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:::It's because it's common for style guides to recommend an em dash for joining two nouns in this way. [[User:Remsense|<span style="border-radius:2px 0 0 2px;padding:3px;background:#1E816F;color:#fff">'''Remsense'''</span>]][[User talk:Remsense|<span lang="zh" style="border:1px solid #1E816F;border-radius:0 2px 2px 0;padding:1px 3px;color:#000">诉</span>]] 13:04, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
:::It's because it's common for style guides to recommend an em dash for joining two nouns in this way. [[User:Remsense|<span style="border-radius:2px 0 0 2px;padding:3px;background:#1E816F;color:#fff">'''Remsense'''</span>]][[User talk:Remsense|<span lang="zh" style="border:1px solid #1E816F;border-radius:0 2px 2px 0;padding:1px 3px;color:#000">诉</span>]] 13:04, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
Jesus F. Christ, my proposal isn't so ridiculous! [[User:Kurzon|Kurzon]] ([[User talk:Kurzon|talk]]) 12:30, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
Jesus F. Christ, my proposal isn't so ridiculous! [[User:Kurzon|Kurzon]] ([[User talk:Kurzon|talk]]) 12:30, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

:Wikipedia editors are reluctant to use their power to influence English usage in this way (i.e., deprecating the en-dash for joining equal terms). Possibly the only punctuation issues where enwiki does put its thumb on the scale are date formats and the use of "logical punctuation" for quotations. [[User:Newimpartial|Newimpartial]] ([[User talk:Newimpartial|talk]]) 12:41, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Revision as of 12:41, 8 April 2024

Welcome to the MOS pit


    Style discussions elsewhere

    Add a link to new discussions at top of list and indicate what kind of discussion it is (move request, RfC, open discussion, deletion discussion, etc.). Follow the links to participate, if interested. Move to Concluded when decided, and summarize conclusion. Please keep this section at the top of the page.

    Current

    (newest on top)

    Capitalization-specific:

    This section is an excerpt from Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters § Current.[edit]

    Move requests:

    Other discussions:

    Pretty stale but not "concluded":

    Concluded

    Extended content
    This section is an excerpt from Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters § Concluded.[edit]
    Capitalization-specific:
    2023
    2022
    2021

    Relevant discussion...

    at the WP:Articletitles talkpage, to do with italic titles. Primergrey (talk) 00:39, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Addition suggestion: Lifespan tags

    Lifespan tags are dates in parenthesis which contain the birth and death dates of a person. For example: (1 January 1900 – 1 January 2000).

    • The start and end dates should be divided by an en dash, and not a hyphen or em dash.
    • If the lifespan tags are of the subject of the article, the en dash should be separated with spaces: (1 January 1900 – 1 January 2000), not (1 January 1900–1 January 2000)
    • If the lifespan tags appear in another part of an article, such as being used to give the birth and death date of a person who is not the subject of the article, the dates should be divided with an en dash, but the en dash should not be spaced apart, and should only include the year, not the month and/or day: (1900–2000).
    • Lifespan tags should be included in the short description, but only the years: Chinese encyclopedia writer (1900–2000). Except if the article is of a holder of a highly important office position, such as Abraham Lincoln, where the years serving in office are placed instead of lifespan tags.
    • If one date is not known, then where the date would go should be replaced with a question mark (?): (? — 1 January 2000; this also goes for the short description.
    • If the subject is Living, then put b., followed by their birth date: (b. 1 January 1900.
    • Lifespan tags should be included after the article title in set index articles
    • Lifespan tags can be used to disambiguate article titles, but only as a last resort. Use occupational titles before lifespan tags, which should be placed after the occupational title, separated with a comma (,): John Doe (businessman, 1900–2000), not John Doe (1900–2000).

    Roasted (talk) 20:09, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Isn't most of this covered by MOS:DATERANGE? And I think the abbreviation "b." should (almost) never be used for "born". And the em dash in your "date is not known" example is wrong. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 01:21, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I also think this is largely redundant and not needed. Also, some of it is in conflict with current best practices – for example, short descriptions typically don't include the years of life, unless needed for disambiguation. Which is for the better, as they are meant to be short, after all. Gawaon (talk) 07:33, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Kind of a design question

    Some folks here might be interested in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Islam#RfC on using the crescent and star symbol or Allah calligraphy. It's not directly MOS-related, but it's a design-related question about whether we want to use a unified symbol/logo for various items (e.g., sidebars, navboxes), and if so, which one (of the two main candidates). WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:10, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    "Media" doesn't work

    Hi. I noticed that in the infobox when adding the lang it (e.g. on the page Bica (coffee)) "media" doesn't work; why? JacktheBrown (talk) 20:33, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    @JackkBrown: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Wikipedia:Manual of Style, it is not a help desk. I don't see how your problem is related to the Manual of Style.
    Anyway, {{infobox food}} expects the |name= parameter to be plain text, without markup. You should use |name=Bica|name_lang=pt|name_italics=true. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:02, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Silently correct an error if it's in a title?

    Shortcut

    Per MOS:TYPOFIX "insignificant spelling and typographic errors should simply be silently corrected". But, what if the error is in a title being cited? Correcting the error is going to make it hard to find that article if the link changes. E.g. "Neflix star returns to his West Sussex roots". Clearly Neflix means Netflix, at Timothy Innes, and I know some would correct that, but I'm not sure. Thanks for your thoughts. SchreiberBike | ⌨  21:45, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Don't see any problem correcting the ref title, but of course the underlying url has to be left alone. - Davidships (talk) 22:10, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Yeah I'd correct that without hesitation. Popcornfud (talk) 22:30, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    As the OP wrote, correcting the typo makes it more difficult to find the article if the link changes and it needs to be found again. I would not correct but give some inline comment <!-- not a typo --> or {{not a typo}}. Other readers will figure out the meaning just as you did. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 23:35, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    He could correct it and have a hidden comment next to the ref that clarifies what the actual title is. —El Millo (talk) 23:38, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Facu-el Millo: "correct it and have a hidden comment next to the ref that clarifies what the actual title is." I like that. It hides the error. It doesn't require a disruptive {{sic}}. If at some point in the future it needs to be searched for again, the original will be easy to find. I'd probably put it in hidden text right next to the word that was corrected.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  02:11, 21 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Davidships, Popcornfud, Michael Bednarek, and Facu-el Millo: Based on what seems like a consensus above, I propose the following change to the MoS. At the end of the paragraph that ends "be silently corrected (for example, correct basicly to basically).", we could add the sentence If there is a typo in the title of a source, the source could be hard to find after the typo has been corrected, so when correcting the typo, add a hidden note (<!-- -->) near the error to indicate the original text. I hate to add anything which makes the MoS longer and more complicated, but is this worth the distraction? What think you? SchreiberBike | ⌨  11:41, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Comment: Where the ability to find the ref is not compromised because there is an underlying URL (as in this example), this is not necessary; otherwise a [sic] would seem more appropriate. But I am just a passing editor, so I leave this to those with broader persective on MOS. - Davidships (talk) 12:06, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I think this is such a rare borderline case that it doesn't deserve to be mentioned. I also have some doubts that it's really necessary. Presumably, when the original URL disappears, people will just enter it into the Wayback Machine and hopefully retrieve it there. If not, they may google it, but search engines are fairly tolerant of misspellings and I suppose the typo-corrected title may be nearly as findable as the original one. Maybe more so, if the publisher had in the meantime spotted and corrected the typo. Gawaon (talk) 12:54, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @SchreiberBike I think it's too specific—it's OK to draw attention to it as a issue to be aware of when editing, and maybe suggest possibilities for handling it, but prescribing which to choose seems premature. Something like One way to handle this is . . . seems better. Musiconeologist (talk) 13:47, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    That is, the recommendation would be to bear the issue in mind when correcting a title. Use of a hidden note would be an example rather than a guideline. Musiconeologist (talk) 13:55, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree with Gawaon's point: it's rarely occurring and not worth mentioning. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 14:41, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree with the notion that a source may be harder to find the the typo is silently correct, but a hidden note cannot be the best solution to this. This matter would be relevant not only to editors like us but also to several external users (e.g. non-Wiki researches) who will not even be aware that such a hidden note exists. The format of such notes will also be wildly inconsistent. The simplest solution here, in my opinion, would be to leave the typos as-is. They are not in the prose text, so they don't really hurt anyone except maybe AWB typo searchers; a [sic], either unlinked ({{sic|pronounciation|nolink=yes}}) or hidden ({{sic|pronounciation|hide=yes}}) would solve even that. IceWelder [✉] 05:55, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I have to say I think you're right. The typo is part of the information about the source or about how to find it (depending whose typo it is), so a correct citation includes the typo. Hiding the typo, or leaving the reader to guess whether it's ours or not, would be putting aesthetics before accuracy. Musiconeologist (talk) 10:09, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    We do allow silently correcting harmless typos (MOS:TYPOFIX), that was the starting point of the discussion. Hopefully, reliable sources won't often have typos in titles, but if they do, there is no reason to treat them differently from any other typo. Gawaon (talk) 10:18, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm a confirmed gnome and I've got a collection of delicious errors that I go through every once in a while to make corrections. In the past I would mark errors in titles with {{sic}}, but then other editors would correct them with the explanation "insignificant spelling and typographic errors should simply be silently corrected" and not leave any sign of the original error. This is a small problem as a percentage, but there are at least thousands, and a surprising number of the errors are in quality sources. (Over the last day I've made corrections linking MOS:TITLETYPOCON 61 times, 35 of them for twelvth.) I agree that a hidden note is not a perfect solution, but it's the best I've seen so far. Thank you. SchreiberBike | ⌨  12:51, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I think the point here is that in a title, it's not necessarily an "insignificant typo" (in the words of that section) and not necessarily 100% harmless. So there can be a reason to treat the individual typo differently when editing. (I'm saying that a reason has been given in the discussion, based on the reader's potential needs, and that it's made me change my mind.) But the situation doesn't need treating differently in our advice, since it's a matter of judgement about a specific typo. It's treated the same in that the editor uses their own judgement as to whether it's significant. But the outcome of their judgement might be different for the particular case. Musiconeologist (talk) 12:53, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    I've boldly added the shortcut MOS:TITLETYPOCON to the top of this discussion to make it easy to link to this consensus without adding clutter to the Manual of Style. I've only seen that done once before, so I'm not sure if others will agree that this is helpful. SchreiberBike | ⌨  12:10, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Quotation marks and internal links: visually identical examples

    Apart from the colour, the "correct" and "incorrect" examples under Quotation marks and internal links both display identically and behave identically when I click them. So the only way to compare them is to open up the section for editing. Maybe include a code snippet for each? Not necessarily the whole fragment—I'm thinking perhaps just [[" "]] and "[[ ]]" so things don't get too cluttered.

    NB I've not checked for other instances of this—I just happen to have encountered this one. Musiconeologist (talk) 13:18, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    In the correct example, the quotation marks are outside of the linked title, while in the incorrect one they are part of the link text. If you look closely, you should see it. Gawaon (talk) 13:42, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Perhaps someone can come up with a way to make the difference more obvious. EEng 13:45, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Gawaon I did, and in the app they appeared as part of the link in both cases. Musiconeologist (talk) 14:20, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    OK, scrub that. The difference is visible in the app. I had to take a screenshot then zoom in. Apologies. I might add something about them showing in the link colour in one and in the surrounding text colour in the other. Musiconeologist (talk) 15:31, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I've now made the change, before seeing the replies. I decided it was minor enough to just do it. Feel free to change it if something else would be better. Edit: I've since changed it, to a brief comment noting whether the quotes are the same colour as the link or as the surrounding text in each case. Musiconeologist (talk) 14:24, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I took the liberty to revert that since I think that your earlier version (with the code examples) was actually more helpful. Gawaon (talk) 17:40, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Gawaon Thanks—I saw just after saving a change here. I'm happy with that. Musiconeologist (talk) 17:53, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    WP:COMMONNAME, "Parmesan" page

    Continued at Talk:Parmesan#Parmesan vs. Parmigiano-Reggiano. DeCausa (talk) 22:54, 24 March 2024 (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.


    According to this rule, if a valid English translation exists it must be used, but in the case of "Parmigiano Reggiano" the situation becomes very complicated. In order, a user changed the name of the page ("Parmesan") to "Parmigiano Reggiano"; I deleted his changes, but after further investigation, and based mainly on the sentence (on the page) "Outside the EU, the name "Parmesan" can legally be used for similar cheeses, with only the full Italian name unambiguously referring to PDO Parmigiano Reggiano.", I was wondering whether, since "Parmesan" outside Europe is almost always a bad imitation, it's wrong to write Parmesan under the ingredients of Italian foods; this might make them less authentic. JacktheBrown (talk) 05:10, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    I think the current situation is fine. The Italian name is given in the lead sentence and is a redirect to the article, but it shouldn't be printed in bold, as it's not a "common name" widely used in English. And it shouldn't be the main article title, for the same reason. Gawaon (talk) 06:26, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I guess that depends on where you are? I checked the websites of three major UK supermarkets, and all of them sell under the label "Parmigiano Reggiano". I remember the 'Parmesan' moniker from decades back, but it's now uncommon; typing a search and all three supermarket sites redirect to Parmigiano; on one the Parmesan name doesn't appear and on the other two it is only used for a couple of products, lower graded usually grated cheese. It's not really used nowadays for the whole cheese or solid pieces of it. MapReader (talk) 06:42, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @MapReader: also in my opinion. If we came to the conclusion to change the title, we would have to change all the "Parmesan" (to "Parmigiano Reggiano") from thousands of articles, I see this as very difficult. JacktheBrown (talk) 06:47, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    An interim solution would be to put both names in the lead sentence, in bold. Gawaon (talk) 07:00, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, but establish the correct position and over time WP will conform; meanwhile the redirects will do the job. Defending the current position with arguments based on merit is fine, but retaining an incorrect or unsupported position (and IMHO using 'Parmesan' as the article title is now just wrong) simply because changing it leads to some work isn't really acceptable. MapReader (talk) 07:01, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I wonder if this usage persists in North America? There is a similar issue over "Swiss cheese" which is not made in Switzerland and "Emmenthal" which is a PDO in Europe. @Johnbod:, who may be able to advise but may choose not to get back into this culture war again. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 08:56, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, "Parmesan" in US, Australia etc can be locally made. It's just a style of cheese there. Certainly in the US "parmesan" would be the dominant name. This is covered in the current article. There's two different topics covered in this article. I think they should be split out: an article on the global generic style under "Parmesan" and another "Parmigiano Reggiano" covering the "real" stuff. If it's left as currently written "Parmiagiano Reggiano" wouldn't be a correct name for this article. DeCausa (talk) 09:10, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @MapReader Isn't that just supermarkets trying to make their parmesan sound special and non-generic, though? Or trying to avoid saying that it's parmesan since people think of that as a low-quality grated thing? They'll avoid the everyday word if there's an alternative that sounds worth paying more for. I don't think supermarket usage is a particularly good guide. Musiconeologist (talk) 13:09, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Of the names mentioned so far, parmesan is the only one I'm familiar with, but I haven't checked whether it's usually in upper or lower case. (I think cheddar cheese is usually lower case and not really associated with the place any more.) Musiconeologist (talk) 13:14, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Checked and they're both uppercase, or were in 2005 (the date of my Oxford Spelling Dictionary edition. They may have moved to lowercase by now.) Musiconeologist (talk) 13:25, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I don’t think so. You only hear very elderly people taking about Parmesan nowadays; it dates back to the Delia Smith era when cooking anything foreign was adventurous and the brave pioneers bought a pot of grated second rate Italian cheese to sprinkle on their Spag Bol. The next generation are rather more familiar with international travel and international food, and happy to call things by their proper names. MapReader (talk) 19:33, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @MapReader Steady on. I'm only 61 . . . ! Last time I went to an Italian restaurant I was asked if I wanted Parmesan. I'm not at all happy with this stereotype. It could be considered quite ageist. (I'm trying not to consider it that way, but not succeeding very well.)
    What I'm finding online is a fair number of articles which try to explain Parmesan as a generic name for things which aren't strictly Parmigiano Reggiano and distinguish the two. Also one about Parmigiano Reggiano having an advertising campaign to promote that as "the only real Parmesan", which rings alarm bells for me.
    It's good that people have adopted the Italian name, but I'd hardly say the other one has gone out of use. Musiconeologist (talk) 21:04, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Hence why I think DeCausa has a point that really the material needs splitting into two articles, particularly if Parmesan is actually still ‘a thing’ in the US. MapReader (talk) 21:24, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I really agree with MapReader. Today we hear very little about "Parmesan", and it might happen that if a non-native Italian speaker (e.g. resident of Louisiana) reads "Parmesan" on an Italian food page, he might think it's an American ingredient, creating a huge misunderstanding and misinformation about Italian cuisine (an American would never want misunderstandings about the culture of his state, e.g. Louisiana, so it would be right to respect us Italians too). Of course, as already written, it's not enough to rename the page, but all the words "Parmesan" must be changed to "Parmigiano Reggiano", otherwise it would be even worse and create even more confusion and misinformation. This definitely requires the help of a bot; we are in luck, because "Parmigiano Reggiano" is capitalised, so the bot in question cannot make a mistake, and it would only be a profound act of indifference not to do so if consensus is reached. JacktheBrown (talk) 20:08, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    DeCausa makes a valid point above, however - the current article covers both the historic, genuine Italian product and the fake American knock off stuff. There should definitely be an article about Parmigiano - using the American title for this information is clealry inappropriate - and in that article maybe there’d be a cross link and single sentence mentioning the fact that in some English speaking countries, the term Parmesan is used to describe a pale imitation product. If Parmesan is still a particularly significant US product, then it would be notable enough for its own article. MapReader (talk) 20:42, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree. There are two kinds of cheese: "Parmigiano Reggiano" (a controlled name only from a specific place in Italy) and "Parmesan" (the cheap American knock-off, often sold as a white powdery cheese-like substance). The differences between these are maybe larger than between Parmigiano Reggiano and Grana Padano. They are separate enough that we should have two separate articles for them. Then there would be no dispute over the name. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:50, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @David Eppstein I've a feeling they might *both* officially have that restriction here (UK), but I'm not sure. It's not something I habitually buy, so I've not needed to know. Musiconeologist (talk) 21:11, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    If there's a place that only allows "Parmesan" to refer to cheese from the province of Parma, we could mention that in either or both articles, but that doesn't change the basic facts that there are two distinct types of cheese and we should have articles on types of cheese not on commonly-conflated names of cheese per WP:NOTDICT. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:17, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @David Eppstein I'd certainly agree with that. Musiconeologist (talk) 22:05, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment - first of all, this is not the appropriate venue to be having this discussion, at least if you expect some binding result to emerge from it. If someone wants to propose splitting, then a discussion at Talk:Parmesan Is in order, and similarly an RM for a proposed move. I don't see any questions here that rise to needing clarification at MOS level. As for the question itself, I'm surprised at the suggestion that "Parmesan" is obsolete or only used by old people. I live in the UK and I'm not sure I recall anyone saying Parmigiano, informally in conversation and also Italian restaurants still seem to generally offer it as Parmesan. Perhaps the packaging on supermarket cheese does say that though, if only for legal reasons. A thorough analysis of sources would be required in any case.  — Amakuru (talk) 22:22, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Amakuru: could we move this discussion to the Parmesan talk page and continue there? Thank you. JacktheBrown (talk) 22:34, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Agreed. There's actually a thread opened on this at Talk: Parmesan (which I've just posted to) which was opened in January. Someone should just close this thread and note the continuation there. DeCausa (talk) 22:41, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @DeCausa: no, we need to move these comments, they're important. JacktheBrown (talk) 22:43, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't see why. A link would do - and I'm not sure what's here is that enlightening! DeCausa (talk) 22:47, 24 March 2024 (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.

    "Manual of Style/Gender identity" Examples

    In the MOS, it uses the example "The article about The Wachowskis, for example, is better without any pre-coming-out photos since the way they looked is not well known as they shied away from public appearances.", yet their article does include pre-coming-out photos, should the images in the article be removed, or should a new example be found?
    Thanks,
    I can do stuff! (talk) 03:45, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Honestly, I don't think any specific example is required for this guideline—what it means should be obvious to the reader. Remsense诉 03:48, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    MOS orphan sidebar category: languages

    Currently the MOS sidebar template "By topic area" includes "Regional", which links to vaguely language-related and language-region cross-topics. However, the MOS has significant subpages on specific languages which are very difficult to find on main page navigation -- basically I have to guess. Furthermore, there is no corresponding Category:Wikipedia Manual of Style (languages) (or similar, something like which can be made immediately).

    For example, under the sidebar is linked WP:Naming conventions (geographic names); but going through the sidebar to MOS/Korea-related articles, we are linked to WP:Naming conventions (Korean), which is then part of a large category of language conventions with lots of near-orphans. Additionally, there is no way to access stalled proposed guidelines that may be served as essays for the time being, or do with eyes for improvement, such as MOS/Arabic (which by the way is not linked in a regional category, but under MOS/Islam-related articles).

    There's a lot of potential disentangling and cleanup to do between region, language, and culture guidelines (or not); or some could be referred back to subpages of WP:WikiProject Languages instead of here as P&G. Regardless, all MOS pages need to be somehow findable, because usually it seems people don't even realize they exist. SamuelRiv (talk) 22:18, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    An additional orphan: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive (foreign languages) (just 2004), whereas the only way to navigate archives is the WT:MOS/Archive index -- I found this by chance using the search box, so there are probably other orphaned MOS Talk Page archives? SamuelRiv (talk) 22:32, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Guidance on --> vs → (right arrow)

    What is the WP:MOS policy on usage of --> vs → ( aka right-arrow / U+2192 ) ?

    Benefits of →

    1. More readable / better contrast / better scaling
    2. More accessible (screen readers will read "right-arrow" unicode description)
    3. more concise
    4. better alignment consistency — some reader's typeface will render '-->' out of alignment making it unclear.
    5. WP:MOS uses the arrow here Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Typographic conformity
    6. unambiguous, unlike --> which is confused with comment tag

    see also discussion Wikipedia talk:Typo Team#Help needed finding legacy punctuation like "--" "-->"

    Relevant From WP:MOS archive

    Some example edits I've been making which improve readability:

    Tonymetz 💬 22:55, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Using --> to represent an arrow is ugly and ridiculous, → is also obviously preferable in my mind to simply > in situations like denoting the historical evolution of words in linguistics articles. Remsense诉 23:56, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    i was trying to be generous and i couldn't have said it better myself. the more cleanup I do, the uglier --> looks Tonymetz 💬 00:01, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    It's also problematic for technical reasons, as many parsers may get confused when there are loose angle brackets that aren't part of a HTML tag. Remsense诉 00:03, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    very true. one unexpected side effect of my cleanup is finding dangling --> to also prune Tonymetz 💬 00:05, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    On that matter, imagine a portion of an article which has been commented out using <!--...-->. If there are true right-arrows within that portion, all is fine; but if there are two hyphena and a greater-than, these will cause normal display to resume earlier than intended. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:22, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Some observations on the six edits:
    • The Dutch railway services one I would question, the arrows imply a one-way service - is there no corresponding service in the other direction? If it's bidirectional, use an en-dash; if it's one-way, add a note explicitly saying so - a parenthesis like (one-way service) is sufficient.
    • The PITX2 and HOXD13 ones are valid, since the titles of the cited works do use a → character at those positions.
    • The Adrenocorticotropic hormone one is questionable, since the page reached by that URL does not contain the word "PROOPIOMELANOCORTIN" at all - either the URL is wrong or the title is wrong. I'm not familiar with the field, so cannot decide.
    • The Arosi language one is possibly valid, but I don't know enough about linguistic theory to know if the right-arrow is some kind of relational operator or not.
    • The Eldorado Mountain one goes against WP:EL - the URL should take you to the actual verifying text, readers should not be expected to perform their own searches. It's not even as if no suitable URL exists - I found Eldorado Mountain Rock Climbing and Eldorado Canyon State Park Rock Climbing quite easily. If those links are used instead, there is no need for reader instructions.
    To sum up: using --> is generally to be avoided, but simply replacing it with right-arrow is not always correct - it's a case-by-case decision. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:36, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Re: Dutch railway—I also think an en dash is sufficient, but may prefer U+2194 ↔ LEFT RIGHT ARROW, what do you think? Remsense诉 12:52, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree ↔ is better in bidirectional cases Tonymetz 💬 15:49, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    hyphens for titles

    We should be allowed to use hyphens for titles because it causes fewer problems. This is what Geiger-Marsden article URL is

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geiger%E2%80%93Marsden_experiments

    It's ugly and weird. A hyphen will look so much better. Kurzon (talk) 20:54, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geiger-Marsden_experiments already works, it's a redirect. Gawaon (talk) 06:32, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Seems a bit pedantic, though. Why is hyphen bad but en dash good? Does it have to do with an algorithm? Kurzon (talk) 13:00, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    No, just the general rules of English on when to use which punctuation. See MOS:DASH. Gawaon (talk) 13:03, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    OK then. Change the rule so that we can use hyphens. They look the same to humans, it's only the computer who can tell the difference. Why is this such a big deal? Kurzon (talk) 13:27, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Maybe I'm a computer, but I see the difference. Gawaon (talk) 13:32, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    It's like commas and periods. If you're not sensitized to the tiny difference, you might say they look the same. But the distinction matters a lot, though I'm not saying that that the dash-hyphen (or dash–hyphen) distinction carries quite the same import. EEng 14:00, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree. Also, merge U and V back together, as well as I and J and I'm not kidding. Remsense诉 14:08, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Which raises a question: why do we have all four of those letters in the article titles in Category:Latin words and phrases, anyway? —David Eppstein (talk) 15:32, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Because they were originally invented for use in Latin, corresponding to phonemic distinctions in Latin! Ofc ditto C and G for completeness's sake. Their use then apparently continued in the language until... it says 2777 AUC here, wow! How auspicious. Remsense诉 15:37, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    It's because it's common for style guides to recommend an em dash for joining two nouns in this way. Remsense诉 13:04, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Jesus F. Christ, my proposal isn't so ridiculous! Kurzon (talk) 12:30, 8 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Wikipedia editors are reluctant to use their power to influence English usage in this way (i.e., deprecating the en-dash for joining equal terms). Possibly the only punctuation issues where enwiki does put its thumb on the scale are date formats and the use of "logical punctuation" for quotations. Newimpartial (talk) 12:41, 8 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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