Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style

See also
Wikipedia talk:Writing better articles
Wikipedia talk:Article titles
Wikipedia talk:Quotations
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/quotation and punctuation

"MOS:"

There's a discussion about whether non-Manual of Style pages should use shortcuts prefixed with "MOS:" over at Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2011_January_8#MOS:ALT. Any comments would be appreciated. Thanks! Mhiji

Contractions, again

In yet another example, this:

In general, the use of contractions—such as don't, can't, won't, they'd, should've, it's—is informal and should be avoided.

has been changed to this:

The use of contractions—such as don't, can't, won't, they'd, should've, it's—is informal and should generally be avoided; on the other hand, the pointed avoidance of contractions is stilted and also should be avoided.

I'd have thought "In general" was enough leeway for common sense to be applied in particular instances. "On the other hand" isn't a particularly thrilling phrase for a style guide. Can we have examples of where "the pointed avoideance of contractions is stilted and also should be avoided"? Otherwise, it seems to be bloat. What will new editors make of it? I'm struggling with it myself. Tony (talk) 01:56, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

This should have been placed at #Proposed replacement text for WP:CONTRACTIONS section. The coy avoidance of contraction, when it is idiomatic, can be stilted, can't it? Or should this encyclopedia use can it not?

Much of the bad writing here is due to editors attempting Victorian school-room prose, because they think it necessary for an encyclopedia. You've read Fowler; you know how his contemporary reporters did when they tried writing on stilts. Let's not encourage newbies in this bad habit. Or do we need Let us not? For Heaven his sake, why? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:19, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Again, consider this paragraph, ridden with cliche and pointless repetition, in the register of a bibulous sportscaster:

Godfrey signed a one year contract with Hampton & Richmond Borough in August 2004, but didn't make his first appearance until October that year due to injury. His debut was a home match against Windsor & Eton in the Isthmian League Premier Division, where he came off the bench to score the winner in a 2–1 victory for his new club.

Soem editor "corrected" didn't, leaving the rest of it alone, and went his way rejoicing. That does nothing to the real horrors, makes the sentence somewhat less natural, and doubtless gives the good soul a feeling of being useful to Wikipedia. That's what one-sided guidance produces. May he be happy; but has the guidance helped Wikipedia any? How? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:47, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't see anything wrong with that paragraph including the contraction. But since I know WP:CONTRACTION, I too would have changed that word. If WP:CONTRACTION changes to "Only remove contractions when you can guess that we want you to", I will simply ignore contractions, and tell my AWB software to do the same. Art LaPella (talk) 06:15, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Please do. When the contraction was taken out without fixing the paragraph, that made very bad writing slightly worse by changing register pointlessly. You didn't do it, but the fewer who do the better. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:30, 29 January 2011 (UTC).

Sure, as soon as your change to WP:CONTRACTION remains unreverted; how else do I know what the consensus is? Art LaPella (talk) 05:27, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

This section should make plain that the present text isn't consenus. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:01, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Then change it again. Would you prefer we ignore every guideline that has been debated in the archives? Art LaPella (talk) 19:25, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

The problem is that every bullet-point of MOS is - in effect - a separate guideline. Most of them have been protested in the past; the response is usually not a demonstration of consensus, but one or two editors claiming consensus (with no evidence) and revert-warring. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:07, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

I basically agree that style Nazis are a problem on this page. But style Nazis throughout Wikipedia who don't bother with this page, or with any other form of consensus, are a bigger problem. So what's the alternative? Art LaPella (talk) 01:54, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

It seems like an OK situation of WP:BRD to me. The revert was absolutely appropriate, as is this discussion; and the bold change was OK, too, but then don't rag on the reverters. I made a bold change myself to the page recently, and nobody complained (I was surprised); so it depends on what the consensus is, right? Dicklyon (talk) 02:55, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

One problem is that is the first sign of discussion by the reverter; the other and more serious problem is reversion of edits with which the reverter doesn't disagree just on principle. This destroys all possibility of reaching general agreement; the actual text may be supported by nobody (except presumably whoever wrote it, and she may have left) - and still it stays as "consensus". Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:32, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

For example, this edit made with the edit summary this change has not been fully discussed; one can assume the text is correct and the example is in error. One may indeed presume that the reverter has never heard the old joke: "when you ass-u-me, you make an ass out of u and me" ;-} but the edit was made after discussion at WT:MOSNUM, to straighten out sn inconsistency by which Tony was desperately worried. Now I don't really care; I intend to ignore this page and its whole Mass of Stupidities whatever asinine (as it were) rule it lays down on the subject. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:46, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

I would like to establish something: Wikipedia does not require people to get permission before making controversial edits. It only requires people to enter into discussions after their changes are reverted. Here on the MoS, we've developed a custom of discussing things first, and it's served us well, but it's not as though Anderson broke any rules.

However, now that it is clear that said changes are controversial, I would ask that Anderson make a habit of discussing any rule-changing edits on the page first. It's just nice to do. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:55, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Darkfrog puts it nicely. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 19:13, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree that it's annoying when editors remove contractions. Doing so often requires that the sentence be rewritten, because there are cases where "don't" is fine, but "do not" looks silly. I hope the reference above to software doesn't mean there's a bot going around doing this. If there is, I hope Art will consider putting a stop to that.

As for being bold on policies and guidelines, it's okay when improving the writing, but substantive changes are best discussed first. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 01:21, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

The only reference above to "software" I could find was "AWB software". AWB is not a bot; it lets me look at each change before I accept it. In the case of WP:CONTRACTION, I don't remember ever rejecting a change AWB presents (that is, from a contraction to an uncontracted form) just because it sounds wrong, because I have never encountered such a contraction in a real article. I reject changes to contractions in titles and quotes. I believe that is consistent with the consensus as reflected by the current language of WP:CONTRACTION, unless your proposed change is accepted. Art LaPella (talk) 06:24, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I propose the following language to deal with the problem:

The use of contractions—such as don't, can't, won't, they'd, should've, it's—is informal and should generally be avoided; on the other hand, the pointed avoidance of contractions is stilted and also should be avoided.

Anything which conveys a similar caution will be equally acceptable. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:38, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Personally I don't see anything wrong with contractions, so I'd suggest telling people they're fine. If we want to retain the general caution, we could write something like: "The use of contractions—such as don't, can't, won't, they'd, should've, it's—is informal and should generally be avoided, but whether they are appropriate depends on context, and editors should not remove them without good reason." SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 03:50, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm fine with that. Is there objection to this proposal? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:20, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes. Contractions don't belong in encyclopedias, except in quotes or similar things. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 05:41, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

And where is that written? :) SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 09:05, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

• More such words to invite editor conflict. Which two or more editors will be able to agree on its face what is a appropriate context for a contradiction: "appropriate depends on context". And what is "good reason" to two or more unhappy editors who always believe they are absolutely right and anyone who disagrees is absolutely wrong. Just look at routine editing here: whenever there is an opening for conflict, it is taken. Either WP is opened for any type of informal English or it is not. And it is a very slippery slope. This is an Encyclopedia, not a place for pandering to popular culture, nor Google stats, and not anything else that would make our school English teachers outraged. Hmains (talk) 04:42, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Contractions are prominent hallmarks of oral English and informal written English. I'm yet to see an example in which "it is" should be replaced by "it's" in WP text (aside from quotations, of course), and why is it "stilted" to use "do not" in an encyclopedic register? Tony (talk) 09:13, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

The Britannica disagrees; for example, they phrase rhetorical questions: Shapley’s work caused astronomers to ask themselves certain questions: How could the existing stellar data be so wrong? Why couldn’t they see something in Sagittarius, the proposed galactic centre, 30,000 light-years away? as English actually phrases questions; substituting Why could they not would make the reader stumble - because it's not idiom; it's writing on stilts.

To impose such writing on Wikipedia is to disrupt the encyclopedia to make a point - and make the encyclopedia measurably worse.

It is also Original Research - since, as Slim Virgin points out, you have no source for this; you and Hmains have made it up. (The more measured claim in the text is equally unsourced; but as advice, it may halp - and it may also encourage semi-literate editors to make bad writing worse, as with the example in the top of the section.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:24, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm just waiting (w8ng?) for the moment when someone argues that text-speak is their "national variety of English". Blueboar (talk) 16:10, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry. Ebonics actually had some merit to it, and it didn't last. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:58, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi Tony, it's not that "do not" is invariably stilted. It's that a sentence written to flow well with "didn't" may not flow well when it's replaced with "do not". Had the writer known his "didn't" would be removed, he might have chosen to write the sentence differently. I can't give an example because I've not kept note of them, but I've seen awkwardness introduced several times by editors going around changing other people's writing with a "one size fits all" approach. That's the thing that causes the problems, and the MoS makes clear no one should be doing it, so I think it's worth stressing it here regarding contractions.

Perhaps we could leave the sentence as it is, but refer editors back to the section that advises against editors changing from one style to another without good reason. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 02:22, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

I dislike the 'without good reason' proviso. I often do change instances of "don't" or "couldn't" to "do not" and "could not" when I come across them, and I agree that often stylistic rewriting of the phrases are unavoidable. By all means, the guideline may recommend to editors to rewrite for flow to accompany such removals, but by insisting that simply removal of contractions (except within quotes) should not be done "without good reason" is going a bit far. It enforces the perception that contractions somehow have a right to unhindered existence above the uncontracted forms, and may lead to edit warring of an element where I know of no such conflicts. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:48, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. There's nothing special about contractions warranting an implication that they're off-limits from (or less subject to) normal copyediting. —David Levy 03:19, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

There is something special about them if there's a bot going around replacing them. It's that kind of blind replacement that it would be helpful to warn against.SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 16:59, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree that blind replacement is a bad idea, but it's my understanding that no such bot has been deployed. —David Levy 18:40, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

The problem (see the example at the top of this subsection, beginning with Godfrey) is that some editors go around behaving like bots. One took out the contraction in the example, and left the rest of it alone. This failed to fix the paragraph, and probebly added an increment of atrocity. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:01, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Again, I agree that blind replacement (irrespective of the mechanism behind it) is a bad idea, and others appear to agree as well.

I already have addressed that specific example below, and I remain baffled as to how the change in question "added an increment of atrocity" and why you choose to mock an editor for failing to correct unrelated flaws. —David Levy 20:39, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree that we shouldn't blindly replace contractions with potentially stilted wording, but it often is possible to simply recast a sentence in a manner that eliminates the issue entirely.
In the case of "Why couldn't they see something in Sagittarius...", it's true that "Why could they not see something in Sagittarius..." is awkward, but alternative options (such as "Why did they see nothing in Sagittarius..." and "Why was nothing found in Sagittarius...") exist.
Of course, apart from quotations (which obviously shouldn't be modified in that manner), Wikipedia is unlikely to contain this style of prose in the first place.
I don't understand Pmanderson's earlier example, as I see absolutely nothing unnatural about the wording "...did not make his first appearance...". I agree that the paragraph contains unrelated flaws, but I find it rather unfair and distasteful to mock an editor for failing to address them (as though this was an either-or proposition in which the change from "didn't" to "did not" was performed instead). —David Levy 03:19, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Slim, I have no objection to the avoidance of contortions in WP article text just to achieve a stylistic recommendation (or insistence). It is always open to an editor who objects to the spelling out of a contraction by another editor to invoke the "use common sense" principle, which, if not accepted, could be debated on the talk page or even brought here for comment. But it does worry me that a few academic journals do allow contractions—not too many contractions, in scope (never "would've", of course) and in density in the text. These journals tend to be not very authoritative, I must say. We should beware risking difficulty in countering a group of editors who went around adding contractions (in good faith) to make the text more "friendly" in tone. In 20 or 30 years' time, maybe English will have changed enough to loosen up on this; but I don't think it has yet, at least, not in the most authoritative sources whose tone we need to emulate. Just my thoughts, and I think your and Mr Anderson's concern have been noted by everyone here, and that it's made us think carefully about the issue.

On that, let me comment on Mr Anderson's example above from Brittanica": "Shapley’s work caused astronomers to ask themselves certain questions: How could the existing stellar data be so wrong? Why couldn’t they see something in Sagittarius, the proposed galactic centre, 30,000 light-years away?" I do believe this tone is not encouraged in WP articles. It comes perilously close to POV in the relationship it assumes with the readers. If authoritative sources reacted in this way, it should be expressed as such, not as though it's WP's opinion. Have I got this right? Tony (talk) 14:36, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

We're not an academic journal, though. We're a new kind of thing, and we make up our own rules. If editors want to use contractions, I truly see no reason to stop them. What we want is good writing. Using or not using contractions won't change the quality of the writing, but swapping them willy nilly might. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 17:04, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

There appears to be agreement that contractions shouldn't be blindly replaced (because doing so might result in stilted wording). But there also is consensus that contractions reflect an informal tone not typically used in our encyclopedia (apart from quotations) and generally should be avoided. (As with any other style convention, exceptions may arise.)

Indeed, we determine our own rules, and this one is longstanding. Much of the Manual of Style's text is fairly arbitrary, recommending one convention over another of comparable validity (based upon outside usage) because this eliminates needless inconsistency and argumentation.

In this instance, the rule isn't arbitrary, as there is a legitimate (albeit not universally applied) distinction. I'm sure that some editors want to use contractions, but others don't, and the last thing that we need is another source of edit wars. Unlike national English varieties (as an example), there is no compelling need for multiple styles to coexist. —David Levy 18:40, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

One who has had little exposure to refined English is more likely to consider the avoidance of contractions to be stilted, whereas one who has spent much time in studying educational works by professional writers using refined English is more likely to accept easily the avoidance of contractions.

—Wavelength (talk) 21:07, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Mild disagree: (Let me "pre-caveat": The last thing in the world (World?) I want to do is run around her fixing people's contractions or cripes edit-warring them. That said I wrote Ph.D. thesis and several peer-reviewed science papers without contractions (searching to fix all) and I never felt the "shackles" as heavy on me, or that the writing was strange afterwards.TCO (talk) 22:30, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

And they weren't (ha) stuffy papers either. The idea that sounding sciencey or being unreadable makes you better is routinely contradicted in any how to write a science paper article (although Wiki needs to read those more). They all say to avoid over-nominalizing and the like. That said, they are not as chatty as some good old talk page battlin".TCO (talk) 22:45, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

When writing articles, we need to code-switch into an "encyclopedic" tone. That changes most people's writing considerably. In particular, the prose in our articles shouldn't use contractions, because that makes it sound too informal. But people like me can use contractions on talk pages if they want to. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:24, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Remove the rule. I think that the guideline should recommend against "informal language" in general and leave it at that. This rule is too specific and, as such, it invites lazy editors to apply it mechanically. A paragraph with overly informal language needs to rewritten by someone who is actually thinking about what they are writing. "To write is to think, and to write well is to think well". This rule invites "thoughtless" edits. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 06:13, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

My two cents

1. While some contractions such as gonna or ain't are indeed restricted to spoken or spoken-like English or direct quotations thereof, others such as don't are now widely found even in professionally written and edited texts such as university-level textbooks. In >90% of the cases, using do not instead would be less informal but no less natural, but a blanket or near-blanket ban on don't is excessive, and just editing an article to replace all occurrences of don't outside quotations to do not without changing anything else is just a waste of time. (For an example of the remaining <10% of cases, see the “Cosmological constant problem” item in Unsolved problems in physics#Cosmology and astronomy: “Why does the zero-point energy of the vacuum not cause ...” would sound much worse.)
2. On the other hand, PMAnderson's proposal sounds too wordy and slightly polemical (“pointed”?) to me; the “generally” in the current guideline is fine, but I'd like something like “In most cases, uncontracted auxiliaries such as do not or it is should be preferred to contracted ones such as don't or it's, as the latter are less formal” even more. A. di M. (talk) 10:49, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Let's think about this a minute.

1) We are stuck with whatever someone uses in a quote. But, most people making quotable statements don't (!) use contractions.

2) Contractions most often involve a negative. Don't, can't, won't. These are seldom used by editors because they involve negative inventories. We inventory things/events that are there, not ones that aren't (are not!  :). Therefore, editors themselves will rarely need contractions.

3) Other contractions are clearly "lazy" and may confuse people whose first language is not English. "Would've", "you'll" "we'd".

Except for these informal discussions, I have found that I seldom need contractions.

I think we're arguing over pretty much nothing, here. Let the current language stand. It's rarely invoked anyway. Student7 (talk) 13:33, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Are you serious about point 2? The last four days' Main Page featured articles all have between two and sixteen instances of “not” immediately following an auxiliary not in a quotation. The reason why you seldom need “don't” is that “do not” is usually just fine, not that you never need negative statements in the first place. --A. di M. (talk) 14:26, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

"rarely invoked"? I invoke it often, as part of my AWB edits, and fairly regularly when copyediting Main Page material. Art LaPella (talk) 21:40, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Bots

This was archived without being resolved, so I've brought it back. We seem to agree that people should not be going around changing contractions without reading the text, and someone above said it wasn't being done with a bot, but I saw an example today of precisely that, so I suggest we add a caution about that to the guideline. Or else remove the section entirely as Charles suggested. But I think we do have to stop encouraging this blind replacement. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 14:55, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

This is a link to Bender's contributions, not to a specific edit. But since it was one of his edits which inspired this discussion originally, dealing with him may be more immediately helpful. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:34, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

A very good article was printed in the Journal of Technical Writing & Communication about this issue. If anyone subscribes, "I, Pronoun: A Study of Formality in Online Content" in the December 2010 issue. From the abstract: "The study found that readers perceived text passages to be less formal when they contained personal pronouns, active voice verbs, informal punctuation, or verb contractions." Personally, I don't think we can afford to be perceived as any less formal. Contractions also frequently confound ESL readers and are difficult to translate. --Andy Walsh (talk) 15:15, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

The examples linked by SlimVirgin sound quite informal regardless of the contractions, so the versions with uncontracted auxiliaries sounds even weirder because of the mismatched registers. And referring to them as "typos" in edit summaries is particularly disingenuous, as it's quite unlikely that someone accidentally failed to input a space and accidentally input an apostrophe instead of an O. (Confound ESL readers? Actually when I started studying English in primary school I was taught I'm long before being taught I am. Difficult to translate? Couldn't means the same as could not, so if you can translate the latter you can translate the former as well.) --A. di M. (talk) 15:24, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

The point of the MoS is to offer general advice that should usually be adhered to. Legislating in equivocation and sentiments against editors going about doing botlike changes is just more junk prose. The cautions do not belong here; they belong on relevant pages on editor behavior. This is just the style manual. I suggest reverting back to the simple language of the article before PMA started changing it. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 15:45, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Andy, we're not a technical journal or an academic journal. We don't need to be so formal that we sound as though we have sticks up our asses, which is what sentences often look like when someone randomly removes contractions. I'm not saying that contractions are always fine. But they sometimes are. It depends on context. The only thing I'd like to stop is the bots going around removing them. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 15:51, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

MOS works best in discouraging disruptive editor behavior; there is an argument that ENGVAR and similar sections are the only part of MOS that is actually consensus.

Pointed was intended as restrictive, not as polemical; if taking out don't doesn't produce artificial prose, there is no objection - and sometimes some profit - in taking it out. But where it does, either leave don't alone or recast. This seems to me the common sense of the matter - and if there is a clearer way of putting that, I will be glad to accept it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:04, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

The MoS is not a "don't do this!" manual; it's a style guide. You've come to the wrong place for sanctions. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 16:07, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

No, it's largely a piece of Original Research which claims to be a style guide. Please note that ENGVAR does not present sanctions; it notes the consensus that rewriting this encyclopedia into uniformly British or American [or Trinidadian, but that's not a problem] English is undesirable and should not be attempted. None of the proposed texts on contraction say any more; indeed most say less. If there is objection to the principle that MOS does not intend to prescribe stupid or clumsy writing, please say so. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:18, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Again, if we were to make clear in that section that this is just a guide, I'd be fine with that. The problem is that it's being imposed blindly by editors using bots as though it were policy, which is almost certainly leading to poor writing. I assume people won't mind if words to that effect are added? SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 16:31, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

It sounds like we have two distinct issues here... one is whether the MOS should include a note that contractions should (generally) be avoided... the other is whether we should have bots that "act upon" this statement. I have no problem with the first part... I have a serious problem with the second. Style issues are often gray areas... judgment calls that depend on context. Bots don't do a very good job when it comes to judgment calls based on context. You need a human in those situations. Blueboar (talk) 16:41, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

This looks like the intermediate case: a human (not native to English) acting like a bot; his user page has a biography. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:48, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm using "bot" to include editors using AWB, which is allowing them to remove contractions at a rate faster than anyone would want to replace them, and definitely too fast for each one to be considered separately. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 16:51, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Quoting Masem, “Yes, AWB is semi-automated. But I've used it, and when working on my own articles, I know how easy it is to think "Oh, I trust all changes AWB makes, I'll let it do it", and bam, something bad happened (which I was then able to correct).” --A. di M. (talk) 16:55, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I've added a second sentence, so it now reads: "The use of contractions—such as don't, can't, won't, they'd, should've, it's—is informal and should generally be avoided. Editorial judgment is required to determine whether their use is appropriate in any given context, and they should therefore not be removed as a matter of course." SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 16:57, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Changed the last phrase to mechanically. We could also spell out in an automatic or semi-automatic fashion, but this is not a law code. The change may convey SV's point (with which I agree) better to somebody who hasn't seen this discussion. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:14, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm fine with that. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 19:20, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree... in fact, we could add a caveat like this to most of the MOS sections, but, that would be overkill. Blueboar (talk) 19:29, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't see the point of it being added here: editors should never make mechanical edits without reviewing them first. In fact that is the very first rule at WP:AWB, bolded, italicised and capitalised to make sure editors get the point. It seems even less likely it would be an issue for a bot, as they should only be run by trusted users very aware of their limitations. So it makes as much sense added to every other section: we don't because it should be far more effective to provide such guidance to those actually using mechanical means, not to the majority of editors who don't.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 20:23, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

That's one reason I chose mechanically; editors can be mechanical without using any tools beyond the edit screen. The implicit claim that AWB and bots are not used mechanically is, however, a falsehood, as the date celinking case made clear. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:30, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

The edit seems to be this one, changing he wasn't very tall to he was not very tall. This does not produce a encyclopedic tone, and (to my ear) changes the meaning from something like "He was less than 6' 2" (185 cm)" to a clumsy way of saying "he was shortish". Some editors may remember Orwell on the not unblack dog. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:10, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

You folks seem to have issues with AWB. Perhaps you should do something about that instead of adding text that could be placed in every single part of the style guide. Someone still has not explained why "generally" does not seem to mean "generally" to them, or how "common sense and the occasional exception" has to be restated repeatedly. If people aren't understanding all that, it's not the guideline's fault, it's theirs. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 22:38, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

First of all apologies for the length of the post - it reflects my belief on the importance of the matter

I regularly use AWB and have rules set up to propose changes to some contractions. Checking "it's", for example, has to be reviewed as it could be either "it's" or "its" - without the check the incorrect "it's" cannot be changed to "its". Every proposed change to contractions, and indeed every change, I make is reviewed by me and if the context has been changed, then I rewrite the sentence to accommodate. The problem seems to be that some editors think that those using AWB are using it without checking.

Wiki being neither a scholarly work nor an academic journal - Wiki is indeed something new. That does not mean that we should lower the standards of grammar to a level below those works. The problem is that when saying "sometimes they are fine" depends on the reader, and the editor reading it. How would it be worded to better explain when it is fine, and when it is not? The basic problem is that written and spoken English are been very different. Written English has traditionally had contractions at an extremely low level, for example the APA guide says to not use them. Suggesting that articles allow contractions would make them more spoken than written.

MoS tries to guide people into correctly editing articles along a general path which aims to keep all articles in a similar vein. It would be strange to find some full of contractions and some with none. The problem is still when and when not. I hope that someone can come up with some sort of sense which can show differentiation between the two - I for one cannot. What about contractions such as "I'd", "We'd", and similar - are we saying those should not be automatically changed either ? I think that the real problem is those editors wishing to retain "don't" and "won't" etc. want to stop every contraction being removed from Wiki and see the spreading uses of AWB as the main problem in removing them.

It would be wrong of me to assume that contractions are not to be allowed at all, yet examples like the "very tall" one above are blatantly a problem with understanding as the "was not" and "wasn't" refers to "very tall" and the context of very tall has not been changed by the reintroduction of the o and space, after all it is a shortening of exactly the same thing, they are the same words, not different ones, reduced by punctuation.

Perhaps it is time for some research to be done which would show what the various current style handbooks (Chicago etc) and guides on grammar show. I found this [1] and [2] quite informative and it seems, at least here, that informal and formal are the basic delimiters.

It is a shame that I may have to remove the contractions rules from AWB as most changes, in my opinion, improve the articles. "Stilted wording" and "Victorian school-room prose" does not help those editors trying to improve grammar and prose, it merely suggests that the current editors making the accusations are perhaps not very well versed in grammar or they feel we should be adopting a more informal pose. If wikipedia is to be seen as a formal publication or an informal one, and if that is something which is going to be important in peoples acceptance of it as a serious encyclopaedia, is another matter. Chaosdruid (talk) 00:37, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Agree with Chaosdruid. The arguments against AWB for contractions could be used against any AWB edit. User:Art LaPella/Because the guideline says so#AWB. Art LaPella (talk) 00:58, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

This editor was removing two or three a minute, so clearly wasn't reviewing them. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 05:45, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I said the arguments against AWB for contractions, not the arguments against specific editors and specific edits. I hope we have some mechanism for controlling abuses of AWB, other than arguing against AWB in general – assuming we don't want to clearly outlaw AWB altogether. Mildly discouraging AWB in general will have the effect of driving out conservative AWB users, while leaving the aggressive AWB users to continue. Art LaPella (talk) 06:05, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't think contractions should be used in formal text. There might be occasional exceptions, but the examples provided don't convince me. There is nothing "stilted" in "would have". Tony (talk) 01:27, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I'd should not be changed to I had or I would: either it is in a direct quotation and it should be left alone, or it isn't and the use of the first person should be removed altogether. In the Peter Roth example, “In high-school, Roth pursued basketball, but as he was not very tall he changed to music lessons” is too informal, but “as he was not very tall” is quite unidiomatic: that sentence had better be just rewritten. --A. di M. (talk) 01:56, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Precisely. I would have rewritten it myself if it were not also so vague that I'm not sure exactly what was meant. Tweaking wasn't to was not is not a help to anybody. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:03, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the text's quality remained poor. However, I don't agree that the edit actually worsened it or altered its meaning. —David Levy 02:44, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Instead, I think that it changed the sentence from one which sounds like the writer is just not used to write in encyclopaedias to one which sounds like the writer is just not proficient in English, in any register. That's pretty much worsening it, IMO. As for the meaning, it means that he (thought he) was too short to be likely to become a successful basketball player whether with or without the contraction, but I do perceive a difference in emphasis in the direction PMA says. In any event, even if there was an improvement, it was definitely not worth the time spent by people having the page on their watchlists and the resources to store one more revision of the page, and the edit summary calling it a "typo" sounds like [Lynn's writing class participant's teacher. --A. di M. (talk) 09:09, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't perceive a change in overall style or emphasis, but we agree that the wording is poor either way, so this matters very little.

Indeed, the edit was not worthwhile, but this is an unavoidable aspect of operating a wiki. I agree that contractions shouldn't be blindly replaced, but I believe that it's the potential for good prose to be harmed (not the potential for bad prose to remain bad) that justifies our concern. —David Levy 14:35, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Chaosdruid suggests that objection to the automated removal of contractions "merely suggests that the current editors making the accusations are perhaps not very well versed in grammar or they feel we should be adopting a more informal pose." As I am one of those editors (over here ), I feel that I should address this. In point of fact, I make my living as a copyeditor. I specialize in editing reference works and educational works. It is because I am a copyeditor who is well versed in grammar, style, and how they apply to formal works that I object to AWP expanding contractions.

Chaosdruid also suggests a review of current style manuals and such. For the record, the Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition) addresses contractions in 5.103, which begins with "Most types of writing benefit from the use of contractions," and continues in the same vein. The third edition of Garner's Modern American Usage, which typically advocates the more formal or traditional approach whenever possible, spends most of page 198 debunking those who object to the use of contractions, citing several other authorities in the process. Those are the most recently published such works in my collection; I could cite others as well.

In short, the claim that contractions have no place in formal writing has no basis. When I object to those who would override considerations of euphony, cadence, register, and readability in the service of a rule that, while flawed, is at least easily quantifiable, this objection is not because I am not well versed in grammar or am trying to lower the tone of Wikipedia. Rather the contrary. — Shmuel (talk) 06:44, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Well said. I agree completely with Shmuel, especially the last paragraph. Chicago agrees with Shmuel! What more do you need? The rule should be struck. It is unnecessary and can't be applied intelligently. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 09:01, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

• Is anyone seriously suggesting that WP article text (i.e., not quoted text) should contain "would've", ever? That is what the current text appears to condone. Tony (talk) 05:55, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

• No, but don't and can't are common, and are often fine. It's the semi-automated removal that's objectionable. Either the caution in the MoS that editors shouldn't go around changing style issues counts for something or it doesn't. Every time people see editors arrive at articles they've not edited before to change someone's writing because a rule somewhere says they should it pisses people off, and that brings the MoS into disrepute. So I think we need to make clear to people that the automated fiddling has to stop, unless they're fixing clear errors, e.g. spelling mistakes, it's instead of its, etc. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 06:01, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Using bots (sensitively) to bring WP article text in line with the guidelines is necessary when we are approaching four million articles. Isn't it up to BAG? Tony (talk) 06:08, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

(ec x2) I did 7 AWB edits in 3 minutes during a session today - it is not unusual to do that many, especially if there are only 1 or two changes to be made - that is why AWB is so popular :¬) - why oh why have people started a sub discussion up there - its much easier to follow if chronological order is kept Chaosdruid (talk) 06:11, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

The guideline said contractions should "generally" be avoided. That left it to editorial judgment. No one should be going around imposing their judgment on articles they've never edited two or three edits a minute for several hours. This—"The Arbitration Committee has ruled that editors should not change an article from one guideline-defined style to another without a substantial reason unrelated to mere choice of style ... "—has to be respected. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 06:22, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Only if "guideline-defined" is inconsistent with the word "generally". Heck, all guidelines have an implicit "generally" in them, so what does "guideline-defined" mean if it only applies to rules with no exceptions? Also, in my case it isn't true that "Every time people see editors arrive at articles they've not edited before to change someone's writing because a rule somewhere says they should it pisses people off"; I do that without getting nearly so much animosity. Art LaPella (talk) 06:29, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

The quoted text refers to cases in which two or more styles have equal standing in the MoS (i.e. neither style is preferred). It doesn't apply to cases in which one style is recommended over another.

The word "generally" reflects the fact that exceptions should be taken into account (rather than rigidly imposing the guideline-defined style when doing so is illogical), and there appears to be wide agreement that editors shouldn't blindly replace contractions (and should instead consider their context and ensure that the change doesn't result in inferior prose). —David Levy 14:35, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

@Shmuel - Well, as far as I can see those manuals talk about informal v formal - is that not the case ? Chaosdruid (talk) 06:57, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

While those of us objecting to your position have been agreeing—even insisting—that the use of non-contracted forms affects both tone and register, often in a positive way, Chicago and Garner are decidedly not confining themselves to informal writing in asserting the utility of contractions. I would also question your use of "as far as I can see" when it does not appear that you have actually looked this up. You mean "I would assume." On what basis you would do so is anybody's guess. — Shmuel (talk) 07:16, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I do not ass-u-me : that is why I asked you but obviously you cannot resist a dig. If you do not know what as far as I can see means, it means "As far as I can see" I cannot see waht is not in front of me. I do not possess any American references as I am not American. I have seen quotes and links on the Chicago website and am not going to buy the book, nor pay and fees for access to a website when people like you can easily tell us. There is no need for you to get personal, simply answer the question or not. Chaosdruid (talk) 12:50, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that contractions are consistent with an encyclopedic tone, but it is not unreasonable to ask that people read the text on a case-by-case basis before replacing them.

Also, let's not have assumptions about what people really meant. No one here is telepathic (I assume). If there's a question about what someone meant, ask him or her. Don't tell him or her. Darkfrog24 14:10, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

This became personal when Chaosdruid claimed that those on the other side were either ignorant or heedless of grammar. Putting that aside, I have already answered his or her question. Yes, I am citing references that deal with formal writing.

Perhaps a British authority will be more convincing. One might note page 127 of the Cambridge Guide to English Usage, by Pam Peters. I will note the obvious and say that it is a formal reference work. Peters explains that contractions used to be considered "too colloquial for the written medium," but that this is no longer the case. "The writers of formal documents may feel that they undermine the authority and the dignity of their words. But the interactive quality that contractions lend to a style is these days often sought, in business and elsewhere. They facilitate reading by reducing the space taken up by predictable elements of the verb phrase, and help to establish the underlying rhythms of prose. For all these reasons, contractions are used from time to time in this book." — Shmuel (talk) 18:02, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Do not misquote me "perhaps not very well versed in grammar or they feel we should be adopting a more informal pose." - You chose the first one to apply to you rather than the second and then made comments as if the second half of the sentence never existed Chaosdruid (talk) 20:18, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I did no such thing, but then you continue to pretend that I never addressed the latter. Either way, further bickering over this is out of place here. (If you must argue further over who insulted whom first, take it to my user page.) — Shmuel (talk) 20:25, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Virtually every style guide I own says contractions are discouraged; APA, MLA, Associated Press. The Chicago is one of the few that doesn't openly discourage them. I did find mention of a few that encourage it, although as I do not have the books or access to them so my understanding of these ones is cursory and secondhand (still with what I have I can safely posit that the majority of American style guides at the very least treat them with ambivalence). Really, it hinges on three points: one, certain contractions are essentially never allowable even in "casual" usage, such as "ain't". Secondly, it depends on the audience. For example, from my time in the US Federal Government, contractions were used purposefully in adhering to a "write as you talk" model to improve rapport with readers (so basically a public relations move). Three, we are attempting to be an encyclopedia, which aligns us more with academic, rather than mass-market, forms of style. I would say those are factual statements. What we do with that is another question. Frankly, if we aligned ourselves with one style guide, only amending it for the realities of creating a reference work for a web reader, we would be better off. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 19:07, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

That contractions are much rarer in formal writing is true, but that they have no place at all is not, as someone's quotation from Britannica shows. --A. di M. (talk) 19:29, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

APA and MLA deal with academic writing, which is far more rarefied than most formal writing, including encyclopedias. I don't think even the maintainers of APA and MLA style would claim they ought to be used outside of that realm. I'm not sure AP is directly relevant either, but in any event it does not say that contractions should never be used, just that one should "avoid excessive use of contractions." (Note: I quote this from the 2007 edition. I don't have the 2010 edition, but I doubt this is among the changes.) I do not believe anybody here has disagreed with that. — Shmuel (talk) 19:49, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

It would be better to pick a single style guide than to invent one, as we do now; but that is equivalent to saying it would be better to reproduce the 1911 Britannica as it stands than permit OR; one of the two may be better, but neither is desirable. An English or an American style-guide? One for journalists or for academics? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:18, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

What I'd like to know is (a) what exactly is meant by formal writing, and (b) who decided that Wikipedia articles all had to be written that way, no matter the subject matter? The overarching theme of MoS discussions going back as far as I remember is that "once size fits all" is rarely a good idea, especially when it's not even clear where that size came from. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 19:43, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I see that David Fuchs has revert-warred against the advice not to change from wasn't to was not mechanically, on the grounds that it adds nothing. That is a falsehood; the edits which have provoked this long thread were done by AWB - and if the sentence removed adds nothing else, it is a caution against using AWB without thinking. If it is removed again, I will consider what relief it is necessary to request from the relevant authorities. It would be better to have no AWB than to have it abused. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:18, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I've reverted your change once; considering you seem to be attempting to rewrite the entire guide without discussing first anyhow, I don't see that as unreasonable. If you want to complain about AWB, you simply are on the wrong page. Go start an RfC somewhere else about it if you feel that strongly. I've never touched the damn tool and don't care one whit, but I do object to you frontloading the style guide with verbiage. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 19:22, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

And I object very strongly to the sweeping phrases of this foolish page being used to justify active harm. If you think the section too long, take it out altogether; while I agree that contractions should generally be avoided, we've had several voices here that don't. Mechanically does mean AWB - but it also means any other good soul who thinks that the solution to don't is always do not, clarity, rhythm, and sense be damned. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:33, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

So in other words you admit you are not working in the best interests of this page, and you're content to continue your past behavior of edit warring to get what you want. Splendid. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 19:36, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Not working in the best interest of this page? What's that supposed to mean? I am working in the best interests of Wikipedia. The best interests of this page are - like all WP space pages - to serve Wikipedia (which, at the moment, it doesn't do at all well); I have therefore supplied a novel (and shorter) form of words in order to meet David Fuchs' criticism.

Since Slim Virgin has lengthened it again, I subjoin my proposal; it may be useful to endorse editorial judgment in a separate, general, statement.

In most cases, uncontracted forms such as do not or it is should be preferred to contracted ones such as don't or it's, as the latter are less formal. However, replacing them should not be done mechanically; in many contexts, rewriting the sentence is preferable.

Is this, however, a declaration that this page has a goal independent of Wikipedia, which David Fuchs is attempting to serve, whether or not it causes the encyclopedia harm? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:48, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Pma, I want the section to make two points clear: (a) that contractions aren't always wrong, and (b) that they shouldn't be removed mechanically because removal often requires a rewrite. They're separate points and I feel both are important to stop the knee-jerk removals. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 21:02, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

In most cases, uncontracted forms such as do not or it is should be preferred to contracted ones such as don't or it's, as the latter are less formal. Contractions should not be expanded mechanically; they are sometimes acceptable, and when they aren't, they should often be removed by rewriting the sentence.

To my ear, this is a self-illustrating example: are not would change the emphasis; whereas should not is intentionally proscriptive (on conduct, not content). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:14, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

That's fine by me. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 21:32, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Could we please make clear that people should not add advice to the MoS unless multiple style guides support what they're adding, and if there are good style guides that disagree, make that clear too, with inline citations perhaps? Also, please don't try to impose the standards of academic writing across the board, because it isn't appropriate for the overwhelming majority of our articles, and it's not going to help us retain readers. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 19:59, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

What style guide addresses AWB use? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 21:12, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Many style guides recommend thinking about what you're doing. I regret to see that this is controversial at MOS. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:19, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

There are two perennial problems with MoS:

• (1) People add their own preferences as though they're written in stone. Sometimes those preferences reflect commonly held positions in good style guides, and sometimes they're idiosyncratic. If we could stop adding the latter, we'd be miles ahead.

• (2) Wikignomes see those preferences and start imposing them across the board on articles they've otherwise not edited, which is often inappropriate, leads to poor writing, and leads to internal inconsistency because later editors continue to do what they were doing before the gnome arrived. This annoys people and makes them dislike the MoS. That makes them arrive here to change the MoS, which in part accounts for the large number of edits the page sees, which makes it unstable, which makes people not like it ... Rinse and repeat. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 21:30, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I do not (or don't) understand the argument against expanding contractions. I'm not going to bring in style sources, but I also feel that contractions read more informally. But if I want to stress "not", I add emphasis to it; otherwise, I read them approximately the same and I don't discern a difference in the author's intent. Where above it seems that some perceive a change in meaning between "wasn't/was not very tall", I read them as meaning the same. Can someone please explain how they see this changes the meaning? As a self-proclaimed gnome, I agree with SV's #2 point for the most part, though I tend to rely on the tools enforcing the rules. But the MoS should not be able to have it both ways; if it wants to prescribe a widespread style, it should accept articles being edited to fit the format. Solely editing to change contractions may be excessive, but fixing them in the process of making other changes seems to harmless when edits are easily reverted. —Ost (talk) 22:36, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

As in the quote above, expanding when they aren't, they should often be removed by rewriting the sentence to when they are not already adds more emphasis than necessary; when they are not would be grotesque.

For the other, the point is that English has no associative law. In because he wasn't very tall, was is grouped with not by construction; because he was not very tall can be read as grouping not with very - and not very tall is a coy way of saying short. (It is worse than ambiguous, since it is naturally so read; if the author meant to group was with not, he would use wasn't.)

Any wikignome who relies on the tools to enforce the rules is relying on our rules to automatically produce English - and automatically produce the English the author of the article meant. No set of rules can do either of these; the second also presumes the rules are telepathic. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:48, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)It may seem grotesque to you, but at least according to WP:ADVISOR, it is what it prescribed for users that type NOT (which I believe is usually naïvely done to add emphasis). I certainly do not hear emphasis on "not" whenever I see it; maybe this is a cultural difference, but this seems like a personal emphasis that some readers add (perhaps because they tend to speak in contractions). I'll defer to you on the not very point, because I would not speak the second way, at least not in the example given; I've never heard "not very" mean "the opposite of". —Ost (talk) 23:01, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Litotes. --A. di M. (talk) 00:43, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Also, gnoming doesn't mean using tools blindly without checking edits. The tools are made to make it easier to enforce rule without watching every page of the MoS and monitoring every edit, but I never implied that editor discretion isn't necessary. That includes checking AWB edits, but if the rules are meant to encompass most articles, there should be few reverts from editors cleaning up articles. —Ost (talk) 23:05, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Bots 2

Whether or not we want contractions edited: Changes to the Manual of Style should cause changes to the rest of Wikipedia or the Manual is meaningless. Outlawing automation doesn't make the job get performed more carefully; it makes the job be ignored (except maybe on a couple featured articles nobody reads), and again the Manual is meaningless. If changes to the rest of Wikipedia bring people here to object to guidelines, that is a good thing; isn't that how Wikipedia consensus is supposed to work? It is possible to use AWB without reviewing the changes as carefully as one would without AWB, but it is also possible to confront such abuses without shutting down automation. Of course, if the main goal is to create a debating society, then changing the outside world is an unnecessary distraction. Art LaPella (talk) 00:08, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Until a few hours ago, I was not opposed to automation; I assumed it would be used in accordance with this guideline and general policy. (I thought some provisions inappropriate for mindless editing even so.) Now I am.

The question is "which changes?" This is a guideline; all its provisions are to be applied with common sense and occasional exception. This applies doubly to those which are controversial - and most of them are.

Automation cannot allow for any of that; AWB will do so only if applied with the utmost care and discretion. Those who "tend to rely on the tools enforcing the rules" are not applying care and discretion.

These guidelines were and are written for those who, considering an article, know what they want to say, and want advice on how to ssy it; not for going and searching for some fine point of English grammar and then applying a MOS rule to the letter. But to the letter is unfair; the gnomes omit those letters which spell generally, normally, sometimes, usually or are intended to be applied in awareness of the article context and of the rest of the English language. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:36, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Guidelines are supposed to describe the best current practices, so it's changes to Wikipedia which should cause changes to the MOS, not vice versa. --A. di M. (talk) 00:43, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Quite so. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:48, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Art, the MoS isn't policy, so it's not appropriate to go around applying it blindly. It's fine to use tools to remove spelling mistakes and the like, but not to enforce style preferences. We've had this problem over and over for years. Editors used to go around removing image sizes because the MoS said so (that caused a lot of fights and made articles look silly), or removing the passive voice, and a thousand other things, issues the MoS doesn't even recommend anymore. It's an example of the issues raised in this recent Independent article—guidelines and articles lurching back and forth because of some obscure argument somewhere that a gnome decides is definitive. It's incredibly off-putting. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 00:59, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

It isn't appropriate to blindly apply policies either.

All editors, whether utilizing special tools or not, are obliged to pay attention to what they're doing and understand why they're doing it.

The indiscriminate application of style rules is potentially harmful, irrespective of whether it stems from unmonitored AWB use, a failure to adequately consider context, or a misguided belief that a rule's letter trumps its spirit. —David Levy 02:33, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. I believe this summarizes the matter; I have been bold and have written a lightly edited version of it into the guideline. If anybody can disagree, I would appreciate it if they said so here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:26, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

First of all, there's no reason why using AWB to apply a rule (the distinction between policies and guidelines strikes me as mostly Wikilawyering; either there is a consensus or there isn't) has to be any more blind than applying the rule without AWB. What should be called "blind" are the articles nobody sees because they aren't using AWB. So the real question is whether to fix MoS problems one encounters by any means, AWB or not.

I wasn't around for the image size and passive voice wars, but if those guidelines were removed from the MoS after objections, it sounds like the system worked. It sounds like if you guys (oops, I didn't mean to exclude SlimVirgin) had your way, those rules would still be in the MoS, useless for any purpose except to cause another disruption if anyone ever noticed them, which they wouldn't.

But let's pin this idea down more precisely so we can see how it would work: It can't mean that you only use the MoS on your own article, because of WP:OWN. It would have to mean that you can only use the MoS when writing your own text, not to change someone else's. So there would be no reason to ever mention that you were using the MoS. And so nobody would know if anyone was really using it. And they wouldn't; I have lots of English books on my bookshelf I haven't looked at lately, and without any kind of peer pressure, the MoS would be just one more English book.

Of course, if there really is a consensus against making the MoS mean anything, I can find something else to do. Art LaPella (talk) 03:27, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

No, there is no consensus against making MOS mean anything; it should mean what every other guideline means: a summary of what editors agree on in practice when actually editing articles, put in one place so we don't have to repeat ourselves.

It should not mean the Secret Fulcrum of Wikipedia, where a handful of self-appointed mavens decide esactly what everyone else must do, and send out bots to enforce their will; I hope you don't need it to mean that. If you do, please say so. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:44, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Every other guideline is cited when making edits. So should the Manual of Style.

I'm not convinced that there should even be a Manual of Style. But if there is one, I think Wikipedia will run more smoothly if we use it. If we don't want to use it, just change it to an essay. I too am frustrated when "a handful of self-appointed mavens decide exactly what everyone else must do", but at the same time I am faulted ("Wikignomes" are faulted, and I surely fit that category) because "This annoys people and makes them dislike the MoS. That makes them arrive here to change the MoS". That is exactly what is needed to counteract the "self-appointed mavens" problem. We should do one or the other: just call it an essay, or use it. Otherwise, we spend half our time arguing about whether it means anything or not. Art LaPella (talk) 04:01, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Guys in the plural is not longer generally taken to exclude women, except e.g. when explicitly contrasted with chicks. I hear native English speakers address groups containing both males and females as “guys” nearly every day, and I've heard entirely female groups addressed that way at least half a dozen times in the past few months. I daresay that in contemporary spoken English you and you guys are just the second person singular and plural pronouns respectively, akin to e.g. [tú] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) and [sibh] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) in Irish. --A. di M. (talk) 14:58, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree in part, and am partly puzzled.

• Who said MOS shouldn't be cited? It shouldn't be blindly imposed - especially by bots, which can only act blindly.
• Wikipedia will run more smoothly if we use it. Wikipedia never has run more smoothly when the MOS has been used. That's because what it says is not consensus; which is also why it is only stable by revert-warring.
• If it is cited, it should first be consensus; it should describe the English language; it should have a rationale for what it says.
• As it is now, it is an essay; we can either admit this and start over, or change it once and forever. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:12, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

• • Then I don't know what "a summary of what editors agree on in practice" means. How is that incompatible with applying it throughout Wikipedia? And once again, editing without AWB is more blind than editing with it, because most articles are never seen.
  • I could address your other points better if I could understand your alternative. You seem to be against any practical use of the MoS, but you say you aren't.

Art, the example of image sizes, and all the other hard-won issues, aren't examples of the system working. People had to fight, in some cases for a long time, for common-sense changes. People leave Wikipedia because of this atmosphere of nitpicking. Please do read this article. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 04:25, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

That article isn't about the MoS, but it is about nitpicking. (It's also about feminism, but we aren't likely to agree on that.) Do you think I like the "atmosphere of nitpicking"? When the arguments go on and on about some obscure detail, you're unlikely to find my name except to mention civility or otherwise bring things back to reality. If you like contractions for instance, eliminate the rule entirely, rather than write a whole paragraph of nitpicking to describe how you mean it but you really don't mean it. That will just lead to more nitpicking about whether the rule really applies or not. I can only guess what the image size war was like, but if people are making up rules just because they lust for power, then people should watch this page to revert them, not just hope nobody will notice the rules. Art LaPella (talk) 04:46, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

There's more nitpicking that goes on because of the MoS than any other single issue, Art. And the reverting issue is not so easy. We finally got rid of the requirement to wikify dates. We finally got rid of the absurd overlinking. We finally got rid of the prohibition on fixing image sizes. I say "we," but it was other people who fought those battles, not me (Tony1 can take a lot of the credit). It's utterly draining, it can go on for literally years, and it sometimes ends up at ArbCom. I recall that people actually left because of the date linking arguments. We should not be giving so much weight to a guideline that has the power to do this. We should be giving advice (this and this and this are best practice), and we should be very clear that wikignomes must not go around imposing the MoS's style preferences, because it's that imposition that people resent. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 04:55, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, there's more nitpicking that goes on because of the MoS than any other issue, except perhaps for style arguments from people who can't be bothered with the MoS or any other form of consensus. Of course it's a major problem. What's hard is to state a solution, within the bounds of "Anybody can edit". I don't think the solution is to have one wiki-drama to decide a guideline, and then have another wiki-drama to decide if the first wiki-drama should have any practical effect; rather, I think that guidelines should be put into practice. And once again "it's that imposition that people resent" is only indirectly true at best; I don't get nearly so much resentment. What causes resentment is the damn the torpedoes attitude that often goes with that imposition. Dictators at the Manual of Style are a problem, but style dictators throughout Wikipedia who don't bother with consensus are a bigger problem, so I conclude that the easiest place to fix it is right here at the MoS. I can't even get them to make the rules consistent with each other, but I nag them regularly. Art LaPella (talk) 05:27, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

(e.c.) Comment. To deal first with Mr Anderson's complaint. He says (and I've changed the typography because I didn't pick up the green), In "because he wasn't very tall", "was" is grouped with "not" by construction; "because he was not very tall" can be read as grouping not with very – and "not very tall" is a coy way of saying "short".

No, the attachment of "was" and "not" is directly derived from oral mode and arose because people slurred over it in the first place, not because they wanted some intimate semantic connection between the two items or to avoid some connection between "not" and "very": it is a phonological, not a grammatical artefact, and the coyness Mr Anderson imputes could be there in either form and rather depends on the larger discourse. The grammar is totally unchanged in terms of how the items are interrelated; only the grammatical register of the text changes in the flagging of a more informal relationship between writer and reader.

In writing, contractions are still primarily rooted in the direct quotation of oral speech. The fact that we use contractions freely on talk pages is evidence of this, because talk on talk-pages (note that title—no coincidence there) is a hybrid form, lying somewhere between written and oral modes. The same is true of an email to a friend, of text messages, of transcripts of oral discourse, and in some advertising and public signage. Yes, there has been a shift towards less formal social relations in all anglophone societies over the past century, and this is reflected in the greater use of contractions in some written registers. But it is rarely appropriate in an encyclopedic register, which is supposed to convey smooth authority and neutrality, not a "Hey there, we're friends, thanks for reading my article text, you're welcome" kind of come-down-to-your-level self-conscious intimacy. Authorititative encyclopedic text is not a friendly email, a TV autocue, an ad at the bus-stop, or a sign in the vet's surgery that would be harsh were it not for the contraction ("Don't feed your dog dairy products.") These registers all use intimacy, friendliness, to engage—sometimes to pretend to engage—on the same level as the reader for a variety of social or political reasons, and occasionally to save space. That's fine.

But in WP articles, the text engages with readers in a quite different way. Parallel to this different engagement is that we don't use "I" or "you" normally in article text. I don't accept that "when they aren't" is right for WP article text (i.e., excluding quotations, of course), and it is fanciful to claim, as someone did above, that "when they are not" is "grotesque". No one has yet exemplified text in which a contraction is superior and/or more appropriate than the spelled-out form in WP article register; one example looked persuasive at first glance, but lies outside WP's register for another reason: non-neutral editorialising (which proves the point, doesn't it). And no one has tackled the issues of which contractions are plain gawky ("should've"), and whether it's ok to be inconsistent within an article: who wants to have to police that?

I spoke with User:Noetica last night to sound out his opinion on the matter—without knowing what it would be. He said, in brief, that he sees utterly no reason to change the pre-existing MoS advice on contractions: it left quite enough leeway to ignore the advice against contractions if a context is found in which it would be better to contract. While he couldn't think of an example when I pressed him, he said the proviso at the top of MoS to "apply common sense", and the slight leeway provided in the pre-existing version, are the satisfactory solution. His final comment: we could add explicit riders to everything at MoS, but that would be useless bloat. One or two editors clearly feel comfortable arguing that the guideline should be scattered with "generallies", "normallies", and "but do as you please if the fancy takes you", but that is irritating to the readers and clutters what is already too-long a text. The rider at the top is quite sufficient, as David Fuchs points out.

Concerning bots: methinks that it's all too convenient to pour tripe on bot-runners when you don't particularly agree with an aspect of a guideline the bot is fixing in articles; care is required, but virtually banning bot actions to bring this unruly site into harmony with the style guides would be to shoot ourselves in the foot with nearly four million articles. No one has brought up an example of where a bot has spelled out a contraction that is not an improvement in the text. I see little evidence of false positives.

And one more thing: this notion that "style guides should be or are properly prescriptive or descriptive alone" cuts no ice: they have always been both. You know that; I know that; why is it being put about again? Tony (talk) 04:30, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

All written English - except perhaps for some of the worst bureaucratese - is rooted in oral English; English is one language, not two. The effort to enforce (literally) deracinated prose is misguided - and the product unreadable Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:42, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Tony, we need an MoS that's rooted in the advice given by good style guides, where applicable. The problem is that editors add their own preferences, then wikignomes impose those preferences on articles. You were stunned yourself when you saw the ridiculous image sizes we were left with because wikignomes wouldn't allow us to fix image sizes, thanks to the MoS. That single issue went on for years, and led to heaven knows how many rows, how much bad feeling. People would work hard on articles they cared about, only to have some uninvolved editor arrive to insist that they reduce their image sizes to the point where no one could see them.

Schmuel cited some good style guides that don't mind contractions, and we ought to take that seriously. In addition, we disagree about what's meant by an encyclopedic register, and how that would be applied to, e.g. Cum shot and similar. Wikipedia isn't the Encyclopaedia Britannica and it isn't an academic journal. It succeeded because it's not those things. It will flounder—as they flounder—if it tries to be like them. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 04:46, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but we did fix the images issue, didn't we—both the default size and the restrictions on using larger/smaller sizes? I wasn't aware of the problem until late in the day, and probably should have been. One reason for the slow response on sizes was that monitor sizes and download speeds have increased only gradually: the frog in the pot of slowly heating water didn't realise until rather late that the default size and our ability to adjust image sizes to the local context should have kept pace. (Aside: frankly, I find image management to be pretty bad even now.)

The style guides provide varying advice on contractions and other matters. None applies to the unique context of an online, international site such as the English WP. We have to make our own minds up on this, by consensus.

On Cum shot (I'd not dreamt WP would have such an article!), it shows how topic is different from register. I still think the language of the article should be similar to that for Queen Elizabeth II, even if Her Maj has never ever thought of the notion of cum shot. The "wasn't" contraction doesn't look too bad there, and I'd probably leave it if copy-editing; but even if changed to "was not", the stilted bit there is the comma after "1970s", not any spelling out of "wasn't" (I've spelled it out for the point made here): "it was not until the advent of hard-core pornography in the 1970s, that the stereotypical cum shot scene became a standard feature—displaying ejaculation with maximum visibility." And why "hard-core pornography", but "cum shot scene"? I don't think I want it on my contribs list, hehe. Tony (talk) 06:43, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I want to stress that I didn't know there was a contraction in Cum shot, having never read it. I saw someone link to it somewhere recently and mentioned it only as a rhetorical gesture. :) SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 06:48, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Aw, I had taken your reference to be on purpose, and a clever one. We need an injection of wry humour here and a few examples where contractions might just survive. I think some flexibility will go a long way in treating this issue in articles ("use common sense"); but I am slightly concerned that some editors might misconstrue a change in the guideline wording to conduct a well-meaning campaign to make WP article text more "friendly", informal. What a wondrous thing WP is that it can treat such disparate topics within the same set of guidelines and policies! Tony (talk) 14:23, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I guess because hard is an adjective and cum is a noun and/or because hard-core is a fixed expression (occurring with extremely high frequency, and whose meaning cannot be inferred from those of its constituents) and cum shot isn't. But there seems to be no infallible rule predicting which compounds in English get written with a space, which with a hyphen, and which with neither, and it is very common for them to shift from one form to another. When in doubt, I just look up an up-to-date dictionary or search language corpora. --A. di M. (talk) 14:58, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Of course no style guide is entirely prescriptive or entirely descriptive, but some are mostly prescriptive and some are mostly descriptive. The white keys on a piano don't scatter all of the incident light and the black keys don't absorb all of it (otherwise you couldn't see a laser pointer pointed at a black key), but this doesn't make the words white and black useless.

As for "text in which a contraction is superior and/or more appropriate than the spelled-out form", I've already provided such an example. --A. di M. (talk) 14:58, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

"No one has brought up an example of where a bot has spelled out a contraction that is not an improvement in the text." False. Even disregarding the disingenuous edit summary, do you actually think this edit was an improvement? If Bender235 had done that by hand rather than through AWB, and spent a minute on it rather than two seconds, he would have had a chance to change that sentence to actual formal written English, rather than something which looks like written by someone who started learning English six months ago (at the very least, removing the hyphen in “high-school”). --A. di M. (talk) 15:07, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

@PMA: What you're writing is covered by the rest of the MoS to a good degree. Once again, your issues with automated edits are not in the purview of the MoS. If you want to add restrictions to what types of automated edits people can make (so, for example, if MoS changes are allowed) then start a centralized discussion. As established already, many people here don't use AWB at all. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 16:36, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

That is another falsehood. If it were covered unequivocally by the rest of MOS, we would not be having this discussion. Furthermore, mindless edits are harmful, however they are done; that's Levy's point. (The only reason AWB comes into this at all is that it permits more mindless edits in a given quantity of time - and that its irresponsible users can say "but I trust AWB; nothing can go wrong"; some comments to that effect have already been made above.)

And that's a behavioral issue, not a style guideline one. You still have yet to convince me the MoS should be telling people how to use Wikipedia editing assisters or tools when there are separate pages for their operation. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 17:10, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

MOS has had behavioral guidance all along; it's just that much of it is wrong. The only part of this page which is actually widely supported and useful is the behavioral guidance of WP:ENGVAR, which has been here longer than either of us has been editing. In practice, on the other hand, this page does give very unfortunate behavioral guidance: when MOS expresses a preference, make the change, without considering context or anything else. This is a long-needed corrective - and MOS without it should be struck from Wikipedia. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:18, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Bots 3

To slightly reword David Levy's post above, incorporating {{guideline}}:

This page is a guideline, an assistance to editorial judgment; it should be applied with common sense, and its provisions have occasional exceptions, not always stated. All editors, whether utilizing special tools or not, should pay attention to what they're doing and understand why they're doing it. The indiscriminate application of style rules is potentially harmful, whether it stems from unmonitored use of editing tools, a failure to adequately consider context, or a misguided belief that a rule's letter trumps its spirit.

Now the entire discussion above appears to agree with this, whatever our feelings about contractions; nevertheless, a single editor has reverted against it - without, it appears, disagreeing with it. The customary consequence of WP:BRD is discussion; if no objection to the content (as opposed to the wording, better done on the page itself) appears in a reasonable time, I shall restore it.

On the other hand, if MOS is intended to encourage and command editing without thought and understanding, it is actively harmful to the encyclopedia and I dispute its usefulness as a guideline. What should be done with those editors who support mindless edits is another question, to be addressed at another forum. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:51, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I have struck the indicated portion. Out of context, it gives undue stress to editing tools, which are mentioned below. While I do not think automatic tools should ever be used to enforce the Manual of Style, that is only one branch of the generic idiocy which all too often passes as "enforcing MOS compliance". Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:33, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I've tweaked the text, in part to establish a more formal tone. You'll notice that I recast the wording instead of blindly removing the contractions.  ;) —David Levy 17:51, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

“ People just don't think, that's the problem. ” — Geoffrey K. Pullum, [3]

--A. di M. (talk) 18:27, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I do disagree with it, as made clear above, and I find your edits in an attempt to entirely recast and rewrite the purpose of the manual of style harmful. If you want to make such changes, I think you need to poorpose a change in the purpose of the entire MoS first. The consequence of BRD is discussion, Pm, not "rebuttal on the talk page and then add back my changes"—you seem to skip past the discussion part rather quick. If you keep this up I'm just going to ANI with this, because it's utterly ridiculous and unhelpful. I would hope you had learned from your blocks and warnings. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 19:37, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

No, what you say above is not that you disagree with anything David Levy has now written; but that it is inexpedient to say it in the MOS. If you disagree with any sentence, any sentiment, of it, please be clearer; we cannot adjust to a substantive objection without knowing what it is. I subjoin the text for your convenience.

This page is a guideline, not a replacement for editorial judgment; it should be applied with common sense and awareness of occasional exceptions, not always stated. Users are expected to pay attention to their edits and understand the reasons behind them. The indiscriminate application of style rules is potentially harmful, whether it stems from unmonitored use of editing tools, failure to adequately consider context, or adherence to a rule's letter instead of its spirit.

What purpose of the Manual of Style has this recast? The text David Levy has left combines {{style-guideline}} and the assertion that one should think while editing to conclude guidance should not be applied indiscriminately. You have yourself claimed that this is already covered by MOS to a good degree (I don't see where - but if so, we can merge whatever it is.) Which of those is novel? Indeed, the first and the last are direct application of WP:POLICY#Adherence. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:09, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

There have always been words to this effect in the MoS, but they've not been enforced, so it's worth stressing them. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 00:39, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I concur with David Fuchs that Anderson's changes are retrograde. I feel none of the 'editorial judgement' section is necessary, as it can be seen as applying the IAR pillar. Explicit mention is bureaucracy, and patronising to editors. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:22, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

This is more WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Let's have some reasons; what do you disagree with and on what grounds? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:32, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

TLDR version

Life is too short to read all of the above. Do we really have established editors arguing in favor of using contractions here? Shame on you if so! If you are serious, please comment on this edit which I made before seeing this. --John (talk) 04:37, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

One [Two] experienced editor[s] (not me) thinks they are harmless; but several experienced editors approve your edit, but deplore the tendency to edit to make (in your case) are not around anymore. That's what the dispute is really about; the people who expand contractions without reading the context. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:41, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

"Life is too short to read all of the above. Do we really have established editors arguing in favor of using contractions here?" Yes, and if you'd read the above, you might know why. The edit you link to is a fine one. If you'd read the above, you'd also know that nobody is arguing that contractions are always the best choice. They are, however, one of many tools employed in good, readable, formal writing. Insisting that they never be used would be just as wrong as insisting they always be used. (But I tire of repeating myself. See elucidation and citations above.) — Shmuel (talk) 07:49, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

• Contractions are not harmless, and should be removed on sight; leaving the unsightly contractions is a tacit nod to their proliferation. I would even favour bot-removals of same, provided instances within quotations can be avoided. If any rewording of the resulting sentence is necessary, I'm sure someone will come along and do the necessary at some stage. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:58, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Are you a professional editor or writer, Ohconfucius? I don't mean that as a snide remark, but as a genuine inquiry, because I'm puzzled about the certainty. We have professional editors disagreeing here (e.g. Shmuel above), so the issue isn't clear-cut among professionals, as the style guides show. I'm therefore wondering what your strength of feeling is based on. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 07:55, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I struck that because it does come across as a dig rather than a question. It's just that I always wonder where the certainty about language comes from in these borderline issues. Read Charles Dickens, a great writer, from not that long ago, and his punctuation is often unrecognizable. Things change, and different parts of the world have different practices. Even within the same country—for example, the UK's different spellings that cause such consternation here—people disagree. So these are rarely, if ever, issues that it makes sense to feel strongly about. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 08:23, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Slim, you will note that I was a lot less categorical before. I guess that, like John (below), I have been watching the reopened and continuing debate on what I had assumed was a well-established consensus. I was further struck by the sentiment about how it would make a mess of the encyclopaedia if contractions were simply removed without rewriting. I am challenging the notion that each change must give rise to a perfect text. As for the underlying principled objection, the use of contractions was indeed taught to me at an early age, but it was equally strongly drummed into me that it is inappropriate to write formal or quasi-formal texts using contractions; bitter memories of being marked down as a consequence of deviation therefrom remain. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:15, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

But is there any reason for MOS to encourage edits which make a text no better - and perhaps worse? As A. di M. said above, MOS should not encourage changing a sentence from one which sounds like the writer is just not used to write in encyclopaedias to one which sounds like the writer is just not proficient in English, in any register. (

In addition, he hasn't fixed it but he removed the indicator that it may need fixing. That's no help. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:06, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Regarding "bitter memories of being marked down as a consequence of deviation therefrom remain," I understand that, and you're not alone. A lot of mistaken beliefs about proper English use are a consequence of rules from school being remembered long past the context in which they were useful. (Theodore M. Bernstein, former editor at the New York Times, wrote an entire book devoted to "Miss Thistlebottom's Hobgoblins," his term for rules learned in school that have no basis out in the real world.)

I had a class in graduate school in which I was forbidden from using semicolons, and had to drastically cut down my use of commas. The professor was quite right in doing so, as I had a tendency to use far too many of both. (I still tend to do so, but the exercise in that semester helped rein in my excesses somewhat.) If I had taken the lesson from there that semicolons were always inappropriate, I would have been in error. Indeed, some of my most cherished professors were those who insisted upon untenable rules that resulted in ridiculously stilted English... because after leaving those classes and (quite rightly) abandoning those practices, I ended up with a sensible middle ground and a vastly improved style.

It is for this reason that some classes in schools and universities bar the use of contractions. Not because they are always inappropriate for formal writing—a cursory look at formal texts in general should suffice to disabuse one of that notion—but because most students in those classes tend to use far too many of them. When you have a poster that's rolled too tightly and you want to flatten it out, you need to roll it tightly in the other direction first. If students use too many contractions, as they often do, bar them from using any at all. Once they leave school, they will rebound to using a sensible number. That, at least, is the theory. The problem comes when people (sometimes even teachers, alas) take the "rule" too much to heart and think it is actually a rule of English style in general. This is not the case. — Shmuel (talk) 22:12, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

(to Ohconfusius) There's a problem with the way writing is taught in schools. Rigid rules are often drummed into people (for no good reason, or to simplify in order to get them to remember), and they're often wrong, or outdated, or at least wrong in their absolutism. Again, not a dig at you, just a general observation, which makes me think we should stick to the best of the modern style guides. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 22:25, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Dickens is a great writer but I don't think we should aspire to write like him here. There's a long-standing consensus that using contractions is too chatty for an encyclopedia. I was shocked and horrified at the implication that this was being challenged. Please tell me I misunderstood and this was rhetorical license rather than a real position. --John (talk) 15:58, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I only meant that punctuation and grammar advice has changed a lot since Dickens, and continues to change. So what we were taught in school wasn't necessarily the most current advice, or if it was at the time it may not be now. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 22:28, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

True, and philosophically I agree with you. I do think there's a consensus among those who think about these things, that we should err on the side of writing relatively conservatively, in the paradigm we are debating here. We should not be breaking new ground but reflecting the tone of the sources we work from. The sources I use don't tend to use "ain't", they prefer "is not", and so I am going with that style. --John (talk) 09:16, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree with John's first and last comments. I would think that some of these arguers were trolls except they are long established editors. (I know. I know. Yet another essay on not suggesting that editors are trolls). Student7 (talk) 14:34, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Attempt to sabotage the role of the style guide

Now, a recent flurry of changes to the top of the MoS effectively represents a massive downgrading of the role of the style guides. To enact such changes, it would be normal to present the proposed text on the talk page first to gain consensus. Instead, the changes have been worked out on the style guide itself, making huge changes to the general principles.

These include the elevation of a new section announcing the primacy of what is called "editorial judgement" over the style guides, as a matter of principle. This flags strong "excuses" for not complying with the style guides—as if we didn't have enough already in the "use common sense" and the many instances of "generally", etc. This would be such a huge change in direction for Wikipedia—the community and the articles—that if seriously proposed it would first need careful scrutiny, debate, and consensus generation. For your convenience, here is the diff.

Could I remind editors that the style guides function to minimise edit-wars out in the articles. Although there may be instances of friction and edit-warring that relate to the style guides, without the style guides there would be anarchy. Can you imagine? There would be a constant stream of stylistic arguments flaring up into edit-wars based on this "Editorial judgement" principle: whose editorial judgement? That is the whole point of calmly discussing issues on the style-guide talk pages. In the new chaos, we'd need to start a special section at ANI to deal with style wars arising from this strong right to exert "editorial judgement" over all else. Do we have enough admins to run it? Are we prepared for the inevitable increase in instability in articles? That is why we have style guides, even if we don't agree with everything in them. Tony (talk) 01:21, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

If MOS is intended to minimize edit wars, it is an utter failure. This is "Do it MY way and we'll have stability", the claim of every POV-pusher sophisticated enough to frame it; we wouldn't put up with that on content (and it doesn't work there either); why should we put up with it here? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:37, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Tony, the MoS has always said something like this, and that was the point of the two or three ArbCom rulings that we mention in the first section, namely that editors shouldn't go around changing from one style to another. It's becoming a problem; there's a similar discussion on the CITE talk page at the moment. So I can't see the harm of expanding that section just to emphasize the point. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 01:26, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

They are two different things. It says now "that editors should not change an article from one guideline-defined style to another", such as from one citation style to another, or from British to Canadian English spelling, without good reason. But changing an article to conform with the MOS is acceptable and expected, though as with all edits with care and common sense (so e.g. not blindly using bots). As for exceptions editors can exceptionally invoke Ignore All Rules, but if challenged would have to justify doing so with something more than "editorial judgement". And WP:IAR is already linked at the top of the article.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 01:45, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Slim, this went far further than what is there already: "The Arbitration Committee has ruled that editors should not change an article from one guideline-defined style to another without a substantial reason unrelated to mere choice of style, and that revert-warring over optional styles is unacceptable.[1] Where there is disagreement over which style to use in an article, defer to the style used by the first major contributor." Isn't this quite clear? I believe the proposed change fundamentally altered the relationship between the style guides far beyond ArbCom's determination. Indeed, it would invite edit-warring at articles, which is exactly what ArbCom didn't want in its determination. I agree that it's a delicate balance—but one that has served us well, despite intermittent rumblings about particular points of style. Tony (talk) 01:47, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

While I'm uncertain of whether such a section is needed (and see no harm in discussing this), I'm baffled as to how its inclusion constituted "MAJOR MAJOR shifts" or "a huge change in direction."

Does anything stated in the text not reflect longstanding consensus? What new, controversial principles were introduced? —David Levy 01:33, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Indeed so. If there is a dispute about any of the words involved here, let us have specifics. Daivd Levy's wording is:

This page is a guideline, not a replacement for editorial judgment; it should be applied with common sense and awareness of occasional exceptions, not always stated. Users are expected to pay attention to their edits and understand the reasons behind them. The indiscriminate application of style rules is potentially harmful, whether it stems from unmonitored use of editing tools, failure to adequately consider context, or adherence to a rule's letter instead of its spirit.

Now, if, as I believe, this is consensus, and #Bots 2 and #Bots 3 demonstrate evolution ofthe wording that consenuss, then it should be restored.

If not, what is the objection?

1. Does anyone say that this is not a guideline, or replaces editorial judgment?
2. That it should not be applied with common sense and awareness of occasional exceptions?
3. That editors are not expected to pay attention to their edits and understand the reasons behind them?
4. That indiscriminate application of style rules is never harmful?

If so, let them say so, now and here. That's all the section says.

If more evolution of the wording is necessary, what is it? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:22, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

• What I said above. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:40, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Which remains without specifics. What do you disagree with? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:43, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

There is a big difference between emphasising internal consistency in articles and emphasising the primacy of editorial judgment. I cannot see the problem with saying that articles should be internally consistent. That's just plain common sense. As for emphasising the primacy of editorial judgment, if that is the case, why do we need a style guide? Michael Glass (talk) 02:52, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

• It is understandable that some people may not like to be constrained by guidelines, let alone policies. That they want no restraints does not mean they have to be diluted so as to have nil effect; however, it could mean they should re-evaluate whether they want to be part of this project. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:34, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Style guides exist to inform and advise editorial judgment; to guide it. That's why we call this a guideline. Is it intended to replace editorial judgment? Say so frankly. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:58, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

You're playing with semantics. Yes, it is intended to replace editorial freedom to "do as you please" in many areas, because if editors did as they pleased in all respects there would be chaos: edit-wars all over the place. One of the trade-offs for having an unprecendentedly free and open encyclopedia is that we sort out the wars here before they happen. That is a prime function of the MoS. I do not want to work on a project that is full of bickering and warring: let it happen here, and keep the articles relatively free from it. Tony (talk) 03:55, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

That's your theory - and that of a handful of disruptive edir-warriors beside, who in so holding violate policy - and backed by palpable falsehoods. MOS doesn't sort our disputes before they happen; it inspires unthinking editors to conduct edit wars in articles they know nothing about. But insofar as that is the role of MOS, it should not be a guideline; it should be a record of a historic failure, Until it complies with policy, I dispute its standing. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:03, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

• This style guide has functioned to minimise edit-wars in the articles I have had problems in. PPdd (talk) 04:06, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Nice to know it works sometimes. That's what it ought to do - and if it represented either consensus or English usage it would have a better chance. But that it is used to justify edits which don't pay attention to context or awareness of exceptions starts more wars - and causes more harm - than it prevents. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:14, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

• Anderson's statement, that "insofar as that is the role of MOS, it should not be a guideline; it should be a record of a historic failure, Until it complies with policy, I dispute its standing" says all about his intentions to re-weight this guideline by his none-too-subtle change, dressed up as a simple extension of fact. The fact that one or two people dispute a matter does not mean a consensus does not exist on the matter. It just means they do not accept the consensus, or perhaps they are calling 'black' 'white'. ;-) --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:18, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Not to reweight it; to weight it as a guideline - as what policy says a guideline is. It has been used too long to justify disruptive imposition of stuff made up in school some day. The opinion of two or three editors that it should be more than a guideline is unfounded in policy, in pracrice, or in its text. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:21, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

• New users view MOS as authoritative, experienced users view it with respect and with home-team loyalty[[4], and wikilawyers use it manipulatively[5]. A big change in its semi-authoritative appearance would be to cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war. PPdd (talk) 04:31, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

• It would be a pity if new users viewed this page with authority; although newbies will be over-impressed by anything with a tag on it. It has none: it doesn't describe English, it's not based on reliable sources, and it doesn't have consensus.
• The only experienced users I know of that respect MOS are the half-dozen who write in their views; most of us ignore it. I am occasionally foolish enough to think it can be fixed. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:43, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

• Your statements are inconsistent; it appears fairly transparent to me that you are trying to undermine it totally by turning it into an essay. Its standing as a guideline is clear enough to all but a vocal minority, and no reinforcement necessary – and certainly not the rather subjective language of 'editorial judgement', instead of the well accepted WP:IAR. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:33, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Note: Some of Pmanderson's comments, as well as his repeated tagging of the MoS as "disputed," indeed appear to reflect a desire to undermine the guideline's standing. Because he's adapted one of my messages and quoted me by name several times, I want to state for the record that I strongly disapprove of any such attempt.
I believe that the section in question accurately describes longstanding consensus, but if its introduction was intended to further the aforementioned campaign, I object to its inclusion (whether derived from my words or not). —David Levy 05:11, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't see this as an attempt to undermine the MoS qua guideline; rather it's an effort to point out that it's not policy. And even if it were—imagine the chaos if I now took it upon myself to go around enforcing WP:V and WP:NOR in articles I had otherwise no interest in by removing unsourced sentences two or three times a minute for the next few hours or days or weeks.

It's this attempt to enforce by otherwise uninvolved editors that's the problem. If you're editing an article and you remove a contraction, no one's going to care. But the sight of someone engaged in semi-automatic MoS enforcement (whether it's contractions, or passive voice, or image sizes, or whatever the latest thing is) is provocative, and every time someone does it, the MoS's reputation drops another notch—along the lines of the best way to get rid of a bad law is to enforce it. It's the MoS admirers who should be asking the wikignomes to tone things down a bit. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 08:07, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

We need to accept something: Whoever made this changes probably wasn't trying to "sabotage" the MoS. We're not dealing with a vandal. We're dealing with someone who probably thought that he or she was improving things. This person absolutely should have raised the issue on the talk page first, but let's see if we can't stop viewing this as an attack and view it as the unconventional delivery of some new ideas. The truth is that while most of the MoS is an accessible tribute to correct English, it does also contain rules that were made up and have been imposed on the rest of Wikipedia by their fans.

There has been a problem over the past few years in that the MoS is labeled "guideline" but followed like the rule of law. These changes seem to have something to do with that. It should either be enforced like a guideline or renamed. Perhaps we should rethink the MoS as a "list of changes that anyone is allowed to make, regardless of other factors." And by "changes," I mean "stylistic corrections that ought to have no affect on meaning." As SlimV puts it, no one should care if an editor removes a contraction or corrects punctuation or capitalization. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:28, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

And this was discussed - at length - on this talk page; see #Bots 2 and #bots 3 above. The only objection then was that this might belong on some other page, and there was wide support; there is no specific disagreement now. As best as I can tell, the only problem is that three editors want MOS to be something more than a guideline - although there has never been consensus that it should be. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:37, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I am seeing a parallel between the discussion here, and similar discussions we have had at WP:RS. On both pages we seem to have a constant tug of war between those who feel that guidelines should be broad in structure and language (favoring broad statements of principal and explanations of intent that avoid going into detail and specifics)... and those who desire it to be narrow in structure and language (favoring a "list of rules" approach that goes into narrow detail and specifics.) Both views are valid... but both can be taken to extremes, and what we should be striving for is something in the middle.

At the moment, I think the MOS is currently overly narrow (increasingly being edited towards the "list of rules" extreme). It needs to be broadened... but... in doing so we need to avoid making it overly broad (to the point where it becomes meaningless and unhelpful). Not easy, but necessary. Blueboar (talk) 15:39, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

As a point of personal privilege, I deny David Levy's charge that I want to undermine the proper standing of MOS. I would like two things from it, even in an ideal world:

• I agree precisely with what he has written (including denying that MOS should replace editorial judgment). I did not expect it to be controversial; I believe all of it to be consensus among editors in general. Those who do disagree with it violate Wikipedia consensus and policy and encourage harm to the encyclopedia; MOS should not be used to produce mindless editing. I am shocked that respectable editors should hold such a position; insofar as MOS does, I dispute it - but I go no further.
• It would be nice if MOS provisions described English usage (in an encyclopedic register), had some rationale for their enactment (such as a published style guide), or were consensus among editors. I'd settle for two out of three ;}. But all too many of these score zero out of three. (Nor do I expect this to change any time soon.)

I urge nothing else. If this be sabotage, make the most of it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:49, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

For obvious reasons, I agree with the section's wording and believe that it reflects longstanding consensus. However, as Ohconfucius noted, your statements are inconsistent. Some appear indicative of a belief that the MoS is illegitimate and should not be respected. Coupled with your repeated tagging of the "entire page as harmful" (a disruptive response to one's failure to immediately get his/her way), it's entirely reasonable to question your motives. —David Levy 18:23, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

No, my statements are conditional.

• If MOS behaves like a guideline, and is applied by editors who think about what they are doing;
• if it contains advice which is helpful to the encyclopedia and represents best practice;
• then it is useful.

The first of these is not as true as it ought to be, but I thought until yesterday that all of us agreed it should be true; I dispute this guideline if it does not mean that. The second is a long-standing problem, why many editors have a low regard for MOS, but it is a reason to dispute individual provisions. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:39, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Amen to that. --A. di M. (talk) 19:25, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

PMA, the MoS is more than a guideline, whether people want it to be or not. BlueBoar: I see no reason why the MoS cannot contain both statements of principle and specific rules. Considering that the MoS's purpose is to instruct users on correct English, which is itself made up of rules, the "list of rules" approach is probably best, even if that would not be the case for something like WP:RS. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:45, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Who says MOS is more than a guideline? MOS doesn't say so; indeed, it has borne a guideline tag for years. Does any policy say so? Not that I can find. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:06, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

The MoS doesn't say that it is more than a guideline but it is enforced as absolute rules. If it were a guideline, then people wouldn't be brought up on ANI for "violating" it. I am saying that the problem is that the MoS is labeled as one thing and enforced as something else. The name and the practice should match and they don't. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:34, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Have there been cases where editors have been blocked for not following the MOS? Blueboar (talk) 15:52, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Blocked? Wouldn't know off the top of my head. Brought up on ANI? Heck yes, myself for one. We should either treat it like a guideline or—and as much as I disapprove of the one rule I supposedly violated, this next would be the better choice overall—acknowledge the MoS for what it is and call it something that reflects that reality. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:58, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I would not say it is "more than a guideline", but rather that is a guideline does not make it less than policy. I would refer readers to WP:PGE, which gets to the heart of my point, in particular

Misconception #3: Policies tell you what you must always do, and other pages just make optional suggestions

Misconception #7: Policy pages outrank guidelines, which in turn outrank essays

This is a guideline but so is WP:EL which editors are regularly blocked and banned for ignoring. So a guideline can be as important or more important than a policy when it comes to guiding editing behaviour. Although editors will rarely be blocked for not following the MoS it is possible and probably more likely than they will be blocked for not supplying sources as required by the policy WP:V.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 23:47, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Question, John B: How are these misconceptions? The word "guideline" has at the very least strong connotations of "general direction" and "optional," and policy pages do seem more important than guidelines, which are both certainly more canon than opinion pieces written by individual editors. Please imagine non-sarcasm for my tone of voice. I am actually quite interested in your reasoning. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:11, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

But all the examples I have seen of such blocks and bans are not because EL is a guideline, but because they are revert-warring to insert links which back their POV. That's two policies. Here we have people warring "to enforce MOS" - often when their understanding of it is not how the majority would read it - and some of them have been sanctioned for that. (By this logic, it's less than a guideline; but the general view is that it is neither more nor less.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:52, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I was thinking more of spammers, the sort that participate in WP simply to promote something by repeatedly inserting links. They don't need to edit war, just do it often enough on different articles that they get four warnings and are blocked, the warnings such as {{Uw-spam1}} referring to WP:EL as a reason for them, as well as WP:SPAM, another guideline. My point was and still is that it makes no difference whether it's a policy or guideline. If it's a WP policy or guideline, or sometimes even an essay (e.g. WP:TE), that's been agreed by broad consensus then major changes should not be made without similar consensus being achieved.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 01:26, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

If it's a WP policy or guideline, or sometimes even an essay (e.g. WP:TE), that's been agreed by broad consensus. That's true of most policies, even many guidelines and some essays. But MOS is not the product of broad consensus; I've watched this sausage factory. Slim Virgin said "people add their own preferences as though they're written in stone" and she's right. Sometimes they look in style guides first; more often they remember what they learned in high school; all too often they invent stuff. But do they ever secure broad consensus? Find me an example. (Sometimes, as with ENGVAR, they achieve it; but that's chance at work.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:51, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Contractions, resumed

Addressing none of the concerns in this thread (sorry), I would like to point out that contractions may have to be used in quotes (already pointed out), but they should seldom be used in the current or future tense. We report history; we don't really know what is happening now. We are not WP:CRYSTAL. Therefore many contractions limited to past tense or past pluperfect. "Wouldn't've (!)," not "don't," "couldn't've"(!) not "can't". These tend to be a little more stilted than current tense, note. Note that editor has well made the argument above for verbal (conversation) vs written English. Makes a lot of sense IMO. Student7 (talk) 20:52, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Not so. Many contractions (didn't, for example) are preterites. More importantly, we use the present quite often, for scientific or mathematical or philosophical articles, where we are discussing non-temporal states of affairs. There isn't a thirty-third class of crystals; Perfect numbers aren't square. Rhetorical questions, where both the Britannica and we use contractions because expanding is clumsy, are often presents. Why doesn't the zero-point energy of the vacuum cause a large cosmological constant? (Observe, there, that does not is not idiom, and Why does the zero-point energy of the vacuum not cause is hard to read.)

This is, incidentally, one endemic problem with MOS; rules are phrased by somebody thinking of one case (direct statements in historical articles) and then applied to other cases where they fit less well. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:06, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I regret if anything I have said seems personal - and will be happy to strike if it does; both halves of this compound error ignore much of Wikipedia and much of English. So does most of MOS. Those who have learned that formal English has rules have yet to learn that the full syntax of a living language can't be expressed in a finite system of rules. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:34, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Exactly... One of the things that frustrates students of English (especially those who grew up speaking other languages) is that it has so many exceptions to its rules. Throughout its history, the English language has consistently resisted being formalized. The use of contractions is a case in point. In many (even most) cases, they should be avoided.... however there are a lot of exceptions to that broad rule. Blueboar (talk) 16:09, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

The solution to two of those examples is to reword them. Instead of "There isn't a 33rd class of crystals" write "There are only 32 classes of crystals". Instead of "Perfect numbers aren't square" write "All perfect numbers are non-square" (though this is a poor example as not being square is not usually a notable mathematical property and there is no term for it). The third example is a rhetorical question that should not usually appear in an article: instead the article should contain a description of the facts, such as : "the zero-point energy of the vacuum does not agree with the magnitude of the cosmological constant, a discrepancy which has various explanations."--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 16:59, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

This is another diadvantage of attempting to set rules for an encyclopedia; whether a number is, or must be, square is often a tolerably important tool in number theory; whether the number is divisible by a square is even more important (see Square-free integer, to which quadratfrei redirects). The MOS all too often sets rules for subjects where we would do better to "restrain our legislative hand" because, as the Lord Chancellor sings, we do not understand them. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:33, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

To return to the topic, I believe most people agree that two of the examples can - and probably should - be reworded, although I gather this last is not consensus; SV and Shmuel would probably dissent. But they are none of them properly solved by blindly replacing aren't by are not and so on - and it is that blind editing which this entire section is intended to address. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:45, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

For the second one, try "None of the perfect numbers are". The third one is not a rhetorical question at all, and if you answered it you would likely be awarded a Nobel prize. Also, all the items of List of unsolved problems are phrased as questions, so rewording only one of them into a statement only to avoid a contraction would be idiotic. --137.43.105.17 (talk) 19:40, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Given the present wording of WP:CONTRACTION, I'm abandoning editing of contractions, with or without AWB, rather than guess what you want changed and what you don't. Or what you do not. Whatever. Art LaPella (talk) 22:41, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Forget about us and do what is best for the encyclopedia. That's the whole point here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:45, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Or "No perfect number is square" – there are many ways to reword it to avoid the are not/aren't in the first version, and editors are not only permitted but encouraged to copy-edit articles to make them read better and so avoid stilted writing that cries out for contractions. And yes, if the article is a list of questions then it will contain questions, which is why I wrote 'not usually'. But normally such questions should be replaced.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 22:58, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I couldn't change contractions in a way that makes them read better, because contractions read fine to me. It's only at Wikipedia that I read anything about discouraging them in formal English (which I presume to be true). If I "forget about us and do what is best for the encyclopedia", Wikipedia would be much less formal; some jokes would be nice, for instance. But I know that isn't the consensus. The consensus used to be no contractions. Now we're supposed to guess about contractions. So I'll leave them alone. Art LaPella (talk) 03:47, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

There is no consensus on any of these subjects. If you can make an article clearer with a joke, go ahead - but remember your audience includes Australians, Idahoans, and anglophone Maori.

But surely some of the examples in this discussion, probably at both ends, seem ungainly to you; feel free to fix them as you come across them. If somebody dislikes the result, he'll fix them again. That's the wiki method, on which we gamble. Only those who dislike it need crowds of bots to work their will. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:30, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Then I'm lost in your semantics. You say ENGVAR is a consensus, but there's a bigger consensus for routinely removing jokes as vandalism. Suppose a bot could reliably enforce ENGVAR; would you use it? Art LaPella (talk) 15:19, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Your mileage varies. I've seen ENGVAR referenced often; every halfway reasonable claim has prevailed. Some "jokes" (in the manner of Lenny Bruce) are vandalism and removed; but the two or three jokes I've used seem still to be in place. I haven't seen discussion of any others.

On your second point: a bot that could reliably enforce ENGVAR would have to have a full corpus of the differences between the dialects - and be able to construe English to see where, for example, the English plural applied. When artificial intelligence is applied to Wikipedia, we can reconsider the matter; but there is an argument that such a bot would be paying attention to its edits and is aware of what it is doing. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:55, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I said to suppose it was reliable, so I think your answer is "yes". I certainly pay attention to AWB contraction edits, if only to make sure they aren't in a quote or something. My awareness is debatable, since I come to different conclusions. I brought it up because I don't think the guideline says what you really mean. I think you would rather expand all contractions than none of them. I would avoid expanding contractions in the question examples, but I don't remember ever finding such an example in a real article. Art LaPella (talk) 20:57, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

If I had no other choice, I might choose to expand all rather than none. But there is always another choice, closer to what we should do;Expand when beneficial and only then.

Likewise, it might be better to trust AIs to edit our articles; in the same realm of purest SF, we'd have AIs to write them. But we don't now. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:02, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

As I explained, there isn't much of another choice for me, and I think other Wikignomes have more in common with me than with MoS regulars. If we can't use AWB, then there surely isn't another choice for most articles, because there wouldn't be time to edit them all. It does sound like some AWB users are at least worth discussing, but doesn't the Bot Approval Group handle that? Art LaPella (talk) 14:47, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

The key question begged here is: Why should you have to edit them all? Wikipedia relies on the tendency of readers of articles to improve them; even on minute points of fact, which few readers, even those interested in the subject, will know. What works for Accuracy and Verifiability will work for how and whether to expand a contraction.

Indeed, the very use of this argument concedes the great weakness of MOS: only a few people agree on any of its mandates - and usually some disagree - otherwise the wiki process would enforce your desires. It is when a handful of editors need to express The Hidden Truth about Macedonia or global warming that we get people trying to edit all Wikipedia on that subject; so here. Those who believe there is One True Way about contractions which only a handful Really Understand (rather than a general tendency of formal English) are those who demand bots. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:17, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Then remove the guideline. But if there is a good reason for a guideline that tells the world to expand a randomly selected 1% of all contractions, without making any attempt to specify which contractions you want, then the same reason applies to the other 99%. Art LaPella (talk) 02:17, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

There's a good reason for a guideline which says (to each individual editor): if you're not sure which way you should write it, it's probably better to expand the contraction. That's what MOS actually now says.

There is no reason for random edits at all - which is all categorical instructions blindly fulfilled can produce. Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring, and the same applies to the less emollient spring of Dionysius Thrax. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 11:01, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

No offense, but the fault was with the guideline in this case. Don't blame the bot runners. The guideline contained a rule which was utterly unambiguous and specific: no contractions. The rule was, in a word, wrong. The more relaxed version we have today is closer to right (although I still think we should just drop the section all together). Millions of edits were (mis) guided by a bad rule. That's not the bot runners fault. You can't simply add a section the guideline that says (in so many words) ignore bad rules! That's ridiculous. I would prefer we avoid bad rules in the future. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 11:56, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't want to talk about fault; the problem is double:

• Most of MOS is oversimplified rules; many of them not entirely wrong - like this one, they point more or less in the right direction; but not exactly correct. (Others are made up in school one day; and those are the most viciously defended - but that's like article text) For most features of English, this is unavoidable - except by silence; actual idiom is too complex for a tolerable rule to be accurate.

• All too often, they are applied without thought or understanding, and not only by botters.

The solution, therefore, is also two-fold: Make MOS represent English better, on the one hand. On the other hand, consider its advice but don't trust it beyond your own competence and knowledge; especially when it says generally or usually or normally, don't impose it as an infallible rule. This would be sound if it were the best possible MOS; even if it were, it would be less sound than the habits of a literate writer of English. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 13:17, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Most Wikipedia contractions weren't written by Dionysius Thrax, and Septentrionalis would be the first to agree that almost nobody reads the Manual of Style. If the guideline should be "if you're not sure which way you should write it, it's probably better to expand the contraction", then it doesn't matter whether it's "you" as an author, "you" as a copyeditor, or "you" as a semi-automated copyeditor – except that if someone else wrote it one way, that is limited evidence that others would write it that way, just as I would be more careful changing a statistic or equation than if I were adding it as missing data. WP:OWN. Art LaPella (talk) 02:07, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

The only difference between semi-automatic editing and manual editing is quantity. If AWB is applied using common sense and judgment, it is as valuable as the same amount of manual editing; if it is done blindly it is as bad as, and more copious than, blind editing by hand. (The same applies to automatic editing, but outside SF it can't be done with judgment.) AWB does tempt to laziness and thoughtlessness, but the same cautions should be applied to both. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:14, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Here are some randomly chosen contractions, excluding quotes, titles, and file names. Search these for "can't": List of smoking bans, List of Alvin and the Chipmunks episodes, Passport, PlayStation3, Turing test, and Afterlife. "don't": Comparison of web browsers, Homosexuality, Electoral College (United States), and List of Monster Rancher monsters. "wouldn't": Arab citizens of Israel. "isn't": Mass–energy equivalence. "wouldn't" in Vegetarianism is something that I hopefully wouldn't change because it's a quote in disguise. Are there any other examples you wouldn't change, or is the whole problem more hypothetical than real?

Remember, the relevant comparison isn't between AWB and "the same amount of manual editing"; AWB or nothing is a closer approximation. If you believe the former, then the next time I get the urge to edit a list using AWB, I'll ask you to volunteer to edit the same list manually, instead. Art LaPella (talk) 06:38, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

• Maybe I wouldn't change (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, but there are plenty that I would happily change. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 06:46, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

  The language of a pompous bureaucrat is not really an improvement; we hope our articles will be read. the serving or consumption of food or drink are not permitted would be unreadable, save by those readers perverse enough to be attracted by lack of agreement between subject and predicate. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:57, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

• Ouch, you found me out! ;-) Perhaps you might like to have a go, then... --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:04, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

It's a choice between AWB and nothing only for articles which nobody reads (and, if nobody reads them, our concern for what they look like is -er- limited). Most of my mainspace edits are tweaks of articles I was reading for some other purpose; this includes repairing clumsy or ungrammatical phrases, ideally with no change of meaning. None of the articles you mention should be unread, but even there, one rational test for whether isn't is acceptable in the encyclopedic register is: if no reader notices it's there without using a search engine, it's not a problem. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:19, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Then I hope your edits are prolific. Actually, even the Main Page would get occasional contractions if I didn't catch them – which I should evidently stop doing, since my edits are too mechanical. How many non-bot users do you think are even aware of WP:CONTRACTION? And does your last sentence mean that the contractions I Googled have survived this long, so they must be correct? In that case, we don't need a guideline at all. (note: "pompous bureaucrat" is, um, pushing the WP:NPA envelope) Art LaPella (talk) 02:13, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Language of a pompous bureaucrat is discussing the edit, not the editor; since he writes much better in expressing himself, even before ArbCom, this is probably another example of the dangers of editing to a register not natural to the editor. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:32, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

(ec) If it isn't a matter of general consensus among editors at large to expand contractions, then this is a minority concern, and the rule to do so doesn't belong in a guideline at all. If it is general consensus, then you don't have to worry about how often I edit. (If contractions have survived FAC, imperfect though it is, we should probably strike the section; glaring embarrassments usually don't make it.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:32, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I missed that the edit you linked might be criticized as pompous and bureaucratic. Now perhaps you have another explanation for why you so emphasized the simple grammatical oversight of making "x or y" plural. Of course I could point out similar oversights in anybody's writing.

Most editors don't write guidelines and don't care about expanding contractions. It's a consensus only in the sense that not enough people have objected, and that can be said of any guideline including ENGVAR. I'm not sure of your answer to my previous question; do you want to expand the contractions I listed? If we remove every guideline I find routinely violated in Tomorrow's Featured Article, there wouldn't be many left. Art LaPella (talk) 03:45, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

You don't intend it as such; but that's a good idea - if you allow for the occasional exception. You are very unlikely to find ENGVAR violated; most such articles are written by editors with the same national ties - or those who can fake it. Moreover, ENGVAR has active support; for our culture on the matter see the archives of Talk:Yoghurt. Nor would you find violations of the actual consensus rules of English. (End sentences with punctuation.)

Why should we make rules which only a handful care about - and some of that handful diagree with? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:13, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

• "You don't intend it as such" Actually, my earlier quote was something like "I'm not sure there should even be a Manual of Style. But if we have one, we should use it."
• "violations of the consensus rules of English" How many would you like me to list? There's nothing sacred about ENGVAR, either, although I'm more likely to notice British spellings in US articles than vice versa. Anyway, featured articles are a game for Wikipedia insiders only, unless they are going to the Main Page. The main part of Wikipedia ignores the Manual of Style even more completely than featured articles do. We need more automation, or everything else on this page is a game.
• Why make rules which only a handful care about? I suppose because at least a bigger minority wants formal English, but doesn't know the details of how to get it. Once again, many or most of those rules I wouldn't miss. But we should use them if we have them.
• Going back to whether to use AWB: Because apparently you want to expand almost all contractions. Because the Manual of Style without AWB would be as unused and pointless as it was a couple years ago. Because the easiest way to achieve what I think you want (but I can't get you to state it clearly) is to zap everything with a bot – preferably an automatic bot, not AWB – and then undo the exceptions manually. Because AWB users who re-revert too aggressively or uncivilly are an ordinary tendentious editing problem, not an AWB problem. And because if making Wikipedia work creates an uproar, we should think first of how to deal with the Luddites, not AWB. Art LaPella (talk) 06:03, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I've stated what I want several times: intelligent editing. That is impossible with a bot; once we start bots - or bot-like editors - to work, we cannot in practice turn them off and revcerse their work where it has gone wrong.

And if we have a bad rule (and we have all too many), we should remove it - certainly, we should not enforce it. First, do no harm. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:58, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

"What you want" refers to how many of my sample contractions you would keep; I'm guessing zero. But as explained, the alternative to AWB is virtually no editing, which is more harmful than AWB, whether or not we check the bot's history file. But I certainly encourage you to remove bad rules. Art LaPella (talk) 04:48, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Here is a paragraph with two contractions I didn't expand, because I can't see the Emperor's new clothes and therefore that expansion would be "mechanical" contrary to WP:CONTRACTIONS. Art LaPella (talk) 19:23, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

The word "didn't" is now scheduled for the Main Page from 6 pm to midnight, February 24, UTC. [6] Art LaPella (talk) 01:00, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

That's a classic example where the contraction is not needed and ought to just be expanded in article text. Maybe the goal of the hooks is to have a conversational tone instead of an encyclopedic tone. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:12, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Actually, if you look at the rest of my edit, and the similar edits I make daily, I'm pretty sure the goal is unrelated to Manual of Style obscurities at all. Almost nobody knows that stuff. Few know that there's anything wrong with contractions in the first place, never mind which contractions should be kept, and after the above it isn't going to be my call whether expanding that contraction would be "mechanical" or not. It won't be protected until it goes on the Main Page, and thus any of you may edit it.Oops, it's already protected, but CBM is an administrator and he is welcome to edit it. My point is, of course, that I think the recent WP:CONTRACTION change will have far more unintended consequences than intended consequences. Art LaPella (talk) 01:33, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

I could edit it, but I think it would be a little pointy, since I basically never deal with deal with DYK, to suddenly pop in to make some minor change like that based on some far away discussion. But I don't think there's any reason why "don't" is needed there; it makes the sentence a little chatty. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:46, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

"didn't". I might be called pointy, but I'm not really, because I'm drawing attention to the absence of an edit I wouldn't have made anyway. Art LaPella (talk) 02:05, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

10 word long titles? Huh?

"Titles should be short—preferably fewer than ten words.[2]"

Ten words for a title–even a subtitle– seems really long, and the source doesn't quite confirm this either. Shouldn't this be closer to 2 to 4 words at most?AerobicFox (talk) 04:31, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

A few examples just off my current watchlist:

• Population history of indigenous peoples of the Americas
• 95th Civil Affairs Brigade (United States)
• List of North American cities by year of foundation

Try fitting any of these in under 4 words or less. Heiro 04:44, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Or items such as this:

• • Conversion on the Way to Damascus
  • Salome with the Head of John the Baptist (Caravaggio), Madrid, both paintings by the artist Caravaggio. Heiro 04:54, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

If the title is of a book or something which has a name that long of course the title should be that long. However some of these could be shortened:

• Population history of indigenous peoples of the Americas
  • Population of early Americas
  • Population of pre-Colombian Americas
• 95th Civil Affairs Brigade (United States)
  • 95th Civil Affairs Brigade

Clearly things like "List of" are automatically going to have two additional words "list of" and need not be shortened. Also titles of songs, paintings, groups, etc, should remain the same. Nonetheless, only one of those you cited even had 10 words in it(the name of a painting). Is there any reason this is at 10, and not say 8?, or 5?AerobicFox (talk) 05:23, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Population of what in the early Americas? birds? lizards? buffalo? indigenous peoples?

95th Civil Affairs Brigade-of what country?

• • List of sites and peoples visited by the Hernando de Soto Expedition
  • National Register of Historic Places listings in Athens County, Ohio

Some subjects just can not be boiled down into 4 words, or they lose their specificity, such as Art of the Edo period, plus some thing get their titles from their real life most common terms, as in art works, scientific or artistic concepts, etc. I'm not sure why the cutoff is ten, but it seems a reasonable number to me. Heiro 05:48, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I was going to actually change "Art of the Edo period" to "Edo period art" since if someone is looking for art of the Edo period, it is much more likely they will start typing in "Edo Period..." and then have "Edo Period art" pop up under the search bar than typing in "Art of..." where they get "Art of Fighting", "Art of Noise", "Art of memory", etc. Nonetheless I suppose it's fine as it is. It just seems like a really low goal to aim for—less than 10.AerobicFox (talk) 05:57, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I think its more to keep titles as succinct as possible, so as to avoid the proliferation of Whole sentence style titles for subjects not many people care about with excess verbiage and extraneous details 06:02, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

• This is the longest one I know of, but there's a much longer formal title hiding behind Sino-British Joint Declaration. And if anyone here wants to take a stab at the record, try creating an article about this. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 06:25, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
  • And that is why Hong Kong needs a manual of style.AerobicFox (talk) 06:35, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree with the example-posters, but if anyone thinks that the word "ten" might give people title-expanding ideas, we could just take out the number. "A few words," would do the trick and keep enough flexibility for necessarily complex titles. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:55, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

The longest title I have ever seen suggested was: [[The Supreme Council (Mother Council of the World) of the Inspectors General Knights Commander of the House of the Temple of Solomon of the Thirty-third Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry of the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States of America]] ... The argument was that this was the "official" name of the organization and so should be used as the article title... thankfully we were able to convince people to use Supreme Council, Scottish Rite (Southern Jurisdiction, USA) instead (on the grounds that the shorter version was actually more common).

That said, I could agree to removing the specific number. Reword to something like:

• Ideally, titles should be short — using as few words as possible to accurately indicate the topic of the article" Blueboar (talk) 14:26, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

"Thoughts should be short, preferably two to four words". Geez, worded that way it's like a dictum from the Ministry of Truth in 1984 (there it was "sentences"). "Thou shalt not have complicated thoughts" or the like - "don't use long sentences, it hurts my brain" (of which WP:TLDR is a manifestation). The post-literate era has arrived and inflicts itself on the literate....The re Scottish Rite title above, the official name of the city of Bangkok in Thai is over 100 words long and begins with the phrase "Royal City of Angels"....just something I remember from my Bangkok guidebook from years ago (which quoted the first twenty words, though in Roman script); Bangkok is a foreign/outside word/usage that has become the standard.Skookum1 (talk) 17:39, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

A title is supposed to capture the eye, and something asking people to think deflects their eyes away from it. I like this suggestion "Ideally, titles should be short — using as few words as possible to accurately indicate the topic of the article"AerobicFox (talk) 23:20, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Titles are covered under WP:TITLE, which does have brevity as one of its five principles; this is a summary. TITLE does not give a limit, and there should not be one; a shorter title is better than a long one, other things being equal; five words are better than ten, and two better still. But often other things aren't equal; as a prinicipal example, another principle is Recognizability, which is the argument we should title the articles on the Caravaggios by what they are called (disambiguating when necessary). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:31, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Hard to disagree with that. The MoS should reflect this advice, too. Tony (talk) 03:41, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Agreeing from my side also.AerobicFox (talk) 05:17, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I concur with AerobicFox's previous observations if we were a media publication looking for "catchy" titles (see Strunk and White). But not for encyclopedic entitling. A name "Kings of France" is objective and tiresome. Also accurate. But neither as catchy nor simple as "French Kings." I think we are striving towards the former (objectivity) and trying to get our fellow editors to relinquish "catchy" media-oriented titles. (I don't know about 10 words though. That does seem long). Student7 (talk) 01:47, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

• I don't agree: titles should be as short as possible. Readers don't like reading long ones, and it is a great advantage if they don't wrap onto a second line (even if the reader has chosen a narrow window width—many people do). Long titles can usually be trimmed without much trouble: they need contain only the kernel that distinguishes them from the surrounding titles, and to provide some sort of comprehensible flow in the ToC. Sometimes, yes, it's hard not to have long title; but this should be rare. Tony (talk) 01:55, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

The longest title in words is (and has been (at least the tie) longest in characters (since it hits the software limit) for some years) Dante And Randal And Jay And Silent Bob And A Bunch Of New Characters And Lando, Take Part In A Whole Bunch Of Movie Parodies Including But Not Exclusive To, The Bad News Bears, The Last Starfighter, IN Jones And The Temple Of Doom, Plus A High Scho. As I remember there is a sequel or prequel which also runs up against the maxlength buffers.

Other long titles in words are:

Note that the 35 word title The hill of the flute playing by Tamatea — who was blown hither from afar, had a circumcised penis, grazed his knees climbing mountains, fell on the earth, and encircled the land — to his beloved redirects to Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu, only one word, but hardly easier to remember or type.

Rich Farmbrough, 14:46, 19 February 2011 (UTC).

I think you may have some duplicates in there, Rich. That said, quite a few of these are titles of creative works, government acts and other proper nouns, which cannot be shortened. So the current, general advice is good, as long as it's not applied too mechanically. Anyway, this is really WP:ARTICLETITLE stuff, though it does have implications for section titles, which do fall under MOS. oknazevad (talk) 15:27, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

A lot of them are redirects, of course, and do look similar, I can assure you that they aren't otherwise the same. For your viewing pleasure the 41 article space titles over 199 characters long are listed at user:Rich Farmbrough/temp227 - many are the same as the above but Lopado­temacho­selacho­galeo­kranio­leipsano­drim­hypo­trimmato­silphio­parao­melito­katakechy­meno­kichl­epi­kossypho­phatto­perister­alektryon­opte­kephallio­kigklo­peleio­lagoio­siraio­baphe­tragano­pterygon isn't. Rich Farmbrough, 15:31, 19 February 2011 (UTC).

I think we have consensus with the concept that titles should be as short as possible, with the understanding that "short" is not always possible. On a related issue... we do have a technology based character limit for titles... we should probably mention that. Blueboar (talk) 15:22, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Might be a little BEANSy? Rich Farmbrough, 15:32, 19 February 2011 (UTC).

How about "Short titles are preferred to long titles." ? Rich Farmbrough, 15:34, 19 February 2011 (UTC).

Dash or hyphen?

In "east-west position" (i.e. position along an east-to-west axis) and "north-south position" (i.e. position along a north-to-south axis), should those be hyphens or dashes? 81.159.109.69 (talk) 14:31, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

These are compound adjectives, so they should use hyphens. — Edokter (talk) — 14:51, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

No, an en dash: east–west and north–south. Please see the MoS section on dashes. Tony (talk) 07:33, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Wrong. There are three questions to be asked; so I will make a separate post of this.

1. Is this English usage?
   • No; Google books yields millions of scans for books with "east west", which will include both dashes and hyphens. Hyphenation appears more common even in well-typeset books, and in East-West dialogue or relations, where the modifier is a compound noun in apposition; in east-west direction or distance or position, where the modifier is a compound adjective, it is difficult to find an example.
2. Is there a rationale for this, such as support by a commonly accepted style guide? (Consensus would be preferable.)
   • Not at present. CMOS says The en dash can be used in place of a hyphen in a compound adjective when one of its elements consists of an open compound or when both elements consist of hyphenated compounds (see 7.78). This editorial nicety may go unnoticed by the majority of readers; nonetheless, it is intended to signal a more comprehensive link than a hyphen would. It should be used sparingly, and only when a more elegant solution is unavailable. (§6.80, bold added) If other style guides are more permissive, let us see them.
   • This is permission under two conditions, one of which is false here, and the other of which is extremely restrictive; other style guides are likely to be similar. East—West may be a compound noun (from the East and the West), but that's not what the original post asked.
3. Is it consensus?
   • Well, no.
   • There's no evidence that ENDASH is consensus. (Where's the discussion?)
   • ENDASH does not even give the grudging permission for a dash here that CMOS does.

That's zero for three. A requirement of a dash here is not ENDASH; it would in any case be Original Research - and, as far as I tell, erroneous original research. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:07, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I have to agree with others that OR does not enter into it. It might be right, wrong or debatable, in common meaning of those terms. But we could decide to write right to left or or boustrophon, should the community wish, and it would OR would not enter into it. Rich Farmbrough, 15:45, 19 February 2011 (UTC).

OR enters into it to the extent that this Manual of Style claims to describe English, which is not written boustrophedon. The fact that MOS appears on this, the English Wikipedia, implies that it does describe English; and MOS:CLEAR states that plain English (a subset of English) is preferable. I suppose there is a verbal quibble whether this amounts to OR in MOS, or MOS (as misinterpreted) requiring OR in article space; but which of these is better?

Let us consider what would be likely to happen if some small group made MOS say that we should be so original as to write boustrophedon, and took every measure in their power to "enforce" the rule against the "MOS breaches" of writing left-to-right. That would make half of every article unintelligible to the common reader; which would be a deliberate major harm to Wikipedia. Would we even pause for an RfC, or would we take the small "consensus" directly to ArbCom?

The present "rule" (which is not, of course, backed by the actual text of WP:ENDASH) doesn't make Wikipedia unintelligible, merely more difficult to read and subliterate in appearance. It is only minor harm - and open embarrassment. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:28, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I believe ArbCom would reject a boustrophedon case as a content issue. However, a bigger consensus would presumably revert the boustrophedon guideline. If the pro-boustrophedon faction maintained control through edit warring and other disruptive editing, and perhaps if other dispute resolution procedure was followed (although that procedure wasn't really made for factional war), then ArbCom would accept the case. That's what should happen here, if the MoS isn't really a consensus. Art LaPella (talk) 20:08, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Original research, as quoted from the Wikipedia article:

Original research is research that is not exclusively based on a summary, review or synthesis of earlier publications on the subject of research. This material is of a primary source character. The purpose of the original research is to produce new knowledge, rather than to present the existing knowledge in a new form (e.g., summarized or classified)

I can not stress enough against your campaign to label a multitude of items discussed here as "Original research". In actuality, most of the items you prefer to label as "original research" are simply cases of improper grammar and in the rare case, a falsity. While it is certainly frowned upon to include false information on Wikipedia, using improper grammar does not signify intent to convey false material and is not original research in any context. --Xession (talk) 18:45, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

The false claim, however, is that these instances of improper grammar, as here, are proper grammar - and, quite frequently, that some unheard-of form is the English for the subject. Neither of these classes is sourced (or sourceable); they are false and they are OR; but it will suffice to call them WP:MADEUP, if it will keep a red herring off the ground. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:56, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

If they are false and are not sourcable, then how could they possibly be original research? What would a person research to come to an entirely false assumption beyond their own mind? They've taken no previously reviewed knowledge and they've contributed no new knowledge on the subject beyond stating absolutely false claims. It is not original research then, but rather a falsity. If however, an individual unknowingly misuses symbols, they may not be intending to present a falsity at all, but rather demonstrating their own lack of knowledge of English syntax. This would not make their entire contribution false, nor would it make such a contribution unwanted; the content would however, require an editor with further knowledge regarding English syntax, to correct the mistakes. Not everyone is skillful in English. --Xession (talk) 19:04, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Something an editor has made up is always Original Research; that's what WP:NOR was (forgive the play on words) originally for; it is easier to observe that (as here) a view is unsupported than to prove it to be an invention. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:47, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I would argue that the dash is required in "east–west", to signal the "to" or "between" or "versus" relationship between co-equals, as opposed to the hyphen, which would signal that this is the adjective form of an "east west" whatever that is. You can find it in at least a few sources, like this one. To show that some sources make the opposite determination, you'd need to find a source that can be seen to normally use the standard convention of en dash between co-equal terms, and then show that they use a hyphen in east-west. The proliferation of hyphens in sources that neglect en dashes doesn't tell you anything. Anyway, why not just go with the conventional rule, use the en dash, and thereby give your reader the right signal? Dicklyon (talk) 23:41, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

How about the OED? It has a full entry on Michelson–Morley (with dash), but its entry on east has a large number of citations of east-west and East-West and even East/West, (with hyphens and slashes, but no dashes). The entire entry has five dashes, all of them in the section on spelling, in such expressions as "OE–ME éast", which is a genuine instance of the from/to sense of the dash.

This signal seems unlikely to be received and understood by any reader who hasn't read through MOS (and how many have done that? why should they have to?); that's the trouble with making things up without letting the reader in on them first. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:46, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Statement of fact challenged

It doesn't seem to me that the following statement from this article is true:

"In American English, U.S. (with periods) is more common as the standard abbreviation for United States"

I encourage you to do as I have and make a point of noticing how it is done in America and by Americans, if you can, as you go about your lives. I think you will notice that the statement doesn't seem to be true. No authority is referred to in support of this statement, and I believe that it is not true now, although I think it used to be true in the not too distant past, it doesn't seem to be true now. Guideline articles like this are not held to the same standard of citation as mainspace articles, but in this case because there seems to be some doubt, if it's not just me, then please let's back up this statement with some kind of authority or remove it from this guideline article. Chrisrus (talk) 17:52, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I did a quick search on the NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal websites, and they all use "U.S.". This summary of the APA style explicitly says to use periods [7]. I have the impression that this is the de facto standard for general publications in the United States. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:27, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I wrote a post on it and cited a good essay by an English professor grammar expert. It's still the norm in the United States. There are some changes and you can find some style guide that helps your case if you want to be cutting edge, but this guy's advice was to use whatever made sense in the context, and if you don't know, he said opt for the periods. Personally, I really don't care, since the kind of people who change them are meticulous about changing all of them. And I went through 7 changes in less than a month to my article. I just laid back and enjoyed it...;-) TCO (talk) 01:43, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Well OK then. I asked for some kind of authority to the statement and you've given several, includig APA style book, which would have been enough for me. So that's that, without checking up on you I'll just take your word. But I'd just like to say before I drop it that I am an American and I never use the points and feel like I'm not alone in this and feel that way based on lots of evidence I see around me here in the US, so I think the dots are on the way out and we should keep a very long term eye on it and go with the winds of change. We should probably set some standard as to when we will change, such as maybe when the APA or the NYT change the style, we will take that as our cue to change as well, but until that day we'll stick with the periods. And we might have a look at the statement in the article and see if it shouldn't be softened about what "is the standard" in America because if it's the standard it's not a very standard standard if you'll look around you. Chrisrus (talk) 07:16, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

It was a momentous decision by The Chicago Manual of Style last year to reverse its previous ruling that insisted on dotting "US"—a decision that is yet to fully filter through to American users; the WP MoS cites this decision. In reality, within in North America the ugly dots appear more often than not, but with decreasing incidence. Outside North America, the dots were dropped a long time ago by almost all users, which is consistent with the strong trend away from dotting acronyms and initialisms throughout the language; strangely, for some time American usage has insisted on no dots for USA, USAF, and just about every other American abbreviation. Tony (talk) 07:41, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I much prefer the look and logic of using the periods. I'd also like to reiterate that the Wikipedia should (and in this case does) reflect what English is, not what it seems as though it will be. Remember, we can always change it then. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:34, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Same here. I'm also an American and I did not know that you could say US without the dots; that just seems kind of strange to me.AerobicFox (talk) 19:01, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

While I believe Wikipedia has the potential to help further standardize language to the benefit of all, according to the usage on the government website, USA.gov [8], "U.S." is primary form and should probably be used until otherwise acknowledged by the government itself. --Xession (talk) 19:08, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

While not definitive in addressing the commonality of the usage, the style guidelines for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a U.S. government agency, mandates that U.S. be used when addressing the United States. Link

• "reflect what English is, not what it seems as though it will be."—Sorry, you've been left behind. Most people don't use the dots. The fact that some US institutions will take a few years to remove the uglies from their titles is of no relevence. Please don't try to force your personal preferences onto everyone, Darkfrog. Tony (talk)

It could also be said that most people today, heavily use contractions, memes and texting codes when writing as well. Common usage does not reflect formality in all(most) cases. --Xession (talk) 02:12, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Common usage aside, it seems we have conflicting advice on this in respected published style guides. Which to me means that we should not demand one usage or the other. Both should be seen as acceptable. Blueboar (talk) 03:59, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

This seems agreeable. I need to stop reading this page so much. It seems to enforce dogmatism in supporting your own preferences, rather than collaboration. Thank you for balancing this. --Xession (talk) 04:04, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

You have identified one of the major functions of MOS: allowing editors to make their own (all too often ungrounded) preferences into rules. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:50, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I've been thinking about this and thought of something. Maybe those authorities who mandate the use of the periods are worried about that fact that, unlike USAF or USA, US is also a common English word, us, the object form of the word "we". In cases such as newspaper headlines or official doccument titles and such that are often written in ALLCAPS, there could be an awkward moment when the mind of the reader might parse it as the word "us". Imagine "POLL FIND US PEOPLE LIVING LONGER". Thinking about that, it made me theorize an understandable reason why a govenment agency or a newspaper would mandate universal use of the U.S. style. Chrisrus (talk) 04:17, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

• "POLL FIND US PEOPLE LIVING LONGER"—it's very ungrammatical. I don't know how a headline like this could ever get through the subeditors. "US PEOPLE" is unusual (Americans). Could you find an example that is grammatical and ambiguous? Even then, it doesn't stop most people from dropping the uglies. Tony (talk) 07:53, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

If you amend it to "POLL FINDS US PERSONS LIVING LONGER", it sounds to me like something you might find in a low-quality rag. However, I don't think that's a problem for us. We don't write things on Wikipedia in all caps. And since we don't write things in all caps, "US" can't be misunderstood as "us" (unless we're doing something like quoting a source that had it in all caps, but then we should be preserving the original ambiguity anyway).

I don't have the same reflexive hatred of periods that Tony has, but I do think they're distracting. Nevertheless plenty of people use them, so we ought to accept them just as with any other ENGVAR issue. Someday, I expect "U.S." will look quaint and we'll all write "US" everywhere; but that's not today. Ozob (talk) 12:35, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Tony, if you believe that most people in the U.S. are leaving out the dots, then we are not reading the same people. When "US" becomes the clear standard—when the MLA and AMA et al do as Chicago has done—then the Wikipedia MoS should instruct users to do the same in American English articles. Until then, the paragraph stating that Chicago has changed but the others haven't is good to go. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:26, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I am inclined to agree that the dots are on their way out. Note that I prefer dots, in many ways, that I spent a considerable effort some years ago persuading people to use dots on WP. But I am inclined to the reverse opinion now, for the following reasons. Firstly Chicago has changed. Secondly general usage has changed and appears to be changing consistently in the no-dot direction. Thirdly we need to use the undotted version when juxtaposed with other similar abbreviations (US, UK, NZ) which are never dotted on WP and rarely elsewhere, and it makes sense to maintain consistency across WP, otherwise articles could flip-flop from dotted to undotted as reference to, say, the UK were added and removed, and articles in the same set could have different styles (we do have a lot of this already for various reasons). Despite this opinion I think that the corpus should be simply allowed to drift to the undotted version over the next few, maybe more, years until it is 80/20 or 95/5, possibly a tidy up exercise at that stage might be warranted. Rich Farmbrough, 18:38, 19 February 2011 (UTC).

Yes, At some such point, when and if it is reached, no dots will be prevalent English usage, supported by style guides, and presumably Wikipedia consensus. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:50, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

While Americans can unilaterally decide how to abbreviate things, it seems to me in poor style to confuse readers with other dialects or for whom English is a second language. I would be greatly annoyed if the Brits, for example, decided to employ words and phrases and abbreviations easily understood in the UK but not comprehensible elsewhere. I don't want to "work" to read a British English dialect article. If they have selected common phrases to both dialects, that would make it more readable to others IMO. I think unilateralism in English dialects is in poor taste, and a bit off-putting. Student7 (talk) 00:22, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

We are written in English; there is a Simple English Wikipedia for anybody who wants to read English before they have learnt it. It is in any case a doubtful kindness to learners to misinform them what English is; anybody who trusts us as what the abbreviation of United States is should get the actual abbreviation, as used by those who most often discuss it.

But it would appear that Student7's actual objection is to using American English to discuss the United States - which is a quite different section of MOS. Tell us, do you object equally to discussing England in British English? Or is your favorite dialect "international English" which everybody must use? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:26, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant to type the example I invented with an "s". I mean "POLL FINDS US PEOPLE LIVING LONGER". You are right that we don't use all caps on Wikipedia, so one could argue that there therefore is no need to follow a convention that only exists to avoid allcaps confusion, if it could be established that that is, in fact, the only reason some mandate "U.S." be written with the dots while other expressions that don't spell a common English word, such as USA, USMC, or UK, are to be written without. I could be wrong that this is the reason, but if not, what possible reason could there be for writing only U.S. with dots and not USA, FBI, KGB, CIA, NASA, UK, USSR, etc. etc. etc. There's got to be a reason this seems to be the only one and that's the only reason I can think of for them to mandate such an inconsistant rule. Chrisrus (talk) 00:41, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Changing topics is confusing to readers in the middle of a thread. But answering the question about dialects, generally: I don't care (for example) for the British insistence on calling playing fields "pitches," accurate enough for cricket, but sloppily applied to all fields including rugby, soccer (association football), on which no one "pitches." It is a noun that they could easily replace and still be understood by a Brit reader. Student7 (talk) 14:24, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

• Us people? Ungrammatical. United States people? Unidiomatic (try "Americans"). No newspaper in its right mind would write US PEOPLE or, for that matter, U.S. PEOPLE. Tony (talk) 14:29, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Section headers BRD discussion

A bold addition from earlier today recommended against using semicolon headers and other boldface quasi-headings. For this who haven't used them, coding this:

;Example

Renders this:

Example

I reverted, as not only do I believe that this deserves some discussion, but I disagree that these headers are always undesirable. "Real" headers appear in the ToC, and if there's a series of headers in quick succession, the ToC can get very clogged.

As an example, I've used semicolon headers in Long Island Rail Road, in two sections. One for the list of branches, the other on the major (terminal) stations. In both cases, the ToC became quite bloated when they were full section headers. Also, as all entries have their own, already-linked article, there's no need to ever use a section link, which is the other major reason to use full headers. That certainly doesn't apply here.

This is only one example, but it strikes me that putting a blanket ban on them, especially without discussion, is problematic at best. Also, if they aren't meant to be used, why does the simulation feature exist? oknazevad (talk) 19:08, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

From what I understand, the mark-up for semicolons exists from previous incarnations and alternatives to wiki-software for definition lists: a holdover from dictionary coding that is not really used in Wikipedia any longer except in glossaries (which are, as I've come to read, a controversial subject in their own right that I won't be touching here). In order to avoid breaking the intention of the initial contributor, the lead semicolon-syntax is kept, but it is more-or-less deprecated. In the example you cite, you seem to be using "headings" inappropriately since what you are doing is making an embedded children list that isn't a proper definition list, IMHO. I think best practice would be to follow the MoS guidance for children lists rather than using the semi-colon faux subsection. IvoryMeerkat (talk) 19:49, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Still useful in limited circumstances; some articles do contain glossaries, lists of minor characters, and so forth, where making them all sub-sub-sections would produce a mess of one- or two-line sections, and an absurdly long table of contents. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:43, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Most articles that contain glossaries can usually change those glossaries into embedded lists. I did so for the Long Island Rail Road referenced above. It's a stylistic improvement. You don't need to use sub-subsections, you can use bullets instead (with the added advantage that long embedded lists of things like minor characters can be easily divided into columns, for example). IvoryMeerkat (talk) 18:05, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I would absolutely support deprecating the various home made headers - I spend a lot of time cleaning them out of articles (that are probably headed straight for AfD - but that's another tale). To avoid ToC "clutter" use {{TOC limit}}. Rich Farmbrough, 18:45, 19 February 2011 (UTC).

If they're headed for AFD, why bother? But does this also remove the equally unnecessary header lines? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:59, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

What do you mean by "header lines"? IvoryMeerkat (talk) 18:05, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Married women names

Apologies if this is not the right place for this question, but I was wondering about the naming convention that Wikipedia (and Wikipedia, only) seems to use in naming married women, in which the article is in the format: Firstname Maidenname Marriedname. I have never seen this format used anywhere else so I was hoping someone could tell me why (only) Wikipedia uses this naming convention, even for married women who don't actually use this naming convention themselves. NorthernThunder (talk) 06:33, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

That is North American custom; it should be used with caution elsewhere. But the proper place for this is WT:TITLE; examples would be nice. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:43, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Behind-the-scenes work

I see that Mr Anderson made an "Uncontroversial request" at Wikipedia:Requested moves that would have involved breaching the MoS guidance on dashes, by moving "Mexican–American War" to "Mexican-American War". Fortunately, an admin caught it and deleted the request.

Mr Anderson, please do not conduct clandestine campaigns without consensus. Tony (talk) 07:40, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

"Clandestine campaigns"? Strictly speaking, is anyone required to ask on the MoS page first before requesting that the title of a completely different page be changed? Sure, it would have been best to discuss it first, but let's give people the benefit of the doubt and assume nothing deliberately underhanded was going on. At the very least, it'll keep tensions a little lower and make true consensus easier to reach. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

This is, I think, more of the unfortunate results of the claim that MOS has a mystic status "higher than a guideline" - and that it means whatever Tony would like it to mean, not what it says. It would be nice if he would cite ENDASH for what it actually says - that is, after all, the purpose of writing down even a disputed guidance.

As for Mexican-American War, it's another case of a hyphen being what English actually uses - and should use. These are the printed books which use "Mexican American War" (search phrase chosen for neutrality). I have looked some way down the list for one which does not hyphenate when one clicks through to the actual scan and not found one; for one Google has an OCR error and reports a space. Since this a compound adjective, being the war which is both Mexican and American, hyphenation also complies with WP:ENDASH.

Tony likes more colorful language that WP:CIVIL will normally permit (at least he isn't discussing his bodily functions again); but really, "clandestine" for an edit on WP:RM, a page watched by hundreds? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:25, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Doesn't WP:ENDASH's "male–female ratio" include a compound adjective just like "Mexican [insert favorite punctuation here] American War"? "Male", "female", "Mexican", and "American" can all be used as nouns or adjectives. I wouldn't have called Septentrionalis's well-known opposition to ENDASH "clandestine", but then I wouldn't have called dash wars "uncontroversial", either. Art LaPella (talk) 23:17, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

The Mexican-American War was both Mexican and American, whereas the male–female ratio is neither male nor female. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.43.105.17 (talk • contribs)

Nor is it both; as the War is Mexican (indeed, the name Mexican War is not uncommon) and American; the ratio is of males to females. Therefore male and female are nouns.

As for whether it is controversial; the reaction of every American with whom I have discussed this is "Wikipedia spells the Mexican-American War how? Why?" (And this War has strong ties with the United States.) Searches confirm this reaction; it should not be controversial to correct something Wikipedia has invented, with complete - er - originality. If it is controversial, the guideline which has misled non-Americans should be ignored until it is clarified. If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia.... Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:44, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

You might be right about the adjectives (or was it a war of Mexicans and Americans, and a ratio of being male to being female? I don't know). But surely this page's archives show dashes are controversial here, regardless of their merits anywhere else. Here's how someone interpreted the rule in 2008. WP:EXCEPTIONS Art LaPella (talk) 06:36, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, in principle "Mexican–American War" could be taken to mean a war between Mexicans and Americans, but I think that's not the way wars are usually called. I guess a war involving Spain would be called Spanish-Whatever War, not Spaniard–Whatever War. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.43.105.17 (talk) 14:05, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Other_dashes

The manual states that two hyphen (--) should not be used in place of an en dash (–) or em dash (—) as they are typewriter approximations. However, the typewriter conventions page (where the link goes) states, "A number of typographical conventions originate from the widespread use of the typewriter, based on the characteristics and limitations of the typewriter itself. For example, the QWERTY keyboard typewriter did not include keys for the en dash and the em dash. To overcome this obstacle, users typically typed more than one adjacent hyphen to approximate these symbols. This typewriter convention is still sometimes used today, even though modern computer word processing applications can input the correct en and em dashes for each font type." I don't know about most users, but my computer keyboard still doesn't have either an en dash key or an em dash key and Wikipedia doesn't autocorrect double hyphens into a en dash or em dash. Given that double hyphens still seem to be a valid necessity when writing on Wikipedia (and not using Alt+whatever to generate an en dash), and that this "approximation" has been around and in use for decades, it is my opinion that the manual should be changed to not actively discourage the use of double hyphens. The change to the "other dashes" section should be something like the following:

Do not use substitutes for em or en dashes, such as the combination of two hyphens (--). These were typewriter approximations.

Keyboards generally do not have en dash and the em dash symbols. To overcome this obstacle, for ease of use, users may use the typewriter approximation of typing two hyphens (--) for an en dash and three hyphens (---) for an em dash.

That's my opinion, anyway. :) Banaticus (talk) 09:48, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

What about &ndash; and &mdash;?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 09:52, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

It is indeed regrettable that through ignorance or plain boorishness, the geeks at Microsoft et al. who designed their computer keyboards decided to put all sorts of weird things on the keyboard—such as the circonflexe that is so useful (^), but left off the en and em dashes. The Mac keyboard, fortunately, does have these as normal keys, in keeping with its generally greater sensitivity to usability and its greater consumer orientation (as opposed to programmers' "we know how to write; don't bother to ask users or clients" attitude, which, sadly, still persists in many quarters—I suppose we're lucky to have a semicolon on the standard keyboard). Oh wait: could it be that # and ^ are required in programming? Fancy that.

After this little rant, to answer your question, Banticus, WP does require professional typography, as should any publisher worth their salt. The gobblydy &ndash; and &mdash; as suggested by Ryulong is one way; easier still are your trusted buttons that are always under the edit-box—the first two provided you have the "Insert" tab chosen. User:GregU's superb dash script is good before you click "Save"; it will change hyphens into dashes in number ranges and as spaced interruptors on the clause level, but won't fix the use of hyphens in, say, "east–west", or "blood–brain barrier", or "protein–protein interaction".

If writing a letter of complaint/request to Microsoft were ever not going to be trashed in a flash, one might bother; they're an arrogant near-monopoly. Remember Bill Gates in the witness box before the Congressional inquiry? Tony (talk) 12:55, 18 February 2011 (UTC) Postscript: LaTeX automatically renders -- as en dashes and --- as em dashes. Any impediment to putting an option for this in users' prefs, so that those combos are transformed into the proper typography upon first saving?

The reason that # and ^ (and other characters such as @ and ~) get used in technical contexts is that they are on the keyboard and scarcely used rather than the other way around. Rich Farmbrough, 15:51, 19 February 2011 (UTC).

Insulting Microsoft doesn't really help further your point any. I have computer keyboards from before the Microsoft era, that have an almost identical layout. The standard formed over time, and people got used to it. You are more than welcome to pick up any of the multitude of alternate layouts that fit your preferences though.

My keyboard does have the basic typographical symbols. I just feel for those who have to click the buttons at the bottom. Tony (talk) 14:46, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Ditto for the insults, but perhaps the answer is to make the list of codes like &endash easier to find. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:20, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Besides the HTML entity code, there are templates {{ndash}} and {{mdash}}, and even {{--}}; unfortunately, {{-}} is used for float-element clearing. --MASEM (t) 19:24, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

No, please don't use those templates: people use them for unspaced en dashes, yet they come with a space. The template should be deleted. Tony (talk) 03:32, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

There is no space from the double-dash version. Eg: no—space as compared to obvious–space. That means the ndash/mdash ones can be corrected. --MASEM (t) 04:00, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Exactly, which is why we see horrors like 1983–86. It's two more keystrokes than &ndash; so as so often with a well-intentioned syntax/template, it falls over. Please don't use it. Tony (talk) 04:53, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Is there *any* time that one would spaces on either side of an ndash? or a better question, would be better to strip the spaces from the two (ndash/mdash) and have uses do that themselves? --MASEM (t) 04:58, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes. The spaced en dash is a stylistic alternative to the unspaced em dash, for a break. The template is for only that purpose–but it's not a very good name for it. It includes a non-breaking space before the en dash, so that it won't end up as the first thing on a new line. Taking the spaces out of the template would break all the correct uses of it. Dicklyon (talk) 06:06, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

At the risk of being shot down in flames for a date range where the entities themselves use spaces or dashes - the spaced dash indicating a weaker binding than the spaces or dashes, e.g. July 12 - 30 May 62 rather than July 12-31 May 62. Rich Farmbrough, 15:55, 19 February 2011 (UTC).

What? Tony (talk) 05:07, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

• Far better, to me, to strip the spaces away, to stop users from wrongly inserting it in all contexts aside from the en dash as interrupter – like this: January–March 2008. Most en dashes are for year ranges. For full date ranges (dates of birth and death at the top, for example), it's a spaced en dash. But I cannot see the point of this template to start with. Just click on the button below the edit box. Tony (talk) 05:20, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

The point is only to get the non-breaking space into the spaced en dash. It's lame that someone made the "--" template do em dash instead of following closer to TeX and giving us both dashes as "--" and "---". It wouldn't be hard to fix, though, since there are few uses of "--". Dicklyon (talk) 06:06, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately we also have the problem that {{---}} is taken for a different purpose too.

We could make {{n-}} and {{m-}} to make "easy" n and m dashes, no space on either side. --MASEM (t) 06:17, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but {{n-}} and {{m-}} are rather clunky to type out when you just want an en dash because you prefer using them over semicolons to set off a non-dependent clause in a sentence -- just use the double hyphens. So what if some "fancy" word processors autocorrect them -- let's use the decades old familiar approach. That's my opinion. :) Banaticus (talk) 09:35, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Please do not use double-hyphens unless an auto-correction is installed in WP's software. I I have to go around correcting after your edits, I'll be not worth speaking to. What is wrong with m and n within double curly brackets, Masem? (Assuming no spacing.) Tony (talk) 10:21, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

{{m}} is used across >50 pages for what appears to be latin alphabet stuff. {{n}} is a "nay" vote template.

Again, all I'm suggesting is that for some people, a template form of the standard html entity text is easier to remember when editing. We want an easy-to-remember template name to allow that to happen. Ideally it would have been {{-}} and {{--}}, but we can't use this pairing due to the first being used as float-div-clear. With names like "n-" and "m-", at least they audibly sound like what they are supposed to do and help improve their mnemonic quality.

Alternatively, we could actually change {{ndash}} and {{mdash}} to remove the spaces, but only after a bot or AWB is used to convert all existing uses from "{{ndash}}" to " {{ndash}} ", and then alter the docs to explain this change. That's a lot more work but also I would think probably more correct. --MASEM (t) 16:10, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

(or replace those spaces with non-breaking ones if that's the correct way...) --MASEM (t) 16:12, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

{{M}} is not in use on articles - there were two uses but they were typos. Many of the other uses I have looked at are tranlated from the French and should be {{Tl}}. Rich Farmbrough, 16:43, 19 February 2011 (UTC).

If you can remember {{mdash}}, you can remember &mdash;. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:17, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

But WP:DASH should link to a help page explaining options, or maybe one best option, for how to make dashes. It might also include discussion of those who want to change &mdash; to – or vice versa with a bot. I think everyone except the Hyphen Luddites agrees that's a good idea if somebody else does it. Art LaPella (talk) 03:29, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Except that they divide more or less evenly between those who want to change &mdash; to – and those who want to change – to &mdash;, both for clarity. This may depend on how visible the difference between dash and hyphen is on their personal computer. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:35, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I meant everyone agrees that a dash making help page would be nice, however we explained the – or &mdash; (or ndash) issue, if we explained it at all. Of course that assumes that eliminating WP:DASH is not an alternative. Art LaPella (talk) 04:45, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)True, but the double curly brackets do have the benefit of being common to every other Wikipedia template (heck, I just wound up using two of them myself), so it would be easy to learn for newbies. That said, I always use the insert box below the edit window. Mentioning that is probably sufficient. oknazevad (talk) 03:41, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

• What about {{en-}} and {{em-}}, for the unspaced, and {{ en- }} for the spaced en dash? And while we're at it, could we please consider {{s-}} for the non-breaking space? Tony (talk) 05:07, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
  • en- and em- are open. I don't think we can technically precede or follow the name of a template by a space character, but there's no reason templates can't be strong, or use something like {{_en-_}} for the nbspaces. There is a standard {{nbsp}} template already, but if en- and em- are considered fair, so is s- (though caution should be made, that there's a series of S-<name> templates that are used for succession boxes.) --MASEM (t) 05:16, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

May a bot protect template citations but not plain citations?

I have started an RfC on this question at WT:CITE#May a bot protect template citations but not plain citations? Jc3s5h (talk) 14:37, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Usage: Why weasel

Tony has extended MOS:FOLLOW to

Many points of usage, such as the treatment of proper names, can be decided by observing the style adopted by high-quality sources. Unless there is a clear reason to do otherwise, follow the usage of reliable English-language secondary sources on the subject. If the sources can be shown to be unrepresentative of current English usage, follow current English usage instead—and consult more sources.

I thought he liked MOS brief.

More to the point, do the bolded weasel-words add anything material to the section that simple Observe doesn't? There is already an allowance for cases in which there is a clear reason not to follow usage; what more do we need? I suppose there is a case for Unless there is a clear reason to do otherwise, generally follow the usage of reliable English-language secondary sources; but is even that necessary? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:46, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

The only benefit of Tony's version I can see is the notion that following high quality sources is not mandatory is expressed right at the beginning, for the benefit of people who don't read the entire paragraph. If someone can think of a version that is as brief as Septentrionalis's but expresses the non-mandatory nature of the advice right at the beginning, it would be an improvement. Jc3s5h (talk) 00:02, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Fine, we can put In general as the first two words. I do not agree with this, since I am tired of the campaign to use MOS to convert Wikipedia into something other than English, but it will do much less harm than the weaselry now in place. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:58, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Watering down the status of the MoS

Mr Anderson is pursuing a daily strategy to unilaterally perpetrate a change he has decided on to the "Follow the sources" general principle at the top.

The pre-existing text, to which I have reverted, is specific:

"Many points of usage, such as the treatment of proper names, can be decided by observing the style adopted by high-quality sources. Unless there is a clear reason to do otherwise, follow the usage of reliable English-language secondary sources on the subject. If the sources can be shown to be unrepresentative of current English usage, follow current English usage instead—and consult more sources."

Mr Anderson is not happy with this. He wants to reduce the ambit of the style guide in WP articles by providing himself, and any others he can persuade, an instrument with which to challenge just about anything in the style guide he disagrees with:

"In general, observe the style adopted by high-quality sources. Unless there is a clear reason to do otherwise, follow the usage of reliable English-language secondary sources on the subject. If the sources can be shown to be unrepresentative of current English usage, follow current English usage instead—and consult more sources."

This change of itself may not be seen as hugely damaging; but it will be followed by a succession of changes that in themselves are "minor", which will add up to something that is significant. I see no particular reason to alter the text that apparently was agreed on some time ago. The MoS's most valuable function is to stop edit-warring over style out in the articles. This war of attrition—daily attempts to set up a slippery slope towards a vastly weakened MoS—needs to have consensus here beforehand. Tony (talk) 14:44, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Not that I am in disagreeance, however, in the previous discussion (just above), he can be seen as discussing this as well as first choosing wording that was mentioned as overly strict. I don't entirely understand his angle and it seems tha you do not as well. Rather than lambasting him with verbose passages discussing how he is "watering down" the MoS, maybe it would be best to step back and gather perspective on the situation. He chooses to make edits because he feels the MoS is improperly worded in various portions. You feel he is in the wrong to do so because you prefer the current text or would at least prefer discussion on the matter first. However, there is somewhere near 100K active editors and yet, no where near that number discusses anything here. My point: there is never consensus on the MoS. There is no need to label his edits as "watering down" the text. Such labels only serve to demonize his actions without further discussion and really does ham to collaboration.--Xession (talk) 15:35, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

MOS is a Guideline... but Wikipedia has never properly answered the question: "What does 'Guideline' mean?" Some see them as being essentially junior Policy pages (consisting of rules that we must follow). Others see them as being mere advice pages (consisting of guidance as to good practice, but not something that must be followed). Almost all of our guidelines experience a constant tug of war between those who want the content and language to be more rule oriented, and those who want it to be more advice oriented. Over time, the page gets skewed towards one orientation or the other, and there is a reaction against it. I have seen this cycle get played out at WP:RS at least four times in the years I have been editing and working on policy/guideline pages. Resolving the tug of war is never easy, but if we want this page to be stable, we need to reach a middle ground. Both extremes of the pendulum need to compromise. Blueboar (talk) 17:30, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

There may be a bit of a slippery slope argument in the OP. However, the reason for the change in wording ought to have had a justification, and I don't see what justification was given for it. That said, the lede and general principles aren't particularly clear, IMO. It seems to define "Style" as "language, layout, and formatting that are consistent, clear, and precise." In the contended "Follow the sources" section, neither "Many points of usage, such as the treatment of proper names, can be decided by observing the style adopted by high-quality sources" nor "In general, observe the style adopted by high-quality sources" identify what all in Wikipedia should follow the language, layout, and formatting adopted by high-quality sources. Additionally, we don't, in fact, follow the language of the source if it's not English, nor do we follow the page layout of the sources, or the text formatting. Category:Wikipedia Manual of Style (layout) and Category:Wikipedia Manual of Style (formatting) don't clarify what this could mean either. A bit perplexing, as the MoS subpages generally make sense. Шизомби (Sz) (talk) 19:09, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

See the section immediately above. "Many points of usage, such as the treatment of proper names, can be decided by observing" is weasel-wording, which adds nothing to the section. Why have it? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:37, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

How does that wording "deny the reader the opportunity to assess the source of the viewpoint" the way WP:Weasel words do? That's not really a concern with Wikipedia guidelines. "Many points of usage" appears from the edit history to have been there for some time. Tony may have added it recently, but it's more accurate to say he re-added it sometime after you removed it recently: diff. I don't much favor one over the other, as neither of them are instructive so far as I can see. "Many points" gives one example, while yours gives none, but that one example doesn't tell the reader much. Precisely what language, layout and formatting of the sources is supposed to be followed, and in relation to what? It's a question for anybody here. Шизомби (Sz) (talk) 23:45, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Sigh. That's not a definition; Weasel words are equivocal statements, claims, or rules; the language you quote is why not to use them in articles (an aspect of guidelines MOS could use much more of - when, rarely, there are reasons for MOS' claims). Tony's vague and equivocal verbiage is a prime example of weaselling.

Your other questions deal with the substance of the section, which has not been in dispute; I have attempted to clarify: In general, a stylistic question should be solved by following the usage of English sources. Because style vaires by subject, writing on the same subject has most weight; also, there will be times a sensible writer will decline to follow the majority - but she should generally have a sound reason for this. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:45, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

But I am puzzled not merely by the wording of Tony's tirade, but by what he means:

• What does Tony intend to say by is pursuing to unilaterally perpetrate? It alliterates nicely, but what does it mean?
• What is the status of MOS which he perceives me to be watering down? MOS has said for years that it's a guideline.
• How does replacing Many points of usage, such as the treatment of proper names, can be decided by observing by In general, observe undermine this?
• Reducing the ambit of MOS? That means decreasing its circumference, the difficulty of getting around it. Does Tony really want to fatten it?
• Should MOS describe encyclopedic English? If not, what?
• Should it be based on reliable sources? If not, why not?
• Should it represent the consensus of editors in general? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:37, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Is there consensus to end the long-standing role of the MoS?

I have reverted Mr Anderson's change again, since he has not gathered consensus for it here. It would be a fundamental change in the concept of MoS: to [expand the scope of the advice to follow the usage of "reliable" secondary sources in determining "many points of usage, such as the treatment of proper names", to a point-blank, general statement to "observe the style adopt by external sources", in which case, I wonder why we need a MoS at all. If there is consensus to make the change, I will then move to delete the MoS, since it will be of no use.

Before such a transformation begins, we should determine whether there is consensus for giving carte-blanche to anyone who wants to override the Manual of Style simply by citing a single external authority or example.

Support Mr Anderson's proposal to give external sources general authority over the MoS in WP articles ("In general, observe the style adopted by high-quality sources when considering a stylistic question. Unless there is a clear reason to do otherwise, follow the usage of reliable English-language secondary sources on the subject of an article.")

Retain the long-standing wording ("Many points of usage, such as the treatment of proper names, can be decided by observing the style adopted by high-quality sources. Unless there is a clear reason to do otherwise, follow the usage of reliable English-language secondary sources on the subject....")

1. Tony (talk) 10:38, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
2. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:18, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
3. SMasters (talk) 15:30, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
4. Binksternet (talk) 15:37, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
5. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 00:05, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

This personal attack misstates the issues. This "long-standing wording" (adopted early last year) does, and was №intended to, establish a general rule (with exceptions for good reason) that Wikipedia would use styles generally accepted in English; this has not been changed. No word of any version says that we should follow any "single source"; indeed, today's version says we should usually follow general usage - which Tony's verbosity does not.

• Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:09, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Comments

• Can we please have diffs, so we can all see that is at issue. --Philcha (talk) 11:53, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
• Seems like this is an overreaction. Both statements are making the same point - that if there's something that our MOS doesn't answer specifically you turn to the sources - with the latter being more clear about it. --MASEM (t) 13:45, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
• I would go for the second version. A bit stronger and more in line with the WP:NOR policy. It's shorter, and it doesn't presuppose which points of usage are covered for sure. (/me suspects that this is related WP:ENDASH and similar disputes, where it was argued that the punctuation in reliable sources doesn't have to be followed because we have our own stylistic guides) --Enric Naval (talk) 14:06, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
• "Is there consensus to end the long-standing role of the MoS?" Answer: fuck no, and Tony gives exactly the reason why. We have our own manual of style, specific to our own needs. Sometimes we disagree with allowed styles, other times we impose one over all others, and sometimes we permit all of them. PMAnderson's version strips the MOS of it's power to discriminate against styles deemed undesired. Many MOSes would allow for YYYY-MM-DD in prose. Yet we don't want that. Many MOSes would likewise impose the Harvard style of citation. We allow all styles. Many MOSes tells you to use titlecase for sections. We choose sentence case. External sources provide good guidance most of the time, but which are different from our agreed-upon house style. But most damning of all, several reliable sources have shit-poor stylistic standards. Assume for instance, that all books on say... whale reproduction italicizes the English names of whale species blah blah blah, the blue whale is a .... Should we then start italicizing the English name of whales in the article on the reproduction of whales, and not italicize them otherwise, as most books don't italicize the English names of species? The answer is a resounding NO. In this case, books on whale reproduction can take a hike. PManderson's version tells you that no, if you can find a subset of books/blogs/columns/newspaper/journals/... with weird, sub-par, or otherwise-innapropriate-for-Wikipedia conventions, you can now Wikilawyer their horrible style into articles. So again: fuck no. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:02, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
  • To be completely fair, neither version specifically says the equivalent "WP's MOS takes priority over external sources." --MASEM (t) 15:24, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
    • The first version says external sources can often provide a good guidance. The second says you must follow external sources. World of difference. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:29, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
      • "In general" != "must". And given that guidelines are meant to be descriptive, that follows allow that route. --MASEM (t) 15:58, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
  • See the words Unless there is a clear reason to do otherwise, which are in all versions. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:58, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
• Tempest in a tea-pot... Both versions are acceptable, as they say essentially the same thing. Both statements can be boiled down to: "When in doubt, follow the style used in reliable sources" (which I hope we would all agree with). That said... Is there consensus to end the long-standing role of the MoS? ... No, of course not. But that begs the question: Does PMA's edit "end the long-standing role the role of the MOS?" ... my answer: No it doesn't. Blueboar (talk) 15:52, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
  • And I have not intended to change anything about our guidance, merely to word it better; if Headbomb's comments above are intended to enshrine some other role for NOS, I will welcome his saying what it is below.
  • In line with this, since this relatively novel section is still wordy, I have ventured an even tighter text, in the perpetual hope that a new form of words will bring agreement:

    Wikipedia usually adopts the style generally found in high-quality sources on a given subject. Unless there is a clear reason to do otherwise, follow the usage of reliable English-language secondary sources. If the sources can be shown to be unrepresentative of current English usage, follow current English usage instead—and consult more sources.

  • If there is disagreement that Wikipedia usually does (and should) adopt such a style, let us have it explicitly - and without profanity. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:47, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

What is the long-standing role of the MoS?

Having skimmed through several of the debates on this page, have to wonder if we have a consensus on this fundamental question. So let's see if we can reach one... what do people think the role of the MOS actually is? Blueboar (talk) 16:05, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

• I get the impression that some people feel it is some form of a constitution that should be dogmatically followed. I personally feel that the MoS is a guideline, and while maybe a great place to look if in need, it is neither infallible, nor does it necessarily express true consensus on Wikipedia. Giving the MoS the status of a rule book opens the door to many other problems, including giving quasi-legislative powers to a select few, prominent editors. Disastrous, if such a definition for the MoS is sought.--Xession (talk) 16:39, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Rather than complain about how other people see the MOS, could we restrict our comments to what we think the role of the MOS actually is (or is supposed to be). Xession, you say the MOS is a guideline, and "a great place to look if in need". Please expand... What do you mean by that? Blueboar (talk) 16:57, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

If an editor is working on an aticle, and is unsure how to stylize a particular portion, or looking for information regarding how they could benefit an article in some way, the MoS is a great place to start. However, the guidelines should not be mandated, should an editor feel they have a better method than the guide provides.--Xession (talk) 17:10, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

• It is a guideline - it is meant to be descriptive, providing some straight-up mechanical advice (punctuation, etc. ) but otherwise reducing but not eliminating the amount of variance in style between articles. It is clearly not aimed or used to promote one single style (otherwise, for example, we'd be able to fix ourselves on using american-vs-UK english, or american-vs-international date formats). --MASEM (t) 16:49, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

• The Manual of Style is a guideline for writing encyclopedic English. If it demands something which is not English, that interferes the purpose of this English Wikipedia, which is to communicate with English-speakers. The test of whether something is English is whether the community of anglophones has adopted it; there is no English Academy to make decrees. No-one who supposes that this page has some other "long-standing role" has ever stated what it is. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:56, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

• It is a guideline; it gives guidance on how to write English. It is not a policy, a set of rules that must be followed on every single article. This is an encyclopedia, it complies information of a wide variety of fields; when usage common to that field varies from the MoS, the terms and usages proper to that field should be followed. And it describes the English that exists, not the English yet to come. Most importantly, it should describe English as widely used, not just because some editors like it; some parts are currently minority usage (regardless of variety) that were preferred by editors at the time of drafting, but are uncommon in daily usage. oknazevad (talk) 17:20, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

• Guidelines and policies both have exceptions, according to WP:IAR and common sense (for instance, software malfunction isn't listed as a 3RR exception, but obviously it could be), although guidelines probably have more exceptions. But if we have no obligation to honor the MoS and guidelines amount to essays, then I don't understand why we waste our time here on the MoS at all. There are hundreds of books and websites about style, and almost nobody has read them all. If the MoS is no different, then why do we pay any attention to it? Art LaPella (talk) 22:09, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Because it's accessible. Most people don't have access to a single style guide; even fewer have access to a range of them. As Xession says above, it's a convenient place to look; even though I have access to CMOS most of the time, typing "WP:MOS" is a lot easier - and it covers Wikipedia-specific issues.
  • We have no obligation to honor MOS; we have an obligation to write English, because what matters is the encyclopedia which should be intelligible to readers of English. The reason to spend time is the same for every guideline: we save time we would otherwise spend repeating things we agree on - by putting them in a central location and linking. (Of course, that would require a MOS that said things we agree on, instead of things people WP:MADEUP.)
  • And, in the meanwhile, there is always keeping MOS from encouraging willful harm. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:32, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

• I have been following this discussion with much interest. As a professional copy editor, I work with many different publications and media outlets. Earlier in my career, I freelanced, hopping from one publisher to the next, often on a project or short-term basis. Each house will have its own Style Manual, and it is the first thing that I will look at when I'm with a new outlet. If I was not able to adopt to individual house styles quickly, word would get around and I would not be in this career for long. I am not sure if people are confused with the term "Style guide". The word "guide" here is very misleading. It is not a guide at all, but a set of standards – a manual. That is why it is called the Manual of Style and not Style Guidelines or Suggested Style. For professionals, we would view this as a manual and would use it as our "bible", referring to if often to ensure consistency. You see, consistency is key when it comes to the overall feel and look of any publication. It is also a mark of the quality of any publication. I totally agree with Tony that if the MOS is merely a suggested style, then why bother having it at all? There is no point. Everyone can do what they want, and it will just look like chop suey. For Wikipedia, I believe that it should maintain its own house style. It is not just about guidance on language (I do agree that this part is guidance), but it is also much to do with styling, hence Manual of Style and not Manual of English. Why should we bother about all this? What if you are looking at a bunch of articles and cross referencing at the same time, for example, if you are going through all articles in a Featured list, or reading the Signpost in a single page. Following other house styles will mean many conflicting and inconsistent styling of the articles. Even within one article, there will be many references. Which style do you follow? One italicizes foreign terms and another doesn't. One bolds the names of people and uses a period for all abbreviations and another doesn't. Without a style manual, there will not be consistency. Some have argued that we are here to write an encyclopedia, and because there are a wide range topics, an MOS is not practical, workable, or even a waste of time. Firstly, I can tell you that I have worked with old-school encyclopedia publishers years ago, and every single one of them has a style manual. As I have said, this is imperative if one is to achieve consistency. Secondly, while it is used as a "bible" by professionals, there are times when we do have to deviate, but such deviation are few and far between, and affect a relatively small amount of articles. And finally, some of us are writers. Write, and someone else will come and do the copy editing and styling. But don't say that the MOS is a waste of time. If anything, it adds great value to the project. It says that we care about consistency, standards and quality. This is my personal opinion. A big part of me will die if the MOS goes, and my respect for the project will certainly go spiraling downhill. – SMasters (talk) 05:18, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

I think we should reimagine the MoS as a list of changes that anyone should be allowed to make at any time without being required to discuss them on talk pages first. We should accept that not all Wikipedia contributors who are qualified to provide information will be able to do so in high-quality English. We should accept that other Wikipedians will go around and correct the English of such contributions. The MoS should be a list of instructions for those editors.

As for whether the MoS should be treated as a guideline or as hard rules, well, if the MoS were not full of people's personal preferences set up as rules, then I'd prefer a strict interpretation. However, because it includes revisionist "this is how English should be" ideas, then I find it does not have sufficient credibility to be treated that way.

As for consistency, it has long been established that the unit of consistency is the article, not all of Wikipedia. I personally feel that that is a great way to think of a project of this kind: we don't need consistency throughout the whole project and requiring it in all cases would stifle and insult contributors who come from different English schools. That is something else that we should accept. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:41, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Mr Anderson is currently engaged in his war of attrition not only here, but here as well, where he is garnering people who just write "Support" or "Support" what you say, or Support Mexico–America but not Mexican–American. This is a rag-tag, disorganised corner in which he is challenging the status of MoS as the coherent stylistic guideline for the project, focusing on an issue in which he has failed to gain consensus here again and again. He has presented what looks like a skewed argument that somehow neglects the MoS guideline that dashes stand not only for "to", but for "versus"."Is this War a range from Mexican to American?", he asks editors there. No, it's Mexicans "versus" Americans. If he succeeds, I can see that all binary war expressions, x–y graph, blood–brain barrier, and many other well-established usages, will potentially become edit-war zones as he pleases. This is why we have a MoS in the first place: to stop this kind of instability. I wish he would cease and desist. Tony (talk) 15:41, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Tony... please stop your personal attacks against PMA. I started this thread, not PMA, and my question was inspired by a lot more than the specific debate you are talking about. Blueboar (talk) 17:07, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. But I think we are coming to the meat of the matter, and it may require another subsection to discuss it. On the immediate substance: I do not oppose well-established usages; I support them - I oppose Mexican–American War because the dash doesn't appear to be anybody's usage; and therefore Tony's proposed etymology is, however plausible, mistaken. Blood–brain barrier, with a dash, does appear to be common usage - and if so, I support it; but, like Michaelson–Morley effect, it is a compound noun used attributively; the line between this and Austria-Hungary may justify an often. The rational solution would be to explain custom as well as we can, not to invent a new one. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:36, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Tony may not be the most politically correct bout this, but he is nonetheless right. PMAnderson is waging a war of attrition on the MOS. And I'm as annoyed as Tony on this. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 17:40, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

It takes two (or more) to tango. This is exactly the same type of situation that was created during the date delinking mess before it got to Arbcom, sides entrenching themselves without working collaboratively on a solution. --MASEM (t) 17:53, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

If "it's Mexicans "versus" Americans" were the way wars are named, a war involving Spain (or Finland, or Iceland) would be called "Spaniard–Whatever War" (or "Finn–Whatever War", or "Whatever–Icelander War"). That's not how wars are typically called, is it. 137.43.105.17 (talk) 18:43, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

WTF are you people smoking!?!?!? The MoS is the closest thing WP has to "Holy Scripture™" - please stop screwing around with it. Roger (talk) 17:59, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

• In a way, I agree with Darkfrog that the MOS should be a list of changes that anyone should be allowed to make at any time without being required to discuss them on talk pages first -- however, that would involve drastically pruning the current MOS, most of which would be better off as Essays that individual editors or groups could adopt declaiming "the way I wish everybody wrote". older ≠ wiser 18:03, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
  • That is more or less what other guidelines are. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:15, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Holy Scripture?!?

The MoS is the closest thing WP has to "Holy Scripture™"

Thank you, Dodger 67, for expressing frankly what much of the profanity around here seems to imply Is there consensus on this view?

I doubt it:

• NPOV, V, and OR are much closer to Holy Scripture - and the wish to maintain these exactly as written is much weaker.
• This is contrary to clear policy: Wikipedia is not governed by statute law, much less Revelation.
• Has anybody ever attempted to have MOS say any such thing? I doubt it; that is not consensus among Wikipedians as a whole, and efforts to make it say so would have made it {{historic}} long ago. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:15, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Stability

Tony's argument, that MOS is a set of decisions (more or less arbitrary, it would appear) which are to be imposed on all articles in the interests of stability is also refreshingly frank. It has three disadvantages:

1. It does not in fact produce stability. More editors are fluent in English than know the recesses of MOS; when MOS differs from English usage, we get the following cycle: Some editor corrects an error; some worthy soul replaces it as a "MOS breach"; an editor corrects it again; and so on until WP:DEADLINE.

   When MOS arbitrarily picks one usage within the corpus of formal written English, the same thing happens. This is the sort of thing WP:ENGVAR averts; but the rest of MOS is not so sensible.

2. It does not produce English. Since the purpose of en: Wikipedia (and therefore of MOS) is to produce an English encyclopedia, this is actively harmful.
3. It attracts everybody who would like to Fix the English Language. <drumroll> That's how we got the Kibibyte Wars: some good soul decided that kibibytes were the Right Way to Do Things, and attempted to produce stability. If MOSNUM said, first of all, "write English", that would have been comparatively easy to settle.

This is presumably why this view is not consensus. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:28, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

About the serial comma

From the "Serial Commas" section:

"A serial comma (also known as an Oxford comma or a Harvard comma) is a comma used immediately before a conjunction in a list of three or more items: the phrase ham, chips, and eggs includes a serial comma, while the variant ham, chips and eggs omits it. Editors may use either convention on Wikipedia so long as each article is consistent within itself."

I recommend that editors use only the former convention (with the serial comma). It does not make much sense for a serial comma to be omitted in any Wikipedia article (which should be ruled as incorrect), but why is the serial comma omitted before a conjunction in the last item in a list of three or more items, anyway? 66.204.145.253 (talk) 14:53, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

It's a difference of style. If the article is consistent with itself, it doesn't matter which you wrote with or without a serial comma. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:25, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

There are a few cases in which either adding or leaving out the serial comma would be confusing: "Jane thanked her parents, Coach Bob and Jane Allen" doesn't mean the same as "Jane thanked her parents, Coach Bob, and Jane Allen." I recommend allowing editors to use their judgment. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:35, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

What's incorrect to you is correct to me: I usually omit a serial comma in my own writing. Both are valid so it's left up to editorial judgement.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 16:51, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Surely this is an ENGVAR issue? The serial comma is prevelent in US articles and usually never used in British English articles. Never having used a serial comma in 57 years of writing it jars on me like fingernails down a chalk board - but I accept them in US articles (with the hairs on my neck bristling). 21st CENTURY GREENSTUFF 18:09, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

No, it's not only regional. There's a reason it's called the Oxford comma. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:13, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

So, before the last item in a list of three or more items, a serial/Oxford comma should always be used, it cannot be omitted.

• "Jane thanked her parents, Coach Bob and Jane Allen." This sentence implies that Jane's parents are Coach Bob and Jane Allen.
• "Jane thanked her parents, Coach Bob, and Jane Allen." This sentence inplies that Jane's parents are different from Coach Bob and Jane Allen.66.204.145.253 (talk) 19:55, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
  • No. If it is used, it is an Oxford comma; but it only resolves ambiguity in that sentence because the first item is "her parents". There are occasions (see Oxford comma, where including one produces ambiguity. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:07, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

How can including a serial comma produce ambiguity? 66.204.145.253 (talk) 20:13, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

• To my mother, Coach Jane, and God. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:21, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

ISBNs

A bot has been converting ISBN-10s to ISBN-13s and hyphenating the latter (see also WT:ISBN). I am not aware of community consensus for such a mass change. Is there? Geometry guy 21:36, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

The BAG approved it Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/RjwilmsiBot 6, and suggested to be following WP:ISBN appropriately. But there wasn't any discussion on if the task was appropriate from a MOS standard (even though I see the author flagged WT:ISBN for input).

The issue of failure to ignore wrapping might be solved with some CSS ala no-wrap flags. --MASEM (t) 21:46, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

I am advised that the bot is not yet converting ISBN-10s to ISBN-13s, although this was sought in the bot request. In my view this may be an example of BAG approving a task on technical grounds without considering community consensus. Geometry guy 21:52, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

But again, there is a call by the bot author on WT:ISBN to review the bot's purpose before it was approved by BAG. I don't see that notice here on WT:MOS but at the same time, it certainly wasn't done in a vacuum. --MASEM (t) 21:54, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

As you say, I do not think the bot operator is particularly at fault here; rather it is the BAG approval for mass stylistic changes which are not documented in the MoS. Geometry guy 22:09, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

There is no community consensus for stylistic edits without thought or consideration. There is a strong feeling, at least, that editors should know why they are doing things; bots never do, although they are not the only offenders. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:50, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

ISBNs should obviously be hyphenated since it makes them much easier to read and gather the relevant information from them. This is routine cleanup. Likewise for ISBN-10 to ISBN-13 conversions.Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 22:04, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

The hyphenation of ISBN-13s is not in the MoS, so it needs to be discussed. Geometry guy 22:13, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

Clearly the bot operators should know why the bots are doing those things. Just as clearly Rjwilmsi knows why this bot is doing this thing. Converting is the right thing to do, at the least in all articles that have both -10 and -13 types. We should not have them mixed. As for the hyphenation and nowrap, we've discussed it before. It's pretty much a yawner. Some editors will squeal over slow load times, others over wasted space on a small screen. That shouldn't stop the bot from doing the -10 to -13 conversion. LeadSongDog come howl! 22:06, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

The bot is not currently doing the -10 to -13 conversion (although that has, apparently been approved). However, it is adding hyphens to ISBN-13s. Geometry guy 22:13, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Since the -13 contains more info of -10, I don't understand why use not use -13 in all cases. Is there any problem with that? -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:14, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

What information does the 13 digit ISBN carry that the 10 digit one does not? Mr Stephen (talk) 22:31, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

My opinion is that hyphenation/spacing is useful to the reader. The ISBN folks' current preference is to use hyphens. I have hyphenated quite a number of ISBNs in the last year or so, several times at FAN or GAN or in the FPA queue, and to the best of my memory none have been reverted (except once when an editor expressed a preference for the retention of existing spaces, I forget why I changed the format). I have been reading long enough for my brain to recognize that a hyphen at the end of a line indicates continuation. I am unpersuaded that the 10-13 change is a benefit. Mr Stephen (talk) 22:29, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Personally, I prefer ISBN-13s, and I also prefer ISBN-13s with minimal hyphenation (one at most). So I would support a bot to covert -10s to -13s. However my personal preferences are not the issue here: mass stylistic changes need community consensus, and in this case, that probably means explicit support for the preferred style (whatever that is) in the MoS. Geometry guy 22:36, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge, the single hyphen is not approved or described by the ISBN authorities (but enlighten me if I'm wrong). I don't see what information it gives the reader, and we should avoid it. Mr Stephen (talk) 22:49, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

• Per ISBN international manuals (which was pointed to at the BRFA), both ISBN-10 and ISBN-13 require hyphenation. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 18:31, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

---

I'm deferring comment on this issue for 24 hours. However, in the hope of aiding discussion I've posted some stats on existing ISBN usage on Wikipedia at Wikipedia_talk:ISBN#ISBN_usage_on_English_Wikipedia_as_of_January_2011. Rjwilmsi 22:32, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

No italics for Latin/French/Japanese words?

Hello, I am here to put my two cents' worth of knowledge: In my native language, Spanish, we often put Latin/French in italics, but not Japanese, so I was shocked when I read the following sentence:"Loanwords and borrowed phrases that have common usage in English—Gestapo, samurai, vice versa, esprit de corps—do not require italics. A rule of thumb is not to italicize words that appear unitalicized in major English-language dictionaries." I would change the wording to "Some words do require italics" because for example, many people nowadays know what samurai is, but not what Gestapo or esprit de corps mean. Thus I will seek either removal or rewording of that section. Fandelasketchup (talk) 13:14, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Comprehension of a word/phrase is different from how it is formatted. Such are linked to allow readers to understand the terms if they are not in common english (eg as Gestapo or esprit de corps); but as you noted, phrases like samurai or vice versa though borrowed are considered common english and would not be linked. --MASEM (t) 13:34, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

These words don't need italics because they have become English words. We don't need to italicize them just because not everyone would understand them. (After all, English is the one that drags other languages into the alley, beats them up and then goes through their pockets for spare vocabulary.) We don't regularly italicize words like "vociferate" and "pulchritude" and these are probably harder to understand than "Gestapo" despite not being loan words. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:34, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

I would italicise "esprit de corps" because it is a foreign phrase that is not part of the English language, we just use it for effect. McLerristarr | Mclay1 14:58, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree; it is a bad example - at best marginal, and for many good authors wrong. Gestapo is another matter; it is an English term of abuse, often used as a generic term. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:22, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

As a counter example on the other side, in situ is nearly always italicized in academic sources. --MASEM (t) 18:08, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

So is loc. cit.. The usual way of expressing the line is whether a phrase is treated in English as foreign or not; since that consists largely of whether it is in italics, that becomes quite circular. (Also whether it makes English compounds and inflexions: Gestapo-like, but [[xt|esprits de corps}}.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:38, 24 February 2011 (UTC)