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Quotation Marks - Why Straight? Change proposed.

Can someone explain to me why the MoS states that straight quotation marks be used at all? They are clearly typographically incorrect, visually inferior, and the only reason they exist at all is because of ASCII (that sub‐standard blight inflicted upon computing in ages long since past). The MoS gives the reasons for this as for “uniformity and to avoid complications”. Now I must disagree with both of these – articles can uniformly use correct quotes, and doing so introduces no complications whatsoever. So both of the cited reasons are quite clearly invalid. Unless someone can give indisputable reasons for using them, I propose that the quotes section be amended and brought kicking and screaming into the 1980s. Nicholas 8 July 2005 12:10 (UTC)

Don't agree, and I'm a purist about typography, but mostly for printed publications. It's significant that the code you used for a hyphen ("‐") doesn't render correctly in my browser.

There are lots of reasons why using straight quotes is simple and efficient, and mandating anything else can introduce problems. I know a lot of people are bothered by not using true typographic quotes, but it's a non-issue to me and probably many others, for now at least. I would vote no to a change. DavidH July 9, 2005 03:55 (UTC)

It's significant that the code you used for a hyphen ("‐") doesn't render correctly in my browser.

That's the key for me; when I stop seeing quotes that turn into "no such character" glyphs, then I'll be ready to change away from straight quotes. But right now, there are still far too many inter-operability problems between the various browsers, text editors, word processors, mailers, and operating systems to do anything other than follow the KISS principle and stick to boring old straight quotes.

Atlant 8 July 2005 14:00 (UTC)

8208 (U+2010) is an unambiguous hyphen. I guess some OSs or browsers don't support it yet, along with thin spaces and attribution dashes. But the ASCII hyphen, em and en dashes, typographic quotes and apostrophe don't suffer from the same problem. —Michael Z. 2005-07-8 14:54 Z

David H, I don't think anyone is proposing mandating typographic quotes. Isn't the proposal to allow them? —Michael Z. 2005-07-9 06:46 Z

I agree with Atlant completely on this. Jonathunder 2005 July 8 15:25 (UTC)

Almost all articles use straight quotation marks, they are easy to see, and easiest to write in the edit boxes. Why make life more complicated than this? jguk 8 July 2005 17:37 (UTC)

How are the typographic quotation marks harder to see? Which web browser are you using? —Michael Z. 2005-07-8 18:23 Z

By "see" I meant aesthetics - I can see curvy ones on Internet Explorer, they just don't look so good, jguk 8 July 2005 18:34 (UTC)

Actual quotation marks look fine to me — they're closer to what books and other printed texts use. Factitious July 9, 2005 03:12 (UTC)

Ah, but a computer screen is not print. What looks good in print does not necessarily look good on screen and vice versa. Indeed, we'd expect differences in font, font size, etc. between the two media, jguk 07:25, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Good typography is easier on the reader and looks more professional than poor typography, anywhere. Wikipedia's default design employs fonts optimized for the screen that support the characters in question. I've seen WP on both Mac OS X and Windows XP, and there is no problem resolving typographic quotation marks. If you're still using Windows 98, then typographic display probably isn't your priority. Barring technical display foibles of particular systems or fonts, I can't imagine anyone arguing that typewriter quotes and spaced hyphens are actually better than real quotation marks and dashes.

Editing is still an issue so we can't require anyone to type typographic quotation marks and dashes, but there isn't much of an argument for banning these characters, especially since the English WP already includes hundreds of pages with Cyrillic, Chinese and Thai text. —Michael Z. 2005-07-14 03:33 Z

For further info, you might want to read through m:Help:Special characters. —Mike 07:57, July 10, 2005 (UTC)

It seems to me that you are all correct. Straight quotes are easier to type in (a key feature for wiki-markup), but are rendered incorrectly. The obvious solution therefore would be for the Mediawiki software to automatically identify quote pairs, and translate them to the correct unicode characters when rendering the page. MS Word already does this, so it can't be impossible. There could also be an option to disable this in the user preferences if you don't like it. The important point is that very few users are going to have keyboards with keys devoted to all the typographic variants of quote marks, so they should not be allowed in the wikitext. - Aya 42 ^T C 19:47, 18 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A) Ms-word currently does this very badly, often getting the wrong kind of quote, and there is no easy way to correct such errors. I doubt that any authomatical solution will handle all cases reliably. B) too many bouseres currently in wide use don't render these characters properly, so causing us to use them is actively harmful. If the automatic translation were off by defualt, that might be ok, but problem A remains. I oppose any use of "fancy" quotes at this time. DES 20:04, 20 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Name just one browser—that’s what you meant by ‘bouseres’, right?—in common use that suffers from such problems. Just one!

Netscape 4.x. You'll say it's not in “common use”, and you're right, but I know several people who still use it for various reasons. In fact, I was using it myself until a week ago, when I finally managed to build my own version of Firefox. (I couldn't use the Firefox “Linux” download, because I run Linux on something other than x86). Steve Summit 00:18, 29 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Automatic conversion does not work well enough to be used, but, still, curly quotes should not be forbidden. IPA, Cyrillic pose more problems, likewise the dagger (†) used in biographies a lot. Typographic dashes, – and —, are almost equally well supported as curly quotes. Yet only the latter are not allowed by the MoS.

It may be reasonable to use the ASCII substitutes in the article titles, in those rare instances. I would recommend redirects, though.

“If a law is not necessary, it is necessary not to have it.” (I forgot who said that and how exactly. Some late 18th century French or American revolutionist, I believe.)

Christoph Päper 15:49, 26 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed that automagically changing straight quotes to directional (à la MS Word) is fraught with peril. But explicitly encoding directional quotes and optionally converting them back to straight (for display, if the browser prefers them that way) at some point along the line is an almost ideal solution, as long as they're encoded portably, and this is essentially what is advocated by Help:Special_characters#Typeset-style_Punctuation. It's significant to the debate, I think, that the Help page rather directly contradicts this MoS entry in this regard, in that it essentially condones the directional quotes. I had already (before discovering this discussion) inserted cross-references so that readers will be aware of both pieces of advice. I propose changing the MoS text to

For uniformity and to avoid complications it is best to use straight quotation marks and apostrophes. If you prefer to use directional quotes, make sure they are encoded correctly and portably; see Help:Special_characters#Typeset-style_Punctuation.

Steve Summit 14:25, 22 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Check out what this edit did to directional quotes for a good argument why nobody should use them :-/. Rl 14:34, 22 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

No question, but I have a hard time saying that no one should use them just because some people can't use them correctly. (And in any case when they tend to get broken is when people blindly cut'n'paste text between edit boxes and M-------t W--d, and they're going to do that -- and mess stuff up -- whether or not this MoS says "use straight quotes".) Steve Summit 14:52, 22 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Gaahh! You were too subtle. When you pointed to "this edit", I didn't notice it was my edit. Sheesh. Haven't figured out how that happened yet; it might have been a problem cut'n'pasting UTF-8 text to/from an emacs buffer. Thanks to Susvolans for fixing. Steve Summit 23:53, 22 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Can we put this to a vote? What are the guidelines for having the community vote on something? I think it's been discussed enough that any further discussion would just be more jaw-waving. Ravenswood 15:46, July 25, 2005 (UTC)

No. There would be too many stupid people voting nay, just because they think they had to use curly quotes then, although it’s just about allowing them. Christoph Päper 15:49, 26 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I started this debate some weeks ago on a separate page. See Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Quotation marks and apostrophes). From what I can see, there is absolutely no reason to keep the existing rule about forbidding curlies. The rule itself was adopted long ago without any discussion, and was based on a technological restriction. The restriction is now gone, so the rule needs to be reevalutated. The current debate shows that today there is no consensus at all behind that rule, so if we follow the way we usually adopt in such case, the normative restriction in the MoS has to go the way of the Dodo—same reasoning as with dashes, or UK/US spelling, or whatever. Note also that no other Wikipedia I know of needs a rule about what quotation marks editors should use, and they all work fine. Arbor 15:49, 27 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

But they don't "work fine." There are still computers and webbrowsers in existance which render them incorrectly. Also, it is much easier to get everybody to use straight quotes than it would be to get everybody to use curly quotes. I honestly don't even know how to type in curly quotes. Ravenswood 16:09, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

(1) They (e.g., French and German Wikipedia) certainly "work fine". And quotation marks aren't even mentioned on their MoSs. Uniquely among Wikipedias (that I know of), the anglophone MoS makes quotation marks an issue. It shouldn't. Millions of WP articles (in French, German, and probably many other languages) are proof. They work fine. (Otherwise point me to any debate about their problems. I couldn't find any).

I think this is a key point. Right now we have a contradiction between this page (which says "Use straight quotation marks and apostrophes") and Help:Special characters#Typeset-style Punctuation (which says of the typographical ones that "Since using these characters maintains data integrity even on those machines that may not display them correctly, it should be considered safe to use these unless proper display on old software is critical"). I tried to temporarily fix Help:Special characters (to highlight the ambiguity by linking to Wikipedia:Manual of Style so people would at least be aware of it), but my change got (properly) rolled back, becase Help:Special characters is a pure copy of m:Help:Special characters and isn't supposed to be edited. So my attempt failed; I couldn't highlight the ambiguity in this way; it quietly persists. But since m:Help:Special characters applies to all wikis, why can't it apply to en.wikipedia? Steve Summit 00:47, 29 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

(2) I have challenged the argument that starts "there are webbrowsers" several times, including setting up a page so that people can test their concerns. I will gladly to it again: give me a concrete example. So far, nobody has ever responded. I invite you to be the first. (Remember that your situation must be a browser that is sufficiently advanced to view the rest of WP, and that your editing environment should be something that can be used to edit the other UTF-8 symbols in WP.) (3) Nobody want "everybody to use curly quotes". That's a straw man. If you cannot type them, use a straight quote. Wiki works. Arbor 17:13, 27 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

As for (3), I'm sorry, I thought we were aiming for consistent use. Ravenswood 17:20, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

I don't think we are -- or should be -- aiming for a single mandated (i.e. consistent) use at this time. It is not easy to get people to use straight quotes -- many people use the curlies by default, perhaps because their software does it for them. But obviously it wouldn't be easy (would be much harder) to get everyone to use the curlies. But the curlies are arguably superior, which is why I don't think we should discourage those who prefer (and are able to enter) them from using them. Steve Summit 00:25, 29 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal by Steve Summit

Clearly we don't have a consensus here, so I think we oughta do the NPOV thang and address both opinions. Here's my attempt. What do you think? (Note that I have also resurrected -- and revised -- the paragraph on Microsoft Word, which User:Crissov had deleted at 15:36 on 22 July 2005.)

Use of quotation marks and apostrophes

Single and double quotation marks (and to some extent apostrophes) can be entered in two different styles: the "straight" or nondirectional versions ' and ", and the "typographical" or directional variants ‘ ’ and “ ”. Both styles are in current use on the English Wikipedia; there is not currently a consensus mandating conversion to a single consistent usage.

For simplicity and to avoid certain complications, many editors of the English Wikipedia prefer to use the straight variants. However, Help:Special characters (which is a copy of the mediawiki-wide m:Help:Special characters) says of the directional quotes that they "maintain data integrity even on those machines that may not display them correctly" and that "it should be considered safe to use [them] unless proper display on old software is critical."

Therefore, our best current advice is similar to that for British versus American spelling: When entering new text, it is permissible to use either quoting style, but you should not edit existing text merely to change from one quoting style to another. When you do enter or edit any directional quotes, be careful to encode them correctly and portably; see Help:Special_characters.

There are two situations in which more definitive advice can be given. The fancier, directional quotes (which are not simple ASCII characters) can cause problems in article titles, since Wikipedia uses exact matches for link text and default searches. So the simpler, straight, ASCII quote characters ' and " should be used in article titles. Also, in contractions and possessives, there is nothing to be gained by using a right-hand directional single quote ‘ instead of a plain apostrophe, and in those cases plain apostrophes (which are identical to straight single quotes) are preferred.

Be careful if you are pasting text to or from a word processor such as Microsoft Word, since doing so can introduce unintended or nonportable directional quotes. It is recommended that you turn off the "smart quotes" setting in your word processor (in recent versions of Word it is is in the "Autoedit" settings, called "AutoEdit during typing"). If you do permit your word processor to insert directional quotes, make sure they are rendered in your submitted article as portable HTML entities, not as OS-specific extended characters (see Help:Special_characters).

Do not use acute and grave accents or backticks (´ `) as quote characters.

Steve Summit 01:48, 29 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Steve, thank you for doing something constructive. My comments are as follows

I strongly disagree with the part about article titles. These are the most visible straight quotes/apostrophes, and an eyesore to the typographically trained eye. The technological argument doesn't hold water—we have lots and lots of articles with much weirder letters, and the software handles these just fine with redirects. Check Beth (letter) or Paul Erdös. For an overview, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Unicode) (draft). Compared to the weird letters that already work, curlies are trivial from a coding perspective. They also appear on almost all fonts. We are already using many, many codepoints outside 7-bit ASCII, none cause us any trouble. The technological frontier of what works and what doesn't currently are "combining diacritical marks" as in This Is Spın̈al Tap, which renders weirdly. But the four curly quote characters are trivial. The MoS article should not imply that there are technological problems with using them in article titles.
I don't think portable HTML entities are the way to go. A better advice would be to ensure that the external editor is set to UTF-8 encoding, which it must be anyway so as not to mangle all the other more-than-seven-bits characters. A non-UTF-8 editing environment will mangle the page, so it should be discouraged (for broader reasons than just entering curlies). An UTF-8 editing environment will encode the curlies properly, and not as a HTML entity. (The same happens for ö å ß and whatnot, which are used on countless WP-en pages, including titles.)
Strongly disagree with the preference for the vertical typewriter apostrophe (ASCII 39) over the typographically correct choice (U+2019). To quote from WP's own article on Apostrophe (mark):

In most cases, the preferred apostrophe character is the punctuation apostrophe (distinguished as typographic, or curly apostrophe).

To repeat a slogan: Wikipedia is Not a Typewriter. Arbor 08:50, 29 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Good points. Quick comments on your comments: (1) I have no strong feelings about article titles; I was merely repeating the argument from the original text. ~~(But did you mean to say "The MoS article should not imply that there are technological problems with using them in article titles"?)~~ (2) I'm not quite ready to advocate/mandate UTF-8, because I fear there are still far too many ways to botch it (especially when cut/pasting to/from external editors). I suspect some wikimedia fixes are appropriate here, to detect/correct the circumstances in which the common problems occur. (3) I in turn feel strongly about "plain" apostrophes, but that's my opinion which I shouldn't have injected so strongly into the proposal. Steve Summit 12:11, 29 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Also, while addressing all the P's oV, we probably need one more sentence saying "Some/Many editors strongly prefer the visual appearance of the "typographical" quotation marks and note that Wikipedia is Not a Typewriter. Steve Summit 12:22, 29 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Let's see if I can abstract all of this into a slightly edited version of Steve's proposal.

Quotation marks and apostrophes: straight or curly?
Single and double quotation marks and apostrophes can be entered in two different styles: the "straight", "typewriter", or nondirectional versions ' and ", and the "typographical", "curly", or directional variants ‘ ’ and “ ”.
Both styles are in use on the English Wikipedia; there is no consensus mandating conversion to a single consistent usage. Our best current advice is similar to that for British versus American spelling: When entering new text, it is permissible to use either quoting style, but you should not edit existing text merely to change from one quoting style to another. When you do enter or edit any directional quotes, be careful to encode them correctly and portably; see Help:Special_characters.
If you want to enter straight quotes, be careful if you are pasting text to or from a word processor such as Microsoft Word, since doing so can introduce unintended or nonportable directional quotes. It is recommended that you turn off the "smart quotes" setting in your word processor (in recent versions of Word it is is in the "Autoedit" settings, called "AutoEdit during typing").
Do not use acute and grave accents or backticks (´ `) as quote characters.

Note that I have removed quite a bit Steve's proposal, and was probably overzealous in doing so. Please put stuff back in. Especially, I have removed any attempt at explaining the reasons behind preferring one variant or the other; I think the MoS should give advice, not invite debate (that's what the talk page is for). Maybe I'm wrong, in that case Steve had good and short suggestions as to how this could be phrased.

I am very unsure about what advice we want to give about encodings. I think the best idea is just to maintain a link to Help:Special characters, which discusses the issue and would be the best place to keep up to date. I repeat may claim that neither French nor German Wikipedia have anything about this in their MoS, so I boldly assume that there really isn't a problem and the MoS shouldn't scare the user. But I may be underestimating the problem. Arbor 09:25, 1 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

According to Plugwash’s comment at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Lock_out_unsafe_browsers?, there is now a workround to handle non-Unicode-compliant browsers. Susvolans (pigs can fly) 09:45, 1 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ah. Good to know. This confirms my opinion that such issues don't belong to the MoS, and certainly not to the section on quotation marks. And the Wikimedia Help:Special_characters seems to need an update badly. Arbor 10:06, 1 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

JFTR, I support Arbor’s version, but IMHO the paragraph on Word is not necessary (any more). Should the section mention or encourage redirects? Christoph Päper 00:05, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I object to this change in toto -- I think the comments above show no consensus to permit the use of non-straight quote marks, and i think the MoS should continue to recomend that only straight quotation marks be used at this time. I don't see the above discussion as establishing a consensus broad enough to justify a change to an existing MoS provision. Please revert the change recently made to the Mos pending further discussion. DES ^(talk) 21:31, 7 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I can see that CDTieme has reverted the change already. Could you or he suggest a method of operation to move this debate along? Its been over two months now since the first post on May 9 by User:Susvolans (see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Quotation marks and apostrophes)), and the debate was announced on this talk page as well as on the Village Pump. The only conclusion I have seen anybody reach is that there is no consensus. We finally have tried to construct a MOS entry to that effect here, and after some polishing and a few extra days of possible feed-back I inserted it on the MOS page. That seems to be the usual way of proceeding. But maybe I read the evidence wrong. Do you think that there is consensus for a straight quotes only policy? Arbor 08:31, 9 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

As I have stated previously on previous topics, Wikipedia guidelines should reflect common practice and consensus, and any guideline that doesn't reflect common practice and consensus must be changed so it does. There does not appear to be any kind of consesus to forbid curly quotes; therefore the section of the MoS that forbids them must be stricken. The "conservative" argument; i.e. that's the way it has been so that's the way it should continue to be, is anathema to the Wiki process. (For the record, I strongly support the use UTF-8 and correct typography). Nohat 09:08, 9 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I support correct spelling, and that doesn't seem to be a Wikipedia standard. I see relatively little use of curly quotes in articles and small difference at normal type size. On my own website, I use curly quotes only in headings, where I think it's worth the extra effort. I would be more in favor of curly quotes (at least as an option) if they could be added more easily. Can buttons be added to the edit toolbar? I hardly use any of the ones that are there now, but curly quotes and an em-dash would be very useful. --Tysto 13:54, 2005 August 9 (UTC)

I added curly quotes to the "Insert" toolbar that appears at the bottom of edit pages on June 28. They're at the end, between superscript 3 and the Euro sign. Using the "insert" toolbar in most browsers, adding curly quotes is as easy and pointing and clicking. For reference, that template is located at MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning. Nohat 08:17, 11 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Tysto, thank you for your comments. Ways to enter curly quotes are very much a Mediawiki question and doesn't belong here. Also note (as I have pointed out before) that millions of Wikipedia pages (for example, in Germany and France) uses proper quote marks without software support or outlandish keyboards or any MOS discussion. Also, millions of anglophone Mac users can enter curlies without problems and have done so for decades. Still, before we can politely ask the Mediawiki designers to provide special quote support (maybe only for the Anglosphere? maybe even with new syntax as with dashes? who knows?), the MOS needs to allow using these symbols in the first place. Otherwise the wizards would waste their precious time implementing something that is forbidden to use. I completely agree that software support would be nice, of course! But we cannot expect the tech-gurus to preempt our decision. Ah, and one more thing: on my machine (yes, it's a Mac) the difference between “ and ” and " is quite visible to the trained eye. In headlines and titles it's an eyesore. Arbor 14:17, 9 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

"...millions of Wikipedia pages..."? Aren't there only about 1.5 million total Wikipedia articles? Anyway, I agreed that curly quotes are okay for typographer-types; I'm just saying the great majority of Windows users aren't going to use them if it isn't easy. But do I blame them for not being German? Nein! I blame typographers for not lobbying the keyboard industry to abandon their awkward and outdated layout. --Tysto 18:36, 2005 August 9 (UTC)

Right. I should have said "hundreds of thousands". My bad, thank you for correcting that. As for your points: Windows users (and anybody else) are free to use straight quotes. You seem to be misunderstanding the change. It says no consensus instead of use curly quotes. Arbor 19:09, 9 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Right. I'm agreeing with the proposal on the table that both are okay, which is the opposite of the original proposal to use curly quotes only. --Tysto 19:35, 2005 August 9 (UTC)

Huh? There was never a proposal to use curly quotes only. (Unless I have missed that.) Could you be more specific? Arbor 07:04, 10 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with DES here. When wholesale changes to the MOS are made over the strong objections of many and there is not even a majority in favor, the best response may be a revert. And here there are strong objections because of what is lost by these changes. Smart quotes just don't work the same way on my Linux editors the same way they do on Microsoft Windows products. Smart quotes break things and make it harder for other editors. I wish people would understand that. As for the logical quote style, that has been raised and discussed at length. The longstanding guidance is prefered because it preserves exactly what is quoted: no more, no less. Jonathunder 15:18, 2005 August 9 (UTC)

in my view, this is not only a question of typography. It is also a question of parseability (aka 'semantic wikipedia'). I. e. while I hate the curly quotes, I think that quotes, beginning and end, should be formatted so that they are easily recognized by a parser. The ideal thing would be a {{quote|blah blah}} template. Typographical issues then go to the template (they can even be customized via CSS). dab (ᛏ) 18:06, 9 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

C'mon. That cannot have a bearing on the MOS—we don't normally argue that way. However, parsing curly quotes is easy, there are Unicode Character Categories for them, and the parsability of a page certainly improves by distinguishing opening and closing quotes, because these carry semantics (a parser can tell where the quote starts and where it ends). But I don't see this as a relevant argument. Arbor 19:09, 9 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Then tell me why they break things when I try to use "Find in This Page" in Mozilla Firefox or "Find (on this page)" in IE 6. Since I don't see a difference in my default font size, that is a problem. Redirects can take care of the article title problem, if they are made (and as someone pointed out, when you don't see the difference, you don't stop to think that they need to be made). But they cannot fix the "Find" problems. Gene Nygaard 09:26, 16 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

No consensus for straight quotes

We have debated this for 3 months now. There is obviously no consensus to use straight quotes only (nor, for that matter, to use only curlies). So we have fooled around with a paragraph to reflect this and then copied it to the MOS page. But User:Jonathunder and User:CDThieme have reverted this to the old version with its blanked prohibition against curlies.

Let me assume good faith here and ask both of you:

do you think forbid curlies is consensus?
should the MOS reflect consensus?

I cannnot see how anybody could answer anything else but ‘no’ to the first and ‘yes’ to the second. But clearly I am missing something. Are you making—implicitly or explicitly—an argument ad historiam along the lines of ‘rules persist until there is consensus to abandon them’? From that perspective your behaviour makes sense; but as far as I understand that’s really bad wiki and not how things are normally handled at Wikipedia (or MOS for that matter).

Note that I am not asking a question about straight quotes versus curlies (there has been enough time for that, and I think every argument has been made). I am asking a question about how you think the MOS should work when there is no consensus. Arbor 06:53, 11 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I have reverted to the non-prohibitory version because no one has answered the points brought up by me earlier and clarified here by Arbor. I expect that anyone who reverts the page will have reasonable answers to these two questions. Nohat 08:03, 11 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I have reverted because you not only removed additional information not related to the straight-vs.-curly question but because the question itself is asymmetrical. What's the penalty for using straight quotes when curly would work? The typography might be "boring"? What's the penalty for using curly quotes when curly doesn't work? They don't even appear as quotes at all. When there is a conflict, the MOS should reflect utility over appearance -- i.e., making sure it will look acceptable on all systems rather than really fancy on some systems and really messed-up on the others. -- Antaeus Feldspar 11:53, 11 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

My feeling is a) there was a clear guideline for strignt only, and there is no consensus to change this guideline. I think consensus is needed to change the MoS, and that no consensus should mean the atatus quo ante. b) I have seen curly quotes disply as boxes or question marks in mar browser, and i am using IE 6.0.2900, not an unusual setup. I had seen people discuss test pages in this thread -- I have not seen a link to a test page that has curly quotes on it that I can see. c) In articel titles, the exact match rule that wikipedia searches use will mean that the possibility of curly quotes (and of more than one possible quote character, at that) will significantly exacerbate the problem of finding an article. i won't support curly quotes (abostrophes) in articel titles until the softwear will automatically match all quote varients in a search.

For all the above reasons i think the MoS should stay unchanged. DES ^(talk) 12:12, 11 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The people who really want those curly smart quotes keep ignoring the fact that not everybody uses the same software they do, and that these abombinable smart quotes are a huge pain for some people. It seems like some people just don't care about making more work for others. But if they keep ignoring the objections and keep trying to force a change through, they will be reverted. CDThieme 13:41, 11 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

OK, then to summarize:

In general, it is not necessary for guidelines on the MoS to represent consensus of opinion as well as common practice.
In the case that an old guideline loses consensus support, if the users who prefer to keep the old guideline believe that their argument for keeping is more important than the argument of the users who prefer to change the guideline so that it represents the consensus (or lack thereof), then the old guideline should stay even though the guideline no longer represents the consensus.
Even though the editors who support not changing the policy have failed to reach a consensus using their arguments, and a significant number of editors continue to disagree with them that the current policy should stay, the fact that the current policy is extant means that they can railroad through keeping their non-consensus-supported policy.
When a guideline no longer represents consensus, as long as the people who support keeping the current guideline are vocal and obstinate enough, then there is no need for a guideline to be changed to represent consensus, because the guideline should represent the opinions of the people who support how the guideline appears in the status quo rather than the representing the actual consensus.

I just want to make sure that I understand the line of reasoning. Please clarify if I'm misunderstanding what's going on here. Nohat 17:19, 11 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If there is consensus to change the current guideline, then it should be changed. I do not think such consensus to change has been established as yet.
If there is no consensus about the proper guideline, then the status quo ante should remanin unchanged. I think this is the current situation
A guideline that will be unworkable for some editors is not preferable to a guideline that will be unaesthetic for some editors.
A guideline that makes articles harder to find is a bad idea, in general.

Those are my view on this matter. I might add that I have mentioned this issue on WP:RFC and at the Pump in hopes of getting a broader range of people involved, one way or the other. DES ^(talk) 17:28, 11 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Well, as I explained before, I think it is completely un-wiki and unreasonable to support keeping a guideline that doesn't represent consensus simply because the guideline is the status quo. Wikipedia simply doesn't work under the idea that the status quo should remain in general, unless there is overwhelming consensus to change it. In fact I can't think of anything more anti-wiki than that philosophy. Guidelines should be continually changed to represent consensus and common practice. When a guideline doesn't represent consensus or common practice, then it must be changed so it does. It doesn't work the other way around; i.e. that consensus or common practice should be changed to reflect the guideline, yet that seems to be what you and the other obstinate editors are advocating.

As per you other points, they don't really obtain:

Remember that you're not arguing against a guideline that requires curly quotes. You're arguing against a guideline that permits curly quotes. No one will be forced to use curly quotes if the guideline is changed to represent the fact that there is no consensus on whether curly quotes should be used.
Permitting curly quotes is no more unworkable than permitting any other non Latin-1 characters, but we have plenty of articles that are full of non Latin-1 characters, including ordinary punctuation like em- and en-dashes, as well as IPA and other more exotic Unicode characters, and yet those articles are flourishing.
Permitting curly quotes does not make articles harder to find. Creating articles with curly quotes in the title that don't have redirects with straight quotes does, but that's neither here nor there with respect to this policy. There are already plenty of articles with hard-to-type characters in their titles, like Gdańsk, and other guidelines as well as common sense demand that there be redirects at the easy-to-type variety. Curly quotes in titles would be no exception. Nohat 17:49, 11 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If there is no consensus on what the guideline should be, then what should it be? The general rule as I understand it, is that once a policy or gideline gains consensus, and is established, a change requires consensus, and in the absensce of consensus, no change should be made.
There is no consensus to permit curly quotes. (Nor to forbid them, I grant.)
I find that curly quotes disrupt display significantly more than en and em-dashes, which seem to be rendered corretly for me and I think for most users. I would support a policy to ban all non-latin characters in article titles, but i doubt that would get consensus.
"No one will be forced to use curly quotes if the guideline is changed" I grant, but users will be forced to see and perhaps edit articles containing such characters.
Granted that articles with titles containing non-standard characters are only harder to find when there is no redirect, allowing such characters increases the chance of this occuring significantly. At least people using diacritical marks generaly know that these are non-standard, and such editors are likely to create proper redirects. Curly single-quotes, used as apostrophes in article titles, I strongly suspect will be seen as "normal " by those whose software generates them automatically, and the proper redirects are far more likely to be ommitted, IMO.

A question to you: When there is an existing guideline or policy, and there is no current consensus on what the guideline or policy should be, should it be changed to a guideline of "there is no guideline" or "there is no consensus on this issue"? Or what?

Don't you see that an argument of "this will make it significantly harder for a sizable number of users" ought to trump an argument of "This will make things look better"?

You argue that curly quotes won't break existing bowsers in any significant way. Put up a test page, please where there is text that uses such quotes, preferably as many versions as you think ought to be permitted in wikipedia, and post a link to it in this thread. Let me and others see just how much of a problem they cause our current setups, and report our results. DES ^(talk) 18:10, 11 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I have modified Carlito’s Way (this version in case someone reverts my changes) to use curly quotes for this experiment. Nohat 21:21, 11 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

As for the other issues you bring up:

The guideline should be changed if it doesn't represent consesus. I just really don't understand the argument that the fact that a guideline already exists makes it a valid tiebreaker in the case where there isn't consensus. I don't see how the fact that some particular wording is already existing has any inherent value.

I think this is where the miscommunication is happening. Your position, if I understand it, is "there's not consensus on this rule, so it should change". You see editor's choice as a compromise. What others are saying is "there is not consensus on allowing a change that may make Wikipedia less readable, so that change should not be made". Rather than a compromise, they see editor's choice as permitting curly quotes, which some see as problematic, and until a consensus process allays those concerns, the rule should remain unchanged. I don't think its as much a matter of the existing wording having inherent value. Rather, the existing rule was put in for a reason, and until there is consensus that said reason is no longer valid, it shouldn't be changed. -Satori 23:07, 11 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

That seems like a disingenuous application of contradictory logic. The content of Wikipedia guidelines exists because there is a consensus for the guideline to exist the way it is. It doesn’t matter what people’s reasons are for supporting the content: either there is consensus support for a guideline, and the guideline stays, or there is not consensus support, and the guideline goes. The reasons that some people who support keeping a guideline that doesn’t enjoy consensus support are completely irrelevant to whether or not the guideline should stay. It is a completely unworkable policy to take into account the reasons people may or may not support a policy in deciding whether or not the policy should stay. The only metric that matters is whether or not the guideline has consensus support. Right now, the guideline in question does not have consensus support, so it must be removed. If, in the future, it regains consensus support, then it can be re-added, but the situation where a guideline persists even though it doesn’t have consensus support is intolerable and anti-wiki. Nohat 09:01, 12 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If there is no consensus on how something should be handled, then there should be a guideline that indicates otherwise. It seems tantamount to lying to our users if a guideline page says "you should not do X" when in fact there is no consensus that users should not do X.
Yes, I agree that "this will make it significantly harder for a sizable number of users" ought to trump an argument of "This will make things look better" but I reject that the former is true, based on the evidence that other special characters have existed in articles for years without significant outcry that results in a consensus that such characters shouldn't be used. Furthermore, this isn't just a question of aesthetics; it's a question of correctness. Using straight quotes to demarcate quoted material constitutes deprecated Unicode usage. It enjoys common usage, sure, but so does the <font> HTML element. Nevertheless, we use <span> here on Wikipedia, not <font>, because the latter is deprecated. Nohat 22:12, 11 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The version with curly quotes looks exactly the same to me (in IE6, monobook skin). Only if I enlarge the size to "largest" I can see a difference, but not much text anymore. Moreover, the curly quotes then look rather old fashioned to me, and not fitting well with a sans serif font. My conclusion: using curly quotes is a lot of trouble for no benefit. −Woodstone 22:00:24, 2005-08-11 (UTC)

I though this was obvious, but the benefit is correctness, which I thought was one of our goals. Not to mention the fact that they will be required if Wikipedia is ever to exist in printed form, which is also one of our goals, is it not? Furthermore, not everyone uses sans serif fonts in their browser—I certainly don’t. And nobody will be required to use curly quotes! I wish people would stop making arguments about how much trouble curly quotes are to enter because those are arguments against a straw man representation of what this is about. This is about whether they should be forbidden, not whether they should be mandatory. Nohat 22:59, 11 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Aside from one person who says curly, or smart quotes look better on whatever software system he or she prefers, and one person who is writing a lot about the process of concensus, there already seems to be a consensus of nearly everyone else who has commented or edited this section says the guidance should stay because of how it affects many editors, and how it varies in look from reader to reader. On many systems, to many readers, curly quotes are downright ugly. For many editors, smart quotes are broken. There seems to be a consensus about this, unless consensus means unaminity. I disagree that it does. Jonathunder 18:15, 2005 August 11 (UTC)

OK, first of all, this is how the Carlito's Way article looks on my browser:

They... look like straight quotes anyway.
Second: Suppose I want to edit this article, I take the first sentence:

In 1975, Judge Torres wrote “Carlito’s Way” and its sequel “After Hours”,

...and somehow I cut the quotes off of the movie's title. When I go to put them back, I can't type-in curly quotes, (A point I have made before [1]), so I type them in straight:

In 1975, Judge Torres wrote "Carlito’s Way" and its sequel “After Hours”,

Question: For those of you who can see the difference, is it ugly? Not the straight quotes themselves, but the fact that both types are used in the same article? Because if it is, what you're proposing would require me to replace all the quotes in an article to straight quotes any time I use straight quotes anywhere. Ravenswood 23:10, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

I note that this example conveniently excludes the section of the page that displays the title of the article, which almost certain contains a noticeable curly quote. Nohat 09:01, 12 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You can enter curly quotes very easily by clicking on the curly quotes in the “Insert:” box on the edit page, or by copying and pasting. This isn’t exactly rocket science.
Yes it is ugly, but nothing about the proposed guideline forces anybody to do anything. If you put in straight quotes, someone else for whom it is easy can change them to curly quotes. You're not obligated to do anything. That’s the beauty of the wiki system. Nohat 01:07, 12 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Two things occur to me. First, I really can't tell the difference between the two unless I edit the article, since in the default font for Wikipedia curly quotes look exactly like straight quotes. We might want to consider why we're even bothering if most visitors aren't going to even see the difference.

Second, it's very true that special characters have long been used in articles, but mostly they are in contexts where it is obvious what is missing if they don't show up. (For example, phonetic symbols. Half the time I can't see them properly and it's annoying, but they are always labeled so that I can tell what it is that's not showing up and it doesn't interrupt the article.) If quotes don't show up, though, you've got missing character boxes all over the place. -Aranel ("Sarah") 01:12, 12 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Sarah. We don't need to introduce those curly quotes. No Account 01:17, 12 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, I find curly quotes a pain in the butt for no discernable gain. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:07, August 12, 2005 (UTC)

I don't care much either way as long as nobody complains when they get straight quotes from my edits. However, I'd like to point out this table which shows what people in other countries consider "typographically correct": de:Anführungszeichen#Tabelle. I'm afraid we may end up with all kinds of interesting quote characters in the English WP. In case your browser doesn't render it: Dutch, German, and English are all similar but each is different. French, Italian, Danish and others use a different type of quotes, but not all of them use them the same way. Rl 07:16, 12 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The page Quotation mark has used curlies for a long time, long before we switched to UTF-8. That's a good page for experimentation. I understand that many users don't see a difference between straights and curlies on their screen. Indeed, I am quite sure that Windows in the default font and magnification renders exactly the same bitmap. However, rest assured that the are operating systems (Mac OS X, for example) with other font rendering engines that handle them differently. Or print it. Anyway, I don't think the argument They look the same on my screen holds much water. Not everybody uses Wikipedia in the same way.

Again, the are lots of voice about "bother" or "extra work" or "pain in the butt". I don't understand. If you don't care about curlies then by all means use straight quotes. How can the absence of a prohibition make things more difficult? We are not trying to enforce a No straight quotes policy. We are trying to remove a rule that annoys lots of typographically informed people mightily. If you don't care, then by all means continue to not care.

User:RI makes a good point. The MOS ought to point out that English Wikipedia uses English quotation marks, either straight or curly (my proposal does that), and might want to explicitly prohibit angle quotation marks, Swedish quotation marks, German "low sixes", or quotation dashes. I would support such a rule. Arbor 08:36, 12 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Tech issues: Back to square one

Everybody who hasn't seen this thread before, please start reading at the beginning, which is May 9, and archived under Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Quotation marks and apostrophes). (For example, there is a test page that User:DESiegel was looking for.)

Anticipating the switch to UTF-8, User:Susvolans suggested to drop the curlies verboten rule, because it was based (to a large extent) on a technical problem that would be obsolete when English Wikipedia performed the switch. Many arguments pro et contra were given on that thread, and I haven't seen anobody reach a conclusion different from no consensus. What remains is to decide what to do with that conclusion. I was under the assumption that this observation meant that the rule needs to go, since the mission statement of WP:MOS is "It illustrates standards or conduct that are generally accepted by consensus to apply in many cases". That (and wiki philosophy) closes the case, but we can discuss this. The (grotesque) idea that a consensus statement remains consensus until there is consensus to change it is a Wiki issue that seems to run counter to how we do the rest of Wikipedia, and would benefit from a broader discussion. It has not much to do with curlies.

Anyway the opposition repeats a number of claims that are misunderstandings or fiction. I have replied to them earlier, but let me waste some cyberspace commenting on the curlies break things issue again.

For some reason we now, after three months and a successful migration to Unicode, are back at discussing encoding issues, because of four (4) completely trivial characters. I am annoyed by that discussion, so let me spend some time trying to counter it.

There seems to be a persistent opinion in the curlies verboten camp that "curlies break things." Well, I was pretty aggressive in hunting down such statements in the first two months, asking each and every editor who made such claim to back them up with a concrete example. Nobody has done so. I went so far as to set up a number of test pages on the UTF-8 test wiki in June (before Wikipedia itself switched) to allow skeptics to construct such an example. Nobody replied. The invitation is still open—give me a browser, OS, and possibly an external editor that works with Wikipedia (among other things, it needs to be sufficienlty modern to show very nontrivial CSS, and also needs to honor the HTTP encoding header) but fails with curlies. I'd be really happy to see this setup. Really. We need to fix something very subtle in that case, so we better get it out into the open.

However, I have come to believe that this claim is ficticious. There are thousands and thousand of Unicode characters in use on Wikipedia, including English Wikipedia. I cannot even imagine why the four curlies should be more difficult. (Indeed, they are far less difficult, being included in pretty much every typeface ever designed.)

But the strongest argument in favour of curlies don't cause problems is not the absence of examples to the contrary. Instead, it is the positive evidence of hundreds of thousands of Wikipedia pages in other languages that use curly quotes (and angle quotes and low-nine quotes and whatnot) each and every day without any reported problems I know of. That's very strong evidence in favour of curlies don't cause problems. On the other hand we have User:Jonathunder claiming: "Smart quotes break things and make it harder for other editors. I wish people would understand that".

User:DESiegel is a lot more help: "I have seen curly quotes disply as boxes or question marks in mar browser, and i am using IE 6.0.2900, not an unusual setup." I hope you haven't see that on Wikipedia, otherwise inform the tech-wizards with all speed. It sounds as if you have looked at a page that submitted a wrong HTTP header. For example, somebody wrote a page on a Mac (say) and saved it in the native Mac encoding. However, his or her web server sends the page in isolatin1 or in UTF-8. Your browser correctly tries to show the page in whatever encoding the page claims to be in. But it was never saved that way. Your browser works according to spec, the web designer (or the monkey managing his web server) fouled up. There could be other explanations (we who fight this professionally can tell long stories about it). But none of this is relevant for Wikipedia. It is saved in UTF-8, its edit box sends and receives UTF-8, and your browser will understand the header informing it to switch to UTF-8. Trust me, it's going to work. The only possible problem is cutting and pasting, or using external editing software that isn't Unicode aware. But that's going to foul up lots of other characters as well—dashes, funny accents, interwiki links, etc.—so you would break the page anyway, curlies or not. Arbor 08:19, 12 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

To summarize:

* No one has shown any evidence that curly quotes are broken in any commonly-used browser setup. Therefore the argument that the use of curlies will degrade the user experience for any significant group of users is invalid.

* No one is going to be forced to use curly quotes! This means that any arguments of the form “I think they're difficult to enter” or “I think they're a pain”, etc. are not relevant to the matter at hand.

* There is no consensus supporting maintenance of the current ban on curly quotes.

So how again do we justify the MoS continuing to forbid them? Nohat 08:52, 12 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Very nice summary, Arbor. I've been away from this thread for a while; I'm astonished it's gone on for this long and (seemingly) gotten this contentious.

I think there's one small point which is responsible for much of the remaining contention: minority users of antique browsers.

Big fat disclaimer: up until just a few weeks ago, I myself was a "minority user of an antique browser" (Netscape 4.7). I sympathize entirely with minority users of antique browsers. I am not trying to disparage minority users of antique browsers. I know exactly how frustrating and demeaning it is to try to access what ought to have been a straightforward web page which ought to have been displayable using any browser at all (even an antique one), to have it display badly due to its seemingly gratuitous use of more modern web features, and to be told that no one's interested in supporting the antique browsers any more and that I really have to upgrade, whether I want to or not, whether it's even possible for me to upgrade or not. (In my case, for reasons I needn't go into here, for a long time it essentially wasn't possible for me to upgrade, until I took time out to do a fair amount of hard work.)

Anyway, if you are using an older browser that doesn't support full Unicode or any of the more exotic non-ASCII characters, you're resigned to the fact that you won't be able to see pages written in Chinese or Japanese or full of mathematics or other special symbols. But since your browser can display those two plain-ASCII characters ' and " just fine, it tends to stick in your craw more when you see boxes or question marks or raw uninterpreted UTF-8 gobbledegook where there are obviously supposed to be quotes or apostrophes. It's easy (for you) to hold the attitude that "I don't understand why people think curly quotes are so important; under the best of circumstances they don't look that different; and they look much worse for me, so I wish everyone would accommodate me and keep using straight quotes everywhere." I think this explains why the argument looms so large for just "the four curlies", as opposed to the "thousands and thousands of [other] Unicode characters in use on Wikipedia".

But then there are the people who honestly feel that curly quotes look significantly better -- and I'm a typography nurd who, even when my browser couldn't display them, strongly agreed with this view (and wished my browser could). So the question is, how do we best accommodate both sets of preferences?

There's one final piece to the argument. Clearly, there is no consensus. Clearly, some people need or prefer the straight quotes, and some people prefer the curlies. In the best of all possible worlds, articles could be stored using curly quotes and rendered for display, if necessary for people using older browsers, using straight quotes instead. But -- and this is the key point -- there's an obvious asymmetry here, because while curly quotes can be straightforwardly transliterated back to straight, the reverse isn't true: if an article is encoded using straight quotes, there's not enough information to reliably convert them to curlies for display by users who prefer them that way. (And of course Help:Special characters has always recognized this asymmetry: "Since using these characters maintains data integrity even on those machines that may not display them correctly, it should be considered safe to use these". [But it also concedes, "...unless proper display on old software is critical", which I guess is why we're still arguing.])

At any rate, this is why I must come down on the side of allowing (but not requiring) directional quotes, i.e. not requiring straight ones, i.e. not disallowing the curlies. Directional quotes contain significant information. The importance of retaining that information outweighs the nuisance caused to users of older browsers which can't display them, especially since (a) there are so few of those users, (b) they really do (hate to say this, but it's true) need to upgrade if at all possible, and (c) there's always the chance that Wikimedia could preemptively transliterate directional quotes back to straight on behalf of those browsers.

Steve Summit 16:04, 13 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

As an update, Bugzilla:2726 has since been implemented. This converts characters into entities in the edit box on old browsers. Susvolans (pigs can fly) 16:10, 13 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, and that's excellent news. There are of course two fairly different issues: (1) display of special characters for anyone who even views a page containing them, and (2) convenience and possible mangling when someone with a non-UTF-aware browser tries to edit a page containing them. The bugfix affects (2) only, but this is the more urgent issue, since it concerns data fidelity and inadvertent breakage (and of course it transcends the straight-vs-curly debate, too). So the "use of curly quotes might lead to data corruption during editing" argument ought to be closed, and we're left with (1). Steve Summit 16:55, 13 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Lynx in Latin-1 mode automatically approximates characters when displaying, which covers (1). Macintosh IE, which is the most widely used browser not to have a Unicode-compliant editing box, is similar but handles curly quotes directly. Netscape 4 is now an extreme minority browser and the support issues with it are more severe than character sets, in particular I don’t think Wikipedia’s CSS works round it. Susvolans (pigs can fly) 07:36, 15 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

In short, there are technical problems only for a minority that we neglect anyway. I will take this short (but edifying) debate as evidence that the problems anticipated by users like Jonathunder and DESiegel are fictitious. (I also note—not without unbecoming conceit—that my plea to produce concrete evidence for such problems has remained unanswered.) I will revert to the no consensus version, and ask others we re-revert me to be more specific about the technical problems that might be caused by using curlies. We would all very much like to solve them. Arbor 20:11, 15 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

THE ANSWER
I think we have the answer then. No matter what is decided, I will continue to use straight quotes. -- Ravenswood 16:00, August 12, 2005 (UTC)

Fine. (Of course, you do realise that you are going to burn in Hell for that, and that every time you use a straight quote God kills a kitten.) However, I think we had "the answer" for some time now. That's not the issue anymore. Now we have an editing war on our hands over what seems to be a fundamental wikilosophy issue, and I can see no way of resolving it using the usual guidelines. Anybody with experience in conflict resolution who can tell us how to proceed? Arbor 15:48, 13 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Can't we just have a vote? Choose one of the following: A) Use only straight quotes, B) Use only curly quotes, C) Use whatever suits your fancy, D) Don't even bother being consistant within a single article, E) I don't care, I'm going to do things my way. -- I vote 'E', by the way. -- Ravenswood 07:07, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

Consensus or not

Okay, we're on the brink of an all-out revert war here, so it's time to take a step back. I was about to scold the reverters for repeatedly removing the "no consensus" wording when in fact there is no consensus, but then I went back and counted, and it looks like there's more of a consensus than I'd been asserting there wasn't.

I've tallied, I think, everyone who has contributed to the "Quotation Marks - Why Straight? Change proposed" section on this talk page. ( I have not tallied the responses on Arbor's Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(Quotation_marks_and_apostrophes) page yet.) Here are the results:

pro curly (4): Nicholas, Arbor, Steve Summit, Susvolans

maybe pro curly (5): Michael Z., Factitious, Christoph Päper, Tysto, dab

pro straight/anti curly (14): DavidH, Atlant, Jonathunder, jguk, DES, RI, Ravenswood, Antaeus_Feldspar, CDThieme, Satori, Woodstone, Aranel, No Account, Jmabel

no opinion (2): Mike, Aya_42

These "pro" and "anti" labels could be misleading, since of course not everyone who is "pro curly" is also "anti straight" (i.e. no one has been suggesting mandating curlies or banning straights). And some people (those I've categorized as "maybe pro curly") didn't necessarily say which they preferred, just that they were in favor of dropping the "only use straight quotes" rule.

But -- sorry, Arbor -- 4 is much less than 14, and even 4+5=9 is still significantly less than 14. (I thought I remembered one or two other people voicing vehement esthetic preferences somewhere in favor of curly quotes, but I don't see their comments now, and they wouldn't change the fact that there do seem to be substantially more people here who are arguing in favor of keeping the "use straight" rule.)

Many of the stated reasons, it's true, are weak or have been discredited:

1. Curlies are hard to enter. [doesn't matter; they're not required]

2. Curlies cause problems. [shouldn't matter; many of the problems are hearsay; few actual first-hand problems described; recent mediawiki bugfix reduces problems even further; problems no worse than for other special characters]

But there are also, I concede, some decent arguments:

3. Curlies don't bring that much benefit for the amount of trouble they can cause; we should keep things simple.

4. The curly problems are worse than for other special characters, because quotes (and apostrophes) appear in virtually all text.

(I'm not saying I agree with 3 and 4, just that they're not as easy to dismiss.)

I'll state for the record that I'm still not at all happy leaving the "always use straight quotes" rule standing, because it's in direct contradiction to Help:Special_characters#Typeset-style_Punctuation. (Nor is it possible to change that help page to bring it into line with this MoS.) Furthermore, the rule is also progress-impeding, in that as long as it's in place, the work and experience building that might be necessary in order to relax it won't tend to happen; we could stay stuck in the 1960's flat-ASCII world forever.

Don't get me wrong: "Keep It Simple, Stupid" is a vitally important principle, one I often argue vociferously in favor of. But progress is important, too; the two must be balanced somehow. The extreme case of keeping things simple is Luddism; contrariwise, sometimes we have to do some initially-complicated work, or endure some transitory pain, in order to achieve long-term gain. (And yes, I do think that using directional quotes, if they were easy to enter and free of editing glitches and displayed nicely for everyone, would be progress.)

But for now, I'm going to drop my opposition to the "always use straight quotes" rule, as long as the note about contention and the reference to Help:Special_characters#Typeset-style_Punctuation remain in place. I suggest we revisit the issue again in a year or two, because sooner or later I expect the tide will turn. (And the existing wording can probably still be improved.)

In the meantime, I have a couple of questions. Currently, there are many wikipedia articles which do use curly quotes. Would it be right or wrong to scold someone who -- in ignorance or defiance of the MoS -- continues to use curly quotes? Would it be right or wrong for someone to edit an article merely to change its curly quotes to straight ones? Would it be a good idea for someone (perhaps a bot) to ferret them all out and change them all?

Steve Summit (talk) 05:57, 16 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your very reasonable assessment of the situation. However, I am concerned that your restriction of determining the consensus based only on the commentors in the "Quotation Marks - Why Straight? Change proposed" was not very accurate, and its results are subsequently possibly misleading. My opinion, for example, was excluded from your tally, even though I expressed it when the matter was first broached in May and also over the past few days.

Apologies. While tallying I had a fourth, partially-overlapping category "pro lack of consensus" containing Arbor, Steve Summit, Nohat, and Tysto, and when I omitted that category from the posted results I neglected to move your name to one of the others. Steve Summit (talk) 11:44, 16 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Of course it may be true that Arbor has misrepresented the consensus, but I tend to agree that there is no longer (and perhaps there never was) a consensus to out-and-out ban curly quotes. When only a handful of editors are party to a dispute, any vocal dissent of nontrivial size constitutes a Lack of Consensus.

As for points 3 and 4 above, I admit that they are decent arguments; however, they make the assumption that curlies actually cause problems. As you state in point 2, this assertion remains conjecture, so until it can be shown that curlies actually cause problems for a nontrivial number of users, points 3 and 4 remain inapplicable. Ultimately, there are no good arguments for banning curly quotes.

What continues to baffle me is why the anti-curly contigent has been able to get away with the continual wholesale reverting of attempts to make the MoS reflect the fact that there is no consensus supporting this rule. The current situation where the curly ban remains but there is a small note indicating that the policy is disputed is only barely tolerable. The fundamental concept behind Wikipedia is to continually modify pages so they they better reflect the consensus. Wikipedia practice is to not revert when you disagree, but to try to engage in compromise and continually edit the verbiage so that all parties are in agreement. The fact that those who are opposed to curlies have continuously and fervently reverted without any attempt at compromise reflects poorly on their character. I hope that Ummit's gentlemanly display of willingness to compromise will be followed by others, and that future attempts to modify the wording to reflect consensus will be met with team spirit rather than curmudgeonly reversion. We are perfectly capable of continually editing pages in the main namespace to satisfy all reasonable parties; I see no reason why the same the same should not be true for the MoS. Nohat 07:10, 16 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've gone ahead and made my own tally:

Maintain ban:

Lift ban:

No clear opinion:

These numbers give 9–14 in favor of lifting the ban. 61% does not make any kind of consensus. There is quite clearly a Lack of Consensus. Nohat 08:45, 16 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Maintain ban. It isn't just the quotes, but along with it comes apostrophes using the right curly single quote. Of course, apostrophes don't have a direction to worry about. They would also make it difficult for someone wanting to expand a contraction, when the browser's find on this page function won't find it if you enter the wrong one, and in my default configuration (and many other people's), I don't see the difference. I don't even think curly quotes look better. Most of the time they don't look worse either, except for that `really ugly' left single quote when people think that using the keyboard ` (`) with the keyboard apostrophe ' (') is a good way to simulate curly quotes. Gene Nygaard 09:54, 16 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. I am not sure tallying a lot of opinions that were not given in form of a vote is a valid way of counting. For example, I understood Ravenswood's comments in the sense that he wouldn't oppose lifting the ban, as long as he could continue to use straight quotes. That would put him in "my" camp. (I may be wrong about Ravenswood, but that's exactly my point: we cannot second-guess people's opinions in this way.) But I don't like voting about such things in the first place.

Another comment: Above, it says "Of course it may be true that Arbor has misrepresented the consensus". Let me just point out that I never have made any claims about "the consensus", so I would be surprised I have misrepresented anything. (If that was the case, I apologize, but re-reading my own comments I really cannot see if I was unclear about this—I am actually quite surprised that there are this many curly-fans in the first place!) Instead, my argument goes as follows: The old rule was based on a technological argument that is now obsolete. This means the rule needs to be re-evaluated, especially since it contradicts Help: Special characters, which prefers curlies for reasons of data integrity. Clearly there is now no consensus for the old rule, and I don't need to count to 50% to make that observation. I cannot understand the mindset behind editors who insist on having the MoS claim the opposite: that there should be a consensus to forbid curlies. There isn't even a consensus in Wikipedia's own guidelines. Wikipedia isn't a democracy in the first place, but I certainly don't need a majority to remove the false claim that there is consensus behind "straight quotes only". Arbor 16:06, 16 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've not commented on this issue yet, though I've followed it. I'm not sure if I'm "enough" of an editor to affect this decision. I would forstall considering any lack of comments on either side as a lack of support. I'm strongly in favor of curly quotes, but I haven't chimed in yet because the pro-curly camp has argued so persuasively that I didn't feel I had anything to add. It is possible that those in the pro-straight camp feel the same way about their own champions.

From what I can see, each side has valid reasons for preferring their own quotes. Further, I have no difficulty imagining that there are large numbers of people on either side. I don't think we need an up-or-down vote to realize there is no concensus on standardizing on one quote or the other. My reading of the arguments still makes me think that there are no compelling arguments for forbidding either camp's preferred method.

The revert war on the MOS page is silly. Is there some higher authority than random Wiki users to whom we can appeal to avoid the revert war? Because we can't even seem to get a consensus on a consensus... Mikix 00:34, 21 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

For all of those people arguing to allow curly quotes due to aesthetics: How does Wikipedia look better if some articles have curly quotes and some have straight quotes? Isn't consistency an aesthetic value as well? (Rant: The thing that annoys me most about the MoS is inconsistency. When I edit Wikipedia, I just want some guidance on how to make everything look the same ... I almost don't care what that guidance is. Some articles have american spelling, some have english; some articles use an extra comma in lists, some don't; some use metric, some use imperial; now you want some articles to use curly quotes and some not to? Why have an MoS at all?) Chuck 15:52, 23 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I know I haven't been involved with this discussion prior, but I agree with Chuck. Saying "you can use either" defeats the purpose of having a Manual of Style. You can't use "no-one's going to be forced" as an argument for promotion, because that's not style anymore, that's disuniformity. My personal opinion is that straight quotes should be used, but I defer this to my plea that we don't have a "guidance" to use either-or. Nothing looks worse than scattered bits and pieces all over tha place. (My short rant about style is on my user page) Neonumbers 11:51, 25 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The need for consistency across Wikipedia is not a particularly persuasive argument. For example, we will never have style guidance saying that people should use the word "start" and avoid "begin" for consistency. Many things can (and should) be left to the writer's preference. There should be a demonstrable need for any guidance to appear in the MoS. Nohat 09:06, 27 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

First, if you don't care about consistency, then why are you bothering even posting in this section.

I am posting here because I am trying to combat rampant and unnecessary instruction creep.

Second, no one (except you) has discussed in any way creating MoS guidance where there is no demonstrable need. I (nor anyone else) has suggested that we just start coming up with random rules. We are talking about a single conflict (curly vs straight quotes) where there is a demonstrable need to create guidance. The evidence for demonstrable need is the existence of this discussion. Chuck 03:54, 28 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If every time there was a discussion about whether something should be done in one way or another, the outcome was yet another policy page, then Wikipedia would have more policy than actual content. That kind of bureaucratic morass would grind productivity to a halt as everyone cited various and conflicting policies that support their contentions. The fewer policies and guidelines there are, the easier it will be for people to create content and quit debating stylistic details. Nohat 20:35, 28 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Incidentally, I disagree: "...demonstrable need to create guidance" is false. My very first contribution to this debate was a suggestion so simply remove any mention of quotes in the MOS. I hate instruction creep, so I would just remove the current section. This will work, demonstrably: I cannot find any mention of quotation mark style in either French or German Wikipedia (at least when I looked, back in May). Yet both work and look fine, and (as far as I can see) this debate has never been an issue. (As before: If you can find evidence in FR or GE to the contrary, please tell me. I could be simply wrong—stranger things have happened.) So if you ask me, after the UTF-8 switch all straight-vs-curly talk should just be removed from WP:MOS, just as it is going to be removed from help:Special characters. There certainly is the opposite of a demonstrable need for a guideline. Arbor 07:01, 28 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Arbor. There is no demonstrable need for a rule here, as exemplified by the French and German Wikipedias which get along just fine without one. Both straight and curly quotes have their own advantages and disadvantages. The guideline that articles should be internally consistent still stands, but at this time, since neither straight nor curly quotes have the clear consensus of support so there is no valid justification to prefer one or the other in the MoS. Nohat 20:28, 28 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Do remember that the English Wikipedia is miles ahead of the French and German ones in terms of development.

Now, from what I gather, if we take mandate straight vs. mandate curly, there is consensus for straight; if we take maintain ban vs. lift ban there is not. So those who wish the ban be lifted use the lack of consensus as an argument for their minority side. The thing is, that's not a compromise between the two sides, that's just their side — not that I wish for a compromise, nor that I consider this paragraph of argument.

Anyway, a lack of consistency with these would be very very obvious. There was a small debate a while back over whether or not numbers from 11 to 99 should be spelt out "eleven" to "ninety-nine"; but that's not that obvious, so even though I'd like a guideline on it, without one I could live. Consistency is a perfectly valid justification for preference. If it wasn't, the length of this manual would be halved and all the supplementary manuals deleted.

The consequences of a mixture of straights and curlies are not insignificant. It is exactly this sort of thing that makes Wikipedia look unrespectable, as if it was written by about twenty teams, not by one. Neonumbers 11:52, 29 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Neo, I appreciate your effort of providing a summary of the status quo, but you are hardly being fair: Now, from what I gather, if we take mandate straight vs. mandate curly, there is consensus for straight Absolutely not. I would much prefer a curlies-only Wikipedia, just like French and German are, just like the blogosphere is, and just like every printed encyclopedia (or other publication) is. I just happen to think it's a hopeless case on EN without Mediawiki support, which is why I am not pressing that angle. There is also no consensus for straights in Wikipedia's own documentation, see help: Special characters, and the historical consensus for straights on this page was based on a now obsolete technical difficulty.

Look, if I was in a more confrontational mood, I could easily read help:Special characters as prescribing the use of curly quotes “to maintain data integrity”, and of WP:MOS to basically agree, but to stick with straights due to technical reasons in the latin-1 days. Therefore, the argument would go, the change to UTF-8 incurs, automatically, a switch to curlies, and Wikipedia-EN would finally join the rest of the Internet to not look like a typewriter. (It's not 1993 anymore, the slogan goes.) No debate—straights are out. Good riddance. This (somewhat rude) approach would have established the symmetric situation you describe between a mandate straights versus mandate curlies camp, and a compromise proposal (allow both, stay consistent with the page) would have been the likely outcome. I just don't happen to be a big fan of such behaviour, and thought the lifting of the no curlies ban would have been less dramatic, comparable to what happened with em and en-dashes when these became feasible. I had no idea people would actually want to forbid others to (1) use typographically correct punctuation and (2) follow help:Special characters. I still don't quite believe it. Arbor 13:34, 29 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

European spelling

Would it be possible to actually state that subjects related to European countries should ideally be written with British spelling ?

I am not saying that we should force people to write articles with British spelling, but at least that they don't revert back to US when we correct them.

For now, this page already says that "article on European Union institutions and documents: British, Irish and Maltese usage and spelling"; the point would be to explicitely extend this to History, geographical, etc. articles, and also to explain that even countries which do not have English as their official language actually do have rules of spelling, which are British in most (if not all) of the cases. This can be seen with English translations of official documents, English taught in school, etc. (you can see that articles like France are indeed written with British spelling). Rama 12:17, 25 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I think it should be common courtesy to respect the spelling as is (as long as it's consistent within the article), and I don't think you should "correct" them. I see no need for a policy that favors British spelling, especially since it's not clear that editors of articles on European subjects generally prefer it. Rl 13:23, 25 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

European countries have the rule that they use British spelling. Lots of people from these countries do not know that, since these countries so not use English as everyday language, or could have different habits (for instance, people dealing a lot with computer science might tend to favour the US spelling).

While I am fully agreed with you of the "respect as long as it's consistant" principle one articles about, say, algebra, medecine or flowers, it is clearly innapropriate when it comes to subjects touching to the identity of European states, like geographical or historical articles. It is a very logical extension of the "article on European Union institutions and documents: British, Irish and Maltese usage and spelling" principle. I would just like to suggest that this be put explicitly, since obviously some users have difficulties to see the issue here. Rama 13:32, 25 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I must have missed when WP became an extended arm of European administrations. You said yourself that those European editors may prefer US spelling. But that doesn't matter, because their own "European countries" say so, yes? – Unlike the controversy over the introduction of metric units, spelling changes are not adding any value whatsoever. I see no reason why you or European countries should impose one way of spelling. Rl 13:54, 25 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Why would we have the "article on European Union institutions and documents: British, Irish and Maltese usage and spelling" principle then ? Rama 13:55, 25 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Quite frankly, I don't believe that's necessary, either, but at least (British) English is an official language of the European Union. If you want to extend a rule that limits editing freedoms, though, it should be up to you to provide a rationale. How does it significantly improve WP for editors? For readers? How does that compare to the cost of "correcting" correct US English, and the cost to editors who have their correct US English "corrected"? Rl 14:16, 25 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, English is in fact more official in the European Union than it is in the UK or in the USA :p Rama 14:38, 25 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Also, this idea is not in the perspective of a "conflict" between different dorts of spellings; it is just that it would never occure to anyone to write an article about a US island with Britsh spelling (or to contest the changing of spelling if it happened by mistake), but it does happen that some people mistakenly think that non-English-speaking countries have no preferences about English spelling, and therefore not only chose an improper spelling, but also do not understand why the correction happened at all. A notice about his would be helpful for them. Rama 14:03, 25 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Your assumption is that there is a similar consensus about proper spelling in Europe as there is in the United States. That is not the case. Very few US editors will be more comfortable with British spelling, but many European editors are more comfortable with US spelling. You want to force them to use the spelling of your preference, for no discernable benefit. Rl 14:16, 25 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I do not want to force anyone to write in any way --- the US citizens and the few European ones who are not aware of this difference, or for whom the effort would be too heavy a burden, are absolutely welcome to write in US English, of course. I simply would like people to understand why the correction is made later on. This probably won't handicap anyone's reading. Rama 14:38, 25 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It remains a bad idea in my opinion and I still fail to see the merits of the case. But I have said my part, maybe others can contribute something that hasn't been said already. Rl 15:44, 25 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Rl. I would also agree with deleting the style concerning European Union institutions and documents, which was not strongly supported when it was added. Further, I think attempts to make spelling or usage conform to one regional version or another are often misguided. Maurreen 17:26, 25 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Rama, it would be best if you were to take up this discussion before you start messing around with articles written using American spellings. Your edsums [2][3] (and I see you've done this same thing to possibly dozens of other articles) are insulting and misleading. I'm changing them back to the original spellings, in keeping with the MOS. Note that your edsum at [4] has nothing whatsoever to do with the spelling changes you made. Tomer ^TALK 20:05, July 25, 2005 (UTC)

(I don't see how those edit summaries are insulting, but:) That is exactly what I was afraid of, but I thought I'd be accused of using hyperbole if I mentioned it. So there. It's only a matter of time until Europe extends to every bloody island that has at some point been claimed to be under the influence of any European country. Wouldn't this include all of the Commonwealth and maybe the United States, as well? Well, thanks Rama, your edits drove my point home much better than any arguments that I could have come up with. If anyone's ever holding a vote on pushing over "European Union is British spelling territory", make sure to let me know. (That's nothing personal, Rama, by the way; I have absolutely no problem assuming good faith on your part; I am convinced you will find a more productive way to make use of your enthusiasm) Rl 20:22, 25 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I do not mean to insult anyone, nor mislead anyone and I am acting in full agreement with the policy. The islands in question are under French juridiction, and therefore "institutions of the European Union"; saying that "[5] has nothing whatsoever to do with the spelling changes you made" is incorrect. I understand Rl's concern; however, this case is quite clearly whithin the scope of the present European Union, and I would think that these edits are one good reason why a formal and explicit policy would be useful. Rama 20:31, 25 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Incidentally, it is interesting to see that one of these articles was started with the US spelling because it was copy-pasted from a US military document, and that the other one was started with British spelling but was changed to US spelling. Rama 20:39, 25 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Uf. It's even worse than either of us have been imagining... Please see Talk:Mururoa. Tomer ^TALK 22:44, July 26, 2005 (UTC)

re RL's claim that many Europeans prefer American English spelling — I have never found that to be the case anywhere in Europe. On the contrary, many positively loathe it (its joke name in some places is Lazy English because of the tongue-in-cheek view that Americans for example spell color without a u simply because they are too lazy to get it right!!!) and take offense at its use. British English is in fact sometimes known as International English and it is the version of preference in Europe and most of the Commonwealth. Some countries (Ireland, India, etc) have local variants that are far closer to BE than AE. Hiberno-English definitely has nothing in common with American English. (Students who use American English spelling in essays, for example, in many schools and universities in Europe get automatic fails.)

FearÉIREANN\^(caint) 20:53, 25 July 2005 (UTC) [reply]

European non-native speakers of English usually use a mixture of British and American spelling, because they are not aware of the differences or simply don't care. Germans usually write "center" without thinking about it, because "center" has become a German word. On the other hand, most Europeans will probably write "travelling" instead of "traveling". Or mix spellings like color, neighbour, humour... By the way, User:Jtdirl, you write about Europeans taking "offense"...? Shouldn't it be offence? ;-) SpNeo 17:48, 31 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

All due apologies, I didn't include the insulting edsum, and don't care to find it anymore...it was another edit where Rama changed an article to Commonwealth spelling because it was "correct". That said, the edsums I mentioned previously are still incorrect. Although French Polynesia is a France-controlled territory, it is not part of France, so what is used in France is irrelevant. Also, the "Institutions of the EU" thing is irrelevant, since PF is not an institution, and certainly not of the EU--in fact PF has specifically indicated that it is not interested in participating in the EU. Anyways, the problem has been addressed. I'm happy to move on. Thanks, btw, Rama. Tomer ^TALK 23:55, July 25, 2005 (UTC)

My apologies too:

# I am sorry for the "correct", I did not mean to say that US spelling was intrinsically incorrect, but that the correct thing to do regarding the article in question was to use British spelling. I should have worded my diff more carefully.

# I am now better-educated about French Polynesia, though I still have plenty of room for improvement in the domain.

This being said, I am left with the feeling that a more explicit policy might be welcome:

I find the case of the article about Mururoa very revelating, in the sense that there is clearly a much stronger link between Mururoa and France that between Mururoa and the USA; that the article was started with British spelling in the first place; yet that the article is now under US spelling, and that its moving back to British spelling proves to be a disturbance.

The concerns which Rl points to are of course valid ones, but there is nothing to suggest that there would be any more problems because of this than because of the rules regarding British and US spelling (Both the UK and the USA also have small islands everywhere, etc); in any case, the rule about not disturbing Wikipedia obviously has precedence, and I am confident that common sense is largely enough to decide of these questions (for instance it is obvious to me that an article about the Statue of Liberty should be written with US spelling, even though it is a French work of art, and that one statue of Liberty is located in Paris: commons sense says that the most proeminent statue of Liberty is in the USA, and that its main feature is its associations with the city of New York, rather than its construction of Eiffel).

The use for a more explicit rule is mainly to compensate for the fact that some people are not aware that even countries which do not have English as their national language still have preferences regarding spelling. Rama 07:56, 26 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Rama--I don't know when the change happened in Mururoa and wasn't aware that it was originally written in CE. Let's take it up on the article's talk page if necessary. Again, all apologies. As far as the discussion here, I'm willing to regard it as "settled" if you are, and we can all go get a beer. Tomer ^TALK 22:27, July 26, 2005 (UTC)

When you say that "countries" have preferences, what you actually mean is that their administrations and schools have preferences; they favour British spelling for obvious reasons. People who learned English as a second language are often most comfortable with a mix of both spellings, and they won't even realize or care that it is indeed a mix. Most Europeans would probably agree on "colour", but dialogue, centre, or travelling is a toss-up at best (check articles on big European cities and you will find centre and center happily co-exisiting on the same page). So here's my alternative proposal that suits the actual situation in Europe a lot better: In articles concerning European (non-English speaking) countries, any combination of U.S. and British spelling is fine. Rl 09:28, 26 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Firstly, I think this debate has become way more heated than it deserves (despite my preference, as a Brit, to use CE spellings, I would have made the same edits that Rama did had I cared to), but I'd just like to make the point that one of your examples, "centre", is a French word, and is similar ("centro") in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, being derived from the Latin "centrum". Given that English draws heavily on other European languages, the CE spellings of words are likely to be more familiar to a native even if they know no English at all. Then again, the en wikipedia is not written primarily for them, that's what the fr, de, etc. 'pedias are for. Our primary target is native English speakers, the majority of who are U.S. English speakers (although I'd be interested to know what variant of the language China is teaching the kids in school - when they get up to speed, they will outnumber all other English speakers put together). So, basically I'm neutral on this topic. — PhilHibbs | talk

The main reason for saying that articles concerning U.K.-related topics should use U.K. English, etc., as discussed ad nauseam here and elsewhere, is that many readers find a mismatch between the subject and the style of English jarring. It isn't because of anything that the various governments (or other relevant bodies) have decided. I can't support Rama on this, therefore.

Incidentally, French Polynesia is part of France (as a pays d'outre-mer, though with more autonomy than, say, Martinique (which is treated as just another departement). --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:34, 26 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

As discussed the first time around (or was it the 10th time? see Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style--Archive11#EU and Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style--Archive11#EU_and_OAS for two earlier discussions). I am in favour of CE English for "European Union institutions and documents" and I interpret this clause to mean that if one is writing about the European Parliament when in Strasbourg then it should be in CE English. But an article on Strasbourg Cathedral can be in AE or any other formal English dialect and should stay in the English of the primary author. Otherwise one ends up in the unreasonable position, that because someone writes an article on the bolts in a 1950s Ferrari that CE English should replace whatever the primary author wrote it in, or the Battle of the Bulge should use only CE because it took place in Europe and one of the major protagonists was German. I think this is a step too far. Also if "my memory serves me well" those lander in Germany which were occupied by the US after the war use AE in their schools, so why should Bavarians writing an article on BMWs have to put up with some Brit changing their spellings to CE which may look odd to them? Philip Baird Shearer 17:22, 26 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm unclear on what the problem is. Articles should use the spellings common to the subject. Articles about US subjects should use US spellings, articles about UK subjects should use UK spellings, and so on. European English-speakers are likely to have considerably more familiarity with UK English than with US English in the form of newspapers and books, so UK spellings should be used for those as well. Outside of that, the article should retain the spelling of its original author. Why the debate? --Tysto 05:10, 2005 August 4 (UTC)

Why the debate? "European English-speakers are likely to have considerably more familiarity with UK English than with US English in the form of newspapers and books, so UK spellings should be used for those as well." (User:Tysto) That's the critical point.

I can understand User:Rama's view, but I'm quite unsure about this...

As far as neutral articles are concerned - in my opinion, mixed spelling should be acceptable as long as it is "consistently mixed" (the same word shouldn't be spelled in two different ways) SpNeo 13:17, 10 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If you read the whole discussion you will find that it's worse than that. The proponents of British spelling for all European articles concede that European editors may be more used to US spelling (typically due to US media exposure). They argue that the non-English speaking European countries (read governments) prefer British spelling and so should all European editors, whether they like it or not. — I very much support what SpNeo calls "consistently mixed". Rl 13:34, 10 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I support using CE or British spelling in European topics. We learn them in schools, not US English. It isn't about forcing, it is about familiarity. People may later learn US spelling from Internet. English Wikipedia is for all people that understand English well enough to bother to read it. It is not only for native speakers. -Hapsiainen 18:24, August 27, 2005 (UTC)

British vs U.S. Alphabetising

What is the Wikipedia standard for alphabetizing? By word or by letter? Should it be:

can
can do
candid
candy

- or -

can
candid
can do
candy

? -- Ravenswood 15:53, July 25, 2005 (UTC)

Commonly spaces are taking part in sorting. The space character comes before any others. If words are of unequal length, trailing spaces are assumed: "can " comes before "candy". Similarly "can do" comes before "candid". −Woodstone 17:11, July 25, 2005 (UTC)

Is that official policy? If it is, it should be in the Manual of Style. Ravenswood 21:27, July 25, 2005 (UTC)

Does it need to be part of the Manual of Style? I thought that that ordering (per Woodstone) was just 'understood'. Back when dictionaries were paper, a space came before alphabetic characters in sorting. The space character precedes all the alphanumerics in ASCII, so that takes care of the digital era. Heck, Excel even does it correctly when you ask it to sort a column of text entries. :) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:17, 26 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If one method was universally "understood" there wouldn't be (at least) five methods of sorting, would there? There have been and are dictionaries (on paper) which sort as if all the spaces were removed. Some people lump all "Mc" and "Mac" names together before other names starting with "M". Some people treat numbers as if they were spelled out, some don't. No, it is a matter of disagreement and controversy, which has occasionally led to edit wars and knife-fights. No murders yet, but a few skirmishes have come close. Ravenswood 23:22, July 26, 2005 (UTC)

There's also whether to sort St. with start and starve or with saint. —Wahoofive (talk) 16:10, 29 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Sorting should follow the Unicode collation algorithm for English, which can be used to sort any set of Unicode strings, except where the UCA gives unreasonable results. Nohat 18:52, 4 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

UCA is a bit... complex for what we're trying to do, as it covers sorting items in every alphabet of the world mixed together, whereas for the English Wikipedia we just need a sorting standard for English.

I would propose:

Skip a, an, the
Sort spaces before all letters, so: cat food before catch, van der Waal before Vanderkellen
Intermingle accented letters with their unaccented forms, so: God, Gödel, Godfrey
If there's no difference between two listings other than capitalization or an accent mark, then capitals before lowercase, unaccented letters before accented
Numbers are sorted numerically before A. Special characters are sorted by ASCII value before numbers.
Non-English scripts are transliterated into English before sorting
Sort "St." as if it is spelled-out: "Saint"

Ravenswood 05:42, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

For most sorting purposes, whatever seems reasonable to the author should suffice. However, in the case of disputes, it makes more sense to defer to the experts rather than attempt to invent our own complicated system to maintain and argue about. Certainly your 7-rule example system misses something that someone else will think of, which result in the Wikipedia sorting system growing ever-more complex. Best to not have a formal policy and just defer to the experts. Nohat 06:04, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

That seems to be how most things in Wikipedia are handled: Do things however you like, until there's a disagreement strong enough to warrant intervention. OK, I can respect that. What I don't understand is, WHY hasn't there been a disagreement about this? The topics of straight quotes vs curly quotes, US vs U. S., and Latin abbreviations have all raged on for months, with much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and no easy consensus in sight. But sorting? Ignored. What gives? It's just as meaningless and arbitrary as the other topics people have been fighting over. Where's the five-way world war over sorting convention??? -- Ravenswood 15:01, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

OK, I changed the title of this section to "British vs US Alphabetizing", which doesn't make a lot of sense, but should get a bigger reaction out of people. Ravenswood 19:49, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

I edited slightly further along the path you started, Ravenswood. Maybe that will draw attention. ;) I think most of your rules above look like a good start. The only one I would differ with is sorting short forms as if they were spelled out. That can be confusing and can get complicated quite easily. (Writing "St." but sorting as if it were Saint or Street or what have you.) Much better, I think, to spell them out them out in full, then sort them, or barring that, to sort by what is actually written. No Account 23:34, 11 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Yes! YES!! Controversy at last! — Except, I agree with you. Ravenswood 16:02, August 12, 2005 (UTC)

U.S. vs. US

In the national varieties section:

When abbreviating United States, please use "U.S."; that is the more common style in that country, is easier to search for automatically, and we want one uniform style on this. When referring to the United States in a long abbreviation (USA, USN, USAF), periods should not be used.

That is just a stupid plead and should be removed. It is totally inconsequent to use ‘U.S.’, but ‘USA’ and ‘UK’. It really looks awkward when being used in the same sentence, yet some editors take the above plead as a rule and change all instances of ‘US’ to ‘U.S.’ or even ‘U. S.’ (and nothing else). To save my contributions from such morons I, and thus myself from edit wars, I now use the expanded form way too often, which has also to affect similar abbreviations nearby. A good search engine would treat them the same anyway, Google does AFAIK. Christoph Päper 16:26, 26 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This has been brought up before, and there was no consensus to change it. Maurreen 16:47, 26 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I think you're entirely right, Christoph, and in practice you're unlikely to get into a revert war if you use "US" in an article that otherwise does not use stops afte initials. It seems silly to keep this guidance there (and it leads to some silly presentations about articles going on about the UN, UK, but the "U.S.". Surely if an article uses stops after all initials appearing in it, the you'd use "U.S.", if an article doesn't use stops after all other initials it has, then use "US"?, jguk 17:12, 26 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

He might be right with refard to the argument and the facts, but his manners could do with some revision. Or is calling other editors "morons" now OK? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 21:43, 26 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

No, so I removed it. — PhilHibbs | talk 15:43, 1 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I stand by what I write, but maybe moron was too strong a word—I’m not a native speaker. It’s just really annoying, if people change a harmonic sentence by following this plead without any questioning. Christoph Päper 00:06, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You're right, it would have been better for Christoph not to have referred to "morons" - especially as it detracts from his underlying point, which is a good one, jguk 10:39, 29 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You say exactly what I wanted to say, so I won't say that again :) . But a related question is whether US or USA should be used. The second is more complete and correct, but less common. Eg it would look awkward in USA dollar. By the way, the article on the country is called 'United States', not 'United States of America', which doesn't see to make sense. DirkvdM 10:47, 30 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ugh, you don't want to go there. There be dragons. Rl 10:59, 30 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It is almost always "United States" or "U.S." as an adjective; it is only the noun usage that can be USA or U.S.A. Gene Nygaard 11:25, 13 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree with the recommendation's claim that "U.S." is more common form in the US. It has always been my understanding that lowercase abbreviations require dots and uppercase abbreviations require no dots. So: a.k.a., d.o.b., a.m., p.m., abbr., etc. And FBI, IBM, US, UK, AM, PM, GI, ZIP code, and so on, with the modern trend being toward more UC abbreviations. (Acronyms, however, are words: laser, radar, sonar.) No other treatment makes any sense. The only exception is to use dots with uppercase abbreviations when you write a headline like CNN's crawl: BULGARIANS HATE U.S. I'm all for starting a consensus to change the recommendation. --Tysto 05:55, 2005 August 4 (UTC)

Oh, I thought I had given the news crawl example myself already, but obviously I did not. Thanks for mentioning it. Christoph Päper 00:06, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Those capitalization rules vary considerably geographically and by field of activity and many other things. Consider that both Washington, D.C., which is the current title of its article, and Washington, DC are both considered quite correct for use in the United States of America and elsewhere; this is not primarily anything to do with geography. The difference is that D.C. is the traditional abbreviation for the District of Columbia, used in the same way that Mass. is used for Massachusetts. But DC is the two-letter USPS symbol, used in the same way that MA is used for Massachusetts. Usually, one style or the other should be followed within any given article, here or anywhere else. Gene Nygaard 11:25, 13 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

GPO Usage

The GPO Style Manual (of which the 29th edition issued in 2000 is the latest) specifies the following rules on abbreviating United States. (With my comments in italics and parenthesis.)

9.7. Abbreviations and initials of a personal name with points are set without spaces. Abbreviations composed of contractions and initials or numbers, will retain space. (This means that "U. S." is incorrect, but this rule is silent over the issue of whether to use "U.S." or "US".)

9.9. United States must be spelled out when appearing in a sentence containing the name of another country. The abbreviation U.S. will be used when preceding the word Government or the name of a Government organization, except in formal writing (treaties, Executive orders, proclamations, etc.); congressional bills; legal citations and courtwork; and covers and title pages. (This rule is the source of the preference for "U.S." over "US" except in specific contexts. Note however, that in a list of countries, the United States should not be abbreviated.)

9.10. With the exceptions in the above rule, the abbreviation U.S. is used in the adjective position, but is spelled out when used as a noun.

9.60. The following are some of the abbreviations and symbols used for indicating money:

$, dol (dollar)

c, ct, ¢ (cent, cents)

LT175 (Turkish)

US$15,000

Mex$2,650

P (peso)

£ (pound)

d (pence)

Use “US$” if omission would result in confusion. (This rule would seem to argue against using “US dollar”, but “U.S. dollar”, “US$”, or ISO 4217's code of “USD” depending upon the context when abbreviating United States dollar.)

Obviously the above rules from the style manual won't cover all cases, but they serve as a good first approximation. Caerwine 15:17, 30 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Whoever wrote for the GPO that d indicates pence should have been sacked on sight by them for incompetence. d meant pence (short for denarii) in pre-decimal currency, which was phased out in the early 1970s Pence in decimal currency is symbolised by p and has been for well over thirty years! FearÉIREANN

\^(caint) 17:35, 14 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

GPO is a US postal service. Not quite a basis for a standard in Wikipedia. ISO, however, is the international standardisation organisation. So that would be a better source, but still not definitive, I'd say (don't ask me why, it's just a feeling...). But I can't find any relevant standard (iso4217 is about money, not countries). But these sources don't give a definitive answer anyway. What matters more is consistency, and I never see other country abbreviations with dots, like U.S.S.R. , U.K. or G.B. . Notice in this listing that that also makes the punctuation awkward (where should one place the comma and should the space between the final dot and the period be there?). And it's more difficult to type - without the dots you just hold Shift with one hand and type the letters with the other (that's just a practical argument, but not irrelevant). Oh, and then there are abbreviations like LASER, TV, CD, LP and NATO (although laser may not be a good example). Strictly speaking, these should have dots, but no-one ever uses them (just try googling them with dots). Also, see the Abbreviation article; "The only rule universally accepted is that one should be consistent". There is no standard between publishers (postal offices or others), but one publisher should be consistent within his publications. And that consistency should also be between abbreviations (though I wonder if the New York Times will spell laser as l.a.s.e.r.). Name me one abbreviation that should be written with dots and I'll be stuck. But I wonder if you can. DirkvdM 19:31, 30 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not saying that the GPO is "the" reference for WP. But ...

The GPO is not "a US postal service" (or U.S.). It is the U.S. Government Printing Office.
Can you clarify your concern about punctuation?
"Should" is subjective and the point of discussion.
"U.S." is more clear than "US".
If you don't like "U.S.", you could use "USA", which isn't much more trouble.
I believe Google disregards whether periods are used. Maurreen (talk) 20:07, 30 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

As already pointed out GPO stands for the U.S. Government Printing Office which sest the standard for all printed matter published by the U.S. Governmment. Given the sheer quantity of material the Government publishes, simply by example alone it sets the basis of the style prevalent in the U.S. Your quote about constency is take out of context. It refers to always using the same abbreviation for a particular word or words, not to always using points or never using points for all words. The general GPO practice is to be courteous and use points in an abbreviation according to how the entity whose name is being abbreviated wants it done. Thus the GPO Style Manual specifies both U.S. and NATO as the prefered forms, even when used together as in this example from it: U.S.-NATO assistance. As for how commas interact with U.S., you add the comma after the point as in this example and as with all other abbreviations using the point. Finally as to your last point, the GPO Style Manual does specify that USA and U.S.A. has two distinct meanings; the former means United States Army while the latter means United States of America, although I'll conceed that the distinction between those two can usually be gleaned from context and that it does not see much use in popular writing. Caerwine 22:24, 30 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Getting back to the point, is the preferred way forward just to delete the guidance or to replace it with something that says that articles should be consistent in either always using dots after each letter of a two-letter abbreviation, or in not using dots after each letter of a two-letter abbreviation? jguk 17:14, 31 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The question of how to change the style guide about "U.S." is premature. I see no consensus that a change is desired. Maurreen (talk) 17:20, 31 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Is there anyone arguing that where, for other two-letter abbreviations, an article does not use dots after each letter that we should make an exception for the abbreviation "US"? As it's clearly not a case of people potentially being confused, surely aesthetics should take over and whatever style is adopted for two-letter abbreviations for the rest of the article should prevail? jguk 17:27, 31 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The current convention is in line with the other rule on retaining the spellings of proper names. (For examples, we still use the spelling "Australian Defence Force" in an article on the "United States Department of Defense.") Wouldn't it look jarring to be using U.K., U.N., G.B., etc.? In the United States itself, "U.S." is the common form and "US" looks similarly jarring for those who are aware of the rules. --Ji ang 17:11, 1 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There are many examples of pages that use "U.K.", "U.N.", etc., and so they should if that is the style adopted throughout those articles. Indeed, there are many British publications that choose that for their style. I'm not sure how your comparison with the rules on spelling fits, as this is a punctuation issue, not a spelling issue. And there are plenty of Americans who don't use dots after "US", although they are in somewhat of a minority. It's really a question of aesthetics - and given WP's laissez-faire approach to style (as long as it is consistent within any one article), which has undoubtedly helped WP grow to what it is today, it seems best to allow either dots throughout or no dots through when it comes to two-letter abbreviations. It would also put a stop to the silly edit wars that appear to have initiated this discussion, jguk 18:14, 1 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Just as there are different regional conventions when it comes to spelling, there are different regional conventions when it comes to punctuation. I don't quite understand why we should keep proper names spelled in their original forms while allowing their punctuation to be changed to another form. if you're going to be bastardizing U.S. Department of Defense to US Department of Defence, why not change it to US Department of Defence as well? The consistency-in-spelling rule applies to non-proper names, as should the punctuation rule. For example, British punctuations (e.g. single quotation marks, lack of serial comma) should be used to British-related articles but this should not apply to American proper names. --Ji ang 10:51, 2 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The following comments have recently appeared on the discussion page for the US. May I put in a plea to those who wish to retain dots, that there is a solid trend all over the English-speaking world to minimise the use of dots in initialisms. Apart from the other good reasons to drop them from 'U.S.', why not lead the trend rather than drag behind?

PASTED IN: I wonder whether contributors support the idea that it would be neater and easier to read if the nation were referred to simply as 'the US', i.e., without the dots; that is, after the opening, and in all instances for which there's no good reason to use one of the longer names. Currently, usage in this respect is inconsistent. Tony 05:23, 29 July 2005 (UTC) If you want to make it consistent, better use U.S.A., because only US is not very descriptive. −Woodstone 08:10, July 29, 2005 (UTC)

in context of this article, what could anyone confuse US with? Gabrielsimon 08:12, 29 July 2005 (UTC) Agree with Woodstone, we should use U.S.A., instead of "the US." --Gramaic | Talk 08:17, 29 July 2005 (UTC) USA instead of U.S.A.? (SEWilco 15:22, 29 July 2005 (UTC)) I'd rather spell it out as 'the United States' than use 'U dot S dot A dot', which, although an accepted abbreviation, is (1) one letter too many in this highly focused—and already too long—text, and (2) looks much neater, in my veiw, without the dots (nowadays, who spells NASA, NATO, PBS, ABC, and most other acronyms with the dots?). I'd still opt for 'the US'. 'The USA' sounds pedantic, as though you're shortening it, but then partially retracting the brevity. 'The United States' is attractive, but the article is far too long as a single text for most readers of Wikipedia, and spelling it out on its numerous occurrences will worsen that problem. In addition, 'US' can also be used as an epithet ('the US peace mission', 'US interest rates') whereas 'USA' sits awkwardly in that respect. 'The US' has a high recognition factor worldwide; no one will mistake it for 'us', as in 'we, us, they, them', even momentarily. Tony 02:58, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

Tony 12:57, 2 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It's not up to wikipedia to propel or advocate trends in English punctuation. We already stated that acronyms such NASA, NATO, PBS, ABC should not retain periods. There is no evidence other than by word of mouth that the trend in American English is towards omitting periods, while there is evidence that almost every major American style book still prefers U.S. with periods over US without. It is not a simple matter of confusion - many rules are pointless - but of following the conventions and rules that have been set in place and are being widely followed. --Ji ang 15:56, 2 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A look at the 1967 and 2000 editions of the GPO Style Manual does show a small but documentable shift towards a reduction of point usage in abbreviations. Mainly this is due to the abandonment of points in units of measure. However there are a few other examples such R. & D. (note the spaces in addition to the points) is now R&D and a.w.o.l. is now AWOL. Furthermore, the GPO Style Manual is definitely conservative in its abandonment of points as it still reccommends the use of forms such as 2005 A.D., c.o.d., and U.N. instead of what I would likely use, 2005 AD, COD, and UN. However, the question here is not whether there is a trend towards one form or another since it is not a purpose of Wikipedia to make, prescribe, or predict trends in language use. Currently both US and U.S. are in common use with the latter being the form prefered by the United States. Besides, I fail to see the need to hyperabbreviate things. Do people in Burkino Faso speak of "le BF" or do Austrians of "der Ost"? Those abbreviations make as much objective sense as what we are discussing here. Frankly, if policy were to be changed, it should be towards always using the points with U.S. save where it is being used as a technical abbreviation as in ISO 3166. Caerwine 19:49, 2 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I have no problem with articles that use the convention of using dots in two-letter abbreviations using the abbreviation "U.S.". From what you say, most articles written in American English will already use that convention. The question here is whether, in an article that otherwise doesn't use dots for two-letter abbreviations, which Tony argues is the worldwide trend towards doing things (and this is certainly true outside N America), should an exception be made for the abbreviation "US" (and for this abbreviation alone) - and I can't for the life of me see a good reason why, jguk 19:15, 2 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It all depends on the context. Frankly, I'm at a loss to think of a reason why I would want use to the abbreviation U.S. alongside other abbreviations (outside of an article that is making liberal use of the ISO 3166 codes) in formal writing. As an encylcopedia, Wikipedia should use a formal writing style and formal writing uses far less abbreviations than informal writing does, just as it avoids the use of contractions. Caerwine 19:49, 2 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Seems that although it has some supporters, there isn't exactly a lot of support for the current guidance. Should we just delete it, or is it best to put something else in its place? jguk 18:14, 4 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I see there’s enough consensus to remove it, but for I was the one asking for it I won’t do the edit. FWIW, I would never advocate changing proper names which use one or the other form of the abbreviation—if I did I would adress the nameholder not WP. Christoph Päper 00:06, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I know this is somewhat orthogonal to the issue at hand, but I think it merits mention: one of the arguments given against using the full expansion United States for US/U.S./U. S. is that "the article is too long already". I feel that that the implication here, namely that a long article should adopt the use of abbreviations as a technique to avoid being too long, is patently wrong. Wikipedia is not paper—if an article is too long, then what we have is a problem with organization, and no amount of using abbreviations is going to fix it. The use of abbreviations can only make an article more ambiguous and more opaque, and we should always be striving for less ambiguity and less opacity. Nohat 08:11, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Consensus?

Again, I see no consensus to change the style. If anything, it looks like the split is about even. Maurreen (talk) 02:39, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Nevertheless, if there is no consensus to change, that means that there is also isn't consensus to keep it the same. The page should be changed to clarify that there is no consensus on the topic. To leave it as it is would be to misrepresent the nature of the consensus, or more accurately, the lack thereof. Nohat 03:07, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree. To apply that principle widely could lead to chaos. Do you base this on any WP reference? Maurreen (talk) 03:20, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It's not chaos, it's The Wiki Way. Nowhere does it say that the MoS is exempt from the normal Wiki process. Nohat 06:51, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I mean really, to not do this would be abhorrent. Any current policy guideline needs to have consensus support to stay a policy or guideline. To do otherwise goes against the very essence of how Wikipedia works. Nohat 07:08, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently we interpret The Wiki Way differently. Why don't we agree to disagree on the specifics of that and wait a day to see if anyone but the three of us weighs in on this? Maurreen (talk) 07:13, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm confused... does your interpretation of The Wiki Way allow for minority rule? Aren't guidelines supposed to reflect community consensus? Nohat 07:52, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

IMO, a guideline should need both consensus to add and consensus to remain - and this one clearly has no consensus to remain, even if there is no 80% in favour of a replacement as yet. It also tends not to be observed in many articles that do not have dots after other two-letter abbreviations anyway. I've offered comments above on a possible formulation that may enjoy consensus, and would welcome positive comments and other ideas in constructing one, jguk 06:34, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Compromise?

Jguk, there was no consensus on "September 11, 2001 attacks", and you chose not to compromise. Are you open to some give-and-take on both? Maurreen (talk) 07:13, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Maurreen, that discussion was about whether one additional comma was or was not added to the title. Where the discussion boils down as to which of two options we have, compromise isn't possible - come the end of the day we plump for A or B - there is nothing in between A or B that would allow for compromise. Where issues, such as we have here, are not so black and white, there's more room for manoeuvre, jguk 07:19, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree. Several options were offered. I only voted against one. Another option would be not to repeat the title in the article, but you reverted that. Maurreen (talk) 07:33, 5 August 2005 (UTC) And you have criticized my concern about a comma. I don't see how your concern about a couple of periods is any more weighty. Maurreen (talk) 07:42, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

WP articles show the title in bold in the first sentence. The only thing to compromise on there would have been the article title, and personally I think the article should be located at 9/11 as that's the most common name for it - but unfortunately I was in somewhat of a minority there. My concern, as ever, is readability. In the 9/11 discussions, my concern was that to add another comma just looks wrong, very wrong (and is therefore very distracting) - at least to a non-American reader. American sources suggested some Americans use and some do not use a second comma - so thinking of the readers, the conclusion is that there should not be a second comma (although a complete name change would have been a possibility if there's an alternative that would be generally acceptable). Here, it is a case of aesthetics - if an article uses a number of two-letter abbreviations, should they not all be dealt with in a similar way? (and note that I do not suggest prescribing which way is used) What would it mean to do otherwise? And isn't it distracting to see a variety of approaches used, which would make an article look slipshod rather than well-written? Of course, as someone else has noted, it may be preferable to avoid using abbreviations in the first place wherever it is sensible to do so, jguk 08:07, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I would support deleting the current guideline in favor of changing "Proper names should retain their original spellings, for example, United States Department of Defense and Australian Defence Force." to "Proper names should retain their original spellings and punctuations, for example, U.S. Department of Defense and Australian Defence Force." Otherwise, I oppose removal. I still don't see how punctuation and spellings are different from it comes to proper names. --Ji ang 07:26, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The proper name of the US Department of Defence is "United States Department of Defense" not "U.S. Department of Defense". On the punctuation front, I think what you propose is neither practical nor desirable. It would mean that every time you have an abbreviation you'd need to research into whether it should or should not have dots - and then you'd have to decide what to do with abbreviations where there is no one firm rule. It would make articles look silly to refer to, say : "XY, K.Z., WUDJ, DH and J.D.L.E. ....", and would clearly give no benefit to the reader. The other problem with the guideline is, whether rightly or wrongly, it gives the appearance of saying America is different from the rest - and it is the edit wars that derived from this that started this discussion (see above). Why, of all possible abbreviations should we single out "US" for a special rule? And how do you really think that goes down with non-Americans? jguk 07:48, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There is no need to research - the rule only applies to clear cut cases. Is it not practical to "research" everytime we have an article to decide whether it is more "British" or more "American"? It is not singling out America - the guideline also requires that "UK" appear without periods. The current rules do not provide such a guideline. --Ji ang

What an absolutely horrible strawman of an argument. What exactly is an XY, a K.Z., a WUDJ, a DH, or a J.D.L.E.? One of the reasons why U.S. gets special attention is that it is an abbreviation that is widely understood without being spelled out in full the first time. Caerwine 13:35, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This is strawman. "US" is as easily understood as "U.S."! jguk 15:16, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a compromise proposal -- replace the current paragraph with the following:

Wikipedia's style for identity is to "use terminology that subjects use for themselves". The majority of U.S. references on the language support: spelling out "United States" and normally using "U.S." when abbreviating it.

Also, because this discussion has been going on for a while, I ask that no one be in a hurry to end it. Maurreen (talk) 08:18, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Moving to what subjects use to identify themselves is really not the way forward. We would not be able to describe Jonathan King as a convicted sex offender or paedophile - indeed, we would have to delete a lot of descriptions throughout WP that the subject doesn't identify themselves. We are not here to write autobiographies or company puff, we're here to write an encyclopaedia. There is a reason why we state explicitly that those identity guidelines are non-binding.

Jiang says there's no need to do research under his proposal, yet fails to say when we should or should not decide to adopt a style a subject prefers - not really a good way forward. He also says that under the current guidelines, "UK" must be written without dots - Jiang is mistaken here.

I must say that to me it seems obvious that an article should either always use dots after two-letter abbreviations or not. What's the big deal about having dots in "U.S."? Is it something teachers drum into people at American schools? I'm genuinely surprised about why there's so much resistance about removing what to me seems like a complete anomaly, jguk 10:37, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

"What's the big deal?" goes both ways. Maurreen (talk) 10:42, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You're the one arguing that we should have a rule on this, rather than to let users make up their own minds depending on context. The "big deal" is that we should put our readers first and present to them well-written consistent articles. It is also that this guideline has, if you look above, given rise to edit wars in the past, and will do in the future. We're all well aware of how vicious US v British v Commonwealth English disputes can get, this just seems like more fuel for them, jguk 11:08, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Youre throwing a red herring here. We are limiting the scope of this to proper names. "Jonathan King" is a proper name. "convicted sex offender or paedophile" is not. Your whole argument is irrelvant here. What Maurreen has proposed is much like the status quo.

"when we should or should not decide to adopt a style a subject prefers" applies only in the case of proper names. Descriptions and other fluff are still bound by accuracy and npov. I say that under proposed guidelines, "UK" must be written without dots. I say that under current guidelines, UK may or may not be written without dots.

The use of dots is not a complete anomaly. go to CNN.com, CBSnews.com, MSNBC.com or any of the other major American news network sites and you'll see dots all over the place: U.S., U.K., U.N., etc. At least you don't have to see U.K. or U.N. in wikipedia. --Ji ang 10:59, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The sites you quote are consistent in having dots for all two-letter abbreviations. I see nothing wrong with that. Similarly, BBC.co.uk has no dots for all two-letter abbreviations. Likewise, I see nothing wrong with that. It is sensible to require that one of these two approaches is taken in any given article (ie to allow either approach in any one WP article). What we shouldn't do is to say use one of these two approaches, but, hang on a second, if you decide not to have dots, but want to refer the the US, you must use dots for that, jguk 11:08, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I take it that you consider the GPO Style Manual to be insensible then. It favors a third approach which calls for a mixture of pointed and unpointed abbreviations, following the convention of the entity that is named. (It also avoids the issue of whether to use UK or U.K. by calling for the United Kingdom to never be abbreviated, which is somewhat beside the point.) Caerwine 13:35, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I certainly do consider the GPO Style Manual to be insensible. It's an unwieldy thing, and probably the worst style guide I've ever seen - even the Chicago Manual of Style, which is avoided with a vengeance this side of the Pond, is preferable to it. Let me tell you now, if you want to be thought of as a good writer, do not follow the GPO! jguk 15:16, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It certainly is stodgy, but I wouldn't call it insensible. Considering that its target is intended to be formal writing only, not journalese, not business prose, but only formal and/or legal writing, its stodginess is appropriate for its subject matter. Journalism oriented style guides are more suited as an inspiation for Wikinews, not Wikipedia which is an example of formal writing, not journalism. Caerwine 15:06, 6 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Back to the proposal

Here's my compromise proposal, tweaked slightly from above -- replace the current paragraph with the following:

Wikipedia's style for identity is to "use terminology that subjects use for themselves". The majority of U.S. references on the language support: spelling out "United States" as a noun and normally using "U.S." when abbreviating it.

The proposal contains no "pleas" or imperatives, just a few statements. Can anyone offer any evidence that any of the statements are not true? Maurreen (talk) 03:01, 6 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with this is that it implicitly restates the current guideline, for which there is no consensus to keep (or indeed remove), and by trying to summarise a long guideline on identity restates it in an impractical way. Our style is emphatically not to always "use terminology that subjects use for themselves" - as can be seen in many an article about a criminal and/or politician.

As of yet you have not responded to my comments above or answered the questions I raised. I'd be grateful if you would, jguk 07:20, 6 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

So, do you believe WP style on identity should make exceptions for criminals, politicians and the United States? You are normally against singling out a country.

About responding to your comments and questions:

Several times you have chosen not to answer my questions.
The question of aesthetics is subjective.
As I've said before, edit wars are determined more by the participants than the style guide.
You said above, "a guideline should need both consensus to add and consensus to remain." This is inconsistent with your position about "her majesty" and the like.
One of your arguments is that the style is often not observed. Speed limits are often not observed. Should we do away with them?
You say, "Why, of all possible abbreviations should we single out "US" for a special rule?"
1. We don't need to single it out. We could add more.
2. I think my proposal addresses "why."
You say, "And how do you really think that goes down with non-Americans?" -- No worse than your various campaigns come across to many people.
"Moving to what subjects use to identify themselves is really not the way forward." -- I disagree. See above.

~~#"We are not here to write autobiographies ..." -- Haven't you worked on many articles about cricket players?~~

"... or company puff" -- I don't see how standard punctuation equates to puffery.
"I must say that to me it seems obvious that an article should either always use dots after two-letter abbreviations or not." -- Obviously, it is not so to everyone, or the style wouldn't be there in the first place.
"What's the big deal about having dots in 'U.S.'" -- The deal is not bigger than not having the periods.
"Is it something teachers drum into people at American schools?" -- That's not the most productive way to phrase things.
"I'm genuinely surprised about why there's so much resistance ..." -- I don't see any more resistance to changing the style than resistance to the current style.
"You're the one arguing that we should have a rule on this" -- You're the one arguing that we shouldn't. Perhaps arguments could have been avoided if you had handled the issue differently.
"We're all well aware of how vicious US v British v Commonwealth English disputes can get." -- Then please don't start them or fan the flames.
"What we shouldn't do is to say use one of these two approaches, but, hang on a second, if you decide not to have dots, but want to refer the the US, you must use dots for that." -- You are welcome to you opinion, but at least one style guide disagrees with you (that of The Associated Press).
"if you want to be thought of as a good writer, do not follow the GPO!" -- No style guide is going to make anyone a good writer. Maurreen (talk) 18:05, 6 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Maurreen, since you say it is no big deal, why do you argue so strongly for the retention of the guideline. If it's no big deal, shouldn't you be neutral on this? jguk 18:30, 6 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I din't say it is or is not a big deal. I said I don't see that it's bigger to me than it is to you. Maurreen (talk) 18:39, 6 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Riddles? What about getting rid of the guideline? Though to be honest, as long as no-one actually tries to copy-edit to impose it, it won't make a difference either way. If someone does try to copyedit to impose it, there will be much acrimony (and not just from me), jguk 20:17, 6 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Given the lack of consensus about the present text, it should go. It's just a question of what, if anything, should replace it? Maybe nothing would be best, jguk 18:22, 12 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

"use terminology that subjects use for themselves" won't work because it wrongly presupposes that there is a clearly discoverable fact of the matter. We've already dscovered that different people in the U.S. and the U.K. have different approached to punctuation. I disapprove of the modern journalist-led move away from punctuation (of all kinds) in this country, and I'm in a large minority at least (I have to read material written by people of all ages, and from many different backgrounds). To say that I'm right or that they're right,a s a guide to Wikipedia practice, would be arbitrary. My impression is that things are even more complex in the U.S. Why not go for clarity rather than trying to determine our usage according to some sort of impossible democratic process? Full stops signal an abbreviation in which words stop before the end (the limit case being a single letter), their absence signals that this isn't the case. ZOOM isn't an abbreviation, U.S. is. Could anything be simpler?

This is, of course, leaving aside the genuine difference between U.S. and U.K. use of the full stop in abbreviations (as in "Saint/St" vs "Saint/St."), but let's not get into that. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 14:44, 13 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, as I pointed out above, the U.S. Government has specific rules on this and therefore applying the "use terminology that subjects use for themselves" rule in articles or references relating to the U.S. Government means that those rules should be followed there. Outside of those usages, how and when to abbreviate the United States is much more personal taste. Caerwine 14:58, 13 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

That "stop before the end" notion is mostly British, resulting in not only the "St" you mention (note that in the U.S., addresses often use "St" without a period as well as with it for street, but "St." for Saint usually has the period), but also "Dr" and "Mr" and "Fr", for example, rather than the American "Dr.", "Mr.", and "Fr." and the like. Gene Nygaard 15:07, 13 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Jguk -- Lack of consensus did not stop you from making changes you agreed with, in the style guide and elsewhere.

Mel Etitis -- This is not clear to me: "Full stops signal an abbreviation in which words stop before the end (the limit case being a single letter), their absence signals that this isn't the case." Can you give a few more examples? Maurreen (talk) 06:56, 14 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Maurreen - the WP approach is a "be bold" approach - if something is added with which people disagree, it soon gets removed and discussed on the talk page, so you can't blame me for that.
All - I have removed the bit which clearly no longer has consensus (and probably hasn't done so for months). There remains the question of whether anything (that does have consensus) should replace it. I'm not convinced that there are any benefits in replacing it. Punctuation rules have some flexibility within each form of standard English as it is. There are also some very noticeable dialectal differences, jguk 07:27, 14 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Compromise proposal 2

For easy reference, here's the bit that jguk removed:

When abbreviating United States, please use "U.S."; that is the more common style in that country, is easier to search for automatically, and we want one uniform style on this. When referring to the United States in a long abbreviation (USA, USN, USAF), periods should not be used. When including the United States in a list of countries, do not abbreviate the United States. (e.g. "France and the United States", not "France and the U.S.").

While it is clear that as is, that guidance has some flaws, I think that we should provide some guidance. Let me try a hand at it since Maureen's sensible approach met some objections.

There are two commonly used ways to abbreviate "United States", "US" and "U.S.", due to differences in abbreviation style. In general, abbreviation style should be harmonized to the rules of one particular style guide. However, Wikipedia's style for identity is to "use terminology that subjects use for themselves". Therefore when referring to the government of the United States or its agencies, one should exhibit a preference for its own rules on this topic. Those rules are to never abbreviate the United States when used as a noun, to use the form "U.S." when used as a stand alone adjective, and to not use periods when the United States is included as part of an offical acronym or initialism. For example, the army of the United States should be referred to either in full as the "United States Army" which can either be abbreviated to "U.S. Army" or be replaced by initialism "USA".

So what do people think of this? Caerwine 15:50, 14 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I think this would be fine. But most of all, any sane standard is better than no standard. On issues where there is unanimity, a manual of style is redundant, or at best a way of educating the ignorant. It is precisely where there is more than one reasonable way to do things that clueful people need a manual of style. -- Jmabel | Talk 16:34, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

Removing the guidance about using dots for U.S. was not warranted, in my view. It is the common use. It serves the purpose of clarity for the reader, distinguishing from the pronoun "US". There was no consensus for removing it; most comments here, in fact, are in favor of keeping. It should be restored. Jonathunder 16:41, 2005 August 14 (UTC)

It was warranted as it clearly did not have consensus. If there is wording that does enjoy widespread support, that wording should go in its place.

I'm a bit puzzled by one point Caerwine mentions - don't all the US government agencies have "United States" spelt out in full in their name. Presumably we either should spell it out in full, or alternatively, if we do want an adjective meaning "of or pertaining to the United States of America" we should just use "American"? jguk 16:55, 14 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Just as there times when it would be inappropriate to replace "UK" with "British" or "Anglo" despite these being commonly used as substitutes, there are occassions when replacing "U.S." with "American" would be inappropriate. As for the "United States" being present in U.S. agency names, that is the case, but as given by GPO rule 9.9 quoted above, except in extremely formal or legalistic contexts the preference is to abbreviate it to "U.S.". Caerwine 18:10, 14 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

We are not adopting the GPO style guide (nor, indeed, any other style guide). The sooner we ignore the GPO the better, jguk 18:54, 14 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If we're going to change the style (and I'm not sure there is consensus to do so), Caerwine's proposal is a reasonable compromise. Maurreen (talk) 19:54, 14 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The only place where definitive guidance under this proposal about how and when to abbreviate "United States" is in the case where it is referring to the Federal Government itself. The GPO rule is used as gudance not because of any subjective opinion about the quality of its style manual, but because of the objective fact that it is evidence of how the U.S. Government wishes references to itself to be handled. Caerwine 21:35, 14 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Follow common U.S. style

This discussion baffles me. You cannot omit the periods from abbreviations that are easily confused with words. This is why publication style guides in the U.S. with which I'm familiar call for periods in abbreviating the United States. . Follow Associated Press, NYT, Washington Post, and most other newspaper style guides. (Most also rule out use of USA -- except USA Today, which loves using that abbreviation because it's part of its name.) In guidelines, clarity is key. FBI and UK and WTO are fine, US is not. DavidH 03:17, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

I agree. Tree&Leaf 03:41, 20 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

- You cannot confuse "US" with any word, as evidenced by the large number of books, newspapers and magazines that happily use "US" without dots throughout the world. We allow all standard forms of English to be used (as long as the standard form of English chosen is used consistently throughout an article). We should stick to that principle - there's nothing special about the US that necessitates a unique rule for it, jguk 05:59, 20 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

In our language, the letters "u" and "s" do actually spell a word, so I'm not sure how you can say it "cannot" be confusing. But if this is common style in UK publications (or even, as you claim, "throughout the world" though in other languages the letters do not form the objective case of "we") I can understand your preference. To US readers, I bet it looks very weird (pun intended). DavidH 12:20, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

"US" (the country) is always in capital letters, "us" will have no capitals (you can't start a sentence with it) and context will tell you what meaning "US" has, even if you were to write a message entirely in capitals - so you'll never confuse the two, jguk 13:09, 20 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Don't youse guys start sentences with us? US GUYS DO. [6] Gene Nygaard 13:21, 20 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

To put in my two bits: In articles discussing American law — for example, the United States Constitution or the United States Code — the periods need to stay or else we will end up with some weird articles from the perspective of American lawyers, and in turn, there will be some crazy edit wars. For centuries, the vast majority of American lawyers have always written U.S., and continue to write U.S. to this day. The dominant American law dictionary, Black's Law Dictionary, uses U.S. and not US (I just consulted my personal copy of the 7th edition). Both the Bluebook and the ALWD guide prescribe U.S. To the best of my knowledge, only one state, New York, requires its lawyers and judges to write US instead of U.S. in legal citations.

Also, the official reporter for the U.S. Supreme Court, the United States Reports, is traditionally cited as U.S. --Coolcaesar 12:21, 20 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

We're not saying that dots are never used in the abbreviation, only that in articles where other abbreviations do not have dots, we shouldn't use dots for "US" - to do otherwise looks entirely weird, and as noted above, there's nothing special about the US, so there's no need to have a special rule for it, jguk 13:09, 20 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I have one comment to make on this discussion. Let's just pick one way to abbreviate United States. Hell, we can flip a coin. It really doesn't matter, but its just a cop-out to say: "everyone just do it how they want". Firstly, it just leads to edit wars. Seconday, don't we want some consistency in Wikipedia? If not, let's just do away with the MoS altogether. Chuck 16:08, 23 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

And what about UK, GB, NI, EU, etc., etc, ? As with everything else, we should allow any acceptable style, as long as the chosen style is used consistently in an article, jguk 18:04, 23 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Jguk, isn't that at odds with your comment below in the Aluminum section? Why don't we just come up with guidance on all acronyms. Someone suggested that capital acronyms never need periods (since you wouldn't mistake them for words) while lower-case would need periods (since they otherwise might be confusing). Chuck 16:36, 28 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm saying that each article should be internally consistent, but that we should not be prescriptive about which style each article uses. I've also noted that there's a consensus-cum-compromise on WP about chemistry-related articles that says WP should use the SI terms. Is my view really inconsistent? jguk 18:40, 28 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'd propose the following, modeled on the "National varieties of English" principles: There are two ways to abbreviate United States, U.S. and US. A majority of American style guides recommend U.S., so this is the suggested usage for articles about the United States and its institutions. There may be circumstances where US is preferable, for example where other two-letter abbreviations such as UK and UN are used. Articles that are consistent in their usage of either U.S. or US should not be edited to use the other form without good reason and advance consultation on the discussion page. --agr 12:39, 30 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The above proposal seems well balanced and fitting with other rules. Full support. −Woodstone 17:33:10, 2005-08-30 (UTC)

I'm totally against this proposal. This is the worst possible outcome: a long, complicated explanation that, basically, provides no guidance. Nohat and I have an ongoing discussion (argument?) about which is more important: consistency of articles or simplest possible MoS. This provides neither! This is a recipe for even more acrimony than (i) the annoyance people feel when someone nitpicks an article to match the MoS or (ii) the annoyance people have in trying to determine a standard within an article where the MoS is silent. Now people on either side of a discussion could have this non-guidance to support their case. Let's either decide "U.S.", "US", or leave it out altogether. Chuck 18:09, 30 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The proposal makes sense - but the MoS would say that (with far fewer words) if the guidance were just omitted. Let's do that, jguk 18:20, 30 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Latin abbreviations

I see the injunction against Latin abbreviations like i.e., e.g., and etc. is gone from the Manual of Style, and I'm glad. There's enough dumbing down going on in the world without forbidding the use of extremely convenient abbreviations on Wikipedia. Thank you to whoever got rid of it. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 09:10, 27 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I second your sentiments.--Cyberjunkie | Talk 10:17, 27 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I do not mind that the guideline was relaxed, but I still regard the use of e.g., i.e. and etc. as sloppy and lazy.−Woodstone 12:58, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

Certainly it would be sloppy to use the abbreviations mid-sentence, but their use for brevity in brackets shouldn't be prohibited. Personally, I'd never use etc, but would use ie and eg in certain circumstances.--Cyberjunkie | Talk 13:09, 27 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Woodstone, please explain why you regard the use of etc, i.e., and e.g. as sloppy and lazy. I'm not saying you can't feel that way -- you're certainly allowed to, I just have never encountered anyone who felt that way before. I'm interested on why you feel that way. Could you provide an explanation, and maybe an example of the type of usage that irritates you? Thanks. Ravenswood 16:14, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

There are few cases where e.g. is appropriate where it wouldn't be equally appropriate to just say for example. It's a convenient abbreviation so long as it is easily understood. The original reason not to use these abbreviations was that not everyone understands them. Just about everybody understands etc. (although I agree that it's sloppy writing to even have to say it at all), but i.e. and e.g. are sometimes confused. The goal is clear communication. -Aranel ("Sarah") 16:45, 27 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I would assume that the majority of readers know (or could figure out from context) etc and et cetera, i. e., e. g., AM, PM, BC and its bastard cousin BCE, AD, QED, and Ibed. Even ad infinitem and ad nauseum can be figured out by someone who's never encountered them before. If you're using things like a priori then you're going to begin losing your audience. Ravenswood 18:40, July 29, 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Woodstone that use of such abbreviations come across as sloppy and lazy. Ravenswood, I suspect that you have encountered many people who feel that way, but you haven't actually asked them; it's just not a good conversation topic. :) Anyway, they feel careless and rushed when I read them in sentences, as if the author didn't have the patience to express his or her thoughts concisely in plain English. If one needs to resort to using abbreviations to reduce the wordiness of one's writing, one might consider trimming the excess elsewhere... —HorsePunchKid→龜 19:03, July 29, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, only poor, lazy writers use such abbreviations — lazy writers like John Locke, David Hume, Baruch Spinoza, Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Ralph Waldo Emerson, most modern academic writers. A sad bunch indeed. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 22:49, 29 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, appeal to authority, my old nemesis. We meet again! You have so many guises, but I see through them as through the ether itself... ;) —HorsePunchKid→龜 09:02, 30 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Your x-ray vision has unfortunately been reflected by the lead plate of inattention; it's not an appeal to authority, but to evidence. The claim was that only sloppy, lazy writers use these abbreviations (and other, related claims were also made); if a large number (actually, most, I suspect) of respected writers use them, then with what criteria for good writing are you working? If your definition of sloppy writing encompasses many writers whose work is considered to be excellent, should you not consider the possibility that your definition is faulty? That your aversion to abbreviations is a matter of personal taste? Perhaps you could give examples of writers whose work you consider not to be lazy and sloppy; that would at least allow others to gauge the relevance and acuity of your position on this issue.

(If I'd said that Fowler, or Gowers, or some other writer on language had declared abbreviations to be OK, that would have been an appeal to authority, incidentally.) --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 10:16, 30 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, assuming a fallacy where none exists, your real old nemesis. The people cited as authorities are all writers. They are all well known. They all used the abbreviations in their works. They are therefore appropriate authorities to cite. Appeal to authority is a fallacy where the authorities cited and/or the situation where they are cited are not appropriate. For example, quoting Michael Moore as an authority on national security and Iraq would definitely by a fallacy. David Newton 19:40, 3 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, assuming a sense of humor when..., oh never mind. :) I guess I'll have to take my own comment more seriously than I intended it. My point, admittedly hidden in my own sarcasm, is that bowing to authorities is not necessarily the way to solve this "debate". (I was taught in school that opinions aren't debatable, but here we are; what other lies has my head been filled with?) I'm sure I could find a large list of respected authors that do not resort to Latin abbreviations to make their writing more concise—if I were better read, anyway. Shall we stack up the volumes and see whose pile is higher? I hear the courts have found this to be a valuable shortcut in legal proceedings... ;) —HorsePunchKid→龜 06:11, 4 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Finding authors who don't use abbreviations would be very useful if you were arguing against the thesis that abbreviations are compulsory, but not when arguing against the thesis that they're not acceptable. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 17:15, 4 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

An important distinction; good point! —HorsePunchKid→龜 06:22, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ah assuming assumptions, the enemy of us all. - Ta bu shi da yu 07:08, 4 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not so sure Latin abbreviations were at all popular with the classic writers. I just did a search of my entire e-book collection of classics (which, unfortunately doesn't include several of the above examples); i.e. and e.g. were virtually nonexistent, and even etc. was rare (altho Jane Austen and Victor Hugor--or Hugo's translator--loved it). --Tysto 15:08, 2005 August 9 (UTC)

I think that two problems with ie and eg are 1) people carelessly omitting the full stops between them and b) their confusion and misuse. I prefer not to see them and would usually change them, but I do find aka and AKA much worse. violet/riga (t) 10:22, 30 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I dislike "aka" too (though my dislike is aesthetic, and not grounded in any reason). That people misuse or confuse "i.e." and "e.g." can't be a reason not to use them correctly, though. If it were, we'd have to ban "alternative" and "alternate", "disinterested" and "uninterested", "beg the question" and "raise the question", "flaunt" and "flout", "its" and "it's", "their" and "there", "politician" and "arse", etc., etc. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 10:34, 30 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I think you've hit on the key thing there - aesthetics. That's my main reason for disliking them. Your point about common confusions with other words is also very valid. violet/riga (t) 10:49, 30 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I hate Latin abbreviations. I don't speak Latin. I don't know anyone who does. No one I know has any idea what most of them stand for except me. Few writers use them correctly, which means that few readers understand them. They are an old-fashioned academic affectation that should be avoided in all writing, especially one like Wikpedia, where the extremely broad audience makes clarity and accessibility crucial. --Tysto 05:27, 2005 August 4 (UTC)

While I like Latin abbreviations, most of them have lost their utility (e.g. who needs q.v. when you can hyperlink?) I have compiled a table of what I would consider the common ones that are both useful and generally understandable and I would appreciate comment. Caerwine 14:02, 4 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Terrific. Why use simple English when both readers and writers can consult a table? I have created a table that looks just like yours, only it eliminates the first two columns. --Tysto 14:45, 2005 August 9 (UTC)

Ha Ha. The point of that table is more to be one that would be used to limit the acceptable abbreviations for original Wiki text to those that are actually useful and used. It also likely should include a link to a larger list oncluding the antiquated ones that either are no longer used or suitable only for paper instead of hypertext. Caerwine 17:26, 9 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I think an important point that is continually overlooked is that we're talking about abbreviations. The whole purpose of the existence of abbreviations is to save space. Seeing as how Wikipedia is not paper, I don't really see what the point of using space-saving devices is when there isn't any space that needs saving. Furthermore, Latin abbreviations of the sort constantly debated here are pretentious. There are perfectly acceptable fluent English substitutions for every Latin abbreviation. The only point in using the Latin ones is to make the writing look more erudite, and frankly almost everywhere I encounter them in Wikipedia articles they just make the writing pretentious and more opaque. They just scream a sort of intellectual snobbery that says: "I'm so smart that I know Latin so well I don't even have to write out the words, I can just put the initials. Look at how well-educated I am that I can breeze through my writing by substituting long-winded English phrases with short Latin abbreviations." I have never seen a case where an article wasn't improved by removing Latin abbreviations. Regardless of what it says in the MoS, I change them to English whenever I encounter them, and everyone else should too. Nohat 03:35, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I was going to bring up the possibility that they were originally used to save space and reduce the chance of typographical errors, but I didn't have any evidence to support it, so I didn't. Now that you mention it, though, I'll voice my agreement. :) I also agree that in the majority of cases I see here and on real paper, these abbreviations serve only to make text pretentious and inscrutable. Editors should keep in mind that they're not writing for themselves, but rather for the interested, average reader who—if my experience is at all indicative—does not understand how to use i.e. and e.g. correctly. —HorsePunchKid→龜 06:22, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Unless you know people who say "id est" or "exempli gratia" (or "videlicet"), rather than "i.e.", "e.g." (or "viz"), then I think that you're wrong about the main reasonj for using the abbreviations. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 16:53, 15 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

In bibliographies ibid. and op. cit. have become terms of art, part of the standard format for bibliographic citation according to various manuals of style, and are often used and used correctly by people who neither know nor care about the latin origin. similarly, in copyediting and proofreadign, stet. has become a common piece of jargon, quite divorced from its latin origin. Use of latin abrevs of this sort in these kinds of specialized contexts deos not seem at all pretentions to me. DES ^(talk) 18:24, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is beholden to no so-called "standard formats" and seeing as how "ibid." and "op. cit." in particular are both merely space-saving devices, I fail to see the point of their use on Wikipedia. Their meanings are certainly obscure to most anyone except dyed-in-the-wool academics. Better to just use English. I didn't know what "op. cit." and "stet." are until I just looked them up, and I know this sounds self-important, but if I don't know what it means, an average user definitely isn't going to know what it means. Nohat 18:50, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Se my comment just above. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 16:53, 15 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

"In bibliographies..." which are written by scholars for scholars and are indecipherable by ordinary readers, Latinisms are a withered vestige of a decrepit tradition that should be reformed. I agree that certain usages are so common (etc. and v.) that they are recognizable in full and abbreviated form, but that makes them borrowings into English. --Tysto 14:45, 2005 August 9 (UTC)

When i went to high school and college, everyone who took an english course had to produce multiple research papers using standard bibliographic formats, very much including "ibid." and "op. cit.". Anyone who went thorough such a course ought to be able to recognize such terms, and this should mean a substantial majority of the population in the U.S., as mine was in no way an unusual or particularly scholarly high-school. I don't know about whether such things are rountinely taught at that level elsewhere. And I belive that MLA foramt (which is widely used, and mandated in several professions) requires the use of these terms. As for "stet." that is a specialized term, but anyone who has done copyediting or professional proofreading will know it, and it probably should be in an article on those fields, just as various latin terms should be in articles on medical subjects. There is no reason for it to be used generally in wikipedia outside of that particular context, however. DES ^(talk) 15:22, 9 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Both ibid and op. cit are old, no longer used, deprecated bibliographical forms. The version of the MLA Handbook I have (6th edition) says on page 313 "The abbreviations ibid. and op. cit. are not recommended." Nohat 15:45, 9 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There is no compelling reason to use latin abbreviations for good old English words "that is" and "for example." However fond many writers are of the patina of scholarship that latin abbreviations impart, the abbreviations are widely misunderstood, except by those with graduate-level degrees. Mass communication, not sounding scholarly or crusading against "dumbing down," is the goal here. Often, it's just as easy to use parenthesis to translate or explain a word or phrase:

...because of anthropogenic (i.e., manmade) effects such as carbon dioxide emissions...

I'd perfer:

...because of anthropogenic (manmade) effects such as carbon dioxide emissions...

Examples can also be given parenthetically without writing "for example":

Sudden temperature changes are common (on March 21, 2004, the temperature plunged from 67 F. to 34 F. in two hours).
Many types of fruit (citrus, mango, pineapple, guava, sapodilla, starfruit and many others) are grown commercially in Florida.

As in many discussions here, I go along with modern newspaper style, which avoids i.e., e.g. and etc. I can't believe a writer who says she hasn't time to type out "for example" rather than "e.g." Of course, I use "stet" and other abbreviations when I'm copyediting on hard copy. Abbreviations are perfect for marginal notes. Face it, ye who support i.e. -- it's shorthand. Strong discouragement of using i.e. and e.g. should be in MoS. I'd like a recount, or a revert. I'd likely change or remove the abbreviations in any article I edited, with the comment unnecessary, widely misunderstood and ugly. -- DavidH 05:35, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

I am no big fan of abbreviations like i.e. or e.g., either, at least in article text. I wouldn't even mind explaining the rationale for the benefit of those who are looking for guidance. However, I strongly oppose any attempt to introduce language into the MoS that gives people an excuse to "correct" other people's articles, unless that is really necessary, which is clearly not the case here. For what it's worth, I think the MoS should more clearly differentiate between "when in doubt, how about this" and "this is WP:en style". Both can be useful, but too many editors go on a crusade based on the former. Rl 07:38, 15 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Again, as I've pointed out above, many people say "i.e." and "e.g." in ordinary conversation; their use isn't merely print-based space-saving. The fact is that many of these terms are in common use, and more are in common academic and semi-academic use. A fair number of objectors are relying upon the basic argument that we should reject them because there's something wrong with using them — they're not inaccurate or unclear, but "old-fashioned". We're surely not supposed to be setting fashion, but writing clearly. Few if any of these terms is unclear (except in so far as some people won't understand them — but then some won't understand lots of non-abbreviations either; we have the simple-English Wikipedia for those unable or unwilling to use a dictionary. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 16:53, 15 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that "i.e." and "e.g." are found in conversation. Indeed, they fill a valuable role there as a verbal open parenthesis. However, the question is do they belong in modern written media such as Wikipedia. They certainly serve a useful purpose in concisely indicating the nature of parenthetical comments. Despite, DavidH's opinion, that nature cannot always be determined by the reader in context. Simply dropping them is not good style. If I were writing his three given examples for Wikipedia, I would have done so as follows:

...because of anthropogenic effects such as carbon dioxide emissions...
Sudden temperature changes are common. (For example, on March 21, 2004, the temperature plunged from 67 to 34 °F in two hours.)
Citrus, mango, pineapple, guava, sapodilla, starfruit and many other fruits are grown commercially in Florida.

Lest you think that I'm coming out on the side of doing away with latin abbreviations, let me point out that since Wikipedia is not paper, most uses of "i.e." are best turned into links which can give an even fuller explanation than a parenthetical comment, David's first example had a sentence long parenthical comment, while I prefer to restrict my use of "e.g." to clauses or phrases, not items that can be written as full sentences, and it was feasible to rewrite his third example to avoid using a parenthetical comment entirely. On the other hand, if the third example had been using the Florida fruit as a noun phrase instead of an explanitory sentence, I might have done the last as example as follows:

Florida commercial fruit (citrus, mango, et al.) are an major component of Florida's agricultural economy.

In my opinion, a list as long as the original example deserves a complete sentence while a short incomplete parenthetical list is better off with "et al." than "e.g", with "e.g." being reserved for a single example.

However, once parenthetical comments that can be concisely rewritten so as to not be parethetical have been dealt with, the question of whether Wikipedia should allow their use should be decided based on whether their role in English reasonably understood by most native readers of English? I would say yes, despite that probably fewer than 1 in 10 users know the Latin phrase they are an abbreviation for and perhaps 1 in 10 of those actually care. The point is not their Latin origin but their English use. Caerwine 19:30, 15 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

People use "i.e." and "e.g." in conversation? I don't hang out with that crowd, I guess. Do these peple speak Elvish too? Besides, conversational usage as a basis for a style guide? Please. Show me a major newspaper that uses "e.g." and I might pay attention. As to the fine recastings of my example sentences, it seems to reinforce that they are best written without the abbreviations (and let's not veer off into discussion of what's wrong with parenthetical clauses.) It also seems a bit strange to state that only 10 percent of readers know the meaning of these abbreviations -- but it doesn't matter, they're just so useful and readers should get the meaning from the context. Then comes a recommendation of yet another Latin phrase (et tu Caerwine -- et al.)? Friends, editors, Latin phrases in general-readership articles are sui generis snobbishness. Be bold, not pedantic. DavidH 07:42, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

And how many people know or care that "AD" is an abbreviation for "anno Domini"? My point was that as long as people know what they mean in English, it doesn't matter if people know what they mean in Latin. Abbreviations in general should be avoided in most formal written contexts, which is the reason why there are few good examples of the usage of "e.g.". I just don't see any reason to single out abbreviations that happen to be of Latin origin. Caerwine 15:32, 16 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. I have yet to see an example of a usage of "i.e." or "e.g." that wouldn't have been clearer and less awkward after being recast using English. Thus the reason for supporting a recommendation against them. To those who oppose the MoS recommending against "i.e." and "e.g.", show us some examples where they work well, and where they wouldn't be better or clearer after being recast into English.

At the very least, the MoS could note that some editors recommend against using them, but there is no consensus to ban them, so editors should use them if they think they are necessary, but (maybe) should consider recasting their prose in English. I don't think that providing no guidance at all is better than providing the facts as they are: some people like them, others don't. The MoS should advise editors to do whatever they think is best, but to consider the arguments for and against. Nohat 08:04, 16 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Book quotations

Has anyone considered putting a recommendation about the proper way to make quotations or citations of books ? I witness a considerable amount of citations of the form "The C++ Programming Language, p.224", which are obviously totally useless. Could a format such as "Bjarne Stroustrup, The C++ Programming Language, Special edition, Addison Wesley 2002, p.224" be made an official standard ? Rama 11:13, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Any sensible way of doing it and giving the requisite information is sufficient. You could put the ISBN there instead of "Special edition", jguk 11:37, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There's a guideline for citation at WP:CITE; it's probably not as well-known as it should be, however. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:28, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Links to years

It seems a lot of people put links to years like 2003 or 1945 whenever they see a year referenced. I personally think there is no point in linking to the year. Is there a standard for this this? Bubbachuck 18:12, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

According to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Date formatting If the date does not contain a day and a month, then date preferences do not work. In such cases, square brackets around dates do not respond to user preferences. So unless there is a special relevance of the date link, there is no need to link it. I normally remove such links when i am editing an article that contains them. DES ^(talk) 18:18, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Many other users, perhaps most, prefer to have the years linked. Feel free to omit links on your own articles, but please don't take it upon yourself to remove links that others have made — its akin to arbitrarily changing spellings to some prefered national variety.. Fawcett5 18:22, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Dates are the most linked articles. They rank highly on:

the list of articles with multiple links to the same article.
the list of most referenced articles
the list of most incoming links

Some editors just add links because they can, not because of an encyclopedic benefit to the reader.

See also Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links): An article may be considered overlinked if any of the following is true:

more than 10% of the words are contained in links;
it has more links than lines;
a link is repeated within the same screen—40 lines, perhaps;
more than 10% of the links are to articles that don't exist; or
low added-value links (e.g., such as year links 1995, 1980s) are duplicated.

Adding year links is clearly popular with many editors. But I think it is excessive and makes Wikipedia look silly. I am sure that a misunderstanding of the date preference method is partly to blame. Bobblewik 19:05, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

After edit conflicts, reply to Fawcett5. Well, not quite. The national variety of spelling is independent of Wikipedia style, whereas linking of dates isn't. I have no strong views, and although i don't much like linking every year, I do it, because so many people seem to regard it as important.

I've come across a couple of editors who became offensive when I unlinked the names of months. When I pointed out that information about, say, March wasn't relevant to the article about a pop single, I was aggressively contradicted. Admittedly, those editors have shown repeatedly that they never follow their own links, and clearly hadn't read March. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 19:16, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Bobblewik above. I think many people have mistakenly gotten the idea that such links are somehow important from misunderstanding how date preferences work. If anyone says that they routinely follow such links and will explain why he or she finds them of value, I will be interested to hear it. In the mean time, while I am not on a mission to hunt down and destroy such links, I will more or less routinely and automatically remove such links if I am editing an article where they occur, although I will not nornally edit an article just to remove such links. Many editors fail to put the subject of the article in bold in the first paragraph, or to put birth and death dates in parens after the name on biographical articles too -- and i routinely correct those style violations when I happen to notice them. i put this in pretty much the same class. DES ^(talk) 21:20, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't feel particularly strongly about this issue, but I do tend to linkify year links when the year is relatively far from other date references. I rarely follow the links, but I find that they help me in scanning documents for a rough timeline, particularly when articles fail to give a brief history. Of course years do tend to stick out a bit already, but the extra highlighting does help a little. —HorsePunchKid→龜 06:06, 6 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If that is your purpose, you could bold or italicise them, or use color, to emphasize them, rather than creating a link just to highlight information in the display of a page. DES ^(talk) 17:07, 15 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You could, but that would pretty much fly in the face of standard conventions for bold, italics, and color. Which wouldn't really be an improvement. -Aranel ("Sarah") 17:11, 15 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Don't like year links. It struck me as silly as soon as I followed some and found they had nothing to do with the article. I wondered if there was something in the Wiki software that required them. If there's a link to 1872, say, in the Chicago, Illinois article, I expect to find an article about Chicago in 1872 if I follow the link. That said, I won't remove them unless the article is overlinked -- which is often the case. -- DavidH 05:31, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

Image description guideline

I see no guideline on the description of images, so if such a protocol exists, please forgive me. I notice a great disparity in the description of images on Wikipedia, and would appreciate if this matter was even loosely regulated, be it for the sake of consistency.

Usually, image captions aren't ended with a period, however they may contain several sentences. Following are several examples of captions using commonly accepted rules.

Here is a boring caption. Here is another one

As for the image summary, unique to Wikipedia, perhaps it should follow the same rule, with the image source indicated in italicized parentheses, if applicable. See the following example.

Picture of Wikipedia's possible mascot. It is reading books and a Web site (Wikipedia)

Thank you for your input,

Grumpy Troll 21:39, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see a need for instruction creep here, jguk 21:47, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ideally a caption should be a complete sentence that ends with a punctuation mark. See Wikipedia:Captions. These guidelines already exist; they're just recorded elsewhere. -Aranel ("Sarah") 13:30, 9 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I thank you for your answer. Grumpy Troll (talk) 13:44, 9 August 2005 (UTC).[reply]

Proper hyphen/mdash usage?

Is there a Wikipedia standard to proper use of the — character? Is it...

Lorem ipsum — dolor sit amet
Lorem ipsum—dolor sit amet
Lorem ipsum - dolor sit amet (i.e. use the normal vanilla hyphen)

I personally favor the first convention but I'm not convinced that I am correct for doing so. --Bletch 23:01, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dashes) — boredzo (✍) 05:32, August 8, 2005 (UTC)

Movie/DVD easter egg inclusion?

I was thinking it would be cool if we had a section at the end of a movie's article stating wether it has easter eggs and if so what they are. -Indolering

Reversion war

There seems to be something of a battle over whether to refer to U.S. usage/UK usage or American usage/British usage. I have added in what I think is correct term, which neither of the combatants were using. That is American english and British english. BTW Irish usage actually is called Hiberno-English!!! I've added it in too. That way readers of the page can go to the actual pages and find out what those darn things actually are. FearÉIREANN\^(caint) 17:41, 14 August 2005 (UTC) [reply]

Did you intend to lowercase English? If so, why? Maurreen (talk) 19:45, 14 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Pronouns beginning sections

One point of bad style that I've seen in a number of articles is the failure to reintroduce subjects properly in new sections. For example, they might do like this:

Face

Chickoomunga's face is big. He likes to eat cherries.

Social standing

He's very elite in his society. (Better: Chickoomunga is very elite in his society, or Society has given Chickoomunga an elite position.)

The concept is that a section shouldn't really read like a continuation of previous stuff; to some extent, it should stand on its own. I don't think the use of pronouns beginning section should be strictly disallowed, but at least recommended against. Deco 21:18, 14 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that starting a new section with a pronoun is bad writing style. Have you found others disagree with you? I don't think the point of the MoS is to detail English language "best practices". The point of the MoS is to provide guidance where there might be multiple approaches which would be "OK" in English, but where the community finds value in standardizing on a single approach. Chuck 22:57, 29 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Economist style guide

Has a lot of good pointers. Good resource.

http://www.economist.com/research/StyleGuide/ Jacoplane 02:25, 15 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

"See also"

This was recently added: "+ Notice that, consistent with the policy of Wikipedia:Lists, See also list items are not capitalized unless the word normally would be, such as, in the above example, Internet." Was there any discussion about this? Maurreen (talk) 03:06, 16 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It was already implied by the example already in use on the page for many, many months:

==See also==

* [[Internet troll]]

* [[flaming]]

and also, policy should be consistent with each other, so Wikipedia:Manual of Style should be consistent with the policy of Wikipedia:Lists, which is a Wikipedia guideline that has long been in place. —Lowellian (reply) 10:53, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

Contractions

The Manual of Style states:

In general, formal writing is preferred. Therefore, avoid excessive use of contractions — such as don't, can't, won't, would've, they'd, and so on — unless they occur in a quotation.

Every manual of style I have seen has outright banned contractions (except within quotations) in formal writing. What does "excessive" mean? Two contractions? Three contractions? Four contractions? Suppose we said that it is four. Then three contractions are allowable within an article? Personally, I think that just makes the rare contractions within an article look even more glaring, hurting the stylistic presentation of the article even more, to have one or two contractions scattered throughout an article. Would people object to an outright ban on contractions to clarify the issue? When are contractions ever useful in encyclopedic writing? —Lowellian (reply) 11:10, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

This was discussed recently, see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style--Archive Directory/Archive_15#Don.27t_use_contractions.2C_really.3F. Susvolans (pigs can fly) 11:23, 18 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, okay, I see. A note: looking through the history, I see now that the language was changed from:

In general, formal writing is preferred. Therefore, avoid contractions — such as don't, can't and won't, except when you are quoting directly.

to:

In general, formal writing is preferred. Therefore, avoid excessive use of contractions — such as don't, can't, won't, would've, they'd, and so on — unless they occur in a quotation.

on a July 6 edit [7]. —Lowellian (reply) 19:03, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

German eszet

I can't find any discussion to settle a question that arose on United States of Europe and occurs elsewhere. Is there a policy on the use of German eszet (AKA ß, AKA szlig) in English Wikipedia? I understand that many Latin characters with diacritics are used in English texts, but the use of eszet seems gratuitous. It's my understanding that it's not used in all forms of German. I've never seen it in an English text except where eszet itself is being explained. English users will not use it to search for Strauss, for example, and how man native English speakers know how to pronounce it? 2%, maybe? The capper is the opening of Franz Josef Strauß: "Dr. h.c. Franz Josef Strauß (spelled Strauss in English)..." This is English. --Tysto 21:37, 2005 August 22 (UTC)

I say use the dominant name for that person, and link the ß. There's precedent for this, isn't there? ~~ N (t/c) 22:02, 22 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

No accented characters in en: without a damn good reason. — Xiong 熊 talk * 22:53, 2005 August 22 (UTC)

ß is not an accented character. I'm very much for using ß and redirecting from the ss version of the name, simply because it's *wrong* to write words with ss instead of ß. Regarding "It's my understanding that it's not used in all forms of German.": Granted, the Swiss Germans don't use it, but that's their choice, and frankly - there's just a lot more Germans and Austrians than Swiss Germans, anyway. ;) — File:Austria flag large.png ナイトスタリオン _ㇳ–ㇰ — 06:40, 23 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

So Swiss who speak German would never use eszet, but we English speakers are obliged to? --Tysto 18:38, 2005 August 23 (UTC)

There is an easier rule: Swiss names are spelt with double s, German names with ß (where that is correct). The Bavarian Franz Josef certainly is a Strauß and should be spelt that way. Richard Strauss wrote his name with a double s, but Johann Strauß used an ß. So should we. Arbor 07:02, 23 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

We should use English names in the English Wikipedia. Johann Strauss is the spelling used in English - therefore the English Wikipedia should use that spelling. Otherwise we'll get to the absurdity that all Greeks, Russians, Arabs, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, etc. have their articles at places that are meaningless squiggles to an English-reader, jguk 07:42, 23 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The current official spelling rules in Germany do not longer use ß. It is replaced by ss. −Woodstone 07:45:55, 2005-08-23 (UTC)

That's simply wrong. Read ß or German spelling reform of 1996 for more information. Arbor 09:03, 23 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

We should no more use non-English letters like ß than we should use Chinese characters in ordinary text or article titles. The initial paragraph of an article can (and should) give the name as it was used the name's owner, but the title should be the English name, and although it is debatable whether certain diacritics can be counted as English, ß is decidedly on the side of not English. For precedent, þ was recently moved back to thorn (letter), and þ has a much stronger claim to being an "English letter" than ß does. Nohat 07:50, 23 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If it doesn't have an ß, does that mean it's mißpelled? --Wetman 08:31, 23 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

My perſonal preference would be to uſe long S's wherever þey belong, in Engliſh text or in German. On þe oþer hænd, until ſuch time as þey cæn be ædded directly from a ſtændard keyboard, þey probably ought not to be made compulſory in þe Engliſh Wikipedia. I generally favour unæccented characters over æccented ones and Engliſh over foreign ſpellings, and find þe impoſition of foreign names ænd ſpellings ræþer annoying. -- Smerdis of Tlön 19:22, 23 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

ß proposal

Based on these comments, virtually none of which called me dirty names, I propose this as a standard:

When referring to German words that use the eszet (ß), render it in English as "ss" and follow the first time with the German form of the word: "Franz Josef Strauss (spelled Strauß in German)." Note that the use of ß is not universal in the German language (see Switzerland and Liechtenstein under ß), that its usage has changed in recent years (see German spelling reform of 1996), and that not all versions of the same name use it (Franz Josef Strauß, but Levi Strauss), so be sure of your usage. Where such a word appears in the title of the article, use the English form (ss) for the main page and create a redirect from the German form (Franz Josef Strauß --> Franz Josef Strauss).

This naturally raises other questions (Goebbels v. Göbbels; Mueller v. Müller) which must be dealt with in the same section, but should not be a consideration in your comments at the moment. Also, I should have mentioned before: Basil Fawlty rules are in effect. --Tysto 14:54, 2005 August 25 (UTC)

First, a tweak: We could just follow the shorter style used at (say) Lenin or Mao:

Franz Josef Strauss (German: Strauß) was the …

However, I am in the “allow ß” camp. I prefer the German spelling (it is in roman type, unlike Mao and Lenin), obviously with a pronunciation (which is needed anyway—pronouncing the first S is no easier than pronouncing the last ß). That would come out as

Franz Josef Strauß (/ʃtraʊs/) was the…

On a related note, Goebbels should not be moved to Göbbels (that is not how he is spelt) and Richard Strauss should of course remain where he is, too. Likewise, not all Muellers are Müllers or vice versa. Why throw away all that wonderful information? It is easy to “dumb down” the data for a user agent and display all Müllers as Mueller or Muller or whatever transliteration is desired (there are web browsers who do that for you). But we cannot go the other way. So the data needs to distinguish Richard Strauss and Franz Josef Strauß, and we should be happy that there are editors who care about such things. Arbor 07:33, 26 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

ß is not a latin character, it is a modified latin character not used in english, the language of this encyclopedia. My opinion is that it does not belong in the primary title of a page, or anywhere on the page except when referencing the original german spelling. Redirects are OK, since we use them to improve accessibility (increase the odds that when someone searches a variant, they end up at the right page.) Chuck 16:25, 28 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Chuck. To a vast majority of English readers, ß is just a meaningless squiggle. See my proposal at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English). As for in the text itself, the German name should be given in the first paragraph, but the English name should be used throughout the text. This is in line with the convention used for names in non-Latin writing systems, and seems applicable here, as the concern about non-Latin writing systems being inscrutable to most English readers also applies to ß. Nohat 20:51, 28 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

My vote is for ss in the title, correct spelling given as soon as possible in the text. We are trying to write an encyclopaedia for English-speaking non-specialists: we aim to be accurate (object=encyclopaedia), but we are not necessarily normative (audience=non-specialists). The information we convey is in the article text and images, not the title. Let us expend proportionate amounts of work per word on article text and title! Physchim62 02:44, 28 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Chuck, Nohat, and Physchim62 -- do not use ß in article titles -- do provie the speeling using ß (where appropraite) promptly near the start of the article. Possibly provide redirects from the fom using ß. DES ^(talk) 00:07, 29 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I seem to be in the minority here (no big deal). Some comments: (1) The rule shouldn't be specific to article titles—it should appeal to body text as well. So the rule should be to “Transliterate ß to ss. Where this concerns an article title, provide the German spelling near the start of the page.” ~~(2) I would still much prefer to see this solved by Mediawiki. Serving up all ß as ss for English clients by default is easy, but those who care can switch it off.~~ (3) Playing around with google's search engine indicates that it changes Gauß to Gauss tacitly (lots of pattern matching packages can do that automatically). Does Mediawiki do this as well, or can it easily be coerced into this behavior? (There aren't enough Wikipedia pages to test this on, so I don't know.) This would avoid the need for redirects (and a MOS entry to that effect). Arbor 06:02, 29 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think we want to do this. For example, we should be able to have an article ß on the character itself; that should not be interpreted as SS. Bad enough that we are stuck with all initial letters becoming capitals, let's not do something that makes even more titles impossible. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:53, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

To sum up (and ignoring my own dissenting voice, which seems to be singular), we just need to be precise about what a letter in the roman alphabet is, and what a diacritic is (the current discussions at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English) seem to simply overlook ß, which is certainly in the roman alphabet, but whose meaning seems to be too opaque for the English reader. So, while in general we should be happy to include (natively) correct spellings as long as the extra dots and squiggles can be ignored (preferring Erdős over Erdos), this does not apply to ß, which we transliterate to ss (but suggest redirection and correct spelling of proper names which are article titles in the first paragraph, as with all other transliterations). While mulling this over, at staying with the Strauß example, a minor point about pronunciation struck me as well. I think the following is proper:

Franz Josef Strauss (German: Strauß /ʃtraʊs/) was the…

But should there be an English pronunciation as well? I don't think anybody in the anglosphere says /ʃtraʊs/, do they? Would that mean we ought to write something like this:

Franz Josef Strauss (/strɔ:s/, German: Strauß /ʃtraʊs/) was the…

I quite like this. (It really doesn't have much to do with ß… sorry) Arbor 09:23, 29 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, Merriam-Webster gives /ʃtraʊs/ first (including an audio pronunciation), followed by /straʊs/. OED doesn't have Strauss, but gives Strausian as /straʊsɪən/. I can't find any English dictionaries that give /strɔ:s/. But the point in general is valid, and English pronunciations should, in general, be given separately from native pronunciations. A particularly alarming trend is the inclusion of audio files of a native pronunciation of various words names, with the implied assumption that English speakers should attempt to imitate this. Nohat 17:07, 29 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Pronunciation guides aside, I think we do have consensus on the use of "ss" in titles and articles, followed by the German in parentheses (with Arbor's tweak. I'll add it to the MoS. --Tysto 07:04, 2005 August 30 (UTC)

Interesting detail: have a look at Strauss, a disambiguation page. I would assume that here, the various ßs serve a good purpose, don't they? (There is an explanatory first paragraph noting that -ss is the common English spelling.) I don't think we want to transliterate those. Well frankly, I am confused as to what to think. Arbor 08:34, 30 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Let's stir up the hornets' nest a bit more. The bit about the German eszett (currently in the « National varieties of English » topic, weirdly) should be extended to other ligatures. You see, the eszett isn't a letter per se, it is a ligature, a standard way of combining two letters (in this case two 's') in a single glyph. Whether ligatures are treated separately or not in lexicographic ordering seems to be a varying national preference. Some ligatures are universally considered to be purely typographical, such as "fi", "fl", "ffi", "ffl". But that is not so for others.

Breton has no "c" but has the ligatures "ch" and "c'h". The order is as quoted: « chug, c’hoar » (juice, sister). Oddly, there are no Unicode slots for those, it seems, which makes it a non-problem.
Croatian uses the DZ (Ǳ, ǲ, ǳ), DŽ (Ǆ, ǅ, ǆ), LJ (Ǉ, ǈ, ǉ) and NJ (Ǌ, ǋ, ǌ) ligatures, which each come in three forms!
Danish and Norwegian use the AE ligature (Æ, æ). It is treated as a letter coming right after Z: "...Z, Æ, Ø, Å". Danish also uses the AE-acute (Ǽ, ǽ) and there is an AE-macron out there (Ǣ, ǣ). Since English also uses that ligature, it is a non-problem.
Dutch uses the "IJ" ligature (Ĳ, ĳ), but different dictionaries place it in various slots —almost never after the I, however. Proper case is « Ĳmuiden, Ĳpolder, Ĳmeer, Ĳssemeer ».
French uses the Æ and Œ ligatures, the latter much more frequently than the former. Lexicographic ordering breaks them down, so you have « caducée, cæcum, cafard » (caduceus, cæcum, cockroach). Proper case is, for example, « Œuvre ». Since English also uses those ligatures (although the œ is rare), they are a non-problem.
German, as already mentioned, uses the eszett to represent the "ss" ligature, which is particularly problematic in English because it doesn't even look like a double-s.
Several languages use the "AA" ligature (Å, å). Danish and Norwegian place "Aa" along with "Å" as the last letter in the alphabet. In Swedish, the sequence is "...Z, Å, Ä, Ö", where Ä serves as the Danish/Norwegian Æ.
Spanish, until the 1987 reform by the Real Academia Española, has the "ll", "ch" and "rr" ligatures. The alphabet runs "...C, CH, D...L, LL, M, N, Ñ, O..." —note that the rr ligature is not treated as a separate letter. Neither of the three ligatures warrants a Unicode slot, which makes them a non-problem.

So, to sum up, the German eszett bit should be broadened as follows:

When referring to Latin-alphabet foreign words that use a non-English ligature such as the Dutch Ĳ or the German eszett (ß), render it in English as the un-ligatured form (e.g. "IJ", "ss") and follow the first time with the foreign form of the word: "IJmuiden (Dutch: Ĳmuiden)...", "Franz Josef Strauss (German: Strauß)...".
- The English ligatures Æ and Œ are fine and should not be un-ligatured for the article title (e.g. Æthelred, fœtus).
- Note that the use of some ligatures is not universal (see Switzerland and Liechtenstein under ß, for example), that its usage may have changed in recent years in some cases (e.g. German spelling reform of 1996, Spelling reform of the Spanish language), and that not all versions of the same name use it (e.g. Franz Josef Strauß, but Levi Strauss), so be sure of your usage.
- Be careful of case when the broken-down ligature leads a sentence or link; the Dutch Ĳmeer, for example, should be IJmeer and not Ijmeer (although a redirect from the latter is also needed).
- Where such a word appears in the title of the article, use the English form (e.g. ß --> ss) for the main page and create a redirect from the foreign form(s) (Franz Josef Strauß --> Franz Josef Strauss).

Urhixidur 17:11, 2005 August 31 (UTC)

I've got a better idea for a guideline: "Use English in the English-language Wikipedia", jguk 18:17, 31 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Consistency

I made a similar comment above in discussing straight versus curly quotes, but I thought I'd make it more generally, as well.

Why are we not interested in consistency in the MoS? Its a huge cop-out that when we disagree on something (curly vs. straight quotes, serial commas, US vs. U.S., etc.) that the answer is "either one is OK".

A lot of people complain "I don't like serial commas" or "straight quotes are ugly". To me, the ugliest thing is inconsistency. I don't care whether its US or U.S., I just want to pick one so all the articles look consistent. I don't care if we use serial commas or not, I just want to pick one so all the articles look consistent.

If we aren't actually providing specific guidance, why have an MoS at all. (OK, I'm exagerating, there's plenty of stuff that has actually been hashed out here, but you get the idea.)

I know there are some issues people take very personally that we can never approach this way, like British vs. American spelling or AD vs. BCE. (Just so you understand where I'm coming from, I'd be happier with all British spelling than with some British and some American spelling ... and I'm American.) However, for something like straight vs. curly quotes or US vs U.S. ... just pick one, let's flip a coin, who cares! Chuck 23:00, 23 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

While I understand and symphatize with the urge to homogenize, to do so would just cause a deluge of unnecessary acrimony and animosity to no useful end. One of Wikipedia's greatest strengths is its diversity. Nohat 03:33, 25 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, its diversity of information, ranging from Pokémon to Esters to Invented sports to Animals. One of Wikipedia's greatest weaknesses is its not being one project with one style of writing, but about twenty ways which make it look like a collection of pages rather than an encyclopedia (hyperbole, I give, but you get the idea). Having a broad range of information makes it look great. Having a broad range of prose style makes it look unreliable. And this is an encyclopedia to be both great and reliable, not just one.

My agreement with Chuck goes all the way to the flipping a coin. Minor things - that really, honestly, don't matter just so long as it's all the same. Having US here and U.S. there and “text” and "text" here looks horrible and quickly depreciates the respect of this encyclopedia (again, if already resolved, then ignore that fact and you get the idea). Just pick one, I don't care if I disagree with it, I can live as long as style is upheld.

If we really want a nice diverse style, then it may well be worth deleting this project page altogether. Having on every line, "you can do whatever you want, and don't force anything on anyone" is essentially doing the same thing.

Please please, please, people, see style for what it is, and don't make these long, drawn-out, ten-page-long debates about whether a dot should be there or not (hyperbole). If it's split even, take the status quo. If the majority's clearly against you, then live with it and edit by the majority. This is a manual of style, not a manual of freedom. (This is for minor things, not fundamental structural or major things.)

I also posted such a comment above, just under Chuck's, and then I saw this, sorry about the double post (the posts aren't replicates but convey the same thing). Neonumbers 12:08, 25 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

How is it acrimonious to say "for consistency's sake, we have decided not to use curly quotes in the Wikipedia"? Don't the edit wars we get today (not to mention the discussions on this page) cause acrimony? Does anyone really care that much about any one of these issues? (If so, they really need to get some perspective.) Also, I agree with Neonumbers: the diversity of information makes Wikipedia great, the diversity of styles makes it ugly.

Oh, and regarding your quote... it would make just as much sense if you replace "consistency" with "inconsistency". They key part is the "foolish" part. If you think consistency in general is foolish, you should be against having a MoS at all. You don't think its foolish and "little" to be arguing over the spelling of "aluminum" or whether or not to use curly quotes?

Chuck 16:01, 25 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This idea is never going to get any kind of consensus support. Debates surrounding what the MoS should say are never going to be ended by flipping coins because those kinds of solutions are not representative of consensus. I guess you are having trouble believing it, but yes, plenty of people really do care that much about these issues. I see no value in imposing the will of the apathetic. The MoS process will continue to be characterized by long, drawn-out debates on the merits of various positions with the MoS representing the consensus of those debates.

No, consistency in general is not foolish, but a consistency based on no more than coin toss is foolish. And so is the notion that the MoS would be improved by settling debates with a coin toss. If you don't want to argue over such "trivial" matters like the spelling of "aluminum" or whether or not to use curly quotes, then don't. But how dare you have the hubris to tell us what we should and should not argue about! Nohat 17:40, 25 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

First of all, my position is not that we necessarily settle things with a coin toss. You clearly didn't read what I wrote if you think that. My position is that we not end up with guidance that is "do it either way". I also never tried to tell you what you should or shouldn't argue about. I merely threw a rude, obnoxious quote back in your face.

Regarding flipping a coin: If there is not consensus either way between two choices, it implies that the cost/benefit of either choice is similar -- at that point, flipping a coin is a perfectly valid way to choose between two apparently equally valid choices. If one choice was really better it would receive consensus, regardless of any individual's belief to the contrary.

So argue away, but remember that at the end of the day, the whole point of the MoS is to provide guidance of how to edit wikipedia consistently, not to validate everyone's spelling and typesetting opinions. Chuck 00:21, 26 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

True, coin tosses won't work for everything, but that's not the point. The debates over what's "better" and what's "worse" have destroyed the manual of style. Every detail merits a short debate, sure. But if it's truly clear there is no true consensus and the points even up — or, let's face it, we make arguments based on personal choice (even I do) — then instead of having a long, drawn out debate that ends in a compromise as good as nothing, a coin toss in its theory would do fine. (In practice, I would put it to the side with majority, however slight.) (And remember, there is no such issue about issues where there actually is a better way and therefore has consensus.)

This isn't about consistency based on coin tosses. This is how we make this the one project it was meant to be. One project, one encyclopædia, one style. We are, or should be, a unified team, not a divided community.

I'm not saying debate should be replaced with coin tosses. I'm just saying that, amidst the debate and reverts and the desire for absolute uncontested consensus, we're forgetting what this manual's all about. Guidance, consistency, style. The constant arguments seem to have overpowered the need to work together. To make the manual of style work like a style guide, some of us — even almost half of us — have to give way sometimes out of our will to make the style guide do its job. Otherwise, the manual will ultimately cripple and the encyclopædia with it. Neonumbers 12:09, 26 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

That's a very nice argument, but I'm trying to see where you are going with it. After all, at present, a supermajority of native English speakers are Americans (see the graph in the English language article), and Canadians tend to side with Americans on the spelling of most words (with exceptions like center/centre). As an American, I personally don't mind going with the "majority rule" rule, since in practice, such a rule would usually favor American English usage (curb/kerb, median/central reservation, periods always inside quotes, and so on). But I am also concerned that such a rule would severely alienate users of British English and its variants, resulting in a permanent fork of the encyclopedia. --Coolcaesar 13:04, 26 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A consistent answer, applied uniformly across the Wiki, even if it's the "wrong" answer (for some people), would be better than the current system where we tear each other apart with debate and still flip and flop the style recomendation from one polarity to the other every few months. I heartily agree that a coin toss would be better than what we have now.

Atlant 13:02, 26 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The underlying assumption of this little debate is that every stylistic choice is equally valid. Sometimes this is the case: there is really nothing apart from tradition that prefers color to colour (or colo3r, to drive the point home with an absurd example). Such issues might, I agree, just as well be settled with a coin toss. I care not and don't contribute to WP:MOS discussions about such issues.

But it's not always that easy. Take the straights vs curlies debate. The arguments are not symmetric. One side argues that straights are to be preferred because the are easier to enter or edit. The other side argues that curlies are to be preferred because it preserves data integrity (curlies can be automatically converted to straights but not vice versa) and the result is closer to the ideals of traditional typography. These aren't simply two arbitrary and symmetrical conclusions; they rely on which weights are attached to opposing ideals (data integrity vs. ease of editing, for example) that aren't necessarily based on aesthetics or regional traditions. A similar discussion is the use of diacritics. For me, the difference between Paul Erdős and Paul Erdos (and even Paul Erdös) is significant. It's a question of more information versus less information. The correct diacritic can be dumbed down to ö or o, but the other direction doesn't work. So on this topic I have an opinion that is not based on regional or traditional whims. It's a question about information quality (or “data integrity” if you want).

In summary, the difference between Paul Erdős and Paul Erdos is qualitatively different than the difference between colour and color. For the latter, a coin toss would be fine. But there are many matters where one stylistic choice is better (contains more information, has a higher standard of typography, correct grammar, etc.) but more hassle (harder to enter or edit or get right). These aren't symmetric, and worth debating. I will always decide on the “better but harder” side. Consistently. Arbor 14:19, 26 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This is a classic example. If one choice is really "better", it will receive consensus. (Isn't this the Wikipedia's definition of better in this context?) If it does not receive consensus, then regardless of your (clearly strongly held) personal opinion, it must not really be better. The fact that your position is not "based on regional or tradition whims" is irrelevant. Instead it is based on your "data integrity whim", which you claim is a priori more important that someone else's "ease of editing whim". In fact, a counterargument that you failed to mention is that neither Paul Erdős nor Paul Erdös are actually english spellings. I don't know anything about the specific issue, since we generally don't use diacritics in english, but there is potentially an equally valid point to be made that in an english language publication, you use neither (except maybe as redirects and to reference the original spelling within the article). So maybe my "let's stick to english whim" should be the one that wins out.

What's really interesting about your point, though, is that you are basically saying "I don't care if we flip a coin when I have no opinion on the outcome, but I do care on issues where I do have an opinion on the outcome". Is this really a constructive position? Chuck 18:19, 26 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry it came out that way. I didn't try to disparage either straight quotes or diacritic-less spellings in this contribution. The argument from ease of editing is a very strong one, and it is not clear that it trumps the argument from data integrity, (It does for me, but as I said, this is worth discussing — I didn't say that the outcome is clear.) On the other hand, the debate between color and colour are two qualitatively equivalent spellings. Hence there are no useful “higher principles” to appeal to, and discussion is (in my mind) a waste of time. A coin toss would be fine. I, personally, always write colour (and find the alternative mind-numbingly ugly); it's something I care about very much. But if there was a WP policy for American spelling, I would cheerfully follow that, in spite of my whims. But I can see no rational argument for preferring colour over color—the two choices are symmetric. Arbor 20:03, 26 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

OK, so now I'm confused what your point is. The existence or lack of existence of "higher principals" bears no relation to the fact that eventually a decision should be made. Are you arguing that you would rather no decision was made than a decision was made that you disagree with. I still find it hard to believe that it is controversial that the MoS actually provide guidance, instead of saying "do it either way". If people are fine with it being done the "other" way some of the time, then why not all the time? Chuck 22:18, 26 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I was agreeing, to a large extent, with you. Yes, in a lot of cases I would prefer the MOS to be more restrictive. For example, a decision to use (say) American spelling would be fine with me—I can just switch on another spell checker, or some friendly soul can correct my Britishicism. These things I find symmetrical, and I am right behind you; consistency is good. However, there are other debates on this talk page that I find very relevant, and where your criticism is (IMO) too blunt. I took the straight/curly debate, or the diacritics debate as examples of the point I wanted to make. These debates aren't symmetrical (I feel). The two positions are based on how important we think different, relevant but conflicting, ideals are. For example, ease of editing (a fundemental Wiki cornerstone) versus data integrity or professionalism (which I happen to think are more important). This is in principle a relevant topic for debate (without there being an obviously superior position, even though I know what I think), whereas I agree with you that, e.g., colour vs color might as well be decided with a coin toss. Arbor 07:59, 27 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

...Speaking of pointless debates, this is certainly one.

Coin-flipping (or any random decision-making method) is never going to be a consensus-supported method of deciding MoS guidance
No one is going to stop arguing about supposedly "unimportant" matters simply because it has been suggested that debating them is not a worthwhile activity
There is not going to be a universal spelling of color (or any other word whose spelling varies from country to country) chosen for use throughout the Wikipedia project.

Nohat 08:20, 27 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I have NEVER ONCE stated we shouldn't debate things. What I have suggested is that at some point a decision should be made one way or the other. Or when a decision has previously been made, that we not break down and revert to a "do it either way" position.

I think it interesting, by the way, that you know what will and won't be supported by consensus. You are the master of group psychology and I bow to your esteemed greatness. Chuck 18:13, 27 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'll start by commenting on the color vs. colour thing: my personal opinion is that the current policy on follow-the-first-editor spelling is good because American vs. British English standardisation is truly unrealisitic; and having said that, if there was a guideline mandating American English (I'm a NZer, we follow Britain), I would happily defer to that guideline despite my view against it. I guess that's just my thing and isn't really important.

Anyway, I now start to see, thanks to Arbor, why there is a debate at all about quotation marks, and yes, I guess that now I can symphathise a little bit. The arguments are asymmetrical — but they are still equal and they from a perfectly neutral stance cancel out one for one. (Obviously this ignores weighting of priorities, I accept that. I actually personally have a very strong view for straight quotes.)

Now, that thing aside, there is indeed nothing that merits no debate whatsoever, true; what I find annoying is the long debates that are just saying the same thing over and over and lasting several months and ending with "do either". For the manual of style to work, some of us will have to give way sometimes.

At this point originally began an explanation of what I'm asking for. Then I realised that I'm just repeating what said earlier. So here's my point: Where there is no consensus, we must remember that this is a manual of style, and nothing else, and therefore we have to turn one way or the other. My detailed explanation is in my last post.

Again, for the record, I'm not saying that debating is pointless and shouldn't be happening. But surely there be consensus that a style guide is to provide guidance with style? Neonumbers 07:10, 28 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Some of us are concerned about m:instruction creep and try to limit the number of rules and regulations to a minimum. We understand that too many rules makes Wikipedia a difficult and unfriendly quagmire in which to work. In most cases, stylistic questions are fine left to the writer's discretion. The fact that some people find consistency aesthetically appealing does not make for a very persuasive argument. We need only provide guidance when there is a clear advantage to consistency. The onus is on the legislator to demonstrate not only that his proposed legislation will solve a problem, but also that a significant problem exists in the first place. Nohat 08:44, 28 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

1) What's the matter with "instruction creep". Show me how it becomes "difficult" or "unfriendly". No one is required to follow the MoS. No one is graded on how well their edits follow the MoS. Someone may come along later and, for example, change all of your straight quotes to curly. But so what ... if you take it personally if someone edits your work, you really shouldn't be contributing to wikipedia.

2) There is no such thing as the "legislator" in the wikipedia. If you think there is, you don't belong here. The wikipedia works on consensus. If people think there is a need for guidance, then there is such a need. If people don't think so, then there isn't a need. Chuck 16:15, 28 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with instruction creep is self-evident. It's overwhelming and off-putting to conscientious users who want to be aware of all the rules and guidelines to make constructive contributions if there is an endless quantity of them, especially when they serve no useful purpose, such as arbitrary and capricious entries in the MoS. If there is no clear consensus that something should be done one way or another, then there should be no guideline at all, not a randomly selected guideline.

A legislator on wikipedia here is you, the person who wants to add additional rules. If you think that MoS guidance should be selected by a coin toss when no consensus emerges, then please, by all means, make a proposal. Set up a poll. See how much consensus you'll get. Nohat 20:18, 28 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

One of, and perhaps the main thing that was emphasised to me clearly when I first came here was not to worry about doing things wrong because someone would come along and change it. And if, by chance, someone else does something wrong, then just change it — no need to take it up with them.

So, again, we forget what this manual is about. Guidance. There's nothing wrong with making an out-of-line edit if it contributes information. It's a wiki world. Someone else will change it to suit.

The manual does not exist to impose strict rules on editors. It is a reference guide so that editors who do like to know which way is preferred can look things up. Editors do not need to be familiar with this at all — someone else will come along and take care of it for them. Those who make out-of-style edits will not be reprimanded.

On that note, perhaps that should be made clear: that conformance is the goal of the team and there is no requirement for editors to follow it flawlessly. (And I would say that only essential things go on this page to make life easier for the newcomer; minor, specialised preferences can go on the supplementary manuals.)

There is a fundamental difference between this and legislation: legislation is about the individual, whereas this is about the project. We can all contribute, information helps and so does style, and there is no need to have both in the same person — I have no shame in saying I have no information to offer here. When will people realise what this is? One project, driven by the will of editors to make this the best encyclopædia (not collection of encyclopædias) around.

Despite all this bluster about how I don't understand how Wikipedia works (which is nonsense), I have still yet to a see a reasonable argument for why it is so important that Wikipedia have official preferences on things that we can't come to consensus on. Despite your sunny-day scenario for the MoS, in the Real World, the MoS is used by domineering editors to push undesirable and unnecessary changes into articles to make it conform to the MoS without any demonstrable effect other than aggravating users. The shorter and less full the MoS is of useless rules, the more useful it is, and the more likely it is that users will stick around and help contribute by making articles more accessible, informative and accurate, instead of being put off by an interminable and needlessly abundant MoS full of arbitrary and capricious rules that imperious and officious busybodies use to make needless and profligate changes that exasperate and annoy potential long-term contributors. I see no legitimate useful purpose and a mountain of drawbacks to having official stylistic preferences for things that don't actually affect our measurable value as an encyclopedia; that is, our ability to accurately inform. There is no need to fill the MoS with useless official preferences on picayune stylistic matters. Nohat 05:37, 30 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Nice diatribe. This discussion might be more productive if you would ratchet up the civility a little bit. Am I an "imperious and officious busybod[y]" because I sometimes go through an article and fix the punctuation to match the Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Quotation marks section? If so, please explain.

Your personal pet peeve "Oh no, someone changed my curly quotes to smart quotes", is no more valid that my personal pet peeve "How come this article has curly quotes and the last one I read has smart quotes". Your fear that editors will be put off by people editing their work (god forbid) is not particularly compelling in a medium where it says "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then don't submit it here" at the bottom of every edit page.

So let's say I'm editing a long article and I want to add a few sentences, and one of the sentences includes a list, and I'm trying to decide if I should use a serial comma. Tell me how I'm supposed to decide. I have to read the whole article and tabulate the number of times serial comma is used, the number not used, and then go with the majority? Or do I have to go through the history and figure out the first time someone made a list and see whether they used the serial comma or not. Or do I just do it whichever way I feel like and just risk leaving the article looking like crap. Wouldn't it be a lot easier if the MoS just said "Use serial commas" or "Don't use serial commas". Which one of those scenarios creates the simplest, least controversial editing process?

BTW, I have yet to see a situation where there was a big todo over someone coming through an article and implementing style changes per the MoS. Can you give me an example? Chuck 16:39, 30 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't checked your editing history so I don't know what kinds of edits you have made, but I know for a fact that some mean-spirited editors will wikistalk people who they have gotten into disagreements with and follow them around the wiki, making changes of the sort I described to agitate and annoy. It's happened to me, and I've seen it happen to others, and it's really annoying. The less ammunition we give those people (with unnecessary and arbitrary MoS guidelines), the harder it is for them excuse their incivility. If this doesn't apply to you, then I'm sorry you thought I was accusing you of being imperious and officious.

My fear is not that editors will be put off by people editing their work; it is that editors will be put off by people making unnecessary and capricious changes bolstered by a MoS full of arbitrary rules that have no logical justification other than "we just decided to do it this way".

Note that this is not my only reason for opposing unnecessary MoS entries. I have outlined my other reasons for opposing them above: that if they're not needed, they shouldn't be had, that diversity is an asset, and so forth.

In your example scenario, the answer is that the editor should just do it whatever way he feels like as long as the result is reasonable. If the result is not reasonable, then someone else will change it so it is. A MoS entry that says "use serial commas" or "don't use serial commas" would not be some kind of editing panacea: it just moves the debate from a the trenches where the actual efficacy of particular editing choices has palpable impact to here, where the debate turns into interminable and wasteful meta-discussions (and meta-meta-discussions) on the theoretical benefits of particular editing styles with very little concern for or measurable impact upon the actual quality of articles.

So, rather then continue this rather pointless meta-meta-discussion, why don't you put your money where your mouth is, so to speak, and make a proposal? Nohat 20:26, 30 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Assholes will always find ways to annoy people. I'm really not trying to be rude or dense, or frankly even say that I don't believe that happens, I just find it hard to believe that someone following you around changing, for instance, all of the times you write "U.S." to "US" would be annoying, as long as they were doing it based on some sort of consensus arrived at here. I certainly don't see how its a priori uncivil. Are they making annoying comments in the summary field? Are there MoS items that lend themselves to this? I often change the punctuation in quotation marks to be consistent with the MoS. If I am annoying people, however inadvertently, I would think that's weird.

Frankly I would think it was awesome if someone followed me around fixing all the little nits to make my edits consistent, assuming they weren't leaving obnoxious comments in the summary line, of course.

Why isn't it more useful to just have a discussion once. You seem to be saying "Instead of having a discussion once and getting it out of the way, we rehash the discussion again and again and again". That seems counterproductive. Isn't the simplest way to focus on actually adding content and to decide simple issues (especially Arbor's "symmetric" issues) once, in a forum like this.

I find it hard to figure out what your last paragraph means. No one is forcing you to continue this "pointless discussion", although I did notice that you managed to sneak in a snide comment at the end. Have I not made a proposal? Unfortunately, my proposal does not result in some type of action taken. Instead I was trying to invite discussion on the issue and try to encourage one possible approach to decisionmaking.

But you want me to make a proposal so let me start by setting the stage. First, I certainly believe we should discuss things thoroughly before making a decision. Second, rather than 2 choices, there are usually 4 (or more) choices in any of these debates. Assuming x and y are contradictory guidance: (i) add x to the MoS, (ii) add y to the Mos, (iii) add both to the MoS, allowing editors to choose between them, and (iv) add nothing to the MoS. My original proposal was that we should avoid using choices (iii) and (iv) as cop outs. Yes, sometimes there is consensus that we really don't need guidance on that issue. But many times, there seems to be consensus that we should say something, but we can't agree on what, so we end up with (iii) or (iv). So my proposal summarized is:

When there is consensus that MoS should address an issue, we should try to avoid ignoring the issue in the MoS or allowing multiple styles in the MoS, even if it may mean one side giving in and "taking one for the team" or both sides agreeing to choose randomly. When there is not consensus that MoS should address an issue, it should be left out entirely.

I know its more of a suggested philosophy than a proposal that would result in a specific action, but you asked me to propose something. Maybe that's not as bad as you thought it would be? Chuck 21:58, 30 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

'Aluminium'

I'd like some opinions on this. You see, the word is aluminium here at Wikipedia, despite that most English speaking people (Alright, so we're all Americans and we just outnumber the rest) pronounce it 'aluminum'. The numbers favor 'aluminum', but the Manual of Style does not - it favors the official version, which is 'aluminium'. Admittedly, somebody's going to wind up in the cold, but which would be better: the official version, or the version more people use? Everyone on Talk:Aluminum - including me - is so entrenched in their own opinions that it really isn't possible to get anywhere with this anymore. -Litefantastic 23:53, 24 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I am British and believe that the official spelling of the word should be conserved as I have personally never heard of the apparently more popular pronunciation. Simply because some people pronounce the word differently than how it is intended to be pronounced should not warrant changing its spelling in order to adapt to the expectations of people oblivious of it. ~~At most, make aluminum a redirection to the aluminium article.~~ Grumpy Troll ^(talk) 00:11, 25 August 2005 (UTC).[reply]

Actually, "how it is intended to be pronounced" is related to how it is spelled, and there's an interesting story involved. (It's explained in the article under "spelling".) Apparently the person who named it originally did call it aluminum (and then changed his mind). Personally, I feel that it is apppropriate to use aluminium in scientific contexts, since it is technically a scientific standard, but in other contexts it should be left to the editor to choose, like other words that are spelled differently in different varieties of English. (To talk about "aluminium cans" in an article about recycling the United States would be as strange as talking about the "United States Department of Defence".) But if it's an article about chemistry, let the chemists decide. -Aranel ("Sarah") 00:36, 25 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Given IUPAC's preference for aluminium (altho aluminum is an officially accepted variant) chemistry articles would be best written using the second 'i' in my opinion. Outside that usage, the spelling preferred by the subject of the article should predominate following the usual Wikipedia mixed spelling conventions. Caerwine 00:56, 25 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

IUPAC's preferences shall have no bearing on Wikipedia policy. We are beholden to no external entity dictating how to spell ordinary things like aluminum. The only policy that applies is the one that makes articles consistent within the national writing style used for that article, which is based primarily on the subject matter, but if that is not sufficient to decide the national style, then the style used by the first major contributor shall be used. I don't see any valid reason or justification for preferring the IUPAC spelling because IUPAC prefers it. They hold no jurisdiction over the spelling of an ordinary word, even in scientific articles. Nohat 02:27, 25 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

That's awfully harsh. Certainly, Wikipedia should not be bound by any external medium. However, I think it is logical that if we wish to claim scientific credibility, the article on the element should be located at the spelling as used in the scientific community. That the 'i' spelling is also used in the ROW can't hurt either. Same goes for sulfur. However, like Aranel, I don't necessarily see a problem with the national variants (ie, US "aluminum" and ROW "sulphur") being used outside the actual element's article. When used in a scientific context though, the internationally accepted form should be used.--Cyberjunkie | Talk 02:53, 25 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I concur with Cyberjunkie. I think we should go the status quo: aluminium for the article on the element, and for any other article discussing it in a scientific context, and aluminum for articles on ordinary objects using the metal, where the articles were first created by Americans (like aluminum can).

It's not as though the entire scientific community uses the aluminium spelling exclusively. The vast majority of American chemists, and there are many of them, do use the spelling aluminum. There is no reason that articles they were the first primary contributor to should have the non-American spelling imposed upon them. Furthermore, IUPAC explicitly permits the spelling aluminum, so it's not like the spelling aluminum is in any way "wrong", it's just not "preferred" (whatever that means) by IUPAC. Nohat 03:23, 25 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I want to note to GrumpyTroll that there is no such thing as an "official English spelling" of anything, and if there were, the British would have no more claim to deciding what it is than anyone else. The spelling and pronunciation of aluminum is just as valid as that for aluminium. The fact that IUPAC prefers the latter over the former is of zero import to Wikipedia's policies. Nohat 03:40, 25 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I did not state there was an "official English spelling" of the word, albeit I took the term given by the question's submitter (i.e. "official version"). I pointed out that I was British to explain not having heard the apparently more popular pronunciation. Grumpy Troll ^(talk) 03:50, 25 August 2005 (UTC).[reply]

Red flags get raised that there is a misunderstanding of how language works when I read statements like "how it is intended to be pronounced", as though words have intention. A plurality of English speakers are American, and the spelling and pronunciation aluminum is standard (for "standard" read "conventional" not "correct") in American English. I don't necessarily advocate changing all "aluminium" to "aluminum", just that the American spelling is perfectly legitimate, and there is no reason to show intolerance towards it, as long as it is used within existing Wikipedia policies. Nohat 04:03, 25 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Please excuse me, for I was hitherto oblivious of the existence of aluminium being pronounced aluminum, let alone being spelt aluminum. Grumpy Troll ^(talk) 13:54, 25 August 2005 (UTC).[reply]

For chemistry articles, WP has decided, after long discussions, to compromise on IUPAC spellings. For example, although our chemistry articles use the Commonwealth English forms "aluminium" and "caesium", they also use the distinctly American "sulfur". And in this regard, IUPAC spellings are relevant. This style choice only applies in practice to chemistry-related articles - in other articles a spelling appropriate to the style of the article should be used, jguk 05:30, 25 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with Jguk, and (as a NZer) I haven't heard of "aluminum" except from Americans. I think it's fair in chemistry to follow official spelling, remember that this is still an encyclopedia whichever way looked at, and in non-science articles to follow the of-the-first-major-contributor convention. That makes perfect sense. Neonumbers 11:28, 25 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the first-major-contributor convention is a bit of a non-guideline. The MoS says to consider using it as a last resort - but, of course, you never get to the last resort, or alternatively, if you disagree with it, consider it and decide, after that consideration, that it isn't appropriate in that case. Besides, we should be writing with our readers in mind (our potential readers being anyone searching the web for information in English, and our actual readers being a broad subset of that), meaning that the question to be asked is "What is best for our readers?" rather than "What do the editors, or the first editor, want?", jguk 18:33, 26 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Calling it a "non-guideline" is a bit disingenuous. The only other criterion to determine what dialect an article should be written in is whether the topic is inherently related to one English-speaking nation in a particular way. The vast majority of topics are not inherently related to a single country, so the only way to determine what dialect spellings should use is to look at what the first major contributor did. I'm not sure in what cases where "inherently-related to one English speaking nation" doesn't apply that one shouldn't necessarily apply the "first major contributor" criterion. Can you give an example where someone could "disagree with it, consider it and decide, after that consideration, that it isn't appropriate in that case"? Nohat 08:26, 27 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There are plenty of reasons why the "first major contributor" guideline is effectively meaningless.

1. You only use it as a last resort - the circumstances that lead to even discussing the point are likely to be contentious. That means that there must be arguments for at least two different styles taking priority. They will have conflicting merits - and the disputants will expect the issue to be decided on its merits.

2. You would then have to decide who was the "first major contributor" to an article - something which is often far from clear.

3. Next is to decide what style the first major contributor used. In most cases this may be difficult if not impossible. Despite all these arguments we keep having on this page and elsewhere, the vast majority of WP articles are not in any one particular form of English. For example, my comments in this somewhat long post read equally well in American, British, Australian and Indian English.

4. An article often has many editors who most often contribute in the style of English to which they are accustomed. This can make articles all higgledy-piggledy - not through any malice, just through the normal editing process. When an article has developed like this, do we really care that the first major contributor in one instance twelve months ago wrote "color" rather than "colour" - especially when it so easily could have been a typo?

5. It is extremely difficult to copyedit to a style to which you are unaccustomed. OK, we can all see that "color" is North American and "colour" not and copyedit the odd word to a style to which we are unaccustomed. But it's very difficult if you have a reasonbly large article written by lots and lots of editors from different backgrounds and which now has lots of inconsistent styles. It's better for WP (as it will create a much better flow for the article) if the article is copyedited so that it reads better. If we have a willing volunteer, let's welcome them, not damn them for apparently changing the article to something different from which a "first major contributor" chose.

6. Do we really want a trouble-maker who has found out that an article which is stable and is consistent in its style now, two years ago used a different style, to be allowed to come in and change it to their preferred style? Isn't it more to the point that if an article is already consistent, we should leave it as is?

There are other problems too, both with the practical side of things and the theoretical side of things. On the theory side, we are all warned that our articles will be edited mercilessly, and we all know that no-one owns any article. Giving the first contributor a veto say in how an article develops (even to a minor extent) goes against this.

It would be far better to restate the whole section along the lines of (1) put the readers first - use a style that they will like; (2) don't change style without good reason. Of course, as we all know, unfortunately on WP, if you ask people just to use common sense you soon end up finding someone who has none:) jguk 19:03, 27 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, sulfur is now the official UK spelling (the Royal Society of Chemistry made the change a few years back, after the IUPAC agreement, and an exam board followed, with quite some hoo-ha surrounding it). Frankly, I don't see why we can't just split the difference. I guess the issue is that this affects pronunciation, not just spelling. \\ Wooster

If I may summarise jguk's suggestion as "follow the relevant authority where one exists", then I can support that whole-heartedly. Thus: chemistry articles follow IUPAC style (Aluminium); industry and other non-national articles also follow IUPAC style (Deville process); American articles follow American style (Charles Martin Hall); and Commonwealth articles follow Commonwealth style (can't think of any examples). Wooster 17:08, 29 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

(It would seem we must be careful using this word "official". A particular spelling cannot really become "official" in any variant of English. English, and language at large, doesn't work like that; not even the académie française can force a change to popular spelling. So I doubt very much that "sulfur" is now THE spelling in the UK. But, I stray too far...)--Cyberjunkie | Talk 17:57, 29 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't agree with the requirement to follow IUPAC style in industry and other non-national styles. By all means stick with IUPAC for chemistry-related articles, but don't let the prescriptivism spread, jguk 17:42, 29 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Decapitalisation

Shouldn't this page be properly named Manual of style? Phaunt 09:34, 29 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Added later: I wrote this based on Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization). It seems odd that the manual of style doesn't conform to what it preaches. Phaunt 13:35, 29 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I couldn't agree more; let's lose the old typewriter mind-set, please. Computers, and the numerous devices for highlighting titles, have been around for long enough. Tony 09:56, 29 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This page has long been here. As with Main Page it's just best kept as it is, jguk 14:18, 29 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hhmm, I know the line can sometimes be fuzzy between proper nouns and regular nouns, but I feel like the Wikipedia: Manual of Style is enough of a specific thing to merit being a proper noun. The title describes what the page is not just what's on it (i.e. "This page is the Manual of Style"). Similarly, Wikipedia: Naming conventions (capitalization) isn't so much describing what the page is as what's on it (i.e. you wouldn't say "this page is the Naming Conventions (Capitalization)", you would instead say "this page describes/contains the naming conventions (capitalization)").

Frankly the same holds true for the Main Page. That title is not being used to describe/define what main pages are in general, nor is it being used purely descriptively - its the Main Page.

Just thought of an example: If I gave you a copy of the New York Times, I might tell you to turn to page three. But if I gave you a copy of the The Sun, I would tell you to turn to Page Three. Chuck 21:11, 29 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

My reasoning behind the capitalization in the article title is that in most cases a Manual of Style would be a book. Although the Wikipedia MOS is not a book, it was created as an equivalent to, or replacement for, a book MOS. BlankVerse ∅ 18:20, 30 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Capitalization of link lists

Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#"See also" and "Related topics" sections states that lists of links like the See also sections should be lowercased (with the exception of proper nouns). This Manual of Style section is clearly against the common use - I have never ever seen this being done on Wikipedia before. Moreover, lowercase link lists look very ugly :-) Therefore I suggest to change this paragraph so that lists of links should be capitalized. Cacycle 23:01, 29 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

That Manual_of_Style paragraph references to Wikipedia:Lists where it says "as a matter of style, do not capitalize list items". However, this has never been discussed on the talk page Wikipedia_talk:Lists and is not even followed in the article itself. Cacycle 23:22, 29 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It is often done on Wikipedia (as are capitalized lists). I like it, and think it should be the rule. That gives us information we cannot get from the title of the article, with initial capitalization still turned on. But the ugliest thing is when some are one way and some the other. Gene Nygaard 09:10, 30 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There might indeed be a few lowercase lists out there, but I have yet to find them:

NONE of 116 checked random articles contained only lowercased list entries, 5 contained mixed style, 48 contained only capitalized list entries starting with non-proper nouns.
NONE of about 40 checked Navigational templates contained lowercased lists.
NONE of about 50 checked List of ... articles contained lowercased lists.
The link lists on the Wikipedia user interface are ALL capitalized.

The Manual_of_Style and the Wikipedia:Lists guidelines clearly have to be changed to accomodate for this overwhelming consensus.

Cacycle 22:07, 30 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Here are a few for you:

Gene Nygaard 04:14, 31 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The new lowercasing rule on Manual_of_Style was invented by Lowellian August 16 2005 without any discussion before and after. The new lowercasing rule on Wikipedia:Lists was invented by Patrick March 23 2005 without any discussion before and after. Cacycle 22:35, 30 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Shouldn't we just follow typical lowercase/uppercase rules used elsewhere:

See also: flaming, fire, Internet troll

or

==See also==

* [[Flaming]] or [[fire]]

* [[Internet troll]]

Basically, everything is lowercase unless its the first letter in a sentence, the first letter in a bullet, or the first letter of any word of a proper noun (except for a, an, of, etc.).

Looking at the Wikipedia:Lists page, I can't for the life of me figure out why that is the guidance on that page. I'm making a suggestion over there that we change it. Chuck 22:36, 30 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Can we please leave the typewriter era behind? Computers can highlight and format so easily that we just don't need to capitalise and underline any more. The layer of meaning conveyed by upper-case letters should be preserved in lists, rather than covered by overusing upper-case, word-initial letters. Tony 22:41, 30 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see what this has to do with a typewriter. Among the things that the Wikipedia is not is a a forum for advocacy. There is no reason it should be the vehicle for your crusade to change the conventions of written English. (You really should see someone about your hatred of typewriters ... I kid.) Chuck 23:23, 30 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You personalise it, but at issue is a significant change in formatting culture wrought by the replacement of typewriters with computers. With a typewriter, highlighting could be achieved in a severely limited number of ways, i.e., by capitalising and/or underlining. These methods reduce a level of meaning, and are hard to read and ugly, respectively. Their use is now declining because computers allow a much wider range of highlighting techniques that do not have these disadvantages. And this is precisely the forum where this issue should be raised. Tony 00:01, 31 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Again, the Wikipedia is not a medium to advocate changing the conventions of written English, it is a reference source. Hard to read and ugly is subjective, anyway. I find it ugly and hard to read to have a list switch from capitalized to uncapitalized. Also, title caps and capitalizations in lists predate typewriters. This has nothing to do with changing technology. Here is one example and another. Chuck 01:41, 31 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree with just about everything you say. 'Hard to read and ugly is subjective, anyway.'—Everything's subjective, isn't it? Pre-typewriter capitalisation served the same ends in the absence of the computer's rich highlighting resources. It has everything to do with changing technology. Tony 02:17, 31 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

No, "everything" is not subjective. There's plenty of things that are not subjective. I'll give you just a few examples of non-subjective points that I've seen used in recent MoS discussions: ß is not a letter used in English. Even though ß is not used in English, it is a member of the same broader Latin alphabet that English is. Johann Strauss spelled his name Strauß. Some early browsers show a square instead of curly quotes. The current version of Firefox shows curly quotes correctly.

Did you even look at those links I attached? The first uses no fewer than 11 different typefaces (different shape, size, style or weight) and the second uses no fewer than 10. (And that doesn't even include places such as the word "Illustrated" where they could have gotten away with just making that one word in one cast, rather than doing a whole font.) I don't think they were starving for "rich highlighting resources". They already use a separate typeface for chapter titles, for example, but still use title caps. Chuck 03:46, 31 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

One more comment. Even our table of contents (the one automatically generated for pages with multiple sections) capitalizes each item. There is nothing special about that table, it is merely an automatically generated list. Chuck 04:24, 31 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Don't lie. It does not automatically capitalize them, it prints the lines in the table of contents just the way they appear in the section headers. Gene Nygaard 14:14, 31 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed use of "U.S." when referring specifically to language in U.S.

This brings up a different issue than those mentioned in the discussion in Manual of Style archive ("U.S." or "American") in that it refers specifically to the name of the language spoken in the U.S., not the use of the language to name things other than itself.

Because the word "American" has multiple uses, referring to either the U.S. exclusively or to what is pertinent to cultures/peoples in either the Americas (North, Central, and South) or North America, its use on pages dealing with language is not transparent because it cannot be immediately interpreted. There are distinctions between American (North American) English and British English. This is a different matter than the differences between U.S. English and British English and Canadian English.

Canadian English (which is distinct on a number of counts from British English and has certain elements in common with U.S. English) is, in a certain sense, "American English," and though the article explains its exclusion, a change of title would remove the need to make this distinction. Since "Canadian English" is a distinct article, one would think that the parallel for the country just south would bear that country's name, not a name that can also refer to the continent.

So, arguably, the article currently called "American and British English Differences" should be titled "U.S. and British English Differences" (and any parallel changes in other articles made) in order to disambiguate the meaning of the word "American" with reference to the English language. This would allow the ability to distinguish without confusion or need for explanation between U.S. English usage and usage that extends to multiple countries in the Americas or the other country in North America, which would be useful given the realities of language use.

I put this note on the "American and British English Differences" talk page first. That was the first time I ever posted here, and I haven't been able to find a guideline about multiple postings about the same issue. I'm not sure if it was correct to post in both places, but I didn't know that this page existed at that time. I apologize if this is not the way things are done.

Emme 13:27, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

!American" means "of or pertaining to the United States of America". There's no need to complicate the issue, jguk 18:17, 30 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding is that "American English" is the standard form to refer to the language. Also, I believe "U.S. English" is an organization. Maurreen (talk) 06:34, 31 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Nobody talks about "North American English". There is no need to talk about "North American English". Canadian English is a different thing entirely (we don't tend to lump it together with the English spoken in the United States, that is) and Mexico is Spanish-speaking. South America rarely enters into discussions of English dialect, so there is really no need to talk about "(North and South) American English" There is not really a whole lot of potential for confusion. -Aranel (Sarah) 18:35, 31 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

"Diacritic" is being used inconsistently

In the article Diacritic, there is a very clear explanation:

"A diacritical mark can appear above or below the letter to which it is added, or in some other position; however, note that not all such marks are diacritical. For example, in English, the tittle (dot) on the letters i and j is not a diacritical mark, but rather part of the letter itself. Further, a mark may be diacritical in one language, but not in another . . ."

However, the article is driven to using the heading "Non-diacritic usage" for the inclusion of such marks within letters. If there is a term for markings on letters other that "diacritical mark" or "accent" this would help. Possibly because no such term has been introduced (does it exist?), this careful distinction is not being followed in all language/alphabet articles, with the result that what is a letter, collated and counted among letters, and what is a letter with a diacritical mark is not discussed with clarity, and could be improved.

This issue arises in, for example, Latvian alphabet ("the remaining 11 [letters] are obtained from Latin letters by using diacritic marks"); Polish alphabet ("It is based on the Latin alphabet but uses diacritics such as kreska . . ."), Romanian alphabet ("Five of the above letters have diacritical marks . . ."), Slovak language ("The Slovak language . . . uses four types of diacritical marks"), Sorbian alphabet ("The Sorbian alphabet is based on the Latin alphbet but uses diacritics . . . "), Vietnamese alphabet "The many diacritcis, often two on the same letter, makes written Vietnamese easily recognizable." - this example is particularly confusing because some of these markings referred to are proper to the letters themselves, while others are true diacritics), etc.

Possible approaches:

Use "letters with/including marks" (to avoid using the term diacritic of a mark that is part of a letter)

When possible, name the mark (as is done in Diacritic to refer to "u with a breve" in speaking of non-diacritic use in Esperanto, for example).

Anybody know of a standard term for this language element?

Emme 13:53, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

I don't believe that there is a real problem using the word diacritic to refer to modifying marks beyond the general set of Latin characters. The use of the word is the boundary of a number of linguistic fields. For example, one might say that the letter ö as employed in German is the letter o with a diacritic. However, this letter is a distinct phoneme in that language. To be strict one should use the word diacritic only to refer to marks used to distinguish homographs and supersegmental signs. However, in practice, one uses the term more loosly to refer to any letter that receives a modifying mark. Gareth Hughes 14:49, 30 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Capitalization of ethnic group/race metaphors

Here's a thorny thing the MOS is pretty much mute on: Is it Black man or black man to refer to an African-American? Our article on Black (people) seems to use primarily a capitalized version. In academic text I have often seen the capitalized version used as a method of conveying that this title is no longer one of just color metaphor (the man's skin color is not actually black, it is a variety of pigmentations, and so labeling him a black man would be incorrect, so the reasoning goes), and to convey respect (or at least to be consistent to how we deal with country names -- French man -- or "ethnic group" names -- Hispanic man). After this -- what about White man/white man? Please also note that answering "African-American should be used whenever possible" is not really a valid response to the question, as not only are there a number of times in which "Black" is more appropriate as a signal of an ethnic designation (esp. in a historical context, when it was a distinction specifically written into laws and had little to do with "actual" biological origins), and anyway there are articles like Black (people) which can't just be ignored away or dealt with in any other way. Thoughts? My vote is for capitalization of both Black and White when used in an ethnic/racial context; there are no "respect" issues and it also makes it clear that this is not a literal color category. --Fastfission 11:43, 31 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Aren't races and ethnicities proper nouns? Skin color isn't necessarily, unless its being used to identify someone with a group.

"Morgan Freeman is Black."
"Morgan Freeman is a Black man.
"George Hamilton is so tan, he looks almost Black." - if you mean he could pass for a member of the Black race. ("race" may not be the best word, but I needed something)
"George Hamilton is so tan, he looks almost black." - if you just mean his skin has turned a very dark color. Chuck 12:42, 31 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

My concern would be that although there is precedent in other print sources for capitalizing Black when referring to the race (rather than the colour) there doesn't seem to be much usage of a capitalized White. Correct me if I'm mistaken, but the context where I usually see a capitalized White race is in exhortations to build a noble Aryan nation. Whether it's 'fair' or not to capitalize, I'm worried that there might be connotations attached to a capitalized White that we don't want.... TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:07, 31 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

That's true, and a worthwhile consideration. That's actually pretty much what The American Heritage Book of English Usage says on the topic. --Fastfission 13:42, 31 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I symathize with the issue, but we certainly can't cater to every group that doesn't like what is written here, or how it is capitalized. Chuck 16:25, 31 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't the lowercase form still the more common in the English language as it is actually written? Wikipedia isn't about deciding what the style ought to be. -Aranel (Sarah) 18:28, 31 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 1,536: / Line 1,536: @@
 ::My understanding is that "American English" is the standard form to refer to the language. Also, I believe "U.S. English" is an organization. [[User:Maurreen|Maurreen]] [[User_talk:Maurreen|(talk)]] 06:34, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
+:::Nobody talks about "North American English". There is no need to talk about "North American English". Canadian English is a different thing entirely (we don't tend to lump it together with the English spoken in the United States, that is) and Mexico is Spanish-speaking. South America rarely enters into discussions of English dialect, so there is ''really'' no need to talk about "(North and South) American English" There is not really a whole lot of potential for confusion. -[[User:Aranel|Aranel]] (<font color="#ba0000">Sarah</font>) 18:35, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
 == "Diacritic" is being used inconsistently ==