footnotes g and h differ. Today's FA, Shostakovich v. Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp. has spaces, but the first of the "recently featured", Daisy Bacon, has no spaces. The examples in MOS:ACCESS have no spaces.

Could we have, somewhere within the MOS, one of the following:

  • a statement that spaces should be used in section headings;
  • a statement that spaces should not be used in section heading;
  • a statement that either form is acceptable and it is not appropriate to change one to the other?

Either it matters or it doesn't, and if it doesn't, it's irritating to see timewasting edits changing it. PamD 20:19, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Lol. We have editors who go round replacing double spacing between sentences with single spacing, when the editing guidelines for WP are clear that it makes absolutely no difference to how the text is displayed. It’s not irritating, just a silly waste of time. MapReader (talk) 20:22, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
I wouldn't mind "just a silly waste of time" if it was only the editors concerned, but it impacts anyone who has such a page on their watchlist. Changing spaces is particularly annoying since no red shows up. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 20:34, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
I agree with Martin of Sheffield; it's the watchlist issue without the comparison revealing what's changed that is the real time waster. Schwede66 20:42, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
I agree that it should be mentioned somewhere in the MOS. I think either should be acceptable (though I like it with the spaces better) Masterhatch (talk) 20:23, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
This has been discussed before, and the general take was that MoS shouldn't be a "coding style manual". But this does keep coming up over and over again. Which ever of "the editing guidelines for WP" or some "Help:" namespace page that addresses this could maybe just be cross-referenced here in a footnote. We've found footnotes to be a good way to get tedious nitpicks into MoS that we need for dispute-resolution reasons but which we don't want bloating the main text of MoS with stuff the average editor never need be concerned with. Anyway, if anyone is going around doing this robotically at article after article, they need to stop, as it is against WP:MEATBOT and the human-editor instruction in WP:COSMETICBOT (unless they are also making an actually substantive change in the same edit, in which case just let it slide).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:51, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
No need. Makes absolutely no difference. Personally, I hate the version with the spaces, but that's just personal preference. I'll change it back if someone changes it on an article I've written (since that's just their personal preference), but not otherwise. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:31, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
As I understand it, VisualEditor enforces that spacing automatically, so it's a lost cause. Though this will need some testing. I've started writing up a user essay on helpful/unhelpful code changes, so I'll get around to gritting my teeth and using the unbearable VE for a while to see what pointless and editor-annoying things it is doing.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:10, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
Would it be technically feasible for this type of edit could be "hidden" from the change log, or at least always be given a default status of "minor edit"? I'm assuming that it's 'not technically feasible (and probably also not acceptable) to in some way make one version fixed and unchangeable? Martinevans123 (talk) 17:33, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
Not that I know of, only if the editor clicked "This is a minor edit". The ones that drive me nuts are removal or addition of a single space; they're very hard to see in the diff, so I'm looking and looking for WTF was changed, and can't find it. Heh.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:10, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Note about quotation marks

A note about the use of curly quotation marks reads as thus:

Curly quotation marks and apostrophes are deprecated on the English Wikipedia because:

  • Consistency keeps searches predictable. Though most browsers treat curly and straight quotation marks interchangeably, Internet Explorer does not (as of 2022), so using the browser's find function to search a page for Alzheimer's disease will fail to find Alzheimer’s disease and vice versa.
  • Straight quotation marks and apostrophes are easier to type reliably on most platforms.

Internet Explorer has been deprecated, so the first point is moot, unless we find another major browser that does distinguish the two sets of quotation marks. What should we do about this argument?

Note: I'm not advocating the revocation of this rule. --ItMarki (talk) 16:52, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

@ItMarki: Is it the case that all browsers now require ticking a "Match Diacritics" box (or similar) in order to distinguish the different kinds of quotation marks? 0DF (talk) 03:14, 8 September 2023 (UTC)
Pretty much nothing can be true of "all browsers" when it comes to their interface controls, because they're made by completely different software companies (or free-software dev teams).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:06, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
IE represents 0.4% of desktop browser usage—obviously it's less when factoring in mobile, but arguably the find function is really most relevant for desktop users anyway. I actually made the same change approximately a year ago, when it was about 1%. That change was reverted on the basis that 1% may represent millions of users and the bug may happen in other browsers as well, but I think neither of those make much sense. Millions of people are not using IE's find function in searches that include quotes or apostrophes, and I have been unable to find another browser that behaves the same way. (I prefer to see positive evidence for supposedly similar browsers rather than mere possibility.)
At this point the overwhelming practical concern is that curly quotes are hard to type. I think it is sensible to cut the search rationale. — HTGS (talk) 01:53, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Chrome suffers from the opposite problem – it's not possible to restrict a search to either straight or curly apostrophes/quotation marks, behaviour that makes targeted editing of MoS compliance impossible. Keeping the current practice (not having curlies) makes that easier. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:14, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Not "impossible", since wikEd and various other tools provide better in-text search functions. (I use one all the time, though I honestly am not certain where it came from; it's not wikEd nor one of the other Gadgets or Betas from what I can tell, and I'm not seeing it in my common.js, but it provides an hourglass search icon at the righthand side of the toolbar when in editing view, and that search function distinguishes between these glyphs. Anyone know what this is?)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:48, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Update: I did figure it out; it's part of the default built-in editor, under "Advanced", and available even to IP users.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:03, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
@Michael Bednarek: I’m not sure I understand why Chrome’s function changes much? But in any case, I can’t see that the function of a functionally-dead browser matters much. Nobody uses IE; can we just cut that first bullet? — HTGS (talk) 04:22, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
I would not object to rephrasing that note to "Though most browsers treat curly and straight quotation marks interchangeably, Internet Explorer does not (as of 2022)some do not, so using …". -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:35, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
I cannot find any other browsers that function the same way, do you know of any? At this point it should be straightforward to just cut the whole thing, especially as IE is now rounded down to 0.0% of all traffic (desktop and mobile). — HTGS (talk) 04:50, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
Ok, it's a bit more complicated. As I wrote above, Chrome has no way of searching for straight or curly signs specifically. That makes searches for non-compliant signs impossible. This is admittedly not a concern for readers. However, as long as we have the rule MOS:STRAIGHT, that's a concern for editors. I don't know whether this needs to be mentioned in that footnote. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 05:41, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
"That makes searches for non-compliant signs impossible.". Nah. In the standard editing tools (if you haven't replaced them with WikEd or VisualEditor), if you click "Advanced" in the top toolbar, you get a secondary toolbar right below it, and the far-right of that has a magnifying-glass search icon. This search feature is glyph-specific (and also has a regexp feature). WikEd itself, I'm told, has similar features. So, the only ones left out are VisualEditor users.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:02, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
Visual Editor can and does distinguish, and a simple [“”] in regex will find both characters, while avoiding ".
Unless anyone objects with good reason, I am going to just remove that bullet point about IE, per ItMarki's original comment. — HTGS (talk) 22:26, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Propylaea

How do I know when to write "propylaea", "propylaia", "propylaeum", "propylaeon" and "propylaion" with a capital letter and when not to? Both forms are used in the article. JackkBrown (talk) 16:48, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Try asking on the article's talk page. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 16:57, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
C'mon now. It should be, and is, lower case except when the Propylaea (Munich) is mentioned, which is a proper name. Johnbod (talk) 17:01, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, the general usage at Propylaea is clearly a common noun.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:11, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
Similarly, the Propylaia (Acropolis of Athens) is capitalised, for the same reason as John mentions. UndercoverClassicist T·C 15:54, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

"lang" templates

Guys, even if it's not important, why don't we create a bot that turns all the italicised words on all the pages of this encyclopaedia into "lang" templates? It's unrealistic to do this work manually. JackkBrown (talk) 18:23, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't get it. Not every use of italics pertains to foreign languages. Schazjmd (talk) 18:31, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
Most words and phrases in italics aren't non-English, and, if they were, how would a bot know what language they were? (Language recognition usually takes more than one or two words.) Largoplazo (talk) 18:34, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
@Largoplazo: true, it would be impossible for a bot. JackkBrown (talk) 18:53, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
Lately I've had to correct a lot of improper use of {{lang}} and/or italics, such as for proper names and English borrowings, or where the language cited in the template is simply wrong. So even if you could optimize detection of foreign words (and you can't, per Largoplazo), you'd still have to flag all of them for human oversight. SamuelRiv (talk) 18:56, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
Well, using {{lang}} is not "incorrect" for proper names, and helps screen readers pronounce them properly (as long as the languge code is correct). It's just that because our style is to not italicize them – except when being contrasted with a conventional English form, as in "Munich (German: München)" – the proper markup is, e.g., {{lang|mga|Uí Mháine|italic=unset}}, to suppress the italics (output: Uí Mháine). The shortcut template wrapper {{langr}} ("lang, roman") can be used for this {{langr|mga|Uí Mháine}}, output: Uí Mháine.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:53, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Frittella

This text doesn't seem good to me. I don't have a great knowledge of the English language; I can translate every sentence and every word of this language, but I have difficulty writing sentences from scratch. This text seems quite repetitive to me, "they" is used many times. JackkBrown (talk) 22:43, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Hi. The purpose of this talk page is to discuss the maintenance and application of the policies on the associated page WP:Manual of Style, not to discuss the writing in an individual article (unless there's a question or disagreement about how to apply any of the guidelines in WP:Manual of Style). You should discuss your concerns at Talk:Frittella (doughnut). Largoplazo (talk) 23:33, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
Agreed. You can also request a copyedit from the Guild of Copy Editors. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 23:35, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
Well, I did take care of most of it, anyway. In English we have trouble with the singular and plural of borrowed Italian words. In the US, at least, most people think a "panini" is one thing and that two of them are "paninis". The same is true of biscotti: one biscotti, two biscottis. "Fritella I straightened out the singular and plural in the article. Largoplazo (talk) 23:40, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
@Largoplazo: I have added the plural in the infobox, please let me know if singular or plural is better. JackkBrown (talk) 00:32, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
@Largoplazo: regarding the renaming of the pages frittella and frìtoła pages, I followed the informations on these two pages of the Italian language Wikipedia: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frittella; https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%ACto%C5%82a. JackkBrown (talk) 00:38, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Proposed clarification about Foreign terms

Your feedback would be welcome at WT:Manual of Style/Text formatting#Proposed clarification about Foreign terms. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 01:54, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Royal Rumble 2024

There is a discussion about how MOS:FICTION should apply to Royal Rumble (2024) — — BillHPike (talk, contribs) 10:19, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Spaced slashes

MOS:SLASH says that spaced slashes are permitted for multi-word expressions, e.g., if you are putting a slash between "myalgic encephalomyelitis" and "chronic fatigue syndrome".

Alalch E. and I are talking about whether the space changes the meaning, such that "myalgic encephalomyelitis / chronic fatigue syndrome" and "myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome" would have materially different meanings (or at least that it would in the general case). The use of a spaced slash is not mentioned at all in Garner's Modern American Usage, and CMOS says "Where one or more of the terms separated by slashes is an open compound, a space before and after the slash can make the text more legible", with no hint that it changes the meaning or is otherwise necessary. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:13, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

  • I espouse the view that when our MoS is talking about the spaced slash it is already saying that when separating open compounds and any units at least one of which includes a space with a slash, that the slash needs to be spaced. If it isn't saying that clearly enough, it should say it more clearly. I am unsure if it's saying it clearly enough, but I believe that that is what it is saying, and that that is what it should be saying. See https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Punctuation/faq0096 —Alalch E. 19:23, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
    • The word may in our guidelines means "optionally", not "mandatory". When we mean "mandatory", we use the word must. Fun fact: This guideline uses the word must more than any policy (and possibly more than all of them put together).
    • Even if it were mandatory, spacing the words out to "make the text more legibile" does not change the meaning of the words.
    WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:30, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
    As a general principle within the IT community, words like "must", "should" and "may" (plus some others) are normally interpreted as described in rfc:2119. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:50, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
    I think that a bit of a computational approach to English is the source of the disconnect. I read the unspaced phrase "gelato/ice cream" as meaning "gelato and/or ice cream". Alalch seems to be reading it as "gelato cream or ice cream". You just pick your choice of the words touching the slash and throw away the other one. That would make "ME/CFS" mean "MCFS" or "MEFS", which would be nonsensical ...but it's also not how English works. Compound words (including open compounds) are always treated as a unit; it's {ME}/{CFS}, not {M}{E/C}{FS}. You don't get to throw away one of the words in an open compound. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:26, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
    It really isn't any different from spelling out the pertinent conjunction. "Sales of gelato/ice cream are up" doesn't mean "sales of gelato cream and ice cream are up", it means "sales of gelato and ice cream are up". (To make this a somewhat realistic case, imagine that this utterance is related to a published breakdown of foods into categories, one of which is designated "gelato/ice cream".) Whether it's a slash or an explicit conjunction, the reader has to have a pragmatic, semantic understanding of the vocabulary being used. To be able to write at all, a writer makes implicit assumptions about what a reader knows in this regard. Largoplazo (talk) 21:41, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
    Since the ME/CFS example has been invoked, I would like to note that the following orgs opt against spaces in presenting myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome: Mayo Clinic, CDC, NIH, NICE. In addition to these scientific authorities (which are the controlling factor in titling medical pages), I’ll add it’s also the preference of the NYT. As the title of that page has already been the subject of protracted discussion, my request would be for the MOS guidance to continue to characterize the issue of spacing as optional, so that such pages may follow the available sources. Innisfree987 (talk) 09:32, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
    Well, we don't or shouldn't be using "must" anywhere in MoS or any other guideline unless describing a policy or technical requirement. The usual wording is something along the lines "should [not]", "prefer / is preferred" or "avoid", "recommends [against] / is [not] recommended", "do [not]", "If x, then y is done", etc. Reasoning: "can make the text more legible" is a good enough reason to do it, and it can imply a meaning change or at least an unclear meaning, which is the same reason for spaced versus unspaced hyphens or dashes in open compounds, and for spaced versus unspaced ellipses at the end of incomplete material (to indicate a truncated sentence versus a truncated word), and for using the serial comma in many constructions, and for replacing commas with semicolons in an inline list if one or more items contain their own commas. Basically: help the reader and don't make them read twice or think hard to parse the sentence.

    Garner's American has been replaced with successive editions of Garner's Modern English Usage; the latest is generally critical of slashes except in certain numeric constructions, and as a separator of different lines of poems/lyrics that are run together inline, and he uses the spaced form for the latter. Same in Peters's The Cambridge Guide to English Usage, Kaufman & Straus's The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation 4th ed., Rozakis's The Complete Idiot's Guide to Grammar & Style 2nd ed., Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language, Johnson's The Handbook of Good English 1991 revision, Webster's Grammar and Puntuation Handbook (Gamercy/Random House) 2006, Turabian et al.'s A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses & Dissertations 6th ed. (which explicitly says to space them, doesn't just illustrate them that way), and The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style (ditto), Gregg Reference Manual 10th ed. (ditto), The Associated Press Stylebook 55th ed. (ditto). Lester & Beason's McGraw-Hill Handbook of English Grammar & Usage 3rd ed. simultaneously narrows and broadens this to unspaced except when indicating inline a line break in verse or otherwise. American Chemical Society's The ACS Style Guide 3rd ed. calls for unspaced in mathematical and other numeric usage, but does not address slashes otherwise. In Garner's The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation (which is older than the current Garner's Modern), he switched to a "Use no space before,/ And one space after" style for verse, which is a variant I've never seen anywhere else in my life. Trask's Penguin Guide to Punctuation uses the unspaced version for this, which is rare.

    Current edition of Oxford's New Hart's Rules says it "generally" prefers the unspaced version (for non-verse uses), without elaborating; same goes for Gregg in another section, and Webster's Punctuation Guide. The Australian Government Style Manual says "most" should not be spaced, but makes exceptions for verse and for dual placenames like "Truwana / Cape Barren Island". The toponym and verses uses do seem to suggest a generalizable principle. The Centre for International Governance Innovation Style Guide is one of the few that ever addresses multi-word elements: "Use a space before and after a slash if more than one relevant word appears before and after it (Environment Canada / Environnement Canada). Avoid spaces before and after a slash if only one relevant word appears on either side (Hercules/Heracles)." Another like this is the European Commission English Style Guide (2020 edition): "The forward slash is often used to give alternatives, as in 'yes/no/maybe'. It is closed up when separating single words, but is written with a space either side when one or more of the alternatives is a compound term, e.g.: Brussels/Luxembourg but police car / fire engine / ambulance". World Health Organization's WHO Style Guide 2nd ed.: "give no spaces around forward slashes (/) or the en rule (–) in numerical ranges" (i.e., whether to space other use of this character is left open to the writer). I don't currently have access to Scientific Style and Format, so I'm not sure what it says.

    Explicit support for the spaced version seems rather limited, but a) almost all the unspaced examples in these works are between single words not multi-word expressions, and b) the vast majority of style guides never approach anything like the question at all (from my substantial collection of them, I only mentioned above the ones that did). This may be something of a WP style divergence, but it's optional and often helpful it making clear what the actual divided "units" are in the expression. E.g., there's no much question that "A Foo Ministry / Department of Bar programme" is clearer than "A Foo Ministry/Department of Bar programme". Many of the above-mentioned style guides, however, suggest replacing most slashes with alternatives, including hyphens, dashes, colons, or a word, depending on the kind of construction: "singer-songwriter", "secretary-treasurer" (though Garner's The Redbook - A Manual on Legal Style 3rd ed. prefers "secretary–treasurer"), "American—Canadian relations", "a 50:50 ratio", "30 kilometres per hour", "Hercules or Heracles", "a buy or sell decision"). My previous example could be rendered "A Foo Ministry – Department of Bar programme", though some prefer that unspaced as well. Obviously, most of these constructions can be rewritten to read better, though a spaced slash is handy for dual publishers in citations.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:59, 29 January 2024 (UTC); added another ref, 05:30, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

    All of which appears to add up to: The choice of whether to space is optional and does not change the meaning of what's written. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:42, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
    Well, it can (or at least be confusing) in multi-word constructions like the example I gave with "Ministry/Department" in the middle of it, which seems to suggest one entity and the writer unsure whether it's a ministry or a department.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:33, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
    I think the rule we currently have is fine and not in need of revision. Gawaon (talk) 06:05, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Blank line after {{Authority control}}

The text at {{Authority control}} says it should be placed "on a new line, after the external links section and navigation templates, immediately before the categories.", but it is often placed with a blank line between it and the categories. A recent edit inserted that blank line as a "correction" (I quite agree with the other change made in the same edit). MOS:LAYOUT seems to say nothing about blank lines in amongst the various footer items in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout#Standard appendices and footers. It would be helpful if the MOS could specify whether "immediately before the categories" means "before the categories, separated by a blank line" or not. Or is there somewhere else I should be looking for this? Thanks. PamD 20:27, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

And, applying my usual "What do FAs do?" test: today's FA has no authority control, but Daisy Bacon and Supernova both have a blank line after {{Authority control}}. So it seems standard (OK, 2/2 is a small sample!), but where is it specified? PamD 20:32, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
And to muddy the waters further, the 3rd "Recent FA" has no blank line between {{Authority control}} and the DEFAULTSORT, but then a blank line before the categories, while Daisy Bacon has AC, blank line, DEFAULTSORT, Categories. PamD 20:37, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
Just tested it, and there is no difference in the output. As a "code sensibility" matter, the blank line makes sense, since this has nothing to do with categories, and the only thing normally butted up against the top of the categories is {{DEFAULTSORT:...}}, which is directly pertinent to the categories. However, since this makes no reader-facing difference, going around mass-changing this, without doing something actually substantive in the same edit, would be against WP:MEATBOT and the human-editor provision in WP:COSMETICBOT (which needs to move into MEATBOT, something I meant to deal with a while back).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:35, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
Side update: my proposal to merge those sections did not meet with approval; instead we now explicitly cross-reference between the two sections so anyone arriving by shortcut realized that there are two sections of the bot policy that address human editing.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:09, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Make it easier to follow the guidelines

One of the design paradigms that I strongly believe in is that the best way to enforce a policy is to deploy tools that make it easier to conform. I suggest that in parallel with discussing policy, the community discuss what new templates or parameters would make it easier for editors to comply, e.g., a {{date|from-date|local}} that uses the pages date format, a {{page-range|from-page|to-page}} template that automatically replaced hyphens with the proper dashes and inserted the proper dashes between the numbers. This would be helpful both for consistency withing an artical and for compliance with global guidelines. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 17:24, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

@Chatul: Can you explain in more detail what you expect the date one to do? Your sample parameters don't mean anything clear to me (and the template would have to be named something else since there's already one named {{date}}). For the page one, I could do that easily and flag it as "should always be substituted" so it is replaced by bots if someone forgets to substitute it. I think there's already a bot task or at least an AWB script that fixes page ranges mistakenly given with hyphens in them, at least when they are inside citation templates (if encountered in a manually written citation or in running text, there would be no way to be certain it was a page range and not something else).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:22, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
What I had in mind was that if an article had, e.g., a {{date-format|ISO}} template, followed by, e.g., a {{date|January 24, 2024|local}}, then it word be formatted as specified in the {{date-format}}, i.e., 20240124 2024-01-24. This approach doe not require any guessing.
For {{page-range}}, the format would be the same on all pages, subject to change only if MOS changed. Such templates would also ease the difficulty of enterring different types of dashes from the keyboard. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:33, 24 January 2024 (UTC) -- Revised 14:25, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
Template:Page range now exists, thanks in large part to Ahecht. It is not something that should be left in the code, but substituted, since it would just be unnecessary code bloat, and use of it inside citation templates would pollute the citation metadata output. Unfortunately, {{subst:page range|...}} does not work inside a <ref>...</ref>, so inside that tag it would have to be done as {{page range|...}}, and the substitution in that kind of case will have to be done by a bot.

As for date formatting, "YYYYMMDD" isn't a format anyone uses on WP (and not much used in the real world, either; if it does not have the DD portion, then the YYYY-MM format is required, i.e. YYYYMM is invalid; the YYYYMMDD format is thus brittle and inconsistent, leading to implementation problems unless the data is strictly constrained to always possess a DD value). It we were to use an ISO format, it would be full YYYY-MM-DD syntax, which is already permissible for certain WP purposes by MOS:DATE. There are already various date-processing templates, like {{date range}}, and many others in Category:Date mathematics templates.

However, I think you are looking for automated display conversion throughout a page based on a template at the top of it. This is a complex matter. For one thing, {{use dmy dates}} and {{use mdy dates}} already support a |cs1-dates= parameter that will auto-format displayed dates in templated citations, so much of the coding work is already done, at least for citations that are CS1/CS2-templated, though they are the vast majority now; it's mostly a matter of installing one of those templates with that parameter and a valid value in a zillion articles). Second, imposing ISO date format on all the article text would be against MOS:DATE; that geeky format is only used here for certain kinds of things. Third, using any mechanism like this to auto-format all dates everywhere in the article would be extremely problematic (would have to "escape" a large number of use cases, such as appearance of dates in quoted material, in titles of works, in table columns arranged a certain way for display and sortability reasons, handle non-Gregorian dateas, and so on). And even if those challenges could be surmounted, doing it would probably be controversial. In the 2000s, MediaWiki introduced a date auto-formatting feature, and the use of it on en.wikipedia turned into a years-long "style brawl" that resulted in ArbCom cases and eventually a community decision to remove this feature from our installation of MediaWiki entirely.

All that said, it might be feasible to borrow code from the CS1 citation templates and create a {{date format}} template that used the same mechanism to read the |cs1-dates= parameter in our {{use dmy/mdy dates}} templates and formatting inline dates in the article text. That might meet with some consensus usage, though it would require WP:Lua scripting that is beyond my pay-grade (I suck at Lua, and have little interest in becoming an expert at it; someone else would need to build that tool). However, because of the code-bloat it entails in the wikitext of the article, I think that the consensus would be to require substitution; no one wants to see piles of {{date format|2024|01|24}}, etc., code all over the place (that kind of concern had a fair amount to do with why the auto-formatter in MW was removed).

What may be more practical for you, and everyone else, is just installing the user script User:Ohconfucius/script/MOSNUM dates; this gives you options in the left menu pane (when in editing mode) named "all dates to dmy" and "all dates to mdy". They have to be used with caution, though, so as to not alter material inside quotations (you need to go over the results before saving and make sure it didn't change something it shouldn't have). And not to force a change from mdy to dmy or vice versa without consensus.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:15, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

I think {{date}} is what you are looking for? (Also {{daterange}} and {{Birth, death and age templates}}.) Seems to have most of the CS1 date functionality already.
The key advantage of allowing the user/editor enter dates in whatever format they please is that it significantly reduces the likelihood of typing and maintenance errors.
One template we're missing is something like Commons:Template:Complex date that outputs metadata where applicable. Then we can have a common inheritance between say {{start and end date}} and {{circa}}. SamuelRiv (talk) 19:33, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
That thing at Commons is bewilderingly complex.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:57, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
No, {{date}} doesn't support |2=local I'm looking for something whose format is controlled by a template like {{use mdy}} at the top of the page. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:25, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
Yes, {{page range}} looks like what I want for that example.
No, {{date}} isn't what I'm looking for, because it doesn't support |2=local as a request to obtain the format from q template similar to {{use mdy}}.
I intended for my proposed {{date-format}} template to affect only date templates, not dates in free text. In particular, I intended it to be exempt from the bot activity triggered by, e.g., {{use mdy}}.
It might be desirable to have the substitution include a comment contaning the original invocation. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:25, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
Well, I don't know what "doesn't support |2=local as a request to obtain the format from q template similar to {{use mdy}}" means. What is |2=local supposed to indicate? Why is it numbered? "Local" to what? What is a "q template"? We do have a template redirect at {{q}}, which goes to Template:Wikidata entity link, but that doesn't seem pertinent. Why do you think {{use mdy/dmy dates}} templates obtain a format from another template? They do not; they set the format that a few other templates use (citation templates, and only when the |cs1-dates= parameter is set in the former).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:48, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
One problem with ideas like this (at least when it comes to templates that are not immediately substituted out) is that they would greatly add to the parser-limit load of the page. A long article would pretty quickly hit that limit just from date templates alone.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:59, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
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