Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style

See also
Wikipedia talk:Writing better articles
Wikipedia talk:Article titles
Wikipedia talk:Quotations
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/quotation and punctuation

Spot plague

Is there any MoS guidance on use of a stop to end each item in a list?

I am thinking of the See Also section of an article as an example where I am noticing a tendency to put stops at the end of each line, even with short items that are not sentences. Is there any MoS guidance on this (I have looked, but not thoroughly)? If not, should there be? (It seems to me to be an undesirable affectation.) Globbet (talk) 01:05, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Generally speaking, stops should be only used at the end of a sentence. I can see three distinct cases here:

the whole list is part of a sentence

Punctuate as if part of a sentence; e.g.

I need to remember to pack

• my toothbrush;
• my hat; and
• my ferret.

a list of sentences

Punctuate each entry as the sentence that it is; e.g.

• Feed the dog.
• Kick the cat.
• Kiss the wife.

a list of non-sentences

Don't bother punctuating; e.g.

List of VFL clubs starting with F:

• Fitzroy
• Footscray
• Fremantle
• fucking Collingwood

Hesperian 01:42, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

• It is usual in today's English to keep full stops to a minimum. For example, 50 years ago the BBC was written B.B.C., today it has no full stops. I also query the use of full stops when writing U.S. Should it not be US or better still USA as leaving off the reference to America is an arrogance that presumes that presumes there are not other united states in the world? Brenmar (talk) 06:14, 24 October 2008 (UTC) Brenmar

Dots are usually redundant; their use should be minimised. Some American writers still insist on "you dot es dot", regrettably. Tony (talk) 12:08, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

In some contexts it is easier to do a computer search for "U.S." rather than "US" because if the search is not case-sensitive, the latter is the same as the word "us". --Gerry Ashton (talk) 13:36, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

That is true, but one would search for "US" plus another item such as "health system". Hmmm ... that would yield nothing, probably—just joking; actually, it's very successful on google, with WP's articles (which use the dots in their titles) the top two of 52.4 million hits. Looks like cyberspace has caught up the the dotless way. Tony (talk) 13:49, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

MOS:DAB is specific that thou shalt not end entries with a period. For consistency, other list-like pages or sections should do the same (or else dab pages should conform to the general standard). SpinningSpark 16:09, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing that to our attention. MOSDAB has hardened into a most unfortunate bunch of silly rules; but its requirements should not make Wikipedia look stupid. We have enough articles that do that already. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:26, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

I regret seeing my learned colleague endeavor to impose Australian English on the rest of us. Please chill, Tony. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:08, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm trying to impose nothing; I support the current option to use or not use dots for "US", but encourage all editors not to use them. On the other point (below), US editors apparently object to the dots in "U.S.A", and indeed even to the use of the triple abbreviation in most instances: see MOSNUM. Tony (talk) 03:09, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

• Maybe the answer, Tony, is to refer to USA. That way makes it clear and avoids the arrogance of the Americans in thinking they are the ones with united states. Even presidential candidates call it the "United States of America" Brenmar (talk) 22:59, 24 October 2008 (UTC) Brenmar
• And the editors you refer to correctly represent idiom: U. S. but USA; nowhere is it written that idiom must be logical. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:22, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

List items are already clearly marked by bullets. Adding semicolons or periods is useless decoration, as would be adding colons to boldfaced headings. Periods should only be added as separators if the list items are mixed fragments and sentences, or short paragraphs. The same thing goes for image captions, whose nature is clearly indicated by their relationship to the image and enclosing border.

Like any functional product, typography is degraded by redundant elements, and it is not common practice to use them. —Michael Z. 2008-10-25 00:33 z

So - general agreement, as I expected, but where in the MoS maze does it say, or of it doesn't, where should it say something like 'don't clutter lists up with misguidedly prissy punctuation'? Globbet (talk) 00:03, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

I guess Wikipedia:MOS#Bulleted_and_numbered_lists has advice, but it doesn't quite conform to this concept, nor does it match prevailing use in my opinion. Also the examples in WP:LIST have no punctuation at all. —Michael Z. 2008-10-26 16:13 z

I tried fixing Wikipedia:MOS#Bulleted_and_numbered_lists to remove the unnecessary punctuation and conform to WP:LIST and common practice, after asking for comments here and posting a project-wide request for comments, but my change was reverted by Tony1. -- Beland (talk) 17:16, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I didn't see an opposing view stated here by Tony1, so I have changed the relevant section, along with some rephrasing. Our table of contents is a prime example of final punctuation being omitted for a numbered list of non-sentence elements. --Zigger «º» 04:02, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Failure to punctuate the end of list items causes them to be run together as a single sentence in some assistive technologies (primarily screen readers, as these only parse the displayed text, not the underlying HTML). Not everyone can afford more sophisticated software such as JAWS, so placing stops at the end of all list items is an important part of making Wikipedia accessible. dramatic (talk) 03:45, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Hyphens after -ly adverbs (rationalised section)

I've moved the content of the two misleadingly titled sections just above down here, so that the topic is treated in one place. Below the existing material, I've posted a more detailed explanation of why the long-standing text should not be anodysed as Anderson has done twice in the past day.

In regard to the question of using a hyphen after an -ly adverb, User:Pmanderson has just informed me that "the question of English usage ... differs between the national varieties of English." The same editor has also changed the wording of Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Hyphens, section 3, point 4. I looked for more information about the matter on this talk page, but found none. If those differences exist, what specifically are they?
-- Wavelength (talk) 05:18, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Reverted; thanks for alerting us, Wavelength. The reason for the rule is that an -ly adverb clearly flags that it will quality a subsequent verb (usually immediately after). Tony (talk) 14:27, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

This is why I quote "specially-designed sound cards", where the adverb is not qualifying a verb, but an adjective (here a participle, but it could be any adjective). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:38, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

A participle is not an adjective. Ilkali (talk) 00:42, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

'Tis where I come from, but is there anything more here than a purely verbal argument? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:07, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

The comment I replied to was predicated on classification of participles as adjectives, which is contrary to mainstream linguistic theory. If the comment in question had a point (and I can't see one), it is defeated by that fact. Ilkali (talk) 17:13, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Citation please. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:34, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

The old wording encouraged, indeed mandated, the dehyphenation of compound adjectives, such as specially-designed sound cards. These are being "corrected" by a single-purpose account, who gives little scope for the use of the hyphen here in avoiding ambiguity, and none to the difference in this respect between American and British English.

He is also finding his instances by searching on ly-. This is a recipe for bad writing; although I have to admit it could be worse; he could be using a bot.

I think nothing more is needed here than a toning down; and have done so. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:48, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Please see User:David Kernow/Internet sources re hyphens and adverbs,

which includes American, British, and Canadian sources.

(By the way, mine is not a single-purpose account, but that is irrelevant anyway.)

If "specially-designed" is a compound adjective,

then "the-quick-brown-fox" is a compound noun,

and "jumps-over" is a compound verb,

and "the-lazy-dog" is another compound noun.

If "specially designed sound cards" is ambiguous,

then a disambiguation here would be helpful,

because I can see only one possible interpretation.

-- Wavelength (talk) 22:49, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Response by Tony1: I've reverted Anderson's second attempt to dilute into meaninglessness a useful guideline in MOS that I believe has improved the readability of WP's article text. I've received a substantial email on the matter from User:Noetica, who is on an extended Wikibreak, but noticed Anderson's edits. Noetica writes:

"I subscribe to the Chicago Manual of Style online (recommended). Here is the Chicago ruling:

5.93 There are exceptions for hyphenating phrasal adjectives: (1) If the phrasal adjective follows a verb, it is usually unhyphenated—for example, compare a well-trained athlete with an athlete who is well trained. (2) When a proper name begins a phrasal adjective, the name is not hyphenated {the Monty Python school of comedy}. (3) A two-word phrasal adjective that begins with an adverb ending in ly is not hyphenated {a sharply worded reprimand} (but a not-so-sharply-worded reprimand).

Absolutely definitive, confidently prescriptive, and in accord with our long-standing text. Other guides issue much the same edict."

Anderson, please stop trying to impose your anti-centralist, do-as-you-please agenda on our style guides by anodyning its guidance bit by bit.Tony (talk) 08:10, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

In general, CMOS is a hasty piece of shorthand for writers and editors in a hurry. We are not; we can afford to be prescriptive only when English usage is without exception. (And in fact, we omit most such points, because we don't need to specify them; when English usage is genuinely without exception, it's not controversial here also.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:25, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

• I deeply regret and oppose the attitude that guidelines must be prescriptive; they can simply guide, as the other clauses in the same section do. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:28, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

• • I'm beginning to think Tony and PMA are using different definitions of "prescriptive". Perhaps they'd care to elaborate their intended meanings for the term in the above, because to my reading the CMOS quote above is more descriptive than prescriptive. LeadSongDog (talk) 20:06, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

• Also, hyphenation is here, as elsewhere, more common in British than American. CMOS is a guide to American English, and does not have WP:ENGVAR. I will try another draft. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:35, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

---

[Please do not insert comments within this post, but respond after it.-N]

PMAnderson, you flagged the guideline concerning ly-adverb modifiers as disputed. The way you did it disrupted the markup and the numeration. If you re-apply a dispute tag, check the effects of doing so. Otherwise you gratuitously blemish a page consulted by well over a thousand people a day. While you do such checking, take the time to read the section you are tinkering with. The section on hyphens includes the following proviso:

• Hyphenation involves many subtleties that cannot be covered here; the rules and examples presented above illustrate the broad principles that inform current usage.

I have not joined in discussion here for ages. Nor have I edited the page for many months, though I have been one of its most prolific editors, if the statistics are to be believed. The reason? I thought progress was impossible beyond a certain level, because editors like you, PMA, stood doggedly against MOS as a genuine corpus of guidelines. You just don't seem to be able to separate the issues. Every style guide must guide. Every style guide adopts a prescriptive tone. That is its virtue, and its reason for being. That is what people value in it, and why we get our thousand hits a day (even after allowing for the activity of MOS editors themselves). We disappoint those who come here for guidance, if we offer only bland nullities. Don't tell them this, for example: "The hyphen may be omitted after an -ly adverb"! That will license text like this: "we had a really-good time". Tell them what all major guides tell them. That's what the current text does perfectly well:

• A hyphen is not used after an -ly adverb (wholly owned subsidiary) unless part of a larger compound (a slowly-but-surely strategy).

And don't purvey such unsupported conceits as this, to a readership of one thousand a day:

• A hyphen is generally not used after an -ly adverb (wholly owned subsidiary) unless part of a larger compound (a slowly-but-surely strategy); sometimes, especially in British English, a hyphen may be used to clarify exactly what the adverb modifies.

Almost worthless. Can you even cite any authority for that assertion about British English? I have surveyed many style guides, and not one says anything like that. I don't approve of everything CMOS says, but the guides are pretty well unanimous concerning ly-adverbs and hyphens. Find one that contradicts our current guideline. In fact, ours is more complete than most, since it includes the most important kind of exception (a slowly-but-surely strategy). There are other exceptions sanctioned implicitly by some authorities; I know about them, through my extensive investigations. But you have not identified them, and you have not brought to this discussion any respected guide that so much as hints at them. Can you do that? I doubt it! And even if you could, such a source would have to be weighed against the united voice of the American CMOS, the British New Hart's Rules, and the other guides that I could cite.

If this matter did not affect the convenience of one thousand readers a day, I would have simply stayed away in graceful retirement, PMAnderson. Ever tried graceful retirement? Think it over. I thoroughly recommend it, for the new perspective and tranquillity it affords on old issues one has cared too closely about. But I cannot stand by, leaving Tony to struggle alone against such unreflective and obtuse depredations.

MOS cannot function at its best if it is not allowed to guide. It must not be a draconian imposition on editors, and it is not; but to guide, it must answer the questions that people bring to it. The thousand a day are looking for a concrete prescription, not the vapid deliverances of Desiderata.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 00:21, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes; it is part of Fowler's discussion of hyphens. (He does not prescribe for American.) The old wording, sans exceptions, is being used to justify bot-like removal of hyphens in this construct, even when they are grammatical and do add to clarity, despite the catchall sentence. When moderate wording indicating that hyphens can occur in this construction, although they normally do not, is agreed upon, the tag certainly can and should go. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:28, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

• I do not understand the claim that the tag disrupts the numbering. On my system, the only things actually numbered in WP:HYPHEN are the three main subsections, and they are numbered 1, 2, and 3. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:31, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
• I have stated the example that annoyed me, and it was not "really-good time". I am very tired of having red herrings dragged across MOS to defend it every time it says something stupid. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:36, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

PMA, the tag is designed to be placed at the top of a section, as its wording suggests. With some browsers (like recent versions of Mozilla Firefox) it interferes with the display of subsequent text if it is used irregularly. As for a really-good time, it is no red herring. You continue to avoid the issue. The wording you had proposed does not rule out such errors; the wording you attempted to replace did rule them out. That is why our MOS, along with every other major style guide, gives such a guideline. As for Fowler's, note first that it is not a style guide. Then I must ask: Which edition are you talking about? What does it say, exactly? Why should the fact that it typically does not address American English warrant our saying, to well over one thousand readers a day, anything at all about differences across the Atlantic concerning these compound ly-adverb premodifiers?

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 01:15, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the old language ruled out much that was undesirable, it also ruled out much that was desirable; that's what was wrong with it. See Type I and Type II errors. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 06:33, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I personally find adverbly-adjective constructions acceptable, but I recognise the value of conventions and adamantly object to Pmanderson's constant attempts to erode the MoS. In this case, his proposed alternative is no better than having no text at all. I am in favor of the original wording. Ilkali (talk) 00:41, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Then you agree on the point at issue. Why should we insist on something which is not English? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:12, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

If I may presume to give the obvious answer on Ilkali's behalf, he prefers this uniformity (which is a perfectly serviceable approximation for all purposes) to insisting on his own preferences. He works toward the greater good. (Many of us do that, PMA. Take note.) In this case, the greater good is a style guide that actually guides. I don't know that Ilkali accepts a really-good time and the like; but he seems to want to give hundreds of thousands of Wikipedians each year access to a ruling that will keep us from becoming a laughing stock.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 01:22, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't, of course, accept a really-good time. What I should've said is that I generally find it acceptable to hyphenate -ly adverbs with past participles, but there are probably some exceptions. Likewise, there may be instances of hyphenating with simple adjectives that I find acceptable, despite really-good being aberrant. Without some way to concisely articulate my intuitions, and without any indication that others share those intuitions, I'm happy to accept a simple rule that sometimes excludes constructions I would accept, but reliably excludes ones we'd all reject. Ilkali (talk) 03:44, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

[Further amendment: I am obviously in verbal mode today, not numerical. I have again amended all of my references to the number of people consulting WP:MOS. It is in fact around 2,000 per day. After allowing for hits from MOS-editors themselves, the conservative figure is still well over a thousand users per day seeking a ruling on style.–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 05:47, 14 November 2008 (UTC)]

That still offers a wide scope for interpretation. Indeed, I would hope that many looked to see what this page said, and had better sense than to treat what they found as a ruling; and of those who sought "rulings", perhaps half-a-dozen looked at any given sentence (perhaps one; we cannot tell how many passed through on their way to subpages). Your language shows what is wrong with MOS: we are not a race of kings. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 06:26, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Please don't pretend we agree, PMan. As Noetica suggests, the difference between us is that I am willing to discard my personal sensibilities in support of something universally beneficial, such as the clarity and unequivocality of the text you want to replace. "Not English"? Absolute drivel. Is specially designed sound card "not English"? Ilkali (talk) 03:44, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Very well, we do not agree. You speak as a disciple of Carlyle and Lord Shang: Nothing is useful, except a direct unconditional order. Actually describing the English language is of secondary importance, if any. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 06:22, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

At this point, I have tried four different wordings in a search for compromise. Is there any reason, other than this "we must speak prescriptively" argument, why we should not say, as the other clauses do, that hyphens are not normally used after -ly? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:07, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Reasons have already been given. Do you accept that, for any hyphenated form excluded by the original guideline, the unhyphenated equivalent is legitimate English? Do you accept that your version of the guideline permits illegitimate English? Ilkali (talk) 17:10, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Diff for the reasons, please. As for these questions: no, I do not accept that "specially designed sound cards" is good English; if sound were a true adjective, rather than an attributive, it would be worse still. Nor do I accept that "normally" permits illegitimate English, any more than the normally in the following clause: A hyphen is normally used when the adverb well precedes a participle used attributively (a well-meaning gesture; but normally a very well managed firm, since well itself is modified); and even predicatively, if well is necessary to, or alters, the sense of the adjective rather than simply intensifying it (the gesture was well-meaning, the child was well-behaved, but the floor was well polished). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:34, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

"no, I do not accept that "specially designed sound cards" is good English". Well, I don't know what to tell you other than that the purpose of the MoS isn't to license all of your personal preferences. Ilkali (talk) 03:14, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Style guides are by nature prescriptive. If you wish to abolish the MoS, kindly approach the matter directly and overtly rather than trying to disassemble the document one piece at a time. Ilkali (talk) 17:10, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I do not wish to abolish MOS; that is my next to last choice. But you are mistaken: style guides are not by nature prescriptive; they are descriptive, and advisory: They describe what English does, and recommend between the available choices, giving what reasons there may be for each. As an example, I quote the text for the second section of WP:HYPHEN.

There is a clear trend, not yet complete, to join both elements in all varieties of English (subsection, nonlinear), particularly in North America. British English tends to hyphenate when the letters brought into contact are the same (non-negotiable, sub-basement) or are vowels (pre-industrial), or where a word is uncommon (co-proposed, re-target) or may be misread (sub-era, not subera). North American English reflects the same factors, but tends strongly to close up without a hyphen when possible. Consult a good dictionary, and see WP:ENGVAR.

That offers facts and advice, which varies by national dialect. It makes no command, except the inarguable one to consult a dictionary, but it guides the reader all the same. If there were compilations of punctuation comparable to dictionaries, we would recommend that they be consulted for the rest of this paragraph. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:48, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

According to What Is Grammar - Descriptive and Prescriptive Grammar,

By their nature, all popular style and usage guides are prescriptive, though to varying degrees: some are fairly tolerant of deviations from standard English; others can be downright cranky. The most irascible critics are sometimes called "the Grammar Police."

-- Wavelength (talk) 23:43, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

By searching on the web, one may find almost any set of keywords; it helps, however, to read the text found and see what it actually says. This is addressing, as may be plainly seen, the opposite issue: whether a style guide should tolerate "deviations from standard English". That is not what is in question here: Ilkali and Wavelength are demanding that MOS forbid a usage that is standard English, and which is sometimes clearer and less ambiguous than the alternative. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:52, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

"style guides are not by nature prescriptive; they are descriptive, and advisory". Welcome to contradiction theatre, folks. Ilkali (talk) 03:14, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

You can find information about web pages linking to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style,

at Site Explorer - Search Results.

-- Wavelength (talk) 07:23, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Most of which appear to be WP pages, either subpages of MOS or pages with such tags as {{duplication}} or {{cleanup}}. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:46, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Please see Site Explorer - Search Results "Except from this subdomain"

-- Wavelength (talk) 16:50, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Does Wavelength look at search results before posting them? That list begins with a wikimedia user page, continues with Wedding, then on to es:Wikipedia:Manual de estilo. This at least has found some results which are not WP and its sister projects, mostly one Stephen Downes' blog, but is there a point here? (Aside from the question of whether {{rewrite}} should redirect here; the objections at Wedding are not MOS concerns.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:10, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Above the list of links, you can see the number of links. At the bottom right corner of the page, you can click to see subsequent pages of the list of links. The distinction here between Wikipedia pages and non-Wikipedia pages is of minor importance. Even links to the project page from other Wikipedia pages are an indication of the importance of the project page. The main point here is to show the importance of the page by the number of pages linking to it, and thereby to supplement what Noetica said about the number of times the project page has been viewed. -- Wavelength (talk) 07:11, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

---

This has gone on far too long. If Anderson were able to present any evidence for the claim that he is now reduced to (inclusion of the word normally), we might have settled things earlier. He has referred us only to Fowler's. Which version, I asked earlier? No response! Fowler's does not, despite Anderson's assertion, deliver anything relevant to ly-adverbs that would support his case. Since Anderson cannot do or refuses to do the necessary work, I will. Garner's Modern American Usage (Bryan A Garner, OUP, USA; 2nd edition 2003, 928 pages) is a meticulous and authoritatively prescriptive work, at ease with its role and enormously well received by a wide readership. Garner devotes seven dense columns of text to phrasal adjectives. His essential message? Use hyphens. He begins with a general rule:

A. General Rule. When a phrase functions as an adjective preceding the noun it modifies [...] the phrase should ordinarily be hyphenated. [...] Most professional writers know this; most nonprofessionals don't. (p. 604)

This is followed by the solid reasons for such a practice, and long lists of examples. Then this (with my underlining):

Some guides might suggest that you should make a case-by-case decision, based on whether a misreading is likely. You're better off with a flat rule (with a few exceptions noted below) because almost all sentences with unhyphenated phrasal adjectives will be misread by someone. (p. 605)

Then follow illustrations of what can happen when hyphens are omitted. And last, the exceptions referred to. Only one of these is relevant to the guideline we are discussing:

B. Exception for -ly Adverbs. When a phrasal adjective begins with an adverb ending in -ly, the convention is to drop the hyphen [...example...]. But if the -ly adverb is part of a longer phrase, then the hyphen is mandatory (the not-so-hotly-contested race).

That's it. Nothing more to be said that's relevant to our guideline. No qualification with normally, no sometimes, no British do this but we do that. After establishing the baseline assumption that hyphens are generally to be used in phrasal adjectives, and listing several dozen examples to reinforce that assumption, Garner finds only one class of phrasal adjectives with -ly that calls for a hyphen; and that is exactly the class that we mention. CMOS, New Hart's, and all other major style guides agree. If they mention any exception at all, they mention that same exception. Now, I am aware of further considerations, and certain very particular sorts of further exceptions that no style guide I have seen addresses. But I don't think they amount to much, and I have no more time to devote to this exercise. Anderson should now accept that the weight of almost all who write in this field is against him, and that he has no body of support here. I have removed the attenuated qualification with normally that he inserted, pre-empting discussion here. And I have removed the dispute tag, for such an ill-founded and one-sided assault on our plain, useful, and perfectly justified wording. Let him waste our time no longer, without bringing detailed argument and evidence to the table. This has been a serious imposition on my time, and on the patience and time of many others here.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 00:51, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Dispute tags

I have once again removed a dispute tag that was improperly applied in the middle of the section. See my edit summary. The edit appears anonymous because of a local system glitch. (I am not at my usual location.)–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 22:11, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

OK, there is no question that there is a dispute in the section. If the dispute tag cannot be next to the disputed statement, it should be at the beginning of the section. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:04, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Please no, it makes people think that the whole section is in dispute. Better to leave the tag out completely - it serves no purpose except to half-direct people to what independent observers will conclude, sadly, is a very lame discussion.--Kotniski (talk) 17:22, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Nonsense. There is a legitimate dispute. If there's no way to tag just the disputed statement as disputed, the tag is necessary for the article to be a legitimate guideline. The alternative, I suppose, is to use the disputed guideline tag at the top; which we'd both like even less. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:12, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

We don't insert dispute tags every time someone disagrees with part of the article. Is there some reason the tag is appropriate for this issue but not any of the others being discussed on this page? Ilkali (talk) 18:53, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Template messages/Disputes.

-- Wavelength (talk) 19:26, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Or more relevantly perhaps, Wikipedia:Template messages/Wikipedia namespace.--Kotniski (talk) 19:42, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Of course there is no reason to flag this particular section as disputed any more than the others. These disputes over dispute tags are becoming tiresome and disruptive - let's remember that guideline pages are not private battlegrounds, but are intended to be read by editors, who don't know what to make of a section that has a red question mark at the top (particularly misleading when the dispute is only over one insignificant detail of a large section; and the tag is added without even using the parameter that takes people to the relevant talk page discussion). Rather than continue battling the issue out here, I've tried to formulate some guidance for use of such tags, or rather to clarify and expand what was already written at WP:Policies and guidelines. Please comment on that talk page on my recent changes there. Of course I'm not saying anything I wrote there is applicable (anyone's perfectly entitled to slap a disputed tag on that), but I think it would currently imply that the correct solution in this situation is no tag or, if people really think it's useful, an {{underdiscussion}} tag, with the talk page discussion section noted.--Kotniski (talk) 19:53, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I am sympathetic to both sides here, and the general question needs to be discussed elsewhere; so thanks to Kotniski. In the present case, the tag disrupts markup if placed exactly where it is relevant, but if placed at the beginning of the whole section its scope is misrepresented. Luckily, the dispute has now diminished to exclusion or inclusion of the single word normally. No user of WP:MOS will be misled or inconvenienced by the tag's absence; but some might be by its presence. Accordingly, I am removing the tag. Let anyone reinstating it give a justification that counters the reason I have just articulated.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 00:08, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

This discussion would not have begun if the absence of normally, or some such qualifying phrase, were not itself inconveniencing users of the encyclopedia. An irresponsible editor is taking its absence as an excuse to remove useful hyphens. Pleading the disputed clause as a justification for this form of vandalism should be more difficult if this tag remains. An in-line tag, like {{dubious}}, would be ideal, but I'm not sure one exists. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:56, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

"An irresponsible editor is taking its absence as an excuse to remove useful hyphens". At the moment this can't be taken as anything more than a single person's opinion. If nobody else agrees, there is no consensus either to make the change you suggest or to mark the section as disputed. Ilkali (talk) 16:16, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

This is a repetition of part of a post which I made at 22:49, 12 November 2008 (UTC).

If "specially designed sound cards" is ambiguous,

then a disambiguation here would be helpful,

because I can see only one possible interpretation.

-- Wavelength (talk) 17:14, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Is that supposed to be a poem? But on the question of the tag and the section's wording, can we all eat our tea if we include "normally" (like it makes any difference) and omit the (clearly misleading) section tag?--Kotniski (talk) 20:57, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I did not intend it to be a poem. I put each clause on a separate line, to make the sentence easier to read. I am still waiting for PMAnderson to disambiguate the expression, and to explain how a hyphen after "specially" makes a difference.

-- Wavelength (talk) 21:35, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Paragraph 4 of Electric guitar#Sound and effects contains the expression "specially-designed sound cards" [sic]. I removed the hyphen at 23:33, 10 November 2008, but it was restored at 23:38, 11 November 2008. If I remove it now, do I have the support of the Manual of Style (with the inclusion of the word "normally" in the relevant guideline)?

-- Wavelength (talk) 04:22, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Unless it is, as I would hold it to be, one of the abnormal hyphens which does clarify: in this case, by indicating that "specially designed" acts as a unit in modifying "sound cards". Septentrionalis PMAnderson 06:10, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I have to agree with Wavelength - at least, until you can tell me what other interpretation you can put on that phrase that we've so far missed.--Kotniski (talk) 07:02, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

• Manderson, all style guides are bound to be both descriptive and prescriptive. Now, tell me, as a child were you thrashed regularly by your father for disobedience? I'm trying to work out exactly why you have such a bee in your bonnet about rules. Tony (talk) 00:48, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
  • No, actually. Were you? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:51, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Since PManderson has just reintroduced the dispute tags, I feel I have to ask: PMan, in what circumstances would you drop the issue and cease edit-warring over the tags and the wording? Clearly it's not enough that you've faced near-unanimous opposition. What more do you need? Ilkali (talk) 18:18, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

An acknowledgment that "is not hyphenated" is false; I will settle for "is not normally hyphenated" and would consider stronger language (I can't think of any, or I would have suggested it); simply enough to discourage the automatic "correction" of wholly-owned, especially in articles in British English, where it is plainly usage, and may be predominant usage. We are not here to invent a new language, but to guide editors through the existing one. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:28, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

I asked what it would take for you to drop the issue. Am I to take from your answer that you will continue edit-warring until you get your way? Ilkali (talk) 18:34, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Evidence that the English language is not as I understand it. Consensus does not justify the assertion of undocumented falsehood. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:42, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

So you will ignore the opinions of all other editors and continue edit-warring until you are convinced that you are wrong? Ilkali (talk) 18:54, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

I think Andersen et al. have done enough to show that this rule is not an absolute in good English writing. Let's remove the dispute tags that deface the whole section over this one trivial point, include "normally" as Andersen suggests, and (if anyone considers it important enough) try and find some more pertinent examples that illustrate the use and non-use of hyphens in this situation.--Kotniski (talk) 19:02, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

You're entitled to think that (and it's why I said "near-unanimous"), but it doesn't answer my question.

Again, PManderson: Are you resolved to edit-war over this until you get your way, ignoring the opinions of any editors who disagree with you? Ilkali (talk) 13:13, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I give limited weight to opinions which insist upon language which is demonstrably contrary to reliable sources. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 13:49, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Explaining hyphens after -ly

Since a literate editor like Kotniski is puzzled by what seems clear to me about "the specially-designed sound cards", let me compare with "really-good time".

• "really good time" and "good time" are both meaningful, and mean much the same thing with different force; really modifies good only and directly.
• But "the designed sound cards" does not mean at all the same thing as "the specially-designed sound cards"; indeed, "designed" is a piece of mush which an editor should remove or recast. Grammaticé, "specially-designed" as a whole modifies cards - this is marked by the hyphen; omitting the hyphen will tend to trip the reader by making xem parse the clumsy phrase "the designed sound cards" first. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:56, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

No, -ly means already that the qualified word is coming, usually immediately. A hyphen is redundant, and indeed obstructs. You need another thrashing, Anderson. Tony (talk) 09:12, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

I have attempted to draw a parse tree for the noun phrase "specially designed sound cards".
The periods have no meaning in the diagram; I put them there to help with the display.
The word "designed" looks like a verb in the past tense, but here it is a participial adjective.
The word "sound" looks like a noun, but here it is a noun adjunct.
For comparison, I have also shown "very good style guides", which has a similar parse tree.

                      Noun phrase
             ______________|_____________
             |                          |
    Adjectival phrase               Noun phrase
     |            |                 |         |
  Adverb      Adjective         Adjective    Noun
     |            |                 |         |
 specially     designed           sound     cards
   very          good             style     guides

-- Wavelength (talk) 20:08, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, of course, designed is a (passive) participle, and sound is in adjunction, but a sentence has more than cladistics: very and good form a different sort of adjectival phrase than specially and designed; as removing the adverbs will show. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:31, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I do not know what you mean by "cladistics"; most references give a biological meaning.

Please see cladistics - OneLook Dictionary Search.

I am still analyzing what you said about removing the adverbs. I have revised the parse tree.

-- Wavelength (talk) 21:26, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

(to Sept, primarily) I think we see the difference, but still I don't see the need for the hyphen to assist parsing in one case but not the other - the parse tree shows that the two sentences need to be parsed in the same way. Indeed the example given in the MOS - "wholly owned subsidiary" - which you seemed to leave unaltered when you edited the section - is one of the kind which you now seem to be claiming can use a hyphen.--Kotniski (talk) 17:22, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

"Wholly-owned" probably should be hyphenated, insofar as it is British English; I missed it. Reading with an American accent, I suspect; thanks. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:53, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

When I am reading "PCs with specially designed sound cards" (as in paragraph 4 of Electric guitar#Sound and effects), I am reading in a forward direction, from left to right. After I read the adverb "specially" I anticipate an adjective to follow. It could be a passive participial adjective such as "designed". It could be an active participial adjective such as "functioning". It could be a non-participial adjective such as "strong". In this example, I read "specially designed". Then I read the word "sound". If there is any temporary "tripping" by the string "specially designed sound" (if I analyze "designed" as modifying "sound", with "sound" as the head of "specially designed sound"), it is soon corrected when I read the next word ("cards"). Then I immediately understand "specially designed sound cards" as a correctly parsed noun phrase.

-- Wavelength (talk) 00:38, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

• The taxonomy above is nested in the type of traditional grammar that teaches no one to write well (although is possibly useful in the early stages of learning Eng. as a second language). For example, epithets and classifiers are both tagged as adjectives, whereas their grammatical roles are quite different. See Halliday. Tony (talk) 00:14, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the reference to Halliday. To me, this is new and interesting. I have skimmed the following articles: Traditional grammar, Michael Halliday, Systemic functional grammar, Epithet, Classifier (linguistics), and Taxonomy.

I found this statement at Traditional grammar#The role of "traditional grammar":

The main benefit of "traditional grammar" is that it gives learners a basic understanding of the building blocks of language, which can help in improving their writing skills.

-- Wavelength (talk) 04:03, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

I see that Cole has been running around changing the "discussion" tags at the three style guides relevant to the dates issue back to "disputed". In addition, he has been spattering the talk pages of numerous users with a threatening message about their work in improving the date formatting of the project. I ask that he calm down and look clearly at the issues rather than pursue this frenzied campaign against hard-working editors. Tony (talk) 03:24, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Response to Wavelength on the taxonomy: I agree that for second-language learners, trad. grammar word classes are probably essential. But they are sadly inadequate—and often misleading—when it comes to the underlying complexities of the grammar, and hardly ever improve written and oral skills. As a matter of interest, in Halliday's SFG (systemic functional grammar), "good" is an interpersonal epithet (I'm convincing you of my attitude towards the style guide), and "sound" is a classifier (in this sense, you can't say that they're very sound cards—it's a cut-and-dried category of card, e.g., not a playing card). "Style" is ambiguous, since it might be said to have merged into "guides", and is indeed merged by some writers into a compound word. If not merged, it's a classifier. "Stylish" would be a plain epithet.

You may wish to have a look at nominal group, which has direct relevance to this taxonomic exercise. The concept and application of nominal groups are probably more important in English than any other language: ours is a very highly nominalised language, which is one reason it's so good for scientific and technical writing, where Things are so important. Another taste of SFG is the short article on thematic equative, another important feature of English grammar (trad. grammar calls it a cleft something or other, but is rather wobbly—superficial, actually—WRT its grammatical function). A Swedish client has objected to my claim that English may be the only language to have such a grammatical feature; I'm not convinced that he's right, but the question is open. Tony (talk) 04:36, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

---

It gladdens my heart to see this surge of elevated linguistic analysis at our normally pedestrian talkpage. But let us not lose sight of a salient fact: nothing has been said to support any weakening of this guideline:

* A hyphen is not used after an -ly adverb (wholly owned subsidiary) unless part of a larger compound (a slowly-but-surely strategy).

Even if something above does count as evidence supporting change, there is still no consensus to diverge from the unanimity of major style guides. PMAnderson has twice attempted to smuggle the word normal into the guideline, with these edits: [1] and [2]. Each time he concealed the change with an edit summary that masked the change, and misled editors who were patiently discussing the matter with him. Clearly this editor does not really like the idea of discussion and consensus-building. Add to this his reluctance to produce, when challenged, evidence that he claims exists (from Fowler's, which I have checked in every one of its major editions).

MOS should not surrender to this relentless death of a thousand pin-pricks. Anderson would do better to study MOS and learn what it actually says – and perhaps get up to date with developments since the decline and fall of his mentor Edward Gibbon (see Anderson's self-inflating reference, above below [where many a true word was spoken in ironic jest]–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 13:19, 20 November 2008 (UTC)). For example, he might learn to avoid mistakes and misrepresentations like this one.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 00:25, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

• Only one style guide has been cited; unanimity usually requires at least two minds to unite.
• The OED and all three of its quotations hyphenate wholly-owned subsidiary (wholly adv. def 3). That should trump an inference from CMOS 's brevity. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:53, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

In the interest of a balanced debate, we might hope that you will eventually get something right, Anderson. For a start, two serious and respected authorities have been cited against you: Garner's and CMOS. And I can cite more. Would you like me to do that? Fine: I'll give two further authorities for every one that you can adduce – starting with your first, please.

Meanwhile, OED does not rule on these matters of hyphenation. In fact it scarcely remarks on them at all, and does not, in its catholicity, care one way or the other (as we, with our altogether different brief, must). It is sheer luck that its examples for wholly-owned are hyphenated. Other occurrences in its citations have wholly owned unhyphenated and without comment (see entries for "network, n." and "refinance, v."). To see how little OED cares about hyphenation, look at this from its entry for "made, ppl. a."

[III. 8.] b. With adv. (or sometimes adj.) giving the sense ‘made in a certain manner, having a certain quality or kind of make’, as in badly-, neatly-, well-made; often with reference to the ‘make’ or ‘build’ of the body (= -built), as in loosely-, powerfully-, stoutly-, strong(ly)-made. Most of these combs. are treated under their first element, or in their alphabetical place as Main words.

Very well; but when we look for these words under their first elements, or as main words, we find only one of the combinations mentioned cited with a hyphen! (Stoutly-made, cited at "stoutly, adv." and "standard, n. (a.)": both from the same source dated 1833.) In fact OED has many combinations with ly-; but that is entirely predictable, given its universal and historical scope.

I am again reverting your unilateral tinkering, Anderson. You are fumbling badly with this, and we shouldn't have to bear the consequences. You wanted discussion? You have had it. No one has supported any of your desperate attempts to sabotage a perfectly sound guideline. I wish we could move on; this is wasting so much precious time.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 04:53, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Lynne Truss writes that the OED used to say anyone who took hyphens seriously would go mad, and that Churchill's rule was to avoid them at all costs. PMA, they're intended only to aid understanding. Truss gives the example of the pickled-herring merchant, someone who sells pickled herrings, rather than the pickled herring merchant, someone who sells herrings and is drunk.

Where they're not aiding understanding, they're not needed. When you're dealing with an adverb, "ly" is the hyphen, as it were, in that it signals that it's about to qualify a verb. There's no need to signal that twice. SlimVirgin ^talk|edits 05:09, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. Anderson, there's only one thing worse than omitting a sorely needed hyphen: inserting a redundant one. This is what you want to promote, apparently. Noetica is right: move on, please. Tony (talk) 05:35, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

• "Wholly-owned subsidiary" - so written - is a legal term in the UK, defined in S 1159 of the Companies Act 2006[3]. I find the onjections to making this an ENGVAR matter mysterious. Johnbod (talk) 09:29, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Do you indeed, Johnbod? Then cite the non-American authority on style that agrees with this hyphenation, as a systematic feature of practice. It is not in New Hart's Rules, Complete Plain Words (3rd edition), Cambridge Guide to English Usage, Ridout and Witting's The Facts of English, or Australia's AGPS Style Manual, all of which are squarely in accord with our current guideline. Nor is your exception given in Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors, which is an alphabetic list of special cases. Yes, there are some spellings in some British usage that disagree with our guideline, and these are pointed to here and there in some books. The world is wide and various. For example, British dictionaries typically spell newlywed optionally with a hyphen. Are we to list all such curiosities? Are we to clutter our guideline by accommodating exceptions ignored by other major guidelines – American, British, and Australian? We could. In fact, I have prepared a draft that makes sense of all this, and explains certain exceptions. But I don't propose it, because our present guideline is industry-standard and uncomplicated. That is the special virtue of a good guideline!

Once more I should draw attention to a line in our section on hyphens, since no one else in this discussion seems to have taken note of it:

• Hyphenation involves many subtleties that cannot be covered here; the rules and examples presented above illustrate the broad principles that inform current usage.

That certainly is adequate to cover the odd sort of case that you and Anderson raise. I understand your point, and your contribution to these long deliberations. Anderson's case is different: he attempts to foist successive variations on us, under cover of misleading edit summaries, and will not relinquish his stand no matter what weight of opinion or evidence is laid out plainly before him.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 13:12, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

If "wholly-owned subsidiary" is enshrined in UK law, though, we should at least find a different example to replace it in the MoS.--Kotniski (talk) 13:50, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Anderson, it's not a joke or game, and the MoS is not your private plaything; everyone sees your antics as tiresome and disruptive. It's time to stop now, and to start making constructive contributions. Your silly contrarian tactics undermine any semblance of authority you might have had. Try to learn from highly skilled writers like Noetica and Kotniski, please. Tony (talk) 15:32, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

MOS should not be a joke or a game; but it is both. As long as handfuls of language cranks set up rules they are quoting out of context, have misunderstood, or have invented, and broadcast them all over Wikipedia, contrary to English usage or some major variant of it, it will continue to be a joke - or, rather, it would be one if it did not do so much harm both to the civility and to the text of Wikipedia. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:16, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

As for this matter, which is almost as arbitrary, and fully as silly as "Mebibyte", I present below a quote from the Second Edition of the OED. A hyphen is not used after an -ly adverb (wholly owned subsidiary) has the disadvantage of being false; it is at best an unacknowledged and unfounded exception to ENGVAR, which has genuine consensus, unlike this invention.

Wholly

....

3' Comb.: wholly-owned a., applied to a company all of whose shares are owned by another company.

1964 Financial Times 11 Feb. 12/1 The directors..have decided to give the holders of Ordinary shares the opportunity of acquiring an interest in the wholly-owned subsidiary. 1972 Accountant 21 Sept. 360/1 The UK company is a subsidiaryalthough not wholly-owned. 1976 Scotsman 20 Nov. 3/2 The plan is recommended by the boards of all the companies, who will become wholly-owned subsidiaries of the new Malaysian group.

Obsrerve all three quotations; last I heard the FT had a style guide. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:16, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

As for SV's citations of anyone who took hyphens seriously would go mad and they're intended only to aid understanding, I agree with both; we would have a better section if all the subordinate bullet points under WP:HYPHEN 3 were replaced by that language. The only good I expect from MOS is to get out of the way of an editor who hyphenates for clarity - or does not hyphenate for clarity. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:38, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

---

Anderson, I have already dealt with the OED case that you quote at length, and shown that elsewhere OED cites examples with wholly owned (no apostrophe). You have utterly ignored my painstaking analysis. Let me make it clear once again: OED rarely concerns itself with matters of hyphenation. In the case of made, to give the example once again, it presents a number of compounds with hyphens: loosely-, powerfully-, stoutly-, strongly-. But this is only for expository convenience in lexicography. The dictionary is founded on citations; but in fact, only one of these very compounds is cited in examples: stoutly-made, twice in different articles, from the same 1833 [sic] source. In fact, strongly made occurs in nine OED entries, but each time without a hyphen. So much for how OED presents phrases with hyphens, outside of its citation texts. It even uses strongly made in its own definitions, for example at the entry "strong-box".

OED goes about its monumental work of recording the rich chaotic variety of our language, but style guides do not have the same brief. CMOS, New Hart's, and the others I refer to above (and more!) offer straight guidance to help editors and writers confronting hard choices. The guides I cite are unanimous on the point we are discussing. And in fact, with our wording we help more than some: not all guides show compounds like a slowly-but-surely strategy.

The fact that a phrase turns up in OED is not compelling, for style guides. Nor does its fixed technical use in UK statute law. It is easy to see why, in special circumstances, special treatment of these phrases will occur. I remind editors a third time that we have long included this proviso:

• Hyphenation involves many subtleties that cannot be covered here; the rules and examples presented above illustrate the broad principles that inform current usage.

Given this proviso, and given our brief to guide rather than minutely govern choices in writing at Wikipedia, the wording we have is perfectly adequate. If we qualify this guideline with its own normally, where a general qualification is already in place, we weaken the guidance and make it harder for editors to be sure how robust this particular provision might be. In fact, the present formulation is very robust: close to unanimously endorsed by style guides, regardless of practice in the drafting of UK statutes and regardless of the quite different imperatives under which OED operates.

Now, as I have revealed, I have a draft that is more complex and less like the standard that is accepted by almost all guides. I am not absolutely against a more complex guideline! But so far, Anderson has given only feeble reasons for pusillanimous changes, some of which he attempts to introduce by stealth under misleading edit summaries. That we should resist. His attacks have gone on for too long. If he used evidence, if he offered cogent arguments (and responded to cogent arguments!), the case would be different.

I might accept normally if it were not the result of such a flawed process of deliberation here. I would accept a different example than wholly owned subsidiary; but I note that to avoid this example is to avoid guiding exactly where an editor will want guidance. It is hard cases that bring editors to MOS for help, and hard cases that we must therefore address. We can do that briefly (which we do perfectly well already, with the general qualification that I have now exhibited here three times); or we can do it at length. But we should not do it weakly, and we should not do it without genuinely guiding practice.

Anderson, you reveal this about yourself:

The only good I expect from MOS is to get out of the way of an editor who hyphenates for clarity - or does not hyphenate for clarity.

But such an editor does not write in isolation; in this community an editor's work is subject to review and improvement, with rational discourse back and forth. To help that editing, that review and improvement, and that discourse, we offer guidance. Please stop your campaign aimed at ensuring that MOS is only ever "out of the way"!

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 21:57, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Oh, MOS could do a great deal better than stay out of the way; but it is clear that it will not be. In the meantime, a statement which is factually incorrect is not atoned for by a qualifier in a different paragraph; we all know that MOS is usually consulted and quoted out of context. I am prepared to adopt any solution which satisfies these criteria, but I am fresh out of suggestions. Since I agree that a tag at the head of the section is imprecise for a problem with a single clause, I will be restoring the {{dubious}}. Kotniski, do you have any further suggestions? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:54, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

I do not contend that wholly-owned is the only British usage, but it is plainly a legitimate one; doubly so if it is the term of art in the law. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:54, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Don't come here mouthing half-truths about factual correctness, Anderson. Not with your record! Concerning the Financial Times, you write "last I heard the FT had a style guide". O really? If they do have one, it is no "authority" for hyphenation in the phrases we are considering. Some recent snips from FT:

• a licence to apply to open wholly owned units in the country [10 September 2008]
• two employees of his wholly-owned EasyGroup [16 November 2008]
• Sir Stelios's wholly-owned Cayman Islands registered EasyGroup [whew! 15 November 2008]
• a purely private, wholly unregulated mode of transportation [14 November 2008]
• StudioCanal's Optimum Releasing, a wholly owned subsidiary of Canal Plus [1 November 2008]
• created by wholly-owned stores to support wholesale sales [8 November 2008]
• Sales of Volvo, wholly-owned by Ford, plummeted [3 November 2008]
• the size of his wholly owned online delivery business [8 November 2008]

I think we can do better than follow their example!

And don't appeal to terms of art in law (in just one jurisdiction, as far as we know) to determine our general recommendations here. It is because they are terms of art that they are special cases, and should not affect standard consistent usage for Wikipedia. We cannot note all special uses; we give the best general guidance we can. Some of us do, I mean.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 00:18, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I agree; we could do worse than to follow their example: permit both. Of the seven examples of wholly-owned, four are hyphenated (one of those may be unwise); wholly unregulated is like really good, and should not be hyphenated. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:01, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

In light of the evidence presented, is there any reason why people keep removing "normally" and re-inserting what has been shown to be a patently bad example (the wholly owned thing)? Or tagging the whole section when only one small point is considered dubious?--Kotniski (talk) 07:01, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Because this is a style guide, and that's the chosen style. Has anyone produced a style guide that advocates for a hyphen after ly? SlimVirgin ^talk|edits 07:09, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Kotniski, I cannot speak for others. For myself, there are two answers to your question:

1. The various suggested changes weaken a strong and useful guideline that is in accord with all major style guides – British, American, and Australian, at least. The guideline already falls in the scope of a general qualification that I have quoted three times above. Further qualification is unnecessary and counterproductive.
2. As I have written above: "Now, as I have revealed, I have a draft that is more complex and less like the standard that is accepted by almost all guides. I am not absolutely against a more complex guideline! But so far, Anderson has given only feeble reasons for pusillanimous changes, some of which he attempts to introduce by stealth under misleading edit summaries. That we should resist. His attacks have gone on for too long. If he used evidence, if he offered cogent arguments (and responded to cogent arguments!), the case would be different. / I might accept normally if it were not the result of such a flawed process of deliberation here. I would accept a different example than wholly owned subsidiary; but I note that to avoid this example is to avoid guiding exactly where an editor will want guidance." I should add to that: wholly owned subsidiary is an excellent example for us to retain, since it shows how our chosen style (indeed, that of all major style guides) resolves even that unstable and uncertain case!

So I do not mean to be intransigent. I am taking a stand, and so are some others, against an editor whose pernicious activity has been steadily against everything we (nearly all of us) are working to achieve here. He is, for whatever unfathomable reason, zealously against the natural program of every style guide: to provide genuine guidance; to prescribe solutions to problems of style, whether or not they are ultimately adopted by those who seek that guidance. We sometimes capitulate to Anderson, because life is too short. But this time I do not capitulate, and I invite others not to also. At the very least he should not amend the guideline while there is still discussion of it here. But he doesn't even do us that courtesy.

Kotniski, much more detail is in the dense forest of verbiage above. I have answered every one of Anderson's points that has any relevance; he has addressed precious few of mine, and seems determined to have his own way against the majority here no matter what evidence or what argument is brought to bear. If the majority think we should give in to pressure from such an isolated and ill-motivated editor, I shall happily return to my retirement from this talkpage and from editing WP:MOS. Yes, I withdrew entirely, many months ago, because of the impossibility of dealing with Anderson. I came back reluctantly because I saw that an unfair burden fell on Tony, who labours to keep Anderson from white-anting Wikipedia's Manual of Style. Unlike some, I have no psychological need to stay here; and I will not, if MOS once more appears to me to be a lost cause.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 07:38, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I understand your sentiments and hope that you will stay with us and make more of your valuable contributions, but on this specific point, if the law itself says "wholly-owned", this must at the very least be the wrong example to use, and it probably also serves as evidence that the MoS rule can be watered down at least to the extent of adding "normally" (or possibly by trying to formulate the exception more precisely, maybe with a restriction to British English, if this kind of hyphen grates with those from the US and Oz).--Kotniski (talk) 10:44, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Kotniski, never mind the sentiments: feel the evidence. And weigh the arguments. As for wholly-owned being enshrined by what you with wide eyes call "the law itself", so is wholly owned. From the British Shipbuilders Act 1983, UK:

any activities which were carried on, immediately before the date of transfer, by a company which, by virtue of this Act, becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of British Shipbuilders

none of whom need be a wholly owned subsidiary of British Shipbuilders

And more of the same within that act. Then there is this from the Transport Act 2000, UK:

The expressions “subsidiary” and “wholly owned subsidiary” have the meanings given by section 736 of the [1985 c. 6.] Companies Act 1985 or Article 4 of the [S.I. 1986/1032 (N.I. 6).] Companies (Northern Ireland) Order 1986.

Seems pretty definitive and consistent, right? Or the Railway Heritage Act 1996, UK:

any wholly owned subsidiary of the Board

"The law itself", even within the single jurisdiction of the UK legislature, is inconsistent. Must we therefore be? No. We needn't strive at every point to pursue a half-baked pluralism. No style guide does that. It sets a style, and prescribes remedies for those seeking specific help with style issues. We let them down if we explicitly permit every recorded variant, or cravenly step around giving a decision in problematic cases. Where would it end? They can still use their judgement; no one is saying they shouldn't or can't.

Burchfield's revision of Fowler's ran into a great deal of censure for failing in exactly the way Anderson advocates. The reprinted first edition gets 4.5 stars out of a possible 5 stars at Amazon; Burchfield's edition gets 3 stars, and the reviews tell you why. Then compare Garner's Modern American Usage that I have referred to: absolutely clear and prescriptive, and because of that it gets a near-unanimous 5 stars from its 25 reviewers (one of whom gives it only 4 stars). You can be sure that not one of those reviewers felt under any compulsion to abide by Garner's expert rulings. But they all appreciated his guidance.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 11:38, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

O, but I simply must add these two, both from the very same page of the Crossrail Act 2008, UK:

from a body corporate which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of CLRL

from a body corporate which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Greater London Authority, the London Development Agency or Transport for London

Anderson might take this as precedent for allowing inconsistency even within one article; I take it as decisive evidence that a clear ruling is needed.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 12:12, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I see where you're coming from, but the Companies Act actually defines wholly-owned subsidiaries (and uses that form consistently). It would be perverse to use a different hyphenation if writing about that Act, for example. This may be the type of exception that is so rare as not to require mention, but we could at least find an equally valid and illustrative example that isn't itself likely to be the subject of such an exception. (Maybe even the "specially designed" one that started this whole thing off, though that might look a bit pointy.)--Kotniski (talk) 13:23, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Along with never minding the sentiments, Kotniski, never mind "where I'm coming from". Mind, rather, the hard arguments and evidence I bring to bear. I am tired of repeating points that readers miss. Brevity is most valuable and compelling; but neither brevity nor long-windedness nor even the oratory of angels will have any effect, if people fail to pay attention. I have already argued for our not being swayed by practice in UK legislation, and explained how that inconsistent practice should have us retain the controversial example, not weakly sidestep it, abnegating our responsibility.

See my response to Wavelength, in the section below.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 22:50, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I would prefer to tag the clause only, but every effort to do so has been reverted (we'll see if Kotniski's sticks); as far as I am concerned, a tag is preferable to edit-warring.

I don't see why the addition of another normally to a section which already has one is being decried as chaos come again. Why is "we normally do X" not clear? If I were genuinely uncertain between X and Y, I'd take it as advice to do X. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 13:58, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Kotniski's tag is a brilliant innovation, and much to be preferred. Why should it be removed, so long as this discussion drags on?

No, Anderson: normally would not amount to "chaos come again". But it is one more tiny worm eating away at the robustness and utility of our Manual of Style. And you are the Wurmmeister.

If this must continue, let it be in the section below, for the convenience of us all.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 22:50, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Alternative examples

Here are 12 alternative examples for use in the manual. Maybe they include at least one which everyone can accept. These include four active participial adjectives, four passive participial adjectives, and four non-participial adjectives. They include eight plural nouns and four singular nouns. They can even suggest other examples which may be better.

vaguely familiar voice gracefully blooming roses intricately embroidered curtains softly falling snow

brightly shining sun quickly galloping horses carefully placed napkins majestically tall sequoias

surprisingly good results eagerly awaited event fondly remembered faces nearly ripe apples

-- Wavelength (talk) 20:05, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

All of that avoids the core issue, Wavelength: an issue that is illustrated by the particular guideline we are looking at, but one that pervades all of our work at MOS. That is why I, for one, am holding on tight.

The core issue? It is easy to find alternative examples and workarounds. It is fatally easy to evade the task of settling the hard questions that will bring editors to MOS in the first place. Sure, we could go the way of Burchfield, and give no useful ruling. Look what reception that gets from users (see above)! Or instead, we can say this, in effect: "Here is a useful and robust guideline. You are wondering whether to write wholly owned subsidiary or wholly-owned subsidiary? Ah yes: both are used, sometimes inconsistently by the same source. But we, along with every other major style guide, recommend the form without the hyphen." And we have our reasons for this recommendation, what's more.

I am reminded of uncertainties with terms addressed in Diatonic and chromatic. In initiating and developing that article I surveyed a vast number of sources, as the fifty footnotes might suggest. I saw very many "authorities" that crept around the central problem with the term diatonic, which has two logically incompatible meanings. Such craven pussy-footing is not a good look, and it is worthless in a style guide. To guide, we must confront hard cases. UK legislation is inconsistent, but that is no good precedent for us.

Keep the example we have now. If we do not, either we fail to guide or we must make a considerably more complex guideline. I am not absolutely against a more complex guideline; but I think others might be.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 22:34, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

The core issue is that Noetica insists on making MOS assert falsehood. "Wholly-owned subsidiaries" is usage, as xer own examples attest; in some contexts it is mandatory usage. Having an example which denies that makes MOS look illiterate and bullying; I should prefer not to.

The grammatical point here is the difference between two slightly different constructions: "majestically tall sequoias" can become "tall sequoias" with a slight change in force. But "X Company sold off its owned subsidiary Y Technologies" is scarcely intelligible - and that's why it is usual to hyphenate wholly-owned. The examples Wavelength cites are of the first, normal, type, and that's why we should use one of them. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:56, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

The legal document cited above is about commercial law, and not about regulating the English language. It is not a style guide. An error slipped into the document in many places, and no one corrected it. Someone should contact the people responsible for the document, and tell them about the mistake. Maybe there will be a corrected version published in the future, or, at least, an addendum of errata.

If I were a British lawyer composing text about the act, I would not hyphenate the expression "wholly owned subsidiary", in spite of what the act says. If I were a British legal secretary composing text for a British lawyer who wanted the expression hyphenated, I would tell the lawyer that the authors of the document made a mistake, and I would try to persuade the lawyer to follow a reliable style guide.

Whether "designed sound cards" or "owned subsidiary" is meaningful is irrelevant to a reader who reads in a forward direction, from left to right. (Presumably, the meaningfulness is questioned because all sound cards are designed and all subsidiaries are owned, and so the unmodified adjectives add no information.) Faulty parsing appears to be the crux of PMAnderson's unusual point of view.

I understand better now why Noetica wants to retain the long-standing example "wholly owned subsidiary". In the interests of brevity, a person consulting the Manual sees that, even in a case like this, where some people might have seen in the legal document a reason to hyphenate, the omission of the hyphen is recommended. Therefore, in easier cases, such as "specially designed sound cards", that is likewise the course to follow.

Unfortunately, my good intentions in providing alternative examples may have made things more difficult for Noetica and for me. (I started this discussion because my dehyphenation to "specially designed sound cards" in paragraph 4 of Electric guitar#Sound and effects was challenged.)

-- Wavelength (talk) 22:00, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Wavelength, I cannot begin to tell you how pleased I am that someone, at least, can be persuaded by sound argument. Thank you for paying attention, and for graciously acknowledging a change of heart, as we all should from time to time. That is enormously to your credit.

Anderson, you claim that I "insist on making MOS assert falsehood". But you misrepresent me. Two points:

1. I am discussing the issues; you insist on making changes to a long-established guideline that is tagged for discussion. I have just reverted your last attempt (which was garbled, by the way). Who is grasping for control, here?
2. With a guideline in the form of a plain indicative utterance, a style guide cannot genuinely assert a falsehood. Not in any interesting or relevant sense. The guideline is a stipulation. When God says thou shalt not kill and the recipient of the instruction does kill, has God uttered a falsehood? Only on a twisted understanding of how language operates. We have already covered this: the surface structure of a guideline can be a plain statement (thou shalt not kill), or it can be a modal formulation (thou mayst not kill), or it can be an imperative (do not kill). But none of this affects its manifest force as a guideline (or a recommendation, or an injunction, depending on the case and the context).

You claim that my examples attest to wholly-owned subsidiaries. Sure, that is used: here and there, inconsistently. It is one sort of problem case; loosely speaking, it is a crux for anyone setting out to guide style. For that very reason we should confront it! As I have pointed out (and you have not answered the point), it is exactly in such crucial instances that editors will consult MOS. You would have us supply information that most people already have. Few will have trouble with majestically tall sequoias; many will with wholly owned subsidiary. Yes, even UK legislation is all over the place with that one! If we stick boldly with a difficult case like wholly owned subsidiary, we cover all contingencies: we advise grandma without telling her how to suck eggs, and a fortiori we advise those who do need advice in the basics.

A clear and confident MOS will not look bullying, any more than Garner's book (mentioned earlier) is seen that way. Rather, like Garner's book it will have earned respect, and actually be used: it sets a consensual style, and delivers it boldly and clearly. The newest Fowler's fails to guide; you would have us do the same.

I agree that there is a difference between most purely adjectival and many participial cases. I have analysed this thoroughly myself, and could say more. But all major style guides give the guideline that we currently give; and it is mysterious why we should want to complicate things, and be over-delicate where they are robust and clear.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 22:23, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

But changing the example wouldn't need to do either of these things. There must be other equally crux-ish examples that don't carry the objection that the term is defined (not just mentioned) in law using a different hyphenation style. I'm sure most people would consider it incorrect to write "the UK Companies Act defines a wholly owned subsidiary as..." if we know it uses a hyphen there - factual correctness must trump stylistic correctness. --Kotniski (talk) 11:49, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

If I were writing about the Act, I would omit the hyphen. If I were quoting the Act, I would use the hyphen, but I would put "[sic]" after the expression (see sic). I would do so, even if it meant doing both in the same sentence. See paragraph 2 of my previous message.

-- Wavelength (talk) 18:02, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

OK, I think we're just gonig to disagree about this. Doing what you suggest would, I suspect, be viewed as annoying or incomprehensible pedantry by most readers (but then the majority aren't always right...)--Kotniski (talk) 07:21, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

English is a language which allows flexibility. Both The Guardian[4] and The Daily Telegraph[5] arbitrarily use "wholly owned" and "wholly-owned". Our style guideline cannot be prescripive, if general practice is not. Therefore editors can use either construction as they prefer. Ty 12:32, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Prescriptiveness has already been discussed. Please read #Hyphens after -ly adverbs (rationalised section) from the beginning, or search for "prescri" on this page.

-- Wavelength (talk) 18:55, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Wavelength:

Your care with citation of the act would go well beyond the care that the UK legislators take, as we have seen. Analysis of occurrences of wholly[-] owned subsidiary using the advanced search facility at www.publications.parliament.uk is revealing. Like Google, the facility does not detect hyphens. The first 50 hits on a search for wholly owned subsidiary show, in the heads that appear on the screen:

• 33 hyphenated instances
• 22 unhyphenated instances

Not an impressive majority, for Hansard and all other parliamentary uses. When we restrict the search to actual legislation (bills or acts), we find in the first 20 hits:

• 14 hyphenated instances
• 16 unhyphenated instances

Clearly the definition in the Companies Act is not about English usage, as you have pointed out. Nor is it taken as guiding style at the official site of the Parliament that framed it. Nor do the Hansard transcribers appear to give a hoot one way or the other. Should we care what the UK Companies Act says, then? Of course not! Nor should any other style guide. And – unanimously – they don't.

Ty:

You write that "Our style guideline cannot be prescriptive, if general practice is not." But that is singularly unhelpful. "General practice" is that which stands in need of prescription (or does not, if your view is different). To say that general practice either prescribes or fails to prescribe is to make a basic category mistake. Are CMOS, New Hart's, and the other major style guides in awe of "general practice"? Of course not. They prescribe standards, just because "general practice" is chaotic and inconsistent. And people subscribe to them in droves because they want such guidance. Please follow Wavelength's suggestion, and read what has already been said about this.

Kotniski:

It is not clear whom you are addressing when you write "Doing what you suggest...". Please try to keep a long and complex discussion orderly. See, for example, how I am structuring this post. Beyond that, the issue here is not something on which we can simply agree to disagree. Through this seemingly trivial example (hyphenating wholly owned subsidiary) we approach core dilemmas for MOS: Err on the side of detail or the side of simplicity? Err by prescribing too narrowly or by barely prescribing at all? And more.

Anderson:

Again I have reverted your unilateral meddling with an established guideline that is tagged for discussion here. (I hope others will assist in reverting such uncollegial edits.) You write: " 'X Company sold off its owned subsidiary Y Technologies' is scarcely intelligible". But that is not so. The details vary according to the jurisdiction in which a company is set up, but strictly a subsidiary is not always owned. Some subsidiaries are not even minority-owned subsidiaries. What makes a company a subsidiary of its parent company is that the parent company has control of the subsidiary. This is normally underwritten by at least majority ownership, but it need not be. Google searches are dangerous, as we all acknowledge; but a search on "the owned subsidiary" (the quote marks are essential) gets 1,350 hits. I could say much more about the motivations for hyphens in such premodifiers, and more tellingly than in the case of wholly owned subsidiary. But I am inclined not to. As I have said, major style guides are effectively unanimous on this point; and they agree with our own long-standing and simple guideline. You have not made a case for our doing differently; and you have not made a case for us holding back from delivering genuine guidance in difficult cases.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 23:00, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

There would appear to be consensus above that wholly owned subsidiary is not the best example, from Johnbod, Kotniski, and Wavelength, for various reasons. Any of Wavelangth's dozen examples above would not be hyphenated, even in the most formal British English; they are, therefore improvements over wholly owned subsidiary. Perhaps Noetica can explain why xe keeps reverting to the weakest example we can find, which is, even by xer own research, hyphenated as often as not? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:17, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Anderson, once more you distort the tenor of the discussion. You refuse to focus on the lines of argument and the enormous amount of evidence that I can easily bring against your flat assertions. Do not persist in making changes to a guideline flagged for discussion. Do not continue to pretend that you have unambivalent support for such changes, let alone consensus. Far from wholly owned subsidiary being the weakest example we can find, it is much bolder and gives much clearer guidance than any of the listed alternatives – alternatives that Wavelength now regrets offering, if I read correctly. Please: let us read correctly! And let us not attempt to mislead other editors. If they read through what has gone before, the deception is easily uncovered.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 23:12, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Anderson, what on earth makes you think I want, or anyone else here wants, "a compromise". I do not compromise when it comes to redundancy in language, and nor should you. Ilaki, I don't understand why you find the hyphen acceptable when it is redundant. Tell me now that it's not redundant, and we can get down to the nub of it. Hyphens are useful—indeed indespensable—to good writing, but only where they're useful. To add a redundant hyphen is to distract the reader, and to make the reading harder, not easier. I have no intention of accepting this watering down of a useful and long-standing guidance to our editors that has helped to make WP's prose better for our readers. Tony (talk) 00:43, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

WP:Consensus. Those who are unwilling to compromise should find some other hobby; those who are uncompromising in order to impose a novel variant of the English language should find a Newspeak Wiki. Wholly-owned subsidiary is plainly British usage; we should not attempt to reform that - it is also (less common) usage elsewhere for the sound reason that it indicates a difference in construction from majestically tall sequoia. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:53, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps one who is "opposed to all efforts to impose uniformity" has mistaken Wikipedia for a contrarians' playground. -Ac44ck (talk) 01:12, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Anderson:

• We are not attempting to reform the language, but to guide style in Wikipedia articles. That is the whole purpose of MOS.
• The "variant" you seek to ridicule has support from all major style guides. You have not succeeded in bringing to the table even a minor style guide that supports your own preferred variant.
• Compromise is often desirable. Capitulating to an extreme position (refusal to allow guidelines to guide; refusal to work collegially; refusal to represent others' positions accurately; refusal to join in nuanced analysis of the facts) is not a good kind of compromise.
• Those who seek to undermine all that MOS is attempting to achieve – they are the ones in need of "another hobby".
• Wholly-owned subsidiary is definitely not settled as British usage, as the carefully presented evidence above amply shows. It is not accepted as such in any major style guide. It is becomely more and more apparent, Anderson, that argument and evidence count for nothing, for those implacably advocating their own long-held prejudices. What is the point of anyone arguing rationally, and presenting clear evidence, if argument counts for nothing, and is simply passed over in favour of repeated assertion?

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 01:16, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

This discussion keeps popping up in my watch list. My interest is in another topic on this talk page. The rehashing here is annoying. I experienced the same repetition of prior statements in my dealings with User:Pmanderson. It is apparently known behavior. There comes a time to cut people loose. -Ac44ck (talk) 01:37, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

"Ilaki, I don't understand why you find the hyphen acceptable when it is redundant". Am I "Ilaki" for the purposes of this conversation? All I said is that, in my own personal version of English, hyphenation is acceptable in most of those instances (including wholly-owned subsidiary). I do not think this should affect the design of our guideline, and I agree with you and Noetica on what the wording should be and what example should be given. Ilkali (talk) 01:30, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

PMAnderson, I request that you refrain from citing me as a supporter when you change the Manual. Although I did suggest 12 alternative examples, I am now advocating for retention of the long-standing example ("wholly owned subsidiary"). This may baffle you, but the reason for my previously suggesting the alternative examples is also the same reason for my now advocating for retention of the long-standing example, namely, its difficult nature. The example is potentially difficult for many users of the Manual (but not too difficult for editors of the Manual who prescribe according to reliable style guides), and therefore it can be used as a benchmark for deciding less difficult cases. Whereas previously I was offering examples for easy acceptance by editors of the Manual (although with less helpfulness for users of the Manual), I am now advocating for greater helpfulness for users of the Manual (although with more difficult acceptance by editors of the Manual). I am also hoping for an example that would support "specially designed sound cards" as clearly as possible, without actually using that as the/an example. Would you rather live in a straw house, a wood house, or a brick house? Constructing any of them requires work.

Noetica, please do not give up on this case. Since it began on November 11, no one has proven to be more qualified than you in discussing it.

--Wavelength (talk) 02:49, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

So why not simply use that as an example? It's just as robust as the wholly owned one, and (as far as we know so far) isn't subject to any objections of the type raised with respect to w.o.s. We do the MoS no favours by deliberately choosing an example to which people are able to make quite valid objections, thus weakening the authority of the MoS.--Kotniski (talk) 11:09, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Kotniski, the long-standing example ("wholly owned subsidiary") is a better and a more robust example, as I just explained in my previous message at 02:49, 25 November 2008 (UTC); also, in paragraph 4 of my message at 22:00, 22 November 2008 (UTC). How did you miss it? Please read again my messages, carefully. Also, please read again Noetica's explanations of the same point, carefully.

-- Wavelength (talk) 18:48, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I've read it all, but I still see no reason why it's any better or more robust than any other of a thousand similar examples. Instead it just invites people to discredit the whole rule by pointing out that the law defines this particular term otherwise. Still, as long as they are not doing so (or attempting to write about such companies), I'll let it go.--Kotniski (talk) 19:32, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Another kind of exception

Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Hyphens, subsection 3, point 2, refers to the use of a hyphen to disambiguate, as in little-used car, where little is an adverb, and not an adjective, as it usually is. It happens that, of the English words that can be both adjectives and adverbs, some end in -ly.

half-hourly, hourly, daily, nightly, weekly, fortnightly, semi-monthly, monthly, quarterly, yearly

early, kindly, likely, only

I am still pondering what would be a good example of a phrase requiring disambiguation. This kind of exception can be added to subsection 3, point 4.

-- Wavelength (talk) 22:27, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

This point about adjectives in -ly is made in some style guides, Wavelength. But these are not strictly exceptions to any statement that is about adverbs. Kindly can be an adverb or an adjective. It is an adverb in Kindly given gifts are better than grudgingly given ones; it is an adjective in a kindly-seeming teacher, like good in a good-looking girl.

But I don't think we should strive to educate users on every such point of grammar!

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 19:48, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

What is WP:MOS?

Despite the presence of the above box at the very top of WP:MOS, several editors here have recently indicated a belief that MOS should be prescriptive, and thereby demonstrated a lack of understanding that it is a "guideline", the meaning of which is laid out in WP:POL. Please take a moment to review at least the nutshell. LeadSongDog (talk) 02:19, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

This, indeed, deserves wider discussion. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:56, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Can you clarify what you're question is, because I'm not sure I'm getting what the problem is? The box repeats what is stated at POL for a guideline? -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 03:02, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Certain editors regard anything less than than a command: Do this, Don't do that, as rendering MOS useless; see, for example, #Hyphens after -ly adverbs (rationalised section), above, where there are several objection to a proposal to change "a hyphen is not used" in certain circumstances, to "a hyphen is not normally used", on the grounds that to insert normally or generally weakens MOS to a nullity. (I hold that in the instant case, the claim is false without such qualification, but that should be discussed there.)

The question here is: Is this absolute language, in a guideline, which will have occasional exceptions and special cases, either helpful or appropriate? Some of us would prefer to describe what English does (often not always or never, and the cases where it is generally have not gotten into MOS, because we don't need to decide them). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:23, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

If we wanted to be genuinely descriptive, we would be neutrally describing all the errors that English speakers habitually make. We wouldn't be describing forms as "correct" or "incorrect" ([6],[7],[8],[9],etc), we wouldn't have at the top of the page "Editors should follow [this guideline]", and we wouldn't use a word like 'should' over a hundred times throughout the article.

You don't actually want the MoS to be descriptive, and you're confusing your case by suggesting that you do. What you want is for it to prescribe a range of possible styles, all approved by yourself, without expressing any strong preference. That's still prescription, it's just a much blander form. Until you understand what you're advocating, nobody's going to be able to convince you that it's a bad idea. Ilkali (talk) 03:44, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I congratulate you on acquiring telepathy, but it seems to be wonky. I do indeed want MOS to be descriptive; that would in itself do most of the work of guidance we need. (We do not, of course, need to describe, still less to prescribe, all of English - including those actually occurring usages which are vulgar errors; that would require volumes, which already exist and are available elsewhere.) What would be useful is to describe what good writers actually do, and, as we do not, on what grounds they actually do it. That might even be persuasive, and obviate the bullying, bot usage, and name-calling. This would involve treating our fellow editors as adults, with minds to be persuaded; is that the obstacle?

I have no objection to the behavioural prescriptions, such as ENGVAR; they may indeed be the only really useful part of MOS.

Postulating what the other side are "really" saying has "all the advantages of theft over honest toil", to quote Bertrand Russell. When you get tired of arguing with straw men, do let us know. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:59, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

"I do indeed want MOS to be descriptive; that would in itself do most of the work of guidance we need. (We do not, of course, need to describe, still less to prescribe, all of English". As soon as you choose what to describe, you fall into prescription. You're trying to handwave that away by saying "no, we're just describing the language used by people we want our editors to copy". Can't that be said about virtually any prescription? Again, this isn't a matter of description vs prescription, it's a matter of how broad our prescriptions should be. Ilkali (talk) 13:15, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

As soon as you choose what to describe, you fall into prescription. Does anybody else believe this? Must we transcribe all of Jesperson (and he does not describe everything), or fall into prescription? (To say nothing of the fact that we are choosing to describe English, as opposed to French, or to chess.) This is another purely verbal argument, by a sophist, who, like Humpty Dumpty, makes words mean whatever he pleases. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:35, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

This is a meaningless question. For a guideline to guide, it must prescribe some options while advising against others. There is no way a manual of style could be anything but prescriptive. Ilkali (talk) 03:04, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

---

[Here is my own considered opinion of the role of MOS, and of the continuing attack on MOS. Please comment after, not within my post.–N]

Just as it is easy to support practically anything from a judiciously chosen Google search, it is possible to lend all manner of absurdities a veneer of credibility with a well-chosen quotation from Bertrand Russell. The one I would bring to the table is this:

It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go. (Collected papers of Bertrand Russell, volume 10, Routledge)

But now that I consider more closely, this one fits pretty well: Anderson both behaves badly and, usurping the prerogative of the car, won't go. For this reason we are perhaps doubly wise not to be angry. Rather, Anderson, we should view your campaign against MOS with stoic equanimity, and meet it as we might some mere natural calamity. Truly, that is why I retired from my engagement with MOS some months ago. Until now. Your persistent jackal-like despoiling of others' good work has drawn me back, at least for a short while.

I suppose we ought to feel relieved: The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) earns from you as little consideration as our MOS does. Is CMOS truly "a hasty piece of shorthand for writers and editors in a hurry", in your words recorded above? An odd judgement, concerning the major style guide for the publishing industry – all 984 pages of its fifteenth edition. Hasty? Shorthand? Come now. Even I don't say that, and I am one of its stern critics.

There is a general uncertainty and unease about prescriptiveness. But let me remind editors: to prescribe is not to command; to advise is not to browbeat; to guide is not to goad. As Ilkali and I have pointed out (as if it needed it!), style guides by their nature prescribe standards and touchstones in support of consistent high quality. They offer remedies for the difficulties writers and editors encounter. Worthwhile style guides anticipate a good proportion of the most thorny and most probable problems, though none can predict every conceivable eventuality. Any attempt to do this would end up not as guidance but as an offer to take over the task of composition itself.

Wikipedia's own MOS is a style guide, and unlike such farraginous compendia as Fowler's, it must aim to prescribe real solutions to the problems likely to be encountered in making and improving Wikipedia articles. Sometimes it can do this well by description of accepted practice elsewhere; but to insist that is all it can do is to be a fanatic. No style guide merely describes! And let's be clear about this: style guides, in prescribing for good style, do not always have to use the imperative mood ("Do this, and not that"). Nor do they have to employ modals of obligation ("You must capitalise a proper noun"). No, they commonly use ordinary indicative sentences ("In British usage a colon is not often followed by a full stop").

WP:MOS should be a rationally organised suite of guidelines that genuinely guide: not detailed to the point of mind-numbing prolixity, and not broad to the point of vacuity. Its language should be simple, confident, and unambiguous. It should make sound and useful recommendations based on the deliberations of committed, interested, knowledgeable editors, and thereby earn the broader Wikipedia community's respect. Exactly how obligatory the community wants to make those recommendations is not our concern here. We should simply make the best guidelines we can. We should not work to sabotage that endeavour, through a misguided and fanatical confusion of roles.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 06:06, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

From the above, I take it that Noetica interprets "prescribe" here by using one of its softer meanings. It has quite a range, and therein lies some of the discomfort. From my old Funk & Wagnall's:

prescribe v. 1.To set down as a direction or rule to be followed; ordain; enjoin. 2.Med. To order the use of (a medicine, treatment, etc.). 3.Law To render invalid by lapse of time. v.i. 4. To lay down laws or rules; give direction. 5.Med. To order a remedy; give prescriptions. 6.Law a To assert a title to something on the basis of prescription: with for or to. b To become invalid or unenforceable by lapse of time.

So there are several possible meanings, which makes for confusion when the term is used. LeadSongDog (talk) 08:45, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

• Insofar as the MoS should be descriptive, it should be in that it forms a corpus of good practice taken from the prescriptions of authorities in the field. In this way, it documents what others have prescribed. We then go one step further and say "therefore, one should do X as this is what the authorities do". This is perfectly sensible as it allows editors the authority to unify the styling of different articles. Without any hint of prescription, every article is its own little fiefdom where local rules apply. I disagree strongly with this happening. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 13:06, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

You (and PManderson) are concocting some weird ad-hoc meaning when prescription is already a well-defined term within linguistics. Ilkali (talk) 13:15, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, and LeadSongDog, please spare us the medical and legal definitions. Indeed, more than they are irrelevant in that comprehensive definition; fact is, "prescribe" has a range of meanings, and "enjoin" is one of them, as you point out. My Encarta Dictionary says of that word: "urge, encourage, admonish, press; instruct". But Anderson would have us dilute our style guide into nothingness—in the spirit of the political hard-right, he just can't abide centralised advice or direction for the good of a community (unless he quite likes it WRT a particular point). Tony (talk) 14:11, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

In my experience, orders, demands, and a system which all must follow, without exceptions, and independently of the evidence, are precisely characteristic of the hard right. Australian politics may differ. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:25, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

To clarify, Tony, I am not advocating the use of any one of those definitions (I simply quoted the entry entire), but rather pointing out that there is such a significant range of meanings as to effectively render the term useless for the purpose of this discussion. The link Ilkali kindly provided to Linguistic prescription was interesting. That article could benefit from some TLC to improve its inline citations and I have so tagged it, but it was still informative. Even so, we are not exactly talking about linguistics here, but about the WP House style guideline.LeadSongDog (talk) 19:23, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Could somebody rewrite this question so that it actually asks the reader to do more than "review a nutshell". I've reviewed the nutshell, but since no actual comment is requested in this request for comment, I don't see anything else to do. Tim Vickers (talk) 17:50, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Proposed addition to "Currencies" section

I propose that the following text be inserted in the "Currencies" section:

The names of currencies, currency subdivisions, coins and banknotes should not be capitalised except where normal capitalisation rules require this (for example, at the start of a sentence).

Matt 20:01, 15 November 2008 (UTC). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.136.194.39 (talk)

• Since there have been no objections I've done this. Matt 23:05, 22 November 2008 (UTC). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.146.47.251 (talk)

Footnotes in the lede?

I recently saw someone claim that the MOS says the lede section of an article should not contain footnotes. I dont care about the article in question, but please tell me this isn't so. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:51, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

The idea is that the lede is a mere summary of the article, so all claims in the lede will be verified in the text. As such, visually distracting inline citations do not provide any benefit to the reader. If this is not covered in the MoS, I think it ought to be. the skomorokh 21:54, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

There are many purposes for footnotes other than inline citations of specific facts. In particular, they are used for parenthetical and editorial comments. And the scientific citation guideline has long recommended that one way of indicating general references for the article is via footnotes or inline citations in the first paragraph, as in Mathematical logic and Aldol reaction. So I can't see that a blanket prohibition would be justified. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:05, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Right, I was referring to straight inline citations, as in {{cite journal}} and the like. Expository comments are of course a different matter. the skomorokh 22:07, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I'd agree in most cases, but I still think it's not totally uncommon to get the occasional cite-worthy statement appearing in the lede that isn't repeated anywhere else. Perhaps we could make a recommendation including exceptions; but perhaps not on this page, but on whichever one it is now that deals with citations.--Kotniski (talk) 22:12, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Aye, for well-developed articles. Many ledes are simply unsectioned leftovers rather than summaries. Something like "inline citations are discouraged in the lead sections of articles where the lede functions as a summary"? I image WP:LEDE would be the place to address this. the skomorokh 22:14, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

There is already some text at WP:LEDE#Citations. I just wanted to be sure there is no general prohibition on footnotes in the lede in some other MOS page. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:27, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

(ec) Examples of two well-developed articles that use notes in the lead for dispute resolution: USS Constitution, an FA, uses two notes that point out facts that were often changed or discussed on the talk page. Led Zeppelin, a former FA candidate, uses notes in the lead to an extreme, again to avoid arguments about facts that were disputed in the past. I would have to say that the USS Constitution uses the correct style, and Led Zeppelin is overkill. However, in both cases without the notes disputes are bound to occur. I am constantly amazed that editors will remove, tag or dispute facts on talk pages without reading past the lead, but it does happen. Sswonk (talk) 22:36, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether we're talking about just footnotes as opposed to citations or both; people use the word "footnotes" both ways. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that a year ago, it was a common request at WP:FAC to remove all <ref> tags from the lead section, but there have been many FAC's this year that passed with multiple <ref>'s in the lead. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 23:32, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Led Zeppelin has mostly citations; USS Constitution has two parenthetical explanations, just as well out of the text. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:55, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

• Strongly against a blanket prohibition, or even any discouragement. For example, articles on paintings should give their size in the first paragraph, about which there is rarely anything further to be said. But this should be referenced. Similarly with variant spellings of historical people's names. Johnbod (talk) 14:58, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Strongly against a blanket prohibition, or even any discouragement. If the lead section contains statements that need citations to justify them, then it should have the citations.

• An example of this is Prince Consort class battleship whose second paragraph has citations for what the class is called today (Prince Consort class), and what it was called at the time (Caledonia class). These facts belong in an introduction.
• In the article Jackie Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher there are citations concerning his name - how this man should be referred to is disputed. Having his correct name at the start (with citations), but using one of his many nicknames as the title seems to be something people can live with. Other examples of citations for the name being advisable, are articles on some cities in Eastern Europe, because the English language name is disputed, e.g. Dnepropetrovsk (though curiously enough, that article does not have them - the justifications (with citations) being in the talk page.--Toddy1 (talk) 15:20, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Roman numerals in Bible citation

It may be helpful to mention forms of Bible citation in the MOS.

The Bible citation article says the colon-delimited form of Bible citation is the "most common format on Wikipedia". If so, the MOS might promote the use of that format for consistency.

Some references use Roman numerals for chapter numbers. The Homiletics article uses several references of the form "Matt., xxviii, 19".

Maybe it's a personal or regional preference thing like spellings (color or colour) and units (feet or meters — or metres).

Perhaps there is elegance in using Roman numerals for this purpose, but I don't encounter Roman numerals often and it slows my reading to translate them. Maybe it isn't the role of the MOS to discourage Roman numerals in this context, but the format seems like an anachronism to me in that I usually find it in older books. - Ac44ck (talk) 17:24, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Roman numerals are fairly standard in several types of Biblical study; I doubt it would be useful or effective to prohibit them, and "most common" already promotes "Matthew 28:19". Since the exact chapter really only matters if you plan to check the reference, can't you just treat them as arbitrary tags? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:03, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Note, however, that this is a virtually unaltered Catholic Encyclopedia article, from when Roman numerals were more common than they are now. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:20, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

The "most common" observation seems anecdotal, but probably accurate, to me. And it doesn't seem to be the result of a conscious decision to write a Wikipedia articles using the format that most people will _expect_ for Biblical references. It seems to be an unwritten, (mostly) de facto standard. I favor making it a written (not inviolable, but preferred) standard.

Finding references in Roman numerals may make it harder for me to marshal the effort to actually look up the verse listed. It may provoke a choice between 1) trusting the author's interpretation, or 2) overcoming several obstacles to evaluate the author's claim: a) go get a Bible, b) find the cited book in the Bible, c) decode the Roman numerals, d) find the referenced verse, e) evaluate the author's interpretation. Finding the verse in Roman numerals makes the list of obstacles 25 percent longer than it would be otherwise. Certainly not insurmountable, but potentially discouraging enough to break a chain of events that might have happened otherwise.

As for treating the Roman numerals as arbitrary tags, I assume that means to read over them as I might a word that I don't understand, hoping that I might glean enough of the author's meaning from the context around the unfamiliar word. That can happen, but it interrupts my reading to 1) encounter a word that I don't recognize, 2) make the decision that I will skip it and hope for the best rather than reach for a dictionary, etc.

There is a Wikipedia article on how to write a phone number:

Local conventions for writing telephone numbers

Writing a telephone number in a different format will look strange to a resident

I have seen several ways to write a phone number in the USA: (888)555-0111, 888-555-0111, 888.555.0111, 888 555 0111. Some forms are easier for me to recognize as a phone number. And these examples involve only a change in punctuation, not numeral type.

A Bible citation article exists, but it isn't likely to get much attention unless there is a link to it in the MOS. And the existing article doesn't address the issue of using Roman numerals.

There was a time when I was unfamiliar with the colon-delimited format by which chapter and verse are usually cited. A mix of Roman/Arabic numerals may compound unfamiliarity and discourage some from making the effort to learn the "code" by which chapter and verse may be found. It may not seem like a complicated code, "But knowledge is easy to him who has understanding" (Prov 14:6b).

I don't know how many Romans read the English Wikipedia, or how many of them use Roman numerals. I don't necessarily subscribe to the "newer is better" hype, but updating the verse references in the Homiletics article, which apparently is "a virtually unaltered Catholic Encyclopedia article, from when Roman numerals were more common than they are now", seems like it could be a helpful thing to do. It could also be helpful for the MOS to address the issue instead of leaving it for several editors to raise the issue on multiple talk pages where they might want to "update" the format.

• There may be more Arabs, but not many; this is a poor case for Arabic numerals. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:40, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

• Arabic numerals

• The arabic numerals (often capitalized) are the ten digits (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
• Today they are the most common symbolic representation of numbers in the world.

• Roman numerals#Modern_usage

The Roman number system is generally regarded as obsolete in modern usage

-Ac44ck (talk) 06:43, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Except, of course, in those fields where it isn't obsolete, such as here and here and here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:32, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

The issue here is: Might a general audience have a preferred format for Biblical citations? The statement in the Bible citation article about the "most common format on Wikipedia" suggests that they do. Who might prefer the mixture of Roman and Arabic numerals? I suppose that some scholars might. Anyone who is familiar with the mix of Roman/Arabic numerals can understand the simpler format. I don't believe that the converse is true. One who is less familiar Biblical references in general may find a reference containing Roman numerals to be too cryptic to pursue.

Several additional examples of current (if potentially cryptic – how many can evaluate "MDCCCCLXXXXIII" in movie's copyright notice before it scrolls off the screen?) use are given in the link that I gave before: Roman numerals#Modern_usage. It is perhaps instructive that the notion of using Roman numerals in Biblical citations is not included in that list. In fact, the character string "bibl" doesn't appear anywhere in the Roman numerals article; even the historical use of Roman numerals in Biblical references isn't mentioned anywhere in the article.

The one-liner quips haven't made much of a case for indifference (comparable to that which should exist in a dispute over the spelling of color/colour) toward the old style of citation.- Ac44ck (talk) 19:22, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

The MOS essentially says, "If you find the 'colour' spelling in an article, don't change it to 'color' instead because both spellings are common in modern use." I don't think the MOS should be as indifferent about the old convention of citing Bible verses using a mixture of Roman and Arabic numerals. - Ac44ck (talk) 22:04, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

This issue was discussed before:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Humanities/2008_January_22#Chapter-verse_notation_styles

I would say the first is more common and the second is perhaps the more traditional; they are equally correct. ... Just keep your style consistent within your writing.

In my view, this gives "conformity with precedent in a particular article" priority over "ease of comprehension by an average reader".

One might point to this statement in Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Consistency

Edits should not change a stable article from one guideline-defined style to another unless there is a substantial reason to do so that goes beyond mere choice of style.

and call the issue "resolved". Though there doesn't seem to be any "guideline-defined style" which discusses the use of Roman numerals in citing Bible verses, and whether "ease of comprehension by an average reader" qualifies as "a substantial reason" is in the eye of the beholder.

I have added a section on Roman numerals to the Bible citation article. -Ac44ck (talk) 19:19, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Abuse of article space

Please do not abuse article space for hosting arguments about Wikipedia house style. Article space is for encyclopaedia articles about Bible citations, supported by sources that discuss such things, and reflecting human knowledge on the subject, not for discussing or specifying what style of citations should be used within Wikipedia. We already have a project-space discussion of citing the Bible in Wikipedia. It's Wikipedia:Citing sources/Bible. Uncle G (talk) 14:13, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

The Wikipedia:Citing sources/Bible page seems to be a work-log about templates, which external website they should link to, and which Bible version to use. It doesn't seem to touch on the various styles of citation allowed in Wikipedia. Wouldn't that be the subject of a Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(Biblical_citations) page?

I may not understand the "self-reference" rule. I assumed that the quoted articles contained valid information. I see how that could be unstable if the linked article changes, or invalid if the content copied from the linked article was tainted. But as I read it, WP:SELF is about refraining from mentioning the word Wikipedia or linking to things outside of article space. It seems that self-referencing can be okay if it "makes sense in a copy of Wikipedia which contains only the article space", which is what I did.

I didn't discuss or specify "what style of citations _should_ be used within Wikipedia."

I didn't touch the first part of the page other than to build structure by adding a heading, using words from the existing lead. Other than the removal of what may be interpreted as self-referencing material, the remainder of how I left it at 19:08, 19 November 2008, essentially persists (dressed up and in better company, but conceptually similar) in the current version. User:Pmanderson tagged the Roman numerals section for WP:SYNTH, but I still don't understand that.

It seems that the "abuse of article space" was either preexisting or in the "self-referencing". Otherwise, I don't see that my changes caused article space to be "hosting arguments about Wikipedia house style." -Ac44ck (talk) 08:25, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

MOSHEAD-checking script

I've written a script to check for violations of MOS:HEAD. It adds a new button to your "navigation" portlet in the left-hand column; when clicked, the script analyzes the article, printing potential MoS errors in popup windows in batches of 10 and highlighting suspect section headings in red. I've been testing it on random, Featured and Good Articles and it seems to work OK, although it can't recognize proper names, of course. To try the script out, you need to import it by adding "importScript('User:Proteins/mosheadcheck.js');" to your monobook.js subpage under your user name, as you can see at my own user page. You can test it on your favorite articles or on this MoS nightmare. Feedback would be welcome! Proteins (talk) 00:07, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Checking nesting of headings is very handy; it's tedious to check it using the edit screen. I will check out the script this weekend; thanks for your work, it looks complicated! - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:31, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Image size

The last conversation on this was inconclusive. The current wording doesn't sit comfortably with the policy statement: WP:IMGSIZE. On the whole my understanding has been that size forcing is discouraged, unless there is a compelling reason for it. A vague statement that "This image is often resized to about 300px" is misleading as it doesn't give any explanation for the statement. It could either be advice to resize to "about" 300px, or a simple observation that the image tends to get forced even though it shouldn't be. I looked back in the history to find the first instance of allowing the lead image to be forced and found this conversation in which it was concluded that though there are considerations for at times forcing the lead image (and Bishonen's comments are persuasive for at least that incidence), that it shouldn't generally be applied. When the statement was transcluded over to this guideline, the wording on allowing forcing the lead image was left out as not having consensus. It was Gman who applied that wording 4 months later without consensus, or apparently misunderstanding the reasons why people were not comfortable with including it. The wording has been played around with since, so that now it no longer even makes sense. I propose a return to some of the original wording of the proposal, and to removing the vague statement about "This image is often resized to about 300px." SilkTork *^YES! 11:29, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Better remind us what the "original wording" was. Personally I am happy with the current wording, which doesn't seem to lead to problems in practice. Johnbod (talk) 14:53, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

This is a much-watched page; substantial changes that have been made were the subject of discussion; the current wording has been stable for months; if it didn't represent consensus someone would have said so long ago. Forget the history and simply make a new proposal to change it, with reasons. The meaning of "this image is often resized..." is fairly clear to me; editors are allowed to use their judgement, as must always be the case with image size, but in so far as their judgement is to be based on the aim of consistency with other WP articles, 300px for lead images is a good direction to go in. (That's just what it says now, I'm not saying I strongly agree with it.) --Kotniski (talk) 15:40, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I've given WP:IMGSIZE a quick edit, to make it explicitly clear that exceptions are discussed here at the MoS.--Kotniski (talk) 15:47, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

It shouldn't resized to "about 300 px". Wording should be "may be resized to 300 px". Users can set their preferences to specific thumbnail default sizes up to to 300 px. If someone sets their default to 300 px, and the lead is a forced image size of 250 px, then it will be smaller than all the other thumbs on that page (which will render at 300 px). This defeats the purpose of setting the larger image size for the lead image. It forces someone to see an image at a smaller size than the preference default they have chosen. Ty 15:58, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

How about "often resized to 300px, as this is the upper limit on the reader's thumbnail size preference"? That explains the rationale while still allowing a little wiggle froom for common sense in cases where 300px may be undesirable (images with very tall aspect ratios, for instance). Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 16:17, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

That 300px is the largest default is not a reason to make it the largest size allowed. Ty's reasoning would suggest something like "at least 300px", or maybe "300-350 px". What is the size where images are just too big on some screens? Johnbod (talk) 16:38, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

On a screen 800 x 600 (some users have even lower res screens) the 300px image takes up just over half the width of the article. 550px leaves no room for text at all. On a 1024 x 768 screen, 300px takes about 40% of the width and 550px about 70%. This suggests that 300px should be the maximum for the lead image, apart from exceptional circumstances. Ty 17:12, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Is there a good reason why the lead image should be treated differently to the other images in the article? Why should all the images not be thumb sized and let editors' preference settings and visitors' default settings take over? (obviously with the exception of images with a high aspect ratio). Rotational (talk) 18:40, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I think lead images can be 300px or they can be thumb size depending on the article, the image and number of images. In certain cases the lead is better as a thumb; and in other cases it is better at 300-350 px...Modernist (talk) 23:19, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion

The original wording that was discussed:

The lead introduction image bullet point was questioned and no consensus was found for keeping that statement so was not included in the edit bringing over the wording.

This is when the edit under discussion was included: April 2007.

Previous discussions on this issue: [10], this long debate, the finish of which was that there was no consensus to add in the lead image statement, this one is more about the default image size, which is probably a developer issue, [11], inconclusive, but interesting discussion - good contributions from SlimVirgin, [12], image size, but this is a developer discussion misplaced here, [13].

Interesting reading.

The wording from image size policy is:

"In articles, if you wish to have a photo beside the text, you should generally use the "thumbnail" option available in the "Image markup". This results in 180 pixels wide display (140 pixels for images with the "upright" parameter) in the standard preferences default setting. As a rule images should not be set to a fixed size (i.e. one that overrides the preferences settings of the individual users), but see the Manual of Style for exceptions.

Where size forcing is appropriate, larger images should generally be a maximum of 550 pixels wide, so that they can comfortably be displayed on 800x600 monitors."

Given that a guideline should keep within policy, a suggested wording:

IMAGES

Further information: Wikipedia:Picture tutorial, Wikipedia:Accessibility § Images, and Wikipedia:Image use policy

The following general guidelines should be followed in the absence of a compelling reason to do otherwise.

• Start an article with a right-aligned lead image or InfoBox.
• Multiple images in the same article can be staggered right-and-left (for example: Timpani). It is often preferable to place images of faces so that the face or eyes look toward the text. However, images should not be reversed simply to resolve a conflict between these guidelines; doing so misinforms the reader for the sake of our layout preferences. If an image is ever reversed or otherwise substantially altered, there should be a clear advantage to the reader in doing so (for example, cropping a work of art to focus on a detail that is the subject of commentary), and the alteration must be noted in the caption.
• See Wikipedia:Picture tutorial#Avoiding image "stackups" for how to group images and avoid "stackups".
• Avoid sandwiching text between two images facing each other.
• Use {{Commons}} to link to more images on Commons, wherever possible. If there are too many images in a given article, a link to the Commons is a good solution. Use of galleries should be in keeping with Wikipedia's image use policy.
• Do not place left-aligned images directly below subsection-level (=== or greater) headings, as this can disconnect the heading from the text it precedes. This can often be avoided by shifting left-aligned images down a paragraph or two.
• Use captions to explain the relevance of the image to the article (see #Captions).
• You should generally use the "thumbnail" option available in the "Image markup". This results in 180 pixels wide display (140 pixels for images with the "upright" parameter) in the standard preferences default setting. As a rule images should not be set to a fixed size (i.e. one that overrides the preferences settings of the individual users). Where size forcing is appropriate, larger images should generally be a maximum of 550 pixels wide, so that they can comfortably be displayed on 800x600 monitors.

Examples of images where size forcing may be appropriate include:

• Images with extreme aspect ratios
• Detailed maps, diagrams or charts
• Images in which a small region is relevant, but cropping to that region would reduce the coherence of the image
• To get the full impact of the image because at the default ratio it could not be seen clearly

I am not quite convinced why the lead image should be forced simply because it is the lead image. If it is forced because it is in an InfoBox, then so be it. If it is forced because it matches the above criteria, so be it. If there is some other reason why an image should be forced then so be it. But simply because it is the lead image doesn't make any sense that I can see, and nothing has come through from the debates I've linked above that indicate why being placed in a particular corner of an article means an image should be forced beyond default size. SilkTork *^YES! 20:53, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree about that, but won't go into it again. There are other problems above:

1) The no facing out should be given precedence over staggering left & right - I think it is generally accepted as the more important in the inevitable conflicts - see for example Sandy Georgia somewhere recently on FAC. Reversing the order would make this clearer. It is not just faces that may have a left or right-leaning bias, but perhaps that is too complicated to get into. 2)"If there are too many images in a given article, a link to the Commons is a good solution" is redundant to the previous sentence, and often a Commons link is far from a good solution, but one should be added anyway. This should be cut. 3)"Where size forcing is appropriate, larger images should generally be a maximum of 550 pixels wide" appears to contradict what Ty says above, except for panoramas intended to take up the full width. Maybe this should be spelled out. Johnbod (talk) 08:03, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree with that. Also there is no onus on staggering images. They can all be right-aligned if that works for the article. Staggering need not be done mechanically right-left-right, but can be adapted for the needs of the article. Ty 09:20, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Agreed that human heads are not the only objects with a front and a back - animals, vehicles, sculptures and a myriad other things should be included in the guideline/policy. Rotational (talk) 11:23, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

I've merged in the text to the project page. I haven't altered the "maximum of 550 pixels wide" sentence as that comes straight from policy, and the policy should be changed before we change it here. SilkTork *^YES! 08:35, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

The fourth item in the list there sounded weird; is my merge and reword of it into the first item acceptable? --an odd name 08:58, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Forced v unforced image sizes (again)

I realize that this is a perennial discussion, and am well aware that the consensus here is that image sizes should generally be unforced to defer to user preferences. But, isn't it time to reconsider the emphasis on "user preferences", given the recent decision to abandon date formatting? I mean, it was said that the vast majority of Wikipedia readers, on the order of 99%, are anon IPs and therefore do not have "date preferences" set. By the same logic, they don't have image size preferences, either, leaving them to strain trying to view a postage stamp-size 180px image or click on the image to enlarge. At the risk of being considered an iconoclast, I think for the sake of consistency and applying the same rationale, we should move away from the rigid, doctrinaire "no forced images so you can set your own size preference" for a more flexible approach. The goal should be suitable viewability by the vast majority of our readers, when 180px is too small.  JGHowes  ^talk 22:37, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

We shouldn't start making more images fixed size until logged-in editors have the ability to override the fixed size through an additional option in their preferences.

And, more fundamentally, the point of using the "thumb" option is the put a thumbnail of the actual image; the reader is perfectly able to click on the image to see the full version. If the default size for thumbnails is too small, it can be increased. That's far better than having each editor pick sizes out of the air that happen to look nice to him or her but are likely to lead to problems for users with different setups. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:45, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

With the date situation there was no consistency for the unlogged in user when editors were using the auto-date feature, and the use of it was leading to a mess. With the image situation the mess occurs when editors are size-forcing the image, so we ask them not to size force, because then we have a consistency built in with the default size of 180px.

To be consistent with the decision to abandon date formatting is exactly why we abandon size formatting/forcing. Do you see? The purpose is exactly the same.

Now, for some people there is a belief that 180 px is too small a default size. But that is a different discussion. It's a developer issue, and has nothing to do with MoS guidance or Image Policy, which would continue to say the same thing, regardless of what the default size is: Do not force the size of the image unless there is a compelling reason to do so, because by forcing the size you are producing a different result for different people depending on their browser settings, etc. On these pages we are urging a consistency to aid all users - we are not advocating a particular size, simply a uniform approach. SilkTork *^YES! 23:40, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

If 180px is too small considering the size of modern monitors (and I think it may be), then it's time to revisit that as the default size for thumbnails. That's the best solution to the problem you describe. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 08:52, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia appears to be optimised for 800 x 600 screens, which was once probably the majority of viewers, but may not be any more. Statistics are needed on readers' screen resolutions before any viable decision can be made on a default image size. Ty 09:24, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

My screen resolution when I am not using a stationary display is 800x480. And that's not unusual. --Hans Adler (talk) 09:32, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

800×600 is the size of the laptop I am using right now. — CharlotteWebb 20:34, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

So you now advocate that we should approve of forcing images to be larger than the screen of an iPhone and similar mobile internet devices and yet smaller than a user prefers? If the wikimedia software was more able to identify the type of device and set the default in a more intelligent manner, multiple "default" sizes could be used. Unfortunately, we simply don't have that available to us. It's bad enough that the last round of argument here moved from saying that we should not specify unless for one of a very limited range of reasons to saying that it was fine to have static sizes specified as long as you could get a majority consensus on the article's talk page to agree to it. I don't believe that the current position is as good as the previous one, and would prefer to retirn to the old arrangement wherein there were a very limited set of reasons to justify occasional images having their size fixed. --AliceJMarkham (talk) 11:27, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

We currently have: "If an image displays satisfactorily at the default size, it is recommended that no explicit size be specified." Is that not strong enough for you? Especially given that (as was pointed out in a previous discussion) fixed sizes were very commonly applied in practice - even in FAs - even when the guidance was worded differently.--Kotniski (talk) 13:59, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Any default size needs to be overridden sometimes. E.g. sometimes an image is just eye-candy, sometimes it illustrates a point and sometimes it helps to explain a point. I've even used Template:Annotated image to crop images so that they focus on the important aspects. I've also tested "fixed size" images in Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer 7, and all will expand images along with text, so I don't think there's an accessibility issue.

We can't assume all desktop users are viewing WP though widescreen monitors, and I test article layouts at both widescreen (16:9 or 16:10) and "traditional" (4:3) aspect ratios. To get the layout right for both, you need some control over image size.

For a good diagram a default thumbnail size is too small but full-size may be ridiculous.

If an editor specifies a size, he / she has probably thought about it.

Re Chris Cunningham (not at work)'s "If 180px is too small considering the size of modern monitors (and I think it may be), ..." a new default size needs to be tested on a range of clients, screen sizes and aspect ratios. --Philcha (talk) 15:39, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

I may be missing something here, but what is the problem with clicking on the thumb to see a full size image? jimfbleak (talk) 19:06, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Well yes, you can do that, but it's better (if practicable) to save users that extra decision and extra bother. Images should - if possible - make an article nicer to read, not more annoying.--Kotniski (talk) 19:13, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

I typically hard-code most images to be 200px or larger, since 180 is just too small. For maps and diagrams, they're pretty much useless at 180 and even for photographs 180 looks like a postage stamp. And for the record, images of 200 or 300px display just fine on my iPhone. All this talk about needing tests and statistics is pointless. No one looks at webpages at resolutions less than 600px (including iPhone users) and I don't think anyone would want to set the default to be larger than 300, which is only half that. Kaldari (talk) 19:34, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Setting my preferences to read thumbs at 300px works just fine on my screen. Is there any reason why images can't be changed from 180px to 300px as a default for casual readers? I can't see why that should be difficult... Rotational (talk) 20:04, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

I remember when this was last discussed, there was a strong consensus to allow editors to fix or omit the pixel size as they saw fit. Despite that, we have editors turning up at articles, including featured articles, to do nothing but remove pixel size or otherwise adjust images to conform with whatever someone has decided to add to the MoS. I've therefore removed the recommendation not to fix the size, and I've emphasized that the ArbCom has asked editors not to turn up at stable articles simply to change the style. SlimVirgin ^talk|edits 20:41, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Your changes to the stability section are fine with me, but not the changes to the image size section. I reverted those. Editors should not be setting non-standard fixed widths simply because it looks good on their particular browser and setup. The aesthetic appearance is only one factor; the usability of the page, particularly on small or narrow screens, is another equally important factor. I also support increasing the default size to 240px. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:01, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, plus this just comes from the policy Wikipedia:Image_use_policy#Displayed_image_size, where it has been for a long time. Johnbod (talk) 10:08, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

The conversation seems to be continued at #Forcing Lead image below. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:07, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I think we have conflicting guidelines here:

• Wikipedia:Mos#Images: "If an image displays satisfactorily at the default size, it is recommended that no explicit size be specified." Since this does not define "satisfactorily", I think the default must be "in the opinion of editors / reviewers."
• Wikipedia:Image_use_policy#Displayed_image_size: "As a rule images should not be set to a fixed size (i.e. one that overrides this default), but see the Manual of Style for exceptions." I interpret as being much more stringent, equivalent to "Do not override default sizes unless they fall inot the exception defined at Wikipedia:Mos#Images".

IMO the less stringent Wikipedia:Mos#Images guideline is almost OK and the more stringent Wikipedia:Image_use_policy#Displayed_image_size is wrong. As I pointed out earlier, images are used for a variety of purposes. At one end of the scale, I've produced diagrams that need to be as large as they can be without making a shambles of the layout. At the other, they can be simply eye-candy, or examples of points made in the text, and they only need to be large enough to be recognizable.

The problem with Wikipedia:Mos#Images's "satisfactorily at the default size" is that the default may change, and the new default may be unsuitable for the purpose for which the image is being used in a specific article. Only the editor(s) of the article can make this decision. --Philcha (talk) 18:19, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

About 'Quotation' section

However, attribution is unnecessary for quotations from the subject of the article or section.

Does it mean that if the content is from the part of another content, it is not necessary to be attributed ? I think this sentence can be misleading. Jtm71 (talk) 23:06, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Attribution means mentioning who said or wrote something, and if it's clear already, then it's not necessary to mention it. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:05, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Academic Level of Articles / Formality vs. Insightfulness in Mathematics articles.

I think Wikipedia needs to solve a problem involving the academic level of science articles. Do we need to mark articles or sections of articles with levels like these: "high school (in USA terminolgy)", "first two years of college", "last two years college / graduate / first year graduate school", and "late grad school / postdoc"?

Also, in the mathematics section there is going to be (has been for a while) a problem where if everyone on the planet can improve an article by adding "formality", eventually it will become so formal that noone but a mechanical theorem proving progam will have a clue what is being discussed. Do we need to label sections as "Formal" and "Insightful / philosophical / informal". Actually, I dont know a word to discribe the opposite of "formal" in mathematics.

I noticed a similar problem in biology articles. It seems like some biology articles have tables of chemical codes and not much information about what is under discussion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by GeorgeScienceNut (talk • contribs) 03:21, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

It would be better to bring this up at WT:WPM. There you might mention an example or two to focus the discussion. (This would be a welcome break from the current tempest in a teapot over stub template images.)

It is certainly possible for a math article to be too formal. My concern would be that sometimes when people think they're making an article less formal, they're actually making it less correct. I hope we agree that it's not possible for a math article to be too correct. Also we need to keep in mind that WP is a reference work, not a textbook — the goal should be to make it possible for the reader to find out what he/she wants to know, not to teach the subject. --Trovatore (talk) 03:29, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I see that User:GeorgeScienceNut edited the Eikonal equation article. The first sentence of that article says "The eikonal equation is a non-linear partial differential equation". To me, that is getting into rarified air. I don't suppose that one should expect the treatment of "a non-linear partial differential equation" to be written in "high school (in USA terminology)".

Perhaps a quote from Einstein is apropos:

Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.

One might ask for clarification on the talk page of a math article. I have done that before, and there were helpful replies. - Ac44ck (talk) 03:46, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

If anyone can suggest an informal (which is the word wanted) translation of non-linear partial differential equation, I would be glad to consider it; frankly, I can't. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:02, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

It's true that informal is the opposite of formal, but I think that George was searching for the word intuitive. For example, a theorem in calculus might have an intuitive geometrical proof that many people might understand, whereas a rigorous proof might fly over their heads. I'm reminded of the 19th century complaints that even Gauss' proofs were not rigorous enough; surely we don't expect casual readers of Wikipedia to operate at a level higher than Gauss?

As a scientist, I sympathize with both requirements, to be precise and to be accessible. However, I'm not sure that multiple versions of the same article are practical, although I see that good things have been done with general relativity and introduction to general relativity. I made a suggestion at Wikimania 2008 that might pertain here. The suggestion was to label articles or even article sections with the prerequisites for understanding it. That's sort of done implicitly by the article's wikilinks, but it might be good to work out something systematic. A method for determining prerequisite knowledge would be helpful for people who want to make textbooks and courses from wiki-material. Perhaps the prerequisite labels might be hidden by default, and visible only when the reader clicks on a button. Stating prerequisites more exactly also gets around the problem that curricula can vary widely between countries, within a country and even between schools in the same city. Basic algebra, trigonometry and statistics might be 7th-grade material in some schools, or college-level material in others. Proteins (talk) 14:35, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

The problem with a label about the "level" of an article is that it would function as a warning or disclaimer that an article might not be suitable for a reader. Although this particular type of disclaimer isn't covered at Wikipedia:No_disclaimers_in_articles, the talk page discussions have been relevant, and this text is relevant, IMO: "Allowing some disclaimers would generate a significant overhead of disputes surrounding where to draw the line, drawing editors' time from more productive tasks." - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 18:52, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Apart from the logistical problems in trying to define the "level" of an article, I think that it can send an unhelpful message: "No user-servicable parts inside — please stay away." There is no telling what someone at any level might be able to glean (or inspired to learn) from the most complicated article. Wikipedia does not exist in isolation. Things that I have read in articles have caused me to search for, find, and learn from information elsewhere. One can't grow without stretching. Sending the message to stay away because "some animals are more equal than others" can be needlessly crippling.

Maybe a "complexity" tag would be useful. As there are tags for uncited statements, NPOV issues, etc., maybe there could be a tag which is shorthand for "This discussion seems to be more complicated than needed. Please clarify by addressing issues of jargon, unexplained connections with other concepts, etc." This would be a message to _editors_, not visitors.

I don't know a good mechanism for doing so, but increasing an awareness of statements in existing guidelines could be helpful: WP:Explain_jargon and WP:Manual_of_Style_(mathematics), where it says "Probably the hardest part of writing a mathematical article (actually, any article) is the difficulty of addressing the level of mathematical knowledge on the part of the reader." It seems to me that the issue of excessive complexity is probably something that needs to be handled on an article-by-article basis.

Rating systems for article quality exist. Maybe a rating system for article _clarity_ could counter a trend toward complexity. A "this article is muddy" tag would send the message to a visitor that the tough slogging ahead is not necessarily due to a lack on their part. - Ac44ck (talk) 19:14, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Forcing Lead image

I thought we were clear that there was no reason, and no consensus for size forcing the lead image purely because it is the lead image. Examples of where the lead image have been forced can be traced to the other criteria listed. I will remove this statement: "Lead image, which should usually be no larger than 300px." I feel we need to have some rationale for size forcing the lead image before we can include that statement. SilkTork *^YES! 16:49, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I dunno, that statement's been in the guideline for easily long enough to become established (I mean, to the extent that we need consensus to take it away, not consensus to leave it in). Maybe we could look at recent practice on FAs, to see what people have been doing with lead images recently. It seems natural to me, from the point of view of the appearance of the article, to start of with a sizeable image as a main illustration of the article subject.--Kotniski (talk) 17:07, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

(After looking at FAs) Well, the last few have had infoboxes rather than lead images, so not much evidence to go on there. But it strikes me that since infobox images are generally larger than standard size thumbs, it makes sense to allow the lead image (which is basically an infobox image without an infobox) to be at least as large as the infobox ones.--Kotniski (talk) 17:15, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

(thinking aloud here) And MOS:INFOBOX gives 300px as a typical width for an infobox, so maybe that's where the 300px for the lead image comes from. Seems illogical to insist on making the image significantly smaller just because it hasn't got an infobox to wrap it up in.--Kotniski (talk) 17:19, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

It also depends on the size at which the lead image is useful. The one at Paleontology needs to be big, but summarises many aspects of the subject. The one at Cambrian substrate revolution summarises half the article, and again needs to be big - and in this case it's hard to think of what an alternative lead image would look like. As Kotniski points out, many lead images are in layout structures such as infoboxes, and it would look silly if the images were much narrower than the boxes. --Philcha (talk) 17:38, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

That wasn't quite what I meant; I was assuming that. I meant that if we allow ≈300px images on many pages because they appear in infoboxes, then it would be inconsistent (from a stylistic point of view) to discourage ≈300px lead images on other pages that don't currently have infoboxes.--Kotniski (talk) 17:46, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

And the examples you mention are perhaps not the best ones to consider, because they would qualify for the larger size under other criteria (the need to show detail). We have to consider images that have no other reason to be larger than standard thumbs except that they are lead images. Not having any better example off hand, let's consider this article (it's an old revision, since changed to an infobox). Here I made the lead image 300px (in accordance with this guideline), for no other reason than that it was a lead image. Thoughts please (or better examples if you can). Is the picture OK? A bit too big? A lot too big? --Kotniski (talk) 17:55, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I certainly don't think "we were clear" on this, no. There may have been a temporary majority on the odd thread here about it, but this certainly isn't clearly supported. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 17:50, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

It's an interesting question. Speaking with the bias of a copyeditor, my favorite content policy page is the one that says Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Look at any encyclopedia, online or print, and you'll see that, when they have an image that helps define the topic, which is the function of images in Wikipedia lead sections, the image is not a thumbnail and doesn't require a click for viewing. When we do things the way everyone else does them, it facilitates the free flow of information into and out of Wikipedia, and enhances our reputation. I believe this is the thinking that produced the long-standing guideline (which SilkTork has just removed) that lead images can have their width specified, as long as it's kept to no more than 300px. I'd be in favor of restoring that guideline. I understand the argument that many people use smaller screens to view Wikipedia, and some people have slower connections and don't want to see large images unless they specifically ask for it by clicking on it. Over the last year at WT:MOS, the most contentious arguments have always been the ones that require the devs to do something they haven't done yet. This problem needs a dev solution, including at least another option or two in user preferences, and perhaps some help for non-logged-in readers as well. We can't make up for the lack of dev action here, and we cause a lot of trouble when we try. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 18:32, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

If there is a rational need for an image (any image) to be forced then we account for that in the existing criteria (or add extra criteria as needed). Unless we give a reason why a lead image by itself should be forced then by default the statement "Lead image, which should usually be no larger than 300px." allows all lead images to be forced. If a lead image is in an Infobox it automatically gets adjusted to the size of the Infobox, and so there is no need for us to make any comment on this page other than what is already there "Start an article with a right-aligned lead image or InfoBox."

It is not a convincing argument that because the "lead image" statement has been around since April 2007 that it has consensus. It was inserted into the guideline in dubious conditions. It was backed up by a link to the debate as though the debate had led to a consensus that the statement should appear - but when reading through the discussion, the conclusion was the opposite - it was decided to remove the lead image comment. Since then there has been repeated questions about it, as linked to above. I am here myself because there is some dispute about the issue. What might be an advantage is to clarify the situation because there has been no consensus to size force the lead image purely because it is the lead image, and the wording which allows size forcing of the lead issue has been questioned and challenged.

The question is: Is there a reason (other than those already given on the guideline page) why a lead image should be size forced? If there is a reason why an image should be forced then that reason is pertinent for ALL images within an article. Unforced images in the lead position appear to be fine - and there are many of them. SilkTork *^YES! 20:13, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I voted for you in your ongoing and wildly successful RfA; I very much respect your work. But you apparently didn't think much of my arguments, and I think this might have something to do with the lack of sufficient intersection between the communities at WP:AfD and WT:MOS. The focus at AfD is learning all the ways that the world has gotten it wrong, and how Wikipedia is different: how to use better judgment than other information sources do and how to do a better job of finding consensus. I think if you surveyed people at AfD on why they think Wikipedia has become the top online content site in the world by hits, they'd focus on the kind of arguments you hear at AfD. But over here at WT:MOS, we focus more on similarities: which phrases and orthography and page design elements are easy for a wide range of readers to digest because they've seen them before. My argument that lead images should be big enough to see clearly because that's how all encyclopedias present their lead images is probably a persuasive argument over here; it might not be the kind of thinking that AfD people are used to, but if so, you guys should come hang out over here more often :) What we do is important, too. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 21:43, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

• It seems most editors favour keeping a mention of forced lead picture sizes in, for which reasons have been given. This was after all Silk Tork's original proposal a few screens up, though I am ok with "to 300px" per Ty, or as a minimum. Johnbod (talk) 01:18, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

To Dank. Sorry, I hadn't fully taken on board your comments when I wrote the above. I was responding mainly to the responses above yours, and I had to finish up quickly as I was going out. I don't feel I am in any particular camp - I contribute to guidelines as much as I contribute to AfD (possibly more) - nor do I feel there is a conflict between these camps. If there is any perceived conflict that is possibly down to misunderstandings. And misunderstandings certainly happen when people take text from a policy and then change the wording on the guideline. Where policy statements are used in guidelines then it seems to me to make sense to stick with the same wording OR change both policy and guideline wordings so they match. When we have differing (and possibly conflicting) statements the whole point of having guidelines gets lost - and people can pick and choose the statements that most favour what they want to do. You don't like forcing image size, then quote Image Policy. You want to force the image size, then quote MoS - Image. No wonder people keep raising this same issue! It appears to me that the Image Policy is fairly clear on the point of size forcing: we don't do it unless there is a reason, and points to MoS for those reasons. Currently we have the following reasons:

• Images with aspect ratios that are extreme or that otherwise distort or obscure the image subject(s)
• Detailed maps, diagrams or charts
• Images in which a small region is relevant, but cropping to that region would reduce the coherence of the image
• Images containing a lot of detail, or where the detail is important to the article

Those seem decent enough reasons, and if a lead image fits one of those reasons then it can be forced, and it would be appropriate to do so. Added to that, is the provision that an InfoBox can be placed in the lead section, and that would allow an image to be forced within the InfoBox. So, that appears to cover every instance where a lead image might appropriately be forced.

Your argument is that an image in the lead section should be "big enough to see clearly", and that is an excellent suggestion. I would add to that, that ALL images should be big enough to see clearly. I think that's a given. And, I hope, that the provision for making images big enough to see clearly is given in the criteria we already have, and which I quoted above. If people feel that the current wording is not clear enough to guide people to make the decision to force an image so it can be clearly seen, then we need to address that. But that would be a general criteria, not one specific to the lead image. If you take a look at an article close to my heart - Beer - you'll see two lead images. Neither image is forced, and the top one shows the subject very clearly. Take a look at Wine. Is that image not large enough? And that is not forced. I took a look at some Featured Pictures such as Innocence and Catrina, for examples of unforced Featured images used as the lead image, but that was difficult because InfoBoxes prevail, and also because Featured Pictures are not always used as the lead image (which surprised me). But I hope that with the few examples I have shown, that it is clear that the lead image does not by default need forcing. And that if the lead image does need forcing to be seen clearly, then I hope our general forcing criteria would be sufficient. Am I making sense? SilkTork *^YES! 08:56, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

When you say "currently" above, you meant "currently, since I just changed it from the long-standing guideline". The best I can tell from the above discussion, consensus hasn't changed from what it's always been. I follow that you're trying to remedy a difference you perceive between image policy and WP:MOS. I don't know what was going on over at the image policy page; I keep up with content guidelines and style guidelines, and there are a lot of people who know a lot more about image issues than I do. Regardless of what some guy stuck in on that page, I'm pretty sure that the consensus of editors who show up at GAN and FAC, and certainly the consensus of article reviewers, is to prefer images that are larger than thumbnail in lead sections. I've reverted your change. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 21:35, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

This "no larger than 300px" appears to be a reversal of how it had been for a very long time. Without actually checking back, I'm certain that the size was "no smaller than 300px", on the basis that 300 was the largest size that a user could set in preferences and that the wording here made sure that the forced size was no smaller than that user pref size. --AliceJMarkham (talk) 07:46, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I find all this historical analysis rather unhelpful. We recently had a stable guideline for several months; on a highly visible page like this, people would have been objecting right from the start if it didn't have consensus. I believe it did say something like "no smaller than 300px" at one point, based on the logic Alice cites, but surely we can see that that logic is flawed (it's a repeat of the date autoformatting fallacy - why should an insignificant aesthetic effect on 0.001% of users cause us to adopt a less desirable display style for the other 99.999%?) Then I think it was changed to "no larger than..", but people objected to that too, so we settled on "often...about 300px". If anyone seriously objects to that then they can propose a new wording, but please ensure that there is consensus for any change so we don't get into another pointless edit war.--Kotniski (talk) 11:26, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Let us look for some acceptable wording for size forcing the Lead Image. Personally I'm not interested if the lead image is forced or not. But I am concerned that the issue is contentious (as based on the diffs I gave above), that forcing the lead image because it is the lead image is not a valid reason and rubs against the wider consensus of policy, and that the lead image clause was inserted in this guideline erroneously. Suggested wording:

1. "The Lead Image may be size forced only when it meets the size forcing criteria"
2. "The Lead Image may be size forced (beyond the size forcing criteria) when the Lead Image needs to have impact."
3. "The Lead Image may be size forced (beyond the size forcing criteria) when in the editor's judgement the lead image needs greater impact."
4. "The Lead Image may be size forced (beyond the size forcing criteria) in all cases, provided the image is kept within the 180 - 550 pixel range. This is because the Lead Image sums up the topic, and needs to have greater impact than other images in the article."

I would favour either 1 or 4. SilkTork *^YES! 13:31, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Option 1, personally. The default should always be used unless there is a specific reason for a particular image to be resized. Just being near the top of the article doesn't make an image need to be resized. Also, there are practical problems with large lede images and tables of contents on small screens; these are less serious when the lede image is smaller. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:42, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I blame myself and other style and layout people much more than I blame anyone else for the fact that we don't have huge piles of professional copyeditors participating at WT:MOS who would gladly jump on this question. We're not doing a good enough job of being friendly and welcoming on the one hand and holding conversations to a high and professional standard on the other. So, to be clear, I'm not disappointed in SilkTork and Carl, in fact I highly respect both of you, I'm disappointed in myself. I agree with you that specifying image sizes is a problem on small screens, but that's a problem the devs need to fix. Having said that, the option you two are suggesting is truly, abysmally awful, for the following reasons:

1. As I said above, some communities at Wikipedia are right that what what they do is critically important but wrong about the importance of listening to publishing professionals on some issues, especially copyeditors. There isn't any great disagreement among people who produce online and printed reference materials that attractive lead images are important, as long as the images are relevant and helpful and there's no difficult tradeoff (such as breaking someone's back when they try to pick up your encyclopedia). 140-pixel (the default for upright thumbnails) and 180-pixel images may be functional, but they're rarely attractive. This wouldn't even be a discussion if professionals were weighing in and if their views were taken seriously.
2. Any MBA will tell you that it's a classic mistake to assume that you know what magic is responsible for your company's success without asking your co-workers and your customers. Don't radically change the look of your product just because some guys in the back room thought it would look "cooler" that way, or some engineers told you that you could save a little money (or in this case, a little page layout landscape) with a different design. The style guidelines haven't required thumbnails before, and most contributors have chosen lead images more in the range of 300px than 140px, and they've probably made those choices because they and their readers thought it looked better. Don't assume they're all wrong.
3. SilkTork says above that it's not relevant that a recommendation for around 300px has been in WP:MOS for a long time; by implication, he's saying that the many conversations over the years on the subject at WT:MOS, style pages and article review pages that led to the recommendation are irrelevant. I disagree; I'd rather listen to a wide range of people, and I especially listen to people who also like to listen to a wide range of people. Those who don't read history are doomed to repeat it. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 18:39, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

The strength of Wikipedia comes from the diverse talents, skills, knowledge and experience that people bring to the project. Copyeditors are part of that. All views are respected and listened to - that's the Wiki way. And that's what we are doing here. I'd like just to address Dan's third point about the 300px recommendation being in WP:MOS for a long time. I'm thinking that at this point it might be best if we look at current arguments rather than hark back to what has been said in MoS previously. However, if we are going to do that then I'd like to point out that Policy takes precedence over guidelines and WP:Image use policy has been consistent since at least 2004 on the view that by default images should not be forced, though accepts that there are exceptions. Exceptions are discussed at Wikipedia:Mos#Images. Until 20 April 2007, there was no exception for lead images. That change came about through a misreading of this discussion. The bringing in of the statement that it is acceptable to size force "a lead image that captures the essence of the article." was done so against the advice and consensus of the discussion, and specific image policy. It didn't at that time specify any limits to or recommendations to size. The first mention of 300px came with this edit from this discussion. It's a little unclear the intention, as the edit gives a maximum of 300px at the same time as a minimum of 300px. After a period of uncertainty this clearer wording was offered in July this year. A short while later we return to the contradiction of having a maximum 300px and a minimum 300px. The contradiction has been observed and fixing the size at 300px is offered. A bit of flexibility is introduced. These are selected difs, there are plenty more which reflect the varying views on the issue. My point is that there has not been a stable period of harmony as regards the size forcing issue - and in particular the 300px size. My suggestion is that, anyway, it's not helpful to us to look at what has gone on in the past 18 months, but that we would be concentrating on discussing the best way forward. SilkTork *^YES! 23:52, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I am bothered by the fact that this discussion, about an issue which affects ALL editors, is receiving input from only 3 people (with a single comment from 5 others). The reason for the lack of participation I can only put down to being unaware of this debate. Even so, in a month's time the 10 000 or more WP editors will find a decision based on this debate tagged as having been arrived at by consensus. WP is in desperate need of an effective way of notifying people about important discussions that will affect their editing lives. Does this worry anyone else? Rotational (talk) 05:19, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

2c: size forcing should be avoided. People may have very good reasons for their chosen user thumb size preferences; e.g. small images because of low bandwidth; or large images because of eyesight problems. It is discourteous to dishonour these preferences without a good reason. The vast, vast majority of size forcing lacks any such reason. This includes lead image size forcing: it is claimed that size forcing the lead image is sometimes necessary to achieve more impact, but I am yet to see a concrete example of that. I very much like the idea of the MoS discouraging size forcing. Hesperian 05:46, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

I have tagged this as a centralised discussion following Rotational's comments above. SilkTork *^YES! 08:24, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

I think it's very wrong the the image use policy has a section on displayed image size. Image size is a style issue that should be treated in a flexible way. Policies are meant for more fundamental issues such as legal and ethical issues, basic principles, technical limitations, etc. These are type of issues that occupy most of the WP:Image use policy page. Having a section on display size there sticks like a sore thumb; I imagine someone added it to try to provide a helpful summary and link to the style guidelines, not to try to provide a "size policy" to trump the MoS. --Itub (talk) 10:44, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Can you see the irony there? Allowing people to set their own defaults is termed "inflexible", while over-ruling those defaults with a fixed image width is termed "flexible". Hesperian 22:21, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

No irony. Not all images need to be the same size, and the best person to decide is the editor. Now, if the user preferences had an option for relative scaling of the images, that would be something useful. --Itub (talk) 13:23, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

... which is why I submitted an enhancement request over three months ago.[14] Meanwhile, we're stuck with what we have, which is the requirement that we choose whose preferences we are going to honour: those of the user or those of the editor. Both choices can equally validly be termed "flexible" and "inflexible" depending on your point of view. Hesperian 06:04, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure that centralising all discussion of image sizes under the heading "Forcing Lead image" is a good idea, as I think lead images have specific issues that do no apply to others.

I've stated at Forced v unforced image sizes (again) why I think editors sometimes need to have control over the sizes of images, so for now I'll stick to lead images.

I'm aware of a number of issues about lead images:

• Many articles have Wikiproject-specific infoboxes, which provide a standard summarisation that is helpful to readers. Infoboxes vary in width from about 180px to 260px. A 180px or 200px image may look silly in a 260px infobox. It would be helpful to ask Wikiprojects why they chose a particular infobox width. It would be silly to set a rule about lead image widths without considering infoboxes and very silly to set a rule about infobox widths without consulting the Wikiprojects that use infoboxes.
• Ignoring infoboxes, some lead images are just eye-candy and some attempt to give information about the subject. In the latter case they may need to be greater than the default thumb size. I know of one lead image, in a GA, that illustrates several aspects of a subject. Because that image is complex, it needs to be shown at 400px. Before even suggesting it I checked that it worked both on widescreen monitors (aspect ratio 16:10 or 16:9) and "traditional" (4:3). I offered the GA reviewer a more modest alternative image that conveyed less information, and he was happy with the large one. Note the GA reviewer for that article is a very experienced reviewer and editor of biology-related articles.
• We would also need to consider what I'd call "pseudo-images" i.e. illustrations produced by methods other than Image tags. I'm familiar with 2, cladograms, see for example those at Arthropod#Evolutionary_family_tree, and chess diagrams, see for example those at Ruy Lopez. Right now I can't think if a case where a cladogram should be the lead image, but Ruy Lopez quite rightly has a chess diagram as its lead image. I know the one at Ruy Lopez is in an infobox, but it should be the same size (about 250px) even if there were no infobox, just so that readers can see clearly what the defining position of this chess opening is.

The argument about users with visual difficulties needing larger images is weak because such users can enlarge both images and text in any decent modern browser, even Internet Explorer 7 (I've tested with IE 7, Firefox, K-meleon and Opera).

The argument about low-bandwidth users is totally spurious, because transfer time depends on image file size, not on displayed size. Wikimedia displays images by means of a standard (X)HTML IMG tag, using the WIDTH and HEIGHT attributes to control the displayed size. Anyone can see this if they do a "view source" to inspect the generated (X)HTML.

I'm not convinced by arguments based on the difficulty of viewing large images via small-screen clients such as WAP phones. Small-screen clients make reading any article like viewing a landscape through a keyhole. For example try wapedia.mobi/en/Precambrian_rabbit with your browser window reduced to mobile phone size or even PDA size (the Tungsten E2 is 4.5 in high by 3 in wide) - it's no fun, and that article is fairly short and has no images.

Finally, I agree with Rotational's (05:19, 24 November 2008) comment "I am bothered by the fact that this discussion, about an issue which affects ALL editors, is receiving input from only 3 people (with a single comment from 5 others)". I've advertised this discussion at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#WP:MOS_-_discussion_of_image_sizes.2C_especially_lead_image_sizes, and any other means of advertising this discussion would be welcome. --Philcha (talk) 11:29, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry Philcha but your "file size versus display size" argument is a load of bollocks. Wikipedia uses server-side thumbing and always has. About a week ago, server-side thumbing was turned off for png images, which may be the source of your confusion. Hesperian 22:21, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm happier now that this discussion is getting wider publicity. I can't remember off the top of my head another time when I've said that someone's approach was terrible, and I groan to hear myself say that (it sounds so much like the kind of dismissive, unhelpful comment that I will generally complain about), but there's a significant danger of coming across as autocratic here and losing valuable contributors in the process. Given the choice between a lead section image in the 250- to 300-pixel range (and as SilkTork points out in the link from 2004, 250px used to be fine according to our image policy page) and a 140-pixel lead image (which is now the default upright thumbnail size), a wide range of editors have chosen the larger size for a wide range of reasons, and they didn't have to go through any tribunal to justify that image size. Experienced article reviewers know this, and people experienced with online and print encyclopedias, books, magazines and newspapers know that it looks better without having to think twice about it. What image size looks right is a subject that has been discussed constantly in review processes. To ignore all of these conversations and preferences because someone wasn't doing their job at WP:Image use policy and let it get out of sync with community expectations would make me very sad. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 16:50, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

I've just encountered an example of gratuitous size forcing on Beer purely because of the Lead Image wording. At least one editor is going round making ad hoc changes based on an assumption that MOS:Images said it was OK. This is clearly wrong. We are still in discussion here. There has been dispute about this size forcing of the lead image since the wording appeared in the guideline (as indicated by my many diffs). Until there can be an agreement on the wording of the Lead Image, it would prevent edit wars and disputes if the contentious wording under dispute remains out of the guideline. In the interim if having no statement is problematic to people, we could have "Size forcing of the Lead Image is currently in dispute." SilkTork *^YES! 11:38, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Don't blame people for making changes based on what the MoS says - that's what it's here for. And please don't start making changes based on what you personally consider to be gratuitious and wrong - other people have different opinions, and you must gain consensus to change an established guideline. A guideline doesn't cease to be one just because it's under discussion and a few people disagree with it. I'll mark it with an {{underdiscussion-inline}} tag.--Kotniski (talk) 11:45, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

That said, I certainly agree with you about the beer example. The wording perhaps needs to be changed to make it absolutely plain that lead images don't have to be 300 px if inappropriate. --Kotniski (talk) 11:50, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

SilkTork, I have to agree that the lead image of Beer (before you adjusted it to the default size) was absolutely ridiculous an dyou were right to make it take the default size. It's a perfect example of the type of image I've described as "eye-candy". I also acknowledge that there are other advantages of a standard image size, such as ease of reading - even where I specify image sizes, if there's a series of images close together I usually make them the same width so that starts and ends of lines of text have the same X co-ordinates.

OTOH there are other cases where fixing the size is desirable. North Sea contains a couple of examples. The lead image there would be indistinct at a smaller size, and the infobox can't be much narrower because it contains a large amount of information. If you look at section "History of the coastlines" you'll see a couple of techniques I've used with images: the one on the left is cropped and zoomed to focus on the relevant part of a large image; and the two images side by side illustrate stages in geological history that would otherwise require a much longer prose explanation. I've already mentioned Paleontology, where a very experienced GA reviewer was happy with the choice and size of the lead image. I've only mentioned cases from from my own experience, but I'm sure there are dozens of other situations where editors have needed hands-on control of image sizes. Hence I think legislating about image sizes is a bad idea and the issue should be left to editors and GA / FA reviewers. --Philcha (talk) 12:12, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

North Sea is a good example of an article that looks ridiculous to me because my default thumb size is 300px, but the infobox mandates a smaller size, making the lead image smaller than other images in the article. Your "the lead image there would be indistinct at a smaller size" reveals your myopia with respect to default sizes other than your own. Just because forcing the size of the lead image makes the article look better for you, doesn't mean you're making it look better for everyone! Hesperian 13:21, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

That's interesting. What are the physical size and resolution of your monitor? My impression is that the layout of a lot of article swoudl be at least fractured if all images were 300px wide, and taller pro rata. Do you get a lot of whitespace in articles with a lot of images? Or articles with images producing a chequered flag effect because they can't all right-float in the same place? Or images next to some text other than what they're supposed to illustrate?

BTW re "myopia", my eyesight is pretty poor. --Philcha (talk) 14:30, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

My image thumb default size is also set to 300px and it works just fine when all images in an article have been left at thumb size. North Sea, though, has a hodge-podge of sizes with a lot of thumbs thrown in, and the net effect is not pretty. I experimented with North Sea, tweaked all the image sizes to thumb and the layout improved immensely. Perhaps, just as a test, you should set your preferences to the same and see the effect - you might even become a convert!! Rotational (talk) 19:05, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

no size forcing

forced 180px

forced 300px

scaled using upright=1.5

No offence to anyone, but it really isn't important what you see on your screens with non-standard preferences set. Our readers get the default, and it's them we're writing the encyclopedia for. If it actually broke something for preference-setters I might be a bit concerned, but if it's just aesthetics then they can be safely ignored (unless it makes absolutely no difference to ordinay readers, but in this case of couse it does).--Kotniski (talk) 19:38, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Exactly my point - if the readers' default is set to 300px instead of the ridiculous 180px, and if all images in the article were set to thumb, then readers might actually see something like a sensible layout. Rotational (talk) 05:47, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I think Kotniski's point is that the majority of readers are not registered, so they can't set preferences.--Philcha (talk) 10:28, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

It's the unregistered readers I'm talking about - they can't set their preferences, but WP can by upping the default size of thumbs to 300px Rotational (talk) 13:48, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Almost none of our readers are logged in experienced Wikipedians who have modified their preferences. We need to cater to the general reader - not to ourselves. Setting almost every image to a width of 180px is detrimental for the reader. There's nothing wrong with specifying the width that seems most appropriate in each case - we don't need to stick the general reader with a standardized width of 180px just so that a few veteran Wikipedians can tinker with their display settings. There isn't a choice between a) "forced size" and b) "flexible size" - there's a choice between a) 180px and b) editors' judgment on how big a given image should be in a given context. I'll take the editors' judgment every time. Haukur (talk) 14:26, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Haukurth. The aesthetics of an article are as important as the text. We shouldn't be interfering with the judgment of the editors. In any event, guidelines and policy should describe best practice, and the best editors don't (that I've ever seen) pepper their articles with thumbnails, especially not the lead. SlimVirgin ^talk|edits 22:46, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately almost no editors can be aware of the relative frequency of the range of screens and settings used by readers, and naturally tend to chose sizes they think appropriate for their own set-up and tastes. A default of unforced images has been policy for a good while, but like most people here, I think lead images should be one of the explicit exceptions, and the default size should be increased. Johnbod (talk) 02:54, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

The typical editor has a typical set-up, that's pretty much a tautology. Those who don't have a typical set-up are usually aware of that fact. And, this being a wiki, if an inappropriate size is chosen then another editor can come along and make things better. I'd much rather have sizes chosen by editors in each case than a roundly inappropriate 180px across the board. Sure, choosing the best size, taking everything into consideration, can sometimes be difficult. But that's no reason to decide that we shouldn't even try. If not setting a size would result in images automatically adjusting to the set-ups and tastes of each reader, that would be excellent. I would be very much in favor of that. But that's not an option we have - not setting a size just means setting the size to 180px for almost all of our readers almost all of the time. Haukur (talk) 16:47, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, and that's what we want - almost all the time, the default size should be used. The problem with "editorial judgment" is that most editors have no criteria at all by which to judge image sizes, apart from what happens to look good on their particular monitor with their particular browser settings. So in most cases, we really should simply not try. I think that increasing the default to 240 px would be reasonable, but having every editor make a more-or-less random decision about which size they happen to prefer isn't reasonable. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:30, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

This section needs a break; replying to Carl at the bottom of the next subsection. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 13:48, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Scaling factor instead of fixed size?

Noting that there is now the ability to use a scaling factor such as by adding the parameter upright=2 to an image, should we perhaps be moving to recommend this method of making the lead image (and indeed any image) larger? This would scale to a multiple of the default for most readers, or of the logged in editor's preference. As long as the factor is kept reasoable, this seems like a much better compromise than arguing incessantly about whether or not to use absolute fixed sizes. --AliceJMarkham (talk) 15:08, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

If the scaling factor isn't buggy, I think you've got a good argument that it's desirable; bigger screens would want bigger images, and smaller screens would want smaller. Anyone see a problem? - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 22:51, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

The top image is "thumb", the middle is forced at 180px, the bottom is forced at 300px. Top and bottom images appear the same on my screen because of my settings. Aren't scale factors just putting another name to the same problem. Rotational (talk) 13:54, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

No, a scaling factor is a multiplier times the size it would be if no size was specified. Hence, if like me you have your pref set to 300px, an image scaled for a factor of 2 would display at 600px wide for you. However, for someone with the default size of 180, that same image would display at 360px. I think that a scaling factor of 2 would probably be a bit too big in most cases, and that a size in range of 1.5 to 1.8 would probably work best in most circumstances. --AliceJMarkham (talk) 09:06, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

I've now added a 4th image that is scaled using upright=1.5. The size of this image will vary in proportion to the configuration that you're using. Comments? --AliceJMarkham (talk) 09:17, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

I support all of what Carl/CBM said just above, and as usual with Carl, I can't think of any way to improve on what he just said, either by subtracting or adding. I also support recommending scaling factors in the lead section and in most (but not all) cases rather than fixed sizes. What the scaling factor should be for the lead section depends on what our default size is; I agree that 180/140 is too small, and it's harming the appeal of the encyclopedia every day it remains, because editors are making layout decisions based on that look that won't be valid when it's increased. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 13:48, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Reference library category

In order to help facilitate easier location of potential sources of offline information to help verify the notability of article subjects and contents, I have created Category:WikiProject reference libraries and placed into it all of the reference library pages of which I am aware. Please add more project reference libraries to this category if you know of more. Additionally, feel free to create new reference library pages for any particular project as well. They can be very useful. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 20:08, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Do these qualify?

• Wikipedia:Book sources
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange

-- Wavelength (talk) 21:50, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 04:51, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. I see that all of them are now mentioned on the category page.

-- Wavelength (talk) 06:51, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

A new citation template

Hi all. I've created a new citation template for citing Canadian federal & provincial statutes and regulations, based on the citations used by Queen's University, listed here. Compare [15], [16], [17].

A quick demo:

{{Cite canlaw
|short title = Trade-marks Act
|abbr        = R.S.C.
|year        = 1985
|chapter     = T-13
|section     = 9
|subsection  = 1(e)
|link        = http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/showdoc/cs/T-13/bo-ga:s_1::bo-ga:s_2?page=2
|linkloc     = Department of Justice Canada
|wikilink    = Trade-marks Act}}

Produces: {{reflist}} (reflist moved down the page, no need to do it over and over)

I would appreciate any feedback on this. I'm concerned that too many abbreviations (chapter, section, etc) may be used, and I know the code itself looks awful. Is this something that people here think would be useful?

I have posted links to this discussion at WT:CANADA and WT:Citing sources to gain input from those groups as well. You can see the template in the wild here (the lone untemplated reference was what spurred me to try and find a template, but there wasn't one). //roux   11:59, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Some thoughts:

• You might want to notify members of WikiProject Law about this discussion.
• There are far too many abbreviations in the citation. They may be intelligible to lawyers (and I have my doubts), but they will be a mystery to many readers. I suggest you spell out some of the terms in full, e.g., "Wikipedia Act, S.C. 2004, chapter W-1, section 2(iii), as amended by S.O. 2006, chapter 16 and S.O. 2007, chapter 4, section A (Wikipedia Act at Wikipedia).". Alternatively, if you feel that abbreviations will shorten the citation sentence, at least add mouseovers for abbreviations like "c." (chapter), "s." (section) and "ss." (subsection). (Note that "ss." is potentially ambiguous – it could be interpreted as "sections" or "subsections".)
• Is it possible to give pinpoint citations as "section 2(iii)" or "s. 2(iii)" rather than as "section 2, subsection iii"?
• Shouldn't there be a comma as shown? "S.O. 2006, chapter 16, and S.O. 2007 ..."
• I suggest that the phrase "Wikipedia Act at Wikipedia" be enclosed in parentheses rather than be set out as a separate sentence. Place a full stop at the end.
• Isn't the external link in the wrong place? "Wikipedia Act at Wikipedia" suggests that I am being provided with a link to a Wikipedia article, in which case the name of the piece of legislation at the beginning of the citation should be the one externally linked.
• Alternatively, to reduce the length of the citation sentence, why not link the first occurrence of the name of the piece of legislation to a Wikipedia article (if one exists), and the chapter number of the legislation to the external link, thus: "Wikipedia Act, S.C. 2004, chapter W-1, ..." The get rid of "Wikipedia Act at Wikipedia" at the end.

— Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 14:13, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi! Thanks for the feedback. In order..

• Will notify them now, should have thought of that!
• Yeah, I was iffy about the abbrevs too.. easily fixed.
• Yes, citations can be pinpointed if preferred.
• I don't think there should be a comma. Willing to be corrected but it doesn't look necessary to me.

My personal view is that there should be a comma in such situations (for example, "Big Ben in London, England, is a world-famous landmark"); not everyone agrees ("Big Ben in London, England is a world-famous landmark" seems – ugh – to be acceptable these days). But don't worry about it. It's not a biggie. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 14:40, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

• Parentheses make sense.
• The external link isn't particularly clear in my fake example. Look at this for a real version:

Trade-marks Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. T-13, s. 9(1(e)) (Trade-marks Act at Department of Justice Canada)

Oh, that looks fine (but there should be a full stop at the end – or, preferably, use parentheses to avoid having two sentences). Your example was a bit ambiguous. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 14:35, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

What about just "Trade-marks Act, R.S.C. 1985, chap. T-13, section 91(e) (Trade-marks Act at Department of Justice Canada)"? That way, editors can string several citations together in the same footnote separated by semicolons, if necessary: "Trade-marks Act, R.S.C. 1985, chap. T-13, section 91(e) (Trade-marks Act at Department of Justice Canada); Wikipedia (Prohibition of Use in Assignments) Act, R.S.C. 2008, chap. W-13, section 1 (Wikipedia (Prohibition of Use in Assignments) Act at Department of Justice Canada)." — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 15:27, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't quite follow... why would you cite multiple sources in a single note? //roux   15:32, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Because there are multiple sources for a single assertion. (This is sometimes inherent in the assertion: "Several laws provide..." requires several laws - or a secondary source.) Some editors approach this with multiple footnotes at the same point, but I find that ugly, complex, and confusing; so does FA. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:43, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

[Sorry, edit conflict.] It might be relevant to refer to more than one piece of legislation in the footnote. For example, one might be listing all the statutes that create offences for which the defendant can be sentenced to life imprisonment. It would not make sense to have a whole series of footnote numbers ("[1][2][3][4]..."), each one stating "See, e.g., the Offences Against the Person Act ..." — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 15:48, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

(out)Hmm, well, one could easily do that, no coding necessary.

Little bit of fiddling needed to make semicolons work, but I see no reason why someone couldn't include multiple cites in one set of ref tags. Or am I missing your point? I may well be.. //roux   16:22, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I'm getting at. But you're misunderstanding me slightly. I'm not suggesting you recode the template to allow for the citation of multiple statutes within the same template. All I'm saying is that your citation sentence should be one sentence. At the moment the template breaks up each citation sentence into two sentences, the first one being "Trade-marks Act ... section 91(e)." (note the full stop at the end) and the second one being "(Trade-marks Act at Department of Justice Canada.)". If one puts a comma or semicolon after that and then adds another citation sentence, it will look odd. I suggest you eliminate some punctuation marks and make the template generate a single citation sentence, like this: "Trade-marks Act, R.S.C. 1985, chap. T-13, section 91(e) (Trade-marks Act at Department of Justice Canada)" (no full stop after the section number and at the end). — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 16:57, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Ah so. Done. //roux   17:03, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

• I thought about doing that, but then it just looks like one long link at the beginning of the cite. If no wikilink is provided, the act title becomes the external link, and no external link is appended on the end.//roux   14:32, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Good idea! Will have a look at the code when I am less busy. Hmmm, am now wondering whether to expand {{Singapore Statute}} and {{Singapore Constitution}}, which I previously worked on. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 14:35, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

I've edited per your suggestions above and struck out some of my comments. //roux   14:47, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Other comments

"Section" and "subsection" parameters. Is there any utility in having separate "section" and "subsection" parameters? Why not have a single "section" parameter that would be used thus: "section=9(1)(e)"? The separate "subsection" parameter may tend to mislead editors into typing "subsection=1(e)". This would cause the template to render "section 91(e)" rather than "9(1)(e)". — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 17:17, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, that's why I had chapter & subsection in before. I'll re-add them.//roux   23:52, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Er, not sure what you mean. "Chapter" has always been a separate parameter and I'm not suggesting any changes to it. But I think it may not be necessary to have two separate parameters, "section" and "subsection". Just a single "section" parameter is enough. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 06:30, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I think I've now made it as clear as it's possible to. The docu for the template is also extremely clear about what goes in which field. //roux   06:36, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm in favour of the shorter form "section 9(1)(c)" rather than "section 9, sub. 1(c)", in which case it's only necessary to have one parameter "section" which an editor can give the value "9(1)(c)". But this isn't a big issue. I guess it's still possible for editors to just use the "section" parameter and omit the "subsection" one. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 06:44, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm aiming for standardization and idiot-proofing. If there are separate places to put the section and subsection, it avoids goofs, as well as being more transparent in the final cite to anyone--like myself until yesterday--not familiar with the conventions of legal citations. //roux   06:54, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

General and specific questions about subscripts in section headings

First the general questions: is it appropriate to include a subscripted mathematical variable such as pK_a in a section heading? Pro: It can be useful, and my own feeling is that we should err on the side of allowing things. Per WP:ACCESS, Graham87 and I have checked that such variables are read correctly by screen readers. Alternatives such as the Unicode pKₐ do not render in all browsers and are not read by screen readers (at least with my JAWS and Fire Vox settings). Con: MOS:HEAD suggests that "special characters" should not be used in section headings. There's also a problem with linking to such sections, as you can see at User:Proteins/Sandbox. This can be solved using an additional {{anchor}}), but many editors might not know about that.

Now the specific questions. The article acid dissociation constant is at FAC, and the nominator Petergans would like to use pK_a in the section headings. He and I agree that this variable is equivalent to the article title, and therefore would ordinarily not be included in the section headings, per MOS:HEAD. Should an exception be made? The current section headings do not use pK_a. What do people here think of introducing pK_a into the section headings of this particular article? Proteins (talk) 16:05, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

I would be cautious. Just because some browsers handle this right is no quarantee that all do, and the cost of garbling a header could be quite large.

I would include the special character if necessary; but I'm not sure, for this article, where it would even be helpful to add it. (Possibly Values, but Values of the acid dissociation constant would probably be better there.) Which ones does he have in mind? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:55, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

I believe the idea would be to (1) substitute "Values" in section 7 by "pK_as", and (2) add "of pK_as" to several section headings such as "Experimental determination" and "Significance".

With the article at FAC, everyone would like a consensus on the issue. The current consensus seems to be: (A) in general, allow subscripts (with caution) if necessary but (B) discourage "pK_a" in the section headings of acid dissociation constant. Does that seem fair and sensible? I encourage everyone here to contribute their ideas and opinions! Proteins (talk) 12:51, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Tags or templates of any kind are not reliable in section headers.

• [[Very long article#Very important section about pKₐ]]
  This will always link to the correct place whether you can see the last letter or not.
• [[Very long article#Very important section about pK_a]]
  This will never be rendered as any kind of link.
• [[Very long article#Very important section about pKa]]
  This link might point to a section containing the html <sub> or it might not. There is no way for the reader to know prior to clicking. This should be avoided as typical non-obvious link behavior.
• [[Very long article#Very important section about pKa|Very long article#Very important section about pK_a]]
  This will have the correct target and the correct appearance without using non-ASCII letters but this code is not something I'd like to see in the edit box, ever.

Additionally if a reader attempts to copy and paste the section title to another medium the <sub> tags (and thus part of the meaning) will be lost, but using ₐ would preserve it. — CharlotteWebb 15:27, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

You raise very good points, Charlotte, some of which I was also trying to highlight in User:Proteins/Sandbox, less articulately. What I'm hearing from your post is that you would discourage the use of subscripts in general, but if they must be included, they should be done with Unicode characters such as ₐ, not with tags such as _a. Is that a good summary?

I agree that tags won't work as internal page links. An extra {{anchor}} template (with a non-subscripted name, of course) could be used as workaround, but I imagine that most editors won't know about it. If we wish to allow casual editors the freedom to link to arbitrary sections, then it seems we should discourage editors from using subscripts in section headings.

The problem I see with Unicode subscripts is that they don't always render. For example, the symbol ₐ appears as a square box with numbers in it on my laboratory computer running Firefox 1.5, which I believe is standard for the operating system, Ubuntu. Also, there seems to be an accessibility issue: I didn't hear the final "ay" in pKₐ when I listened to it in version 9 of JAWS and in Fire Vox. Presumably, those screen readers don't know about this Unicode character, unless perhaps my default settings are bad. In the future, browsers and screen readers will undoubtedly support Unicode subscripts, but for the moment, they seems like they aren't a solution for everybody. Proteins (talk) 16:20, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

On the bright side one of these appears to be open source, so there may be some hope of correcting its deficiencies. — CharlotteWebb 16:48, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Screen reader trials and tribulations

Well, I just tried to install Fire Vox hoping to see what settings are available but it caused Firefox (3.0.4) to crash immediately after opening, so I had to use "safe mode" to disable the plug-in. Can anybody else get this to work? — CharlotteWebb 17:08, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

My installation of Fire Vox was disabled when I upgraded to 3.0, so evidently it's not compatible.--Curtis Clark (talk) 18:11, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I forgot to mention that I did try it in version 2.0.0.18 I had before and it failed there first. This is what encouraged me to upgrade to FF3 and try again, but the plug-in still causes a fatal error. In 2.0.0.18 it said:

firefox.exe has generated errors and will be closed by Windows. You will need to restart the program.

Now in 3.0.4 the message is longer but no more informative:

Firefox had a problem and crashed. We'll try to restore your tabs and windows when it restarts.
Unfortunately the crash reporter is unable to submit a crash report.
Details: The application did not leave a crash dump file.

Note that there were no "tabs and windows" at the time of these errors, as they happened immediately at startup in both cases (can only be avoided by using "safe mode" to disable add-ons). — CharlotteWebb 18:38, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm so sorry that you've had such difficulties with Fire Vox. Fire Vox is not a mature screen reader and I mentioned it only because I personally found it easy to install and learn. I'm using Firefox 3.0.4 on a Hewlett Packard laptop running (I cringe to say this) the Vista operating system. If you can get one working, screen readers can be fun and also useful to writers, because you can hear an article read aloud. To make the reading flow better, you might want to strip out the hyperlinks with this script. We also probably all agree that it's important to make our articles accessible; isn't WP:ACCESS part of the MoS?

The de facto standard screen reader seems to be JAWS, although I've found it a little difficult to learn to use. It's commercial software but you can download a free demo version that gives you 40 minutes of use after every reboot. Graham87 maintains notes on how best to use JAWS on Wikipedia; he's the go-to expert. A GPL-free screen reader is NVDA, which is designed specifically for Windows. Proteins (talk) 11:56, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

I almost forgot to ask: what's the consensus on the general and specific questions that are posed above, the questions about subscripts in section headings? It'd be great to give Petergans a clear answer. Thanks, Proteins (talk) 12:01, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't know how these programs work as I haven't gotten any of them to run, but why would one want to "strip out" the links? Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of using text-to-speech within the web browser? If I wanted to listen to plain text I'd probably just copy-and-paste it in my word processor and be done with it. Of course if I was blind I probably wouldn't be able to do that.

Anyway the point of all this was I wanted to check out these screen readers and see whether they can be user-configured with "alternate text" for letters and symbols it might not recognize:

"subscript a" for ₐ to use instead of "_a" which might not be recognized if tags are stripped out.

"not equal to" for ≠ to use instead of "!=" (which the screen-reader might interpret by shouting the previous text) or worse, "=/=".

"copyright" for © (instead of (c)).

If these settings are easy enough we can offer a configuration file for screen-reader-users to install, possibly including other symbols or expressions with a Wikipedia-specific meaning. I'd really like to help with this as long as I can find some software that actually works and especially if it's free. Hopefully the result will be one less excuse for poor typography. — CharlotteWebb 17:10, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

I have very limited experience, but screen readers always seem to stop reading at every hyperlink, to allow the listener the option of following it. Given how dense hyperlinks are in wiki-text, that makes for very choppy reading. That's why I wrote the script to strip them out. You could cut and paste the article into a text editor, as you say, but the script spares you that trouble. Later, I found out about an online server that produces MP3 files of a whole article. However, a screen reader gives you control over what parts of the article you'd like to listen to. If you listen to an long FA, it can take over an hour!

BTW, what do you think about the general and specific questions on section-heading subscripts? Proteins (talk) 17:49, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

I think html tags and templates should generally be avoided within section-headings, and that the section headings should more generally conform to the same "technical" restrictions as article titles. That is, they should not include #<>[]|{}. Sections are after all independently wiki-linkable, and can in many cases be thought of as an article within an article (especially those which are the product of a merge or a candidate for splitting apart). I'm experimenting with NVDA right now (but I had to disable it because it wouldn't let me type with it running—I'll have to figure out what's up with that). — CharlotteWebb 18:23, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Figured out why I can't type while using NVDA—the keyboard is overridden with bunch of shortcuts making it impossible to input most letters. I tried using "[x] Disable access keys" in Special:Preferences but that had no effect on the screen reader behavior (yes I cleared the cache, and yes I'll keep them disabled anyway) because this is entirely some feature of NVDA. Once I slowed the voice down enough to understand it, I figured out why it was jumping around to different parts of the screen, such as looking for the "next separator" with "S" and the "next list item" with "I". I can't find any settings to disable this, so I'd appreciate advice from anyone who uses NVDA, because it is tedious to exit the program every time I want to type something.

Anyway, I was able to test it on a previewed page with the following:

visual	foo bar pKa test 1 foo bar pKₐ test 2 foo bar pKa test 3
wikitext	#foo bar p''K''<sub>a</sub> test 1 #foo bar p''K''ₐ test 2 #foo bar p''K''a test 3
actual html	<ol> <li>foo bar p<i>K</i><sub>a</sub> test 1</li> <li>foo bar p<i>K</i>ₐ test 2</li> <li>foo bar p<i>K</i>a test 3</li> </ol>

On all three lines it only spoke "foo bar pee" and stopped, I removed the italics from all three and tried again.

After that I got: "foo bar pee kay [stop]" for #1, "foo bar pee kay test two" for #2 (but with no pause for the unrecognized U+2090), and "foo bar p'kahh test three" for #3.

Then I took a closer look at #1 and figured out it would pronounce the "a" and the "test 1" individually but only when I hover cursor over them. It seems to stop at all html tags, not just hyperlinks, and it does not give any hint that the "a" is formatted as subscript.

I'm not sure if this could be configured enough to be reliable for a visually impaired person so I will try the JAWS demo next. — CharlotteWebb 16:39, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Your experience with NVDA echoes my own, although I am able to hear #1 more-or-less correctly in Fire Vox and JAWS. Graham87 and others will be able to tell us the best settings, if any, for reading such examples. However, the fact that a screen reader must be specially configured to read a section heading suggests to me that HTML sub/superscripts and Unicode text should be discouraged from section headings, at least until screen readers improve. I can't imagine a situation in which they'd be necessary, but it's also good to keep an open mind. Proteins (talk) 17:30, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, the JAWS demo gave me the following message: You cannot install this product on this version of Windows. Please contact Freedom Scientific for a version that will run on your operating system. On a more positive note the error message was spoken aloud and much more clearly than any of the NVDA voices, so unless it was pre-recorded this does inspire some confidence (as soon as I can afford to buy a new lappy—but I'm told Vista really sucks so I might try going Linux in that event). In the meantime I don't suppose there is any JAWS demo that will run in Windows 2000, service pack 4… — CharlotteWebb 18:26, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Encyclopedic style

Is there a more general, fundamental style guide that addresses the actual writing style, as opposed to the little details? Imagine an article written like this:

Cardiologist Dr Hyan Mighty, MD, PhD, Chair for Life of the Extremely Important Department of the World-Renowned Medical College (WRMC), in his 2007 Journal of Medicine paper, writes that proper scientific studies prove that half of women in America die from heart disease.<ref>Might, H. ''What women die from.'' 2007. JM.</ref>

As this is not a statistic that is significantly disputed, the attribution is unimportant -- and possibly even inappropriate, since the fact of attribution suggests that this is a view held by only one person. But I keep seeing articles that throw in these details. I think the typical goal is POV pushing, but sometimes it's real ignorance of what constitutes an encyclopedic summary. Good editors rapidly grok what we're after, but others don't. Is there somewhere an essay about "encyclopedicity"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:10, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

We shouldn't need a rule for everything, but I agree that in general if a fact is undisputed then it should simply be presented by itself, with attribution in a reference. Only if there is reason to believe that opinions differ amongst reliable sources should the proponents be mentioned in the article body, so as to avoid weasel words. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 11:06, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

In most articles such a sentence would be trimmed to: "half of women in America die from heart disease.<ref>Might, H. ''What women die from.'' 2007. JM.</ref>". We need the cite, what we don't need in most cases, as WhatamIdoing points out and Chris supports, is the in body naming of the source unless the statement is contentious. Science articles tend to use Wikipedia:Parenthetical referencing, though that would appear like this: "half of women in America die from heart disease (Might 2007).<ref>Might, H. ''What women die from.'' 2007. JM.</ref>". More information may be found at Wikipedia:Citing sources. SilkTork *^YES! 13:50, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

So it sounds like we don't have any essays on this subject. I'd really rather not write one myself, but it would be handy. I'm thinking that it should cover some basic issues like:

• Just state generally accepted facts (according to mainstream views) without a lot of folderol about the specific source. That's what your ref is for. Don't blather on about a source's credentials. If they're that important, then write a bio about them.
• Write dispassionately. We're not trying to convince anyone of anything. Wikipedia is WP:NOT advertising/promotion/public awareness/anything else.
• Write concisely. Bits are free, but the reader's time and attention is not. Present the most important information. Supporting details, like who said what to whom, or how many people completed the survey, are normally too trivial to include.

If anyone has other ideas, I'd be happy to hear them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:05, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Guideline-by-guideline citation of sources

I would like to suggest that the Manual of Style cite beside each guideline the sources that support that guideline. Sources are cited beside entries in the article "List of English words containing Q not followed by U". I see four benefits.

• Maintainers (new and old) of the Manual can assure themselves by inspection that a given guideline has the support of certain sources.
• Maintainers of the Manual can refer to the sources to defend the Manual against its challengers.
• Users of the Manual can assure themselves by inspection that a given guideline has the support of certain sources.
• Users of the Manual can refer to the sources and avoid uselessly challenging the Manual.

-- Wavelength (talk) 04:49, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Additionally, more details about the source information for the guidelines can be provided in an accompanying page:
Wikipedia: Sources for the Manual of Style. The same treatment (same-page guideline-by-guideline citations and accompanying-page source information details) can be applied to each of the subpages of the Manual of Style.

-- Wavelength (talk) 17:06, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm completely in favor of people who know stuff sharing what they know, so anyone who wants to make a page called "stuff in the style guidelines, and where it came from", will have my undying affection. I've got it on my to-do list to pick out those elements that are well-understood and well-supported by publishing professionals and citable in style guides and references, as a way of making publishing professionals more comfortable on Wikipedia. It's not such a good idea to put this stuff directly on the style guidelines pages, because the most commonly cited reason for ignoring the style guidelines is that they're too long, and that would make the problem worse. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:33, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your support. The article "List of English words containing Q not followed by U" uses only abbreviations after the entries, and the abbreviations are explained at the bottom of the page. My suggestion is for something similar for the Manual of Style. The extra space occupied would be very small.

If some people ignore the Manual because they find it to be too long, then why not Wikipedia because it has so many articles, or the Internet because it has so many websites? It does not have to be a case of all or nothing. If it would help some people, a notice can be put on the Manual to say that even applying only some of the guidelines is better than applying none of them. Other pages linking to the Manual can also point this out, so that editors are aware of it before they see the Manual. In any case, where guidelines are not applied, other editors can make corrections.

-- Wavelength (talk) 02:30, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Is Wavelength suggesting WP:MOS should be subject to WP:V, WP:RS, WP:NPOV, etc. just like an article? Sounds good to me. --Philcha (talk) 22:01, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I had not thought of this suggestion in those terms, but, now that you mention it, I guess I am.
I say "I guess" because I do not know the complete set of guidelines to which an article is subject.
(By the way, I saw on your user page a link to Web Style Guide, 2nd Edition, and I found it to be
very interesting.)

-- Wavelength (talk) 22:28, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

(minor sidepoint) That's actually rather scary regarding the 'standards' section... so old: ie, where you're actually building the site using HTML. A better read in that regard would be Introduction to the Web Standards; Opera. --Izno (talk) 02:58, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Wavelength, your comment "I do not know the complete set of guidelines to which an article is subject" highlights a serious problem - especially coming from someone with your strong contributions record. At Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Proposal_to_include_template_.7B.7Bcent.7D.7D_on_every__discussion_page one editor estimates 300. I think the number of policies and guidelines is a serious issue. I've raised this at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Too many guidelines and policies.? --Philcha (talk) 09:56, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Izno, thanks for the link to Introduction to the Web Standards; Opera. However I was referring to what readers experience rather than the techniques for producing the experience. --Philcha (talk) 09:56, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Philcha, I have not found the number of policies and guidelines to be a serious problem, nor the size of the Manual of Style, nor the size of Wikipedia, nor the size of the Internet. A storybook is read from cover to cover, but a reference work is consulted for what is of interest at the moment. Lists, categories, tables of contents, indexes, and search functions simplify the work of zeroing in on relevant information. I have not, so far, worked with images on Wikipedia, except occasionally to edit their captions, so I have not concerned myself with policies or guidelines about images. Others are establishing those policies and guidelines, and others are applying them, so that I and millions of other users can benefit from them.

-- Wavelength (talk) 15:41, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Wavelength, I'm referring to the fact that learning all the relevant policies and guidelines is a more onerous research task than writing a well-sourced article on a scientific subject.

BTW in what sense of "interesting" did you find Web Style Guide, 2nd Edition "very interesting"? --Philcha (talk) 11:49, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

I found it to be interesting in a positive sense, and as something which I wish to investigate further. Also, it may be of positive interest to watchers of this page and maintainers of the Manual. Of course, I can not vouch for what I did not see, but what little I did see sufficed for me to list it on one of my subpages.

By the way, if policy A seems to contradict policy B, there can be a hierarchy of policies, where policy A trumps policy B, or vice versa. Additionally or alternatively, one can say that policy A applies in a given situation, unless certain features are present, and then policy B applies. If I remember correctly, such a system is used in the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual.

-- Wavelength (talk) 23:45, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi, Wavelength. I'm not sure the exmaple of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual is a compliment to WP:MOS. What does one need in order to understand MOS - psychiatric training or psychotherapy? --Philcha (talk) 00:17, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Philcha, I meant neither a complement nor a compliment. When I said "such a system is used", I was making an analogy (a comparison). In the PDM, if I remember correctly, a diagnosis is associated with a list of symptoms. If a patient has a minimum number of those symptoms (for example, seven out of ten), then that diagnosis is a made of that patient. However, if a minimum number from another list of symptoms is found, then that finding overrides the diagnosis that would otherwise be made, and a different diagnosis is made.

In Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, it might be that, if policy A usually applies in a given situation but certain features are present, then policy B applies. I hope that this clarifies what I said. We all need to be careful with analogies. Otherwise, we could be out of the ball park, on a wild goose chase, barking up the wrong tree.

-- Wavelength (talk) 02:23, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Woof :-)

Back to the serious stuff. We seem to agree that WP:MOS should be subject to WP:V, WP:RS, WP:NPOV, etc. just like an article. The question is how to proceed. How about a community-wide RfC, like the recent one about Notability? --)

-- Philcha (talk) 10:37, 29 November 2008 (UTC) [signature and timestamp constructed from history by Wavelength]

I am ready for a Request for Comment. Instructions are at Wikipedia:Requests for comment. If that results in a "No" decision, my suggestions could still be followed, as I described them at the beginning of this section, before this subjection was mentioned to me.

-- Wavelength (talk) 23:31, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Undesirable behaviour of the section edit box, for the last section

If the last section, edit tag, is selected, all content below that section is also displayed in the edit box, this can be solved by creating a footer section. Byzerodivide (talk) 01:21, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

The only problem I see with that is there is no way to for a section heading to be editable without being visible both at the bottom of the article and in the table of contents, which would be an eyesore in my opinion.

The only syntax other than ==Headline text== is to use <h[number]>, but this has exactly the opposite effect:

Example!

This is visible here and in the TOC but has no edit button (because despite appearances it is actually part of the previous section). — CharlotteWebb 22:41, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Page of frequently made challenges

It appears that the Manual of Style is receiving so many challenges on a repetitive basis (as other parts of Wikipedia are doing) that it must be difficult for some editors to keep from tiring out (burning out?) from answering the same challenges over and over again. Some challengers are probably new to Wikipedia, and some challengers evidently fail to read or to understand or to accept responses which have already been given above their own challenges. Therefore, I suggest, for the benefit of everyone concerned, that there be a page Wikipedia: Frequent challenges against the Manual of Style, with a list of frequent challenges and carefully prepared responses to them. There can be a notice at the top of the page Wikipedia:Manual of Style, saying: "If you wish to challenge the Manual of Style, please see this page first."
-- Wavelength (talk) 03:34, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Wavelength, you've really stepped it up, and you're learning fast. I have been deliberating whether to reinstate monthly changes to style guidelines at WP:Update, and have decided that it will be a net positive (especially if you help!) There's one thing we have to be careful about: when we're sharing information about style guidelines, it's important to do it for the right reason ... to support the community of copyeditors, and people who are familiar with books, magazines and newspapers generally, and Wikipedian editors generally who are more comfortable when they're operating in a world that looks familiar to them. We need these people; they need our help. What you're saying sounds great, but the proof is in the pudding: if it attracts and supports people with high levels of clue, we're succeeding, and if it puts them off, then we need to adjust what we're doing. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 16:22, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

With the note that, per WP:CONSENSUS, that frequent challenges to the same point by independent editors strongly suggest that the consensus of self-appointed "regulars" may not represent a consensus of Wikipedia as a whole. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:10, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

...and that pre-emptive non-collegial tampering with guidelines tagged as under discussion is unacceptable. And that editors who do not even support MOS offering genuine guidelines should be advised to reconsider their involvement here. And that we desperately need to tackle the whole matter of prescription (the common stance of all style guides) versus passive description (the common stance of dictionaries and entertainments like Fowler's). If these things are not attended to fast, no other work here counts.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 00:38, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Feel free to tell me whenever I'm wrong, I love collegial feedback. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 00:06, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Do I detect a reference to the first and last sentences of the third paragraph of Collegial#Definition_of_collegiality? --Philcha (talk) 01:43, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I didn't know that meaning, I meant "genial" and "as among colleagues". I've got something going on that would make it very unwise for me to get in any big fights at the moment; I can come back to this topic in about a week. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 03:15, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

PMAnderson, which is more important, the quantity of editors supporting a position, or their qualifications and expertise? If a thousand editors were to challenge the article "Pig" with the claim that pigs can fly, and ten editors were to refute their claim with solid evidence, should Wikipedia state that pigs can fly? What would Doctor Google say?

-- Wavelength (talk) 05:54, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

As you're stating it, that's more of a policy discussion, Wavelength (WP:OR, WT:OR, WP:RSN, etc.), but I take your point that you're talking about how to arrive at useful content in WP-space, which is not covered by those pages. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 15:07, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

@Wavelength: The quality of the editors' arguments. We cannot judge expertise; indeed, we've already had scandals where Wikipedians have claimed expertise they don't have. The numbers of editors can be a proxy for this; but this page should only make assertions which have general consensus among Wikipedians - see WP:POL. It doesn't match that standard, because there's always a language crank or two who want to lend tinsel "authority" to their pet notions. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:36, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

• Which is more important to Anderson? Neither. His monocampaign is to dilute the authority of the MoS, pure and simple. Tony (talk) 15:24, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
  • If my learned and gallant colleague has really never noticed the tag at the top of the page, I invite him to consider it. MOS is a guideline; it has no "authority" other than representing the consensus of Wikipedians, which it does not, as to the the actual or desirable usage in English, which it does not. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:55, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

So what are we talking about for starting off here? Curly quotes and lede image sizing are two which spring to mind which are constantly quarrelled by people other than the usual suspects. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 15:35, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Unless curly quotes have popped up again, we actually got consensus on avoiding them; I think I talked with everyone who weighed in. I wouldn't put lead image sizing in the category of issues that cause trouble, at least not yet; there are a variety of legitimate concerns on both sides of the table, and it will probably work itself out. Stay tuned. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 17:44, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I presumed Dan meant such things as the insistence on "logical" quotation. As it is, we get objections every other month or so, by someone who was taught differently, and the same half-dozen voices insist on its manifold virtues. It would be worth seeing if stating those virtues convinced everybody; on the other hand, it would be useful to keep a running record of those it does not convince. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:55, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Curly quotation marks (as to shape) are discussed at Quotation mark glyphs.

Logical quotation marks (as to position) are discussed at Quotation mark#Punctuation.

The same marks can be curly or logical or neither or both.

-- Wavelength (talk) 22:21, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

But logical quotation is the entirely different issue: when does punctuation go inside the quotation marks? MOS present adheres to the position that punctuation in inside only when it occurs in the original; there is an another form, aesthetic punctuation, which always places periods and commas inside; this treats ," as a single conventional mark. The CMOS prefers the latter, as more practical, and it is widely taught, especially in the United States; it is certainly easier to proof. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:29, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

• It's illogical and, in terms of WP's critical respect for keeping faithful to the original, can be very misleading. It looks gawky. Why is it "easy to proof" (if that was ever an important consideration here)? Tony (talk) 04:09, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
  • Most of this is WP:IDONTLIKEIT. "Gawky" is in the eye of the observer.
  • Checking whether "logical" punctuation has been done correctly requires checking the punctuation in the original text (which can, in some cases, be impossible to define). This is much harder than checking the mechanical requirements of aesthetic punctuation. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:36, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
  • CMOS warns against "logical" punctuation because it is easy to get it wrong. I see no advantage whatever to erroneous "logical" punctuation; plainly Tony does. Perhaps he could explain. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:49, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

The first paragraph of Quotation mark#Punctuation says:

The traditional convention in American English is for commas and periods to be included inside the quotation marks, regardless of whether they are part of the quoted sentence, whereas the British style places them inside or outside the quotation marks according to whether or not the punctuation is part of the quoted phrase. The American rule is derived from typesetting while the British rule is grammatical (see below for more explanation). Although the terms “American style” and “British style” are used, it is not as clear cut as that because at least one major British newspaper prefers typesetters' quotation (punctuation inside) and BBC News uses both styles, while scientific and technical publications, even in the U.S., almost universally use logical quotation (punctuation outside unless part of the source material), due to its precision.

-- Wavelength (talk) 21:40, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Image position

Reywas92 recently added this statement to the guideline: "Images should be inside the section they belong to (after the header and after any links to other articles), and not just before the header." It was taken from "Wikipedia:Accessibility". I've initiated a discussion about this guideline at "Wikipedia talk:Accessibility#Image position"; do join in. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 07:55, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Individual wikiprojects are deleting infoboxes from articles

Several people from musical Wikiprojects are systematically deleting infoboxes from biographies that are covered by their projects:

• "Rmv infobox as these are not used for classical musicians per Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical music#Biographical_infoboxes)
• "Rmv infobox as these are not used for composers, per Wikipedia:WikiProject Composers#Lead section) "

Here is an example at: Milton Adolphus

It appears that they are trumping Wikipedia biographical policy with their own subset of rules. It would be like the New York Wikiproject deciding that people born in New York City don't get infoboxes, or don't get birth dates added, or any other global Wikipedia rule. It destroys the consistent look and feel of biographies from article to article. Anyone else have an opinion? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 06:33, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Which WikiProjects? They should be given a medal. Mostly, infoboxes are a huge weeping sore on an otherwise good article. Dreadful idea that spread like leprosy. They tend to repeat information that is already in the main text, and/or to falsify it by shoving it into awkward categories. There should be a project-wide audit of them. Tony (talk) 06:51, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Hear hear!!! I've been fighting what I thought was a lone vendetta/campaign against infoboxes since day one. I have never found that they improve articles, in fact quite the reverse. It would be interesting to go back on their history and see who decided to foist them on the world at large. It's high time that we started a movement to outlaw them!! Rotational (talk) 10:31, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

• • The lede to the article also repeats information in the article such as birth and death and what made them notable. It is 100% redundancy. Should we remove the ledes from all articles, or just the classical composers? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 21:07, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Infoboxes are not always a good thing, and sometimes people try to cram too much information in them, when it would be better to have most of the information in tables in the article. Nevertheless, as a general rule some kind of small infobox is usually useful.--Toddy1 (talk) 06:54, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

• • Cram is such a loaded word, editors fill in the info fields. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 21:07, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Toddy1. An infobox that extend belows the TOC generally creates problems: creates a barrier between readers and the real info; makes it hard to add images that provide useful into in the first section(s) of main content. The use of widescreen monitors makes layout problems more difficult because it reduces the height of text blocks. The layout problem is most acute in articles where there's not much to say in the lead.

The fact that "sometimes people try to cram too much information in them" (infoboxes) may reflect political compromises that are better for WikiProject members' egos than for readers. The infobox at Strom Thurmond is ridiculously long and needs severe pruning.

• Strom Thurmond looks fine, it would look odd to be 100 lines long in an article of 10 lines, but how could that happen, it is long because his career was long. I all depends on why you came to the article. Was it to read a complete biography, or was it to find his years of service as a senator, or find his wife's name? We don't have a crystal ball. Try finding a single fact by reading the entire article, it is frustrating. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 21:18, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

In a few cases the heights of infoboxes may vary widely, e.g. the one at Arthropod is right on the limit because arthropods have so many subphyla and classes. In other cases variations in the amount of text content may cause difficulties, e.g. in the last version of Milton_Adolphus that had an infobox, there would have been a problem if the main content contained any actual text.

Rather than try to lay down the law, it would be better to have discussions with Wikiprojects as required, and draw their attention to cases where the infobox runs into the main text. --Philcha (talk) 10:18, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

If people don't have time to read a multi-page article, the infobox gives a good, quick overview. I often find them quite helpful.FunkMonk (talk) 20:46, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

• The infobox also automates information retrieval. Read the article to search for the spouse, or search for "spouse=". The formatted fields also allow for all this data to be retrieved and indexed automatically so someone can query "who was Abraham Lincoln married to" and get the answer. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 21:07, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

• I am sure there are lots of aesthetic reasons why some people don't like infoboxes, but the question is: can the New York Wikiproject decide that people born in New York don't get infoboxes, or people born in New York that are living don't get birth years put in, or don't get photos until they die? Or is this a global Wikipedia concern, so the look and feel is consistent? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 21:12, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Also please stop removing the infobox at Milton Adolphus while we are discussing this, it shows bad faith. Let everyone see for themselves if it is useful to them. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 21:14, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Infoboxes are very useful to different groups of readers, in many articles. Angrily dismissing the use of "all infoboxes" (such as the chemistry infobox, or film infobox, or ship infobox, etc), is counterproductive to fruitful discussion.

Out of the 15 most recently featured articles, only 4 do not include infoboxes: Kannada literature in the Western Chalukya Empire, Mozart family Grand Tour, Romeo and Juliet, and Caspar David Friedrich. The first two of those don't need infoboxes. The last two are interesting examples for this discussion:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Shakespeare does not use {{infobox Play}} in any of its play articles (archived discussion) for legitimate reason (though they do use one at the FA biography William Shakespeare).
• The article on Caspar David Friedrich had an infobox until November 16, when the FAC nominator removed it hours before the nomination itself. (with no objections at the talkpage or FAC).

So, there are examples of per-wikiproject and per-article decisions not to have infoboxes. I agree with the decision at the play articles, and disagree with the decision at the biography: it is harder to determine the man's final age and location at death, and any of the other fields at {{Infobox Artist}} would make informative details more readily available to readers looking to see if there are connections to other topics they already know about (patrons, etc).

As for Milton, we'd need to track down the history of {{Infobox Composer}} (deleted in Oct 2006 because "been superseeded by Template:Infobox musical artist", which itself currently states that it is "for non-classical musician articles"). At a glance, it (Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Composers/Infobox debates) looks like there is a lot of intractable history. See Template talk:Infobox Musical artist#Where is the infobox template for classical musician articles? for the most recent thread. Perhaps someone else can research that, and let us know what the pertinent objections are, and whether they can be usefully worked out? Until then, I agree that an {{Infobox Person}} is potentially suitable and useful for all articles about people that don't have a more specialized infobox available. -- Quiddity (talk) 23:37, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

• Biographical infoboxes are also often a menace in articles on (visual) artists, where the Visual arts project is agreed they should not be preferenced over works by the artists (whether infoboxed or not) as lead picture, but they are not yet being hunted down. Frankly the biography project is wasting its time if it tries to exert a common style on all biographies where this conflicts with more specific subject-area projects, who normally contain the people who do all the work in their areas. Johnbod (talk) 23:56, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
• (X-posted from Milton Adolphus & edited for context) The Composers wikiproject has had an extensive discussion about the merits of infoboxes on composer pages and there is overwhelming sentiment against them. I suspect RAN didn't know this and that is why we have the current dispute. I concur completely with the idea of global consensus, but infoboxes are not sanctioned Wikipedia policy. Hence, as Andy Mabbett discovered, it is entirely reasonable for an individual project to determine a best-practice within a certain area and to uphold it. Clearly no group of editors owns a topic but I refer interested editors to this ANI discussion on the topic and I suspect that if this dispute continues the results will be similar. Eusebeus (talk) 00:19, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

That just highlights the major issue with most projects, for the most part they believe they do own articles. They cannot 'overrule' editors working on individual pages so every time someone disagrees the project consensus becomes void and ultimately impossible making the whole discussions pointless. --neon white talk 23:25, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Just to add a footnote here. The Composers and the other classical music projects do not have any guidelines about infoboxes - only about biographical infoboxes. It's important to make this distinction. Nobody is objecting to the use of these boxes for factual, quantitative information (as for example the excellent geographical ones). The problem is with subjective information relating to people.

It may also be worth noting the long debate about popular musician biographical boxes at the Music Project which extended through September and October (now housed in six archives), see Music Project Archive 9 etc. This indicated the level of unpopularity of these boxes throughout the whole range of musical WP. --Kleinzach 01:05, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm glad to be reminded that there are intelligent WikiProjects. I've found infoboxes very useful at times. None of these useful infoboxes have been the silly things that litter the top right of biographical articles. As a presumably "mature" example of the latter -- one that's the result of much to-ing and fro-ing among a number of editors (rarely if ever including myself) -- I present that on Vladimir Nabokov. This gives straightforward biographical info that's not essential to an understanding of him -- nobody's opinion of his works would change if it turned out he was born in May rather than April, etc etc -- and that's anyway easy to find in the main part of the article. He's said to pertain to two literary movements, both of which are labels that apply to some stuff that's like VN's and to other stuff that isn't at all (and that additionally may be near-complete bollocks); VN, who was scathing about lazy references to "Romanticism" etc, would be grimly amused. The list of three "Notable work(s)" includes three excellent works but among them at least one surprising choice -- why Real Life and not The Gift? The list of influences on him is pretty much a not-bad list of writers to whom he referred approvingly, but unsurprisingly it's incomplete (if Mayne Reid, why no H G Wells, and VN at least once stated that he wished he had the chance to teach Shakespeare) and anyway it isn't a list of what influenced him. The list of people he influenced is a list of people who (a) more or less credibly claim he influenced them or (b) are said by some "RS" to have been influenced by him; as some of these people seem rather obscure, it's hard for me not to suspect a wee bit of coat-racking here. This infobox could be worse -- it doesn't (yet) have little flags -- but it's better removed. I'm tired of arguing with WP's Nabokovians so I leave the silly thing; but when it comes to biographical infoboxes elsewhere, I'm active/vocal in removing the stupid things. -- Hoary (talk) 06:48, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

PS 1. The few useful infoboxes include those for software: when looking for a program that promises to do something useful for me, I often find that categorization (which I might expect to do the job) isn't sufficient, and thus I want to be able to see fast whether each of a series of articles I'm skim-first-glancing at is about something that runs under the operating system of my choice, has the payment model of my choice, etc. ¶ 2. Particularly daft infoboxes include those for universities: each an odd congeries of gross oversimplification (one year given for foundation, one location given for campus), risible pseudoprecision (student number to the nearest person, no date specified), areas in olde-worlde "acres" (even those readers interested in further education mustn't be confronted with any pressure to consider metric units), trivia (university colors), etc. -- Hoary (talk) 07:04, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

The problems are similar with artists, where the selection of "works" (because almost all artists have far more works than writers) is likely to lead to even sillier or more misleading results. These boxes are often added in WP:BIO drives by editors with no knowledge of the subject, whose judgement of "movements" "influences" etc is most likely to be wide of the mark. But I approve of very many types of infoboxes - sports people, films, species, and many types of scientific ones and so on can be very useful, and even look good. Johnbod (talk) 11:50, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

• Which style guide is most appropriate for the inclusion of intelligent guidelines on where to and where not to use infoboxes? I presume that some people believe that this central MoS is it. True? Tony (talk) 08:03, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
• Biographical infoboxes often tend to oversimplify things (or to overemphasize unimportant issues). It is perfectly acceptable that some projects decide not to use them. This is one of the issues on which there has been no consensus for several years, and the standard approach in no consensus stylistic issues is to let the primary author decide. Kusma (talk) 11:30, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Funny ... if that is the case, how were the style guides ever started? It's just the kind of matter on which users need guidance—the current situation is most unsatisfactory. Tony (talk) 14:17, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Often when things get out of hand. A good example of that is Wikipedia:Manual of Style (icons), before that guideline was created almost every article had a little flag icon. Garion96 (talk) 14:40, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

I was thinking of stuff like WP:ENGVAR - if it doesn't really matter either way (and different choices that are decent exist), inconsistency is much preferable to forcing a randomly chosen standard down everybody's throat. Kusma (talk) 16:46, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't disagree that projects can decide on their own whether to infobox or not, however, as noted above, infoboxes can serve to automate several things including collection of metadata, automatic category population, and so forth. For that reason, we should make sure that infoboxes can be filled but have a way to be called out as hidden via CSS so that they are still doing these automated aspects but are not shown to the end reader if a project decides against showing them. I can see a potential way to make this an option in user-prefs, but lets start with the easy way. --MASEM 14:47, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

• I don't share your faith in the ability of infoboxes to provide uncontaminated and useful data. To start with, they're not used in every article of a type. And even if they did provide such metadata is it important compared with the potential compromises in individual articles? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tony1 (talk • contribs) 14:52, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Frankly Infoboxes are unpopular at the Visual Arts project..They are ungainly, bureaucratic, and unattractive to many..At best they should simply be optional....Modernist (talk) 14:58, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

• (reply to Tony after ec) And you do have faith in the ability of articles to "provide uncontaminated and useful data"? The accuracy of either articles or infoboxen is directly proportional to the attentiveness of contributing editors. I'm interpreting "uncontaminated" here to be accuracy, although you may have something more pejorative in mind. Usefulness is a somewhat subjective consideration. What one project considers useful may be anathema to another project, which I suppose is the genesis of this thread. How best to address the situation is not helped by blanket dismissals of what many editors view as valuable. older ≠ wiser 15:02, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

• • If there was a way (which there is, it's just template programming) to make them completely hidden from readers' view if the project didn't want to show them, then there is no reason they couldn't be used in every article where it was appropriate - including using multiple completely hidden infoboxes if a topic spans several WPs. The key is that they have to be able to be hidden - still part of the wikitext, but wrapped in a CSS display="hidden" div. (this would allow users that also "must" have infoboxes to be able to make a custom CSS to show them. There's only one aspect that could be a problem and that is how NFC images would be dealt with (one could "hide" the use of a NFC image in such a case, it would meet the NFC to be used in one article but it wouldn't be shown.. I'm sure there's a way to fix that however). --MASEM 15:04, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Recently at Caspar David Friedrich the infobox was removed and the article achieved FA status..with no objections to the lack of an infobox although I only reluctantly agreed to its removal..Clearly it isn't necessary to the quality of articles...Modernist (talk) 15:12, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

From a visual arts point of view, I prefer not to use infoboxes for two reasons. 1. For artists including them they make no sence, artists are not species and cant be sucinntly defined. 2. Its preferable that the lead has two images; a portrait an major work in the case of an artist bio, and a reproduction of the artwork and a work it was closely influenced by in the case of a painting. Also, I dont see why a project should have authority over articles under the remit it itself has defined. Ceoil (talk) 15:13, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Why are artists different from other people? Politicians aren't species either (jokes aside). ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 17:12, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Artists are different because their notability derives from individual works, not from holding an office or appointment. Thus their careers cannot be so easily summed up. As others have said already, I don't think consistency for its own sake is worth having infoboxes that contain very little useful information. Chick Bowen 17:18, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

• So what is the objection to the one at Milton Adolphus. Is it because it uses the people infobox, and it is demeaning that he is just a person and not an artist? Is it because of his birth and death date, or naming his spouse and children? What quality of an artist transcends them beyond a person that the infobox is not capturing or is confusing to people? And why is it any different than scientists? They are creative too, and hard to define. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 21:32, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Do pay attention - he is not an artist in the sense used in this discussion, but a musician, and the music project have decided against using infoboxes for the reasons they have explained above, which everybody else here seems to think they are perfectly entitled to do. Johnbod (talk) 23:34, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

• Question What are you going to do when someone decides to create them all again? There's nothing really you can do. They are used project wide and their removal would have to be project wide and have a project wide consensus. --neon white talk 23:28, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

• Is your argument he is not a person? The box removed is the people box, not the musician box. He is also a vaudevillian, as much as a composer. You seem opposed to the concept of boxes, not the pigeonholing of occupations. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 01:14, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I am baffled by the argument that the Composers Wikiproject "owns" Milton Adolphus. He is covered by other projects, including Wikiproject New York City, which has not come to a decision that an innocuous infobox with basic biographical information is what was called a "disinfobox". I'd expect a far better justification than a concern that people reading the article will only read the infobox (see here). Alansohn (talk) 04:17, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Wow, looking at that edit history, this is indeed getting ridiculous. It's about as blatant a violation of WP:OWN as it gets, really. And yeah, saying it "competes with the article" makes about as much sense as saying the lead will. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 04:52, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ), we have had this discussion for many times. The following archives document the various infobox discussions in 3 projects

• Opera Project: [18] [19] [20] [21] [22]
• Composers Project: [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] (scroll down) [28] [29] [30] [31] [32]
• Classical Music Project: [33] [34] [35]

The information in infoboxes is not sufficiently flexible, can lead to oversimplification and ambiguity, and, when placed at the head of the article, simply repeats information that should be in the first sentences in any case. Thanks - Jay (talk) 05:48, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

• Then we shouldn't have Wikipedia, people use it as a crutch when they should be reading a comprehensive 300 page biography. Even a biography is a poor substitute. People should go to an archive and read original materials and synthesize their own opinions about important people. They should hold in their hand original compositions and read letters written to and from important people. How can Thomas Edison be distilled into a 300 page biography when he left 5 million pages of documents that chronicle his extraordinary life and achievements? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 06:10, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Disinfoboxes

A box aggressively attracts the marginally  literate eye with apparent promises to contain a  reductive summary of information that can't be  neatly contained. Like a bulleted list, or a time-  line that substitutes for genuine history, it offers  a competitive counter-article, stripped of nuance.  As a substitute for accuracy and complexity a box  trumps all discourse.                —courtesy of User:Wetman

From the perspective on an editor who just looked at the article on Milton Adolphus for the first time I would have to say that I see no beneficial use for an info box at this article. The biography is in itself so short that the infobox merely parrots back what is already on the view screen (the info in the info box can be seen at the same time as the entire biography section with the same info). If the article was larger and more detailed I could see a reasonable arguement for dissementing essential information into an info box. As it is, it seems like a rather pointless/useless tool that causes un-needed redundancy in this particular article.Nrswanson (talk) 06:29, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

• The lede is 100% redundancy too. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 06:31, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

• That is rather a false analogy. A lede's function is to give an overview of an entire article but not to categorize the information into a pre-determined organizational structure that may or may not be suitable for an individual article. The lede is also primarily responsible for clearly establishing a subject's notability (see WP:LEDE), something that an info box can not do. The lede may also contain an overall perspective or view of a topic that may not be stated anywhere else in the article, thereby containing original content which is not the case in an info box. A lede has the further benfit of being able to address complicated issues with nuance in order to maintain accuracy which is less feasible in an info box. Further, since a lede is a standard literary device for academic papers it is an established format and essential element for the prose section of the article. An info box in my view is neither essential nor necessary. It can however be useful in some but not all articles. In general I would say that most articles with info boxes right now would probably be better off without them.Nrswanson (talk) 06:47, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Forum shopping

Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) has now referred this issue either under the title "Individual wikiprojects are deleting infoboxes form articles" or "WikiProject Classical music is deleting infoboxes from articles under their control" to:

• Template talk:Infobox Person
• Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)
• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography
• Template talk:Infobox Musical artist
• Template talk:Infobox Actor

(With one crossreference to: Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Council)

But not to the related Composers Project. --Kleinzach 02:11, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Nothing sinister, I am notifying potentially aggrieved parties, the first step in any law based system, and asking them to comment where the discussion is taking place. Posting notices in targeted forums conforms with Wikipedia policy. It would be egregious to not inform others of policy decisions affecting them being held in remote areas of Wikipedia. As I said earlier, this isn't about composers, or any other narrow category a biography belongs to, its a global Wikipedia policy for biographies. The person in question is as much a vaudevillian, a Yalie, and a New Yorker as he is a composer. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 06:02, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

The mater was already raised, two days earlier, at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Composers#Biographical infoboxes: Milton Adolphus by, er, you. Did you notify the named individuals discussed there that they were mentioned? BTW, your choice of sub-heading does not assume good faith. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 09:21, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ), it would be helpful if you would post at all the other Talk pages "please contribute at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#Individual_wikiprojects_are_deleting_infoboxes_from_articles", so that this becomes a centralised discussion. --Philcha (talk) 09:48, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Images

I see no compelling reason for the guideline, "Images should be inside the section they belong to (after the heading and after any links to other articles), and not above the heading." to exist. If there are placement reasons (such as other images in a section) for images to be at the tail end of another section, then it does not do any harm to do so. The goal of images is to clearly illustrate encyclopedic content and concepts in the article, and this particular guideline doesn't support that goal in a way that makes it a necessary addition to MOS. Steven Walling (talk) 22:36, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

• If an image is outside of the section it illustrates, it confuses the reader. That should be obvious. This isn't "wiki stalking", by the way, I had this page on my watchlist already. FunkMonk (talk) 22:41, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm glad you joined in the discussion, no worries about "wiki stalking" (I'm all about AGF). I don't think it confuses the reader at all: Putting the markup for images outside the section they illustrate doesn't necessarily not place an image within the section it is meant to illustrate, as you can see in Domestic sheep. Some images can be placed just above a header, and still appear within the section. It's sometimes necessary to put sufficient space between images so that text isn't crowded. Steven Walling (talk) 22:46, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

See the talk page of Domestic sheep, where I've answered already. FunkMonk (talk) 22:58, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

• This is already being discussed elsewhere - see 2 sections up. Personally the suggestion that every image has a "section they belong to" just seems wrong to me. Johnbod (talk) 00:00, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
  • An image "belongs" to a section in the sense that it is relevant to it and the subject of it is discussed in it. If there's a section about the beak of a bird, an image of the beak would "belong" in that section. FunkMonk (talk) 01:20, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Wow, thanks! but many images are relevant to several sections, or the whole article. Johnbod (talk) 14:58, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Please join the discussion at "Wikipedia talk:Accessibility#Image position". — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 07:45, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

That should be clarified. I would have taken belong = "In edit space, Image:Foo is after the section header for". Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:11, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Another new section under Punctuation

In line with recent changes to include punctuation marks that had not been covered, I have altered the subsection dealing with exclamation marks and question marks to include also periods (full stops). These three are sometimes discussed together as sentence-enders, and it is perhaps most efficient for us to follow that practice. The text includes the content of a subsection I have now deleted – concerning spaces after the end of a sentence. The new subsection therefore gathers together all that is relevant to ending a sentence, or at least links to subsections that deal with exceptions:

Punctuation at the end of a sentence

• Periods (full stops), question marks and exclamation marks are the three sentence-enders: the only punctuation marks used to end sentences.
• In some contexts, no sentence-ender should be used; in such cases the sentence often does not start with a capital letter. See Quotations, Quotation marks and Sentences and brackets, above.
• Question marks and exclamation marks may sometimes be used in the middle of a sentence (Why me? she wondered; The door flew open with a BANG! that made them jump).
• Along with commas, semicolons, and colons, sentence-enders are never preceded by a space in normal prose.
• There are no guidelines on whether to use one space or two after the end of a sentence (see Double-spaced sentences), but the issue is not important, because the difference is visible only in edit boxes; i.e. it is ignored by browsers when displaying the article.
• The exclamation mark is used with restraint: it is an expression of surprise or emotion that is generally unsuited to a scholarly or encyclopedic register.
• Clusters of question marks, exclamation marks, or a combination of them (such as the interrobang) are highly informal, and inappropriate in Wikipedia articles.
• For the use of three periods in succession, see Ellipses, above.

––_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 06:15, 30 November 2008 (UTC)[Amended]

Sounds good, Noetica. I wonder whether that punctuation table in your copy of Halliday's Spoken and written language adds anything? Tony (talk) 08:05, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Ah no, Tony. That isn't among my Halliday books. You may be thinking of my Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English, which I mentioned to you once. A glorious corpus-based blockbuster of 1,200 pages. But as I'm sure you suspect, where necessary I check my work against a formidable array of sources.

I'll look out for that one of Halliday's.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 12:03, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

I gave you a copy! Tony (talk) 14:06, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Ha! I sensed that something was amiss about this. Yes you did, and I am grateful. It is not among the many recent acquisitions I had told you about, and I had forgotten its title. Thank you! I'll look it up soon.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 22:08, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

It's all good, Noetica, and thanks. But can you think of any Wikipedia article where a question mark or exclamation point in the middle of the sentence would be desirable? (As always, I'm not competent in anything but professional American English, and not always in that; that's my context even when it isn't anyone else's.) "Why me? she wondered" and "The door flew open with a BANG! that made them jump" are professional English in a narrative style, but I'm having trouble coming up with a sentence in an expository style that should have ? or ! in the middle. If you agree, then I'd prefer we have the warning just before those examples rather than just after. We could tell the editors that they may have seen this in novels, but you don't usually see it in expository writing (or "encyclopedic" writing, although that word is so overloaded around here.)

I can hear someone objecting now that additional advice on punctuation is unwelcome. How "big" the style guidelines should be is a question that comes up again and again here at WT:MOS, and in general, I don't think it matters. The more words we have, the less comfortable people will be trying to digest it all; the fewer words we have, the more people will be forced to go to other sources, or not find out our conventions until they're getting "graded off" in some review process, which isn't good, either. I think readers can decide for themselves how much they want to read, and if they think it's too much they can say so, and if they have questions, they can ask. In general, it looks to me like that's exactly what is and has been going on at WT:MOS, and you're never going to have perfection in an adhocracy. Perfection isn't even desirable.

Many GAN reviewers have pushed back against the style guidelines, feeling that they distract from more important things. I believe we'd see less resistance if we had 20 well-trained copyeditors volunteering at GAN and FAC, and that would increase throughput, too. Ideally, we'd want copyeditors with 20 years of experience who are either retired or are bored with what they're copyediting in their day jobs. For anyone who's interested in volunteering, or in recruiting and training copyeditors, see WT:WikiProject_Featured_articles#Kicking around some ideas about copyediting. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 14:46, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Worthy thoughts, Dan. Yes, I can think of contexts in which these marks ought to be used in the middle of a sentence in Wikipedia articles, or in which editors at least need to be familiar with such usage:

1. An editor may transcribe some text from an audio source (a formal recorded speech, a radio documentary, or a film, perhaps). The words could be anything at all: an account of a robbery, a spoken memoir, a story about a dream. The editor then needs to have the normal resources of English punctuation available; and these include exclamation and question marks not at the beginning of a sentence. (This is one of several situations in which rewording is not a practical option; editors cannot always avoid difficulties such as numbers starting sentences, awkward possessives, and uncertain applications of the hyphen – as in recent drawn-out discussion about premodifiers that include adverbs with -ly. Simply to advise them to do so is often unhelpful.)
2. An editor may be quoting directly from a source that uses such punctuation, and be unsure whether to break off the quotation at the relevant point and paraphrase, apply the notation "[sic]", or just leave the text intact as representing normal practice. MOS then helps.
3. Further cases like the following could turn up in quoted text (or implied in a spoken source); major style guides allow them, and though we cannot cover them all we should at least suggest such flexibility in our guidelines:

   The battalion – or was it the whole army? – was headed for defeat.

   Catullus – saucy poet that he was! – is improper for the youngest readers.

   Homer wrote (?) the Iliad before the Odyssey. [He or they wrote these, or were they composed orally?]

   The insect eats five times (!) its own weight in a day.

   Addressing the questions "how long?" and "at what cost?" proved harder. [Omitting these quote marks is possible, and perhaps capitalising the starts of the questions without capitalising after the question marks themselves. It's a fluid affair.]

4. Certain uses of the kinds just given would not be out of place in straight unquoted text, at least in articles on pop-cultural topics and the like. The style guides approve of them: why should we not?
5. Of course exclamation and question marks occur at the end of sentence fragments too, not just full grammatical sentences. (Like this? Why not!) We don't want to give a wrong impression, and have at every point to distinguish sentences-for-the-purposes-of-punctuation from fully grammatical, non-elliptical sentences. Give a guideline that both tells the truth and suggests the right path for further interpretation. (Consider the guideline we have for captions, by the way, which treats sentence fragments as non-sentences for purposes of punctuation. I don't approve of that!)

All that said, I have no problem with making our warnings more prominent by putting them earlier. Since we seem to agree about that, I'll re-order the text like this:

Punctuation at the end of a sentence

• Periods (full stops), question marks and exclamation marks are the three sentence-enders: the only punctuation marks used to end sentences.
• In some contexts, no sentence-ender should be used; in such cases the sentence often does not start with a capital letter. See Quotations, Quotation marks and Sentences and brackets, above.
• For the use of three periods in succession, see Ellipses, above.
• Clusters of question marks, exclamation marks, or a combination of them (such as the interrobang) are highly informal, and inappropriate in Wikipedia articles.
• The exclamation mark is used with restraint: it is an expression of surprise or emotion that is generally unsuited to a scholarly or encyclopedic register.
• Question marks and exclamation marks may sometimes be used in the middle of a sentence (Why me? she wondered; The door flew open with a BANG! that made them jump).
• Along with commas, semicolons, and colons, sentence-enders are never preceded by a space in normal prose.
• There are no guidelines on whether to use one space or two after the end of a sentence (see Double-spaced sentences), but the issue is not important, because the difference is visible only in edit boxes; i.e. it is ignored by browsers when displaying the article.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 22:08, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

The Homeric question changed from Did Homer write the Iliad? to How did the text now called the Iliad come into being? over the course of... The internal question mark can be rephrased away, but it is a legitimate usage in an encyclopedic tone, and we should permit it. I'd really rather not have a MOS vigilante trying to explain the evolution of oral poetry theory since Friedrich Wolf; please? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:35, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

I can't be confident about the motivation for some of what you say there, PMA. No one is suggesting that the sentence I made should be included in MOS. It is just to illustrate a point in this discussion; its punctuation is at issue, not its content. I agree that contentious or simply wrong content is not good in our actual examples. Your own more extended sentence is more suited – if we wanted to include another example. But do we?

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 00:14, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I see we came up with the same idea independently; my eyes must have blurred after your Catullus example, which I would not use (it's emotional and probably POV, even although it may be consensus). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:07, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

It may or may not be helpful for the Manual to mention Factorial and Subfactorial in the use of the exclamation mark.

-- Wavelength (talk) 02:44, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

AP Stylebook does give You told me – Did I hear you correctly? – that you started the riot. I still think it's likely that at least 9 times out of 10 that I'm copyediting an article, and I see a question mark that's not at the end of a sentence or sentence fragment, and it isn't a scientific symbol or code and isn't quoted (either directly or by implication), it's going to seem too informal or chatty to me. I don't object to your proposal, Noetica, but your BANG! sentence is a little more positive than I'd like. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 03:13, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

BANG! is not suggested as encyclopaedic style, Dan. See my points 1 and 2, above (and 3, I suppose). Note the wording, and note the caution that now precedes it:

• The exclamation mark is used with restraint: it is an expression of surprise or emotion that is generally unsuited to a scholarly or encyclopedic register.
• Question marks and exclamation marks may sometimes be used in the middle of a sentence (Why me? she wondered; The door flew open with a BANG! that made them jump).

But on the strength of your comment, I'll now change it. And why not, indeed, adapt and shorten PMA's rather good suggestion too? Note the bold "?,", which is also generally allowed. So:

• Question marks and exclamation marks may sometimes be used in the middle of a sentence:

Why me? she wondered.

The Homeric question is not Did Homer write the Iliad? but How did the Iliad come into being?, as we have now come to realise.

The door flew open with a BANG! that made them jump. [Not encyclopedic, but acceptable in transcription from audio, or of course direct quotation.]

Now any editor paying attention with even dimly activated cortices will get the message, yes?

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 03:50, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Small ranges of relatively large numbers

I see this sort of thing a lot, stuff like:

• pg. 1011–2 to actually mean "pages 1011–1012", and presumably not "page 1011, paragraph 2" or somesuch.
• Until 1910–12 which could mean "until some uncertain end between 1910 and 1912" or "until December of 1910".
• elevations of 1200–700 m. could mean "from 1200 m. up to 1700 m." or "from 1200 m. down to 700 m." depending on whether the sentence flows up-hill or down-hill, i.e. whether we are talking about mountain-climbing or stream hydrology.

Really, wouldn't it be better to use complete numbers in all cases? — CharlotteWebb 12:39, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Agreed that all 3 of your examples have undesirable ambiguity. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 13:51, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Single-digit closing year-ranges are against the recommendation at MOSNUM. Try "pp. 1011–12", or if you must, the full "pp. 1011–1012". "Until 1910–12" might be OK if three-year ranges are at issue (three-year agreements from 1903–06 until 1910–12"), but otherwise, best to stay away from the jarring of spelt-out lead word then a symbol for "to"; yes, render the whole thing fully. MOS's advice on en dashes says to avoid constructions such as "of 1200–1700 m" (use "to"); a reverse range in running prose is probably confusing unless the reader is warmed up to it; render in full. Tony (talk) 14:14, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

otherwise, best to stay away from the jarring of spelt-out lead word then a symbol for "to" ← I've read this again and I don't know what you're saying.

I did look at MOSNUM and abbreviating the second year to two digits is okay if they are in the same century. I would prefer that we avoid altogether except in tables where there is a compelling reason to save space, or at least avoid them where there they can be potentially confused with the YYYY-MM of ISO format.

However it doesn't say anything about page numbers in ref templates, or other units of measurement. I suppose I will continue changing these to complete numbers wherever I see them. — CharlotteWebb 16:19, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Here is a real-life example of two-digit numbers being used after a year to variously imply a month in some cases or an end-year in other cases, in the same section [36]! Wouldn't it be nice if we had some way to semantically distinguish date elements? Err, wait a second… — CharlotteWebb 19:26, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Really, now; do we have to invent a whole new English language? Yes, I suppose we do; that 1910–12 (please note the useless endash) is English usage, and clear enough in context (or how was it emended) seem to be irrelevant. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:12, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

If you'd read the above example you'd see where "2006-07" was used to mean 2007–2008, but 2007-10 was used on an adjacent line presumably to mean "October 2007" (as 2010 is in the future—if not for this, I would have sincerely misinterpreted it). Please try not to belittle a very real ambiguity. — CharlotteWebb 21:18, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

And if it was clear, that is not a problem; if it were not clear, it should have been tagged. MOS cannot remove ambiguity from English, which is a natural language. Bear has more than a dozen meanings, from the animals to the force of a spring to a kind of tent. This does not mean we should replace it, everywhere it means the animal, by Ursus sp. to be unambiguous; so here. If 2006-07 is clear in context, leave it alone as idiom; where it's ambiguous, fix it, as you would any other piece of ambiguous language. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:34, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

I got a question on my talk page about this matter. Note that I objected to "until 1910–12", not "1910–12". AP Stylebook and NYTM are silent. TCMOS, 6.83, doesn't mention the word "until" specifically, but they do say not to use a dash if the range is preceded by "from" or "between", and from the examples they give, I don't see them allowing any other prepositions if the dash is used in the range, either. For my part, I can't figure out what "until 1910–12" means ... until some unspecified or unknown time in that range? until December 1910? until the beginning of some "season" that lasted from 1910 to 1912? If someone asks me, that's my answer, but I'll be happy to ask around if you like; maybe the phrase has some consistent meaning that I've missed. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 02:17, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

• As far as dates go, this has been endlessly discussed in the past, with firm concensus for allowing both 1910-12 and 1910-1912, but not 1910-2 nor 1913-4. Johnbod (talk) 04:34, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Plurals

the paragraph on plurals recognizes the difference between British and North American use, but doesn't indicate which is used by Wikipedia. For example, the article on the band Genesis has both ('Genesis are' and 'Genesis has'). Is there one use required by Wikipedia? or does it depend on what the article is about?--Richardson mcphillips (talk) 19:10, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

AP Stylebook recommends that a singular collective noun should take a plural verb only for bands and teams. British English often takes plural verbs with collective nouns. I'd go with "are" for AmEng and BrEng, but I don't know how other countries handle this. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 21:57, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

P.S. I'd appreciate feedback on the special case of words which are being used as synonyms for "a lot of"; "a bunch of kids are going to the movies" sounds right to me, but "a bunch of flowers is..." also sounds right. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 21:57, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

See WP:ENGVAR. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:42, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

thanks all. pmanderson, I conclude that the paragraphs your link sends me to imply that an article on an English (UK) rock band should use the English (UK) style. --Richardson mcphillips (talk) 03:42, 1 December 2008 (UTC)