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Non-breaking spaces with written-out units

As a follow-up to topic-specific discussions at Talk:Hassium and User talk:DePiep#MOS and NBSP, it seems that the current MOS guideline on the usage of non-breaking spaces when separating numbers from written-out units (e.g. 5 kilometers (instead of 5 km); 118 elements) is open to interpretation. It advises to use non-breaking spaces when line breaks are awkward, which they seem to be in this case; however, implementing this would apparently require making heavy changes to lots of articles, as it is not strongly established as are the examples given in the MOS section.

I thus ask, should the same guideline for quantities and abbreviated units be followed for fully spelled-out units? Should non-breaking spaces be used only with abbreviations, or always with units and quantities? I would like to establish a more definite MOS guideline, in which one or the other is widely agreed upon as common practice. ComplexRational (talk) 00:46, 10 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • I really, really wish people would stop jumping straight into a project-wide RfC before working with other editors to frame the questions to be posed. I urge you to withdraw this. And MOSNUM is probably the right place for this. (Main MOS vs subsidiary pages is a longstanding problem.) EEng 01:26, 10 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Where else would you suggest discussing this, seeing as its outcome is not specific to the articles for which this was discussed, and the question is pretty straightforward from these discussions? If it can be held elsewhere, I will withdraw; however, I don't think that place is MOSNUM because this issue pertains to MOS:NBSP, which is not its own MOS sub-page. I'm open to ideas. ComplexRational (talk) 02:02, 10 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'd suggest discussing it right here (or at Talk:MOSNUM, but since ultimately it's an aesthetic, not technical, issue I guess here is fine.) There are plenty of people here who have thought a lot about formatting issues, and many have outside professional experience, and with their participation I suspect the issue can either be resolved or boiled down to a clearcut question. Open-ended RfCs like you've started, which pull random people from all over into an unstructured discussion, just end up a mess. EEng 03:28, 10 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I withdrew it as an RfC. Let's play it out as a regular discussion now; I apologize for being unaware of this potential complication. ComplexRational (talk) 09:53, 10 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Ping to prevent archiving. EEng 12:49, 27 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see the "jumping into an RfC" that EEng is referring to here. I do see a reasonable description by ComplexRational of a MOS detail to be clarified somehow. Do I miss some invisible redacted editing? Please clarify. As it stands now, the OP is correct and relevant to me. -DePiep (talk) 00:01, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, obviously, like the OP said: he had set this up as an RfC but later withdrew it at my urging. EEng 00:28, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Eh, that 'obvious' part is not visible then?, like in an talk edited afterwards (ouch)? Must I do homework research to see it? -DePiep (talk) 00:34, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Jesus Christ, the OP wrote, just above here: Okay, I withdrew it as an RfC. 01:46, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
I think the point that is puzzling both DePiep and me is there seems to be no trace of the !RfC for us to see what issues had been raised. Starting an RfC and then withdrawing it should surely leave something in a history somewhere. There are no links, nor anything in contributions that I can find. What am I missing? --RexxS (talk) 14:11, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The most recent diff before I withdrew upon EEng's suggestion was [1]. All that changed since then was removal of the RfC template; the content of my original post is the same now as it was then. ComplexRational (talk) 14:43, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In traditional typography, typesetters would ensure that sentences didn't break onto another line at a point where the result was a new line starting with something that didn't make sense alone, or where the break would produce a semantic dissonance. So they would avoid lines starting with an abbreviation:

  • something something ... a distance of 15
    km

as well as lines that changed meaning when the next line was read:

  • something something ... a cost of $5
    million

In electronic document processing, when line length can change with screen resolution or window size, the non-breaking space was used to prevent those sort of breaks from happening. I don't believe there has ever been any rationale for placing a non-breaking space between numbers and normal recognisable English words, because those don't produce problems, other than in cases like the second example. There is really nothing wrong with seeing:

  • something something ... a distance of 15
    kilometres

and it is especially ludicrous to extend the fetish for non-breaking spaces in quantities to normal counted items. There is nothing wrong with reading:

  • something something ... a squad of 24
    football players

The examples at MOS:UNITNAMES reflect these simple principles, and I can't see what other interpretation could be made of the present guidance:

  • Use a non-breaking space ({{nbsp}} or  ) between a number and a unit symbol, or use {{nowrap}} ...
  • ... and a normal space is used between a number and a unit name.

If somebody wants to change those guidelines, then they really should be proposing what changes they want made and the reasons for them. --RexxS (talk) 19:07, 27 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Just for the record, I wasn't proposing a change. I was merely asking for clarification, and if any disagreement were to arise, then firmly establish one way or another. What is written here makes sense, now I only propose that it is made crystal clear for other (copy)editors in the MOS:NBSP section (to use only with abbreviations). ComplexRational (talk) 00:10, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) @RexxS:, these examples are undisputed, and are clear by WP:NBSP and WP:MOSUNIT. Minor detail: your example of 15<regularspace>kilometres is not in the MOS explicitly, but well observed, also by {{Convert}} — end of detail.
Note: for simplicity, an "_" (underscore) says NBSP.
A question arose when reading in MOS:NBSP: It is desirable to prevent line breaks where breaking across lines might be confusing or awkward. -- note the criterium "awkward". The examples given are (1) unit symbols - no problem, see before, and (2) exampes of number-in-proper-name (Boeing_747).
Some editors state that the "awkward" situation may also occur in situations with a number inline, i.e. in running text. Examples (in here): element_114, the expected magic 114_protons, ....
My (opposing) point is that such number-word combinations are not awkward, can reasionably occur in any running sentence, are part of a reading habit, and so are not 'awkward' and do not allow an NBSP. Otherwise, this whole enwiki could require a MOS-change in ~every article, or have inconsistent styles between articles re this line-breaking.
So, first question: do we recognise this is a Good MOS Question to discuss? -DePiep (talk) 00:25, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
There's long been a need for the nbsp/nobreak guidance to be improved. I've never done anything about it because I realized some cases would need a discussion. EEng 00:28, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@DePiep: It certainly seems that something ought to be done to educate editors about when to use (and not use) non-breaking spaces. I just looked at the Island of stability article you pointed out. Over 200 non-breaking spaces. Seriously? I've just removed four that you could see at a glance occur at places where the line could never break. No doubt somebody will revert me, citing MoS instead of thinking for themselves. I'm not sure repeating the already crystal clear guidance in MoS is the solution though. Either they never read MoS or they don't understand what a line break is. Either way, tinkering with the MoS won't have any effect on them. As for your actual examples, I've long ago given up trying to convince others that there's absolutely nothing wrong with reading
  • Flerovium, with the expected magic 114
    protons, was first synthesized in 1998
Although to get a line break there, you would have to be viewing on a screen with a maximum line length of less than 40 characters. Even my 1978 vintage TRS-80 could manage that. --RexxS (talk) 03:06, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • If 114 protons can't be broken, then you may as well say that every number has to be followed by an nbsp, always, and that would be silly.
  • I do think Z = 112 shouldn't break, though that would be better coded as {{nobr|Z = 112}} than the current Z&nbsp;=&nbsp;112
  • I'm not sure that all the examples at MOS:NBSP belong there, and I wonder if there shouldn't be some other cases listed.
EEng 04:20, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
User:RexxS: that is my understanding of MOS:NBSP too, including its background (typography). It's just, I stopped editing because of EW, started a talk, and involved editors correctly started a wider talk here. But I see no need to admonish other editors, instead we could use a clearer MOS text and explanation here, for fellow editors. -DePiep (talk) 08:28, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I now see that the section title here is a much narrower issue than the wide one ComplexRational and I were discussing/editing. As the Island of stability example show, it was and is about all of MOS:NBSP. This complicates/disturbs this talk flow, I must excuse. (how to proceed?). -DePiep (talk) 08:32, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@EEng and DePiep: Apologies, I was too focused on the quantities issues and not enough on the general nbsp guidance, which does seem to be missing. IMHO, we should have a guideline that says something like
  • Numbers followed by an ordinary English word (not an abbreviation, or similar) do not require a non-breaking space between them in normal circumstances.
There are also many circumstances where a non-breaking space is unnecessary because a line break can't happen there. There are three examples in Island of stability: in the caption of the infobox (the width is fixed, regardless of window size); in reference number 5 (too close to the start of a line for a line break to be possible); and in the table caption "Most stable isotopes of superheavy elements (Z ≥ 104)" (the table can't become narrow enough to wrap the caption onto another line). I've tried pushing the zoom up to 250% and narrowing the window to its minimum, but I can't find a setting that could cause a line break where one had been placed. Nevertheless, I don't suppose that is anything we can, or should, try to give guidance about in MoS for fear of causing more confusion. --RexxS (talk) 14:06, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
In the first image, a line break appeared at 70% zoom on my computer screen, and indeed was awkward. What exactly are you suggesting would risk more confusion? The MoS is supposed to make things as clear as possible, and I wouldn't have started this thread had it been clear from the beginning (echoing EEng – There's long been a need for the nbsp/nobreak guidance to be improved.). ComplexRational (talk) 14:40, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for explaining how you got the line break in the image caption; I hadn't considered zooming out that far. But do you think anybody actually reads Wikipedia at 70% zoom? I can't even get any of my browsers to zoom at 70% to see the effect. Still, it's possible, so best to leave in the {{nowrap}} in that case. The general point about infobox images with captions shorter than the image width is worth understanding, though.
What I am suggesting is that there are many cases where we simply don't need a non-breaking space, i.e. whenever it's not possible for the line to break at that point, but that it's difficult to try to give foolproof guidance to cover those cases, so I don't think we can come up with a form of words that would be helpful. Can you?
Do you agree with my suggested clarification above: Numbers followed by an ordinary English word (not an abbreviation, or similar) do not require a non-breaking space between them in normal circumstances. and if not, why not? --RexxS (talk) 16:33, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Makes sense, I understand what you're saying about captions. Would it then also be better to use {{nobr|1=''Z'' = 114}} (for example) throughout the article, if this would be preferred to a pair of nbsp's? (On an unrelated note, maybe a new template should be created following whatever this discussion establishes, as this is pretty common in chemistry and physics articles.) ComplexRational (talk) 18:18, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with this wording, it addresses the elephant in the room and is easy enough to follow. I would specifically use it as an antithesis to the MOS points advising nbsp with units (70_km) or parts of the name (Airbus_A380), though I suppose saying "not an abbreviation" already addresses that. The only thing that may raise questions is "normal circumstances" – I'd rather leave that out and add an additional bullet point saying something along the lines of Non-breaking spaces are not required in fixed-with table cells or image captions, especially when the text is not long enough to wrap., or else work out through discussion what the most common exceptions would be (that would otherwise confuse editors unfamiliar or too familiar with MOS). ComplexRational (talk) 18:18, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Most editors, in my experience, prefer {{nowrap}} over multiple consecutive non-breaking spaces in a phrase. It makes the wikitext more readable for other editors (the same reason we prefer to avoid html entities where possible).
The "normal circumstances" would be to cover exceptions like
  • ... his fee for the service was $50
    thousand.
where a non-breaking space between the number and the next word would avoid giving the reader the impression the fee was $50 until they read on to the next line. But I'm happy to accommodate other views such as giving examples of specific exceptions instead of stating "normal circumstances".
While I think about it, there is a good case for what I called the "semantic dissonance" to be noted as a rule in other places as well:
  • ... the great-grandnephew of Queen Mary
    II
To anyone familiar with Tudor/Stuart history of England, it first reads as Mary I of England, then as Mary II of England when the next line is reached and obviously should be avoided. That represents one of the very few phrases where I would have no hesitation in recommending the use of a non-breaking space for cogent, rather than aesthetic reasons.--RexxS (talk) 19:26, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
This is already covered at MOS:NUM, to the extent any of this needs any rule-mongering. It advises using non-breaking spaces in strings like 5 cm, but it does not advise doing this when using spelled-out words. It doesn't advise against it, either. Like most things, it is left to editorial discretion. Nothing is broken. No, we do not need another template, since {{nobr}} and {{nbsp}} work fine. So does just using &nbsp;. Yes, it is WP:Common sense to non-breakify certain strings like "$50 thousand", and "Mary II". No, we don't need a rule about it, or we would've already had one by now. No, we do not need anyone going around inserting non-breaking spaces robotically in proximity to every number they see, per WP:MEATBOT ("ain't broke, don't 'fix' it").  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:29, 3 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

NBSP for numeric followed by words

Hi all, I recently put up Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/1985 World Snooker Championship/archive2 for FAC. SandyGeorgia commented that there should be some additional non-breaking spaces for items such as "15 seeds, 103 entrants, 32 participants". I don't really mind putting these in, but wanted to clarify our MOS, and how it effects these types of phrases. My understanding at WP:NBSP is that we should use these on names, such as World War 2, and measurements, such as 10 Miles. However, should we also use these on regular expressions, such as "20 people"? I don't mind either way, but wanted to clarify before I do wholesale changes. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 14:19, 10 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The guideline gives patchy and somewhat conflicting advice on this entire subject. I'm going to give you what I think will be useful guidance, but we must brace ourselves for people to leap out at us from all corners of the project to denounce what I say as at best the product of unfathomable ignorance, and at worst detrimental to the moral fiber of the nation.
There are two (maybe more, but two I can think of offhand) things we're trying to prevent:
  • (1) You don't want tiny fragments that look odd alone stranded on the start of a line. Thus World War{nbsp}2 and Henry{nbsp}VIII.
  • (2) You don't want two things separated by a linebreak if the reader, seeing just the first part, will be momentarily misled and have to back up and rethink when he sees the bit on the next line. Thus $2{nbsp}million, because if the million goes on the next line the reader first thinks "Two dollars", and then when he sees the million he has to back up and think "Oh, wait, Two million dollars". (This is a peculiarity of the fact that money symbols go at front of quantities rather than at the end as with other units. Can anyone think of a similar example not involving money?)
(3) Notice that the logic of (2) doesn't arise with normal quantities like 15 seeds or 2 million dollars (i.e. no nbsp used in these cases) because as the reader scans "15<linebreak>seeds" there's nothing misleading about 15 alone at the end of the line, and the same for scanning "2<linebreak>million dollars" or "2 million<linebreak>dollars". When you think about it, if you required nbsp in constructions like that, then you're pretty much saying every number anywhere must be followed by an nbsp, and that can't be right. So I would not put {nbsp} in your examples.
(4) Units of measure are a special case. By the logic of (3), there's no {nbsp} in 10 kilometers. However, I think the guideline does recommend an {nbsp} in the case of 10{nbsp}km, because at the start of a line km looks weird in a way kilometer doesn't. (km is what's called a unit symbol, whereas kilometer is what's called a unit name, and there are several other ways in which unit symbols and unit names are treated differently, so there's nothing odd about treating them differently here.)
Perhaps the principles laid out above can be the start of a revival of this thread. EEng 03:04, 12 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Or perhaps not. In the meantime, here are some other places I think (comment invited, of course) nbsp would be needed or not needed. Probably some or all of these are give by others in the posts above but I want to get them down while they're on my mind.
Needed:
  • In DMY dates e.g. 28{nbsp}May or 28{nbsp}May 1935, because at least some readers will find separation of the day-in-month from the month odd. (Further explanation on request as to why this is different from the case of 10 kilometers.)
  • In MDY dates e.g. May{nbsp}28, 1935, because "28, 1935" looks ludicrous at the start of a line.
  • He responded, "Better you than{nbsp}I." or The smallest reading was{nbsp}5.
  • 9:30{nbsp}a.m. because I think it's somewhat analogous to a unit symbol (see above); and definitely 9:30{nbsp}am, because "am" alone and separated from the "9:30" could cause the reader to trip and fall.
  • several{nbsp}.22 shells, because starting a line with a . looks weird
  • <certain image caption situations, details to be supplied (centered captions, left-aligned captions)>
  • Ellipsis or other fragments at the start of a quotation: He listed them as "1.{nbsp}Good goals, 2. Good planning, 3. Good execution; or The torn fragment read, "...{nbsp}for the love of God!"
  • July{{nbsp}}28, 1942 ????
Not needed:
  • 123 Main Street
EEng 00:48, 14 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I ask people here: how often have you struck a dangling numeral at the end of a line? Me: not that I can recall. Tony (talk) 07:08, 14 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    By struck do you mean "run into/happened to find" or "struck out/had to get rid of"? EEng 16:14, 14 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I could see having a summary section somewhere (hopefully not in the main page, maybe in MOS:TEXT) about "Appropriate uses of non-breaking spaces" or some heading title like that, in which we could suggest these sorts of cases, without implying that they're required. People already rankle at the currently fairly-strongly-recommended ones in MOS:NUM and a few other places. So, there's opportunity to cry "WP:CREEP!" here if this discussion produces more rules, rather than optional tweaks for polishing up text for maximum usability.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:30, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    Definitely for FA-level polishing, mostly, but there's one situation where I've found it worth the trouble to apply nbsp/nobr fairly liberally: in image captions, because their short line length means bad breaks do occur now and then unless you prevent them. EEng 03:45, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Something from somewhere else

From User:Tony1/Monthly_updates_of_styleguide_and_policy_changes / WP:Wikipedia_Signpost/2008-07-07/Dispatches --EEng 15:34, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Non-breaking spaces. The narrower scope for using non-breaking (i.e., "hard") spaces was significantly clarified. They should be used:

  • in compound expressions in which figures and abbreviations or symbols are separated by a space (17 kg, AD 565, 2:50 pm);
  • between month and day in dates that are not autoformatted (August 3, 1979);
  • on the left side of spaced en dashes; and
  • in other places where displacement might be disruptive to the reader, such as £11 billion, 5° 24′ 21.12″ N, Boeing 747, and the first two items in 7 World Trade Center.

Stress marks in Russian words

Stress marks

Stress marks discussion

There is a dispute on whether the Russian terms and names should include the accents that mark the stressed vowel, as in "Никола́й Андре́евич Ри́мский-Ко́рсаков", or should the correct spelling be preferred ("Николай Андреевич Римский-Корсаков"). In fact, these accents are not part of the regular Russian orthography, it's rather a kludge that exists to compensate for the lack of a full IPA transcriptions. The problem is that most readers unfamiliar with Russian don't realize what it is, they just think that the words are spelled correctly. "Because I've copied it from Wikipedia!".

For a couple of years I've been cleaning the articles from that, and by request of one of the curious users I wrote an essay that describes the matter: Stress marks in Russian words. However, recently I've met a significant population of users (by the number of two) who oppose to my edits so strongly that I have to draw your attention now. Please see the current discussion and express your opinions.

See also:

Ideally, we should form a statement to be included in MoS, so that the controversies no longer arise. Even if we don't, any input will still be helpful. — Mike Novikoff 13:00, 23 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Taurus Littrow, who wrote an excessive amount of comments below, is now indeffed and furthermore globally locked (see CentralAuth), which ultimately resulted from his attitude to this very dispute. So I've taken the liberty to boldly mark his comments with <s>, in hope that the uninvolved users, whom I encourage to comment, can read the discussion. — Mike Novikoff 02:29, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Important Note: Unlike claimed above, both spellings (stressed and unstressed) are correct. Taurus Littrow (talk) 07:47, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Not exactly. The whole point is that the stress-marked variants are used very seldom and only on certain occasions, and thus do not represent the common spelling. You may call them "correct" only in a narrow sense.
And I strongly oppose that you edit the essay before gaining any consensus to do so. It now looks like I wrote something that I actually didn't. :\ — Mike Novikoff 12:34, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The use of stresses is a different question. And what is "common spelling"? In encyclopedias, we have one common and accepted spelling (with stresses), and in books, another common spelling (no stresses). But you can't say that one spelling is correct and the other is wrong. That would be utterly misleading. Stresses are not mandatory, but they are not forbidden either. "Not mandatory" and "forbidden" are two different things. P.S. The essay doesn't belong to you; it's in common space, and some other users actually asked me to edit it. One other user edited it before me, anyway, and another after me (I also included a sentence suggested by a third user). You can give a link to the old version here, and we can discuss the whole thing on the talk page. Anyway, I tried to include both points of view, and I didn't remove most of your arguments (save for the irrelevant or misleading stuff). Let's not complicate things. Taurus Littrow (talk) 12:48, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You didn't word this invitation neutrally. So I'll try to help clear up the situation a bit.
You have tried to get rid of stress marks in the Russian Wikipedia and failed. Here: ru:Википедия:Форум/Архив/Общий/2018/09#Ударения в русских словах. So it is not only two users. The whole Russian Wikipedia opposes you. --Moscow Connection (talk) 18:11, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to echo this. This statement is certainly not neutrally worded, especially w.r.t. the mischaracterisation of accents marks. The description above could be interpreted as meaning that are an invention of Wikipedians, which is false. It is true that they are not a part of standard common everyday written Russian as is found in newspapers, books, signage etc. that is intended for normal L1 Russian speakers; however, they are common in texts for younger L1-speaking children or beginning L2 learners and, more relevantly here, have precedent in certain Russian-language encyclopaediae and dictionaries aimed at adult L1 speakers. Stephen MUFC (talk) 21:21, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, Mike Novikoff's statement is clearly very biased, one-sided and derisive. Frankly, I've got quite tired of this discussion, and I already listed my arguments for using accents (see the above links), so I will be brief this time and just say that using stress marks in Russian encyclopedias and dictionaries (in entries) is at least 200-year-old common practice which is still in use (see the Great Russian Encyclopedia in 36 volumes, published only recently, between 2004 and 2017, by the prestigious Russian Academy of Sciences). Stress marks are also used in all polysyllabic words in books for young Russian children and in reading books for foreigners. I guess that solves the issue. Taurus Littrow (talk) 13:51, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
> The whole Russian Wikipedia opposes you.
That's not even remotely true. The discussions on this matter appeared there since at least 2011 ([1], [2], [3]) when I hadn't even been there. @Jack who built the house: ping. — Mike Novikoff 08:09, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Both discussions concern dictionary words. While what you do is removing stress marks from people's names. No one in the Russian Wikipedia would ever agree to that. --Moscow Connection (talk) 11:10, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Just like in that old joke on the Russain army, where an officer says: "Hey, the three of you! I tell you both! Yes, you, man!"
In fact, there were much more than three discussions, some of them even successful, but I'm not going to reveal everything so that you don't go and edit war there now. I guess you are having enough fun there already, aren't you?
Back to the topic, there's no use to look at a non-consensus (there has never been one!) of a barbarian wiki that in 2021 still practices SOB-formed datelinks and infobox flags. They are copulating with geese, you see. — Mike Novikoff 13:50, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Is that a Russian expression? If not, I was considering asking at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language. Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 09:00, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It was a poor joke, sorry. I'll strike it out. — Mike Novikoff 10:05, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oh crumbs, it was a joke. Now even more intrigued. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:20, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'd dare to suggest that your joke is completely irrelevant here. Also, please avoid personal attacks like this one: "I guess you are having enough fun there already, aren't you?" — No personal attacks or harassment. Let's be polite. Thanks. — Taurus Littrow (talk) 16:01, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I agree, this can be a real problem for those unfamiliar with the Russian orthography, who confuse the stress mark with other diacritics. Mike made a pretty strong argument in his favor. On the part of opponents, I see the argument that stress marks are used in Russian-language encyclopaediae and dictionaries (especially for children). However, here is an encyclopedia for adults in English.
P.S. At the same time, I have no opinion about the stress marks in the Russian Wikipedia, perhaps Mike really had no arguments to remove them in ru-wiki, but here is another case.--Nicoljaus (talk) 14:56, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Nicoljaus "stress marks are used in Russian-language encyclopaediae and dictionaries (especially for children)" – There has been a misinterpretation on your part. Stress marks are used in: 1) encyclopaediae and dictionaries (which are intended both for adults and children); 2) books for small Russian children; and 3) reading books for foreigners (both adults and children).
"However, here is an encyclopedia for adults in English." See 3) above. Taurus Littrow (talk) 15:09, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don’t understand what you’ll argue with. Here, in any case, not a book for L2 learners. Give an example where a common English-language encyclopedia uses the Russian spelling with stress marks.--Nicoljaus (talk) 15:20, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What exactly don't you understand? I explained that your statement re. children is wrong. And why don't you give an example of a common English-language encyclopedia that doesn't use stress marks? Note that stresses are used in Russian-English and English-Russian dictionaries (in Russian words), including those published in English-speaking countries. Can it be considered a strong argument for using stresses? One way or another, there is nothing wrong in using stresses in Russian words; they are just not used in "normal" books, newspapers, magazines, etc., where they are considered excessive. But even in those texts accents are still used in some words (e.g., to help distinguish words which are written the same). I repeat: it is not a mistake to use accents in Russian words. And stresses are used on a large scale for guidance purposes, including in texts intended for non-Russian speakers. I'd dare to say that English Wikipedia can be considered such a text. Taurus Littrow (talk) 15:34, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
And why don't you give an example of a common English-language encyclopedia that doesn't use stress marks? -- Well, for example see: Russian-English Geographical-encyclopedia there is nothing wrong in using stresses in Russian words -- I am not saying that using the stress mark is something wrong. I say that when a person, who does not know that this is a stress mark, sees such a spelling in the English Wikipedia, they will think that this is a common variant of Russian orthography. While this is a variant that is rarely used, only for special purposes. This can lead to confusion and you need to think about how to avoid it. At the same time, the information on where to put in stress is already given by the entry in the IPA.--Nicoljaus (talk) 16:03, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
OK, thanks. However, stresses are used in the English-Russian Russian-English Medical Dictionary and Phrasebook, published only recently, in September 2020. It only supports my statement that there is nothing wrong in using stresses.
Whether the IPA can be used to replace (rather than complement) the stresses has already been discussed elsewhere (see the links above), so I won't repeat the arguments pro and contra (I've got quite tired of this stuff).
"This can lead to confusion and you need to think about how to avoid it." – OK, we can discuss that, but just removing stresses (which are of great help) is obviously not a very good solution. We could probably write a notice to this effect and put it in some visible place, probably in the Russian language article. Taurus Littrow (talk) 16:27, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Would a hover-over notice briefly explaining the situation with stress-marking accents be appropriate perhaps? Stephen MUFC (talk) 16:35, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It sounds like a good idea. Whatever way we choose, I believe we could write a bot that would do the necessary changes automatically in all the articles. Taurus Littrow (talk) 16:38, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Could it not just be added as a feature of the template used to demarcate Russian Cyrillic in the wiki code? Stephen MUFC (talk) 16:40, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That would be perfect, sure. Taurus Littrow (talk) 16:54, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If we were to follow the same kind of logic ("it's confusing, so remove it"), we could delete the patronymics as well. They are not used in "normal" texts either. Taurus Littrow (talk) 16:54, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Taurus Littrow:However, stresses are used in the English-Russian Russian-English Medical Dictionary and Phrasebook -- Yes, in dictionaries sometimes spelling with a stress mark is done instead of IPA, but I have never seen that both are used at the same time, this is really confusing. In encyclopedias in English I have never seen Cyrillic with stress marks.
We could probably write a notice to this effect and put it in some visible place, probably in the Russian language article. -- If you mean the Russian interwiki article, then I don't think this is a good idea, since it is unlikely that an English reader will go there. The notice ("a feature of the template") seems like a better idea.--Nicoljaus (talk) 13:10, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Nicoljaus If you mean the Russian interwiki article – No, I meant the Russian language article on enwiki (where the use of stresses is actually explained). But I agree that "a feature of the template" is a much better idea. Taurus Littrow (talk) 13:29, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oops, I'm sorry for my misunderstanding.--Nicoljaus (talk) 14:37, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If even the Russian Wikipedia disagrees with stripping these marks, that's suggestive that we should keep them as well. But the real question for en.WP is what do most modern, high-quality, English-language sources do, when they also present these names and terms in Cyrillic? And not dictionaries, since they may be including them for pronunciation-guide reasons. If it's usual to include them, then WP should include them. If it's not, then it's not.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:04, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think usually English-language encyclopaediae actually either don't include the Russian-language name at all or only use a transliteration rather than Cyrillic. Stephen MUFC (talk) 21:16, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Which is one of the reasons I said modern, high-quality, English-language sources, not English-language encyclopedias.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:00, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The two aren't mutually exclusive but apologies for too hastily reading your post. It is also true, however, that even history or politics books in English about Russia(ns) don't tend to provide Cyrillic but may give a transliteration. I can't say for certain that there are sources which do use Cyrillic - I'm sure there must be some out there - but I can't remember ever having encountered any and, although I'm not an expert, I (have) read a fair amount of relevant material. Stephen MUFC (talk) 22:55, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, I didn't mean they're mutually exclusive, but that one is a large class and the other a subset (which we already know is doing it for pronunciation reasons).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:43, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
SMcCandlish I believe that English-language sources (other than dictionaries and reading books) don't include Russian spellings (with or without stress marks) at all. You can only see Russian spellings in bilingual dictionaries and reading or learning books, and they are almost universally accompanied by stress marks, whose main reason is indeed to help with the pronunciation. So if you do add Russian spellings here or in an another encyclopedia, I don't see why you should exclude the stress marks. There's no harm in adding them other than a possible misunderstanding as to their use in normal texts, which can be easily solved by adding an explanatory note. Taurus Littrow (talk) 21:22, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm skeptical that serious works of biography, etc., never provide the Cyrillic of anyone's name. I don't read a lot of Russia-related stuff, but it's certainly common in academic sources to include the Greek-alphabet name along with the Latin-alphabet transliteration when writing about Greek subjects. I'm not even suggesting this need be done on a case-by-case basis. If, for example, very few English-language sources on a new Russian movie star gave their Cyrillic name, that's irrelevant if lots of English book sources do give Cyrillic names of Russian politicians, generals, composers, authors, etc., and a dominant style (with the marks, or not) can be discerned from modern works of this sort. If a source analysis of this source proves fruitless, then I'm not sure I know what to !vote here. I like being consistent with ru.WP, but if they're only doing it as a pronunciation aid, because their equivalents of WP:NOTDICT and WP:AT are very different, then that wouldn't be a good rationale to apply at en.WP. But if these marks are common in everyday works like newspapers and adult books in Russian, that would refute the claim these are only used as pronunciation aids for children's/learners' materials and dictionaries.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:00, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
SMcCandlish Well, I've read a lot of Russian-related stuff in English, and I don't remember seeing Russian spellings. They just transliterate and translate anything written in Russian, including titles of books in bibliographies. Just checked some books on space exploration, and that's indeed the case; I could find nothing in Cyrillic in them. One book is actually a translation from Russian, and even its original title was transliterated. So the situation is completely different from that for Greek-related subjects. Weird, but true.
But if these marks are common in everyday works like newspapers and adult books in Russian – They're NOT common there, that's the point. Nobody uses them in Russian newspapers and books for persons older than 7 years or so.
that would refute the claim these are only used as pronunciation aids for children's/learners' materials and dictionaries – Well, this exactly what they say in the above-mentioned Russian-English Medical Dictionary and Phrasebook: "Russian words are provided with stress marks for proper pronunciation." Taurus Littrow (talk) 22:30, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Alright, then. This "Weird, but true" situation is unfortunate, but I guess it is what it is. Unless there's some big trove of sources and facts we've missed, I'm more swayed by your argument. It sounds more and more like ru.WP is lacing its article titles with pronunciation information, which might be entirely normal under their own policies but is not under ours. One of the reasons I've held out a bit on this is that in the case of Spanish diacritics, they were originally introduced for a similar reason, and slowly became a norm of the language. But if there's no evidence this is the ongoing case in Russian, and considerable evidence to the contrary, I can't see a reason to treat these on en.WP as actual diacritics that are part of the natural language, even if we're normally skeptical of attempts to suppress diacritics (and "para-diacritics" like Vietnamese tone marks, which are part of the standardized language, not something limited to kids books and dictionaries).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:43, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Please note that patronymics are not part of the natural written language either; they are only used in personal documents, such as passports, and you can barely see them in common English-language sources. In Russian, they are used sometimes in oral language, usually as a polite address (first name + patronymic; no surname). So one can take the arguments against using stress marks on English Wiki and apply them to patronymics. Same thing with the "Old Style" for birth and death dates, the pre-reformed Russian spelling for names, etc. Taurus Littrow (talk) 06:31, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Greetings, SMcCandlish. No, the situation in Russian is completely different from Spanish. At first, stress marks were required in every word (and there were three types of them), but gradually they died away. In Russian encyclopedias (on which the ru-wiki is oriented), a variant with stress marks is traditionally given in the title of the article to clarify the pronunciation. It also can be used for some other cases. There is some information about this in the book: A Reference Grammar of Russian by Alan Timberlake. Also, this book says: "If stress is marked generally - it usually is not, but it can be, for example, in dictionaries or pedagogical texts for foreigners..." Taurus Littrow is right, and the use of Cyrillic in English books is quite rare, but I have found several variants and they are usually unstressed. The Russian-English Geographical-encyclopedia was mentioned above. Here's another one: The Osprey Encyclopedia of Russian Aircraft. By the way, I see that the Cyrillic alphabet is also used in educational books without stress: [2], [3].--Nicoljaus (talk) 14:33, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Stress marks will never die out in Russian-language encyclopedias, because without stress marks there will often be no way to determine the correct pronunciation.

The stress in Russian words is most important. A misplaced stress may alter the meaning of a word (зáмок – castle; замóк – lock), or render it incomprehensible.
— http://russianlearn.com/grammar/category/stress

I can give more examples. Take Alexandra Trusova, for example. "Trúsova" means "Cowardova". But "Trusóva" would mean something like "Pantiesova". It wouldn't be nice to call her like that. --Moscow Connection (talk) 17:49, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
without stress marks there will often be no way to determine the correct pronunciation -- It's true for Russian-language encyclopedias, but here we have IPA--Nicoljaus (talk) 08:24, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I already pointed out that, in my opinion, IPA can be used as an additional tool, but not as a replacement of such an easy and elegant solution as stress marks. Is there a rule that prohibits using both stresses and IPA? I don't think so. P.S. Note that the article you mentioned, IPA, actually uses stress marks. Taurus Littrow (talk) 08:55, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Stress marks are the best choice if you know they are stress marks. The only thing that worries me is that in the overwhelming majority of languages there is no problem with stress at all (it is always in the same place) and the acute sign does not mean stress, but something else.--Nicoljaus (talk) 09:01, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I already mentioned that the possible misunderstanding can be solved by adding an explanatory note or (as proposed by SMcCandlish below) by indicating both spellings, with and without stresses. But I definitely don't like the "confusing so delete" approach. Note that Russia-related articles are generally very confusing, especially if they are about people who lived before 1918: two birth dates, two death dates, two Cyrillic spellings, etc. etc. The patronymics are very confusing, too. I keep seeing serious sources using and misusing the patronymics. Some foreigners believe they are mandatory, while others treat them as if they were a second American name and abbreviate them (e.g., "Sergey P. Korolev" - we never do it in Russian). Taurus Littrow (talk) 09:15, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
tl;dr completely irrelevant to the topic. — Mike Novikoff 17:50, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I apologize for that. Anyway, some of the stuff in your essay on stresses is also completely irrelevant ("Russian Wikipedia (that has a series of similar technical cargo cults, such as reverse name notation [Surname, Name] in article names, as if there's no DEFAULTSORT [Wikidata shows that ruwiki is the only Wikipedia that has it], and so on"). --Taurus Littrow (talk) 15:09, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
something like "Pantiesova" – I see you are mostly concerned of the biographical articles. Once again, as Nicoljaus already said, "here is an encyclopedia for adults in English", not Simple English Wikipedia for children or people with disorders. There are many names (in various languages) that may seem funny to someone, or that someone may try to make fun of, but doing so is completely childish, and a reasonable adult won't even think of it. Remember what Wikipedia is not: "not a complete exposition of all possible details" (WP:NOTEVERYTHING), and in particular not a dictionary. Articles on persons are about persons, not about their names. It's necessary to give the correct spelling of a name (readers do search for names, and do copy names from Wikipedia), it's optional to give the pronunciation (that's what IPA is for), and to deal with the name's etymology is out of scope. Even a dictionary won't do that, unless it's a specialized dictionary of proper names. — Mike Novikoff 09:19, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, it is usually impossible to determine the correct stress placement in a Russian family name. I know this by experience. In October I renamed a number of Russia-related articles in the Spanish Wikipedia, and it was more than often that I had to go to YouTube to search for news announcements, interviews, etc. (Cause the Russian Wikipedia didn't have all the stresses marked. And it doesn't have many articles that the English and Spanish Wikipedias have. This is because the Russian Wikipedia is not as developed as the Spanish and English ones. And because it has stricter notablility rules.) --Moscow Connection (talk) 18:34, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Potential solution: This appears to be analogous enough to different ways of transliterating Chinese, etc., that we already have a functional, well-accepted way to approach this: The article title should be in the Latin orthography that is most common for that particular subject in English-language reliable sources. The lead sentence of the article should give that spelling first, then parenthetically provide the bare Cyrillic and the stress-marked Cyrillic. It need not provide a stress-marked variant of the Latin-alphabet transliteration unless this is also showing up in sources (or, I suppose if that one does show up, but stress-marked Cyrillic hasn't been found in a source yet, then omit that one). Basically, just account for the variants found in sources, and make sure that for the Latin-script ones that they redirect to the same article. Maybe we can even create a template (or add features to {{lang-ru}}) to indicate with little links what these different orthographies are, as we do in {{lang-zh}} for different Chinese transliteration orthographies.

I think this would be an encyclopedic approach, since these marked-up spellings are attested in RS (for specific purposes today), and at one time, if I'm understanding Nicoljaus correctly, were much more common, such that older people or people reading older materials may be specifically expecting or searching for those spellings. So, we should just provide them all without trying to decide is one is "right" and the other(s) "wrong". WP:CONSISTENT is just one criterion and we have to treat it with WP:Common sense: It's perfectly fine if, for whatever reasons, some particular subject has become better known with those marks in the name than without them (in either orthography or both, though only the Latin orthography will matter for article title determination purposes at en.WP). But by default, we would not be adding the marks just to indicate punctuation the way ru.WP does; it's clear that their title policy is very different from ours.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:51, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I agree with this solution, in general lines (minor details can be discussed). We definitely must use an encyclopedic approach since this is an encyclopedia. Just to clarify one thing: I don't know what kind of period Nicoljaus is referring to (when stress marks were mandatory), but these must be very old times, like 300 or so years ago. I've read many 19th-century books, and they don't have stress marks. So you have to be really old to expect to see stress marks in books, lol. Taurus Littrow (talk) 07:34, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I was referring to the times before Peter the Great. The stress mark in handwritten texts (which were less affected by Peter's reforms) fell out of use in the second half of the 18th century (see paper in Russian).--Nicoljaus (talk) 08:21, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, that's what I thought. Peter's reform of the Russian alphabet (1708–1710) is actually described here. Taurus Littrow (talk) 08:32, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you both for clarifying the origins of the subj, I didn't know that. Very interesting indeed. So for us contemporary Russians they originate in the first grade of elementary school, and historically they are from the epoch before Peter the Great, being abolished by him. Let's remember that for making any further decisions. — Mike Novikoff 10:30, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Peter the Great didn't abolish the stress marks, their use just ceased to be mandatory. Taurus Littrow (talk) 14:32, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There are no two Cyrillic Russian orthographies today, there's only one. And, unlike Chinese, it's not a transliteration of something else. I can't even imagine a subject that is "better known with those marks in the name than without them". For instance, they are never used in official documents that identify people (birth certificates, passports, etc). — Mike Novikoff 09:12, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note that birth certificates and passports always use patronymics. Does it mean we should use them on enwiki, too (in the name of an article, not just in the lead)? Taurus Littrow (talk) 09:19, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I guess neither patronymics nor article titles are subject of this discussion. — Mike Novikoff 09:41, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
then parenthetically provide the bare Cyrillic and the stress-marked Cyrillic. – Just no. We have too much WP:LEADCLUTTER already. Have in mind that {{lang-ru}} names are commonly provided for subjects associated with neighboring languages ({{lang-uk}}, {{lang-be}}, {{lang-kk}}), and having two near-identical Russian renderings next to each other would be a solution of a non-issue that would contribute to a much greater problem. No such user (talk) 10:03, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
SMcCandlish, greetings, and thank you for your approach. I've always thought you are against redundancy, just like me (and isn't it one of the main goals of MoS overall?), and now I have to agree with the user above: double rendering of Cyrillic Russian would be awfully redundant. I'm always fond of consistency too, so I'm for the consistent implementation of the IPA throughout the Wikipedia, regardless of the language.
And one more thing: there is no legitimate "stress-marked variant of the Latin-alphabet transliteration", it's a madness done by those who just don't know what they're doing. That's why I often refer to WP:RUROM that describes the correct current practice of transliteration from Russian. — Mike Novikoff 12:22, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
it's a madness [sic!] done by those who just don't know what they're doing. Please read Civility: "Avoid condescension. No matter how frustrated you are, do not tell people to "grow up" or include any language along the lines of "if this were kindergarten" in your messages." // That applies to everyone. Let's keep this discussion civil. Thanks. – Taurus Littrow (talk) 15:21, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Mike Novikoff: Well, okay. If they're just not used enough to really matter, then don't put them in the lead after all. Just create redirects so they work in getting people to the right page. I decline to stress about this. :-) PS: Can someone tell me the Russian term for this kind of "pronunciation markup" (in Russian and romanized), and is there a ru.wikipedia article about it, or section at least, if we don't have anything on it at en.wikipedia? Would like to read more about it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:18, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@SMcCandlish: The Russian terms are ударение (udareniye) and знак ударения (znak udareniya). See also Stress (linguistics) § Spelling and notation for stress. — Mike Novikoff 06:20, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I do not have an opinion but want to set out the argument as I understand it. An example of the issue is diff which changed three {{lang}} instances including from the first of the following to the second.

Russian speakers refer to the schism itself as raskol (раско́л), etymologically indicating a "cleaving-apart".
Russian speakers refer to the schism itself as raskol (раскол), etymologically indicating a "cleaving-apart".

Should the article show how to spell a word (раскол) or how to pronounce it (раско́л)? According to comments above, Russian dictionaries etc. (and ruwiki) show the pronunciation for a word. The ruwiki equivalent of Old Believers in the example above is ru:Старообрядчество and it seems to use the example word without stress marks. @Kwamikagami: I've seen you working on things like this; do you have an opinion? Johnuniq (talk) 02:38, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Johnuniq: The ruwiki equivalent of Old Believers in the example above is ru:Старообрядчество and it seems to use the example word without stress marks. -- Have a better look: the Russian word does have stress marks, and so does the second Russian term: "Старообря́дчество" and "Древлеправосла́вие". Anyway, even if some Russian pages don't have stress marks in the entry word, that's because nobody bothered to put them, not because they are not necessary on ruwiki. P.S. Note that both Russian terms are a mile long, so it would be virtually impossible for a foreigner to tell where the (main) stress falls. – Taurus Littrow (talk) 15:27, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I edited Mike Novikoff's essay on stresses to make it more neutral. I removed the irrelevant info and added both points of view. Everyone is welcome to leave their constructive comments and suggestions on the essay's talk page. — Taurus Littrow (talk) 15:45, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
When I search the wikitext of ru:Старообрядчество for the word "раскол" I get 10 hits (there are 39 hits for the text including not as a whole word). However, there are no occurrences of "раско́л". If you see something different, perhaps you could quote a few words so others can see it. That seems to support my above summary, namely that "раскол" is used to spell the word while "раско́л" is used to pronounce it. Do you disagree? Johnuniq (talk) 22:38, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Johnuniq: I was talking about the word "Старообрядчество". It is stressed in the lead, the first time it appears, in bold: "Старообря́дчество, или Древлеправосла́вие, — совокупность религиозных течений". No other words (including "раскол") in the article are obviously stressed, since the stress is only placed upon the entry word(s) and only once. No disagreement as to the spelling vs. pronunciation; the intention of the stress mark is to help with the pronunciation, that's correct. P.S. Just to clarify: Both spellings (stressed and non-stressed) are technically correct, so I wouldn't oppose the spelling to the pronunciation (if that is your intention). Stresses can be (and are) used, but only in certain texts. Please read the new version of the essay: Wikipedia:Stress_marks_in_Russian_words for more explanations. — Taurus Littrow (talk) 06:58, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"раскол" is used to spell the word while "раско́л" is used to pronounce it – the short and simple answer is yes. — Mike Novikoff 22:55, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Not true. Didn't I ask you on your talk page not to mislead non-Russian users? To show pronunciation in Russian, one obviously uses phonetic transcription, while the placement of a stress mark helps with the pronunciation (to pronounce a word in Russian, you basically only need to know where the stress falls). And one can't claim that a stressed word is not a valid spelling or something. Any spelling is used to spell, that's kind of obvious. I already explained all this stuff slightly above, anyway. — Taurus Littrow (talk) 07:19, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You seem to be just playing with words. Your "helpful" variant exists solely for the pronunciation, and it's a special one, not the regular. — Mike Novikoff 09:30, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No, I'm not "playing with words". A stress mark helps with the pronunciation but doesn't constitute a pronunciation as such. That would be the IPA or the Cyrillic phonetic transcription or something similar. A sign on an office door stating one's name, e.g., "John Smith", doesn't mean that this sign is actually John Smith. It only means that the office belongs to John Smith. Same thing with the stress. Anyway, both spellings are valid and correct; whether they are special or regular, that's a different question. P.S. In a nutshell: A stress mark shows the phonetic stress, nothing more. — Taurus Littrow (talk) 10:03, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Phonetic. — Mike Novikoff 10:39, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That's what I said. And I doubt that a foreigner with very little knowledge of the Russian spelling who sees, for instance, металлообраба́тывающая ("only" 11 syllables) would be able to pronounce it, even if the word comes with a stress mark. So you cannot quite tell that the above spelling shows one how to pronounce the word in question. You'll need a proper transcription for that. — Taurus Littrow (talk) 11:03, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure what you're arguing. Of course stress marks are phonetic (so they are about pronunciation), and of course IPA is much better. — Mike Novikoff 11:55, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ruwiki is a very poor example since it never had a guideline nor even a consensus on these stress marks. The only thing that can be told for sure is that they never include them in article titles. The rest is chaotic: someone "bothers to put them" in leads just because they feel they should, and then gets very surprised to learn that there is no such requirement. — Mike Novikoff 14:30, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Those who remove stresses on ruwiki also get quite astonished when they are told that removing the stresses that were already placed "is not welcomed", to put it mildly. Adding stresses on ruwiki is OK, while removing them, not so much.
  • They never include them in article titles. — That would have been preposterous indeed. — Taurus Littrow (talk) 15:29, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe a single repetition of the word in accented Cyrillic, with a footnote to explain that the stress marks have been added for the benefit of the reader, and aren't normally found in print?

My opinion is that we should make WP as useful as possible. That's the general criterion I try to follow when deciding on things like this. And the accent marks are undeniably useful. Russian stress is unpredictable. Even disyllabic grammatical words include minimal pairs that differ by the position of the stress. (Not long ago I had to ask a native speaker about such a word, because it fit two dictionary entries and without stress marking I couldn't tell which.) But Russian orthography is otherwise close to phonemic. So if you are even slightly familiar with Russian, you can read it, as long as someone tells you where the stress lies. Without the stress assignment, you won't know how to pronounce the vowels, because they change drastically depending on stress. (E.g. unstressed a and o are pronounced the same, as are e and i.)

As for the contrary argument, that accent marks will confuse readers who don't know Cyrillic, I wonder why they'd be using Cyrillic in the first place. The situation is very much like English technical dictionaries, that mark stressed syllables and expect you to be able to pronounce Latinate words once that is given. Like Russian, English Latinate orthography is close to phonemic apart from stress. And I suppose that because of that convention, some people might conclude that English orthography includes an acute accent mark, but I would expect readers to educate themselves when they come across something new. There's only so far we can dumb things down.

Another parallel is vowel marking in Arabic and Hebrew, which is similarly useful in making written words pronounceable to L2 speakers but is otherwise only used for children and dictionaries.

I support stress marking in the Cyrillic, but would reluctantly accept removing it if the remover added the IPA to compensate, just as I would for English technical vocabulary. (I would prefer to keep the stress marking, in both Russian and English, and add the IPA as an additional key.) Or, as proposed above, have parallel Cyrillic with and without stress marking, parallel Arabic and Hebrew with and without vowel marking, etc.

The problem is Cruft. (Click if you dare.)

The problem with these other solutions is cruft — they can lead to a ridiculous delay before you get to the topic the article is supposed to be about. And they tend to bloat over time. In a dictionary, you can skip the pronunciation, orthography and etymology sections if you're not interested and go directly to the definition. On WP they're all glommed together. I find it annoying to start the lead, and encounter a paragraph of detail about the keyword that has nothing to do with the subject. Repeating the keyword once in Cyrillic/Arabic/Hebrew/Devanagari/IPA is easy enough to skip, while being highly informative — that is, if we keep it short, there's a high ratio of utility to inconvenience. Repeat it two or three times, for Cyrillic with and without stress, or Arabic with and without vowels, or English with both IPA and respelling (or stress marks and IPA), and the utility ratio starts shifting the other way. I'd prefer a single repetition that covers orthography + pronunciation, and supply further detail if needed in a footnote.

— kwami (talk) 22:34, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Maybe a single repetition of the word in accented Cyrillic, with a footnote to explain that the stress marks have been added for the benefit of the reader, and aren't normally found in print? — Adding an explanatory note is an excellent solution in my opinion. I actually proposed it in this discussion already, and some users agreed with it. Just to clarify: we better only include the stressed word(s); the version without stresses would be redundant and confusing. Thanks.
  • Both the IPA and the stress(es) can be kept, sure enough. If you have a car (IPA), it doesn't mean you are forbidden to walk (stress).
  • Thanks for the information on stresses in English words; very useful and revealing. It looks like it's not "madness [sic] done by those who just don't know what they're doing", after all.
  • Your other arguments and suggestions look very good to me. (I won't list them and won't comment on them so as to keep this discussion short.) Thanks much. — Taurus Littrow (talk) 07:31, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
English technical dictionaries, that mark stressed syllables – Can you please name a few? I think I've seen some in my life, namely FOLDOC and The Jargon File, and they don't mangle the words with accents. The latter does this at most. — Mike Novikoff 23:57, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I ... would reluctantly accept removing it if the remover added the IPA to compensate – That could be a feasible compromise, if we don't reach anything else. Another user had already suggested it: stress marks should not be used if IPA is present or added. It would also be in line with MOS:REDUNDANCY that says "keep redundancy to a minimum in the first sentence". (Most articles that I care about have the IPA already.) — Mike Novikoff 05:20, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • This would actually be no compromise at all, not on your part at any rate. This is something you have been claiming here for months if not years and which you mentioned in your essay: no stresses, including when we have no IPA. No, just nyet. The stresses should stay whether we have the IPA or not. There's no harm in using them. — Taurus Littrow (talk) 06:56, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The dramatic track five of Battleship Potemkin. :-)
No matter what I've been claiming, I'm now ready to agree on something different. — Mike Novikoff 16:50, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • A stressed spelling would only be redundant if we indicated it along with a non-stressed one (раскол, раско́л), so that's really a non-issue. We do use respelling H:RESPELL for English words, after all, and nobody claims it's redundant. — Taurus Littrow (talk) 06:56, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Another possible solution: Stressed vowels can be emphasized in some different way, e.g., by using bold: "Александр Сергеевич Пушкин" ("Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin"). Aamof, some Russian dictionaries underline stressed vowels, but, as far as I know, it is not recommended to use underlining on wiki. P.S. @SMcCandlish, Moscow Connection, Nicoljaus, Johnuniq, and Kwamikagami: What do you think? — Taurus Littrow (talk) 12:21, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Acute accents are the standard convention for marking stress in Russian, and I see no reason not to follow it.
I don't care for emphasis by formatting. It's not stable, for one thing -- someone might want to copy these names into their own work, and the stress would be lost. It's easy enough to remove the stress marks if they want to, since they're combining diacritics and all they have to do is hit backspace.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't we have one person who wants to change consensus, and everyone else keeping to the existing consensus? He's brought it up, didn't get any support, so he needs to follow consensus. He can continue to campaign for a change, of course, but meanwhile the current consensus is valid. It's not really up to us to convince him, but up to him to convince us. — kwami (talk) 06:43, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You couldn't be more correct as far as that user's behavior is concerned. I also agree with your arguments regarding the use of accents vs. the formatting. Stresses are much more stable and common, indeed. I just tried to find a solution which would please every user, including the person you have just mentioned, but it appears that nothing would ever please him other than his own solution. Thanks. — Taurus Littrow (talk) 07:03, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Are we discussing my behavior? And can you please stop flooding? — Mike Novikoff 07:28, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Novikoff, please choose your words. I'm not "flooding", just explaining things. Taurus Littrow (talk) 07:40, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Kwamikagami: What "consensus" you are talking about? There hadn't been one so far, not even in ruwiki. I do have some support already, and the discussion is far from being over. BTW, you didn't answer my question above. — Mike Novikoff 07:28, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The consensus is that we've been doing this for 20 years without a problem.
As for English tech dictionaries marking stress, sorry, I never bothered to keep track. Too trivial to think twice about. You could probably find something as easily as I could.
I do remember seeing this in guides to Roman and Greek names, both historical and mythological, where the only guide to English pronunciation was an acute accent. I believe there are two reasons for doing that: (a) there are different traditions for how to pronounce Classical names in English, and it would create a mess to try to give them all, while upsetting people if the editor took sides, and (b) those pronunciations are generally predictable as long as the placement of the stress is known, so there's no need to give the pronunciation beyond that. The latter is exactly our situation with Russian. — kwami (talk) 07:33, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Novikoff, please stop misleading people. Other users and I have already commented on the alleged lack of a consensus on ruwiki. This is what I wrote: Those who remove stresses on ruwiki get quite astonished when they are told that removing the stresses that were already placed "is not welcomed", to put it mildly. Adding stresses on ruwiki is OK, while removing them, not so much. — Taurus Littrow (talk) 07:38, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
OMG, what a chaos. :(( You may repeat everything you've said some more times, in all possible threads, then it certainly becomes more convincing. :\ — Mike Novikoff 08:05, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Please see WP:CIVIL: Avoid condescension. No matter how frustrated you are, do not tell people to "grow up" or include any language along the lines of "if this were kindergarten" in your messages. — One way or another, even if I repeated a couple of my arguments, I only did so because this thread is very long and people might fail to notice them. Another reason for doing so is to rule out any possible misunderstanding; the fact is that some users tend to make clearly misleading arguments, which is not OK. P.S. I already asked you in this thread you to be civil, several times, but you keep ignoring my warnings. Should I ask an admin to intervene? — Taurus Littrow (talk) 08:24, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In Hebrew Niqqud, e.g., vowel marking, is normal in, e.g., dictionaries, grammar texts, but is rare in, e.g., news, nonlinguistic texts. Would it be appropriate to make a similar distinction for stress marks? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 15:09, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Chatul: I'm all for it. — Taurus Littrow (talk) 15:36, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia is not a dictionary — Mike Novikoff 16:25, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Nobody claimed that it was. Wikipedia is, however, a collection of articles on diverse subjects, some of them on aspects of linguistics for which stress and vowel markings are appropriate. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:10, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Should a translation show its pronunciation?

Would someone not involved in the dispute please offer an opinion on my question at 02:38, 31 January 2021 above. Rephrased, that question concerns Old Believers which concerns a schism between groups with different religious beliefs. After defining "Old Believers" and giving its Russian equivalents, the lead says:

Russian speakers refer to the schism itself as raskol (раскол), etymologically indicating a "cleaving-apart".

My question: should the translation of schism show how to spell the word (раскол) or how to pronounce it (раско́л)? It is conventional for pronunciation to follow the lead words that mirror the article title, as done at Raskol. However, that does not apply to schism. The MOS at this subpage includes "Normally, pronunciation is given only for the subject of the article in its lead section." That suggests the Russian word for raskol (раскол) would not indicate pronunciation. The counter view is that stress marks for pronunciation are useful for the reader. Does MOS have guidance on this? What should happen—an RfC? Johnuniq (talk) 09:05, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from the involved users
I'm very sorry to intervene, but as far as I understand, pronunciation is this: 1) pronounced [rɐˈskoɫ] or 2) /ˈvɛnɪs/ VEH-niss. As to the stress mark in Russian words, it only shows where the phonetic stress is to be placed, nothing more. A stress mark helps with the pronunciation (basically, it's the only thing you need to know to pronounce a Russian word), but a stressed word doesn't constitute a pronunciation as such. That would be the IPA. The Russians have their own phonetic transcription which uses Cyrillic symbols: 1) [рʌско́л] or 2) /трʌнскр'и́пцыэjъ/ (IPA: /trɐnskrʲˈipt͡sᵻjə/). See Russian Phonetic Transcription Translator and Pronunciation Dictionary or Orphoepic dictionary (in Russian). On the second site, just type the Russian word in and click the first button on the left (ПОИСК = search).
For "raskol", the second site says: Транскрипция слова «раско́л»: [рʌско́л]. Translation: Transcription of the word «раско́л»: [рʌско́л]. — Taurus Littrow (talk) 09:55, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Kwamikagami: Any comment on this? There seems to be a misunderstanding as to what pronunciation is. (I'll take all the blame for calling an involved user, lol.) — Taurus Littrow (talk) 10:15, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The pronunciation is already there in the article linked to. But personally I think it would be nice to show where the stress is here too, so readers won't need to follow a link to know what sound should be in their heads when they read this article. Many readers won't and might end up hearing it as "rascal", so I'd add an acute accent. But since we're giving a transliteration, it might be better to put the accent mark there instead: raskól (раскол). But that's just a suggestion. — kwami (talk) 10:24, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. I noticed that the Venice article includes both the IPA and the "pronunciation respelling key" (H:RESPELL), so it looks like it's not really forbidden to use both the IPA and other pronunciation keys (that would be a stress mark in Russian words). Therefore, the argument "No stresses, only IPA!" is void. — Taurus Littrow (talk) 12:23, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. I wonder what would happen if someone started removing respelling from all the articles, arguing that this stuff "is not part of the regular English orthography", "doesn't represent the common spelling", "there's no consensus to use it", "it's madness done by those who just don't know what they're doing", etc. etc. — Taurus Littrow (talk) 12:33, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's such an obscure situation, to a general English-speaking reader, that it is not possible to resolve this by adopting some standard style for Wikipedia (and bearing in mind that readers hardly ever read the Wikimedia Manual of Style). So it would be necessary to indicate one of the symbol sequences is the word in Cyrillic script, and one of the symbol sequences is a pronunciation (and indicate which system of pronunciation symbols was used). Jc3s5h (talk) 19:22, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comments from the involved users
@Jc3s5h: I'm compelled to intervene once again and repeat that "раско́л" is not a pronunciation but a word. Please read my explanations in the collapsed section above. This looks like a case of misinterpretation on Johnuniq's (and apparently your) part. — Taurus Littrow (talk) 19:43, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Misinterpretations all around! Can we just let the uninvolved users talk without us? That's what this section is apparently created for. Without you and me, in particular. — Mike Novikoff 20:20, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Like I said in the edit history, I'm not commenting on the MoS as such here, just clearing up an obvious misunderstanding. Oh well, I hope the two above users saw my explanations. P.S. Also, I didn't notice that your comment was there, so you really need to calm down. — Taurus Littrow (talk) 21:10, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Certainly you are doing The Most Important Thing Possible, which is above anything. — Mike Novikoff 22:20, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yevgeny Petrosyan — Taurus Littrow (talk) 22:46, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

RfC?

@Johnuniq: This topic is going to be archived without any decision in a couple of days, and it worries me much. One of my opponents once said that he just wants to stop me, and exactly that is going to happen. (That's what ruwiki is infamous for, and that's why their content is always so poor: they have a rule to discuss almost everything, as an amendment to the fundamental WP:BOLD, and then they do bludgeoning or even a filibuster). I still deeply believe that every Russian term should be shown in its common spelling reflected in RS, yet I'm now prone to be accused of not having a consensus for such edits, so I'll probably cease to edit (and perhaps to even read) any articles containing my native language altogether, to save me a trouble. Which would be much pity indeed. And the articles would inconsistently have one kind of spelling or the other. Can we somehow arrange a wider discussion to reach any determined conclusion? — Mike Novikoff 05:00, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Mike Novikoff: The "stop me" diff does not necessarily mean to stop you—it can be read another way, namely that the editor disagrees with edits which remove stress marks, and wants to stop that removal. Re the issue, I naively imagined that my question at #Should a translation show its pronunciation? above would get a clear answer from uninvolved MOS addicts who are normally very resilient and able to make themselves heard over bickering. However, the uninvolved replies have been very hesitant and I think the only outcome would be that there is no consensus to systematically add or remove stress marks. If you want to start an RfC, I suggest a new section where you focus on the issue to be discussed and minimize mention of past discussions (adding an RfC to this section would be very unlikely to get a reasonable response due to the lengthy and convoluted debate). I would suggest including three diffs with example edits where the question would be whether the edit is helpful. From the response so far, I would guess that removing stress marks is not going to get consensus. That might change if some source were available that supported removal. Johnuniq (talk) 06:37, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Having mulled this over for a while, my conclusions are that:

  • WP (en.WP, anyway) should just use normal Cyrillic language and markup, since this is what we do for all other langauges, and is what the majority of reliable sources do (both in Russian and in English when writing about Russian). To the extent children's and other learners' works use the pronunciation markup, WP has no reason to care, because those are categorically unreliable sources (see WP:CHILDRENSLIT, WP:TERTIARYUSE).
  • To indicate pronunciation where this is actually important (mostly in the lead of an article on a Russian subject, in linguistic material when comparing phonetics between dialects, etc.), use IPA markup (see {{IPA-ru}}). For sight-impaired readers, one of the purposes of {{lang|ru}} and {{lang|ru-Latn}} is triggering screen-reader software to switch to a pronunciation appropriate to the language in question instead of trying to parse it with default English phonetics (and in this we're dependent on the makers of the screen readers doing a good job of this; I know of no evidence that these marks would help them do it better, and it might actually confuse them).
  • Our own article at Stress (linguistics)#Znaki udareniya says it all: "In general [Russian/Belarusian/Ukrainian] texts, stress marks are rare, typically used either when required for disambiguation of homographs (compare в больши́х количествах 'in great quantities', and в бо́льших количествах 'in greater quantities'), or in rare words and names that are likely to be mispronounced. Materials for foreign learners may have stress marks throughout the text."
  • For any unusual case in which the pronunciation marks are provably the overwhelmingly preferred version in reliable sources with regard to a particular subject (e.g., maybe a Russian singer insists on spelling her name with them, or whatever), then we would use that version in that case; this is already covered by MOS:DIACRITICS, MOS:TM, etc.
  • So, I don't think that any rule needs to change (there is no contradiction or other error in the guidelines), nor that efforts to force en.WP to use the spellings (in Cyrillic or in Latin-alphabet tranliterations) that have pronunciation marks as a general matter are defensible. Their pedagogical nature is at odds with WP:NOT#TEXTBOOK.
  • That said, I have no particular objection to the guidelines being updated to say that we by default do not use these marks. It's really pretty close to the opposite of Vietnamese, which kinda-sorta can be written without the language's tone marks, at least for common terms like pho, but which usually is not in RS, so we do usually include the tone marks. It's a regular feature of that language, not a tack-on for learners like these Russian marks are. Znaki udareniya are even more directly parallel to Japanese and Korean "ruby" markup, which WP has debated and decided against using, in general. The language at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Japan-related articles#Ruby is a good model: "Do not use the <ruby> tag to further annotate the kanji with ruby characters, except in articles about ruby characters themselves, or where they are needed to accurately quote something that includes ruby characters." Something like this could be added to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Russia-related articles#Orthography. While that is just a draft guideline, it's a good place to put it.
  • If we wanted to add this stuff to the main MoS, I would suggest putting a combined line-item about both ruby and the Russian markup, and anything similar (so we don't have to do it again when some dispute breaks out about Elbonian or Kerblachistinian orthography), at MOS:FOREIGN. Maybe something like this, just after the material about diacritics:

    Do not use auxiliary, pedagogical diacritics (including Russian, Ukranian, and Belarusian znaki udareniya stress marks, Tagalog tuldik, and Indonesian "dictionary é"), nor other auxiliary spelling or pronunciation devices (including Japanese and Korean "ruby" characters), except: where they are needed to accurately quote something that contains them; where they are used (e.g. for disambiguation of homographs) in the predominant spelling of a particular term or name in reliable sources other than pedagogical material; or in content that is about these symbols themselves. (See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation for how and where to provide pronunciation guidance with standardized templates.)

    This would be consistent with actual practice, in agreement with (though more precisely worded than) other guidelines, and compliant with policy like WP:NOT#TEXTBOOK and WP:NOTDICT (the equivalents of which ru.Wikipedia clearly lacks).

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:14, 21 March 2021 (UTC); wording revised based on input below: 13:23, 10 April 2021 (UTC); clarified again after more input: 16:43, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the thoughtful analysis which I imagine Mike Novikoff would want to see. @Mike Novikoff: The above is currently just an opinion and I would not use it to purge pronunciations just yet. Johnuniq (talk) 05:31, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@SMcCandlish and Johnuniq:
Indeed, I'm really glad to see the thorough analysis by SMcCandlish, that's what I've hoped for. And I strongly support his proposed addition to the MoS. Of course I'll wait until it's established, I don't start to edit the articles just yet, but I hope we don't lose our efforts all in vain. I suggest that it would be added to the MoS within a month starting from today (that is, before the topic is archived), unless someone presents some really strong arguments to the contrary. — Mike Novikoff 23:23, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Since this is basically rooted directly in WP:NOTDICT policy, we needn't wait that long, especially given how long this thread's been open. I proposed this on 21 March, so 21 April is fine as a target date. RfCs and other proposals generally run for 1 month (aside from RMs, which are a week unless relisted, and various XfDs are also more like a week). I'll "advertise" this thread in a few relevant places.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:58, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Just a comment on the above wording: the expression "optional stress marks (including Japanese and Korean Ruby..." is extremely odd. So-called Ruby has nothing to do with stress, and is typographically completely different from stress indications, so I do not think it should be included in this way. I agree with both recommendations, by the way: not to use Ruby except in exceptional circumstances (because it is typographically incompatible with English), and not to show stress marks in (e.g.) Russian where they are not part of the normal writing of the word, even though personally I find it easier to read the Cyrillic stress indications than the IPA ones. Imaginatorium (talk) 03:21, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
We have {{Respell}} for providing simpler-than-IPA pronunciation guides that include stress indication. Since we already have two ways to indicate this, we have no reason to "pollute" the actual words/names in running text with additional stress indicators.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:23, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose removal of pronunciation from what is supposed to be a pronunciation. Why not just use Cyrillic without Latin? Or Latin without Cyrillic? NOTADICT is not the issue: if we were anal about that, we couldn't have any guide to pronunciation of any word on WP. The point of having Cyrillic is so that readers can search for the name/word in its original form, and the purpose of the Latin/stress marks is so that they know how to pronounce it.

Maybe we could amend the MOS with the following:

When recording an audio version of a Wikipedia article, you cannot give the pronunciation of foreign words, because that's a violation of NOTADICT. Instead, just say "gobbledegook".

— kwami (talk) 03:18, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Kwamikagami, I think you've misunderstood this discussion and proposal. This isn't about removing stress indicators from pronunciations; if you use {{IPA-ru}} and/or {{Respell}}, they would still indicate stress (similarly, we also have {{Ruby}} for circumstances in which its use is actually sensible in an encyclopedia). What this is about: not changing the spelling of a name or other word when used normally. I.e., it's about not doing the Russian or Japanese equivalent of changing impeller to im·PEL·ler at first occurrence (much less later ones). Even most major dictionaries don't do this sort of thing, and save stress and syllabification information for the pronunciation guide that comes elsewhere in the definition (i.e., in their equivalent of an article).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:04, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@SMcCandlish: So, basically, instead of
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Ле́в Никола́евич Толсто́й),
we would have
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой, Lév Nikoláyevich Tolstóy)?
That's a lot of clutter, but I suppose as long as we don't force people to use {{IPA-ru}} in order to indicate basic pronunciation (and thus delete pronunciations anywhere that doesn't have IPA), that would work for me. — kwami (talk) 21:11, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Support SMcCandlish's proposal, but replace "stress marks" with "diacritics and auxilliary spellings" per Imaginatorium's comment. The native spelling should reflect the common spelling, without auxilliary diacritics which are only used in limited contexts. Although some systems are self-explanatory (like the znaki udareniya), many are not (like the tuldik); further, it might create the misledaing impression that these are commonly used spelling devices. If we want to indicate stress or more details about pronunciation, we have IPA for that purpose. Austronesier (talk) 10:27, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Austronesier and Imaginatorium: We couldn't use wording quite that vague; there is long-established consensus that WP does in fact use diacritics when RS tell us they belong there (it's fiancée not fiancee, even if the latter dumbed-down spelling can be found in some sources). We've had debate after debate about this for 20 years and the answer is always the same. Consensus is not going to change on that. But the point about "stress marks" being insufficient to cover Ruby is on-point. I've revised the proposed wording above to try to address this. I'm not entirely sure "auxiliary spellings" is the perfect term for Ruby marks, either.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:23, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@SMcCandlish: Sure, I didn't want to trade one inaccuracy for another. What about this: Do not use auxilliary/pedagogical diacritics (including stress marks such as Russian, Ukranian, and Belarusian znaki udareniya diacritics) and other auxilliary/pedagogical spelling devices (such as Japanese and Korean "ruby" characters) which are not part of the common spelling.... My point is that auxilliary diacritics (thus not the one in fiancée) can indicate more than stress in various languages. This includes the Tagalog tuldik mentioned above (which is never used in common writing unless for rare disambiguation purposes), or Indonesian é as a dictionary-only device for disambiguating front /e/ from central /ə/; in common spelling both are just ⟨e⟩. –Austronesier (talk) 15:20, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I see what you're getting at, but your version is saying the same thing several times. I'll try to revise to integrate some of this, though, including those other specifics. See what you think of the version up there now. Also may address Kwamikagami's concerns.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:43, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@SMcCandlish: Looks good now (referring to this version)! –Austronesier (talk) 18:35, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Limited support I can only speak to Ukrainian—stress marks are almost always included in leads on Ukrainian wiki and from what i gather reading this discussion are more commonly used than in Russian. I support the suggested inclusion of stress marks on Ukrainian words—blindlynx (talk) 17:48, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

But why should the practice in the lede in Ukrainian WP matter? Our readers need in the first place the spelling they're going to encounter in books and online media, and any other kind of natural text material. The capital of Ukraine is Київ, not Ки́їв. The stress sign is a tool, but not part of the actual spelling. It's not even "optional": what will happen in real life if a journalist submits a news report complete with stress marks on every polysyllabic word? The editor will tell them to resubmit, but certainly not leave it as is. Austronesier (talk) 18:50, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
My point is that stress marks are reasonably common in Ukrainian particularly in educational or reference texts—such as encyclopedias—I was using wiki as an example. The cases where we would include words in Ukrainian on this wiki are more or less the same cases as would include stress marks in Ukrainian. I doubt that anyone copying single words from wiki will be capable of generating anything coherent.—blindlynx (talk) 19:10, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Here we go again: some special "educational" language instead of the real one. Anyone copying single words from wiki can at least search for them, and most search utilities by default will only find a literal match. — Mike Novikoff 02:00, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Blindlynx Please read the discussion above this (and the proposal). There is no "suggested inclusion" of stress diacritics for Ukrainian words here, but the opposite. The entire reason this discussion and proposal are open is that we already know that uk.wikipedia and ru.wikipedia regularly use these pedagogical spellings, and that this does not match en.Wikipedia practice, because our policies are different and the practices built on them are different. This is not a discussion about making a sweeping change to en.WP practice to agree with ru.WP and uk.WP practice (which is not going to happen). It is about how to codify in MoS the fact that our practice is different and that we do not do what ru.WP and uk.WP do (because they lack close equivalents of en:WP:NOTDICT and en:WP:NOT#GUIDE policies). And yes, the marks are entirely optional, by definition, as they are not part of the name. Syllabic stress information belongs in the pronunciation guide, which is a different part of the lead sentence. It does not belong jammed into the name itself (much less over and over again, and across multiple pages).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:23, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Support I strongly agree with SMcCandlish's analysis and proposal. Thank you very much. Retimuko (talk) 16:47, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The capitalisation of "Internet" (referring to the global interconnected network generally used today)

Hi,

I had a discussion with another person on the talk page of the article In Rainbows about the capitalisation of "Internet" (referring to the global interconnected network generally used today), as they changed the capitalisation back from how I had edited it (to capitalise the "I"). They mentioned that as there is no formal decision on this, people editing Wikipedia can do as they like, so it may be capitalised in one article and uncapitalised in another, depending on the consensus of that particular article. However, I consider this to be something of a problem. I think it looks rather strange if we have no formal consensus on this.

My position on this is that the word should be capitalised when it refers to the Internet (the one we are using right now) as opposed to an internet; this makes sense to me, as it makes for an easy distinction between "merely 'an' interconnected network" and "the main interconnected network most are familiar with".

The other person's position is there is no reason to consider Internet as a proper noun; therefore, it should not be capitalised. They cited some sources recommending that people no longer capitalise Internet (the talk page of the In Rainbows article contains the links to the sources in question).

So, there are three options here:

  • (A) Capitalise the word internet whenever it refers to the global interconnected network most commonly used today
  • (B) Don't capitalise the word internet in any case
  • (C) Per-article consensus on the matter, as it is now

Please indicate which option you prefer below, explaining why if possible. Regards, DesertPipeline (talk) 12:43, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Addendum: Another way of looking at this, as Gah4 helped me realise with their comment in the Discussion subsection below, is that "Internet" is a name; "internet" is a term. DesertPipeline (talk) 05:33, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Survey

Option A (Capitalise when name; lowercase when term)

  • Capitalize the proper noun name of our favorite network of networks, (also known as internets): The Internet or just Internet. As noted below, I don't know why it didn't get a nice name like everything else. Talking to someone who actually wrote the book about Ethernet (which is also capitalized as a proper noun), it seems that no-one thought about naming it before it was too late. Gah4 (talk) 06:01, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Right-pointing arrow This comment has been responded to in the Discussion subsection: link to response.
  • Capitalize when used as a proper name, otherwise lowercase. Blueboar (talk) 21:20, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Capitalise if we're talking about the medium in which users can communicate globally. Otherwise, standard all-lowercase works for talking about the kind of network. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 22:02, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Capitalize in reference to the Internet; lowercase when referring to generic technologies (usuable on an intranet). We've been over this again and again and again (and the "give me lower case or give me death" folks really need to stop WP:FORUMSHOPping this again and again and again in hopes of getting the answer they want). It does not matter that various newspapers and bloggers and so forth are too ignorant to know that the Internet is a proper name and that an internet is not, and that they are not the same subject. Wikipedia knows better, and our job is to be factual and to communicate clearly, not to immitate lazy, confusing style found in other publishers with lax standards. For those not aware of it, an internet is an (i.e., any) inter-network, what is more commonly called a WAN (wide-area network) today. This question also applies to [W|w]eb: Use Web when it means the World Wide Web. It's fine to lower-case both terms when used as modifiers and as generic technology descriptors, since they can refer to protocols from the Internet and the Web usable in an isolated intranet circumstance: "internet-technology server", "web developer", etc. When fully compounded, also use lower-case: website, webpage, internetworking (these terms are not proper names so should not be capitalized). Remember also that Internet of Things is a proper name. As a subset of the Internet, it would not be a proper name if the Internet were not one itself. And some modifier cases will remain capitalized, because they refer to (and may be definitional of) proper-name the Internet: "the Internet protocol suite", etc. See also Internet Standard, which is a proper name (a formal IETF spec); this is distinct from "an internet standard" a vague term we should not use which could mean "any standard pertaining to internet technology").  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:14, 22 February 2021 (UTC); revised 10:30, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Right-pointing arrow This comment has been responded to in the Discussion subsection: link to response.
  • Capitalise is correct for The Internet and lowercase is correct for a general internet. However, Wikipedia is not about being correct — it is about reporting the sources — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 13:24, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Right-pointing arrow This comment has been responded to in the Discussion subsection: link to response.
  • Capitalize. It's fallen out of favor (AP Style shifted to never capitalize a decade or so ago), but it still strikes me as wrong and potentially confusing to treat it generically instead of as a proper name for the global network. Carter (talk) 01:17, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Option B (Lowercase always)

  • Lower case per Capitalization of Internet#Usage examples. Randy Kryn (talk) 05:19, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lower case per the majority of publications (eg the New York Times, the Associated Press, Chicago Style, Guardian, BBC, the Telegraph, Reuters). WP:MOSCAPS says: Only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia. The old distinction between internet singular and internet plural is no longer in common use and doesn't matter. Popcornfud (talk) 21:00, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lower case always since I can't see any uses that I would think of as proper names. Like radio, television, and the mail, it's a medium through which businesses and individuals communicate globally. So what? No particular reason to ignore our own style guidelines on this one. Dicklyon (talk) 00:34, 21 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Right-pointing arrow This comment has been responded to in the Discussion subsection: link to response.
  • Same as "universe". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:26, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Right-pointing arrow This comment has been responded to in the Discussion subsection: link to response.
  • Lower case per Dicklyon. --Khajidha (talk) 15:59, 23 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lower case should be our default for all terms unless there's near unanimous consensus among grammarians and style guides to capitalize. pburka (talk) 04:31, 24 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lower case per popcornfud. We're well behind the curve on this one, and the only reason we still allow capitalization is the inertia from an outdated status quo. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 16:31, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lower case I'm from the networking world and know that technically "Internet" is correct to distinguish the world-wide internet from all the others. However, it's a lost cause as explained at Capitalization of Internet and it's time to follow common usage. Johnuniq (talk) 02:10, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Right-pointing arrow This comment has been responded to in the Discussion subsection: link to response.
  • Lower case, mainly because I just want to annoy User:SMcCandlish. We could also go with camel case: "InterNet". But that would be wrong. Herostratus (talk) 02:27, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lower case always, as that seems to be the most usual way to spell it everywhere else. −Woodstone (talk) 08:33, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lower case always per television, radio etc. Number 57 01:16, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lower case always—per Dicklyon. Tony (talk) 09:48, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lower case - Generally, terms become lowercased more often as they enter common parlance. Internet seems to be following this trend, and its lowercase variant is already becoming the most common. - Novov T C 07:46, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lower case per Dicklyon, Popcornfud and Johnuniq. JG66 (talk) 08:05, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Option C (Per-article consensus)

  • Per-article It really depends on the usage. For example, I do a lot of work on video game articles from an historical perspective and it is important to talk about the arrival of the capital I Internet (the global network), as well as the fact the video game consoles gained access to lower case "i" internet functionality. I would agree that if we are talking in the present tense in all sense, the lower-case "i" internet makes reasonable season, but the historical aspect needs to be considered. Hence, per-article consensus needs to be reviewed. --Masem (t) 04:50, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Right-pointing arrow This comment has been responded to in the Discussion subsection: link to response.
  • Hell no. This will just cause "slow-editwar" and WP:CIVILPOV activity by obsessives who want to eventually force all uses to lower-case or all of them to upper-case, and we'll have the same squabble break out page after page after page. The second purpose of MoS (after consistent and professional-looking output for readers) is forestalling repetitive, time-wasting editorial disputes over style trivia – not generating a perpetual stream of them. This really has nothing to do with what page the term appears in, but rather the contextual meaning. If what is meant is the the Internet then that is a proper name. If what is meant is internet-technology networking in general, including on an isolated intranet, then lower-case is appropriate. Same goes for [W|w]eb; if you mean the Web, then it's capitalized. If you mean web technology like HTML and CSS and HTTPS and whatever, then lower-case is fine. I.e., distinguishing between name and description, between the global network and the technologies that enable it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:20, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Many publications are switching to lowercase as someone mentioned above, so I think that should be the default. Just be consistent within the article. I would only distinguish the two (Internet v. internet) if it is absolutely necessary for the subject matter (I don't know, say talking about the early days of the internet and what people called it). Otherwise the distinction is likely to be distracting. Fredlesaltique (talk) 01:10, 24 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Dear God, why? 207.161.86.162 (talk) 06:21, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • For maximum flexibility. Dhtwiki (talk) 20:38, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    If we wanted "maximum flexibility", WP would have no style guide, no article title policy, no naming-conventions guidelines, not citation formatting guideline. The community emphatically does not want "maximum flexibility".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:26, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

People should search before making proposals. 2020, more 2020, more 2020, 2019, 2012/2014, 2010, 2008, 2004 (eesh on that last). --Izno (talk) 16:28, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, it's the exact same editor as a half dozen of those discussions. Popcornfud, that you're still having this issue and across multiple pages doesn't look too good for you. Please stop pushing it until there is an actual consensus on the point. --Izno (talk) 16:29, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"Half of a dozen of these discussions"? I think one - maybe two? edit: OK, three (though those were kind of all the same discussion).
I am not the one who is pushing anything; DesertPipeline wants to make this change to an article. Per the lack of consensus I see no reason to deviate from the WP:STATUSQUO. If a consensus emerges to change it (on that article, or at a MoS-wide level) then I will follow that consensus. Popcornfud (talk) 17:03, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
My apologies for starting another discussion on this when there's been so many; Popcornfud did mention that it's been brought up here before but always ended in no consensus. I guess discussing it so soon after the last time is probably not going to result in anything different? Also I'm not sure if I'm at the right indentation level and in the right place here to be replying to User:Izno... sorry, I still don't really know how talk page threading works exactly :( DesertPipeline (talk) 04:47, 18 February 2021 (UTC) Struck last part as I'm now at the right indentation level – I hope :) 05:20, 23 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ha, I skimmed the struck-out text and initially misread it as I'm not sure if I'm at the right indignation level ... to be replying. Pelagic ( messages ) – (17:46 Sat 27, AEDT) 06:46, 27 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't downcase it when I come across the cap, because I don't like complaints; but in my view it should be lowercase; and where some subset of the internet is intended, that should be clear from the context. Few readers appreciate the significance of the I vs i, anyway. Tony (talk) 05:17, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, it's not that the Internet is "a subset of the internet"; the article Capitalisation of Internet explains it quite well – "the Internet is an internet, but an internet is not the Internet". I do realise that nowadays most people don't care about this sort of thing, but I don't feel like we should lowercase the "I" in a context where it should be capitalised just because that's how most people do it. My opinion on this is that as an encylopedia, which should strive to get things correct as much as possible. To me, it would be like Wikipedia writing "COVID-19" in lowercase simply because most people do that nowadays, and fortunately we aren't doing that. DesertPipeline (talk) 05:26, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Just to be sure, even though it says right in the Internet article, an internet is a network of networks. That is important for the scaling of network architectures, such that each host doesn't need to know the path to all others, but just to a router that knows which way to route it. Many large companies have their own private internet, and many are worldwide. Some companies need the security of not connecting their internal internet to the Internet. Many companies will name their internal network after the company. What does seem strange to me is that the Internet doesn't have an actual name other than Internet. Gah4 (talk) 10:04, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    What does seem strange to me is that the Internet doesn't have an actual name other than Internet. The Internet used to be also called the World Wide Web, but I think that name has fallen out of use a few years ago. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 16:58, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    No, the Internet and the World Wide Web are two very different things. It is true that there are commentators who lump them together, but they don't understand what either is. The WWW is an application that uses HTTP over IP, and no more the Intenet than Gopher, NNTP or SMTP. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 18:47, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I was actually able to think of a much better reason for capitalisation thanks to Gah4's comment. "Internet", referring to the Internet, is a name; "internet" is a term. Would anyone say that provides a better case for standardising capitalisation? Also, I've added a discussion subheading and a survey subheading. DesertPipeline (talk) 04:47, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Addendum: I also have to wonder if the sources that Popcornfud linked which recommend not capitalising the word don't realise that it is a name, rather than simply a term in all cases. I haven't read them though, so I'm just speculating here :) DesertPipeline (talk) 05:01, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    "the Internet is an internet, but an internet is not the Internet" I don't see how that means that "the Internet" is a proper noun. Seems pretty parallel to the statement that "the atmosphere is an atmosphere, but an atmosphere is not the atmosphere". --Khajidha (talk) 19:30, 3 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes. Like Microsoft naming their word processor Word, our favorite internet is named The Internet. It might have had a fancier name, but it seems not. Gah4 (talk) 06:36, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    And even LibreOffice fell victim: They called theirs "Writer" :) DesertPipeline (talk) 06:42, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I also have to wonder if the sources that Popcornfud linked which recommend not capitalising the word don't realise that it is a name, rather than simply a term in all cases. I haven't read them though, so I'm just speculating here
    Yes, the history of the term as a proper noun is discussed in those sources (here are some of them again: NY Times, Wired, New Republic, the Verge).
    I have to say that the fact that you didn't bother to read these - which I provided because you asked me for an explanation - and are now typing things to the effect of "I wonder what those sources arguing against my position say? guess we'll never know!" is sort of causing me to faceplam. Popcornfud (talk) 20:51, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm sorry, Popcorn :( The reason I didn't read the sources you provided is that I feel paranoid about visiting websites I haven't before – and I know the ones you linked are trustworthy, but my fear is just irrational. I thought you might be frustrated if I said I didn't read them, but I didn't want to act as if I knew – because I don't. I could read them with Lynx, a terminal-based browser, if you'd like me to (although my paranoia is such a problem that I even hesitate to do that, despite the fact that I installed Lynx specifically for situations like this). DesertPipeline (talk) 06:38, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    DesertPipeline, OK, that sounds tough. If you're curious, I would be happy to summarise what those articles say on your talk page, just let me know. Popcornfud (talk) 10:44, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    If you don't mind doing that, then sure, and thank you :) DesertPipeline (talk) 12:48, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lower case per Capitalization of Internet#Usage examples. Randy Kryn (talk) 05:19, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Hi, would you mind putting this in the Survey subsection above and adding (B) to the beginning of your comment? Thanks, DesertPipeline (talk) 05:28, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    OK, added it there as well. Randy Kryn (talk) 05:40, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks :) I also decided to add subheadings for each option so hopefully things will be more readable. I moved your comment to the corresponding subheading (Option B). DesertPipeline (talk) 05:44, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Pinging everyone who participated in the discussion so far (except Gah4, because I mentioned it on their talk page and was intending to do that for the other participants but then realised it was way less efficient than just doing it here and using pings): User:Izno, User:Tony1, User:Tenryuu, User:Chatul (I think that's everyone). If you don't mind, can you add which option you're in support of to the survey? :) If you already gave your explanation in this section, you can just say something like "see my comment in the discussion section". I just want it to be clearer for whoever closes this what option each participant was for :) Thanks, DesertPipeline (talk) 05:12, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Talking to someone who actually wrote the book about Ethernet (which is also capitalized as a proper noun), it seems that no-one thought about naming it before it was too late. Gah4 (talk) 06:01, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
    Ethernet is a trademark. Dicklyon (talk) 00:38, 21 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    According to the article on Ethernet, it seems that it used to be a trademark, but it isn't any more :) DesertPipeline (talk) 05:55, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Interesting. So I guess we'd have to say it's capped because it was a trademark. Dicklyon (talk) 01:03, 23 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Presumably, yes :) In that case, though, there's no such thing as "ethernet" (I think?) – i.e. there isn't "Ethernet" (a single concept) and "ethernet" (a broader concept) :) DesertPipeline (talk) 05:03, 23 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Lower case always since I can't see any uses that I would think of as proper names. Like radio, television, and the mail, it's a medium through which businesses and individuals communicate globally. So what? No particular reason to ignore our own style guidelines on this one. Dicklyon (talk) 00:34, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
    I wouldn't really say that radio, television, and mail are good comparisons – they're not words that can either be a term or a name. In this case, though, "Internet" is the name for the global internet we're using right now – and "internet" is just a term meaning "interconnected network". As someone (me? I can't remember) said previously: "The Internet is an internet, but an internet is not the Internet" :) DesertPipeline (talk) 06:25, 21 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I do understand that you want it to be a name. But I disagree that it is ever that. Dicklyon (talk) 06:49, 21 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I'll be honest: I don't understand why you think it isn't a name. I'd like to know why you think this way. Do you think you could explain to me? Thank you, DesertPipeline (talk) 10:14, 21 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    And I don't understand why you think it is. A lot of things have names, like the Internet Engineering Task Force, Internet Protocol, ARPANET, but this thing we call the internet is just the agglomeration of everyone's networks. Nobody named it; they just took to capping it to indicate that if you're not on it, maybe you're on some other internet. That's a use of caps that's outside the uses that WP's and many others' style guides recommend. Dicklyon (talk) 04:37, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, I'll admit... I thought I read somewhere that someone had officially named it Internet, but... apparently that's not the case, at least according to the article on Internet :) Still though, language is just something we invented of course, so we could say "its name is Internet now because people call it that, even though it wasn't officially named that". Then again, maybe humanity should have a vote to decide on an official name, like... well, I don't even know what it could be called, but I guess it'd be less confusing if it wasn't called "Internet" :) DesertPipeline (talk) 05:38, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, I think humanity did take a vote. Or least the part of humanity that issue style guidelines has pretty much converted on lowercase. Dicklyon (talk) 05:41, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I'd argue that the most likely reason style guides usually recommend lowercase nowadays is that they don't realise that it is a name (or at least that some people consider it a name)? I'm not sure though :) DesertPipeline (talk) 05:49, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    You don't think they looked long and hard at the issue before changing their guidance? They just don't "realise that it is a name"? Yeah, that must be it; probably a bunch of new grads running that department now. Dicklyon (talk) 06:22, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    ...But would you be so shocked if that was the case? ;) DesertPipeline (talk) 06:29, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Per-article It really depends on the usage. For example, I do a lot of work on video game articles from an historical perspective and it is important to talk about the arrival of the capital I Internet (the global network), as well as the fact the video game consoles gained access to lower case "i" internet functionality. I would agree that if we are talking in the present tense in all sense, the lower-case "i" internet makes reasonable season, but the historical aspect needs to be considered. Hence, per-article consensus needs to be reviewed. --Masem (t) 04:50, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

    If I'm reading this right, I think you may actually be in favour of option A? I agree with you that it should be capitalised only when referring to the Internet and uncapitalised when referring to any other internet :) DesertPipeline (talk) 05:47, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I think he's saying that there may be historical contexts in which that distinction might still need to be represented via caps, but that most current stuff not. I'm not sure I get why, though. I don't know what video game consoles gained access to lower case "i" internet functionality means. Dicklyon (talk) 06:07, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Not to suggest that I can read minds (that would probably make life a little easier :D) but I think what's meant is that video game consoles gained access to internets in general – i.e., any interconnected network :) Maybe you're starting to see why some consider the distinction between capitalised I and uncapitalised I important now? ;)[note 1] DesertPipeline (talk) 06:13, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I didn't say anything about it not being important; just not capitalization relevant. But what internets did videogames have access to? Dicklyon (talk) 06:20, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, any :) If a computing device can connect to a network, then it can connect to any internet, including the Internet, although some manufacturers of video game consoles might try to prevent connection to internets they don't authorise – P.S. I'm not an authority on this subject if it wasn't already obvious, so my explanation isn't very good, sorry ;) DesertPipeline (talk) 06:25, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Same as "universe". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:26, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
    I'd say that the example of "universe" is another one that doesn't really apply here – it's not both a name and a term: it's just a term :) DesertPipeline (talk) 06:29, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree. But some want it to be a name, too. NASA style guide and many others say not to cap it, but there are outliers (billions and billions...). Dicklyon (talk) 06:57, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    To be honest, I wouldn't really mind either way myself – I mentioned this in the On Rainbows talk page, but if there are other universes then I feel like having a distinction between "the Universe" (ours) and "a universe" (any other universe) could be useful. DesertPipeline (talk) 07:01, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"It behooves us" – Neigh!
Bees don't have hooves, silly!
But they apparently have the best knees.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 
They have bee feat.
"A shetland pony,
a bee, and a beefeater
walk into a pub...."

  • Capitalize in reference to the Internet; lowercase when referring to generic technologies (usuable on an intranet). ... — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 10:14, 22 February 2021 (UTC); revised 10:30, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
    One quick question SMcCandlish: Is it then correct to say "Web page" (as opposed to "web page")? When I see "web page" I usually change it to "Web page" – although I do feel like "webpage" sounds better :) DesertPipeline (talk) 12:51, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    The fully compounded "webpage" has been the most common since the early 2000s, maybe even the late 1990s. I don't think anyone's arguing for retaining the capital letter when it's used in a combining form like this. If one were to write it as "Web page", then the "W" would arguably belong, but this seems a bit archaic at this point (in Internet time, anyway). Same with "website" and "Web site", etc. Various terms like "web development" can probably go lower-case, because they are about web[site] technology in general, and equally pertain to intranet websites, not just the [World Wide] Web. Used in a generic enough way, even "web page" and "web site" would work for that reason, though again "website" and "webpage" seem to be the dominant spellings now.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:29, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    S, I never proposed "death" as the alternative, but it seems to me that treating "Internet" as a proper name is out of step with most modern style guides, so it behooves us to discuss when/whether to re-align with them. Dicklyon (talk) 01:01, 23 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I never proposed "death" as the alternative – But those of us following this thread are openly pining for it. Oh sweet release! EEng 04:29, 23 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Admit it, EEng – you're just envious that I made a joke in this section before you, aren't you? ;) DesertPipeline (talk) 05:05, 23 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Au contraire. It delights me to see other editors taking up the jokester's banner. EEng 05:56, 23 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Another task ticked off the bucket list – "checkY Have work approved by EEng" :) DesertPipeline (talk) 06:06, 23 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Congrats. All I got from him was some pix to mock my verb choice; et tu. Dicklyon (talk) 01:54, 26 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Sorry, but I have standards to uphold. EEng 07:35, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Dicklyon, I seem to recall you being among those of us who regularly point out that "is a proper name" and "is capitalized in some proportion of publications" is not a 1:1 relationship. We know news-writing style in particular takes a large number of liberties with capitalization (mostly dropping it at every chance, even when the results are confusing, e.g. "Nato" and "the Aids virus", and lately "Covid-19" or even just "covid"). It's one thing for a eponym to lose capitalization when it becomes "divorced" from the namesake ("our platonic relationship", "draconian workplace policies", "french fries"), but nothing like that has happened here. The Internet is no less the Internet now than before, and if anything it's more: more a prominent part of our lives, and more the Internet, as it grows to integrate with our phones, our watches, even our refrigerators and doorbells. I'll repeat what I've said in several other variants of this debate: if we decide this has somehow become "the internet", then we're also going to have to down-case Internet of Things. This is a very good example of why not to trust newspapers when it comes to style questions. They'll happily drop a capital letter from a common proper name, to save a sliver of typing time, then insist on capitalizing something simply because it seems new and important (MOS:SIGCAPS). Can't have it both ways. When the very same sources directly contract themselves on whether to capitalize [I|i]nternet, and do it only when used as a modifier (i.e., the exact opposite of actual trends in English usage, which is to start decapitalizing modifier usage, which may or may not then spread lower-case to the noun form), then they are not reliable sources for the style question.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:40, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree completely with SMc here honestly – just because other style guides are getting it wrong it doesn't mean we should follow in their footsteps ;) DesertPipeline (talk) 03:38, 23 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Someone mentioned universe, which it seems is not capitalized and not a proper name. There might be some astronomers who disagree, (that is, that we live in one particular Universe), but it reminded me of Earth and Mars, which it seems are proper names, though earth (synonym for dirt) is not. It might be that mars is a synonym for dirt if you are Mars. I don't see any discussion for capitalization in talk:Earth, but instead whether it is Earth or the Earth. Somehow that question was avoided here. In any case, I still believe that Internet is the proper name for out favorite internet, like Earth for our favorite planet. Gah4 (talk) 02:34, 23 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Sometimes I see "earth" when it really means "Earth" (in an article where it was capitalised before) and I usually correct that. I've heard that in casual usage, people will just type "the sun", "the earth", "the moon" (etc), but weirdly enough I don't think that's done in the case of the other planet/celestial body names. I wonder why that is? P.S. I fixed the indentation of your comment :) Regards, DesertPipeline (talk) 03:21, 23 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    "Sometimes I see ..." – Yes, we know. There is not a single line-item in MoS (or any other style guide) that you can't find some people ignoring (on-site or in RS material). That really has no bearing on the matter. MoS is not about what "is" "correct" (English doesn't have a set of hard rules governing it); it's about what to do on WP, so that we have consistent and semi-formal output for readers, and a reduction internally in tedious strife over style trivia.

    "I wonder why that is?" It's because "earth", "moon", and "sun" have many figural usages ("to till the earth", "When the moon hits your eye / Like a big pizza pie", "shining in the sun") and pre-date common understanding of celestial bodies. Most of our other astronomical bodies were named much later, after thing that were in and of themselves proper names (mostly mythological figures), and do not have much in the way of figural/metaphoric usage.
     — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:23, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • I'm going to do some refactoring with the discussion. The intent was that the Discussion subsection would be for any replies, including to replies in the survey section, for better readability, but even I forgot to do that at first :) I'm going to try and organise all the (initial) replies to bullet points in the Survey section by time posted when putting them in this section. Someone have a mop ready, because I can't guarantee that this will go smoothly... but I'm going to try my best :) DesertPipeline (talk) 06:17, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    checkY Refactor complete. If anyone else wants to check to make sure everything that existed before still exists now, I'd be grateful, because this stuff makes my head hurt :) DesertPipeline (talk) 07:04, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Lower case I'm from the networking world and know that technically "Internet" is correct to distinguish the world-wide internet from all the others. However, it's a lost cause as explained at Capitalization of Internet and it's time to follow common usage. Johnuniq (talk) 2:10 am, Today (UTC+0)
    User:Johnuniq: I'm curious as to why you think it's a lost cause. Could you elaborate on that? As said before, many people get it wrong nowadays, but at Wikipedia, we don't have to get it wrong as well. In my opinion, considering people are getting it wrong consistently nowadays, I almost feel like it's Wikipedia's duty to get it right – an encylopedia is supposed to be educational, after all, and we could induce some positive change by capitalising it when it should be capitalised in all cases, perhaps. Regards, DesertPipeline (talk) 09:09, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    User:Johnuniq: ...I really seem to be having trouble getting pings to work lately :) At least, the notification system isn't telling me it sent. I hope it isn't silently doing it so I'm double-pinging people. DesertPipeline (talk) 09:13, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    By lost cause I mean that the tide of common usage has risen and trying to oppose it will not be successful and will only make us look like pedants. For readers, there is no difference between Internet and internet except that the former looks like someone inadvertently pressed the Shift key in the middle of a sentence. Johnuniq (talk) 09:58, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    User:Johnuniq: Would you disagree that if we don't take that attitude, there's still hope? Think about it this way: If we do nothing, then yes, the correct capitalisation for the Internet will probably cease to exist at some point. However, if we do do something, then there is at least a chance that things can change for the better. Even if it's a small chance, I think it's worth it, especially considering it requires little effort on our part. DesertPipeline (talk) 10:26, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Wikipedia is not here to right great wrongs. Popcornfud (talk) 13:54, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Microsoft doesn't capitalize [4]. Nor does Google [5]. Nor does Apple [6]. I guess all these companies are wrong too - it's up to Wikipedia to lead the way now! Popcornfud (talk) 14:42, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    User:Popcornfud: Come now, you must recognise why "everyone else is doing it" is a poor reason :) Just remember that no matter how popular something is, that doesn't always make it correct or right. (The world is in a lot of trouble because there are many people doing things that are popular but ethically wrong, usually in order to make money.) Also, in response to your above comment where you mention WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS: There is a difference between "righting great wrongs" and "not making things worse" :) The same problem applies in another area that I've been trying to deal with: Wikipedia has a lot of loaded or confusing words on it (such as "consumer" and "intellectual property") – my opinion there is the same as here, which is that while we're not here to right great wrongs, we can at least not make things worse. If a capitalised I in Internet – referring to the Internet – is indeed correct, which according to Johnuniq, it is – I'm from the networking world and know that technically "Internet" is correct to distinguish the world-wide internet from all the others. – then I really think we should be following what's correct, rather than what's popular. Although I do want to ask: In your view, is "Capitalised I for the Internet is correct" not a factual statement, but an opinion? I might be repeating myself in a sense here... my apologies if so, my brain is not good at keeping track of so many things :) DesertPipeline (talk) 03:34, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    There is really no "fact" when it comes to what is "correct" in language. The closest you'll get is the fact of what's more commonly used or not, or what's considered standard or non-standard by big-cheese publishing houses et al.
    "Everyone else is doing it" is the perfect reason, though. As others say: Wikipedia follows, it doesn't lead. Wikipedia reflects sources. Wikipedia has no responsibility to uphold your preferred version of the universe. And as I said right at the start of this discussion, we have a policy for this: WP:MOSCAPS: Only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia. In other words: only capitalize if "everyone else is doing it". Popcornfud (talk) 12:09, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    User:Popcornfud: Well, the lead of MOSCAPS also says primarily needed for proper names. The lead of Proper noun (which Proper name is a redirect to) says A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity – does that not apply to Internet, since it's a single entity? It goes on to say as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities which applies to internet. By the way, I would like to ask, what is your reasoning behind wanting to do this because everyone else is doing it? Regards, DesertPipeline (talk) 12:23, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    The entire point of this disagreement is that most style guides no longer consider it a proper noun, so you saying "but it's a proper noun" misses the point. As for what is your reasoning behind wanting to do this because everyone else is doing it, I just explained that. WP:MOSCAPS: Only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia. In other words, "Do what most reliable sources do" - even if you think it's wrong - sorry. Popcornfud (talk) 12:30, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    User:Popcornfud: I just don't personally believe that what is and what isn't a proper noun can be defined by popular opinion, though. Surely it is or it isn't, regardless of what people think, based on what the article on proper nouns says? DesertPipeline (talk) 12:40, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • However, Wikipedia is not about being correct — it is about reporting the sources — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 13:24, 20 March 2021 (UTC)
    User:GhostInTheMachine: Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm not really sure that applies here. We can obviously report that some people don't capitalise the I when referring to the Internet according to the sources, and that some do, but when we're just referring to it generally, shouldn't we be capitalising the I if that's the correct way to do it? :) DesertPipeline (talk) 03:44, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Joking moved out of the !vote section (with copy of what it's a response to), per user talk request:

    • Lower case, mainly because I just want to annoy User:SMcCandlish. We could also go with camel case: "InterNet". But that would be wrong. Herostratus (talk) 02:27, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

      Yeah, all Apple fans know it has to be "iNternet".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:42, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  1. ^ "I can tell you right now, Dave... that monkey is indeed being cheeky!"

Rewording of hyphen section

I want to propose a simplification of the section on hyphens.

Current

=== Hyphens ===

Hyphens (-) indicate conjunction. There are three main uses:

  1. In hyphenated personal names: John Lennard-Jones.
  2. To link prefixes with their main terms in certain constructions (quasi-scientific, pseudo-Apollodorus, ultra-nationalistic).
    • A hyphen may be used to distinguish between homographs (re-dress means dress again, but redress means remedy or set right).
    • There is a clear trend to join both elements in all varieties of English (subsection, nonlinear). Hyphenation clarifies when the letters brought into contact are the same (non-negotiable, sub-basement) or are vowels (pre-industrial), or where a word is uncommon (co-proposed, re-target) or may be misread (sub-era, not subera). Some words of these sorts are nevertheless common without the hyphen (e.g. cooperation is more frequently attested than co-operation in contemporary English).

Proposed

=== Hyphens ===

Hyphens (-) indicate conjunction. There are three main uses:

  1. Personal names (Daniel Day-Lewis)
  2. Certain prefixes (vice-president, ex-boyfriend). Note that general usage tends to avoid hyphens for many prefixes (subsection, nonlinear). Use a hyphen in the following situations:
    • If it changes the meaning (re-dress dress again versus redress set right)
    • To separate the same letter (non-negotiable) or vowels (pre-industrial) unless doing so goes against general usage (cooperation not co-operation)
    • To avoid misreadings (sub-era not subera)
    • Uncommon words with no established usage (co-propose)

Thoughts? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fredlesaltique (talk • contribs) 04:44, 21 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think "personal names" is too telegraphic and open to misinterpretation. We only use hyphens to separate parts of the personal name of a single person; we do not use them to separate names of two people. The current text is worded circularly and doesn't clearly indicate this but the new wording is worse in this respect. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:29, 21 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@David Eppstein: I don't think such a misinterpretation is likely, and rewording would probably add to confusion. We could add a second well-known name for clarity, though. Fredlesaltique (talk) 10:04, 21 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with the general trust of this, but concur with David (especially on his main point, that people will misinterpret this to mean "write Comet Hale-Bopp"; we know for a fact that various editors are perpetually confused about en-dash usage with human names so we do have reason to avoid worsening it). Given that names like Day-Lewis have a term for them and we have an article on it, at Double-barrelled name, just use that term and link to it. However, not all such surnames are hyphenated any longer. And it's not always surnames; hyphens are common between Chinese and Korean given names (in either family-name-first or Western order), and among some French and Southern US given-name clusters. So what we should probably say is something like the following (and I even managed to find someone with a hyphenated forename and a hyphenated surname):
  1. A double-barrelled surname or compound give name that is hyphenated for a particular subject in most reliable sources (Daniel Day-Lewis, Yu Myeong-Hee, Jean-Louis Vieillard-Baron)
This wording accounts for the fact that (especially for Asian cases) source treatment may differ as to the spelling, and we should use the dominant one in RS. And we should use cross-references more liberally, to avoid restating rules (which provides an undesirable opportunity for WP:POLICYFORKing). I notice that MOS:DASH not once but twice makes the point that double-barreled surnames take hyphens, and this would be better done with cross-references to the rule rather than restatements of the rule.
Next, "cooperation not co-operation" is flat-out wrong. The original text was correct about frequency of usage, but the revised version goes too far in marking one as an error. "Co-operaticon" "Co-operation" is a very well-attested spelling, and there's nothing wrong with it. Plenty of editors and readers prefer it. This vowel-separating hyphenation is only commonly used when pronunciation might be uncertain (esp. to a non-native speaker or school child) because the combination forms a common diphthong. The e[-]u case seems to be among the least frequently hyphenated, so a better example would be the following:
  1. ...
    • ...
    • To separate the same letter (non-negotiable) or vowels (pre-industrial) unless doing so goes against general usage (reunion not re-union)
Basically MoS shouldn't be prescribing against a usage that still has currency in formal writing, but should illustrate avoidance of a misusage that almost all readers would take to be an error.
Finally, remove "Note that"; just say "General usage tends ...", or "However, general usage tends ..." if we think that reads better. We should actually search all the MoS pages for "note that" and similar phrases, and remove them. We advise avoiding their use in articles, so MoS should practice what it preaches. PS: The footnote (to what MoS means by "recent", "current", "modern", etc.) will probably no longer be needed, given how this is being revised, so I've removed it (including from the original quote, since it throws an error here on the talk page due to the note itself being missing).
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:04, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Co-operaticon (noun): A joint convention of fans of both Italian and German opera. EEng 15:41, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ha ha.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:31, 23 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Personal names: I think that lengthening the wording on personal names would make the principle more convoluted than it needs to be.
As I see it, the guide should simply answer the question "When do I use a hyphen" with "in personal names." In other words, if a personal name has a dash-like symbol, then it should be a hyphen. I don't think it needs to mention what all the specific examples of hyphens in names are; by keeping it simple they are all included anyways. The current and proposed wordings make no mention of when to remove a hyphen or keep it, since that is a separate issue. I also think that introducing new terms like double-barreled surnames is pertinent but not strictly necessary, and should be avoided to keep things concise.
What about changing the wording to "in personal names"? Then the question "how to combine two personal names" is neither raised nor answered, as far as I can see. Putting a note mentioning that the answer to this separate question is below, like one of you proposed, seems like a good solution, though I worry it just makes things more confusing. (Also I noticed John Lennard-Jones is used elsewhere as an example, so should not have been removed.)
  1. In personal names (Daniel Day-Lewis, John Lennard-Jones)
Prefixes: We can change the wording on prefixes to be less prescriptive, I was trying to make it more cut-and-dry but I may have gone too far. What about this?
  1. ...
    • ...
    • To separate the same letter (non-negotiable) or vowels (pre-industrial) unless doing so goes against general usage (reunion not re-union). Note that some words commonly lack a hyphen (cooperate versus co-operate)
Note that: the Manual of Style states "Avoid such phrases as remember that and note that, which address readers directly in an unencyclopedic tone and lean toward instructional." Since the manual is not an encyclopedia article but rather a guideline that is meant to instruct, I don't think using "note that" is an issue.
Wow that was a lot longer than I intended. Cheers, Fredlesaltique (talk) 13:08, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that concision on this matter would be an improvement. On the MoS-should-do-as-it-advises matter, I don't think you've been around long enough, or you'd know that any time MoS doesn't do as it says people who don't agree with the line item in question leap on that as an excuse to claim it doesn't have consensus, yadda yadda (the "fight against MoS" b.s. we've been deailing with for nearly 20 years. Everyone has at least one bone to pick with MoS (an every other style guide there is), so we should not feed them opportunities to manufacture drama over style trivia.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:04, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
MOS doesn't apply outside project space, in particular not to itself. Nor should it. Nonissue. EEng 23:17, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It's actually come up as an issue many times. People see MoS not following its own rules (when they can logically apply), and argue that it's not really a rule, that it doesn't have consensus, that it's obsolete and no longer being followed, etc., etc. We can avoid all this bullshit by simply writing MoS in MoS style. It's already routine to apply most of MoS even to policy pages, so the actual "nonissue" here is the idea that there's anything faintly controversial about doing so. Cf. WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY: The fact that MoS doesn't officially apply to projectspace as a set of per se rules is meaningless in the face of the fact that they're our writing best-practices and that not using them consistently causes internecine problems. Trying to enforce non-compliance just for the hell of it, on a jurisdictional-technicality argument, absent a particular non-compliance being objectively an improvement to the wording or other formatting at hand, is a WP:SPITE matter. It buys us absolutely nothing yet comes at non-trivial and predictable costs. Another way of looking at it: the fact that it's not illegal in most places to tattoo your eyelids doesn't make it a good idea to exercise the right to do so.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:38, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Post–World War II or Post-World War II?

I left a message at Talk:Post–Cold War era#En dash or hyphen? —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 02:16, 25 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

HueMan1, I agree with Fredlesaltique; should be a hyphen (particularly item 3). —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 02:54, 25 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. According to the MOS, it should be an endash. See section 9.9.2.3, which addresses it directly. Good Ol’factory (talk) 03:39, 25 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Agreed, an en dash. It refers an era that is post the Cold War, not a war era that is post cold. Doremo (talk) 03:49, 25 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Good point; I hadn't thought of it like that. — Christopher, Sheridan, OR (talk) 08:19, 26 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No. Cold War functions as one single lexeme lexical item (specifically a collocation); for any kind of grammatical constructions, suffixes, prefixes, etc, Cold War is treated as if it were a single word. Firejuggler86 (talk) 09:45, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question for @Good Olfactory and Doremo: Does "Post-election pendulum for the 2019 Australian federal election" fit under this category? I'm not sure if it's referring to an election pendulum or a pendulum after an election. —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 08:03, 26 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
And oh, another thing, about PTSD. Why should it be an exception to the MOS? —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 08:07, 26 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not arguing for or against the dash in PTSD on WP, but noting that the hyphen is overwhelmingly common usage in reliable sources, which is another WP principle. It's just because this rule or principle (like many) doesn't get applied consistently. If I were writing it for my own publication, I'd probably use a dash (and my editor would probably change it to a hyphen anyway). The "post-election pendulum" is a pendulum after the election, so the premodifier post-election is simple + simple (i.e., one word + one word), so it's just a hyphen, the same as "a man-eating shark" or "a well-cooked steak". Doremo (talk) 10:28, 26 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Doremo: I agree, I guess a majority would oppose its hypothetical RM (P-TSD to P–TSD). Thank you for your response! —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 13:44, 26 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's a hyphen in PTSD because it's a stress disorder that arises after trauma, not a disorder of trauma stress. I could be wrong. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:49, 28 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly. "Post—traumatic stress disorder" would seem to be an awkward adjective or adverb meaning "after one has gotten over 'traumatic stress disorder', whatever that is". PTSD is a disorder involving trauma-induced stress. The post- is modifier only of trauma.
  • Comment: I'm getting the feeling that this discussion will have a greater reach than was initially intended. As I don't have an English major, I'm going to bow out of this discussion. The decision should be broached to Wikipedia as a uniform policy. — Christopher, Sheridan, OR (talk) 08:29, 26 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • It should 100% be an en-dash, per MOS:DASH, in section 9.9.2.3 ("MOS:PREFIXDASH"). It's "post–[World War II]", not "[post-World] War II". Paintspot Infez (talk) 16:23, 26 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not policy, but traditionally constructions like "post-World-War-Two shenanigans" would be considered correct. The whole pWW2 bit is a compound adjective, is it not? Pelagic ( messages ) – (17:59 Sat 27, AEDT) 06:59, 27 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment The Manual of Style does specify that "post–World War II" should be an en-dash. However, even the comprehensive Chicago Manual of Style says that it's "a rather fussy use of the en dash that many people ignore, preferring the hyphen."
In general for hyphens and dashes, I would say 1. if something is technically correct but overly-distracting, then ignore it and 2. deference should be given to reliable sources. Cheers, Fredlesaltique (talk) 11:13, 27 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
My great-grandmother had a saying: "Straining at gnats and swallowing horses". If we're gonna keep up the insistence that page ranges must use endashes instead of hyphens, then we're damn sure not gonna give a pass to pre-World War artillery, as is there was war artillery before there was a world. EEng 01:58, 28 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe more to the point, Fredlesaltique's argument is trebly faulty.
  1. There's no evidence that en dashes versus hyphens are, to readers or to editors, "overly distracting". (Note the lack of a hyphen in that, by the way; anyone who hyphenates after a -ly adjective isn't in a position to be offering hyphen-related advice.) At most, they're faintly inconvenient to some editors who are neither Mac users nor (on Windows or *n*x) users of keyboard macro utilities, and who also don't use the "Wiki markup" or "Insert" utility right underneath the editing window. If this sort of minor expediency matter were a valid rationale, we'd also drop all MoS matters about the minus symbol, em dashes, ×, non-breaking spaces, language markup, diacritics, mathematical symbols, etc., etc. "It's not one of my default keyboard-layout characters" isn't a reason we take seriously. (And typing efficiency is the reason that news publishers eschew en dashes; it's not because it's "more correct" to do so, it's simply a matter of deadline pressure. Same goes for all the punctuation- and capitals- and space-dropping, the avoidance of diacritics, the clipped grammatical structures, the formulaic "newsspeak" clichés, and other hallmarks of news writing. News style guides have had virtually no impact on MoS for good reasons.)
  2. Second, CMoS and other off-site style guides are not reliable sources for how to write Wikipedia; only our own internal consensus in developing MoS (and AT, and the naming conventions guidelines, etc.) is that, and it already takes all the major off-site style guides into account. Carol Fisher Saller, Bryan A. Garner, and the handful of other people who determine the content of CMoS – and fail to fix factual errors in it a decade after they're reported >cough cough< – don't dictate how WP is written. And no style guide in a vacuum is an authority on English, even as source for encyclopedia material like Comma#Uses in English; they have to be used in the aggregate because they all contradict each other on hundreds of points (even when they don't contradict themselves internally, which is too often).
  3. Last, and most obviously, CMoS doesn't even say not to use en dashes for this, it just observes that some don't use it. CMoS makes many observations of this sort, as do most other style guides. Many of them have been bending over backwards the last 20 years to be more descriptive, which kind of defeats the purpose of being a style guide; New Hart's Rules under Waddingham's editorship and Fowler's under Butterfield's are especially crappy in this regard. This throwing up of the hands by some particular other publication (which amounts to "we give up, so just do whatever the hell you want") has no effect on whether MoS advises, deprecates, or avoids addressing any style point. (The main impetus of this new wishywashiness in some style guides that were formerly bastions of a particular "academic" writing style appears to be pressure to be inclusive and permissive of some news-style and business- or marking-style writing habits, to sell more style guides. Paper publishers are under increasingly intense pressure to drive up sales any way they can to survive at all in the 21st century, and it tends to result in dumbed-down, least-common-denominator results. The effects are more obvious in this niche than in many others because the traditional divide between styles has a long history and – until lately – rather sharp lines, so their sudden blurring stands out.)
The perpetual "style warfare" people bring against MoS line-items they don't personally care for, however, is very much a distraction from editorial productivity (theirs and everyone else's). Editors have to understand that there is no one who agrees with 100% of the statements in this or any other guideline or policy, and there are no guideline or policy rules that have agreement from 100% of editors. Perfect unanimity is not possible to achieve, ergo lack of unanimity about any given line item is not an argument against it. Consensus can change, but WP:IDONTLIKEIT is a codified fallacy on this site. So are WP:OTHERSTUFF and WP:CONTENTAGE and WP:NOTFIXEDYET, which are frequently also thrown up as anti-guideline lobbying points; the fact that no policy or guideline line-item has 100% compliance, and some failures to comply are in articles that haven't been corrected on the matter for years, is not reasoning against a rule's existence and applicability, or the whole project would be unworkable. Cf. WP:NOTPERFECTION, WP:NODEADLINE, WP:NOTUNANIMITY.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:15, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
and fail to fix factual errors in it a decade after they're reported >cough cough< May I ask to what this is referring? 207.161.86.162 (talk) 07:01, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This thread isn't really the place to dig into it. If you want one quick example, see here, where I already documented a double error in some detail (CMoS directly contradicting itself in the same passage, and then trying to cite an "authority" that has nothing to do with the subject at all. I reported these errors to them some time around 2007–2009, both directly in e-mail and on their forum. They've released two editions since then without fixing either error.) CMoS is not alone in such problems; I pointed out similar problems is my Amazon reviews of the latest (Waddingham and Butterfield) edition's of New Hart's Rules and Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage. I could do likewise with Garner's English Usage, which makes a lot of incorrect linguistic claims. The author is a lawyer not a language specialist. He's also quietly the principal author of most of CMoS's grammar and usage information since at least the 15th ed., so you can see how these problems can interrelate. Similarly, the former long-term editors of NHR and Fowler's, Ritter and Burchfield, were in close communication with each other through years of OED-related work. When Waddingham made all kinds of willy-nilly changes to NHR out of nowhere (mostly in the direction of being excessively descriptive in a "there are five ways do this, so just do whatever you like" vein, which is the antithesis of what a style guide is for), Butterfield just deferred to all of them blindly. Poor material and poor thinking about language jumped from one into the other.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:58, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"Early" hyphenation question

Do we write "the early 20th-century upper class" or "the early-20th-century upper class"? Wolfdog (talk) 15:43, 8 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • The Chicago Manual of Style recommends late nineteenth-century literature, stating that it is "clear without a second hyphen" as an adjective modifying a compound, but a mid-eighteenth-century poet because CMS classifies mid- as a prefix. (CMS 16th ed., §§ 7.83, 7.85) Following this recommendation, it would be "the early 20th-century upper class". Doremo (talk) 16:33, 8 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, it depends on the larger context:
    The early 20th-century upper class considered sexuality propriety paramount. but
    He subscribed to the early 20th-century upper-class attitude that sexual propriety should be paramount.
    EEng 17:24, 8 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • Right. I meant "upper class" as a noun. Wolfdog (talk) 23:14, 8 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      • This seems reasonable to me on first approach. However, the more fully compounded style ("early-20th-century") is clearly well-attested, and we have no reason to legislate against it. MoS should not impose a rule that serves no practical purpose. There are probably 10,000 things would could have a new rule about (given the size of the major off-site style guides), but we keep MoS constrained to only those things that matter for reader comprehension and an encyclopedic tone, or which we need to have a rule about to stop constant infighting.

        Anyway, I think usage on this exact question is going to vary even by individual, depending on context. For example, I would be more likely to use "early-20th-century" when it proceeded another modifier. Ex.: "early-20th-century nationalistic movements", because it is in fact clearer for the reader, that "early" is modifying "20th[-]century" not the entire string about the movements. And they were not in fact early nationalistic movements, but direct outgrowths of late 19th-century proto-fascism. But that last clause makes me notice for sure something that I suspected: I'm disinclined to do it if what follows the construction also contains a hyphen, because lots and lots and lots of hyphens become more of a problem than a help. I would feel compelled to add it anyway in a case like "late-19th-century proto-fascist sentiment" (modifier modifier noun), again because it was not late proto-fascist sentiment but early (even taking into account that proto- implies early – the proto-fascist period lasted well into the 20th century). Nor do me mean "among the proto-fascism examples toward the end of the 19th century, select only last few of them". We just mean "proto-fascism examples toward the end of the 19th century", the end. In messy cases like that, however, I would strongly consider just rewriting, e.g. "proto-fascist sentiment of the late 19th century" which has only one hyphen (required because proto- is a prefix not a word).

        In short, I would oppose making a rule requiring or even recommending "early 20th-century", since it should be left to editorial discretion, and MoS is already overlong with examples, so we don't need to add a new block of "sometimes do this, sometimes do that" stuff, especially given that there are no recurrent knock-down, drag-out fights about this stuff. If someone does what to fight with you about it, just rewrite to avoid (it's the first rule of MoS!), as I did in an example here.
         — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:47, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Italics in captions question

I have question about how MOS handles italics in captions on mainspace articles. Should words or phrases be in italics when in brackets when it is something like "(pictured)" or "(left)" in captions, etc? I have seem this kind of implementation around at WP:TFA Examples or WP:DYK Examples or in some mainspace GAs (e.g. D'oh-in' in the Wind, 200 (South Park)) but it seems to be inconsistent. Kind regards  Spy-cicle💥  Talk? 15:10, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I know this will sound incredible, but MOS is silent on this; there have been discussions but no resolution (unless it happened the month I was comatose). Thus you and your fellow editors are free to write (r) or (r) or (right) or (right) (though I suspect fewer will mind if you use italics than will object if you don't). If you want to open at discussion aimed at standardizing this sort of stuff, do it at WT:Manual of Style/Captions. But I don't recommend it. Really I don't. EEng 01:21, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Your warning not to discuss it is a bit (sinister). pburka (talk) 02:27, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Get involved in enough generally unnecessary MoS arguments, and you'll understand the warning. It's WP:DRAMA we don't need. People can be amazingly emotive and petty about their WP:BIKESHED nit-picks.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:28, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the response, I'll keep that in mind. It is tempting to want to start an RfC on such a matter but your warning is convincing.  Spy-cicle💥  Talk? 08:46, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
While not entirely relevant to the question of italicization, I'm not sure that (r) and (r) would be compliant with MOS:ABBR. 207.161.86.162 (talk) 07:23, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Good point. EEng 17:47, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I would say our rules on text formatting tend toward conservative. That is, use less, not more. --Izno (talk) 03:38, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Right. It's usually "don't use it unless there's a reason to use it", that is, not purely on stylistic grounds. —El Millo (talk) 03:49, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
People do this because WP style is to italicize self-references, including "talking at the reader" (e.g. all our hatnotes, all of our inline cleanup/dispute templates, etc.). We don't do it for large blocks of stuff like menus, navigational templates, and the whole "See also" section. But we do it a whole lot in mid-article, where the instructional commentary is being distinguished from the content per se. This is really a grey area, yet another of those cases of "conflicting consistencies" that cannot really be resolved to everyone's perfect satisfaction. E.g., we have dispensed with the obnoxious italicization habit of various bibliographic styles that italicize all cross-referential interpolations ("See Johnson 1938 p. 3", etc.), which tends to come off as inappropriate emphasis and really serves no practical purpose (I always hear it in my mind as some browbeating schoolmarm trying to force homework on me!). But bibliographic citations are metadata, not part of the article content proper. One can kinda-sorta make that argument about image captions, but it's pretty weak, and we generally treat the contents of them as part of the article content (e.g. subject to MoS rules that citations can sometimes skirt, either by being subject to a more specific cite-specific rule, or by the article using an established citation style that diverges from MoS's expectations).

In the end, given that people are apt to keep italicizing these things, and there's not a burning need to legislate against this, nor to require it, we should probably have a template for them ({{caption note}}, shortcut {{capnote}}, using the {{inline hatnote}} meta-template) that marks them up with CSS classes like hatnotes and other claptrap get, so they are distinguishable from the real content, including by WP:REUSE tools, by user CSS, and so on. They are basically inline hatnotes, of a sort similar to {{cross reference}} and its shortcuts: {{crossref|printworthy=y|see [[#Brobingnagese language|below]]}}, or {{xref|For additional details, see [[Lilliputese dialects]].}}
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:28, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

En dashes and merged jurisdictional names

We have a long-standing problem of confusion about whether to use a hyphen or an en dash in names like Travancore–Cochin (AKA Thiru–Kochi or State of Travancore–Cochin), a merger of the formerly separate Travancore/Thiru and Cochin/Kochi. Despite MOS:DASH being for a long time eminently clear to use an en dash for mergers between coeval/comparable entities (and in other cases involving them, such as relations between or collaborations involving separate entities), there keeps being regurgitative debate about this at WP:RM. I've traced this perennial conflict to the addition of the following to MoS (the MOS:DUALNATIONALITIES subsection of MOS:DASH), seemingly without discussion:

Wrong: Austria–Hungary; the hyphenated Austria-Hungary was a single jurisdiction during its 1867–1918 existence

That's a nonsense "rationale", as every merged jurisdiction (or dual-named meta-jurisdiction) like Travancore–Cochin is "a single jurisdiction during its ... existence". I.e., someone has forced the guideline to directly contradict itself. I've commented out this line, pending further discussion, but believe that it should simply be deleted. I think what has happened here is that someone got confused about Austro-Hungarian Empire using a hyphen, and assumed it must also apply to Austria–Hungary then made up a rationale to get that result. But Austro-Hungarian uses a hyphen for an entirely unrelated reason: Austro- is not a word but a combining form. It's the same kind of construction as Afro-Cuban and Franco-Prussian.

Despite this confusion, the majority of RM discussions have understood the overall gist of MOS:DASH and have concluded to use the en dash for names of merged or superset jurisdictions that have the names or parts of the names of component places in the combined name and which use short horizontal lines to separate those components (thus Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, etc., etc.). But the injection of this "Austria-Hungary" pseudo-rule has caused and continues to cause confusion and counter-argument, which defeats the purpose of having a clear and consistent guideline. And it has produced some inconsistent results, e.g. North Rhine-Westphalia (which is not northern "Rhine-Westphalia" but North Rhine combined with Westphalia), and Bà Rịa-Vũng Tàu Province, though these do not appear to be the result in most cases of RM discussions being misled by the line quoted above (they mostly seem to be article titles chosen before MOS:DASH existed, or more recently by editors who have no read it).

PS: This stuff has no effect on Wilkes-Barre or Guinea-Bissau or Vitoria-Gasteiz, which are hyphened for entirely different reasons and which are not merged jurisdictions or supra-jurisdictional names. (The first is a place with two kind of randomly chosen namesakes that had nothing to do with the place or each other, and which could as easily have been named Badger-cake or Hospitality-Socrates or Pottery-Holstein. It ended up hyphenated just because it did, and if had been established recently it probably would not be since we don't use hyphens that way in contemporary English. But it has no reason to take an en dash. The second is due to a French convention of using a hyphen to stand in for something like "containing" or "related to" or "associated with"; it means 'the Guinea that has Bissau', basically. German has a directly reversed convention where such a name is applied to the enclosed place not the surrounding one: Berlin-Charlottenburg, meaning essentially 'the Charlottenburg of/in Berlin'. The handful of places with these sorts of names take hyphens are are all former European colonies or are in Europe. The third is a case of two languages' names for the same place being given at once, in this case Spanish and Basque. Various places with names of that kind don't take hyphens, e.g. Papua New Guinea.)
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:22, 13 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • From looking over the requested move discussion from 2010 where the dash was changed to a hyphen in Austria-Hungary, there does seem like there was consensus that in general a compound placename should use a hyphen and not a dash. Consensus can obviously change over time, but it should be discussed first before this is officially removed from the guideline. Rreagan007 (talk) 18:18, 13 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    You seem unclear on the fact that purpose of a guideline talk page is to have such discussion, and this is such a discussion.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:30, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think the conclusion of the argument (that we ought to use a hyphen) is correct, even if the argument itself is flawed. Perhaps the better argument would be to say that Austria-Hungary is one entity, whereas to use an en dash would imply they are usually separate but somehow related in a particular context. Right, Dallas–Fort Worth has a dash because Dallas and Fort Worth are separate things, connected only by proximity to a metroplex. But the rest of the time, when I say "Dallas" I don't mean "Fort Worth." On the other hand, if I say "Austria" when it should be "Austria-Hungary," I would be wrong: it is not separable from Hungary. JarmihiGOCE (talk) 16:51, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Defining common abbreviations

In many fields, abbreviations and acronyms are used quite commonly. Sometimes this such an extent that the full name is not so well known, sometimes the initialism and the full words are used interchangeably. People might search for information using the acronym. Where an article is giving scope to some area it may be helpful to list both the full name and the acronym, even when the abbreviated form isn't used elsewhere on within the article. This appears often the case where the abbreviated thing doesn't necessarily have (or warrant) its own page.

Is there a correct way to handle this?

Options may include:

  • (A) Tea cannot be made in a Chocolate Teapot (CT).
  • (B) Tea cannot be made in a CT (Chocolate Teapot).
  • (C) Tea cannot be made in a Chocolate Teapot. [ we have a #REDIRECT to the article on a new page "CT", so people can at least find when searching with "CT"]
  • (D) Tea cannot be made in a Chocolate Teapot, commonly referred to in the industry as a CT.
  • (E) Tea cannot be made in a CT (the common industry shorthand for a Chocolate Teapot).
  • (F) Tea cannot be made in a Chocolate Teapot. [You're out of luck if you search using "CT"]
  • (G) Tea cannot be made in a CT. [You're on your own trying to find out what CT means]

Are there further options?

What is our preferred stance on this? And what types of evidence should be considered when choosing an approach to this?

For options (D) and (E) above, will we need to find a WP:SECONDARY to demonstrate that the acronym is indeed commonly used? Or would a definition on some primary source be acceptable? (Perhaps counts of google hits may be inaccurate, or indeed for some short initialisms they may be tricky to disambiguate.)

Considering relative frequency of use of the full term versus initialism would be sensible, but again what level of evidence is required? Chumpih. (talk) 06:38, 14 March 2021 (UTC) + edits to clarify 11:46.[reply]

  • Can you please give an actual example from an actual article -- ideally two or three? I'm having great trouble appreciating the issue from this farfetched hypothetical. EEng 07:03, 14 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • For example lots of (B) style on ENodeB, RANAP or for (A) style see CSFB on System Architecture Evolution, List of Bluetooth profiles, or QMS on HDMI. For (C) style see ECCN. For (D) see HP in Health (game terminology). For (E) see Video Random Access Memory. (F) is very common, but has the disadvantage that the text isn't discoverable through a search. (G) is contrary to MOS:1STOCC. Chumpih. (talk) 07:18, 14 March 2021 + 15 March 07:30 (UTC)
      • This discussion was started (and I was pointed to it) after I undid the addition of the initialism ECJU (for Export Control Joint Unit) to Export control. Per MOS:1STOCC "When an abbreviation will be used in an article, first introduce it using the full expression." If we are not using the term elsewhere in the article there is no need to introduce the initialism at all. As far as I am concerned, It should not matter if the term is commonly used in a particular field. There are thousands upon thousands of such industry-specific abbreviations and initialisms. In this case the term "Export Control Joint Unit" is not used elsewhere in the article, and in fact, it is not used anywhere else in English Wikipedia. It is clearly not a common term in general. Meters (talk) 20:04, 14 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
        • There are two three issues you raise: firstly whether a commonly-used initialism is worth spelling out on some page, even when there is no further reference on that page, and the other is whether ECJU is a common term. ECJU is out of scope on this talk page, and should be discussed on Talk:Export control. MOS:1STOCC doesn't clarify the situation on commonly-used initialism being shown on a page, and having some clear policy in this area would be appreciated. You state "If we are not using the term elsewhere in the article there is no need to introduce the initialism at all.", and for a commonly-accepted initialism that is debatable. Chumpih. (talk) 20:20, 14 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
        • And regarding the initialism 'ECJU' not appearing elsewhere on English Wikipedia, it is precisely because of this that there is reason to include the initialism on that page. In this example, if someone were to conduct a search using 'ECJU' they will then find some relevant information about a UK government department, as opposed to turning up empty-handed. (It's open to debate if that gov't department is of sufficient importance to warrant its own Article.) In the hypothetical example, if someone were to search for "CT" then they woud at least find a page including references to chocolate teapots.
          There is an attempt at a policy for initialisms that don't get a second mention on Talk:Export Control, which basically permits (A) style above. It offers justifications. It's only for that page. Is it plausible? Chumpih. (talk) 22:57, 14 March 2021 (UTC) + highlighting 07:30 15 March.[reply]
          • I sometimes find it helpful to see how other style guides treat the issue. Here's what the Associated Press Stylebook says for Abbreviations and Acronyms:
            "A few universally recognized abbreviations are required in some circumstances. Some others are acceptable, depending on the context. But in general, avoid alphabet soup. Do not use abbreviations or acronyms that the reader would not quickly recognize.
            "Abbreviations and acronyms should be avoided in headlines.
            "Guidance on how to use a particular abbreviation or acronym is provided in entries..."
          The stylebook will usually say a particular term is 1. acceptable on all references (HDMI), 2. acceptable on first reference, but should be explained in the story (HDR, "high-dynamic range"), 3. acceptable on second reference (HD, "high-definition"), or 4. where possible, avoid using the term (HIPAA).
          So basically, it depends on the term and what is most comprehensible for the reader. I would err on the side of spelling it out, as Wikipedia's Manual of Style suggests. Cheers, Fredlesaltique (talk) 02:17, 15 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Given that A–E are all used on a regular basis, whichever one works best for the context, there is no issue to solve here. I think maybe the OP has not read MOS:ABBR.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:32, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    OP? But... Optimus Prime is not real, how did he get in this discussion. But right, do we need a written down rule, just use common sense, mnmh? User:Meters points out that the question came up when "I undid the addition of the initialism ECJU (for Export Control Joint Unit)" per some rule. Well easy solution there: if it's a matter of undoing a recent addition, just WP:BRD it back out if you want; ball's in the other person's court. Per WP:1Q you obviously only do that if you feel that adding the ECJU is a bad thing on the merits; if you don't, just ignore the rule. If the EJCU had been standing material, maybe leave it alone; some editor thought it was good to have and there's no need to gainsay her on minor matters of form. Or remove it if you like, if you don't get BRDed back you're good, if you do move on. If an article's an alphabet soup, that's different. It doesn't sound like this article was broken. Herostratus (talk) 23:52, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Bumblebee thinks you're nuts for not believing in Optimus Prime, but says he'll let it slide. Anyway, yeah, I'm having a hard time seeing a need for a new rule or a rule change here. What we don't want is people making up fake acronyms/initialisms out of their own heads, nor wallowing in MOS:JARGON just to be geeky. If the abbreviations appear in the sources, they can be used, and probably should be to avoid being browbeatingly repetitive, but not be used just to sound geeky/insider. As long as they're explained on first occurrence one way or another: "Export Control Joint Unit (ECJU)", "ECJU (Export Control Joint Unit)", they're generally okay, but the longer the article is the more time they may need explanation (once in the lead, once in the body at least, and sometimes more than once in the body of along article with sections that get a lot of incoming direct visitors who won't start from the top). I.e. "[abbreviations] that the reader would not quickly recognize" is easily mitigated by make sure they get recognized, though not to excess.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:05, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Perhaps then the consensus regarding the use or not of initialisms that common even when the abbreviated form isn't used elsewhere on within the article, is that it depends on the context, and keeping in mind that we are for the benefit of Wikipedia, we should WP:BRD on a per-case basis. Sounds reasonable to me. (Edit away the highlights if you like.) Chumpih. (talk) 15:48, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Sure. We need to keep in mind that the intended audience for articles varies; articles on highly technical subjects that require some background to understand much at all will probably have an audience for whom various contextual abbreviations are relatively more common (maybe massively more common) that the same jumble of letters would be for someone new to the subject. Like, at the Prehistory of Scandinavia article, if you peppered it with "PIE" in reference to Proto-Indo-European, that would probably be a problem (even if it were properly explained on first use), but it would be an appropriate acronym to use a lot of at Proto-Germanic.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:05, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    PS: I will go through my semi-annual promotion of the idea of creating a topic-specific glossary article (using the richer, templated syntax, which makes linking and formatting robust), and using a topically customized variant of the {{glossary link}} template to provide links to definitions. This proved to be a godsend when it came to writing about cue sports (billiards, snooker, pool), which is perhaps the most jargon-heavy sport of all time. That would be a very useful approach for any acronym-heavy field. You just explain the terms once in the glossary, then link to them with something like {{astrogloss|UHTC}} any time it seems prudent. Well, maybe explain it outright in the article one time, for WP:REUSE purposes (someone might rip the bare text of the article).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:14, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

MOS:COLLAPSED seems wrong / misleading

The notion that tables shouldn't be collapsed upon the loading of a page seems to be based on some incorrect ideas and some misleading positioning of sentences. The current wording gives the impression that the mobile version of the site will strip auto-collapsed tables; this is false, only navboxes are stripped from the mobile view.

Any information hidden in this way when the page loads will be irreversibly invisible to the aforementioned classes of users, as well as a growing number of low-bandwidth users in Asia who reach a Wikipedia article via Google.

The second half of this is crystal balling and outdated. Google Lite is only available as a hidden "advanced" feature in the mobile version of Chrome, that was barely announced beyond 2016. No data shows that this number of users is either A) significant or B) growing. Also, Google cached pages / LITE searches display the exact same as their mobile and desktop counterparts on my phone. Disabling javascript simply displays collapsed data as uncollapsed. I think this section needs to be updated as it seems unnecessarily regressive. - Floydian τ ¢ 15:32, 14 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • I've confirmed that even without JS and CSS enabled, the mobile website now defaults to showing collapsed tables at least - I didn't have examples handy to test it on other collapsed things and am not familiar enough with how collapsing is done outside of the table class to comment on those. However, the iOS app defaults to collapsing all tables, and it is reasonable to assume that, for various reasons, third parties may utilize collapsing of tables/data via CSS classes to not download that data at all. While it's great that the mobile website now "un-auto-collapses" tables/various things and that the site does so as well when JS/CSS are not active, that does not eliminate other reasons to avoid collapsing things in articles. On the subject of the "lite" versions, there are many places in the world where Google caching is not the primary means of reducing bandwidth - thus I would welcome input from users who may have knowledge of whether or not non-Google/WP low-bandwidth technologies display this content.
    There are also other reasons to discourage/prohibit auto-collapsing in articles. As the second-to-last sentence of the section states: If information in a list, infobox, or other non-navigational content seems extraneous or trivial enough to inspire pre-collapsing it, consider raising a discussion on the article (or template) talk page about whether it should be included at all - and this is what should be made the focus of that section if any changes are made. I would also welcome input as to whether there are accessibility issues that involve CSS classes which provide collapsibility - examples being screen readers and other software/devices which automatically alter/change the way content is produced. Furthermore, we must (per MOS:PRECOLLAPSE) remember that Wikipedia content can be reused freely in ways we cannot predict as well as accessed directly via older browsers and adding complexity via collapsing things when there is a better solution is contrary to that goal of WP. If information is important to an article, it is important to the goal of Wikipedia that virtually any reasonable reuse-of-content case be able to obtain a complete picture of the important content of said article - which auto-collapsing may prevent by suggesting the content is not important. The better solution is listed in MOS:COLLAPSE already - either un-collapse the content if it is important enough to be in the article, change the way in which it is presented to make collapsing or not a moot point, or remove the content altogether.
    To summarize, I do not support altering MOS:COLLAPSED to decrease guidance against (auto-)collapsing things in articles, but I do support revisiting why it's important and rewording the section accordingly - including clarifying that current modern browsers and official websites display the content even when CSS/JS are not used. I also think that it should be made clear that auto-collapsing is not a means for "visual" changes to an article - i.e. making an article "flow" better, or allowing people to "skip" tables/etc - but is instead only to be used as a way to include information which is relevant and has a good reason for inclusion, but outdated or supplementary - the prime example being historical data on pages it is not likely to be the primary topic, but is still useful for historical data. We must primarily remember that we are not an indiscriminate collection of information, and information which is "hidden" by default should be evaluated with serious weight given to the idea that maybe that information/data is not in line with Wikipedia's purpose. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 02:52, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • "There are also other reasons to discourage/prohibit auto-collapsing in articles." Yes, and the devs messing around again with what the mobile version is doing by default (always a moving target) does not change this. We cannot depend on it remaining even that much semi-functional. And it really is just semi-fuctional, since it will have no effect on other kinds of collapsed content.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:35, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm not sure I agree with the premise that data is either worthy of being displayed in full or hidden. To me this is akin to saying "We shouldn't allow endnotes because that information either is worthy of inclusion in the prose or not at all". Some topics are physically long, and while the data is surely important, it makes for a scrolling nightmare and should only be expanded by those who want that in-depth information. As to your point SMcCandlish, that's certainly a good reason for discouraging... but prohibiting? Also considering the stability implications of changing accessibility behaviours, is this not something that should've been hammered out years ago (i.e. as opposed to developing a guideline around it, get the commitment issue addressed)... or does Wikimedia also suffer from unmetered developer creep like Facebook and Google? Quickly, Nerdlinger! We have to come up with a new feature before they start questioning our purpose! - Floydian τ ¢ 22:57, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      References are long but this particular guideline prevents changing that, and we have multiple times rebutted attempts to change that. Why are tables different? How are they the same? Izno (talk) 00:32, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      • References are placed below the main content, as footnotes. Tables are often placed within the prose. Footnotes are collections of external links and information, tables are collections of relevant data to the prose which they accompany. - Floydian τ ¢ 15:29, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      "I'm not sure I agree with [long-established consensus]" is never an argument that makes a dent. If you're certain consensus has changed, feel free to open an RfC to revise or remove the guideline passage in question. Otherwise, please just accept that WP is not made in your own image, and that like everyone else there are lots of WP:P&G pages with line items to comply with even if you don't like them. WP:NOT#WEBHOST is also relevant; this project is not for people to experiement with their own preferences and ideals when it comes to website design. This site is intentionally text-heavy, rudimentary in layout, and avoidant of JavaScript-dependent gimcrackery, at least if it has any impact at all on access to the content. You're welcome to use WP:User style and user JS to hide every single collapsible element by default for your own viewing, but you don't have a right to force it on people who can't undo it because of the tools they have available.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:19, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Use of em dash in latin abbreviations such as —e.g., and —i.e.,

There is an absence of guidance on how to format exempli gratia (e.g.) and id est (i.e.).

In my internet research on typography and style guides, the most formal presentation when immediately following a sentence is with the use of an em dash and comma like this: —e.g.,

Ironically, the strongest source of information I could find on the use of various types of dashes is Wikipedia itself. But this article doesn't yet cover the use case of —e.g.,

As of March 2021 the Wikipedia editor's text field erroneously renders the em dash as an en dash. In other words, if you are authoring an article in the text editor, you go to Advanced > Special characters > Symbols and click on the em dash button (or you can press the keyboard shortcut for an em dash), then an en dash is erroneously displayed in the text field. However, if you publish your changes, the resulting HTML page correctly renders the em dash with the correct unicode character. This is a call to action that there is a bug that needs to be fixed in the editor but I don't know where to report it. Also, I'm not yet sure if its a browser bug or wikipedia/MediaWiki bug.

Note, this is not an invitation to debate if i.e. and e.g. should be discouraged or avoided. That ground has been covered in archived discussions here. Likewise, the use of commas ( here, here, here, and here), full stops, italics, and even brackets have been debated. There are a lot of external links here.

The MoS itself is not internally consistent with the typography of e.g.. It varies from using hyphens before e.g. and commas following it. It even has an instance of a colon following e.g.

Two proposed actions:
1) fix the editor bug
2) create a bot that judiciously changes wikipedia to use an em dash before e.g. but only in cases where it starts a new clause but not in cases where it does not create a new clause such as where it may appear following an opening parenthesis or the beginning of a table cell, etc.

Chris Murphy (talk) 10:17, 15 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • en dash is erroneously displayed in the text field – There is no bug. It's a longstanding problem that hypen, minus, ndash, and mdash (respectively: - • − • – • —) are hard to distinguish as they are rendered in the edit window some edit windows. That doesn't mean they're the wrong charater.
  • The MoS itself is not internally consistent – MOS is an ecumenical zone where various WP:ENGVARs and other style choices coexist side by side in peace and harmony. I quote from User:EEng#A_rolling_stone_gathers_no_MOS:
    In the last 48 hr I've become aware of a simmering dispute over whether the text of MOS itself should be in American or British English. With any luck the participants will put that debate (let's call it Debate D1) on hold in order to begin Debate D2: consideration of the variety of English in which D1 should be conducted. Then, if there really is a God in Heaven, D1 and D2 will be the kernel around which will form an infinite regress of metadebates D3, D4, and so on -- a superdense accretion of pure abstraction eventually collapsing on itself to form a black hole of impenetrable disputation, wholly aloof from the mundane cares of practical application and from which no light, logic or reason can emerge.
    That some editors will find themselves inexorably and irreversibly drawn into this abyss, mesmerized on their unending trip to nowhere by a kaleidoscope of linguistic scintillation reminiscent of the closing shots of 2001, is of course to be regretted. But they will know in their hearts that their sacrifice is for the greater good of Wikipedia. That won't be true, of course, but it would be cruel to disabuse them of that comforting fiction as we bid them farewell and send them on their way.
  • create a bot that [etc etc etc] – You say This is not an invitation to debate but – trust me – that's an invitation to debate. Anyway, I don't know who's going to develop this bot that knows what a clause is and so on.
EEng 22:21, 15 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • are hard to distinguish as they are rendered — Thank you, your user experience helps to isolate where the bug may reside. For you, the en and em characters are merely hard to distinguish in the text editor, but for me, they are pixel for pixel identical. Therefore, you must be on a different platform or browser from me and that then suggests that this is possibly a browser bug, not a bug in MediaWiki. What OS and browser are you using?
  • I don't know who's going to develop this bot that knows what a clause is — The bot can skip areas where the em dash is not appropriate. As I said, the beginning of table cells, after opening parenthesis, etc. The bot doesn't need to know what a clause is to accomplish this logic. I would be willing to work on it eventually, if granted the authority to do so.

Your concern about British English is slightly germane to the e.g. debate, but localization is not an important aspect of the issues I raised. If it's important, maybe someday there can be a read-only ben.wikpedia.org with reasonable BE translation. Chris Murphy (talk) 11:03, 17 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I use Windows 10 + Chrome, and you can avoid whatever problem you're having by using templates like {mdash} instead of literal characters. The quote about British vs. American English was simply to dramatize that MOS is consciously inconsistent in the styles and formats used in its own presentation. It's a waste of time to keep talking about a bot until you get agreement that everything should be conformed to the one style you describe, and that's never going to happen. EEng 16:17, 17 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is not a bug. Your operating system and/or browser simply does not have/is not loading a font which differentiates the horizontal straight line (to your liking). You can add personal CSS which selects some saner font for the window in question. Izno (talk) 01:42, 18 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Chris Murphy: For the US, I can give two guidelines. The Chicago Manual of Style recommends commas before and after, except in contexts where a semicolon, dash or parenthesis is appropriate (see here and here). The Associated Press Stylebook only states they are "always followed by a comma."
I can't speak for British usage or other style guides, but it seems like there is no hard and fast "rule" about what comes before. Personally I don't think it's worth articulating one in the Manual of Style. Fredlesaltique (talk) 03:12, 18 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is basically not an MoS issue:
  1. If there's an actual bug with one of the available editing interfaces, that should be reported via WP:PHAB; MoS regulars and other WP editors, who are not also among MediaWiki's developers, have no way to fix such a problem.
  2. I rather suspect this is actually a browser problem of what font is being used in the editing window. Make sure you have downloaded a monospace "programmer font" that takes pains to distinguish between all similar characters, and tell your browser to use that for monospace, and maybe even force the matter in your user CSS on this site; see Help:User style#User CSS for a monospaced coding font. A dead giveaway that this is the issue is you are seeing "the wrong character" in editing mode but not when you save. I don't think it's actually possible for what you think is happening to actually be happening (the software certainly would not have been coded to sneakily change – input into — output to mess with you then change it back to – upon saving.
  3. Aside from that stuff, the underlying "—e.g." question ... just kind of "isn't a thing". What there are, are various ways to set off a parenthetical, all of which are valid: "Blah blah, e.g. yak yak, snort snort." "Blah blah – e.g. yak yak – snort snort." "Blah blah—e.g. yak yak—snort snort." "Blah blah (e.g. yak yak) snort snort." All of these are also valid at the end of a sentence instead of mid-sentence. It simply isn't the case that one of these is "correct" and the others are "wrong". Your "—e.g." thing is just a preference of whatever writer(s) you've been reading lately. It's perfectly valid, but WP would never require that version, since doing so would directly conflict with other parts of MoS, e.g. MOS:DASH. And in fact you should not (per MOS:DASH) use that version if the article already has an established style of using spaced en dashes instead of unspaced em dashes, for the parenthetical dash function. Aside: As for "e.g. yak yak" versus "e.g., yak yak", that's another editorial-discretion matter. Some editors always use the comma, some never do, and most of us do so when it seems to aid clarity, e.g. when what follows "e.g." is long and complex. It's even possible to do "e.g.: ..." when introducing a list of stuff.) Remember that English has no formal rule-making body that dictates its stylistic particulars.
PS: Please use <br /> not <br>; while both will parse in HTML 5, the latter breaks the editing-mode syntax highlighter (at least the one available under the Preferences menu).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:00, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Reviving MOS:IDENTITY

I found interest in reviving discussion of this failed proposal, which is not covered by any current guideline and includes points that are not explicit in any existing guideline; for example, the use of the dated and inaccurate term Caucasians for White people. A major factor in its failure was being mislabeled as a proposed naming convention for articles. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 17:35, 17 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I am confused... MOS:IDENTITY is currently a shortcut to an existing section of our main MOS, not to a failed proposal. Are you asking whether it should be hived off into its own MOS subpage? Blueboar (talk) 20:06, 17 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think what is meant is Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Identity (failed proposal). It was originally created as a draft naming convention, but spent very little verbiage on naming and was almost entirely about style matters in article content, so I moved to a more appropriate name, then proposed (after cleaning it up some) that it be integrated into MoS (rather than sit for more years as a moribund proposal). The response what not exactly positive: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 194#Merge draft WP:Naming conventions (identity) to MOS:IDENTITY?.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:07, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You could rename it as an essay and remove the failed-proposal tag. Then at least people could quote from it or point to it to explain their opinion. Which I guess if you do that to a failed proposal will not have much impact. It's a lot of words, are the problems occurring which this would help address? If not, leave it as an essay maybe. (My take on on the general subject is that persons are mediocre sources for information about themselves, for various reasons, particularly self-dealing. If "When writing an article about specific groups or their members always use the terminology which those individuals or organizations themselves use" means we have to call the Proud Boys "freedom fighters" or whatever in our voice, I'm not in favor of that.) Herostratus (talk) 09:49, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the clarification. I would agree that making it an essay would be the right way to go here. I too would oppose reviving it as a guideline. My feeling is that we should always note what labels people or groups apply to themselves, but we should also note the labels others (reliable sources) apply to them. When these conflict (and especially when they are controversial), we should bend over backwards to avoid stating ANY of the labels in WPs voice. Attribute, so the reader knows who applies which label. Blueboar (talk) 11:58, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yep (other than see below on making it an essay; the pigs-and-lipstick cliché comes to mind).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:35, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"people could quote from it or point to it to explain their opinion. Which I guess if you do that to a failed proposal will not have much impact". Yes, it would be rather self-defeating. It's not impossible to re-work a failed proposal into a viable essay, but it won't work without understanding why it failed and resolving all the problems in the material that led to that. (And, yeah, one of the most obvious flops is "When writing an article about specific groups or their members always use the terminology which those individuals or organizations themselves use"; this kind of myopic "I'm only here to soapbox for the social-justice concern I think about all day long and have no idea what fallout my propositions would have in an actual encyclopedia" stuff never goes anywhere, and is a clear indicator why we need to not have this page be anything but a failed proposal). 'Pedians have a long memory. An essayized version of this that retained a recognizable amount of the original material would probably trigger opposition, derision, etc. It would likely be more practical to just start a new essay, and not even crib from this one. It's maybe instructive to look at WP:Notability/Historical and the weird stuff found there. The old, draft approaches to the idea have pretty much no wording in common with the current guideline. They each just had to be nuked from orbit, starting again from a clean slate. Somewhere around here, someone is actually trying to "recover" another failed proposal and essayize it, and I don't think it's going to work. I forget what the topic was though.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:35, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What sources are there declaring that 'Caucasian' is dated? Its use is still common in the US. Historical accuracy is not relevent, and words/names having multiple meanings in English has never been proscribed (i.e., it does not matter that Caucasian means a person from the Caucasus, or a person of European ancestry, or more broadly a person with ancestry from Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, or South Asia, regardless of skin tone; this broader definition is largely obscure to many Americans now, but in India it is still in general use, and is still used by American forensic anthropologists (forensic anthropology being one of the last remaining fields where deternining race based on cranial features is still needed, and the US being one of the only countries in the world where any given skeleten that turns up has multiple possible races that it has a significant chance of belonging to)). Firejuggler86 (talk) 10:46, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

CfD regarding MOS:SUFFIXDASH

Category:21st century-related lists has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 11:11, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a rule somewhere on whether to use "actor" for all thespians, or just male ones?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
There is already an open RfC on this question, so I'm soft-redirecting this discussion there per WP:TALKFORK / WP:MULTI. (non-admin closure)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:58, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In other words, is the term "actress" deprecated, or not, or is there nothing in the MoS about that? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Herostratus (talk • contribs) 22:53, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • I'm pretty sure "actor" is considered acceptable regardless of gender but that some female thespians prefer "actress" and we should respect that preference. So you will find a mix of both terms among our articles. Probably best to stay consistent within any one article. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:12, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, no such rule exists today. We've had an RFC or two about this in the past 5 years somewhere or another, but it's conceivable consensus has shifted. Izno (talk) 23:18, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • No rule in Wikipedia, but like David Eppstein said it's acceptable and good to stay consistent within an article. Worth mentioning that some style guides prefer "actor" for both male and female actors, except in contexts like the Oscars which use "actress" in the award title (Associated Press (USA), American Library Association, Observer and Guardian newspapers, etc.). I'd have to research more to know if it's a broader preference. Fredlesaltique (talk) 02:17, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm confused by the concept of a male thespian. Is it anything like this [7]? EEng 05:15, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    "And what does Nana do to naughty boys who are late for school, Aunty Christine?" Martinevans123 (talk) 14:10, 1 April 2021 (UTC) [reply]
    Smacks them on their automated tools that carry out repetitive and mundane tasks, of course. EEng 14:21, 1 April 2021 (UTC) [reply]
    We should not use "actor" for all Thespians or even just the male ones. Not everyone from Thespiae is acting; some are for real. Levivich harass/hound 05:25, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    This would be a good point at which to inject a male lesbian Thespian haiku or Burma-shave. EEng 11:20, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Hmmm...not sure why, but There once was a man from Nantucket dangerously keeps popping into my head because of all the different ways it might end up.

There once was a male lesbian Thespian from Nantucket
Whose gender was no drop in the bucket
But rather than quibble
With lesser minds that spew dribble
He is now simply known as Pat.

😊 Atsme 💬 📧 12:36, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, that's pretty good, considering the material you have to work with. EEng 18:51, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There was a Young Person of Thespiae,
Whose toilette was so grim to espy;
She dressed in a some jeans,
Spickle-speckled with greens,
That ombliferous person of Thespiae.

(with apologies to Edward Lear). Martinevans123 (talk) 19:02, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure an apology is enough. EEng 20:19, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I've tended to use what the article subject prefers. Indeed, this discussion began on the talk page of an article (see above) the subject of which is described as both in numerous RSes, is called "actor" by her employer and at least one co-star, and refers to herself "as a theatre actor". With that said, I just found another interview where she says "as a young actress", so her preferred title has now been rendered a bit more ambiguous. 🤦🏻‍♂️ —ATS (talk) 20:25, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hmph, I don't much care about self-descriptions, as long there aren't WP:BLP implications. It's one data point of many. That's why we don't call Grey Owl an Indian, Anna Anderson the Grand Duchess Anastasia, and so on. And if we really did that, we'd have a lot of articles about honest self-made billionaires, politicians who live only to serve the public, and so forth.
But whatever, it's fine. But in that case, I no longer wish to be referred to as "Herostratus" or "the editor Herostratus", but by my preferred self-description: "that beloved editor of near-preternatural wisdom, Herostratus", thank you very much. Herostratus (talk) 15:34, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe you'd like to be called tree [8] EEng 01:01, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Dang. But who is this "you" of whom you speak. First of all, my preferred pronoun is "thee" (I've no use for the kids and their "you" and "y'all" and "youse" or whatever is hip this century), and I only respond to "thee, beloved editor of near-preternatural wisdom". I will, on consideration, and to be fair, also permit "That ****ing vandal Herostratus". Herostratus (talk) 02:11, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It is just an act
Kimono open to all
Gender still unknown

-- RoySmith (talk) 03:21, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure those two usages are contradictory. Describing herself as a theatre actor places her within the larger group of all who act in theatre, regardless of their sex or gender. Speaking of when she was a "young actress", she may cover situations that are rare or nonexistent in relation to male actors, so her being female would be relevant to the story.--Khajidha (talk) 12:34, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well said. —ATS (talk) 21:16, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"... situations that are rare or nonexistent"? Whatever do you mean? Martinevans123 (talk) 13:10, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Garner discusses this topic.[1] Short version: Although we still have Oscars for Best Actress, etc., actress "is on the wane" in favor of actor. Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/his/him] 05:31, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Bryan A. Garner, Garner's Modern English Usage, 4th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 823.
Meanwhile, a longtime admin has pointed me to MOS:GNL and WP:WAW. 🖖🏻 —ATS (talk) 21:15, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It is entirely consistent with WP:GNL to use only "actor". Tony (talk) 22:52, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The trend seems to be to actor for all, but as long as large award shows with all the RS they generate continue with actress, it seems unlikely Wikipedia will mandate the actor only form, and the discussion will be had over and over again. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:06, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Executive summary of this post: 1) "Actor" for both genders is kind of retrograde and anti-feminist, really; 2) gender is (unlike most professions) important when discussing thespians; 3) we mostly use "actress" here; 4) "actress" seems to be used more, at least in top google results. Here's the details:

So... in the language, we have (altho it's on the way out) "man" meaning human, and then "man" (the subset of humans that are male) and "woman" (the subset of humans that are female). The two meanings of "man" engenders confusion and can be insulting to women. It the past, we used the generic "he" for generic humans (when a particular person isn't involved). "The clown blows up the balloons and then he pops them". That "he" can be taken to mean "male", so that's not good. So instead we use "they" a lot more (other words like "xe" have been used, but "they" has caught on). And this is all to the good.

For thespians, we are doing the opposite, here. "Pat Carroll took the stage, and damn if that actor didn't make a great speech" can be taken as "Pat Carroll took the stage, and damn if he didn't make a great speech". We are introducing confusion, and also disregarding (and thus basically deprecating) Pat Carrol's femaleness (if they are female -- and we don't know, do we.)

We don't have an acceptable generic word where person-who-acts is the superclass, and "actor" and "actress" are the subclasses, as we do with "they" for humans generally. "Thespian" is obscure and "actron" hasn't caught on.

The other thing is, even if we did, gender is really important for thespians. It just is. It's not important for pilots or doctors or welders. It is for actrons. If you replace a male pilot with a female pilot, it doesn't matter. If you replace one of the male leads it Brokeback Mountain with a female, it matters. It's a different movie. When giving a person's profession to the reader, we don't need "aviatrix" but we do need "actress", because that matters in helping the reader get a sense of where the person fits in the theater and film world. We're here to serve the reader.

As to what's generally used, it appears to be "actress" here in Wikipedia (by random sample), and we are encouraged to follow regular practice for most things. As for the world in general, I googled Cate Blanchett (chosen at random) and without fear or favor came up with this result, in order of rank:

  • IMdb: actress
  • Wikipedia: actor
  • Rotten Tomatoes: actress
  • Britannica: actress
  • Instagram: doesn't say
  • A fansite (cate-blanchette.com): doesn't say, that I could find
  • Roger Ebert's website: doesn't say, that I could find
  • Fandango: actress
  • People Magazine: doesn't say
  • (next three are YouTube, I skipped)
  • Variety: doesn't say
  • Lord of the Rings fansite: actress
  • Daily Mail, quoting George Clooney: actress.
  • popsugar.com: doesn't say, that I could find
  • Golden Globes: doesn't appear to say, except when describing "Best Actress" awards where of course they have to use "Actress".

That's the first two pages and I stopped. If you count Wikipedia (not sure you should) that's 6-1 for "actress". That doesn't seem consisted with a claim that "actor" is generally used for females and males. It may be a trend with the hip crowd, but we're supposed to lag not lead trends. Herostratus (talk) 03:41, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is now at least the second time this editor, with all respect, has posted a massive wall of false equivalence and complete irrelevance in an attempt to hide the fact that, in his mind, 'actor' must mean 'male'. (I say 'his' because only the male mind could justify the twisted logic that a gender-neutral term is somehow more insulting to women than a diminutive.) —ATS (talk) 05:59, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No, no such "rule" exists.  Spy-cicle💥  Talk? 04:36, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • ATS, shorter posts would be appreciated. Tony (talk) 06:41, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I know, right? 🤦🏻‍♂️ —ATS (talk) 06:52, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • No rule exists, nor is there a need for one. Blueboar (talk) 10:24, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, no rule and "actress" is certainly not deprecated. It is usual practice to refer to female actors as actresses unless there is strong proof that they prefer to be called an actor or they are usually referred to as an actor. In English, "actress" is still the common term. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:37, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I see that MOS:GNL says, "Use gender-neutral language, and the table headed Examples of gender indication in occupational titles in the Gender indication section of that wikilinked article may be relevant. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 14:35, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No, "actor" can mean male. It's confusing, and the reader has to figure it out. If the meaning is "male" it misleads the reader on an important point, and switches the actress's gender. If it means "thespian" it removes important information from the reader's purview. It's an exception to using gender-neutral language because of the peculiarities of that particular profession.
"[T]his editor, with all respect, has posted a massive wall of false equivalence and complete irrelevance" is an insult not argument (and is false). It's not helpful, and no, I'm not going not build arguments point by point just because there are a lot of good ones. I provided an Executive Summary after all. You can read that and take my word for it, or if you don't want to but lack the time, interest, or attention span to vet it you're excused from the discussion I guess. Herostratus (talk) 16:41, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I found your survey of sources quite instructive. But that's just Cate Blanchett, isn't it? Martinevans123 (talk) 16:49, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I picked her at random. Herostratus (talk) 17:01, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Not confusing in the slightest.
  • Literally every pronoun in the lede and in the rest of the article is "she". I am confused by your insistence there is confusion. She is an actor.
  • We are at Wikipedia, not an awards show. In the face of GNL and WAW in particular, invoking the unrelated is indeed completely irrelevant.
—ATS (talk) 18:36, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No, I don't think it's excellent to require the reader to drill down into the second or third sentences of an article and read the pronouns to figure out the gender of Gene Tierney or Cary Grant, which is important. We don't do that with other professions. We have "Peter Beauvais was a German television film director..." His gender's not important but his country and job is. That's why we don't have "Peter Beauvais was a German person. He directed many television films including..." See the difference? What the point of making the reader play guessing games regarding key core aspects of the subject? Herostratus (talk) 17:01, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This discussion started with the article for Isa Briones, actor and singer. A veteran of musical theatre, Briones rose to prominence for her—a 12-word gap. 'Her' is in the article 26 times (twice in the lede); 'she', 28 times (four in the lede); 'he' once (clearly referring to her father [a second to Alex Kurtzman in a citation]); 'his' twice (clearly referring to a reviewer and to Data); 'him' does not appear. No reader reasonably versed in the English language could find any confusion with Ms. Briones' gender identity. —ATS (talk) 17:30, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Come to think of it, upon re-read I could rephrase that to shorten the gap. Edit there to follow. —ATS (talk) 17:38, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
AFAICT actress is not deprecated, indeed the MOS tacitly accepts that it may be used, by providing "Courtney Michelle Love [...] is an American singer, songwriter, actress ..." as an example of acceptable writing. Gender-neutral use of actor is clearly also allowed; Wikipedia uses it in category names, "Actors" as the top-level category with subcategories for "Male actors" and for "Actresses" (e.g. Category:21st-century American actors; nonbinary actors remain in the top category, alongside people whose entries haven't been subcategorized yet). If an article is stably using one or the other, it's probably best not make changes just to change the word. -sche (talk) 19:14, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I guess. It may well be true that this is one of those things where it doesn't matter if we're consistent between articles. But I'm not 100% sure of that. Maybe "female actor" would be a good compromise that people could agree on? Herostratus (talk) 17:01, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No. How about not having to flag every non-straight-white-protestant-male as a non-straight-white-protestant-male for the benefit of those straight-white-protestant-male readers and editors who think that everyone else must be a straight-white-protestant-male unless explicitly told they are non-straight-white-protestant-male. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:11, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Um it's not a contest to see who's more woke? It's an encyclopedia not the student union. I do kind of get a vibe that some people think it is somehow based to use the male term for everyone. It's not. Your subsuming women actrons under the male term, it's kind of appallingly reactionary if you think it through. But that's not a major consideration here. Herostratus (talk) 05:26, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I see acter would seem gender neutral. If acting exists, why not acter‽ Kautr (talk) 20:50, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"Actron" already exists, but it remains non-standard. If we were going to use uncommon words "thespian" would be best. But we're not. "Acting person" at least doesn't pretend that only men exist or matter on the stage and screen, but... I'm more and more thinking that, since we obviously want tell the reader the subject's gender right off, that "female actor" would be a way forward. "Actor who primarily plays female roles" would sort of get the point across, but it's kind of convoluted and maybe confusing. Herostratus (talk) 05:26, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I asked someone who is a professional in movie and television production in New York City. They said that the crew says "actor" to everyone regardless of gender. They said that the term "actress" gets used in award ceremonies because awards were going to males, and the industry wanted a path to recognize females by making awards for actresses. Also, for on-location movie sets, the portable restrooms are labeled Lucy and Desi from I love Lucy rather than having conventional gender labels. To me the field seems to have a complicated relationship with gender where sometimes people are careful to use labels and sometimes people want to avoid them. Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:21, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • We don't need a rule about this. The real world is fine using actor generically (which should be our default, as it generally is off-site), and yet using actress in circumstances where the distinction seems to be matter (e.g. in the context of gender-divided awards, etc.), so we also have no reason to ban actress. But we have no reason to use it outside of such contexts where the distinction is contextually important. If people really, really want a rule about it, I suggest putting it in either MOS:TV or MOS:FILM and cross-referencing the other to it, and cross-referencing from MOS:BIO and MOS:GNL: {{Crossref|For "actress" versus "actor", see ...}}. This doesn't rise to the importance level of needing to be specified in the main MoS page, or even living in MOS:BIO (where the section on job titles is already overly long).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:05, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Preferred term for romantic partner?

When speaking about a romantic partner, what set of terms should be employed? "Boyfriend"/"girlfriend" or just "partner"?

I believe it should be the latter, for two reasons:

  1. It has (in my opinion) a more encyclopedic tone.
  2. It is gender neutral, which improves readability.

Envysan (talk) 03:46, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There's nothing written in the main Manual of Style. As far as I know, terms like boyfriend/girlfriend are generally acceptable, as is partner. It depends on context.
I would use whatever is appropriate for the article in question, and check how the subject is treated in reliable sources for guidance. Just be consistent within that article. Cheers, Fredlesaltique (talk) 04:30, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I've used "lover" one or two times, for unmarried romantic partners. It's a word of long-standing use, well-known and quite clear (unlike the squeamish "partner" which is vague), perfectly acceptable in formal writing, and the most accurate description of the emotional situation in play often enough.
"Roerick, who was gay... lived with his partner and longtime collaborator..." sounds a bit... flat. The were fucking each other with wild abandon I suppose, not setting up a joint-stock company. That matters. Why not use use "roommate" if we're going to be that squeamish. I don't much recommend this or often use it, tho, even though it's possibly the best term in many cases, because people might consider it too florid and unusual, and you're just going to get into disputes. You'll be in the right, but still: disputes. Herostratus (talk) 15:46, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Herostratus: note that "roommate" means different things on different sides of the Atlantic. In the US it seems to be used interchangeably with "housemate" (i.e. a person with whom one shares a dwelling) but in the UK it specifically means a person with whom one shares a bedroom but not (usually) a bed, whereas "housemate"/"flatmate" is used for someone who lives in the same house/flat but has a separate bedroom. Thryduulf (talk) 09:34, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure that there is a good option. The obvious terms that I can think of, e.g., partner, room-mate, are subject to ambiguity, and terms such as Person of Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters (POSSLQ) are too narrow in scope.
Do you want to include partners in short term sexual relationships? Partners in Platonic relationships? Romantic partners not living together? Relationships that don't involve emotional ties? There are lots of ways to interpret the question. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 19:16, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well speaking personally, I'm certainly open to including partners in short-term sexual relationships. Use the Email this user feature if you're interested. EEng 06:14, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Why not try the good old fashioned technique of using the term that the preponderance of reliable sources use? EEng, do not bother checking your inbox. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 06:22, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
do not bother checking your inbox – You mean like "If the phone don't ring, you'll know it's me"? EEng 06:41, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Just wanted to thank you for that song reference. --Khajidha (talk) 12:40, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Generally, we should agree with the dominant usage in sources on that particular pair of individuals. As Chatul, et al., have indicated, there is no one-size-fits-all solution here. For one thing, "partner" even when interpreted as intended (i.e., not as business partner) tends to imply much more than "girl/boyfriend" does, at least a long-term relationship, and depending on the reader it may also imply long-term cohabitation, and might even imply "essentially a married couple but not married for some particular reason like laws in their jurisdiction refusing to permit the union". Of all those I've ever termed "girlfriend" in my life, only two would rise to "partner" level, because of long-term cohabitation. At any rate, it certainly is not true that "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" are too informal; they're the most common usage in news and many other contexts.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:55, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Follow the sources. I agree with SMcCandlish that "partner" implies a much closer relationship, it's closer to "spouse" than "boyfriend"/"girlfriend", indeed in some cases (e.g. civil partnerships) it is equivalent to "spouse". "Boyfriend"/"girlfriend" are more casual and could be used after a few dates, but partner indicates a degree of long-term commitment. Thryduulf (talk) 09:34, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • It is usually not our concern to investigate the exact sexual or romantic situation. I think this is another case where we would want to follow the way the person uses it if we know it. Other..eise, "partner" seems to be the current multi-meaning term. *Btw "lover" is not clear historically; prior to the 20th c., it usually mean suitor, somebody who a person is in love with, with no physical meaning implied).
Ah I did not know that. Thanks. Realistically, "partner" is probably the best term for most romantic relationships. It seems somewhat accepted in the real world. Special cases where there's clearly a romantic relationship (but maybe, best guess based on sources, not sexual, or anyway clearly pretty casual) and we need to mention it are pretty rare and we probably don't need advisement for that. We mostly wouldn't mention it I guess.
"Partner" also means "business partner" and certainly did in older times. But really the reader can mostly get it from context I guess (altho remember we are also writing for ESL readers not familiar with our mores and terms). Herostratus (talk) 17:01, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment, I fail to see how anything and everything that's gender neutral "improves readability". Really, the only example I can think of is using the generic singular "they/their" in place of "he" "she" or the exceeding clunky "his or her" (and truly, this we were doing in speech for decades and decades before its recent acceptance in formal writing). Anyway, with regard to significant other: given how fixated society at the present time is with regard to sexual orientation, I think we should avoid using language that that could be reasonably expected to cause wild speculation in readers. But also, I think this is one of the few areas where the subject's self descriptors (about their relationships) may be the best route. Two more things I would note: 'partner' rock typically implies cohabitation as if married, but without being married. If they've not been living together for a good number of years, boyfriend or girlfriend is likely more appropriate. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly: we are not a gossip tabloid ;D. Firejuggler86 (talk) 23:48, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

INFOBOXFLAG

A discussion (not a formal RfC, yet) regarding the "military conflicts" exception of the above is under way at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history#Coats_of_arms_in_infoboxes. Input of further editors would be welcome. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 17:25, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Use of "Gameography" vs "Ludography" in headings for biographies

Gameography and ludography are both words regarding the works of a game designer, or people who have otherwise worked on games (a lá discography or bibliography). On biographical articles on Wikipedia, there seems to be no consesus as for which to use, for instance, Derek Yu and Hideo Kojima use gameography, while Edmund McMillen and Peter Molyneux use ludography. See also Shigeru Miyamoto ludography, which was recently moved from Shigeru Miyamoto gameography. Results from Google search of Wikipedia:

109 results for ludography
183 results for gameography

This topic stems from a disagreement between Heffner000 and I on Cr1TiKaL (see User talk:Heffner000#Rationale behind use of "Gameography" instead of "Ludography"), and I think a third opinion would be appreciated. I believe there needs to be some consistency between articles; MOS:HEAD states the following: "Section headings should follow all the guidance for article titles". MOS:AT states the following: "A title should be a recognizable name or description of the topic that is [...] consistent with those of related articles". Ergo, headings should be consistent between articles.

To resolve this issue, I propose the usage of one term over the other. Therefore I suggest ludography over gameography for several reasons:

  1. It enjoys wider usage outside of Wikipedia, especially within academic literature[1][2][3][4][5]
  2. Greater consistency with other Graeco-Roman derived terms used on Wikipedia (discography, bibliography, ludology, ludomusicology)
  3. Subjective: The use of a native English term with a Greek morpheme in gameography just sounds like an odd neologism rather than terminology used in an encyclopaedia

References

  1. ^ 938 results for ludography on Google Scholar
  2. ^ 290 results for gameography on Google Scholar
  3. ^ doi:10.14361/9783839445976-016
  4. ^ doi:10.5040/9781501316647.0008
  5. ^ doi:10.2307/j.ctv65swb6

What are your thoughts? Kind regards, Orcaguy (talk) 18:32, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have pinged the video games wikiproject on this thread, as I know we don't really have a project-level set guidance either so this may be useful. --Masem (t) 18:37, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't have a preference if Ludography is more preferential and more widely used. So long as it's not WP:JARGON and widely accepted term, then we can use it. In my humble opinion, I don't think it's necessary to use either the term "Gameography" or "Ludography". A lot of times I see just a table that is listed as "Works". But I'll go with whatever the consensus goes by.Blue Pumpkin Pie (talk) 20:37, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Filmography is recognizable for the average reader, the word "film" is common. Bibliography is itself a fairly common term. Discography is very common too, and includes the word "disc" which is common as a music-related term. But the issue I have with "ludography" is that is it not recognizable to the average reader at all, "ludo" not being a common word/prefix in English whatsoever, whereas "gameography" is immediately readable by everyone ("oh it's like a discography but for games"). I don't buy the linguistic etymology argument, game is an English word like film and they both have Proto-Indo-European roots if you go back far enough. We also have some articles use musicography instead of discography, both are appropriate terms in that case, and there's no big debate there. In the end both ludography & gameography are pretty recent neologisms and perhaps we should think of more universal alternatives like "Works" or similar. Ben · Salvidrim! ✉ 20:52, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • Filmography is recognizable for the average reader, the word "film" is common
There is no word for filmography aside from filmography that sees common use. Filmography also feels strange to me, but there's nothing that can be done there (aside from coining a neologism for Wikipedia, which seems a bit daft). Of course, how a word sounds to my ears should have little to no bearing on whether or not it's included on Wikipedia.
more universal alternatives like "Works" or similar.
For biographies of people who have made more than just video games, this approach does not seem very feasible. See e.g. Haden Blackman, PewDiePie or Jordan Mechner. I don't think Wikipedia should necessarily be adverse to words readers won't understand, though I do understand your point.
We also have some articles use musicography instead of discography, both are appropriate terms in that case, and there's no big debate there.
"musicography" has 58 results on Wikipedia.
"discography" has 314 000 results on Wikipedia.
"musicography" and "discography" are not synonymous according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary (though, if they saw widespread use as synonymous, then I might see your point). The reason there's no debate is because no one uses the word musicography, while the usage of "gameography" or "ludography" is fairly evenly split. If one of the words saw near-zero usage, then this wouldn't be a debate either.
I don't buy the linguistic etymology argument
Of course, the words used on Wikipedia don't necessarily have to be 100% etymologically sound, as is already concluded with the usage of filmography, though I would prefer it. I should probably explain my usage of "odd neologism": something akin to nonce words like "kookology" (the study of kooks) or other newly coined words like "fatphobia" (fear and dislike of fat people). As stated earlier, how certain words sound shouldn't really have any bearing on its usage, as it's mostly subjective whether a neologism sounds encyclopedic or not.
As an aside, -graphy links to ludography, currently a redirect to Lists of video games, which seems a bit silly. It may need to be expanded into an article, as every other -graphy word has its own article (if it's notable enough, of course). Orcaguy (talk) 21:46, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Prefer general simple term Wikipedia has a goal of easy reference and simpler more common language is best, especially in cases like this where there is no precision lost by using a more understandable term. The count of Google search results is not evidence which persuades me because the counts for both ludo- and game- are so low as to indicate that neither is a popular term, perhaps because there is no online resource like Wikipedia which cares so much to match games to creators. I support the suggestion of Blue Pumpkin Pie and Salvidrim! to use "works" instead of a subject matter specific term. I might support this in general in favor of getting rid of "discographies", "bibliographies", and similar terms which describe particular works from past generations. Increasingly, music comes with video, books come with interactive supplements, and movies and games come with stories and soundtracks, so multimedia is the new norm. I support using terms like "ludography" in the article text, but in the title as the most public facing aspect, uncommon terms are not providing maximum benefit to the most users. Also thanks to WikiProject Video games for continually being at the center of interesting discussions and good test cases. Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:08, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Prefer general simple term per Blue Pumpkin Pie, Salvidrim, Bluerasberry. Why can't we just go with "works", which eliminates the entire issue here? I feel like we are trying to force a style here simply because actors have "filmography" and musicians have "discography". The only time I can see "works" not being enough is in biographical articles where the subject has done works outside of gaming entirely, such as acting in films or being a musician in a band. In cases like that then I suppose ludography would be preferred due to its more academical nature, but I'm not fully sold on that either. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 23:28, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Works", for the reasons given above - plus WP:PLAINENGLISH. Popcornfud (talk) 23:34, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Works, as above — keep it simple. Games would be fine, if all of the works are games — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 09:29, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • I did think of "Games" too, though I think it's conceivable biographies of game staff may already have a section called "Games" that summarises stuff they've worked on in prose (ie not just a list of games). Popcornfud (talk) 13:12, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Works as general heading for all: actors, writers, painters, video game programmers, etc. With subsections when necessary: novels, films, games, etc. --Khajidha (talk) 13:05, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Use "Works". "Gameography" is a neologism that clumsily mixes Anglo-Saxon and Greek elements. "Ludography" is a neologism (not found in any major dictionary, just in Wiktionary) using an element most people will not recognize (and the few who do will probably think it's a reference to gladiators).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:47, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Works works. GenQuest "scribble" 19:29, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Person-first language

Hello, I am new to the MOS page and have a question. I cannot seem to locate much in Wikipedia policies and guidelines about the specific use of person-first language. Granted, I do see a small section about the importance of using gender-neutral language, which is all well and good, but the importance of person-first language extends far beyond that. Are there such policies in place and I'm not seeing them or is this not yet in place? If it's not, then why not? Thanks. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 09:39, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There is a brief mention in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles#Careful language, final bullet point. -- Colin°Talk 10:39, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Colin. I took a look there and that particular area looks like it is in significant need of expansion. I'm unfamiliar with MOS procedure, how does one go about that? TylerDurden8823 (talk) 01:55, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
TylerDurden8823, Unless you are really confident about what you feel should be said, I recommend posting a suggestion to the MEDMOS talk page. You could either explain what you think needs to be said or said differently, or propose some text. Best to encourage people to comment rather than vote. Wrt the "need of expansion" it is also worth perhaps giving some examples. Are there a lot of articles that use inappropriate terminology? Is this something editors argue about. Etc. If you think the mistakes are mostly happening on non-medical articles, then there is an argument that we should say something on the main MOS or something more related to biographies, say. -- Colin°Talk 13:27, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • ”Person-first language” is a bit of terminology that I have never encountered before... could someone give me an example, so I know what we are talking about? Blueboar (talk) 13:44, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I thought it said first-person language; no wonder I was confused. Anyway, apparently we're talking about this And see People-first_language, in which (I am startled to see) the For Dummies series is cited as a stylistic reference; I think the Criticism section is well worth reading as well, because it turns out not everyone agrees this woke approach is always desirable. EEng 17:06, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, there are several articles that use language that aren't using this. I'm sure it has its critics like everything does but there are many compelling arguments to use it (at least, in the way that I will suggest). I can definitely discuss what person-first language is about, provide some high-quality sources about it, etc. It will have to be a bit later though since I'm busy in real life at the moment. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 21:51, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ignoring the comments from ignoramuses (see what I did there?) MEDMOS also links to APA style guide. This is a basic of modern professional writing. For example Guardian Style Guide entry on "epilepsy", and Association of health-care journalists. As MEDMOS notes, there are a minority of medical conditions where a proud community has developed (deaf, blind, autistic) for whom putting the condition first is part of their pride assertiveness. But those are exceptions. It is correct for us to accept that people are who they say they are and should be referred to how they want to be referred to. For example this analysis from Epilepsy & Behaviour journal indicates medical profession is very aware of this issue, and demonstrates that, when asked, people with epilepsy prefer that form 9/10 times over the deprecated "epileptics". -- Colin°Talk 09:18, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Participants were recruited by advertisements placed in the newsletters and on the websites of epilepsy interest groups and organizations – Yeah, no bias in that sample. EEng 17:40, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
While recruiting volunteers for a study may introduce bias in some ways (which the paper discusses) it is hard to see how else to gain access to a large number of people with epilepsy. It isn't clear to me that this method of recruitment/selection would necessarily tend the opinion in any particular direction. Clearly the respected journal it was published in considered the methods satisfactory. If instead you were to ask those attending specialist epilepsy centres, one would end up with the more severe end of the spectrum, and epilepsy isn't common enough that one could simply knock on doors or stand in a shopping mall and stop passers-by. I think the views of 638 people with epilepsy and 333 significant others is probably going to be as good as it gets as to a view on what people, in the UK anyway, think of the language choices. Whereas your method for determining an opinion worth hearing, was to ping a Wikipedian friend. Everybody here is well aware that the activist autistic community rejects person first language, so it doesn't really inform the debate wrt other medical conditions. I think "is autistic + has a blog" is about as biased as one can get wrt selecting from an opinionated minority of a population group. A study on autism, suggests a more varied range of opinions than one might think from reading blogs. -- Colin°Talk 17:08, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Clearly the respected journal it was published in considered the methods satisfactory – This may shock you, but respected journals in the soft sciences routinely publish statistical nonsense such as this. If we are charitable we may imagine that the editors expected their readers to recognize the paper's severe (fatal?) limitations for themselves.
  • bias ... which the paper discusses – Actually, the paper doesn't even begin to probe the internal evidence that its sample is seriously, amazingly, fantastically out of whack. For example (and no, this isn't noted in the paper) only 23% of the responding "patients" in the study were male, yet (I gather) at least half of epileptics are male. And (also not noted) an amazing 90% of the responding "family and friends" were female! I could go on.
  • I think the views of 638 people with epilepsy and 333 significant others is probably going to be as good as it gets – The size of the "sample" is irrelevant when nothing is understood about its relationship to the population (which, by the way, was never defined by the paper either). As a result, all those impressive-looking confidence intervals and significance levels are completely meaningless; that everything's carried out to n decimal places makes the joke all the more delicious. I have a degree in statistics so I assure you I know what I'm talking about here.
  • epilepsy isn't common enough that one could simply knock on doors or stand in a shopping mall and stop passers-by – So your idea is that to get a useful sample you should knock on doors or stop passers-by, if only a bigger % of the population had the characteristic sought? Really?
  • hard to see how else to gain access to a large number of people with epilepsy – just because the only approach you can think of is seriously flawed doesn't make it any less seriously flawed.
  • Everybody here is well aware that the activist autistic community rejects person first language, so it doesn't really inform the debate wrt other medical conditions – Sure it does. It reminds us to beware of sweeping generalities from people declaring themselves up-to-date.
EEng 04:11, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Genuine question: why are you two discussing the potential bias in one study about the preferred terminology in one group that was simply provided as an example? If anything, this just goes to show that there's never going to be consensus for one form or the other in any circumstance. Aerin17 (talk) 05:07, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Colin said that this study demonstrates that, when asked, people with epilepsy prefer [etc] [etc]; I thought it was important to make clear that it demonstrates no such thing. EEng 10:51, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not going to argue with "someone on the internet" who just wants to argue and mischaracterises what others have written. But hey, if you think asking Guy Macon's opinion is more persuasive than getting a study published in a per reviewed journal, or think the absence of a Y chromosome might just radically alter the findings... The only people here making sweeping generalisations are those who are not interested in anyone's views but there own. -- Colin°Talk 15:21, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As a proud person of ignorance (see what I did there) I really don’t think it matters whether someone writes “he was an epileptic” vs “he was a person with epilepsy”. Both are fine. If you want to change one to the other, be BOLD... if you get push back, discuss on the article talk page and don’t edit war over it. Mandating specific terminology on a project wide basis via the MOS strikes me as overkill, and it gets us into WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS territory. Blueboar (talk) 12:00, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
With respect, Blueboar, it really doesn't matter one bit what you or I think is acceptable language, as we are people (I assume) who don't have epilepsy, or some similar condition that stigmatises and marginalises people. That's why it is important to research why certain groups want to be referred to a certain way, rather than assuming things about them from our position of privilege. The majority of writers here are likely to be ignorant (joking aside) of this issue unless they work or write about healthcare issues. Language does shape how we think about people. Are they someone, a person, just like me? Or are they primarily not like me at all, dehumanised to the point where I don't even use the word person, and they become some other creature: an epileptic or an alcoholic, say. I think MEDMOS gets it about right, pointing out that is is appropriate in some contexts but not all. We have guidelines about gender-neutral language, for example, which some wouldn't bother with in their own personal writing, but which the community feels is important. I think the long-standing advice at MEDMOS is sufficient for anyone to be bold and fix up troublesome terminology while citing MOS. Whether it needs more visibility in a main MOS page probably need investigating as to whether non-medical articles often use inappropriate language. -- Colin°Talk 12:48, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, what you and I (along with other editors) think definitely DOES matter, since we are the ones who determine what our MOS guidance should say.
While I would certainly agree that we should be aware of the desires of those we are writing about, and take those desires into consideration - we are under no obligation to automatically accept those desires. We can (if such is our consensus) reject those desires - or (as I propose) intentionally remain silent, and neither accept nor reject those desires. Blueboar (talk) 13:32, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"dehumanised to the point where I don't even use the word person, and they become some other creature: an epileptic or an alcoholic" Citation needed. Or, more bluntly, I'm calling BULLSHIT. How is "epileptic" dehumanizing any more than "driver" vs "person who drives"? And I say that as an epileptic from a family that includes many epileptics. --Khajidha (talk) 15:18, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
And I say that as an epileptic from a family that includes many epileptics – So much for we are people (I assume) who don't have epilepsy and our position of privilege. It is so, so tiresome to be lectured by the woke. EEng 17:40, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I was about to say almost exactly the same thing, except using plumber, teacher, and paramedic instead of driver.
The APA style guide was cited above, though apparently without realizing that what it actually says is Both person-first and identity-first approaches to language are designed to respect disabled persons; both are fine choices overall. It is permissible to use either approach or to mix person-first and identity-first language unless or until you know that a group clearly prefers one approach... Mixing this language may help you avoid cumbersome repetition of person with ... Of course, that leads to the question of how a "group" expresses itself; as explained at Person-first language#Criticism, for example, some autistics (or persons with autism) prefer to be referred to as persons with autism, but others prefer the term autistic. Paging my favorite autistic person with autism.
EEng 17:40, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(Blushes). Your favorite? Aaaaaw!
I can't speak for anyone else, but to me intent is everything. I have been called "aspie" and "autie" (by people who in good-faith want to talk about my experiences) and "the kidney in room 203" (by the doctor who ended up curing the condition) and had no problem with it But "the person who..." can be a insult when spoken in a certain tone of voice and combined with other negative context. Some terms (Queer, Quaker, Mormon, Geek) started out as insults but were embraced by those who were being insulted. Others (Colored) went out 0f style but left behind traces like the name of the NAACP. And some people (imagine the worst possible tone of voice in those last two words) use pronouns as a club to beat anyone who, say, thinks it is OK to call someone "Xe" instead of "He" or "She" or that someone asking everyone to use "Tree" instead of "He" or "She" is being silly. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:14, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
WP is not in the language-policing business. If contemporary reliable sources use "epileptics", "persons with epilepsy", and "epileptic people", then all of these are and will remain permissible in WP articles, unless and until one of them becomes so disused we hardly ever see it any longer in modern sources. For example, "albino[s]" in reference to humans has gone out of fashion, so it's okay that our articles are mostly now using "people with albinism" and "person with albinism" and "albinistic people" and so on; but no one is punishable for writing "an albino" or "were albinos"; it still in common enough RS usage (mostly news rather than medical literature) that it's not wrong. This is not in any way comparable to using offensive racial epithets and the like (no matter how much false equivalence is engaged in by a certain sort of censorious and doctrinaire busybody). And we also just had an RfC about banning "committed suicide" (result: we did not ban this phrase), and another about always capitalizing "Black", but only "Black" not "White", in an ethno-racial sense (result: we are not going to just capitalize "Black"; either capitalize both or neither, consistently in the article). This is just more of exactly the same "write the way I dogmatically prefer, or else" stuff. The idea that "epileptic or alcoholic ... dehumaniz[es] to the point ... they become some other creature" than a human is just absurd nonsense. This is more of that "desperately looking for something to be offended about" stuff, and WP has way, way too much of that going on already. We have much better things to do than entertain any such extreme PoV-pushing arguments.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:39, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
So I take it you're also against saying things like "person battling epilepsy"? EEng 04:48, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
On the fence. There's been some discussion, I think at WT:MOSWTW, about this sort of language ("cancer victim", "a sufferer of dermatitis", etc.), and the view generally seemed to be pretty negative; something about it painting people as victims and defining them primarily in terms of a disorder. But I do note that "[someone] living with HIV" seems pretty common, and that "is a cancer survivor" and "died after a three-year battle with cancer" don't seem to arouse as much criticism. I think it's going to depend on how judgmental and/or euphemistic it comes off in a particular case. My personal take is that the specific example "person battling epilepsy" is over-the-top and shouldn't be used, but it's not something I would write an MoS rule about, just rewrite in situ where I found it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:24, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There's a difference between "a cancer victim" and "a cancer", just like there is a difference between "an epileptic person" and "an epileptic". As for the sources, there is a general move in the sources to follow the pattern that "seizures are epileptic, not people". A quick look at recent review articles on PubMed finds three (3) sources mentioning "epileptic people" and 658 that mention "people with epilepsy". I also notice that all three of the papers using the older term were written by people whose native language isn't English. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:39, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That doesn't track. Maybe you need another example? "A cancer" isn't a noun ever used to refer to a person ("a Cancer" is, as an astrology thing). "A cancer" means "a type of cancer" or "a tumor", depending on context. But the noun "an epileptic" always means a person (or, in veterinary medicine, an animal); it never means "a type of epilepsy" or "a seizure". So you're comparing applies and oranges. Yes, we're all aware that there's a language reform movement that exists in the medical community. That's precisely what the very recent suicide-wording debate was predicated on. They have not yet succeeded in changing the language, only making a small dent, so WP has no reason to do anything or continue talking about it. WP does not lead, it follows. WP is not a soapbox for any form of advocacy, no matter how well-motivated. WP doesn't impose restrictions on editors that are not necessary either to produce mainstream-acceptable encyclopedic out output or to prevent internecine fighting. And we have more productive things to do that try to language-police our volunteers over extremely subjective matters (especially when many of the people being "allied at" will tell their wannabe allies that they're wrong and need to stop projecting on them. This is not FarLeftPedia (and I say that as a progressive). These reformationist pushes are coming from the progressive-activist sector, which a recent (2020) survey indicates are only about 8% of the US population [9] (and probably much less in the UK). Even among the left-of-center, far more of us (editors and, more importantly, readers) are somewhere within the traditional-liberal to passive-liberal to politically-disengaged spectrum (and nearly half of people are on the right-hand side, from moderate to devoted conservative).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:02, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@SMcCandlish, you need to look at a dictionary before you make these kinds of pronouncements. There are at least two definitions for "an epileptic", used as a noun. (The other is a class of drugs that is more descriptively, and now more commonly, called an anti-epileptic.) As for your assertion that "a cancer" isn't ever used to refer to a person, that is typical jargon in hospitals. Search this page for "the kidney in room 203". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:49, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I did not propose to be covering every possible definition of such terms in every imaginable usage, only those that are contextually sensible. Nothing in this discussion has anything to do with terms for drugs; it's entirely about people and their diseases. And your hospital-jargon point was already made clear earlier, but WP does not write in hospital jargon, so it is irrelevant. "An epilepsy" meaning "a person with epiplepsy" would never, ever, find its way into encyclopedic wording (other than as something to immediately revert). It also will not be found in a dictionary, so your dictionary finger-wagging is off-base. Please remember WP:NOT#FORUM and WP:WINNING. This page does not exist as a webboard for trying to prove you're a better arguer than someone else and to keep trying to find ways to stick it to them. The point of this page is determining what MoS should say and how to apply it. We don't get there by "debate as a sport" behavior.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:24, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to volunteer (perhaps in my own personal capacity as a person valiantly fighting the scourge of epilepsy, natch) that such language is hideous and its writers should be indeffed on sight it should perhaps be the form discouraged if we absolutely must discourage any forms. (I would prefer not to discourage any forms, but then I'm not usually inclined to these conversations at all -- I got here from a WT:MED link.) Vaticidalprophet 10:46, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I demand that both of you admit you knew I wasn't suggesting we describe articles subjects as battling stuff (unless, perhaps, they were knights of old) EEng 15:43, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I've never confessed to anything and I don't plan to start. Vaticidalprophet 22:51, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Confess! EEng 02:50, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Whether something requires a MOS statement/rule/advice and whether something is worth knowing, a reasonable rule or is good advice are not the same. Nor, as Blueboar notes, do editors need rules in order to be bold and fix things. I don't think MOS should be in the game of guiding every possible decision an editor makes about wording. That said, advice on this issue does appear in style guides for professional writing, so it isn't unreasonable to consider if it should appear in a Wikipedia one. This isn't about Wikipedians looking for something to be offended by, and I wish folk here were capable of having a grown up conversation about something the professionals take care over, rather than the mocking and dismissal and insults by some.
I disagree with SMcCandlish that the rule for WP usage is that something is "permissible in WP articles" until "we hardly ever see it any longer in modern sources". That would suggest Wikipedia should be way behind the curve and the last publication to adopt current language usage. Our reference should be professional-level writing by authors knowledgable about the topic -- which is exactly what our readers would wish our articles were. So usage by some newspaper journalist who writes about pop stars and refers to the child of one of them as "an epileptic" should not influence whether Wikipedia thinks that language is acceptable in medical or biographical articles. As MEDMOS notes, the language that is acceptable or preferred varies from condition to condition, and they can only speak for themselves and for their own situation. So the opinion of people on the autistic spectrum, say, is only really relevant to that group. -- Colin°Talk 10:23, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You can "disagree" all you want, but it's an actual fact of how WP adopts recent language shifts. You're mistaking description of process for "a rule". If there were an actual rule I would have quoted it at you. I'm telling you about experienced observation, not rule-thumping.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:02, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Generally speaking, Wikipedia should be at or slightly behind the peak of the curve when it comes to language evolution. There are some exceptions when we should be more forward, where there is clear evidence of harm to people and (all-but) no dispute among the impacted group (pronouns matching expressed gender identity for example), but we should never lead - particularly where there is active dispute among an impacted group (as it seems here) or different approaches in different national varieties (e.g. capitalisation of "Black" as a racial term is almost exclusively a US thing, at least currently) although MOS:TIES can help in some instances. We should also try and avoid being the last to adopt a change that has broad consensus among contemporary sources. Thryduulf (talk) 11:19, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The preferred terminology varies by group, and views-by-group cover a spectrum ranging from strong preference for person-first terminology, through very mixed feelings and no clear consensus, to groups that reject it for themselves. That "it's complicated" doesn't mean it should be dismissed. Very much worth reading Language Matters: Language and Diabetes. The is no controversy in professional healthcare writing of the need to be careful about language and to respect the wishes of those with those conditions. -- Colin°Talk 12:55, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I absolutely agree we should be careful about language, though how that translates into what we should actually write is the whole question. I'll note that the "Language matters" piece you link says we shouldn't say that someone has not had good diabetes control and now has a complication as a result but rather is experiencing xx condition and he/she also has diabetes. Really? The former highlights a potentially important cause-and-effect connection while the latter makes it sound as if two unconnected things just happen to be present by coincidence. EEng 15:43, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with "has not had good diabetes control" is that it implies that good diabetes control is realistically achievable for every person and that the failure is the patient's moral fault: if only they had put in more effort, if only they had been more compliant, etc. It somehow never implies "if only the healthcare provider had checked for diabetes five years ago instead of last week" or "if only the patient wasn't forced to choose between being homeless or working a rapidly rotating day–night schedule at work" or "if only we provided education in the patient's native language or using food examples beyond the stereotypical American food or outside most people's working hours" or "if only we managed the ag industry so that apples were cheaper than high-sugar drinks" or "if only we had a better care system for elderly people, including asking whether they've got enough food, feel able to prepare it, and have been eating a healthy diet".
Also: The phrase suggested there sounds like it's for a referral. The healthcare professional receiving the patient are expected to know what constitutes a complication. Is there any medical value in making sure that they are reminded whom you want to blame for this situation?
The same problem appears informally in cancer treatment. Healthcare providers speak of patients who fail treatment, when it's quite the other way around: the treatments failed the patients. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:07, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with "has not had good diabetes control" is that it implies that good diabetes control is realistically achievable for every person and that the failure is the patient's moral fault – No it doesn't. It just says the diabetes control hasn't been good. (Clarification: good here is not a moral judgment, just shorthand for "effective".) None of the rest of what you're saying seems relevant. Science and medicine deal in cause and effect. Just because A caused B doesn't mean someone's being blamed. EEng 02:50, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I concur with EEng on this, entirely. "is experiencing xx condition and he/she also has diabetes" is terrible and misleading writing (not just for an encylopedia but also in any kind of medical context). "Has not had good diabetes control and now has a complication" says nothing judgmental whatsoever, especially since it doesn't even say what the source(s) of the control might be, nor what a good enough level of it is. It's a simple statement of cause–effect. But this is a red herring anyway, since WP would not say "good", but "effective" or something like that, removing even accidental misinterpretation of it as a judgment. Nor would WP ascribe a cause in this way as if doing a diagnosis ourselves. "[They] failed treatment" is another red herring, since WP would never use that. We don't need to have a discussion about every stupid thing doctors or social workers says, since this is not a webboard for venting about such matters.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:02, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't like their suggested phrase, but I understand that many people actually do feel condemned when their healthcare providers tell them that they don't have good control of their diabetes. It's all well and good to say that they shouldn't, but the fact is that they do. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:51, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"[They] failed treatment" is another red herring, since WP would never use that.
Really? You need to start checking your assumptions before you post easily checked claims like this. Put the phrase the "WP would never use" into the search bar, and you'll see things like "Patients are said to have failed treatment if"... "Patients included in the study failed treatment"... "Among patients that had failed treatment"..."patients whose tumors express PD-L1 and who have failed treatment"..."The number of failed treatment attempts"... "in the years following a failed treatment"... "Karen Blixen Failed Treatment of Syphilis"... "unless they have a contraindication to the medication or have failed treatment with the medication in the past"... "a second patient wit this mutation failed treatment"... WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:57, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Nope. WP quoting and attributing is not WP using in it's own voice. If any of these cases are actually written in WP's own voice, they should be fixed immediately. I really hope you do understand that when someone says "WP would/should/can never do X" they mean "in any text we would consider keeping". With thousands of anonymous editors per day, some of them outright vandals, it is impossible for even the absolute worst things that could be said to actually end up getting written here, albeit only until someone notices and fixes it. So, cf. previous not about not engaging "debate for sport" antics. They are not constructive to this or any other discussion here, and you are not "WP:WINNING". If you ever misinterpret a long-term, competent editor in a way that makes them seem like they have an IQ of 60, you are making a mistake, and it makes you, not your target, look bad.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:31, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The phrases I have quoted are not from sources. Those statements are from existing Wikipedia articles. The first one is from Tuberculosis management – our article, in Wikipedia's own voice. The second is from Abituzumab – our article, in Wikipedia's own voice. The third quotation is from Elotuzumab – again, the current version of the English Wikipedia article. These were also not phrases added by IPs or newbies on their first edit; often, it's long-time editors with hundreds or thousands of edits. Instead of lecturing me about WINNING, how about you stop assuming you're always right, and actually click this link to search results and check your assumptions about what Wikipedia would "never use"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:11, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Some of those are clearly unobjectionable even by the touchy-feely standards advocated (the years following a failed treatment and failed treatment attempts clearly "blame" the treatment, or maybe the practioner, but not the patient) and, actually, I'm OK with most or all of the rest. If you say that public service announcements, educational materials for children, and so on should take pains to use language (yes, even "person with" language) that will help shape attitudes in beneficial ways, I'll wholeheartedly agree with you; but if you tell me that an already complex discussion of some medical issue should be further obfuscated by changing a second patient with this mutation failed treatment to the condition of a second patient with this mutation failed to improve to a satisfactory extent in response to treatment – sorry, no. (I will grant, however, that we should not change "patient with this mutation" to "mutant".)
The way this is going we shouldn't say "the patient's heart rhythm was abnormal" – because, you know, my heart rhythm's a poor thing, but mine own, so please don't judge me by it – nor may we say "all these patients were negative for HIV and hepatitis" because you don't want to say anything negative about someone. And if the neurosurgeon on call rushes into the emergency room and is greeted with, not "There's a depressed skull fracture in 2 and an attempted suicide, hanging, possible cord injury in 3", but rather "There's a patient experiencing a depressed skull fracture in Room 2 and in Room 3 another patient who was found hanging from a rope around the neck and may be experiencing a cord injury, but I want to be clear that the jury is still out about whether it was an attempt at suicide self-harm because we're not judging anyone", then if I'm either of those patients and my care was delayed by even 3 seconds by such nonsense, I'm suing.
There's a time and a place for the soft and poetical, and a time and a place for the businesslike presentation of facts in crisp, straightforward langauge. Encyclopedia articles are the latter. EEng 22:48, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I would, as someone who's spent plenty of time around both the fringes and the centres of disability self-advocacy, strongly caution against any attempt to reify use of either person-first or identity-first language. This is a "five people, six opinions" issue, and all of those opinions hate each other. Frankly, even consistency within articles is quixotic. Vaticidalprophet 10:46, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Pardon me, please say that consistency has quixoticism. EEng 15:55, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you Vaticidal for saying so. Too often discussions like just get overrun by "allies" who have no shared experience with those they are claiming to speak for. That was a big problem in the months-long debates about how to write about transgender/nonbinary people back in the mid-2010s, before we had a guideline about it. It was about 95% "allies", some of them so off-base (in the same way: over-generalizing about broad classes of people to impose theor own opinion on everyone, a form of "equal but opposite objectification", and closely akin to "inspiration porn"), that actual TG people had to basically tell them to STFU. Heh.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:02, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Consistency within articles may or may not be the right answer. I think that it's not unreasonable of us to speak of "children with autism" (especially for young children) but "autistic adults". WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:11, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Frankly, yes -- I've intentionally written article inconsistently. (Autism is the high-profile case, because it has the loudest self-advocacy of any neurodivergence, but there's plenty more than only it. I personally find person-first language unbearably patronizing even where it's 'uncontroversial' and grit my teeth to write "people with epilepsy".) Vaticidalprophet 22:51, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Colin that just because this is complicated doesn't mean it's not worth discussing. On the contrary, I do think it's worth having some guidance since, as he said, this can be a confusing area and preferred terminology may vary for different conditions we discuss. I also agree that we strive to achieve high-quality writing here on Wikipedia and shouldn't be terribly behind when it comes to this. The impetus for my raising the discussion was to discuss this at least in the context of medical disorders that are commonly stigmatized (e.g., substance use disorders). As Colin correctly points out, our words do have impact on our readers and can do so even below readers' awareness but with negative results. Several articles have been published on that exact topic. I'm not suggesting we become the "language police" here but I do think it's important that we don't use language that contributes to the stigma of these already marginalized people. It does make a difference when we say someone is a substance "abuser" rather than characterizing them as a person with a substance use disorder.
Some will disagree with this perspective, and that's okay, but it has been clearly shown that when such language is employed that it leads to negative implicit biases and the perception of a moral failure. This view remains widespread despite being incongruent with our modern scientific understanding of such disorders. I certainly don't claim to know everyone's individual life experience here on Wikipedia. From my own personal life experience, I have noticed that when people seem opposed to such small adjustments to writing and language, that there is often some form of personal hangup or misgiving about the topic being discussed that causes them to cling to stigmatizing terms. To be clear, I'm not suggesting that as a blanket statement for anyone who expresses reluctance to adopt such a change. It's simply something I have observed and the approach certainly isn't beyond reproach. Nevertheless, I have yet to see anyone here or elsewhere put forward any compelling evidence suggesting that the use of such stigmatizing terminology doesn't negatively affect those who read it. I think I've seen enough to suggest that it does. Here are just a few examples of literature from widely recognized addiction medicine experts highlighting the impact of such language [10], [11], and [12].
I think in real life you'll get different answers from different people in these stigmatized groups if asked whether they're offended by the use of such terminology. Some are easily offended by the most minute of sleights whereas others may shrug off the use of overtly stigmatizing terms and everything in between. The use of such language indirectly affects these people though by affecting perceptions of these groups by everyone else as well and I think that's a noteworthy point to consider. How are people with alcohol use disorders viewed in society? What about people who use heroin? Hopefully I don't need to convince anyone that such groups (and others) are heavily stigmatized and that perceptions that they (and others) are at fault for their medical conditions remain widespread and have very harmful effects. I disagree that this is about "righting a great wrong" and I think the implied slippery slope is overblown. Similarly, I don't think that just because something is "commonly used" means that it's acceptable for use and brings the ad populum fallacy to mind. Yes, I understand the point about common name, which has been raised before, but I don't find that reasoning to be very persuasive. As Colin stated above, it's simply in compliance with what numerous professional health and medical societies recommend. Language evolves over time and this area of it definitely has (for a while). From what I have seen, the current Wikipedia guidance on this topic appears relatively sparse and I think it should be expanded and refined beyond a passing mention of gender-neutral language, etc. To all of those who have contributed to the discussion so far, regardless of whether you share my perspective or not, I'm grateful to you for engaging in thoughtful discussion about this important topic and hope you will continue to do so. I think we'll forge a better encyclopedia for it in the end. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 09:22, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I hope it is clear I'm not among those who think person-first language should be imposed across all disabilities and medical conditions. Labelling people is always a sensitive matter. I think it important we do realise language influences how we think and that we respect how people with those conditions or divergences want to be described. That's just basic manners. I am fascinated how these language changes evolve. I've written before about the rationale given for dropping the possessive from some eponymous medical conditions and how I think that is bunk.
Those who consider their "medical condition" to be not actually a disability, or are proud to declare it part of their identity, are going to champion "identity first" language. But that only really works when the condition has a convenient adjective (autistic) and is especially powerful when the trailing "person" is dropped. While perhaps Vaticidalprophet may not see much importance between "epileptic person" and "person with epilepsy", and the latter is weaker English style, I would hope they wouldn't be comfortable writing about "epileptics". By dropping the "person" it becomes much easier to take the next step and use the label as an insult: retard and spastic being two of the most offensive disability-related terms in UK English. Consider also what happens when one reduces a woman to just their hair colour: "some blond", "a brunette", "that redhead".
I only speak English, but suspect our choice of word order is an English problem, and in some other languages perhaps there isn't the freedom to put the person first or last. There's no adjective (AFAIK) for people who get migraines. Most of the more complex syndromes and disorders have no short-form that can be used to label a person, and so there is no option but to say "a person with ____". It would be rather odd to say "Bob is a tuberous sclerosis complex person". While Vaticidalprophet may find their thoughts about patronising do-gooders colour how they view some terms, language is what it is, and probably a bit random. -- Colin°Talk 09:49, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I would hope [he] wouldn't be comfortable writing about "epileptics" -- well, it's how I write about myself (and a smorgasbord of other identity-first terms that 'advocates for patients' insist are inappropriate, apparently in the process deciding that defining others as 'patients' and speaking for them isn't). I haven't used the term in any articles, but where I've had the need to write on matters where I'd naturally use identity-first language but abled people have decided for themselves that this is inappropriate, I haven't so far actually been forced into using any kind of person-based construction, regardless of what aspect it focuses on (e.g. in the given case, I've only needed to discuss epilepsy as a symptom). The actual reason I wouldn't tend to use 'epileptics', 'autistics', 'schizophrenics', etc. in articles is that I think of them as informal constructs, so they're inappropriate for Wikipedia simply for being in the wrong register rather than for causing actual offense. 'People with migraines' is 'migraineurs', for what it's worth. Vaticidalprophet 10:02, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I've been meaning to point out all along that the actual usage levels vary widely. Some conditions have no "person term", for some it's the dominant usage, for others it's middle ground, and for others it's formerly common usage now considered obsolete. One size does not fit all. And in particular, this "person experiencing X" stuff is sociologist and activist language; it's not what the vast majority of people use in reference to their own conditions, even when doctors, case workers, etc. practically badger them to do so. The sea changes that actually happen in usage tend to be per-condition, and have a lot to do with grassroots. E.g. "people with albinism" has become so common because an organization (NOAH) founded by people with albinism, running mailing lists and organizing events for such people, promoted it gently among their own. And those people preferred it in the main, for one special reason: because they were used to "albino" being hurled at them by strangers (and non-stranger antagonists) exactly like a racial slur. People yelling things like "Creepy albino vampire! Get a frickin' tan!" at you is an intense and unusual driver. People with albinism lobbied their own doctors to start saying "people with albinism"; not the other way around.

But no one yells "Screw you, you attention-deficit freak!", or "Why don't you just die, you worthless epileptic! Yeah you!" on the street. There is no comparable grassroots driver of language change among most people with most medical conditions; it's almost entirely a matter of them being lobbied at by busybodies who claim to know what's best for them (and they're the same "allies" as in every other case: a privileged cluster whose demographics have been pretty well studied, the "professionally outraged" with way too much time on their hands but too little influence on real-world socio-economic forces). This is stark raving obvious in other areas with the same thing going on. E.g., even if you live in a big city with economic woes and housing shortage, you will still probably never in your entire life hear someone say they are "experiencing homelessness" or are "an unhoused person". No one uses these phrases but caseworkers and politicians. They don't like being called "a homeless", because that's weird and its intentionally weird and meant to insult (imagine being called "a jobless" or "a hairless" or "an eyeless" and you see the problem). They're not too keen, either, on being lumped together as "the homeless", a faceless mass like termites. But "homeless person/people" is just fine, and so is "being/am homeless" (not "experiencing" it).
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:02, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding both claims along the lines of "just because this is complicated doesn't mean it's not worth discussing": Well, past a certain point, yes it is not worth discussing on Wikipedia. WP is not going to "ban" or "require" certain formulations unless and until it has become a broad societal norm and is reflected in a preponderance of RS, across all media and genre, not just in cherry-picked specialist literature or echo-chamber websites. See how long it took to get MOS:GENDERID, and how long it took to get it saying what it does now. No amount of fist-shaking made that happen faster, and there was one F-load of fist-shaking. WP:NOT#FORUM matters. These pages do not exist to endlessly debate socio-political desires and postures and proposals. As long as "is epileptic" or "is an epileptic" or "has epilepsy" or whatever remain common in RS material (including newspapers, etc., not just American medical journals), WP will not effectively-prohibit them and say to use something else. This isn't my vague supposition; it's a statement of very predictable fact based on 15+ years of direct experience (both in support and opposition, depending on the case) with how WP processes linguistic shifts, and what actually causes them to finally occur within our e-walls: It's supermajority usage across contemporary source material of all kinds. Until that line is crossed, WP will not make a rule. And we shouldn't want it to.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:02, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Snarky off topic comment... re: “It’s supermajority usage across contemporary source material”... unless we are talking about capitalization of things like “Prime Minister”... just saying... end snarky comment. Blueboar (talk) 18:09, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Cute, but it's off topic in both senses: it's not about WP adopting (early or late) a change that has been pushed by advocacy, which is what's under discussion here. Writing "prime minister" when it's not attached to a name isn't something angry advocates are engaging in cancel-culture activities about. Nor is it something WP made up out of it's own collective a[rse|ss]. It's very long-standing guidance found in all major academic-register (or formal-register, whatever you like to call it) style guides, including Chicago Manual of Style, New Hart's Rules, Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage, and Garner's Modern English Usage, the four that most of MoS is based on. You and a handful of other people get perpetually pissed off about it because it doesn't match typical journalism style; but WP doesn't care and never will care. See WP:NOT#NEWS, WP:Common-style fallacy.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:40, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think that just because this topic is complicated doesn't mean that we can't address it or try to fix it when it comes up on individual pages; but because it's complicated, there's really no feasible way we can try to come up with a blanket rule. As Vaticidal said, this is a "five people, six opinions" issue, even within specific communities. If we were to try to implement a rule of some sort, it would have to be something very vague like "defer to what people with this condition prefer," which is pretty much what WP:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles#Careful language says already. It isn't our job to try to determine what the consensus is regarding specific conditions, and I think it might even be more harmful to try to say we know what's preferred than to just leave the policy as it is. Aerin17 (talk) 18:37, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

For someone who doesn't think it worth discussing on Wikipedia, SMcCandlish sure has written a lot on this page, and nearly all of it unsubstantiated claims. Personal feelings on the subject extrapolated as though one speaks for a community or others seem to dominate this discussion far beyond what is helpful. Personal views are interesting only to a very minor level, probably best reserved for some blog or social media rant. Vaticidalprophet thinks that "epileptics", for example, is an "informal construct[]" and the "wrong register rather than for causing actual offense". There is nothing informal about labelling people "epileptics". It was absolutely standard mainstream professional language. The UK had "The National Society for Epileptics" until the 70s (now The National Society for Epilepsy). Scientific studies recruited and experimented on "epileptics" and professionals wrote books and papers about them. It hasn't become "informal" but has become "unacceptable", like it or not. The words "rather than for causing actual offense" is a bit of a giveaway. SMcCandlish compares albinism with epilepsy and yet again seems to be writing without knowledge or even the most cursory research. The neurologist Rajendra Kale once notably wrote "The history of epilepsy can be summarised as 4000 years of ignorance, superstition, and stigma followed by 100 years of knowledge, superstition, and stigma." -- Colin°Talk 10:42, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The National Society for Epilepsy??? Personally, I'm against epilepsy, but maybe that's just me. EEng 03:54, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, duh. All that epilepsy has to be coming from somewhere, right?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:50, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, SMcCandlish has written a lot on this page, but so have you Colin. The majority of what both of you have written is unsubstantiated claims. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that (a) some people prefer person-first language, a proportion of them find condition-first language inappropriate and a proportion of them find it offensive; (b) some people people prefer condition-first language, a proportion of them find person-first language inappropriate and a proportion of them find it offensive; and (c) some people have no particular preference either way. The relative proportions of groups a, b and c vary by condition, by relationship to the condition and possibly by location and/or other variables.
If we are writing about a specific person who has expressed a clear preference, we should respect that (e.g. "John Smith is an epileptic", "Jane Doe suffers from epilepsy", "Lesley MacDonald has a mild form of epilepsy", "Jean Dupont's epileptic daughter"). Beyond that all the evidence points to imposing a single, hard-and-fast rule covering all situations being completely inappropriate. Wikipedia should not, in 2021, be encouraging or discouraging either person-first or condition-first language across the board. Thryduulf (talk) 02:02, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is the way the debate ends: not with a bang but a whimper. EEng 03:54, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you; this is exactly what I wanted to say. Aerin17 (talk) 04:00, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that's a fair characterising at all. What I have written is evidence-based by a body of writing and research, whereas SMcCandlish largely made up what he wrote and was caught out on it on several occasions. The style-guide at the National Center on Disability and Journalism, along with numerous statements from organisations suggests Wikipedia's main MOS is out-of-step and we could say more than Thryduulf claims. It is not nearly as indeterminable as they make out. It is not generally possible to ask the subject or find out how they wish to be referred, when writing an article. What is clear, here, is that Wikipedia discussion on the issue is unlikely to be productive, where editor's personal opinion is held to be representative of our readers and who dismiss science and evidence. -- Colin°Talk 08:06, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I've been "caught out" in absolutely nothing. Both purported "catchings out" were fallacious, as already demonstrated. Try sticking to the actual substance of the discussion instead of trying intensely to personalize the dispute in a demonizing manner. I'll remind you that this is a discretionary-sanctions topic, and was put under discretionary sanctions precisely because of editors being shitty and character-assassinating at each other instead of focusing on the content. Also, this is not an article, it's an internal consensus discussion. The entire thing is informed opinion, grounded primarily in policy and WP:5P and WP:ENC, an interplay between inductive and deductive reasoning. In short, it's "original research". Cherry-picking a few sources that agree with you means nothing. You have one and only one thing to prove here: that the vast majority of modern English-language sources that are reliable enough WP would ever cite, actually write the way you wish they would write. Until you can prove that, you have no case to make, because WP does not lead when it comes to language, it follows. This has been tested and demonstrated again and again and again. If I had never been born, this would still be true, and all of this would play out exactly the same way.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:50, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
PS: I just checked, and I see that you received as {{subst:Ds/alert|mos}} as recently as February, so you should already know better than to engage in "go ad hominem on that editor I don't agree with" behavior here.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:02, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Look on the bright side... now you can go on your favorite social media platform and bitch about how “wrong” Wikipedia is. Blueboar (talk) 11:15, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That's not my thing at all, Blueboar, and I'm old enough here to know this doesn't represent Wikipedia any more than talk Jimbo does. -- Colin°Talk 13:24, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a reason why participants in this discussion have chosen to not notify WikiProject Disability about it? Please see WP:WikiProject Disability/Style advice#People-first language. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 20:06, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't know about that style advice, but having read it it seems to mostly back up what I was saying - Wikipedia does not promote one style over another, but follows the sources. Following the sources tends to correspond to using people-first in some cases and not in others, with people with different conditions preferring different language styles, and regional varieties of English also having an impact. Thryduulf (talk) 21:05, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Roger, I didn't know the project had a style guide. Perhaps WP:MEDMOS could refer to it? Thryduulf, I don't think it backs up what you said at all, and is more in line with what I've been saying, and what MEDMOS says, and what the better general disability guidelines say (e.g. this significant one). Rather than WP saying definitively which to use at all times (which is the strawman some have been attacking), both guides give editors the knowledge that there are these schools-of-thought, as it were, about how to refer to people. They explain it is likely one approach is better for X,Y and Z and another for A, B and C, and give a clue as to why. At the start of this page, there was the question by Blueboar where they were honest enough to admit they hadn't heard of this before. If you don't even know about something, you can't even begin to investigate for yourself and come to an educated choice. I'm glad both MEDMOS and the disability guide have been introducing editors to these issues (in the case of MEDMOS, for 14 years). -- Colin°Talk 08:00, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What would you say, Dodger67, if I asked why you have chosen to wait until now to raise that point, and have chosen to not do it yourself? And the link you gave is [citation needed]. EEng 00:40, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • MoS actually already addresses this. I was having an itch about this at the back of my brain, and went looking so I could scratch it. See MOS:EUPHEMISM, and especially its footnote: Norms vary for expressions concerning disabilities and disabled people. The goal is to express ideas clearly and directly without causing unnecessary offense. Do not assume that plain language is inappropriate. [Footnote: The National Federation of the Blind, for instance, opposes terms such as sightless, in favor of the straightforward blind. Similarly, the same group argues that there is no need to substitute awkward circumlocutions such as people with blindness for the simpler phrase blind people; see "Resolution 93-01", National Federation of the Blind, July 9, 1993, accessed April 26, 2010.] And that's in addition to other material there about not using euphemisms and circumlocutions in writing about diseases, either.

    In short, there is no universal approach to this, so we are not in a position to "legislate" that WP editors must use particular circumlocutions, especially since we already have a guideline largely against using them in the first place. Follow the sources, and prefer what modern sources in the aggregate are doing, without antagonizing other editors if they don't write exactly the way you'd like them to. "Sources" here means all of them, across genres and audiences, including mainstream newspapers. Not just specialized material, which tends to be dominated by activistic hand-wringing about patients' and families' sensitivity, which makes sense given that doctors have a pretty intense and necessarily personal-yet-professional relationships with patients and their families. WP does not, and is just an information repository.

    It's probably okay to change a particular instance in a particular article if the result reads better in that context, and the construction used is genuinely common in reliable, mainstrea sources, and is not pushing a viewpoint (e.g. "people with albinism" instead of "albinos" is okay, but not "the differently abled" in place of "disabled people" or "people with disabilities"). However, if you go about doing this obsessively and programmatically at page after page, you're going to run afoul of WP:MEATBOT and WP:NOT#SOAPBOX, piss off a lot of people, and end up at WP:ANI for a topic-ban, so don't do it.
     — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:31, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You keep attacking this "universal approach" strawman. The euphemism guideline says nothing about "circumlocutions" as you call them. That unnecessarily opinionated language appears in a footnote, citing a long rant in a magazine . We all already know that blind advocacy groups hate people-first, but they also speak only for themselves. Nobody here is threatening to bot-edit articles into one style. Nobody has ever loved "differently abled". Your arguments are just strawmen after strawmen. I don't really get the impression you are reading what anyone here has written, but just want to have a good old rant to display your prejudices, which we already knew at the start. Unwatching. Better things to do. -- Colin°Talk 16:27, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Your argument is shade-throwing after shade-throwing, with the clearly purpose of personally antagonizing another editor instead of sticking to the content under discussion (i.e., what the guideline should say and why). If it does not stop, the next step will be a WP:AE report. Back to the substance: What your argument is missing is that the footnotes of the guideline are part of the guideline, and the advice in it remains the same, whether you like the word "circumlocution" or not, whether the footnote existed or not. It's immaterial whether anyone is unhappy or happy with advocacy groups for the blind; this is a "doctrinal" squabble that has nothing to do with Wikipedia, basically. The fact that the squabble is real-world and long-term is itself evidence against WP picking a side on this wording question. Authoritative voices on the matter – RS – are vociferously contradicting each other. "They speak only for themselves" is true of all opinion sources on this question. Warning all sides away from trying to "sweeping change"-enforce whatever result might come out of this discussion, if it concludes with a clear result at all, is not a straw man; it's simply good advice. And you did not absorb it and apparently have not read the cited guideline (it is not about bot-editing, but about human editing in a bot-like manner. That why it's called MEATBOT not BOT.) PS: I never said you or anyone else here "loved" that phrase, so railing against me for supposedly doing so is an actual straw man. I used the phrase as an excellent example of obviously biased euphemism, counter to an example of person-first usage that has become unusually, almost extremely, well accepted. Most cases are smack in the middle of these two extremes. Cf. Thryddulf's gist: WP is not in a position to advocate specific language because even the RS are not consistent about it, the patient communities of particular conditions don't agree, and the overall shape of preference varies by condition, among other things.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:36, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
PS: The NCDJ style guide you like so much, in its intro, bullet point 4, addresses exactly the kind of "different abled" euphemism as wording to be avoided, exactly as I've suggested. If we're all agreeing that it does in fact represent one extreme, and that best-accepted person-first constructions are the other pole, then what exactly are you arguing about in relation to it, and why?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:42, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am very impressed with this (linked by Colin above): National Center on Disability and Journalism - Disability Language Style Guide. It does recommend person-first as a default, but follows with very good discussions of specific topic areas. I'm not sure how we'd use it exactly, because it's so detailed. Perhaps we could start by just pointing editors to it (at relevant places in MOS/MEDMOS) and then see, after a year or so, how people feel about it and whether we want to encourage its use more explicitly. Please give it a read. EEng 17:13, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    (responding to ping). Thanks for that comment. I've added it to MEDMOS, alongside the existing APA guide. Both are thoughtful guides reflecting the difficulties in choosing good wording. They aren't perfect, but a whole lot better than what MOS:EUPHEMISM cites: a magazine that published two letters from very angry people nearly 30 years ago. -- Colin°Talk 17:45, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Part of what I like about the "Disability Language Style Guide" is that, in the discussion for each phrase or concept, it reviews the AP (not APA) style guide's recommendation. Frankly, I think we should look more to the AP than to the APA.
    I think this conversation would have gone much differently had it been opened as "Let's review how to write about disability", with a link to that guide, instead of featuring person-first from the beginning. EEng 00:12, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Possibly, but it has to be kept in mind that the works you're referring to are in one sense language-reform advocacy pieces, and in another sense prescriptive style guides for contexts that have nothing to do with encyclopedia writing. They do contain some reasonable things, but they're clearly one side of something that's an ongoing real-world dispute even within their specific field. It's like siding with AP Stylebook versus NYT Manual of Style and Usage in American journalism, or Guardian and Observer style guide [sic] versus The Economist Style Guide in British journalism, then on top of that PoV side-taking also declaring that these works which don't relate to our writing needs should make us change our own style guide. (You actually write "I think we should look more to the AP" ....) WP:NOT#NEWS: "Wikipedia is not written in news style." It says that for a reason. It's also not written in "doctors talking to and writing for their suffering patience and their grieving families and being very careful to avoid frivolous malpractice lawsuits" style. We shouldn't have to add that to the policy. The whole point of WP:NOT is "WP isn't any of this short list of things, from which you can intuit that it isn't any of 10,000 other things. It is and only is an encyclopedia."  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:36, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion related to MOS

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) § RfC: Modification of Agatheira for syntactic compliance with linguistic precision guidelines. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 01:03, 1 April 2021 (UTC)Template:Z48[April Fools!][reply]

It makes one's breast swell with pride to read that One of the most comprehensive sections of the Mos, the section on dashes, stretches to more than 14,000 characters and covers a variety of dash-related concerns. EEng 02:28, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
And perhaps "it has been present at least since last April" was part of the joke? It's actually been about 10 years since the section was created in nearly its current very-long form, settling lots of arguments (and maybe provoking a few more). Dicklyon (talk) 01:19, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Here's something truly sad: there have been so many knock-down-drag-out hyphen-dash (or hyphen–dash) controversies over the years that I actually failed to recognize an RfC on whether
    the reign of Eumenes II (188-158 BC)
should be changed to
the reign of Eumenes II (188–158 BC)
as an April 1 joke. Well played, Sdkb – well played indeed. EEng 16:10, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The capitalisation of UK political offices

Under MOS:JOBTITLES, UK political offices (like Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Secretary of State for the Home Department etc.) are rarely capitalised. I'd like to put forward the idea of reversing this presumption.

The first reason for doing this is for consistency with many other sources, like the gov.uk website and the parliament.uk website. While other outlets, like BBC News, generally don't capitalise job titles, I'd certainly argue that Wikipedia is much closer in substance to the first two examples than a news website. The second reason for this is because MOS:JOBTITLES specifically makes use of a distinction between titles and offices, however that distinction isn't really known in the UK; Boris Johnson isn't Prime Minister Johnson or Mr Prime Minister, but The Right Honourable Boris Johnson MP, who also happens to hold the offices of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service and Minister for the Union. While the distinction between titles and offices might work for US Presidents and Senators, for example, it doesn't really work in the UK, as for our articles it means that almost every use of these terms are in lower case. Finally, MOS:JOBTITLES deems offices common nouns, but I'd argue that it is much more nuanced than that. According to Wikipedia's own entry for proper and common nouns, proper nouns refer to a single entity, while common nouns refer to a class of entitites. Surely, you could call the office of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom its own entity? It may have had many holders who all fall into the category of having been Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, but it's still a corporation sole in itself that, in itself, gives its current holder (and only its current holder) certain powers. What do other people think? FollowTheTortoise (talk) 16:55, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@FollowTheTortoise: Hi and thanks for starting a discussion here. I respectfully disagree and oppose the proposed change to MOS:JOBTITLES.
With respect to your first point: Yes, it is true that government offices, in the UK as well as in the United States, generally capitalize titles in most/all usages, as do corporate entities. Their usage need not govern ours, however. Also, while Wikipedia may be different in substance from a news agency, it's much closer to an encyclopedia than to a government website. Notably, the Encyclopedia Britannica lowercases prime minister and other offices (see, e.g., the Britannica article for William Pitt the Younger).
To your second point: I'm not sure I agree. The title–office distinction is, after all, just a distinction between referring to the office itself, or referring to the name of the office (i.e., the title). This is really a form of the use–mention distinction, which of course exists regardless of which regional or national dialect of English (or other language) you're using. Additionally, BBC news articles refer to Bojo as "Prime Minister Boris Johnson", and to other officeholders similarly. And finally, to your point that "for our articles it means that almost every use of these terms are in lower case", first, I don't think this is necessarily correct—the Boris Johnson article contains five titles in the first three sentences, and all are uppercase, as they should be under the existing version of MOS:JOBTITLES. Second, to the extent that it *is* true that MOS:JOBTITLES results in job titles being lowercase more often than not, I think the same is generally true about articles about U.S. offices.
I would add, finally, that I actually disagree with the distinction MOS:JOBTITLES draws between titles and offices. It's difficult to discern a policy rationale for capitalizing the one and lowercasing the other, and, notably, the stylebooks of both news outlets and ordinary encyclopedias lack this distinction and capitalize job titles *only* when before a name. So to the extent that the distinction is inapposite, I think the remedy is to lowercase nearly everything. However, I don't know that I'd go so far as to propose removing the distinction from MOS:JOBTITLES altogether, and I mention my opinion on this subject only to say that I do understand your frustration with the distinction, to a point.
Thanks again for starting the discussion. Wallnot (talk) 17:34, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Wallnot. The first sentence of MOS:CAPS is "Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization." The government sources are self-published primary sources, and I give more weight to secondary sources such as the BBC. I also see no reason to make an unnecessary distinction between the UK and other countries. All the best, Miniapolis 21:23, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It's not necessarily the correct place for this point given the topic is specific to the UK, but manuals of style that I used for years in the US generally eschewed capitalisation where the title was not the full legal title or did not immediately precede the person's name. For example, Jen Psaki is press secretary to the president; Jen Psaki is press secretary to the President of the United States; Press Secretary Jen Psaki works for President Joe Biden. —ATS (talk) 00:54, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
ATS You said what I was going to say. The US style guide (2020 AP Stylebook) I use only capitalizes when the title is directly before a name (not offset by commas). The only minor exception is nobility titles when they serve as an alternate name (e.g. The Duke of York spoke yesterday). I would be curious if British style guides differ, though. Fredlesaltique (talk) 07:16, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Fredlesaltique From what I'm seeing on the BBC's website, they seem to follow the AP rule, more or less. I'm curious which stylebook ATS is referring to that calls for caps for the full legal title — does CMS do that? Wallnot (talk) 14:33, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'd have to look it up, but AP and/or CMOS was all I ever used. —ATS (talk) 16:08, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, ok. FWIW, the most recent CMOS (17th ed.) lowercases titles in all usages, unless before a name, or "in such contexts as a toast or a formal introduction, or when used in direct address" (see 8.19-20). Wallnot (talk) 16:16, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Wallnot: Thanks for looking up the Chicago Manual of Style. I checked the BBC which follows AP usage like you thought BBC Style Guide (under "political titles"), but their treatment of nobility is slightly different. The Guardian just avoids it all: "David Cameron, the prime minister; not prime minister David Cameron or "prime minister Cameron"" But I can only access online stuff, so take my limited, amateur research on British usage with a grain of salt. Fredlesaltique (talk) 00:38, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Fredlesaltique: Thanks for sharing—the Guardian's take is interesting. On the whole, I'm not seeing any major news agency, British or American, that capitalizes job titles in the instances FollowTheTortoise is suggesting we ought to. Not sure what the procedure for closing these discussions is, though I'd definitely like to have some kind of consensus to back up my edits on, e.g., Home Secretary going forward. Wallnot (talk) 15:31, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Wallnot: @ATS: Incidentally the Times mentions that they recently stopped capitalizing prime minister—which makes me think that some British style guides continue to capitalize it. I'm also inclined to trust FollowTheTortoise that British sources treat "prime minister" differently than US sources treat "president," in that it usually doesn't precede the name.
Just to clarify, the question is whether UK government offices should be consistently capitalized? (Also I like to remind myself that at the end of the day the article will still be legible whatever capitalization is there). Fredlesaltique (talk) 00:52, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Fredlesaltique: Yes, the question is whether to capitalize references to these offices in all usages—if the Times used to do that, it was in the minority, even in the UK. I also don't buy FollowTheTortoise's claim about the treatment of job titles in UK as compared to the U.S.—it took me all of five seconds to find multiple examples in British media of prime minister and other job titles used before a name. So if there is some difference between the two countries in the treatment of job titles, that ain't it. The article will certainly be legible, but one could say the same thing about disregarding basically every MOS rule, and, as Miniapolis notes above, the first line of MOS:CAPS is "Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization." I haven't seen a single reason so far that we'd make an exception to that rule just for British offices, as, again, the clear majority of British secondary sources, including encyclopedic and news sources, follow something resembling the MOS:JOBTITLES rule. Wallnot (talk) 01:04, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Fredlesaltique: Thanks for the update. 🙂 —ATS (talk) 15:45, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Already covered by MOS:JOBTITLES; we don't capitalize them except when connected to someone's name ("Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher", "when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister").  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:20, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your feedback, everybody! I think that all I really had to say on the matter was included in my original comment, but it's clear that the consensus is that MOS:JOBTITLES shouldn't be changed. FollowTheTortoise (talk) 09:45, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

RFC: Hyphenating "virtual reality" as an adjective group

Should "virtual reality" when used as an attributive adjective, such as in "virtual reality headset", be hyphenated or unhyphenated? --Masem (t) 06:04, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Background

At a resent move request at Talk:Virtual reality headset#Requested move 24 March 2021, the issue came up that under MOS:HYPHEN, the article should be at "Virtual-reality headset", specifically as A hyphen can help to disambiguate... and Compounds that are hyphenated when used attributively (adjectives before the nouns they qualify.. As noted by the discussion, this style of hyphenating "virtual reality" as an attributive adjective has some support in reliable sources including the Encyclopedia Britannica, but more commonly in the reliable industry sources in computing and video games, the adjective phrase is left without a hyphen, and some of the argument at the move request was about retaining the industry's presentation, which is in contrast to the WP:Specialized-style fallacy. The move request was closed without consensus.

Given how frequently "virtual reality" as an attributive adjective is used on Wikipedia both as article titles and in body, it makes sense to seek an RFC to determine how WP should standardize on the use of the hyphen or not. This RFC would also be expected to affect related phrases like "augmented reality" and "mixed reality" which are both commonly used as attributive adjectives and have the same type of problem with the industry literature that serves as reliable sourcing tending to omit the hyphen. --Masem (t) 06:04, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: The move's non-admin closure has been challenged by three editors already [13] and would have probably proceeded to WP:MR tomorrow if not rescinded, had this RfC not been opened.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:09, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Support (hyphenation: "virtual-reality headset")

  • Support as before. WP needs to take every opportunity to make it easier for non-experts to recognise such word strings. Experts see them every day; we don't. Tony (talk) 07:51, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes. No exceptions for a generic invention. Especially any inventor could, without analysing English, write this. "I was nearly there. Our work had brought to fruition a virtual (virtually a) reality headset". They omit the brackets, the readers have the wrong gist.- Adam37 Talk 15:04, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - If proper punctuation isn't a good enough reason, surely an obvious gain in clarity is. Primergrey (talk) 15:40, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support as with other compounds used as modifiers in front of a noun. Omitting the hyphen has no positive effect for any reader, while including it helps the unfamiliar reader parse the multi-word phrase correctly. English grammar affords the opportunity to make the meaning easier to see for all readers, so why would we write it in a lazy way that's just OK for already-familiar readers, even if that's commonly done in contexts where people are already familiar? Dicklyon (talk) 17:25, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Hyphenating attributive compounds is generally standard English usage, and I'm not convinced that this is an exception. Take, for instance, these articles from the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the BBC, all of which hyphenate the phrase. And this is not just nitpicking. As Adam37 notes above, hyphenation has the potential to reduce ambiguity in some cases. I therefore see no need to depart from the traditional rule. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 22:49, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Searching on the BBC website for virtual-reality headset revealed just two articles with the hyphenated form on the first 100 results. Is the same low frequency apparent on the US sites also? Chumpih. (talk) 01:00, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose (no hyphenation: "virtual reality headset")

  • Oppose It's not widely done outside Wikipedia. While there's no question that a compound adjective should be hyphenated, this is a compound noun used in an adjectival form. Wikipedia appears somewhat atypical in its application of hyphens in this case, including Near Field Communication which is hyphenated on Wikipedia but practically nowhere else on the Internet. Light Emitting Diode gets a similar treatment here, and again it's grammatical 'correctness' versus common practice. Contrast to Passive electronically scanned array, for example. Chumpih. (talk) 22:36, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Actually, it is widely done outside Wikipedia, considering how many such uses are common enough to make it into n-gram stats; the fact that it's more often omitted has been stipulated, and is due largely to nerds writing for nerds; let's not be that. And you're missing the point with "there's no question that a compound adjective should be hyphenated"; I don't know why you say that. What is a compound adjective? There's really no question that a compound noun used as a modifier before another noun should be hyphenated; that's what all the style guides recommend. It's not hard to find books (if you look beyond the specialist VR books, that hyphenate the compound when it's used as a modifier, e.g this one. Dicklyon (talk) 00:22, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    And if you delete the hyphen in that Ngram Viewer query, the usages of "virtual reality" without a hyphen in a compound adjective are a bit more common (pay attention to the higher percentages along the vertical axis). --Coolcaesar (talk) 06:39, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    @Dicklyon:, the n-gram stats is interesting, but is there a decent comparison of the frequency of "virtual reality headset" to "virtual-reality headset" etc? Using the technique Coolcaesar suggested, the n-gram viewer results for the unhyphenated form suggest it's roughly 20x more prevalent than the hyphenated form.
Or to put it another way, results from a search on duck duck go with hyphen, the hyphenated form appears nowhere on the first 2 pages of results (outside of the URLs). Is there good evidence to show the hyphenated form is widely used? Chumpih. (talk) 08:46, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the hyphen is most commonly omitted, as it's most commonly insiders writing for insiders. Just as in other specialties. E.g. the AMA decided that now that every doctor knows what a small-cell carcinoma is, they recommend dropping the hyphen; of course, for the poor guy that thinks he just has a small cancer, this is very misleading. Specialists have their own style; we should write in a way that conveys the meaning to those who don't already know. There is no down side to including the hyphen where it helps. Dicklyon (talk) 18:22, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The "down side" is that the hyphen is atypical. In the case of VR headset, the hyphenated form is seldom used. There may be punctilious grammarians who are becalmed by the inclusion of the hyphen here, but "virtual reality headset" is a common, consumer term. Saying "it's most commonly insiders writing for insiders" looks to be specious, given that the search engine results cites listings on Amazon, etc.
Why would hyphenating this bring additional clarity? Are we certain it won't actually cause confusion in this "general audience"? What evidence is there that the hyphenated form is actually clearer, easier to parse, or more useful?
It's probably not for us to recast and alter common terms when they're the things getting referenced and used. It would be a poor show if some reader of the article were to walk away thinking that the hyphenated form is the correct, common, or preferred representation. Clarity is great, but let's not misinform. Chumpih. (talk) 21:52, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As for your strawman about Passive electronically scanned array, I don't get it. That would never use a hyphen according to standard rules; are you thinking after the -ly adverb? That's never done. See Synthetic-aperture radar where the hyphen is important, in distinguishing a radar using a synthetic aperture from an aperture radar (whatever that might be) that is synthetic. That hyphen is similarly used in less than 10% of sources, but since our style is to write for the general audience that doesn't already know how to parse it, we include it. Dicklyon (talk) 18:28, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. For the same reasons as argued by User:Chumpih. --Coolcaesar (talk) 06:39, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. As above, it appears to be small minority usage in reliable sources (noting that as a tertiary source Britannica is nowadays not preferred). It's already well on its way to being a readily recognisable descriptor, and likely heading toward becoming simply "VR" in the same way that PR is used in "PR manager" (noting incidentally that the full phrase is 'public relations manager', not 'public-relations manager', anyway). It's comparable to Artificial Intelligence in the phrase 'artificial intelligence program', which also is not hyphenated. MapReader (talk) 07:03, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per above arguments noting that the common term, even in consumer/non-specialist usage, is without the hyphen. CapitalSasha ~ talk 23:28, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per above. A hyphen does not help the reader's understanding if the reader is expecting to see something without it; indeed, in such a case, it hinders. Vaticidalprophet 00:58, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    That's nonsense. Dicklyon (talk) 01:37, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. It's less common in general usage (not a specialist term at all), and does nothing to improve clarity, because the term "reality headset" is meaningless, so there is no such thing as a virtual version of a reality headset. In other words, the only way to read "virtual reality headset" is a headset that allows a virtual reality experience, a common term that been established for over two decades. oknazevad (talk) 02:05, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    SMcCandlish already pointed out numerous meaningful uses of "reality headset". And even if it were not meaningul, the hyphen helps the unfamiliar reader to parse and understand the phrase.
    • No, he pointed out other similar terms. None of those use the "reality headset" with no preceding modifier. With out a modifier "reality headset" is useless. In this case the term is a single modifier of a fixed compound term. oknazevad (talk) 00:00, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose for reasons described in the RM. Wikipedia should defer to outside use. To back up to first principles... it is clearly incorrect to "fix" spelling (and sometimes borderline insulting, see people who complain about non-standard name variants) to a standardized form when the actual usage is something that is clearly not the standardized form. That doesn't mean that there's a problem that needs fixing, that just means that language is inconsistent sometimes. So if we accept that spelling can be unusual sometimes, so too can hyphenization rules. I'm not saying that there can't be a default guideline for hyphenization, that's fine. But it needs to be a guideline (not a firm rule) that defers to outside usage, in exactly the same way that "i before e except after c" defers to "weird", "seize", etc. Absolutely any rule in "proper" English usage can be overruled if the actual usage differs. If an editor thinks that all of this non-hyphenated usage in reliable sources is "wrong", that's great, but take it up with them, not on Wikipedia. If and when the usual form within the New York Times, books on virtual reality, etc. starts using the hyphen, then sure, Wikipedia will switch too. Per evidence in the RM, that isn't true currently. SnowFire (talk) 05:29, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    That's a silly strawman. Nobody has suggested that omitting the hyphen is "wrong", or needs to be "fixed". It's not very different from the thousands of other compounds that we hyphenate when used as modifiers, to help the reader. This is a standard affordance of English punctuation, which is widely used in the exact phrase "virtual-reality headset" even, not something we're making up. Just because a lot of writers don't bother with it, mostly assuming that their readers will be familiar enough to not stumble over the ambiguity, doesn't mean we should give up on doing the best job possible for our wider readership. Dicklyon (talk) 19:00, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per Chumpih, and SnowFire. The term is much more widely used without the hyphen. Polyamorph (talk) 08:35, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    We don't generally just copy stylings because they are more widely used. We have our own MOS, and we strive to do the best job for the general reader, who might not be familiar with the term, or how to interpret it. Dicklyon (talk) 18:56, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As you have mentioned already, I disagree. Polyamorph (talk) 21:59, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. This is the more common way to style the term. I know we have our own style guide, but Wikipedia doesn't exist in a vacuum. I don't think anyone would be confused by the lack of hyphen either. -- Calidum 22:07, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral

  • Either is acceptable. Virtual reality is an open compound, and normally you'd hyphenate it when used as an adjective preceding a noun. That is my hyphen-loving personal preference. But this rule is not absolute, and usage matters. One commonly speaks of a real estate agent or a high school student rather than a real-estate agent or a high-school student. When the unhyphenated form is common, it is acceptable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:23, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think anyone argued that omitting the hyphen is "unacceptable". Rather, it's WP style to do what we can to help the reader. I dare say that real estate agent and high school student are familiar to almost all readers, while virtual reality game is much less so; so let's help the readers parse that expression by choosing the more helpful of the acceptable alternatives, as MOS:HYPHEN suggests. Dicklyon (talk) 00:25, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I expect that "real estate agent" and "high school student" are unfamiliar to non-Americans, since those terms aren't used in most of the world. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:59, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Don't worry! Thanks to Hollywood and Netflix, we all know exactly what life in America is like. Johnbod (talk) 17:30, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I suspect you're right. And when I write for an international audience, I include the hyphens, because there's no down side to doing so. But the no-hyphen usage has been so strongly established for those ones in the US that they are listed as examples of exceptions in dictionaries; so at least in articles in US English, we're not going to hyphenate them. The situation is different with virtual-reality games, synthetic-aperture radar, small-cell carcinoma, narrow-gauge railway, etc., where the hyphen is in the minority (as with almost such writing, due to insiders writing for insiders), but is still common. Dicklyon (talk) 18:35, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    What we could take it that as VR becomes more commonplace, then the idea that it will be like a term like "high school student" or "real estate agent" without hyphen in the future. But while most of us (likely) are well aware of VR, its still a relatively new thing, so the arguments here are related to the current state of the state. Perhaps in 5-10 years (presuming this closes as to require hyphens) we can re-evaluate the current usage to see where it stands. (This also relates to ATS's comment below, in that we may not yet be at a point that "virtual reality" is widely used as there's no way to misconstrue it, ala the same way we handle "high school student". --Masem (t) 23:38, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Either per WAID. The pedant (and, to quote Jeff Foxworthy, "I are one") would say the hyphenate is correct. The same pedant could also point out that the term is so ingrained in the lexicon that its meaning cannot be misconstrued ('[virtual reality] headset' v 'virtual [reality headset]'). —ATS (talk) 18:49, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Agreed. But pedantry does not figure in concerns over clarity. Primergrey (talk) 20:00, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting. I always thought that was pedantry's job. 😏 —ATS (talk) 15:46, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Stability RFC

See Wikipedia talk:Stable version to revert to#RFC for a RFC involving RETAIN. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:11, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Removal of "UK" from location field in infoboxes

The last attempt to resolve this issue ended in silence. User:Spy-cicle has insisted that a consensus must be reached here before adding "UK" to the end of location fields, which it is clearly obvious to do. There is no other member state of the United Nations whose location is subject to this same argument. We can see the potential application of political bias from people here - is is obvious that only including one of "England/Scotland/Wales" is as controversial as only including "UK" after a particular city. Why then do we allow the sole inclusion of "England/Scotland/Wales" as opposed to the very fair compromise of having "England/Scotland/Wales, UK"? If an editor were to be suggesting the removal of "England/Scotland/Wales" altogether, that would be rightly controversial. Yet some users are able to maintain that status quo, which suits them, which sees "UK" removed altogether.

We can see that the discussion here ended in absolutely no agreement. Several users in that discussion, including User:GoodDay, User:EEng, User:koavf, User:DeFacto, indicated a clear preference for the inclusion both of "England/Scotland/Wales" as well as "UK". This is clearly a fair compromise, unlike the current situation that sees "UK" completely removed (imagine if we suggested the complete removal of England/Scotland/Wales).

Given that User:Spy-cicle currently has his preferred position (the expunging of "UK" from any article) included as default, this seems like an incredibly unsatisfactory state of affairs. Compromise ought to be reached, and I would be grateful for guidance on this point. Vaze50 (talk) 08:05, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Why no mention of Northern Ireland here? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 08:23, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Martinevans123 A good point, my apologies, I both could and should have referred to NI above - my own oversight. I personally take the same view given by the user below, that if it is in the UK, which NI unambiguously is (and to acknowledge this does not deny the politics that exist around the topic), then "UK" or "United Kingdom" ought to be included. Vaze50 (talk) 08:40, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Vaze50, I support requiring "United Kingdom" to be included as a minimum requirement for each location within the UK - it is the only sovereign state covering this area after all, and is equivalent to US, France, Canada, Australia, China, Japan, etc. Any sub-division, such as E, NI, S or W or county names, etc. should, I think, only be included if they are required for disambiguation and only if there is a local consensus to include them.
The main point of the location data is surely to pinpoint a place within the world in the most efficient way, and the sovereign state is the internationally accepted primary sub-division of the world for that. This fundamental requirement should not be hijacked to push any political agenda. -- DeFacto (talk). 08:31, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Fully agreed with you DeFacto and adding my support for requiring either "United Kingdom" in full, or as a reasonable compromise to that, requiring "UK" in the same way that "U.S." is required for US pages. Vaze50 (talk) 08:42, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Could I also ask where county fits in to this discussion? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 08:48, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Martinevans123, using the principles of efficiency and specificity, I'd say only include the county if it is essential for disambiguation of the location within the UK. -- DeFacto (talk). 09:10, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That makes sense. But very many BLP articles for British people include county, where no disambiguation is needed, and I feel no compelling desire to remove them. I sometimes wish MoS was clearer, as currently there is no specific advice about counties. I've always regarded them as the equivalent of US States, even though there's a big size difference. But I think Vaze50 sees the constituent counties of the UK as the equivalent of the US states, rather than as countries in their own right. Martinevans123 (talk) 09:35, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
To clarify Martinevans123, I do accept that E/S/W/NI are not the equivalent of US states in most respects. In a purely literal sense it is true that they are subdivisions of a sovereign state, but the state of California doesn't have international sports teams, its own 'national anthem' etc. I accept therefore that a reasonable compromise would include both the UK country in question as well as the UK at the end. I do not think it is right or fair that "UK" is the only sovereign state in the world that is airbrushed entirely out of location fields. If I was being totally single-minded about it, I'd recommend the removal of E/S/W/NI, but I accept that this would not be met with general approval. I think the most reasonable compromise would be a practice of: City/Town/Village, County (only when necessary, large cities e.g. London, Birmingham, Glasgow clearly don't benefit from having a county attached), E/S/W/NI, UK. In this way, we include the constituent country of the UK (and I am happy to accept that removing them would be unacceptable to some) AND the sovereign state of the UK, reversing the current situation where the UK is the only sovereign state not allowed to be on location fields in infoboxes. Does that sound reasonable? Vaze50 (talk) 10:24, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds reasonable to me. But I'm aware there are probably as many editor preferences over this as there are possible combinations. By the way most of the largest cities in England can't have a county attached as they are Unitary Authorities. Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:53, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Vaze50: You've only pinged editors who appear to have agreed with your position in the earlier discussion. It's only right then that everyone should be invited back (if you'd just mentioned them by name above, that would be different). JG66 (talk) 08:48, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
JG66 By all means, the more the merrier. I didn't include every single editor who agreed with my position in that earlier discussion, only a number, I also included one who did not, but the bigger the discussion the better - will hopefully mean an agreement can be reached. Vaze50 (talk) 10:17, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Vaze50, that's good to hear. So if you could now ping all the others, it would be much appreciated. You say you included an editor who did not agree with your position, but I'm referring to your statement: "Several users in that discussion, including User:GoodDay, User:EEng, User:koavf, User:DeFacto, indicated a clear preference for the inclusion both of "England/Scotland/Wales" as well as "UK". This is clearly a fair compromise ... [my emphasis]." Many thanks, JG66 (talk) 14:14, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • UK or United Kingdom is generally excessive if the country is already stated. Places would generally be Town, County, Country — such as Blackpool, Lancashire, England. Adding UK would be excessive — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 09:50, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
GhostInTheMachine, in the international context though (and remember the audience of this work is wider than just the UK), "England" is not equivalent to a sovereign state or country, and that it is only the sovereign state (i.e. United Kingdom) that is internationally recognised. The addition of "England", a sub-division of a sovereign state is inefficient and totally unnecessary to identify the location precisely and concisely. To locate Blackpool precisely, all that we need is "Blackpool, United Kingdom" (or "Blackpool, Lancashire, United Kingdom" if there is another "Blackpool" in the UK which it might be mistaken for), so why complicate and confuse infobox contents with the clutter of totally superfluous and redundant bloat? -- DeFacto (talk). 10:05, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
DeFacto, that is not entirely correct to claim that "in the international world England does not have the status of a country." That really only applies to diplomatic and other official relations between the states and their governments. In other settings, England and the other UK countries most certainly are considered as countries, not only domestically but internationally as well. In international trade/commerce, for example: imports are very commonly labeled "product of England" or "product of Scotland" without any mention of UK. Another example, when sending mail to, say, somewhere in England, internationally, there's no requirement to write "UK" - writing England for the country is all that's needed. That is not the case with either US states or Canadian Provinces, even when mailing between Canada and the states, they require on a separate line below everything else to be written either 'Canada' or 'USA' (and even after both countries coordinated their state/province abbreviations so that no state or province used the same two letters as any state or province in the othercountry). Sorry for the long winded reply. Just pointing out that there is a difference that can be objectively quantified that is unique to the UK cases. Firejuggler86 (talk) 07:23, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
GhostInTheMachine I respectfully disagree with you that adding UK or United Kingdom is excessive. The UK's status is an unusual one, often referred to as you know as "a country of countries". Personally I would favour the approach recommended by DeFacto, in that "Blackpool, United Kingdom/Blackpool, Lancashire, United Kingdom" would be easily sufficient. However, recognising the rather unusual situation of the UK, I think "Blackpool, England, UK" or "Blackpool, Lancashire, England, UK" is not excessive, but rather a perfectly reasonable compromise. As it currently stands, the UK is the only sovereign state that is not included in the location field, and this does not seem reasonable or fair. One way or the other, I think the case for the inclusion of "United Kingdom" (or shortened to UK for the sake of space, which is reasonable) is overwhelming. Does that sound reasonable to you? Vaze50 (talk) 10:20, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Not the best example folks, as Blackpool is no longer in Lancashire. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:22, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps I am missing something but aren't England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland countries? Which makes them equivalent to Australia, US, Canada, Russia, etc. The UK would be more equivalent to something like the old Soviet bloc (ie a group of countries).
In any case, we only need to give enough information to the reader so that they have a reasonable chance of knowing where it is. Readers from the other side of the world should not be expected to know where all the shires are in the UK (I'm Australian and I certainly don't know many UK shires and I wouldn't expect most Asian or American readers to know them). But most of these same readers should be comfortable with just the country, even if they think it is a far away, exotic, country. Adding 'UK' just makes it more verbose.  Stepho  talk  10:34, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Stepho-wrs England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are not the equivalent of Australia, Canada etc., because they belong within a single unitary sovereign state, the UK. What you're suggesting would be more like adding "European Union" to the end of locations (of course the UK is no longer in the EU so that wouldn't apply here, but I hope you understand the point). It's because England etc. aren't the equivalent of Australia, Canada etc., that this issue arises. Vaze50 (talk) 11:44, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm still confused. I look at the England, Scotland and Wales pages and they all say "XXX is a country that is part of the United Kingdom" (my emphasis). If Scotland (for example) is a country then it is equivalent to Australia, which is also a country. It is also equivalent to France, even though France is also a part of the EU. However, the Northern Ireland page doesn't say that it is a country.
Just in case my pinion was misread, I'm not suggesting we add something, I'm suggesting that we stop at the country level because our readers know what a country is, most of them know those countries in particular and have got the point by then without more verbiage. The same way that we don't say France, EU.  Stepho  talk  12:45, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Stepho-wrs, Australia, Canada and France are so-called "sovereign states", and there is a list of all of them here, and that means they have sovereignty over a given geographical area and international recognition for that. You'll notice that neither England, Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales is in that list, that's because they are not recognised internationally as independent states. The sovereign state that covers them, and so is equivalent to Australia, Canada and France is the United Kingdom, which is in that list. Using "England" as a 'country' is similar to using sub-parts of Australia such as "Victoria" and "Tasmania", or "Saskatchewan" or "Manitoba" from Canada. -- DeFacto (talk). 13:25, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Stepho-wrs I understand where you're coming from, and I would agree that adding "EU" at the end of, say, "Paris, France" would be unnecessary. However the EU is a supranational organisation, and the UK is a sovereign state - like France. Indeed it is exactly because France (the sovereign state that Paris is located within) is included after Paris that I think surely somewhere like London ought to have the UK added after it. To put it more simply, London is the capital city of both England and the UK. It seems bizarre to me that within a location field we can have "London, England" without controversy but not either "London, UK" or "London, England, UK". I accept that it can be a bit confusing when you see on the article that "England is a country", however there is no government of England for instance, which is a pretty basic requirement for a country. There is a UK Government instead, because the UK is the sovereign state. It is on that basis that I strongly recommend the inclusion of "UK" within location fields on relevant infoboxes - does that make sense? Vaze50 (talk) 14:10, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I acknowledge that England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are not sovereign states. But I find it very hard to accept that England, Scotland and Wales are not countries - at least according to WP's own articles, the Oxford, Cambridge and Merriam-Webster dictionaries. But whether or not they are sovereign states is irrelevant. They are countries that are known around the world in their own right. Adding 'UK' is therefore not necessary and only adds clutter.  Stepho  talk  04:08, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Words can have multiple definitions and meanings. There are a variety of places that are known in their own right (eg. London), but consistency is useful to a reader, and so giving locations in a consistent pattern is also useful, rather than being unnecessary or clutter. CMD (talk) 04:23, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Stopping at the country level is the best way to specify the location of a place. England is a country, so towns and villages in England would be specified as being located in England. The reference to "sovereign states" is not relevant to locations — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 11:08, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
GhostInTheMachine Would you accept that E/S/W/NI are not typical countries given their status, and are not the direct equivalents of, say, France or Germany? As such, is it not fair to include BOTH E/S/W/NI as well as UK, so that this encyclopaedia is not taking a potentially political stance of removing the country that E/S/W/NI are within? Vaze50 (talk) 13:48, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
GhostInTheMachine, England isn't a country recognised by the UN, it is a constituent part of the UK - and the UK is recognised, and indeed is a founder member of the UN. All places in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales can rightly be addressed as being in the country of the United Kingdom, without the need to mention which of the constituent countries they are also in. The sub-country is irrelevant as far as the location of a UK place is concerned. Also, amongst those that do not fully understand the structure of the UK, "England" is often erroneously used when the "United Kingdom" is meant, which could be considered offensive by British people, especially those from one of the other three constituent countries. All in all, "UK" alone is the safest bet, if we are to avoid "England, UK", "Northern Ireland, UK", "Scotland. UK" and "Wales, UK".
  • Oppose use of UK. Adding UK is both superfluous and redundant. If Americans want to say "England, UK" in articles about non-British subjects – fine. But, if the article is within the remit of Template:Use British English, then British convention must apply and we use county first and then country to clarify – never UK. For example, Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire. However, an overseas reader might not know where Oxfordshire is so we're happy with Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, England. In fact, removal of the country would be downright insulting to many, probably most, British citizens. No Great Shaker (talk) 10:39, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No Great Shaker, what's your logic for requiring the inclusion the superfluous sub-division of the sovereign country - which probably isn't even fully understood within the UK - and excluding the name of the sovereign country itself - which is the only name recognised at the international level? -- DeFacto (talk). 10:48, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see what it is that you fail to understand. British people do not use UK. They use their country. A Scottish person will say they come from Aberdeen, for example. If someone asks where Aberdeen is, they will say Scotland, never UK (okay, they might say Britain depending on the situation). UK is not a country, it is a state which consists of four individual countries. And please don't assume that British people do not understand living in the UK and its component countries. No Great Shaker (talk) 10:57, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm just glad no-one has mentioned the Isle of Man yet. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:02, 10 April 2021 (UTC) [reply]
Ha! Or the Channel Islands. No Great Shaker (talk) 11:11, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Also, you say UK is the only name recognised internationally? What about sport, for example? I can't think of one international team that is called UK (tell me if there is one). No Great Shaker (talk) 11:11, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No Great Shaker I would dispute the point you make in your final paragraph - "British people do not use UK...they use their country". The UK is the correct term for the country, it is a unitary sovereign state, a founding member state of the United Nations, and is therefore, I would suggest, very reasonable to include on this basis. The logic you apply here would suggest that we should also remove "U.S." from the location field of appropriate boxes and replace with "America" - after all, very few Americans would say they come from "the U.S." over simply saying "America". However, the U.S. is the technically correct term, and as this is intended to be an encyclopaedia, I don't agree that we should apply an arbitrary approach based on what some people might or might not say. On that basis, I think the inclusion of "UK" after E/S/W/NI is perfectly reasonable as a compromise. I am certainly not suggesting throwing out E/S/W/NI. I don't agree that identifying the sovereign state of a location (when this is done in all other cases) is superfluous. Vaze50 (talk) 11:44, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Vaze50, UK is not a country, that is the point. The countries are England, Scotland, Wales and NI. The UK is a political entity – a sovereign state, if you like. It does not follow that British convention should apply to the US and I would oppose any proposal to alter American convention. Also, per the points made below, could you please fromally define your proposal somewhere above? Thanks. No Great Shaker (talk) 13:53, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No Great Shaker I'm sorry but I strongly disagree with your assessment above - there are a huge number of "lists of countries" on this encyclopaedia, as there are many different criteria by which one could list a country, and in the overwhelming majority it is the United Kingdom that is referred to in these lists, not E/S/W/NI. Whilst it is true that E/S/W/NI are referred to as countries in many respects, this doesn't change the fact that the UK is itself also a country. The phrase "country of countries" has been employed outside of this website to describe the UK, but even if we stick to this website alone, the fact that the vast majority of "lists of countries" articles include the UK (not E/S/W/NI) I think provide a suitable basis for disagreeing with your comments there.
My proposal is to add UK to all infobox location fields where the location is within the UK, as simple as that. I certainly do not propose to remove E/S/W/NI - to be frank with you, I would be happy to see them removed and replaced with United Kingdom, but I fully recognise that compromise is required and it wouldn't be fair to try to impose that on articles when clearly the status of countries within the UK is complex at best. Therefore I think the most suitable (and informative) compromise is to include simply "UK" wherever E/S/W/NI is used. My reasons for doing so is that all other sovereign states are referred to within the relevant location fields, and it would seem to be unfair to be prioritising the use of E/S/W/NI over UK - as a fair compromise, I think both should be included, and I cite the example of Derry/Londonderry as where, on this website, there has been a recognition of similar. I hope I've made that clear, but please let me know if I can clarify further. Vaze50 (talk) 12:02, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep/add UK, this is an international encyclopaedia read by many who will not know what is or isn't part of the UK. Removing it is removing helpful information for readers for no benefit. Don't particularly see much difference as to whether United Kingdom is spelt out or UK is used for space reasons. Responses against the removal of Eng/Sco/Wal/NI seem misplaced, that doesn't appear to be proposed. CMD (talk) 10:46, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe the proposal needs to be clearly defined. The individual countries of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are known globally and the addition of UK is superfluous. However, you may have a point about the Isle of Man, Guernsey, Jersey, etc. No Great Shaker (talk) 11:15, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
They are known globally, but equally the states of New York and California are known globally, and yet they are included along with "U.S." in the equivalent infoboxes. Whilst it's true that a US state and a UK country are not exactly the same thing, they are both subdivisions of a larger sovereign state, and it would I think be appropriate and useful to include, as well as a fair compromise. At the moment, including only E/S/W/NI feels like a politically biased outcome, unintended or otherwise, whereas to include both is a reasonable compromise. Think the Derry/Londonderry debate - strong feelings about both, and so both are used. It makes the articles longer than they would otherwise be, but it is a fair compromise for a potentially sensitive issue. Vaze50 (talk) 11:45, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly. They are not the same thing. England is a country, California is a state, British and American conventions are different. It may be an American convention to always say "London, England, UK" but it is not a British convention and articles about British subjects must comply with Use British English. "England, UK" is absolutely not part of British English. No Great Shaker (talk) 13:53, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No Great Shaker You have asserted that it is "not part of British English" and "not a British convention" but would you please be able to point me to where the guidance is on this website that British English dictates UK ought not to be added after England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland? I have gone through it and have not been able to find any advice one way or the other. If that is the case, it would appear to be assertion, rather than guidance, and there would be no compromise with British English to include the UK. Indeed the fact that the British English article begins by referencing the United Kingdom first and foremost, I think that rather demonstrates the point that UK would be worth adding to these location fields! Vaze50 (talk) 14:20, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Also a strong citation needed for "known globally". The amount of times I have had to explain what Northern Ireland is... CMD (talk) 02:11, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Bit of a side question, but: I note that we do not add “EU” to locations in France, Germany, etc. Is there a parallel? Blueboar (talk) 11:51, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don’t see that as a parallel. Parallels might be “Dogsville, California, USA” or “Oompahberg, Bavaria, Germany” MapReader (talk) 12:03, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Blueboar, no, there is no parallel there. The EU is not a sovereign state, it is a trading bloc of member states, each of which is an independent sovereign state. On the other hand, the United Kingdom is a sovereign state which comprises four, non-sovereign, constituent countries. -- DeFacto (talk). 13:32, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Blueboar I would like to emphasise the point made above by both MapReader and DeFacto - the EU not only isn't a sovereign state but doesn't claim to be, it is a supranational organisation, which only sovereign states can join. Indeed the very fact that it was the UK that was a member of the EU until recently, rather than England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland being members separately, demonstrates why it is the UK that is the country those four are located in, and why I and others here believe it ought to be included within location fields in infoboxes, do you think that is fair? Vaze50 (talk) 14:14, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep/add UK, obviously. Per arguments above. Johnbod (talk) 13:01, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Please explain what is obvious about it. No Great Shaker (talk) 13:53, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • "England, UK" is an abomination. There are various laboured arguments above about the status of the United Kingdom as a "sovereign state" (indeed, only recently having regained its sovereignty back from the EU according to one popular opinion), but we are talking about explaining where somewhere is. None of the four constituent nations of the UK is obscure, and none is ambiguous, so "Scotland" is sufficient to identify where something is. Geography is not just about "sovereign nations": there are many cases, such as remote offshore bits of France, where giving the "sovereign nation" (i.e. "France", for an island in the Pacific) is quite misleading. Imaginatorium (talk) 19:07, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Imaginatorium "Abomination" is a bit strong I think, considering England is unambiguously within the UK! The cities of London or Edinburgh are not obscure, and are not ambiguous, why therefore isn't "London" or "Edinburgh" sufficient to identify the birth/death place of somebody? The reason "England/Scotland" are added (but not UK, the sovereign nation these cities are located) seems to be political, frankly! Offshore areas are less of a problem for the UK - Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories are not technically within the UK, so the issue simply does not arise. Vaze50 (talk) 21:31, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep UK. If it is necessary to include U.S., Canada and Australia inside infoboxes (see Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau and Scott Morrison), why shouldn't UK be included? -- Calidum 19:24, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Unnecessary Infoboxes are supposed to convey "key" information "at a glance". The country (e.g. England, Scotland) is more than sufficient for the reader to understand the location. That's all the infobox is for. No need to specify UK in thousands or tens of thousands of articles, that is pedantic (overly concerned with minute details or formalisms).
MB Why in that case do we even add England/Scotland/Wales etc.? Surely "London" would be sufficient enough (for example)? But every other infobox includes city/town etc., followed by country - England/Scotland/Wales/Northern Ireland are not ordinary countries, they are within a wider sovereign state, the UK. It only seems fair to me that both are included, and we are hardly crowding the infobox by adding two letters, are we? Vaze50 (talk) 21:33, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Don't remove. No need to reinforce systemic boas by engaging in special pleading. Only the UK is a sovereign country. oknazevad (talk) 21:41, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • "England, UK" is just ridiculous. Use either, not both. Readers of English know what both mean. It's time not to clutter our text—especially in infoboxes—with superflous divisions/subdivisions/super-categories. Same for the ridiculous "New York, New York". Same for "Chicago, Illinois" et al.: when well-known, we can dispense with using WP like a postal envelope. Tony (talk) 01:59, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep UK (and US, etc.) for consistency and because it may be a skewed (perhaps Western or developed-country) perspective to assume that all Wikipedia readers, including those in Africa and Asia, know that England is part of the UK. Indeed, it is not an uncommon misconception for “England” to be used to refer to the whole of the UK (and “Holland” for the Netherlands). Avoiding ambiguity is to be preferred for an encyclopedia. Also, if some sovereign nations are omitted, there will inevitably be further discussions about which other cities or regions are so well-known that their sovereign nations can also be omitted (Paris? Kuala Lumpur? Rabat? Rio de Janeiro?) — SGconlaw (talk) 06:33, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep UK where it is and do not remove. Only the UK is the internationally recognised state, if it's been included this is likely for some reason and other editors should not WP:POINTedly try to remove it. FOARP (talk) 08:40, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It’s not quite so simple... Margaret Thatcher once quipped that when she attended international conferences, the country she represented depended on who she needed to speak with. If she needed to speak with Ronald Reagan, she would ask to be seated as “United Kingdom”... if she wanted to speak with Mubarak of Egypt, she would ask to be seated as “England”... if she wanted to speak to the President of Greece, she would ask to be seated as “Great Britain”... and if she wanted to speak to someone from Angola she could ask for the seating to be in French, so she could be from “Angleterre”. Blueboar (talk) 11:14, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking § Linking non-major countries

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking § Linking non-major countries. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 21:28, 5 April 2021 (UTC)Template:Z48[reply]

Contractions of "cannot"

As I said before, contractions are to be avoided in formal writing. However, I was going to say that cannot is usually one word, though "can not" does exist. 68.197.54.51 (talk) 15:04, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what your point is. But before we go further: can not and cannot are different. EEng 18:22, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In what way are they different? Other than the obvious, two words/one word, space/no space. Is can not not just a nonstandard and/or archaic form of cannot? More specifically: are there any cases where 'can not' would be required and 'cannot' would be improper? Firejuggler86 (talk) 23:57, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No, can not is not just a nonstandard and/or archaic form of cannot. They mean completely different things:
  • "I cannot X" means I am incapable of doing X, or in some way prevented from doing X.
  • "I can not X" means I am capable of not doing X if I so choose; for example: "You say I must do X, but the fact is that, if I wish, I can not do X".
You cannot change can not to cannot, or vice versa, in these examples because to do so would completely change the meaning. Assuming that you do not feel that you cannot believe me about this, then you can believe me about it or you can not believe me about it. EEng 01:40, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What EEng says makes perfect sense, and I really wish it were a widely recognised distinction. But it is not. Most sources on the web either say the two terms are interchangeable, or that "can not" is more emphatic, or that "can not" should only be used in constructions like "You can not only do this, but also do that". See, for example, [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], and [22]. These aren't all fantastic sources, but they show that EEng's view is not widely held. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 14:21, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well explained. Blueboar (talk) 01:55, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • "She cannae take much more o' it Captain!" GirthSummit (blether) 16:03, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • Perhaps more usefully : Fowler's Modern English Usage says that 'cannot' is the normal construction, but that can not is sometimes used. I agree with EEng that 'can not' can be used with a different meaning, as he has set out. Personally, I'd probably reword in such a situation to avoid potential ambiguity, eg 'you can choose not to' or similar. GirthSummit (blether) 16:08, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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