Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style

Request for comment: Deprecation of the Template:English variant notice

An editor has asked for a discussion on the deprecation of Template:English variant notice. Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#RfC: Should Template:English variant notice be deprecated?.—Godsy^(TALK_CONT) 07:00, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Forum shopping notice

Moved to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Requests for closure § Administrative

The virtually unanimous consensus a week or two ago to deprecated the huge banner version of the ENGVAR templates (see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 167#Proposal to deprecate Template:English variant notice) is being forum-shopped in an "RFC" that is not actually an RFC, at WP:Village pump (proposals)#RfC: Should Template:English variant notice be deprecated? (and WP:VPPRO wouldn't even be the right venue for such a discussion anyway; it would be WP:VPPOL, since this is not a proposal). I don't know what the intent is, though I note that I announced a day or two ago that I was working on the WP:TFD for these and a categorization merger plan, and the pseudo-RFC, pseudo-proposal does not appear to have understood anything in the previous discussion, but is an odd "we need ENGVAR templates!" overreaction.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:37, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Pronoun pref

Regarding MOS:IDENTITY I am wondering if we can include Janae Marie Kroc as an illustrative example.

This applies in references to any phase of that person's life, unless the subject has indicated a preference otherwise

JM Kroc has stated a desire, in genderfluidity, to be addressed by whatever pronoun is appropriate to how they are presenting. So since Kroc presented as male for the earlier portion of life, it would be appropriate to use male pronouns earlier in their life.

Even now, with Kroc assuming a female name and central identity, this also means they can be referred to as male in present day if presenting as a male, like for example if Kroc was to compete in another male powerlifting event, set a male world record, compete in a male bodybuilding event, or challenge CM Punk in a UFC fight or something. However is Kroc is dressed in female clothing it would be appropriate to use female pronouns. 64.228.91.73 (talk) 17:36, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

You are interpreting the rule correctly. If anyone gives you trouble, make sure you have a link to a quote of Kroc stating his or her preference. A personal blog is acceptable in this case. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:50, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

I believe that this is saying that Kroc is the exception to MOS:IDENTITY because she prefers to be thought of as someone who actually was a man before her body was changed with surgery, not a woman trapped in a man's body. Georgia guy (talk) 18:56, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

RfC: piping a wikilink for the sole purpose of inserting the 's

Hi! You may be interested in Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking#Saxon genitive and piping. It is about [[George Washington|George Washington's]] administration vs. [[George Washington]]'s administration wikilinks. Thanks in advance! -- Basilicofresco (msg) 04:54, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Include country when mentioning placenames?

There is a disagreement between two editors at The Boy with the Leaking Boot as to whether placenames mentioned (as locations of copies of the statue) should, or should not, include "United States" and "England". One view is if people are too ignorant to know that California is in America and Lincolnshire is in England (or are too lazy to click a link) then that's their fault. We shouldn't have to awkwardly and unnecessarily insert country names after every place. Another view is in an international encyclopedia such as this we need to give full place names with country - not everyone who reads this will recognise every US state (I sometimes forget whether "Michigan" is in Canada or USA) or British county.

I cannot find anything in WP:MOS to help: the section on Geographical items is about choice of name, historic name, etc, not level of context given for the name.

(a) If there is guidance about this somewhere, please show us where.

(b) Perhaps, if there is no such guidance, there should be?

MOS afficionadoes would be welcome to chip in to the discussion at Talk:The Boy with the Leaking Boot. Thanks. PamD 13:55, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Having it specified would be useful. From what I've seen, the norm is similar to that of WP:OVERLINK. If the place is widely known (e.g., California or New York City) there is no need to specify its location to a wider geographical area. If the place is relatively unknown to a global audience (e.g., Iowa or Akron) or there are multiples of that location (e.g., Cleveland) then we should specify it (which for the latter would disambiguate it). EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 17:04, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

• As far as places in the US are concerned, as long as the State name (California, Texas, Wisconsin, etc.) is included there is no need for "United States" be included as well. The average English speaking reader (our audience) does not need to be told that Sandusky, Ohio is in the United States... because he/she will already know that Ohio is in the United States. I would say the same assumption of a preexisting familiarity will be true for the Provinces in Canada, the States and Territories of Australia, and the Counties of the UK.

However, the assumption of a preexisting familiarity will not extend to States/Departments/Provinces/Regions of other countries. The typical English speaker probably will not be aware of the provinces of Gabon... so adding Gabon when mentioning towns in Nyanga would be helpful.

In other words, I would object to creating a one-size-fits-all "rule" for this. Take it on a case by case basis. Blueboar (talk) 12:27, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm wary about making assumptions about our "typical" reader knows, particularly when writing a general encyclopedia where it is often good practice to state the obvious. According to List of countries by English-speaking population, the countries with the second, third, and fourth largest English-speaking populations are India, Pakistan, and Nigeria. My knowledge of the interior geography of those countries is spotty at best; it would be very presumptuous to assume someone there must have a detailed knowledge of mine.--Trystan (talk) 13:29, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

For those who don't know that Ohio is in the United States... well, that's what links are for. Blueboar (talk) 13:42, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

• NOTE: As far as the specific article (ie The Boy with the Leaking Boot is concerned... I have attempted to resolve the issue by simply reorganizing the article a bit... I have added "by country" section headers. With section headers that mention the name of the country, there is no longer a need to add the country name every time we mention a town's name (the reader will know that the town is in the US or UK etc because the section header says so). This may not necessarily resolve the generalized question, but hopefully it will resolve the immediate dispute that raised that question. (Sometimes it helps to think "outside the box"). Blueboar (talk) 14:24, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

RfC: Are personal pronouns (including "who") to be avoided for fictional characters?

Is it incorrect to use personal pronouns such as "he", "she", or "who" to refer to fictional characters? For example:

Nelvana is a fictional superhero who first appeared in Triumph-Adventure Comics #1.

vs.

Nelvana is a fictional superhero that first appeared in Triumph-Adventure Comics #1.

Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 09:14, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Discussion (pronouns for fictional characters)

• There are editors who insist that, since a character is not a living human, it cannot be referred to with a personal pronoun. I am not aware of any style guide that recommends avoiding personal pronouns for characters, nor am I aware of this being generally true in spoken or written English (or why it should be). Some editors nevertheless change "who" to "that" in articles on fictional characters, as here. Lacking evidence from real-world usage or styleguide recommendations, this appears pointless at best, and in many cases unnatural and awkward.
  • Real-world evidence indicates "a character who" is widespread (3,760,000 GBooks hits alone).
  • Styleguides seem to be entirely silent on the (non-)issue.
  • The only off-Wiki source I can find that even addresses the issue is [this essay, which concludes "... it is not at all unwarranted that a personal pronoun such as 'he' be (nonconnivingly) used to refer to such a character." (referring to Sancho Panza).
  • This line from the Harry Potter (character) article would be absurd with a "that" in place of the "who": "The majority of the books' plot covers seven years in the life of the orphan Potter, who, on his eleventh birthday, learns he is a wizard." Similarly this line from the Batman FA, where replacing "with whom" with "with which" would do unspeakable damage: "Robin was introduced, based on Finger's suggestion, because Batman needed a "Watson" with whom Batman could talk."

  Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 09:14, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

  How widespread is this problem? Did this just come up once or more than once? If lots of people are getting confused by this issue, then an addition to the MoS is warranted. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:51, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

  This has been "standard" at WP:COMIC for longer than I've been here. I'm not aware of any other WikiProject that supports the idea, but the editors at WP:COMIC have come to believe that their local decisions are valid elsewhere (for instance, disambiguating all comics character articles with (comics) where (character) is standard elsewhere, which has resulted in endless moves at articles like Wolverine (character) and Hulk (comics)). Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 22:04, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

  This came up a couple of years ago at Batman. My comment then was: I'm a strong supporter of the WP:WAF guideline, but I don't think it suggests we should grammatically treat fictional characters as inanimate objects; that's just not how English works. That interpretation would lead to truly absurd text: "It fights an assortment of villains assisted by its crime-fighting partner, Robin." *Of course not. The only reason that sounds less glaringly wrong is because it is increasingly common to use that when referring to people, however, doing so is still widely considered an error, and should be avoided.--Trystan (talk) 13:14, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

• How is this any different from centuries of literary criticism where people have referred to fictional characters as "he" or "she"? See Jane Eyre (character) for the first one who came to mind. PamD 13:35, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

  OK, that's not the best of articles, lots of unsourced stuff, but Lady Macbeth is a Good Article and refers to the character as "she" throughout. I wonder if there are any FAs for fict characters. PamD 13:38, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

  Yes. Kenneth Widmerpool. FA, and "he becomes increasingly formidable, powerful and ultimately sinister as the novels progress". Or am I missing something, and superheros are in some way different (beyond their superpowers) from characters in novels? PamD 13:43, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

  This appears to be a pet issue of the superhero faction of WP:COMIC, but they do make the claim that it applies to all fictional characters, so if any of them were interested enough in any of the articles you've linked to, I imagine they'd make the same change. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 21:59, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

  This is the fairly classic "popular culture isn't as good as older but still popular culture which has become known as heritage, literature, and etc--at least on Wikipedia" bias that spawned as a counterforce to the overwhelming documentation of fictional elements relative to "scholarly" elements prior to 2007 or so. It's nothing new. --Izno (talk) 15:08, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

• There is a somewhat interesting question hidden in the question of: what about characters that appears as both genders (aka genderbent) at some point in their history? I can't think of any off the top of my head presently, but I suspect we'll be seeing more of them as time passes and cultural barriers come down. --Izno (talk) 15:11, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

  I'm not confident of that, Izno. The question seems to be "Should we refer to fictional characters the same way we'd refer to real people?" The answer is "Yes (and really why did you have to ask?)." I imagine we'd refer to a genderfluid fictional character the same way we'd refer to a genderfluid human, though for actual fictional beings who do not have gender at all, like fictional aliens, we could find some precedent in the literary criticism of 20th century science fiction. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:32, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

  Genderfluidity isn't what I'm getting at, actually. I'm talking about characters who are distinctly one or the other given a particular serialization referencing that character e.g. female Thor. Yours is probably still the correct answer, but it's an interesting question because there's no actual definite "he"/"she" then. "Predominantly depicted as a he/she" would be a phrase I'd expect to see in that case, I suppose. --Izno (talk) 18:09, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

  This discussion is supposed to be about animate vs inanimate pronouns. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 21:59, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

• This matter seems to be, "The only reason we don't have a rule about this is because it's a non-issue the overwhelming majority of the time." There seems to be no serious question regarding what the rule is, only whether we need to use the space to tell people about it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:32, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
• We're not going to use pronouns because they are fictional? What kind of weird fundamentalist idea is this? Refer to fictional persons as we would real people. Ogress _smash! 23:31, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

• And the answer for gender-unclear individuals is "they", which is been the gender neutral 3p singular pronoun. Chaucer and Shakespeare used it and people who say they don't use it even use it speech unknowingly all the time. Ogress _smash! 23:33, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

• I don't think there's a universal answer here. When talking in terms of the fiction (including talking about the development of the character in the work of fiction such as the Batman/Robin example given above), refering to the characters with "who" rather than "that" makes sense, because we're writing about a fictional person at that point. But when we're talking about the character as strictly an element in an out-of-universe fashion, as the lead example gives, referring to the character as a thing ("that" instead of "who") makes more sense. But it all really depends on the context and I don't think one rule can capture all uses easily. --MASEM (t) 23:39, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
  • ^^You understand it perfectly. That is exactly how it is.Cebr1979 (talk) 23:49, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
    • You mean, that's how you wish it were. Meanwhile, back in reality ... Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 23:52, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
  • It's fine to have a belief, Masem, but
    1. where in the real world does this belief hold currency?
    2. in what tangible way is the encyclopaedia improved by adhering to such a belief? In what way could the encyclopaedia suffer damage by using personal pronouns for fictional characters?
    3. how would this hold for hypothetical (thus fictional) persons? e.g. is "There will never be a person who can travel backward in time." an error?

    Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 23:52, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

I think the difference is understanding when the character is being discussed as a character whether within the work of fiction or as the development of that work of fiction (to which "he/she/who/etc." type pronouns apply) and when the character is being discussed as a creative idea or concept (for which "that/which" type pronouns apply). It is also important to recognize that one should not force the idea of "individualizing" a fictional concept when the context is not appropriate. For example (not real wording but to get the idea across) "Superman is a character created by Siegel and Schuster. They created him in 1933." is forcing the personal pronoun since we know that Siegel and Schuster never actually created a "person", which the "him" pronoun implies. Instead the language that our article acctually uses "The character was created by the two in 1933." is the right way to approach it, or "They created the character in 1933..." So sometimes these knots of which pronoun to use are created by poor approach to the existing language around it. --MASEM (t) 16:21, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

How many times are we going to have this conversation? Oh, until someone gets the only definitive answer they'll accept.Cebr1979 (talk) 23:46, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

• Support Masem - his description covers it perfectly. It basically depends on context. Excluding gender pronouns altogether is going to lead to awkward sentences, and probably general confusion as to what the pronoun is referring to in more complex sentences, so avoiding altogether is not a good approach. Either way, I don't see this being much of a problem that a guideline needs to be put in place. If its just one person who keeps bringing it up, they drop it and work on more pressing issues. Sergecross73 msg me 12:55, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Suggested wording (pronouns for fictional characters)

Since Cebri has provided evidence that this is an actual problem that occurs at a non-negligible frequency, I believe it's worth adding a line to the MoS or MOS:FICTION, location TBD. I suggest the following first draft:

Editors are not required to use inanimate pronouns ("that," "which") for fictional characters. Decide on "who" vs "that" depending on the context of the sentence.

"He first appeared in print in 1961 alongside another hero who was, at the time, more famous."

"Wonder Woman is one of many characters that have become a franchise unto themselves."

I believe "not required" expresses our meaning very well. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:31, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

"Not required" tends to be taken as implying "but preferred", and that is not at all how I read the prevailing opinion above. If you're trying to express the lack of a hard rule, perhaps something along the lines of "no requirement for either … or …; it depends on the context". Xover (talk) 05:16, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Given there exists no support for the prescription oustide the dark basement of the superhero faction of WP:COMIC the wording should avoid the appearance of giving it any legitimacy. Wikipedia is not the place to introduce novel linguistic prescriptions. If an editor chooses to avoid personal pronouns when adding text, that's an editorial decision; but prowling pages to removing such pronouns in no way improves the encyclopaedia, and in many cases (as cited) hurts it. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 06:18, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

The truth seems to be that English overwhelmingly prefers "who" over "that," so that's what we want to communicate. Take two! "In general" is usually interpreted as "Most of the time."

In general, use animate pronouns ("who," "she") for fictional characters, but there are some contexts in which inanimate pronouns are suitable ("that," "which").

"Laertes and Ophelia both took action, unlike Hamlet, who continued to delay."

"Wonder Woman is one of many characters that have become a franchise unto themselves."

What really has to shine here are the examples. It would be best to really hammer home how these contexts are different. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:04, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Whenever this discussion pops up, it always seems to center on passages that refer to the character by name, specify the fictional nature, and then say something else. Take the primary example for this new debate: "Nelvana is a fictional superhero who first appeared in Triumph-Adventure Comics #1." Break it down into two sentences. "Nelvana is a fictional superhero. ___ first appeared in Triumph-Adventure Comics #1." Does she or it belong in the blank? I think very few people would argue against she, so it follows a personal pronoun, who should go in the combined sentence.

Most of the time, though, the simple solution is to rewrite the passage to eliminate the issue altogether. Why argue about "Other characters that have adopted this name" vs "Other characters who have adopted this name" when you can shorten it to "Other characters using this name"? Argento Surfer (talk) 13:09, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

In whatever MOS wording we adopt, I would suggest not leaving out it when discussing pronouns. Who/that errors are fairly common at the best of times, so (s)he/it is perhaps a better test, as Argento points out above me. So your second example could be:

"Wonder Woman is one of many characters that have become a franchise unto themselves.It has been enduringly popular since its creation."

That sounds wrong to me, but it is clearer what is being suggested.--Trystan (talk) 13:28, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

That is a case where I would replace "It" with "The character" to avoid the pronoun knot. --MASEM (t) 16:22, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Dancing around personal pronouns might work for a sentence or two, but becomes unwieldy when you are discussing a fictional character as a concept for whole paragraphs. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 16:39, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Why not write: "Wonder woman, as a character, has become a franchise unto herself. She has been eduringly popular since her creation." If you avoid writing about fictional characters "as a concept", and instead just write about that particular character, you can avoid having "pronoun trouble". Blueboar (talk) 16:52, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, it is actual far less frequent when one writes about a character as a concept than as a character, though it sometimes is needed; the intro on Superman I think captures a place where one does need it: "The Superman character was created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster in 1933; the character was sold to Detective Comics, Inc. (later DC Comics) in 1938." In any of this sentence to us "he" instead of "the character" implies an ownership of a living being which is the one sticking point in the language; it is the concept that has ownership and creation. Past that, "he/who" all make sense. --MASEM (t) 16:56, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

In any of this sentence to us "he" instead of "the character" implies an ownership of a living being: it implies no such thing—or do you have a source which addresses this to back up such a statement? This is a solution looking for a problem. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 21:17, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

We should avoid giving inappropriate advice on the use of English, and especially refrain from giving the incorrect impression that "that" (as opposed to "which") is an "inanimate pronoun". That is a relative pronoun used for restrictive (aka defining, integrated) relative clauses, both for inanimate and animate entities, as in This Is the House That Jack Built: the farmer that kept the rooster, the judge that married the man, the man that kissed the maiden, the maiden that milked the cow, etc.). To avoid additional confusion, any examples should use non-restrictive (aka non-defining, supplementary) relative clauses with which and who, which do distinguish between personal and non-personal (including most animals). Yes, recommended usage of that and who is slightly more complicated, but is not something that needs to be dealt with in the Manual of Style. That can be a useful way of avoiding the distinction between personal and non-personal (as in some examples here?), but that is also something for English teachers that does not need to be described here. --Boson (talk) 17:34, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Take three:

In general, use animate pronouns ("who," "she") for fictional characters, but there are a few contexts in which inanimate pronouns are suitable ("which," "it"). However, it is often possible to avoid the issue entirely by rewording the sentence.

"Laertes and Ophelia both took action, unlike Hamlet, who continued to delay."

"The character Superman, which was sold to Detective Comics, Inc. in 1938, was created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster in 1933."

"The character Superman was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster in 1933 and sold to Detective Comics, Inc. in 1938."

Remember the points that we're trying to convey: 1. It's best to use animate pronouns, 2. but we're not banning inanimate pronouns (and 3. here's what we mean by that). Those issues are not in dispute here. As for locations, I'm thinking both here and at MOS:FICTION. Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:23, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Again, this seems to be legitimizing a non-issue—is there anyone here who is not from WP:COMIC that would have batted a lash at "The character Superman, who is owned by DC Comics ..." before this RfC was started? Of course not—this is perfectly natural everyday English that poses no problem to readers whatsoever and does not need to be "fixed". It does not imply—even slightly—that Superman is a real person. The language does not work that way. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 21:28, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

43rd governor of Kentucky

This is in today's TFA (See the Main Page today, or Wikipedia:Today's featured article/August 18, 2015 anytime.) There's a question at WP:ERRORS about whether to capitalize "governor". Both copyedited text in general and wikiproject practice tend to be inconsistent on the point. WP:MOSCAP says to capitalize the office ("was King of France", which is a singular office), but of course it would be "43 kings of France" rather than "43 Kings of France", so one interesting question is whether "43rd governor of Kentucky" more closely resembles the former or the latter. Thoughts? - Dank (push to talk) 14:53, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

The consensus on what sources I've dug up in a few minutes seems to be to not capitalize "governor" unless it is used with the person's name: "Governor Smith vetoed a bill. He is the third governor to do so." AP Blue Book USA Today Utah.gov AP Political Guide (search for "capitalize the titles") Purdue Owl (search for "mayor")

However, I did find one notable exception. The U.S. Government Printing Office says that a title can be capitalized when used immediately after the person's name to "indicate preeminence in certain specialized instances," which I take to mean "John Smith, Governor of Kentucky." Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:45, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Amazingly helpful, thanks. - Dank (push to talk) 17:52, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Notice of proposal regarding unusual prepositions in titles (re: clarification request in RM closure)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Proposal regarding unusual prepositions in titles (re: clarification request in RM closure).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  23:51, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Centralized spot for capitalization after hyphenation

Weirdly, there was no one place this was located, but it was scattered about in MOS:CAPS and not written in generalized form. I've fixed this at WP:Manual of Style/Capital letters#After hyphenation, with shortcut MOS:HYPHENCAPS. Also added a one-liner summary at WP:Manual of Style#Hyphens.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  00:23, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Revisiting possessive for words ending in unsounded s

Can someone point me to justification within the WP confines of why Illinois, Descartes, and Verreaux have an added ’s rather than only an apostrophe? Perhaps I missed it, but I don’t see it on the pages listed at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Register#Possessives. humanengr (talk) 06:47, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

• I doubt Wikipedia has decided on this, as it appears to be a matter of dispute. Recently Arkansas passed a resolution that the possessive of the state name be Arkansas's, though some were nonplussed, saying it was "too many esses". I'm in the 's camp. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 08:16, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
  • I'm also in the always-use-the-same-formula camp ('s); but there are too many detractors to get consensus. I believe that as long as usage is article-consistent, either approach has to be accepted. Tony (talk) 09:13, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
    • I think we should follow Fowler's Modern English Usage, which says "With French names ending in (silent) -s or -x, add 's (e.g. Dumas's, le Roux's) and pronounce the modified word with a final -z." DrKiernan (talk) 14:00, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
• Agree with the above commenters: Consistently use 's. Leaving it out because of how you think it sounds [which varies considerably on a regional basis, BTW] is eye dialect, and WP is not a novel trying to mimic people's speech patterns. When Jones says something it's Jones's speech. When I break a glass and cut myself while cleaning up, it was one of the glass's fragments that cut me. The temple I was in in Greece last year was a former center of Zeus's worship. People resist this mainly because many Bibles use Jesus' (often in red like that) and they don't ever want to do it differently. If it comes down to it, we can just make an exception for Jesus' in the context of scripture, only (use Jesus's in the context of, e.g., the historicity of Jesus), and move on, the same way it's permissible to use smallcaps for the Tetragrammaton and English Bible translation of it as GOD, and we even templates for this stuff (I just used one of them). A WP:COMMONSENSE exception to avoid religious flamewars and permit "Jesus'" is no reason to throw the rest of the rule baby out with the religion bathwater.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  00:55, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
• OP here. WP MoS states "For the possessive of most singular nouns, add 's (my daughter's achievement, my niece's wedding, Cortez's men, the boss's office, Glass's books, Illinois's largest employer, Descartes's philosophy, Verreaux's eagle). …" [silent (unsounded) 's' boldfaced]. I was asking not for further argument at this point, but for reference to old discussions to have that as a grounding. humanengr (talk) 03:28, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Is this any help? --Boson (talk) 19:51, 20 August 2015 (UTC)