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Welcome to the MOS pit


    Style discussions elsewhere

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

    Current

    (newest on top)

    Capitalization-specific:

    This section is an excerpt from Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters § Current.[edit]

    Move requests:

    Other discussions:

    Pretty stale but not "concluded":

    Concluded

    Extended content
    This section is an excerpt from Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters § Concluded.[edit]
    Capitalization-specific:
    2023
    2022
    2021

    Note about quotation marks

    A note about the use of curly quotation marks reads as thus:

    Curly quotation marks and apostrophes are deprecated on the English Wikipedia because:

    • Consistency keeps searches predictable. Though most browsers treat curly and straight quotation marks interchangeably, Internet Explorer does not (as of 2022), so using the browser's find function to search a page for Alzheimer's disease will fail to find Alzheimer’s disease and vice versa.
    • Straight quotation marks and apostrophes are easier to type reliably on most platforms.

    Internet Explorer has been deprecated, so the first point is moot, unless we find another major browser that does distinguish the two sets of quotation marks. What should we do about this argument?

    Note: I'm not advocating the revocation of this rule. --ItMarki (talk) 16:52, 5 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    @ItMarki: Is it the case that all browsers now require ticking a "Match Diacritics" box (or similar) in order to distinguish the different kinds of quotation marks? 0DF (talk) 03:14, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Pretty much nothing can be true of "all browsers" when it comes to their interface controls, because they're made by completely different software companies (or free-software dev teams).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:06, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    IE represents 0.4% of desktop browser usage—obviously it's less when factoring in mobile, but arguably the find function is really most relevant for desktop users anyway. I actually made the same change approximately a year ago, when it was about 1%. That change was reverted on the basis that 1% may represent millions of users and the bug may happen in other browsers as well, but I think neither of those make much sense. Millions of people are not using IE's find function in searches that include quotes or apostrophes, and I have been unable to find another browser that behaves the same way. (I prefer to see positive evidence for supposedly similar browsers rather than mere possibility.)
    At this point the overwhelming practical concern is that curly quotes are hard to type. I think it is sensible to cut the search rationale. — HTGS (talk) 01:53, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Chrome suffers from the opposite problem – it's not possible to restrict a search to either straight or curly apostrophes/quotation marks, behaviour that makes targeted editing of MoS compliance impossible. Keeping the current practice (not having curlies) makes that easier. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:14, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Not "impossible", since wikEd and various other tools provide better in-text search functions. (I use one all the time, though I honestly am not certain where it came from; it's not wikEd nor one of the other Gadgets or Betas from what I can tell, and I'm not seeing it in my common.js, but it provides an hourglass search icon at the righthand side of the toolbar when in editing view, and that search function distinguishes between these glyphs. Anyone know what this is?)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:48, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Michael Bednarek: I’m not sure I understand why Chrome’s function changes much? But in any case, I can’t see that the function of a functionally-dead browser matters much. Nobody uses IE; can we just cut that first bullet? — HTGS (talk) 04:22, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I would not object to rephrasing that note to "Though most browsers treat curly and straight quotation marks interchangeably, Internet Explorer does not (as of 2022)some do not, so using …". -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:35, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I cannot find any other browsers that function the same way, do you know of any? At this point it should be straightforward to just cut the whole thing, especially as IE is now rounded down to 0.0% of all traffic (desktop and mobile). — HTGS (talk) 04:50, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Ok, it's a bit more complicated. As I wrote above, Chrome has no way of searching for straight or curly signs specifically. That makes searches for non-compliant signs impossible. This is admittedly not a concern for readers. However, as long as we have the rule MOS:STRAIGHT, that's a concern for editors. I don't know whether this needs to be mentioned in that footnote. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 05:41, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    "That makes searches for non-compliant signs impossible.". Nah. In the standard editing tools (if you haven't replaced them with WikEd or VisualEditor), if you click "Advanced" in the top toolbar, you get a secondary toolbar right below it, and the far-right of that has a magnifying-glass search icon. This search feature is glyph-specific (and also has a regexp feature). WikEd itself, I'm told, has similar features. So, the only ones left out are VisualEditor users.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:02, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Visual Editor can and does distinguish, and a simple [“”] in regex will find both characters, while avoiding ".
    Unless anyone objects with good reason, I am going to just remove that bullet point about IE, per ItMarki's original comment. — HTGS (talk) 22:26, 23 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Hyphenating racial identities, again

    Back in 2021, there was a discussion about hyphenating ethno-racial descriptors like "Asian American". There was never a formal closure, but it might reasonably be said that there was either no consensus or consensus to recommend against hyphenation. In June 2022, that guidance was added to MOS:HYPHEN. As far as I can tell, it's been in the MOS ever since.

    Given the uncertainty of consensus on this point, I'd appreciate some input on whether the current guideline is supported by consensus and common practice. I'm prompted by some recent page moves conducted by Iljhgtn, whose thoughts I'd like to hear. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 13:49, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    The standard "rule" I follow is no hyphen when used as a noun, hyphen when used as an adjective: thus eg, 'Asian Americans are . . .' and 'the Asian-American history movement . . .'. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:56, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    i came across that "rule" where it is noun vs.adj only according to grammar blog site grammarist, the article can be read here. Iljhgtn (talk) 14:02, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, it's pretty standard grammar that compound adjectives always get a hyphen because they are meant to be read as one thing, not two things, modifying/describing something else . Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:08, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm surprised grammarist hasn't been evaluated at WP:RSP yet. ~TPW 14:09, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    good side point, grammarist sure should be on there. Iljhgtn (talk) 14:18, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    looking at the MOS i concluded that the african american should not be hyphenated. also, seems to be the decision of the APA in 2019 and other guidelines, as well as nearly all african american museums do not use it see here, here, here, here, here, here and literally every single other one that I can find. Iljhgtn (talk) 14:00, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    When it is part of a name, you are not going to use a hyphen. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:05, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    all of those museums also officially give their blessing to the no hyphen more generally, from what I can find, see the educator resource from the National Museum of African American History & Culture. Iljhgtn (talk) 14:23, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Iljhgtn changed more than a dozen article names, and I think such changes should have been discussed. Since our normal, established style is with hyphen (when used as a modifier), those changes only cause inconsistencies. Rsk6400 (talk) 15:37, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    @Rsk6400: That's why we have Wikipedia:Requested moves#Requests to revert undiscussed moves.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:45, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    there was already a inconsistency, it should be corrected on all articles, but i am not going to edit any others right now. Iljhgtn (talk) 15:58, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Why would we need to go over this yet again? If it's a noun phrase, don't hyphenate: She is an Asian American. If it's a compound adjective, hyphenate: an Asian-American social organization. There's nothing even particular to ethnicities about this; it's how we handle writing in general: Carom billiards uses two cue balls.; a complex cue-ball path.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:04, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    See also the middle entry in this move log. Rsk6400 (talk) 18:18, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    At least it seems American English does not agree with that. all of the African American museums, as well as the American grammar styles APA, MLA, etc., all appear to drop the hyphen for ethnicities at least post-2019 or thereabouts. We may want to distinguish this with an ENGVAR component then too. Iljhgtn (talk) 18:19, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, MoS isn't determined by the APA or MLA house styles (I'm hard-pressed to think of anything at all that we've adopted from either of them in particular), much less those of some particular museums. Two book examples isn't "all". Garner's Modern English Usage (one of the style guides MoS is actually based on) is entirely clear about the noun phrases versus compound adjectives split and makes no special exception for ethno-cultural terms. Same with The Penguin Handbook, the main style guide used for university-level writing in the US. The Chicago Manual of Style (another MoS-formative style guide) does now prefer the unhyphenated form for such terms as a special class, but provides no rationale for why. They say elsewhere that they have switched to a "hyphen minimizing" style, so that is probably the explanation. (MoS, meanwhile, has not; given the breadth of our readership, the meaning precision provided by some hyphens that Chicago now considers optional is more important than the expediency Chicago seems to be moving toward, at least on this particular point.) So we have a conflict in the sources that MoS is actually built from, but no clear reason to prefer Chicago style over Garner style, expecially since the former is inconsistent with all the rest of our practice, and produces reader-confusing constructions.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:45, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    SMcCandlish, sorry to be bringing it up again. Your analysis is at odds with the current guideline. My understanding of the mixed state of external style guideline advice and of the best choice for the MOS matches yours. I'm hoping we walk away with either a clear endorsement of the current guideline or a removal of it. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 18:52, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The key question to me is, what could we possibly gain from dropping these hyphens? It produces confusing constructions, and is generally incompatible with our entire approach to compound modifiers, but to what end? A "consistency" with some subset of external writers that some editors prefer? Why would we trade actual internal consistency for a half-assed and biased pseudo-consistency with off-site interests, at the expense of clarity to boot? I just don't see a good rationale for doing this. It would make no objective improvement to the encyclopedia, only satisfy a couple of activistic interests who keep trying to conform our style guide to those of organizations they are personally alinged with for socio-political reasons.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:59, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree with most of that, and my disagreement—mainly about the motives of those advocating for the hyphen drop—isn't particularly important. Since we both think the current guideline is unhelpful, why not keep discussing it? There's a fresh multi-page move discussion in which a "per MOS:HYPHEN" argument is likely to win the day, I'm thinking this is the time to question whether the current guideline has enough support to stick around (or if it ever did). Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 20:04, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The poorly written "magical exception" for ethno-national terms that someone injected in there without a clear consensus has been removed by someone else already. I tracked it to this edit by Caorongjin who says it was their "2nd attempt", so it must have been reverted previously (it was, by Imaginatorium). Cites this archive thread as their rationale for adding this "rule", but that discussion did not come to a consensus in favor of the idea. Four editors favored retaining the hyphen on various grounds ranging from clarity and consistency, to opposition to instruction creep. The supporters of the change were also four, on arguments that range from "a trend" in other style guides (ones with almost no impact on MoS, actually) of dropping the hyphen, a suggestion that the hyphen somehow suggests a bias, a strange claim that "we could definitely use the consistency" when this would just lead to obvious inconsistency with all other compound modifiers, and in one case no rationale but the common-style fallacy. The opener of the question did not take a position on it, and two other editors also commented without taking a clear side. That's hardly a consensus to change long-standing consistent treatment of these modifiers, in ways that would affect the content of tens of thousands of articles and titles of at least several hundred (and the fact that it was in there for over a year without having any actual effect on our content suggests there is no community appetite for it at all). There's yet another whiff of misusing Wikipedia for "culture warrior" language-change-advocacy activities about this.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:58, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    First, thank you for tagging me, as I would not have known this conversation was going on otherwise. This talk page is really hard to follow, tbh. Having said that, I'd appreciate it if you do not dismiss my changes as "magical". I have tried to be clear of intentions and engage in discussion as best as I could; and, as you have noted, I have documented in this (unwieldy) talk page the two times I made a change to the article page. The "2nd attempt", as I described it, was meant to convey that it was taking @Imaginatorium's comments into consideration; I was not intending to convey I was edit warring or anything of that sort.
    It is inaccurate to describe dehyphenation as a common-style fallacy, which, as described in that essay, is "flawed reasoning that if a particular typographic stylization turns up commonly in newspapers, blogs, and other popular publications with a less formal register of English usage than the precise language of encyclopedic writing" that is "newsy or bloggy stylization." If this is the case, you are calling MLA, APA, and CMOS popular style guides that are newsy or bloggy (I suppose that can be applied to AP, if you stretch it).
    It is also inaccurate to say the previous discussion had 4 oppose and 4 support. Perhaps they can speak for themselves, but the supports seem to include @Bagumba, @Kokopelli7309, @Jurisdicta, @Chumpih, @Almaty, and @Caorongjin (myself). It was also suggested by @Andrewa that my first attempt was a good consensus, and suggested a second attempt. So is that not 6 or 7 who voted in support?
    As I see it:
    • The main argument against dehyphenation is English grammar has different rules for adjectival or nominative uses. True… to an extent. English is a living language, making the grammar an evolving set of rules. English grammar has pluralization rules around pronouns as well; but now due to changing arguments around gender identity, there is the use of the singular they. And the (growing) academic consensus is to dehyphenate ethnic descriptors, due to a large extent to the century plus problem of hyphenated American.
    • The main argument in support of dropping the hyphen is around WP:COMMONNAME, both of organizations and of how all of these subjects are discussed in the majority of English-language sources, especially academic sources. This latter point is partly due to the increasing changes in styleguides, academic and otherwise, to attend to these differences; but the dehyphenated forms also predate these changes.
    —Caorongjin 💬 08:10, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    right, all the style guides, as well as all institutions (nearly all) that use the phrase "African American" in particular, are dropping the hyphen. this is not a case of "righting great wrongs", but is just wikipedia catching up to the conventions and norms related to the hyphen being dropped in african american.
    though honestly, i do not care strongly either way, and will get back to editing other things. this conversation itself is getting unwieldy.  Iljhgtn (talk) 11:06, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Microsoft grammar checking now also marks as an error "African-American" too. with a double underline and something to be corrected for. just hope that we can at least add in to the MOS that it is wrong or incorrect sometimes, and make that distinction, and not leave it in all cases, even though it is only on wikipedia and no where else that it will remain.. for whatever reason we want to retain it here.. Iljhgtn (talk) 11:14, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Two or three books is not "all". And WP doesn't care what Microsoft thinks is proper writing; their house style is not our house style (nor does a double underline in Word indicate an "error", but rather somoething their software suggests you might want to change; the most common case is two spaces after a period, which is not an error but a style choice.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:25, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    not two or three books, all american style writing books, as well as academic institutions, museums, and other orgs use "African American" not "African-American." But if wikipedia wants to go its own way then it is what it is. Iljhgtn (talk) 13:55, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    If you want to go long-form, I guess we can go long-form. I didn't say you personally were engaging in a WP:CSF, I said one of the respondents in the earlier thread was. The fact that one style guide MoS is based on, CMoS, is going along with the hyphenless form for unrelated reasons (a general shift away from using hyphens the CMoS editors don't consider necessary, for the kind of academics-writing-for-other-academics writing CMoS is principally concerned with) isn't much of a point in favor of the idea; it's coincidence. Two style guides MoS is not based on, APA and MLA, supporting such a change is probably an argument in its favor (though I want to see whether they, too, are dropping other kinds of hyphens), but not a terribly strong one. That's because our reasoning for using the hyphenation is clarity and to a lesser extent consistency, not tradition or popularity. We'd need to see a near-universal dropping of this hyphen to drop it ourselves. I.e., proof that for whatever reason(s), nearly all modern writers had dropped it in spite of the improved clarity of using it and in spite of the blatant inconsistency of dropping it. (It is fair to characterize the idea as a "magical" exception; it's one not grounded in any reasons that have to do with grammar, clarity, or other concerns related to writing well, but rooted in extraneous reasons of being seen as aligned with a particular socio-political stance.)
    The ongoing evolution of English has only the slowest and most cautious of effects on WP's own style, which does not change on much of anything unless there it is objectively a writing improvement, or on a more subjective idea that comes at real costs like this one, if there is overwhelming evidence of a change across all of contemporary English writing, including most or all of the style guide ours is based on, not just one of them. A couple of other organizations' house-style manuals don't change anything; their house style is not our house style, by definition. Nor do we care at all about a style guide for newspapers (WP:NOT#NEWS: "Wikipedia is not written in news style."); MoS has borrowed either nothing or very, very close to nothing from AP Stylebook. It took about a decade of on-site debates about growing acceptance for singular-they to turn into actual acceptance of it on Wikipedia (and there are still many editors who would rather write around it), and it didn't happen until after the usage became accepted across CMoS, Garner's, Fowler's, and New Hart's/Oxford, and even then after a tremendous amount of evidence-showing that usage had palpably shifted to support it across all sorts of writing (not just news or a few particular organizations). See also several years of still-ongoing debate about whether we should stop using the phrase "committed suicide" (last result: no consensus reached, despite arguments that closely mirror this case: support for the change in some organizational style guides, some but not overwhelming evidence of general usage change, and activist stance-taking in favor of the change).
    COMMONNAMEs of organizations are irrelevant; we don't rewrite organizations' actual names to comply with MoS ideas. (And the implication, that organizations have all dropped the hyphen, is false anyway. Maybe you'd like to write a letter to the Scottish-American Military Society and surely hundreds of others and tell them their own names are wrong and have to change? Next will you write to Bob Callahan and tell him his The Big Book of Irish-American Culture has to be republished under a hyphenless title? Will you tell the Library of Congress it's wrong for using "African-American" as an adjective[1]? And so on.) The fact that hyphenless forms of these terms pre-date some style guides recommending them is obvious and irrelevant; style guides don't recommend imaginary usages, and both news-speak and bureaucratese have been engaged in something like a war against hyphens for about a century. Trying to bring the "hyphenated American" insult that was in vogue from 1890 to 1920 into this is also irrelevant, and contradictory of your 'English is a living language and its usage can change' lynchpin argument. It also makes it clear that, as I suspected, this is some kind of highly Americans-specific WP:GREATWRONGS thing. And one that is easy to argue against: e.g., referring to Obama as "the first African American President" instead of "the first African-American President" actually directly undermines the perception of his Americannness and just helps to feed "birther" conspiracy-theory nonsense about him really being from Kenya. I'm also strongly reminded of various provisions in MoS about not inappropriately stressing ethnicity (or origin-nationality), which the hyphenless usage does, and also reminded of the RfC that removed the |ethnicity= parameter from {{Infobox person}} because it was so often misused for such inappropriate attention-drawing. "The main argument against dehyphenation is English grammar has different rules for ..." - Except no one in either edition of this debate has ever mentioned English grammar "rules" as a rationale, so you're just making stuff up. As for propriety, it was quite inappropriate to push in a change you knew had substantial principled opposition, then do it again after being reverted, and just pseudo-announce the change by editing an archive page virtually no one would ever look at. Even worse is you WP:CANVASSING now by pinging everyone you think is on your side from the old debate, but no one else.
    I'm going to repeat my earlier question, because nothing I raised was addressed at all: What could we possibly gain from dropping these hyphens? It produces confusing constructions, and is generally incompatible with our entire approach to compound modifiers, but to what end? A "consistency" with some subset of external writers that some editors prefer? Why would we trade actual internal consistency for a half-assed and biased pseudo-consistency with off-site interests, at the expense of clarity to boot? I just don't see a good rationale for doing this. It would make no objective improvement to the encyclopedia, only satisfy a couple of activistic interests.
     — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:25, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    I'm glad that sneakily added bit has now been removed. The only discussion in 2022 was this remark added to an already archived discussion. Dicklyon (talk) 00:19, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    @Plifal, EEng, Only in death, Tvx1, Blueboar, Khajidha, Firejuggler86, and Mikehawk10: pinging everyone from the previous round of this discussion (2022) that Caorongjin left out in his ping of just people who supported his viewpoint. If we need to RfC this to reach a resolution this time, then we should just do it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:25, 20 September 2023 (UTC) @Red-tailed hawk: re-pinging user whose username changed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:31, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    sounds like resolution one way or the other should be found. the only one i asked about was African American, but a more general rule would cover that one as well. Iljhgtn (talk) 13:57, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Editing-in a new exception to the Wikipedia MOS? What you mean to do (whether you know it or not) is to force Wikipedia editors to change the way they write, when they write in a way that is common for clarity. Such an anti-hyphen move is worse than worthless. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:04, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    • If one writes "an African-American senator," it refers to a senator who is African American, while if one writes "an African American senator," it would refer to an American senator who is African. Why on Earth would one adopt a rule that banned the use of such a clarifying hyphen? AuH2ORepublican (talk) 21:08, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      Without revealing on which side I fall in this debate, I'll point out that if one writes "high-school student", it refers to a student in high school, but if one writes "high school student", it would refer to a school school student who's smoked a little weed. Or does it? EEng 21:49, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      Is the "school school" smoking weed because it's cool cool? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 21:54, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      Man, you are a COMPLETE BUZZ KILL. EEng 23:20, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      You'd have hated my college friend group. We used to get high, put on some instrumentals, and criticize each other's grammar. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 00:20, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      dont ask me. this is not my idea, this is what the USA and the American English speaking world decided. the "righting great wrongs" side of things therefore falls on those that wish to include the hyphen as African-American. Otherwise, there is a change that needs to be made over at African American (currently hyphenless) and many other pages... as of right now, while it might be "wrong" to include the hyphen, it is not our job on wikipedia to "right" such "wrongs", from WP:RGW, "We are, by design, supposed to be "behind the curve". This is because we only report what is verifiable using secondary reliable sources, giving appropriate weight to the balance of informed opinion." Thus, at least as of September 2023. The no hyphen "African American" is what all American English manuals for writing suggest using, as well as every African American Museum in the United states.
      Seems to me that the rule should only apply then for ethnic groups that have a strong United States connection. I don't know if anyone proposed that though? Might be more worthwhile given that there are such strong feelings to the contrary coming from the United Kingdom editors. For what its worth, I am in Richmond, Virginia, so attribute any bias that i might have tied to my geography accordingly. Iljhgtn (talk) 22:36, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      Repeat: What could we possibly gain from dropping these hyphens? It produces confusing constructions, and is generally incompatible with our entire approach to compound modifiers, but to what end? A "consistency" with some subset of external writers that some editors prefer? Why would we trade actual internal consistency for a half-assed and biased pseudo-consistency with off-site interests, at the expense of clarity to boot? There is no sensible rationale to make some "magically special" carve-out for ethnic terminology in a particular country. That would just compound the confusing inconsistency.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:16, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      Joking aside, "it would refer to an American senator who is African" is not an idle concern at all. See List of foreign-born United States politicians.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:16, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Slight diversion:Anglo-American, etc.

    I not-so-guiltily confess that I haven't had the tima and patience to read through and absorb all of the discussion above, let alone the related discussions elsewhere, but one secondary point (if it hasn't been raised before) is that formulations such as Anglo-American and Franco-American usually demand a hyphen because Anglo and Franco are not usually stand-alone words. [In fact omitting the hyphen in Anglo American would now make that combination refer to an American of Anglophone or non-Hispanic extraction or identity, while an Anglo-American would mean someone who has both English (or British) and American birth, ancestry, citizenship or identity]. This is becoming rarer as combinations such as Italian-American (or Italian American) have gradually supplanted the once-more-common Italo-American. Afro-American was certainly hyphenated, but has given way to African American (or African-American) — which raises at least the possibility of a parallel distinction between Americans born in Africa or whose parents or grandparents were African, and African-Americans (or African Americans) descended from many generations of American-born ancestors. I apologise for any incoherence in my language or logic and I don't know where this would lead in the debates above. —— Shakescene (talk)

    No one seems to be proposing to not use hyphens with prefixes such as Anglo-, Franco-, Sino-, etc.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:35, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    MORE THAN A COINCIDENCE??? EEng 07:46, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    That is right. If you look at even the African American page, Afro-American is considered acceptable. Again, this isn't my choice one way or the other. Wikipedia follows established trends and manners related to all of these things. i didn't say it was always consistent or made perfect sense, but that is not for us humble editors to decide for the world. Iljhgtn (talk) 12:26, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    You misread and misconstrue the Wikipedia African American article, first it's not an article on English writing, and second, African American as a noun or the subject or title of an article does not get the hyphen, only when it is used as a modifier, see eg the Juneteenth article has African American, when a noun, and African-American _______, when an adjective. ("African Americans were often prohibited . . . African-American memories" - that last part is not talking about "American memories" in general, it is clearly referencing "African-American memories" in particular) -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:32, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    do we spell out that difference between nouns and adjectives in the MOS already? If so where? Iljhgtn (talk) 16:36, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The MOS section we are talking about is all about modifiers, the textbook modifiers are adjectives and adverbs. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:52, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    frequently i see both "african american" written in articles, even when it is not a modifier. I just wanted clarity in all cases, which is correct to use? If there is no disagreement, and its "noun" (African American) "adjective" (African-American) then we could close this conversation and make sure the MOS just makes that extremely clear. Iljhgtn (talk) 17:08, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I think most all the time in prose, it will be clear whether its used as in subject/noun, and when it is used in describing/modifying some other subject. And feel free when a noun or subject, to remove the hyphen if you think it's improved, or add hyphen when it is used as a modifier, as needed. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:37, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The problem is the usage is generally consistent, with the exception of ethnic nomenclature. For instance, you will be hard pressed to find hyphenated usage of "African-American studies" or "Asian-American studies" even though they are being used as adjectives. —Caorongjin 💬 19:02, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    "You will be hard pressed to find ...." - Nope. From very first page of search results: "African and African-American Studies", Kansas U. (note also "African-descended", another modifier) [2]; "Institute for Research in African-American Studies .... The Institute for Research in African-American Studies was established .... The African-American studies curriculum explores the ....", Columbia University [3]; A Companion to African-American Studies by Gordon & Gordon, Wiley Press [4]; "Social Movement Tactics, Organizational Change and the Spread of African-American Studies" by F. Rojas, Social Forces journal; U. of N. Carolina Pr. [5]; "Departmental Conditions and the Emergence of New Disciplines: Two Cases in the Legitimation of African-American Studies", M. L. Small, Theory and Society jnl., Springer [6]; and so on. It is true that universities tend to avoid hyphens in any of their curriculum names, but this isn't particular to ethnic terms, and doesn't have anything to do with encyclopedic writing. It is probably because, firstly, academic institutions' house-style is based on marketing and news writing, which is generally anti-hyphen, and secondly, as someone else observed below, "African[-]American Studies" is itself a noun phrase, so some people aren't sure whether to hyphenate the modifier inside it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:29, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Are those current usage? Hard pressed to find post c. 2019 when this change seems to have gone mainstream. That is an important timing point. Iljhgtn (talk) 11:50, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Hard pressed is not the same as impossible. FWIW, my Google search found one entry of "African-American Studies" on the second page (University of Kansas), one on third page (Columbia University), and none until sixth page (University of Central Arkansas). The same query for "Asian-American Studies" returned one as the last entry of the eighth page for Merritt College.
    Re: @SMcCandlish and @Alanscottwalker's comment about noun phrase (completely honest question): how are you differentiating between a noun phrase and an adjectival usage? The only noun phrase mentioned thus far is that "XY Studies" is a noun phrase (and the "Studies" should be capitalized, although they have been lowercased in Wikipedia). What about XY… literature, film, history, experiences, culture, society, etc.? —Caorongjin 💬 18:21, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Ultimately, why care? We have our own style guide for a reason, and there is no compelling rationale to make a "special exception" in it to the general, across-all-topics "hyphenate compound modifiers" rule just become some other publishers who are not us like to make an exception. I'm going to repeat myself yet again, because no one can answer this question so far, much less do it satisfactorily: what could we possibly gain from dropping these hyphens? It produces confusing constructions, and is generally incompatible with our entire approach to compound modifiers, but to what end? A "consistency" with some subset of external writers that some editors prefer? Why would we trade actual internal consistency for a half-assed and biased pseudo-consistency with off-site interests, at the expense of clarity to boot? I just don't see a good rationale for doing this. It would make no objective improvement to the encyclopedia, only satisfy a couple of activistic interests. PS: In answer to your first question, the "African-American" in "African-American [noun here]" noun phrases is a compound modifier and should thus be hyphenated. This is pretty obvious, but some people seem somehow confused by it, even though they don't seem terribly confused when something other than an ethnical label is in question. Who doesn't understand that "curly-coated dog" or "second-stage rocket" are noun phrases that contain compound modifiers?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:49, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Why care? WP:COMMONNAME
    And, honestly, "pretty obvious"... "somehow confused". This is just such a belittling and condescending response. —Caorongjin 💬 21:01, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Said this before about 1,000 times: COMMONNAME is about what basic name is used for something (e.g. "African[-]American studies" versus "Black studies" versus "Afro-American studies" versus "African diaspora studies", versus etc., etc.), regardless how it is styled; it is not about what style to apply, and it logically cannot be or it would not be possible for WP to have a style manual (at least not one that could ever apply to titles). We would necessarily never do anything but choose the most popular style in the majority of sources. Yet this is not at all how article titling is done on Wikipedia. We every single day apply MoS to article titles, and we expect our title style and our prose style to be in agreement at our articles. You're engaging in what's known as the common-style fallacy, the false assumption that whatever the most common stylization of something is in the sources we happen to have found for it is the style WP must use. Various people in the past have proposed trying to shoehorn style considerations into WP:AT policy, and they have failed every single time.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:18, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I never said WP:COMMONNAME was the rational for changing WP:MOS. I am saying the debate outside of Wikipedia is or has been siding with no hyphen, and this is reflected in both (1) common usage and (2) academic (and newspaper) style guides. It is because of the latter, external style guides, that I made that change. And it is also because of the academic guidance and usage that I don't see it falling under WP:CSF.
    You say WP:MOS is based off of x, y, and z style guides and not k or l. OK. I was not aware of that. But this does not mean that the change is invalid but, rather, that it needs to be discussed. We are clearly of different opinions and, it seems, cannot convince one another otherwise.
    You said in a separate post "If we need to RfC this to reach a resolution this time, then we should just do it." Can you please just start an RfC about this (tbh, I am not sure how to do so but can if you point me to the appropriate guidance)? —Caorongjin 💬 08:14, 23 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I didn't said that you said COMMONNAME was "the rational[e] for changing WP:MOS". You're misusing it as a rationale to change article titles in a way that is incompatible with MoS (not just with a line-item in it, but with its entire treatment of compound modifiers as a class), and that is fallacious and problematic. Yes, I can open an RfC on this, but the currently ongoing discussion should wrap up first, either with a consensus (obviating a need for an RfC) or without one, but we should not have two competing discussions going on at the same time (WP:RFCBEFORE, [{WP:TALKFORK]]).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:27, 23 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    i just want to mention that this was not about article titles per se, but about all uses of these hyphens when between ethnic words. i read above a few mentions where it seems like this was just about article titles only. Iljhgtn (talk) 11:16, 23 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    And COMMONNAME has nothing to do with article content anyway. I think you simply do not understand the policies and guidelines enough to be constructive in this discussion. Again, the usage in the prose needs to match the usage in the title, so trying with one hand to make it about title policy is a non-starter, and trying with the other to make it about content guidelines as severable from titles is also a non-started. I'll repeat myself again: every single day, we apply MoS to article titles as well as to in-article content.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:27, 23 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    its fine to do that, to apply it to both, but i was just saying not to apply (seemingly) to just one or the other. i am on eastern usa time by the way, and just starting my morning. where are you? I feel like were discussing this both when i went to sleep and now first thing in the morning. i will edit other articles now.. Iljhgtn (talk) 11:30, 23 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Is it possible that some orthography/usage/syntax/mechanics of words in specific combinations is just as clear, without hyphen? Sure, for some readers. Anything is possible, and "African American Studies" because of the combination of capitalization may be just as clear for quite a few readers, but we at Wikipedia have set for ourselves to be writing for the broadest audience possible across all national borders and even whether English is first, second, or third language, and the default hyphen-when-modifier, answers that call, most all the time. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:30, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    i just ask is it for us wikipedia editors to decide? or is the decision made by others? grammar guides? reliable sources? museums and other institutions? Iljhgtn (talk) 20:40, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm finding it hard to believe you're even asking this question. Of course it is for Wikipedia editors to decide, like all other style matters here (and all other matters that pertain to how we build this encyclopedia, with the sole exception of legal requirements imposed by external forces). It would be literally impossible for WP to have its own MoS if we were beholden to external third parties to make style decisions for us. We take their views and the rationales for them into consideration when making our decisions, of course. But so far no consistent rationales are even emerging. Some have exceptionally dubious socio-political claims behind their decision to not hyphenate these particular terms; others have a generally hostile stance to hyphenation in general; and others provide no rationale at all. The rationales are not compatible with each other, and do not (singly or together) somehow overcome our own internal concerns with regard to clarity, precision, and consistency for our readers.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:51, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    "African American Studies" is a noun phrase so what you should be doing is capitalizing [S]tudies, which makes that clear. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:53, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    in the titles of many of these articles would need to change maybe Iljhgtn (talk) 19:56, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Alanscottwalker Just a heads up, that is not the style used on Wikipedia. Please use African American studies or African-American studies, per MOS:FIELD. — HTGS (talk) 00:46, 19 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    if that is the case, we really should make that clear in the MOS. that is consistent with my findings @Caorongjin Iljhgtn (talk) 19:11, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't believe that it is standard for universities to write "African-American Studies" without the hyphen; it's use certainly varies, even though it is pretty common to forgo the hyphen in the adjectival phrase when the modified noun is in uppercase (as generally is the case for the word "Studies" in a college faculty or a course name). And as for those who claim that ethnic nomenclatures should never be hyphenated--even when the rules of grammar dictate that they should, as in the case of modifiers--because the elimination of such hyphens somehow makes language more "inclusive," please note that Alabama State University, which is a historically black university and a member of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund (and thus unlikely to be insensitive to the concerns of African Americans), has an "African-American Studies" department with a consistently used hyphen: [7].
    Grammar is grammar, and adjectival phrases should be hyphenated, whether one is referring to a "red-tailed hawk" (a species of hawk with a red tail; a "red tailed hawk," on the other hand, would be a red hawk that has a tail), an "English-muffin recipe (a recipe for English muffins; an "English muffin recipe" would be a recipe from England for perhaps blueberry muffins) or "Chinese-American cuisine" (cuisine created by Chinese Americans; "Chinese American cuisine" would be American cuisine as served in China, such as at a Beijing burger joint). AuH2ORepublican (talk) 23:09, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Just sharing this here in case others have not read it. This has a larger component at play, when the racial/ethnic component is involved only. that is all this discussion entails. And to be clear, this discussion already in the united states seems to have been undertaken, so it is not a WP:RGW to keep the hyphen, in fact, we are "righting" it it seems only if we are keeping the hyphen at this point. all of the perfectly sound grammarian arguments above notwithstanding... [8]https://daily.jstor.org/on-hyphens-and-racial-indicators/ Iljhgtn (talk) 23:29, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    maybe it makes sense to restrict the scope of this further to just racial or ethnic descriptors within the united states. I know the united kingdom readers had strong feelings against, and i do not see anything to think that this should apply to the british english pages, but only american english, and thereby this is an ENGVAR thing too, and does not need to be made universal. Iljhgtn (talk) 23:30, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    FYI, I am not a Brit; I'm American. Do you think that Brits are the only ones who use proper grammar? And the articles from which you removed all hyphens from "African-American" when used as a modifier, both in the title of the article and in its text--without even discussing it with editors, much less obtaining a consensus--were articles about American politics written in American English and edited by Americans. And I doubt very much that Alabama State University has a lot of Brits in its faculty, much less within its African-American Studies department, and they sure rock that intra-modifier hyphen: [9]. AuH2ORepublican (talk) 03:22, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    My understanding is that the main difference in hyphen usage between UK and US English relates to words that are commonly run together or compounded in American English, like midline or readjust, which British English would tend to hyphenate, as mid-line or re-adjust. That isn’t relevant here. Otherwise in both my understanding is that hyphens are typically used for compound adjectives but not compound nouns, so ‘he is an Italian American’ but ‘he is an Italian-American gangster’ and also used when there could otherwise be ambiguity, thus ‘he is a small-businessman’, to avoid it otherwise looking like a comment on his size. (Edit/ other sorts of gangster are of course available, before anyone complains) MapReader (talk) 03:43, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, all of that is consistent with a detailed read across a bunch of major academic-leaning style guides, on both sides of "the pond" (which is how MOS:HYPHEN arrived at what it says, after all; it's not like WP editors just made it up out of nowhere). Now, long after the fact, a few style guides (only one of which MoS is in part based on, Chicago) want to make an exception, but no clear rationale is provided for doing so, much less one that overrides our precision/clarity needs for our audience.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:34, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    'frequently i see ... "african american" written in articles, even when it is not a modifier.' It's supposed to be written as "African American", no hyphen, when it's not a modifier. How is anyone still confused about this? It's exactly the same as writing "the author is well known" (not a modifier) versus "a well-known author" (modifier). Or "I spent a long time in the organization" (not a modifier), "my long-time association with the organization" (modifier). PS: I don't think we're in a position to take any kind of style advice from someone who doesn't capitalize anything, including "African[-]American".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:15, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I had a thought today that i do not think has been introduced into this conversation, so let me introduce it.
    I think this whole conversation relates to how most sources are now treating "African American" vs. "African-American", which are, or at least can be, two different things.
    African American refers to an American that may have some distance African heritage. African-American on the other hand, may refer to relations of the two countries, such as if Uganda were to enter into a pact with the USA over some trade deal, this would be an African-American trade deal. I think this is also addressed in the noun versus adjective discussion above, but I think one refers to actual African country known connections, whereas in the case of many African Americans today, there may be no way to know what "African" lineage the person in question may or may not have, and therefore the fact that they are really not both "African" and "American", these two things are not being merged together or connected, but are in essence one and the same thing. Sorry if I am not making sense... I can try to explain more if needed. Iljhgtn (talk) 13:44, 29 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    African–American with an en dash refers to relations between Africa and the US (see MOS:DASH). And Africa is not a country.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:12, 29 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Ever since Jesse Jackson popularized the term "African Americans" to refer to the people to whom theretofore had been referred as "blacks" (and, a bit before my time, as "Negroes"), the term has been used in precisely the same way as the terms "Mexican Americans," "Italian Americans," etc., had been used for decades: to describe Americans of (sub-Saharan) African descent. It has nothing to do with relations between the United States of America and the continent of Africa.
    And the presence of the hyphen varies based solely on whether or not the term was used as a modifier, not on whether one is talking about a hypothetical "African–American cultural exchange (which, as previously noted, required an "en dash," not a hyphen). The terms "African American" and "African-American" are used in exactly the same way as are "Mexican American," "Mexican-American," "Italian American" and "Italian-American." For example, just as we write that Nomar Garciaparra is a Mexican American and that Selena Gomez is a Mexican-American actress, and that Frank Sinatra was an Italian American and that Joe DiMaggio was an Italian-American ballplayer, we write that Jackie Robinson was an African American and that Diana Ross is an African-American singer. There is absolutely no difference in the usage of those terms, and it makes no sense to try to create a distinction where there isn't one. AuH2ORepublican (talk) 17:51, 29 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Well said AuH2ORepublican. Cinderella157 (talk) 03:08, 30 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    i dont think my keyboard can even make an en dash. anyone know how to do that on a dell/pc computer? Iljhgtn (talk) 22:58, 29 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    A standard keyboard only provides access to a hyphen. However, text editors (such as the standard WP editing interface) do provide access to extended character sets. On the standard WP interface, both the en-dash an the em-dash have quick access from the section immediately below the editing screen immediately after the text Insert: which appears in bold. Cinderella157 (talk) 03:15, 30 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    And even if you've done something to somehow mess up the built-in Wikipedia interface tools, a "Dell/PC", i.e. any Windows computer, has a built-in program called Character Map. It's very handy, though I prefer the (non-free) program PopChar for access to non-keyboard characters. Also exists for Mac.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:39, 30 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Or you use the numeric keypad and type Alt+0150. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:59, 30 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Is Windows the only platform for computers? Tony (talk) 08:02, 30 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    "Is Windows the only platform" - naughty, don't mock the afflicted. :) More seriously: Compose--. for Linux implementations. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 08:58, 30 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    On a Mac, it's even easier: Option-hyphen (Option-Shift-hyphen makes an em dash).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:42, 30 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    am i able to see that "insert" here in this reply? I don't see it. Iljhgtn (talk) 22:56, 30 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    or you just mean when making edits on pages? Iljhgtn (talk) 22:57, 30 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    When making edits on article pages—or here, if you click on "Edit" and not on "Reply." AuH2ORepublican (talk) 23:05, 30 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Any page you edit. Use Ctrl+F and type in insert in the search box to find it. But this is if you are using the standard classic editing box. If you are using another editor it might be a bit different. Cinderella157 (talk) 23:15, 30 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Cartoon from Puck, August 9, 1899, by J. S. Pughe. Angry Uncle Sam sees hyphenated voters and demands, "Why should I let these freaks cast whole votes when they are only half Americans?"
    Discussing about emdashed Americans seems to be a method for refusing the existence of the Hyphenated-Americans. And pretending that this could depend from whatever Manual of Style appears rather as a kind of blindness from some White-White-Americans, you know these English-Americans whose faces are ranging from pink to red(emdash/endash/hyphen)pink --don't ask why. May be there is some letter soup item about inclusiveness. Pldx1 (talk) 16:03, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    maybe that was the correct use in 1899, but in 2023, the unhyphenated appears to be the widespread use. Iljhgtn (talk) 16:19, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Section-specific terminology hatnotes

    Is there any MOS guidance about section specific hatnotes noting linguistic conventions? If not, would it be best to use {{hatnote}} to templatize this guidance on linguistic conventions? — BillHPike (talk, contribs) 20:54, 21 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    @BillHPike: See this for a solution: special:permalink/1181333207#Chinese—Alalch E. 11:39, 22 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Another tentative application of the same approach: special:permalink/1181358259#References (hatnotes also don't show in the printable version, and a note with this content shouldn't show in the printable version however it may be formatted, in my opinion). —Alalch E. 15:40, 22 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Why on earth would you use an annoyingly decorative pseudo-hatnote like that? By including what amounts to a big blue "block" icon, it is against MOS:ICONS: "For the purposes of this guideline, icons encompasses ... other decoration, whether produced by small image files, typographic dingbats, emojis, or CSS display manipulation." This is the last of those cases.) The style in question is used by warning templates to flag article problems that readers should be aware of it; it is not for generic cross-referencing. If you want to create a custom hatnote, that is what {{hatnote}} (indented) and {{crossreference}} (not indented) are for.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:20, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Neither of those solutions which you suggest are good either, because the purpose of hatnotes per WP:HAT is to help readers locate a different article if the one they are at is not the one they're looking for, and this is not such a case. I think that this is good: Special:Diff/1189104552. Just not sure about indenting or not. Maybe unindented but italicized makes the most sense. (Also, I don't agree with you that the generic notice template serves only to flag problems, but we don't have to discuss that, as I don't intend to pursue replicating the above approach.) —Alalch E. 18:57, 9 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    "et al." or "et alia" with or without italics

    When used in regular text (i.e. not as a citation), should "et al." or "et alia" be used? Should it be used with or without italics. For example:

    1. Precise definitions are often only accepted by theorists belonging to a certain philosophical movement and are revisionistic according to Søren Overgaard et alia ...
    2. Precise definitions are often only accepted by theorists belonging to a certain philosophical movement and are revisionistic according to Søren Overgaard et alia ...
    3. Precise definitions are often only accepted by theorists belonging to a certain philosophical movement and are revisionistic according to Søren Overgaard et al. ...
    4. Precise definitions are often only accepted by theorists belonging to a certain philosophical movement and are revisionistic according to Søren Overgaard et al. ...

    This is being discussed at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Philosophy/archive1. Phlsph7 (talk) 17:56, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Putting an end to using "Caucasian" for white Americans

    There is an unfortunate, US-centric trend of using the term Caucasian to refer to white people, especially in medicine. This use is not quite accurate for obvious geographic reasons, but because the term is/was widely used by RS, it's very much NPOV and uncontested by the current standards of MOS:IDENTITY. Examples:

    • Eye color: Studies on Caucasian twins, both fraternal and identical, have shown that eye color over time (referring to an US study)
    • Doctor–patient relationship: According to a study of 618 medical encounters between mainly Caucasian physicians and Caucasian and African American patients... (US, again)
    • Factor V Leiden: Suspicion of factor V Leiden being the cause for any thrombotic event should be considered in any Caucasian patient below the age of 45... (US, of course)

    Should we do something to discourage this kind of use, and in fact encourage rewriting the "Caucasian" in sources about e.g. US population genetics and case reports to "white"? The change needed might be as simple as adding example under the use specific terminology part of MOS:IDENTITY, or arguing that it's "Contested vocabulary" using non-American English sources (themselves being a minority, eh). Artoria2e5 🌉 05:24, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    We can't re-interpret sources or what they meant by "Caucasian". Maybe they included people from the archaic racial category which is wide-ranging across multiple continents and could potentially include people from the Caucasus, Middle East, North Africa, and Indian subcontinent, as well as Europe, or perhaps they meant some variety of "white", whatever that means. We need to stick to what the sources say in quoting or paraphrasing them, otherwise would involve some OR/SYNTH. —DIYeditor (talk) 05:39, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    At the very least, we should link to the Caucasian American article on first use if the study explicitly talks about "Caucasian" people in an American context. Oh wait what's that, a redirect?
    Look, in many cases, no OR/SYNTH at all is needed to figure out that we aren't talking about Georgia and Armenia.
    • The eye color article's source, doi:10.1001/archopht.1997.01100150661017, directly says "whites" in the abstract. Someone actually bent that into Caucasian to sound fancy.
    • Same goes for DPR article, doi:10.1016/S0277-9536(99)00338-X, right in the abstract.
    • FVL article quote is unsourced, but lower down we have Studies have found that about 5 percent of Caucasians in North America have factor V Leiden. Data have indicated that prevalence of factor V Leiden is greater among Caucasians than minority Americans. That's zero guesswork involved to know it's about "Caucasian Americans". The source PMID 9415695 does use Caucasian for once.
    --Artoria2e5 🌉 07:20, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Considering the first two sources actually use "white", anyone contesting a change to those articles would need to justify it since the "Caucasian" term isn't actually used. As for the third, unfortunately the term is used in the source, so it needs to be used for accuracy here. That said, I would have no qualms about a general statement that the term is dispreferred because it represents an outdated (and throughly discredited) form of pseudoscientific racism. oknazevad (talk) 12:58, 11 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Re This use is not quite accurate for obvious geographic reasons: "White" is not quite accurate for obvious color reasons. (Very few of us Caucasians/white people are albino.) But words are understood to mean what they're understood to mean, and "Caucasian" isn't a pejorative term. However, I wonder what people these days think "Caucasian" means. When I was a kid (1960s), a resources I had (I think it was a Rand McNally world atlas) presented a tripartite division of the human species: Caucasian, Negroid, and Mongoloid. We generally find a finer categorization today, with the some people classified as "Middle Eastern" or "South Asian", for example. I think that older sources would have counted Middle Easterners and South Asians as Caucasian while newer sources might not. So what "Caucasian" means is going to be inconsistent as one goes from source to source to source. So I agree it isn't a cut-and-dried matter, but I don't think that changing "Caucasian" to "white" would solve that problem. Largoplazo (talk) 12:26, 11 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Agree here I am also a 60s kid and without doubt the meaning has been refined. When i deal this the I simply use quote marks so its clear its a term from the source Of the 36.3 million people enumerated in 2021, approximately 25.4 million reported being "White", representing 69.8 percent of the population. The major panethnic groups chosen were: "European" (52.5 percent)..... Moxy- 13:13, 11 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not a 60s kid, but the tripartite racial classification still being taught in China today is basically the same thing (with color-based names), so I get the concern about blurry buckets. I think that quotation marks and a general statement discourage de novo (uh, not-in-the-source) uses of the term is good enough for me. Given current NIH reporting recommendations, the term should die out. --Artoria2e5 🌉 02:08, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Are you SURE that American English sources are a minority within English sources? Given the proportions of native speakers within and without the US, I wouldn't be so sure.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:21, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Uhhh Khajidha, I said non-American English sources (themselves being a minority, eh). That means that I believe Am Eng is the majority, and non-Am is the minority. You know what? That's bad punctiation on my part. If it read "non–American-English", it might make more sense. Artoria2e5 🌉 12:57, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not sure if that would have helped. I was understanding the sentence to say that you were proposing to use sources not in American English to establish the status as contested because Americans are the minority. I'm not sure now if the problem was your phrasing or my brain. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:04, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The use of "Caucasian" to refer to white people is not US-specific. It's also used in many other countries (it's certainly long been used in the UK). It isn't pejorative and it's no less inaccurate than calling people "white" or "black" or saying "people of colour" (what colour? Does that mean white people are colourless?). It's a commonly used and perfectly acceptable term. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:11, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    From a biological and genetic perspective, the terms Black, Caucasian, Negro and White are all problematical, lumping together people with different genetics and splitting people with similar genetics. For people of mixed ancestry, the terms become positively ludicrous. In the US, a person with mostly European ancestry and a small amount of African ancestry is called Black, which is difficult to explain on any basis other than slave-era prejudice. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 15:05, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    These days, I would actually have said it was precisely the opposite! Mixed-race people often identify as black themselves, even if they have more European than African ancestry. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:09, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    There's also the issue that Africa is culturally and genetically diverse, even if you only look at West Africa; IMHO, our language should respect that. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 15:40, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Nobody thinks all White people are clones of each other, nor that all Black people are clones of each other. We all know there's genetic (as well as cultural) diversity among both groups. The use of those terms doesn't imply otherwise. Largoplazo (talk) 17:05, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Succession box entry for new and abolished positions

    In succession boxes, the "before=" and "after=" parameters often have no meaningful values, if the position was its first or last time. In these cases, for new we see "New Position", "(new position)", "(no predecessor)", "(none)", "(-)" and such for "before=", and "Abolished", "Abolished Position", "(Position abolished)", "(abolished)", "(post vacant)" etc. for "after=". Personally, I think the parenthesized lowercase entries make the most sense, not looking like a proper name but explaining why there's not one. Do we have any guidance on this? Should we? Dicklyon (talk) 17:52, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    I'd recommend, if the office holder had no predecessor or successor. The officer holder should have no succession box. GoodDay (talk) 17:59, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Of course. I apologize for misleading you by putting "and" where I should have said "or". Dicklyon (talk) 19:08, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    This actually should probably be settled on as a prescribed style, then built into the boxes as parameter values that emit that. I.e., detect "none" and perhaps "new", "abolished", and "vacant" (any others to account for?) as values that will emit something in a consistent format, e.g. (none), (new), (abolished), or (vacant), if we agree on this parenthetical style. Throw an error if people try to add randomly made-up annotations. And, yes, if the position only had one holder such that there is neither a predecessor nor a sucessor, then such a template should not be used and would just be pointless visual noise. PS: I'm not even sure "vacant" has a use case. Even if the previous office/title/position holder had been two centuries earlier, that is still a predecessor.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:48, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Let's see if we can agree on a style first, then worry about the mechanics of how to get there. I recommend lowercase parentheticals, "(new position)", "(abolished)", and similar if other cases such as "(vacant)" or "(none)" are needed for some reason. Dicklyon (talk) 19:25, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Recommend visual examples (i.e boxes) of proposals. Give us a more direct look at what we're dealing with. GoodDay (talk) 19:42, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Current version
    Preceded by
    Created
    		 Office
    2023–2025     		Succeeded by
    Abolished

    Here's what I see as most common and what I propose (though as noted you wouldn't have a succession box at all if the position has no before or after like this): Dicklyon (talk) 23:58, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Current version
    Preceded by
    New Position
    		 Office
    2023–2025     		Succeeded by
    Abolished
    Proposed version
    Preceded by
    (new position)
    		 Office
    2023–2025     		Succeeded by
    (abolished)

    @Dicklyon, GoodDay, and SMcCandlish: I think the templates already have a solution for this. Template:s-non can be used in place of the before {{s-bef}} or after {{s-aft}} box. Using the example above it looks like this:

    New Position Office
    2023–2025     		Abolished

    Hope that helps, Rjjiii (talk) 05:25, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Yup, that version looks great. GoodDay (talk) 05:28, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree with the proposed version. The capitalization in the original was weird, and the {{s-non}} stuff is just confusing (maybe not when there are multiple succession boxes for multiple positions indicating a before/then/after relationship between the fields, but one by itself wouldn't make much sense to the reader).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:35, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @GoodDay and SMcCandlish: are y'all supporting the capitalized version by Rjjiii, or the lowercase parenthetical by me? As far as I can tell, the Template:s-non thing just copies the reason string, so it has no influence on what style the editor uses. It helps, but leaves a question; perhaps sentence case "New position" would be sensible there instead of what Rjjiii showed. Dicklyon (talk) 17:37, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    My primary choice, would be to have 'no succession box' used, if there's no predecessor or successor. But, if we're to have a succession box in those circumstances? then Rjjiii's version is acceptable. GoodDay (talk) 18:34, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Lowercase parenthetical. The capitalization isn't necessary. But yes, if there are neither a predecessor nor successor, then no such template should be used, since no navigational function can be served by it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:35, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Style for group of articles

    We are a group of editors who have been having a discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Date format for year articles on adopting a policy/standard that all articles about generic years (e.g. 1998) should be written using the DMY date format. (For the reasons why, read the discussion itself). I and several other editors do find it beneficial and desirable that such a narrow group of articles consistently use the same format not just within one particular article but across all year articles. However, according to MOS:VAR: "If you believe an alternative style would be more appropriate for a particular article, discuss this at the article's talk page or – if it raises an issue of more general application or with the MoS itself – at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style".

    The policy only grants the right to change format based on consensus within one article. As it would take a lot of time to go through individual discussions on all +2000 year articles, I would therefore like to suggest changing the policy in a way that (in very rare cases) allows for establishing a consensus on a place like the village pump to change the date format (or questions about styles in general) on a group of articles, and not just individual ones. I do think this makes sense with regard to years.--Marginataen (talk) 17:00, 19 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    You say that those proposing this change find it beneficial to have conformity between year articles (and not just within a given year article, as is current guidance). Could you elaborate on that and explain precisely what the benefits would be? Blueboar (talk) 18:06, 19 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm likely to be strongly against any change to the policy. Johnbod (talk) 20:39, 19 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    This is a guideline, not a policy. And it's entirely normal for wikiprojects to set some basic style standards for articles within their scope, as long as it a) isn't making up an "anti-rule" that is against site-wide policies or guidelines, b) doesn't conflict with style asserted by other wikiprojects for whom the articles are also in-scope, and c) isn't advanced in a WP:OWN/WP:GANG manner, e.g. to thwart a consensus discussion at a particular article that concludes to diverge from the default style for that category of articles (cf. WP:CONLEVEL). This sort of wikiproject setting of default styles in a category is mostly done with article layout (what sections should typically be present in a football bio, or whatever), determining what to put in topical infoboxes, standardization of tables and charts at similar articles, and so on. (For a rather large collection of such wikiproject style advice material, which has the authority level of essays but is nevertheless generally followed, see WP:WikiProject Football#Manual of style.) But there's no particular reason something like this couldn't apply to the date format in a consistent and programmatic series of articles on years. It's not any different from the consensuses to format them all as the same sort of list, to give them all consistent introductory leads, to have the same trio of infoboxes in the same order, to have the same major sections for Events/Births/Deaths, to all use the section title References (instead of some altenative like Citations, Sources, etc.), and so on. Remember that Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy and we are not here to wikilawyer about rules in a way that impedes working on the encyclopedia. A consensus to treat several hundred near-identical articles in the same category in a consistent matter is not magically invalid because it didn't redundantly happen several hundred times on separate talk pages, article-by-article. Cf. also our WP:RM, WP:CFD, and other processes that support multi-page nominations (which very often involve MoS matters); we systemically permit multi-page consensuses because re-re-re-re-arguing the same thing at hundreds of pages of the same sort would be a stupid waste of editorial time and energy. WP:VPPRO is a perfectly fine venue at which to come to a broad-participation consensus in favor of or against this wikiproject's narrow style consistency idea (though there's been so much workshopping of text in mid-discussion that I suspect it will require a second round). And Johnbod is correct that there is no rationale to make a change to this guideline, or to any policy, in response, any more than we would rewrite MOS:LAYOUT to account for what is said about football/soccer articles at WP:WikiProject Football#Manual of style; wikiprojects have broad latitude to provide consistent style advice as long as it's not directly against site-wide norms that apply to all articles (and the project in this case is not proposing some new date format that MOS:DATE doesn't sanction). (All that said, the football project's section I mentioned should probably be renamed to "#Style advice" to stop implying it is part of the Manual of Style guidelines.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:17, 19 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not sure that "set some basic style standards for articles within their scope" is the right way of putting this. One would hope that editors who are particularly familiar with and enthusiastic about improving articles within a self-chosen area would provide some optional advice (and we call them WP:Advice pages for this reason), but they're not really "setting standards"; they're just giving us the benefit of their experience. (Also, hopefully not directly contradicting the best advice from other groups, because it's not unusual for an article to be supported by multiple groups. See also the problem with {{drugbox}} and {{chembox}} both being relevant for many articles, and it not always being obvious which one should take priority.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:15, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I already covered both of those points in my original post ("has the authority level of essays", and "doesn't conflict with style asserted by other wikiprojects for whom the articles are also in-scope"), but okay.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:13, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I said my piece over at the Village Pump, but... I agree with SMcCandlish that there isn't a problem with some sort of "unified discussion" of a group of articles. However, I do object to the grounds on which this proposal is made. The spirit of ENGVAR (and, in this particular case, DATEVAR) is that discussions on preferred style of English are highly discouraged, and when an over-eager editor goes around trying to impose "consistency" on what is coincidentally the format they're used to, they're told to stop. We just don't do that. And there are good and proper reasons for this that have to do with editor retention: if one editor has an article they maintain with Commonwealth English, and another one with Pakistani English, and another one in Canadian English, Who Cares. Let them be. I haven't found any other rationale other than "DMY is my favorite format and a more global format" which goes directly against the ethos of ENGVAR, where if the first major editor to an article slaps a South African English tag on it, that's how it stays regardless of how global it is or isn't. A general discussion is fine, but it should be for something like how articles on the US Military use DMY because that's what the sources use. No such argument has been provided for year articles. If this precedent goes through, then what's to stop there from being chips in the wall until nothing remains of DATEVAR? We could hold the same vote for articles on electronics, or articles on games, or articles on clothing, and generate ENGVAR flame wars each time where the "losing" side will feel embittered for no reason. SnowFire (talk) 06:19, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I made a follow-up proposal in VPP which I would suggest as an alternative: if the goal is merely consistency, then the way to keep the truce of ENGVAR is to vote for consistency or not, and if consistency wins, randomly select one of DMY / MDY. That way any sort of ENGVAR debate is avoided. Both formats work, and the "losing" side at least lost to a coin toss rather than not wasting time on an unproductive vote. SnowFire (talk) 06:19, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Two issues I have with this are a) there doesn't seem to be an established on-wiki way to generate a random result, and b) this "terriblizing" scenario of going topic-by-topic with RfC after RfC to set a date standard is nowhere in sight. Such a category-wide standard has never been proposed before (that I know of), is only being proposed in this particular case because the articles are themselves about dates and people are very apt to navigate from one to another and be subjected to more-jarring-than-usual inconsistency, and there is no reason or rationale to try to impose a similar standard across articles on electronics or clothing. In short, this looks like the fallacious version of the slippery slope argument to me.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:18, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @SMcCandlish: As I understand you, your assesment is that the discussion on the village pump on whether to establish a standard for using the DMY format consistently across WikiProject Years is completely valid. Not that it is a good idea, but that it is a valid request to discuss on the Village pump as venue. How do we move forwad from here? Marginataen (talk) 09:30, 21 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Of course it's valid; editorial consensus can be determined on anything (other than to undo WP:OFFICE actions and other legal matters imposed on us externally by WMF), provided the discussion has broad enough input. The discussion as it stands now is kind of a messy one. I don't think it's going to come to a clear consensus. It would probably be necessary to do it again later. And it might still result in no consensus, or a consensus to have no standard, to a consensus to have a standard that isn't the one you favor.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:51, 21 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    All right, with the validity of both the request and the venue for its discussion established, I am considering to start a whole new discussion about it at the village pump since the current one indeed is a mess. Would this be permissible/recommendable, SMcCandlish? Marginataen (talk) 16:06, 24 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    "That which is not forbidden is permitted." As for recommendable, probably not, until the current discussion completely dwindles. Or start a subthread under the existing discussion if you think that would be effective. But just WP:TALKFORKing while the current discussion is still ongoing would probably not be well received.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:54, 24 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Consolidate and clarify non-English orthography advice

    I've read through MOS:FOREIGN, MOS:FOREIGNITALIC, WP:Manual of Style#Foreign words (which has no shortcut; it's part of MOS:ITAL), MOS:FOREIGNQUOTE, MOS:FOREIGNITALIC, and MOS:OTHERLANG, and what is conspicuously absent is the instruction to use the capitalization orthography of the original language when presenting non-English text (other than loanwords/loanphrases that have been fully assimilated into English).

    This instruction is present in two places (at least):

    • MOS:LIFE has "... foreign-language terms: italicized as such, and capitalized only if the rules of the native language require it."
    • MOS:TITLECAPS has "Capitalization of non-English titles varies by language", with a cross-reference to MOS:FOREIGNTITLE below it: "Capitalization in foreign-language titles varies, even over time within the same language. Retain the style of the original for modern works. For historical works, follow the dominant usage in modern, English-language, reliable sources." (And provides some examples.)
    • The principle is also clearly illustrated at MOS:LEADSENTENCE, which provides the lead sentence from Spanish–American War, including proper casing in English, Spanish, and Filipino.

    So, unless there's some principled objection, I plan to add at MOS:FOREIGN something along the lines of Use the capitalization orthography of the original language when presenting non-English terms that have not been fully assimilated into English. This will be consistent with the advice we do have in at least two places, and (more importantly) will be consistent with actual practice. If we want, some examples can be added, such as Festchrift (German capitalizes all nouns) but bratwurst (German loanword assimilated into English); copo americano (Portuguese generally does not capitalize adjectives derived from proper names), but Superliga Nacional de Futebol Americano (proper name spelled that way both in Portuguese and English sources). I don't really think examples are necessary, though I know some editors prefer MoS sections to have some.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:32, 19 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    I agree with this. I wonder if we can also standardize capitalization for translations from non-cased scripts? I tend to prefer sentence case when translating titles and names, but I'm sure someone could hold the opposite position. Remsense聊 20:03, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    That would seem to be a separate discussion. And, yes, I think people will argue the opposite position, that when giving a translation from a caseless language, we should follow the norms of English title case given at MOS:TITLES; i.e., since it's arbitrary in such an instance anyway, follow the default instead of doing something unusual. A third group of editors would (perhaps unhelpfully) argue for doing it differently on a title-by-title basis, following the predominant style used for that specific title in English-language sources.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:02, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    "Foreign terms": rename a subsection?

    Under "Foreign terms", the first subsection is called "No common use in English". This subsection title is genuinely ambiguous, especially in the context of a manual, because the word "No" appears to be prohibiting something. I'm sure the person who wrote it merely wanted to avoid wordy headings, and the topic was so familiar to them that they didn't see the confusion.

    Just in the interest of trying to keep it short, I might suggest something like "If not commonly used in English" or "Words not commonly used in English", but my preference is to give up trying to condense the idea, and put "When the word is not commonly used in English".

    If a change is made, the subsection that follows it should probably be renamed correspondingly. TooManyFingers (talk) 18:21, 23 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    There isn't any other MoS section that start with "No" and is a rule against something, and if we do have a rule against something, it is not given in the form "No [whatever]".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:40, 23 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not among those who had planned to read the whole manual just in order to discover the situation you described. I can't imagine I'm alone in that, so your response doesn't seem reasonable to me. And even if it is expected that everyone will just know they have to read the whole manual before reading this part, there are other ambiguities in this heading that make it unclear what it's even referring to, and it's easily fixed. Of course you know what it means, but that isn't really relevant – you were already familiar with it. TooManyFingers (talk) 23:31, 24 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    "No common use in English" is a descriptive phrase and has no verb in it, so it cannot be an instruction. I honestly don't care much whether the wording is tweaked, but none of the suggestions above strike me as improvements. "If not commonly used in English" looks like a fragementary question. "Words not commonly used in English" is too specific, since the material applies to multi-word phrases. "When the word is not commonly used in English" has the same issue.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:36, 25 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    The name might be re-titled too. America is "foreign" where I live. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 12:14, 25 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Doesn't have anything to do with the US. It's about foreign to English, not foreign to a particular geographic location.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:36, 25 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Then why not say that directly rather than approach it obliquely? I suspect when it was written many many moons ago, the author unconsciously channelled the US phrase "foreign and domestic". Wikipedia is a world-wide encyclopedia, nowhere is "foreign". --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:11, 25 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Sure, but this is not the MOS for Wikipedia. It's the MOS for en.wiki. That said, I agree "foreign" is not quite precise. --Trovatore (talk) 17:48, 25 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    (As an aside, I think the project of trying to make Wikipedia a single encyclopedia that you can read in multiple languages is a bit overdone sometimes. The different languages are different encyclopedias, between which there is a certain amount of coordination, but there is no need to try to make them all just article-for-article translations of one another.) --Trovatore (talk) 17:51, 25 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, and what's striking to me here is that this particular material has been stable for years and years, then suddenly out of nowhere two people want to change it (without a good idea for what to change it to), both with rationales that indicate problems understanding the clear meaning of the material, which no one else seems to have any difficulty with.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:09, 25 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    This should resolve it, with a minimal amount of change, and no substantive change.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:09, 25 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Agree with SMC’s “tweak”. Should resolve the issue. Blueboar (talk) 17:17, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    "UK government" vs "British government"?

    This question is being discussed at Talk:Elgin Marbles#UK vs British. Does the Manual of Style makes any distinction or express any preference between these two? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:20, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    I don't personally have a preference but the title of the Prime Minister is Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The government is elected under United Kingdom Local Elections. I'm more bothered about not switching between the two in that article. British might read better for people. Knitsey (talk) 12:43, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    United Kingdom is a subject or (as in your first example) object. British is more common as an adjective. MapReader (talk) 12:47, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, I'd say United Kingdom was a proper noun. But it has been suggested that, in this case, its abbreviation "UK" can also be used as an adjective. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:59, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I think that’s a practice more common in American English, because the Americans clearly do use ‘US’ as an adjective - for example ‘US Navy’ or ‘US Army’. Whereas it’s the Royal Navy and British Army. If the article is in American English then using UK as an adjective would be more in order than it would for a British English one. MapReader (talk) 18:46, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    That's not an adjective. That's a noun adjunct. May not matter for this discussion, but good to keep these things straight. --Trovatore (talk) 02:13, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The idea that "UK government" (with or without a capital G) is an Americanism isn't demonstrable, as shown by a quick search for this quoted string in news from the UK [14]. It's quite frequent, and simply not the preference of a few specific publishers such as The Guardian.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:06, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    For what it's worth, the UK Government's Digital Service style guide (www.gov.uk/guidance/style-guide/a-to-z-of-gov-uk-style) says: Use UK and United Kingdom in preference to Britain and British (UK business, UK foreign policy, ambassador and high commissioner). But British embassy, not UK embassy. -- DeFacto (talk). 14:00, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Too bad it doesn't mention "UK government". It doesn't even give those as "e.g."? Martinevans123 (talk) 14:12, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Both "UK government" and "British government" are in widespread common use, and both are used in official sources like gov.uk. In that context, I don't think it would be appropriate for WP to prescriptively pick one over the other. I would say we shouldn't arbitrarily switch between them, but that is more an issue of the problem with elegant variation generally than this specific usage.--Trystan (talk) 15:02, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, Googling on just "https://www.gov.uk" gives 4,910 hits on "British government" and 1,870,000 hits on "UK Government". -- DeFacto (talk). 15:08, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    errrrm, we never use Google hits as the basis for MoS (for a whole host of reasons)? Martinevans123 (talk) 15:11, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    That's as maybe, but it makes an informative contribution to the discussion, that's all. -- DeFacto (talk). 15:22, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Again, as I suggested at Talk:Elgin Marbles, unless we know the reason(s) why each of those cases was used in each particular example, we're really no further forward. I don't think its a case of "UK government wins by 1,865,090, because that's what the gov.uk website says." Martinevans123 (talk) 15:27, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Ah, it does. In the "U" section it says:
    UK government
    Never HM government.
    And in the "G" section it says:
    government
    Lower case unless it’s a full title. For example: 'UK government', but 'His Majesty’s Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'
    Also 'Welsh Government', as it’s the full title.
    -- DeFacto (talk). 15:03, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I see. Well we have no examples of "HM government" and no examples of "Government". So no issues there. But, as Trystan says above, it's probably not appropriate for WP to prescriptively pick one over the other. And certainly not on the basis of advice offered by a single external website? Martinevans123 (talk) 15:09, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I'd go by the related pages - You've got Parliament of the United Kingdom, Government of the United Kingdom & Monarchy of the United Kingdom. Although, you've also got British royal family. -- GoodDay (talk) 15:33, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    We've also got British Empire, which was kind of when all this Elgin Marbles fuss kicked off? Martinevans123 (talk) 15:39, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Haven't read the bio page. Are there any other governments mentioned? GoodDay (talk) 15:47, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Unsurprisingly we also have Greek government (which redirects anyway). Martinevans123 (talk) 16:17, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    FWIW, that page should re-direct to the Government of Greece page. GoodDay (talk) 16:22, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Retargeted it. Note that Greek Government already pointed to Government of Greece, so this is just a matter of consistency. oknazevad (talk) 16:54, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    As posted on the article talk page, pre 1800 it was the British Government, after 1800 it was changed to UK Government. The events surrounding the Marbles started just before 1800 (if my memory serves me right) but the removal, after the casts were taken, began 1801(?).
    I don't know if this [15] is applicable, While many government powers have been delegated to the devolved institutions in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, only the UK Government can speak on behalf of the UK and represent us abroad. Knitsey (talk) 15:53, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    "British" is the standard adjective for the United Kingdom. It should be "British government". The use of "UK" as an adjective is very poor English. You wouldn't say "the France government" or "the Canada government". -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:52, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    That's true. But you would say "US government"? Martinevans123 (talk) 16:15, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, because US is commonly used as an adjective and always has been. You wouldn't, however, say "USA government". -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:27, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Necrothesp, just like "UK" then, which is commonly used as an adjective too. Your argument against "UK government" is illogical. -- DeFacto (talk). 17:54, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Necrothesp, "British" is one of the standard adjectives. The other is "UK", and neither are poor English. -- DeFacto (talk). 16:21, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    My point is that it is poor English. Bad English is not an excuse for bad English. This is an encyclopaedia, not a populist social media site. -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:27, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    And bad British is not an excuse for bad UK! The article ought to be consistent, where it can be. (but nothing is set in stone, lol) . Martinevans123 (talk) 16:44, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Necrothesp, what's poor about using the common adjective "UK" as an, err, adjective? Of Britain and UK even the Guardian's style guide here says: "These terms are synonymous: Britain is the official short form of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Used as adjectives, therefore, British and UK mean the same". -- DeFacto (talk). 17:11, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    We'll have none of those pinko, lefty, subversive grammar ideas here, thankyou very much! Martinevans123 (talk) 17:14, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, as in UK Empire, UK Raj, UK Army, UK Airways, etc. etc..... Martinevans123 (talk) 17:18, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Quite! -- Necrothesp (talk) 17:32, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    There's an obvious difference though between those examples and "UK Government". The latter is in common usage, as "US government" is. The others are not, and are comparable to "US pie", "US Dream", "US football", "US Revolution", and "US Samoa". -- DeFacto (talk). 17:51, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I maintain that "UK" and "British" are not synonymous. Far from it, in fact. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:27, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    When "the UK" is used as an adjective before a noun, as in "the UK government", it means "the government of the UK" (and there "the UK" is used as a noun). "The British government" can also mean "the government of the UK", so clearly it is synonymous in that case, although it is a more ambiguous way of saying it. -- DeFacto (talk). 16:42, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Why is it "more ambiguous"? Martinevans123 (talk) 16:57, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    "British government" is ambiguous because "British" has two common meanings:
    1. of or relating to the United Kingdom
    2. of or relating to Britain
    The second is the problem as "Britain" has two common meanings too:
    1. an informal name for Great Britain (England, Scotland, and Wales)
    2. an informal name for the United Kingdom (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales)
    -- DeFacto (talk). 19:37, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I would suggest that the phrase "the British government" may be ambiguous in isolation, but that the context in a sentence/ paragraph/ section/ article, etc., will generally help to demote what is being referred to. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:22, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    For my part, I wasn't even sure that "the British government" might sometimes be ambiguous, but rather "British government" without the definite article (which suggests "the government of Britain" rather than the vague "a government in Britain"). I.e., the ambiguity is probably only in constructions like "according to several British government sources" or "subsidized by British governmental funding". And Zacwill's point below about "Spanish government" not being seen as ambiguous despite some self-rule autonomous areas within Spain is valid, so I'm less enthused about my own ambiguity argument now than when I began (and it seems not very persuasive to anyone else anyway). I don't want to die on a hill at all, much less this one. Heh.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:59, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Seeing as "Greek government" is being used in the said-bio page? Then "British government" should likewise, be used. Bring it all into consistency. GoodDay (talk) 16:56, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    @GoodDay, would you insist on using "American government" if the US were involved? Would you similarly eliminate other synonyms in use in the article? -- DeFacto (talk). 17:59, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Depends on what's being used in a page. If "UK government" is used in a page, I would use "US government". If "British government" is being used in a page, I would use "American government". Consistency within the page. GoodDay (talk) 18:01, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    But "American government" isn't how it's usually referred to, by a wide margin[16] (and definitely not a proper name), and would be considered by various people to be some combination of misnomer, ambiguous, or even offensive (mostly to people from Latin American countries who object to use of "America[n]" to refer to the US in particular). While "American government" is not exactly a neologisms and can be attested in sources, it is a far-minority usage and readers may mentally rebel at encountering it, so it should probably be avoided. It is much more important to be clear and neutral than to use precisely parallel constructions that hardly anyone but a linguist would notice.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:52, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I would favour "UK" [in the modern context, not for pre-1800 matters] because "British" includes "Scottish", but Scotland for some time has had its own devolved (rather unfortunate term) separate Scottish Government. While Scotland is still subject to some UK-wide legalities and regulations that aren't covered by the devolution, it is increasingly self-governing, and "British government" is misleading. It's also more of a descriptive term, not really a proper name like Scottish Government and arguably Government of the United Kingdom (in practice, though I think His Majesty's Government is the official name of it, albeit disused by sources and the public). As a descriptive "British government" phrase, or an alleged proper name "British Government", it is apt to be confusing in some ways to various readers.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:06, 1 December 2023 (UTC); clarified 01:52, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks, SMcCandlish. I was really only asking about usage at Elgin Marbles. I am guessing that you are offering advice here about usage in general. Are there any aspects at Elgin Marbles, particularly to do with the historical era involved, that might lead you to tailor that advice? Thank you. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:26, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Sure. For a historical subject the principle to not "rewrite history" would include avoiding confusing anachronisms. Elgin's activity came after the Acts of Union 1800 that established the United Kingdom, but the lead as of this moment confusingly says "Elgin sold them to the British government in that year.... In 1983, the Greek government formally asked the UK government to return them.... The UK government and British Museum declined UNESCO's offer of mediation. In 2021, UNESCO called upon the UK government to resolve the issue at the intergovernmental level." The "UK" version already dominates in the material in reference to both the government and parliament, with a stray instance of "British government" in there that seems to imply it is something different from the UK government but existed at the same time, the way the present UK and Scottish governments/parliaments co-exist. (The presence of "British Museum" in the same material is fine; it's a proper name and no one calls it the "UK Museum".) Should generally be made consistent throughout the article (e.g. "Goethe thought the British government's decision to buy the marbles..." → "Goethe thought the UK government's decision to buy the marbles..."), except here: "In November 1798, the Earl of Elgin ... had approached officials of the British government to inquire ...". In 1798, the UK as such didn't exist yet, so "British" should be retained. But later in the same section, "The excavation and removal was completed in 1812 .... Elgin sold the marbles to the British government for £35,000" should read "UK" not "British", being post-1800.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:52, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I don’t think the suggestion that using ‘UK-‘ as an adjective for situations after 1800 reflects the most common practice in British English commentary. It’s British English, after all, not UK English. The British Army, the British Royal Family, etc. In the same way as you observe above that American readers would expect to see ‘US Government’ rather than ‘American government’ (the latter nevertheless being not uncommon in British English), British readers would think phrases such as ‘UK Army’ and ‘UK Royal Family’ rather odd constructions, regardless of historical or contemporary geographical accuracy. For the Olympics the country competes as Team GB, and rejected a suggested switch to Team UK, and in either case were the qualifier to be put before the noun as an adjective it would have more commonly been switched to ‘British team’ rather than ‘GB Team’ or ‘UK Team’. MapReader (talk) 06:23, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Already addressed this: Example text The fact that "British" is casually used more often in various constructions is irrelevant; in this particular construction it's ambiguous and often confusing. It's also irrelevant that various British publishers dont' care are use it anyway, since it provable no done near-universally, and WP is not bound to write about the UK like some particular newspapers choose to write about the UK; we have our own style guide for a reason. The fact that more than on government and parliament exist in [Great] Britain alone is sufficient to not use the confusing term, even if it's common.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:48, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    FWIW, just because Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland have devolved governments, doesn't mean they're no longer governed by the UK/British government. Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland aren't independent. In other words - What the British gov't hands over? the British gov't can take back. GoodDay (talk) 17:03, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The difference between UK and British lies in including Northern Ireland. The country's name is "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland", so equating the mainland of GB to the whole of the UK can give offence in some quarters. In passing, and I don't want this to become a lengthy debate, why SMcCandlish is "devolved" a "rather unfortunate term"? Power and authority devolve from the national government to constituent parts, the word seems to me to be precise and appropriate. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 17:40, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Disagree. That's the difference between the proper nouns United Kingdom and Great Britain. But the adjective British is not limited to referring to GB. Its common use in relation UK-wide things is entirely valid. That is clear from the Government's own style-guide, odd though it may seem. My passport has the name of the state in full, and above that - in larger letters - British Passport; and within, all adjectival uses are "British" (excepting, of course, "Britannic Majesty"). I have never heard of NI Unionists objecting to British citizenship or being British nationals. Davidships (talk) 18:46, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Being very careful here about sensibilities, but NI Republicans can use the term "British" to imply that GB doesn't really care for NI and reinforce claims for a united Ireland. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 20:44, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The laws and regulations of the UK generally apply also to NI, so "UK government" would be more accurate a term anyway, since some interpretations of "British" exclude NI (even if Davidships might argue that most of them don't). PS: Martin, I called devolved an "unfortunate" term because devolve is also, with a different meaning, the opposte of evolve and in that sense implies a degeneration or retrogression. I get the sense that various of the English (and even some Scots) actually take a bit of delight in this pun as it applies to the devolved Scottish Government. Not something RS would cover propbably, but I've encountered use of it sarcastically in social media. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:52, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    (As far as I can tell, SMcCandlish, in the UK the term "devolution" is used by everyone without the slightest intention or suspicion of a pun.) the other Martin (talk) 11:17, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    So, in a side matter that really has no bearing on the thread, you just randomly feel like calling me a blantant liar that I've seen it used with sarcasm/irony? The fact that you haven't personally run into this usage doesn't mean it doesn't exist. FFS.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:56, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Your opening phrasing is contestable, not only because of devolution but because the Brexit settlement, built on the Good Friday Agreement, leaves NI still subject to much EU law. But usage isn’t merely about strict geographical or historical accuracy, anyway. MapReader (talk) 06:29, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    SMcCandlish, do you think the WP:MoS needs to say something about the use of "the UK government" and "the British government"? Surely there are times in British history when use of "the UK government" would be anachronistic? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:13, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    It would be anchronistic pre-1800, but MoS need not address it unless it's a frequent bone of contention (MOS:BLOAT). I would think that in any article improperly using "UK government" for something happening in 1745, that pointing out it was anachronistic and changing it to British would not go opposed. And anyway, I don't seem to be changing anyone's mind that using "UK government" instead of "British government" is a better post-1800 option anyway (and am not inclined to argue it any further; I've given the rationales I have and would just be repeating myself annoyingly), so the usage is apt to remain "British" most of the time regardless.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:48, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Aint' this discussion kinda getting off topic? GoodDay (talk) 02:39, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Yes, but just to point out, British government, indeed all things British are things that have something do with the British Isles which includes Northern Ireland. So if anything, it's not NI that would be upset but the Republic. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:38, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Suggesting that the British government is a government of the British Isles might raise a few eyebrows, if not hackles, in the Republic of Ireland. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 12:31, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    That's my, "if anything" clause above. But the British government still has 'something to do with the British Isles', nonetheless. (I rather doubt most in the Republic care that it's called the British government -- it's little different than calling the Irish government, the 'Irish government' -- although they might not prefer what the term 'British Isles' encompasses.) Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:16, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    At any rate, slightly more on topic, I just don't think anyone is confused by the phrase 'British government', in the present, or in the past 300 years or so. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:54, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I wholly agree. I just don't see from where all this alleged ambiguity/ confusion is supposed to arise. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:57, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    To spell it out again: For some time now there has been more than one government that is British, and this was also true before the Acts of Union. The time period in which "British government" has had only one possible referent is not the present, and it might (I would have to do some word history investigation to be sure) not even be the majority of the time that "government" has been a term used in Britain. You're depending on every reader interpreting the word "British" to mean "encompassing all of Britain" and never "within Britain", despite the word having multiple meanings. There's less potential confusion when "British government" is preceded by "the", but this will not always be the case. And "UK goverment" (for the 1800-onward period in which it is applicable) is ambiguous in no way to anyone (is precise) and is well-attested in sources, including British ones, even if it isn't the most common way someone would express it over a pint at the pub. It's is better to use clear language than the most common language when the latter may be unclear (especially to people outside a particular country).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:10, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Errrrm no, I'm depending on every reader (or just most readers) to see a phrase such as "in 1801 the British government" and to realise that this refers to the government of Great Britain (i.e. those guys sat in the Houses of Parliament in Westminster) in 1801. Very sorry if that's asking too much. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:31, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    This is a bit like claiming that Spanish government is an ambiguous term because the various autonomous communities each have their own devolved governments. There is no possibility that someone could see the phrase "British government" and assume that it referred to anything other than the national government seated in Westminster. Zacwill (talk) 00:42, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Since the Elgin Marbles page is using "Greek government"? Then that page should use "British government". Or do ya'll want to have something adopted for the entire Wikipedia, concerning the governments of the UK & USA. GoodDay (talk) 18:03, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    It was my edit here (subsequently reverted by DeFacto) that started this discussion. I have no wish to enact a sitewide policy, but I would prefer to see "British government" in the article, simply because it is a more encyclopedic term. Zacwill (talk) 00:35, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    There's nothing "unencyclopedic" about "UK government", in which "UK" is used adjectively just as "Greek" is being used. The fact that "Greek" is not (in this sense) also used as a noun is irrelevant. A closer comparison would be "New Zealand", a noun phrase that is routinely also used adjectivally ("New Zealand government" or in short form "NZ government"; use of "New Zealander government" is almost unheard of). The fact that "British government" is more commonly used, by writers who care less about potential ambiguity, doesn't mandate that we use it. Not sure how to make this clearer. This ambiguity reason really isn't much different from "United States government" and "US government" (or "U.S. government" if you really insist on that excrescent style) rather than "American government". It's not really material that "American government" and "British government" aren't ambiguous to everyone all the time. There's enough ambiguity for some readers some of the time for us to avoid the problem.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:08, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    As I tried to explain above, the context ought to be sufficient to remove any ambiguity. If "some readers" just ignore the context, and still see ambiguity, they must really be somewhat stupid. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:15, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Fair enough. I'm inclined to concede on this, though I don't think there should be any editwarring or meatbot activity to force "British" everwhere. But the usage should be consistent in the same article (except don't make it "UK" if it's anachronistic; an article that needs to use a "X government" term for pre-1800 events should probably use "British" consistently and avoid the "UK" construction).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:57, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Oooooh.... "editwarring or meatbot activity". Criminy! Whatever next. But many thanks for your input. Martinevans123 (talk) 16:39, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Strange WP:FAITACCOMPLI behaviour sometimes ensues (including from rather random quarters, like very recent editors) when they think there's a "mandate" to prefer one style over another. It happens.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:08, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I'll try and reign in my recent user meatbots on this one. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:31, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    If they are plump and juicy, set them aside for barbecuing later.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:47, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Decoding US Naval Ship Hull Numbers: Format Matters

    Hull numbers on US Naval ships serve as unique identifiers, much like personal names. Altering their format or inserting punctuation changes their intended identification. Just as "Bob Ross" is distinct from "Bob-Ross," CVN 77 and CVN-77 represent separate designations. These hull numbers are specifically structured to convey essential information, and any deviation from their intended format leads to potential confusion and inaccuracies. Just as one wouldn't arbitrarily modify a person's name, altering the format of a hull number can distort its precise meaning and hinder effective communication within naval operations, emphasizing the importance of maintaining the correct format for these vital identifiers.

    The resulting impact, at a minimum, is a prevalence and perpetuation of incorrect format across the shipyard industry.

    All US Naval ship designations should have hyphens removed. 50.231.20.123 (talk) 15:07, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Whoah. Well, USN doesn't agree about the hyphen. For example USS Abbot (DD-629) in the two key official USN-published reference sources:
    A choice was made on WP some while back: see WP:SHIPNAME "On Wikipedia, US Navy and US Coast Guard hull numbers are hyphenated (the US Navy itself is not consistent in this respect)".
    If you wish to pursue this, I suggest that you raise it at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships. Davidships (talk) 16:11, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I would add that the rationale from the anon was self-defeating from the outset. If "the shipyard industry" shows "prevalence" of the usage with the hyphens, then it is strong evidence against removing them. And the rant asserts that using hyphens "changes their intended identification ... leads to potential confusion and inaccuracies", but has illustrated no such problems, e.g. two different ships designated "CVN 77" and "CVN-77", respectively, that have to be disambiguated.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:14, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    NOWRAP on sports scores

    Hi! I'm looking for some input on something that's come up on an article. Following a chat on my talk, it seems as though scores separated with an endash (no spaces) are default wrapping on a specific browser (Edge on Windows 10). I was under the impression that items like 6–4 wouldn't wrap. It doesn't on my browser, but there have been articles with these scores put into {{Nowrap}} tags; which I don't think is usual policy. Can anyone shed s some light on this? Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 15:57, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Of course sports scores (3‍–‍2) should never wrap. Whether {{nbnd}} or {{nowrap}} is used to achieve it is immaterial. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 23:36, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I think what I'm getting at, is that currently we don't use either in any MOS or style guide. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 07:07, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    We don't need a rule to do the sensible thing. All sorts of things should be no-wrapped to prevent line breaking, and we don't catalogue all of them. Is there some long-term, intractable fight going on, with people revert-warring against no-wrap templating?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:09, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    There is no edit-war going on at all. Just a polite discussion.  Alan  (talk) 10:35, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Not really. I didn't even know that this dash would wrap. I was just looking for some sort of consensus to update our MOS (such as at MOS:SNOOKER, but also maybe a paragraph here) and make it the suggested formatting. Otherwise we'll just end up with other sports, etc. having the same conversation. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 10:37, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Because it would be such a small addition, and because the problem could be widespread, I don't think I'm actually going to object to adding this to MOS:NUM in the sport scores and vote tallies section, and I think I saw that someone had already done it anyway. If at least two browser have this issue, and it affects all sports (and votes, and other things formatted like this), then I suppose it's a real enough issue to address it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:33, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Well spotted. MOS:SCORES says: "To avoid potential line breaks, {{non breaking en dash}}, or {{nbnd}} for short, can be used."  Alan  (talk) 10:51, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Sure. I'm happy-ish now. It's going to be a bit more processing for pages, but not too bad. I would prefer it to say "should" be used, else we are still leaving it up as a style preference thing, which I don't think it is. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 12:56, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    It depends on context. There is no potential for unwanted line breaks in many sitations, so 'should' seems too strong. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:03, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree with Lee Vilenski. I also think that using "should" is better than using "can" in this case. In what situation is there no potential for unwanted line breaks? Example?  Alan  (talk) 13:42, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Right near the start of a sentence (or equivalent, e.g. beginning of an infobox parameter or near start of an image caption) and probably in a table column that consists of nothing but scores.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:46, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Understood - and that's fair enough, but I still don't think that "should" is too strong. "Should" is making a suggestion. "Must" would be too strong in being an instruction. But "can" is very weak.  Alan  (talk) 16:32, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    That would be the start of a paragraph, rather than a sentence. I think suggesting it as "can", has the idea that it could be reverted as not being required, as it isn't wrapping on their display. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 17:53, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Yep, I mean "paragraph". Derp.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:11, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    It might be better to reword it to say something along the lines of: "A {{non breaking en dash}}, or {{nbnd}} should be used to avoid a potential line break unless a line break is unlikely to occur."  Alan  (talk) 18:57, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Or better still something like: "A {{non breaking en dash}}, or {{nbnd}} for short, should be used to avoid a potential line break, except where a line break is unlikely to occur, such as at the beginning of an infobox parameter or at the start of a paragraph." in MOS:SCORES  Alan  (talk) 19:22, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    But then it's getting longwinded and WP:CREEPy. We don't go into this detail in other places where nbsp is mentioned.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:11, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Fair point. So what do you suggest.  Alan  (talk) 08:57, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Just leave it as "can" or change it to "should" if you really, really think this is necessary (though expect someoen to later revert it as too emphatic), and don't add a bunch of conditional verbiage. We don't need it for any other such case, so we don't need it here. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:41, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I would be happier having it changed from "can" to "should", which I don't think is too emphatic, and I think Lee Vilenski would agree. But it would be better to get a wider consensus than just the two or three users who have contributed to this discussion.  Alan  (talk) 11:02, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Help:Line-break handling says that {{nowrap}} is good for short text sections like "10 kg (22 lb)", which should always stay together. This, I think, applies to scores. The MOS says It is sometimes desirable to force a text segment to appear entirely on a single line‍—‌that is, to prevent a line break (line wrap) from occurring anywhere within it. and I think this applies here also.  Alan  (talk) 10:33, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    To clarify, the problem seems to be browser specific. I use Microsoft Edge on Windows 10, but the same occurs, apparently, on an iPad. I'm told that it is not a problem using Firefox. The following table (column headed "plain") will look horrible on some browsers but OK on others. Using {{nowrap}} or {{nbnd}} fixes it:
    {{nowrap}} plain {{nbnd}}
    {{hyphen}} Text before 6-4 Text before 6-4 N/A
    {{ndash}} Text before 6–4 Text before 6–4 Text before 6‍–‍4
    {{mdash}} Text before 6—4 Text before 6—4 N/A
     Alan  (talk) 13:41, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • Just say "Use {nbnd} to prevent linebreak." That sounds sort of imperative ("Do this!") but also admits a reading where you might not bother with {nbnd} in a situation where you're sure it's not needed ("Do this in order to achieve this goal -- assuming, of course, that the goal is relevant in your situation"). Having said that, I always use {ndash} for ndashes (never the literal – character, nor –), so actually {nbnd} is easier to type in, so why not just use it for all scores? EEng 03:38, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      We shouldn't effectively mandate a particular template when there are multiple approaches. E.g. just doing {{nowrap|12–3}} or the alias {{nobr|12–3}} works fine and are both more intuitive/memorable for various editors and clearer in the source code about what is going on (since {{nbnd}} isn't familiar to many editors and not a very intuitive name if you don't already know what it stands for). PS: Some of us are fond of using the actual "–" character since it's right there in the "Wiki markup" section of the built-in editing tools and is concise.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:14, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      Yeah, well, your mother wears army boots. EEng 03:28, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      @EEng: Your comment seems to be off-topic and unconstructive. See WP:CIVIL.  Alan  (talk) 09:10, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      He's just a-kiddin'. I know EEng's humour pretty well by now. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:28, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      I guess I forgot to say [FBDB]. EEng 11:19, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      I had to get it from somewhere!  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:28, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • I would change the wording to "should use" and suggest any of the valid templates. We shouldn't be enforcing one template when all of them have effectively the same outcome. Joseph2302 (talk) 09:03, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      So that would mean changing the wording to something like:
      "To avoid potential line breaks, {{nowrap}} should be used around the entire score construction, or use {{non breaking en dash}}, {{nbnd}} for short, between scores."
       Alan  (talk) 09:31, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      Works for me, even the "should" I was initially skeptical about, since "To avoid potential line breaks" puts a logical rationale/condition on it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:32, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      I'm happy with the "should" at MOS:SCORES but my reading then is that it would say that to "avoid potential line breaks" you "should" use x or y, but it doesn't say that you should be trying to "avoid potential line breaks". Personally I'm happy with that since some projects may be happy with the potential line breaks, which to me are no big deal. Nigej (talk) 11:03, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      I agree that 'should' would be preferable to 'can' in whatever the consensus wording ends up as. As mentioned previously the wording in MOS:SCORES – "A {{non breaking en dash}}, or {{nbnd}} for short, should be used to avoid a potential line break, except where a line break is unlikely to occur, such as at the beginning of an infobox parameter or at the start of a paragraph." – appears sensible enough to me. Steveflan (talk) 11:44, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      Too longwinded. No need for all the detail.  Alan  (talk) 11:57, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      It's gone quiet in here, so I decided to be WP:BOLD and change MOS:SCORES.  Alan  (talk) 12:03, 9 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • All the debating about "should be used" vs. "can be used" is basically mooted by writing simpler and avoiding both, as I did here. The entire-section context of the material, which starts off advising {{ndash}} by default, make it clear that the meaning of the new material is "If the score string is positioned in the text such that a line break might occur in the middle of it, that splitting result would be undesirable, so here is how to prevent that from happening". No "should" or "can" wording is needed at all.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:58, 10 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Is this edit by Bastun correct? Bastun states that [[Irish people|Irish]] is an absolutely standard link on Irish BLPs, but there is no mention of this at MOS:OVERLINK, which advises against the linking of major examples of nationalities, ethnicities or descent (e.g., British, Japanese, Turkish, African American, Nigerian). Neveselbert also removed the link with this edit. Khiikiat (talk) 22:17, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Looking for examples of such linking, I'm now finding it hard to find any - possibly a bot has been at work? In the particular case of Shane MacGowan, though, there is some controversy over whether he is Irish, English, or both, so linking seems appropriate. BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 12:13, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Linking may be appropriate, though a link to Irish people is questionable. A more relevant link would be preferable, per WP:LINKRELEVANT. ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 17:43, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Bastun and Neveselbert: In the case of the MacGowan article, maybe this would be a better link: [[Irish nationality law#Entitlement by birth, descent, or adoption|Irish]]. Khiikiat (talk) 22:29, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    That seems to go against MOS:EGG. If the link text is "Irish", arguably Irish people or Irish language, or possibly something else from the disambiguation page, should be the most appropriate link target. Gawaon (talk) 23:04, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Might be fixable with something more specific, e.g. naturalised Irish citizen or whatever. Depends on exactly how it's used in which sentence, I suppose.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:04, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    OVERLINK does say that, but such links are still quite common. I'm not entirely sure if this means we need a bot to go around and clean them up, or whether there is a slowly changing consensus shift toward linking ethnic terms (and when it is done, yes, "Foo people" is the usually correct target unless the ethnicity has a more specific ethnonymic article title). I'm not sure how to establish this other than some kind of painstaking numerical survey of a large number of bios.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:46, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I'd say that a person's nationality or ethnicity is fairly important for the article about that person, so arguably OVERLINK shouldn't apply there at all (since it says: "Unless a term is particularly relevant to the context in the article"). Gawaon (talk) 21:33, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I'd say the nationality or ethnicity is important, but would question the need to link it. If it's relating to a commonly known country then Irish, German, English, Australian etc without links are sufficient. Canterbury Tail talk 21:39, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Even though it may not be important, it is what we call a defining characteristic. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:43, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Real example for NOTRIPLEDASH

    If a real, article-based example is needed for MOS:NOTRIPLEDASH, the lead paragraph of Rigging, consisting of one, long sentence with three dashes, is a textbook case:

    Rigging comprises the system of ropes, cables and chains, which support a sailing ship or sail boat's masts—standing rigging, including shrouds and stays—and which adjust the position of the vessel's sails and spars to which they are attached—the running rigging, including halyards, braces, sheets and vangs.[1]

    Having only passing familiarity with sailing—I do remember spar, and boom vang, but not enough to define them—I am unable to parse that long sentence in one go, and I'm still not sure what the standing rigging and the running rigging are, although I guess I could figure it out if I sat and annotated the sentence. I'll be pointing this out at its Talk page, so it may have changed by the time you read this, but it's a good illustration in the wild of the type of problem triple dashes can cause. Mathglot (talk) 20:23, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Agreed, it was horrible. I've rewritten the lead to use simple sentences and no dashes. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 21:35, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Currently a bunch of month articles, such as January 1960, have links in section headings, like this: 

    ==[[January 1]], 1960 (Friday)==

    My understanding of MOS:NOSECTIONLINKS is that links in section headings are prohibited, and exceptions are not allowed:

    For technical reasons, section headings should:

    • ...
    • Not contain links, especially where only part of a heading is linked.
    • ...

    These technical restrictions are necessary to avoid technical complications and are not subject to override by local consensus.

    Is my understanding correct here? Should these links be removed from the section headings? —Bkell (talk) 19:51, 12 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    You are correct. Those links are especially non-useful because the calendar at the top already lists all the day-of-year pages, and, well, MOS:OVERLINK (A good question to ask yourself is whether reading the article you're about to link to would help someone understand the article you are linking from).
    The links are still there because such articles get such little attention and there are so many of these articles. I have a hard enough time looking through decade or century pages, let alone specific months! — HTGS (talk) 00:04, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    As a reader of February 1960 § February 29, 1960 (Monday), I find the link in the heading quite useful. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 00:39, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The section header link is wrong if the suggestion is to allow it here and not elsewhere, but the use of a hatnote is too clunky. Maybe there should be a new convention. Remsense留 00:48, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    If the suggestion is that Feb 29 in particular deserves a link, then I think a hat is fine. Better (imo) would be a line of prose, but that suggests at a lot more lines of prose for every section. — HTGS (talk) 00:55, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    HTGS, I agree this is a better solution. Remsense留 01:09, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    What I was trying to say is that MOS:NOSECTIONLINKS is generally a very good rule, but some articles have such a unique structure that links should be allowed. The series of lists under discussion here is not visited in large numbers and their specific design is not going to bleed into general articles. In short: beware of WP:CREEP and allow WP:COMMONSENSE. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:47, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    On some points, I may agree, but this specific style point that is as firm and total as it is for a reason—if a ubiquitous element of the site's layout (section headers) is presented obviously differently only in some articles, this will create endless end-user confusion and lead to endless litigation over where exactly the line is. Carving out exceptions is usually what actually creates WP:CREEP as characterized through the essay; there are simply more consistent options. Remsense留 02:51, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Please explain how it will create confusion? And where does "litigation" come into it? Deb (talk) 08:55, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Because section headers will have blue segments on 0.1% of the site's articles and not elsewhere, and there will be a very vague category of articles that allow them, and people will be confused and try to litigate which articles are in that category. Remsense留 09:03, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    You'll find that this is already the case, and people aren't confused. By "litigate", do you mean argue, discuss, dispute or what? We don't do litigation on Wikipedia. Deb (talk) 09:16, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    ┌──────────────────────────────┘
    This thread exists because people were confused—now that I am aware of it, I am also confused. If such exceptions were actually adhering to the MoS—meaning they would be explicitly written in the MoS rather than just ignoring it—there would be plenty more confusion, because the issue would be more visible, and it would grow. As for my choice of verbiage, I'm going to abstain, because I'm not sure you were actually confused as to what I meant. Remsense留 09:27, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Michael, how do you justify "some articles have such a unique structure that links should be allowed" when the Manual of Style clearly says "These technical restrictions ... are not subject to override by local consensus"? I don't understand what else that MOS sentence can mean if it isn't saying that exceptions are prohibited. —Bkell (talk) 03:03, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The MoS is demonstrably wrong here; a link like February 1960#February 29, 1960 (Monday) obviously works without any complications. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:40, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The likely problem is the links in the headings themselves, not just links to those headings. I can certainly believe that the headings look fine for you on your computer. But are the headers rendered properly for everyone who uses screen readers, for example? SMcCandlish suggests below that the "technical reasons" here might be related to accessibility. Or do links in section headings cause problems for some automated tools? There are many ways that Wikipedia data is used, and the fact that the links don't cause any problems for you personally in the way you use Wikipedia doesn't mean that there are no potential technical issues for other people or for other tools. —Bkell (talk) 03:49, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I am intentionally not making a MOS:OVERLINK argument here—let's focus on MOS:NOSECTIONLINKS. See MOS:DATELINK, which makes an explicit exception for "intrinsically chronological articles", which seems to indicate that MOS:OVERLINK does not apply to these links in these articles. So it seems to be fine to link to January 1 from the January 1960 article. But my understanding of MOS:NOSECTIONLINKS implies that those links shouldn't be in section headings. —Bkell (talk) 01:28, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    You aren't making an overlink argument because I already explained to you that articles relating to chronology are excluded. On investigation, it appears to me that the original Manual of Style was changed in 2006 to introduce this instruction: "Avoid links within headings." Note - not section headings. Later, somewhere around 2009, it became "Section names should not normally contain links, especially ones that link only part of the heading; they will cause accessibility problems." The nature of these "problems" is not specified. Month articles have existed for many years, certainly before the wording in the MOS changed to what it is now. Whether the specific dates should be linked has also been discussed. The links in the Month articles are very useful to me, because they allow navigation to and from Date articles. Deb (talk) 09:13, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Trying to make a "grandfather clause" argument for ignoring the Manual of Style is a bit baffling, so I don't know why that's an angle here. Remsense留 09:34, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I have no idea what you are talking about. Please explain what you mean. I can't have been ignoring it because that "rule" has never been raised previously in relation to the month articles. Deb (talk) 12:38, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    There very definitely is not a "grandfather clause", with regard to MoS or any other policy or guideline. WP:CONTENTAGE is utterly irrelevant to whether something should be edited to comply with P&G rules. WP's rules are updated all the time (for better or worse) and it is simply never ever the case that articles are magically excluded from compliance with them because of how long ago the article was estabished or how long ago something undesirable was first done in it. To put it in really obvious terms, when, say, WP:BLP1E was implemented it immediately applied to all articles and all content in them; there is no provision for violating it based on the violation pre-dating the implementation of the rule. In my 18 years here, I have one time, and one only, seen an attempt to impose a grandfather clause, by an RfC closer. What of course happened in reality was that his desire to see the consensus reached in the close not be applied to old articles was ignored as nonsense by the community, and the implementation in that case is now consistent throughout all our articles. Moving on, the fact that no one raised an issue about substandard formatting at an article that basically no one watchlists is also irrelevant. One cannot, for example, ignore BLP1E policy on an obscure bio simply because it's obscure. Nothing about Wikipedia works that way, ever. Deb has been here even longer than I have, and must understand all that already, so this "I don't get it" stuff is looking rather performative.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:22, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    You said "litigate", a term that refers specifically to legal action. Maybe you mean "Wikilawyering|wikilawyering"? Deb (talk) 12:40, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    See any good dictionary, in which litigate includes non-law definitions like 'dispute'. Even if you don't have such a dictionary, you easily should be able to intuit the general meaning as a metaphor. In very common Wikipedia usage, it refers to time-consuming and adversarial debate. But it's not plausible for you to have been here for 21 years without already understanding that. "I just don't understand" games are not helpful and simply degrade the quality of the discussion and the speed of its resolution.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:22, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    So far in this discussion I haven't seen any rationale for why it is important for links like January 1 to be in section headings specifically. Support has been voiced for having such links in month articles in general, which is fine—I don't think anyone is arguing against that. But I don't understand why those links have to be in the section headings. The month articles already have a calendar at the top with links to every day in the month. If it is important to have these links in each section too, then perhaps we can add a line of prose with the link or a hatnote such as {{See also}}. Why is it so important for the links to be specifically in the section headings? —Bkell (talk) 23:15, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Header links: technical reasons

    A question for other editors: I assume that particular bullet is not actually for technical reasons, but just fits nicely into the list there? — HTGS (talk) 00:07, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, there's another bulleted list immediately below containing additional guidelines for section headings "as a matter of consistent style", including a guideline against markup in section headings. Since the rule against links is in the "for technical reasons" list and not the "matter of consistent style" list, I assume that it is for technical reasons. —Bkell (talk) 01:19, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Do piped links break section linking? I can’t imagine many other technical reasons for such a rule. My presumption has always been that we don’t like it because it looks awful. — HTGS (talk) 01:49, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't know what the technical reasons are, but that certainly doesn't mean that they don't exist. For example, maybe it has something to do with the Wikipedia mobile app or automated tools or accessibility concerns (such as screen readers) or cross-language considerations or some internal data representation or something that I don't even know about. There are a lot of ways that Wikipedia data is used beyond just editing and viewing pages on wikipedia.org on a computer. We should be careful about concluding that there are no technical reasons just because we don't know what they are. —Bkell (talk) 01:57, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I wasn’t disputing that there are technical reasons, so much as looking for those reasons. If there are still good tech reasons to keep the advice, then I will take that as good reason to be more aggressive in removing links. — HTGS (talk) 04:23, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    There's an accessibility reason, too, though I do not recall the details, and I don't know how long it's been since it was re-examined. Better asked at WT:MOSACCESS where some screen-reader users are regulars and can usually answer such questions pretty quickly.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:32, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Older versions of the MOS stated:

    Avoid links within headings. Depending on settings, some users may not see them clearly. It is much better to put the appropriate link in the first sentence under the header.

    This sounds like it was for accessibility, or at least for CSS and browser settings. Of course this was a long time ago (2004). — HTGS (talk) 04:20, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I see that HTGS has posted at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Accessibility#Links within section headings. I also just posted at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Technical issues caused by links in section headings? —Bkell (talk) 14:39, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Links in section headers used to cause problems for screen readers, at least JAWS (which was then almost universally used in Windows), where the screen reader would stop reading the section title after encountering a link. That's no longer an issue. Graham87 (talk) 16:44, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    On the mobile site, you need to tap on a heading in order to expand a section and read it. If the heading has links, you have to carefully tap outside of them (in the worst case, you need to tap on the tiny icon on the side). This is uncomfortable and can be unintuitive. Matma Rex talk 17:19, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Is this true of section headers? I understand you to say that, when you look at an article like March 1965 and you look at the section headed "March 6, 1965 (Saturday)", you can't see the events for that date unless you click on the section header. Is that correct? Deb (talk) 12:31, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Using the mobile app (Android), the article appears much like on the desktop, with uncollapsed section headings. At the mobile site, each section is collapsed (not when the mobile site is viewed on a desktop), but the uncollapse button is easy to reach, or the string "(weekday)" can be used. So, no technical reason exists. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:59, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    It is not totally broken, but the links do interfere with that functionality. —Bkell (talk) 13:19, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Deb That is correct, here's how that article looks on my phone: [17] Matma Rex talk 17:53, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Okay, I can see why that's a difficulty for you. Deb (talk) 08:48, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    As I pointed out above, after I visited the page in the mobile view, I had no problem to expand a day's section by touching the downwards expand button or the year or the day of the week following the linked date. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:08, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    1) Links in headings are a pain from a user script perspective. One of my user scripts reads wikicode, then tries to use that wikicode to figure out what HTML element to target to add some links or a form or something. I had to write a mini parser with unit tests to make sure this conversion goes smoothly.

    2) It is also a pain from a perspective of trying to generate the correct #SectionLinks in the URL. Wikicode markup in section headings can make it hard to guess what the correct #SectionLink will be. Does == [[User:Novem Linguae|Novem Linguae]] == render as #Novem_Linguae or #User:Novem_Linguae? What about if we start doing template transclusions such as == {{u|Novem Linguae}} ==? These are not insurmountable problems, but they add complexity to what could otherwise be a nice, straightforward system. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:11, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    @Novem Linguae There's no such complication in these cases. We only use the Date as the link, e.g. March 5. Deb (talk) 08:41, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Deb, Novem Linguae is giving examples, from personal experience, of some of the complications that arise from having to parse links in section headings. Frankly I find it rather insolent to deny their experience by telling them that such complications do not exist. You seem to be saying that the "simple case" is not hard, but even the simple case requires additional code to handle, and then you have to add code to check that it really is the simple case. For example, in order to ignore the brackets around a link, the code needs to check that the brackets really do form a proper link—it can't just ignore all brackets in a heading. The code probably needs to be able to properly parse piped links if only to make sure that a heading doesn't have them. And I'm sure there are lots of additional edge cases that I am not aware of because I haven't written such code. When someone who has actual experience in writing code to deal with links in section headings tells me that those links are a pain and cause additional complexity, I believe them. —Bkell (talk) 15:49, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Not at all. What I'm saying is that the examples s/he offered in that particular comment don't correspond to the situation we're discussing. In the second comment, s/he seems to be talking about piped links and I'm not. The first comment doesn't mean anything to me but, if it's only relevant to the relatively few contributors who write user scripts, then it is hardly mainstream. If you can write user scripts, you can fix user scripts. Deb (talk) 16:07, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    That's not an accurate representation of the issue. If something breaks userscripts, that's an issue for script maintainers and users alike. Part of the reason it breaks userscripts is because it's semantically unexpected, the core issue underlying whether links in headers should be allowed or disallowed: this doesn't seem like it should be a thing, it's explicitly proscribed and not a thing anywhere (except in this secret area of the site), so tools are designed with that expectation in mind.
    Our options seem to be:
    1. Go with the MOS as written, and find other ways to supply these links, totally removing all links in headers.
    2. Create a specific cutout with some 'unique article content' justification in the MOS, which I think would create far more problems than it solves, as I've argued above, or
    3. Continue with the present "easter egg" approach.
    Remsense留 22:53, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Links in section headers can make section linking problematic and I recall a discussion a few months back when mention was made of these breaking an archive function (archivebot?). They also look awful. There you are, two technical reasons and one not quite so, though it should carry some weight. Neils51 (talk) 05:05, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Perhaps you could point us to this discussion, and give us an example of how they "make section linking problematic". "They look awful" is neither a technical reason nor an opinion that others share. They look fine to me; in fact, they look helpful because they tell people they can go straight to the article for that date. Deb (talk) 08:43, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Neils51, may I raise {{Citation needed}}? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:08, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    For what it's worth, I agree that "they look awful" is not a technical reason, but it is not correct to say that others do not share that opinion. HTGS literally said "it looks awful" earlier in this discussion, and I also hold that view. —Bkell (talk) 23:46, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Subjectively, I agree. More objectively and substantively: A) linking in a heading also has WP:SEAOFBLUE issues; B) is contrary to the entire purpose of headings (to serve as a content identifier and navigation target, not as key content itself or a navigation launching pad; c) harms WP:REUSE of our content, by encouraging miportant links (and even crucial text that is used for the link) to be put only in a heading (which may get lopped off in various forms of repurposing of our material) and not in the content under it (editors would be apt to remove it from the body text as "redundant"); and d) for the same reason is dangerous in another way, namely the rather carefree attitude of many editors toward re-wording or even removing headings, which could easily eliminate a contextually necessary linked term from the article entirely.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:29, 16 December 2023 (UTC); revised with A–D argument labels for clarity. 17:07, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    It's hard to think of anything less objective than the WP:SEAOFBLUE argument. There has only been one convincing argument in this whole discussion, and that was the potential issue raised by User:Matma Rex. Deb (talk) 16:25, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Um, no, picking at one argument you don't like when four were provided does not magically dismiss all four. No one is fooled by this sort of pseudo-argument.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:46, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I assume the four arguments you mention are 1) section linking; 2) accessability; 3) usability on mobile devices; 4) problems of a vote counting script. 1–3 have been shown as incorrect, no. 4 doesn't apply here (nor does SEAOFBLUE). As I wrote before, MOS:NOSECTIONLINKS is generally a very good principle, but its application to some months articles would lead to loss of convenient links or clumsy prose repetition. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:07, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Why would you assume those are my four arguments, when they are not in my post that Deb is responding to, which contains four arguments? [sigh] As for the arguments you want to talk about intead: No. 1 (section linking) is unclear as to what you mean by it; this entire thread is about "section linking". No. 2 (accessibility) has not been thoroughly explored; one editor's comment about one particular accessibilty issue from a while back and it's lack of applicability any longer to one software package, isn't the only concern that could arise; it all needs more testing by more reader-editors with different screen readers and probably more accessibility issues to work with (e.g. mobility ones that could tie in with the mobile issue that is up next). No. 3 (mobile usability) was not "shown as incorrect"; rather, one editor demonstrated through testing that manipulation of headings was not totally broken, but made confusing and much more difficult; it's not clear at all that such a trade-off is worth it. No. 4 (some script) does seems to have been resolved already.
    My points I have gone back and labelled A–D for earlier reference. Point C is the most important one probably, because it's clear that your actual intent, not just a possible side effect in some other case, isn't just to have an allegedly "convenient" link in the header mirror the linked text in the article prose, but actually replace the linked text from the article prose so that it is only in the heading (you miscall it "clumsy prose repetition").  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:07, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Flagicon next to the tournament title

    Hi all.. In Gao Ling#Performance timeline section NguyenDuyAnh1995 added flagicon next to the tournament title. As i know, added flagicon next to tournament name, will make the country or location seem to be of greater significance than the tournament. Per MOS:FLAG said that "flag icons may be relevant in some subject areas, where the subject actually represents that country or nationality – such as military units or national sports teams." The subject in Gao Ling#Performance timeline is the tournament not the country. So i think, per MOS:DECOR and MOS:FLAGCRUFT, the country flag in that section should be remove.. I hope someone can help me.. Thanks. Stvbastian (talk) 04:59, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Agreed that doing that decoration is a poor idea. Flags in sport are used to indicate the sporting nationality of a particular competitor. So, aside from the problem pointed out above of unduly dwelling on the location of events, it has the additional fault of confusingly switching in mid-article from an indicator of something about the player to an indicator of something else entirely, and at first seem to weirdly imly that the player was representing different countries at different events. It's just completely unhelpful.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:21, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you for your explanation SMcCandlish. 3 times i reminded NguyenDuyAnh1995 to read and understand the MOS:FLAG, but he was unable to understand the rules. Hopefully with additional explanation from you he can understand. Once again, thank you.. Stvbastian (talk) 08:59, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Hi, when you “reminded me” of the matter, you did not show any specific violation except that my using of flag icons was “merely decorative” and I replied that they were “informative” which I believe is accurate. If you had quoted “flag icons may be...sport teams” I might have understood the problem, but instead you at the first time used “merely decorative” and other times just “read this” “read this”. Honestly if you believe someone violated something you have to tell what it is, which rule and which regulation, not just throw the whole article and tell people to read that. I will remove the flag icons from the tables, but next time please identify the mistakes first before telling others they are wrong. NguyenDuyAnh1995 (talk) 11:16, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Hei,, don't act like a fool. You said in your talk page that you have read the rule ([18]. I deliberately included the MOS:FLAG link, so you can click, read, understand, and your knowledge increases. But you continue to brag about your personal opinion which is not based on Wikipedia's rules. This is important to every Wikipedia editors to read more and more about Wikipedia rules especially the Manual of Style. Stvbastian (talk) 11:55, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    NguyenDuyAnh1995 does need to read and understand the relevent guidelines, but name-calling like "fool" is not civil, and is strongly contraindicated in a topic area covered by WP:CTOP (which MoS is: WP:CT/MOS). If someone is making faulty arguments, there are better ways to say that (see first two sections of WP:HOTHEADED for examles).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:43, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Sorry for saying that. I just feel uncomfortable with NguyenDuyAnh1995 attitude of constantly making excuses, not wanting to increase his knowledge of Wikipedia rules, and only using his personal perspective to edit on Wikipedia. @SMcCandlish Thank you for the useful explanation. Stvbastian (talk) 01:29, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I read the rule, you read the rule. But in our discussions none of us came up with any mention of "flag icons...sports teams", but only whether the using of flag icons were "merely decorative". You told me that I violated the rule without pointing which it was, and as I might have missed the actual violations while skimming MOS:FLAG, you failed to notice it as well and only brought it up here. Yes, it's important for editors to read about the rule, but it's also important for you to identify the violated rule to inform the "violators" like me, instead of discussing about one rule with me on my talk page and bringing up another one here.NguyenDuyAnh1995 (talk) 03:48, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    They are merely decorative; there is nothing informative about them since they are simply decorating the country name which is already specified textually. We grudgingly permit this for sport competitors for the sole reason that in other media like TV coverage, sports scores in international competition often have countries reduced to flags as identifiers, so a reader who sees something like that and wants more information may actually be aided in our material on a sports event by the flag being present in reference to that competitor (player or team/squad). Names of sports events or venues are not reduced to flags in this manner, so there is no purpose served in our article by festooning a list of events with flags for their locations. It is definitely against MOS:FLAGS and MOS:DECOR, as well as MOS:IMAGERELEVANCE: "Images must be significant and relevant in the topic's context, not primarily decorative"; images are properly used as an "illustrative aid to understanding", a purpose not served by adding flag icons to a list of events.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:43, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you for the explanation. Some rules are not easy to understand thoroughly and it doesn't help when the one who accused me of violations the rule said things like "adding flag icons doesn't mean anything because the named of host countries are already included in the names of the tournaments" which is not true in many cases. I admit that sometimes I fail to notice which rules I violated, but explanations like yours are more helpful than giving me the like to articles with "read this" "read this" only.
    NguyenDuyAnh1995 (talk) 04:00, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Too much reasons.. It is clearly stated in first section of MOS:FLAG that said Flag icons may be relevant in some subject areas, the subject actually represents that country or nationality – such as military units or national sports teams.. When i gave u the link then u said already read the link... But what do you do? You said you have read the rule and continously gave your personal preference which is not based on Wikipedia rules. And again just like SMcCandlish said: "You does need to read and understand the relevant guidelines". Reading and understand the rules is important to every Wikipedia editors. And sometimes, when someone asked you to read and understand the guidelines, please do that and stop take examples in articles that don't follow the rules, especially editing just based on your personal understanding... Stvbastian (talk) 07:31, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    You read the rule as well and you had to ask the opinions here about that first section and now you tell me that I should have understood it immediately after reading it? You read that but didn’t bring it up in the discussion or give any thorough explanation like what SMcCandlish did here. For what I know there are advisors and customer services who will explain the rules and regulations for those you have questions about them, not bringing tons of papers or pdf files and tell them to read it. Or when police or authorities announce a resident that they have violated something, do they explain the specific rule that is violated, or did they just throw the whole laws book and ask the “violator” to read and see for themselves what they do wrong? And I’m pretty sure when you cited MOS:FLAG you didn’t notice that I might have violated that first section. That’s why you only brought up “merely decorative” thing.NguyenDuyAnh1995 (talk) 08:09, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Can we not have the argument? We deprecate the use of flags next to tournament names, and realistically most usage of flags are overkill. Some sports where national teams regularly use flags, or sometimes when people represent a country at an event (although not always), is suitable times to use a flag. Whether or not there has been an edit war to this period is irrelevant. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 10:09, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I just want to make NguyenDuyAnh1995 understand, because it seems like he fails to understand and looking for too many excuses for his mistakes. Decorative?? Yup thats right.. just like SMcCandlish said "merely decorative; there is nothing informative about them since they are simply decorating the country name which is already specified textually." Just as i explained previously in your talk page. Am i wrong? So, per your edits you violates the MOS:FLAGS and MOS:DECOR, as well as MOS:IMAGERELEVANCE. And don't forget to click, read, and understand the 3 links MOS:FLAGS, MOS:DECOR, and MOS:IMAGERELEVANCE. Thanks Stvbastian (talk) 10:20, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    You still don’t get it, do you? I accept the mistakes as explained by SMcCandlish and removed the icons. The problem is that you didn’t know what I violated as well, and that’s why you discussed about one section of MOS:FLAG on my talk page and came here and talked about another. “Merely decorative”? It tells that Artic Open is in Finland, Syed Modi International is in India and Hylo Open is in Germany, unlike what you said of the place where they being held is already in the name of the tournaments. If you know what I violated, quote the section, not cite the whole article, then come here to ask for opinion about something you did not mention on our discussion and talk like I’m the one who were not unable to understand. NguyenDuyAnh1995 (talk) 11:19, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Ok, im wrong, you are right. Thanks Stvbastian (talk) 11:36, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    You're not wrong and NguyenDuyAnh1995 is not right. A flag does not "tell that Arctic Open is in Finland"; the word "Finland" does that, and the flag just decorates that name. We have three guidelines (at least) against doing this and NguyenDuyAnh1995 is playing WP:IDONTGETIT games endlessly in hopes that the opposition will just give up and go away instead of keep trying to get him to understand something that he must actually understand by now but is simply defying.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:13, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Twitter or X

    When presented with events before the Twitter rebrand, should I replace the word Twitter with X or leave it alone?

    Thank you, ItsCheck (talk) 19:40, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Use the name contemporaneous with the event being related. This goes for all entities that have changed their name: Königsberg; Berlin, Ontario; Constantinople; Edmonton Eskimos, Stalingrad, etc. Indefatigable (talk) 03:34, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Yep. This is not RewritingHistoryPedia. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:53, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Please also consider carefully if you can avoid mentioning Twitter/X entirely.
    For example if something was announced on the front page of The New York Times that might worth noting in the article text, but if someone notable said something on Twitter in most cases it is only important that the article text explain who said what, and it is usually more than enough to leave it to the reference to explain specifically where (ie Twitter) the statement was published. -- 109.79.166.31 (talk) 03:30, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Semi-protected edit request on 20 December 2023

    In the section "Punctuation inside or outside": "Quotation marks and internal links", the correct and incorrect examples are the same. Grammar-style (talk) 01:40, 20 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Sorry, first edit request: The incorrect example currently states:
    but should be changed to
    Grammar-style (talk) 01:43, 20 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
     Not done: It's subtler than that. The quotation marks are not part of the link in the correct example but are part of the link in the incorrect one. No change is needed for this. —C.Fred (talk) 01:49, 20 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Grammar-style, not quite. The distinction being illustrated in that section regards the use of wikilinks, not punctuation. Remsense留 01:49, 20 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh, thanks for the clarification. Turns out the info re: punctuation and quotes is in the "Titles of Works" part of the manual. Grammar-style (talk) 02:06, 20 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    See also MOS:LQ. It looks like you were trying to apply the commonly but neither unanimously nor exclusively American puctuation habit of putting terminal punctuation inside the quotation marks as a general approach. If you are doing around doing that on Wikipedia, please stop and undo it. WP only puts terminal punctuation inside quotation marks when that punctuation was part of the original material. If you are quoting "The shop closed at midnight." as part of a larger containing sentence, it's '"The shop closed at midnight", according to the manager.', because the original material contained no comma.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:10, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Don't worry; I was doing the exact opposite—moving punctuation from inside quotes to outside (specifically in song titles). Grammar-style (talk) 04:01, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Grand. While you're act it, be on the lookout for silliness like In ''The Tommyknockers,'' ... where people used to the "puctuation inside quotes" habit also mistake our italics or bold markup for quotes and do it there, too.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:24, 27 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    "WP only puts terminal punctuation inside quotation marks when that punctuation was part of the original material"...and only if it's a full quoted sentence, rather than sentence fragment, per LQ. MapReader (talk) 10:23, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    SMcCandlish, it's about time WP:LQ was reviewed and corrected. Does any other respected style manual or publisher really want " 'The shop closed at midnight', according to ..." (where the quoted material had a period at the end)? Show me! New Hart's Rules (NHR) and others would put a comma to represent that period: " 'The shop closed at midnight,' according to ...".

    NHR's own example makes this perfectly clear (but here I use WP-style double quotes):

    Yes, we will. It’s a good idea.
    "Yes, we will. It’s a good idea," he said.

    That's industry-standard logical quotation. It's a pity WP:MOS doesn't call for that, instead of its own awkward and anomalous variant. Find us any quide in the league of NHR that supports current WP:MOS practice for logical punctuation.

    49.190.56.203 (talk) 05:11, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    You seem to be unaware of "industry standards" outside the US? Actually the New Hart's Rules calls what we use the "traditional British style" and gives as example: Traditional British style would have given: ‘May I suggest’, she said, ‘that you have a bath before supper?’ (2014 ed., p. 163) Other examples, for which they don't even mention that there might be alternatives, are given on p. 161, including Chancellor was ‘convinced that the entire Balfour Declaration policy had been “a colossal blunder”, unjust to the Arabs and impossible of fulfillment in its own terms’. Gawaon (talk) 05:32, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Wikipedia's rules are the same as the Australian Government Style Manual. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:44, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Gawaon: On the contrary. I am intimately familiar with standards in and outside of the US. The examples you give from NHR are completely irrelevant to the point I have carefully laid out above. Read again, with care.
    Hawkeye7: Wrong. That wretched cobbled-together excuse for an Australian style manual in fact falls into line with NHR. But unlike NHR, it does not first give in raw form the text that is being quoted – essential for complete certainty about the intent. Examples at the point you link to (again I use WP double quote marks):
    "It has arrived," said the manager.
    "Has it arrived?" asked the manager.
    Now, it's possible that the first quoted text here had a comma in the original. The dullards don't say. A period in the original is far more likely to have been intended. What we do know is that the Australian Government Style Manual does not give any example like this:
    * "It has arrived", said the manager.
    The only examples it gives at the section you link with the comma following the quote mark (setting aside occrurrences in bibliographic material that are not remotely relevant):
    Single quotation marks are also known as ‘quote marks’, ‘quotes’, ‘speech marks’ or ‘inverted commas’.
    Another use of quotation marks is for words introduced by expressions such as ‘titled’, ‘marked’, ‘the term’ and ‘defined as’.
    Many things have been called ‘the new black’, but they usually fade to grey.
    His stirring speech, ‘We shall never surrender’, galvanised the UK and its allies. [Quoting the name of a speech.]
    Not one of these supports the strange version of logical quotation embedded in WP:MOS all these years. Read again, with care.
    49.190.56.203 (talk) 07:01, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, the NRH also has examples such as He asserted that ‘Americans don’t understand history’, and that ‘intervention would be a disaster’. They don't give the original wording, but conceivably it might have been something like Americans don’t understand history, therefore intervention would be a disaster. Our style is at least consistent and easy to follow. Their style, and that of the Australian Government Style Manual, seems to be pure chaos. I'm glad we don't have to attempt to follow them. Gawaon (talk) 07:29, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Well Gawaon, you quote New Hart's Rules misleadingly and out of context. Here is that material from NHR (2ed, 2014) but with the essential preamble that you omitted (my bold, my underlining):
    When a quoted sentence is a short one with no introductory punctuation, the full point is generally placed outside the closing quotation mark:
    Cogito, ergo sum means ‘I think, therefore I am’.
    He believed in the proverb ‘Dead men tell no tales’.
    He asserted that ‘Americans don’t understand history’, and that ‘intervention would be a disaster’.
    So your take on the quoted material is manifestly wrong. The four strings in NHR examples that I mark here in bold are declared to be sentences (short ones) in their own right. Read again, but with care.
    49.190.56.203 (talk) 21:08, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    And what you're failing to take care to notice is that even in NHR style (which is just one of at least 10 distinguishable ones among different British publishers and institutions) is that "He asserted that 'Americans don't understand history', and that 'intervention would be a disaster'." is actually following the LQ rule to not put that comma inside the first quoted string, though many British and most American publishers would do so. NHR is just weird in having made up a strange exception to logical punctuation, a new "rule" to put the terminal punctuation outside the closing quotation mark if the quoted sentence is short and part of a larger editorial sentence. In over 20 years of style-guide reading I've never seen another promotion of this idea, and it clearly is not logical and not common either. But this is not evidence that NHR doesn't otherwise follow LQ, even if they don't use the term "logical quotation". Gawaon's other quotes from NHR conclusively demonstrate this.

    The Australian Government Style Manual is actually quite clear and entirely in synch with logical quotation, other than an example typo:

    If the punctuation mark is part of the quoted text, place the punctuation mark before the closing quotation mark. The same rule applies for directly quoted speech followed by the attribution. If the punctuation mark is part of the sentence outside the quoted text, it follows the closing quotation mark. Quoted material can appear as parenthetical information, enclosed in parentheses, dashes or commas. In these cases, place the quotation marks inside the sentence punctuation. If the quotation ends a sentence or is a sentence in its own right, place the final full stop before the final quotation mark.

    That it has an singular example that fails to follow its own rules doesn't magically erase the rules, it's simply a typographical error. Even Chicago Manual of Style has some (I reported one, a capitalization error that contradicts their own rule on capital letters and organism names, to their editors back in the 2000s, in the 15th edition, and it is still present in the 17th. This does not make CMoS an unreliable source on a stylistic scope within American publishing, nor mean that their rule in particular is inapplicable, it just means they have a typo in one of their examples.) The .au guide's only divergence (aside from that typo) from any of Wikipedia use on this kind of question is in "Sometimes, there are 2 punctuation marks – one for the quotation and one for the sentence. Decide which is stronger and use it. Don't use both punctuation marks." That generally applies on Wikipedia (and MOS:LQ provides an example of it), but taking a cue from computer science and textual analysis, there are various circumstances in which we would in fact write something like "The Speaker called 'Order!'.", because the emphasis is in the original and is not part of our own dispassionate sentence. Picking the "stronger" one would in fact be an error in encyclopedic writing. This comes up so infrequently we don't even have a rule about it in MOS:LQ. But notably, people do not editwar about it here, because we understand that the point is absolutely clarity to the reader, in an encyclopedic register) not prescriptivist imposition of personal or nationalistic style peccadilloes for their own sake, which appears to be your raison d être here.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:20, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    That latter looks horrendous; the comma is there to break up the material for the reader, and having it inside the quote makes no sense to me. MapReader (talk) 10:25, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    No practicable system for ordinary everyday quotation could ever be perfect. If you're accustomed to what WP:MOS prescribes for example, your reaction is understandable. Let's be aware, however, that the WP:MOS system for LQ is a Wikipedia invention without support from the world's major style manuals. And it leaves ambiguities and uncertainties for the reader, just as all other codifications must.
    49.190.56.203 (talk) 21:08, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    This needs to just be listed in WP:PERENNIAL. "LQ is a Wikipedia invention" is patently false, and we've been over this many, many times. Pretty much every 6 months to a year, someone says MOS:LQ is "wrong" and wants to "correct" it, yet the consensus to stick with what we have never budges. If you dig back in the archives, you'll find many previous discussions of this, including one in which I analyized the relevant contents of a large number of style guides on the matter, back when I had a large collection of those taking up an entire 5-shelf bookcase. The short answer is to this is yes: 'Does any other respected style manual or publisher really want "'The shop closed at midnight', according to ..." (where the quoted material had a period at the end)?' As for "Show me!", no. Do your own research, especially since most if it's already been done for you and you can just dig it out of the archives.

    Contrary to popular belief, The Chicago Manual of Style also accounts for logical quotation in numerous places (it simply refuses to call it "logical quotation", probably because the term would undermine their favoring of typesetters' quotation, hereafter TQ). It covers the usage of it in computer science, in philosophy, and in textual analysis and criticism (the latter being what much of WP is: our "job" is painstaking analysis of, with a critical and sumarizing eye toward, large amounts of written source material).

    I'd forgotten about it entirely, but the essay WP:Logical quotation on Wikipedia covers a lot of this ground, with sources, though it's over a decade old and is missing some key material like Pullum's mentioned below. Also, Here's a bit of proof of one major publisher following LQ: The Times [19]

    Commas: keep commas where they should be logically in "broken" sentences. Thus, the comma goes outside in the following example: "The trouble is", he said, "that this is a contentious issue."

    Note that punctuation marks go inside the inverted commas [quotation marks] if they relate to the words quoted, outside if they relate to the main sentence, eg, She is going to classes in "health and beauty". If the whole sentence is a quotation, the final point [period] goes inside, eg, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty."

    So, the "Show me!" is answered after all. And there are more. See, e.g., University of Sussex [20]:

    Anything which is not part of th[e] exact words must be placed outside the quotes, even if ... this means using two sets of quotes because the quotation has been interrupted.

    This piece describes both approaches, actually, toward the end, and refers to ours as logical, and advises to prefer it when possible, while noting that various publishers will not permit it because their editors "have been taught the conventional view and adhere to it rigorously" and will engage in "grim opposition". The same grim opposition tediously brought by our anonymous prescriptivist here (who is also engaging in something of a mixture of WP:OR, idiolect, and fallacy of equivocation, changing the meaning of the term "logical quotation" on-the-fly to a new personal definition that includes "Yes, we will. It's a good idea," he said., which is not at all what logical quotation or logical puntuation refers to, in any source anywhere.) The author of the Sussex material, Larry Trask (a notable trans-Atlantic linguist) also cites Geoffrey K. Pullum (another notable trans-Atlantic linguist) on the matter, as correctly observing that use of TQ results in misquotation.

    Here's another, Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies [21]:

    Punctuation marks are placed inside the quotation marks only if the sense of the punctuation is part of the quotation; this system is referred to as logical quotation. ... When a sentence fragment is quoted, the period [full stop] is outside. ... Within a quotation use the spelling and punctuation of the original.

    It takes only a few minutes with Google to find such material, and I don't have all day for it. PS: "[LQ] leaves ambiguities and uncertainties for the reader": It most certainly does not, and elminates those caused by TQ. If you think otherwise, then try to lay out for us all a supposed "ambiguity and uncertainty" caused by LQ, and we'll be happy to disabuse you of the notion. Oh, and be sure to "read again, but with care" since you love telling everyone else to do that.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:46, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    A spirited response, SMcCandlish – but one that misses the point entirely. You appear unable to adduce an example of the sort I was asking for, and instead rail against those who don't like LQ. I'm not one of those! I strongly prefer LQ. But I find that the Wikipedia version of logical quotation stands quirkily apart. WP:LQ gives this example, where the source quoted is a full sentence ending with a full stop: "For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own", said Kennedy. Show us any published source, or any respected style manual other than WP:MOS, putting a comma after the quotation mark where a full sentence is quoted.
    I have looked at the sources you mention. I do not find any example of the sort I ask for, which WP:MOS prescribes. Have I missed something? If so, please correct me. If one or two published examples are found, they are surely isolates – or lapses by some editor.
    Let me illustrate the pervasiveness of this strange blindspot in Wikipedia style. I'll start by quoting from the highly polemical essay you mention above (you are reported to be responsible for 79.4% of it):
    Typesetters' quotation is not American – British, etc. journalism and fiction often use it, too
    Here's one example, out of literally millions, of British professional journalism using typesetters' quotation, from a BBC News article on the death of a Hiberno-British sports figure: "Len did a terrific amount for charity," he said.[4] Note ...charity," versus the supposedly expected version: ...charity", which is claimed to be the British style by the proponents of TQ as "American style". There are several other examples in that same piece.
    Now, the only quotations in the piece that is referenced there fit perfectly with LQ as it is presented in NHR. Unsurprising, from the BBC. Contrary to the essay's assertion there is no distinguishing evidence to show that TQ is adopted in the article. And if we look at other BBC material, we find that NHR LQ is the norm. This randomly selected BBC article for example includes quotations styled like this (my underlining):
    Within days, "Z" had become the symbol of what the Kremlin was calling its "special military operation".
    Mr Yefremov insists he is "anti-war".
    "I don't know what's going on in their heads," he says. "How could they allow themselves to be fooled? ..."
    "I realise now I should have ignored that and driven on," he says. "But I was afraid of being put in jail."
    " 'Yes,' the prisoner replied. 'Then someone bring me a mop,' said the colonel. 'We'll turn you into a girl and send your wife the video.'"
    BBC uses TQ? Nothing to show that it uses TQ here, or in the article linked in that polemical essay. BBC uses LQ à la Wikipedia? Nope. No one does, except on Wikipedia. BBC uses logical quotation in the NHR manner. That's the industry standard.
    I gave just one illustration – easily found – of the confusion, misunderstanding, and poor analysis that underlies WP:LQ. Many others could be shown. You would do well, SMcCandlish, to read with more care. And you would do well to meet a fair challenge fairly, rather than impugning without evidence my own competence in such matters. I too have shelves groaning with style guides, and I read them with unusual care.
    49.190.56.203 (talk) 06:36, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    "The" and periodicals

    In open prose, not at the start of a sentence, is it (for example) "the New York Times" or "The New York Times"? If linked, is it "the New York Times", "the New York Times", or "The New York Times"? Seems worthy of site-wide consistency, but I can't find the applicable guideline, if any exists. ―Mandruss ☎ 01:18, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Ought to be The New York Times, if that's the name of the paper/site. GoodDay (talk) 01:23, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    MOS:THETITLE  — Archer (t·c) 01:23, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Ok, so we are to refer to the title of the article about the periodical, which, I presume, derives from the periodical's self-reference at the top of its cover or front page. But that doesn't address the linking question. ―Mandruss ☎ 01:28, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    We link it with the title of our article on the periodical, capitalized and italicized following the style in that article. So, "The New York Times", but "the San Francisco Chronicle". —David Eppstein (talk) 02:21, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    That's not quite true — we always use italics for newspaper titles even when the newspapers themselves don't, such as the Guardian. We also seem to want to write The Guardian (uppercase The) and not the Guardian even though the Guardian doesn't do that either. Popcornfud (talk) 02:23, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Practice varies widely but most often I see "I saw it in the New York Times", but "I saw it in The New York Times" is closer to our guidance at MOS:THETITLE. Even if we were to standardize on "I saw it in The New York Times", sometimes it would be lower case, like in "I read the New York Times article" where the is referring to the article not the newspaper. When linked, it should be to the name which would be italicized. SchreiberBike | ⌨  03:10, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    You're absolutely right on the second point and that's something I'm often fixing on Wikipedia — but it's also true for titles of works of art, eg "the Lord of the Rings author". Popcornfud (talk) 04:46, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Attributive use typically drops the leading The: "McKellen's favorite Lord of the Rings scene". Because our style guide is not making an explicit except for this, the thing to do would be to rewrite: "McKellen's favorite scene in The Lord of the Rings. Same with "In a 2022 New York Times op-ed" → "In a 2022 op-ed in The New York Times." It is possible that MoS should make an attributive-use exception, but that's another discussion to have separately (I lean in the direction of making one, because the attributive use without The is already common in our content and not generally seen as an error.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:53, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    (I don't know why our treatment should be determined by the periodical's graphic designers. Presence or absence of "The" at the top of the cover or front page is a style/layout decision, and it's far more likely the San Francisco Chronicle's founders and higher-ups referred/refer to the paper as "the Chronicle", not "Chronicle". Show me official legal documents where the paper refers to itself as no-The "San Francisco Chronicle".) ―Mandruss ☎ 04:14, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    If I had my way, I'd lowercase the lot of 'em.
    I see this as consistent with the general principle of MOS:CAPS, which is that "only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia". The "the" in the New York Times is not capitalized in a substantial majority of sources — the Guardian, for example, doesn't capitalize it, nor any other leading "the"s in periodical names.
    I don't think the names of periodicals should be treated in the same was as the titles of works of art, either — so MOS:THETITLE wouldn't apply. For a start, the "substantial majority of independent, reliable sources" doesn't treat periodical titles as akin to the titles of works of art — the Guardian will capitalize The Lord of the Rings, but not the New York Times. Periodicals would instead be covered under MOS:INSTITUTIONS. Popcornfud (talk) 04:44, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    The is clearly an optional part of the name, not consistently capped in sources. See stats for * San Francisco Chronicle and stats for * New York Times, as examples. And just as one would not say "a The Beatles album", one would not say "a The New York Times article" (nor with lowercase the). Even the NYT themselves will use lowercase now and then, as in "Follow the New York Times Opinion section..." and often "a New York Times...". And here are plenty of places where the Chronicle omits The; and they often refer to themselves as "the Chronicle". Dicklyon (talk) 06:02, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Let's start by ignoring what webmasters somewhat casually choose to use for HTML page titles. There is very little chance those are vetted by the respective papers, whose higher-ups have more important things to think about. And we shouldn't allow our treatment to be dictated by webmasters any more than graphic designers. If you want to take a COMMONNAME approach, that isn't it (nor is the current guideline) and it would be more complicated than is warranted imo (maybe impossible). Again, show me legal documents or support one-size-fits-all. (Once again, I've started with an inquiry and gotten myself deeper than I intended.) ―Mandruss ☎ 06:41, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    FWIW, I doubt that ngrams can meaningfully decide any question of this sort, since by definition they pluck phrases out of their contexts, and for this point the grammatical context of the phrase matters. (Maybe ngrams can be helpful in resolving the question of what to call an article by estimating which synonym is more common, but there, context typically matters less, and we can always redirect from the less common name to the more popular one, so there isn't a risk to getting it wrong, really. The issue of what text to put in an article is qualitatively different.) XOR'easter (talk) 16:49, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    As a matter of tradition, the word "the" is far more common in newspapers than magazines. Nobody says or writes "the Forbes" or "the Rolling Stone" (except for "Honey, where's the Forbes?"). This being the case, if there is any room at all for a guideline change, I'd favor carving out a separate guideline for newspapers, to include both article titles and treatment in prose. I'd also support some form – any form – of one-size-fits-all-newspapers. This business of drawing distinctions between papers is, in my opinion, a prime example of Wikipedia's strong tendency to overcomplicate style issues, costs exceeding benefits. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:43, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Agreed. Simplest solution? Lowercase "the" like MOS:INSTITUTIONS. Popcornfud (talk) 01:32, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Despite all the complaining above out this being over-complicated, by people actively trying to over-complicate it by making convoluted arguments about over-complication (and confusing publications with their publishing companies in the process), there is nothing complicated about this at all.

    1. If the publication's actual name contains "The", then do "in The New York Times".
    2. If its actual name does not contain "The", then leave it lowercase and outside the italics, even if a "the" seems to help in the sentence structure: "in the Los Angeles Times".
    3. That is all, the end.

    Same with titles of books, albums, films, TV shows, journals, plays, magazines, songs, poems, etc. If you're not sure which it is for a particular case, then use what our article title is, since other editors have already figured it out for that publication. If the publication is not notable and has no article here, then use it as-found (if the newspaper page says "The Podunk Mercury-Picayune" or says just "Podunk Mercury-Picayune" then you have your answer already, one way or the other). Those looking to forcibly assert a made-up consistency for all-must-have-The or none-may-have-The don't have a sensible argument to make. We don't go around either removing a leading The from, say, book and film titles (Lord of the Rings, Shining) nor do we go around sticking one onto things that aren't actually named that way (our article is not at "The American Civil Liberties Union" or "The PlayStation 5", despite both names being regularly attestable in source material with a leading definite article for syntactic reasons). These are not institutions (corporations, schools, government bodies, nonprofits, etc.), they are publications. Virtually all publications we would ever cite are also the product of institutions. Treating newspapers and their e-equivalents as institutions instead of publications would be an order of magnitude more confusing.

    As for San Francisco Chronicle in particular: Show me official legal documents – No. Trying to dig up legal filings from government databases or paper government primary-source materials is WP:OR, and the goofy arguments above about whether we can trust webmasters to get things right when it comes to names also applies to lawyers and other hirelings. If there's any kind of actual doubt about this case at all, there should not be. See their own "Our Company" page[22], which uses the same styling we do, down to the italics placement: Acquired by Hearst in 2000, the San Francisco Chronicle was founded in 1865 by Charles and Michael de Young and has been awarded six Pulitzer Prizes for journalistic excellence. The Chronicle, available in print, e-edition .... See also: [23].  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:05, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Per my previous comments, the name at the top of the front page does not constitute the paper's "actual name". It's a style/layout decision, nothing more. And a more careful reading would show you that I abandoned the "legal documents" argument in favor of one-size-fits-all-newspapers; sorry for changing my mind mid-stream. The futility of trying to determine an "actual name" is a large part of the basis for one-size-fits-all-newspapers. Given your derisive tone, that's where I stopped reading. ―Mandruss ☎ 02:26, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    If you think for some reason that the publication is not using its own actual name at top of the page, check the colophon (usually a small-print inset box on front page, second page, or last page) in a print edition; or check various of the about-us/policy/contact pages in an online version, to find out what they consider the publication name to be when given in plain text. I already did the latter for you in the SF Chronicle case (but you didn't bother to read it). If you can't find it anywhere, then do (as other style guides do) trust the name given at the top of the site or paper, since odds are that it is correct and your assumption that it's not correct is just unnecessary and unfounded OR unless you already have the evidence to back up your contrary suspicion in the first place.
    Someone taking the time to examine your argument and present a counter is much less dismissive than your "I stopped reading" just because you're unhappy that your idea wasn't cheered (and which also signals "I don't really care what the eventual outcome is"). No one is victimizing you.
    Some arguments really are poor and deserve defiance, such as making a never-The or always-The blanket rule for one very narrow class of publications but confusingly not for others; or making such a rule for all publications across the board, despite it not agreeing with how work titles are handled in the real world or the style guides ours is based on; or extra-confusingly trying to misapply a rule about organizations to a particular class of publications (and no others), out of confusing the publisher with the publication; or ignoring what a publication most pointedly says its name is, absent a compelling reason in that partcular case to think it's just a logo stylization and not the publication name. Any of these would sow far more confusion than they would prevent.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:44, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Overthink exists. Everything else aside, costs exceed benefits, and that calculation is as much your OR as mine. KISS. ―Mandruss ☎ 04:06, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I quite agree with all that wording, but find that it applies much better to what I'm saying, and what MOS:THETITLE clearly means and intends: use The if it's part of the actual name of the publication. If you can't tell for sure what the name of the publication is, use what appears at the top of the page. There is nothing further to it.
    All these propositions above at cross purposes to each other are the opposite (singly, not just together) of keeping things simple, because they would 1) carve out a "magically special" class of publication (which people would incessantly fight to the death over when it came to online news sites - are they newspapers or not? only if they have a paper edition too? What if they have different editorial boards? What if the corporate ownership has forked? What if the newspaper also publishes a magazine version as The New York Times at least used to? What if ...) to which a rule for all publications somehow doesn't apply; or 2) re-classify one class of publication as a non-publication and as if a publishing institution; or 3) make a one-size-fits-all rule (pro or con with regard to The) for all publications, in a way that conflicts with normal English usage. The result is chaotic crap no matter which of these were imposed. I don't predict consenus for any of them, because they're all confused and excessively prescriptive ideas and they have no "real problem to fix" basis to begin with.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:31, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Consider the following hypothetical guideline applicable to news publications, whether web, paper, or both.
    • Article title omits any "The". The New York Times moves to New York Times.
    • If common usage includes "the" to a significant degree, include "the" in open prose, uncapitalized. "the Los Angeles Times", but "FiveThirtyEight".
    • If linked, link only the article title. "the Washington Post".
    Benefits:
    • Guideline is simple, unambiguous, easily understood.
    • No need to fret about "actual names" (which isn't always as clear-cut as you make it out to be).
    • All article titles are consistent.
    • Readers who notice such details (yes, they exist, including me), aren't left wondering why the differences in treatment. Unless they dig into the guidelines (how many readers know how to do that, and care to?), it just looks like careless and unprofessional inconsistency.
    • No need for editors to check out the article title to know how to write the prose. Admittedly minor, but not insignificant.
    Costs:
    • A new guideline. A significant cost? Perhaps, but does it exceed the above benefits? Not in my view.
    • Otherwise, you tell me. There might be skirmishes over "significant degree" in bullet 2, but likely not many. How about a few real-life examples where the above guideline would increase costs significantly?
    As for "If it ain't broke, don't fix it", I quite agree with all that wording, but kindly define "broke". If something is unnecessarily complex, it's broke in my book. The difference in treatment between Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post is undeniably an example of complexity, and it's unnecessary. When the editor learning curve is at stake, every bit of added complexity needs to earn its keep through rigorous analysis, and any error should be in the direction of simplicity. ―Mandruss ☎ 13:40, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I suppose next you're going to tell me "El País" should really be "the Pais"? "Le Monde" should really be "the Monde"? Or are you treating other-language definite articles as somehow different?
    What about names of periodicals that use "the" in the middle, such as The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats? Are we supposed to remove the "the" from one of the two things in the title (making the title look like Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats, maybe a great name for a rock band but not actually accurate)? Are we supposed to un-italicize or un-link the second "the"? In The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate do we omit both "The"'s from the linked name, or only the first one? What about other names of periodicals in which the "the" at the start applies only to part of the title, not the whole title, like The Analyst, or, Mathematical Museum?
    Your supposed "benefit" that the guideline is simple and easily understood, is not an actual advantage over the current "just use the same form as the Wikipedia article title" which is simple and easily understood even in such cases.
    The current style, in which we can just link the title without piping or redirecting, is easier to link and helps discourage gnomes from "fixing" the links. Your proposal has the disadvantage of not doing that. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:42, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    As to other-language definite articles: No, I'm not going to tell you that. You're reading things into the proposed guideline that aren't there. Bullet 1 says, "Article title omits any 'The'." El País and Le Monde have no "The", so nothing would be removed from their titles. Bullet 2 says "If common usage includes "the" to a significant degree, include "the" in open prose, uncapitalized." Do common usages for El País and Le Monde include "the" to a significant degree? I don't know, but I strongly doubt it. So open prose would not include "the" for those cases. And bullet 3 says "If linked, link only the article title."; as we've established, the article titles for El País and Le Monde would be El País and Le Monde, respectively, so our linktext would never be País or Monde.
    I hear you saying that it makes little sense to limit the guideline to English-language publication titles. But why object to a literal interpretation of the guideline that addresses all of your practical concerns? I favor doing what works. We wouldn't even need to say, "This applies only to English-language publication titles"; we would simply need to apply the guideline as written.
    "The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats is a biannual review journal addressing English literature." How is that a news publication?
    Sure, there would be exceptions that need special treatment, as with any guideline. Guidelines are never expected to cover every case in the wiki-universe. That's why we have human editors with advanced brains.
    Have I failed to respond to any significant points in your post? If so, feel free to point them out and I'll do my best to do so. ―Mandruss ☎ 09:33, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, you have failed. You have failed to respond to the substantive issue of how to address periodicals (news or otherwise) whose name starts with "The" (as many do) but for which the initial "The" does not grammatically cover the entire title. I gave three examples, one a newspaper, so you cannot weasel out of this with special pleading that you only intend to describe the style for newspapers and that other kinds of periodicals need an entirely different style guideline. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:34, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    you cannot weasel out of this Ok, I see you're a member of the old school who don't give two shits about civility or common respect. I didn't know that about you; now I do. I'm out. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:28, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, that wasn't a civil response either. Your go-to tactic appears to be "I am frustrating people and meeting resistance which is not deferential to me, therefore I should turn even more dismissive than they were", instead of taking the fact that you are frustrating people as a sign to change your approach.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:47, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    No. Just no. Bullying and aspersions have no place in Wikipedia discussions, period. If you don't believe me, have a look at Wikipedia policy. You won't find an exception for frustrated editors. The difference between his incivility and mine is that mine was based on what he said, not what I believed to be in his mind (see AGF). I don't "weasel", and any editor who has been around me much will tell you that.
    One's long tenure does not elevate them to some god class exempting them from behavior standards. If anything, it puts them in a position to set good examples for newer editors. We should "win" debates by the strength of our reasoning, not by driving off opponents who don't care to be around mean-spiritedness. Feel free to collapse as off topic. ―Mandruss ☎ 12:22, 27 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Substitute "wiggle" or "wriggle", as suits your dialect, for "weasel", and David Eppstein's point is entirely, well, on point.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:48, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The above proposition by Mandruss is not the things it purports to be ("simple, unambiguous, easily understood, ... consistent") It's is an oversimplification, a Procrustean bed. It ambiguously fails to handle non-English definite articles as mentioned above and likely has other issues. Editors will not understand it and will rebel against it, because it defies near-universal real-world treatment of publication names, conflicts with other guideline principles (namely to include a leading The in cases where independent RS nearly always do so). And it absolutely is not consistent, because it treats one ill-definable class of publications radically differently from all other publication types, for no clearly definable rationale. (And this is particularly silly since the alleged concern about newspaper applies equally to other serial publications including magazines, academic journals, podcasts, etc.).
    The only "reason" advanced for this stuff is an alleged difficulty in figuring out what the actual names of a few publications are, but we've already been over this several times now. It is not difficult at all: First, believe what the publication at the top of it is telling you to your face. That is usually the end of it right there. (If it's notable and we have an article on it, just accept that our article title has already been vetted by other editors, and use it.) If for some unusual reason you disbelieve it anyway, see the publication's colophon and other fine print for how it refers to itself in running prose. If that still doesn't help you, see what the majority treatment is of the name in other publications. If in the ultra-rare case all these fail for you, drop the leading "The" since the MOS:THETITLE exception to The-dropping in our article titles only applies to titles of works that clearly have a leading The, and in this odd scenario the fact of one cannot be established. There is nothing "careless and unprofessional" about giving the title of a work with a leading "The" if it properly has one. Show me reliable sources referring to J.R.R. Tolkien's novel Hobbit or the TV show Munsters; These have a leading The, while Charlotte's Web and Battlestar Galactica do not. No one's head ever explodes about this.
    Ultimately, none of this really matters for newspaper mentions and citations. The encyclopedia is not broken if it says "in the Podunk News Journal" and {{cite news|...|work=Podunk News Journal|...}} versus "in The Podunk News Journal" and {{cite news|...|work=The Podunk News Journal|...}}; the referent is clear enough regardless. There is no reader- or editor-facing compelling reason to make up and impose a false consistency. PS: "Sure, there would be exceptions that need special treatment" – Mandruss's entire premise seems to be that a handful of cases of the present guideline needing (at least so he thinks) special treament means the guideline is broken and must be replaced. By something he concedes has the same limitation.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:21, 27 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Guideline is simple, unambiguous, easily understood is not a reader-oriented consideration. SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:37, 30 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    If the publication's actual name contains "The" ... If its actual name does not contain "The" ...
    Half of the debate here is that whether a periodical's title contains "The" or merely uses "the" is not always obvious or consistent. Nor is it agreed upon by sources writing about themselves and each other — unlike the titles of works of art. All sources write The Lord of the Rings, but not all sources write The New York Times. Popcornfud (talk) 03:30, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Already addressed this above. You don't need other sources to tell you that the title of The New York Times is The New York Times instead of New York Times when the publication itself already tells you what its title is both at the top and in all the about-itself material on its website [24][25][26], etc. There is nothing difficult or unsual about any of this. If you want to know what the proper name of, say, some non-newspaper website is, you look at what it says at the top, and if it seems like it might be a logo stylization, look in its plain text materials; we know it's "eBay" not the "ebay" of their present logo because they tell us so [27][28]. If you can't figure it out due to a lack of such plain-text materials, accept the logo version as the name unless there's compelling evidence otherwise. For use in a citation, all that matters really is that it be identifable, since the purpose of citation is finding the source to use it to check our content's verifiability. If the publication is the article subject, then if other editors are convinced by some evidence they have found that the full title of the publication is something else and the page should be moved and its text adjusted, they can present their evidence on the talk page. It's not your problem. When it comes to a newspaper being mentioned attributively in article prose, either form should be identiable enough both forms should work as a link if there's an article on that publication (if one redlinks, redirect it), and if someone else is utterly certain that it should have a The added or removed, they can do that on their own time later. We have lots and lots of articles with mistaken New York Times links in them, people fix them as they run across them, and the sky is not falling. "Ain't broke, don't 'fix' it."  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:44, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    How do you determine the name of the/The Guardian? From the Guardian's perspective, "the" is not part of the name, just as it is not part of the name of the Statue of Liberty. Popcornfud (talk) 04:06, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    It should be The Guardian, with both words capitalized and in italics, since they use the article as part of their name, as visible on top of the website and (I suppose) every print edition. That they use neither italics nor a capitalized article in running text doesn't change that. They have their style guide, we have ours. Gawaon (talk) 04:24, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    And yet, as SmC says above, we do not write The San Francisco Chronicle. Popcornfud (talk) 04:30, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, and for the same reason: they don't include the article in their name as shown on their website and print editions. It's just the same as with book titles: We write The Lord of the Rings, but the Odyssey. Gawaon (talk) 04:46, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Right. There's no "and yet" to be had here. San Francisco Guardian does not have a The in its name. How is there any possible confusion about this, and what is its nature?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:31, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The title of the site in huge letters is The Guardian. The print edition is very, very clearly titled The Guardian [29]. Their domain name is TheGuardian.com. When they write about themselves, they write things like "Support the Guardian", lowercase, as some weird quirk of their own in-house style, along with not putting publication titles in italics. (Though they're not consistent about "the" - see page bottom of their current e-edition, where the exhortation instead reads "Support The Guardian"; the HTML <title> of their homepage has both "the Guardian and "The Guardian" in it). But Wikipedia has its own MoS and does not follow their stylesheet.
    They often do the lower-case "the" and no-italics stuff to other publication names, e.g. that of competitor The Economist: "Italy’s ambassador to the UK has criticised the Economist for rehashing old stereotypes after ...". (But lower-casing The is actually against their own published style guide! I checked.)
    Their lack (sometimes) of capital T and lack of italics, pursuing their own inconsistent quirks, has nothing to do with the actual name of the publication, much less with how WP should treat it. Here's from their own "About us" page (you may have to manually switch to UK edition to see this): "The Guardian is owned by Guardian Media Group ... the financial and editorial independence of the Guardian ... In short, the Guardian isn’t owned or controlled by advertisers or billionaires. It’s owned by a Trust, ...." (Note the mis-capitalization of "trust" which is not a proper name; they simply are not reliable at all for capitalization style). It's quite clear that the title of the publication includes "the" even if they like down-casing it for some reason. Meanwhile, the title of the US edition does not include that word, and is simply Guardian US; you can see this by switching to US edition and going to "About us" again. Their "the" stylization weirdness in running prose has confused writers about how to refer to them [30][31] – neck-and-neck results.
    However, Wikipedians in general are not confused, and pretty consistently use The Guardian, as does our article at The Guardian. So, there is no breakage on Wikipedia to fix by changing MOS:THETITLE. Cf. WP:MOSBLOAT specifically and WP:CREEP generally: we should not add any rule (to MoS especially) unless it is demonstably necessary to resolve long-running editorial conflict over something. Yet there is no interiminable dispute about this (with regard to that newspaper or any other publications).
    PS: It is possible that because of the The-less name of Guardian Media Group that they are transitioning to just naming the newspaper Guardian and dropping [T|h]e entirely. But WP:NOT#CRYSTAL, and we will follow WP:COMMONNAME even after that hypothetical change takes place, until we're certain that the name change has been picked up by the majority of independent post-change sources.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:31, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Entirely possible, but not actually the case. British newspaper titles have a strong preference for beginning with "the"; British company names are exactly the opposite, for various reasons. "The Guardian" has been owned by a "Guardian foo" company since I think 1908. Any transition is a very slow one. Johnbod (talk) 19:52, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, the transition being dubious, and slow if real, is why I brought up CRYSTAL.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:45, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The thing is, just because a name uses the definite article doesn't mean it's part of the name, even when it's written in headings and logos and stuff. If that were true, based on its official website, we should insist on writing The White House. You could also say the same thing of, for example, band names. Popcornfud (talk) 09:37, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The White House (covered by MOS:THEINST) and a band name (covered by MOS:THEMUSIC) are not titles of works, so the WP:THE exception made by MOS:THETITLE for titles of works that start with The doesn't apply to them. You have to read and understand all this P&G material in concert, not pick one line-item you like and try to apply it to things that are not within its scope. Start at MOS:THE. As for "just because a name uses the definite article doesn't mean it's part of the name": when all indications, including the publication's own consistent branding and self-reference, indicate that the "the" (capitalized or not) is essentially a required part of the name (except when used attributively, e.g. "in a New York Times article), then it's blatant WP:OR to decide on your own that it the "the" is "really" not part of the name. It's worse than OR, since it's actually defying the evidence right in front of our faces, and is also contrary to WP:ABOUTSELF. Maybe more to the overall point here, the vast majority of sources independent of The Guardian refer to it as The Guardian not just Guardian and not the Guardian or the Guardian, so we already have our answer. The only time there's an "I dunno" to solve is when the work in question doesn't clearly specify its own name (or you can't find a facsimile copy to prove it one way or the other) and it is not covered by many if any sources or is treated so inconsistently in them that you can't decide; in that unlikely event, default to WP:THE and omit the word, since the the MOS:THETITLE exception only applies when a leading "The" is demonstrably part of the name. For The Guardian it is, even if they defy their own internal style guide quite often and like to lower-case that "the" for inexplicable reasons.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:45, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Is it OK to use a quote in lieu of a topic sentence?

    (This is tangential to MOS, but I can't think of a better place to put this) I'm working on a draft about someone well known for performing tributes, and rather than write a lead paragraph explaining that, I have instead used a quote for this purpose and jumped right into examples. I did this because I like the quote, and because I can't think of a suitable lead paragraph more than one sentence long, but I'm uncomfortable using quotes to supplant original summation, rather than complementing it. Thoughts? Mach61 (talk) 07:16, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Did i not post my reply to this? Apologies if this is a double post.
    i'll let more "official" editors give a real answer to your question, but while i find that quote informative, i expect a majority of Wikipedians will deem its tone, you know, too informal, insufficiently encyclopedic and that sort of stuff. It may be more forgivable because it's not actually the lead of the article, or even the first section--it supplements the article without the emphasis of being the introduction. Still, might be better to paraphrase the quote, or extract some of the more direct lines from it. Maybe something like:
    According to Patrick Jarenwattananon, Chris Byars pays tribute to "intricately arranged '40s, '50s, '60s" material to "both honor his predecessors and refine some of the ideas".
    (The phrase "distinct musicians, who time may have forgotten" reminds me of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch, although i'd have to reread that to see if it's actually relevant to this situation. Plus, you're not the one describing the musicians that way; a quote is a quote, and a cited source is a cited source.)
    i fixed 2 typos in your draft.
    --173.67.42.107 (talk) 20:09, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I think it would be better to actually write in your own words what the topic is. A quote can support it, but Wikipedia articles should be unified prose not a string of quotes. Why is this quote the main idea for the whole section, suggesting there would be nother more to say (since the whole topic is merely what this one person says)? Seems WP:UNDUE for that person, especially if the person being quoted is themselves not notable or coming from a uniquely qualified source. DMacks (talk) 20:27, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think UNDUE is applicable for this style issue, as the quote accurately represents what other RS say (and NPR is reliable). Mach61 (talk) 20:53, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    It is undue, because it is deferring to the exact wording of some non-notable writer instead of summarizing what all the sources say, in our own blended wording. If you're not going to listen to the advice you get when you ask a question like this and are instead going to argue with people who know a lot more about Wikipedia policy and writing style than you do, then why ask the question?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:33, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm having trouble imagining someone being notable enough to be the subject of an article without there being much one can write about the person in a proper lead paragraph. If the person is well known for performing tributes, there must be material that's been written that conveys what it is about the person or the tributes the person has become well known for them, or why the person is writing so many tributes in the first place, and who some of the more noteworthy subjects of them have been. That doesn't mean a quote can't convey some of that: see Richard Avedon, where the lead is short, but it's a conventional one, and it uses a quote to convey Avedon's notedness for his work. Largoplazo (talk) 01:50, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, exactly, all of that.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:33, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    apostrophe s after plural singulars

    i understand Jess’ and Jess's (of Jess, singular) and Jets’ (of Jets, plural). What is the appropriate possessive form of a singular thing whose title is a plural noun, such as the film Robots, the song "Wildest Dreams", or Star Wars (the film or the franchise)? What if the title ends with a plural noun, like The Lord of the Rings (singular lord, plural rings)? What about cases like the Superhuman Tactical Activities Response Squad, aka S.T.A.R.S., a single unit whose acronym is a plural noun?

    Sometimes rephrasing things is an option, but sometimes rephrasing things is awkward or inconvenient or even inaccurate, especially if quoting someone (especially someone speaking rather than writing). Does Wikipedia's or any other manual of style address this type of situation?

    --173.67.42.107 (talk) 19:03, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    The Lord of the Rings is a singular object, a single book (etc.). You would never say The Lord of the Rings are a novel full of wonderful ideas, and likewise, you would never write The Lord of the Rings' ideas are wonderful for the reason of the last word in the name being a plural noun. For all these cases, you would treat them like you would treat any singular noun that ends in s: The Lord of the Rings's ideas are wonderful.Remsense留 19:10, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks for the quick reply. Rephrasing it is! ;-)
    Your logic seems sound and unsurprising to me, but The Lord of the Rings’s, "Wildest Dreams"'s, and Star Wars’s just look wrong to me. Singular verbs sound right though. But i have no reliable source to justify either. --173.67.42.107 (talk) 19:29, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    They definitely look a bit unwieldy out of context, but I imagine I could read them in the context of a greater passage and not get caught up or notice them. Definitely you wouldn't want to prefer them as a primary form, but I think they are viable at points. Cheers! Remsense留 19:31, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Because it's a bit awkward to say, generally editors should seek to reword the sentence: The ideas in The Lord of the Rings have been reused in many other fantasy works. isaacl (talk) 19:52, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Definitely use "The Lord of the Rings’s", it sounds just so Gollum. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 20:39, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • A better solution is to avoid the possessive entirely… and instead try to find a different way to form a sentence that says the same thing. Example: instead of writing “The Lord of the Rings’s plot involves…” write “The plot of The Lord of the Rings involves…” etc. Blueboar (talk) 19:57, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      For context (and why didn't i mention this before?), i came here wondering if i should edit Star Wars: Visions#Season two, which has Rotten Tomatoes ... reads, "...Star Wars: Visions' second volume is..." and Brett White ... describing the series as "...proof of Star Wars’ legacy..."
      In other words, to rephrase the sentences not to use apostrophes would be to misquote Rotten Tomatoes and Brett White, although Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Original wording says "insignificant spelling and typographic errors should simply be silently corrected". i figured apostrophe-s fell under that category. --173.67.42.107 (talk) 20:37, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      Wikipedia:Ignore all rules and ignore all rules, but that doesn't mean "don't ask what the rules are."
      i don't intend to change Star Wars’/Star Wars: Visions’ to Star Wars’s/Star Wars: Visions’s, but i probably won't challenge the edits if someone else wants to make them.
      --173.67.42.107 (talk) 20:49, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      I would leave the quotes wholly alone in this case. You have the right mindset. Remsense留 21:00, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      This is more of a manual of style issue (that is, a difference between the rule followed by Rotten Tomatoes versus the one agreed upon by the English Wikipedia community) than a typographical error. Unifying quoted text to have a common style for, say, British spelling is traditionally done for consistency. In your examples, since altering the form of the possessive would alter the sound, and as the English Wikipedia community tends to support being very literal about what is placed in quotes, personally I wouldn't change the quoted text. isaacl (talk) 22:59, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • If you're directly quoting, just leave the punctuation inside the quotation alone. While it is permissible to monkey with it in very minor ways, per MOS:CONFORM, there is often no reason to do so. If you're not directly quoting, just rewrite to avoid the problematic construction (which is what the quoted author in the former case should have done in the first place).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:28, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    "Capitalisation(z)of ancient"

    Hi, some time ago there was a discussion about the "Capitalisation(z)of ancient". my question would be: is it correct to write "ancient Rome", with lowercase initial (see page Ancient Rome), but is it correct to write "ancient Carthage"? The Punic people page uses the uppercase initial. JackkBrown (talk) 17:09, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Surely it's just whether or not it is a name or a discriptor. Do most sources use upper case to describe items like this? Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 17:22, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    If it's part of the name, as is typically the case with the names we apply to older forms of modern languages, such as Ancient Greek, it should be capitalized, comparable to "Old English" and "Middle English". But as an adjective to refer to a people or a country, such as ancient Greece or the ancient Greeks, it's not part of the name, it's just an adjective, and it shouldn't be capitalized. One doesn't write "in Contemporary Greece" or "in Medieval Greece". Largoplazo (talk) 17:55, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    We treat Carthage as the name of the former city and Ancient Carthage as the proper name of a civilisation. Rome still exists and lowercase "ancient Rome" is interpreted as the word "ancient" attached to Rome. Karthage was destroyed when the civilization ended in 146 BC. I think "ancient Carthage" would give a misleading impression that there is a non-ancient Carthage. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:09, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Your last sentence leads to me recommend not using "ancient" at all. It was just Carthage. Calling it "Ancient Carthage" or "ancient Carthage" is as though they'd spoken of "acoustic guitars" before there were electric ones. And in speech there's no case anyway, so, if that's the implication, then it's always being implied in speech. Anyway, somehow we get by with just plain "Sumeria" and "Canaan" and "Timbuktoo". Largoplazo (talk) 18:15, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    There is in fact a modern Carthage (municipality), developed as a suburb since the C19, and there was also a Roman city rebuilt on the ruins, which is unlikely to be what people referring to "Ancient Carthage" or "ancient Carthage" are talking about. I'd go with the caps in most, but not all, contexts. Johnbod (talk) 19:16, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Not to mention all the New Carthages and New New Carthages out there. (Carthage itself meaning "new city"...) —David Eppstein (talk) 20:21, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I think given all the discussion so far, "Ancient Carthage" should usually be reserved for the civilization, and when referring to the city all attempts to rephrase as needed should be taken first, e.g. the ancient city of Carthage, the site of Carthage in modern Tunisia, etc. etc. – but if 'ancient' and 'Carthage' end up next to each other, the former should remain uncapitalized. Remsense留 21:03, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    "go with the caps in most, but not all, contexts": if that's meant to be a general rule of thumb about such cases, it is contrary to MOS:CAPS: "Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia." In most cases, this capitalization is superfluous because "ancient" (or "medieval" or "modern", etc.) is descriptive not part of a proper name, and we should write ancient Rome, ancient Egypt, medieval London, modern Tokyo, etc., since reliable sources do not consistently capitalize these words in such usage. I.e., only capitalize one of them when the overwhelming majority of RS do so for a particular case, same with any other capitalization question. PS: This is conceptually different from age/era indicators in names of languages; e.g. Old French and Middle Irish, not "old French" and "middle Irish". Same goes for such indicators (as words or prefixes) in formal names of geological, biological, or anthropological ages, like New Stone Age and Neolithic.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:25, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Some stats might help. Dicklyon (talk) 22:52, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Yes, and they appear to strongly indicate "ancient Carthage".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:25, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    MOS:PUFFERY

    It's been claimed that BLPs that have "regarded/considered as one of the greatest/best X of all-time/his generation" are unencyclopedic and appear to be indiscriminately removed[32][33][34] with a request to re-write the words are in quotes with attribution as per MOS:PUFFERY.

    None of these BLPs have stated the subject is "the best/greatest" but state they're regarded/considered as one of the greatest/best players of all-time/his generation" which is consistent with what's included in BLPs such as Lionel Messi, Diego Maradona, Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, Tiger Woods, Serena Williams, Usain Bolt and many others.

    MOS:PUFFERY states: "Words such as these are often used without attribution to promote the subject of an article, while neither imparting nor plainly summarizing verifiable information". My understanding is that the use of stating that the subject is regarded/considered as the "best/greatest" citing RS is within the policy and guidance as opposed to claiming the subject IS the "best/greatest". Even in the Bob Dylan article, which is cited as an example, states he is "Generally regarded as one of the greatest songwriters ever". RevertBob (talk) 10:10, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Well, it also has to comply with WP:DUE policy. Some random music journalist saying that Neil Peart was one of the greatest rock drummers of all time is not sufficient; what is sufficient is a large number of high-quality sources on music (not random bloggers) saying something like this, and his presence in top-lists at such publications, so that the clear reliable-source consensus is that he was one of the best. You will run into opposition to such labelling if the DUE test is not well-met, and may still run into it anyway even if it is, because it is categorically better to demonstrate to the reader that someone was a great, by listing their awards and other accomplishments (including top-lists from notable publications), rather than tell the reader that various sources say they were one of the greats, which always raises the question of whether sources have been WP:CHERRYPICKed and thus are not a DUE selection.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:13, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The issue with including top-lists from notable publications is then those also get removed with the claim of being trivial. So to use Neil Peart as a hypothetical example: if DUE was met with independent, reliable sources on the topic of music [i.e. not a blog and high-quality source(s)]. Is it unreasonable for the article to then say:
    "Considered one of the greatest rock drummers of all-time,[insert source(s)] Peart earned numerous awards for his musical performances, including an induction into the Modern Drummer Readers Poll Hall of Fame in 1983 at the age of thirty, making him the youngest person ever so honoured."[insert source(s)] RevertBob (talk) 13:49, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes. Various of our biographical articles are written this way, but the sourcing has to be particularly strong (WP:EXCEPTIONAL). Some editors are apt to disagree with it anyway, for the "show don't tell" reason I gave above. [Yes, that was a Rush lyrics reference; couldn't resist.] This sort of question might really be better asked over at WT:FAC: "Under what sourcing circumstances would the Featured Article reviewers accept a claim like 'considered one of the greatest [occupational speciality here]'?" PS: "top-lists from notable publications ... also get removed with the claim of being trivial" – Well, that's not defensible, since they're obviously not trivial when the awarders are notable and pertinent.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:41, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Just to clarify, did you mean yes it's reasonable/no it's not unreasonable?
    Your contributions have certainly been helpful in providing more clarify! FYI, my knowledge of drummers doesn't extend beyond Keith Moon and Ringo Starr. I don't think editors should just be able to subjective disagree and remove content within the policy and guidelines as per WP:IDONTLIKEIT. It would be good for consistency to be applied and for the goalposts to not be keep being moved (that was a footballing pun).
    It's certainly not a fringe theory or extraordinary claim for Alan Shearer to be widely regarded as one of the greatest strikers of all-time or for Mohammed Salah to be regarded as one of the best players of his generation or for Raymond Kopa for be considered one of the best footballers of all-time. High-quality sourcing would support that. RevertBob (talk) 09:09, 29 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I mean "yes, it's reasonable". Though, as noted, others are still likely to object to it, because it is hard to sufficiently source, is not necessary, and another approach of showing instead of telling, if often (usually?) better. "Consistency" will never be applied on something like this, because every bio is different and ultimately the writing at each is determined by consensus on an article by article basis. The exactly claim will vary by subject, the sourcing level and quality will, and so will the meaningfulness of the claim (there's a big difference between the claim that Babe Ruth was the greatest 20th-century baseball player (perhaps of all time), and Joe Schmoe being hailed by disc golf magazines and websites as the top player of a sport with few players and little public interest.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:59, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    When I reverted some of these edits, my edit summary was "Please re-write this puffery in quotes with attribution, per MOS:PUFFERY". The policy literally says, "without attribution", and the example given shows the puffery in quotation marks. All that RevertBob needed to do was follow the policy. Magnolia677 (talk) 20:50, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    The policy is referencing using the phrase as being referred as "is" (a claim of act) rather than "considered" or "regarded" (an opinion) i.e. "I am the greatest bird ever!" Even the Bob Dylan article which is referred in the policy has the following in the lead without attribution: "Generally regarded as one of the greatest songwriters ever". RevertBob (talk) 21:50, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Do you know what "attribution" means? Magnolia677 (talk) 21:56, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    "Generally/widely regarded" is one of those WP:EXCEPTIONAL claims that requires exceptional sourcing. I don't really know if taht standard is met at the Dylan article. Being able to find potentially dubious usage in one article does not make it magically permissible everywhere (WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS). Ultimately, it really comes down to a consensus on a per-article basis. E.g., at an article like Kopa's, how many sources are making such a claim and what is their quality? If we have two sources of reasonable quality, it's probably better to attribute them directly ("according to"); if we have two of low quality, omit it; if we have 50 and many are high-quality, then maybe it's a "generally regarded". (Obviously don't WP:OVERCITE 50 sources; rather, cite the best ones and list the others in a talk page discussion to convince other editors that "generally regarded" is permissible). And did you do what I suggested? Namely: This sort of question might really be better asked over at WT:FAC: "Under what sourcing circumstances would the Featured Article reviewers accept a claim like 'considered one of the greatest [occupational speciality here]'?"?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:59, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I have no beef with "the greatest", or "best kicker in the history of soccer", or "most epic player ever". My request is that it be attributed and in quotation marks; it cannot be in Wikipedia's voice. That is the essence of this policy. Magnolia677 (talk) 23:11, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The thing is, we summarise what sources say. If we have a lot of citations that specifically say that this person is "the best" or "one of the best", then the prose should use these sources, maybe specifically quote them, or just comment on them, but our lede should summarise that information, which quite often ends with that phrasing. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 23:16, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    SMcCandlish I didn't do what you suggested as the point of contention isn't over whether these can be included or not but a consistent approach of how the content should be added. The issue is, what is the the problem with something being "regarded" or "considered" as something in Wikipedia's voice according to the policy, Magnolia677? It's an objective statement of sources rather than the subjective term of referring to something as "the best/greatest" without the words "regarded" or "considered" preceding it. I'm not trying to make an OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument here but it doesn't seem to have been raised as an issue by other editors on dozens or hundreds of other articles within sport, film, music or other topics (e.g. Messi, Brando, Dylan and many others) where this format is currently used which would appear to suggest a community consensus that it's acceptable. As Lee Vilenski has said it's a summary/paraphrasing of the information in the source. If it's a list then the subject is regarded/considered "one of the greatest..." Adding a quote would suggest that's what's quoted in the source which it isn't.
    If you look at Raymond Kopa as an example [35]. I amended "Often considered one of the best players of his generation" (which didn't appear to be sourced) to "Considered one of the best players of all-time" and added the following citations:[36][37][38][39] from Bleacher Report, Sports Illustrated, FourFourTwo and Give Me Sport. RevertBob (talk)
    An alternate approach would be to find one very reliable source, and say, -> Sports Illustrated has called him "the greatest player of 1990". Magnolia677 (talk) 20:16, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    That's also a valid approach. There are multiple ways to come at this sort of thing (and I'm not the one who needs convincinging, RevertBob). My personal take is that there is a general and loose consensus that something like "considered one of the greatest" is permissible, but only with a number of high-quality sources, but that despite this general it's-okay feeling, there is no rule requiring it, and various editors aren't comfortable with it, so it's going to come down to a per-article editorial consensus. That is apt to be a butt-pain sometimes, but I'm not sure there's really a way around it. PS: RevertBob, please don't insert blank lines between your reply and what you're replying to (MOS:LISTGAPS).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:32, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    He was 25th in Bleachers Report, 22nd in SI, 34th in FourFourTwo and 22nd in Give Me Sport - you could make the argument that it'd be cherrypicking to select one. However, even if one was selected then it'd get removed as trivial which to be fair using the policy can be argued as being used to "promote the subject of an article" whereas simply stating he's "regarded as one of the greatest players of all-time" is "imparting nor plainly summarizing verifiable information". RevertBob (talk) 20:49, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    I am curious whether some of those talking about “attribution” mean to say WP:INTEXT attribution. Reasonable claims (eg, at Tiger Woods: Woods is widely regarded as one of the greatest golfers of all time and is one of the most famous athletes in modern history) don’t need more attribution than a one or two strong citations, especially in the lead (which is where I think we’re all really talking about). My main concerns for this type of writing are that a) we don’t say such things in Wikipedia’s voice, and b) we source them clearly. Including explicit quotes is arguably better, but full quotes and in-text attribution can really weigh down the writing, and I really wouldn’t want to push aside multiple strong sources just to provide in-text attribution from one of them, Magnolia677. MOS:PUFFERY should not be an anchor holding us back from describing some of our most important biographical subjects clearly with strong, decisive prose. Of course these kinds of “puffy” statements should be given this leniency only where their claim is largely uncontroversial (NB, not where the statement has been subject to controversy based on hard-line anti-puffery patrollers).

    Consider also the counterpoint at Adolf Hitler, whose lead includes: The historian and biographer Ian Kershaw describes Hitler as "the embodiment of modern political evil"., a statement sensibly attributed to a leading Hitler historian, whose inclusion in the lead is not likely to be an erroneous distraction for the reader. But in that context, I actually suggest going further, and noting Kershaw’s place in the field would better inform the reader. — HTGS (talk) 03:32, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Both myself and User:FMSky reverted this editor after "the greatest" was added to dozens of articles. Magnolia677 (talk) 12:58, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    On a lot of those articles it already had that information and I simply added a supporting source - whether this was correct or not, my intention was to improve those articles and I wasn't intending to be disruptive. After reading into it a bit more, I've tried to be more selective about which articles to add it but it seems Magnolia677 is removing this content from every article that has it stating that it needs to be attributed which doesn't seem to be the case on any other articles. Anyway, to use a football term, I'd like to play the ball, not the player so if we could stay on the topic of discussing the policy and possibly reach a consensus rather than passing judgement of editing history. I've also had the courtesy of not canvassing other editors who may agree with my position. RevertBob (talk) 20:49, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree with @HTGS. Sometimes a fact feels exceedingly positive, but is still basically just a fact. When it's true that any particular superlative is commonly used to describe a given subject, then we should just say that and get on with the rest of the article. It does not make sense, and it is not encyclopedic, to write "Elvis Presley was called 'the greatest performer' by Alice, Bob, Chris, Dave, Eve, Frank, and many others.[1][2][3][4][5][6]" Just say he has been called the greatest and move on. If it's DUE, it should be in the article, and you should no more try to downplay that as "only the opinion" of a list of individually named experts than you should write that climate change is believed to be real by a list of individually named experts. INTEXT attribution is for content that can be accurately presented as being the view of only a handful of people. A statement like Sports Illustrated called him "the greatest player of 1990" is appropriate when that is an unusual comment. It is not appropriate if we could name a dozen periodicals and a hundred individuals that said the same thing, or when it's not just 1990, but also a statement that was true over the course of multiple years.
    These disputes generally involve content that some editor consider to be subjective or opinion-based, by which they really mean "not actually true". Thus, we see editors who are squeamish about saying "has been called the best runner" but who are perfectly comfortable saying "is the fastest sprinter" (even though "best" and "fastest" are basically the same thing for sprinters). I think this is partly because of some editors' personal biases/ways of looking at the world, but also because we have done a poor job of communicating the need for articles to assert facts about opinions. It is a fact that certain individuals/artworks/whatever are considered the best/greatest/most important by a number of relevant experts that is too large for INTEXT attribution to be appropriate. In such cases (which should not happen in millions of articles, but which should probably happen in thousands of them), we really should use Wikipedia:A simple formulation and simply say that it's true that reliable sources say that a lot about this subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:59, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    This is my point WhatamIdoing, just writing someone is "considered/regarded as one of the greatest" is a lot simpler "imparting nor plainly summarizing verifiable information" than complicating it with an incomplete list of Tom, Dick, Harry or others have ranked him in such a position of all-time which could be argued as to "promote the subject of an article". RevertBob (talk) 20:49, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Regarding this discussion, are we seriously going to compare Roy Kean and Eden Hazard—who I have never heard of until my encounter with this editor—with (look above) Lionel Messi, Diego Maradona, Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, Tiger Woods, Serena Williams, Usain Bolt, Bob Dylan, and Adolf Hitler? Seriously? Magnolia677 (talk) 21:05, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    No we're not: Roy Keane and Eden Hazard (if you've watched top-flight English or Spanish football then you'd know who he is) are "regarded as one of the greatest players of his generation" where Messi and Maradona are "widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all-time". There's a big difference. RevertBob (talk) 22:38, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    One other distinction. Those types of phrases like "Mike is considered to be one of the best dart players of all time" imply that they are widely considered to have such a quality. And if true, such is information about what the relevant public thinks rather than puffery. Not just that somebody found a few people/sources that said it. So if 3 truly reliable sources say "Mike is one of the best dart players of all time" that does not support it, it just says that three people think that way and anything more than that would be synthesis. If they all say "Mike is considered to be one of the best dart players of all time" IMO that does support it because they are reporting on what the relevant public thinks. North8000 (talk) 21:36, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    I could find a reliable source to say just about anything...that is why we have that gatekeeper WP:VNOT. Why don't we just stick to the facts and let readers decide who is the greatest? Magnolia677 (talk) 22:34, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    (edit conflict) If somebody is generally considered X, it should be possible to find high-quality sources that explicitly say that they are generally considered X. TompaDompa (talk) 21:47, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Curiosity

    I'm curious to know why Futurism is written with an uppercase initial while Minimalism with a lowercase initial. Is there a particular reason? JackkBrown (talk) 07:45, 27 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    Because it's called "minimalism"—minimal, small, don't use capital letters? OK, that's a joke. It should be lower-case when describing, say, a choice to own less stuff or to have spare furnishings in one's home. As the name of an art movement, it should be treated like the names of other art movements. I'm not exactly sure what our practice is, if we have a standard one. Expressionism, for example, can't make up its mind. Futurism has a number of instances of "futurism" and "futurist", some of them in quoted material and some of them not. Largoplazo (talk) 09:23, 27 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Largoplazo: Since there is a doubt, on the Giorgio Morandi page I decided to write "Minimalism" with a capital letter. JackkBrown (talk) 17:03, 27 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    As a major art movement, WP would capitalize it. This is a consensus that was oddly arrived at back in the 2000s, and of course it directly conflicts with MOS:GENRECAPS, MOS:DOCTCAPS, etc., but we seem stuck with it at least for the time being, inexplicable as it may be. It's particularly absurd when done to non-English terms like French art nouveau which is not capitalized in French (or consistently in English).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:47, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    That's because we follow sources, and because "Impressionist" and "impressionist" and "Renaissance" and "renaissance" have different meanings. Johnbod (talk) 19:01, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The sources do not do this capitalization consistently, with regard to either arts "movements" or "genres" (and there is not clear dividing line between those things, though at their extremes some movements are clearly not genres and some genres clearly not movements). Capitalizing the movements conflicts with our MOS:SIGCAPS principle and (either already or eventually) with the MOS:CAPS lead. Nearly as many sources capitalize fiction, film, and other genres as capitalize artistic movements or "schools" within the same spheres (though more for some genres than others, especially more for those with larger fandoms), yet WP does not capitalize genres. The distinction is largely artificial and maybe not very tenable. Next, "impressionist" and "Impressionist" do not at all have different meanings in this context. The fact that "impressionist" can also mean 'entertainer who does impressions' is no more meaningful than the fact that "bear" can mean 'ursine creature' or 'carry; withstand, endure; bring to fruition'. This is an utterly routine disambiguation excercise. We do not write, say, "cervical" in reference to the cervical vertebrae but "Cervical" in reference to the cervix, despite "cervical" having two very different meanings in the human anatomy and medicine context (and we would not do it even if it were common-but-not-universal to do it in the source material; cf. the decision not to capitalize common names of species despite this being common in certain fields like ornithology and to a lesser extent herpetology). Disambiguation is not what capitalization is used for here, despite frequent misuse of it for such signification in non-encyclopedic writing. Next, "Renaissance" is a Western cultural/historical era, neither an art movement nor a genre; "renaissance" in a figurative sense, like "the 1990s renaissance of swing dancing", is an entiredly derived usage from this historical-period one (nor is the derive use always lower-case; cf. Disney Renaissance, though an argument to lower-case that at WP:RM and in its text is probably justified). And "renaissance" without a capital R has no different meaning in the context of Western historical eras, which is why it is fairly often not capitalized. We're already seeing a lot of sources de-capitalizing both "medieval" (or "mediaeval" if you insist on it, which even most of the British no longer do) and "middle ages", over the last maybe two generations of writers. This is part of a general trend in English away from unnecessary capitalization. Unlike with geological/paleontological and anthropological eras (Ordovician, Paleolithic/Palaeolithic), there is much less of an established professional convention to uniformly capitalize historical eras. Wikipedia already treats a lot of them as common-noun phrases. (But not consistently; see e.g. History of China and watch the period names jump back and forth between lower-case and capitalized – why "Tan dynasty" but "Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms", and especially why "Northern and Southern dynasties"?)

    Anyway, I'm not calling for an actual referendum on either of these things, and above I'm advising following "Futurism" and "Minimalism" style because that's the current consensus (as long as these are largely classified as movements not genres). I do think this consensus is of dubious longevity, at least over the long haul, because capitalization of both historical eras and arts movements is decreasing over time in the source material.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:06, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    List of dames commander of the Order of the British Empire

    List of dames commander of the Order of the British Empire should be changed back to List of Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire -- should never have been changed. Amazing that it went unchallenged thus far. A Dame Commander is never a dame commander. Just as Knight Bachelor is not knight bachelor. Not Marianne Moore style poetry. 96.246.238.31 (talk) 23:14, 30 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

    But not when pluralised. Cinderella157 (talk) 01:18, 31 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Right, "kings" and "popes" and "emperors" at the high end, and "knights" and "bishops" and "barons" at a somewhat lower end, are all lower-case in plural, then "knights commander" would be, too. Same with other compound titles; e.g., the US has had many postmasters general, and the Royal Navy has various commodores second class. MOS:PEOPLETITLES already covers this: we don't capitalize them if they are not directly attached to a person's personal name.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:08, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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