Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers

Unofficial anagram of the Manual of Style

Number ranges more generally

Meant to bring this up a long time ago, but forgot. The logic and resultant rule we're applying to date ranges – to give them in the form 2002–2011 not 2002–11 – applies to all numeric ranges (outside of directly quoted material) and we need to state that explicitly. I keep running into sporadic WP:WIKILAWYERing along lines which can be parodied as "I can use 'p. 2002–11' if I wanna because MOS:NUM#Ranges only technically applies to dates, and no matter how much WP:COMMONSENSE dictates that that the reasoning applies across the board, the rules don't quite say it, so ha ha ha." Let's just fix it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  06:18, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

It seems to me that the preference for a single piece of guidance in Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 129 #WP:DATERANGE ambiguity and stylistic concerns RfC debate would apply equally to the choice between full number ranges and abbreviated ones, in particular phrases like "pages 153–158" vs "pages 153–58" or "pages 153–8". It would be a step forward, I think, to encourage one style and deprecate the others. Reading the RfC, I believe that there is likely consensus for a new sub-section in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers #Numbers titled "Number ranges" with guidance along the lines of "Number ranges, including page ranges, when given as ordinals, should state the full number both for the beginning and end of the range." I expect that the usual exceptions like "In tables and infoboxes where space is limited ..." and when quoting a source directly would need to be mentioned, along with a few examples.

You will either need to start a new RfC, or try a bold edit to this page and see if it sticks. Or perhaps there will be lots more debate here, whence we can determine consensus. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 18:56, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Took the bold approach [1], since all the reasoning in the RfC applies to other date ranges. We can of course RfC it again if necessary.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  23:35, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

User:SMcCandish, I'd much prefer to retain the option. How do you like journal page ranges such as "43241–43248". Really? I'd do a service to readers: "43241–48". Tony (talk) 01:36, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

The problem I see is that for every case of "43241–8" (which is honestly hard to be certain is intended to be a range rather than some kind of obscure serial number or something, so yes I do think "43241–43248" is preferable) there's going to be about 1000 cases of "125–9" or "1901–05". The last kind of case is seriously problematic since it looks like a Y-M date; many fonts do not distinguish clearly between - and –, and many readers are not clear on the distinction even if they can see it. Maybe a caveat can be added that if the range begins with a number higher than 2100 the short form can be used. That should avoid any potential confusion with dates up to the near future. PS: We can't do something like "If it could be confused for a date, use the long form" because some of this data is auto-generated by templates and bots and such. We can't depend on every number range to be human edited. That'll be even more true the more WikiData stuff is implemented here.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  03:38, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

"125–9" or "1901–05"—Isn't that what Chicago demands? Tony (talk) 08:04, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

CMoS has a complicated four-tiered system for compressing ranges, geared to avoiding ambiguities (they say, though I don't see that it deals with date-confusion), and based on how large the starting number is. I strongly suspect their system is too fiddly for WP to accept (plus it's a manual thing, and can't reliably be done in an automated way). The CMoS system, and any others for compression, are concerned with paper publications where space-saving is a concern. CMoS also recognizes the don't-compress rule we implemented for dates, and the compress-maximally ("2934–8") approach some want to use here. Maybe more importantly, it expects citations in a consistent format with a particular order of authors, dates, pages, etc., and a more limited number of such parameters, where we have utter chaos. The potential for confusing dates and other things is much higher on WP, especially since people are empowered by WP:CITEVAR to invent their own citation "styles" (according to CITEVAR's regulars, anyway), and our templated citations have parameters for just about every kind of source ID there is, many of which are numeric. PS: Anyone should feel free to revert the WP:BOLD addition of the "Number ranges" section, of course. If it needs more discussion and perhaps more exemptions or whatever, we can work that out.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  17:01, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Any further input on this?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  05:36, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Non-breaking spaces

In the section Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers #Numbers as figures or words, there are examples of markup that have no reason behind them. In particular:

• Other numbers are given in numerals (3.75, 544) or in forms such as 21 million. Markup: 21{{nbsp}}million

I fail to see why "million" is any different in general from any other word.

The guidance at MOS:NBSP is "It is desirable to prevent line breaks where breaking across lines might be confusing or awkward." If you examine the sentence "Over 60 million people live in the UK", what is confusing or awkward about breaking after the 60? It does not impart any alternative meaning, so is not confusing; and starting the next line with "million" is no more awkward than any other word. Of course starting a line with an abbreviation or unit symbol, or punctuation like an ellipsis would be awkward, but we have MOS guidance already asking us to avoid those circumstances.

I do understand that sentences like "She sold the company for £5 million." would benefit from having a non-breaking space before the million. But that is simply because the currency unit appearing before the ordinal allows the fragment "She sold the company for £5" to have a very different meaning and a cognitive dissonance occurs if the reader then encounters "million" at the start of the next line. Nevertheless, those cases are already covered by MOS:NBSP's "prevent line breaks where breaking across lines might be confusing", so why should we be requiring a non-breaking space in all cases of an ordinal followed by "million" (or "billion", etc.)? --RexxS (talk) 18:29, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

I agree. No one minds the avoidance of wrapping in display mode, but it makes our edit mode even less friendly to newbies and casual editors. If only we had a less cumbersome mark-up for it. Tony (talk) 01:37, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

We do have one: {{ns}}. This should probably be merged with {{nbsp}} since they serve the same purpose (including spans of multiple non-breaking spaces).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  03:42, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

I don't see an issue with using a non-breaking space in that example, but I suppose the main reason to use a non-breaking space is that whatever numerical value precedes "million" is modified by that unit of scale. For what it's worth, a cognitive dissonance would also occur with a sentence like the following if a line break occurred between the numeric value (1.5) and the unit of scale ("thousand"):

"The average weight of a [car make and model] in kilograms is approximately 1.5

thousand."

Compare that to the example provided above:

"She sold the company for £5

million."

@RexxS: Any time that a unit of measurement precedes a numeric value that is modified by a unit of scale (e.g., thousand, million, billion, etc.), the same issue arises; it's not unique to cases where the unit of measurement is a currency. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 03:00, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Sure. You don't even need a unit of measurement to generate ambiguity, whenever you write a multiplier as words: "The number of people affected was estimated to be 10 thousand". That ought not to break between "10" and "thousand" and a non-breaking space would be helpful in cases like that. Of course you can always write "The number of people affected was estimated to be 10,000". Just as you can write "The average weight of the car is approximately 1.5 thousand kilograms, which I would find much more natural and wouldn't cause any problem if the line broke before either of the words "thousand" or "kilograms". Or just use "1.5 tonnes" in that particular case – still doesn't need a non-breaking space. --RexxS (talk) 03:14, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

You make a fair point; however, referring back to our discussion at Talk:MDMA, I still think the use of non-breaking spaces in that context should just be left up to individual editors.

Also, this is sort of a tangential point, but we really should have an article, or at least a redirect to an article section, about "unit of scale" / "units of scale". Potential content references: [2][3]. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 03:23, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Fair enough, and I agree with you about the usefullness of an article or redirect. But you're never going to convince me there's any value whatsoever in putting a non-breaking space anywhere in the sentence "In 2014, between 9 and 29 million people between the ages of 15 and 64 used ecstasy". --RexxS (talk) 15:51, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

"Miles" in prose

There does not seem to be any guidance in this Manual of Style on what units to use in prose writing and whether to convert them (such as this edit: "they used bamboo pipelines to transport and carry both brine and natural gas for many miles" to "they used bamboo pipelines to transport and carry both brine and natural gas for many kilometres."). WP:UNITS seems to state use SI (kilometers) "In all other articles" without "strong national ties", but it seems to just cover actual unit measurement, not prose. Using the unit "miles" without converting in prose seems to be supported by this Manual because it is cited twice as an example, "He walked several miles", "Miles of trenches were dug". Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 18:44, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Those examples seem irrelevant to this question. I don't see why prose would be any different from any other use of units. In this particular case I would go back to the sources (why are there four of them?) and see what they say. And use SI units with optional conversion, as there doesn't appear to be a strong national tie for this article. Kendall-K1 (talk) 19:11, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

On my way to debate miles vs. kilometers

–EEng

(edit conflict) There are two scenarios: (i) where you have a direct quote from a source; (ii) where you are writing a prose summary of one or more sources.

In the case of the direct quotation, there's little doubt that "for many miles" is best, if that is what the source states. Fidelity to the source is essential.

Where you are paraphrasing and summarising sources, you have more flexibility. You may ask yourself in those cases whether you need to write either "for many miles" or "for many kilometres"? If there is some more precise indication of distance like "for about 30 miles", that could easily be written as "for about 30 miles (50 km)", which increases the breadth of audience who would find it easily comprehensible. Obviously, constructions like "for more than 50 miles (80 km)" are just as useful.

If there really isn't any better indication in the sources about the distance, then I'd recommend using either phrases like "He walked several miles" or "He walked several kilometres" (but not both), depending on what system is the primary one used in the article (i.e. imperial or metric) – if there is one. That has the advantage that you're not altering whatever scheme is already in place in the article, so you're slightly less likely to get into conflict with the pedants who insist there is only One True Way™. HTH --RexxS (talk) 19:19, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Great answer. EEng 01:52, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Yep.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  03:44, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Rule on M and bn

I have to question whether this should be retained, at least in anything like the current form:

• M (unspaced) or bn (unspaced) respectively may be used for "million" or "billion" after a number, when the word has been spelled out at the first occurrence (She received £70 million and her son £10M).<!-- This needs to be coordinated with text in units tables re nonuse of M (for 1000) MM, etc. -->

Reasons:

1. It's inconsistent to use bn (lower-case) but M (capitalized).
2. The bn abbreviation isn't all that frequently used in general-audience publications (mostly in financial news, which verges on specialist material).
3. It's also not consistently given as bn but sometimes Bn or B; why are we advocating bn in particular? (Similarly, m is often used in real-world sources, especially ones not using metric units.)
4. The fact that this use of M can be confused with M for 1000 is a problem.
5. In both cases, mil. and bil. appear to be much more common in general-audience English; I would advocate that we switch to recommending these.
6. "At the first occurrence" here is ambiguous. We mean "at the first occurrence in the same passage" or something to this effect, but it's going to be misinterpreted to mean that as long as million appeared in the lead, for example, that any other occurrence can be replaced with M, even if it's separated from million by 50K of article text.
7. When we actually do want to use an abbreviation, there's no reason that the normal rules in MOS:ABBR shouldn't apply – i.e., do something like £10mil. (or £10M) at first occurrence, with {{abbr}}, regardless how recently we used million somewhere in the same page.

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  05:34, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Markup for math variables

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Text formatting#Mathematics variables section is wrong and needs updating
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  05:40, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Jewish dates

Is it possible to add Jewish dates in templates (for example {{cite news|date="7 Tishrei, 5775 // October 1, 2014"}})? --Jonund (talk) 19:19, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Decades

The example given "1960s Boston" - since it is referring to "Boston of the 1960s" I believe it should be written with an apostrophe in this case! i.e., "1960's Boston." Be good! 238-Gdn (talk) 07:39, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

No. 1960s is a plural not a genitive. Your example "1960's Boston" would be refer to Boston in 1960, not for the ten years as a whole. By the way be careful of "decade". To be strict (which as an encyclopaedia we should) the decade runs from 1961 to 1970 inclusive, not from 1960 to 1969. See the discussion on the page. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:47, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Ah, you're right that it's a plural, but it is also genitive (or possessive). In that case, it should be 1960s', with the apostrophe after the s. By the way, it's not my example, but one of the examples offered in the text, which is not accurate, and is therefore confusing. I suggest changing the example and writing a new paragraph with examples in which use of the apostrophe would be required. Be good! 238-Gdn (talk) 10:11, 7 November 2017 (UTC)