Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style

Clarify MOS:LQ#LQ

I've long found the handling of this issue pretty confusing, and I think the wording leads to people misunderstanding the application of logical quotation/punctuation in BritEng articles. The problem, as I see it, is that the opening statement reads like a hard-and-fast rule regarding end punctuation for all instances where we place quoted material, even just a single word, at the end of a sentence of our article text. In fact, as implied by a later point, the statement should apply only when we're reproducing a full sentence of quoted material, at least in BritEng or "logical" punctuation. Here's that opening statement:

On Wikipedia, place all punctuation marks inside the quotation marks if they are part of the quoted material and outside if they are not, irrespective of any rules associated with the variety of English in use … This punctuation system does not require placing final periods and commas inside or outside the quotation marks all the time but rather maintaining their original positions in (or absence from) the quoted material.

Yet later on we have:

When a quoted sentence fragment ends in a period, some judgment is required: if the fragment communicates a complete sentence, the period can be placed inside.

And there's allowance for ignoring the fact that a period/full stop appeared inside the quote originally, when its coverage within the quotation is considered unnecessary.

So, to follow the example given on the page – where the quoted sentence is "The situation is deplorable and unacceptable." – that would allow for a paraphrasing of: Arthur said that the situation was "deplorable and unacceptable". This is logical punctuation.

I see some confusion in Quotation mark#Punctuation also, where again, the emphasis seems to be on a full sentence of quoted material. I'm referring to a statement early in that section: The prevailing style in the United Kingdom and other non-American locales—called British style[13] and logical quotation[14][15]—is to include within quotation marks only those punctuation marks that appeared in the quoted material but otherwise to place punctuation outside the closing quotation marks. That's all true but, as the cite explains, there's more to logical punctuation than that. Subsequent points made at Quotation mark#Punctuation clarify the BritEng approach: Fowler's "All signs of punctuation used with words in quotation marks must be placed according to the sense."[16], and "When dealing with words-as-words, short-form works and sentence fragments, this style places periods and commas outside the quotation marks …"

I think we need to clarify the wording here, because in Brit Eng articles, I believe it's incorrect to have that Arthur-said paraphrasing as Arthur said that the situation was "deplorable and unacceptable." But I think a lot of editors maybe take the opening statement at MOS:LQ, and/or the sentence from Quotation mark#Punctuation, as the only criterion to consider.

In addition to making it clear in the opening statement here that we're referring to a quote that constitutes a full sentence, perhaps including that example Arthur said that the situation was "deplorable and unacceptable". would be useful as guidance. (And of course something is needed for when a quoted fragment ends in a comma and our adoption of those quoted words (i.e., in the context of a sentence of article text) happens to require a comma.) JG66 (talk) 17:02, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

I agree. The opening sentence seems to allow Arthur said that the situation was "deplorable and unacceptable." and I've encountered editors who defend things like that with the argument that the full stop communicates that the quoted sentence ended there. Imo the words "communicate a complete sentence" are ambiguous and we need a better formula that doesn't admit that misinterpretation. And that opening sentence needs to be rephrased so as not to admit the approach: "the source had a full stop there, and I'm quoting it". --Stfg (talk) 18:02, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

However, quoting the full stop does make the quotation more accurate. Suppose that Arthur actually said: "The situation is deplorable and unacceptable, but too costly to change." Then Arthur said that the situation was "deplorable and unacceptable". is accurately quoted (albeit misleading unless the text later makes his qualification clear). Suppose he actually just said without qualification: "The situation is deplorable and unacceptable." Then either Arthur said that the situation was "deplorable and unacceptable." or Arthur said that the situation was "deplorable and unacceptable". are accurate quotations, but the former has the advantage that it makes it quite clear that his sentence did not continue.

(Slight side issue, but to me this nit-picking over the position of the full stop is inconsistent with the requirement to silently change the initial capital letter, thus not making it clear whether the sentence started at the quoted point. According to MOS:QUOTE I should not write Arthur said "[t]he situation is deplorable and unacceptable." If it's important to show that a complete sentence is quoted by the position of the full stop – which is what seems to be claimed – then it's equally important to show this by the choice of capital for the first letter.) Peter coxhead (talk) 08:30, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

I think the main point is that the current MOS:LQ text doesn't clearly express its intention. But I'll take you up on your first example: the source might have phrased it the way you did, or it might have said "The situation is deplorable and unacceptable. But it is too costly to change." If the too-costly-to-change part is significant to the article we're writing, then in either case, to omit it is to quote out of context; if it isn't significant, then the full stop is merely a dot. So I think that the question of whether or not the sentence continued after "unacceptable" is nothing more than one of syntax: it doesn't tell us anything about what the writer meant. Ditto, for the same reasons, about whether the sentence started with the first quoted word. But once again, I'd say the only issue that matters here is to say whatever we mean more clearly. --Stfg (talk) 09:13, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Peter (if I may), adding to Stfg's comment: okay, but what would happen if our sentence was Arthur said that the situation was "deplorable and unacceptable", while Tom viewed it as "fairly run of the mill". – we wouldn't feel the need to convey whether there was more in Arthur's sentence, right? That's the point of logical quotation: taking others' words but treating them in the context of the sentence in which we're choosing to reproduce them, not the context in which they appeared originally. When it's a full sentence-worth of quoted matter, no problem, because "logically" the quoted matter merits a full stop. (In fact, when the quote constitutes a full sentence but there happens to be more text in the original, I prefer to add an ellipsis. But that's only when the quoted portion appears at the end of our sentence.)

What I've raised here is the need to ensure that the guideline allows for a basic tenet of (correct) punctuation in BritEng. (Not whether logical quotation/punctuation is infallible!) Right now – and over the last year or two – I've seen this wording create confusion for North American-based editors working on BritEng articles. I can understand why, because the weight given over to the opening statement appears to override the all-important exceptions, as at Quotation mark#Punctuation, I believe. JG66 (talk) 17:09, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

None of this is in any way specific to Brit Eng articles, nor should it be. WP:LQ applies equally to all varieties of English on Wikipedia. If you want to clarify the guidance and examples generally based on what's good for all articles, that's perfectly fine, it's great, but it shouldn't be discussed as if it's only something we'll apply to "BritEng articles". Wikipedia prefers logical quotation in the sense that's it's used internationally, not because it's a part of British English usage. __ E L A Q U E A T E 17:44, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Exactly. It doesn't matter within the English Wikipedia what the ENGVAR is; precisely the same version of LQ is to be used in all ENGVARs.

What's the authority for saying that a sentence terminal full stop is only quoted (and hence within the quote marks) when the complete sentence is quoted? Peter coxhead (talk) 21:10, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Is that what we say? Then "communicate a complete sentence" could become "is a complete sentence", with greater clarity. I've always wondered whether the second half of a compound sentence is being considered as "communicating" a complete sentence, or something of that ilk. (I agree this isn't a question of ENGVAR; it's a matter of the clear definition of LQ for all ENGVARs, as you say.) --Stfg (talk) 22:47, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

I apologise if I seem to have excluded all varieties bar British English – exclusion is the last thing I want to achieve. It's just that, as I understand the situation, logical quotation need not be applied in American English, whereas it's standard in BritEng. As it says in Quotation mark#Punctuation: The prevailing style in the United Kingdom and other non-American locales—called British style and logical quotation … vs In the U.S., the prevailing style is called American style, whereby commas and periods are almost always placed inside closing quotation marks. This style of punctuation is common in the U.S. and Canada, and is the style usually recommended by The Chicago Manual of Style and most other American style guides.

So, in my opinion, this MoS point on logical quotation needs to be clarified in its own right – the problem being that readers here (and at Quotation mark) can come away with the idea that the guiding principle is to automatically place a full stop or comma from the quoted material inside the end quotation mark in a sentence on Wikipedia. In fact, that suggested paraphrasing Arthur said that the situation was "deplorable and unacceptable". (from Arthur's original words: "The situation is deplorable and unacceptable.") is closer to a guiding principle, and the point about "plac[ing] all punctuation marks inside the quotation marks if they are part of the quoted material and outside if they are not" is secondary, as a guideline for when the quote constitutes a complete sentence.

But in addition to this clarification, surely mention needs to be made that LQ is a convention in BritEng, in the same way that the subsections Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Compass points and Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Periods (full stops) and spaces offer guidance on usage. JG66 (talk) 01:42, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

I do hope this isn't going to become yet another rerun of Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 143#RFC: punctuation when quoting. By the consensus there, this is not an ENGVAR issue. Let's just clarify the wording of the current guideline and get back to editing articles. Those interminable discussions are time sinks. --Stfg (talk) 09:44, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Quotation mark#Punctuation is an article, not advice about what to do on Wikipedia, (and it looks like it needs some updating). It is about general usage globally outside of Wikipedia, not usage on Wikipedia articles using MOS style. It is not part of the MOS; it is not guidance on how to write Wikipedia articles. Logical quotation applies everywhere on Wikipedia. JG66, there is no reason to mention that WP:LQ applies to any specific English variety, because it applies to all varieties, including American English articles.__ E L A Q U E A T E 12:09, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Your original example is already covered by When a quoted sentence fragment ends in a period, some judgment is required: if the fragment communicates a complete sentence, the period can be placed inside. The sentence fragment "deplorable and unacceptable" does not communicate a complete sentence, so the guidance currently suggests not putting the period inside. If the sentence fragment is more obviously a complete thought on its own, taken from something like I know many dogs; dogs are good. then including the period when quoting "dogs are good." is arguably justified, based on editor judgement and context. I don't think you can make a hard and fast rule here for what constitutes "communicating a complete sentence" as it depends on the relationship between the parts of the sentence, not whether an "and" or semi-colon was used. Case-by-case judgment is required for logical quotation, and that's not a demand specific to its use on Wikipedia.__ E L A Q U E A T E 12:39, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I agree entirely that it's a matter of editorial judgement and context. For example, a whole sentence may be reported in the text, with the opening changed to fit, and the rest quoted. Suppose John Doe said I know that all dogs can be trained. This might appear in an article as John Doe said that he knew that "all dogs can be trained." Here a full stop within the quote marks seems appropriate to me since the full sentence has been reported. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:47, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm in total agreement regarding those examples – "dogs are good" and "all dogs can be trained" both constitute a sentence in their own right. So if a period followed the words originally, it can and should be reproduced. (Although, I believe the inclusion of the word "that" in examples like John Doe said that he knew that "all dogs can be trained." complicates things – according to one school of thought anyway.)

Apologies up-front for repeating myself here …

My point regarding MOS:LQ wording is there's too much emphasis on adherence to whether a period or comma appeared in text originally. Again, the opening paragraph misrepresents logical quotation:

On Wikipedia, place all punctuation marks inside the quotation marks if they are part of the quoted material and outside if they are not, irrespective of any rules associated with the variety of English in use. This practice is sometimes referred to as logical quotation. It is used here because it has been deemed by Wikipedia consensus to be more in keeping with the principle of minimal change. This punctuation system does not require placing final periods and commas inside or outside the quotation marks all the time but rather maintaining their original positions in (or absence from) the quoted material.

The statement "This practice is sometimes referred to as logical quotation." is confused, and confusing. As defined on Wiktionary, LQ is in fact: A system of quotation wherein punctuation marks are enclosed within a quotation only if the sense of the punctuation is part of the quotation. (The sense of the punctuation, not whether the punctuation is part of the quotation.)

This definition is in keeping with:

• Fowler's statement (although one wishes there was more from Fowler on the issue): All signs of punctuation used with words in quotation marks must be placed according to the sense.
• And the Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies style guide cited at Quotation mark#Punctuation, specifically: 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 … e.g. Jane said that the situation is 'deplorable'. (When a sentence fragment is quoted, the period is outside.)
• Also the sentence following Fowler's in the same Wikipedia article: When dealing with words-as-words, short-form works and [my emphasis] sentence fragments, this style places periods and commas outside the quotation marks …

In other words, it's got nothing to do with whether a full stop or comma appeared in the quoted text originally when we use just a fragment. To repeat, I've seen this create confusion among editors, because we're not conveying the true principle(s) of LQ.

As the wording is currently, I really don't agree that the all-important point comes across adequately in the guideline: When a quoted sentence fragment ends in a period, some judgment is required: if the fragment communicates a complete sentence, the period can be placed inside. (Admittedly, this could well be because the guideline is dwarfed, comparatively, by the section's opening paragraph.) For a start, I'd suggest rewording to should be placed inside – but if we're looking to explain LQ correctly, then something along the lines of: only if the fragment constitutes a complete sentence should the period be placed inside. And, in order to be utterly clear, there should be an example of where end punctuation from the quote is to be ignored, as in the context of Arthur's full quote being partly paraphrased as: Arthur said that the situation was "deplorable and unacceptable". The reason being, Arthur said that the situation was "deplorable". – which is what currently appears on the page – serves to illustrate the guideline "This punctuation system does not require placing final periods and commas inside or outside the quotation marks all the time …"; but nowhere is there an illustration of editorial judgment being put into practice, re punctuation according to sense. (To state the obvious, the full stop is after "unacceptable" in the original, not after "deplorable".) JG66 (talk) 04:05, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

The Wiktionary definition is raw, as usual. In LQ practice at large, where a sentence that ends with a period does not fall at the end of the sentence in which it is quoted, a comma replaces its period and is positioned before the closing quote mark. This is not written into the MOS, and probably should be. Original sentence: The girl kicked the ball to the end of the field. Quoting sentence: "The girl kicked the ball to the end of the field," he reported. Tony (talk) 09:03, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

This example, and others given above, are very helpful. Is there any chance of capturing these things in the guideline itself, and of fixing JG66's issue with the first paragraph? (Unfortunately, I can't offer to do it, as I'm not quite sure enough of getting it right.) --Stfg (talk) 11:46, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

I've made this series of edits that I think eliminates some of the ambiguity/inconsistency, while adding a couple of examples of incorrect punctuation. GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 18:55, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the hard work you've put into this. I defer to others on its accuracy, but full marks for clarity. I like "constitutes a complete sentence". --Stfg (talk) 20:37, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Stfg. I'm not sure about Tony's above example, because it involves swapping out a full stop that was present in the source with a comma that was not. I have seen this practiced in some publications, but I wonder if this is really in keeping with minimal change. It seems to me that the best practice is to omit the full stop – as the guideline currently suggests – but not to replace it with a comma inside quotation marks, which might give readers the false impression that the comma was present in the original source. GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 20:47, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Perennial rehash. There's nothing confusing about this (use logical quotation, i.e. do not add punctuation to a quotation that was not in the original material being quoted). It's not an ENGVAR matter. British (and Australian, etc.) journalistic and fiction publications frequently use typesetters' quotation, and plenty of American (and Canadian, etc.) publications that value accuracy and precision over insular tradition use logical quotation. We've been over this again and again. There's an incorrect perception that typesetters' quotation is "American style" because some major US-published style guides recommend it, but even Chicago Manual of Style does not recommend it where precision is needed. The consensus has (repeatedly) been that WP values the precision. This "new" (not new at all) LQ kerfluffle is itself rehash; we've already previously dispelled the idea that LQ differs between UK and American English; the confusion is in trying to equate LQ with Oxford style quotation, which is similar to LQ but not identical. It's a false comparison; move on.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:39, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Er, it's seems you're a day or two out of date. We've already "moved on", to what was always the main issue here – clarifying in the MoS what exactly LQ is. JG66 (talk) 09:34, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Except even now I see responses like "My first choice would be scrap WP:LQ entirely and have rules for quotation marks follow ENGVAR...", "The text as it is is a little too worshipful of British/logical style", etc., which clearly indicate that some participants here just don't get it. Commingling a "screw this British imposition!" misunderstanding and rehash with a discussion about how to actually improve the LQ-related wording is kind of dicey.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  17:37, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

I've made a few more edits that I think resolve any lingering ambiguity, but if I've missed anything then please let me know. GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 23:01, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

I think the wording Editors should never include terminal punctuation inside quotation marks unless that punctuation is present in the source, and the quoted text constitutes a complete sentence. opens things up to the ambiguity in Peter Coxhead's example—to restate, I know that all dogs can be trained. could appear as John Doe said that he knew that "all dogs can be trained." becaue "all dogs can be trained" can in and of itself be a complete sentence, even though it is not the complete sentence the quote was lifted from, nor is it the complete sentence in the hypothetical article—it is a "that clause", and the period should logically punctuate the sentence as a whole that begins with "John Doe" (and thus be outside the quote marks). Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 23:59, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

That's a good point. Does this edit resolve your concern? GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 00:46, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

No, actually, because "all dogs can be trained" still constitutes "constitutes a complete sentence", and leaves things wide open to soul-draining discussion about where to "logically" place the period. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 04:21, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

My first choice would be scrap WP:LQ entirely and have rules for quotation marks follow ENGVAR, but as long as WP:LQ is in place, it should be done as close to right as possible. The MoS should describe correct British English, not anything made up specifically for Wikipedia. If the MoS is wrong, then it should be corrected.

As for Quotation mark, it is an article. It should describe American and British punctuation accurately, regardless of whether the MoS follows either system. Ideally, the MoS and the article would match, but that's another matter.

The text as it is is a little too worshipful of British/logical style. One statement seemed to say that it wasn't actually British (whoever put it there probably meant to say that it's required in all Wikipedia articles, not just British English Wikipedia articles). Also, the claim that this rule is here because of the principal of minimal change is not only not helpful to the reader but untrue. Our last major RfC on the subject, despite the extreme bias of the wording, showed that most proponents of WP:LQ just like that system best, in most cases because it appeals to their sense of logic. That's not bad but that's not minimal change. (It's not the reason this rule was inserted in the first place either: The original reasoning was a splitting of the difference between American and British punctuation, with British comma/period placement and "American" double quotes. This was in turn based on the belief that British requires single quotes in all cases--it doesn't.)

I've cleaned the passage up some, but we should do more. The concept of "logical sense" is too subjective. Even the expression "placement according to sense" will be unfamiliar to most Wikieditors. Our discussions on this matter have shown that not everyone comes to the same conclusion about what is and isn't literally logical in punctuation. We should spell out what the editor is expected to do and save the theorizing for the article space where it can be sourced properly.

Why not just copy something directly out of a British style guide, modifying any terminology that would be unfamiliar to our users? Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:38, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

It's disappointing if "minimal change" is going to be removed from the wording—I think that's the most concices and helpful rationale to give. If that's not the rationale !voters explicitly stated in the last RfC, then perhaps we need a new one to confirm what editors think about that wording—I doubt many would raise any kind of objection to it. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 04:21, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Most of the rules in the MoS don't have rationales given for them, so why give one for LQ?

I'm objecting to this text for two reasons. 1. This rule isn't here because of minimal change; it's here because it's popular. 2. Stating that this rule is here because of minimal change implies that British/logical style is associated with fewer errors than American style, and no one has ever found even one error or other problem on Wikipedia that can be attributed to the use of American punctuation (which is relatively common despite the ban). If we're going to say, "We require British/L style because of accuracy and error prevention" then someone should have to point out some non-hypothetical, non-imaginary case of error or inaccuracy.

Things like the differences between British and American styles--whether it's their history or their effects--are better addressed in the article space where sources can be provided. And if a statement as bold and loaded as "British/logical style is more consistent with the principal of minimal change than American style is" is going to be on Wikipedia, then it should be sourced. Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:01, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

I think today's changes were made in good faith, and I understand it's tricky, but it's much less readable at this point. I think the number of compound and overlong sentences has increased. Compare the readability with this. Now it has strange repetitions from so many incremental changes. The first sentence has an A and a B, and then later in the paragraph the whole concept is repeated with an A, B, and C! Too much. What do people think of this:

On Wikipedia, punctuation marks are placed outside of quotation marks when the quoted material is seen as a discrete phrase or incomplete sentence. When the quoted material is considered a grammatically complete sentence then the material's original punctuation is preserved, and placed inside quotation marks. This practice is sometimes referred to as logical quotation. It is required for all articles on Wikipedia regardless of the variety of English in which they are otherwise written. Logical quotation does not require the placing of final periods and commas inside or outside quotation marks all the time, but rather it encourages editors to maintain the punctuation's absence or original position in the quoted text.

Thoughts? __ E L A Q U E A T E 05:09, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

I think the first sentence is a little too esoteric but the rest is good.

Concerns: 1. "Punctuation" is too broad of a word. This rule is about periods and commas. There's less of an issue with exclamation points and question marks. Semicolons and colons are supposed to be placed outside the quotation marks every time. We're certainly not talking about parentheses or dashes, slash marks, brackets or other forms of punctuation. 2. The imperative mood is more appropriate here. We are telling people what to do, not describing what happens (to be extremely literal, punctuation marks are not always placed that way on Wikipedia). 3. And we should definitely keep the link to the punctuation section of the quotation mark article in there somewhere. 4. What else? I'd put a "from" after "absence." Otherwise it looks like "absence in."

Consider On Wikipedia, place periods and commas outside of quotation marks when quoting a discrete phrase or sentence fragment. Place them inside when quoting a grammatically complete sentence. This practice is...

If we're going to give the name of the practice, we should include the one by which it is most commonly known. It is called "British" more often than it is called "logical" by what feels like two to one. Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:15, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

On Wikipedia, place punctuation marks outside of quotation marks when the quoted material is seen as a discrete phrase or incomplete sentence. When the quoted material is considered a grammatically complete sentence, place the material's original punctuation inside quotation marks. This practice is referred to as logical quotation or British style quotation. It is required for all articles on Wikipedia regardless of the variety of English in which they are otherwise written. Logical quotation does not require the placing of final periods and commas inside or outside quotation marks all the time, but rather it encourages editors to maintain the absence or original position of punctuation in the original text.

Honestly, I think we should let an article explain that logical punctuation is also called British. Having the mention of the "British" name just seems to confuse people about which articles it's in effect for. You are correct about the imperative. Thanks for that. I stuck with "punctuation" because it's true for all punctuation, even though you are correct that is predominantly periods and commas, and laundry-listing them muddles the readability. An example, if the quoted material is a full sentence ending in a question mark, then it's included inside the quotation marks. We don't want anyone saying it doesn't cover question marks. I left the "seen" and "considered" in because LQ requires case-by-case judgement. It's better to say something like "considered a grammatically complete sentence" rather than just say "sentence" which doesn't cover all of the cases. I moved the absence bit.__ E L A Q U E A T E 05:43, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Then why state either of the practice's names? Maybe it shouldn't be, but this is a hot-button issue here on the MoS, with accusations of inappropriate framing on both sides. We should either follow the sources (which certainly use both names enough, even if they use B more than L), or leave the entire matter to the article space. However, if we do mention both names, "British" should be stated first because it is the primary name. If we mention only one name, it should not be the one that is less common.

Actually, it is not true of all punctuation. Colons and semicolons are supposed to be outside quotation marks. This is the case in both British and American English, though APA seems divided on the matter. Here's a two-minute source job: [1] [2] [3]

The "seen as" and "considered" leave the reader to wonder "seen by whom?" and "considered by whom?" Can we make that less vague? Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:51, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm not worried that people won't know who does the considering, as the examples spell it out with Judgment is required whenever.... My general opinion is that it would probably work out better for Wikipedia, being international, to go with the name not connected to a single country. Pushing the British name just seems to be asking for more "But I'm an editor who's not British so that doesn't apply to me fooferall". It's WP:LQ, it's not an article, and we're not the only ones to call it LQ. The punctuation wording as it is, still ensures that incomplete phrases won't force commas and semicolons inside quotation marks.__ E L A Q U E A T E 07:57, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

I think it's getting there, Elaqueate. I wonder if this might help: "When the quoted material is considered a grammatically complete sentence in its own right, …" In the discussion above, I'd made a point of referring to quoted material "constituting a complete sentence"; we needn't follow that, of course, but I just wonder whether the addition of "in its own right" in your suggestion wouldn't clarify the situation beyond any doubt.

As you say, it's tricky: the fourth sentence (Logical quotation does not require the placing of final periods and commas inside or outside quotation marks all the time, but rather …) does end up being slightly redundant once we've read the opening two sentences, do you not think?

Good though, all in all. And I agree we'd best run through possibilities here before committing on the page. JG66 (talk) 06:14, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

The examples below it make it clear with Judgment is required whenever... that includes the constituted sentence phrasing and further nuance. I was thinking of "in its own right" but I worried that it was too much of an idiom and might cause squabbles over its interpretation. It makes sense, but the sentence can get unwieldy if we add multiple phrases to tease out meanings, when that's better left to the examples below it. The first part of the fourth sentence is almost but not quite redundant, but I think it makes a nice summation of what comes before it, and it was nice that the other sentences only make it seem more clear, rather than contradictory or incomprehensible.__ E L A Q U E A T E 07:57, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

I liked "constitutes" and agree with DF24 about the problem with "seen as" and "considered". Alternatively, would something like "is presented as a sentence in its own right" more clearly address situations where there's something like Curly Turkey's that-clause? --Stfg (talk) 09:00, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

I think "is presented as a sentence in its own right" is pretty my own approach to it, at any rate. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 09:31, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

If using the name "British" is pushing, then why push the claim that the practice is logical? That's just as loaded. The MoS is not the place to revise the English language. It's only a place to tell Wikieditors what is expected of them. Preferring a secondary name to a primary one isn't passively following the sources; it's a statement. If you think "British" would cause problems, then we should say "This practice has various names" with a link to the article, and let any claims about its national origin or logic be made there.

How about "could be a sentence on its own" or "could be a sentence in its own right"? I do like the words "grammatically complete," though. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:53, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

@Darkfrog24: you and I agree that the MOS should not be recommending the use of LQ in ENGVARs where style guides overwhelmingly reject it, but we lost that one. Calling it "British" here, however accurate, will just confuse editors.

The problem with "presented as/could be a sentence in its own right" is that it allows fragments of the original which are misleading out of context, but form a sentence in their own right, to have a full stop inside the quotation marks as if the sentence were essentially complete as quoted. The key issues for me are:

• As SMcCandlish noted, punctuation inside quotation marks should always be present in the original: no punctuation should be added inside quotation marks which was not there already, which is why I don't like Tony1's example where a comma is placed inside the quote marks.
• The main issue here is when to omit full stops that immediately follow the quoted text in the original. The simplest advice we could give (advice that editors have a chance of being able to follow), is to say that it should only be included when the full sentence is quoted. This may or may not be what style guides advocating LQ say, but there's too much over-complex "guidance" in the MOS (e.g. hyphens versus en-dashes).

Peter coxhead (talk) 14:46, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Peter, I did say "where a sentence that ends with a period" (meaning not a part-sentence, but a sentence). Tony (talk) 03:44, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

I agree that keeping or discarding WP:LQ is a separate issue, but if we're not using the primary name then we shouldn't use the secondary name either. A link to the article will provide the practice's name, history and difference from other practices. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:44, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Logical and British (or Oxford) quotation styles are not identical. Stop beating that dead horse, please. British isn't any name for LQ much less the "primary" one, any more than "American quotation" is properly a name for typesetter's quotation. See argument to emotion, of which this labeling things with inaccurate nationalistic names is an obvious (and common) variant.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  18:49, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

SmC, I have shown you source after source showing that this practice is indeed British and that "American" and "British" are the proper names for these practices. I'd link to them again if I thought you'd bother to read them. Show me one that supports your argument that they are not the proper names for these practices. But then I've asked you to do that before. EDIT: Oh, found a new one while looking for sources. [4]Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:05, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Right back atcha. The archives on this perennial discussion have this covered many times over. I decline to re-dig up material others have posted before repeatedly. And it doesn't matter anyway: WP's MOS is not an article and this is not an RS debate; MOS is based on a consensus about what is best for our readers (and to a lesser extent, editors), and while it takes into account what various external style sources recommend, it is free to dispense with them (where they don't conflict anyway) where those recommendations don't suit our purposes. Anyway, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Register#Punctuation inside or outside and Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/quotation and punctuation. I decline to spend minutes much less hours digging through that material for you. Your refusal to believe isn't magically an obligation on anyone else's part to do any work to convince you, especially when that work has already been done and we're all sure you've seen it before more than once.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  04:39, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Much of this back-and-forth about recasting this section of MOS is missing the point. LQ is very simple: Was the punctuation in the original? No: Don't put it in the quotation marks. Yes: Is it helpful to the reader (regardless of how you or the subject might arrange quotation marks in a piece of journalism or fiction) to include that punctuation inside the quotation marks? No: Then don't. Yes: Do so, with the understanding that later editors might disagree it's helpful and remove it. The end.

LQ is about and only about not adding false material to quotations; it has nothing to do with (and no practical quotation system is ever going to guard against) quoting out of context; that's a matter of editorial discretion and source verification, not punctuation. If the wording needs clarification it should simply be to make clear the above nested if-then flow, and nothing more. Why would MOS have any reason to tell editors always to include terminal punctuation inside quotations or never do so unless they're full sentences, or whatever? It's not an LQ matter and it doesn't seem to be a burning editorial dispute issue that MOS needs to settle. E.g. If Sam's (complete) statement was "Chris went to the store.", there is no particular reason to quote this as "Sam said 'Chris went to the store'." vs. "Sam said 'Chris went to the store.'" LQ doesn't care, even if it's "Sam said of Chris that he 'went to the store'." vs. "Sam said of Chris that he 'went to the store.'" (not quoting full sentence). That last case seems to be what people care about most here, but why? The period/stop was part of the original quotation and it perfectly serves its function in both the quotation and the larger sentence containing the quotation, but also works just fine outside the quotation, so it doesn't matter. Including it is a tiny bit more accurate, but in a way that has no actual significance in this case. If it did matter, in a different case, editorial discretion would say to include it. That's a case-by-case judgement call, not an MOS rule. LQ does care that you do not write "Sam said 'Chris went to the store,' but did not indicate when.", because the wrongly inserted comma implies that Sam's statement about Chris is only partial. We can't guarantee that a quote isn't partial without looking at the source, but we should not willfully falsely convey that it's partial (nor, by inserting false periods/stops, wrongly imply that a partial quotation did not actually continue). A desire to have MOS declare when and when not to include final punctuation, that is not essential, simply because it was present is not really an LQ discussion at all. LQ allows that, but does not require it (unless, again, it actually is essential, e.g. a quotation mark vs. a period/stop).

It's very interesting that many of the changes proposed here would do little but make LQ seem (incorrectly) to be the same as Oxford style, and thus seem more like an imposition of a Briticism in violation of ENGVAR (which LQ is not), and thus make it easier to attack LQ in an attempt to remove it from MOS later. LQ is said to be "confusing" by hardly anyone ever in the course of actual editing (vs. arguing about style matters here). Some don't agree with or prefer LQ, but I'm skeptical that many actually have any genuine trouble understanding it.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  18:49, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Actually, SmC, MoS:LQ does violate ENGVAR. Regardless of whether you think LQ is British or not, it requires a punctuation practice that is expressly contradicts the rules of correct American English. Of the spellings "analyse" and "anallyze," the first is considered correct in British English, but both are still considered wrong in American English. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:09, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

See prescriptive grammar and linguistic descrioption; there is no such thing as "correct American English". "Analiyze" isn't a word, so whatever point you're trying to make it's not working, especially since all American dictionaries other than the most compressed and abridged ones will in fact list "analyse" along with "analyze" (usually as "chiefly British"). Next, ENGVAR (which is not a policy, it's another small part of MOS that we balance against all other concerns) is not about slavishly following whatever the most common usage is in any particular dialect or idiom at any given time, it's about putting a stop to conflicts between American vs. British (or even Australian vs. Canadian, for that matter, but I think we all know this is almost always a UK vs. US problem) in editwars over spelling and style. MOS is not here to authorize people to write in whatever colloquial style they prefer (note our lack of articles written in Jamaican Patwah, which is in fact a national variety of English), it's a) to help readers by establishing consistent writing practices here, b) to stop editorial conflicts, and c) to give editors a clear set of rules to follow, in that order. Making extremist prescriptive grammarians happy is not among those goals. Because LQ is not British and TQ is not American. The more common style in the US and Canada and a few other places like the Philippines is TQ, but not for works where precision is required. The more common usage in most other countries is something similar to LQ, but not exactly LQ. Calling it "British style" is wrong; it's neither limited to the UK nor universal within it. Reglardless, identifying it with LQ is wrong again on top of that. Just because a badger has teeth and claws does not make it a dog, and just because some badgers live in Texas does not make all badgers Texan dogs.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  04:39, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

If there were no such thing as correct or incorrect English, then students wouldn't need to learn it in school, there would be no such thing as style guides, we wouldn't bother having an MoS, and the whole act of communicating through writing would be much more difficult. The point that I'm trying to make is that yes, WP:LQ does require Wikieditors break the rules of American English, to punctuate the articles incorrectly, regardless of whether you prefer to think of LQ as British or not. In American English, leaving periods and commas outside the quotation marks is wrong, just like spelling "analyze" with two Ls or with an S is wrong.

I agree that the MoS is not here to let people do whatever they want, but it is even worse to use it to push whims and personal preferences on the whole community. Unlike the case with single vs. double quotation marks, no one has ever shown that American punctuation causes any type of problem on Wikipedia--there's no non-hypothetical reason for the ban.

No, calling these practices "British style" and "American style" is not wrong. These are the names used in most of the sources upon which this MoS is presumably based. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:47, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, I get your point, but if we leave the door open for editors to dispute the inclusion – inside quotation marks – of periods at the end of complete sentences that are quotes then we are doing editors a disservice and not really solving anything.

If we stress your above explanation, then both of these examples are correct:

• Arthur said, "the situation is deplorable and unacceptable."
• Arthur said, "the situation is deplorable and unacceptable".

Except that at any time, the first example can be challenged as "unhelpful", creating fodder for time-wasting content disputes. So, its correct for only as long as nobody disagrees with the period's inclusion inside the quotation marks, which seems like a dangerous way to write the MoS, particularly when you consider the project's minority population of pedantic edit warriors, who live for this kind of vague stuff to argue about.

Consider also that the first example is correct until its disputed and changed, but what happens when another editor arrives at the page and notices that the period was in the source, and as such reverts back to the first example before it was challenged? Guidelines should solve disputes, not generate them.

So, if your interpretation of LQ is the definitive one, there is no right or wrong answer regarding the above example, a condition that creates a confusing and unhelpful guideline; thus encouraging the perennial rehash. Maybe the community consensus is in favour of a hybrid LQ-Oxford style guideline that is slightly more prescriptive and significantly less subjective and open to interpretation. Otherwise, I'm not at all sure why we bother with LQ, when we could just as easily drop the whole contentious guideline and simply ask editors to place all terminal punctuation outside ending quotation marks; thus ending this years-long debate by accomplishing a simplicity and consistency that is less likely to fuel repeated pedantic disputes. Is this about writing a clear and concise guideline for the community, or slavishly preserving a system that is obviously fraught with implementation difficulties. If this really were that easy for the community then we wouldn't still be debating this year after year after year after ... GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 19:42, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

That would actually be preferable to falsely declaring this an ENGVAR matter and allowing a proliferation of inconsistent usage, based on false claims of what is "standard" in "my" English (which will just be whatever the editor prefers, backed up misleadingly with cherry-picked sources that seem to confirm their preference). However, the idea that LQ is controversial is an illusion. It's simply detested by a small cadre of editors who will not drop the issue and keep bringing it up again and again and again. It also comes up naturally and more neutrally when new (usually North American) editors ask why this style is used, get their answer, and then don't fuss about it. We know that the vast majority of WP editors are in fact Americans. if LQ were a real problem for even a slightly statistically significant percentage of them it never would have become the consensus practice here, and even if it had it would have been undone immediately, because WT:MOS would consist of little but constant complaints every single day, all day, about LQ. It's not happening, ergo there is no real problem. WHat's really happening is the same die-hards re-raise the issue a couple of times per year hoping that the audience has changed enough that they'll get their way this time.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  04:39, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, does this edit resolve some of your concerns? GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 20:22, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Basically, yes, it does. But I think the entire passage now [as of that edit] has a lot of redundancy, and thus can be considerably shortened, but the facts seem right (with, as noted below, removal of the misidentification of LQ as "British"). I am not at home looking at this at my leisure, and thus have not read the new "Arb break" subtopic material below in full, just the end of it with the trio of examples.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  00:52, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

• This edit inserted the "British" terminology. There is no consensus for that, and I have removed it (but not reverted the whole edit). --Stfg (talk) 20:32, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Like.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  00:52, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, good edit, Stfg; MOS is being insufficiently monitored if such an edit is allowed to slip through. User:Darkfrog has a history—here and elsewhere on the internet—of pushing a nationalistic language line WRT this matter. She needs to take a step back. Now, I'll just add that some newspapers and some other publications in the UK, Ireland, Australia, and NZ, do not use LQ (or use a weird version of it). It is not helpful to label LQ in nationalistic terms. Tony (talk) 03:42, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Arb break

I would like to replace the first sentence with the following.

On Wikipedia, place punctuation marks outside of quotation marks when the quoted material is seen as a discrete phrase or incomplete sentence. When the quoted material is considered a grammatically complete sentence, place the material's original punctuation inside quotation marks. This practice is...

As it stands, the first sentence is more concerned with telling people what not to do in abstract situations, rather than directly advising what they should do. I think it's currently too "Wear a raincoat only on the days it's not sunny and never on days where you don't leave the house." rather than "Wear a raincoat when it rains. Don't wear a raincoat when it's not raining." There have been a lot of bold changes, but this is devolving into arguments about theoretical wording, without clear suggestions of actual wording.__ E L A Q U E A T E 21:04, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Can you Wikify "is seen as a discrete phrase or incomplete sentence" so that its more clear? How about "does not constitute a complete sentence"? I think we should avoid phases such as "is seen as" and "is considered", not just because its the passive voice, which doesn't help, but because it leaves so much room for ambiguity, as if grammar is a matter of an individual's perception, versus straightforward criteria. GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 21:08, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

It is usually preferable to be positive than negative when giving guidance. That's what I hope to correct. LQ does require some judgement and appraisal, so people are making a consideration of what a sentence is. But I can try your suggestions to see how it works....

On Wikipedia, place punctuation marks outside of quotation marks when the quoted material is not a complete sentence. When the quoted material is considered a grammatically complete sentence, place the material's original punctuation inside quotation marks. This practice is...

How's that?__ E L A Q U E A T E 21:23, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Well, your version makes it sound as if all original punctuation is omitted when quoting incomplete sentences, which is not accurate to LQ. E.g. John told everyone in the band to immediately stop acting "selfish, immature, and foolish", which they did. The quoted text is an incomplete sentence, but we don't omit the original punctuation, nor can we place it outside quotation marks. The first sentence is general, and it applies to all punctuation, whereas your suggested version applies only to terminal punctuation. GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 21:27, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Okay, how's this:

On Wikipedia, place any terminal punctuation marks outside of quotation marks when the quoted material is not a complete sentence. When the quoted material is considered a grammatically complete sentence, place the material's original punctuation inside quotation marks. This practice is...

____ E L A Q U E A T E 21:33, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, that's much better. I tweaked it slightly, but is this acceptable? GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 21:42, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

For the first sentence I have to admit I think you were right to suggest "not a complete sentence" instead of "an incomplete sentence". A quoted name or technical term is not an "incomplete sentence", but it would fall under "not a complete sentence". __ E L A Q U E A T E 21:52, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Another quibble is that the phrase "does not constitute" is directly equivalent to the plainer "is not". I think it makes it sound a bit officious and technical, on a page that already has a lot of that. It's a nice word, but I might advise changing it to help arrest sentence bloat. I like how you incorporated other parts.__ E L A Q U E A T E 22:12, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Well, you might be right about that, but I know Stfg likes it. Maybe we should let it gestate and see if it sticks. I agree that might be overly technical, but that seems appropriate here because its referring to "quoted material", which feels plural to me. The level of minutia that we are trying to disambiguate with relatively few words makes for some interesting challenges. I'll try to think of an alternative. Nice work with the first sentence. If readers stop there they will still get a good idea of what LQ means. GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 22:23, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

No problem. If it's a synonymous word choice, then it's just becomes a question of style. As long as you're happy with the core meaning, it's probably fine either way. Keep it in mind if the paragraph starts bloating later or if the main verb of the sentence starts getting lost. Thanks for the words.__ E L A Q U E A T E 22:40, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

While all of you have been putting quite a bit of effort in here, it appears that you have gone to significant effort to avoid "do not" statement. You have also subordinated the primary point (don't add/change punctuation within the quote) in preference of the "complete sentence" issue. This makes it less clear to an average reader.

I have not refined specific wording, but something to the effect of:

Other than adding ellipses, do not add, remove or change punctuation marks within quoted material.

If there is punctuation in the original at the end of the text being quoted (terminal punctuation) it may be included in the quote, or not, based on editorial judgement. Include the original terminal punctuation within the quotes if it makes logical sense, is grammatically correct with the text surrounding the quoted material and the quoted text constitutes a complete sentence. If the original terminal punctuation is not included within the quotes, place any terminal punctuation outside of the quotes. For a single piece of quoted material, do not place terminal punctuation both inside and outside the quote marks. This style of quoting is commonly called logical quotation.

Then the examples. — Makyen (talk) 00:05, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

That's a good point. How's this? GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 00:24, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Definitely an improvement, and it continues to improve. — Makyen (talk) 02:16, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

I think we should treat anything that is punctuated as a complete sentence in the original as a sentence, regardless of grammar. A bit picky of me, maybe (would be an example of that).

Also think the formulation is not quite clear on what to do where you leave a clause off the end of a sentence, so that what you are quoting both is and isn't a complete sentence, depending on how you look at it.

I can see from the above that some editors think

Martin Luther King said, "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up".

would be correct. But I think the choices are:

Martin Luther King said, "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up."

Martin Luther King said, "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up..."

Formerip (talk) 21:47, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Note: For those unfamiliar with Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, the passage in question runs, in full: "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'" I.e., the snippet quoted above in the examples is incomplete.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  00:52, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm fairly certain everyone here would agree that your third example is at least acceptable (it would be my preferred one), and that the second is unacceptable under LQ. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 23:47, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

The first is correct, though could mislead, and so should be avoided in cases where it might. There's nothing wrong with the construction in and of itself: When King said "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up", he was not talking about an armed insurrection, and made it clear in the rest of that passage that he was talking about societal change. Nothing problematic about that example at all. But this one is definitely problematic: King simply said 'I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up". – that's basically a blatantly lie-by-omission at best. But it's not the formatting that makes it intellectually dishonest, it's the implication by "simply said" that the quotation is complete and King did not continue or elaborate; the punctuation just helps to pull it off.

The second case is flat wrong; it's a blatant falsification of the quotation, and a great example of why LQ is necessary.

The third example is also correct (well, after insertion of a space between "up" and "..."), but we needn't use the diaeresis unless it's important to do so in the context; e.g. if we simply state Martin Luther King said, "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up" as if the statement were complete, then we'd need it, not simply a period/stop.

This is a close cousin of the debate about whether to include square brackets around all changes, including insertion of the diaeresis itself. There is a school of thought on this that Martin Luther King said, "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up [...]". is the only correct example here, but we don't go that far. I wouldn't necessarily object if we did, but it's not really an LQ matter either; it's a different precision question, like the one about including or not including the terminal punctuation that is present. LQ is really just about not falsely including extraneous punctuation, even if we're going to try to address more than that in this section of MOS.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  00:52, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

I have a suspicion (although I acknowledge the possibility that it may be me who is in error) that you are labouring under the false idea that what is important is the punctuation of the quoted text. I don't think that's the case. I think logical quotation doesn't look behind the written copy. On this view, the full-stop should be inside the quotation mark if it marks the end of a syntactical sentence. It doesn't really matter if it is the end of the sentence in the original or if it is the end of the thought expressed. The position of a full-stop is only really an accident after all, in terms of the overall train of thought. Since we are talking about a speech, I can easily pretend that the correct transcription is "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up. And live...", thereby evading the issue altogether. I think it's really about syntax, not about fairly representing the source.

But, like I said, I may be mistaken. Are you able to point me to anything that shows I am wrong? Formerip (talk) 02:41, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

I"m honestly not sure I even follow the argument. Your rewrite of King creates a sentence fragment, and he was rather literate, so I don't think your rewrite can legitimately reflect King's speech. Even if it weren't a grammatical problem it would be a WP:NOR issue, because there are many reliable sources transcribing the speech as we've quoted it above, but not your way. If you think that I think it's the punctuation, per se, that is important, then you're not following me, either. In the narrow LQ debate, the accuracy of quotation is what is important, and that includes its punctuation incidentally. In the wider "what should this whole section recommend?" discussion, the meaning conveyed to readers is what is important. Neither of these concerns necessarily suggest, as you do, that the period/stop should be inside the quotation mark if it marks the end of {Wikipedia, not quoted) syntactical sentence; I and others have already illustrated cases where we should not do this because it falsely inserts punctuation into quoted material and false implies that the quoted passaged ended where we inserted that punctuation. So, as I've said now three or four time, yes, there is a syntactical argument being made here, but it is not really about LQ, it's an add-on to the LQ issue. GabeMc (I think) suggests above that we're really talking about some combination of LQ proper and borrowing something perhaps from mainstream British usage, just to settle on something. That does seem to be an accurate descrption of what's going on here. Your syntactical and speech-related argument addresses that non-LQ part, while skipping what LQ is about entirely, which very definitely is about accurately representing the source.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  04:39, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm concerned that editors may be innovating with regards to style and calling it "logical quotation". I don't believe logical quotation would ever allow you to end a sentence by quoting something that is a complete grammatical sentence and placing the full-stop outside the quote mark. The point being that "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up..." is a complete grammatical sentence. Whether it is the whole of the sentence in the original or not is unimportant with regards to the placing of the full-stop (if you want the reader to know that there is more that follows, use an ellipsis).

I am more that happy to be shown to be wrong, though. Are you able to point me to evidence of this? For example, a style guide that outlines the rule or a reputable publication that applies it? Formerip (talk) 11:44, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

FormerIP, since the full King quote is I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.", I agree that it would be correct for us to write: Martin Luther King said, "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up …"

I also agree that there's a degree of innovation being applied now regarding what is or isn't LQ, or there appears to be. "Much of this back-and-forth about recasting this section of MOS is missing the point. LQ is very simple: Was the punctuation in the original? No: Don't put it in the quotation marks. Yes: Is it helpful to the reader (regardless of how you or the subject might arrange quotation marks in a piece of journalism or fiction) to include that punctuation inside the quotation marks? No: Then don't. Yes: Do so, with the understanding that later editors might disagree it's helpful and remove it. The end."

Specifically, "Yes [the punctuation is in the original]: Is it helpful to the reader ... to include that punctuation inside the quotation marks? No: Then don't." – where's a source to support that statement? SMcCandlish, you seem to be impatient over this whole issue, this "perennial rehash". The fact is, the wording (as it was) has continued to cause confusion among editors on this encyclopaedia. Stfg has mentioned that he's seen users misapply the guideline, and I recognise other names here from article talk-page discussions on the issue. I'd never have raised the matter at all unless it merited some attention. JG66 (talk) 13:19, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

What this whole line of thinking seems to be forgetting is:

Did Jane say, "let's go to the beach today"?

--Stfg (talk) 22:03, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Possibly, but are we ever going to ask a question about what somebody said in Wikipedia's voice? Formerip (talk) 23:32, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

We aren't, as editors writing WP itself, but we may be quoting someone asking a question, in a audio-visual source, about someone else's statement, so the case has to be accounted for.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  00:52, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

We should lose the term "logical sense." Our repeated disputes around this rule have shown that not everyone has the same idea of what that means. The term "grammatical sense" is more neutral, but it still presupposes that all Wikieditors think the same way. Even this conversation shows that people have different ideas about what makes the most sense. We should just tell people what we want them to do.

The section is starting to look like we're just making things up. We shouldn't invent new English rules for Wikipedia. We should conform to those that already exist.

We could benefit from consulting a reliable style guide. I have some with me but they're all American and do not discuss the practice in question. The online preview to the New Oxford Guide cuts out in the middle of a section that might be relevant, but the examples that they use are neat and professional, and they're just the sort that STFG has raised: [5] Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:28, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

That's a big non sequitur; nothing Stfg or I were talking about here had anything to do with "logical sense". To address your post anyway:

All manuals of style devise rules that suit their needs. That's the exact purpose of manuals of style. This is not an article; while WP:MOS reflects, where practical, what other style manuals are doing, they all conflict with each other in innumerable ways, and MOS picks whatever works best for WP, not what is most popular, or most insisted upon by arrogant blow-hards with degrees, or most hip, or most traditional, or anything other than what serves our needs best. If that happens to agree with some external style manuals, that's great. If it agrees with a majority of them, that's probably even better. But a head-count of how many style guides we're agreeing with is neither a goal nor part of the process. MOS, like all style manuals, is prescriptive by nature: "do this, not that or that". I'm not trying to pick on you, Darkfrog24, but you have a sense of grammatical prescription vs. linguistic description that is completely backward. You're insisting that some made-up rules in some rule books that you happen to like "are" "proper" and "correct" with regard to real world language use, when even a first-year linguistics student knows that's absurd; Meanwhile, you think that the one case where linguistic prescription (as a practice not a philosophy) is actually necessary – the writing of a style guide to which a group of writers/editors are to conform for consistency within a publishing operation – should instead be descriptive. It's 180-degrees unworkable.

That said, I agree that the term "logical sense" is weird and should be replaced.

However, your complaint about how poor this section is becoming is ironic, because its current palimpsestuous messiness and unclarity are largely the result of you and a handful of others who will not let this LQ debate alone, resulting in continued futzing with the text there, largely to assuage highly questionable "it's confusing!" concerns that seem increasingly disingenuous. I've been around here over 8 years, and LQ predates me on WP. Tens of thousands of active editors over the last decade+ have had no issue with LQ, while those who've raised a fuss about it can probably be counted on two hands. I repeat that the main result (whatever the actual intent may have been) of dredging up this perennial debate for the umpteenth time has been to weaken the passage with confused and confusing edits and counter-edits, with the result that it looks more easily attackable. Should consensus not soon emerge on language that actually makes sense and doesn't surreptitiously try to change consensus without consensus clearly having actually changed, the clear solution is to revert to what the section said before this debate was re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-opened. Again, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Register#Punctuation inside or outside and Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/quotation and punctuation for just how many times consensus has not changed on this.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  04:39, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

I brought up "logical sense" because the words "logical sense" were in the passage under discussion, not because I believed that you guys had been talking about it just now. If the point of this section is to prevent fights and confusion, then less subjective terminology is probably a good idea.

The purpose of a manual of style is not to make up rules about whatever its writers think looks cool or even what they think looks logical. I might think that spelling "freight" as "frayt" is logical, but I'd be wrong and my writing would be hard to read and make a poor impression on my reader. That's why good manuals of style conform to the language's existing standards. We want Wikipedia to look correct and professional so that readers will have a sense of confidence in its contents. In this case, that means providing instruction on correct punctuation, on getting it right. Wikieditors aren't allowed to put whatever they think sounds cool in the article space; they have to provide sources. The MoS should be held to at least that standard of verifiability.

I do not share your beliefs about prescriptivism vs. descriptivism. Regardless of whether outside style guides are describing the results of studies and surveys or telling their readers what to do, they reflect the current state of correct usage and whatever-we-feel-like does not. We're not allowed to perform original research in the article space; don't WP:SYNTH any positions here. As for why the LQ debate keeps coming up, it's probably less because of me and more because of sources like CMoS, the APA, AMA, MLA... As long as the MoS contradicts what people learn in school, read in style guides and see in the quality published sources, people are going to show up and point it out as a problem. Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:06, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

^This. Formerip (talk) 11:44, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

If every editor naturally agreed on a single style throughout the world (even throughout a nation), then we could dispense with a MOS completely. Sources say people disagree or that some solutions to common problems are equivalent. The MOS is always going to disagree with what some of the people "learned in school" (what school? when?). I think reverting the longstanding references to "Logical Quotation" is misguided. Putting the word "grammatical" throughout is incorrect as well. Punctuation style is not a grammatical consideration. "Grammatical" is a useful word when talking about whether a group of words form a sentence (e.g. "grammatically complete sentence") but it is not accurate when describing a punctuation preference.__ E L A Q U E A T E 13:02, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

I will also add that the last RFC closed as a consensus to Continue to recommend LQ exclusively. I find an attempt to remove all explicit references to "Logical Quotation" distinctly on the disruptive side. The consensus is to recommend logical quotation, and to do it exclusively. We can't change the wording to do an end run around the RFC. Don't erase language recommending logical quotation.__ E L A Q U E A T E 13:22, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

The last RfC, which had extremely biased wording, did show a clear majority of participants in favor of keeping the ban on American punctuation in place in favor of British style exclusively. In the discussion preceding it, an overwhelming majority of the sources indicated that the national divide on this issue is real and that leaving periods and commas untucked is incorrect in American English. That is why this issue keeps coming up: because those two things don't match.

Right now we're not talking about whether to scrap WP:LQ. We're talking about how to phrase WP:LQ. There are plenty of reliable sources on this. Some of these sources call this system British and some call it logical. That's where we should go for answers to "Can the period go inside in this case?" and "What if the comma is present in the source?" Not our own feelings and preferences.

It's no secret that I prefer American style, but the British/logical system certainly works. We should present it to our readers well. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:39, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

"Constitutes a sentence"

Opening up a new section here because I don't want to drown in the philibuster above. I still have issues with "constitutes a complete sentence"-like wording. Let's take two quotations from the famous guitaist Harry Spaz:

• I think it was pretty deplorable, you see.
• It's becasue it wasn't the right thing to do.

Now, an editor includes them both in the article:

• Spaz expressed his dismay at the situation, saying "it was pretty deplorable". ... When asked to elaborate, Spaz stated "it wasn't the right thing to do."

In both cases, "it was pretty deplorable" and "it wasn't the right thing to do" are complete sentences (and this can be interpreted as "constituting a sentence"). In the first, placing a period inside is obviously wrong, as it wasn't there in the sentence the quote was lifted from. In the second, the period was in the original, and the quoted fragment can be a complete sentence, so it can be argued that the period goes inside the quotemarks. What we end up with, then, is an article with two similarly-structured sentences, one of which has the period inside and the other outside the quotemarks. To most readers—even careful ones—this simply looks like a mistake, and is a likely target for editors to "fix"—either by putting the one period in the quotemarks (violating "minimal change"), or by placing the other one outside. The second case is perfectly fine in and of itself, but the kind of thing that sparks edit wars when the original editor notices that the period (which was in the original, after all) has been removed.

My own solution is to be consistent in putting periods outside the quotes, except when the quote is presented as a sentence (rather than merely "constituting a sentence", logically or otherwise). That leaves the period (or leaders) inside the quotemarks in situations like Spaz said, "I think it was pretty deplorable, you see." while putting them outside in pretty much any other case.

So perhaps "When the quoted material is presented as a complete sentence" would be easier to understand and apply? It would also probably allow simplification of other parts of this section of the MoS, I imagine—fewer edge cases to catch. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 05:40, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

This is the sort of thing we should be talking about, stuff that has actually caused non-hypothetical problems in the article space. We should be consulting sources for the answers. I agree that "is presented as" and "constituting" are a lot less concrete than something like "could be." I'd like to see a top-notch printed style guide that deals with this issue (regardless of whether they call the system "British" or "logical") but all of mine are American. Online sources, touch on the issue, but it tends to be the printed guides that do the in-depth treatment that we need: [6].

Curly, can you link to any of the edit wars in question? I'm curious as to what exactly they were fighting about.

If I were writing this for a British audience, I'd guess that the right thing to do would be to treat the period like a question mark or exclamation point, in which case it would go outside in both examples, but I'd prefer to see a source that deals with this issue explicitly. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:48, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Curly Turkey, the goal here should be to eliminate ambiguity, which "presented as a sentence" is ripe with, IMO. Its either a complete sentence or it isn't a complete sentence, so I'm not sure why we should imply that a text-string that constitutes a complete sentence must also be "presented as a complete sentence", because we wouldn't add a grammatically incorrect period inside quote marks in the middle of a sentence anyway. 1) Its present in the source material, 2) it makes grammatical sense with the surrounding text, which explicitly precludes adding a period to a text-string that constitutes a complete sentence, but is being quoted mid-sentence. I.e., the presentation bit is taken care of by the "makes grammatical sense with the surrounding text". Also, with all due respect, the idea that "putting them all outside is just easier" contradicts the spirit of LQ and causes confusion amongst editors. That's not LQ; that's a guideline that says place all terminal punctuation outside closing quotation marks, which MOS:LQ explicitly rejects. Its one thing to have a personal preference, but I really wish that you wouldn't present it as a viable alternative to actually following LQ. GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 17:04, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

PBS isn't confused by my interpretation there, Gabe, they're confused by LQ in general. Remember, they were aguing that the period should go outside of Holly George-Warren of Rolling Stone commented: "Hendrix pioneered the use of the instrument as an electronic sound source. Players before him had experimented with feedback and distortion, but Hendrix turned those effects and others into a controlled, fluid vocabulary every bit as personal as the blues with which he began." Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 21:22, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, that's a good point, but what if he thinks the terminal punctuation in the last sentence of the quote should be outside? You implied that its a matter of personal taste, versus the rules of proper grammar. GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 00:39, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

He does think theh period of that last sentence belongs outside the quotemarks. That was the whole issue, wasn't it? There's not a system out there that supports that interpretation, and WP's LQ made it clear that wasn't the case.

I never implied anything to do with "proper grammar"—I stated that when the quoted material is quoted as a "that clause" of a sentence, then I consider the terminal punctuation to belong to the sentence as a whole, which I think is a better approach than putting a period inside when there happens to be a period in the source, and outside when there isn't—the last case is sloppy-looking and a headache to maintain, and the advantages are (to me) dubious at best. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 01:11, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

To intentionally omit an original period – that makes grammatical sense with the surrounding text – from a quoted text string that constitutes a complete sentence is to defy LQ and lie by omission. That is not LQ, that's closer to the so-called American typesetter's style, which the Wikipedia community has repeatedly and resoundingly rejected. I think its fine that you do this and nobody has yet complained, but please reconsider your willingness to encourage editors to follow this practice, as its not in keeping with the broader community consensus and its not at all LQ. GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 17:14, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Gabe, I'm not following you at all—since when is placing the period outside the quotes anything like typesetter's/American quotes? Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 21:22, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Also, Gabe, using the example:

Spaz expressed his dismay at the situation, saying "it was pretty deplorable". ... When asked to elaborate, Spaz stated "it wasn't the right thing to do."

When an editor comes along and "fixes" the article by placing the second period outside (to be consistent with the style of the first), are you stating the article is now "lying by omission" if nobody happens to realize the original had a period there? That's a problem far too subtle to deal with, I think—I doubt this "lie" would be caught in an FAC (assuming it is, in fact, an issue). Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 21:36, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Its a lie by omission because you are intentionally withholding information, specifically that the source text included a full-stop that you removed to satisfy a style preference. That's why its not LQ, because you are omitting punctuation from the quoted text based on style considerations, not grammatical correctness. I'll re-phrase: If you "place all terminal punctuation outside" closing quotation marks – regardless of the context of the quoted material – then it is similar to American type-setter style in that its a general rule that does not require any judgment, as LQ does. Its true that American type-setter style would be to place them all inside to avoid inconsistency, but that you do the opposite is incidental to the fact that a general rule for all quotations is not logical quotation; its reverse American type-setter style. GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 22:12, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

By that logic, it's a "lie by omission" to drop "It's because" from "It's because it wasn't the right thing to do." Why give words a person used less weight than the punctuation? Especially given that if it was from an interview, one transcriber may use a period to terminate the sentence, another an exclamation mark, or even an emdash, none of which was part of the utterance. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 22:34, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

If we were truly quoting spoken utterances, then we could punctuate them however we saw fit, but since we are quoting written source material we need to respect the presence or absence of the original punctuation, or its not LQ. If you quoted this sentence: Gabe and Curly edit Wikipedia., but intentionally moved the period to outside the quotation marks to satisfy your stylistic preferences, then you are altering the source material in defiance of LQ. It not a lie by omission to elide, or drop into a quote, though at times taking things out-of-context can create misleading prose, but that's another issue. In short, to omit original punctuation, or move it outside quotations marks when it was present in the source material in an effort to satisfy style concerns is to deny the reader the verification that the quoted sentence ended where it appears to end, and to ignore the basic premise of LQ, which is to maintain the absence or presence in the original. If you were right, then we could write this guideline with three sentences.

1) With the exception of ellipses, editors should never place punctuation marks in quoted text unless it was present in the original. 2) Editors should only maintain original punctuation if it makes grammatical sense. 3) Editors should always place terminal punctuation outside closing quotation marks regardless of its presence in the source material.

Only two of those sentences can be said to accurately reflect LQ. Do you at least agree that no part of LQ officially suggests that editors should always place terminal punctuation outside closing quotation marks? GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 23:10, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

I've admitted that before, in our discussion with PBS. The original wording allowed for "judgement", and I used my judgement to choose based on what, logically, was being punctuated—the sentence or the quotation? The new wording takes away that judgement, enforcing punctuation inside the quotemarks if it simply happened to have been there, and banishing them if not. As I keep saying, this only invites "helpful" editors to "fix" the "problem" when they see an "inconsistency" within an article (and it is, at least superficially, an ugly inconsistecy).

The spirit of LQ (as I've understood it) is to not introduce anything within the quotemarks that wasn't originally there, unless it can't be avoided (as with leaders, or clearly-marked interpolations). As quotes tend to be slices of strings in the first place, I have trouble interpreting the spirit of LQ as requiring explicitly stating what punctuation the author happened to have used—especially when we have to pick and choose: okay, so we have to include the period if the enclosing sentence is also finished, but we must not include the comma if the enclosing sentence is finished, so we put a period outside the quotemarks, and and and ... too many boring edge cases to wrap one's head around, with the reward of an inconsistent-looking article. Who benefits? Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 23:33, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

"The spirit of LQ (as I've understood it) is to not introduce anything within the quotemarks that wasn't originally there, unless it can't be avoided." I think this is a valid way to look at it. I think the difficulty may arise from seeing this as an immutable principle from which all else flows. Taking the "logical" in "logical quotation" too literally. I think the reality is that there are various rules and conventions which may supervene (I would include these under the heading "Things that can't be avoided"). There may be a general lack of consensus about some of them, and some of them may just be optional. Perhaps trying to identify what those are, and which of them are right for Wikipedia, could be a way forward. Formerip (talk) 00:28, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

I think you are missing 1/2 of LQ if you say that all it means is that editors should never add punctuation unless its original. There are two things that LQ does, 1) no additive punctuation, and 2) maintenance of original punctuation whenever its helpful to readers and grammatically correct. If you follow, and encourage others to follow, only one of the two you are not using logical quotation. The inclusion of the period in this example is not a matter of editorial discretion, because its helpful to readers and grammatically correct. So why would you remove it if not for a personal style preference? The decision should be based on grammar, not style, or its not LQ. GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 00:34, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

I'll meet you only part way. Firstly, I think use of the word "never" in relation to punctuation is problematic. As I just said, there are rules and conventions that will supervene, so there is no "never". This is true to the extent that "no additive punctuation" is not an unbreakable rule of logical quotation. With regard to maintaining existing punctuation, I don't think logical quotation says anything special. You can choose either to maintain the existing punctuation or modify it to match the style that you are using generally. For example, if your quote contains an Oxford comma and your style is not to use one, you can omit it or keep it as you see fit. There is no question of this being a crime. Unless you are quoting from fiction or poetry. I think the bottom line here is that the fact that your style is logical quotation has little bearing on what you should do in that case. This is because your last point is correct: grammar is the guide, not style (although I would add that the two are never seen apart). Formerip (talk) 01:12, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Curly, I don't necessarily disagree, but are you trying to help us flesh-out an accurate description of LQ, or a guideline that circumvents the spirit of LQ – that is maintaining presence as much as absence – by suggesting that its better to just place all terminal punctuation outside? LQ does not say place them all outside, so I'm not sure why this is even a point of discussion here, or why you mentioned it as if it were a viable option – its not. If I did whatever I wanted on Wikipedia I would probably follow your lead (which will never gain consensus), but that's decidedly not LQ. If I institute whatever system I want, and encourage others to do the same, then I'm not helping articles or editors comply with our MoS, which is disruptive, IMO. If you think that the inconsistency issue makes LQ a bad choice, then by all means make that argument in the right forum. But when you imply that you do whatever you want if it makes sense to you, even though you know its not necessarily LQ compliant, it sends a bad message, and it can be fodder for disputes as it was here. Your personal opinion is irrelevant in a discussion about the proper application of LQ, and it muddies the already dirty water. GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 00:34, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

LQ has never in either spirit or letter required the maintenance of the presence of punctuation—if the quoted fragment ends with a comma or semicolon, that punctuation is banished, and there's no argument there. How is it "lying by omission" for periods but not commas?

"Your personal opinion is irrelevant in a discussion about the proper application of LQ": my personal opinion worked out fine under the wording that allowed for "judgement"—now you're altering the wording to take that room for judgement away, and I don't see it improving anything, or any evidence of its legitimacy. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 01:32, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

1. American style is not a lie of omission. In American style, it is understood that the period or comma is part of the quotation process and not necessarily part of what is being quoted. I concur with Curly; these systems permit the omission of actual words, and we don't call that a lie of omission. If it changes the meaning of the quoted material, we call it a misquotation, and if it doesn't, we call it a quotation.

2. You do raise a good point that "just leave it outside in all cases" isn't correct British/logical style. Here's a thought, though. Fowler and Fowler describe this system as "placement according to sense." Why don't we describe the practice using question marks and then just tell the user to treat commas and periods the same way? Again, I'd like to see a style guide address this, but that sounds pretty close to what I've read about this rule.

Did he say I was a "chump"?

He said I was a "chump".

He said, "Do you think I'm a chump?"

He said, "You're a chump."

What do you think? I don't think we should use the expression "placement according to sense" because that's vague/open to interpretation/unfamiliar/blah blah blah but we should explain what we want the users to do. Again, while I'd love it if WP lifted the ban on American style, British/L style is a legit practice and we should instruct our users on it properly. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:14, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

On Wikipedia, place terminal punctuation inside the quotation marks if it applies solely to the quoted material and outside if it does not. This is easiest to see with question marks:

[examples]

Apply this rule to periods, commas, question marks and exclamation points. This is required of all articles, regardless of the variety of English in which they are otherwise written.

It's short, it's clear, it links to the article space, and it's to the point. If anyone feels the need, we can add At the editor's discretion, a period or comma may be placed inside the quotation marks if it was present in the material quoted. but I'm not sure that's proper B/L style. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:20, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Again, I don't disagree that a system like that would be easier to implement and explain; I think it would be infinitely easier, but the battle for LQ has been fought and won – or lost depending on which side you take. I find it hard to swallow that editors at AmEng articles are not free to choose, but that's not my battle, nor is there any realistic chance of overturning the existing consensus to force LQ on everybody. GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 01:28, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

I think what Darkfrog24 has suggested is perfectly consistent with logical quotation (except I don't see how the "editor's discretion" bit add's anything more than "or if you prefer, do what I just said"). Can anyone explain why it isn't?

A good example, which underscores what I was saying earlier about "I have a dream..." is how obviously wrong this is:

Karen Carpenter asked: "Why do birds suddenly appear"?

Formerip (talk) 01:39, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

A "... ?" would be legitimate in both LQ and typesetter's. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 02:06, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

I agree, but this appears to break the golden rule of "no additive punctuation". Also, I think it would be perfectly acceptable to just put the question mark inside the quotes, and I think it demonstrates why

Martin Luther King said, "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up".

is wrong. Formerip (talk) 02:23, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

It neglects the maintenance of grammatical punctuation that is present in the source, but if what DF is suggesting is:

1) With the exception of ellipses, editors should never place punctuation marks inside quotation marks unless it was present in the source material, and 2) Editors should only maintain original punctuation if it makes grammatical sense with the surrounding text.

... then I agree in principle. GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 02:00, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Gabe, what I'm trying to do is instruct the user on correct British/L style, not invent a new style. That's why I keep citing sources. According to Fowler and Fowler, that's what Wikipedia's required style is. But I freely admit that I could be wrong about what F&F or anyone else is trying to say, which is why I keep asking people to show sources.

As for American editors or any editors at all being free to choose, we're not. I used AmE punct in the article space and got brought up on AN/I for it. MoS:LQ is a rule, not a suggestion, and we have to remember that when we phrase it.

As for the text you've suggested just above, it's so confusing that I'm having trouble telling what you're talking about. "Grammatical sense" is better than "logical sense," but what makes sense won't be the same for everyone. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:20, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Well, Fowler says to apply this according to sense; I assume that he means grammatical sense, versus ESP or something. If an editor cannot parse what "grammatical sense" means, then I doubt they will ever understand LQ anyway, but if you look at the first bullet point you'll see that grammatical sense is loosely defined as anything that is both "helpful to readers" and "grammatically correct". I'm not sure how this could be any clearer. What specifically do you think is wrong with the guideline as its currently written? GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 20:30, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

It seems we had an edit conflict while I was trying to move my comment so I'll answer here: To someone not familiar with the differences between American and British English punctuation, it will make sense to place the period or comma in a way that looks familiar. To most Americans that will be inside the quotation marks. To many Brits, outside. People who read more books than web articles may also tend to place punctuation inside. "Grammatical sense" will translate to "What my teacher taught me in school; what is correct," and that differs across national varieties of English. Although it is useful here in the discussion section, in the guideline itself, we should forego any kind of field-specific terminology in favor of plain English.

Even Wikieditors who have never seen the expression "grammatical sense" before will understand what is expected of them if the situation is explained clearly. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:47, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Arb break 2

Whether an utterance "makes grammatical sense with the surrounding text" could mean different things to different people—for instance, as the quoted fragment is (necessarily) taken out of its context, it will not make the same sense as it did in the original context—it's being used as raw material for building a new sentnece in a new context. That's one of many legitimate ways of looking at it, which is why we should leave this to the judgement of editors—and explicitly say that's the case. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 02:12, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

I think that judgment is absolutely inherent in "makes grammatical sense with the surrounding text", because one cannot determine what makes grammatical sense without using judgment – it goes without saying. Kind of like how I don't need to tell you that it requires memory to drive to the library without a map. However, if we go out of our way to say that the proper application of LQ "requires judgment", we are opening the door for PBS-type arguments that it comes down to a matter of individual preference, and each case is determined by how the editor feels about the punctuation. If its original to the source and grammatical with the end product, it should be included, regardless of how each individual editor views its inclusion on any given day. Otherwise, its an anti-guideline that give no direction and fuels conflict. GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 02:21, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

PBS wasn't arguing that it had anything to do with judgement—he was arguing that LQ says to put terminating punctuation outside of the quotations, despite the explicit examples given at MOS:LQ to the contrary. The original wording was very explicit about the placement of punctuation in most cases, and covered the corner cases with "judgement", which I think is reasonable. If there's a dispute, the primary editor can cite that they've exercised editorial judgement, just as with choices of wording in the prose. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 02:38, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Did you see this diff? GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 02:42, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Yup, just rehashing the same arguments that all proposed wordings of LQ have been very explicit about. I gave up responding, since the weight of policy and consensus was clearly against him. Without the bit explicating "judgement is required", it's not in the least obvious that two outcomes could be equally acceptable—which, I think, would only encourage souldraining hairsplitting over where the period "really" belongs. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 03:17, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Well, if you are right and the maintenance of original punctuation is not a goal of LQ, then this should be extremely simple to explain and implement.

1) Editors should never add punctuation, with the exception of ellipses, to quoted material – i.e if the punctuation is not present in the source material then it should not be included inside quotation marks. 2) If the inclusion of original punctuation creates an ungrammatical construction with the surrounding prose, omit that original punctuation.

If its really this simple then why have Wikipedians been unable to find an amicable resolution to this years-long dispute? GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 18:09, 1 June 2014 (UTC) I've added some material that I think stresses the points that most of us agree on. Let me know what you think of the changes. FTR, the second bullet point covers the issue of judgment, and I think it should remain. GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 18:24, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Is it a years long dispute, or is it just a perennial question? All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 19:31, 1 June 2014 (UTC).

Six on one hand? I guess all I meant was, if this is so simple, and we are so capable, then why is there a years-long and on-going disagreement about what LQ suggests? I personally think that the guideline looks quite good right now, but just a few days ago that was not the case. GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 19:39, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Rich Farmbrough—It's been challenged more than once a year for many years, and it has pretty low compliance in the article space. From my perspective, the issue with this rule has never truly been resolved, but right now the rule is in place and we should get it as close to right as possible.

Regarding judgment: Is there a situation in which British/L style allows the Wikieditor to place a period or comma either inside or outside of the quotation marks, solely at his or her own discretion? If the answer to that question is "no," then we should replace "judgment" with another word. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:20, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

According to Fowler, writing in the section: Relative placing of quotation marks and punctuation, "If an extract ends with a point, or exclamation or interrogation sign, let that point be included before the closing quotation mark; but not otherwise.(Fowler's Modern English Usage. 3rd Edition, edited by R.W. Burchfield, 1996. ISBN 978-0-198-61021-2. Pages 646–647) GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 20:48, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm reading "no" on that. So maybe instead of "some judgment is required" we could say something more like "the situation is more complicated."

Regarding the examples, a lot of the text that ends up inside quotation marks on Wikipedia isn't quoted text per se. It's song titles and episode titles and words-as-words. Thoughts? Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:50, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

I don't view song titles as quotes, they are an exception, IMO. Fowler addresses the situation where judgment is required: (ii)"If the quotation is intermediate between a single word and a complete sentence, or it is not clear whether it is a complete sentence or not, judgment must be used in placing the final point: We need not 'follow a multitude to do evil'. The words quoted are the greater part of a sentence—[Do not] follow a multitude to do evil—but not complete in themselves, so do not require their own closing point; the point therefore belongs to the main sentence , and is outside the quotation marks." Ibid GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 20:58, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

He also says: (iii) "The quoted words may be a complete sentence but the closing point must be omitted because the main sentence is not complete: You say 'It cannot be done': I say it can. Here the colon clearly belongs to the main sentence ... and is therefore outside the quotation marks." Ibid GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 21:05, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Fowler also gives us this example, of a fully quoted sentence that nevertheless has the punctuation outside the quotemarks: Alas, how few of them can say, 'I have striven to my utmost'! This appears to be "according to the sense" of the sentence that begins with "Alas": "... according to whether their application is merely to the words quoted or to the whole sentence of which they form a part." How does Wikipedia handle this? It seems to go an awful lot farther than what I've proposed, and I can see it giving legitimacy to PBS's claims. Fowler seems to advocate a lot more judgement than WP's LQ does (either with the wroding the way it was or with the new, more restrictive wording). Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 00:30, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

"Is there a situation in which British/L style allows the Wikieditor to place a period or comma either inside or outside of the quotation marks, solely at his or her own discretion?" The answer to this is yes. A quote at the end of a sentence which is itself a sentence should have terminal punctuation before the closing quote mark, unless it is a very short quote of minor relative weight. I'm not sure if this is universally applied, but it is certainly widely accepted, and so it ought to be permissible on WP. It means that the following are both correct, even though they may appear inconsistent:

Sandra said, "Shut up."

After I had spoken to her about the details of British punctuation for forty minutes, Sandra finally turned to me, exasperated, and said: "Shut up".

Naturally, deciding when the quoted sentence is minor enough for the full-stop to fall outside the quote mark is a matter of case-to case judgement. Formerip (talk) 22:49, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, GabeMc, I do not think the change you link above is an improvement. It simply makes the strictly prohibitive character of the guidance more emphatic. I get that this is your precise intention, but I don't see how it is helpful. I think it's a mistake in the first place for the guidance to be so negatively phrased. We should be advising editors on what to do, not on why they are wrong. That aside, the strengthening to "Never add punctuation marks...", as well as being unhelpful in its prohibitive tone, is plain wrong. We should really be looking at a weakening of the guidance to say something like "Generally...".

The guidance as it now is appears to disallow various things which should obviously be permitted. The current word seems to disallow: silently correcting punctuation, transposing foreign punctuation, punctuating to reflect formatting (I don't think it is acceptable to quote the words at the top-left of this page as "Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia"), punctuating to mark out lines of poetry or song lyrics, modifying the text using square brackets, using "[sic]", adding commas to a list taken from a table. There are likely to be others I haven't thought of. At least some of these examples are prescribed by the MoS, so we have a glaring inconsistency. I also think that the general rule that a sentence should be punctuated at its end is capable of trumping any artificial formulation about quotations. That may be contentious, but that doesn't make it wrong. Formerip (talk) 23:56, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Actually, FormerIP, it looks as though the period should go inside the quotation marks in both the examples you gave. Are you certain that the second one is correct?

I agree that the "Never" should be replaced with "Do not" and the harsh phrasing should be replaced with neutral phrasing to make the section less like an ad for logical style and more like straight instruction in logical style. I took the liberty of enacting such changes earlier today.

May I add that I love that the section has sources now? A lot of the disputes about this rule have boiled down to, "Well who says I should punctuate this way?" and "Fowler does" is a much better answer than "A bunch of Wikipedians no better or worse than yourself." I find it more honest and less offensive. If the source sections end up getting chopped, we should transfer them to the quotation mark article so that readers can see them through the link. (They're better here, though.) Is there a way to place them under a cut of some kind? Our fellow MoSheads will be less likely to remove them if they're made more unobtrusive.

GabeM, when you say that you see song titles as an exception, what do you mean? Fowler's rules seem to say that punctuation should go outside in their case. Frankly, I see no logical reason why it couldn't go inside, but that's true of all cases. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:16, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

The "Shut up" example is in line with what's recommended in the Oxford Guide To English Usage: "...if the quotation is a short statement, and the introducing sentence has much greater weight, the full stop is put outside the quotation marks". I'm not sure that everyone would always follow this, but it must at least be counted as permissible. Formerip (talk) 12:02, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

I agree that providing citations within the guidance is better than not. But it also needs to be kept in mind that we are not in the business of picking our favourite manual and going with that. I think there are problems connected to the negative phrasing. People are not, in fact, going to ask "Well who says I should punctuate this way?", because that doesn't reflect the wording of the guidance. They are going to ask, instead, "Who says I shouldn't punctuate this way?" We ought not to be trying to ban things that are permissible, that's all, at least not without a specific consensus. Leaving aside the question of whether Fowler is being interpreted, we don't have any reason, in the first place to give Fowler the last word.

At the end of the day, guidance which wrongly tells people not to do things and isn't even internally consistent is no good at all. If people choose to ignore it altogether, who can blame them? Formerip (talk) 12:27, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

I see where you're coming from, but it's better to have guidance based on sources than guidance based on personal preferences. If Fowler and Oxford disagree, we should examine both. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:16, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

I don't think we need to be considering different authorities and deciding what is best. That's not what I'm saying. Rather, if any reputable guide to logical-style punctuation says I can do something, then I ought to be allowed to do it on Wikipedia. Unless there is a very good reason I shouldn't and/or a consensus that it is not WP style. There's absolutely no need to try to bolt everything down, particularly because, in trying to do so, we've come up with guidance which is obviously wrong and self-contradictory. Regardless of whether there are citations in place or not, something has obviously gone wrong if the guidance tells users they can't write things like:

"I'll be back," said Arnie.

"Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia"

It seems to be that the guidance has been made restrictive to well beyond a reasonable extent. So restrictive that it seems to compel us to write things that logical quotation doesn't actually allow.

Formerip (talk) 16:26, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

1. Why are we talking about exclamation marks and question marks? I can't think of article text that contains these types of terminal punctuation in Wikipedia's voice, with or without quoted text in it. This is a MOS for Wikipedia, specific to Wikipedia, not an educational primer on how people can use logical punctuation in all aspects of their life. This seems distractingly tangential and bloaty. 2. If there are going to be notes, they should go below the body of MOS where all the other notes live. If it looks like we're quoting whole sections of another party's style book as a supplement to our own, some might see that as a copyvio problem. Keep in mind, this isn't an article about Fowler that could contain "fair use" quotation, it's a document that seeks to serve a similar purpose as what we're copying from.__ E L A Q U E A T E 16:07, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

FormerIP, I personally agree, but that's not how it works. Almost every style guide on American English says I can and should and must use American punctuation, but that doesn't mean much here. If it doesn't get into the MoS, then it's not the rule for Wikipedia--which is why we have to be careful about what we put into the MoS.

Elaqueate, we're talking about exclamation marks and quotation marks because the rules of British/logical placement are a lot easier to see with them than with periods and commas. The terms "grammatical sense" and "logical sense" may be subjective, but if you show someone how placing a question mark can show whether the whole sentence or just quoted material is a question, then you can say, "Okay, now do that with periods and commas," and from what I understand of Fowler, that is placement according to sense.

Yes, this is a rule being worked out for Wikipedia, but that rule should be based on existing English practices, not made up from scratch and whims. At the absolute most, we should choose from among correct practices that already exist, just as we chose sentence case over title case for article-space section headings. Both sentence case and title case are correct, but Wikipedia only allows one of them. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:52, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

That is not a good argument to include question marks. Please show me an article that uses question marks in Wikipedia's voice. Then find me a single one that also contains a quote. I don't see any reason to exhort editors to be especially careful with question marks if they represent a unicorn of a situation.__ E L A Q U E A T E 04:22, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

It's been pointed out above that, since editors may have the occasion to transcribe from audio, there is no form of punctuation syntax that we can say will never come up. In any event, I think what Darkfrog is saying is that it can sometimes be a good thought experiment, if you want to work out whether you've got the punctuation right, to think of similar examples with slightly different punctuation, to see if the rule still makes sense. That doesn't mean we need to include those examples in the MoS, but there's nothing wrong with bringing them up on the talkpage. Formerip (talk) 10:33, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Darkfrog: WP has developed a consensus against American (conventional) style and in favour of British (logical) style for quotations. That means that any sources offering guidance on American style should be ignored. But the use of any (reputable) guide to logical style should be OK. Or, I don't even need to use a guide. If I accurately model my punctuation on what is done in The Guardian, I should also find that I am OK. The Guardian uses logical style, so I am also using logical style, just as consensus tells me to. If I find people using the MoS as a basis to correct me, then the MoS must be wrong, either because it has been clumsily worded or because it has overstepped the mark and tried to be more specific than "use logical quotation style".

"Logical quotation style" is basically a set of fairly simple rules about how punctuation is treated when material is being quoted. All we really need to do is say "Wikipedia uses logical quotation style", and then give the most important rules to be followed. Grey areas can be left to the discretion of editors.

At the moment, we seem to be trying to break into the house through the cat-flap by imagining that "logical punctuation" entails a golden rule about preserving the punctuation of the original, from which all else flows. I don't think this is correct. How far you want to preserve punctuation is a distinct stylistic choice, not an integral aspect of logical quotation. You can use American style and have a strict approach to preservation, or you can British style and a liberal approach to it. Wikipedia has a fairly liberal approach to it, which is already set out in the MoS (we alter punctuation for a whole range or reasons, including to correct, make it conform to WP style, avoid foreign punctuation and so on). So, it makes no sense at all for us to start the guidance on punctuating quotations by saying: "For God's sake, whatever you do don't change anything". Formerip (talk) 11:02, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Any punctuation within quote marks should preserve the intent of the source – this does not mean using exactly the same punctuation marks so long as the original intention of the punctuation is kept (for example, changing a spaced em-dash in the original to a spaced en-dash in the quotation in Wikipedia is fine). Since American/traditional style involves always moving commas and full stops inside the quote marks whether or not they were in the original, how can it be compatible with "a strict approach to preservation"? Peter coxhead (talk) 16:50, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

On the first point, yes, precisely. On the second, neither American or British style allows for 100% preservation of punctuation (contrary to what our guidance currently tells editors to do) because both require the modification of punctuation in the original. You can have a strict approach in either case, though. Formerip (talk) 17:16, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

We're a bit off the main point here, but with TQ the quotation cannot be at the end of the sentence if the text between the quote marks is to maintain the absence of punctuation in the original. Consider the rather artificial example:

• LQ – The first two words of the Declaration of Independence are "When in".
• TQ – The first two words of the Declaration of Independence are "When in."

However, yes, you can always reword the sentence to make the quotation strict:

• TQ – "When in" are the first two words of the Declaration of Independence.

Maybe this is the most practical advice we can give: try to word sentences so that their punctuation is the same using either TQ or LQ. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:45, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Elaqueate, is it the "especially careful" to which you object? The usefulness of question marks in this case is to illustrate what Fowler and Fowler meant by "placement according to sense." To people unfamiliar with British style, it won't be obvious what it means. But show them a question mark and they'll get it. I have no problem with rephrasing the section to change "especially careful" to something like "this principle is easiest to see with question marks."

FormerIp, yes Wikipedia currently bans American punctuation. That's why I've been asking people about British sources. If we require Wikieditors to use British style in American articles, then it should at least be correct British style. I'm not really sure what the rest of your comment means. Yes, if the MoS contradicts something like the Guardian, then it may well be wrong and should be fixed. However, sometimes the MoS merely chooses from among correct options, requiring one at the exclusion of others. That I think is not so bad. As for "for Gods' sake, don't change anything," I haven't been advocating for that.

Peter Coxhead. The American style is consistent with "a strict approach to preservation" because the period or comma is treated as part of the quotation process and not as part of the quoted material. Placing the period or comma inside the quotation marks does not change the meaning of the quoted material; by definition that meaning is preserved. The only thing that could really change the meaning would be leaving out relevant words, and that's a misquotation regardless of whether American or British/logical style was used.

Also, please stop calling it TQ. The overwhelming majority of sources call it "American." This isn't like "logical" where even a large minority of sources use that name.

As for the example, are you suggesting that we apply WP:Commonality here? I like the idea, but I don't think it should be required. As a practical matter, saying something like, "When possible, place punctuation so that it is consistent with both American and British/logical style" would require an in-MoS explanation of what those styles are. That could probably be done easily. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:58, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Darkfrog, it's not you that I am arguing with, but the guidance as it is currently worded. I'm not attributing "for Gods' sake, don't change anything" to you. It's what the guidance currently says. Or, more precisely: "Except for ellipses, do not place punctuation marks that were not present in the source material inside the quotation marks." This is not really anything to do with LQ. It is about taking a very severe approach to altering the original text. It seems like an MoS equivalent of COATRACK. It's also completely contrary to established practice as set out in the MoS and it is actually inconsistent with LQ, which sometimes actively requires punctuation to be used which was not in the original ("I'll be back," said Arnie.).

Yes, in principle, we could decide that a particular aspect of a particular version of LQ is not right for Wikipedia, and this might mean that I can be wrong even if I am copying what The Guardian does. But that isn't the situation. At the moment, the default is nothing more than: "use LQ". So we ought to take a permissive view with regards to the MoS guidance. We don't really need to get too bogged down in deeper theory and grey areas (particularly since, IMO, we have made a bit of a hash of that). We should be able to just give basic instructions on where LQ says you should place your punctuation. I'll have a go at mocking up what that would look like. Formerip (talk) 10:44, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Proposed text

Consensus on the English Wikipedia is to use logical quotation style in all articles, regardless of the variety of English in which they are written.

Where a quotation is a sentence and coincides with the end of the sentence containing it, terminal punctuation should normally be placed inside the closing quotation mark if the terminal punctuation of the quoted material is the same as is appropriate for the containing sentence. Where the quotation is a single word or fragment, terminal punctuation should be placed outside.

Marlin said: "I need to find Nemo."

Marlin needed, he said, "to find Nemo".

Where a quoted sentence has been broken up, the latter fragment is treated as the end of a sentence.

"I need", said Marlin, "to find Nemo."

Where a quoted sentence occurs before the end of the containing sentence, a full-stop inside the quotation marks should be omitted. Other terminal punctuation may be included if desired, and a question should end with a question mark.

Dory said: "Yes, I can read", which gave Marlin an idea.

Dory said: "Yes, I can read!", which gave Marlin an idea.

Where a quoted sentence is followed by a clause identifying the speaker, a comma should be used in place of a full-stop, but other terminal punctuation may be retained. Again, a question should end with a question mark.

"Fish are friends, not food," said Bruce.

"Why are you sleeping?" demanded Darla.

A quoted word or fragment should not end with a comma inside the closing quotation mark, except where a longer quotation has been broken up and the comma is part of the full quotation.

"Fish are friends," said Bruce, "not food."

"Why", demanded Darla, "are you sleeping?"

Where an exclamation or question mark is added to the end of a sentence which ends in a quotation, any punctuation which would otherwise occur before the closing quotation mark is usually displaced, according to common practice. Note that this is not something that we would expect to see in Wikipedia's voice.

Did Darla really ask: "Why are you sleeping"?

While I was typing this, I thought it would be cute to use examples from Finding Nemo. But maybe examples from Wikipedia would be better. Formerip (talk) 12:32, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

I like the Finding Nemo examples, actually. If there's a problem with this it's that it focuses on dialogue instead of on the kind of material that's more likely to be quoted by Wikieditors. There are also places where this could be made less confusing. My preference for the beginning would be something like, "On Wikipedia, use a practice called logical quotation, explained below. This is required of all articles regardless of the variety of English in which they are otherwise written" but it's livable as it is.

And it took me that long to remember that the blue fish is "Dori," not "Darla." Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:48, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

OK, I've changed the first paragraph as you suggest.

Are there any bits in particular that you think could be made less confusing? Formerip (talk) 21:07, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Can we stop saying "On Wikipedia"? It is redundant, inaccurate, and appears self-centered. The entire MOS is about "On the English language Wikipedia" [Note: not "on Wikipedia"]. If it was appropriate to say this, in any form, then we would be repeating it in every single section. What reasonable person would think that this MOS applies to anything other than "On the English language Wikipedia", or at most "On Wikipedia". Do people really think that editors will believe that this section of MOS is making statements about what should be done in writing outside of Wikipedia? — Makyen (talk) 23:18, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes. I have seen people cite the Wikipedia MoS as if it were a reliable source on general English language practices. This includes, for example, students who didn't know they were going to get marked down for using Wikipedia's punctuation rules in their papers. A two-word allusion to the fact that this is not how things are done off of Wikipedia is appropriate. I wouldn't mind saying, "On the English Wikipedia" if you feel that would be better. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:46, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

The first sentence at the top of the page says: "The Manual of Style...is a style guide for all Wikipedia articles." Do we really need to repeat this in each section? If we do specify, no strong opinion about saying "English Wikipedia" but, Makyen, if you are saying we can trust readers to not think it might apply outside Wikipedia, why can we not also trust them to not think it might apply on Russian Wikipedia? Formerip (talk) 12:54, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

In each section no, but most sections don't need it. (You will note that most sections don't have it.) But this particular passage is so very different from standard U.S. English and there are so many cases of "but that's how Wikipedia does it"/"too bad" that a two- or three-word allusion and a link to the article space where the matter can be addressed in depth is not out of line.

In practice, most people just CTRL-F or link straight to the section in question and don't read the lead. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:02, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

OK, I've put is back in. At the end of the day, it's not a lot of extra words. I've also included a reference to "consensus", which I think is useful for addressing the "Oh yeah, according to whom?" issue. Formerip (talk) 10:41, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

I've been bold and added it. I'm not sure whether to expect it to stick or not. Let's see. Formerip (talk) 19:06, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

I don't understand this text. Why "Fish are friends, not food," said Bruce. but Dory said: "Yes, I can read", which gave Marlin an idea.? Both Fish are friends, not food and Yes, I can read are full sentences, so I don't see why they should be treated differently. DrKiernan (talk) 19:12, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

It's because two different rules are operating. If the quote is followed by a clause which identifies the speaker ("said Bruce"), the convention is to convert the full-stop to a comma. If is followed by anything else, the convention is to just omit the full-stop. Formerip (talk) 19:24, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

The examples at the end of the Quotation_mark#Punctuation section imply that the conversion of the final full stop to a comma is American-style and that British-style would be: "Fish are friends, not food", said Bruce. I don't see why we're mixing two styles: it's confusing enough as it is without adding greater complexity. DrKiernan (talk) 19:00, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

The article seems to suggest what you are saying is correct for British non-fiction, but I think it is the article that is wrong. The Oxford Guide to English Usage says:

The comma at the end of a quotation, when words such as he said follow, is regarded as equivalent to the final full stop of the speaker's utterance, and is kept inside the quotation, e.g. 'That is nonsense,' he said.

The Guardian Style Guide says:

Place full points and commas inside the quotes for a complete quoted sentence; otherwise the point comes outside – "Anna said: 'Your style guide needs updating,' and I said: 'I agree.'"

Formerip (talk) 19:15, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Capitalization of common names of species yet again

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

The distinction between names of breeds of domestic animals (whether to capitalize them is something about which there is no WP consensus yet) with the common names of species (not capitalized per MOS:LIFE), has popped up again at this proposal to re-capitalize the common name of en equine species: Talk:Przewalski's horse#Requested move. So far, the discussion has only been joined by those who seem to believe it is a domestic breed, despite the article being clear that it is not, and who want to capitalize "Horse" on that basis. Broader input would be useful, especially in light of the lower-casing resolution reached after an enormous debate and a very well-reasoned close at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 156#Bird common name decapitalisation.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:22, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Common names

I noticed that Southern Hawker was recently moved to Aeshna cyanea. I moved it again to southern hawker (!!). Is there any reason why insects and plants should be exempt from the common name policy? I realise that some taxa may not have common names (eg the bird genus Hirundo) and will be placed at the scientific name by default, but that's no reason to ignore the policy for those that do. We don't have Hirundo rustica instead of barn swallow even though its genus article is Latinised Jimfbleak - talk to me? 12:07, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Discuss at Talk:Southern hawker, not here. The mover's reason was that the common name is ambiguous. If this is the case, then the move may be justified on the grounds of precision, but this should be determined by discussion on the talk page. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:42, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

My reversion of the move to southern hawker has been reversed. Three consecutive insect edits on my watchlist were to pages which are currently named Aeshna cyanea (binomial), small tortoiseshell (lc English) and Red Underwing (capped English). Much more of a mess than the bird capitalisation issue, and I see no point tackling one article at a time, especially as this inconsistency also spreads to other faunal groups and plants. If the implementation of the common names policy isn't a MoS issue, so be it, I won't waste my time. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:53, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

FWIW, note that the established convention in biology is that in binomials, such as Aeshna cyanea, the genus is capitalised, and the specific epithet is lc. (I remember that at one time botanists capitalised the specific epithet when it was someone's proper name, (Say Brunsvigia Bosmanae) but I am under the impression that that convention has been dropped (just as well too!)). I mention this to emphasise that no matter what the policy in the MoS might be, concerning common names, it is independent of the correctness of capitalisation of binomials, or indeed other taxon names. Violation of such a convention would amount to a simple error in spelling, such as failing to capitalise New york.JonRichfield (talk) 14:28, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Well, yes, but you are discussing the one format I haven't seen, all the binomials are correctly capped. My points are that

• Insects, plants and many other taxa (except birds) seem to be exempt from the common names policy
• Even so, there is total inconsistency on the page titles for non-bird groups

Anyway, I've been told above that common names policy isn't an MoS issue, which surprises me, and capitalisation policy seems to be ignored except for birds, so it's obvious nothing is going to done about it here Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:02, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

@Jimfbleak: I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "common names policy", but WP:AT sets out five principles which should be used to determine the title of an article. Precision is one of these principles. Many English names are used for multiple species, sometimes unrelated ones, so are not sufficiently precise to serve as article titles. "Common name" does not necessarily mean "English name". In many cases, the most common name which is also precise is the scientific name. For plants, the article title policy is explained at WP:NCFLORA#Scientific versus vernacular names.

On the issue of the capitalization of species names, there was in the past no common position among editors working on some groups (e.g. plants, lepidoptera, orthoptera) as to the capitalization of the English names of species. So, yes, you will find a mixture of styles. However, there is now agreement not to capitalize English names. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:09, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Well, the previous couple of replies just don't make sense

• Multiple names. The bird project had every species at an English name despite multiple names, eg Parasitic Jaeger/Arctic Skua and Horned Grebe/Slavonian Grebe. It can be done. In what sense is Aeshna cyanea more of a common name than southern hawker?
• Binomials You assume that binomials are stable, but taxonomy advances at a rate of knots. Would you put Great Egret at Ardea alba, Egretta alba or Casmerodius alba, bearing in mind that some MoS editors believe that even having an agreed global species list breaches WP:OWN
• Capitalisation I'm only too aware of the capitalisation policy, but as far as I can see, it's only being implemented at the bird project. Butterflies retain an interesting mix of caps, lc and binomials, even for common species which undoubtedly have English names, but nobody here cares, it's no wonder the bird editors feel singled out.
• Inconsistency As I anticipated, the initial flush of enthusiasm for downcasing bird article has largely run out, with only one editor now making significant edits, as far as I can see from by much-reduced watchlist. The easy ones have been done, and the time-consuming lists such as List of hummingbirds and List of birds of Canada and the United States have been ignored, so we now have inconsistency where none existed before
• Ownership Why, exactly, is the plant project allowed to set its own policy, and the bird project isn't?

Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:53, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

• Multiple names The logic of the approach to naming bird articles is that there is an internationally standardized list of English names that can be used (not "common" names, since many of them are not the names commonly used in different English-speaking countries). For other groups there are at best only nationally standardized lists (e.g. for Britain and Ireland, the BSBI has a list of English names for plants, and there is a reasonably standard list of English names for the lepidoptera of the British Isles). Many of these national names are ambiguous in an international encyclopedia.
• Binomials I certainly don't think that binomial names are stable! In the area in which I work (plants) there are however some reliable secondary sources (e.g. the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families, The Plant List) which we tend to follow.
• Capitalisation/Inconsistency Well, I wasn't in favour of the change agreed in the recent RfC, so I can only agree with you that its outcome is likely to be even more inconsistency than there was before. Certainly no-one that I am aware of is presently systematically "fixing" capitalized English plant names.
• Ownership The bird project has been allowed to set policy (e.g. using IOC names as article titles), but not to have its own policy on the capitalization of English names. As noted above, I'm not going to justify a decision I did not support.

Peter coxhead (talk) 17:22, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

This just proves to me that the recent brouhaha involving bird names was nothing more than a vendetta against a project that made the mistake of drawing attention to itself by being too successful. A number of bird editors have left in response, and after a month of attempting to cool down myself and seeing the noticeable decline in bird articles, I'm out too. This is a joke. Natureguy1980 (talk) 03:42, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

I hope you will consider the possibility that people only disagree with you about the capitalization of bird names in Wikipedia. You know a lot about birds; there are also a lot of people who know a lot about words. I hope you will continue to contribute. SchreiberBike talk 04:44, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Ownership and the Derry/Londonderry debate

The current state of the Derry/Londonderry usage recommendation is relatively unusual. A compromise was reached ten years ago, not based on standard policy, but a more practical one intended to ‘keep both sides happy’ by using Derry for the city and Londonderry for the county ([7]). The project page ([8]) suggests that any amendments to this should be discussed at WT:IECOLL, not at WP:MOS.

• Part 1: Does a project (such as WP:IECOLL) have the authority to design and implement these guidelines and to conduct future discussions, or should this be done at WP:MOS, with the input of any associated projects?
• Part 2: Is the Wikipedia community satisfied with the current Derry/Londonderry situation, or, after ten years of development and improvement to Wikipedia’s structure and policies, should a new consultation be opened? 86.133.243.146 (talk) 01:16, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Response to Part 1

• Discussion about this should not be held at a Wikiproject. The most appropriate place would be WP:Manual of Style/Ireland-related articles. Formerip (talk) 17:37, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Response to Part 2

• My feeling is that the community remains happy with the compromise, in that it still enforces it. No harm in opening a discussion, though. Formerip (talk) 17:39, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Over-long dispute between WP:FOOTY and MOS:ICONS

Subject trimmed from "Over-long dispute between WP:FOOTY and MOS:ICONS leading to template documentation editwarring, etc."

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Icons#WT:FOOTY canvassing/editwarring against MOS:ICONS compliance.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:19, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

ships as "she", additional points

I have read through the archive of this issue here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_%28ships_as_%22she%22%29

I have a point that was not addressed in that article that I beleive bears relevance for the wikipedia policy on maintaining the distracting feature of the use of "she" when decribing watercraft (ships, boats... especially naval vessels).

When I read "she" while reading about global (foreign) naval vessels, I am profoundly distracted by the yoking of the topic under examination (a foreign naval vessel) with the British naval tradition from which the tradition of calling ocean going vessels "she" originates.

This is offensive to those of us who use the now globally common English language but do not share in any sense any heritage with the British naval tradition.

It seems important to me for English language users to be able to feel comfortable and not distracted when reading information about various global naval commands. The immediate introduction of British naval traditions that occurs in the use of "she" to decribe (or in reference to) naval vessels is inherrently offensive/unacceptable to any readers (which must be most) who do not welcome the British naval tradtion.

Sdkenned (talk) 23:50, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree with your specific point, Sdkenned. IMO, people who learn languages need to approach them with an understanding that there may be things about them than seem unfamiliar or weird. I don't mean this in a chauvenistic way, because I am myself a person who learns languages.

I agree, though, that we should move into the 21st century and realise that ships don't have a gender. It's a quaint thing to read in an old book, maybe. Formerip (talk) 00:04, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

The point I am trying to make is that the convention of using "she" to describe seafaring vessels, especially naval vessels, is inseparable from the naval tradition from which it hails. The convention is not specific to the language itself, but rather the British naval tradition. I concede that, historically, the English language and the British naval tradition share a common heritage, but the English language has blossomed and become international in scope of use. It may have originated among the English, but today it transends its national and ethnic origins.

Another aspect of my point is simply this: the use of the English language does not imply allegiance or affiliation with English military tradition. The use of the word "she" to describe seafaring vessels is improper considering the English language's international scope (itself an undeniably great triumph for the language and culture, no doubt). This is particularly harmful to readers when reading about non-British naval commands.

I am making this point as entirely distinct from any language rules relating to gender. This was why I referenced the talk archive linked above: the gender point was already brought up, but the discussion was insufficient to change the use of the convention on wikipedia. The point I bring up is entirely different from the gender issue (which may be arguable in itself in a number of ways, and I intend to make no indication of my thoughts on that here at all, so as not to confuse the point I am making).

Sdkenned (talk) 02:51, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

You are incorrect to attribute the "she" convention to solely naval tradition: it applies to civilian ships as well. And while you object to using the feminine pronoun, you have not suggested which of the alternate pronouns ("he" or "it") should be used. Nor have you explained just how it is you find "she" so offensive. Prior discussion has been (as you note) "insufficient to change the use of the convention on wikipedia"; an unsupported allegation of a hyper-sensitivity is unlikely to make any headway at all. Even if that point were to be granted, it is still the case (per WP:Advocacy) that "Wikipedia is not a venue to Right Great Wrongs". Or even to raise the visibility of an issue. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:19, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

When I hear "she" instead of "it" in an article, I get the feeling it was written by seamen for seamen, rather than by a "regular person" for "general audiences". It's a jargon thing, not a gender thing, for me. But I'm only very slightly outraged, because it makes articles sound slightly like old sea captain's tales, and those are generally fun.

But it's a slippery slope to writing Captain Kidd in pirate language and Suidae in Pig Latin. InedibleHulk (talk) 23:00, June 28, 2014 (UTC)

An argument likely to gain more traction is that the AP Stylebook recommends using 'it' rather than 'she'. The best way to convince Wikipedians about anything is to survey the reliable sources, in this case major style book and guides. Pburka (talk) 23:13, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Pretty much every style guide recommends "it". The only exception I am aware of is the style guide for the US Navy. Oh, and Wikipedia. Formerip (talk) 23:38, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

The Economist Style Guide (ISBN 9781846686061) states succinctly

• "ship A ship is feminine."

The Times Style and Usage Guide (ISBN 0007145055)states

• "ships . . . Ships should generally be feminine; thus she and her rather than it and its."
• The Oxford Guide to Style (ISBN 0198691750)states
• "Personification is traditional, though sexist, in the case of ships and other craft."
• In The Oxford Style Manual (ISBN 9780199657223) (i.e.New Hart's Rules) this becomes
• "The names of ships and other craft are traditionally female . Formerly, it was also conventional to use she of nations and cities in prose contexts, but this is old -fashioned and the impersonal pronoun is now used: "Britain decimalized its (not her) currency in 1971." This seems to imply that the use of she for ships is not old-fashioned.

Personally, I have not formed an opinion on the matter, but I thought this might help the discussion. --Boson (talk) 14:56, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

The Economist and Times style guide citations are something I would be cautious about. Are you looking at recent editions? I don't have access to either, but spot-checking articles in those publications suggests that they actually use neuter: [9] [10]

Any, of course, describing something as "traditional" is not actually a recommendation. Formerip (talk) 16:36, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

The Economist Style Guide I am looking at is the 10th edition from 2012.

The Times Style and Usage Guide was first published in 2003.

I have no idea how consistently the two publication adhere to their own style guides, but a quick Google also find hits for she/her:

• ". . .she will be delivered to Farstad, who will use her to supply rigs."
• ". . . and the other seven ships in her class"
• ". . . she will be the first vessel to dock at London Gateway"
• ". . . where she left for her doomed maiden voyage . . ."

--Boson (talk) 01:01, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Oh how I love the reasoning that spurred me to originally raise this issue, but the point relating to the authoritative style guides is perhaps the best support for making this change. I am glad such exists.

In reply to J. Johnson:

To be clear, I find the introduction of the British seafaring tradition into my awareness when reading about non-British naval forces or any other seafaring vessels as offensive. If support for this issue is what you seek, you may find such in the concept of microaggressive assaults: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microaggression. You call my awareness of the issue hyper-sensitive. What makes my awareness of this issue “hyper-sensitivity” and not simply “awareness”?

Removing the British seafaring tradition from the language conventions used in wikipedia pages devoted to non-British naval hardware would hardly seem an effort to "Right a Great Wrong" but rather to avoid the perpetuation of insult caused by the use of language conventions emanating from the British maritime tradition against English language readers who do not share heritage or allegiance with said tradition.

Sdkenned (talk) 23:45, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

What "insult"? Who do take to be microaggressing whom? Are you simply anti-British? Or anti-feminine? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:20, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

I use the term insult here to refer to offense, not shared between any specific individuals (such as you or I), but inherent in the language convention I am taking issue with. The microagression is inherent in the language convention. I make no acusation of specific intent to harm, only casual use of harmful language conventions that the authors (or page maintainers) may not be conscious of as being harmful. I am anti- only cultural bias where such is inappropriate, such as I have outlined above.

Sdkenned (talk) 00:47, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Does anyone have a source for the <redacted> assertion that the use of the feminine pronoun for vessels is even related to (actually, "British" is clearly wrong, also) English naval tradition? For that matter, does anyone have a source of any other tradition for gendering vessels in non-gendered langauges? (Which may only be English.) I know it's wrong to suggest we should continue to use the feminine pronoun because it offends Sdkenned, but it is tempting, because there is so much illogical reasoning in his "insult" (to use the word as he defined it above). — Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:55, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

A relevant article in the Telegraph from 2002 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1388373/Lloyds-List-sinks-the-tradition-of-calling-ships-she.html An excerpt:

SHIPS should no longer be called "she", the industry's newspaper has decreed.

Lloyd's List, the 268-year-old publication which claims to be the world's oldest daily newspaper, is to abandon centuries of seafaring tradition by calling all vessels "it".

The reason, explained in yesterday's issue, is to bring the paper "into line with most other reputable international business titles".

Julian Bray, the editor, wrote: "The shipping industry does need to move forward if it is not to risk becoming a backwater of international business. I decided that it was time to catch up with the rest of the world, and most other news organisations refer to ships as neuter.

"They are maritime real estate. The world moves on. I can see why 'she' would suit a magnificent cruise liner but to a rusting old hulk it could be rather offensive. [... ...]

Sdkenned (talk) 01:24, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

You didn't answer my question. Let me rephrase: What evidence do you have that the "tradition" that ships are referred to as "she" relate to English (not British; it precedes the absorption of Scotland and Wales into Britain, unless, perhaps, it precedes the creation of the kingdom of England...) naval tradition. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 04:10, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

It's very insulting and sexist. Some navies have specifically excluded its use, but some persist where the old boys' network is still unchallenged. Proponents will fight to the death on en.WP to retain "she/her". What I do say to them is that if using it, just as a matter of general style, avoid banging it in four times in a single paragraph—this I have seen quite a lot, particularly in introductory sections. Rotate "she/her" with "the vessel", "the ship", and [name of ship]. Rotating the pronoun with other referents should be the norm whether using the sexist or gender-neutral version. Tony (talk) 04:34, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

I don't know whether you (Tony1) are serious, but, after reading the 2004 discussion, it's clear that Sdkenned is not. If he/she perceives insult, it is because of a misconception. The previous discussion (1) mentions ships being feminine dating back to 500 BC, and (2) states that ships were "originally" (scare quotes) masculine in English, but became universally feminine by the 16th century. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 05:27, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

I've heard some feminists go over the top about the smallest thing but I've yet to hear anybody say that calling ships "she" is sexist or insulting (assuming the ship is not a rusting hulk). Do you have any real world references about people feeling strongly insulted to help us make this judgement call? But I do like the Telegraph reference above: "Ships have a soul. If I remember my history, they are female because originally the ship was the only woman allowed at sea and was treated with deference and respect - and because they are expensive."  Stepho  talk  05:41, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

As a rusting hulk, I'm a little insulted. We can't stay 21 forever. InedibleHulk (talk) 05:48, June 29, 2014 (UTC)

Arthur, 500 BC, you say? Amazing how far back sexism goes. Yes, I'm deadly serious. And grammatical gender has been starkly different in English from that in other languages for the past 800 years or more. I don't see a feminine form of "the" used before "ship", and in sexist usage, "she" refers to vessel, ship, boat, all of them. Tony (talk) 09:43, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Pushing Formerip's proposal into a subsection. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:14, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

So you (Sdkenned) object to calling a ship "she" because that comes from English seafaring tradition, but you don't mind "it" if that comes from international business practice? I am more insulted that we shoud let international business shape our language.

I have yet to see how "she" is insulting. Just what are folks reading into this? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:18, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

As has been thoroughly indicated all over this page, based on the neuter and inanimate identity (or nature) of maritime vessels, using a feminine pronoun violates the ordinary standards (or rules) of this language. For the wider world of English language users, the use of "she" to describe a seafaring vessel seems abnormal and unnatural. That the English language using sectors of international maritime trade do not use "she" to describe its vessels anylonger is not the source of my preference for the use of the neuter pronoun "it" to refer to these machines. The ordinary rules of the language are the source of my prefernece. It is an exceptional behavior to label a ship "she", in my opinion, for the greater English langaue using population. Commerce and international trade compose the second of two primary arms of global (human) maritime activity (the militaries comprise the other arm). That institutional publications of international trade, even those specifically rooted in the same national/ethnic tradition that developed the custom we are examining presently, now publicly and formally have dicontinued the use of "she" to refer to maritime vessels in their publications, only supports my position.Sdkenned (talk) 23:48, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

  How is "using a feminine pronoun violates the ordinary standards (or rules) of this language", and "seems abnormal and unnatural"? What rule? The one that you have not yet got in place? Or the new one announced by "institutional publications of international trade"?

  You have said repeatedly that use of "she" is offensive, and is "perpetuation of insult", but you have yet to explain how this is so. Are you simply anti-British? Or do you hold that feminine pronouns can only be applied to things that are intrinsically feminine? Do you feel that applying "she" to objects that are big, dumpy, gray, and militaristic thereby "objectifies" all female persons as big, dumpy, gray, and militaristic? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:29, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

In the English language, there are three third person singular pronouns: he, she and it. 'He' is used to refer to persons of the male sex, 'she' is used to refer to persons of the female sex, 'it' is used to refer to things with no sex. These are English basics. You may not like the word 'rules' to identify these differences, but then you may choose another word. A range of professional style guides also indicate the propriety of the use of 'it' to refer to these seafaring mechanisms.Sdkenned (talk) 01:02, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) You'll notice, if you read closely, that Sdkenned is not taking a politically correct stance with that comment, but only noting how it is uncommon—even somewhat unnatural—amongst 21st-century English-speaking laypersons to refer to inanimate objects with a non-neuter pronoun. As Wikipedia is aimed at a general audience it would make sense to write to that audience, when we can, in the language they are most familiar with. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 01:03, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

I don't agree that the use of neutered pronouns is so common as to constitute a rule, nor have I seen how the still common use of feminine pronouns constitutes an offense or insult. Sdkenned's assertion — that the usage in English of using 'he' and 'she' to refer to persons of male or female sex constitutes a rule — is false, as there is no rule unless we agree to adopt one. Perhaps he confuses the so-called "rules" given in grammer books as guidelines to clear communication, but there has been no issue raised that using 'she' confuses communication, only that it is offensive. Sdkenned's assertion also implies that in being used in some cases to refer to persons, he/she can apply only to persons. He (she? it??) seems unaware of grammatical gender ("he" may have missed User:John's mention of this on the 29th), where gender has no relation to any biological aspects. (E.g., in German "Mãdchen" is neuter. Is that an insult to young women?) ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:39, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) J. Johnson (JJ): English has not had grammatical gender since the 14th century, and when it did "ship" was of the neuter gender. Referring to ships with "she" rather than "it" is not done for grammatical purposes. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 23:08, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

It is indeed a rule that in English we generally only use "he" and "she" to refer to male and female people, respectively. English does not generally do grammatical gender in the modern era. The ships thing we are talking about is an exception to that, maybe the last one remaining, and it is seemingly dying out. Do we want to preserve it here? --John (talk) 22:58, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

I think you've forgotten that "ship" was not grammatically feminine when the language still retained grammatical gender, so the use of the feminine is unrelated to that, not "maybe the last one remaining". "Grammatical gender" is a red herring. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 23:12, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

I'm sure you must mean "red hering". Formerip (talk) 23:19, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

(@Sdkenned:) Why are we talking about the "rules" of the English language like it's something codefied? English doesn't have "rules", although what does exist is a set of guidelines for British speakers which encourage and facilitate better mutual understanding, and a set of guidelines for American speakers which encourage and facilitate better mutual understanding. If English had "rules", we wouldn't have nonsense like "protein" and "piece". When people say that there is a "rule" that he always refers to animate masculine beings, they're taking the concept of languages too darn seriously. If we cannot have idiomatic expressions like "she sailed from London to New York", it's strange that we also have expressions such as "Los Angeles is the City of Angels". The English language is not a technical document, and it isn't an object oriented language like C++, flexibility is an inherent part of this language. --benlisquare_T•C•E 06:52, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Also, why do we refer to God as "He" in English, in general when dealing with Abrahamic religions? In Islam, Allah is gender neutral, however in plenty of various English translations of the Quran, "He" is used to refer to God. The English language isn't supposed to make sense, stop trying to make sense out of it. --benlisquare_T•C•E 06:56, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Proposal

• Is there any good reason to continue allowing (we do not insist) editors to call ships "she"? It does seem glaringly sexist and rather old-fashioned. --John (talk) 10:13, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

I don't think so.

Proposal. Change the guideline to read:

Ships should be referred to using neuter pronouns ("it", "its") and not feminine pronouns ("she", "her", "hers").

Formerip (talk) 10:33, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose. I see good-faith arguments both that using "she" and using "it" are sexist, and don't really consider either credible. I only see the common usage argument as potentially relevant. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 12:34, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

To be clear, the basis for the proposal would be common usage, that there exists a clear consensus in external style guides etc in favour of ships being neuter. For example, this is the advice given by the AP, Chicago and Guardian manuals. Formerip (talk) 13:54, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

• Support, with one thing to add. The rule that direct quotations are not rewordable should still take priority over this rule, as well as all other rules except the need to avoid foreign languages. Georgia guy (talk) 12:37, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose The fanatics currently running MoS just want to impose their view of the world on Wikipedia, whatever damage it does. As with the bird project, they will drive content creators away, fiddle around with enough articles to leave an inconsistent mess, and then move on to wreck something else rather than finish the job Jimfbleak - talk to me? 13:15, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Support eliminating quirky jargon. If this was ShipWiki, it'd be well and good. But we write for general audiences, the majority of which are landlubbers and use feminine pronouns for things with vaginas. InedibleHulk (talk) 13:49, June 29, 2014 (UTC)

To be clear, there IS no common usage and no consensus. This is English, neither the whim of the AP, Chicago and Guardian, nor their common dunghill from which they can crow their commandments on what is right or wrong or indeed preferable beyond the ambit of their pages and the imaginations of their writers and (worse) editors and hobbled readers. Style guides as the arbiters of acceptable English for the love of holiness! Just because Hemingway or James never wrote a word before checking with a style guide for clarity and correctness! If you wish to forbid whatever doesn't suit your acquired, mandated, or manufactured tastes and reactions, then stop and ask yourself whether you can do better than damning everything your kindergarten teacher didn't instil as quirky jargon, and why such wording once sounded good and natural. And even expressive, inspiring, or at least not quite insipid. And why the creativity of the inedible should rise no higher than personification of femininity as thing with feminine genitalia. JonRichfield (talk) 19:53, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

That's the opposite of clear. Rhetoric isn't highly valued here. Do you have anything germane to add to the discussion? --John (talk) 20:14, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

In maritime poetry, I have no problem with the moon, the mist or a manatee filling in for the female. But this is an encyclopedia, that's all. Fact-based. Plenty of room for debate on what symbolizes what. With a genital-based system, it's simple. Male, female and nothing.

My kindergarten teacher didn't instill anything about English in me, as far as I remember. That was truck time. InedibleHulk (talk) 23:01, June 30, 2014 (UTC)

• Support. "It" to refer to ships appears to be the standard approach, based on the evidence of other style guides presented above. I don't see any reason it depart from that standard. I'm not surprised to find that other style guides recommend "it" for ships, because whenever I run across "she" on Wikipedia it sounds extremely dated. Alternatively, I like the suggestion above of going for full-on pirate speak in all ship-related articles.--Trystan (talk) 14:26, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
• Support Though the experience that spurred my returning this issue to attention here does not appear to be well understood, the support for this change in policy offered in the 2002 telegraph.co.uk article is compelling, as is the fact that most (if not all non-military) professional English language publications and style guides use the neuter "it".Sdkenned (talk) 14:55, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

• Support Using "she" for ships, rather than "it", is becoming increasingly archaic. Hence the change to "it" in prominent style guides and even in the shipping industry itself. It makes sense to use "it" for vehicles as this is the common English usage. Articles about ships should be aimed at a wide audience, not just sailors and maritime experts (who lose nothing sense-wise from this change). SFB 15:04, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

• Comment I have notified WikiProject Ships here since no-one else seems to have done.Nigel Ish (talk) 15:15, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose - I strongly oppose the ongoing efforts to strip the language of every aspect of its colour and poetry and reduce it to a dry logical formula. Moreover, a convention of this type has demonstrable practical value in that "it" can refer to anything referred to in a sentence, whereas "she" can rarely be mistaken for anything else in this context. As for the "insult" charge - some folks seem to spend their lives looking for something to feel insulted about; referring to ships as "she" might just as well be seen as complimentary. We currently have a rule that accommodates both preferences, in the same way that both American and British English are accommodated here, and that is the best approach for a project of this type IMO. Gatoclass (talk) 15:53, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Colour and poetry are cool, but there's a time and a place for it. Depending on that time and place, idioms, cliches and euphemisms can make very little sense (married to the sea, but sleeping with the fishes in Davy Jones' locker?) It's why plain English works best for mainstream publications.

If a sentence is ambiguous about what "it" is, it's just a matter of moving a word or calling it by noun or name. Same as anywhere. As for the sexism, I think it's marginally worse to say ships can't be women, but not nearly as bad as saying women can't be ships. About as silly as the manhole problem, though. InedibleHulk (talk) 16:18, June 29, 2014 (UTC)

Substituting "it" for "she" will inevitably lead to less clarity and more ambiguity in text, thus causing more difficulty and confusion for the reader. It's user-unfriendly. Gatoclass (talk) 04:19, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Do you have an example sentence where this would be true? I'm not seeing it, for instance, in HMCS Victoria (SSK 876). "It was named for...", "it was purchased from...", "it was the focus of...". All very straighforward, and leaves no doubt that we're talking about an inanimate object, not a female. InedibleHulk (talk) 15:34, June 30, 2014 (UTC)

• Support The current practice is old-fashioned, does not follow modern sources, and is blatantly sexist. I know guys who call their car or their motor-bike "she" and it's always a particular sort of guy. As a modern encyclopaedia we should not attempt to imbue metal objects with grammatical femininity. --John (talk) 16:09, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose, for the present. Undoubtedly, common usage is moving towards 'it', but it is not there yet. External MOSs are not the same as common usage, and to some degree drive change - WP should not be on bandwagons. I believe that the common usage outside maritime circles is still mixed, if evolving. I would be happy, however, for WP:MOS to express a preference for neuter pronouns, though otherwise remain unaltered. (Sticks in the craw though. Davidships (talk) 16:19, 29 June 2014 (UTC))
• Strong Oppose This appears to be the latest, in a seemingly never ending effort by the political correctness police to regulate language in a manner conducive to their world view. It brings to mind the old witticism "the voting will continue until the desired result is obtained." The existing guidelines are more than adequate in dealing with the controversy. For my own part the only thing I find offensive is the the lack of tolerance on the part of the PC pushers for tradition and cultural idiosyncrasies. The barely disguised contempt for the customs and language of "seamen, sailors and maritime enthusiasts" that I read above is profoundly disturbing. Out of curiosity, who do you think is contributing the vast bulk of ship related articles and content on Wikipedia? Further the suggestion that the use of gender specific pronouns is something traceable to the British Navy is risible. Many other countries and languages also use gender specific pronouns. In Russian, ships are almost always considered male and referred to as "He." There are historical records indicating the custom as far back as antiquity. -Ad Orientem (talk) 16:37, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
  • (Striking my earlier comment which in hindsight appears intemperate and excessively strident. I remain opposed however to any attempt to impose a politically correct speech code on Wikipedia. The day may come when there is some consensus to that end. However based on the many more thoughtful dissenting comments posted below, that day is clearly a ways off. -Ad Orientem (talk) 18:34, 2 July 2014 (UTC))
  • Do you speak Russian? --John (talk) 16:43, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

• No, but I have friends and relations who do. The use of the male pronoun in Russian when referring to ships is fairly common knowledge in the maritime community. -Ad Orientem (talk) 16:49, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

• Oh indeed, I am not disputing that; I read it in Tom Clancy and I have no reason to doubt it. The thing is that Russian, like German and French, uses grammatical gender, which English does not. I do not speak Russian, but in French it would be correct and indeed mandatory to say "Ma voiture, elle est en panne." (My car, she is broken down) because the noun "voiture" (car) is a feminine one. So in Russian, calling a ship "he" may not be that unusual. In English, it is, in fact I think it is unique as we do not normally employ grammatical gender at all. You are still free to oppose this proposal of course, but the Russian comparison isn't a very compelling rationale on the English Wikipedia, in my opinion. --John (talk) 16:58, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Hmmm. That's an interesting point. In the case of French and some of the other Romance Languages we may be talking about a language trait that is Latin based. Russian of course, is not a Latin based language, though that doesn't invalidate your point. I don't know enough about the nature of Russian pronouns to answer your comment, but I am going to ask some questions from people who are a bit more knowledgeable on the subject. Good catch! Broadly speaking though my oppose still stands. This is still another example of political correctness run amok. -Ad Orientem (talk) 17:23, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Nothing to do with that, here. Ships just don't have genders. It's a strange custom practiced by a minority group. If I was trying to be politically correct, I'd tolerate it. InedibleHulk (talk) 18:04, June 29, 2014 (UTC)

• • @Ad Orientem: I'm not really sure how you get to the conclusion that my comment above displays "barely disguised contempt" for sailors and maritime experts (enthusiasts was your term). You then suggest yourself that the ship editor population stems from this group – advising editors who are sailors and maritime experts to write for a non-specialist audience isn't insulting, it's what demanded by our shared manual of style. SFB 19:22, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
    • I tried not to bristle at that one too. I am not big-headed enough to call myself a ship "expert" but I have several dozen books on my shelf about naval history and I recognise editors here whose work I have helped copyedit or review for FA. Although I am against the current MoS and support the proposal to change it, I have done a lot of work across the project to enforce the current status quo. It is extremely common on quite developed ship articles to find a mixture of "it", "she", "its" and "her", which someone like me has to patiently regularise. It really isn't fair to characterise this discussion as being ship experts vs MoS geeks. The "only words" argument is true but it cuts both ways; the real thing for our readers is consistency within an article and ideally across the project regarding usage. The current status quo does not ensure that. --John (talk) 19:58, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
• The barely disguised contempt for the customs and language of "seamen, sailors and maritime enthusiasts" that I read above is profoundly disturbing. Out of curiosity, who do you think is contributing the vast bulk of ship related articles and content on Wikipedia? Very well put Ad Orientum. To that one might add - who is likely to constitute the vast bulk of the readership for these articles? Surely it must also be maritime enthusiasts - and which convention would they be likely to prefer? Gatoclass (talk) 04:47, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Support: Though I'm female and I don't view using female pronouns for ships, cars or any other vehicle as sexist (I don't necessarily see anything wrong with a boy or man who does, but rather usually see it as them following tradition or wording something in a way they grew up hearing), I've found it jarring and odd when coming across it (unless in relation to sailors or sailing...in a way that seems appropriate, such as in a fictional story); I think I first came across it on Wikipedia at the Titanic (1997 film) article. And as can be seen, it's not currently used there. I would have replied earlier the previous hour, but I went looking into the Titanic (1997 film) edit history to see if I could find one of the couple of times that an editor attempted to use female pronouns for the RMS Titanic (for example, an editor once added such language to the lead), but I couldn't find a diff-link during my brief search; I'm not sure what years one or two editors attempted such wording, or what edit summary to look for to help locate an example, but I could have sworn it has not been too long since such wording was attempted there. Flyer22 (talk) 17:32, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Strong oppose: Mainstream sources may be becoming more politically correct, but that's certainly not true in actual naval histories where you see generally see a mix of usages like those that Tony mentions above. Honestly don't care if any editor or reader is offended because there's no genuine context to be offended by; people need to take ownership over their own biases, prejudices and triggers. Please see the George Carlin routine "They're only words" for guidance.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 18:36, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Support. Wikipedia is a generalist publication intended for a generalist audience. It seems clear that the dominant style among other generalist publications (newspapers, for example) overwhelmingly use the neuter pronoun when referring to ships. I don't have any strong feelings about 'she' being politically incorrect (whether sexist, imperialist, or something else). Rather it seems slightly archaic and likely to cause minor confusion among readers not familiar with the specialist terminology. Pburka (talk) 20:13, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

• STRONGEST POSSIBLE OPPOSE per WP:SHE4SHIPS. Editors who write ship articles are at liberty to use the neuter pronoun should they wish, or the feminine (or masculine if writing about Russian vessels). Machinery has been female since time immemorial. No need to change for the politically correct brigade. Mjroots (talk) 20:45, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

  Citing the MOS in a discussion about changing the MOS is an odd argument. Are you claiming that Wikipedia editors can never change the MOS? Pburka (talk) 20:51, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

  • @Pburka: No, consensus can change. I was pointing out that this had been discussed before and that there was a relevant section in the MOS dealing with this issue. 06:58, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

  Citing the MOS in a discussion about changing the MOS is an odd argument. Also is (or masculine if writing about Russian vessels) intended to be humorous? --John (talk) 21:07, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

  • @John: No, my comment about Russian vessels was serious. Should a Russian editor with a good level of English write an article on a Russian vessel using the masculine gender, that would be acceptable. I would defend that style against any attempt to change to the neuter or feminine gender. Mjroots (talk) 06:58, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

    • I see. Would you accept "she" for a car from a French speaker with a good level of English? Would you accept "it" for a prominent female politician, from a Setswana speaker with a good level of English? Would you accept "her moved" instead of "she moved" from a Basque speaker with a good level of English? How far would you want to take this? --John (talk) 08:12, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

We wouldn't have to change it. "As with all optional styles, articles should not be changed from one style to another unless there is a substantial reason to do so." Of course, both sides have substantial reasons here, so there might be a practical problem, but it's all "legal".

Whether it jives with "Avoid ambiguity, jargon, and vague or unnecessarily complex wording" is another story, if we're playing the MoS against itself. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:08, June 29, 2014 (UTC)

Isn't the purpose of this proposal to do just that? As I read it, if accepted all ship articles would be forced to use the neuter gender. Completely against well-established consensus that the issue isn't forced. Mjroots (talk) 06:58, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant notwithstanding this outcome. "She" is still ambiguous, jargony and vague. A substantial reason to switch styles. InedibleHulk (talk) 15:27, June 30, 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose Is this not just a vestige of the days when most of our nouns had gender, as other languages do? By the way, just because nouns have "gender" in other languages doesn't necessarily mean that those nouns are perceived to actually have gender (see, for example, the French word for "clitoris". It is "masculine"!). My understanding is that languages have gender because it adds a certain precision to communication. Anyone who has spoken, say, French, and, then, not used the proper pronoun will, almost inevitably, confuse the person being spoken to. Anyway, I think English has a wonderful history, and I'm not in favor of forcing its change for the sake of misunderstanding about what is and is not sexist. 173.160.49.206 (talk) 21:40, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

It may be useful to note that most non-military publications have made this change, including maritime-industry specific publications (Lloyd's was noted in a telegraph.co.uk article). Another article exists here. To keep the convention prevalent here is to yoke wikipedia to the prevalent institution that maintains the convention today: the British Navy. Sdkenned (talk) 21:54, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose mandating this in MOS; the MOS says "use she or it, but be consistent within the article", and this is entirely in keeping with how I see both specialist and generalist writing and speech doing it. The neuter form may be growing in relative popularity, but there's a lot of "she" still around, with both forms often used interchangeably by the same person.

Demanding our editors not use a form that is still widespread is an unusually heavy-handed and prescriptive use of the manual of style; I don't see what benefit the readers would get from it. I am also somewhat unconvinced by the claim that this is solely a British (and solely naval) thing being imposed on other maritime contexts. Andrew Gray (talk) 22:16, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

• Support. Wikipedia should avoid eccentricity in its use of language. Mainstream 21st century English usage is to avoid using gendered pronouns for things that do not have an inherent gender. You can regret that if you like, but unless you can mount an argument that it isn't true then I think you've failed to make any sort of case that Wikipedia shouldn't just do what is done generally.

It is true that "it's sexist", while a valid opinion, is a weak argument here on its own. But I think it is worse still to argue on the basis of resisting "political correctness". That really ought to be discounted as completely invalid. I don't really know, but I do find it plausible that the back-story to all this is a battle between feminists and people who write letters to the Daily Telegraph, ending twenty years ago with a victory to the feminists. But whether you think that was the right outcome or not is irrelevant now, so long as it was the outcome. Personally, I was never much of a fan of the Harrying of the North, but I've long since given up objecting to the use of English words with a Norman French origin on Leeds street signs. Formerip (talk) 22:17, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

I simply don't agree with the position that "mainstream English usage" is to predominantly and deliberately use "it". It may be more common than "she" - sixty-forty, perhaps - but I firmly believe that overall, the language accepts both as valid uses in the same way it accepts serial and non-serial commas as valid uses. (As an aside, I work in an environment where we frequently discuss ships - and pretty much everyone I encounter doesn't even think about what form they use, using either as it seems natural. I'm pretty sure I've seen both on documents. Tempted to keep a one-week tally now...)

Perhaps this is best seen as a dialect use - but our answer to other local or contextual quirks is to permit them but encourage internal consistency. Why are we so keen to shut this one down and mandate it not be used? Andrew Gray (talk) 22:32, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure if "dialect" is the right term, but Wikipedia normally allows, with some exceptions, for different national varieties of English. It doesn't normally allow us to use dialect. I can't recall when I last heard "she" for a ship anywhere. Maybe it's different if your work is to do with ships, but I think 60-40 has to be wildly optimistic. In any case, what matters is not everyday usage but usage in published English, where I think it is very hard to deny that "she" has become marginal at best. Maybe it retains some sort of sub-cultural currency, I don't know, but that also is not what's relevant for us. Formerip (talk) 23:03, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose Nobody has shown that readers are truly insulted, nor has it been shown that this is sexist. Quaint and old fashioned maybe but English WP should reflect English usage of the real world which allows both "she" and "it" (and occasionally "he"). This is political correctness where it is not needed.  Stepho  talk  23:05, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

• Occasionally he? --John (talk) 23:30, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

• German Battleship Bismarck is a male ship, and is sometimes referred to as male in English literature. His crew also referred to Bismarck as masculine, however this relates to the German language, not English. --benlisquare_T•C•E 05:00, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

• You seem confused. Our article refers to the ship as "she". Are you for or against this? I have read hundreds of books on naval matters in English and I have never seen one that uses "he" to refer to ships. If you genuinely have, can you name one? --John (talk) 07:47, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Theodore Tugboat is a dude. InedibleHulk (talk) 13:06, July 2, 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose in general, but let's have some common sense exceptions too. If I'm talking about a ship from the turn of the 20th century, I'm probably going to use "her". If I'm talking about, say, the Exxon Valdez, it's going to be "it". We should use the language that the sources that document the ship typically use, and as noted more often ships are gender neutral, but they weren't always. --MASEM (t) 23:13, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

  When writing about the Santa María, do you recommend 15th century Spanish or 15th century English? Using the vernacular of the era is clearly an undesirable policy. Pburka (talk) 23:45, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

  What would be the difference, once we're talking the English language version? Spot checks show that that ship was still a "she". And we use this type of decision making all the time in considering articles that have potential national ties, we'd consider which approach to use, I see no reason that we allow the era of a ship to decide this. Of course, if it's not readily clear, I'd accept defaulting to "it". --MASEM (t) 00:08, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

• Comment. I don't buy either the argument that "she" is sexist (what is the insult supposed to be?) nor that "it" is "political correctness run amok"—in everyday speech the vast majority of speakers use "it" and find "she" stands out as an affectation (this tendency is reflected in the cited style guides). As Wikipedia aims at a general audience, I think editors should think long and hard before using "she" for ships, but I'm not sure mandating it is the most effective solution—it's aggressive and breeds ill will. I'd prefer to see a wording that prefers "it" to "she", and I think over time "she" will fade on its own—as Flyer22 has pointed out, it has already disappeared from Titanic without a fight. For example: Ships should be referred to using neutral forms ("it", "its"); feminine forms ("she", "her", "hers") are acceptable, though becoming less so in common usage. Each article should be internally consistent and employ one or the other exclusively. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 00:25, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose Per Sturmvogel and Mjroots, as well as opposition to adding yet another rule. Using she or it should be up to the writers. Besides, how many times are going to discuss this exact topic? Give it a rest. Manxruler (talk) 11:56, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose Talk sense and talk English. Treat rules with enough respect to reserve them for constructive functions. If persons whose literacy is so limited that they want to insist on forbidding verbal modes unfamiliar to themselves, defining English as being nothing but what their mommies read to them, as the inevitable speech of the future and the natural speech of the present and the speech that the past yearned for, then let them first tidy up Chaucer, Shakespeare, Swift, Dodgson, Galton, Maxwell, Kingsley, Twain, de Hartog, and Tolkien among a few hundred others, after which they can come back and show us how silly we must be to use figures of speech unfamiliar to them and that therefore must be unfamiliar to everyone else as well and accordingly rightly doomed. JonRichfield (talk) 19:27, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose: Wikipedia is not the place to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. If there is an injustice in the world, attempts to solve it should begin elsewhere. Wikipedia only follows the accepted usages in pre-existing literature. --benlisquare_T•C•E 04:22, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose I've been up for damn near 22 hours, and can hardly see the the screen clearly, yet alone think clearly, but I for one see no reason forcible remove an option for female pronouns just to observe a politically correct position. On top of that observation, morale is an factor here too: the less wiggle room people have to get creative in the articles here the greater the odds are that they will stop editing or worse retire. That doesn't work to anyone's advantage, says I. TomStar81 (Talk) 06:58, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

...And as an added point I have to wonder why Sdkenned a user who has maybe fifty edits on his contribution history has suddenly opted to start a MoS changing drive. I mean no offense here, but unto my experience that kind of behavior is usually the sign of a sock puppet. Food for thought. TomStar81 (Talk) 07:05, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose, vehemently!. Feminine pronouns for ships are traditional English usage. Neuter pronouns are obviously more logical and correcting them may not always be warranted, but any attempt to label them as "preferred", let alone to mandate them, should be rejected as a nonsensical bit of political correctness. Pashley (talk) 14:44, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

A much gentler proposal

Politically, that proposal was dead in the water before it began, and has immensely damaged the cause of a more modern approach. I can't imagine why you thought it had any chance, and yes, the luddite males are out in full force, SHOUTING their anger. [But I do find the shouting offensive.] Tony (talk) 09:11, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Aside from the retro-problem of instantly rendering hundreds of articles non-compliant, a more gradual move would stand a greater chance of success, and <sigh> would be more inclusive. It would go in the right direction, given the urgency of the gender issue on WMF sites.

A

Whether ships should be referred to using gender-neutral pronouns ("it", "its") or feminine pronouns ("she", "her", "hers") is a matter of controversy disagreement on Wikipedia. The gender-neutral form is preferred, though both forms are acceptable. Editors should not change the form in existing articles without consensus on the talkpage.

• Support as proposer. Tony (talk) 03:49, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
• Comment: I support the spirit but not the letter—"controversy" is drama-talk. I'm also fairly confident that a natural switch to neuter pronouns is merely a matter of time, but one that will be impeded by giving people the idea they should be choosing sides in the melodrama "controversy".

  I don't mind replacing "controversy" with "disagreement"; would that meet with your approval? Tony (talk) 06:59, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

  I'd accept "disagreement". Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 07:30, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

• Support either. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 08:01, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Actually, I can't support. The disagreement is not between the two---nobody claims the neuter is unacceptable, or that the feminine should be preferred. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 08:51, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
    • I'm very confused, now. Tony (talk) 09:11, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
      • Whether the neuter is acceptable or not is not disputed. The dispute is entirely over the acceptability of the feminine—whether it's equally acceptable as, or less acceptable than, the neuter, but definitely not if it's more acceptable than the neuter. We should have a wording that tells us the neuter is the default, while the feminine is an acceptable alternative—at least until it ceases to be accaptable, a day that's well on its way. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 22:22, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
        • I'd say the feminine, as the traditional English usage, is obviously acceptable. Whether the more logical neuter is also acceptable is subject to debate. I'd say 'yes' but consider any suggestion that it be preferred absurd. Pashley (talk) 14:59, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose - Preferred will only embolden the "preferred" party to try and impose their preference, leading to wikidrama. Also, it's a slippery slope. Gatoclass (talk) 08:14, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose, echoing Gatoclass' thoughts. InedibleHulk (talk) 15:39, June 30, 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose: Acts as a springboard for partisan activists to wedge their influence into articles. Activist movements have always occurred in gradual increments, and there is no reason to assume that this won't be an exception. --benlisquare_T•C•E 04:31, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

B

Wikipedia and common usage prefer gender-neutral pronouns ("it", "its") to refer to ships; feminine pronouns ("she", "her", "hers") are acceptable but not recommended. Each article should be internally consistent and employ one or the other exclusively. Editors should not change the form in existing articles without consensus on the talkpage.

Wikipedia will see a turnover of editors over the years, and wikiusage will gradually—inevitably—gravitate toward what layfolk and styleguides already prefer. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 04:36, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose - per my response to proposal A. Gatoclass (talk) 04:55, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

  So we can take that as a support for A, which doesn't have the "not recommended" wording? Tony (talk) 06:57, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

I altered my post above to clarify the meaning. Gatoclass (talk) 08:32, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Support - in spite of being called a Luddite. 'controversy' is the correct term because some editors will kick up a fuss no matter which way to set the guideline and this proposal allows some common sense choices without demanding an either/or situation. It has a nice parallel to WP:ENGVAR's first editor's choice principle.  Stepho  talk  05:46, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

So will we slap "controversial" on ENGVAR itself, gender-neutral language, and other guidelines that are far more heatedly debated, then? "Controversial" does nothing more than polarize and create unneeded drama, and will guarantee this issue will be debated ad nauseam. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 06:14, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Question. What the <redacted> <redacted> does "given the urgency of the gender issue on WMF sites" mean? I have an opinion, but I want to know what is going on here. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 06:20, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Comment I am appalled by the aggressive wording of this so called "much gentler proposal", referring to people who object as "luddite males are out in full force, SHOUTING their anger". Please withdraw these offensive comments, which seem designed to enflame the debate.Nigel Ish (talk) 06:39, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Arthur and Nigel: I hope you'll support or oppose based on the wordings alone, not the local social context. Tony (talk) 07:01, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

The "local social context" here at talk:MoS with the continual attacks on editors who disagree with the party line together with the typical "win at all costs" mentality exhibited by the MoS regulars (not just on this discussion), which I find is far more damaging to inclusivity than what pronouns to use means I will not comment on the proposal itself.Nigel Ish (talk) 08:47, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps you'd like to bow out of the process, then; but if you want to contribute constructively to the debate over the wordings, you'd be most welcome. Tony (talk) 09:01, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm afraid that the "local social context" affects how these wordings in the MoS would be interpreted, so, yes, I do need to know what it is before I can comment sensibly. Without knowing the context, I would strongly oppose B, but be neutral on A; however, I see A as significantly different from the status quote, so John's comment that "A merely reiterates the status quo" suggests that I may be misinterpreting either the status quo or A. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 13:13, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Why should we ignore "local social context" in regards of "luddite males out in full force", but not while fishing for some unspecified insult in the use of "she"? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:32, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

An excellent point, Nigel, but perhaps the best response is Don't feed the troll. Pashley (talk) 15:06, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose both - let the status quo remain, leaving the choice to those who actually write the articles. Mjroots (talk) 07:08, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
• Suppport A, as already indicated under the previous proposal above ('disagreement' preferred). I think it gives sufficient flexibility; 'B' goes too far in painting editors into a corner. Davidships (talk) 07:24, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
• Support B as A merely reiterates the status quo. MoS should make recommendations with a view to consistency to reduce reader confusion. She for ships is Victorian; it reminds me of a really old history book I had at school that referred to Russia, France and Austria-Hungary as "she", and also of finding and removing instances where editors have extended the "she" to include aircraft and spacecraft. Language changes and we as a tertiary resource should reflect that. Harping on about "political correctness" makes you sound like Alan Partridge. --John (talk) 09:28, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

  John, A is a change in the status quo, centring on the word "preferred". It is the weakest expression of the world as it has been changing around us in this respect; in compensatory measures given the inevitable resistance from older anglo-saxon men here, it spells out protection for those who feel strongly attached to the sexist usage. The typical armoury of of pleadings against even a generalised encouragement of gender-neutral language is on display right now: it includes the "slippery slope" argument against change, and the "who says it causes offence" argument. We haven't yet seen the "ain't broke so don't fix it" one, but it will appear sooner or later. The proscription of changing existing articles (and even newly started articles that already use the sexist form) remains, clearly spelled out. Many of us would ban the sexist form altogether, except in quotations, of course; but compromise we must. Tony (talk) 14:27, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose both. It's a slippery slope, and just the first step in removing choice from the editors. Manxruler (talk) 12:04, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

  And I strongly resent being labelled "sexist". Manxruler (talk) 14:50, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

  I am being a little provocative here, but it's the manner in which I'd discuss it anywhere. At least it prepares you for the criticism that might be levelled more generally. At the same time, I apologise for appearing to be personal. Tony (talk) 15:08, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

  What do you mean by "the criticism that might be levelled more generally"? From whom would such criticism come? We're supposed to be civil and show good faith, which isn't the same as making assumptions of sexism with regards to using she/her in connection with ships. Manxruler (talk) 15:25, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Inquiry: While any 'forward progress' towards the standard international language convention is desirable here, I wonder what the unwillingness of the greater interested community from releasing their hold on their use of an archaic custom means for English language wikipedia and perhaps the English language itself as an 'international language'. I would think passionate English language users would be more willing to 'internationalize' their language (in other words, modify objectionable customs in favor of maximizing international use/acceptability/agreeableness). Is not this dispute here (and the apparent outcome) at WP:MOS an example of an instance where the English language is failing as an international language? Sdkenned (talk) 15:18, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose both - for a number of reasons; this discussion has already taken place before, removes choice from editors, others mentioned above. As an aside for the proponents of the changes, do they intend to go through all the ship articles and change the words if it passes or are they going to sit here and make the vast majority of ship editors change it for them so their sensibilities are not insulted? If they do win here, hopefully they will back up their demands with action. Foxxraven (talk) 15:39, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

I'd fix ten. InedibleHulk (talk) 15:41, June 30, 2014 (UTC)

Foxxraven, I wonder whether you might re-read both proposed texts. In particular, A says: "... both forms are acceptable. Editors should not change the form in existing articles without consensus on the talkpage." I'm confused about your comment in relation to this clear statement. Tony (talk) 16:47, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

How long before that gets changed if this passes? How long before highly visible articles like RMS Titanic are forced to change their pronouns. That is why I asked if those like you who are demanding the change are willing to go through the articles and change them? From your edit history you do not edit a great many ship articles, so I assume this is some kind of personal crusade of yours. To each their own, but all I ask is for you to, and forgive the colloquialism here, "put up or shut up" should the decision go your way.

You're asking him to "put up or shut up" when he's explicitly telling you no changes to articles are being proposed? Tony, are you willing and able to do absolutely nothing, or is that too much to ask you and your busy schedule? Will you need help? Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 22:33, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Curly, I've no intention of changing any gendered usage in ship articles. Never have, I don't think. I've looked at a couple for a friend, and found the pronoun (was it "she" or "it", I can't remember) was overused, and rotated it a little with "the ship" and [ship's name], just to break up the density of pronoun refs. That much is style over and above the choice of gender or non-gender. The unsigned comment above: I've proposed a very gentle reform that spells out that existing usage should not be changed without local talkpage consensus. It's current practice anyway. What more can I do? And it wouldn't be me doing it; it could be someone else. Just let me know and I'll come in and support the proper process without bias (as any editor should). Tony (talk) 09:03, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

• Strongly Oppose B. Support A provided that restoring the status quo is an option when further changes are discussed. "A", as written, seems reasonable, but there is a agenda presented by those who perceive sexism where no one with even a minimal understanding of English should. (I think that we need a guideline WP:RIGHTSMALLWRONGS (essentially, WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS, with the additional note that the perceived "wrong" is not perceived as important (not to mention "wrong") by hardly anybody.) That agenda should be opposed by all sensible people. I still want to know what "the urgency of the gender issue on WMF sites" and the "social context" here mean, as it affects how the guideline will be applied, regardless (or perhaps even independent) of how it is written. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 20:50, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Do your homework please Arthur. Here is someone who did, although they seem to have reached rather a poor conclusion. Along with your proposal, maybe we should have WP:READTHESOURCES. I suppose WP:CIR is as close as we have. --John (talk) 20:58, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
    • I don't see anyone at The Daily Telegraph who considered it important. At least in that article, only those who want to retain "she" considered it important. So, yes, WP:RIGHTSMALLWRONGS seems appropriate. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 22:35, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose both. The "gender-neutral form" is not preferred, nor should feminine pronounds be "not recommended". (What, is there a war on feminine pronouns? Should we ban all feminine pronouns? Should WP engage in a grand project to make English entirely sexless?) ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:25, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
  • I think the proposal is to restrict feminine pronouns to things that are actually, you know, feminine? Ships are not, and English does not generally use grammatical gender. --John (talk) 21:31, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Should we burn all strawmen? Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 22:14, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
    • With fire. --John (talk) 09:53, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
  • Banning feminine pronouns would solve the problem of the second paragraph of MOS:IDENTITY. In fact, it is probably the only way to solve the problem which wouldn't result in editors being indefinitely blocked. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 09:12, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose both. The fact that some people are offended by the very concept of gender is no reason to remove it from articles... Just make sure the article is internally consistent, and let the writers use their own style/vocab... Simon Burchell (talk) 09:29, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
  • @Simon Burchell: And in which proposal was it that said anything was to be removed from any article? Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 09:51, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Comment It's hard to know where to post in this long discussion, so I'll hedge my bets and just go for the bottom of the votes. I have only one observation to make; I notice that the Lloyds article has been referred to rather a lot as an example of the declining use of the feminine pronoun. On the other hand, near the bottom of that article, the Royal Navy are quite categoric that they will continue to use 'she' or 'her'. So are the BMF.

If you visit the websites of the US Navy, the Royal Australian Navy, the Royal Canadian Navy, The US Coastguard, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs and the Marine Coastguard Agency, Cunard Cruises, P&O Cruises (indeed all of the Carnival Cruise companies it appears), Brittany Ferries, Stena Line, Portsmouth Historic Dockyard and the National Maritime Museum, to name but a few examples, you'll find they use female pronouns extensively in their literature, press releases and other material online.

Equally, I'm sure there are a lot of companies that don't use feminine pronouns. My point is that if we are to look to common usage outside of Wikipedia, there are a lot more examples than just the Telegraph article. Ranger Steve ^Talk 16:03, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Indeed. And this illustrates well my point that common usage currently encompasses 'it' and 'she' in significant proportions in both maritime and general contexts and that WP should find the right internal guidance to respect and reflect that. Davidships (talk) 22:45, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

While we're at it, "served" or "was used"?

Just noticed that changing "she" to "it" would make "It served in the Theoretical War" sound odder. Serving needs willfull intention, doesn't it? The people on the ship serve their government, and the ship serves as transport/weaponry, but it's just a conscienceless tool. If we ban "she", should we treat it as such; "was used", "was deployed", "was captained"?

And does it "see" battle? InedibleHulk (talk) 17:28, June 30, 2014 (UTC)

Books "see" print. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 21:20, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Years "see" events, in print. It's all rather troubling. Why didn't 1888 go to Scotland Yard and settle the Ripper thing? History loves a mystery, I guess. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:59, June 30, 2014 (UTC)

Is this argument supposed to be going somewhere? Seriously, there is no credible argument against these usages of "see" or "serve", and calling a ship a "she" makes it no less an inanimate object, so your argument would apply whether the pronoun were changed or not. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 22:27, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

I just tend to agree with the part of the MoS that says "If a literal interpretation of a phrase makes no sense in the context of a sentence, it should be reworded." Maybe that should be reworded, if "she" isn't. It still sounds odd saying "she served", just odder saying "it served". InedibleHulk (talk) 22:36, June 30, 2014 (UTC)

I tend to agree with the Oxford Concise, which gives as its fourth definition of "serve": be of use in achieving something or fulfilling a purpose. Even literally the usage is correct. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 22:42, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Fair enough. Though still a tad ambiguous, in a military context. Like saying a doctor has patience. I wave my white flag in this battle, but the "see" war will rise again! Maybe. Not a huge deal. InedibleHulk (talk) 01:50, July 1, 2014 (UTC)

I don't buy any of that. Figures of speech are fine as long as they suit the context. I am reminded of what Bierce wrote: "RAREBIT, n. A Welsh rabbit, in the speech of the humorless, who point out that it is not a rabbit. To whom it may be solemnly explained that the comestible known as toad-in-a-hole is really not a toad, and that..." And why should serving require willful (ahem!) intention? Ask any conscript or hatch. And to say that the shipping container served us as a shelter is as clear and less passive than that it "was employed" as our home. And if you want to know about ships called "he", read "Masterman Ready". And once you get to other languages than English, particularly those that that employ genders more intensively, you will find far more assorted genders and personifications in common speech than those that serve us in English. JonRichfield (talk) 18:58, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

I love looking at different languages. For English Wikipedia, English will do. The one I hate is having a section called Fate as though we lived in a predetermined universe. --John (talk) 19:06, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

That'd be a fun eternal argument, trying to prove we don't. Support fate here, for what it's worth. InedibleHulk (talk) 19:16, June 30, 2014 (UTC)

Figures of speech are WP:IDIOMS. Depending on the reader's background, the rhetoric can be wasted or confusing. Plain English works best. I'm absolutely fine with saying an object "serves as" something, like shelter or table. And a meal can "serve eight". But in a military context, service requires obedience, and obedience needs a brain. Even those who were drafted had a choice whether to serve, it was just often a lot harder than a volunteer's. Ships have no will.

I'm also absolutely fine with other languages doing whatever. Thanks for teaching me what a toad-in-the-hole is. And a comestible. InedibleHulk (talk) 19:14, June 30, 2014 (UTC)

John's summary

• Current practice is to permit the use of "she" for ships (though not "he" as some seem to think).
• There are plenty of sources that consider this usage as archaic, anthropomorphic or just plain silly.
• Nobody really knows where this custom originates. The Daily Telegraph reported in 2002 that Lloyd's List had abandoned this practice in favour of using "it".
• English does not generally use grammatical gender, unlike many other European languages. "She" was formerly used to describe countries, the moon, the human soul and various other non-living entities. This is no longer done except for poetical effect.
• Some of the "explanations" and defences for the remaining use of this terminology are cringe-makingly sexist.
• Wikipedia does not embrace archaic forms, sexism, or poetic/rhetorical language. --John (talk) 08:16, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

As you mention, in English and American, nouns do not have gender, and it is arguable whether pronouns do or not. This is unlike most Indo-European languages, barco would be male; navire would be female or Schiff would be neuter. English therefore depends upon common usage (AKA tradition) to select a pronoun to substitute for a noun. In this case, ship=her. --Lineagegeek (talk) 23:09, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Why does the "executive summary" summarise only one side of the discussion?  Stepho  talk  09:22, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

• Hmm. There was so little of substance it was hard to summarize. I'll try.
  • Proponents of the "she" usage argue that to change it to reflect modern sources would be "political correctness"
  • There's a lot of misunderstanding about how the English language deals with pronouns; several people have argued that we should get rid of female pronouns completely. It is hard to tell if they are being satirical or just plain ignorant.
  • Tradition, tradition, tradition.
  • We have seen a couple of people trot out the slippery slope argument; while it's one of my favourite logical fallacies, it isn't clear what they think the terrible consequence will be here.
  • Some people are against the very idea of having a Manual of Style
  • It's been stated that nobody arguing to change the MoS ever has done, or ever will do, work on ship articles. While that fails the most elementary factual inspection, it seems a popular meme here. --John (talk) 09:49, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Response to your judgement

• All I asked was that the proponents of the changes not go around afterward demanding changes on existing ship articles without helping change them. You know as well as I do John that if these changes pass, then highly visible (FA articles being nominated and past FA articles) or highly visible ships such as the Costa Concordia and Titanic, will be asked to change their pronouns. That's a given. I can visibly see you and Tony frothing at the mouth waiting to make these demands, because as soon as the FA articles are such, in order to bring any other article to that level, well then, that would mean changing the pronouns. That may sound like a slippery slope argument to you, but I see it as cause and effect. One does not have to think hard about this subject in order to see the eventual outcome, especially when you and Tony continue to belittle those who do not hold to your beliefs. You and Tony intend to get your way and no doubt you will, since eventually those of us who do not want to deal with wikidrama on a daily basis will eventually stop showing up to fight this. So once again, all I ask, in fairness to the change, is that you, Tony and Curly (since you too seem to make time out of your day to belittle) take the time to work on those ship articles that will no doubt be asked to change in the future should you win. It's not a rude demand, it's just a fair share of the work. Inedible Hulk said they'd change ten. Can you make a similiar promise or are you the kind of person who storms into a room, demands change, and then walks out when the work has to be done to affect that change? I wish you a nice day. Foxxraven (talk) 14:20, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

That's not a summary of the views of those opposed to the first proposal or favouring at least one of the "softer" proposals - it's just a cynical poke and serves no useful function. In particular, you completely ignore the views of those who believe that, although common usage is moving in the direction of neuter, use of female pronouns is still in practice (and not just in maritime circles) quite widespread, at least in England. And the first part even introduces a silly link, rightly not mentioned by anyone in the discussion. Davidships (talk) 11:32, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

This whole thread is clearly serving no useful function. The executive summary is most clearly "some think 'she' for ships is archaic and we should use 'it'. Others do not think 'she' for ships is archaic". The greatest outcome for readers would be if we all stopped reading and arguing on this page and went off to do something actually productive. The potential reader gains via this proposal have already been lost by the editor time spent in this discussion. SFB 16:25, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

A linguistic perspective on ships and gender

I learned of this discussion through the note on WikiProject Linguistics' talk page, so I thought I'd share the reasons people started using "she" for ships. Or at least, the reasons according Guy Deutscher in his book Through the Language Glass, pp.205-208.

In a nutshell, Deutscher says that "she" for ships is a remnant of the gender system in Old English. Until the 11th century, there were three genders in English, just like the current German system. The genders were highly irregular, also much like they are in modern French or German; you couldn't tell just by looking at something what grammatical gender it had.

The reason ships were a "she" in Old English, rather than a "he" or an "it", may have been quite arbitary. Deutscher thinks that most gender systems start out perfectly logically, extending from generic nouns in the language. Quoting: There are a few languages, especially in Africa, in which the feminine gender marker looks rather like a shortened version of the noun 'woman' itself, and the inanimate gender marker resembles the noun 'thing'. Likewise, the vegetable gender marker in some Australian languages looks rather similar to the noun... 'vegetable'.

However, over time, new words come into the language, and they need to be assigned to one gender or another. This will usually make the system less and less logical. Deutscher gives the example of how the word "aeroplane" got assigned to the "vegetable" gender in the Australian language Guragone. He hypothesises that the vegetable gender was first extended to different types of plants, including wood; wood was extended to all wooden objects, including canoes, which were originally made of wood; and canoes were extended to cover different forms of transportation. The steps are all perfectly logical, but the end result is anything but.

So, we can never really know why ships were female in Old English, but it is probably something along the lines of that process. And after the twelfth century, the gender system that had supported feminine ships started to disappear. On this, Deutscher says, The collapse of the Old English irregular genders had little to do with improving standards of sex education. The reason was rather that the gender system had critically depended on the doomed system of case endings. Originaly, English had a complex case system similar to that of Latin, where nouns and adjectives appeared with different endings depending on their role in the sentence. Nouns of different genders had different sets of such case endings, so one could tell from the endings which gender a noun belonged to. But the system of endings rapidly disintegrated in the century after the Norman Conquest, and once the endings had disappeared, the new generation of speakers hardly had any clues left to tell them which gender each noun was supposed to belong to.

The reasons that ships clung on to their gender, while other words quickly lost theirs, are not clear. However, ships weren't alone. Deutscher says that some dialects of English kept some of their words' genders until considerably later than the twelfth century. And he points to Lloyd's List's decision to switch to "it" in 2002 as the "final mooring" in the "slow but sure iticisation of English".

Whether this has any bearing or not on the current discussion is an open question, but I hope people have found this post informative. Best — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 11:02, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Literally, ships were often alone. Just like remote communities on land, it doesn't surprise me they'd be slow to assimiliate (or let their one figment of a woman go so easily). InedibleHulk (talk) 05:38, July 2, 2014 (UTC)

• One issue with this is that, in Anglo-Saxon, "scip" (for "ship") was of the neuter gender, according to Bosworth-Toller. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 11:25, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

  I stand corrected. Checking Deutscher again, he says that Lloyd's List's decision was the "final mooring" of the Old English gender system, but he doesn't outright say that ship was feminine in Old English. Not sure if that's a research error or just poetic licence. Still, that fact does make my post pretty much irrelevant to this discussion - oh well. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 15:20, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

• Yes, I've seen this explanation debunked as well on those grounds. Modern German has "das Schiff" and "das Boot" (both neuter) for ship and boat respectively. Very interesting post though. Lloyd's List's decision to switch to "it" in 2002 was the "final mooring" in the "slow but sure iticisation of English", apart from some die-hards on a free online encyclopedia, eh? --John (talk) 11:26, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
  • Could I say: grammatical gender such as our language had a looong time ago is a very different matter from gendered pronominal references like "she" for ship. It's still "the" and "a" and "this" ship, no matter what. Also, I just want to make the point that I'm not unsympathetic to the feeling that "we've always done it that way"—I can empathise, I can find the same patterns in myself on other points of language (in fact, life). It just doesn't override the need for a weak statement in MOS that doesn't tell editors how to do it. If we don't work out something this time, no hard feelings, and you can be sure it will come up again. :-) Tony (talk) 12:34, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

But Tony, "gender" for inanimate objects in other languages is not really about gender. No one actually thinks those nouns are female, male, or neuter. Gender is just a distinction that adds specificity to the language. 24.8.231.222 (talk) 13:09, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

OK, I'm going to wade in here off-topic for a moment. My comments really have nothing to do with whether ships should be called "she".

The grammatical meaning of the word "gender" is the original one. Etymologically, "gender" means "kind", more or less, and has no necessary connection with either biological sex or social roles associated with biological sex. I seem to recall that there is a language with 16 genders.

The present-day use of "gender" to mean attributes associated with biological sex was originally intended to be humorous. Its non-ironic use is a contemporary innovation. To me, an unwelcome one, but that's even further off-topic. --Trovatore (talk) 05:28, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Deutscher and a handful of studies would beg to differ with that. He argues that speakers of gendered languages actually do associate inanimate objects with masculine or feminine qualities depending on their grammatical gender. For example, in one experiment participants were asked to help to prepare for a film in which inanimate objects come to life, and they had to choose either a male or a female voice for each object. Even though the participants only saw images of the objects, and didn't see or hear their names, they tended to choose a voice corresponding to that object's grammatical gender in their language. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 15:31, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Good comments, much appreciated. Grammatical gender is quite the relevant topic here, which I recommend to all. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:29, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

It's less relevant than you think—as has already been pointed out, the use of the feminine to refer to ships does not have its origins in the old English gender system (under which scip was neuter). Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 06:12, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Why?

We have anti-Semites and holocaust denialists as well as POV pushers of every kind causing all manner of confusion and degrading the quality of this site and THIS topic is worthy of this much discussion? Will all of the boaters, sailors, and poets please weigh in and please bring this to an end. --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (Talk) 17:13, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

I suspect the popularity of many of these kinds of "teacup" issues depends on scaling, accessibility, proximity, and possible tractability. E.g., some issues are too big to grasp (Syria, the global economy), or too deep (quantum mechanics), or too distant (water supply issues in the Andes), or too frustratingly adamantine (denialism in various forms). On the other hand, issues that lack all of these hard aspects, where anyone can have an opinion without being obviously ignorant, are "just right". And easier than doing real work. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:31, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

You should have seen The Great Hyphen-Dash War (sorry if I did that wrong) or the Capital Goose Incident. Many man-hours perished. Lest we forget the woman-hours as well.

Personally, I find the whole Antisemitism thing was argued to death long ago. Now it's just a goopy pool of emotions each side flings at the other. But when I stumbled across the ship thing, it struck me that I'd never thought of it before. It was more intriguing than the stuff people constantly re-explode about on the Internet. Might be the same for the others. InedibleHulk (talk) 05:20, July 2, 2014 (UTC)

Sigh, InedibleHulk, your point is well taken. I can easily see how the rigors of debating such an explosive issue would make this discussion seem like a respite.... --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (Talk) 17:51, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Previous discussions

There has been some earlier discussion on the matter here:

• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive_114#She's a ship (18 February 2010)
• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive_128#"She" for ships (27 March 2012)
• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 140#Gender-specific pronouns referring to ships (27 May 2013)

One quote from 29 May 2013 that I found quite noteworthy is this:

"Ships which have been decommissioned and are awaiting scrapping are no longer referred to as females. They are hulks; they are dead things, and the word "it" is appropriate. This applies also to small or temporarily manned vessels, such as lifeboats, fishing boats and midget submarines, and probably tugboats as well, unless the tug is on a voyage somewhere. Ships are "she" when they are alive. Then they are the sailor's home, and they are providing nurture."

The claim that ships are referred to as female due to a "power dominance" metaphor (that ships are ridden, like women) is completely inane. To a sailor, a ship is their home away from home, and when not at port, the ship is all the sailor has to live with and use as shelter. This "imagery" of sorts is thus reflected in common and specialist English literature as a result, which leads to the usage we see here today on Wikipedia.

For people who have personalities that are easily offended, these people often actively seek expressions which they may interpret to offend them; this is known as "defensive reading". I think Stephen Fry or someone else (honestly cannot remember at this stage) stated that people will always be offended by something, and essentially anything can be seen as offensive by at least one person, and so it's essentially impossible to cater towards everyone's sensitivities. I am firmly of the belief that we should not be catering towards every single special snowflake or align the website with online social justice, and should remain using the English language as it is used in current literature. --benlisquare_T•C•E 04:51, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

For people who have personalities that are easily offended, these people often actively seek expressions which they may interpret to offend them; this is known as "defensive reading". --This point may be more meaningful in cases where the British military and its history are not involved. To attribute to an individual who objects to the injection of British military tradition into their reading (especially when, but not limited to, reading about contra-British military forces) a 'personality that is easily offended' or 'defensive reading' is to fail to consider the glaring nature and history of the murderous institution. Military organizations are fundamentally, by inalienable nature, personally offensive: they maim, kill and otherwise harm people (even when used in a strategically 'defensive' manner). That it is assumed all readers (or even most readers) of English language WP are also "of the fold" of the British military tradition is absurd, considering the expansive global success the English language has had accumulating users and the controversial history of global British military operations. Anyway, however weak the supposition that objectors to this language convention on wikipedia are 'people who are easily offended' and engaging in 'defensive reading', such comments are further weakened by the fact that they are clearly designed to invalidate the opposing party of this issue, rather than address the specifics of the position(s) taken by them.Sdkenned (talk) 18:19, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Once again, I'm slightly offended by the use of the word "hulk". They're not dead, they live forever, brother! InedibleHulk (talk) 05:23, July 2, 2014 (UTC)

Well, we don't want to get you angry. We wouldn't like you when you're angry. --Trovatore (talk) 05:45, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Don't worry. As implied the first time I was "offended" here, I'm not incredible. I'm creaking. The worst I do is make distasteful comments, and refraining from replying to the "sailors ride women" assumption means I'm still in my mild-mannered, less offensive state. InedibleHulk (talk) 06:24, July 2, 2014 (UTC)

• We are not sailors and we are not writing for sailors. I'll leave the inane ad hominems to one side and just finish by reminding you that ships are not alive, they are machines. As are aircraft, cars, motor-cycles and spacecraft, all of whom have their creepy fans who call them "she". Wikipedia does not follow this usage, so why should we for ships when mainstream literature does so less and less over time? --John (talk) 07:52, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Creepy? 24.8.231.222 (talk) 13:12, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

John said he'd "leave the inane ad hominems to one side", so it's now clear he meant his side! ;) - BilCat (talk) 13:52, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I find sexism creepy. I find people who call their car "she" really creepy, and I always have done. That's an aesthetic judgement though and does not influence my opinion that Wikipedia usage should move into the late 20th century. --John (talk) 17:48, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

• I can appreciate John's point and feel that the defacto standard should be for gender neutrality in light of "We are not sailors and we are not writing for sailors" even as much as I believe that Editors who are experts in a particular field should be editing those related articles (WP:STEWARDSHIP). But, given the long history of this tradition and the intended romanticism (versus creepiness, which certainly exists as well) that some apply to sailing vessels, I feel that we should continue to allow the gender term and not admonish anyone who chooses to use it. "She" should not be encouraged, but it should be an acceptable alternative. The issue will sort itself out over time. My 2 cents... --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (Talk) 18:02, 2 July 2014 (UTC)