Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/China- and Chinese-related articles

Kangxi radical template/gloss

Another template that might tread on toes style-guide-wise, but I think is probably really worthwhile in some form? I wrote {{kxr}} this morning. I want to tweak it a bit more, but it only works by number right now, because by label will take a bit longer.

{{kxr|120}} → ⽷ 'SILK'

{{kxr|54|l=yes}} → ⼵ 'LONG STRIDE'

It uses small caps and boldface, but I really do think it's fine here, to distinguish from both regular texts and regular glosses. It uses the Unicode gloss for each Kangxi radical, but I also want to add positioned variants like ⺼, 爫, and 歺, etc. etc. But! I wanted to make sure people would find this useful before I put another few hours into it, and moreover don't actively hate it! Remsense聊 17:00, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

I can't see any purpose to either the bolding or the all-caps, most especially the all-caps. It appears to me (based on MOS:FOREIGN and MOS:SINGLE) that this should emit the character wrapped {{lang|zh}} (or equivalent bare HTML markup, like <span language="zh">...</span>), followed by the gloss in 'single quotes': ⼵ 'long stride'.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:46, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

I suppose I was drawing from templates more oriented towards character encoding, like {{unichar}} → U+2F35 ⼵ KANGXI RADICAL LONG STRIDE. It's almost a less-glossed gloss? Since the semantic meanings of the radicals are so broad and reified, it feels appropriate to potentially mark them up differently/make them appear as part of a set. But maybe I'm overfixated on the distinction?

Also, the character is tagged with lang="Und-Hani", since they are radicals and not characters assigned to phonetic language use per se.

Remsense聊 17:58, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

{{Unichar}} uses that format because it is conventional (not just within Wikipedia) to render the official names of Unicode code points that way. This is not true of glosses of Chinese radicals. It's kind of like deciding to render all names of video game characters in italics because you saw that italics were used for book titles. There's no connection between the subjects. Re: Und-Hani – sure, that makes sense.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:57, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

It's an oblique connection, but I figured it was worth trying out. I'll look at giving it a more canonical gloss style. Remsense聊 19:23, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

@Remsense: It's still rendering all-caps. This has been open a long time and people are already using this template "in the wild", so this needs to be fixed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:43, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I have at least one book where radical names are rendered this way: in all caps, single quotes. I am pretty sure it's used in a couple of my books, but I will have to check. It is certainly not the majority style, however. If presence in a couple relevant books is categorically not enough justification for the template's style, I will just change it.

References

Remsense留 22:02, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Explicitly stating Taiwan as the COMMONNAME

It's come to my attention recently that

1. There is perennial confusion, especially among new editors, that "Taiwan" is the WP:COMMONNAME describing the ROC post-1949 all else being equal (well, I guess I already knew this), and
2. There has been an extensive deliberation that enshrined this as the written consensus.

Am I alright to add as such to this article? It is conspicuously absent. Remsense留 08:03, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

I've attempted to express the consensus starting with this discussion according to how I see it presently expressed, even though the discussion explicitly does not extend itself to other articles, it's clear enough to me that the underlying reasons can apply. Don't hesitate to revert and hash this out if you think I went too far. Remsense留 23:43, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

In-article consistency

What we have now (due to someone reverting to it): Where "China" or the "People's Republic of China" is used, it should not be changed arbitrarily. In many contexts, the terms are interchangeable: if China and People's Republic of China both seem appropriate, editors should use their own discretion.

What we should have again: If "China" or the "People's Republic of China" is used consistently in an article, it should not be arbitrarily changed. In many contexts, the terms are interchangeable: if China and People's Republic of China both seem appropriate, editors should use their own discretion. Or some blended version that still includes "used consistently in an article".

Someone absolutely should "arbitrarily" change a stray occurrence of one match the otherwise consistent usage of the other in the same article. On no style matter should we be veering back and forth confusingly, especially when it comes to names that may mean something different to different people. If you're going to use the short "China", then use it consistently and explain it at first occurrence (with a link or more textually) as referring to the PRC. If you're going to use the long version, then stick with it and use "PRC" for short as seems warranted.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:47, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

In this case, I disagree with the idea that articles should exclusively use one term or the other. This is not really a style difference but rather the usual term ("China") and the more precise official term ("People's Republic of China", abbreviated "PRC"). The main reasons to use the longer, more legalistic term are as part of an official phrase/title (like "Constitution of the People's Republic of China") and to avoid ambiguity in discussions of history and politics. It's reasonable and normal to use "People's Republic of China" once or twice in an article because of those considerations and "China" in the rest of the article. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 15:26, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Mx. Granger, conversely, there is a consistent issue in China-related articles where people insist on exclusively using People's Republic of China (etc.), either not realizing how awkward and artificial it sounds, or having some personal bugbear about doing so. Remsense留 20:13, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I agree this is a problem. Similarly, I've noticed some Wikipedia articles about modern Taiwan use "Republic of China" repeatedly, even though "Taiwan" is more common in all but the most technical and legalistic of contexts. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 02:20, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree. An article is much more readable if the long and precise title is used once early on, and the shorter common name elsewhere. But there will be cases where the possibility of confusion requires more precision. Kanguole 18:52, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Excessive amount of rewriting

Just today alone I see a truly excessive amount of "rehape this in my own person idiom" editing, without any discussion for any of it. This is not how guideline changes are made, it tends to lead to mass-reverts and other disputation, and it casts doubt in community minds whether this is really a guideline or something that needs to be moved to WP:WikiProject China/Style advice and tagged as an essay. Doing typographic and code cleanup is one thing (maybe along with some objective structure and flow improvements), but it's quite another to be making so many actually substantive changes without any consensus discussion in support of them.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:50, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

I'll revert, and people can discuss changes they think are worthwhile. i am of a disposition where i can't merely copyedit a page i care about, but of course I wouldn't make edits to a policy page in my own idiom if i didn't feel safe about it also the consensus idiom. as you know, this started because of a minor headache regarding Taiwan that I wanted to prevent from recurring. But you're right, your reservations are warranted, and this is the process working—i just hope the sum of my contributions is a positive for the site and i don't just make messes for others to worry about.
if any consensus is reached, i will happy do the work to reintegrate whatever material so that this isn't its own mess for others to clean up in itself. Remsense留 04:11, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Understood, got a bit carried away. SilverStar54 (talk) 06:02, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

When to include both character sets

I'm not sure whether my feeling is very rigorous, but it does seem there are instances where both simplified and traditional characters are supplied where the forms are similar enough that it does little but take up extra space. I do not know exactly how universal the knowledge of basic forms of both sets is, but it seems like it could be worthwhile to investigate a nuance in style policy here. For example, it seems potentially very wasteful when both forms of a word are given, but the only graphical distinction is the systematic simplification of a radical. Remsense留 08:02, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

I have the same feeling about cases where the difference is very slight, like 没 vs. 沒. For a case like 饭/飯 I'm inclined to err on the side of including both, as some of our readers will have very basic Chinese ability and may not know about systematic simplifications like those. I'm more inclined to include both forms in an infobox as opposed to a lead-sentence parenthetical, because I think long parentheticals can disrupt the flow of the lead. Also, I'm more inclined to include both forms, even if the differences are slight, when the article or term has strong ties to places that use different character sets (for instance, with topics related to cross-strait relations). The current guideline allows for case-by-case discretion, which might be better than trying to list all the relevant considerations, but I'm open to discussion. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 21:04, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Mx. Granger that we shouldn't drop one of the character sets just because the relationship can be guessed if you know about systematic simplications. But as suggested, I would support recommending infoboxes over long parentheticals, especially when the article needs to give both character sets and multiple romanizations. SilverStar54 (talk) 20:04, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Pinyin usage in topics related to the late Qing Dynasty and Republican Eras on the Mainland

Hi! A user argued in WP:PINYIN for usage of pinyin. This makes sense with post-1949 articles about Mainland China and/or general about individuals loyal to the CCP. However, I think both Pinyin and old postal system names/other romanizations of cities should be used in late Qing Dynasty and Republican Era-related articles, as those spellings were used at the time. Also, IMO individuals who died in the Republican Era and/or were loyal to the KMT should likely use the non-standard romanizations. WhisperToMe (talk) 03:31, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

This has been discussed before; see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese)/Archive 14#Historical names of Chinese places for a recent discussion of a similar topic. Most modern sources use pinyin as the standard transliteration of Chinese terms from all periods of Chinese history. It's sometimes useful to provide another transliteration in parentheses to help readers who may be using older sources, but our default should be pinyin. There are exceptions for the unusual cases (e.g. Sun Yat-sen and Hong Kong) where a different transliteration is clearly more common in modern reliable sources. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 13:47, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Mx. Granger said it better than I could. It would be really confusing to readers if we changed romanization systems based on the historical time period. We should keep things as straightforward as possible. SilverStar54 (talk) 19:03, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I posted responses to Talk:Kweilin_incident. Based on the discussion, I felt the outcome would be to retain pinyin for Mainland Chinese cities, but I indicated the old spellings in parenthenses because one key source (Gregory Crouch's book) uses the old spellings. I indicated aspects about the particular people on the discussion page, with at least one using a particular non-standard romanization of his name during his lifetime. WhisperToMe (talk) 22:06, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

WhisperToMe, parenthetically including alternate romanizations is overly clunky in the vast majority of cases. There's a reason {{Infobox Chinese}} exists. — Remsense诉 23:17, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Infobox Chinese works for introducing various romanizations of the main article's subject. But when introducing multiple romanizations of a time period (for example, looking at an article subject set in the late Qing/Republican eras, when relevant documents and even some modern secondary sources use extensive Postal System romanization), one can't put all of the romanizations of each term used in a single template. Also expecting a reader to click-click-click multiple articles to see multiple romanizations of each term isn't ideal because many readers don't want to do that work. Now, footnoting them might be a possibility. WhisperToMe (talk) 23:21, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

WhisperToMe, I think in this specific case, since both characters and an alternate transliteration may be provided, footnoting is the best option. — Remsense诉 23:41, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

I went ahead and footnoted them! WhisperToMe (talk) 00:04, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I like the footnoting approach WhisperToMe took in the Kweilin Incident article, and I agree with @Remsense that it's superior to putting the alternate romanizations in paranetheses, which interrupts the flow of the text. I would support recommending this as part of the guide if it's supported by other users as well. SilverStar54 (talk) 17:02, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Suggested reworking of "Romanisation" section

What does everyone think of this as a reworking of the "Romanisation" section? Hopefully there's nothing controversial here. My main goal was to add clarifying details and improve the overall flow. I also replaced guidance that already exists more extensively at WP:NCZH with references to that page, to minimize duplication.

===Romanisation===

There are a number of systems used to romanise Chinese characters. English Wikipedia uses Hanyu Pinyin, with some minor exceptions outlined below. When using pinyin:

• Follow the established conventions for hyphens, spacing, apostrophes, and other parts of pinyin orthography (see WP:NCZH#Orthography)
• Follow MOS:FOREIGNITALIC for when to use italics. In general, use italics for terms that have not been assimilated into English, but do not use italics for the names of people, places, or groups.
• See below for where and how to use tone marks

If a source uses a non-pinyin or non-standard spelling, it should be converted into pinyin. Consider also providing the source's spelling to ease verification by other users.

Even where the title of an article uses a non-pinyin romanisation, romanisations of other Chinese words within the article should still be in pinyin. For example, Tsingtao Brewery is a trademark which uses a non-pinyin romanisation, but an article talking about Tsingtao Brewery should still use the pinyin spelling when talking about Qingdao city:

Correct: Tsingtao Brewery Co., Ltd. is located in Qingdao city, Shandong.

Incorrect: Tsingtao Brewery Co., Ltd. is located in Tsingtao city, Shan-tung. or Tsingtao Brewery Co., Ltd. is located in Tsingtao city, Shandong.

====When to use romanisations other than pinyin====

Articles should use a non-pinyin spelling of a term if that spelling is used by the clear majority of modern, reliable, secondary sources (see WP:NC-ZH for examples). If the term does not have its own article, the pinyin romanisation should be given in a parenthetical. For example,

The Hung Ga style Ng Ying Hung Kuen (Chinese: 五形洪拳; pinyin: Wǔxíng Hóngquán) traces its ancestry to Ng Mui.

Relatedly, note that systems of Chinese language romanization in Taiwan (the Republic of China) are far less standardized than in mainland China. Hanyu Pinyin has been the official standard since 2009, but systems such Wade–Giles, Gwoyeu Romatzyh, Tongyong Pinyin, and Chinese postal romanization remain in use for both personal and place names. In Taiwan, place names derived from Hanyu Pinyin rarely use the syllable-dividing apostrophe. For example, write Daan District, Taipei City, not Da'an District, Taipei City. SilverStar54 (talk) 19:59, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

SilverStar54, I think it's a good reorganization. — Remsense诉 23:15, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

@Remsense I see you've already added this to the article. Can you remove it? I'd like to get feedback from more users before adding it to the article. SilverStar54 (talk) 17:10, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

A few suggestions (Mar 2024)

• When to include characters — I think it may be worthwhile and not CREEP-y to explicate that characters for a term may be included if the prose is specifically talking about the graphical form of the character, or is comparing characters.

• Almost all methods of emphasis are bad emphasis, but it's hard to know what to do with characters sometimes—in general, I think double-underlining as facilitated by {{uuline}} is likely the best technique we have when we would like to emphasize a character:

  Posthumous name
  Emperor Qintian Lüdao Yingyi Shengshen Xuanwen Guangwu Hongren Daxiao Su
  欽天履道英毅聖神宣文廣武洪仁大孝肅皇帝

  This should be a logical last resort, though.

Remsense诉 04:21, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Logical exception to "don't include characters/romanizations for linked terms"

During the GAN for Chinese characters, @Kusma pointed out sections that really should include the characters and romanization for certain terms, even though they're linked—e.g. regular script in the the § History section. I agree: perhaps some class of exception to this guideline should be mentioned, while always being mindful of WP:CREEP. I'm not sure exactly what that class should be—perhaps "within a broad article, while summary style–ing what could be considered its subarticles", or "when omission would be conspicuous or confusing in light of other terms that are linked within an article" Remsense诉 02:39, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

I've been meaning to bring up here that the "don't include characters if a link exists" should make reasonable exceptions for tabular data (which is already common practice in many articles like e.g. 13th Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party and all in that series). I'm especially interested in adding characters to terms where translations vary, and no common name has been rigorously established at the target article, which is relatively common for literary titles.

I also think I agree with Kusma's comment referred to above, which I have not read in the original, in that for certain topics, including the native name of a concept in prose should not be prohibited. If you're ever talking Chinese calligraphy with someone irl, the term they'll employ in an English sentence will be kaishu, not "regular script" (which I literally had to click through to in order to ascertain that 楷書 was indeed the topic). Folly Mox (talk) 13:55, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes. Having really immersed myself in writing a topic including a lot of native vocabulary from top to bottom, it now seems pretty common sense that this should be a class of exceptions to not including characters. Remsense诉 14:00, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

I think it makes sense to modify the guideline to explicitly allow for more flexibility. For instance, maybe we should add a sentence to the paragraph in question saying something like "Reasonable exceptions can be made when important for consistency or clarity." —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 14:06, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

The existing wording is broadly in line with the main MOS, Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting § Non-English language terms:

Use non-English vocabulary sparingly; for more information, see Wikipedia:Writing better articles § Use other languages sparingly.

The latter link says:

Foreign terms within the article body do not need native spellings if they can be specified as title terms in separate articles; just link to the appropriate article on first occurrence.

Kanguole 14:33, 11 June 2024 (UTC)