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::Absolutely right. It's sad to see how many people have been taught that English is some kind of programming language with rigid rules for everything. With a handful of exceptions (e.g. as mentioned in my post a little bit up from here) most comma usage is about rhythm and pacing. Drive-by "corrections" we do not need. [[User:EEng#s|<b style="color: red;">E</b>]][[User talk:EEng#s|<b style="color: blue;">Eng</b>]] 17:16, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
::Absolutely right. It's sad to see how many people have been taught that English is some kind of programming language with rigid rules for everything. With a handful of exceptions (e.g. as mentioned in my post a little bit up from here) most comma usage is about rhythm and pacing. Drive-by "corrections" we do not need. [[User:EEng#s|<b style="color: red;">E</b>]][[User talk:EEng#s|<b style="color: blue;">Eng</b>]] 17:16, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
::{{ec}} Nice [[straw man]]. I never said anything about "necessarily correct". What I did say is that style guides treat the comma as optional for shorter phrases, and we have good reasons to opt to include it. I've laid out some of those reasons in detail, and you've done nothing to dispel them. The fact that you can find some publishers who prefer to opt to exclude it is completely meaningless. PS: Actually, none of those are publishers in any sense we'd care about; all are random writing-related blogs, except two that are universities spelling out how students should write in class papers (one just for a specific department). <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span>
::{{ec}} Nice [[straw man]]. I never said anything about "necessarily correct". What I did say is that style guides treat the comma as optional for shorter phrases, and we have good reasons to opt to include it. I've laid out some of those reasons in detail, and you've done nothing to dispel them. The fact that you can find some publishers who prefer to opt to exclude it is completely meaningless. PS: Actually, none of those are publishers in any sense we'd care about; all are random writing-related blogs, except two that are universities spelling out how students should write in class papers (one just for a specific department). <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span>
:::Excuse me {{u|SMcCandlish}}, but I know what a straw man is and I believe you're the one who's presenting one here. I didn't quote you literally, though you suggest that I did. In fact, however, you did essentially say that the commas we've been considering here are necessarily correct in the Wikipedia context, which is what we're dealing with: "The comma should be used on WP for several reasons". That's saying it's correct, and that it's necessarily correct in this context. My saying "necessarily correct" of course didn't mean and wasn't intended to mean that you said the comma is obligatory, as anyone can understand. If you're suggesting I meant otherwise, then you're obviously twisting my meaning. Anyway, you continue to maintain that the comma is necessarily correct also now, though you express this a bit more mildly: "we have good reasons to include it." I don't actually think your reasons are very good, and if I didn't refute them before it was possibly because I had already spent so much time documenting that the comma was considered unnecessary by an apparently very wide consensus, which in itself might be taken as an adequate refutation of your undocumented assertions. But if you want to challenge me, okay, I accept the challenge so let's continue. You didn't say that style guides "treat the comma as optional for shorter phrases" (and what they say is that the comma is omittable, not that it's includable), but rather: "The few style guides that literally advise ''against'' such commas (rather than stating that they're optional) are news style guides, with very few exceptions." This is clearly quite different, with only an oblique parenthetical suggestion that a majority of style guides concur with your opinion, which in fact they don't. As for my purportedly having "done nothing to dispel" your purportedly good reasons for including commas generally considered to be unnecessary, you're right in that I didn't address some of them. I didn't have to, as I presented detailed web documentation adequately refuting your main argument that "it's a formal/academic style versus news style matter" and that since the unnecessary comma conforms to the former rather than the latter it should appear in WP. {{u|Number_57}} questioned this and I do too, and at least here you don't document it at all. (I was actually thinking of editing a [''citation needed''] into your comment, but resisted the urge.) I see you've later come in claiming that the University of Oxford Style Guide represents news style rather than academic style – a dubious assertion on the face of it. And despite your implying that the "real", "academic" Oxford style favors your viewpoint, I've now discovered the "Oxford University Press / Academic Division / Guide for authors and editors / Oxford Paperback Reference" at http://www.oxfordreference.com/fileasset/files/QuickReference_AuthorGuidelines.pdf, which states quite explicitly: "Avoid the use of a comma after an introductory adverb, adverbial phrase, or subordinate clause, unless the sentence will be hard to parse without it: In 2000 the hospital took part in a trial involving alternative therapy for babies." It's funny you should accuse me of illogical argumentation, when it's so clearly yours that's defective. Your syllogism is: Wikipedia should follow academic style; academic style favors the use of commas following short prepositional phrases such as "In 2006"; therefore, such commas should be used in Wikipedia. But your neat distinction between academic and news styles is a bit dubious in any event (particularly as many guides cover both), and even if it does actually exist it isn't at all clear that academic style actually accords with your preference. I worked for the OUP in London and was offered a job with them as a compositor in Oxford, so you can't pull rank on me at least in regard to that institution. As for news publishers, you've presented zero evidence here that they "regularly drop the comma after short introductory phrases, because their primary concern is squeezing text to save space" – nor, for that matter, that academic publishers do otherwise. You didn't document what you actually said about style guides either. I'll get back to this, but I'm dealing with your initial comment in order in order not to miss anything and be criticized on that account. 1) You say the comma is "just clearer, especially for non-native English readers", but this isn't at all obvious and I don't accept it. Whether I can conclusively dispel the notion or not, everyone's reason for authorizing omission of the comma is that it ''doesn't'' make anything clearer – otherwise it wouldn't be considered unnecessary. 2) Your arguing on the basis of "In 2016, they moved to Botswana" is poor, and I ''can'' dispel this purported reason for institutionalizing the comma. Namely, "In 2016 they moved to Botswana" itself – and this is exactly the kind of sentence we're talking about – doesn't lead to any ambiguity whatsoever, so you're effectively arguing against your own point (unless one is prepared to admit oranges as apples, of course). Moreover, while the variation with the comma may not melt anyone's brain, it ''does'' trip the reader up with an unnecessary pause, which is also somewhat inhibiting. 3) Your last, "key" point is perhaps the most unfounded of all: "you have no idea what that line is going to say in 5 minutes or 5 months or 5 years, and it's quite likely that it's going to change." So what? You could say that about just about anything. And if it ''wasn't'' actually clearer with the comma (as others and I will maintain), then it's not going to be clearer later anyway. So having now covered what I missed before, let's get back to what I didn't miss. It's true that a majority of my first seven Google finds were bloggy. This doesn't mean, however, that the authors didn't base their prescriptions on authorities and common usage as well as on their own preferences. But you say two of the finds were academic, and however you may now pooh-pooh these, this still seems very strange for someone whose basic argument is that he thinks academic usage should be preferred. You also apparently ignored my observation that all of the subsequent finds were saying the same thing – and I did quickly look through the whole page of a hundred finds. So where are yours in defense of the unnecessary comma? I hope I've now sufficiently dispelled your arguments. –[[User:Roy McCoy|Roy McCoy]] ([[User talk:Roy McCoy|talk]]) 05:54, 1 May 2019 (UTC)
The fact is that a comma, in this context, ''can'' serve to clarify a given sentence. It will for some readers and won't for others. That makes it an improvement to an article and any revert of it ought to be policy-compliant. [[User:Primergrey|Primergrey]] ([[User talk:Primergrey|talk]]) 06:22, 1 May 2019 (UTC)
:It also can, and quite often does, serve no purpose at all other than to obstruct the flow of the text in which it appears. That's why its addition is not an improvement, and why it may be dispensed with when someone has nonetheless tried to impose it. I note you're arguing solely from personal opinion, and like McCandlish present nothing to support your assertion. –[[User:Roy McCoy|Roy McCoy]] ([[User talk:Roy McCoy|talk]]) 06:40, 1 May 2019 (UTC)


== National spellings of parts of titles ==
== National spellings of parts of titles ==

Revision as of 06:40, 1 May 2019

WikiProject iconManual of Style
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An amusement park with a Noah's Ark theme is...

This is for the Answers in Genesis page. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:16, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • The form without hyphens is clear, and I do not see a compelling reason to hyphenate. It could also be rewritten to avoid the question: "An amusement park with a Noah's Ark theme" (also the title of this discussion). Jmar67 (talk) 16:34, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I could read the non-hypened form as a themed amusement part under the brand name "Noah's Ark". I think the second with the single hyphen is correct, but yes, as Jmar points out, rewording is much easier to do. --Masem (t) 16:39, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, the day has come that we can combine hyphens with creationism. Now if we can only drag in Nazis and infoboxes somehow, we'll have achieved Nirvana. In the meantime, it pains me to say that none of the above is correct. An ndash is needed. Watch. Nothing up my sleeves...
A Noah's Ark–themed amusement park
See MOS:PREFIXDASH. The idea is that we want a bit more distance between Ark and themed than hyphen gives, because we don't want those two binding too closely to the exclusion of Noah's. EEng 16:52, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That's reasonable. At the moment I don't see that covered under the section on hyphens. A reference there to the dash discussion would be good. Jmar67 (talk) 17:16, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I just tried something along those lines, but the mass of dash-and-hyphen–related (or maybe dash and hyphen–related or dash- and hyphen-related) material is just too crushing. I barely escaped with my life. EEng 17:51, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I added an ndash to the article. Thanks! --Guy Macon (talk) 12:15, 16 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
EEng, the important thing is: it's definitely dash- and hyphen-related and not dash and hyphen–related unless you're referring to the Dash and Hyphen pub. (I never go there, the atmosphere is too uptight.) Leviv ich 21:08, 19 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I feel there's a colonoscopy pun in there somewhere, but it's just not gelling. EEng 21:31, 19 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That's because your pun account is in a rears. This being MOS, I would suggest you start with semicolonoscopy puns. Then you can move up to innuendos. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:00, 19 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, you're good. Your contribution has been formally entered in the Great Register. EEng 02:52, 20 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
"Noah's Ark-themed". This is already covered at MOS:HYPHEN (don't inject hyphens into a proper name being used adjectivally). But constructions with no hyphen are ambiguous. E.g. "A Noah's Ark themed amusement park" seems to suggest a "themed amusement park", which certainly sounds like a real thing, owned by a company called Noah's Ark (check trademark registrations and you'll find that there are many).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:18, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

given MOS:GNL, why do we still continue to distinguish between "actor" and "actress"?

I've always wondered this... why do we use the feminized version of actor, i.e. actress, to refer to women who are actors, in light of MOS:GNL? Except when we're discussing gender-segregated awards (Best Actor, Best Actress, etc.), I don't see why we couldn't just default to "actor". I've seen some women disambiguated initially as "Jane Chen (actor)" who have subsequently been moved to "Jane Chen (actress)", which seems particularly regressive. —Joeyconnick (talk) 00:08, 16 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This one has come up a few times but the problem seems to be the industry itself is divided on this and this runs well beyond awards. This piece in The Stage covers the ground on this and shows no real consensus as to which should be used, with some very strongly held opinions in both directions as to what "actress" means and implies. Timrollpickering (Talk) 00:36, 16 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
MOS:GNL is a guideline which does not apply to WP:TITLES policy. -- Netoholic @ 00:41, 16 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm confused by the notion, that I've heard a couple of times now, that MoS guidelines "don't apply" to titles. Is this the commonly held understanding? I know that the title policy has more weight than anything in the MoS guidelines (because of the "guideline" vs. "policy" distinction) but surely that doesn't mean that the MoS has no weight whatsoever. WanderingWanda (they/them) (t/c) 01:16, 16 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Simply because the vast majority of "female actors" are still referred to and refer to themselves as actresses. It is still by far the commonest term for a woman working in the field. It is not our job to change English usage. It is our job to reflect common English usage. What right do we have to essentially tell a woman who calls herself an actress, "sorry, you're wrong, you're actually a female actor and that's how we're going to refer to you"? The term "actor" should only be used if it can be established beyond all reasonable doubt that that is the commonest way of referring to an individual and that's what they prefer (e.g. Helen Mirren, who does, I believe, refer to herself as an actor); otherwise the default should be actress. -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:35, 16 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree: you could just as easily say "actor" should be the default unless a female actor prefers "actress" (sources would be required if challenged by an editor). Tony (talk) 12:06, 16 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That would be going against common English usage, as I said. You cannot possibly with a straight face deny that most people in the English-speaking world (including them) still refer to a female actor as an actress! It would even more certainly go against common English usage for an actress who was active in the past. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:14, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
What they were called in the past is irrelevant—we don't call Amelia Earhart and "aviatrix". Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 00:39, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Of course it's relevant. We're not in the business of historical revisionism. In any case, "aviatrix" is no longer commonly used, so could be said to be archaic, but "actress" most certainly is and could not. Surely you're not going to argue in all seriousness that it's archaic English?! -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:36, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • On would imagine "actor" for some is a bit like using "he", as "gender neutral" language. In general, it's probably good though, not to be really prescriptive or proscriptive with a common word. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:16, 16 April 2019 (UTC) Now, thespian seems gender neutral, these days. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:34, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I suspect it has something to do with the fact that acting is one of the few remaining spheres of endeavor (along with modeling, prostitution, surrogacy, and so on) in which gender is a routine prerequisite for a given position – with exceptions now and then, of course. EEng 12:45, 16 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • EEng, I sort of agree, but because (in its own sexist way) female equivalents are embellishments of the male term, we're stuck with reducing them to remove undesirable gender-specific language: plain English is favoured, naturally. So we no longer say "conductress". And readers would trip over "aviatrix", which markedly draws attention to femaleness. BTW, in many other languages it's much harder to iron out gender-specific language; I believe in Portuguese, an agent's gender has to be chosen, and the effect sprawls through the grammar of the clause. Tony (talk) 04:24, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
      • Ironic that, after many years, French women have finally persuaded the Académie française to agree to female versions of job titles because they were fed up with being referred to using the male ones! A complete reverse of the mania in English. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:18, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Because no commonly used gender-neutral term exists. Given the prevalence of "actress", "actor" cannot be broadly accepted as being gender-neutral unless the "reliable sources" declare that to be the case by consistently employing the term for women as well. "Male actor" is redundant and "female actor" a contradiction in terms. Jmar67 (talk) 16:15, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Please note that the MOS already directly deals with this, about 4 paragraphs below the section cited above. MOS:IDENTITY says, in clear and unambiguous terms "When there is a discrepancy between the term most commonly used by reliable sources for a person or group and the term that person or group uses for themselves, use the term that is most commonly used by reliable sources. If it isn't clear which is most used, use the term that the person or group uses." (bold mine). That is, if a person calls themselves "actress", then use that. If a person calls themselves "actor", then use that. Couldn't be clearer. --Jayron32 16:40, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    "That is, if a person calls themselves "actress", then use that. If a person calls themselves "actor", then use that. Couldn't be clearer." This only applies if the terms in RS sources are mixed. If the RS consistently use a term for a person, that's the term that should be used per MOS:IDENTITY, regardless of how that person refers to themselves. BubbaJoe123456 (talk) 18:38, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    That is not my interpretation. If reliable sources overwhelmingly call A an actress, but A prefers actor, then we nevertheless use actress. But if the sources reflect mixed usage, we use actor. Jmar67 (talk) 17:15, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    If reliable sources are using the wrong term, they aren't reliable for this purpose, n'est ce pas? If a source is demonstrably wrong, why are we calling it reliable? If some article called a person by the wrong first name, or misattributed their ethnic affiliations, or had the wrong birthdate, we wouldn't cite it because it isn't correct. --Jayron32 17:38, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Disagree here. If Tom Cruise started insisting that he was the King of Denmark, then that wouldn't mean that all the articles that don't refer to him as the King of Denmark were somehow wrong. BubbaJoe123456 (talk) 18:38, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    That's a strawman argument. Tom Cruise doesn't refer to himself as the King of Denmark. He calls himself an actor. So we do too. That sort of fake controversy is why we mislabel all sorts of people (gender, nationality, sexual orientation) because we invent some hypothetical, snide, or bullshit reason why someone else's earnest self-identification is invalid. That's now how this works. --Jayron32 18:48, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    I'd be entirely fine with changing MOS:IDENTITY to make self-description take precedence over consistent RS, but that's not how it stands today, so I'm puzzled why you're citing it this way. BubbaJoe123456 (talk) 19:26, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that there are two “correct” terms for a female performer. Some prefer to use “actor”, while others prefer “actress”. Which to use is not a matter of right vs wrong... but one of preference. Blueboar (talk) 18:01, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No, it's a matter of self-identity. We don't deliberately mis-identify someone against their own professed self identity. You would not use a term for someone they themselves reject for just about anything else. Why this one? --Jayron32 18:46, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Except this is a case where one term (actress) is explicitly gendered, while the other one is much less so. While there may be performers who identify as men but prefer to be referred to as actresses, I'm not aware of any. BubbaJoe123456 (talk) 19:26, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Why does that matter? There are women who prefer actor and there are also some women who prefer actress. In each of those cases, use the term the person uses to describe themselves. --Jayron32 16:26, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This is more of a WP:CFD matter, and has been raised there multiple times. I've long been of the opinion that gendered categories are a bad idea, but their defenders have gone to lengths to keep them, like inventing non-diffusing categories, and so on, in an attempt to deal with the "wiki-ghettoization" effect. I'm not buying it, but enough of the editorial community has that we're stuck with it until enough WP:CCC time as passed to re-raise the issue with clearer arguments.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:17, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Abbreviations: Saint

For arguments such as WP:NOTPAPER and the never ending variation of "St" and "St.", I have interpretated a general preference for "Saint" if sources largely permit it, meaning that WP:COMMONNAME doesn't always get its way. Is that correct? PPEMES (talk) 12:29, 16 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

WP:COMMONNAME doesn't apply to formatting issues. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 00:33, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, we should use "Saint Peter's Cathedral", etc. An exception would be surnames and titles of works. Jill St. John isn't "Jill Saint John", and The Night Before St. Patrick's Day is a children's novel that doesn't have "Saint" in its title (and presumably isn't about drinking).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:15, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Numbering officeholders in infoboxes

Relevant RfC for any concerned: Template_talk:Infobox_officeholder#RfC_regarding_ordinal_numbering

"...instead supports the pseudoscientific creation science" or ""...instead supports pseudoscientific creation science"

The sentence in dispute, in full, is: "Out of belief in biblical inerrancy, it rejects the results of those scientific investigations that contradict their view of the Genesis creation narrative and instead supports the pseudoscientific creation science". The 'the' in bold was removed by ජපස on the grounds that keeping it "is a word choice that is incredibly awkward and probably not correct usage wise". Furthermore, he adds that "using a definite article implies that there are two forms of creation science, "the pseudoscientific one and the one that it not pseudoscientific"". I disagree with this, citing the example, "I asked Tom to give me an apple, but the lazy Tom said it was too much of a bother for him", where the article "the" makes the latter clause equivalent to "but Tom, who is lazy, said it was too much of a bother for him". Furthermore, I argue that removing the 'the' from both the example and the sentence in question results in confusion, creating the impression that "lazy Tom" is distinct from the Tom that has been asked to give an apple in the example, and that "pseudoscientific creation science" is a separate term in the sentence in question. Which version would be the most appropriate in this situation and, if neither, is there a workaround?OlJa 18:37, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

How about "Out of belief in biblical inerrancy, they support pseudoscientific creation science, rejecting the results of those scientific investigations that contradict their view of the Genesis creation narrative. BubbaJoe123456 (talk) 18:43, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the issue is about the 'the' (or absence thereof) before "pseudoscientific creation science", so simply switching the clauses around doesn't really solve that issue. I was thinking something along the lines of "the pseudoscience creation science" but perhaps something less tautological? Also note that "creation science" itself is a pseudoscience.OlJa 18:48, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
In your example, I certainly read "the lazy Tom said" as implying that there are other, non-lazy Toms. When it comes to making it clear that the Tom in the second clause is the same person as the Tom in the first clause, the version without "the" is much clearer, in my view. Similarly, including "the" before "pseudoscientific creation science" creates the implication that there are other, non-pseudoscientific, creation sciences. BubbaJoe123456 (talk) 19:17, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I would prefer Out of belief in biblical inerrancy, they support pseudoscientific "creation science", rejecting the results of those scientific investigations that contradict their view of the Genesis creation narrative.
MOS:SCAREQUOTES does not say that we cannot use scare quotes. It says that they should be considered carefully because scare quotes can imply that a given point is inaccurate. Which is exactly what we want to imply; we would write 'the thieves "liberated" several barrels of whisky' with scare quotes to signify that, while the thieves call it liberation, nobody else does. Likewise, nobody else considers "creation science" to be science. Creation science is to science what fool's gold is to gold or tofuky is to turkey. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:04, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Awful as tofurkey is, that's an insult to tofurkey. EEng 20:33, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No one claims it to be science, but almost everyone, including opponents, calls it 'creation science' without quotation marks. There are numerous examples of terms with names that do not convey their meaning well: e.g. computer bug, deceleration parameter, etc. I think just saying that it is a pseudoscience will suffice.OlJa 20:42, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This is taken from Answers in Genesis. It could also be phrased unambiguously as "...supports creation science, which is pseudoscientific." Or "pseudoscientific" could simply be omitted since there is a link to the Creation science article. Jmar67 (talk) 19:53, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that we could use "...supports creation science, which is pseudoscientific." but have no problem with "...instead supports pseudoscientific creation science" either the addition of the word "the" is awkward. Theroadislong (talk) 20:16, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I definitely support this version. Simple and unambiguous.OlJa 20:42, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Ambiguity not detected; remedy not needed. The primary effect of "...supports creation science, which is pseudoscientific." is to add clutter. It also distances "pseudoscience" from "creation science" both visually, and syntactically. It is not the clearest way to write that snippet of text.
Regarding the original issue posted here, it would be difficult to defend adding "the" to the phrase in question. It impresses me as awkward and tone-deaf. Does anyone here other than OJ think it is a good idea?
This discussion really belongs back at Talk:Answers in Genesis. Just plain Bill (talk) 22:10, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Or Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language. It is not an MOS issue that I can see. Jmar67 (talk) 04:23, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

...instead supports creation pseudoscience. --A D Monroe III(talk) 00:54, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I was thinking about this wording, and I must say I don't mind it, either. Apologise for my obsession with the article 'the', but I think it might also be appropriate here. As it is, your half-sentence is similar in meaning to "...instead supports pseudoscience to with creation science", leaving the possibility that legitimate 'creation science' science may also exist. While not a big deal, I think that adding a 'the' to the statement makes it more definitive, making it equivalent in meaning to "and instead supports the pseudoscience of creation science", which straight-up in the face says that creation science is a pseudoscience.OlJa 11:46, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • There is ambiguity (though not very pronounced) in either form, with or without "the". Both can be interpreted as (1) "creation science that is pseudoscientific" (a pseudoscientific variety of creation science) or (2) "creation science, which is pseudoscientific" (creation science is fundamentally pseudoscientific). I think most readers will infer (2) in either case, however, and I think either form is OK. Recasting as (2) is one way to eliminate any doubt. The criticism of "the" as awkward might indicate this an ENGVAR issue. Jmar67 (talk) 03:37, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I think ENGVAR may be relevant, as I seem to be the only user (?) of British English in this thread.OlJa 11:46, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I am a bit of a mix. I was raised speaking and writing the King's English, later purposely started using southern California spelling and phrasing, and often work with a bunch of strines and kiwis and pick up things from them without realizing it. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:30, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Nobody seems yet to have raised what seems to me to be the key usage question, which is whether the article is referring to some specific creation science or to creation science in general. In the former case, "the" should be used, as in "the creation science developed in response to modern evolutionary theory", but "pseudoscientific creation science" on its own would not taken a definite article. Newimpartial (talk) 16:44, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • The problem is that it's neither: it is creation science in general, but creation science itself is always pseudoscientific. Thus, saying "pseudoscientific creation science" (without an article) is a bit like saying "British John Lennon". People here still appear confused as to what role the 'the' plays in my proposed version, so I thought I'd provide some more examples, but, this time, these are actual quotes of football commentators in some recent matches that I've watched: "...who lays it off to the brilliant Lionel Messi", "...fantastic feet there by the young Joao Militao". Hopefully, that clears things up.OlJa 17:49, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I finally understand what you are getting at. You are trying to use the adjective as a proper epithet. This is fairly unusual in American English. jps (talk) 18:11, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Not necessarily an epithet, but I guess there could be a connection. I now see that such usage of the article 'the' is perhaps not as common in the US as it is in Britain, which is, as pointed out by Jmar, one potential source of confusion.OlJa 22:08, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
To me, "the" in these examples is a sort of particle, inserted to make the phrase easier to say and emphasize the person when an adjective is involved. And I think it also has a similar function in the sentence being discussed. Very subjective I admit. Jmar67 (talk) 18:16, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
James, I believe what you are trying to do is something like a "substantive" usage. The problem is that, except for epithets, that usage has largely dropped out of all varieties of English. Newimpartial (talk) 18:25, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps there is an element of substantiveness in there, too, now that I read over it again. Although, addressing your last sentence, I must say that such usage is pretty common where I am from. OlJa 22:08, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
While that may be true in your speech community, the usages to which you refer haven't been evident in written English since before 1945, and probably longer ago than that. Newimpartial (talk) 22:38, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It is pseudoscientific, and we have ample RS for that, so this isn't a MOS:WTW or WP:FRINGE failure. However "pseudoscientific creation science" is confusingly repetitive. For one thing "creation science" is a just a PR euphemism for "creationism", so just use word.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:12, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

WP:GNL practice

It appears that the most commonly followed rule when it comes to GNL is:

In general, try to use gender-neutral language. However, in situations where generic male language remains standard in reliable sources, Wikipedia should follow the sources and use generic male language.

How close is this to being accurate?? Georgia guy (talk) 00:41, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

What do you mean by "generic male language"? Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 00:43, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Language that gives more visibility to males, such as generic he or fireman as opposed to firefighter. Georgia guy (talk) 10:23, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No, in general practice is to avoid the generic male default (i.e. use singular they or a compound "he/she" or other similar constructions). Instead, we should use terminology which is gender neutral, where possible. --Jayron32 16:28, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Not according to the recent discussion at Talk:Chairman. Georgia guy (talk) 16:42, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see anything there which disagrees with me. I see some people disagreeing with each other, and sometimes getting rude over such disagreements. That happens. --Jayron32 16:46, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
"in situations where generic male language remains standard in reliable sources"—this can't refer to generic he, which has always been a prescription. The practice is to avoid "generic male language" unless the alternatives don't have wide currency. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 21:40, 19 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
...but that it's okay if they don't, which means that the MOS needs to emphasize the statement that sometimes they don't. Georgia guy (talk) 22:56, 19 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Why would it need to emphasize that? Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 03:39, 20 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
To make it clear that there's no complete consensus for the absoluteness of gender-neutral language. Georgia guy (talk) 11:55, 20 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
What is unclear? Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 10:14, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It appears to be saying that GNL is always better than non-GNL. But many Wikipedians prefer non-GNL for some purposes. Georgia guy (talk) 10:18, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I think the discussions at Talk:Chairman make it clear that there is substantial support for the view that WP:AT (in particular WP:COMMONNAME) takes precedence over WP:GNL. Personally, I regret this, but it might avoid time wasting discussions if this were made clear. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:05, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The difficulty lies in how to determine what the WP:COMMONNAME is. Language around gender is changing rapidly. People were trying to use Google ngrams during the chairman discussion, but they only cover until 2008, which is a universe away when it comes to thinking about gender. SarahSV (talk) 21:28, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
WP:AT is missing a GNL section, IMO. Leviv ich 21:41, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Language around gender may seem to be changing rapidly in areas which you are participating, but that is not reflected in evidence... and Ngrams is evidence. Wikipedia is not designed to reflect the whims of language (see WP:NEOLOGISM), but rather takes the long view, which a tool like Ngrams is very useful to determine. People experiment with language all the time, but society tends to move very gradually overall. For example, the brief flirtation with the term "chairperson" backfired because whenever it was used in practice, it was interpreted as referring only to women. In essence, the "gender neutral" term became itself gendered. -- Netoholic @ 00:31, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
One of the other proposals was for "Chair", which is both common and ungendered. Regardless, exceptions are to be expected for any guideline—we can't expect the guidelines to capture every edge case. We certainly don't want to grant editors licence to use gendered language simply because it's their "preference". Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 01:04, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Exceptions to guidelines happen, but we do not knowingly make exceptions to WP:Core content policies... So its best to think of chairman as an exception to MOS:GNL, not petition that it should be an exception to WP:V policy. -- Netoholic @ 02:02, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Old sourcing doesn't provide evidence of what the common term is now, and that's what we want to know. The question is what will our readers expect to see in 2019. I don't for one second believe that it's "chairman". SarahSV (talk) 02:07, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If you develop a tool that can scan reliable sources and deliver such evidence as of the CURRENTYEAR, let us know. Until then, please keep your "beliefs" separate from Wikipedia discussions per WP:VERIFYOR policy. -- Netoholic @ 02:16, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I think that something has gone wrong with the way this has been evaluated. I simply don't believe that in 2019 the common name is still "chairman", so I'm questioning your claims about that, which I think must be based on old sources or perhaps sources stemming from one country. See the latest edition of Chicago Manual of Style, an influential style guide, 2017, 5.250, p. 318: "chair; chairman; chairwoman; chairperson. Chair is widely regarded as the best gender-neutral choice. Since the mid-seventeenth century, chair has referred to an office of authority." SarahSV (talk) 02:31, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
What part of WP:COMMONNAME says anything about what something is called "right now"? Nothing there says to give extra weight to sources from 2019, and reliable sources do not have an expiration date. I suspect that, even if you could somehow prove that 2019 is the Year of the Chairperson, that it would still not be COMMONNAME for quite some time due to historic usage prevalent in reliable sources. -- Netoholic @ 04:15, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
So should our articles on African Americans and Native Americans continue to use the current common name, or should we go back to the labels that were historically prevalent? Leviv ich 04:28, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
What's the equivalent of Godwin's law, but for race-baiting? -- Netoholic @ 05:33, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Netoholic, are you here to discuss, or to duke it out? Your unique interpretation of WP:COMMONNAME doesn't appear to be winning anyone over. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 07:42, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
"not petition that it should be an exception to WP:V policy"—this is a non sequitur. "Chair" and "chairperson" are well-attested, established terms, easily and copiously verifiable. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 03:26, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
But apparently not WP:COMMONNAME. I'm not going to re-litigate what's already been covered in Talk:Chairman#Requested move 22 March 2019. -- Netoholic @ 04:02, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That's exactly the point—none of them (including "Chairman") qualify as WP:COMMONNAME. You don't seem to undertand the point of WP:COMMONNAME. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 07:40, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
(I think OP meant to refer to MOS:GNL, which is the guideline in question, and not WP:GNL, which is an essay.)
What should be recognized is that WP:MOS (and its many sub-guidelines) govern what Wikipedia writers have a choice over - the original text we create in order to present topics in the form of an encyclopedic entry - but not what by our WP:Core content policies, like WP:Verifiability, demand of us. We can't title something an obscure name, when it is verifiably called something else more commonly, for example. Titles which reflect the WP:COMMONNAME in reliable sources are automatically neutral. We cannot name things how we would want them to be - that is not the Wikipedia way. We have to describe them as the world does and wait for there to be evidence of a change. -- Netoholic @ 00:13, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
"Titles which reflect the WP:COMMONNAME in reliable sources are automatically neutral"—this isn't always the case. The WP:COMMONNAME of 2011 Canadian federal election voter suppression scandal is indisputably the "Robocall scandal". the article was moved to its current name because (a) the scandal it refers to wasn't over "robocalls" per se and (b) there were other "robocall" scandals in Canada in 2011 that didn't involve voter suppression. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 01:04, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That's a matter of WP:Disambiguation - an unfortunate technical limitation of wiki-based articles that require unique names. -- Netoholic @ 02:02, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It's not a matter of disambiguation—the other "Robocall scandal"s have not had articles created (yet), and you missed (a). Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 03:20, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That's because (a) has no bearing on the title. If the COMMONNAME for it was "unicorn sparklepoop scandal", then that's what it should be named - even if no defecating monoceros was involved. -- Netoholic @ 04:07, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
GRACIOUS! <clutches pearls> EEng 04:17, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Your argument is divorced from the issue raised. The article title is where it is because of various issues including that it was not neutral, let alone "automatically neutral"—an assertion that was silly to begin with. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 07:40, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see that the article you mentioned has been through a formal RM discussion, so it doesn't seem like strong evidence of anything. That you admit it's COMMONNAME is indisputably the "Robocall scandal" seems to me that title should be formally considered. -- Netoholic @ 08:49, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I foresee a pointlessly disruptive RM from Netoholic in the article's future. You never have bothered to try justifying the tautology "Titles which reflect the WP:COMMONNAME in reliable sources are automatically neutral". Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 01:19, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
"Titles which reflect the WP:COMMONNAME in reliable sources are automatically WP:NPOVNAMEs" is not a tautology because it's simply false – as indeed WP:NPOVNAME clearly says, e.g. in the case of "Boston Massacre". Peter coxhead (talk) 08:53, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hmmm. I guess a clearer way to say it is that COMMONNAMES are not violations of WP:NPOV. Whether that makes them truly neutral, I suppose, is a matter of individual opinion... but they are considered neutral for the purposes of the encyclopedia. -- Netoholic @ 10:00, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
"Whether that makes them truly neutral, I suppose, is a matter of individual opinion"—you realize what you're saying here? Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 22:16, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I generally have to concur with Curly Turkey and Jayron and Peter Coxhead on this stuff.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:10, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Question

When writing articles about people that live outside their country of birth, for example if someone lives in the UK, but was born in the US, which variety of English should be used? The country they were born in or the country of residence. I would like to seek a consensus on which is better. Mstrojny (talk) 17:51, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Best to use the one for where they first became notable, or did their most notable stuff. Also, whether they ever changed citizenship (if you know) might be an issue. In many cases either may be acceptable. But if a style has been established, that should be continued. Johnbod (talk) 18:09, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Or at least open a discussion on the article's talk page, which is what MOS:TIES actually advises. It's sometimes mistaken for some kind of "that which was set in 2005 can never be changed" rule, but it is not one. Rather, we shouldn't go around randomly changing stuff, but present a case for why it should change in a particular case, to avoid people getting "you're trying to suppress [insert my personal dialect here] English!" squabbles.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:08, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Deleted sentence at Punctuation inside or outside / Proposed reordering at Names and titles

Greetings.

I almost boldly changed

"Life", Anaïs Nin wrote, "shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."

to

"Life," Anaïs Nin wrote, "shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."

at Quotation Marks > Punctuation before quotations, in accordance with the style I had always seen, I thought even in British publications. I don't remember what stopped me from making this change, but whatever it was I was very surprised – and very pleasantly – to see that what I now see is termed "logical quotation" is now standard in Wikipedia. Despite the change I was about to make, I have for decades been an active proponent of what I would normally call British usage on this, which is both more logical and more attractive. Hooray Wikipedia.

The topics I am here raising, however, are not that but rather (1) my deletion – I hope not too bold – of a sentence in the subchapter Punctuation inside or outside, and (2) a proposed reordering in the subchapter Names and titles.

(1) When I noticed there was no sample given for the sentence "A question should always end with a question mark", I first added one:

Marlin asked Dory, "Can you read?"

I immediately had doubts about this, however. It wasn't really a question, but a declarative sentence quoting a question – and if I changed it to a question I wouldn't be sure how to punctuate it in approved Wikipedia style. Would that be

Did Marlin ask Dory, "Can you read?"

or

Did Marlin ask Dory, "Can you read?"?

Someone please tell me, thanks – though it seems fairly clear that the question needs two question marks in order to conform to the sentence it's supposed to illustrate.

What finally made me desist with trying to provide another sample, however, was not so much this problem but rather that there was no clause following the quote and I didn't know how to provide one, or even if the sentence without a sample necessarily referred to a quote with a following clause or not. So I deleted both my previously placed sample and the sentence, noting:

"Deleted previously added sample, plus the sentence "A question should always end with a question mark." pending provision of an appropriate sample, or perhaps new paragraph with same. Otherwise others than myself will be confused.

What I think I've done, then, is to prompt an improvement without having made or specified it myself. It may, however, be unnecessary to do anything more here at all, since "A question should always end with a question mark" may be taken as something rather obvious that neither belongs at this particular place nor merits a separate paragraph elsewhere.

(2) Continuing to check out the MoS, I noticed that the list item "and the section you are reading now." under Names and titles seemed out of place and should appear at the end rather than in the middle of the list. I tried to change this but couldn't, so I'm now suggesting that someone here who's able to do that make the change (assuming it can be changed by someone, as I suppose it can).

Thanks.

Roy McCoy (talk) 23:56, 19 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Roy McCoy: This is all old news and covered many times before. WP has used LQ since the early 2000s. Briefly: Don't double-up punctuation except in unusual circumstances. Thus Did Marlin ask Dory, "Can you read?" [Aside: we really need to replace these Finding Nemo examples, since they bear little resemblance to encyclopedic writing.] An example of a special circumstance is literal string quotation: The newspaper misquoted Smith as stating "I am to resign.", but Smith's actual announcement phrased this as a question, "I am to resign?". Thus, when quoting a question in a non-question sentence, the quoted and quoting sentence have separate terminal punctuation. There's no need to do this when quoting a question inside another question and they both end on the same word. Similarly, if you quote someone saying "I'm tired, and sore, and upset, etc.", and your sentence ends there, do: He said, "I'm tired, and sore, and upset, etc.", not "I'm tired, and sore, and upset, etc.". PS: Some British news publications also use typesetters' punctuation (commas and periods/stops inside, no matter what). This is not recommended by British style guides (other than the house styles of some newspapers of course). I did an analysis of this stuff a few years ago, and it turns out there are at least 12 different British quotation punctuation styles among major publishers in the UK. They shake out to very similar to LQ, and very similar to TQ, with various intergrading based on special "rules" made up by particular publishers, and they're generally not compatible with each other.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:21, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you SMcCandlish for your interesting and enlightening comments in response to my questions. My MoS revisions have apparently been left alone, and there doesn't seem to be anything that needs to be done further in regard to them on my account. I would say the deletion of "A question should always end with a question mark" is the less dubious in light of the sample given by you ("Did Marlin ask Dory, "Can you read?"), which is a question but ends with a quote mark rather than a question mark. (I deleted your opening single quote there, by the way.) There has however been no reply as yet to my second concern, which was the incorrect ordering of "and the section you are reading now" under Quotation marks > Names and titles. Can this be corrected? Thanks again. –Roy McCoy (talk) 05:01, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure it'll get ironed out. People making undiscussed substantive changes to MoS usually does get reverted, just not always immediately. What the actual "rules" are should not change without being certain it's what the community supports, since any such change has the potential to affect innumerable articles, especially the more general the point is. PS: the "and the section you are reading now" thing is not an error. Look at the list more closely.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:05, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Conflict in MOS:JOBTITLES?

A recent WP:ERRORS entry addressed an ITN blurb that stated "The former President of Peru Alan García commits suicide after a warrant is issued for his arrest." The word "President" was dropped to lowercase based on the argument that it denotes an office rather than a title. I agree with the change, but I do not think the office/title question is clear in this case. To me it illustrates a potential conflict in the rules at MOS:JOBTITLES, which prescribes capitals when used directly with the name but also calls for lowercase if a definite or indefinite article, or a modifier, is used. (I would have suggested recasting as "Alan Garcia, the former president of Peru, commits..." to avoid this conflict.) Jmar67 (talk) 04:39, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but "President" wasn't being "used directly with the name" simply because of its proximity to it. "Used with the name" means directly directly with nothing intervening, i.e. "President Alan García". "President of Peru" is indeed an office not a title, we all apparently agree that the change was in order, I don't see that there's a problem with the style manual on this, and if it ain't broke don't fix it. –Roy McCoy (talk) 04:59, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed with Roy. Capitalize it when it is effectively part of the name ("Queen Elizabeth II"), otherwise not ("Elizabeth II is the British queen"). If you're modifying it with qualifiers, it's no longer part of a proper name ("The aging British queen, Elizabeth II, remains more popular than her heir, Prince Charles"; this is basically the same sentence structure as the Garcia bit in ITN: article additional_modifier[s] title/position/role personal_name verb predicate_material). We presently have a codicil that a formal title referred to as such without modifiers can also be capitalized ("Donald Trump is President of the United States"), but I don't think this will last; it causes more confusion than it's worth, and off-site publishers capitalize in this kind of case less and less frequently. Also, I agree with Jmar67's recasting of the ITN sentence. One of the most important parts of MoS is right in its lead: try to write around problems. Anyway, the JOBTITLES rules aren't in conflict, they're just not mega-easy for every person to absorb, because it's a complicated thing to explain.

Some meta-commentary on this kind of matter: MoS, including that section, slowly changes over time to mirror provable shifts in real-world practice; as more publishers go lower-case when they can, and we can show it's a statistical supermajority in reliable sources, regardless of genre and country, then MoS generally goes along with it, all other things being equal (i.e., if there's not a special internal reason for WP to care one way or another). That section itself was overhauled about a year or so ago to better reflect a lower-casing trend, and again more recently to add that corporate job titles (especially minor ones like "assistant shift manager", etc.) need not be capitalized even when joined to a name, because real-world publishers often lower-case it. Similarly, MOS:JR changed a couple of years ago to stop calling for "Sammy Davis, Jr." with the comma. Even most US publishers have dropped it, across all genres. This kind of analysis is also why we have not adopted the sometimes-British practice of dropping all stops/periods from all abbreviations (even in British-English articles); it turns out to be demonstrably just a news-style thing (cf. WP:NOT#NEWS), and British style guides for mainstream writing, including New Hart's Rules and Fowler's, continue to recommend doing this only for contractions that begin and end with the same letters as the full word (thus "Post St", "St John", but "Prof. Smith" (not that WP would normally use honorifics like that anyway). The point being, it doesn't matter that The Guardian uses "Prof Smith", or that The New Yorker would use "comma-Jr." format. We're going to go with a consensus combination of: A) Is there a really good reason to change it? B) Are there any WP-specific reasons to not do so (technical, or clarity/accuracy-based, or a MOS:COMMONALITY matter, or grounded in some other principle like "WP defaults to lower case when sources are inconsistent")? C) Will a change increase consistency or sow more confusion/dispute? D) What do current off-site style guides advise, in the aggregate? E) What are most present-day RS publishers doing, in the aggregate? (E usually matches D, but there have been discrepancies before, e.g. many style guides were out of step with gender neutrality, transgender pronoun preferences, and singular they, until just the last couple of years, due to conservative editorial boards and slow publication cycles; it's one of the few areas for which the annually published news-style guides like AP Stylebook were actually useful for us.)
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:46, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Another capitalization question

The following is the current lead of the article James Buchanan:

James Buchanan (/bjuːˈkænən/; April 23, 1791 – June 1, 1868) was the 15th president of the United States (1857–1861), serving immediately prior to the American Civil War. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the 17th United States Secretary of State and had served in the Senate and House of Representatives before becoming president.

Note that "president" is lowercased (twice) but "Secretary of State" is not. The general convention on articles on U.S. presidents is to indicate the ordinal rank in this form, with "president" in lowercase. However, in this example there is a capitalization conflict with "Secretary of State". Three other articles (James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams) also use "president" but "Secretary of State". The articles Secretary of state and United States Secretary of State treat it as a proper noun in the U.S. context and consistently capitalize it.

Is this lead MOS-compliant with respect to capitalization of these titles? Jmar67 (talk) 11:23, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No. Should be lower-case. It's capitalized in a construction like "Secretary of State Buchanan" (fused to the name), or in a reference to the position as such and without a modifier ("Mike Pompeo is US Secretary of State, since April 26, 2018"). Even that second case isn't really necessary, but we seem to be doing it. E.g., we have List of lord mayors of London (modified, as a plural, thus a common noun), and Lord Mayor of London as an unmodified title being the subject itself.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:08, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Translating political party names

Hi. Titles for articles about Swedish political parties differ a lot when it comes to language. For example, the articles for Moderate Party (Sweden) and Citizens' Coalition are written in English while articles for Direktdemokraterna and Liberala partiet are written in Swedish. What is the appropriate way to deal with political parties from non-English speaking countries? Should they have translated titles or not? I can see a problem with translating every time, names of parties such as Landsbygdspartiet Oberoende and Enhet cannot be translated accurately translated well into English (the translated name for Landsbygdspartiet Oberoende is "Countryside Party Independent", Enhet would translate simply as "Unit"). And that brings us yet another question, how much freedom do translators have? Landsbygdspartiet Oberoende's literal translation sounds awkward, so would it be okay to rename it to, say, Independent Countryside Party just because it reads better? lovkal (talk) 16:42, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

What do other, reliable English Language sources do outside of Wikipedia? --Jayron32 17:12, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
These are smaller parties which are rarely, if ever, mentioned in English-language media. lovkal (talk) 17:31, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I find that hard to believe. This took all of two seconds. There's a half dozen English-language news sources covering local Swedish issues there, a modicum of effort searching those should turn something up to establish correct usage. --Jayron32 23:39, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not saying that there aren't English-language Swedish news sources, I'm perfectly aware that they exist and I have looked for mentions of these parties in the ones I know of. But as I said, these are *very* small parties with less than 1% of the vote, so I think it's perfectly understandable that they aren't mentioned in The Local. lovkal (talk) 09:13, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If there aren't many English sources that cover a party name, it may be preferable to just leave it in its original language - if there's not an obvious translation then no one is going to be searching for the English name anyway. The parlgov database is a good source for English names of most European parties and a good number of OECD countries. The Manifestos Project also has reasonably good coverage. I couldn't find Landsbygdspartiet Oberoende in either dataset but it looks looks like other pages reference them as the "Independent Rural Party". That translation would make a lot more sense, especially since they appear to be similar to agrarian parties like the Finnish Rural Party. Nblund talk 01:05, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'll check those out, thanks! lovkal (talk) 09:13, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move

Wikipedia:Manual of Style → Wikipedia:Manual of style – As pointed out by my dear colleague SmokeyJoe, the so-called "Manual of Style" does not actually follow its own recommendations. We do not capitalize common nouns in titles at Wikipedia, and "style" is a common noun. This is our manual of style, not some hoity-toity "Manual" of some high-falluting "Style".

I am serious, if a bit facetious. This title is wrong and has no reason to be capitalized. Red Slash 00:27, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • Waste of time The Manual of Style applies only to articles, not project space. What a waste of time. EEng 00:31, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Nobody made you comment! Red Slash 00:43, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    No, but the opening of this thread "made" me come to see what it's about. Next you'll want WP:Arbitration Committee -> Arbitration committee. The main MOS page has literally 150 subpages and 600 redirects pointing to it [2] and on top of that there are (easily) a thousand, if not thousands, of redirects and shortcuts pointing to the subpages. All of those would need to be moved and updated, and inevitably some links in old discussions will be permanently broken through some slipup -- all just to scratch someone's obsessive-compulsive itch. EEng 02:28, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    As a member of the Guild of Copy Editors I have to say that looking for improvement in writing style is not a waste of time. Many of us spend some time changing capitalization in articles. But tiny errors in style do add up and in my humble opinion it is a kind of unwarranted conformism and even outright insulting to state trying to fix such things is a waste of time or a compulsive itch. Thinker78 (talk) 18:19, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    The "unwarranted conformism" here is the overworrying about this tiny "error". I'm all for fixing things, but not where the cost far outweighs the benefit, as here. EEng 19:07, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    I'll second that. Asserting opponents' mental disorders is never a useful or even intelligent argument and has no place in civil discourse. Too bad the community tolerates it. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:57, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    That's crazy -- it's no different than saying "That's crazy." EEng 19:05, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    You're wrong, it's distinctly different. But even "That's crazy" is a pointless non-argument; the only meaningful part is why you feel it's crazy, so the "That's crazy" preface could and should be omitted. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:10, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    It's shorthand for "Your contribution to the discussion seems, at least to this observer, to be severely lacking in the validity of either its premises or its reasoning. You are strongly encouraged to revisit it in light of this commentary." But saying, "That's crazy" saves a lot of time. EEng 19:24, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Equally vacuous: "Your contribution to the discussion seems, at least to this observer, to be severely lacking in the validity of either its premises or its reasoning. You are strongly encouraged to revisit it in light of this commentary." Again, nobody cares that it seems that way to you, what's meaningful is why you feel that way; i.e., your counter-argument. Examples of other pointless cruft: "Nonsense." — "That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard." — "I'm shocked/saddened/disappointed that" ―Mandruss ☎ 20:34, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    That's silly. Often the simple realization that a fellow editor finds your position startling is all that's needed. Or it can act as an intensifier introducing a more substantive comment, as indeed I've used such characterizations in this thread. Now stop being so serious. Jeesh. EEng 21:04, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Not because I really care about capitalisation edge cases, but because I believe that consistency is good for everyone most importantly the newcomers. The MOS should be consistent with its own advice. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:32, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    I should point out that I summoned you, which could technically be "canvassing". Anyone looking to count votes could discount this one to be "fair" Red Slash 00:44, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    It’s ok. Consensus decision making is based on strength of opinions, not vote counting. I obviously wholly share your opinion given in your nomination. Be to create some independence of argument I emphasise the importance of consistency. I do not mention that I enjoy the kick to the shins for the high-falluting grandstanding perception that the MOS carries. Not that I dislike the MOS, it is essential, but should not be taken so seriously. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:07, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    All the more reason not to robotically apply it here, ignoring all the trouble that doing so will cause. EEng 19:05, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Comment Could a case be made for using title case since the MoS is essentially a guidebook rather than a single article? (I'm also tempted to oppose on pure WP:IDLI grounds: I think Mos looks lamer than MoS, and I don't think it really matters since this isn't article space). Edit: I'm changing my !vote to oppose: I agree with Jayron32 that WP:BROKE applies here. gnu57 16:06, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    WP:AfD is well accepted as an abbreviation for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. WP:MoS will continue to function as a redirect to WP:Manual of style. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:04, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    I too fall in the position that the MOS is a long work (inb4 EEng with some sarcastic image about how lengthy it is [FBDB]), for which we typically capitalize significant words. --Izno (talk) 13:24, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support—On this occasion I have to go against the view of the excellent EEng. For years, en.WP has been in harmony with CMOS, the Oxford Style Guide, and many other authorities, in telling us to minimise unnecessary caps. So we do, largely. It's weird that the title of our style guide clashes with this. Tony (talk) 02:40, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    So why doesn't the Oxford Style Guide call itself the "Oxford style guide", or CMOS call itself "Cmos"? -- Dr Greg  talk  03:14, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Bingo! Randy Kryn (talk) 03:23, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    That's a pretty good catch, but to be fair, those are proper names, while the title of our style guide isn't because ... well, for some reason that escapes me. I'd be totally with this change if we were starting from scratch. But there are so many things that really need doing around this joint, and this will no doubt cause all kinds of headaches we're not thinking of -- minor headaches probably, but unnecessary ones for sure. Perhaps we can let the current form of title be a constant reminder that MOS does not apply to MOS (something that comes up now and then, as when someone demands that it be regularized to use either BrEng or AmEng, instead of continuing to display the shocking promiscuity in which it currently indulges). EEng 03:26, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
And for spelling issues we can have a Manual of orthography – Moo!
Manual of orthography noticeboard
Manual of orthography noticeboard?

Page header not displaying in mobile view

I use the mobile view almost exclusively. After a recent edit to this talk page's header by another user, I realized that the desktop view displays a header that I do not see in the mobile view. Does anyone using mobile remember seeing a header displayed here? It does seem like there used to be one. Jmar67 (talk) 00:14, 27 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • I use desktop, iPad, iPhone landscape and iPhone portrait. There have been a lot of silent changes in display by Wikipedia software over the last year, with some crazy things briefly oblong the way. Problems seem to get fixed faster than I can understand the problem I experienced. I think things are quite good at the moment. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:21, 28 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • And what do you mean by "header"? Are you talking about section headings? Templates at the top of the page? If the latter, various <div>...</div> CSS classes have suppressed display in the mobile view. E.g., if you go to WP:ANI in mobile, you'll find a heading for the noticeboard archives but no actual archive links available, until you switch to the desktop view. This isn't really ideal, but it's also not really an MoS matter. More a MediaWiki developers + "MediaWiki:"-namespace regulars matter.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:53, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, I mean the set of templates shown at the top of the talk page. This is not related to the style-related content of the MOS but rather to the talk page itself. The Help Desk referred me to VPT, but I wanted to get feedback here first. Jmar67 (talk) 01:23, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Right then. Definitely a VPT matter, since this is all about how the mobile version is coded, and how our CSS is coded to work with it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:02, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Spaces before unit symbols

Moved to Talk:35mm movie film § Requested move 28 April 2019

MOS:UNITSYMBOLS says to use non-breaking spaces before unit symbols (as in "35 mm"). But some editors have recently moved pages to squeeze the space out of the title, as in 35mm and 35mm movie film, because that unspaced form has become somewhat more common in popular sources in recent decades. This seems like the usual COMMONSTYLE fallacy to me. Shouldn't we try to be more consistent than that, in following the use recommended by standards organizations and our own MOS like we do almost everywhere else in WP? Is 35mm in some way special about this? Dicklyon (talk) 02:31, 28 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely. We've followed the International Standards Organisation for a long time now. It sets the most authoritative, consistent, logical, and respected standards. Tony (talk) 02:34, 28 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Don't go overboard, at least not unprepared
Don’t go overboard. Most units (not %, not degrees Celsius) should for sure have a nonbreaking space. But sometimes a measurement transforms into a name. “400-35mm film” is a leading example. The name is derived from a millimetre measurement, but it became a name. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:18, 28 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Cases where units don't get spaces are enumerated at MOS:UNITSYMBOLS. It doesn't apply to mm. I'm not asking about things like the Canon lens names (e.g. Canon EF 16–35mm lens), but when the film width is a simple measurement as in 35 mm film and 35 mm movie film, we should respect the conventions. Dicklyon (talk) 05:29, 28 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
And I've never heard of "400-35mm film". What is that the name of? Or do you mean an ISO 400 35 mm film, such as Tri-X? Dicklyon (talk) 05:33, 28 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. Although it is quite a distant memory needing to specify 35mm. My first camera used a smaller width film that became hard to find. 100 and 400 were the standard choices. The 35mm film memories are mixed with things like 18-55mm lenses. It was very common for the space before the unit to be lost when a measurement in millimetres was not the point. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:17, 28 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I recall seeing 100m used in articles on sprint and swimming races. No one objected when I moved them to ISO spacing. Tony (talk) 11:33, 28 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn’t expect it. In a 100m sprint, 100 metres the measurement is kind of central. Less so an 18-50mm lens, but I can’t see why someone would be upset. Was Dicklyon concerned about this: Talk:35mm_movie_film#RfC:_35mm_articles? It is a bit odd, section titled “RfC”, but not. Midstream, the “RfC” driver makes actions. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:49, 28 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not upset, just trying to call attention to an error that was made and move things along in a consistent direction. I don't think your fragmental memories of photographic terminology are particularly relevant here. It's a measurement in SI units, and treating it oddly just obfuscates that. The opinions at that discussion do not seem to have been voiced with our own MOS in mind (nobody mentioned it), just a scan of some popular sources. The spaced version remains very common, too, and there's no reason given to treat this case differently from others. Dicklyon (talk) 18:58, 28 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I must have had a 110 film cartridge camera. I have some of the thin negative strips. The purpose of scratching out these memory fragments is for me an attempt to find any remote reason for “35mm” to be a name, and I do not find a reason. Spaced versions and non spaced versions exist without any apparent meaningful distinction, I think it is just a style issue. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:30, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'll start an RM when I get a chance, and link it here. Dicklyon (talk) 19:04, 28 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
By the way, I find it hard to imagine that your first camera used a smaller film width than 35 mm. There was no format like that that I know of in the last 70 years, except for toy and spy cameras such as the TONE camera, and the 1972 Pocket Instamatic cartidges. More likely if you're an old guy like me you started with size 127 or 120 roll film or 35 mm, or a 70 mm size 116 roll film, which is actually what I started with using a very old camera. Dicklyon (talk) 19:11, 28 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Here: Talk:35mm_movie_film#Requested_move_28_April_2019. Dicklyon (talk) 19:30, 28 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, move them back to properly include the spaces. This can be done speedily via WP:RMTR.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:02, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

"Decorative quotations" again

Some while back we had an RfC here, to consistently recommend use of {{quote}} or the <blockquote>...</blockquote> element for block quotations, and deprecate the use of decorative quotation framing devices (colored boxes, giant quotation marks, etc.), which are a pull quote style, and to also remove support for use of pull quotes at all in main space.

I didn't notice at the time but Herostratus misread the RfC results and rewrote the template documentation to basically say the opposite of what the conclusion was: combined diff. Several of the things that version said are flat-out incorrect.

I've belatedly fixed this to reflect both the RfC results and what MoS and other pages say about this stuff: combined diff

Herostratus has reverted this with the non-rationale "Liked it better before", and then cited WP:BRD, but it was Herostratus who actually made the undiscussed major changes in the first place. I've restored my version, as actually compliant with the RfC consensus and the guidelines. So, this seems to be an impasse. We can RfC this here if necessary (doing it at the template talk page is probably a waste of time since virtually no one watchlists it), but just a general discussion is probably enough to resolve the issue.

PS: That sounded grouchier than intended: I don't think Herostratus is "being bad" for not codifying something that agrees with the RfC and the relevant WP:P&G material, since WP:Writing policy is hard. And some of my version might be better integrated directly into guidelines, though it's intended to address several forms of (very frequent) abuse of quotation templates, at the template's doc pages were it'll be seen (WP:UNDUE emphasis, decoration for its own sake, confusing non sequitur placement, over-quotation, using block quotes for very short quotations, mis-placement of citations inside the quoted material, etc.).
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:02, 29 April 2019 (UTC); revised 23:30, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the type with the giant quotation marks looks darn awful, but I don't really see any problem with the judicious use of {{quote box}} for primary-source quotations. I think of them as akin to images+captions in that they offer specific examples or details related to the summary-style overview they run beside. Glancing over a few articles with the quote box template, Aleister Crowley provides relevant excerpts from his writing, Charlie Chaplin includes pithy remarks of Chaplin on his own life events, placed at relevant junctures, and Messerschmitt Me 262 gives a fascinating first-hand account from a fighting ace. I agree that they can be hokey or misplaced (e.g., William Shakespeare, Bill Clinton, Social media#Criticism, debate and controversy), but I don't think the tendency to misuse them justifies discouraging all use. Cheers, gnu57 00:31, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I've said something along these lines myself. What we probably need is a fork of that template exclusively devoted to primary-source excerpts and documented as such, and named accordingly; and then to change the code of the original and its variants – abused literally thousands of times to "decorate" everyday block quotations – so that in mainspace they just emit the same code as {{Quote}}. And do the same thing to the "giant quotation marks" templates like {{Cquote}} and {{Rquote}} (other than they need no variant that does what they do in mainspace, for any reason).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:57, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Commas

I've come across an editor who does very little except add commas in sentences like "In 2006, so-and-so did X". Unless this is an ENGVAR thing I'm not aware of, the sentences don't need a comma (and some style guides expressly advise against using it in these cases). If it's not an ENGVAR thing, I was just wondering was there any kind of policy to stop editors making small changes like this based on their personal preference. Cheers, Number 57 20:50, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I think it might be an ENGVAR issue. I (American) prefer the comma in these situations because I learned to do it and feel a pause there when I read the sentence. Many articles where the comma is missing strike me as being BrE (not necessarily written by a native speaker). I usually refrain from inserting a comma in such cases, although the temptation is always there. Jmar67 (talk) 21:28, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It's not an ENGVAR matter, it's a formal/academic style versus news style matter. You'll find that news publishers in the US and UK regularly drop the comma after short introductory phrases, because their primary concern is squeezing text to save space, while other publishers do that much less often (less often the more formal the publication is, and few things are more formal than an encyclopedia, which is an academic book by nature even if published online as a wiki). The few style guides that literally advise against such commas (rather than stating that they're optional) are news style guides, with very few exceptions. WP is not written in news style as a matter of policy. (It's part of what keeps us reading like an encyclopedia at all instead of dismal blog with too many cooks in the kitchen.)

The comma should be used on WP for several reasons: 1) it's just clearer, especially for non-native English readers; 2) it's going to be clearer regardless of the exact construction (while "In 2016, they moved to Botswana." isn't going to melt anyone's brain, many intro phrases can lead to ambiguities that require re-reading the sentence a couple of times to get the meaning); and 3) it's going to remain clearer no matter what later editors do. That last is a key point: you have no idea what that line is going to say in 5 minutes or 5 months or 5 years, and it's quite likely that it's going to change. Especially because of the WP:PROSELINE problem, these kinds of sentences actually change even more often than they might otherwise.

In closing, see also MoS's admonition against editwarring over optional style matters. If someone wants to clarify our prose by including commas (grammatically correct ones, I mean), then you're not doing right in reverting them or picking a fight with them in some other way. Given the crappy state of much of our mainspace text, especially in articles on more obscure topics, an editor devoted to punctuation cleanup is no kind of problem, but a desirable WP:GNOME doing tedious work most others don't find appealing. If it's a new-ish editor you're singling out, see also WP:BITE. And beware the problem that objecting to someone as a control freak is usually done by someone else acting as a control freak with a difference of opinion (WP:KETTLE); WP is the obsessives' home away from home, remember.  :-)
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:05, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Given that I was referring to the University of Oxford style guide (p12), the claim that it's "a formal/academic style versus news-style matter" doesn't seem to be true. I'll assume it's a personal preference thing then. Number 57 10:09, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Nope. This has been discussed before multiple times, too. The "University of Oxford Style Guide" is not the Oxford Guide to Style, AKA Oxford Style Manual, formerly Hart's Rules, and now New Hart's Rules in current editions – the work intended as a guide book for general publishing, a British equivalent of The Chicago Manual of Style. The "UOSG" is an internal memo for, and only for: "writing and formatting documents written by staff on behalf of the University (or one of its constituent departments etc). It is part of the University’s branding toolkit". Like all university and corporate house style sheets, it is written by the marketing department, using the marketing register and style of English, which is derived almost entirely from news style (plus extra bombast – note the overcapitalization). It is not a reliable source for anything to do with English in a formal/academic/encyclopedic register.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:47, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. Absolutely not an ENGVAR issue. I'm British and I prefer the comma in my own writing, although it doesn't really bother me that much either way. -- Necrothesp (talk) 08:05, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This topic has been on this talk page before, and within the past year. You might take a look through the archives to see what the discussion settled on then. --Izno (talk) 02:05, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I found the discussion, which largely seems to conclude that the comma is not wrong but also not necessary, and that it's effectively a WP:RETAIN-type issue, so the editor doing this probably shouldn't be, especially after their edits were queried. Cheers, Number 57 10:14, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
More recently, here. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 12:48, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
RETAIN applies to ENGVAR issues exclusively. This is about adding something to the article. If an editor were going around removing these commas, then there might be an issue. Primergrey (talk) 22:57, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • an editor devoted to punctuation cleanup is no kind of problem, but a desirable WP:GNOME – If someone has a way to detect and fix comma splices, confusion between dependent and independent clauses, and the few other things like that which are genuine errors in comma placement, fine. But going about reducing comma placement to some anodyne least common denominator is not on. EEng 10:23, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Least comma denominator. Leviv ich 16:22, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    In the Old West men were shot for less. EEng 17:10, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    I would agree per WP:MEATBOT and MoS's own advice about trivial style changes that inserting these optional commas without doing anything else constructive isn't particularly helpful, as it hits watchlists for something not strictly necessary. But that's true of a lot of style cleanup. Gist: integrate such changes into a more substantive copyedit or other article improvement.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:10, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm with you, Number 57, and I don't buy SMcCandlish's contention that the commas concerned are necessarily correct and should be used on WP. I was a career typesetter for both British and US American book publishers, and I clearly remember that the rule was always that short introductory prepositional phrases did not take the comma. I think McCandlish may be taking the rule that introductory phrases generally take the comma and extending it – inappropriately, I think – to cases like your "In 2006". A Google search on introductory prepositional phrases confirms this. "When an introductory prepositional phrase is very short (less than four words), the comma is usually optional. But if the phrase is longer than four words, use a comma." (https://www.grammarly.com/blog/commas-after-introductory-phrases/) "Use a comma in the following cases: [...] After a long introductory prepositional phrase or more than one introductory prepositional phrase." (https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/punctuation/commas/commas_after_introductions.html) "A comma may also set off a single prepositional phrase at the beginning to make the sentence clear. A comma is recommended after any introductory prepositional phrase of more than four words." (http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000074.htm) "It is permissible, even commonplace, to omit a comma after most brief introductory elements — a prepositional phrase, an adverb, or a noun phrase." (https://www.dailywritingtips.com/comma-after-introductory-phrases/) "DO use a comma: [...] After an introductory prepositional phrase of more than four words." (http://writersrelief.com/2008/06/19/how-to-use-commas-after-introductory-phrases/) "You may omit the comma following a short introductory phrase: On Thursday the committee decided the dispute. In 1954 the Supreme Court desegregated the public schools." (https://www.grammar.com/commas-and-introductory-clauses-or-phrases/) "Rule: A short prepositional phrase that is a simple modifier takes no punctuation after it." (https://www.margieholdscourt.com/514/) These are the first finds that come up for me, with none excluded... but all of the finds following – to my surprise, actually – seem to be saying the same thing. In apparently every case, the comma is required only after a long prepositional phrase, generally of four words or more. I don't see any authority requiring a comma following "In [year]", and I accordingly regard such revisions in WP text as unjustified. –Roy McCoy (talk) 16:08, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely right. It's sad to see how many people have been taught that English is some kind of programming language with rigid rules for everything. With a handful of exceptions (e.g. as mentioned in my post a little bit up from here) most comma usage is about rhythm and pacing. Drive-by "corrections" we do not need. EEng 17:16, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Nice straw man. I never said anything about "necessarily correct". What I did say is that style guides treat the comma as optional for shorter phrases, and we have good reasons to opt to include it. I've laid out some of those reasons in detail, and you've done nothing to dispel them. The fact that you can find some publishers who prefer to opt to exclude it is completely meaningless. PS: Actually, none of those are publishers in any sense we'd care about; all are random writing-related blogs, except two that are universities spelling out how students should write in class papers (one just for a specific department).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 
Excuse me SMcCandlish, but I know what a straw man is and I believe you're the one who's presenting one here. I didn't quote you literally, though you suggest that I did. In fact, however, you did essentially say that the commas we've been considering here are necessarily correct in the Wikipedia context, which is what we're dealing with: "The comma should be used on WP for several reasons". That's saying it's correct, and that it's necessarily correct in this context. My saying "necessarily correct" of course didn't mean and wasn't intended to mean that you said the comma is obligatory, as anyone can understand. If you're suggesting I meant otherwise, then you're obviously twisting my meaning. Anyway, you continue to maintain that the comma is necessarily correct also now, though you express this a bit more mildly: "we have good reasons to include it." I don't actually think your reasons are very good, and if I didn't refute them before it was possibly because I had already spent so much time documenting that the comma was considered unnecessary by an apparently very wide consensus, which in itself might be taken as an adequate refutation of your undocumented assertions. But if you want to challenge me, okay, I accept the challenge so let's continue. You didn't say that style guides "treat the comma as optional for shorter phrases" (and what they say is that the comma is omittable, not that it's includable), but rather: "The few style guides that literally advise against such commas (rather than stating that they're optional) are news style guides, with very few exceptions." This is clearly quite different, with only an oblique parenthetical suggestion that a majority of style guides concur with your opinion, which in fact they don't. As for my purportedly having "done nothing to dispel" your purportedly good reasons for including commas generally considered to be unnecessary, you're right in that I didn't address some of them. I didn't have to, as I presented detailed web documentation adequately refuting your main argument that "it's a formal/academic style versus news style matter" and that since the unnecessary comma conforms to the former rather than the latter it should appear in WP. Number_57 questioned this and I do too, and at least here you don't document it at all. (I was actually thinking of editing a [citation needed] into your comment, but resisted the urge.) I see you've later come in claiming that the University of Oxford Style Guide represents news style rather than academic style – a dubious assertion on the face of it. And despite your implying that the "real", "academic" Oxford style favors your viewpoint, I've now discovered the "Oxford University Press / Academic Division / Guide for authors and editors / Oxford Paperback Reference" at http://www.oxfordreference.com/fileasset/files/QuickReference_AuthorGuidelines.pdf, which states quite explicitly: "Avoid the use of a comma after an introductory adverb, adverbial phrase, or subordinate clause, unless the sentence will be hard to parse without it: In 2000 the hospital took part in a trial involving alternative therapy for babies." It's funny you should accuse me of illogical argumentation, when it's so clearly yours that's defective. Your syllogism is: Wikipedia should follow academic style; academic style favors the use of commas following short prepositional phrases such as "In 2006"; therefore, such commas should be used in Wikipedia. But your neat distinction between academic and news styles is a bit dubious in any event (particularly as many guides cover both), and even if it does actually exist it isn't at all clear that academic style actually accords with your preference. I worked for the OUP in London and was offered a job with them as a compositor in Oxford, so you can't pull rank on me at least in regard to that institution. As for news publishers, you've presented zero evidence here that they "regularly drop the comma after short introductory phrases, because their primary concern is squeezing text to save space" – nor, for that matter, that academic publishers do otherwise. You didn't document what you actually said about style guides either. I'll get back to this, but I'm dealing with your initial comment in order in order not to miss anything and be criticized on that account. 1) You say the comma is "just clearer, especially for non-native English readers", but this isn't at all obvious and I don't accept it. Whether I can conclusively dispel the notion or not, everyone's reason for authorizing omission of the comma is that it doesn't make anything clearer – otherwise it wouldn't be considered unnecessary. 2) Your arguing on the basis of "In 2016, they moved to Botswana" is poor, and I can dispel this purported reason for institutionalizing the comma. Namely, "In 2016 they moved to Botswana" itself – and this is exactly the kind of sentence we're talking about – doesn't lead to any ambiguity whatsoever, so you're effectively arguing against your own point (unless one is prepared to admit oranges as apples, of course). Moreover, while the variation with the comma may not melt anyone's brain, it does trip the reader up with an unnecessary pause, which is also somewhat inhibiting. 3) Your last, "key" point is perhaps the most unfounded of all: "you have no idea what that line is going to say in 5 minutes or 5 months or 5 years, and it's quite likely that it's going to change." So what? You could say that about just about anything. And if it wasn't actually clearer with the comma (as others and I will maintain), then it's not going to be clearer later anyway. So having now covered what I missed before, let's get back to what I didn't miss. It's true that a majority of my first seven Google finds were bloggy. This doesn't mean, however, that the authors didn't base their prescriptions on authorities and common usage as well as on their own preferences. But you say two of the finds were academic, and however you may now pooh-pooh these, this still seems very strange for someone whose basic argument is that he thinks academic usage should be preferred. You also apparently ignored my observation that all of the subsequent finds were saying the same thing – and I did quickly look through the whole page of a hundred finds. So where are yours in defense of the unnecessary comma? I hope I've now sufficiently dispelled your arguments. –Roy McCoy (talk) 05:54, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The fact is that a comma, in this context, can serve to clarify a given sentence. It will for some readers and won't for others. That makes it an improvement to an article and any revert of it ought to be policy-compliant. Primergrey (talk) 06:22, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It also can, and quite often does, serve no purpose at all other than to obstruct the flow of the text in which it appears. That's why its addition is not an improvement, and why it may be dispensed with when someone has nonetheless tried to impose it. I note you're arguing solely from personal opinion, and like McCandlish present nothing to support your assertion. –Roy McCoy (talk) 06:40, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

National spellings of parts of titles

What's the style guide's take on how to handle the first sentence of an article that includes a word spelled differently in the US and UK, where that spelling difference is trivial? Color photography opens with "Color (or colour) photography is ...", while color television says "Color television is ...". Which is preferred? --Lord Belbury (talk) 07:55, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

See MOS:ENGVAR. In the case of TV and photography there is no MOS:TIES, so MOS:RETAIN applies. Although "color" jars somewhat, it is pretty obvious so possibly "or colour" is superfluous. It becomes more of an issue when the word itself changes such as "A railroad switch (AE), turnout, or [set of] points (BE) ...". Martin of Sheffield (talk) 08:11, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Personally I'd remove "(or colour)" as disrupting the readability of the lead (and insulting the intelligence), and if someone restored it, leave it alone—it's too trivial to fight over with someone who would actually fight over it. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 11:11, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

source substantiating latter part of sentence

Hi, this is probably another FAQ: I have a question regarding WP:REFPUNC. I have a sentence like “Incredibly interesting topic, so <claim A> and <claim B>.” I have two sources, one supporting <claim A>, the other <claim B>, but neither of them support the whole sentence, so naturally I haven't placed my <ref> supporting <claim B> after the period. Yet WP:WPCHECK reports a bug: A <ref> may not appear directly prior a punctuation mark. Am I wrong? Or should I just insert a <nowiki/> to avoid reporting? Of course I can split everything into two separate sentences, but then I had to re-reference the topic. -- K (T | C) 01:26, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

In this situation, by convention, the reference supports the nearest clauses to that reference, even if after the full stop. --Izno (talk) 01:47, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Right, placing it after the period does not imply it supports the whole sentence—only whatever comes beffore the ref but after the preceding cite (or {{cn}} or whatever). So: Curly Turkey is an editor at Wikipedia. He is ever-present[1] and ever-annoying.[2] Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 02:46, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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