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First you reverted as "vandalism" (Special:Diff/901450577), which it's not, then with no explanation at all (Special:Diff/901559947) & recently you've been blathering about "stylistic and grammatical errors" (Special:Diff/901830072). So I have a better idea: please, if you feel strongly about excluding this, organize yr thoughts and YOU hold a vote (except we don't vote on Wikipedia--probably you should learn a bit more about how things work). See also User:EEng#get_the_joke
Talk pages are for discussion, not repositories for copyrighted quotations. We have specific rules about featuring copyrighted material, and "to lighten the mood" is not an adequate reason to include it. We also remove harmless POV commentary ("I love this show!") from talk pages all the time because it does not contribute to discussion about the article.
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{{Quote box |salign=right|align=right|width=25%|quoted=yes
|quote = MOS ... You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.
|author=[[Mos Eisley|Obi-Wan Kenobi]]<sup>[https://en.wikipedia.org/?diff=prev&oldid=760522201]</sup>}}


==Style discussions elsewhere [keep at top of page]==
==Style discussions elsewhere [keep at top of page]==
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* [[Talk:Mueller Report#Publisher versus work or website in citation template]] – Perennial dispute about putting website titles in {{para|publisher}} or {{para|via}} just to avoid italicizing them in citation template output. Archived.
* [[Talk:Mueller Report#Publisher versus work or website in citation template]] – Perennial dispute about putting website titles in {{para|publisher}} or {{para|via}} just to avoid italicizing them in citation template output. Archived.
* [[Talk:Mueller Report#Reference formats]] – Discussion about using decorative template, {{tlx|redacted content}}, to simulate the appearance of blacked-out material in censored documents, e.g. {{redacted content|text={{white|'''CENSORED'''}}}}. Archived.
* [[Talk:Mueller Report#Reference formats]] – Discussion about using decorative template, {{tlx|redacted content}}, to simulate the appearance of blacked-out material in censored documents, e.g. {{redacted content|text={{white|'''CENSORED'''}}}}. Archived.
* [[Talk:35mm_movie_film#Requested_move_28_April_2019]] – Proposal to undo two recent moves that went against [[MOS:UNITSYMBOLS]]. Moved to add space.
* [[Talk:35mm_movie_film#Requested_move_28_April_2019]] –&nbsp;Proposal to undo two recent moves that went against [[MOS:UNITSYMBOLS]]. Moved to add space.
* [[Talk:Sino-Vietnamese conflicts, 1979–1991#RfC]] – a [[MOS:FLAGS]] matter, about military commanders. Consensus against using flag icons.
* [[Talk:Sino-Vietnamese conflicts, 1979–1991#RfC]] – a [[MOS:FLAGS]] matter, about military commanders. Consensus against using flag icons.
* [[Talk:Nghtcrwlrs (album)#Requested move 16 April 2019 ]] – [[:Nghtcrwlrs (album)]] → {{no redirect|NGHTCRWLRS (album)}} – For consistency with band title. Not moved, per consensus. See also [[Talk:NGHTCRWLRS#Requested move 3 April 2019]].
* [[Talk:Nghtcrwlrs (album)#Requested move 16 April 2019 ]] – [[:Nghtcrwlrs (album)]] → {{no redirect|NGHTCRWLRS (album)}} – For consistency with band title. Not moved, per consensus. See also [[Talk:NGHTCRWLRS#Requested move 3 April 2019]].
* [[Talk:Motion picture content rating system#RfC: Should we install a color scheme with 9 colors in the comparison table?]] – a [[MOS:ACCESS]] case of text-on-color luminosity and contrast. Some [[WP:CONLEVEL]] struggles. Closed: no consensus for any action.
* [[Talk:Motion picture content rating system#RfC: Should we install a color scheme with 9 colors in the comparison table?]] – a [[MOS:ACCESS]] case of text-on-color luminosity and contrast. Some [[WP:CONLEVEL]] struggles. Closed: no consensus for any action.
*[[Talk:Efficiency movement#Requested move 11 April 2019]] – A proper name, or not? Moved to Efficiency movement.
*[[Talk:Efficiency movement#Requested move 11 April 2019]] –&nbsp;A proper name, or not? Moved to Efficiency movement.
* [[Talk:Chairperson#Requested move 22 March 2019]] – Some suggestions include [[Chairperson]], and [[Chair (officer)]]. A [[MOS:GNL]] matter, in part. No consensus to move to a specific title. A majority favored abandoning "Chairman", however. In a move review ([[Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2019 April#Chairman]]), the closure was endorsed. A new RM was then initiated: [[Talk:Chairperson#Requested move 8 May 2019]].
* [[Talk:Chairperson#Requested move 22 March 2019]] – Some suggestions include [[Chairperson]], and [[Chair (officer)]]. A [[MOS:GNL]] matter, in part. No consensus to move to a specific title. A majority favored abandoning "Chairman", however. In a move review ([[Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2019 April#Chairman]]), the closure was endorsed. A new RM was then initiated: [[Talk:Chairperson#Requested move 8 May 2019]].
* [[Talk:Spider-Man: Far From Home#Requested move 26 March 2019]] – [[MOS:CT]], from vs. From. No consensus to move. Exception to guidelines favoring lowercase prepositions.
* [[Talk:Spider-Man: Far From Home#Requested move 26 March 2019]] – [[MOS:CT]], from vs. From. No consensus to move. Exception to guidelines favoring lowercase prepositions.

Revision as of 15:18, 14 June 2019

WikiProject iconManual of Style
WikiProject iconThis page falls within the scope of the Wikipedia:Manual of Style, a collaborative effort focused on enhancing clarity, consistency, and cohesiveness across the Manual of Style (MoS) guidelines by addressing inconsistencies, refining language, and integrating guidance effectively.Manual of StyleWikipedia:WikiProject Manual of StyleTemplate:WikiProject Manual of StyleManual of Style articles
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This page falls under the contentious topics procedure and is given additional attention, as it closely associated to the English Wikipedia Manual of Style, and the article titles policy. Both areas are subjects of debate.
Contributors are urged to review the awareness criteria carefully and exercise caution when editing.
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For information on Wikipedia's approach to the establishment of new policies and guidelines, refer to WP:PROPOSAL. Additionally, guidance on how to contribute to the development and revision of Wikipedia policies of Wikipedia's policy and guideline documents is available, offering valuable insights and recommendations.

Style discussions elsewhere [keep at top of page]

Add a link to new discussions at top of list and indicate what kind of discussion it is (move request, RfC, open discussion, deletion discussion, etc.). Follow the links to participate, if interested. Move to Concluded when decided and summarize conclusion. Please keep this section at the top of the page.

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Concluded

Extended content

Matching commas on attributive nouns in titles

What is the most correct and least awkward way to title certain articles? King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:56, 29 May 2019 (UTC) The MoS requires matching commas at the end if a date or place name contains a comma:[reply]

The woman from Tucson, Arizona, knew that the salesman who tried to sell her a new phone contract on July 1, 2018, was a fraud.

Note that these commas would not normally exist if not for the preceding comma, showing that it is indeed it is this rule which causes the presence of the commas:

The woman from Tucson knew that the salesman who tried to sell her a new phone contract on July 1 was a fraud.

This has been long-accepted as the standard in English grammar, and as far I as can tell no one seriously contests this rule in article prose. However, it becomes less clear when we talk about titles, because titles which follow this rule can appear strange to many people, especially when the expression containing an internal comma is an being used as an attributive noun. Here's an example, adapting a previous discussion I started (but didn't receive many comments): There have now been multiple shootings in some place called Aurora, two of them in Aurora, Colorado and one in Aurora, Illinois. Multiple WP:RMs have dealt with this issue:

I suggest reviewing the content of the discussions before proceeding further. I think there are three general schools of thought:

  1. "City, State" is always a valid drop-in replacement for "City". If "Aurora shooting" would be the preferred title if there were no ambiguity, then "Aurora, Illinois shooting" would also be the preferred title.
  2. Doing that is a violation of MOS:GEOCOMMA, so a matching comma should be used: "Aurora, Illinois, shooting". "City, State," is always a valid drop-in-replacement for "City" in the middle of a title.
  3. The first is a violation of grammatical rules, and the second looks weird, so in most cases such articles should be retitled so that "City, State" is not being used as an attributive noun, even if such titles would normally not be preferred: "Shooting in Aurora, Illinois" or "2019 Aurora shooting".

The same thing is now playing out at Talk:March 1–3, 2018 nor'easter, but with MOS:DATECOMMA. We should seriously take a look at both these rules together to figure out what is the most correct and least awkward way to title such articles. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:56, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • @Ahecht, AjaxSmack, Aphexcoil, Athaenara, BarrelProof, BD2412, Born2cycle, Bradv, Braxton C. Womack, Bus stop, Comfr, Davidsousa1, Dicklyon, Dohn joe, EDG 543, Erik, Feminist, Gonnym, HurricaneGeek2002, Huwmanbeing, Hydromania, In ictu oculi, InedibleHulk, Jax 0677, Jim Michael, John from Idegon, JorgeLaArdilla, Lawrencekhoo, Matuko, Necrothesp, Netoholic, Nohomersryan, Nsk92, Objective3000, Octoberwoodland, Paintspot, PC78, QEDK, Reidgreg, Sheldybett, Shibbolethink, SMcCandlish, SmokeyJoe, Sturmvogel 66, Tony1, TonyTheTiger, WikiWinters, Wow, WWGB, and Xain36: Pinging participants of past RMs. Feel free to ping others I may have missed. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:19, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • The most correct way is to simply add the matching comma, but a fair number of users have expressed the opinion that they don't really care about it being correct, because they understand what it's supposed to mean in the incorrect form. A majority of editors in the biggest RM discussion supported fixing those by reordering or some other method, but this was not judged to be a consensus due to the fair number who didn't care about the error. This was only for GEOCOMMA, and very few such errors remain there, I think. I'm pretty sure DATECOMMA is an even more stringent rule in practice, yet an editor has already claimed it's rare to use correct grammar in American English, which seems odd to me, but yes we have lots of such violations in Wikipedia. Dicklyon (talk) 01:24, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Both approaches of adding the comma or rephrasing the title (e.g., to move the date or geographic location to the end of the title) are worth considering, and can somewhat be handled on a case-by-case basis. Just letting the punctuation violate MOS:DATECOMMA / MOS:GEOCOMMA does not seem like a good idea, since it makes Wikipedia look unprofessional. I am not aware of American style guidance saying the comma is not needed. What do The New York Times and The Atlantic do? —BarrelProof (talk) 01:35, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have no interest in this, and frankly resent being pinged to it. I participated in a prior discussion on the AP style book, and in one on schools. I know how to find discussions that interest me. There is no need to ping me ever. John from Idegon (talk) 01:41, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    @John from Idegon: John, I felt a need to ping you just to thank you for taking the trouble to show up here and let us all know that you don't care. It's not every editor who will go out their way to say something when they have nothing to say. Please do not feel you need to thank me in return, but if you want to, I'll listen. Dicklyon (talk) 04:03, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    I was almost going to continue this chain but I'm still laughing at this. --qedk (t 桜 c) 04:26, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    It's not every editor who will go out their way to say something when they have nothing to say – If only that were true. EEng 09:52, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Not if I have something to say about it. --A D Monroe III(talk) 16:24, 30 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: The MoS is not policy, but rather is a guideline that relates to article prose, so using words like "the MoS requires" or "that is a violation of MOS:GEOCOMMA" is over-stating its importance or relevance in regards to article titles. WP:Article titles is the policy. That said, I don't see any real-world uniformity in favor of double commas for long date handling within titles. As examples, here are Google Scholar title results for one particular famous date and a famous city - I think you'll see handling is a mixed-bag. What we should be discussing is not what the MoS says, but rather what is the best consistent way to handle WP:TITLES on Wikipedia. I think its clear that long-term editor preference has been to not use the extra comma in page titles. These recent move discussions certainly show a strong disinclination to use them. If necessary, we can document this in WP:TITLES. I am open to changing the MoS as well (at least as relates to American English articles, where seeing a "naked" City, State or long date is not unusual, and is easily parsed by the reader), but I'm neutral on that at the moment as it relates to article prose only. -- Netoholic @ 01:56, 29 May 2019 (UTC) (updated)[reply]
    In your search for "September 11, 2001" in titles, only 1 on the first page of 10 hits has the unbalanced comma problem (2 do it right, and in the rest it doesn't come up). Similarly on your "Washington, DC" search, only 1 unbalanced, 2 with double comma, 1 with no commas, and the rest where it doesn't come up (because it's followed by end of title or colon or something). So sources are followed guidance about 2:1 at least. Nobody said it wasn't a common error. Dicklyon (talk) 02:41, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    I searched on "the September 11, 2001" earlier tonight without having seen the above, and without weeding out the titles (since I didn't see any need to – titles, schmitles, it's the same language) and got 32 finds with a comma following and 69 without. That's way less overwhelming than what I got with cities and states the other day, but still over two to one. What I think some people should consider is that even if certain things like absent commas following states and years are incorrect according to grammatical authorities, nonetheless some errors – possessive it's, for example – are more egregious than others. Could we lighten up a bit on the less egregious, or are all purported errors of any degree to be considered equally abominable and attacked with identical furor? –Roy McCoy (talk) 04:37, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    @Netoholic: The MoS is not policy, but rather is a guideline that relates to article prose. Since when is its application limited to article prose? Could you cite your source for this assertion?
    so using words like "the MoS requires" or "that is a violation of MOS:GEOCOMMA" is over-stating its importance or relevance in regards to article titles. You do accept that the MOS is to be observed absent exceptional circumstances, though, right? 142.160.89.97 (talk) 02:16, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    It "is to be observed" only per its stated scope "to help editors write articles with consistent and precise language, layout, and formatting" (note that titling is not listed there), and the very first section of the MoS (under the lead and ToC) redirects people to WP:TITLES policy for concerns related to that. Also, as a guideline, its understood that the MoS "is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply". The MOS:GEOCOMMA section only gives examples of full sentences and doesn't mention titles. WP:TITLES only mentions comma handling under WP:COMMADIS, with no mention of dates/localities. There are naming conventions like WP:NCPLACE, WP:NCEVENTS, and WP:NCDATES, but none addresses extra comma use. WP:NCDATES#Year at the end, with comma states that "use of punctuation marks in article names is discouraged" and I think that is broadly-true. We often err on the side of removing punctuation in article titles, because it makes it easier for editors to predict how to link. -- Netoholic @ 02:35, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    It "is to be observed" only per its stated scope "to help editors write articles with consistent and precise language, layout, and formatting" (note that titling is not listed there). Is it your argument that titles are not part of articles? Or that titles don't contain language?
    and the very first section of the MoS (under the lead and ToC) redirects people to WP:TITLES policy for concerns related to that. ... Are you kidding? It doesn't just redirect to WP:TITLES; it supplements it and even provides the following:

    Subject both to the above and to WP:Article titles, the rest of the MoS, particularly § Punctuation, applies also to the title [emphasis added].
    — Wikipedia:Manual of Style § Article titles

    That being the case, Netoholic, how do you reconcile your argument that article titles are outside the scope of the MOS with Wikipedia:Manual of Style § Article titles?
    Also, as a guideline, its understood that the MoS "is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply". Which is to say that the MOS is to be observed absent exceptional circumstances?
    The MOS:GEOCOMMA section only gives examples of full sentences and doesn't mention titles. WP:TITLES only mentions comma handling under WP:COMMADIS, with no mention of dates/localities. There are naming conventions like WP:NCPLACE, WP:NCEVENTS, and WP:NCDATES, but none addresses extra comma use. WP:TITLES doesn't mention date formats and particular provisions of the MOS don't mention their applicability to titles because that would be redundant to Wikipedia:Manual of Style § Article titles, excerpted above.
    WP:NCDATES#Year at the end, with comma states that "use of punctuation marks in article names is discouraged" and I think that is broadly-true. Given your deep concern about the scope of particular guidelines, I would have thought you would have paid more attention to the heading above that quotation. 142.160.89.97 (talk) 03:08, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    That line you quoted under Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Article titles is certainly interesting. But WP:TITLES does not broadly point to the MoS beyond linking to "further information". If there is any strict consideration related to article titles, though, it should be documented in WP:TITLES or a specific naming convention. I'd be very interested to dig into what prompted that line you quoted to be added here and no matching text included at WP:TITLES. Anyone know what the "ArbCom dash poll" refers to? EDIT: I think I found it Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/dash drafting. If this is what prompted that line to be added here, it seems like an overreach. -- Netoholic @ 03:52, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    But WP:TITLES does not broadly point to the MoS beyond linking to "further information". That is the nature of guidelines. They often tend to provide further information that doesn't contradict the relevant policies.
    If this is what prompted that line to be added here, it seems like an overreach. It's hardly overreach if it's been established as the community consensus for the better part of a decade.
    So if I understand correctly – and do correct me if I'm wrong here – I think we're now on the same page with respect to what started this thread, viz.:
    1. The MOS applies to article titles.
    2. The MOS is to be observed absent exceptional circumstances.
    142.160.89.97 (talk) 04:11, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Not on the same page at all. In fact, you may be the first editor to have ever brought up that line of the guideline. I did some searches using the current and older versions of that line, and I don't see it being brought up in any other discussion or cited in any RM discussion. This line seems to have been added in the middle of a set of rewrites and largely ignored. I don't see that it has consensus to make it on the level of a policy. -- Netoholic @ 07:59, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree that those commas should be there in sentences, but they shouldn't be there in article titles. Jim Michael (talk) 01:55, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree with your opinion, It is confusing because there is no comma in the sentence. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Holiakim (talk • contribs) 08:06, 3 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Doesn't look odd to me. The year and state in the examples are postpositional modifiers/qualifiers. The link to attributive noun refers to "pre-modifiers". Viewing them as attributive nouns may cause the perception that parenthetic commas are incorrect. Not going to loose sleep if they aren't in titles though. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 02:07, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    The expression "postpositional modifiers/qualifiers" seemed curious to me, so I googled it. Zero finds other than the singular one here, so congratulations to Cinderella157 on having coined an original expression. I tried "postpositional modifiers" and got 43 finds, suggesting obscurity. The first of these related to the Peterborough Chronicle, a historical work written primarily in Old English. The second related to Old Hungarian. The third concerned contemporary English, but non-native-speaker with a sentence containing no comma ("My big brother studying in New York always buys me things because he still thinks that I am his little brother."). The fourth related to Chinese. When I tried "postpositional qualifiers" I got precisely two results, the first relating to Santali in Ol Chiki script, and the second to linguistic relativity in French, English, and German philosophy. So sorry, Cinderella, but I'm afraid your postpositional modifiers/qualifers aren't going to cut it as a rationalization for the sacred geodatecommas. We seem to be stuck with parenthesis for the geo, and a hodgepodge of parenthesis and apposition for the date. –Roy McCoy (talk) 15:35, 3 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Quoting or paraphrasing from the relevant pages: A modifier is an optional element in phrase structure or clause structure. Qualifier has a similar meaning/use. A modifier placed before the head is called a premodifier; one placed after the head is called a postmodifier. Adpositional phrases contain an adposition: preposition, postposition, or circumposition. A phrase is a group of words or even a single word. An attributive noun (or noun phrase) functions as a pre-modifier in a noun phrase - a prepositional modifier. Arizona is after (not before) Tuscon and therefore not an attributive noun (rather, it is an apposition? - yes, the term eluded me at the time, but not the construction to which it refers). Who would have thought I was being so novel by simply substituting "post" for "pre" to indicate that the qualification to the noun was being made "after" rather than "before". Ain't English grand. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 01:16, 4 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, Cinderella157, for erroneously claiming that the state is an apposition. This enables me to correctly observe that we have a hodgepodge of parenthesis and apposition as our rationalization for both the geocomma and the datecomma. Dick denied that the state was an apposition before, and I granted that I could find that as a rationalization only for the datecomma. But now we have both for both. Thanks again. –Roy McCoy (talk) 01:38, 4 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Replying:
  1. Did Dicklyon deny "state" was an apposition? The point is that ... [parenthesis are one way to set off a disambiguating term, and commas are another] not that they are identical ... [or that apposition is the relevant concept]. This response occurred in the context of a question: Does anyone here think that apposition is identical to parenthesis? I read Dick's response as saying: "No, that is not the point. The point is how we disambiguate article titles with parenthesis or commas." To claim, "Dick denied that the state was an apposition", appears to me to be a leap that ignores the context and misrepresents what has been said. Perhaps Dick might comment as to what he intended.
  2. To say, I have "erroniouslyerroneously claimed" ignores the question mark in my response that is less than unequivocal. However ...
  3. The proposition I am responding to is that: parenthesis and apposition are mutually exclusive. Parenthesis can be appositive. Some appositional phrases are parenthetic but not all. There are both restrictive and non-restrictive appositions, of which, the latter are typically set off by commas (ie, are paerenthetic). The two "sets" share an intersection. To that extent, both are correct and not so much of an "hodgepodge". Cinderella157 (talk) 10:25, 4 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, a Venn-diagram hodgepodge of parenthesis and apposition – that's even better. Since the year isn't either, it doesn't matter. And the prize for equivocality goes to you, with your question mark, obscure jargon and so forth – also for orthography, with your "erroniously", "apositive" and "perenthetic". But please: I would truly appreciate it if if you could explain to me why "[sic]" follows Elaine Byrne's use of the expression "less than equivocal" at https://www.broadsheet.ie/2011/03/31/dr-elaine-byrne-fighting-the-revolution-one-angry-old-man-at-a-time/. Thank you. –Roy McCoy (talk) 13:26, 4 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Please excuse me, Cinderella157, if I seemed to be concentrating here more on your creative language than on the topic at hand, which latter is of course what concerns us.
  1. Dick, in reply to my question on whether anyone thought apposition was identical to parenthesis, accused me of misstating the point when in fact I hadn't stated any point at all; what he was dealing with was mainly his surmisal in this regard. It was not my contention "that apposition is the relevant concept" (what I was actually thinking was that people have proposed both parenthesis and apposition as the relevant geocomma concept), but in declaring this to be part of my purported straw man, and denying that this was his position, he was in fact rejecting the idea and correctly so, as it turned out that I could find advocacy of the appositive position among only supporters of the datecomma and not of the geocomma. So we were agreed that parenthesis was the relevant geocomma concept. But now you've come in lumping parenthesis partially together with apposition and stating that "both are correct" – which indeed constitutes a hodgepodge, and furthermore one that I doubt many, or any, of the geocomma supporters will want to accept. For now we have no one saying the state is appositional ("that apposition is the relevant concept"), some saying it's parenthetical, and now you suggesting it's somehow both. This impresses me as a curious situation, and I don't think you're doing the geocomma any favor by bringing apposition into it, with a Venn diagram or otherwise.
  2. You directly indicated that the term apposition had previously eluded you, but that you had now found it for "the construction to which it refers", namely that of the state in "Tucson, Arizona". Actually I think you were out of hodgepodge territory there and were actually saying that "Arizona" is an appositive, and not a mixture of appositive and parenthesis. Also, I don't think anybody ever said it was an attributive noun – that would have been Tucson.
  3. Speaking of straw men: I never said that parenthesis and apposition were mutually exclusive. I said they were different, which they are, and nobody said anything to the contrary even when invited to do so. –Roy McCoy (talk) 05:02, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
On your point 2: I don't think anybody ever said it [bold to clarify] was an attributive noun – that would have been Tucson. - please clarify what [word] is "it" and what "Tucson" is being an "attributive to" in the construction, "Tucson, Arizona"? Cinderella157 (talk) 11:15, 11 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate your asking, as I was already thinking of correcting myself on this. My "it" referred to "Arizona", the state, to which "Tucson" would have been attributive. Only neither "Tucson" nor "Arizona" is what we've been referring to as the attributive noun here, but rather the combination "Tucson, Arizona" when used as an adjective modifying what follows, as in "the Tucson, Arizona[,] climate". We can call this a compound attributive noun, but that's another rare term (only nine Google finds on it for me just now). Others here share my feeling that the punctuation should be the same in titles as in text, and why not? They're the same things, are spoken of in the same way ("We were talking about the Sandy, Utah attack", for example), and normally, though with exceptions, are simply excerpted in a title. The difference of opinion among us who feel this way is whether the closing comma should be included in such cases or not. Garner and I (along with a clear majority of normal writers and editors [84/18, 59/14, 56/6/ 45/4, etc.[2]], and I think also e.g. Herostratus, though he hasn't engaged other than to make a singular statement) feel it shouldn't, while others here, and apparently a majority of style guides and a certain grammatical tradition I was unfamiliar with until recently, feel it should. You apparently tend to the latter view, but aren't in this consistently pro-comma group because you tolerate the omission in titles. –Roy McCoy (talk) 16:12, 11 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Replying: I think that the title of this thread is a little ambiguous, in that the "matching commas" applies to only part of the "city, state," phrase and that "state" and not the fuller phrase, was therefore being described as "attributive". I don't see this being clarified in the opening post. I acknowledge this was my earlier perception but do not think I have been alone? However, my initial comments stand. My subsequent comments in this thread also stand. They [my subsequent comments] are made in the context of the "city, state," phrase. I am not seeing that they [same "they"] are dependent on what then follows that construction (ie "city, state,"). Cinderella157 (talk) 03:32, 12 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not at all sure, but at this moment I think King of Hearts might have titled this section "on attributive nouns in titles" rather than "in attributive nouns in titles" simply to avoid repetition of "in". Or maybe the closing comma is on rather than in the attributive noun because it's on the end of the expression rather than internal to it. In any event it's now quite clear to me that the attributive noun concerned is compound/two-word, and this is confirmed in the original post: "especially when the expression containing an internal comma is [...] being used as an attributive noun". Obviously "Arizona" cannot contain an internal comma, while "Tucson, Arizona" obviously does. I can ask you about the "they" in your last sentence here the same as you asked me about my "it", which I nonetheless think was clear. But if you mean that the two words – e.g. "Tucscon, Arizona" – are not dependent on what follows that construction, I agree with you. We simply don't agree on whether there should normally be a comma at the end of such expressions or not. –Roy McCoy (talk) 04:11, 12 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks King of Hearts for dealing with this. I think it's interesting that you write "two of them in Aurora, Colorado and one in Aurora, Illinois" rather than "two of them in Aurora, Colorado, and one in Aurora, Illinois". If this was owing to a natural instinct, I think the instinct is correct, and this despite any criticism that you wrote ungrammatically in omitting the comma. Your first school of thought, with its accompanying policy, is the most natural and (I think) normal, whether purportedly incorrect or not. The problem then, as you and others realize, is that you're then in violation of the MOS:GEOCOMMA rule. The problem, I suggest, may be with the rule rather than the exception. You say that "as far as [you] can tell no one seriously contests this rule in article prose", but I just recently read in a related discussion here that various style guides have been dropping the comma concerned, and (if I remember correctly) that about half the people in a certain space were doing likewise. If I had commented at that point, I would have said that when a state is really in apposition (this being the justification for the comma), it indeed generally appears in parentheses, with the state serving a distinguishing function rather than simply being part of the address. But I only mention that in passing. My opinion here is that the titling matter simply be left without a rule. Let editors title their articles as they wish, and the most natural and normal forms will presumably prevail, whether some people consider some of these grammatically incorrect or not. If this means that the rule is occasionally violated in titles, then so be it. It would hardly be the end of the world. –Roy McCoy (talk) 02:15, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Wrong venue?: I get that the above is more of an open discussion with no direct action proposed yet, but if there were to be any changes, the MoS isn't where we define how to handle article titles. Shouldn't this discussion, and any firm proposal that comes out of it, be held over at WT:TITLES? -- Netoholic @ 02:48, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    There are simply too many possible venues, including WP:NCE and a few others, so I just picked one and went with it. Any other talk pages can simply be pointed to this discussion as I've done. I don't think putting it at MoS is unreasonable given that one of the possible outcomes is carving out an exception to existing policy, which would probably need to be mentioned somewhere on the MoS page if implemented. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:01, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I've always felt like Tucson, Arizona, should have the comma when it's clearly a noun and not when it's trying to be an adjective. And that's the way I wish everyone felt and wrote (at least everyone who writes what I read). So there's that, for what it's worth. InedibleHulk (talk) 03:17, May 29, 2019 (UTC)
Good point, InedibleHulk. With your address-as-adjective case, we've got "1993 Aurora, Colorado shooting" for titles and "the Tucscon, Arizona climate" for text. I sense a progression here, though others supposably don't. –Roy McCoy (talk) 03:35, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I sense it, too, a progression away from English as we know it. Dicklyon (talk) 03:39, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Aye, supposedly. InedibleHulk (talk) 03:43, May 29, 2019 (UTC)
Supposably is a perfectly good word. It's in Collins, American Heritage, etc. etc., and I honestly don't know where the weird idea that there's something wrong with it came from. It doesn't mean the same thing as supposedly, though if you conflate the two you can lose the nuance. But to return to the previous point: we know English differently. If we didn't, everyone would already use it the same way and there wouldn't be any need for style guidance. Furthermore, I don't remember ever having seen a title such as "1993 Aurora, Colorado, shooting", and it's hard for me to even imagine such a load of commas in such a short series of words (unless in a series, which is what this looks like). If anyone can produce any examples, I'd like to see them. Here's a good one, though it's never appeared anywhere and hopefully never will: "the December 14, 1993, Aurora, Colorado, shooting". How about that one! ... I would also tend to say that I hadn't seen phrases such as "the Tucson, Arizona, climate", but I'm surprised when I google "the Tucson, Arizona" and discover that the first find is "in the Phoenix, Arizona, metropolitan area". That just doesn't look right to me... and ha, it's from Wikipedia! Let's see how it's done elsewhere. I'll take the first page of finds, and... 18 with comma, 84 without. The second page... 14 with, 59 without. Let's hop across the continent and try "the Norfolk, Virginia". The funny thing here is that the first find here too is from Wikipedia, and check this one out: "This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Norfolk, Virginia article." But let's do the same as with Phoenix. First page of finds... 6 with, 56 without. Second page... 4 with, 45 without. Don't take my word for it – try it yourself, with any city and state. I think it'll always come out the same, which at least very strongly suggests that GEOCOMMA is contrary to normal English, and that jettisoning it would bring Wikipedia closer to English as most of us know it rather than progressing away from it. –Roy McCoy (talk) 06:04, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I follow the second and third schools of thought. MOS applies until such time as we change it. MOS requires that secondary elements of a geographical designation, or the year in the case of the MDY format, be set off in commas: a comma precedes and follows (unless followed by other punctuation or the end of the construction). I agree with this policy. MOS should also apply to titles (why not?), but any justifiable exception should be clearly explained on both the MOS and WP sides. The desire to minimize commas in titles is, I think, largely due to an optical problem in that the commas are more conspicuous and intrusive the shorter the phrase (such as a title) is. The best solution for titles is to avoid the question by placing the name or date at the end. Jmar67 (talk) 04:22, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    The problem with "MOS should also apply to titles" and "avoid the question by placing the name or date at the end" is that the MoS is a prescriptive formatting guideline, but WP:Article titles are named based on other considerations, especially WP:COMMONNAME, which may or may not follow that MoS. To a certain degree, WP:TITLES even supersedes other main policies like NPOV as indicated in WP:NPOVNAME. Now, in those situations where Wikipedia has some leeway in naming, looking to the MoS for some guidance can solve some debates, but you can't ever broadly say that MoS applies to all titles. As an example, the article Washington, DC Metropolitan Area Special Flight Rules Area is named precisely after the official and common name of the topic. It is "against" the MoS, but is absolutely the correct title to use per WP:TITLES. -- Netoholic @ 08:49, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    I understand. For the purpose of this discussion, I will treat the example as a justifiable exception (as I noted above). My point is that, in the interest of clarity and avoiding disputes, these agreed exceptions need to be addressed in the MOS and WP:TITLES. Jmar67 (talk) 10:09, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    WP:TITLES should defer to MOS on style questions but declare exceptions or address special cases, one of which could suggest placing names and dates at the end to avoid double commas. Jmar67 (talk) 18:27, 30 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Jmar67, then, if I'm following this logic chain correctly, you mean that MOS and TITLES should specifically note different rules applying here. I certainly agree that whatever we decide, it must be clearly stated in both. But supporting a different rule for each doesn't follow the second school of thought you opened with, as the 2nd implies that MOS and TITLE must use the exact same location comma rule no matter what. Only the first school of thought implies different rules for MOS sentences compared to TITLES, right? Unless I'm missing something, your closing and opening comments here are in conflict, and should be clarified. --A D Monroe III(talk) 14:11, 2 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    I want MOS to apply to article titles to the extent that it can. However, there may be exceptions (such as the Flight Rules Area example above). In this case, WP:TITLES should address this exception by saying that titles using proper names override MOS, in this case permitting omission of the comma after "DC". (That exception should of course also apply to the article body.) But MOS should not mandate the trailing-comma form "city, state," or "month day, year," in titles if repositioning them to the end is agreeably better. Jmar67 (talk) 00:17, 3 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Definitely the third one for the reasons given. The first is grammatically incorrect and the second looks plain weird (although maybe that's just to non-Americans like me). -- Necrothesp (talk) 08:16, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Reordering the description just to avoid applying MOS is a poor solution -- actually no solution at all. It's like forcing phrasing like "up with which I will not put". Title are supposed to be clear and succinct, standing on their own. Applying the third "solution" runs directly counter to the purpose of the title. It's simply this: titles are not sentences, and should in no way always require exactly the same rules. --A D Monroe III(talk) 18:59, 1 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    It also requires possibly hostile encounters with the editors of the articles concerned, "of which there has already been enough". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Roy McCoy (talk • contribs) 19:26, 1 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    True. To avoid that, perhaps we need some rules about how to avoid MOS rules.  ;) --A D Monroe III(talk) 14:18, 2 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Could be. Sorry about forgetting to sign that last comment. I was trying to be brief and succeeded too well. (I see, however, that other quick messages have also gone unsigned in the past – which isn't to say that I plan on repeating the error, and I hope I won't.) Later, after that posting, I was reading about apposition in the archives and found an interesting piece by EEng in Archive 143: ... Oh dear, I can't find the funny one about the helicopters and the men in black. I do find, however, his straight assertion that the year 2001 in "September 11, 2001" "is not an apposition, just a part of the date". I say it's just part of the date too, and that the fact that it isn't an apposition is obvious from the definition of apposition itself. I also find in the same place sroc's interesting confession: "Other editors agree that the year is in apposition in MDY dates; in fact, I learned that explanation from other Wikipedians." And then he went on to exploit this purported rationale incessantly. It's comical and sad at the same time.
    And here's another thing I found recently. I was trying to get to the talk page here, guessing at a shortcut and tried MOS:TALK. This led me, however, not to here but to WP:TPG, where I read in the first paragraph: "The purpose of an article's talk page (accessible via the talk or discussion tab) is to provide space for editors to discuss changes to its associated article or WikiProject. Article talk pages should not be used by editors as platforms for their personal views on a subject. When talk pages in other namespaces and userspaces are used for discussion and communication between users, discussion should be directed solely toward the improvement of the encyclopedia." This marked a further stage in my recent WP education, and I will keep it in mind. In fact I have pretty much always been motivated primarily by MOS concerns – I haven't been completely off-topic, at least – but I will try to be stricter about this from here onward. Let it be perfectly understood: Like Garner, I despise both the geocomma and the datecomma, however "grammatical" they may be regarded; and I would want both out of the MOS if possible. If this is impossible, I accept representing a possibly minority viewpoint (in this group! and okay, in style guides though there are some of these opposed to the commas that we haven't yet seen cited). Anything I may say that seems anecdotal or chatty will, I hope, be subordinate to this basic position – which implies, I believe, a fourth option in the... forthcoming RfC? I got one thank for my previous proposal that the current thread be considered the talk-page overture of a definitive RfC, but otherwise it remained unclear – at least to me – whether the present link-only RfC was the definitive one or not. This should be clarified, shouldn't it? Thanks. –Roy McCoy (talk) 15:40, 2 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    The black helicopters are at User:EEng#Museum_of_Seeing_the_Forest_Instead_of_the_Trees (skip down one or two subsections). EEng 17:49, 2 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you! I reread immediately and recommend the same to others. –Roy McCoy (talk) 17:58, 2 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @King of Hearts: What is your brief and neutral statement? The statement as it stands (which terminates at the 00:56, 29 May 2019 (UTC) timestamp) is far too long for Legobot to handle, and so only a link is shown at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikipedia style and naming. This problem also means that the RfC will not be publicised via the WP:FRS. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:22, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Was this an RfC? Please excuse my inexperience and consequent ignorance, but I didn't have the impression that a definitive wording for publication was intended. If it was, and something didn't get properly published, I think we nonetheless have a good discussion going here. I wanted to do some research and post on this tonight, but unfortunately had something to write and got into editing an article afterwards. I seem to remember seeing something about 24 hours in relation to this discussion, but I hope it can be extended if it's continuing to be fruitful and the stated problem remains unresolved. Thanks, ╠╣uw and everyone. –Roy McCoy (talk) 06:31, 30 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    @Roy McCoy: At the top of this section is a box beginning "An editor has requested comments from other editors for this discussion", this is created by the template {{rfc}} and it also links to Wikipedia:Requests for comment. This thread is clearly intended to be an RfC even though WP:RFCBRIEF has not been observed. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:42, 30 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you, Redrose64. What do you recommend be done now? –Roy McCoy (talk) 13:09, 30 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    ​I've followed your links and now get what you mean, thanks again. Can we consider the present thread as the pre-RfC talk-page discussion, withdraw the presently listed link-only RfC, and place a more definitive, in-compliance RfC at a later point? –Roy McCoy (talk) 15:57, 30 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    That is not a decision for you or me; it is for the initiator, King of Hearts, to make. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:36, 30 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Granted, but if you have a good idea it might be helpful. You spotted the problem, so maybe you've thought of an appropriate solution. I didn't mean to suggest that you or I hijack anything, and I'm sorry if I did. –Roy McCoy (talk) 23:01, 30 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Okay, here's what I wanted to get and post, though I'm not sure it quite rates being called research: I just went back and found out when the MOS:GEOCOMMA discussion and addition took place. Editor sroc (who's still around, I think) introduced the topic on 1 May 2013. Several days of discussion followed, following which sroc declared a consensus and, apparently with no opposition at the time, posted the GEOCOMMA addition on 7 May. I stepped through the diffs, which wasn't hard because there wasn't much else going on that week; but the whole discussion can be seen in one piece at the point of the addition. Reference was made back to an earlier discussion, but this one was very short, with only four short messages from three editors. Interested parties may want to read the longer pre-addition discussion, and everyone should read the article talk-page discussions listed at the beginning of this thread if they haven't already. Hope this helps. –Roy McCoy (talk) 20:03, 30 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • King of Hearts: Thanks for getting this moving. For the same reasons as others have expressed above (Roy McCoy in particular), I also favor #1 as it relates to titles — the "address-as-adjective" approach. If not consistent with the letter of grammatical rule, it is at least consistent with much common usage and is a more sensible practice for our titles. ╠╣uw [talk] 13:41, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @King of Hearts: Thanks for the ping. Whatever we decide will have a considerable impact not only on the titles of articles but also on the prose within them. For example, consider the first sentence of James Holmes (mass murderer): “James Eagan Holmes (born December 13, 1987) is an American convicted murderer responsible for the 2012 Aurora, Colorado shooting in which he killed 12 people and injured 70 others at a Century 16 movie theater on July 20, 2012.” As you mentioned, the rule is clear when it comes to prose within articles, so “2012 Aurora, Colorado shooting” should be changed to “2012 Aurora, Colorado, shooting” within the article; however, since this is blue text that is linked, this would lead to a redirect, so would we simply change it to [[2012 Aurora, Colorado shooting|2012 Aurora, Colorado, shooting]]? That would be somewhat unnecessary. Therefore, I suggest that we insert the additional comma in titles of this nature. And, honestly, I suspect that people will eventually just get used to it. Some, notably Americans, might say that even Wikipedia’s mandated use of logical punctuation as opposed to aesthetic punctuation (“John wrote, “Hello.” v. “John wrote, “Hello”.) looks “odd.” --WikiWinters (talk) 15:52, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@WikiWinters: There's nothing wrong with linking to a redirect when WP:TITLES disagrees with the MoS for article text. In this case, the article would stay the same and a redirect would be created with {{R from alternative punctuation}}. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:45, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Guidelines should be superseded when they aren't helpful anymore and in cases where we are trying to find newer policy, there is no point keeping one foot in the past and letting older consensus prevail over the situations now. Coming to MOS:GEOCOMMA, it would be an understatement to say that naming articles along its lines, for e.g. "Aurora, Colorado, shooting" is not suitable. So, the sensible course of action is to adopt something that we can make sense of, probably something along the lines of point 1 and less simplistically, point 3. Point 1 is clearly the easiest solution to the problem, and without arguing the semantics at hand, I am confident that "Aurora, Colorado shooting" is so much more intuitive than the other options being presented. Would I be open to other options? Surely, but is option 1 already doing the job at hand? Definitely. All we would need to do is to carve out an article titles exception to GEOCOMMA and have a separate policy in TITLES supersede it. --qedk (t 桜 c) 13:59, 30 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • It should match the guidance for prose. If not, prose will end up matching the title. For the options available, I vote for two. I guess I vote for three as well but I don't think that the comma after the state looks weird. I do, however, think that packing on modifiers does look and sound weird. I would rarely describe a shooting in Aurora, Colorado, in 1993 as the 1993 Aurora, Colorado, shooting. We are not limited for space and then the title is awkward to bold in the first paragraph because the title does not flow easily into a sentence to describe the article. So then it isn't done, which is fine, but really ends up being different than most articles. PopularOutcasttalk2me! 14:20, 30 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Prose "will end up matching the title" only if we dogmatically insist that there is only one rule to rule them all. If we state in MOS for prose and TITLES that there are differences (which we already do for things like not ending titles with full stops), then this won't happen. --A D Monroe III(talk) 14:26, 2 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd certainly go with the first school of thought. What's required in proper, full sentences can be disruptive in titles. (Should we end titles with full stops, and require a verb?) "Aurora, Illinois, shooting" looks like "lions, tigers, bears" -- a title of three different things that related for some reason here, while "Aurora, Illinois shooting" looks like a noun phrase, which is exactly what the title is supposed to be -- a single thing described by the three words. In fact, "Aurora Illinois shooting" (with no commas) reads just fine, and is still clear and unambiguous. I wouldn't say commas never go in titles ("I, Robot" would be wrong written as "I Robot"), but they should only go where they help clarify. Like robots, rules should serve us, not the other way around. --A D Monroe III(talk) 16:46, 30 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have no opinion on whether we should use the closing comma in attributive nouns, but whatever is decided should apply to both titles and prose—or are we going to have a separate MoS for titles? Title styling has impact on article prose via hyperlinks, so they can't be separated.
    I get sick of seeing WP:COMMONNAME whipped out with regard to punctuation and other styling issues—those aren't issues COMMONNAME was ever meant to solve, and would only end up with more endless bickering over trivial titling issues—with, I imagine, a pseudorandom number of articles named "1980's in XXX" after several archives worth of talk-page "discussion". Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 22:48, 30 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    For sure. The idea of explicitly stating in the MOS and TITLE pages that the MOS applies to title text just like it does to other heading levels and article text has been brought up many times, and if I recall correctly generally got majority support, but not judged to be a consensus. Some editors explicitly claim commonname somehow trumps using our own style, though that argument seldom wins in actual title discussions. Dicklyon (talk) 00:59, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    It does win, though. Japanese has multiple competing romanization systems: the name 大野 can be romanized Ōno, Ôno, O-no, Ohno, Oono, Ono, and probably other ways. Sometimes names appear somewhat more frequently in one than another, usually because they appear more frequently in publications with a particular house style than in others with a different house style. Moves have succeeded based on one style being statistically slightly more prevalent than another, citing WP:COMMONNAME to override MOS:JAPAN. This is not an area WP:COMMONNAME was ever meant to deal with, and it makes a mess of our articles when we link to names in conflicting romanizations. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 02:58, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am firmly in the #3 camp. We should probably discourage attributive nouns in titles as a general practice, but if they must be used for some reason, they should include the closing comma. I am in complete agreement with Curly Turkey that COMMONNAME is invoked entirely too often (and in my opinion incorrectly) in style discussions regarding titles. It would be nice to have a definitive discussion to settle the issue, at least as settled as things get around here. CThomas3 (talk) 00:06, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am firmly with Cthomas3 on this, too. I had removed some unnecessary state disambiguators from some titles to avoid the geocomma problem, and most of those were fine until a guy got pissed at me for opposing his technical requests and dug up 5 of my moves to revert. See this. Dicklyon (talk) 00:55, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Picking up on a previous comment by Roy McCoy: While MOS:GEOCOMMA refers to commas separating geographical subdivisions, likely because that is the common method of separation, it is conceivable that parentheses could replace the commas in titles, e.g. "2012 Aurora (Colorado) shooting". Parentheses are frequently used in titles for disambiguation, and this is a form of disambiguation. Jmar67 (talk) 01:34, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, that would fix the problem, but probably wouldn't be considered natural. Another proposed fix was "2012 shooting in Aurora, Colorado". I like that better. Dicklyon (talk) 02:28, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    On the "3 schools of thought" point, they're all valid, except that in the thought that "City, State" is always a valid drop-in replacement for "City" one may need to add some appropriate punctuation, namely the closing comma, if the phrase continues without other punctuation. This is true in text, and titles are no different. If one thinks that the matching commas look weird, one can either just get over that or re-order the title to look less weird. It's not that hard, and need not bring up any conflict between MOS and TITLE as Netoholic wants to do. Dicklyon (talk) 02:49, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Strangely enough, I too agree with Jmar67 – but only in a case such as this, where there is an Aurora, Colorado and an Aurora, Illinois, and a genuine occasion for parenthetical distinction. (I just now inadvertently created a good example of where a comma after a state – i.e. "Colorado" – would not be wanted and possibly omitted by just about everyone, even those who generally favor the rule in question, as with the comma a three- rather than two-element series would be implied.)
    So this is what I've been wanting to say. Is there anyone among us who honestly feels that "Columbus (Georgia)" is actually equivalent to "Columbus, Georgia"? But that's what the purported logic of the rule requires. As sroc said at the beginning: "My view is that they [the final elements of geographical references] should be followed by a comma as the final element is effectively treated as parenthetical, that is, the commas are used in place of brackets. For example: Portland, Oregon means Portland (Oregon) [...] ". Except it doesn't, at least not exactly, and any difference is enough to invalidate this reason.
    When it's not parenthetical, the state is argued to be appositional; but this too is dubious. Appositional elements refer to the same thing, while "Aurora" and "Colorado" clearly do not. And it's the same with dates: "April 17" and "2013" quite clearly do not refer to the same thing, as I'm sure we will all agree.
    And what have all of us actually learned? (Aside, that is, from a minority who have familiarity with the obligatory-comma rule – I never noticed it myself before now, and I was a professional typesetter, proofreader and editor for nearly fifty years.) We've learned, simply, that "27 Hillcrest Drive, Jeffersonville, Ohio" is an address, nothing more (the same as "April 17, 2013" is simply a date). Nobody ever said anything whatever about parentheses or appositives, and it would have seemed rather silly to do so. These are only justifications for a rule that seems to have popped up somehow for no genuinely good reason. I mean, what's in apposition in the cited address? Is "Jeffersonville" in apposition with "27 Hillcrest Drive"? And then "Ohio" with "Jeffersonville"? So you've got three elements, all in apposition with one another? It just doesn't make sense, and the comma intruded on the basis of this pretext clutters the texts concerned. Remember Garner, who disapproves of comma, state as adjective but apparently hates it with the comma: "To make matters worse, some writers place a second comma after the state. Thus, using a city plus the state as an adjective [with the comma –Roy] disrupts the flow of the sentence [...] Such constructions contribute to noun plague, lessen readability, and bother literate readers." That's it in a nutshell. They bother and annoy, grammar rule or not. States and years are neither parenthetical elements nor appositives, and so no bracing is needed or called for. I say scratch the heretofore sacred geocomma and datecomma, perhaps even making that rather than titles-only the subject of the RfC. Then you wouldn't have to be bothered with exceptions, having something one way in one place and another way in another, having to (try to) reword common titles, etc. –Roy McCoy (talk) 03:23, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    I think I disagree. The secondary parts of geographic names and dates are logically parenthetical elements with a defining function and therefore need to be set off, with closure of some sort. The address format is based on this successively defining nature of the elements and is not "just an address". Also, I do consider the Columbus and Portland examples as equivalent. The parentheses are just an alternative method of setting off. Jmar67 (talk) 03:59, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    And the tertiary parts? Portland (Oregon) (USA)? –Roy McCoy (talk) 04:03, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    04:03 (May 31) (2019)? –Roy McCoy (talk) 04:07, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Good style would call for (Oregon, USA) and (May 31, 2019). Jmar67 (talk) 04:20, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    That's okay on the address, but I've never seen anything like "04:03 (May 31, 2019)". I think we have another debunking of the parenthetical business when we go to quaternary: "53 Main Street (Portland, Oregon, USA)"??? That's hardly equivalent, and barely imaginable. –Roy McCoy (talk) 04:32, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    In the proper context, I can imagine it. Jmar67 (talk) 04:42, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    So can I, but we're stretching them parentheses. –Roy McCoy (talk) 04:45, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Here's a serious question. Does anyone here think that apposition is identical to parenthesis? Please say so if you do. If no one does, it will be taken as commonly agreed that it is not. This is clear enough to me, but perhaps someone thinks otherwise. The relevance of the question will be demonstrated. Thank you. –Roy McCoy (talk) 13:23, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Please don't take silence or failure to agree with your strawman as a more general agreement with your position. The point is that parenthesis are one way to set off a disambiguating term, and commas are another, not that they are identical or that apposition is the relevant concept. Dicklyon (talk) 15:49, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    You seem to understand rather well, Dicklyon, and I don't think I'm underestimating you. I'm certainly trying to be as sympathetic as I can to your grammatical viewpoint, which I completely share in regard to possessive it's, for example (assuming that we actually share the same opinion on that, which I think is a fair assumption). I'm sure we have enough in common that we can continue to discuss this, but first I'm going to wait and see to be sure that no one thinks apposition and parenthesis are the same. I'll give this a couple of hours before coming back to it. I haven't, by the way, used any straw-man argumentation, but (at least at this point) have merely asked a germane question. –Roy McCoy (talk) 16:27, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Roy McCoy, I don't think the two are identical, but they are definitely in the same ZIP code, so to speak. Certainly Portland (Oregon) is only a disambiguator, while Portland, Oregon could also be considered an alternate aggregate name (or potentially an address, as you have previously stated). Not fully congruent to be sure, but one could be a substitute for the other in many circumstances. Certainly if I came across Portland (Oregon), especially in a title, I don't believe I would think it looked odd or out of place. CThomas3 (talk) 16:33, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Okay, we're all agreed that apposition is not identical to parenthesis. The two are in the same area, as Cthomas3 has noted; and we don't necessarily agree about anything else, as Dick has correctly observed. But we do also agree that an address – or geographical reference, to use sroc's term – is a series of elements, right? (street, city, state, country, etc.) I again invite disagreement, if anyone disagrees. –Roy McCoy (talk) 02:21, 1 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    And do we also agree that a date – or temporal reference, to adapt the other term – is a series of elements (hour and minute, month, day, year, etc.)? –Roy McCoy (talk) 15:45, 1 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Dick is correct that apposition is not the relevant concept for the geocomma, the basic topic of discussion here. I didn't remember – excuse me – that the confusion between apposition and parenthesis was centered primarily around the datecomma, a tangential though related issue. The relevant geocomma concept is then parenthesis – about which we will remember Cthomas3's recent observation that "Portland (Oregon) is only a disambiguator", with which I agree wholeheartedly.
    But what I want to do quickly here, aside from observing that we now have tacit agreement that both addresses and dates are series of elements (which is about as hard to argue against as that apposition and parenthesis are distinct concepts), is to further express my sympathy for Dick – and, by extension, for the other hyper-grammarians here. I previously stated that I shared his odium for glaring grammatical errors such as possessive it's, but I've thought about it since and my sympathy now goes beyond that.
    1. Again, I too hate grammatical errors that I regard as glaring, and I similarly wish to correct them or see them corrected.
    2. Though I don't like certain MOS provisions and the way they have been applied, are being applied and may continue to be applied, I nonetheless can assume that Dick's good-faith edits have largely been proper and worthy, so that in the end I should likely be more appreciative and less critical of such corrections – i.e., they may well have generally been for the good. (How magnanimous of me. :-)
    3. Dick has properly corrected me before, as on my apparent assumption that others shared my aversion to the width of the en dash in number ranges. I therefore have to grant that he can be right and I can be wrong sometimes.
    4. He seems to have been occasionally victimized by his advocacy, and one generally has to grant some respect to those willing to continue to stand up for their beliefs regardless of the consequences.
    5. If I start to regard the hyper-grammarians as a somewhat sad group of persons who have lost their ability to believe in anything else and thus grasp onto grammar as if it were a religion or political creed, well... I suppose I'm such a person myself and that's likely why I'm here, rather than elsewhere trying to win souls or promote revolution or defeat plastic or whatever.
And that's the end of that list and this post. Its purpose is to promote consensus, as I think mutual respect is a precondition for consensus generally, and especially in forums such as this one with a history of acrid contention. –Roy McCoy (talk) 17:46, 2 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

1) There's no such thing as a grammatical "error". There just isn't. There are different ways of writing things, is all. There are ways of writing things that are rare (or unique) enough to not be appropriate. Because they would be distracting or confusing. If I decide to write my articles with an interpunct (·) between each word, that's not an "error": it's exactly what I intended to do. However, you could describe it as "confusing" or "distracting" or "unhelpful" or "disruptive" or whatever, and roll it back on that basis. But its not an "error". The word "error" is not helpful in the context of discussing punctuation usually. (The exception would be when a person writes something that they themselves didn't intend.) If it is confusing, that is a problem. If it is distracting (which would probably apply to most rare and highly idiosyncratic stylings), that is a problem. It the meaning is clear and the usage is not outlandish, then what's the problem.

2) "Tucson, Arizona" is a unitary name that happens to have a comma in the middle of it. Some names do have punctuation in them. will.i.am is a unitary name that has two periods in the middle of it. Panic! at the Disco has a bang in the middle of it. And so forth.

India.arie has a period in it. Does that mean that "India" is the end of one sentence, and "Arie" the beginning of the next? Of course not. The period is part of the name. If the person had chosen to use a comma in her name instead, would we have to match it? Instead of "A new album by india,arie was released...", would we have to write "A new album by india,arie, was released..."? Of course not.

Well "Tucson, Arizona" is best treated in the same way. "Tucson, Arizona" is best treated as a unitary name that has a comma in the middle of it because that is how it is perceived and used: it refers to a place called Tucson (the one in Arizona, to be precise). If our language had developed slightly differently, maybe we would be writing "Tucson-in-Arizona", and the meaning would be the same.

This is probably why if you treat "Tucson, Arizona" as a unitary name with a comma in the middle of it, you can write more clearly, and you don't have to worry about apposition or other pettifoggery, and you don't have spend energy worrying about whether the First Gods, emerging from the mists of chaos at the beginning of time, intended the term "article" to include article titles or not. If the MOS says different, meh. There are a lot of rules, and some of them are silly. Herostratus (talk) 21:12, 2 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I both agree and disagree with you, Herostratus, but I don't immediately know how to express either my agreement or my disagreement. I think it's more a question of how we want to express our agreement, namely in the MoS if possible – that being, again, what the discussion on this page is supposed to be about. Are you, or could you be, another advocate of the stated fourth school of thought, that the MoS be modified to permit the absence of the second comma in both titles and article text, and thus to obviate the necessity for either violation, exception, or enforced rewording? I myself can allow for differences between text and titles, the latter for example not requiring end punctuation or a verb (per A D). Not acknowledging , however, the legitimacy of the current geo/datecomma rules (or even their existence in the minds of an apparently large majority of writers), I see no need for an exception or differing policy in this regard. So I hope you'll come back and bring it a bit more home here, thanks.
As for the disagreement, I think you're overstating the case and that certain things may be properly considered grammatical errors. Your exception is "when a person writes something that they themselves didn't intend", but that may immediately be extended to "something that other people don't understand" – or that trips them up unnecessarily, or that violates firmly established spelling norms, etc. I maintain that a degree of error exists, however, and I don't share Dick's "that's absolutely wrong!" attitude when it relates, for example, to a construction used by ten times as many writers/editors (see the Norfolk, Virginia – example above!) as the purportedly correct form.
Anyway, I hope to hear from you again. I need all the help I can get. We need all the help we can get. And the Wikipedia readers and editors clearly need all the help they can get. –Roy McCoy (talk) 17:56, 3 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Orthography is not grammar. In printed or electronic text we can use whatever typographic conventions are clear . The actual grammar of a sentence is the same regardless of what punctuation is used. Titles are furthermore a special form of writing, to which some of the normal grammar rules do not apply., and certainly the usual orthographic rules do not apply. It doesn't make sense to consider the use as an analogy. Personally, I would find it clearer to clarify all place names with parentheses at least in titles, regardless of possible conflicts. we could equally well use a dash, or a subscript--its just a typographical convention. (We have unfortunately decided not to do any of these, but they would serve to indicate the title is a special non-sentence expression.) Myself, in titles here I write both commas. I always write paired commas in such cases, but it's just a habit. I don't care what other people do, and I see no needto fix those that are done differently. DGG ( talk ) 02:14, 4 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Basically agree with DGG. Titles are not article prose, and they have their own quirks as to how they're styled. And basically each case should be assessed on its merits, with reader clarity the number-one priority. That means titles like Rochester, New York, shooting are out. Just call it Shooting in Rochester, New York or whatever.  — Amakuru (talk) 11:15, 4 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

King of Hearts wrote at the beginning of this, on May 29: This [rule requiring commas on both sides of year or state] has been long-accepted as the standard in English grammar, and as far I as can tell no one seriously contests this rule in article prose. That I contest this doesn't matter to anyone, but everyone can still take Bryan A. Garner as a notable exception (not that he's the only one). His remarks on this in Garner's Modern American Usage have been partially and selectively cited in previous discussions, but they merit being presented in their entirety.
C. [Dates] As Adjectives. Modern writers have taken to making adjectives out of dates, just as they do out of place names – e.g.: "His July 1998 book contract resulted in a record advance." The more traditional rendering of the sentence would be: "In his book contract of July 1998, he received a record advance." Although occasionally using dates adjectivally is a space-saver, the device should not be overworked: it gives prose a breezy look.
And the practice is particularly clumsy when the day as well as the month is given – e.g.: "The court reconsidered its July 12, 2001 privilege order." Stylists who use this phrasing typically omit the comma after the year, and justifiably so: in the midst of an adjective phrase (i.e., the date), it impedes the flow of the writing too much. Still, that second comma sometimes surfaces – e.g.: "Harvey is accused of murder, robbery and burglary in the June 16,1985, [read June 16, 1985] slaying of Irene Schnaps, 37, who suffered 15 blows to the head with a hatchet in her Hunters Glen apartment." Jim O'Neill, "12 Potential Jurors Get Boot at Murder Trial," Star-Ledger (Newark), 29 Oct. 1994, at 19.
The idea of the comma after the year, as it has commonly been taught, is that the year is in apposition, so the second comma is required. But if that year is an appositive, it's unlike other appositives; it certainly isn't interchangeable with the noun (the date) that precedes it. The more plausible argument – supporting the absence of the comma after the year – has two parts. First, the comma is really just separating the two numerals, so if a second comma isn't syntactically required, then it doesn't belong <a November 17, 2001 meeting>. Second, the comma after the date marks a nonexistent pause: when a full date is used adjectivally, a knowledgeable speaker of the phrase marches toward the noun instead of pausing after the year. An adjective represents a surge forward, while a comma represents a backward-looking pause. It makes little sense to punctuate a forward-looking adjective with a pause at the end of it.
Most usage books that call uniformly for a comma after the year in a full date, by the way, don't address the question raised just above. They show the comma without illustrating what happens when the date functions as an adjective. In other words, they illustrate the easy cases, not the more difficult ones. That's probably because the date-as-adjective phenomenon didn't really come into full flower until the late 20th century. Even after the shift was well underway, most usage guides ignored the problem.
This establishes a respectable lack of unanimity on this question, various claims to the contrary notwithstanding. A majority of style guides may also proscribe split infinitives, but I hope this doesn't mean that people are going to be running around willy-nilly "correcting grammatical errors" on this score either. –Roy McCoy (talk) 18:55, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Naw. You pretty much just answered it. Primergrey (talk) 23:21, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Good. You've exaggerated my participation in this forum, by the way, by a factor of approximately four hundred. –Roy McCoy (talk) 02:02, 8 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It's a projection. You're sure to beat it. Primergrey (talk) 02:08, 8 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That would take some doing! –Roy McCoy (talk) 02:10, 8 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Two points: 1. The initiator of this conversation clearly has not considered that there is more than one type of English when writing "City, State" is always a valid drop-in replacement for "City". Writing "Edinburgh, United Kingdom" is not a "valid drop-in", Edinburgh, Scotland might be slightly better, but that is "city, country". There is a danger that ideas put forwards here will ignore WP:AT policy and its guidelines (eg Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names) ("NCG")). NCG contains exceptions to the USA city, state rule:

Cities listed in the AP Stylebook[1] as not requiring the state modifier in newspaper articles have their articles named City unless they are not the primary topic for that name.[2] In other cases, this guideline recommends following the "comma convention" as described above.[3]

The same naming convention section on the USA it also in in includes:

Balanced commas: When a place-name title continues past the state name (other than with a parenthetical), for example Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in the American Civil War, a comma is included after as well as before the state name (see also MOS:COMMA).

References

  1. ^ Goldstein, Norm (2013). "Stylebook, section D: datelines". The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law. New York: Basic Books/Associated Press. p. 75. ISBN 978-0465082995. {{cite book}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help) The cities listed by the AP are Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Honolulu, Houston, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New Orleans, New York, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.—although Washington, D.C., does have a territorial qualifier and New York is naturally disambiguated. Wikipedia titles all of these except Phoenix, Arizona, by city name alone.
  2. ^ Primary topic should be judged against all encyclopedic usages of a name; thus, for example, Phoenix is considered not primary because of the mythological Phoenix, Washington is not because of George Washington and the state and New York isn't primary because of the state.
  3. ^ Using disambiguation by state in cases where it is not necessary has the advantage of providing consistent article titles for United States places (a majority of which are ambiguous and so require disambiguation anyway), but the disadvantage of inconsistency with titles used for articles on places in most other countries (where redundant disambiguation is not used), as well as a loss of conciseness. Current convention is to omit the state only with the well-known cities which the Associated Press lists as not requiring the state qualifier in a journalistic context, unless they, like Phoenix, conflict with another non-geographic article; the Associated Press Stylebook is a reliable source, written in American English.

2. This RfC is on the wrong talk page. Anything affecting article titles and the naming conventions ought to be discussecd on WT:AT, then much of this RfC would be solved much quicker by people who know the policy and guidance applicable to this RfC (the Article Title policy and its guidlines called naming conventions). For example in the example linked above Talk:March 1–3, 2018 nor'easter one of rhe first entries says:

  • Support per MOS:DATECOMMA. 142.160.89.97

So what? The MOS does not trump WP:AT. However a similar rule is in the NCG (I mentioned above for USA place names). So why not hold an RfC on WT:AT and propose to have ithe rule moved from NCG into the AT policy and so have it applied to all article titles? -- PBS (talk) 20:44, 11 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • Dicklyon has correctly cautioned us to stay on point - ie disambiguation. Addresses are a tangential analogy, rarely written in prose and probably newer written in full as an article title. Disambiguation is only used if required. While we might have "Tucson, Arizona" because we have an article for Tucson, Ohio but we have Tucson Police Department. The specific question is about pairing commas in article titles when the constriction of "city-state" or "month-day-year" is used to describe and thereby disambiguate an event or similar, placing it to the front in an adjectival (attributive) way. Some attempt appears to being made to deflect this discussion toward a review of the style indicated by MOS:GEOCOMMA and MOS:DATECOMMA in prose and regardless of how it is used (adjectivally or otherwise). Lets just stay on point.
The quote from Garner is interesting though and of some relevance. Garner is written in an editorial style. They are expressing opinion and constructing arguements to support their opinion.
  • While mainly written in respect to date-as-adjective in prose, there is a passing reference to place-as-adjective. It appears to suggest similar considerations on Garner's part.
  • They observe the construction "month-year" is relatively modern and caution that, it gives prose a breezy look. I take "breezy" here to be something akin to "less formal". This suggests that it is inconsistent with the more formal style preferred by WP - in ether prose or titles?
  • Garner suggests how this can be rewritten to avoid the date being used as an adjective. This aligns with comments here to do the same with article titles.
  • They observe that the construction "month-day-year" is particularly clumsy. I read this to be an observation regardless of whether one or two commas are used. I take it as a reason to avoid its use, in prose or article titles.
  • They observe of "month-day-year": [what] has commonly been taught, is that the year is in apposition, so the second comma is required. I think that Garner is conceding that apposition is [has been] considered the relevant concept even if they disagree.
  • That they have not mentioned parenthesis does not mean it is not relevant. They are, after all, discussing parenthetic commas. They make much the same arguement "city-state".[3]
  • They prefer to consider "month-day-year" as a unity arguing: But if that year is an appositive, it's unlike other appositives; it certainly isn't interchangeable with the noun (the date) that precedes it. In an apposition, "one element [serves] to identify the other in a different way". They are not identical. In My brother, Nathan, ..., I may have more than one brother and there are many people called Nathan but I am referring to one particular person. The "month-day" and "year" are not identical but they do refer to the same time of an event - It happened on July 4. It happened in 1776. Much the same could be said of "city-state". Garner appears to have used a strawman arguement to support their case. This is something of an aside on my part though.
While Garner's comments are directed to prose, some of these comments are pertinent to how we form article titles and suggest that the adjectival construction should probably be avoided. In respect to prose, Garner is only one of a number of authorities we might consult to frame the MOS. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 05:38, 12 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Proposing the elimination of the geodatecomma rule is not off point, and suggesting that it is is simply another way of defending the rationally dubious (and relatively less-used in practice) comma involved. Rather than contributing to confusion, this solution proposes a feasible way to dissolve it entirely (options 1 2 3, addresses/dates, text/titles, question of whether to include attributive compounds in the exception or exceptions generally, etc.). I'm very much with what qedk wrote on May 30:[4] "Guidelines should be superseded when they aren't helpful anymore and in cases where we are trying to find newer policy, there is no point keeping one foot in the past and letting older consensus prevail over the situations now." –Roy McCoy (talk) 12:59, 12 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have a brief, practical, opinion. In wikitext, I like to avoid pipe links. In case like the one that started this thread, I would need to pipe link because I would still need the commas, regardless of the article title. Which is easier? [[Place, State, thing]] or [[Place, State thing|Place, State, thing]]? Which one enforces good style in wikitext? (Hint, it's naming the article the same as how it would be referenced in prose.) That's generally why article titles follow MOS. --Izno (talk) 15:49, 12 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Without wading into deep detail on this, I'm in concurrence with DickLyon, who has said everything I would have but probably more concisely. The commas belong there, and they come in pairs. While there are publishers who eschew the second comma, WP is not one of them, nor is that style common outside of journalism (which drops all punctuation it can get away with for compression and expediency reasons without much regard to intelligibility outside a particular target market).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:16, 12 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Flagicons

Hi, there is a discussion regarding the use of {{flagicon}} on the MOS:FLAG page. Please could you comment there regarding updating this part of the MOS. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 10:34, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hyphens bite!

And always will.

"Hyphens in paper titles harm citation counts and journal impact factors"
article at Phys.org at ieee.org DOI: 10.1109/TSE.2019.2915065

Shenme (talk) 14:28, 1 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Then I shudder to think of the effect of semicolons. EEng 19:56, 1 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Curly symbols

Can anybody here provide further assistance regarding this issue? Thanks in advance. Greetings--Hildeoc (talk) 15:16, 4 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

What issue? Single quotes are used in wiki markup for italics and boldface, and they're also used as non-markup for apostrophes and normal single quotes. So it's not immediately obvious if the final single quote on ''Jones''' is inside or outside the italics (it's outside). A similar phenomenon happens when naively writing sets using naked braces inside the {{math}} template (among others) – the closing brace isn't the one you want it to be. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 15:35, 4 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, we can help – agreeing to delete the third list item, which is not a practical reason for which straight quotes are used on the English Wikipedia. Support for that. –Roy McCoy (talk) 15:38, 4 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
There are apostrophe templates created for this purpose, {{'}} or {{'s}}, As in "Dynasty's first season premiered on ..." (wikitext: ''Dynasty''{{'s}} first season). These templates are noted in the section Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Apostrophes, but perhaps the third bullet point should be replaced with an additional explanation of these templates.— TAnthonyTalk 16:57, 4 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Okay Hildeoc, Deacon Vorbis, TAnthony and anyone else interested. I got rid of the non-reason third list item and put its content and that of TAnthony's message into the main text. Anybody who doesn't like this can change it, but don't revert it because it's better than it was before. –Roy McCoy (talk) 02:46, 5 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
(Thanks for the ping; I certainly don't mind). –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 02:54, 5 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
You're welcome, Deacon Vorbis. I think the reworking is okay, but I might have made a technical goof, and perhaps the January, 2016 Internet Explorer thing could be updated. (Just kidding about January.) –Roy McCoy (talk) 03:04, 5 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Discussions on MOS subpages

I recently added two subpage discussions to the "Style discussions elsewhere" section above. Should there be (or is there already) a policy of having all MOS discussions here in one place? I did not realize until now that watching a page does not include subpages. Jmar67 (talk) 11:28, 5 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Reverted revert

@EEng: Concerning this edit and revert of mine. The phrase "is uniformly continuous" is a standard assumption in discussing a function in a mathematical context. That the function "exists" makes no sense. Such a discussion cannot assume that something exists. Please restore the original wording. Jmar67 (talk) 13:36, 5 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The current example (Throughout this proof we assume that f exists) says nothing about a function, just that something exists. The old example (Throughout this proof we assume that the function f is uniformly continuous) adds verbiage for no purpose. Anyway, this is MOS, not a math textbook. EEng 14:25, 5 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I changed the example to We construct S as follows, which avoids your concerns. But since I'm in a pissy mood I'll just add that if you really think it doesn't make sense to say that a function exists, you shouldn't be editing math-related content. EEng 15:36, 5 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This is not math-related content, it's MOS-related content. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:56, 5 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest you vanish, buster.[FBDB] EEng 17:15, 5 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I have a degree in math and I know what I'm talking about. The original example was fine. It was intended to illustrate scientific writing. Jmar67 (talk) 17:38, 5 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, well, I have a degree in math as well -- and mine's from [name of breathtakingly prestigious institution redacted] -- and it's quite obvious that you do not, in fact, know what you're talking about. Example: Define f(n) to be the polynomial with integer coefficients which maps each integer n>0 to the nth prime; but f does not exist (a fact which I certainly hope I need not explain to you). QED. EEng 20:25, 5 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I have The Three Degrees and I generally haven't got a clue what I'm talking about. Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:46, 5 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I had a vinyl copy of Q.E.D. once too, but I traded it for some Wu-Tang Clan. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:34, 5 June 2019 (UTC) [reply]
I doubt anyone here thought you didn't know what you were talking about. The point however should be illustrative and short, as this is a MOS, and not anything else. --Izno (talk) 18:06, 5 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Well, actually, I am suggesting he doesn't know what he's talking about. EEng 20:25, 5 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Long Play Album (LP)

Is there an established style guideline for how to identify a music album as 'long play' or LP? I see references to 'CD' or 'EP' in places. Or should a release simply be characterised as 'album'. Given developments in music sales, songs could be released on multiple formats, e.g. single, LP, CD, or music file, etc…. I think it bears noting the original format at least. I couldn't find guidelines other than the formatting of an album title versus a song title.

Example: "AC-DC was a song on the 1974 LP …" Thanks, ogenstein (talk) 00:27, 6 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Whenever possible, stick with the most general term. The physical format is usually not relevant—an album remains an album whether it's an LP, 8-Track, casette, CD, DVD-Audio, or collection of digital files. The "AC-DC" example should thus read:
"AC-DC" is a rock song by Sweet from the April 1974 album Sweet Fanny Adams ...
... unless we're talking about something that appeared on only one format of the album (for example, the Minutemen's cover of "Ain't Talkin' 'bout Love" appeared on the LP of Double Nickels on the Dime, but not any of the CD releases). Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 00:46, 6 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That makes sense. I can work with that and will modify that page. Thanks for the clarification. ogenstein (talk) 01:42, 6 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Don't worry this is not an LP, but this is (perhaps). Martinevans123 (talk) 20:11, 13 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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