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== [[First-magnitude star]] or [[First magnitude star]]? ==
== [[First-magnitude star]] or [[First magnitude star]]? ==
Circling back to the compound modifier question from above once more, it seems I have been "corrected" [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:POTD_protected/2019-02-26&curid=60063524&diff=884934277&oldid=884924482 here], when someone said should be "First magnitude star" rather than "First-magnitude star". Does that qualify as a valid exception? Usage in sources seems mixed.  — [[User:Amakuru|Amakuru]] ([[User talk:Amakuru|talk]]) 23:44, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
Circling back to the compound modifier question from above once more, it seems I have been "corrected" [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:POTD_protected/2019-02-26&curid=60063524&diff=884934277&oldid=884924482 here], when someone said should be "First magnitude star" rather than "First-magnitude star". Does that qualify as a valid exception? Usage in sources seems mixed. Pinging {{ping|Modulus12}} who made the change.  — [[User:Amakuru|Amakuru]] ([[User talk:Amakuru|talk]]) 23:44, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

Revision as of 23:46, 24 February 2019

Style discussions ongoing [keep at top page]

Add new items at top of list; move to Concluded when decided and summarize conclusion. Comment at them if interested. Please keep this section at the top of the page.

Current

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Concluded

Extended content
  • May I suggest that this section be kept at the top of the page? It's a losing battle keeping it at the bottom. BTW I added a hidden "Do not archive until 2029" tag so that problem's handled. EEng 08:05, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not much caring; someone wanted to put into some kind of sidebar template or something. I only bother moving it back to the bottom when updating it anyway. [shrug]  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:04, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    This should probably be on Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Discussions of note or some such (deliberately not using the 'noticeboard' nomenclature given the past-year-or-two's discussion about having a MOS noticeboard), with some active content transcluded here into some {{to do}}/{{cent}}-ish kind of thing and the inactive content not. --Izno (talk) 13:56, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Perhaps Izno is right, but I've moved this to the top of the page for the time being. EEng 14:20, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Yeah, there are multiple ways to approach this. I didn't recall that the noticeboard idea had been discussed that recently (it was an RfC something like 5–8 years ago). I don't think a noticeboard is an appropriate direction, since we do not "enforce" MoS like a policy, and there's already been F-loads too much drama resulting from certain individuals' attempts to make MoS excessively emphatic, nit-picky, and at times nationalistic. We don't need a bureaucracy for handling formatting trivia, and tensions already run too high too often about such matters. (If someone's being genuinely disruptive, ANI or AE or ANEW can and does already handle it.) The kinds of "not a noticeboard" informational pages used for topical tracking of deletion discussions are probably a better model (e.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Sports).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:29, 20 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Gender identity section

The section is currently:

Extended content

Main biographical article on a person whose gender might be questioned Give precedence to self-designation as reported in the most up-to-date reliable sources, even when it doesn't match what is most common in reliable sources. When a person's gender self-designation may come as a surprise to readers, explain it without overemphasis on first occurrence in an article. Any person whose gender might be questioned should be referred to by the pronouns, possessive adjectives, and gendered nouns (for example "man/woman", "waiter/waitress", "chairman/chairwoman") that reflect that person's latest expressed gender self-identification. This applies in references to any phase of that person's life, unless the subject has indicated a preference otherwise. Avoid confusing constructions (Jane Doe fathered a child) by rewriting (e.g., Jane Doe became a parent). Direct quotations may need to be handled as exceptions (in some cases adjusting the portion used may reduce apparent contradictions, and "[sic]" may be used where necessary). The MoS does not specify when and how to present former names, or whether to use the former or present name first.

See also WP:Manual of Style/Words to watch § Neologisms and new compounds

I think it needs work in two ways, one there needs to be some treatment of how gender is actually indicated for the two simple gender categories of male and female, and the two extra categories of biological female to transgender male, and biological male to transgender female.

In short, gender is typically indicated only by

  • the first name and its cultural assignment to either males or females,
  • the gender pronouns used in the body of the article.
  • scattered additional information, such as a photo, or marital partner information,

This is said to be sufficient, but in a formal way gender is not always clear if the tendecy is to rely on the above. For example foreign language names might be ambiguous, and transgendered persons might be indicated only by their transgender gender, without indication that they are transgender (there are meaningful differences between women and transwomen and transgender status should be clearly indicated). There might be a case for assigning biographical articles with hidden category tags which state that the article subject is one of the two plus two genders, which should cover about everybody. -Inowen (nlfte) 20:23, 21 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • We have a long-standing and clear policy on this issue for a reason. I'm not sure the Manual of Style is the place for an editor to work out his personal issues with/general confusion about transgender people. The Drover's Wife (talk) 00:15, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Greetings, The Drover's Wife. The Manual of Style is the mother of style guides in Wikipedia and here is where we find the main instructions about denoting gender identity in articles. Any editor who has questions or suggestions about the notation of geneder identity in articles should come right here and post up. This is just fine as a place for an editor to ask or discuss that - although there may be other suitable pages, as well. Dismissing queries by assigning "confusion" and "personal issues" to the questioning editor is not helpful and probably constitutes a personal attack. I'd say that even if we think there's confusion from the other editor's part, it's better to clear up the confusion (e.g. by providing helpful links) rather than anything else. Take care. -The Gnome (talk) 06:58, 26 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • As I've said frequently before, nothing arouses stronger and lengthier editorial conflict that attempts to change the wording in this section; at one point, the topic dominated WP:VPPOL (with multiple back-to-back RfCs) for several months solid. The wording we have at present is the result of a very long (and often very angry and unreasonable, on all sides) series of site-wide and editorially broad consensus discussions. Willy-nilly changes to it are extremely unlikely to be accepted, especially if the substantially change the advice (rather than clarify the current advice without producing any different results). If you really want to change anything about it substantively, prepare another VPPOL RfC.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:34, 9 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • The section is also in contradiction with MOS:MULTINAMES, specifically this sentence: "The MoS does not specify when and how to present former names, or whether to use the former or present name first." wumbolo ^^^ 11:46, 14 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Given the widespread discussion that resulted the current consensus for GENDERID, surely MULTINAMES needs a revision, at least to carve out an appropriate exclusion/restriction for GENDERID. Newimpartial (talk) 12:04, 15 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Specialized-style fallacy and resistance to hyphenation of compound adjectives

I keep wondering if MOS:HYPHEN needs to be clarified in some way to make it clearer that compound modifiers are hyphenated on Wikipedia (narrow-gauge railway, loot-box system, half-pipe ramp, etc.) even when specialists writing for other specialists in specialized publications tend to drop the hyphen in a term of art that would be clear to subject-matter experts without that punctuation.

Some people don't even seem to understand that a noun phrase used to modify another noun or noun phrase has become a compound adjective, as at this thread: Talk:Loot box#Loot box hypen. Yet they seem to think they're competent to write an encyclopedia and to lecture others on how to write one. Rather perplexing. It's frequent enough (almost always among little camps of single-topic editors who don't seem to read about much of anything beyond their favorite topic) that it's getting tiresome, and has been for several years now.

The MoS section on this should be clear enough to curtail that sort of "well, we sociometrists/rock climbers/osteopaths/skaters/trainspotters/whatever don't hyphenate" nonsense. It's both sides of the Dunning–Kruger effect at once: an incorrect presumption that the style they are used to is "correct" and that everyone else, including the world's major style guides, are wrong and stupid, compounded by an equally incorrect presumption that the term of art that makes perfect sense to them (through constant familiarity) when used as an unhyphenated compound modifier is equally clear to all WP readers, which is obviously not going to be the case. (Is an "evolutionary ecology theory" an ecology theory that has been evolving, or a theory about evolutionary ecology?)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:10, 10 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It's true that a lot of people are not familiar with this kind of role-related hyphenation for clarification of how to read the text. On the other hand, they usually get it when I link MOS:HYPHEN, and I've gotten very little pushback on such things (with "narrow gauge" being the notable exception, which took a lot of discussion to settle). Are you running into hyphen resistance more often? Dicklyon (talk) 23:15, 10 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) It would be good to have some sort of rigorous rule that we could hang out hats on. I think I saw this when there was resistance to the box-office bomb construct. Not sure what the rule would be, though, because there are exceptions. Well-known proper noun phrases such as Middle Eastern and African American, and probably some involving common nouns too.  — Amakuru (talk) 23:18, 10 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Pretty much all grammar/usage guides are clear on saying that you don't ever put a hyphen into a multi-word proper name. Not really an exception, just part of the general pattern. Dicklyon (talk) 23:22, 10 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
On Box-office bomb, you got no pushback at all. When a clueless editor recently removed the hyphen, it was quickly fixed without controversy. This happens, not because of any general controversy, but just because some editors don't understand the role of this hyphen, as I noted (it's especially apparent in edit summaries such There’s not a dash between “box” and “office”). Dicklyon (talk) 23:27, 10 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, you're right I think. The discussion about box-office bomb at the time was more just that one editor was surprised by it, and when I tried to back up my position via MOS:HYPHEN I found it didn't actually give as firm an instruction as I thought it might. I'll have to have a root around tomorrow though, because I'm sure there have been cases of a construct that's so ubiquitous that we wouldn't consider hyphenating it. Fossil fuel phase-out was a case I do remember, where I rather angrily argued that it should stay as was, but I was younger then and perhaps I would think differently now?!  — Amakuru (talk) 23:37, 10 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
High school is the big exception that few people hyphenate as an adjective. There's also law enforcement officer, ice cream cone, real estate agent, and peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I'm sure more exist. Modulus12 (talk) 04:59, 11 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, hyphens are increasingly dropped as compounds become more familiar, especially in the context of larger familiar compounds. Every now and then, hyphens might even be used in these, like here in PB&J sandwich. Dicklyon (talk) 05:27, 11 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Some constructions become so familiar that many people drop the hyphen (if they were ever even taught to use the properly in school in the first place, which is iffy), but this mostly happens inside even larger phrases that themselves become treated as conceptual units (thus law enforcement in "law enforcement officer", itself a stock phrase, will proportionally be hyphenated less that the same two words in a phrase that isn't stock, like "law-enforcement hiring practices"). Hyphens can be and are used in all of those example phrases ("ice-cream manufacturing facility", etc., but less often hyphenated in the very stock phrase "ice cream cone". [Trivia break: It's still non-standard, but there's an increasing number of people (e.g. on blogs) who fully compound that as icecream, but it sees very little print yet. The two-word form is itself a contraction of iced cream; it was originally from a verbal form, to ice cream (attested in 1718), like to bake bread. I knew most of that already, but cribbed the date from our Ice cream article.].

Sources of hyphen-dropping: More generally, hyphens are less likely to be used in a) specialist writing, which tends to drop them from "term of art" constructions, like case law citations or divorce law practice in legal writing; and b) news and magazines, which follow house style that seeks seek to compress and visually simplify text to save column width and, these days, especially for rapid eye-scanning. [An online news story has about 15 seconds to get its main point across before the average reader moves on [2], and it's not much different for print newspapers, though surprisingly higher for e-news on mobile phones [3], probably due to reading when "trapped" in lobbies, on buses, etc.] The language of marketing is also mostly based on (or debased from) news style, so dropped hyphens are typical of the advertising all around us.

Thus, there are two orthogonal avenues for "I don't like hyphenating that" sentiments: people who mostly only read news and other pop-culture material following AP Stylebook and similar news/marketing style; and people from particular fields who resist hyphenating jargon they already understand. WP isn't written in news style, nor for particular micro-audiences (and they don't get to "own" topics), so neither of these are valid rationales for anti-hyphenation in our articles.

It's never actually wrong to hyphenate "law-enforcement officer", it's just one character more "fussy" (clear, precise) than some people would bother to be.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:03, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't believe that "a lot of people are not familiar with this kind of role-related hyphenation" is actually true; rather, it's not the most common style in either the job-specialized or pop-culture stuff some people mostly read, so it's not their preference. It's not actually plausible that they don't recognize this kind of hyphenation, since it's been the high-register writing norm in English for about 200 years.

I'm also not sure it's really a matter, for MoS purposes, of how much "fight you to the death" resistance any of us encounter about hyphens (especially since WP:ARBATC and other actions against "style warrior" antics have actually curtailed MoS-related incivility and tendentiousness). It's just an unusually frequent point of editorial confusion. Tooth-gnashing about it is actually frequent enough that I consider it problematic.

This passes my "if MoS doesn't have a rule already it probably doesn't need one" test, because faulty hyphenation is one of our most common style faults in article text, even up to the FA level. It's just downright weird that we've not addressed this adequately, especially given the frequency with which is produces sentences that don't make sense to anyone not already familiar with the topic. Guideline-wise, we probably need a line item in MoS saying to hyphenate such compound-modifier constructions by default, and only drop hyphens for stock phrases like "ice cream cone" that are rarely found with hyphens in any genre or register of English. It's not enough that the phrase isn't often hyphenated in specialized writing, or on news sites. It needs to be something dictionaries and other encyclopedias don't hyphenate when used adjectivally. Then we kinda hope for the best. There is no easy way to build a list or test a case, because even Google N-grams are useless for this; too high a percentage of the books and non-books Google has content-indexed are low-register, pop-culture stuff like cookbooks, magazines, children's books, true-crime, pop psychology, and other pabulum without much in the way of editorial control from a reputable publisher, much less one that uses the kind of formal and precise English used in an encyclopedia.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:03, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

MOS:DASH

I am a little confused with The en dash in a range is always unspaced, except when either or both elements of the range include at least one space. If either element of the range includes at least one space, shouldn't there be a space between '1' and '17' in 1–17 September? JACKINTHEBOX • TALK 08:05, 13 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Neither 1 nor 17 contain a space. In the example, 1–17 is the complete range; September is not part of the range. Cf. spaced 19 May – 1 June. Doremo (talk) 09:32, 13 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the clarification. JACKINTHEBOX • TALK 11:48, 13 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Quotation marks on blockquote

MOS:BLOCKQUOTE is contradictory: it says "Do not enclose block quotations in quotation marks" but then the poetry example below ("Tis some visiter...") includes them (slightly complicated by the fact that there are quotes within the quote, which seems to me to be an unnecessary complication). Which rule should I follow, and should a more straightforward example quotation be substituted? Dave.Dunford (talk) 12:39, 16 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Dave.Dunford, I don't think it's contradictory. The example shows dialog which needs quotes. These quotes are different than quoting whole text. If the poetry example would have been quoted inline, it would have had double quotes on the outside (or around) and single quotes for the dialog.
So, don't use quotes around a block quote. Hope that helps. PopularOutcasttalk2me! 14:46, 16 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Oh yeah; my mistake. Dave.Dunford (talk) 15:57, 16 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Use of "et al."

I've always used et al. only in a list of people, but have found it being used in lists of things. I can't find any guidance on this in the MOS. (There is a latin definition here that says there are masculine/feminine/neutral versions in latin). My inclination is to use etc. or others as appropriate. Any thoughts? MB 17:43, 17 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I have only ever seen it used for people, indeed I've seen in the past "et all"! See wikt:et alii where it says "The abbreviation 'et al.' finesses the need for such fastidiousness", ie using different m, f & n terms. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 18:12, 17 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
In careful usage:etc. means "And other similar stuff which you can imagine for yourself, and which we may or may not be able to exhaustively identify or enumerate if we really tried". et al. means "Uncle Al ate it." No, actually, et al. means "For brevity I've left out some members of this list but this is enough to identify the group to which I refer, and there's a definite list somewhere you can consult if you need to"; WP:MISSSNODGRASS would tell you it can only be used for people, and in practice is usually is, but sensible people know it can be used for people or things or whatever.
As per my usual exhortation, unless this is a question of house style specific to WP, or there's a history editors wasting time on it, MOS should not opine on or explain this. EEng 18:39, 17 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
And Miss Snodgrass would be flat wrong, anyway, since it's standard practice to use et al. for any entities (corporate, organizational, governmental, individual human, etc.); a common usage of it is in abbreviating long legal-case names with numerous parties. I agree that it's used to indicate truncation of a finite list, and is rarely applied to non-entities, but could be validly be. Also agree MoS doesn't need to address this; it's a Hart's Rules and Chicago Manual of Style bit of trivia, not a subject of frequent WP editor consternation.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:17, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Under what conditions can WP:IGNOREALLRULES override MoS? (re: closing comma in MDY dates)

(non-admin closure) BMK has been blocked for violating 3RR for 48 hours by MSGJ. I don't see any point in continuing this. If there are any other concerns once the block expires, a new thread should be started. Amaury (talk | contribs) 01:33, 20 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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

Beyond My Ken has invoked WP:IGNOREALLRULES to override the guidance in MOS:DATE to editwar over date formatting at Joey Gibson (political activist). He apparently has an issue with the trailing comma in American-style MDY date formats, declaring them "still not needed", "when a comma is not needed, it's not needed".

Gibson hosted a rally on April 2, 2017␣ which was met by thousands of counter-protesters. (BMK's version)
Gibson hosted a rally on April 2, 2017, which was met by thousands of counter-protesters. (MoS-compliant version)

Ignoring the editwarring violations, under what conditions can WP:IGNOREALLRULES legitimately be invoked to override the MoS, and does this case fall within them? Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 04:12, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Let me repeat what I wrote on Talk:Joey Gibson (political activist):
Well, here's how I look at it, if a comma ain't needed, there's no necessity for a comma. Read the sentence out loud, there's no pause after that date, it flows naturally into "which was met by...". That's not case with a previous date, "On February 25, 2018, Gibson announced..." where a pause is natural. The comma is the pause, so a comma is appropriate there. ... Not a long pause, a tiny caesura, a mere uptake of breath.
Why is this the case? Because a comma is not an abstract typographical invention disconnected from reality, its purpose is to mimic how people talk. After all, writing is merely (merely?) codified speech, which existed long before writing, and long before the comma.
Sometimes, many time, maybe even most times, a comma after a date is appropriate, but no grammarian will tell you that is always the case. There are times when not having a comma is the better choice. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:30, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
"it's purpose is to mimic how people talk"[citation needed] – We're not seriously going to buy the idea that a comma is a visual pause, are we? If this is a legitimate argument, then MOS:DATE will have to change. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 04:34, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
CT, do you know anything about this subject? If you're just kind of vamping in the hope that you'll pick up some traction, you're in danger of exposing your ignorance. And I said nothing about a "visual pause". I am talking about talking, what does visuality have to do with it? What do you think the function of a comma is?
And, of course, the notion that MOS:DATE has to be completely revamped is hogwash, pure rhetorical overkill. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:42, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Incidentally, if anyone's interested, the real reason this is here is that Curly Turkey just flat out doesn't like me. I've never actually been able to determine why, but he seems to think that I done him wrong at some time in the past, so now he occasionally parachutes into an article I'm editing and sticks in his oar -- as he did on Joey Gibson (political activist), an article he's never edited before today -- just to kinda of annoy me. He used to do it more often, but this is the first instance in a while. It's the kind of thing you just have to put up with, like sand in your ice cream at the beach. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:42, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
BTW, I think I'm done with this discussion. I don't believe that Curly Turkey's complaint is anything more than another way to lash out at me, it's not in any way a serious request -- does he really expect the MOS talk page to decide what the proper usage of WP:IAR is?? That's something that's been discussed from Day 1, and has not been, and can not be, determined -- that's really the genius of IAR. In any case, it's outside the scope of this page, and CT's complaint is disingenuous at best, so I'm outta here. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:47, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Well, Primergrey "parachuted in" to revert BMK, and BMK 3RRed it back. Is this legit? Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 06:20, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I missed that, but I also just put the comma back, so that's a 3:1 ratio at least.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:44, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I've had trouble with BeyondMyKen before. Seems to be a hard-liner who won't compromise or yield to common sense—including the common sense contained within our centralised guidelines. To override MOS, in my view, requires cogent argument in a particular context. Where has that been expressed? Tony (talk) 06:27, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • As phrased, this is a nonsensical question, seeking to restrain an anti-rule – an escape valve to get away from unhelpful application of rules – by trying to pin it down with an unhelpful rule about when it can be invoked. :-)

    More seriously, and as to the case at hand, this simply isn't an IAR matter, it's someone editwarring to impose a style quirk that reliable sources consider substandard English. IAR is invoked when a rule impedes someone from objectively improving the encyclopedia. Defying punctation norms to suit personal whims is objectively a detriment to our content, and subjectively an improvement only to someone who shares the exact same peccadillo and who is apparently in a class of people who do not read or absorb style guides (not just ours, but "real world" ones, which are consistent: parenthesizing commas always come in pairs except when the second one is replaced by other punctuation like "." or "?"). That's actually a fairly large class of people, but they're still in the wrong on this and have no business insisting on style changes, against either general English norms as codified in major style guides, or against our own style guidelines (based on the former). There simply is no IAR to be found anywhere in that. There's no rule against saying "IAR!" in your revert, but it will not save you from a 3RR block, etc. No one takes IAR claims seriously when the rule is not being defied to actually make an improvement.

    [I decline to comment on whether there's a specific tendentiousness pattern with BMK in particular, since WT:MOS isn't a disciplinary venue. If this sort of thing seems habitual, and user- and article-talk discussion has no effect on it, it may be a WP:ANI or WP:ANEW matter, or even WP:AE if they've received a {{Ds/alert|mos}} within the last 12 months and are being genuinely disruptive.]
    — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:44, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • To answer the original question, there are self-evidently no "conditions" under which IAR can or cannot be invoked. If we start attaching rules to IAR then we're kind of missing the point of it. In the specific case mentioned here, however, there doesn't seem to be a good case for ignoring the rules. It would create a strange exception to every other usage in the prose of articles.  — Amakuru (talk) 07:43, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
  • And to address the underlying actual style question behind the dispute: BMK's allegation amounts to "everyone arguing against me is wrong, and MoS is wrong, obviously, cuz everyone knows a comma doesn't go here", but this is just flat-out counterfactual. To quote from The Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed., sect. 6.17, "Commas in pairs"), since I have that handy in digital form:
    • 'Whenever a comma is used to set off an element (such as “1928” or “Minnesota” in the first two examples below), a second comma is required if the phrase or sentence continues beyond the element being set off. This principle applies to many of the uses for commas described in this section [No, I'm not pasting in the entire section]. An exception is made for commas within the title of a work (third example): June 5, 1928, lives on in the memories of only a handful of us.; Sledding in Duluth, Minnesota, is facilitated by that city’s hills and frigid winters.; but Look Homeward, Angel was not the working title of the manuscript.'
What's probably happened here is that BMK reads a lot of certain news publishers' output, with a house style that drops a lot of punctuation, and has then assumed that particular "abbreviated" style is some kind of universal norm and rule in English. It just isn't true, and WP is not written in news style, as a matter of actual policy. That said, it is never required to cite off-site style guides to bring an article into conformity with MoS; people can't "IAR" you for not having book citations. It is enough that the guideline says what it does, since WP built it with editorial consensus from such sources in the first place (and more importantly from years of negotiation about, and adjustment for, what is actually best for Wikipedia's needs to communicate to its audience; it is not a rote regurgitation of any particular "rule books"). I'm just citing CMoS on this particular matter to put away any doubt about this comma nit-pick, about the idea that MoS has some kind of "mistake" or "made up nonsense" in it. This should forestall any kind of "I wanna delete this line from MoS because it's wrong" thread; let's just disprove that idea right this second and save everyone the trouble.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:01, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This user has done the same removing a comma following a state name: [4]. Reywas92Talk 19:55, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I actually predicted that would be the case: "I'm almost willing to bet cash you wrongly try to delete those commas, too." [5] Heh. This is why I'm certain it's due to importing style ideas from somewhere else and mistakenly treating them as something like a natural law. It fits a specific pattern common in some flavors of news journalism, an insistence on throwing away certain punctuation to save trivial amounts of space (at the expense of clarity). This problem of "I learned and prefer X from [insert one of: my favorite news site, my job, my 5th grade teacher, Daddy, the obscure style manual required in my community-college English class], and since I know it better I will assert that it is the One True Way to write and that MoS is wrong" is a pretty common cause of MoS-related grumbling. But there's not much we can do about it, other than be patient; people do eventually come around to the fact that this is a guideline about how to write WP not an article describing "official standards" of English.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:09, 20 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That's a case that's been the subject of debate—whether there should be a comma when the placename is used as a noun adjunct. I seem to recall there was a discussion about it just recently, but I don't recall if there was a consensus on how to handle it. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 01:19, 20 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If a preponderance of real-world style guides do not advise drawing such a distinction (or even mention one), and/or there's not a truly compelling Wikipedia-specific reason to draw it (like frequent hair-pulling disputes about it), inserting some MoS line-item about this involves a risk of it being interpreted as exactly the kind of "made-up nonsense" that people fear MoS contains or will contain.

I can't see a reason that we'd treat a noun-phrase adjunct (an NP acting as an adjectival modifier of another noun) differently; there's nothing broken about "They sold their Clovis, California, home in 2014." It doesn't structurally make sense as "They sold their Clovis, California home in 2014.", though most people's brains wouldn't melt. But trying to lay out a rule for editors to drop the second comma in that but retain it in "They bought a house in Clovis, California, in 1998" would be a WP:CREEP nightmare of the kind we've already had to wrestle with before: lots of "I just can't get it" problems, and people disputing it as nonsense or at best as an attested style that's too complicated to employ here.

When such a place name is used in a larger compound construction (the adjectival noun phrase being just part of the compound modifier), like "They sold their Clovis, California-based business in 2014", the hyphen is a replacement for the second comma, just as would be terminal punctuation ("They moved to Weed, Texas.") I don't think even Chicago spells all this out very clearly (as it does for actual terminal punctuation), though their examples illustrate such cases. But we don't seem to have any active problem of editors doing daft things like "They moved to Weed, Texas, – a much smaller community – the same year." (or "... –, the same year"). We just intuitively know that things like ", –" are not idiomatic in English writing. [They actually used to be, in the 1800s; Emerson used such patterns, as illustrated at WP:EMERSON, an essay created for an unrelated reason.]
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:09, 20 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

IAR for MOS:IM

The MOS is also quite clear with regards to certain image placement: "Each image should be inside the level 2 section to which it relates, within the section defined by the most recent ==Heading== delimited by two equal signs, or at the top of the lead section. Do not place images immediately above section headings."

The same user as above believes that because "MOS is not policy, it is not mandatory" that this should be ignored for no clear reason. He claims it provides "VISUAL BALANCE" to the article, but in this case the images are cleanly alternating left and right with no excess images stacking on top of each other so putting the images within the relevant sections is perfectly visually balanced. I think they look bad being in the wrong section and breaking the horizontal header line. What would be a good reason to ignore the MOS for image placement? Reywas92Talk 19:55, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(a) I can't even tell what the section you quoted is trying to say, and (b) MOS is to be applied with common sense, which may override rigidly stated rules. I can't really tell what's going on in the particular article you linked. EEng 00:53, 20 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Same user as in the IAR thread above, already blocked for similar "my way or the highway" editwarring. It's not a valid WP:IAR, since what the editor wants to do isn't an improvement of any kind, but introduced problems for no benefit. For one thing, it separated the image from the material to which it pertains, and as a more immediately obvious problem, it confusingly caused the heading to wrap to the right of the image (though this might vary by viewport size, etc.)

Meta: We (the entire community, or rather the image and layout geeks in it, who care) may need to revisit MOS:IMAGE, Help:Pictures, and image-related parts of MOS:ACCESS to make sure they all still make sense in 2019 and on mobile devices. I'm not sure all of this material has kept pace with display issues, former display issues possibly no longer being issues, changes to MediaWiki, and so on. A lot of this stuff probably needs a round of focused test-casing to see what actually happens today under what circumstances, on the desktop and mobile sites, and on different devices.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:25, 20 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This section says that the images should be placed in the relevant section below the header like at [6], not in the previous section above the header like at [7]. I see no common sense argument that the latter should override the MOS-compliant former. Reywas92Talk 08:12, 20 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Pronunciation of redundant parts of foreign names

I'm asking for the general case, but my question arises more specifically from treatment of Thailand-related proper nouns. The current convention is to include the Thai spelling of a name after the bold title, followed by the pronunciation. But this leads to words which aren't part of the English name appearing in the transcribed version. Take Chulalongkorn University, for example. The name in Thai is Thai: จุฬาลงกรณ์มหาวิทยาลัย, RTGS: Chulalongkon Mahawitthayalai. The IPA pronunciation is given for the entire name, but the Mahawitthayalai part means "university", and is actually redundant. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation says, "If the name consists of more than one word, include pronunciation only for the words that need it (all of Jean van Heijenoort but only Cholmondeley in Thomas P. G. Cholmondeley)." But is [ma.hǎː.wít.tʰa.jāː.lāj] needed here? Readers who look at the bold title Chulalongkorn University will expect to only find the pronunciation for Chulalongkorn, and will be confused where the Mahawitthayalai comes from. But readers who are looking at the Thai name would also presumably want to know the pronunciation in its entirety. How should this be dealt with?

Another example is Charoen Krung Road. It's ถนนเจริญกรุง in Thai, RTGS: Thanon Charoen Krung. But the {{RTGS}} template isn't needed here, since the article title already follows the RTGS transcription. So the appearance of [tʰā.nǒn] in the pronunciation guide is even more confusing to reader who doesn't know Thai. There are also thousands of other streets, bridges railway stations, etc. Would repeating the pronunciation of the same few words for all of them be too redundant? Should they be included or omitted? --Paul_012 (talk) 02:36, 21 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It's an editorial decision, but I agree with you—the lead really only needs the IPA for Chulalongkorn, and probably doesn't need even the Thai transcription, unless there are multiple ways Chulalongkorn could be written in Thai. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 03:44, 21 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yet another dash question

Very simple question: should it be Deer Park–West Werribee railway line, or Deer Park – West Werribee railway line?

I moved it to its current location a while ago after noting "Los Angeles–New York flight" was preferred by MOS:DASH, but now I’m not sure if it falls into the category of ranges with spaces in the elements. Any advice is appreciated. Triptothecottage (talk) 09:41, 24 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oh boy, this will really put the cat among the pigeons. EEng 09:58, 24 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
To put it another way, there is an inconsistency near MOS:ENBETWEEN, where the first bullet includes this example:
a New York–Los Angeles flight
(unspaced), but the subsection just before that says:
The en dash in a range is always unspaced, except when either or both elements of the range include at least one space
and lists examples like:
Christmas 2001 – Easter 2002
I suggest that the first example shown above be changed to:
a New York – Los Angeles flight
(spaced) to be consistent with the written text. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 11:58, 24 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The difference is the first range are dates, while the flight example are places. When the section was hashed out in a massive RFC some years ago, there was strong opposition to having "New York–Los Angeles flight" be punctuated differently from "Chicago–Atlanta flight". I don't think it should be changed. oknazevad (talk) 13:49, 24 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Some of us didn't like the spaces in dates, either, but that's how it came down. I would not be in favor of re-opening any of this, given all the last 8 years of working toward consistency with the consensus guidelines. Dicklyon (talk) 19:25, 24 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see any inconsistency. MOS:ENTO (ranges that might otherwise be expressed with to or through) and MOS:ENBETWEEN (compounds when the connection might otherwise be expressed with to, versus, and, or between) are distinct, separate subsections. I don't see any reason to presume that the spacing rule described under MOS:ENTO would apply to MOS:ENBETWEEN. --Paul_012 (talk) 18:59, 24 February 2019 (UTC) PS Well, one could say that prescribing different styles for different uses of the dash is inconsistent, but the guidance is clearly structured, and I don't think there's significant potential for confusion in the way the MOS page itself is written. Though it is indeed a bit counter-intuitive and could confuse editors who hadn't taken the time to study the MOS. --Paul_012 (talk) 19:12, 24 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
When I wrote the above, I missed the hatnote on the earlier section Here the ranges are ranges of numbers, dates, or times.... I change my objection to that it's inconsistent and counter-intuitive to have different styles depending on the use case, even acknowledging there may be underlying reasons for it. MOS should not be just (or even primarily) for use by experts – they don't need it. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 20:05, 24 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

First-magnitude star or First magnitude star?

Circling back to the compound modifier question from above once more, it seems I have been "corrected" here, when someone said should be "First magnitude star" rather than "First-magnitude star". Does that qualify as a valid exception? Usage in sources seems mixed. Pinging @Modulus12: who made the change.  — Amakuru (talk) 23:44, 24 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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