Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style: Difference between revisions
In good faith reverted possibly good-faith edit by Darkfrog; if he thinks editor Churn and chain made a mistake, let him contact Churn and change to check that; the evidence in Churn and change's edit summary does not support Darkfrog's interpretation ♥ |
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==Disruption is not tolerated== |
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== Apteva needs to stop the disruption now == |
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{{ambox|text=This page is for discussing the MOS, not specific users. If there are ongoing behavioral issues that need to be addressed the appropriate path is to open a [[WP:RFC/U|user request for comment. ]] [[User:Beeblebrox|Beeblebrox]] ([[User talk:Beeblebrox|talk]]) 02:08, 14 October 2012 (UTC)}} |
{{ambox|text=This page is for discussing the MOS, not specific users. If there are ongoing behavioral issues that need to be addressed the appropriate path is to open a [[WP:RFC/U|user request for comment. ]] [[User:Beeblebrox|Beeblebrox]] ([[User talk:Beeblebrox|talk]]) 02:08, 14 October 2012 (UTC)}} |
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<small>was: "Apteva needs to stop the disruption now"</small> [[User:Apteva|Apteva]] ([[User talk:Apteva|talk]]) 03:28, 14 October 2012 (UTC) |
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(<small>I am restoring this section that was blanked by Apteva. Users are reminded that this page is under ArbCom sanction, as indicated by the notice at the top of the page. --[[User:Neotarf|Neotarf]] ([[User talk:Neotarf|talk]]) 08:35, 13 October 2012 (UTC)</small>) |
(<small>I am restoring this section that was blanked by Apteva. Users are reminded that this page is under ArbCom sanction, as indicated by the notice at the top of the page. --[[User:Neotarf|Neotarf]] ([[User talk:Neotarf|talk]]) 08:35, 13 October 2012 (UTC)</small>) |
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Revision as of 03:28, 14 October 2012
File:Yellow warning.png | This page (along with all other MOS pages and WP:TITLE) is subject to Arbitration Committee discretionary sanctions. See this remedy. |
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Internal consistency v consistency across articles
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[I have restored this section just after it was archived; it includes argument that is relevant to the current RFC (see just below), which explicitly makes reference to it.–NoeticaTea? 08:10, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
As the lead already mentions internal consistency, this sentence is arguably repetitive without the juxtaposition. More importantly, we don't require consistency across articles, and it's important to stress that. The lead currently implies that we do, or at least does not make clear that we don't:
Therefore, the addition of "though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole" (or similar) is needed. SlimVirgin (talk) 02:38, 22 August 2012 (UTC) The first sentence of this section inadvertently misrepresents what happened. The sequence of events (all on 12 August 2012):
Slim, would you please amend that first sentence? Best to keep the account accurate. ♥ [Note: I have exhausted my reserves of time for dealing with this issue. I see that Slim did not make the factual correction I requested (see immediately above). For the RFC on this page (#RfC: Internal consistency versus consistency across articles), please refer to the detail in all of my submissions in this earlier section. I explain my temporary absence in that RFC. ☺NoeticaTea? 03:43, 7 September 2012 (UTC)]
I disagree with "In groups of articles on similar topics, similar styling is better than an unprincipled or random selection of styles." this has never been a requirement. The problem is what is a group? For example it could be argued that all articles about any subject within the countries of the EU should use British English/Irish English because the EU does. Or all articles on NATO (except those specifically about Britain and Canada) should use American English because the US is by far the largest contributor to NATO and therefore most articles about NATO are about American topics, and As NATO is deployed in Kosovo and Kosovo is not a member of th EU all articles about Kosova should be in American English. This type of argument has never been accepted. One can see the fun one can have with arguments such as if its in a category its grouped in that category therefore it has to be consistent with all the other articles that appear in that category (An editor at the moment is using that as a justification for using his preferred spellings and ignoring usage in reliable sources). When an article appears in two categories then in which "group" does it belong? This is why the MOS has only ever agreed that consistency should within an article, not across "groups" of articles. I am with SV, EN and Darkfrog24 on this one. If as has been said "SlimVirgin restored some wording that had been long absent from MOS" then as it is a sentence that sums up a lot of Arbcom decisions, when was it deleted who deleted it and what was the justification given on this talk page for the deletion? -- PBS (talk) 10:15, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
There seems to be agreement to restore "though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole." Enric Naval, Darkfrog, PBS and I are in favour; Noetica and Curb Chain are opposed; Mirokado wants consistency between closely related articles, but not necessarily across WP. I think the more people we ask, the greater the consensus will be against requiring cross-WP consistency, so I'll go ahead and restore those words. I think the lead could use some general tweaking too, but I'll address that separately. SlimVirgin (talk) 16:13, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
BreakThe problem is that the second and third paragraphs contradict each other. The second says we have a house style; the third says we do not. Both have redirects (WP:CLARITY redirects to the second, and WP:Stability and WP:STYLEVAR to the third), so anyone reading those in isolation would be misled.
SlimVirgin (talk) 16:30, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
Additional discussionI just want to note that I agree that User:Noetica was correct in removing the discussion that User:SlimVirgin started by pulling the archive instead of linking it, but some comments had been added when she restarted the discussion:[1]Curb Chain (talk) 03:05, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
Reversion of non-consensual edits concerning inter-article consistencyI have reverted (see diff) two edits by SlimVirgin. The change in question clearly has no consensus. Editing and discussion for this page are subject to ArbCom discretionary sanctions (see the note at the top of this talkpage); so a high standard of conduct and respect for due process applies. Please discuss more, and if necessary initiate a neutral RFC. If any RFC is not set up in neutral terms, according to the provisions of WP:RFC, I will call for its immediate closure and refer the matter to WP:AE. Please note especially: This is not intended as inimical to any good-faith development of the page; but experience has shown how these things can escalate, and how they can wear away people's time and patience. ♥
As Noetica continues to object, I've opened an RfC below. Apologies if it ends up being largely repetitive, but it might attract fresh eyes and we can request a formal closure to avoid arguments. SlimVirgin (talk) 01:17, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
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RfC: Internal consistency versus consistency across articles
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.
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[Here I have reverted the irregular closure of part of the material that constitutes the RFC (simply by removing the template markers that added the heading "The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it."). That closure was executed by SlimVirgin, the RFC's proposer. Please wait for an admin to sort out this unholy mess, rather than adding even more irregularities to an RFC that was mismanaged from the start. ☺ NoeticaTea? 22:18, 8 October 2012 (UTC)] The RfC was opened on 1 September. It asked whether the words "though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole" should be removed from the lead sentence: "An overriding principle is that style and formatting choices should be consistent within an article, though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole." The RfC was closed on 4 October by an uninvolved editor, Nathan Johnson, following a request at AN/RFC. He concluded: "The consensus of the discussion was to oppose the removal of the phrase." Noetica reverted his closure twice, [2] [3] asking that it be closed by an admin. I am therefore going to ask an uninvolved admin to endorse or overturn the closure. SlimVirgin (talk) 16:21, 8 October 2012 (UTC) |
RfC
This sentence had been in the MoS for some time: "An overriding principle is that style and formatting choices should be consistent within an article, though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole." The whole sentence was removed 12 months ago, [4] then restored, [5] then it was changed so that it read: "An overriding principle is that style and formatting choices should be consistent within an article." [6] [7]
Should the words "though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole" be removed from that sentence? SlimVirgin (talk) 01:00, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
- [Correction by Noetica: The sentence in question had been absent from MOS for over 12 months, till Slim Virgin reinstated it a few days ago. It was then removed by an editor, and then restored in part by Noetica.]
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Replies
Threaded discussionSome questions
Break 1
I am not sure if Noetica is still amazed, (21:00, 25 August 2012). But there is a possibility of arguing that while a consistent style may not be desirable across all articles, a consistent style in groups of articles may be desirable. This argument has been advanced in the past for the articles Orange (colour) and Grey because they are both articles about colour. It has also been advanced for the articles in featured topics. My problem with arguing for consistence in "groups" of articles is what is obvious a group to one person is not necessarily obviously a group to another (and what to do with articles that are obviously in two groups with differing styles). I suspect that while the argument about obvious groups is superficially attractive, due to the problems lack of clarity in defining a group, it will eventual lead inexorably towards harmonisation of style over large parts of Wikipedia. -- PBS (talk) 08:52, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
Break 2
Well since the proposed addition has been absent for a year or so I can't point to any recent problems it has caused. I can however point to responsible and constructive activities that this wording appears to target and wonder why anyone would expend so much effort to try to prevent them:
Break 3
Counting votes
Presentation of evidence for and against "not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole"I think this discussion might benefit from a summary of the evidence presented. Please limit discussions to things that can be verified (rather than discussing reasoning alone). I have paraphrased four other editors below and I invite them to replace my words with their own as they see fit. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:47, 2 October 2012 (UTC) Non-hypothetical evidence for and against "not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole"This section is for listing problems, such as fights and edit conflicts, that have actually happened. Practical experience falls under this category. Please show how the wording "not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole" caused the problem or would have prevented it. Contributors, please post links to the relevant changes, talk pages and archives whenever possible. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:47, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
Hypothetical evidence for and against "not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole"This section is for listing problems or advantages that you believe would or could happen but haven't witnessed. PLEASE BE SPECIFIC. Don't say "this wording will be misused" or "this wording will keep Wikipedia running smoothly"; say how you think it will be misused or keep things running smoothly and why. Contributors, please include links where relevant. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:47, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
Summary of RfC: “Internal consistency versus consistency across articles”A request for closure has been made, and the bot has removed the RFC tag, and in the meantime the thread has been archived. I have unarchived it and attempted to summarize the issues as follows. Wording: It is proposed to add the following sentence to the fourth paragraph of the introduction: “An overriding principle is that style and formatting choices should be consistent within an article, though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole.” There is a consensus, or at least no opposition, to adding the first part of the sentence, but the second part of the sentence is contested.
Neotarf (talk) 21:09, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
Premature closure reversedWith this edit I reversed a non-admin closure of the RFC. Clearly there is no consensus, so the RFC should be closed by an admin. The editor (User:Nathan Johnson) erred in not realising this, and by less than competent summation of the issues. In particular, he completely failed to distinguish consistency in general (the purpose of all manuals of style, including MOS) and consistency where MOS allows choices. This distinction is crucial among the issues confronting us in the RFC, in a number of ways.
Noetica, you seem to be making this up as you go along. There is absolutely nothing in the policy which prefers an admin closure over a non-admin closure. Any RFC "can be formally closed by any uninvolved editor". I suggest you undo your reversions, and start to play by the same rules as the rest of us. 146.90.43.8 (talk) 18:20, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
Noetica's RFC summation[This is my final systematic statement in the RFC. I request that no one post comments or questions within it, only after it.–NoeticaTea? 14:26, 6 October 2012 (UTC)]
There have been problems with this RFC from the start, and they have obscured the issues most unproductively, as I will show below. Procedural problems include these:
NoeticaTea? 14:26, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:40, 6 October 2012 (UTC) Time to close this (RfC for re-insertion of "not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole")The RfC had been open for 33 days, and it was closed by an uninvolved editor, [32] so I can't see any reason not to respect the closure. Restoring a sentence to a guideline shouldn't require this level of meta discussion. SlimVirgin (talk) 16:02, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
This should be evaluated by someone who is "sufficiently experienced", "impartial", and "familiar with all of the policies and guidelines that relate to the proposal". (see WP:PROPOSAL) This is a policy page, not a wikilove kitten page, and IMHO needs to be closed by an admin, and not someone who is helping out with the backlog but "doesn't care" (see Noetica's talk page). The boxing and summary should be done by the closing admin, not the person bring the RfC. One of the troubling things about this RfC is that no one really understands what it is supposed to do. That was clear enough from the extensive comments. The first time the wording was introduced, there was no explanation or edit summary, at least not that was brought out in the rather confused discussion above. Likewise when this RfC was introduced, the new language was just inserted without much of a rationale. Maybe that's where any new attempt at a consensus should start. --Neotarf (talk) 00:16, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
I step away from the keyboard for a moment, and look what happens to this thread! The subthreads have become impossible to follow; I will put my points all together.
--Neotarf (talk) 01:40, 11 October 2012 (UTC) Does anyone agree with the reasons given for reverting Nathan's closure?Noetica's primary reason for reverting was that a "controversial RfC should be closed by an admin". The above discussion shows that he is a minority of one in that opinion. Noetica has argued, at length, that the validity of the votes should be decided according his own criteria. Jason's "failure" to use Noetica's criteria was another reason that Noetica gave for reverting him. It seems to me self-evident that Jason is not obliged to use Noetica's criteria, any more than he's obliged to use mine or any other participant's. Jason's job was to assess the opinions and thought processes of all participants, which he did. Subsequent to his revert, Noetica has mentioned that the bot had delisted the RfC before Jason closed it. Well, the bot did exactly that, it delisted it; it removed it from the list. It didn't declare that all bets were now off, and we must start again. The RfC was open for 33 days. All interested parties must already have seen the listing. The hours between the delisting and the closure made no difference at all. I don't feel that Noetica, a heavily involved editor, should have reverted Nathan, an uninvolved editor. I don't feel that Noetica has found any support for the reasons he gave for the revert: it should have been an admin, Jason didn't use Noetica's criteria, a bot had delisted the RfC. Noetica's cri de guerre throughout all of this has been "due process". Surely due process now is that Nathan's closure stand, and the text be included in the article. 146.90.43.8 (talk) 12:09, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
This closure was premature. The original discussion died down about halfway through, and the initiator of the proposal made a request for early closure. But there was some disagreement about the early closure. This request was postponed, and in the meantime, notices were placed on various pages. This drew in a few more votes and comments, about equally divided, as before. Again the discussion died down. At this point, I wrote a summary of the positions and started a new section for tallies, since the the discussion seemed to be finished and the tallies had not been updated. This triggered a new round of discussion. At the time of the latest attempt at closure, several questions had been asked, and the problem reframed in several ways, but responses were still being awaited. I don't think it's too fair to dump on the editor who attempted the closure, since it was done in good faith, although evidently without being familiar with WP:CONLIMITED, which states "Wikipedia has a higher standard of participation and consensus for changes to policies and guidelines than to other types of articles" or with WP:PROPOSALs for policies and guidelines, that asks that a closing editor be "familiar with all of the policies and guidelines that relate to the proposal", consider whether "major concerns raised during the community discussion been addressed", and whether "the proposal contradict(s) any existing guidelines or policies". The editor's statement "The closure was neither premature nor incompetent, but you've cleverly exploited my not caring. You may continue arguing about something that no readers actually care about."[37] should pretty much answer any questions about that individual's level of attention to nuances of policy and guideline. It is admirable that they responded to a request to help out with the backlog, especially on these pages that seem to have so many hidden landmines for the unsuspecting newcomer, but they didn't seem to have noticed that the discussion had indeed started up again. --Neotarf (talk) 23:26, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
Since we have been asked for our detailed opinions about the undone closure:
Thus in addition to it's being premature, I think the closure was flawed. --Mirokado (talk) 00:32, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
I'm going to add the text back into the article, per the RfCI'm going to add the text back into the article. From the section above, the only remaining justification for the revert appears to be that the closure was premature. I'd say that is demonstrably not the case. The only discussions we've had in the last few days have been meta discussions about the closure, about the nature of consensus, and so on. At the time Nathan closed the RfC there had been no substantive discussion of the question in the RfC for several days and there has been none since. The RfC ran its course, and consensus was assessed by an uninvolved editor. To anyone considering reverting my change, I would ask that you point out here where the on-going discussion is. For the record, I commented within the RfC as 87.112.91.134. 146.90.43.8 (talk) 11:54, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
FilibusteringCan I point people to our policy on consensus which states
Postmature closure?I thought this thing was long dead and gone. Slim Virgin failed to convince people that we should add the odd clause that she inserted here on Aug. 11 claiming it was being "restored". As far as I can tell, the whole basis for this mess was this lie. We didn't buy it. Move on. Or if I missed something, what? Dicklyon (talk) 02:50, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
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Note: I've restored Nathan Johnson's close. There is no reason why an RfC cannot be closed by an editor in good standing and this editor does appear to be in good standing. The request for closure was sitting on AN for quite a while, the RfC itself saw no new opinions coming in for several days, closing it was a reasonable action. --regentspark (comment) 21:08, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- And I have re-restored it. Noetica complained that it wasn't an admin closure, and now we have an admin endorsing that it was a valid closure. Noetica should stop stonewalling the consensus in this page with non-existing requirements that are in conflict with Wikipedia not being a bureaucracy. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:26, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
Resolving the underlying infobox "ownership" issue
The fact that "first major contributor gets to arbitrarily decided" idea proposed above isn't workable is only half the problem here, and not the root one. The other, which this proposal also tried to address, is that wikiprojects by and large do appear to believe that they have the authority to tell the entire editorship "thou must" or "thou shalt not" put an infobox on any article We the Project consider within our Holy Scope. They need to be rapidly and unmistakably disabused of this notion before this situation gets any worse. So, the underlying issue this proposal tried to address is a real problem and remains unaddressed with this proposal's failure (because it reached too far in the opposite direction).
I propose that we add a statement to the effect that no editor or group of editors can force this issue, and that it's up to a consensus of the editors at the article, on a per-article basis, just like almost all other editorial decisions on Wikipedia.
(PS: I rather wish we'd scrap the entire WikiProject system and replace it with something that forbids any kind of "club"-like model - no "members" or "participants", no "projects", just pages of recommendations arrived at by a consensus of editors who care, on how to address particular topics. But that's another issue for another time and place.)
— SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 22:55, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
- Can you provide links to places where this has happened? (I'm not doubting you, I'm just interested in reading what the debate looked like in those instances.) Tdslk (talk) 00:54, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
- See Classical music, and preceding comments in First major contributor, above. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:17, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
- We already have WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. A link to that should suffice; though the problem is not that we don't have a policy, but that some editors are allowed to ignore it, for the sake of a quiet life. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:22, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
- The rule you want already exists, or nearly does: "If discussion cannot determine which style to use in an article, defer to the style used by the first major contributor." The first choice is a consensus of editors at the individual article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:21, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
- I was asked to comment again. That is not the consensus. The consensus that is followed in practice in WP is that once it is decided to use infoboxes on a particular type of article then the decision stands until consensus changes, and affects every article in scope. It does not go article by article. In particular, there is general consensus throughout WP to use infoboxes for people in as standardized and generalized a way as possible across all the relevant wikiprojects; that nobody is compelled to make such an infobox when writing an article, but that if they do not, someone will add it. (I understood the original proposal here to be challenging that, and I understand that challenge to be rejected. If the wording of the MOS needs to be changed to make it clear that they are not optional, I make such a proposal.) DGG ( talk ) 15:44, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
- Thats way off - I hope others dont see things this way as conflict will only issue - Wiki projects don't own articles in anyway and it does go article by article as seen at Using infoboxes in articles. We have tried to fix this ownership problem many times over the years, but still have statements like "should not be used without first obtaining consensus on the article's talk page" that is a clear violation of our Editing policy and Be bold. To think our editor will see some odd WP advice page before they edit is just crazy and has lead to many many conflicts.Moxy (talk) 17:52, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
- Not to mention in-article comments instructing people not to use infoboxes, which are a blatant defiance of the outcome of the RfC called by members of that project in a vain attempt to enforce their preference. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:08, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
- Thats way off - I hope others dont see things this way as conflict will only issue - Wiki projects don't own articles in anyway and it does go article by article as seen at Using infoboxes in articles. We have tried to fix this ownership problem many times over the years, but still have statements like "should not be used without first obtaining consensus on the article's talk page" that is a clear violation of our Editing policy and Be bold. To think our editor will see some odd WP advice page before they edit is just crazy and has lead to many many conflicts.Moxy (talk) 17:52, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
- Quote - "Whether to include an infobox, which infobox to include, and which parts of the infobox to use, is determined through discussion and consensus among the editors at each individual article". There seems to be a drive here that all articles must have infoboxes, and that the editors of an article or members of wikiprojects have no say whatsoever about what the content or format of infoboxes, which people here appear to want to be set centrally as part of MOS and be immune from all challenge. Why should MOS (effectively a Wikiproject itself) have supremacy and be allowed to dictate things if no-one else is? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nigel Ish (talk • contribs) 18:32, 22 September 2012
- Quote =Nigel Ish "a drive here that all articles must have infoboxes" and "the editors of an article or members of wikiprojects have no say whatsoever about what the content or format of infoboxes" - All that would be the opposite of what the policy says that you have just quoted. All content and format disputes should be discussed at the individual article level first - then proceed to outside the article if not resolvable at the article level. No blanket rules by a group of editors should prevail over talking about what is best for each article at each article!Moxy (talk) 19:45, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
- The quote is what the guidance currently says - the following comments are my take on what the regulars here appear to be doing in trying to force a Wikipedia wide standard for infoboxes onto all articles, with the appearance of trying to override any objections either at the article and ignore any issues that wikiprojects raise, whether based on valid subject related reasons or not.Nigel Ish (talk) 20:18, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
- Oh sorry that was not clear to me.... but yes you are correct that the majority think infoboxes are beneficial thus an asset to our readers.Moxy (talk) 20:29, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
- The quote is what the guidance currently says - the following comments are my take on what the regulars here appear to be doing in trying to force a Wikipedia wide standard for infoboxes onto all articles, with the appearance of trying to override any objections either at the article and ignore any issues that wikiprojects raise, whether based on valid subject related reasons or not.Nigel Ish (talk) 20:18, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
- Quote =Nigel Ish "a drive here that all articles must have infoboxes" and "the editors of an article or members of wikiprojects have no say whatsoever about what the content or format of infoboxes" - All that would be the opposite of what the policy says that you have just quoted. All content and format disputes should be discussed at the individual article level first - then proceed to outside the article if not resolvable at the article level. No blanket rules by a group of editors should prevail over talking about what is best for each article at each article!Moxy (talk) 19:45, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
I just want to comment to say I agree with DGG's analysis above. The current practice is that once there is agreement that a certain type (topic) of article should have an infobox, we do indeed put infoboxes on all articles of that type. This is not the same, for example, as citations, where different articles of the same type could have different citation styles. But I also agree that the MOS is not the place to decide what infobox to use. For many topics it would be better decided by a wikiproject. For types of articles that span many wikiprojects (e.g. biographies), the discussion should be on the village pump. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:37, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
Three corrections
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Please comment if there are any questions. Apteva (talk) 19:11, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
It appears that the example "the Uganda–Tanzania War; the Roman–Syrian War; the east–west runway; the Lincoln–Douglas debates; a carbon–carbon bond" while not commenting that it is a little long (do we really need so many examples?), is in need of two corrections; in the first example, "the Uganda–Tanzania War", war should not be capitalized (see google book search), and it should be "but not the Roman–Syrian War (as Roman-Syrian War is a proper name)". The article at Uganda–Tanzania War should also be moved, to Uganda–Tanzania war, and if it is a proper name, a better example used, and it be moved to Uganda-Tanzania War. (already moved) [and now it needs to be moved, but there is an RM to decide that...] Apteva (talk) 23:08, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
- Comment. I have reverted Apteva's undiscussed move of Uganda–Tanzania War, which was apparently done to prove a point here and not in the interest of the article itself.
This section attracted no comment before Apteva elevated it to an RFC, probably because Apteva is pushing on proper names, en dashes, and hyphens at several forums at the same time – including an RM, now closed as not moved, for the long-settled Mexican–American War. I have explicitly said, on this talkpage and elsewhere, that general issues with WP:MOS guidelines should be raised as general issues, right here. Not at several locations, and not as particular sparring points. It seems to me that this RFC is yet another waste of time. I comment on one detail only: yes, obviously many examples are needed in the guideline. Even more than we have now, perhaps. Some editors are still refusing to accept the principle it is based on as consensual; and Apteva, for example, is playing hard by appeal to inconsequential differences among the present examples. If any element of the long and meticulous community consultation on dashes in 2011 needs review, let it be done in an orderly and informed way. Some recommended background reading for those interested: the article Proper noun, most of which is now accurate. (It needs a move to Proper name.)
NoeticaTea? 21:48, 7 October 2012 (UTC)- It was a correct move. Uganda–Tanzania war is not a proper noun and is not capitalized. Nor was it undiscussed. The date and time in the above discussion shows that it was pointed out on September 27 that it should be moved, and that it was not moved until October 5 (and a check of the edit history will show that I noted that it had been moved when I opened the RfC on October 7). Clearly plenty of time and some for anyone to disagree with the proposal. Seeing none, I took it as approval, not an unusual response. Should an RM to move proper noun come to my attention I would object. And I think that would be the consensus. The word phrase "proper noun" did not enter use until about 1890. The dictionary, if it contains "proper name", defines it as proper noun. The two terms are interchangeable. I have called for an RfC because I am not going to get into an edit war over the Revert. In the BRD cycle, after R comes D. There had been no response, so I am asking for a response. I do not believe that a review of a clearly embarrassing discussion needs to be reviewed. Proper names use hyphens and our MOS says so. 10,000 books use a hyphen and maybe a 100 use something else. Case closed. I would like to remind everyone to focus on the issue, not the editor, though. WP is never an authority on anything, proper nouns included. WP articles can never be used as a RS. Apteva (talk) 02:40, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
- These topics have already been the focus of much long and pointless argumentation that wasted the time of multiple editors, time that could have been spent elsewhere, like in creating content. I don't understand the point of reopening these discussions so soon after they have finally and painfully been settled by consensus. --Neotarf (talk) 08:03, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
- Congratulations to Noetica, the proper noun article has just been cited by no less an authority than Mark Liberman at Language Log. [40] --Neotarf (talk) 08:09, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
- There are still improvements that are needed - fix the misleading and incorrect examples. If someone wants to argue that proper nouns are not capitalized or that sentences do not need periods, not questions of course, then certainly their time is better spent elsewhere, but if someone insists that Roman-Syrian War is spelled with an endash they will have a very hard time supporting that premise. Is War capitalized in "Uganda-Tanzania War"? Possibly, but if it is the punctuation is a hyphen and not an appropriate example of where to use an endash. If war is not capitalized, Uganda–Tanzania war is an example of where an endash is used, and the capitalization needs to be fixed. In both cases the current article needs to be moved - either to Uganda-Tanzania War or to Uganda–Tanzania war. There are always people who misspell things, and use incorrect punctuation, and that is why there is an edit tab and a move option. Apteva (talk) 03:49, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
Comet Hale-Bopp
This example: "Comet Hale–Bopp or just Hale–Bopp (discovered by Hale and Bopp)" needs to be removed because used either with or without the word "Comet" this is still a proper noun and therefore uses a hyphen, as supported by the thousands of reliable sources that use this punctuation. According to Google Books there are 31,900 sources, the overwhelming majority of which use a hyphen. It is not even close. Apteva (talk) 22:47, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
- Nonsense. Many of those reliable sources do use the en dash, which confirms that it is simply a styling choice. The fact that many sources have a style that substitutes hyphens in the traditional role of the en dash, and that the Google books OCR can't tell the difference, does not mean that WP needs to adopt that style. There's nothing special or unique about Hale–Bopp here. Your concept of "proper noun, therefore hyphen" is unsupportable hallucination. Dicklyon (talk) 01:01, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- Not nonsense at all. There are some sources that do use en dash, but if there were many, as in many more than use hyphen, then statistically at least one would have appeared in the first ten. Out of the first 100 how many use hyphen? Out of the first 1,000 how many? Google books has 32,900 to look through. I strongly disagree with the supposition that an OCR can not tell the difference as there are a huge number of occurrences in google books of both endashes where they are appropriate and em dashes where they are appropriate. While it is far easier to do a text search, I am completely confident in my assessment that there are no endashes in the first 10 results that I obtained. As was pointed out before, any suggestion of "many" needs to also include "out of how many", as saying there are 432 examples of using Hale-Bopp with an endash sounds impressive until you find out, say, that that was out of 32,000, with 29,000 using a hyphen and 3,000 using a space, just as a made up example. Proper noun hyphen is not fiction. It is in our MOS and I really have yet to see any example of a proper noun that does not use a hyphen. I am not saying they do not exist. I can certainly imagine that if someone named Hale-Bopp and someone named Lennard-Jones discovered a comet it could be called the "Hale-Bopp–Lennard-Jones Comet, to distinguish between one discovered by Hale and someone named Bopp-Lennard-Jones, or by one person named Hale-Bopp-Lennard and one named Jones. Normally exceptions to rules are pretty easy to find. It is academic to find them, but still interesting, and I really have not seen one. One editor perhaps looked for examples of endashes in WP article titles and came up with two that are not proper nouns and two that are using incorrect punctuation on WP. Since when has WP ever been considered a reliable source? Apteva (talk) 04:27, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- Nonsense. Several of them DO in fact appear in the first page of 10 hits on Google Book Search (with previews). You need to actually look at the previews to see how they are styled, as the OCR does not distinguish hyphen from en dash usually (and sometimes it sees en dashes as em dashes—I was going to say like this one, but it turns out that one really did get typeset with an em dash, due to some amateur typographer's blunder). If en dashes do show up sometimes in snippets, in probably from books that they got electronically, as with this one, where you can tell they got it electronically because if you zoom way in the letters aren't blurry or pixelated; they're being rendered from text. The same effect is often seen in Google Scholar, where papers with en dashes often show up as hyphen, but not always; in spite of that, nearly half show up on the first scholar results page with en dash. It's not an usual style like you're making it out to be. Dicklyon (talk) 05:33, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- Am I hearing an echo? 5/20 is a long way from "nearly half". It is 3 to 1 in favor of using a hyphen. Which is correct based on that information? Clearly a hyphen. Apteva (talk) 06:35, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- Nonsense. Several of them DO in fact appear in the first page of 10 hits on Google Book Search (with previews). You need to actually look at the previews to see how they are styled, as the OCR does not distinguish hyphen from en dash usually (and sometimes it sees en dashes as em dashes—I was going to say like this one, but it turns out that one really did get typeset with an em dash, due to some amateur typographer's blunder). If en dashes do show up sometimes in snippets, in probably from books that they got electronically, as with this one, where you can tell they got it electronically because if you zoom way in the letters aren't blurry or pixelated; they're being rendered from text. The same effect is often seen in Google Scholar, where papers with en dashes often show up as hyphen, but not always; in spite of that, nearly half show up on the first scholar results page with en dash. It's not an usual style like you're making it out to be. Dicklyon (talk) 05:33, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- Not nonsense at all. There are some sources that do use en dash, but if there were many, as in many more than use hyphen, then statistically at least one would have appeared in the first ten. Out of the first 100 how many use hyphen? Out of the first 1,000 how many? Google books has 32,900 to look through. I strongly disagree with the supposition that an OCR can not tell the difference as there are a huge number of occurrences in google books of both endashes where they are appropriate and em dashes where they are appropriate. While it is far easier to do a text search, I am completely confident in my assessment that there are no endashes in the first 10 results that I obtained. As was pointed out before, any suggestion of "many" needs to also include "out of how many", as saying there are 432 examples of using Hale-Bopp with an endash sounds impressive until you find out, say, that that was out of 32,000, with 29,000 using a hyphen and 3,000 using a space, just as a made up example. Proper noun hyphen is not fiction. It is in our MOS and I really have yet to see any example of a proper noun that does not use a hyphen. I am not saying they do not exist. I can certainly imagine that if someone named Hale-Bopp and someone named Lennard-Jones discovered a comet it could be called the "Hale-Bopp–Lennard-Jones Comet, to distinguish between one discovered by Hale and someone named Bopp-Lennard-Jones, or by one person named Hale-Bopp-Lennard and one named Jones. Normally exceptions to rules are pretty easy to find. It is academic to find them, but still interesting, and I really have not seen one. One editor perhaps looked for examples of endashes in WP article titles and came up with two that are not proper nouns and two that are using incorrect punctuation on WP. Since when has WP ever been considered a reliable source? Apteva (talk) 04:27, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
For now I have changed "Comet" to comet, per p. 48 of the New Oxford Dictionary for Scientific Writers and Editors, and per our article on the comet, which does not capitalize the word comet - hence an endash is correct as it is not treated as a proper noun. There is an open RM to move the page to Comet Hale-Bopp, treating it as a proper noun. Sources clearly favor proper noun status. Halley's comet, on the other hand, does not favor proper noun status and can also be corrected. Apteva (talk) 16:28, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Please see WP:Policies and guidelines#Not part of the encyclopedia: "The policies, guidelines, and process pages themselves are not part of the encyclopedia proper. Consequently, they do not generally need to conform with the content standards. It is therefore not necessary to provide reliable sources to verify Wikipedia's administrative pages, or to phrase Wikipedia procedures or principles in a neutral manner, or to cite an outside authority in determining Wikipedia's editorial practices. Instead, the content of these pages is controlled by community-wide consensus, and the style should emphasize clarity, directness, and usefulness to other editors."
- The "New Oxford Dictionary for Scientific Writers and Editors" does not have any authority over Wikipedia. The Wikipedia house style for comets is here: WP:Naming conventions (astronomical objects)#Comets.
- --Neotarf (talk) 18:22, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Irrelevant. The name we have chosen is "comet" not "Comet". Using "Comet" gives it proper noun status, and it becomes Comet Hale-Bopp, with a hyphen, not an endash. the section referenced says to use the common name, and if none, give it proper noun status (how generous). The example, Comet Hyakutake, is littered with references that use comet and ones that use Comet. Apteva (talk) 18:53, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- IMHO, recalling high school grammar classes might be of help here. Is the word "comet" a part of the name, or it just reiterates what the name is about? In other words, can we leave "comet" out without loss of meaning? Does the (c/C)omet Halley-Bopp resemble the "New York Times" newspaper and a McDonald's restaurant, or, rather, The Wall Street Journal and the White House?
- To my feeling, that particular space object is called Halley's Comet, and another one is called Hale-Bopp Comet. Since the names of space objects (planets, stars, comets, galaxies, constellations, etc.) are always capitalised (e.g., Mars, Jupiter, Neptune, Aldebaran, Vega, Milky Way, Sun, etc., etc.) , the word "comet" should also be capitalised in all the instances, since it is an inseparable part of that object's name. Rules as to dash/hyphen should apply accordingly. kashmiri 19:52, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Of course Comet Hale-Bopp (however hyphenated) is a proper noun. All names are proper nouns. Some sources may choose not to capitalize it; that's a style decision (a poor one in my view, but style rather than grammar). But even in those sources, it's still a proper noun — that's a grammatical rather than stylistic category. --Trovatore (talk) 20:29, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- That may be obvious to any number of people, but it is not obvious to the people who write articles about the comet, or Articles as in scientific articles published elsewhere.[41] In both cases the spelling of the dictionary is used. Why would we write a style guide that no one was using? Style guides should follow what we are doing, not make up rules that no one uses. I suggest that Comet should be changed to comet in Celestial bodies to agree with common use. We use sun and moon when 99.9+% (probably a lot more 9s for sun than moon) of the time we actually mean Sun and Moon, and it is ridiculous to capitalize it, and not done in common practice. Our style guides need to follow common practice, not introduce peculiarities. Apteva (talk) 21:04, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Your reference to "common use" seems misguided: Sun and Moon are always capitalised when used as names of celestial bodies (i.e., not in sun lotion, sunbathing, moonlight, etc.); so are Earth, Mercury, etc. As to your removal of capitalisation in "Comet", I would thus suggest you refrain from making edits that deliberately violate WP:MoS. Any such changes should be reverted. kashmiri 21:44, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Speaking only for myself, I am not making any edits that violate the MOS. The MOS says that proper names use hyphens, so I am moving articles that are proper nouns and use an endash, like, for example, Mexican-American War and Spanish-American War. Doing that brings them into compliance with the MOS. I am removing the examples in the MOS that are not in compliance with the MOS. The MOS says that proper nouns use hyphens, and has three examples that are proper nouns yet use an endash. One of them, comet Hale–Bopp, is not capitalized in our article, is not capitalized in a respected dictionary, and yet is capitalized as an example in our MOS. What's up with that? What I do need to do, though, is politely ask editors to read the section of the MOS on hyphens and note that there actually are places they are used - like in proper nouns. We all need to get on the same page here though, and if someone can show me 10,000 books that use an endash in Mexican-American War, and that there are less than use a hyphen, by all means that is what we also should use. But no matter how some editors came to the conclusion that Mexican-American War should have been spelled with an endash so they are going to use one, if in fact that is not a reasonable decision, it needs to be re-opened. In case no one has noticed, out of 4 million articles, there are some that have errors, and that is where I would prefer to spend my time. Fixing errors - like the spelling of Mexican-American War. Apteva (talk) 02:27, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- A Google Books search shows about 50% capitalize "Comet". Art LaPella (talk) 23:57, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- True. But how many dictionaries capitalize Halley's comet or comet Hale–Bopp? Apteva (talk) 02:27, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Most online dictionaries on the OneLook list capitalize the "C". Some capitalize it inconsistently. None on my list uncapitalize it consistently, although Dictionary.com's Halley's comet definition comes closest. Art LaPella (talk) 04:51, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- But now I found two uncapitalizers elsewhere. Art LaPella (talk) 05:07, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- True. But how many dictionaries capitalize Halley's comet or comet Hale–Bopp? Apteva (talk) 02:27, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Your reference to "common use" seems misguided: Sun and Moon are always capitalised when used as names of celestial bodies (i.e., not in sun lotion, sunbathing, moonlight, etc.); so are Earth, Mercury, etc. As to your removal of capitalisation in "Comet", I would thus suggest you refrain from making edits that deliberately violate WP:MoS. Any such changes should be reverted. kashmiri 21:44, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- That may be obvious to any number of people, but it is not obvious to the people who write articles about the comet, or Articles as in scientific articles published elsewhere.[41] In both cases the spelling of the dictionary is used. Why would we write a style guide that no one was using? Style guides should follow what we are doing, not make up rules that no one uses. I suggest that Comet should be changed to comet in Celestial bodies to agree with common use. We use sun and moon when 99.9+% (probably a lot more 9s for sun than moon) of the time we actually mean Sun and Moon, and it is ridiculous to capitalize it, and not done in common practice. Our style guides need to follow common practice, not introduce peculiarities. Apteva (talk) 21:04, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Of course Comet Hale-Bopp (however hyphenated) is a proper noun. All names are proper nouns. Some sources may choose not to capitalize it; that's a style decision (a poor one in my view, but style rather than grammar). But even in those sources, it's still a proper noun — that's a grammatical rather than stylistic category. --Trovatore (talk) 20:29, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Irrelevant. The name we have chosen is "comet" not "Comet". Using "Comet" gives it proper noun status, and it becomes Comet Hale-Bopp, with a hyphen, not an endash. the section referenced says to use the common name, and if none, give it proper noun status (how generous). The example, Comet Hyakutake, is littered with references that use comet and ones that use Comet. Apteva (talk) 18:53, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
Punctuation and footnotes
I would very much like to add the following to this section:
- - - - -
In contrast to scientific articles, ref tags are not placed immediately following the name of a scientist, but following the content that is referenced.
- Example: Humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers stated that the individual needed an environment that provided them with acceptance, empathy, and approval.[11]
- - - - -
The reason is that in more and more articles (anyway, the ones that I see) the ref tags are put immediately behind the name, just as in scientific articles. The problem is that is becomes unclear where the referenced content finishes and the unreferenced content starts.
For instance, "Rogers[11] stated that the individual needed love. Love is the most important need for a human being. Without love, people can get depressed."
In this case, there is no way to know where Rogers statements finish, and the editor's opinion starts. I would like to point this out to some editors and be able to refer to the manual of style. So that's why I wrote this extra example. Lova Falk talk 08:03, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
- Too specific, and ambiguous. My impression is that by "scientific articles" you mean "articles in scientific journals, as opposed to articles in wikipedia", many of which are scientific articles. Just say references follow the facts they are referencing. If a specific editor is violating that you can {{welcome}} (subst:welcome) them and point that out. Apteva (talk) 18:22, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
- Added a section to Wikipedia:Simplified Manual of Style, though to help avoid this happening. Apteva (talk) 18:59, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
- It's a WP:CITEVAR issue. If the editors at the article in question want to use that style, they're permitted to. Your only recourse is to gently talk them out of it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:00, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
- I agree with WhatamIdoing. Suppose the Harvard style is being used. Then you would get something like "Rogers (2009) stated that the individual needed love. Love is the most important need for a human being. Without love, people can get depressed" (where "Rogers (2009)" would be linked). This style is perfectly acceptable in Wikipedia, but doesn't correspond to the advice that "references follow the facts they are referencing". Peter coxhead (talk) 10:56, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- But how would we know where Rogers' statement finishes? If it is Rogers who thinks that people can get depressed or an editor who thinks so???? Lova Falk talk 17:25, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
- Which is why that style is rarely used - but as pointed out it is still a valid reference style. I am guessing that someone could find an FA that uses it - throughout. Apteva (talk) 07:05, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- But how would we know where Rogers' statement finishes? If it is Rogers who thinks that people can get depressed or an editor who thinks so???? Lova Falk talk 17:25, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
- I agree with WhatamIdoing. Suppose the Harvard style is being used. Then you would get something like "Rogers (2009) stated that the individual needed love. Love is the most important need for a human being. Without love, people can get depressed" (where "Rogers (2009)" would be linked). This style is perfectly acceptable in Wikipedia, but doesn't correspond to the advice that "references follow the facts they are referencing". Peter coxhead (talk) 10:56, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
Maths styling and readability
I want to make a case for including, as a style guideline, that all math using symbols other then the basic arithmetic symbols, be 'transcripted' into ordinary language. I don't mean that the math be replaced by ordinary language descriptions, but that displayed math have accompanying text that reads as if the math were being spoken. The case is very simple:
1) There is a huge problem of innumeracy in the general public, even among very intelligent people.
2) Part of this problem has nothing to do with the difficulty of understanding relations of quantity and so forth, but a simple inability to *read* math. Often people's eyes glaze over at the appearance of math because they simply cannot associate any sounds or meanings to the symbols.
3) I realize that the meaning and often the pronunciation of various symbols is covered in specific entries about the symbols but... a) This is not universally the case. There are symbols without specific entries, and those that have them require either the symbol itself or its name to be found. b) Math symbols are often displayed as graphic images, thus the symbols cannot be individually selected, linked or searched unless one already knows the name of the symbol. c) People are reluctant to search lists and read about symbols when they just want to grasp the basic concept the math is expressing. Instead, they go away thinking, "this is not for me..."
4) An alternate possible solution would be to include a list of every symbol used on a page with a link to the specific entry for each, perhaps in a sidebar. But this solution is inferior because: a) Symbols often have context dependent readings. For example '—>' may read 'implies' or it may read 'goes to' or 'maps to' etc. Disambiguation has to occur in context. b) Even in the same context different mathematicians will sometimes read expressions differently. There is no one canonically correct reading for many math expressions. c) It requires people to leave the page and come back, perhaps without the information they sought. d) It is a little like telling people, "learn the math before reading this". But in some cases that is exactly why they are here... trying to learn the math!
5) The problems of reading math expressions and understanding them are related but separate problems. In some cases one does need to "learn the math" before understanding, but there are numerous cases where simply being able to read the expression conveys sufficient information to result in a satisfactory understanding of the article, including the unfamiliar math.
6) For the same reason we don't encourage highly technical articles laced with specialist jargon. The function of an encyclopedia is to transfer specialized knowledge to a general audience. We don't allow foreign language quotations to go untranslated. We oughtn't allow math expressions to remain impenetrable.
68.80.134.156 (talk) 16:52, 3 October 2012 (UTC) (sorry, thought I was logged in) Baon (talk) 17:00, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
- I think that means that at Maxwell's equations#Equations (SI units), for example,
becomes something like (this is surely wrong; I didn't bother to look anything up because the details don't matter) the dot product of the electric field with the infinitesimal change in the surface, integrated over an infinitesimal change in the volume, is equal to the electric charge of the volume divided by the electrical constant. If that is your idea, I think that is harder to understand than the equation. The article's preceding paragraphs explain the equations to some extent. The Simple English equivalent is harder to understand, not easier (perhaps because my editing over there is frustrated by the "science not babytalk" faction) because it "simplified" mainly by omitting the verbal explanation. So how would you write that? And do you really think editors would even read any further nagging about readability?Art LaPella (talk) 20:33, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
- Yes! I think that's much more useful. Let me stress again that I am not advocating this as a replacement for the equation. I can at least look up "the dot product" and I know what an infinitesimal change is and what an electric field is (and could look them up if I didn't). I can't even look up a circle with two kind-of-extended "f"s (or perhaps "s"s) drawn vertically through it and two greek subscripts that I may or may not be able to name. Looking at the equation only, I don't even know that infinitesimals are involved. But perhaps you are trying too hard to deliver the meaning of the equation. That is labor the reader must undertake. I notice your code uses the term 'partial omega' for the subscript, and if I look up "dot product" the wiki page nowhere has the circle with two function signs drawn through it. So this must be "<something>subscript partial omega". What I am asking for is what you would say if you were reading the text aloud to a companion who's comprehension of the meaning of the math was not an issue. How do you read it to yourself? Do you just say to yourself, "oh, Maxwell's equation" and then substitute your understanding of the meaning without ever referring to the symbols themselves? The explanation of the meaning must be something else again, and stand apart. For instance, I might read a differential as, "dxdt" or as "dx over dt" or as "delta x delta t". There is not one "right way" to do it. I might be reduced to "d times x divided by d times t..." and I may have no clue what it means, but at least it can be read. I am looking for analogues of readings like, "the definite integral from a to b of y with respect to x...", or "take the integral from t-nought to t...".
- As for the problems of getting consensus and editor resistance or push back... those are real problems I don't want to minimize. I think it is a matter of lobbying for the usefulness of it. Along with reminders of the purpose of an encyclopedia.. it is not to glory in one's superiority or have conversations with one's peers. I agree with the no babytalk guideline. I am not suggesting talking down to anyone. Merely providing additional verbal information that some (I think many) people would find useful. If done properly, it should not interfere with readability, but enhance it for most people. Those who see it as an unnecessary crutch can skip over it. That is not ideal, but it is, I think, preferable to skipping over the math itself, which many people currently do. In any event, thank you for entertaining the idea. Obviously it will not be an easy sell to math editors, who are the least likely to perceive a need for it, and who have much invested in their own math competency, unless they are also zealous educators. Baon (talk) 23:42, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
- P.S. I looked at the SI units page you link to above. It is very good; very clean. The table provided on the symbols and notation is great! But consider a simple example: Is this "the dot product of the divergence operator and" or "the divergence of" or "divergence times..." All the above? None of the above? Uneducated, I read "the funny down pointing triangle that is the divergence operator, not delta followed by a dot that probably means multiplication". I want to know how it is commonly read. Then I can worry about its function in the equation. We have difficulty associating meaning to symbols we can't name, I think. Baon (talk) 00:36, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- I agree that Wikipedian editors are more driven by vanity than helpfulness, but there is no easy solution without paying them. If readers don't at least recognize that the surface integral symbol (I found the explanation in the table) is some kind of integral, then are we really doing them a favor by inviting them to look up dot product, divergence etc.? This is a physics article. We have other articles that describe multi-variable calculus. So if we're leading them into a trap they won't understand, then isn't "learn the math before reading this" more helpful? And even if a verbal description does more good than harm in this case, is that true of every case, such as the much simpler quadratic formula for instance? Or should we let editors use their discretion for individual articles? And even if we should have such verbal descriptions for all articles, what will another guideline accomplish that WP:JARGON isn't doing already, besides the familiar dangers of WP:CREEP? Most Wikipedians won't read it, and the ones who do will use it for edit wars as in the thread immediately after this one. Art LaPella (talk) 04:52, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks again for engaging with me on this matter. I am coming around to your point of view. I have spent more time looking over the symbol lookup table, and I see that there is a column in the table for "reads as", which is pretty much what I was asking for. I can see the duplication of effort that would be entailed in making that part of every article. I guess my problem reduces to individual cases where a symbol is used that is not in the table... I started this train of thought after trying to read something on the "Affine transformations" page. I have looked at the source.. The symbol is 'varphi' and I was able to look it up. I found the page on phi discusses this. It is a varient font form of phi, found mostly in older fonts, and is deprecated for mathematics. I am content to address this on the Affine transformations page, and take it as an isolated instance. I may add it to the symbol table with a note, so others will at least have a chance of seeing it there, if I can figure out how to do it. I still think there is a problem with symbol lookup... a kind of catch 22 where you need to know the name of the symbol in order to be able to look it up efficiently. And most users won't go to the page source to read the markup. (I didn't think of it myself, initially.) But I can see my suggestion is not really a good fix to those problems. Baon (talk) 16:11, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- Just a note here — Baon appears to have misinterpreted a remark in the phi article. There is nothing "deprecated" about . It is a perfectly normal mathematical symbol and is used quite regularly. --Trovatore (talk) 22:02, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks again for engaging with me on this matter. I am coming around to your point of view. I have spent more time looking over the symbol lookup table, and I see that there is a column in the table for "reads as", which is pretty much what I was asking for. I can see the duplication of effort that would be entailed in making that part of every article. I guess my problem reduces to individual cases where a symbol is used that is not in the table... I started this train of thought after trying to read something on the "Affine transformations" page. I have looked at the source.. The symbol is 'varphi' and I was able to look it up. I found the page on phi discusses this. It is a varient font form of phi, found mostly in older fonts, and is deprecated for mathematics. I am content to address this on the Affine transformations page, and take it as an isolated instance. I may add it to the symbol table with a note, so others will at least have a chance of seeing it there, if I can figure out how to do it. I still think there is a problem with symbol lookup... a kind of catch 22 where you need to know the name of the symbol in order to be able to look it up efficiently. And most users won't go to the page source to read the markup. (I didn't think of it myself, initially.) But I can see my suggestion is not really a good fix to those problems. Baon (talk) 16:11, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- Only four articles are listed at Wikipedia:Spoken articles#Mathematics (version of 22:15, 4 October 2012).
- —Wavelength (talk) 21:39, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- A discussion about pronouncing mathematical symbols is at Learning math? | Lambda the Ultimate.
- —Wavelength (talk) 16:20, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- If you visit the Unicode code chart index at Code Charts, and scroll down to the heading "Symbols and Punctuation", and find the subheading "Mathematical Symbols", you can select thereunder a sub-subheading or a sub-sub-subheading. For example, you can select "Supplemental Mathematical Operators", which is linked to http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2A00.pdf.
- There, below the table with a width of 16 cells, the symbols are listed, preceded by their respective hexadecimal encodings and followed by their respective official Unicode names. For example, the symbol ⨀ is encoded hexadecimally as 2A00 (
⨀
produces ⨀) and has the name "N-ARY CIRCLED DOT OPERATOR". - By reference to the names of symbols in these pages, at least in theory a person can read a mathematical formula without necessarily understanding what they mean. In some respects, the process is similar to reading a passage orally, and spelling orally an unfamiliar word whose pronunciation one does not know or can not articulate.
- —Wavelength (talk) 16:20, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- See the category "Mathematics" at WatchKnowLearn - Free Educational Videos for K-12 Students (WatchKnowLearn)
- and the category "Math & Statistics" [sic] at Math & Statistics | EduTube Educational Videos
- and the category "Mathematics" at Mathematics | Video Courses on Academic Earth (Academic Earth)
- and the category "Math" [sic] at Khan Academy (Khan Academy)
- and search results for mathematics at mathematics - YouTube (YouTube)
- and search results for mathematics at YOVISTO - Academic Video Search (Yovisto)
- and the category "Mathematics" at Category: Mathematics - videolectures.net (VideoLectures.net).
- —Wavelength (talk) 01:49, 13 October 2012 (UTC) and 06:02, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- See http://www.math.cornell.edu/~hubbard/readingmath.pdf (Cornell University)
- and http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~fateman/papers/speakmath.pdf (University of California, Berkeley), with an unlinked reference to www.dessci.com, that is to say, http://www.dessci.com
- and http://www.access2science.com/jagqn/More%20Accessible%20Math%20preprint.htm
- and Periods and commas in mathematical writing - MathOverflow (MathOverflow).
- —Wavelength (talk) 23:45, 13 October 2012 (UTC) and 23:47, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
Arbor-tree break
To remain within the honored traditions of this page, we cannot discuss "Maths styling" without first duking it out in a long, to-the-death debate about the title of the debate itself. Should it Maths styling or Math styling? I'm sorry to introduce a discontinuity, but critical points must be integrated in such differentiations, though it's a slippery slope. EEng (talk) 05:22, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- This is not the place to make individual decisions. Maths is probably British English, and Math American English. Apteva (talk) 06:38, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Please tell me you knew I was joking. Please. Please. I beg you. EEng (talk) 14:01, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, "maths" is British, and EEng is satirizing the rest of the page. Art LaPella (talk) 07:00, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- The word mathematics complies with WP:VNE (version of 19:20, 12 October 2012).—Wavelength (talk) 00:16, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- I repeat, even more forcefully: Please tell me you knew I was joking. Please. Please. I beg you. EEng (talk) 03:01, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
Spaced vs unspaced em dash
A certain well-intentioned user named Hydrargyrum keeps replacing unspaced em dashes in hundreds of Wikipedia articles with spaced em dashes (preceded by a non-breaking space). This is contrary to WP:DASH; still, Hydrargyrum maintains that his is the correct way because he has "completed a typing course". I recognise that there is no single way of using em dashes: The Chicago Manual of Style and the Oxford Guide to Style, for example, recommend unspaced em dashes while AP Stylebook and a few others propose that these be spaced. However, WP:Manual of Style has expressly stipulated that em dashes should not be spaced on Wikipedia. The above user argues that "the information at WP:DASH was developed by incompetent individuals operating in an information vacuum, who apparently never took a course in typing, nor are they familiar with how line wraps are handled in browsers and other software" (User_talk:Hydrargyrum#Em_dashes). What, if any, action should now be taken – either with regard to restraining Hydrargyrum or allowing other styles in WP:MOS? Thanks. kashmiri 22:48, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
- I ask such people to read User:Art LaPella/Because the guideline says so. If that doesn't work, others might try something more coercive. Art LaPella (talk) 23:29, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks, good read, I posted the link, let's see. Little optimism remains: Hydrargyrum has been asked to stop changing dashes his way already several times in the last few months – to no effect. kashmiri 00:14, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- Remember to advise a user (as I've done in this case) if you are going to discuss their behavior somewhere. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 04:30, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- As often when it comes to style discussions, they seem rather overconfident that they are "right" and that everyone else, or any different punctuation style, is "wrong". The reality of course, as appears to have been pointed out to them, is that there are alternatives, which are simply a matter of choice - and that the most commonly seen and used alternatives in the real world for dashes in running prose are the unspaced emdash and the spaced endash. MOS happily allows either. Common sense and the MOS would both suggest an editor shouldn't be making mass changes between the two of them - let alone changing either to the rarely seen spaced emdash. Nor do I think there's much need to change the MOS to add that third option (and even if we did, changing to that format in individual cases from one of the other two would still be utterly pointless). N-HH talk/edits 09:28, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- This is related to the internal consistency RfC in this same page. Some people take upon themselves to change hundreds of articles between two accepted styles in order to ensure consistency, and they refuse to take hints. The MOS needs to make really clear that this is not acceptable. If the MOS doesn't say this clearly then editors can't use the MOS to stop this sort of behaviour. --Enric Naval (talk) 09:39, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- Not really related. This is about an editor who is changing to an unacceptable style (per the MOS). —[AlanM1(talk)]— 16:28, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- I also find spaced emdashes preferable for setting off parentheticals. Unspaced emdashes give an unwarranted sense of connection between the two words they join; parentheticals, almost by definition, should more tightly group the words contained within them than to the words outside. Endashes, on the other hand, do not seem appropriate for parentheticals at all. I think if the MoS does not permit spaced emdashes for parentheticals, this should be changed. --Trovatore (talk) 03:39, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
- The editor appears to still be changing dashes in violation of the MoS, even though several editors have asked him to stop. I have given him a warning on his talk page. Let me know if I need to follow up on it. Cheers. Kaldari (talk) 20:58, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
- I also find spaced emdashes preferable for setting off parentheticals. Unspaced emdashes give an unwarranted sense of connection between the two words they join; parentheticals, almost by definition, should more tightly group the words contained within them than to the words outside. Endashes, on the other hand, do not seem appropriate for parentheticals at all. I think if the MoS does not permit spaced emdashes for parentheticals, this should be changed. --Trovatore (talk) 03:39, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
- Perhaps a modification of the guidelines in the MOS for use of the hyphen, en dash and em dash should be considered. There are technical reasons for doing so. By default, most browsers and text editors break text automatically after a hyphen (ASCII 45, HTML code -); I have never encountered one that doesn't, unless it is forced to display in "no-wrap" mode. This is not true of the en dash and em dash characters, however. Over the years I've encountered some software that breaks lines after these characters, but most don't. Instead, what one most often sees is a break before the en dash or em dash if it is unspaced, putting the dash in the first column of the next line. Although you will no doubt find examples in print publications where this occurs, this is generally considered bad practice in typography and typesetting. It slows down reading and comprehension. How wo
uld it feel if type
-setters interru
ted text at random places within words and used hyphens in rando
-m fashion? It would make reading such text much more time consuming, would it not? By forcing the hyphen or dash to be the last visible character before a line break, it prepares the reader's brain for what is to follow, requiring less mental effort on the reader's part.
Since we don't have any control over what browser software a visitor to Wikipedia will use, we cannot predict how that browser will handle all types of dash characters. Moreover, we don't know what type of display equipment a visitor will be using; it could range from sub-VGA to XVGA, so we can't predict where lines will end within the browser window. Moreover, not all users run their browsers maximized, so even on an XVGA display, they may be viewing Web content in a sub-VGA window. That being the case, how would you go about providing the best reading experience for the site visitor?
Since Wikipedia isn't a typesetting system, we have limited options in controlling where characters will appear in a given line of text. One way that we can control the position of en dashes and em dashes is to precede them with a non-breaking space ( or  ) and follow them with an normal space (ASCII 32, HTML code  ). This guarantees that a line break will not put those characters in in the first column of the following line. Another way of doing it is with zero-width spaces. There is a zero-width non-breaking Unicode character (⁠) and also a zero-width Unicode space character (​) that would allow en dashes and em dashes to appear unspaced, yet retain the desired control of where the line breaks.
Some have presented the argument that it doesn't matter whether one uses an en dash or an em dash. Indeed, one may find pathological examples in print where the typesetter has used en dashes in place of em dashes, particularly when text is arranged in narrow columns and an em dash might appear disproportionately wide. It's not good policy, however to do so in Web content. The technical reason for this again, we cannot predict what kind of hardware and software a Wikipedia visitor will be using. The reader may be using the default screen font, or due to "accessibility" requirements may be using a substitute font, something that one can do with most modern browsers. The hyphen, en dash and em dash can look confusingly similar, depending on the screen font. Hyphens are generally not offset by spaces, and when one uses an unspaced en dash or em dash in such a situation, it can lead to ambiguous interpretation of a line of text: Was the writer pausing and interjecting an incidental thought, or is that some strange compound word? By offsetting an en dash or em dash with spaces, it leaves no doubt in the reader's mind what the writer intended to convey.
If you enjoy abusing your readers, go ahead and insist that the present MOS must be followed without question. If, on the other hand, you care about your readers, consider what I've written here. — QuicksilverT @ 23:26, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
- Thank you for presenting your case on the proper page for it, not throughout Wikipedia. I have verified that a line break can occur before an unspaced em dash, and those who write rules here (not me; note that some people here write style manuals as their real life job, not (ahem!) as a lesser part of some other job) haven't discussed that issue, to my knowledge. And yes, an unspaced em dash could look like an unspaced hyphen depending on the font. Art LaPella (talk) 01:13, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- The identified problem is not unique to the em dash. The problem is that browsers use a widow/orphan control scheme (also called text flow control) which responds poorly to the user's preferences for font size, window size and for image placement. Putting a non-breaking space in front of the em dash does not fix the problem. The problem is virtually the same for unspaced em dashes, spaced em dashes, unspaced en dashes, spaced en dashes, and every sort of hyphen. People here must get past the world of print and settle for the imperfect world of browsers where your writing is going to display in ways over which you have no control. Hydragyrum is tilting at windmills; there is nothing anybody can do to make the em dash work consistently online. The problem is not limited to Safari or Chrome or Mozilla or Internet Explorer—it is all-pervasive. Wikipedia's established em dash style is fine as it is. Binksternet (talk) 04:29, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- Thank you for presenting your case on the proper page for it, not throughout Wikipedia. I have verified that a line break can occur before an unspaced em dash, and those who write rules here (not me; note that some people here write style manuals as their real life job, not (ahem!) as a lesser part of some other job) haven't discussed that issue, to my knowledge. And yes, an unspaced em dash could look like an unspaced hyphen depending on the font. Art LaPella (talk) 01:13, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
Modification to MOS:IDENTITY
A few weeks ago, there was a proposal at WP:VPP to modify the wording of MOS:IDENTITY, specifically Point 2; the archived discussion is here. It gained some traction, but it died down without any kind of resolution, so I want to raise it again. The specific change being sought is;
"Any person whose gender might be questioned should be referred to by the gendered nouns, pronouns, and possessive adjectives that reflect that person's gender at the time of notability as reflected within the prevalence of mainstream reliable sources. Identity changes thereafter should be dealt with chronologically but should always follow the conventions used with prevalence in mainstream sources."
Instead of copying over the rationale, the link to the archive shows Berean Hunter's rationale, and other examples are provided in the thread. If people think this would be better discussed elsewhere, that's fine, but since the waters at VPP have been tested this seems like the most logical place. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:49, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- I made a similar proposal back in May here. I agree with Blade that we need to follow what mainstream sources say rather than get ahead of these sources by making a judgment based on an individual's statements. GabrielF (talk) 18:11, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- Does this mean we'll have to change Template:MOS-TW?? Georgia guy (talk) 18:40, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- Yeah, it would. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:46, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- What would the template's words have to change to?? Georgia guy (talk) 18:48, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- Hadn't thought about it... that'll obviously need some work. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:55, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- What would the template's words have to change to?? Georgia guy (talk) 18:48, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- Yeah, it would. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:46, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- Does this mean we'll have to change Template:MOS-TW?? Georgia guy (talk) 18:40, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
Can you clear up the exact meaning of this proposed rule?? Is it any similar to the following:
Trans women who are notable for being trans women should be referred to as she/her. However, trans women notable primarily for an event before the operation of surgery for a reason that has nothing to do with being transsexual should be referred to as he/him as if they were cisgender men. Georgia guy (talk) 22:29, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- Almost. The first sentence is right, but the idea is to refer to, say, Laura Jane Grace as "he" when he was identifying as Tom Gabel and "she" after coming out in public as a she. Make sense? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 00:10, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
- You mean, we should assume that trans women actually were men, not women trapped in men's bodies, before the operation?? Georgia guy (talk) 00:13, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
- To couch it in less loaded, more policy-based language, it's to avoid outright misleading revisionist history such as ""she captained her tennis team at Horace Mann" (in the article on Renée Richards); specifics are in the linked VPP conversation. We at Wikipedia aren't here to play psychologists and pass judgment on whether or not they were really men or just women all along, we're here to report facts; in the cases of Grace and Richards, among others, they were notable under different names and sexes and our articles should reflect that. And this also works the other way too; the article on Andreas Krieger should be treated the same (and as of writing is actually a good example of what I'm shooting for). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:34, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
- Notable under different names and sexes?? This phrase actually does imply the statement I was asking above whether we should assume. Georgia guy (talk) 19:14, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- The sex the person was commonly believed to be at the time. I think this is a slam-dunk. We do not — we must not — take a position on whether a person's "real" sex is. The choice to retroactively apply a sex change to previous notable events is nothing short of advocacy of a particular point of view; it must stop. --Trovatore (talk) 20:02, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- Notable under different names and sexes?? This phrase actually does imply the statement I was asking above whether we should assume. Georgia guy (talk) 19:14, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- To couch it in less loaded, more policy-based language, it's to avoid outright misleading revisionist history such as ""she captained her tennis team at Horace Mann" (in the article on Renée Richards); specifics are in the linked VPP conversation. We at Wikipedia aren't here to play psychologists and pass judgment on whether or not they were really men or just women all along, we're here to report facts; in the cases of Grace and Richards, among others, they were notable under different names and sexes and our articles should reflect that. And this also works the other way too; the article on Andreas Krieger should be treated the same (and as of writing is actually a good example of what I'm shooting for). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:34, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
- You mean, we should assume that trans women actually were men, not women trapped in men's bodies, before the operation?? Georgia guy (talk) 00:13, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
This section can be archived, just like any section of a talk page. I remember from 2004-2006 the "Georgia moving poll" which was wasn't archived for a long time. (It was at Talk:Georgia; now it's in an archive.) Can we put this discussion in a similar area so that it won't be archived too quickly?? Georgia guy (talk) 17:00, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Not sure... anyone familiar with this talkpage have suggestions? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:15, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
Disclaimer
Are there any guidelines on how to include disclaimers in articles? In a separate section or a footnote, at the start/end of the article,...? I am preparing an article here and would like to add a disclaimer "section/paragraph" saying roughly the following: Most of what is known about the rebellion including the exact dates are due to a single historical source, the Shoku Nihongi. [...some critical discussion on the reliability of this source...] All exact dates in this wikipedia article should therefore be taken with a grain of salt in view of their origin. bamse (talk) 09:00, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
- There's WP:No disclaimers in articles, which should handle it. I'll have a look at your draft, but what you want to do is include somewhere in the article itself that the dates aren't certain; same thing we do with Ramanuja's purported age. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:21, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks. So a separate section titled: "Historical source" or something like it would be fine? Should that go to the beginning or end of the article, or it does not matter? bamse (talk) 11:20, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
- Probably the first paragraph after the lede section; that's what I've seen in most articles. However, if it fits better somewhere else (c.f. Old Tom Parr), go with wherever that is. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:33, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks. bamse (talk) 09:08, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
- Probably the first paragraph after the lede section; that's what I've seen in most articles. However, if it fits better somewhere else (c.f. Old Tom Parr), go with wherever that is. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:33, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks. So a separate section titled: "Historical source" or something like it would be fine? Should that go to the beginning or end of the article, or it does not matter? bamse (talk) 11:20, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
MOSQUOTE vs PERCENT
WP:MOSQUOTE reads "a few purely typographical elements of quoted text should be adapted to English Wikipedia's conventions without comment" and later "Spaces before punctuation such as periods and colons: these should be removed as alien to modern English-language publishing.". In to my opinion this includes and percent numbers. For instance if a quote includes something like "15 %" it should be changed to "15%" per WP:PERCENT. Am I right? -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:30, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
- I would consider this a minor typographic change that does not involve any qualitative change to the underlying quote. -- Ohconfucius ping / poke 10:19, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
- It can also be considered as conversion to house-style. -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:46, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
- (As the editor who raised the altering of the citation
quote=
with Magioladitis) I'd be happy to see WP:PERCENT linked in WP:MOSQUOTE under the list of minor typographic changes, and preferably for WP:MOSQUOTE to explicitly make a statement on citationquote=
applicability. The general altering of citations literals intitle=
andquote=
by semi-automated/WP:MEATBOT methods can be problematic though, as can be seen by the examples in [42]. —Sladen (talk) 11:35, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
- (As the editor who raised the altering of the citation
- "Spacing in quotes can be altered to comply with WP:PERCENT and WP:TIME" would be suffice? -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:05, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
- "WP:TIME" might be too broad as it includes date-reformatting. Perhaps the test would be whether a reformatting change would prevent the locating of the original citation; so removing a space in "15 %" to get "15%" probably doesn't impair locating of a source much; but renaming the
title=
of a work from "25 October - The Romanian Armed Forces' Day" to "October 25 - The Romanian Armed Forces' Day" significantly changes the ability to find that work by that name in an alphabetical card index, or Google. The second paragraph of following WP:TIME shortlinks talks about date reformatting, so perhaps that is possibly too broad. Perhaps the simplest would be to encourage quotation reformatting when used in the main body of an article, but even to go as far as to discourage reformatting within the{{reflist}}
as the references aren't there to be read, but are there to allow the reader to locate additional reliable information easily. This would allow cases where a reformatted quotation is used inline, but the "raw material" is left untouched in thequote=
. It could even be suggested that in the case of extensive reformatting of a quotation in the body, that the original can be preserved in the{{cite}}
for clarity. —Sladen (talk) 15:54, 6 October 2012 (UTC) - Ah yes, You are right. I only meant the addition of non breaking space in 12-hour time. And In general I am referring only to addition/removal of whitespace. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:11, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
- Since you say "Spacing in quotes" I think it is perfectly fine, and the dates stuff is not relevant. Rich Farmbrough, 22:12, 6 October 2012 (UTC).
- Please do correct the space. And commas reversed with periods in numbers, as the continental Europeans do, and currency symbols after and spaced rather than before and unspaced. Tony (talk) 03:45, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
- I disagree with making changes inside quotations. For what purpose? The advice of changing curly quotes with straight quotes and single quotes is fine, but spaces? Why? And "commas reversed with periods"? There is nothing wrong with that style, no matter how strange it may look. If the quote is really wrong [sic] can be used, but it should not be changed. Apteva (talk) 04:56, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- So no, "Spacing in quotes can be altered to comply with WP:PERCENT and WP:TIME" should not be added for two reasons - it is bad advice and it adds nothing to the MOS. If it said "spacing in quotes can not be altered" that would be one thing, but of course spaces are sometimes altered. Saying that something "can be altered" says nothing. It implies that they can also not be altered, and if someone alters them they might have done it appropriately or might not have. So what good is it? None at all. Apteva (talk) 05:03, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- What about "Spacing in quotes must be altered to comply with WP:PERCENT and WP:TIME" then? The problem is that it is optional? -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:15, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- No, the question is why would anyone want to refract a quote. It is no longer a quote. Apteva (talk) 22:02, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Manual of Style reads "This practice of conforming typographical styling to a publication's own "house style" is universal." -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:12, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- And that statement in the MOS is simply false. It is not universal practice, especially in respect of more substantive changes to formatting and typography. N-HH talk/edits 22:23, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- I disagree. Usually a quote is written in a book in the first place just following the rules of the given book. Or it appears in some media again following the rules of the given media. I've never seen a a quote in any of the popular internet media to follow different writing style than the rest of the site/portal/media. The same should hold here. Having or not having a space between a number and the percent symbol is only a matter of preference and the quote should be written following the Wikipedia Manual of Style. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:57, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- And that statement in the MOS is simply false. It is not universal practice, especially in respect of more substantive changes to formatting and typography. N-HH talk/edits 22:23, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Manual of Style reads "This practice of conforming typographical styling to a publication's own "house style" is universal." -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:12, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- No, the question is why would anyone want to refract a quote. It is no longer a quote. Apteva (talk) 22:02, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Please do correct the space. And commas reversed with periods in numbers, as the continental Europeans do, and currency symbols after and spaced rather than before and unspaced. Tony (talk) 03:45, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
- "WP:TIME" might be too broad as it includes date-reformatting. Perhaps the test would be whether a reformatting change would prevent the locating of the original citation; so removing a space in "15 %" to get "15%" probably doesn't impair locating of a source much; but renaming the
I agree with Magioladitis. N-HH is ignoring the word "this" in the MOS statement. It isn't any change in formatting and typography that is universal practice, it is the specific changes listed in the MOS that are universal practice. Jc3s5h (talk) 23:03, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- I understand what it is trying to say perfectly thanks; nor is it likely that the precise stipulations of one MOS reflect "universal practice". As to the first response, it may well happen "usually" (although I doubt anecdotal evidence can show that conclusively). Equally, WP may decide to have an MOS that inists we do things that way. However, it is simply not a universal practice - that explicit statement is simply not true. N-HH talk/edits 23:11, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Then delete it. It clearly adds nothing to the MOS. It is an explanation of why it is done and looks a little foolish pretending to be universal. Here is why I do not think we need to be more explicit about refractoring quotes than to remove all caps. A politician gets quoted exactly as they say something no matter what they say, swear words included. If they misspell a word, we use [sic], but we do not correct it. If they use incorrect punctuation we can add a parenthetical, but we do not correct it. There are just too many quotes where the punctuation is an important part of the quote for us to be "universally" changing it, just to make it look pretty. I want to know if a politician knows the difference between a hyphen and an endash or whether to put a space before a % sign (or how to spell potato). I do not want us to make corrections like that inside a quote whether they are a politician or not. I want to see what punctuation Thoreau used or Dickens. Apteva (talk) 06:40, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
RFC: shall changes in beginning of sentence case be allowed in quotations?
See Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 130#RFC: shall changes in beginning of sentence case be allowed in quotations? for a post archive closure of the RFC. Apteva (talk) 03:42, 8 October 2012 (UTC) NB: The closure was done here:[43] before the archive was moved. Apteva (talk) 03:54, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
"Adaptations of The Thing" vs "The Thing (adaptations)"
Where in MOS is this discussed? I notice that there is Adaptations of The Wizard of Oz, and until a few moments ago, The Phantom of the Opera (adaptations), when it was moved to Adaptations of The Phantom of the Opera. I prefer the "Thing (adaptations)" form, because it puts the modifier last, and the name of the work first, which is of greater importance to the reader, the author, and us, IMHO. Modifier-last conforms with:
- Thing (film)
- Thing (novel)
- Thing (1987 album)
That is, the various instances or forms of a work are always parenthesized. I argue that "(adaptations)" is a superclass of instances of a work on Wikipedia, rather than an extant subject to which the works themselves are subservient. Yet somehow a creeping, "standard" has been put forth, and is being acted upon en masse, solely by User:Neelix Contributions. Discuss? --Lexein (talk) 16:40, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
- Modifier-last is used when the "correct" title cannot be used. In this case, an article listing adaptations of The Thing could not be correctly titled "The Thing", so Adaptations of The Thing (or List of adaptations of The Thing) would be correct. An article on the 1987 album would be titled "The Thing", except that it's not the primary topic for that title, so a parenthetical qualifier is tacked on to the title. -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:06, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, Neelix linked Wikipedia:Article titles#Article title format. Trimmed too much over time, now lacking enough rationale to answer my concerns, and a rationale stretched quite thin when applied to plurals, IMHO. See discussion (my viewpoint, anyways) back at the bottom of User talk:Neelix. Reopen here if you see fit. --Lexein (talk) 18:18, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
- Reopen what here? Your question as to why the qualifier isn't needed here? -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:34, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
- This is not a MOS issue, but a title issue. I recommend discussing either on the talk page of the article or at Wikipedia talk:Article titles Apteva (talk) 00:12, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- Well, that's unexpected. I would have thought WP:Article titles was moved out of MOS for space reasons, not for "not MOS". No? --Lexein (talk) 04:52, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- The farther I dig into the history of "don't imply subsidiary articles" or words to that effect, the less I find. It started out as partially a technical issue (old server software would literally create subpages if a slash was in the title). Over time, the explanation and rationale has been trimmed, and its application expanded to include parentheticals, to the point that it's a nearly empty imperative, without rationale. It's depressing. At some point, I had hoped to see discussion, consensus, or precedent mentioned, but nothing so far, using Wikiblame. In case anyone wondered, that's what I've been doing in spare moments, all day.
- And yes, I'm starting to think that policies and guidelines should also have inline citations, linking to their origin discussion & consensus, precedent in other encyclopedias, or to an external manual of style, just to prevent the kind of endless spelunking I'm now forced into, just because a policy doesn't seem to make prima facie sense.--Lexein (talk) 04:52, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, Neelix linked Wikipedia:Article titles#Article title format. Trimmed too much over time, now lacking enough rationale to answer my concerns, and a rationale stretched quite thin when applied to plurals, IMHO. See discussion (my viewpoint, anyways) back at the bottom of User talk:Neelix. Reopen here if you see fit. --Lexein (talk) 18:18, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
- Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Register is a similar idea, though far from completion. Art LaPella (talk) 05:21, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- I see no reason for documenting changes other than is already available from the history. The basic principle of WP is that it does not matter who or why or when someone adds something as long as it is correct. In article space everything needs a reliable source, and because of the need for verifiability, needs a reference. In WP space everything only needs to make sense, and if not, that is what talk pages are for. Adding references is helpful in some cases, but in most cases they are not needed. That is what articles are for. Apteva (talk) 07:01, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- No one's forcing you into spelunking. The distinction given above between titles and their qualifiers makes prima facie sense. -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:53, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- Agreed. It is a detriment to the project to use parenthetical disambiguators to distinguish articles from their parent articles, both because parenthetical disambiguators have a well-established, disparate purpose and because subtopics by definition represent only a portion of the scope of the term indicated thereby. Neelix (talk) 14:42, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Register is a similar idea, though far from completion. Art LaPella (talk) 05:21, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
Article titles
This sentence
- "The Manual of Style applies to all parts of an article, including the title. See especially punctuation, below. (The policy page Wikipedia:Article titles does not determine punctuation.)"
is, to put it mildly, absurd. Policies always trump guidelines, but policies do not specify everything, that is what guidelines and common sense are for, but to say that a guideline determines punctuation of an article title is not possible, and has created the absurdity of thinking that Mexican-American War should be called "Mexican–American War" (with an endash instead of a hyphen) just because if it was not a proper noun it would be spelled with an endash. Well it is a proper noun and it is spelled with a hyphen. But really, the idea that a guideline can say that a policy does not apply is completely absurd. Which is anyone going to follow, the policy or the guideline? The policy every time. Now if it was the other way around, if a policy felt a need to say, but please ignore such and such a guideline, never mind how absurd that is, that would work, because the policy gets precedence over the guideline. Just my two cents worth. I recommend deleting the entire sentence as absurd. Apteva (talk) 02:23, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- I lost you between "policies do not specify everything, that is what guidelines and common sense are for" and "to say that a guideline determines punctuation of an article title is not possible ... Which is anyone going to follow, the policy or the guideline? The policy every time." Distinction without a difference? Art LaPella (talk) 03:40, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- The only word between those two quotes is "but", an unusual place to get lost. I am having a hard time figuring out what is being asked. The only question at hand is, should the above sentence be removed? Arguments for or against need to be couched not on the clarity or lack thereof of my summary of the issue, but on the merits of the sentence being in the MOS. Apteva (talk) 03:57, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- I meant that what comes before "but" seems to contradict what comes after "but". If you recognize that policies do not specify everything, then why isn't title punctuation an example of something a policy wasn't intended to specify? Art LaPella (talk) 05:24, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- The point is that the MOS does not over ride the policy. If someone finds a policy reason for using punctuation in a certain manner, that is what will be used regardless of what the MOS says, but I have not found any examples of that being the case, hence clearly no reason for the sentence even being in the MOS. I think it is there because someone wants a ridiculous justification for the ridiculous conclusion that Mexican-American War should be spelled with an endash, even though no one does. It is nothing more than trying to make a WP:POINT, and a waste of all of our time. Apteva (talk) 06:47, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- The bureaucratic answer is, in your own words, "policies do not specify everything". For example, if you read MOS:ITALICS (admittedly a guideline, but the same IAR logic applies) you might think Kyrie should be in quotes as a song, but WP:MUSIC says it's "generic" (at least the words aren't; the only words you can sing to Kyrie are "Kyrie ..." or a translation). OK, so only the music guideline covers that detail.
- The practical answer is that laughing off the Mexican–American War debate, one of the biggest debates we have ever had, is completely inconsistent with complaining about wasting time. Art LaPella (talk) 18:49, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- The point is that the MOS does not over ride the policy. If someone finds a policy reason for using punctuation in a certain manner, that is what will be used regardless of what the MOS says, but I have not found any examples of that being the case, hence clearly no reason for the sentence even being in the MOS. I think it is there because someone wants a ridiculous justification for the ridiculous conclusion that Mexican-American War should be spelled with an endash, even though no one does. It is nothing more than trying to make a WP:POINT, and a waste of all of our time. Apteva (talk) 06:47, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- I meant that what comes before "but" seems to contradict what comes after "but". If you recognize that policies do not specify everything, then why isn't title punctuation an example of something a policy wasn't intended to specify? Art LaPella (talk) 05:24, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- The fact that WP:TITLE is a policy and WP:MOS a guideline shouldn't be given too much weight, as it's a bit of historical anomaly. Not much of what is in WP:TITLE can really be called policy, as it's most full of guidelines. Nevertheless, if there's a conflict between them, point it out and let's talk about it. Dicklyon (talk) 04:16, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- I find the words guideline and policy to be carefully chosen and uniformly applied - and not just an accident. A great deal of discussion goes into which items should be a policy and which should be a guideline. Apteva (talk) 06:47, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- They are more carefully chosen now than they used to be. Early on there were few debates (as most did not consider it an important distinction) for example WP:V was turned from a guideline into a policy with this edit (I suspect with no debate on the appropriate talk page) back in April 2005. Likewise what is now Article Title received its banner in 2005 with this edit but it had been in the "Category:Wikipedia official policy" since 2004 after being "One of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines" before that. Of course since then there have been intermittent debates on whether the central MOS page and AT should be a policies or guidelines and each time the status quo has been kept. To understand the reason for the sentence you have picked out you will have to read the talk page archives, and who was in favour of what. Personally as I have stated before (in April this year) that I am in favour of removing this sentence for similar reasons to those you have given. -- PBS (talk) 16:48, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- This appears to be part of a campaign being carried out in multiple threads and multiple forums to reopen the n-dash wars that were settled in 2011. For example, see here [44] --Neotarf (talk) 20:02, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- They are more carefully chosen now than they used to be. Early on there were few debates (as most did not consider it an important distinction) for example WP:V was turned from a guideline into a policy with this edit (I suspect with no debate on the appropriate talk page) back in April 2005. Likewise what is now Article Title received its banner in 2005 with this edit but it had been in the "Category:Wikipedia official policy" since 2004 after being "One of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines" before that. Of course since then there have been intermittent debates on whether the central MOS page and AT should be a policies or guidelines and each time the status quo has been kept. To understand the reason for the sentence you have picked out you will have to read the talk page archives, and who was in favour of what. Personally as I have stated before (in April this year) that I am in favour of removing this sentence for similar reasons to those you have given. -- PBS (talk) 16:48, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- I find the words guideline and policy to be carefully chosen and uniformly applied - and not just an accident. A great deal of discussion goes into which items should be a policy and which should be a guideline. Apteva (talk) 06:47, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- The only word between those two quotes is "but", an unusual place to get lost. I am having a hard time figuring out what is being asked. The only question at hand is, should the above sentence be removed? Arguments for or against need to be couched not on the clarity or lack thereof of my summary of the issue, but on the merits of the sentence being in the MOS. Apteva (talk) 03:57, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- I lost you between "policies do not specify everything, that is what guidelines and common sense are for" and "to say that a guideline determines punctuation of an article title is not possible ... Which is anyone going to follow, the policy or the guideline? The policy every time." Distinction without a difference? Art LaPella (talk) 03:40, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- I stayed away from the hypen/en dash thing, but given that it's being discussed here, I also find the en dash usage odd-looking. It's often at odds with what I would write and with what I see written elsewhere. I have no examples to hand as I've not collected any. But I do wonder about the origin (the sources) of the rules we adopted. SlimVirgin (talk) 23:04, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- It is not the rules that are being questioned, but some of the examples used that do not follow those rules. The correct use of a hyphen, endash, and emdash is relatively subtle, but I think what we have is mostly correct - other than in at least three of the examples, and in at a minimum dozens of articles that were moved in 2011 to follow the "Mexican-American War" misspelling by using an endash. According to "New Hart's Rules", style guides only address issues where more than one style is perfectly acceptable in writing, such as using "co-operate" or "cooperate", both of which are implied as valid, but the book also uses the word "bemade" to mean "be made".
- I stayed away from the hypen/en dash thing, but given that it's being discussed here, I also find the en dash usage odd-looking. It's often at odds with what I would write and with what I see written elsewhere. I have no examples to hand as I've not collected any. But I do wonder about the origin (the sources) of the rules we adopted. SlimVirgin (talk) 23:04, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- "No appeal need be made to stylistic conventions or record kept of them where text is incorrect". That would apply to names, of which it only says that names use hyphens. I think that point has been missed by the advocates of "Mexican-American War" spelled instead with an endash.
- On hyphens is says "If an author has consistently applied a scheme of hyphenation, an editor need not alter it, although a text littered with hyphens can look fussy and dated. Editors can find the dominant form of a particular compound in a suitable current dictionary such as the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors."
- There are examples where either a hyphen or an endash could be used: "Note that in US style an en rule is used to connect a prefix and a compound (the post–World War I period)." Implying that others would use "the post-World War I period" (with a hyphen instead of an endash). Apteva (talk) 00:41, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
Slim, the sources of the rules were discussed at great length in the deliberations of 2011. We even had tables of abbreviations (like CMOS for Chicago Manual of Style) to make it easier to compare and contrast the style guidance of dozens of different guides. Feel free to look into it, so you won't have to just wonder about it. As for "odd-looking", I'm not sure what you mean. To me, it's odd to the see the tight binding of a hyphen where the relationship of parallel items is what is intended. Many people never learned about the typography to signal that, since it wasn't in the realm of the typewriter, or of Microsoft Word, to get that right. Mac users had a better chance, since Steve was inspired by typography and had both en dash and em dash on the keyboard from day one, but many people still didn't learn it, since having it available was not enough. People who make docs with TeX and LaTeX are more likely to have learned about en dash, since you have to get past it (--) to make an em dash (---). Dicklyon (talk) 20:46, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Hi, thanks for the explanation. I avoided that whole discussion and I'm afraid I still don't understand it. Could you explain briefly why Mexican-American War is wrong? It seems correct to me, and using an en dash doesn't. It would matter less in the text, but bolded in the title does look odd (odd as in devoid of meaning, unusual, perhaps just unnecessary or perhaps an error). SlimVirgin (talk) 20:59, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- There's several aspects to this debate of course, starting with the broader issue of whether WP should employ a hyphen/en-dash distinction at all when it comes to compounds and prefixes. Many, possibly even most if you exclude book publishing, online and print publishers don't bother and simply rely on the hyphen for the whole range of such links (and it's not simply because they are "wrong" or not sufficiently sophisticated). I still don't understand why a general-use website like WP, where the editing system makes it difficult to add en-dashes anyway, decided to make the switch at some point to start bothering about it. It makes editing more complicated and leads to endless disputes on the secondary issue, as here, on how to apply the distinction in specific cases, such as the ones under debate now. We have incredibly complicated and detailed rules, formulated after months of haggling, and we still don't have any clarity – in the Mexican-American/Mexican–American war case, we have people citing real-world examples/practice and title policy and/or their interpretation of the rules here to back up each alternative, with equally valid arguments; when at the end of the day the average reader doesn't give a toss, were they even to notice the difference. N-HH talk/edits 22:43, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Slim, it's not that the hyphen is "wrong", but that we have adopted the style of recognizing the type of distinction that the en dash versus hyphen signals. That the distinction is meaningful can be illustrated with this particular example, though. The hyphen is used when a compound noun is used as an adjective. When the the compound noun Mexican American is used as an adjective, as in a Mexican-American neighborhood, or Category:Mexican-American culture, or Mexican-American Studies, the hyphen is used to signal that those are about Mexican Americans. If we had a war against or involving primarily Mexican Americans, we'd probably call it the Mexican-American War. To signal a different interpretation, a relation between parallels, in this case a "versus" or "against" relationship, we use the en dash in Mexican–American War. As N-HH points out, many authors and editors and styles don't bother to try to send such signals to their readers, and many readers don't notice. But for those who notice, and sometimes even for those who don't, the looser coupling of the longer dash helps to get the right message across. That's why so many many guides recommend the en dash for such roles. The fact that styles and guides vary meant that we had to work to hammer out the right compromise for WP. Dicklyon (talk) 05:32, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- I agree. The hyphen used in an adjective or noun subordinates the first item to the second. So an X living in country Y would be X-Y while a Y living in country X would be Y-X. The second part of the hyphen is the main part, and the first the qualifier. But this convention means we can't link two nouns in an "equal" fashion, as is required for a construct such as the "Mexican–American war." That is where the en-dash comes in. Apteva is not disagreeing with this; Apteva's claim is that in a proper noun: Mexican-American War, which is what a title is, the convention is to use a hyphen and not an en-dash, against the convention when the phrase is not a proper noun. I would like to see some sources cited for the claim. Churn and change (talk) 05:48, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- I can provide a small list of names that are similar to this. My source is 1) do they appear in a dictionary 2) how do they appear in books and 3) how do they appear in other sources. I really do not think that I am at all out of line in thinking that the vast majority of editors have been applying the same convention. Use a hyphen in a proper name. Use endash otherwise using the endash rules. Apteva (talk) 06:34, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Hi, that wasn't a rhetorical question objecting to your suggestion; it was a real question. I went and checked. Online, the en-dash is, in general, absent in both content and titles. That is not surprising because most keyboards don't have one. The Chicago manual does not provide an explicit exemption for titles (proper nouns) for its en-dash rule. However that doesn't mean it requires en-dashes in proper noun titles. It does require the use of en-dash in constructs such as the University of Wisconsin–Madison, but that is mentioned as an exception. It requires a hyphen, not an en-dash, for abbreviation compounds such as U.S.-Canadian relations (The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed. 2003. 6.85 and 6.86 pp. 262–263). The APA manual mentions it in passing for equal-weight compound adjectives, but that is it. The MLA doesn't mention the en-dash at all, using just the dash (two hyphens, often an em-dash) and the hyphen. I would say we leave the current guideline wherever it is at now, assuming there is a guideline. Churn and change (talk) 21:05, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- I can provide a small list of names that are similar to this. My source is 1) do they appear in a dictionary 2) how do they appear in books and 3) how do they appear in other sources. I really do not think that I am at all out of line in thinking that the vast majority of editors have been applying the same convention. Use a hyphen in a proper name. Use endash otherwise using the endash rules. Apteva (talk) 06:34, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- I agree. The hyphen used in an adjective or noun subordinates the first item to the second. So an X living in country Y would be X-Y while a Y living in country X would be Y-X. The second part of the hyphen is the main part, and the first the qualifier. But this convention means we can't link two nouns in an "equal" fashion, as is required for a construct such as the "Mexican–American war." That is where the en-dash comes in. Apteva is not disagreeing with this; Apteva's claim is that in a proper noun: Mexican-American War, which is what a title is, the convention is to use a hyphen and not an en-dash, against the convention when the phrase is not a proper noun. I would like to see some sources cited for the claim. Churn and change (talk) 05:48, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Slim, it's not that the hyphen is "wrong", but that we have adopted the style of recognizing the type of distinction that the en dash versus hyphen signals. That the distinction is meaningful can be illustrated with this particular example, though. The hyphen is used when a compound noun is used as an adjective. When the the compound noun Mexican American is used as an adjective, as in a Mexican-American neighborhood, or Category:Mexican-American culture, or Mexican-American Studies, the hyphen is used to signal that those are about Mexican Americans. If we had a war against or involving primarily Mexican Americans, we'd probably call it the Mexican-American War. To signal a different interpretation, a relation between parallels, in this case a "versus" or "against" relationship, we use the en dash in Mexican–American War. As N-HH points out, many authors and editors and styles don't bother to try to send such signals to their readers, and many readers don't notice. But for those who notice, and sometimes even for those who don't, the looser coupling of the longer dash helps to get the right message across. That's why so many many guides recommend the en dash for such roles. The fact that styles and guides vary meant that we had to work to hammer out the right compromise for WP. Dicklyon (talk) 05:32, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Following on from that, why won't we allow article titles to use a hyphen in titles like Mexican-American war? Most keyboards don't have an en dash, most publishers and style guides don't recommend one for that usage, so why did Wikipedia get locked into using one to signal a distinction of no consequence? SlimVirgin (talk) 21:14, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- Well, I would say it is unclear what style guides recommend. Note that manuscripts (the focus of APA and MLA) and books (the focus of Chicago House) don't have "article titles"; they have book titles, chapter headings and so on. As to your specific questions, I don't know the history of why the WP:MOS guideline says all sections and their headings should follow same punctuation rules; I notice somebody has proposed taking that out. WP:AT#Special characters, the policy, allows it and requires a redirect from keyboard-friendly titles. I would say the rules for Article Titles should be in WP:AT, the policy, since administrators effectively decide it by ruling on contested moves (NACs are disallowed there), and, in general, administrators do not enforce guidelines. I would also say article titles should contain only characters people can type, because otherwise they will mostly come in via redirects. However, I suspect this has been discussed to death before. Churn and change (talk) 22:44, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- Following on from that, why won't we allow article titles to use a hyphen in titles like Mexican-American war? Most keyboards don't have an en dash, most publishers and style guides don't recommend one for that usage, so why did Wikipedia get locked into using one to signal a distinction of no consequence? SlimVirgin (talk) 21:14, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
Digressions from the topic
Hyphen examples
Name | Hyphen | endash | Percent |
---|---|---|---|
Spanish-American War | |||
Mexican-American War | 172 | 5 | 97.2% |
Philippine-American War | |||
Wilkes-Barre | |||
Seattle-Tacoma International Airport | |||
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport | |||
Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport | |||
Comet Hale-Bopp | |||
comet Hale–Bopp |
Birds do not need checking, as they are specifically mentioned.
[Apteva neglected to sign the preceding.–NoeticaTea? 08:08, 12 October 2012 (UTC)]
[The above is available as a scratch pad and does not need to be signed. Apteva (talk) 20:38, 12 October 2012 (UTC)]
Discussion of hyphen examples
[After Apteva's refactoring; my next post here responds to one by Churn and change, above.–NoeticaTea? 08:05, 12 October 2012 (UTC)]
Good, Churn. As an avid collector and analyst of style guides, I would be most surprised if a source could be found for Apteva's odd claim. The editor appears to be working from something in WP:ENDASH that is pretty well unrelated:
- By default, follow the dominant convention that a hyphen is used in compounded proper names of single entities, not an en dash.
- Guinea-Bissau; Bissau is the capital, and this distinguishes the country from neighboring Guinea
- McGraw-Hill, a publishing house
That provision started off restricted to place names, like Guinea-Bissau and Alsace-Lorraine. Those cases are clear enough, and each has a hyphen for its own distinct reason; but many place names whose components refer to entities that are more easily separable are treated more variably. "Poland~Lithuania" for example has been a difficult case, resolved on Wikipedia with the disambiguation page Poland-Lithuania (and a redirect from Poland–Lithuania). That fits with the provision in MOS.
Later, A di M generalised this provision to cover cases like McGraw-Hill, because like the geographical examples it is utterly fixed in usage with a hyphen. That is what I call a "fossilised proper name". It is never analysed in terms of separate entities "McGraw" and "Hill".
The qualifier "by default" is crucial. It stands prominently at the start of this provision, which has nothing to do with those proper names having the quite different structure "X~Y Z", where "X~Y" is understood in the way Dicklyon and Churn explain above. This is all perfectly standard, and in accord with the style resources that extensive discussion in 2011 determined would be followed on Wikipedia. But I am reluctant to enter into debate about any of that while Apteva wages several connected campaigns at several scattered locations. He or she is initiating RM discussions and the like for pointy "political" purposes, in a most disruptive way. When all that has settled down, it will be possible to consider any problems with WP:ENDASH calmly and reasonably here. But let's bear in mind that most of it has been thoroughly talked through last year anyway. ♫♪
NoeticaTea? 06:39, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- I have not checked all of the examples in endash, but I do know of at least three that are incorrect and need to be removed or repaired. Comet Hale-Bopp is either not capitalized or spelled with a hyphen. Uganda-Tanzania War is either spelled with a hyphen or an endash and war is not capitalized. Roman-Syrian War is definitely spelled with a hyphen. There are also some cases where it should be more clear that either a hyphen or an endash can be used, but consistency within an article for that word combination should be used - post-World War I can either use a hyphen or an endash. The whole focus on the MOS should be in helping editors, not forcing them to change everything. The vast majority of our editors and readers neither know nor care what a hyphen or endash is, and could not care less if the mark on the screen is a few micrometers longer or shorter. New Hart's Rules says that consistency locally is more important than consistency globally "It is, of course, vital to make sure that individual forms are used consistently within a single text or range of texts. If an author has consistently applied a scheme of hyphenation, an editor need not alter it, although a text littered with hyphens can look fussy and dated. Editors can find the dominant form of a particular compound in a suitable current dictionary such as the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors." (emphasis added) Apteva (talk) 06:56, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- The fact that you're forcing a choice between capitalization and the dash shows you haven't quite got the concept. The dash shows a union of two distinct entities, as for example in a war. Capitalization is irrelevant. In fact, when combining people's names, there is a strong tendency to go with the dash, even in sources which otherwise don't bother with it much, to distinguish cases of a single person with a hyphenated name. So, one entity: hyphen, two entities: dash, and being a proper name is not a factor. — kwami (talk) 07:15, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Trust me, I understand that part. I also understand why 10,000 books use a hyphen for Mexican-American War - because the style guide says to use a hyphen in Mexican-American War. But it is not an "odd claim" that names such as Mexican-American War use a hyphen. It is an "odd claim" that they do not use a hyphen, and the examples in print of an endash are few and very far between, and not anything that can be taken seriously as representing common use. What I am saying is the research is good, but if the conclusion makes no sense it is time to try to figure out what went wrong, and I think it comes down to only one sentence. Names use hyphens. Apply that and you end up with 10,000 books that spell Mexican-American War with a hyphen, 10,000 bird name articles with a hyphen, and who knows how many airports, wars, and towns in Wikipedia with a hyphen. Apteva (talk) 07:28, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- There is no such rule, AFAIK. Many sources simply don't bother with dashes. (Probably the majority of sources use hyphens for date and page ranges as well.) But for those which do, being a name is irrelevant. It would also be a problem with the many mathematical and scientific theorems/theories, where people are more careful to use the dash. — kwami (talk) 07:38, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- It is very true that many sources only use hyphens, but in books it is far more common to see endashes and emdashes used instead of hyphens, but hyphens for every name within that book, even though it liberally uses endashes and emdashes in the same way that our MOS uses them. Their style guide says the same thing ours does - names use hyphens. They just follow that advice. Apteva (talk) 07:54, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Our style guide doesn't say that, and you need a ref to show that "theirs" does. — kwami (talk) 08:11, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- It is very true that many sources only use hyphens, but in books it is far more common to see endashes and emdashes used instead of hyphens, but hyphens for every name within that book, even though it liberally uses endashes and emdashes in the same way that our MOS uses them. Their style guide says the same thing ours does - names use hyphens. They just follow that advice. Apteva (talk) 07:54, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- There is no such rule, AFAIK. Many sources simply don't bother with dashes. (Probably the majority of sources use hyphens for date and page ranges as well.) But for those which do, being a name is irrelevant. It would also be a problem with the many mathematical and scientific theorems/theories, where people are more careful to use the dash. — kwami (talk) 07:38, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Trust me, I understand that part. I also understand why 10,000 books use a hyphen for Mexican-American War - because the style guide says to use a hyphen in Mexican-American War. But it is not an "odd claim" that names such as Mexican-American War use a hyphen. It is an "odd claim" that they do not use a hyphen, and the examples in print of an endash are few and very far between, and not anything that can be taken seriously as representing common use. What I am saying is the research is good, but if the conclusion makes no sense it is time to try to figure out what went wrong, and I think it comes down to only one sentence. Names use hyphens. Apply that and you end up with 10,000 books that spell Mexican-American War with a hyphen, 10,000 bird name articles with a hyphen, and who knows how many airports, wars, and towns in Wikipedia with a hyphen. Apteva (talk) 07:28, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- The fact that you're forcing a choice between capitalization and the dash shows you haven't quite got the concept. The dash shows a union of two distinct entities, as for example in a war. Capitalization is irrelevant. In fact, when combining people's names, there is a strong tendency to go with the dash, even in sources which otherwise don't bother with it much, to distinguish cases of a single person with a hyphenated name. So, one entity: hyphen, two entities: dash, and being a proper name is not a factor. — kwami (talk) 07:15, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
WP:MOS:
Hyphenation also occurs in bird names such as Great Black-backed Gull, and in proper names such as Trois-Rivières and Wilkes-Barre.
New Hart's Rules:
Use a hyphen in newly coined or rare combinations with -like, and with names, but more established forms, particularly if short, are set solid: tortoise-like, Paris-like, ladylike, catlike, deathless, husbandless
(emphasis added)- Apteva (talk) 08:29, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Apteva, I'm not at all an enthusiast for the current MOS guidance on hyphens versus dashes. (I waste far too much of my time "correcting" entries at List of botanists by author abbreviation; new editors to this page almost never notice the two uses of en-dash as opposed to hyphen in each entry.) But you aren't properly addressing the MOS; the issue isn't names per se but distinctness of entities.
- Kwami has expressed the underlying principle very succinctly: "one entity: hyphen, two entities: dash, and being a proper name is not a factor". Your examples above show nothing about names. "Black-backed" as an compound adjective has a hyphen regardless of whether it is part of the name of a species of bird. "Trois-Rivières" is a combination of a number and a noun; it's analogous to "one-woman" in "he's a one-woman man", which would only ever be hyphenated. The fact that it's a name is irrelevant.
- The real problem is different: when does a compound which began life by referring to two entities become a reference to a single entity? "McGraw-Hill" obviously once referred to "McGraw" and "Hill", but as these now don't have independent resonance it is argued that the compound refers to a single entity and so should be hyphenated. "French–British rivalry" refers to rivalry between the French and the British, i.e. to two distinct entities, and so should have an en-dash according to the MOS. "Mexican–American wars" referring to more than one such war between Mexicans and Americans again obviously refers to two distinct entities and should have an en-dash. But, from what I see as your perspective (perhaps wrongly), it could be argued that if the noun phrase "Mexican~American war" refers to one single war (whether or not "war" is capitalized) then a single entity is meant and a hyphen should be used. (To be clear I don't see this as a valid argument but it does test the principle.)
- As another problematic example for the principle, consider double-barrelled names. If such a name is of "long standing" then it is hyphenated as it refers to a single person. But if two people with surnames "Smith" and "Jones" get married and decide to call themselves "Smith~Jones", should this novel combination, which still clearly refers to two entities, have a hyphen or an en-dash? Convention rather than the principle rules here, I guess. (But then why rule out convention(s) in other cases?)
- In summary, the principle "one entity: hyphen; two entities: dash" is a semantic test and is not easy to apply in practice. If it is to continue to form the basis of MOS guidance it needs some further clarification, if this is possible. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:35, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, the 'name' thing misses the point entirely. Apteva, your MOS and Hart's examples have nothing to do with dashes.
- As Peter said, there is a point where a dash becomes a hyphen. Austria~Hungary is a case in point: you could even see that as a political statement, with a dash indicating a union of two constituent states, and a hyphen indicating a single state named after two ancestral states. And indeed the perception of the degree of unification may have changed over time. You get essentially the same thing with people's names: a dash in a theorem named after two people, because it's a union of their work, but a hyphen for a child named after two parents, because even though a child is a product of that union, no-one presents them as half mom, half dad. The publishing house would originally have been McGraw–Hill, but we're now long past the point where both McGraw and Hill are dead, and no-one remembers who they were, so now it's simply a company with a double-barreled name, like the child. The Mexican-American War, with a hyphen, would be a war of Mexican Americans, just as the Russian-American Company was a company for Russian America. There will be cases which are indeterminate, just as there are when a city or country changes its name and we debate which name is better for the title, but such cases are relatively rare. — kwami (talk) 12:30, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Right. There will always be indeterminate cases, as with many other deployments of the limited resources of punctuation against the far more rich and subtle semantic nuances in the language itself. Just like the limited resources of an alphabet, pitted against the subtly varying sounds of any natural language. Problem cases do not count as refutations of anything, in these domains; solutions are expected to be optimal, not perfect. Kwami has given a good account of the McGraw-Hill-type cases. Now, another way to think about double-barrelled surnames: just as a parent-teacher has a hyphen, because the same person is both parent and teacher, so in a way Mary Smith-Jones is both a Smith and a Jones! She might equally have been called a Smith after one parent, or a Jones after the other. She is called both, like the parent-teacher. It all makes a good sort of sense; that is why the guidelines in MOS are in good accord with best practice, as captured in many other major style resources. [Posted from an iPad; apologies for any typos.]
NoeticaTea? 12:54, 12 October 2012 (UTC)- The problem with Peter's and Kwami's theory is that McGraw-Hill has always been written with a hyphen, see google books from 1880 to 1917, a period where both founders were still alive.
- Right. There will always be indeterminate cases, as with many other deployments of the limited resources of punctuation against the far more rich and subtle semantic nuances in the language itself. Just like the limited resources of an alphabet, pitted against the subtly varying sounds of any natural language. Problem cases do not count as refutations of anything, in these domains; solutions are expected to be optimal, not perfect. Kwami has given a good account of the McGraw-Hill-type cases. Now, another way to think about double-barrelled surnames: just as a parent-teacher has a hyphen, because the same person is both parent and teacher, so in a way Mary Smith-Jones is both a Smith and a Jones! She might equally have been called a Smith after one parent, or a Jones after the other. She is called both, like the parent-teacher. It all makes a good sort of sense; that is why the guidelines in MOS are in good accord with best practice, as captured in many other major style resources. [Posted from an iPad; apologies for any typos.]
- For "American-Mexican War", as Peter pointed out, some people take Mexican-American as a compound adjective for "War", with the same role as "Spanish" in "Spanish Civil War". --Enric Naval (talk) 13:41, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- But no. That account of McGraw-Hill doesn't have to be taken literally. It gives a schematic way of thinking about the name for such an entity. People need to understand: the theoretical foundations of punctuation are underdeveloped. The linguistic literature on it is extremely sparse, for example. Nunberg did famous pioneering work a couple of decades ago, and it's been rather stagnant since then. Again, don't expect perfection: and don't be so dogmatic! It is not computer programming: these are "naturally" developing sets of conventions, sometimes in competition, all aiming at effective communication of what needs highlighting in written language beyond what mere letters can achieve. Wikipedia has chosen a high-quality, best-practice set from the competing alternatives. Any change would affect 4,000,000 articles, and is not to be entertained lightly. Or approached with the certainty that is born of ignorance. NoeticaTea? 14:08, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- When opposing the hyphens in airport names, the account of McGraw-Hill was a posited as an example of how compounded proper names started having a dash and eventually changed into having a hyphen. If McGraw-Hill was never written with a dash, then the whole point of the account becomes moot, independently of whether it's literal or not. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:49, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- I think Noetica raises a valid point that comes up in many of these MOS-related debates that have been going on for years. There are some cases where there is no consistency across the English language. In some cases, it's an WP:ENGVAR issue, and as such our convention is to keep British subjects in British English, Australian subjects in Australian English, etc. Other times, however, the inconsistency isn't dialect-dependent. It's just that there is no universal, accepted standard across all sources (I'm also thinking of the currently running dispute of The Beatles vs. the Beatles which is occupying such a large proportion of the Wikipedia servers now). In cases like this, where there is clearly no agreement between reliable sources, or widespread agreement on usage, the more important issue is consistency across the project. We need to establish a set of common-sense and easy to follow rules which is supported by enough well-respected style guides to be supportable, but we're never going to be able to reach a universal agreement with all reliable sources because they don't agree with each other. So since it doesn't matter which convention we pick, but we do need to pick one and make it the site-wide standard. And then just be done with it, and not keep revisiting it every six months because someone comes along and decides that just because they're personal favorite style guide disagrees with our usage, it's got to be overhauled yet again. Perfect agreement is impossible, so we should stop looking for it. Set a rule, stick to it, and be done with it. --Jayron32 14:17, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- But a lot of the discussion here is not so much about what rules to have or whether to change them in any substantive sense (although that broader debate does exist, all the way to whether to have the hyphen/en-dash distinction at all; my preference FWIW), but how to apply the rules we do have to specific cases and groups of cases, such as airport names, Mexican-American War etc. The point is that even with these complex rules, we very definitely do not have best practice, clarity or a rule that we can stick with - because people have different views of what the rule means, as the above thread and countless past arguments demonstrate. N-HH talk/edits 14:29, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- But no. That account of McGraw-Hill doesn't have to be taken literally. It gives a schematic way of thinking about the name for such an entity. People need to understand: the theoretical foundations of punctuation are underdeveloped. The linguistic literature on it is extremely sparse, for example. Nunberg did famous pioneering work a couple of decades ago, and it's been rather stagnant since then. Again, don't expect perfection: and don't be so dogmatic! It is not computer programming: these are "naturally" developing sets of conventions, sometimes in competition, all aiming at effective communication of what needs highlighting in written language beyond what mere letters can achieve. Wikipedia has chosen a high-quality, best-practice set from the competing alternatives. Any change would affect 4,000,000 articles, and is not to be entertained lightly. Or approached with the certainty that is born of ignorance. NoeticaTea? 14:08, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- N-HH, I'm unsure of some of your meanings. Andreas, I agree with much of what you say, particularly the point that style typically varies in sources, no matter how much the most authoritative style guides on both sides of the Atlantic might huff and puff about various issues. Often, experts and those used to seeing a stylistic usage every day (e.g. ignore hyphen as unnecessary) forget that their text needs to be easily read by semi- and non-experts too—people who don't see these items every day. WP writes for a broader range of readers than just experts. Every reputable publisher, including en.WP, has its house rules, and I must say that there's sometimes tension in those publishers between stylistic disharmony within the expert fields to which they contribute publications, and from one chapter/article to another within their portfolio. It's not an easy task, sometimes. So WP faces calls to be inconsistent in its use of the dash to link parallel items (mandated by many authorities), because the sources are inconsistent, either between (or within) themselves, or against the major styleguides. My feeling is that we've reached a good compromise in many cases, and that Mexican–American is the right call here, given the large body of examples we have of analogous items with a dash. Tony (talk) 14:50, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- I agree that the correct punctuation of Mexican–American wars to refer to multiple wars between the US and Mexico is correct with an endash, and that French–British rivalry is correct with an endash. I also agree that probably 99% of the people with an Apple computer with all three hyphens or dashes on the keyboard have never had a clue what the other two were for. I can certainly remember experimenting with them to see what they looked like and trying to pick the one that looked right. The MOS is not a top down organization where you put into the MOS that every third letter has to be red and all of a sudden 4 million articles are affected. It is bottom up. People write articles and a MOS is written so that new articles look sort of like the ones that already exist. In cases where something new comes along, like an endash that as late as 2007 was banned from FA titles, and was only used in 1% of the cases where it should have been used, I found it annoying to have a copy editor who clearly knew nothing about the subject come along and change a hyphen to an endash - even though the change was correct, such as Bose–Einstein statistics. The advice from New Hart's Rules would be that if an article or group of articles are consistently spelling Bose-Einstein statistics with a hyphen, leave it, as local consistency is more important than global consistency. I have no objection, though, as we are running out of articles to add and running out of content to add (or are we?) to go back and spend time bringing the 1% that use an endash up to 80%, but what I object to is spilling over into articles like Mexican-American War that use a hyphen, and what I object to is even discussing whether it should have an endash. Of course it uses a hyphen. There are though, actual situations where two words and two punctuations are equally valid and that also applies to hyphens and endashes, and I would recommend treating those as British English and American English (it is Brit speak to use a hyphen in post-World War I and Am speak to use an endash). The status right now is that of the spillage into names like "Spanish-American War", relatively few have been tainted with an endash, so the collateral is relatively small, but needs to be corrected. As to where we are on the 1% to 80% spectrum of text that really should use an endash, I have no guess - it could be 2%, it could be 79%. I doubt it is 99%. We had an editor embark recently on changing emdash to nbsp space emdash space, for example. But no, changes to the MOS do not make changes to 4,000,000 articles. It is the other way around - changes to 4,000,000 articles bring changes to the MOS, so that the 4,000,001st article looks like the rest. And yes, avoiding titles with an endash is preferable. Is it really going to kill anyone to use California (1840-1847) in the title and California (1840–1847) in the text? It certainly avoids a lot of redirects, and do three pixels really make that much difference? Apteva (talk) 18:28, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
Break 1 (Article titles)
I looked for MoS compliance on dashes by clicking "Random article", and searching for dashes or hyphens that should be dashes according to MoS. This almost always means ranges (pp. 56–58 or date ranges) or list punctuation, the most common places for dashes or hyphens that should be dashes. Out of 20 such articles, 11 used dashes, 6 used hyphens, and 3 used both. As for whether we should use dashes, I tend to sympathize with Hyphen Luddites but the last time we had an RfC, nobody like that showed up at all, so it's hard to claim a silent consensus. And if you want to avoid redirects for better performance, you need to argue with these people and these people first. Art LaPella (talk) 19:57, 12 October 2012 (UTC) However, when I first encountered the dash rules, compliance was non-existent. Art LaPella (talk) 20:02, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- So compliance is roughly 55%, counting the mixed ones as non-compliance. Apteva (talk) 20:38, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- But counting like that tells only part of the story. 3 of the 20 did not apply a consistent style, so they are beyond the pale entirely. Of the 17 that did apply a consistent style, 11 complied with the MOS guideline. That's roughly 65%; roughly two out of every three, in that small sample.
NoeticaTea? 23:04, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- But counting like that tells only part of the story. 3 of the 20 did not apply a consistent style, so they are beyond the pale entirely. Of the 17 that did apply a consistent style, 11 complied with the MOS guideline. That's roughly 65%; roughly two out of every three, in that small sample.
Should the sentence including article titles in the scope of MOS be deleted?
Back to the main question, are there any objections to deleting the sentence "The Manual of Style applies to all parts of an article, including the title. See especially punctuation, below. (The policy page Wikipedia:Article titles does not determine punctuation.)"? If not, it will be deleted. Apteva (talk) 05:54, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, I object. It make no sense for title style to deviate from the style used in article text. Dicklyon (talk) 06:26, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- That is not the issue, but in fact there are reasons for title style to deviate from the text, for example for technical reasons an underscore can not appear in the title but can appear in the text. Chinese characters can not appear in the title but can appear in the text. It is also probably better to use a hyphen in the title even though endash would be used in the text. The basic folly though is guidelines never tell policies what to do. Policies tell guidelines what to do, and both policies and guidelines must be consistent with each other, so the sentence is both unnecessary and absurd. Apteva (talk) 03:02, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- Absolutely. I object most strongly. When you settle down to discuss one question at a time in an orderly way, and only at the appropriate location (which is indeed here, for the present question), I will give my reasons.
♫♪
NoeticaTea? 06:32, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
Use of with ellipses and dashes
“ |
|
” |
I don't get this. How is
- France, Germany,
- ... and Belgium
worse than
- France,
- Germany, ... and Belgium
(or the analogous case with dashes)? —Tamfang (talk) 19:52, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Maybe that example should be chucked in favor of a better example. I see NBSP used a lot between units and their values. Apteva (talk) 20:08, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- That's listed too, and I agree it's worthwhile. —Tamfang (talk) 20:15, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Maybe that example should be chucked in favor of a better example. I see NBSP used a lot between units and their values. Apteva (talk) 20:08, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- is used in many situations enumerated at WP:NBSP. The question is whether we should also use it in front of every ellipsis. If we should, I have often complained that the WP:ELLIPSIS phrase "only as needed" is misleading because it goes on to say the nbsp is necessary with each normal use of an ellipsis. Art LaPella (talk) 20:17, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Art, I recall that this was discussed before. I said then, and say again now, that the point is accurately expressed with the present wording. A may indeed be advisable with every ellipsis; but where does it go? Sometimes before, sometimes after – only as needed to prevent improper line breaks. No, we should not use it in front of every ellipsis. In this case, we need one only after the ellipsis:
These were his exact words: "... we are still worried".
- That's to avoid this happening:
These were his exact words: "...
we are still worried".- But in this case we need a hard space only before the ellipsis:
"Are we going to France ...?" he asked.
- And that's to avoid this happening:
"Are we going to France
...?" he asked.- In a third case, the hard space after the ellipsis is overkill, because there is no harm in a break that may occur there:
"France, Germany, ... and Belgium"
- This is fine:
"France, Germany, ...
and Belgium"- The ellipsis guideline may need minor fixes to explain things better. I've said that for a long time! But the guidance itself is pretty standard, and robustly adapted for online use. Compare the shockingly poor treatment of ellipses in CMOS, which has improved only a little in CMOS16.
- Similar points can be made about a spaced en dash (in any of its uses). When one is used in punctuating a sentence, for example, it marks some sort of a break in sense from what precedes it – like the effect of a colon, perhaps. It's preferable not to have that dash turning up at the start of the next line, almost as we would not want a colon wrapping to the next line. Sometimes it makes little difference; but sometimes it looks awful and might obscure the meaning. In online work, we do not know how different text will be rendered on different browsers with different individual settings (window size, text size, and so on). So the guidelines must be more foolproof that those for more static printed text, traditionally in the hands of professional typesetters.
- ♫♪
- NoeticaTea? 22:47, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, I noted that it was discussed before. No, I didn't say "in front of every ellipsis"; I said "each normal use of an ellipsis". "normal" refers to the "France, Germany, ... and Belgium" situation, which I encounter as a proofreader much more often than the other cases. If you disagree about which use of the ellipsis is most common, I will prepare statistics. I'm not talking about rewriting the whole guideline. Can we simply remove the misleading word "only"? Art LaPella (talk) 22:58, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- We don't disagree on anything important then, Art – except that "only" is crucial, as I have once again explained. How is it misleading? I agree that you have trouble with it, and please don't get me wrong: that is important input! But I don't see the original poster having trouble with that word "only". Do you?
- Why not draft an alternative text here, carefully laid out as it would appear in MOS itself, so we can work on this together?
- NoeticaTea? 23:10, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, I noted that it was discussed before. No, I didn't say "in front of every ellipsis"; I said "each normal use of an ellipsis". "normal" refers to the "France, Germany, ... and Belgium" situation, which I encounter as a proofreader much more often than the other cases. If you disagree about which use of the ellipsis is most common, I will prepare statistics. I'm not talking about rewriting the whole guideline. Can we simply remove the misleading word "only"? Art LaPella (talk) 22:58, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- The original poster asked why we have an nbsp with an ellipsis at all. Why is a break after Germany worse than a break after France? I don't have an answer to that question. While explaining it, I mentioned my long-standing objection to "only". He didn't ask about that word, and I can't explain why nobody else objects to that word. One alternative text would be to simply omit the word "only", so I don't see what there is to lay out.
- How is "only" misleading? From the standpoint of most editors other than MoS insiders, it is strange to use an nbsp at all. So their first reaction to using an nbsp only as needed, would be: why do we need it at all? It certainly wouldn't be: why don't we use it twice, both before and after the ellipsis? And yet the guideline goes on to recommend an nbsp with every ellipsis (apparently not just the main France Germany & Belgium case). It also explains that we don't use two nbsps, just in case anyone thinks we should. For most editors, an unexpected nbsp with every ellipsis is more of a "Wow!" than a "What, only one?" I believe my previous analogy was "Use a space suit in space only as needed, for example if you want to breathe." Art LaPella (talk) 23:57, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks for clarifying, Art. Three points in answer:
- To the original poster: It's just a norm of good typesetting that the indication of an omission should come before any linebreak, so that the fact and the context of the omission are immediately apparent to the reader. Such norms are respected by some publishers and not others. Penguin, I think, is happy for all sorts of punctuation to shift to the start of the next line. But the long-standing practice here has been to respect such norms, especially with judicious use of .
- Art, if you think that removing the word "only" would help, I will not object. But I think we should then give one or two examples of undesirable breaks that the use of will avoid. Perhaps those that I offer above, yes?
- In reviewing an archived RM for Halley's Comet I came across a live example that is relevant here, where I had failed to use and the line did indeed break badly on my screen, at the end of a quote like this:
"[The initial letter of a word
...]."- (Just to demonstrate that the less "normal" cases do occur.)
- NoeticaTea? 06:53, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks for clarifying, Art. Three points in answer:
- How would a line break after "Germany" make the omission and its context less apparent to the reader? What's next, "to do" (i.e., avoiding a –ha ha– split infinitive)? —Tamfang (talk) 08:31, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- Something like the way having a period, a question mark, or a closing parenthesis or quotation mark at the start of a line would. The ellipsis is different in its precise logic from each of those, and a sentence-punctuating dash is different again. But there are relevant similarities here. Also, note that I did not speak of the omission and its context being more or less apparent; I spoke of immediacy: "... so that the fact and the context of the omission are immediately apparent to the reader." Often it's like that: the reader can be delayed, irritated, or distracted if the information doesn't come quickly and naturally, or just where it is expected.
I don't make the norms, and I didn't design human perceptual psychology☺; but I have made efforts to understood both, and both are relevant to good punctuation and good disposition of text on a page or a screen.
NoeticaTea? 08:52, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- Something like the way having a period, a question mark, or a closing parenthesis or quotation mark at the start of a line would. The ellipsis is different in its precise logic from each of those, and a sentence-punctuating dash is different again. But there are relevant similarities here. Also, note that I did not speak of the omission and its context being more or less apparent; I spoke of immediacy: "... so that the fact and the context of the omission are immediately apparent to the reader." Often it's like that: the reader can be delayed, irritated, or distracted if the information doesn't come quickly and naturally, or just where it is expected.
- My answer didn't get saved last night. "examples of undesirable breaks" I usually don't object to adding more explanation, but since you asked, it would add a lot of text without explaining anything I missed. I can easily imagine that omitting an nbsp can result in a line break at that location. But if you think readers need more explanation, it should go at WP:NBSP because it is explaining how nbsp works. Or you could explain some things about nbsp that really are mystifying: it assumes we all recognize bad line breaks when we see them, but in practice I add nbsp only in places that closely resemble the examples, rather than try to guess what the consensus may be on this page, or worse, the consensus on the page I'm editing. Is this related to "only", or is it a separate idea? I don't see how removing "only" would make examples more helpful, because "only" makes sense only to editors who were somehow expecting multiple nbsps, and we already have a red-colored example discouraging multiple nbsps. Art LaPella (talk) 20:21, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
Talk pages
It was mentioned above that a lot of discussion on this talk page is about how to apply the MOS. That is like going to an article and discussing the subject of the article instead of the content of an article. For example, it is not appropriate to go to the talk page of Abortion to discuss whether abortion should be legal, but it is appropriate to go there to discuss whether the article should say that in some places they are legal, and the article should say that is legalized murder, or that is not legalized murder (both are oxymorons by the way, and neither are appropriate). Ideally the place for all discussions on the application of the MOS would be on the article talk page that is being discussed or at the help desk, and not here for the same reason. And if it turns out that the MOS is FUBAR, bring it up here. Apteva (talk) 20:25, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- If you want to discuss whether abortion should be legal, you go to a blog, not Wikipedia. Assuming you don't want MoS applications to be driven off Wikipedia completely, I don't think that analogy works at all. So where should we discuss whether a specific article conforms to MoS? If everybody agrees what MoS is saying on some specific issue, then I suppose the article talk page is appropriate. If not, then I suppose we come here to discuss what it really means – especially if the same issue applies to multiple articles. I hope we don't need another rule on the subject; we have way too many rules as it is. Art LaPella (talk) 22:26, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Discussion takes place on the talk page of the page to be changed. If the meaning of the MOS is unclear, that is not a discussion of how to apply it but a discussion on how to change the MOS. When an issue applies to multiple articles there is normally a wikiproject where the correct interpretation can be discussed. But questions about whether to use an endash or a hyphen within an article do not belong here, they belong at that article or at the help desk. Questions on whether endash should be used in titles belong at the talk page for Wikipedia:Article titles, which says nothing about endash, or at the article talk page. Questions about whether Mexican-American War is spelled with an endash or a hyphen belong at Talk:Mexican-American War, not here. Questions about whether the MOS is correct do belong here. Talk page guidelines are at Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines. If too many people are asking style questions here the banner at the top of that pages talk page can be added here - {{metatalk}} Apteva (talk) 04:53, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- No. Tony (talk) 05:07, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- If discussion takes place on the talk page of the page to be changed, then removing dashes from titles changes the MoS, which rightly or wrongly claims to regulate title punctuation. According to the Arbitration Committee, questions about dashes including the Mexican–American War were settled here. The talk page guidelines say to avoid off-topic posts; is that your point? If so, it's circular reasoning to assume it doesn't belong at the MoS to prove it doesn't belong at the MoS. The actual Mexican–American War debate took place on several pages, with no attempt to exclude anyone who was interested. That sounds better than having some nobility class decide who gets to discuss something. Editors often agree to centralize a discussion, but only when everyone has been notified if they are likely to be interested. Art LaPella (talk) 07:53, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- Discussion takes place on the talk page of the page to be changed. If the meaning of the MOS is unclear, that is not a discussion of how to apply it but a discussion on how to change the MOS. When an issue applies to multiple articles there is normally a wikiproject where the correct interpretation can be discussed. But questions about whether to use an endash or a hyphen within an article do not belong here, they belong at that article or at the help desk. Questions on whether endash should be used in titles belong at the talk page for Wikipedia:Article titles, which says nothing about endash, or at the article talk page. Questions about whether Mexican-American War is spelled with an endash or a hyphen belong at Talk:Mexican-American War, not here. Questions about whether the MOS is correct do belong here. Talk page guidelines are at Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines. If too many people are asking style questions here the banner at the top of that pages talk page can be added here - {{metatalk}} Apteva (talk) 04:53, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
See User talk:Apteva. I will certainly take a look at the Arbcom decision and bring it up again. Everyone makes mistakes. Even me when I thought I did. Apteva (talk) 08:07, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- Questions about how to use the MoS are relatively rare and almost always resolved quickly. They don't get in the way. If it isn't broken, why fix it? 1. Where would these users go if not here? 2. It's kind of nice for all the people who work on the MoS to see proof that people care about using it correctly. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:05, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
American/British English changing
Are the changes this editor is making permissible? Since 2008, has made no other contributions to Wikipedia other than to change American English to British English and is starting to look like a WP:SPA with his editing. While some of it is appropriate, not all the articles he is changing have strong national ties to England. I came across it at the Steven Lewington article, which is essentially a professional wrestler of English descent who wrestles in America and who was most notable in America. In addition to that, I was the original author and I used American English. My concern is that he has made thousands of these changes and that is his entire editing history. A cursory glance is some of the topics, for example, may be like the Steven Lewington article, like his changing the date usage on album articles of a British artist when American English was used before. Regards, — Moe ε 08:23, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- In general, it is not okay to go into articles and change one optional style to another. However, if this editor is going onto the article talk pages, saying "I think this article should be in British English because its topic is related to Britain in ways X, Y, and Z," and receiving no objection within a reasonable period of time, then this would be a grayer area.
- Contact the user and direct him or her to WP:RETAIN, specifically the line, "When an English variety's consistent usage has been established in an article, it is maintained in the absence of consensus to the contrary. With few exceptions (e.g. when a topic has strong national ties or a term/spelling carries less ambiguity), there is no valid reason for such a change." Maybe this person just doesn't know about this rule. We have so many. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:57, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- Upon further examination of the articles, if they're about British citizens, then there is a real case for using British English. In this case, I can see why the user is making these changes. I'd say that Teusdaily only needs to raise these changes on the article talk pages if someone objects to them—which you have. Drop Tues a talk page line and say that you've started a talk page discussion about his or her changes. State your reasons why you think the articles should be in U.S. English, allow others to contribute, and a consensus one way or the other will probably form.
- Is this user also changing national varieties on subject-neutral articles? Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:46, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
Disruption is not tolerated
![]() | This page is for discussing the MOS, not specific users. If there are ongoing behavioral issues that need to be addressed the appropriate path is to open a user request for comment. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:08, 14 October 2012 (UTC) |
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was: "Apteva needs to stop the disruption now" Apteva (talk) 03:28, 14 October 2012 (UTC) (I am restoring this section that was blanked by Apteva. Users are reminded that this page is under ArbCom sanction, as indicated by the notice at the top of the page. --Neotarf (talk) 08:35, 13 October 2012 (UTC)) In recent weeks, User:Apteva has been the most active contributor to this talk page, pushing his idiosyncratic theory about hyphens, dashes, and proper names. He has started at least three RMs based on this theory. As far as I can see, he has not been able to convince anyone to buy into his theory, and his RMs have been roundly opposed, as have his proposals here. I have not had time to read everything that he has written here recently, but on scanning it appears to be just same old same old. I think the vigorous pushing has become too disruptive, and needs to stop now. Does anyone agree, or have a good idea how to encourage a good resolution to this dead horse? Dicklyon (talk) 06:44, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
I have restored this section again, after Apteva collapsed/hid it as "off topic". The question before MOS editors is whether anyone supports what he is trying to do here, or if not whether they have good ideas how to help bring the disruption to an end. Of course, if he stops, no further comment or escalation is needed. Dicklyon (talk) 22:18, 13 October 2012 (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.
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ANI discussion
An ANI discussion related to this page, in particular about the recent RFC, has been initiated by IP user 146.90.43.8 at WP:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Is it reasonable to have my integrity questioned and my edits reverted because I am an ip?. --Neotarf (talk) 14:00, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks very much for letting us know, Neotarf. I missed this earlier, because Apteva hid it!
- My intention is, if the RFC is not set aside as a hopelessly confused jumble from the very start, to request an ArbCom case to sort the whole thing out. I have joined that ANI discussion to alert admins to that intention.
- Unfortunately I may not be able to respond fast to developments. I am away from my usual resources, and busy with urgent matters in real life.
- ♥
- NoeticaTea? 02:02, 14 October 2012 (UTC)