Talk:Famous Players–Lasky

Missing reel

So what happened in the antitrust case...? Was it this one? TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 17:28, 20 July 2011 (UTC) (P.S. I'm not watching this page, so if you want an answer...)

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Requested move 24 June 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. Typically, in cases of hyphens vs. dashes, then it's something that ultimately comes down to style guides. Consensus is to follow our own style guide in this case.

Whether to use "corporation" or not is an open question, but there's no consensus yet for that, but also no opposition to it either; it's worth further discussion, IMO. (closed by non-admin page mover) Sceptre (talk) 15:23, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

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Famous Players-Lasky → Famous Players–Lasky – The tight connection with a hyphen wrongly suggests something like a Mr. Players-Lasky who is famous. A dash conveys the more correct connection between parallel items, Famous Players and Lasky. Some of the early ads and logos clearly use a separator such as a swung dash that is very distinctly not a hyphen. We recognize that many sources don't care about the grammatical implications of small typographical differences, and are happy to render dashes as hyphens, but it is WP style to not do that, per MOS:NDASH. Dicklyon (talk) 21:52, 24 June 2023 (UTC) — Relisting. BilledMammal (talk) 11:15, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Zoom in to bottom of this 1920 page image to see the dash, not hyphen, between Famous Players and Lasky.

Here's one from 1919. Clearly not a hyphen.

And one from 1918.

• Note – Besides these ads with logos using what's clearly not a hyphen, you also find in text listings things like "Famous Players - Lasky Film Company, 485 Fifth Avenue..." where the spaced hyphen is a clear indication that the relation conveyed by a dash is what was intended. In WP, we prefer not to use spaced hyphen for dash (I fix a lot of those); same goes for unspaced hyphen for dash, which is what we have here. Dicklyon (talk) 22:11, 24 June 2023 (UTC)
• Support per nom. This ia classic case of what en dashes are for.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:16, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
• Support—no brainer, per SMcCandlish, also, shouldn't the first word in the lead be "The"? Tony (talk) 10:43, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, most corporations are referred to with "The ... Corporation". This is common in sources, including for this one. I'll go ahead and make that change in any case. Dicklyon (talk) 03:26, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose Companies formed from mergers of predecessors often have double-barreled hyphenated names. Like Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for a particularly relevant example. Also, none of those attempts at cherry picking sources (stylized logos, all) actually have dashes but hyphens. One can clearly see the contrast between the hyphen in the Famous Players-Lasky at the bottom and the dash in the text above it in the third one, and the first one is actually a tilde, so tells us nothing. Actually, none of them tell us anything because they're stylized ads. When a Google book search is conducted without any punctuation in the search to bias it, it's crystal clear from the results that the hyphen is near universal in use of contemporaneous sources. Here are the first five results that weren't just records of legal cases but actual books. Note that a couple of them were actually published by the company themselves back in the day, meaning that they themselves used a hyphen. The evidence is quite clear. This was a good faith but incorrect proposal on the facts. oknazevad (talk) 12:43, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Also, that book linked from the Internet Archive has just as many I spaced hyphen examples as spaced hyphen. oknazevad (talk) 12:49, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Indeed it does. But that's a pretty strong signal that the simple hyphen is not conveying the right grammatical message. And it's not just that it's the "and" relation of two parallel items, but also that there's another en-dash use that typographers have used for over 100 years, "between names which are not single orthographic units". This one is not contradicted by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Hewlett-Packard and such. The hyphen sends such a wrong signal here, and the en dash is the fix. Historically, we see quite a few attempts to fix it, with tildes (swung dashes), with extra spacing, etc. Sadly, the rules for en dash usage never became well known as a core part of grammar, largely due to the fact that there's no such thing on typewriters, and the use of the hyphen as an acceptable rendering of the grammatical dash became commonly accepted. On WP, we decided, back in 2011 in a huge protracted discussion, not to go that way, but to use the en dash to convey better signals to help our readers parse what they're reading. Dicklyon (talk) 03:21, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Or, it could mean simply that the hyphen was specifically intended just like MGM and HP all along. Let's follow the sources, instead of making assumptions based on facts not present to create an original conclusion. You assume that the preponderance of sources are wrong. That's unwarranted. oknazevad (talk) 15:36, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

No, I'm not saying any sources are wrong. Just that in their style, the hyphen is used for the parallel relationship, whereas in our the en dash is used. Dicklyon (talk) 21:22, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

And I'm saying it's not a parallel relationship, it's a union with a single name. The interpretation of a parallel construction isn't borne out by the sources. oknazevad (talk) 00:50, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Sources say it was a merger of Famous Players Film Company the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company. Famous Players and Lasky, for short, in parallel roles. What's not supportable in sources in any plausible interpretation of the tightly connected "Players-Lasky" as a compound. Dicklyon (talk) 16:58, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

And Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was formed by the merger of three predecessors, Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures, and Louis B. Mayer Pictures. It's still hyphenated.

Corporate mergers are akin to marriages where one or both spouses adopt a combined hyphenated name. They are not a parallel construction of still-distinct entities. In other words, we might write of the "Famous Players–Lasky merger" as the series of events by which the two predecessor companies formed the merged company, but the combined company that resulted was the "Famous Players-Lasky Corporation". It's the same principle as Baden-Württemberg. oknazevad (talk) 00:51, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose per oknazevad. Even if this is ungrammatical, it is pretty clearly the common style in reliable sources then and today. I for one would follow the New York Times, per a look at some archive scans [1]. No need to go against the grain on the name of an old company. SilverLocust (talk) 01:12, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

  No problem with the name, but against the grain on style, since we have our own. Dicklyon (talk) 05:23, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

  And this is already covered in our style guide. MOS:DASH plainly says Generally, use a hyphen in compounded proper names of single entities. That's what this is, the compounded proper name of a single entity. After the merger it was not two separate entities. That's how you're mistaken in your application of this. oknazevad (talk) 13:57, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

• Weak support or move to Famous Players–Lasky Corporation: The dash seems helpful in two ways: a) this indicates a merger (see Talk:Brown–Forman#Requested move 28 August 2018), and b) the punctuation mark is being used since one of the two terms contains a space, to avoid the impression of "a Mr. Players-Lasky who is famous", a similar spirit as in MOS:SUFFIXDASH, i.e. "between names which are not single orthographic units". (See also Dash#Attributive_compounds, and its example of the Chattanooga News-Free Press.) Per Dicklyon, the "hyphen is not conveying the right grammatical message" here. (Also I tend to respect the greater expertise of SMcCandlish on such matters.) Appending "Corporation" might help make the usage attributive rather than substantive. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 23:23, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

  No need for the Corporation per WP:NCCORP. As for the whole "Mr Players-Lasky" conjecture, it's a red herring. I'd also argue that the Brown–Forman move was an erroneous move based on the same misunderstanding being proposed here. Unlike, say, the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex used as justification for that move, the Brown-Forman company is a single company named for two separate people, like Hewlett-Packard. oknazevad (talk) 02:01, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

  A distinction between Brown–Forman and Hewlett-Packard was suggested by SMcCandlish, as Brown–Forman is the result of a merger, while Hewlett-Packard is a company named after two people. I think it's hard to argue with the News-Free Press example, which apparently came from Strunk and White. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 17:55, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

  Brown-Forman isn't the result of a merger, it is named after the founding partners, George Garvin Brown and John Forman. There was no separate Forman company that merged with a Brown company. Even using that purported criterion, the name of that article is incorrect.

  But the point is also an incorrect criterion in the first place. Again, companies formed on mergers are akin to marriages, and like double-barreled surnames they should be hyphenated, not dashed, because there is no longer two distinct entities. And the MOS already includes that. It's just misapplied. oknazevad (talk) 22:10, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

  I'm finding some conflicting information about the origin story of Brown–Forman. As far as I can tell, you're right that it was not formed by a merger. I think the Stitzel–Weller Distilling Company was formed by a merger, but not the Brown–Forman Corporation. I use the longer forms "Stitzel–Weller Distilling Company" and "Brown–Forman Corporation" here since those have the personal surnames as an attributive modifier of the noun Corporation, which may be analogous to Epstein–Barr virus and Black–Scholes equation. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 23:39, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

  Two thoughts. First is that the "corporation", "company", etc. are not really a concern per WP:NCCORP. Those are justegal suffixes only used in Wikipedia article titles when disambiguation is needed. (The Coca-Cola Company, for example, is so named to disambiguate from its namesake flagship soda.)

  But secondly is there is a distinction between a scientific discovery and a company, and that is the discoverers are at most temporarily aligned as part of the work (and if it's a case of two discoverers making the same discovery independently being given shared credit, then it's not even a temporary alignment, just coincidence). Conversely a company founded by two or more namesakes, or a company formed by merger of two or more predecessors, is a permanent joining. Again, like a marriage. I keep bringing that analogy up because it's the same concept. We don't make a person's hyphenated surname into a dash, and we shouldn't do that to a company name, either. Fortunately, the MOS already calls for that, and it aligns with long-standing real world practice, as already seen in the sources SilverLocust and I provided. oknazevad (talk) 01:55, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Move to Famous Players–Lasky Corporation (with en-dash) Per MOS:ENBETWEEN, We generally, use a hyphen in compounded proper names of single entities (Wilkes-Barre, a single city named after two people, but Minneapolis–Saint Paul, an area encompassing two cities) but use an en dash for the names of two or more entities in an attributive compound (the Seifert–van Kampen theorem; and, Comet Hale–Bopp or just Hale–Bopp). From the last example (noting that Comet Hale–Bopp is a single entity), the attributive (Hale–Bopp) is modifying the root noun (comet) and an en-dash is used even when the root noun is implied. In the case of this article, corporation is the root noun, which is implied in the current article title and is most always explicitly used in the text of the article. Hence, the example of Comet Hale–Bopp, using an en-dash most closely corresponds to the question at hand. As a matter of type-setting style, WP explicitly distinguishes between an en-dash and an hyphen. However, in common usage an hyphen character is often substituted for an en-dash because of keyboard accessibility (or rather, lack thereof). An argument is made giving digitised sources, that usage of the hyphen predominates. Firstly, the question of en-dash v hyphen is a matter of style. As such, the guidance at WP:MOS, WPs preferred style carries more weight than the style used in various sources. Secondly, the argument is based on at least two assumptions. A: that there was a conscious choice to use a hyphen in the original type-setting rather than it being a convenient substitution (if not the only option). B: that the image to text digitisation employed (at the time) was/is capable of reproducibly distinguishing a hyphen from an en-dash. To my knowledge, neither are sound assumptions. To including corporation in the title, both WP:CONCISE at WP:AT and WP:NCCORP would guide us against this but do not preclude it. A search indicates that the attributive is consistently followed corporation as a unitary noun phrase. The attributive alone is a confusing constriction regardless of the dash/hyphen. It begs to be completed unlike cases such as Apple or Nestlé. Famous Players–Lasky Corporation falls to that part of WP:NCCORP, where the suffix (corporation) is an integral part of the name. Cinderella157 (talk) 03:05, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

• Support—yes, no-brainer The en-dash in cases such as this is explicitly endorsed by virtually all contemporary American English style guides and, of course, by WP's own. The hyphen here, whatever its unfortunate history, now clearly suggests that it is "Players-Lasky" which is (are?) "famous," when that is most certainly not so. This is, indubitably, a classic case of what en-dashes are for. 24.90.253.80 (talk) 06:15, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Requested move 23 August 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) – MaterialWorks 13:11, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

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Famous Players–Lasky → Famous Players–Lasky Corporation – Famous Players–Lasky Corporation is consistently used in prose in sources when referring to the corporation. Per WP:NCCORP, in this case, Corporation is a key part of the company's name in common usage, rather than simply as a designator of its official legal status. Cinderella157 (talk) 10:16, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Ping editors commenting in previous RM: Dicklyon, SMcCandlish, Tony1, Oknazevad and BarrelProof. Cinderella157 (talk) 10:20, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Do you mean "Corporation"? Either way, oppose as is, because of the misspelling, and because the dash should be a hyphen as it was a single merged company, no longer two independent entities. oknazevad (talk) 14:00, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

You're just sorely confused about what MOS:DASH is telling you. It's to use an en dash between the names of two former entities in a merged entity like Famous Players–Lasky. If "it was a single merged company, no longer two independent entities" were a rationale to use a hyphen, much of MOS:DASH would not exist.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:15, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Can you point to specific evidence supporting this theory of using an en dash to indicate a merger of two formerly independent entities (e.g. in MOS:DASH or in externally produced style guides)? I suppose you are unhappy with the recent Talk:SAG-AFTRA#Requested move 20 July 2023 and Talk:AFL-CIO#Requested move 16 August 2023 RM outcomes. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 04:27, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose as we already have Famous Players–Lasky Corporation spelled correctly and styled correctly. Suggest procedural close for misspelled proposal. Dicklyon (talk) 15:43, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
• Comment: (edit conflict) I took the liberty of correcting the spelling error above, so we don't need to keep talking about that and can focus on whether the additional word should be included or not and whether the en dash should be a hyphen. My current impression is that the en dash is desirable, since this is an expression that connects two terms, and one of those two terms includes a space (i.e. it is an open compound). See the dash article section about this, with its remarks about the disambiguating value of the en dash and its examples such as "pre–Civil War era" (versus "post-war era"), "ex–prime minister", "the pro-conscription–anti-conscription debate", and "public-school–private-school rivalries". Question: In Strunk & White's example of the Chattanooga News-Free Press and in "ex–prime minister", aren't those substantive constructions rather than attributive ones? I think an en dash should be used in a substantive construction that involves a joining with a compound term (or multiple compound terms), such as "Minneapolis–Saint Paul" or "Dallas–Fort Worth". —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 16:00, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
  • The essential aspect here is that the merger name is made up of the names of two earlier separate entities; that's all. Strunk & White's Elements was written 1918–1953, hasn't seen a new edition since 2000, sometimes ignores its own advice, and hasn't had any real impact on WP's MoS, so I'm not sure it's terribly relevant for something like this.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:15, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose, on WP:CONCISE grounds, and to be WP:CONSISTENT with the treatment of virtually all other company names. We only add a "Corporation", "Inc.", "Ltd.", etc., when the name is confusingly ambiguous without it, (and even then we sometimes prefer "(company)" or some other disambiguation instead). And ngrams [2] don't support the claim that "... Corporation is consistently used in prose in sources referring to the corporation"; the opposite appears to be the case, so WP:COMMONNAME is not met by this proposal.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:15, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.