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Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/quotation and punctuation

# in British English

I haven't found any discussion of this so far on American and British English differences or Wikipedia:Manual of Style so wanted to bring up this topic.

At Number sign#Usage in the UK and Talk:Number sign#Use_in_UK.3F we've determined that there's aren't any reliable sources for the use of # as "number" in British English. While investigating this, we found a number of Wikipedia pages to do with British musicians that refer to "reaching #1 in the UK album charts" etc. Should these be replaced by "No. 1" and a note made in the Manual of Style? The only source we've found says # is used very rarely in British English [1] but the # usage does seem very common on Wikipedia even though we can't find a relaible source

Examples are:

Alexd (talk) 21:17, 13 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, really I wouldn't mind if we deprecated this usage for all articles, regardless of dialect. It strikes me as insufficiently formal for an encyclopedia. I say this as a speaker of American English who certainly has no trouble interpreting the number sign.
Not sure about the No. usage either. Maybe write out number, or else reword. --Trovatore (talk) 21:21, 13 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't understand "#" when I came over to the States in 1961 at age 11. I can't see it being appropriate (outside quotations) in the body text, but there might be tables where compression might make its use expeditious, although in that case there should be some explanation for non-Americans. I can't see much use for "No." in body text either (unless it's in a quotation or part of a name such as Chanel No. 5), but there are places where it's the clearest and most efficient notation in tables, Info Boxes, etc. And remember that widespread though "No." is, many readers are non-English-speakers who sometimes would use a different abbreviation (that would confuse Anglophones), such as "Nr." —— Shakescene (talk) 05:29, 14 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Regardless of whether "#" or "No." would be too informal, I concur that ENGVAR would apply here. Use the encyclopedic term most common and appropriate in British English. Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:32, 14 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've looked at the addition. Thank the blessed lord we can now get rid of those hedgehog #s that litter popular music articles. The appropriate WikiProjects need to be informed. However, I'm not sure I like "number 1" without the "N", I guess because I'm not used to it. It is standard? Also, I'm unsure that "No. 1" should be outlawed from running prose.

Another issue is that I think we should allow the abbreviated forms in tables and infoboxes (not the very informal № 1, but at least No. 1 and #1). Tony (talk) 12:05, 14 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If "#" could cause confusion, then there's really no need to keep it, as "No." is widely enough recognized in most forms of English as to be suitable for all.

I also don't think we need to get rid of "No." from running text, though, as it is an abrreviation most similar to "Mr." or "Ms.", which are rarely spelled out, even in formal writing.

And as a note to Shakescene, I don't think we need to worry about what abbreviations are used by speakers of other languages, as this is the English Wikipedia. I understand not wanting to confuse non-native speakers who might be used to other abbreviations, but I don't believe it unreasonable to expect someone to learn the standard abbreviations as part of learning the language.oknazevad (talk) 19:21, 14 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. We should not deliberately make things difficult for non-native English speakers, but using ordinary English abbreviations does not constitute making things difficult. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:14, 14 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've amended the guidance to allow No. based on the above discussion. Now, can you guys work out if, since we can't use #, we should use number or issue when discussing comics and magazines? And should the terms be capitalised or not? Hiding T 13:46, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Actually, I think we can resolve the issue and number problem looking at a number of featured articles, issue seems to be fine, issue number can work, and I doubt there's a problem with issue No., so we're good. Hiding T 13:57, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I speak British English and this is all news to me. As Hiding knows this is in heavy use by the Comics Project (we may be the biggest users of # on Wikipedia) and finding an alternative and changing over to it is a big deal (nearly all the comics-related articles will need changing) and I am not yet convinced of the argument for getting rid of it - the usage should be pretty obvious from the context, although perhaps it might be an idea to change this when in the main body of the text: "Sockman appeared in Sockdrawer issue number 1" but allow it for footnotes and infoboxes (as I imagine there is a problem with "No." as it is also an abbreviation). Is there not a way round this like using {{#}} which provides a tool tip saying "issue number" and/or plugging into personal preferences? (Emperor (talk) 14:31, 30 September 2009 (UTC))[reply]
I do not believe it's a matter of English variety. When I first came across # in WP, it took me a little while to get used to it. I think it's pretty ugly. The changeover doesn't need to be immediate. I believe moves are afoot to use a bot. Tony (talk) 15:24, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
My recollection is that the origin of the difference (No. vs. #) goes back to the keys on U.S. vs UK models of typewriters and teletype machines, used by news wire services until they moved to internet transmission. On those keyboards the U.S. models had # at the place where the UK models had the £ symbol. (On those keyboards, and on the Murray Code paper tapes they used, each key was overloaded with different symbols in "Numbers" and "Letters" modes with reserved modesetting symbols by thoses names used to put the receiver into the desired mode.) For usage other than direct quotes and where space permits, spelling out "Number" or "Issue" is clearly the practice that follows WP:ENGVAR. In very dense tables we should follow the local variant if there is one. Editors could also choose the option of entirely omitting the prefix where it does not introduce confusion.LeadSongDog come howl 16:49, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
As Emperor notes above, I think it's likely at WikiProject Comics that the consensus will initially be to use # only for notes and tables and so on. Maybe once we work out what to do with article text, we'll work out a solution that works for when brevity is better. I don't think any of us dispute that an article crammed full of "#" looks ugly. Actually, that might not be true, we may have the odd user who pointedly thinks different, but I never like to speak with certitude anyway. Hopefully we can avoid the sort of drama date formatting caused, because I think at heart most all of us are reasonable people here. I'm not one overly bothered by style issues, in the sense that I'll happily bow to the passing wind, even if I occasionally gripe about that wind. Certainly I can see why the style manual wants to avoid usage of "#", and we'll certainly look to avoid it wherever we can. Hiding T 11:23, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't think # should be used in general contexts, but in articles on some specialized topics, such as comics & popular music, where it has become well established on both sides of the Atlantic, it should be allowed. Johnbod (talk) 12:27, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • I agree. # seems to be in common use in those contexts. Powers T 13:20, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • I think it's standard for comics, and their isn't a better relacement. No opinion on other types of articles. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 16:54, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm British (and middle aged), and I'm probably responsible for adding "#1" in some of the articles on British musicians. As far as I'm concerned, it is now a widely understood symbol in the UK for "number", and the abbreviation "No.", while still used, is becoming increasingly old-fashioned. In any case, there are many more American readers of WP than British; and many more uses of "#" generally here than "No." There are benefits in consistency, and obviously no consensus that the use of "#" is inappropriate, at least in music articles and I suspect more generally. As far as I'm concerned it's a non-issue. Ghmyrtle (talk) 17:47, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Amongst

Despite the repeated reverts, I'd like to see a reference that amongst is "not widely accepted" as this MOS claims. Do not point me to List of English words with disputed usage. It's not covered there. As I pointed out it my initial edit, all that article says is that between is disputed when used instead of among/amongst, not that amongst is disputed, as this MOS claims. If anything, between should be mentioned in the MOS when used to mean among/amongst. Pcap ping 06:59, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For what it's worth, here's what the 3rd edition of Fowler's says about it. First, in Burchfield's collections among is about ten times as common as amongst. Second, "There is no demonstrable difference of sense or function between the two, and the distribution is puzzling except that amongst seems to be somewhat less common in AmE than in BrE." Given this, I don't see why the MoS should prohibit amongst; it is less common than among but I see no sense in which it is "not widely accepted". Certainly amongst/among is in a different category from whilst/while, as whilst is not used in American English whereas amongst is. Eubulides (talk) 07:41, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I only noticed that section of the MoS today because of the reverting. I think it should be removed. I often use whilst, amongst, overly (overly should be avoided?), and in writing I would sometimes use thusly. I take the point about "straining for formality" suggesting an insecure grasp of English, but that's when the words are over-used or used inappropriately; if we were to advise against using all the words Wikipedians use wrongly when they think they're being formal, we'd decimate the vocabulary. But these words, like the rest of the language, are fine when used correctly. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 07:56, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) Thanks for finding that detailed discussion. In the mainstream dictionary links given in List of English words with disputed usage amongst is given as variation of among, but with no discussion as to its use or acceptance (the only discussion was the disputed use of between instead of among/amongst). So, I assumed amongst itself is not disputed (contrary to what our MOS says). It looks like your reference confirms that in more explicit terms, even though among is more common. Since the MOS couldn't possibly give all examples in the "List of..." article, and that amongst isn't even disputed there, I think it's a really bad example to give in the MOS. Pcap ping 08:02, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
While, but not whilst, we're on the subject of forbidden words, apparently the MoS also doesn't allow the use of "didn't". I've had someone arrive at an FA candidate of mine to remove several instances of it because, it seems, the MoS says no. And not only remove it, but replace it throughout with "did not," leaving the sentences awkward and clunky. The people writing the MoS ought to bear in mind that there are lots of editors out there who hang on its every word, and indeed on its every forbidden word, so that what starts life as a helpful tip is interpreted as an unalterable and unquestioned fact about the universe that must be applied rigidly to all texts without exception or mercy.
If there is indeed a section advising against "didn't," does anyone mind if I remove it? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 08:06, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think contractions in general should be avoided. Encyclopedic writing is just about the highest register that exists; informality that would be perfectly acceptable in an academic journal or textbook (I was just noticing yesterday that Kunen's well-regarded set theory text has a section called How free are we to monkey with the powers of regular cardinals?) is jarring here.
My American ear reacts violently to amongst, and while I personally have no objection to overly, I'm perfectly willing to let it go if the A-word goes as well. --Trovatore (talk) 08:12, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This should be about published canons of English, not some personal preferences of the few editors that watch this page. I suspect you'd object to British spelling like colour etc. But, that's explicitly allowed in this MOS. Pcap ping 08:20, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I don't particularly like the colour spelling, but I can live with it just fine. Amongst on the other hand is really really jarring, sort of ultra-British, completely out of bounds on this side of the pond. I would be OK with it in articles on strongly British topics, I suppose, but not in ones that just happen to use British spelling because it's established in that article. After all, among is just fine in British English as well. --Trovatore (talk) 08:51, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Philip Roth uses it, arguably America's greatest living writer. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 08:58, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
And so did Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain. [2], [3]. Granted, they're amongst the dead. Pcap ping 09:11, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(outdent) re "I think [this section] should be removed": would it be useful simply to provide the links so that people who get into disputes over these terms know where to look? maybe the section title needs changing as well – WP:Words to avoid isn't really "contested vocabulary", at least not in the same sense as List of English words with disputed usage. Sssoul (talk) 08:18, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Our MoS has to take into account that the people applying it are not professional editors. If I'm writing for a magazine with a style guide that doesn't like "didn't," and my article has several of them, one of two things will happen: either my note in the text to leave "didn't" will be respected, or the editor will rewrite the sentences to remove it. But he will rewrite them. He won't simply plonk in a "did not" wherever there was a "didn't."
Because our MoS is applied by people who aren't editors, we can't invariably afford the luxury of having rigid rules as other style guides do, because we can guess that they won't be applied well. We are therefore far better not getting into issues such as when it's appropriate to use contractions, because it sometimes is, and it sometimes isn't, and the only way to tell, really, is to develop a feel for it. And even then, people will disagree. But this "highest register" thing is a recipe for precisely the kind of writing that was mentioned earlier, the "straining for formality" that suggests an insecure grasp of English. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 08:42, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the right solution there is not to take the MoS that seriously, which by a happy coincidence is my opinion already. I'll take your word for it that there are situations (other than, obviously, direct quotes) where someone might defensibly use a contraction in WP; I can't think of any, but then I can't think of everything. But in the range of those things the MoS can usefully do, I think pointing out that contractions are at least usually a bad idea, is clearly among the things it should do. --Trovatore (talk) 08:59, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that it seems to be impossible to get people to apply the MoS with common sense. Either it's ignored entirely, or it's applied rigidly—and the people who ignore it entirely tend to do so because they've had a run-in with its rigidity. Given that this is a long-term problem, and is getting worse, it has to be addressed at the guideline level, and the only way to do that is to withhold the ammunition. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 09:03, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
But that contractions should be avoided, at least in most cases, is one of the best pieces of advice the MoS gives. That's precisely the sort of thing it should do. If you take that out, then what shouldn't we take out on the sort of grounds you're discussing? --Trovatore (talk) 09:15, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I would take out anything that suggests there's a recipe for good writing. There are times when "didn't" and "amongst" are absolutely wrong, and there are times when they're the only words that fit. I would make that sort of thing clear. And I would strengthen the prohibition on going around changing from one style to another, or removing forbidden words, just because the MoS has expressed a view. A less intrusive MoS would be a more respected one. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 10:46, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Now, I really can't imagine a case where amongst is "the only word that fits". Can you please give an example? --Trovatore (talk) 19:57, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Whether MoS says so or not, my view is that "amongst" and "whilst" (and many occurrences of "upon") should be discouraged by copy-editors: these forms have become distinctly old-fashioned, have a rather formal ring about them, and go against what seems (to me) a general rule of thumb that if it adds no meaning, don't use it (like most occurrences of "in order to"). Tony (talk) 13:27, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Instead of banning this word or that word, we should advise against "straining for formality." That would allow editors to handle these matters on a case-by-case basis. In the case of "amongst," it's certainly not going to confuse anyone. Sometimes it's awkward and sometimes it's not. While it is more common in British English than American English, it's not incorrect in either one, so this isn't as clear-cut as other ENGVAR issues.
With regard to the fact that not everyone working on Wikipedia has professional-quality editing skills, however, I do not think that we should codify this in the MoS. Of course not everyone contributing to Wikipedia will do so on a professional level, but the whole idea is that then other editors who are more skilled can go in and polish up what they have added. So no, the MoS should not explicitly permit inappropriate styles solely because not everyone knows about them.
I would love to deal with the "people don't treat it like a guideline" issue, but that deserves a separate section and a new conversation. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:00, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I too am not in love with this these usually unnecessary formalized variations of common English words, but I don't think the MoS should ban them. However, whenever I review an article for a content-review process, I almost always recommend that the words are changed to their simpler forms. Dabomb87 (talk) 23:34, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Since this topic has been seriously side-tracked by the discussion in the subsection below, let me try to summarize the main positions:

  1. no real-world evidence has been provided that amongst is "not widely accepted" (personal opinions notwithstanding)
  2. some editors still feel amongst should be forbidden because it's excessively formal

If (2) has consensus, can someone at least edit the guideline and provide a non-misleading reason for banning amongst? Pcap ping 18:09, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's not "excessively formal". It's agressively British. Since among works in British too, amongst should be avoided. Yes, this is a personal opinion, but it's one I happen to be right about. --Trovatore (talk) 18:16, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Are you seriously proposing we write "don't use because it's aggressively British" in the MOS? Pcap ping 18:23, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Not in those exact words. I am saying that this is the commonality among those words: amongst is gratuitously British, overly is gratuitously American, so ideally neither should be used in articles without strong natural ties. By gratuitously I mean that there are perfectly workable substitutes in both dialects, that can easily be swapped in without affecting the meaning, and that do not have a negative effect on readers from another dialect. --Trovatore (talk) 18:29, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Fowler's contradicts the claim that amongst is aggressively British. Please the second comment in this thread. Eubulides (talk) 18:41, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
At the same time Fowler's does say that amongst is less common. So, if we still want to forbid it, perhaps say something like "When a word has several variants with the same meaning, use the most common one." Pcap ping 18:46, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Fowler is from 1926. The other examples of American usages were from the 19th century, excepting Philip Roth, for whom I suspect it's an individual idosyncracy. Really, amongst is an extreme outlier in contermporary American usage. To me it seems that there is no reason to use it except to emphasize one's Britishosity; that's what I mean by "gratuitous".
As to "forbidding" it: Let's keep in mind that the MoS has no authority to "forbid" anything. What it can do is point out that the word is likely to be received negatively by American readers, as it is possible that some Commonwealth editors don't know that — I didn't know about overly until I saw it in that list. --Trovatore (talk) 19:33, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That's exactly what we're talking about under "MoS's role as a guideline." Perhaps the MoS isn't supposed to be taken as a ban on this word or that, but it is in practice. We have to take that into account on the "amongst" issue. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:00, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No, we should fix the problem. --Trovatore (talk) 20:07, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Fowler's quoted by Eubulides is the New Fowler's. It also gives multiple examples of well-known authors using it in 1970s and 1980s. It won't bother listing them here. Pcap ping 19:46, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Replying to Trovatore's comment of 18:29: that also applies with verbs in "-ise", but we also have article titles such as characterisation which is an article having nothing to do with the UK, but AFAIK no-one ever proposed to deprecate -ise verbs on WP. --___A. di M. 12:47, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think there's actually a very faint difference in connotation or style between "among" and "amongst", because I might use "amongst" in some contexts and "among" in most others. A tabloid (even an American one) might scream "The Terrorists Amongst Us", and the difference from "the terrorists among us" to me is that the latter suggests that the terrorists are one of us, while the former suggests more of an alien incursion. This kind of thing might fit in a general discussion of style as found in something like Fowler or Eric Partridge or William Safire, but it has no place in a prescriptive style-sheet like the AP's and should certainly not be in a Manual of Style that's used by 'bots and typo-patrollers. —— Shakescene (talk) 13:52, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Data

The Cambridge Guide to English Usage has much more informative data:


So, Trovatore was right about amongst being very British :-) But this kind of details are over the top for MOS. I think a general recommendation to use the common variants of words with the same meaning is sufficient... Pcap ping 10:11, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The less common versions like amid(st) have their own idiomatic usage however, e.g. amid(st) speculation but not among(st) speculation (there's longer table in the Guide, I won't copy it here). Please read the whole entry in the Guide before jumping to banning any words explicitly. Pcap ping 10:27, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage has this to say:


Not that quantitative, but the same idea. Pcap ping 12:49, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That seems to be the point here. This may be an ENGVAR issue, but it's not a straight ENGVAR issue. In American English, "centre" is wrong. In British English "center" is wrong. However, while "amongst" is certainly more common in British English, it is not incorrect in either variation. We should not ban it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:43, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) By the way, unlike most dictionaries, this M-W usage dictionary is readable on google books; the Cambridge Guide isn't. Pcap ping 13:46, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Overly

Since this was raised above as an example in the other (that is, overly American) direction, this is what The Cambridge Guide says:

So, this is even less clear cut than amongst. All these discussion only serve to show that edicts banning one word or the other in this MOS are fairly misinformed... Pcap ping 13:06, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

M-W Usage Dictionary has this entry:

So, I'm going to remove overly from the short list of banned words. Pcap ping 13:33, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support. "Overly" is not incorrect English. Rather than banning it, we should simply allow users to correct it where it is awkward. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:55, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MoS's role as a guideline

(Conversation has been sectioned off from "Amongst" as of 9-21-2009. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:52, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(reply to Darkfrog) That is the key issue about the MoS, in my view. If people would remember it's a guideline, which means it's advisory, it would be fine to have all this detailed information. But it's being applied as though it's policy, and applied rigidly, regardless of context. That makes it unpopular, which means it ends up being ignored even when it would be a good idea to heed it. I would like to see a section making very clear that this is a guideline, but written carefully in a way that won't undermine it. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 23:39, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
SlimVirgin, can you clarify what you mean by "advisory"? This road sign has an "advised" speed limit, but many drivers can and do ignore that speed recommendation (myself included) anytime they want. By the same token, are you saying that editors should only follow the MoS when they feel like it (i.e., if they just don't like what is says, they can ignore it without further reason)? I shudder to think what would happen if editors took that view toward WP:RS and WP:SPAM, and I don't think that's what you meant.

If you in fact meant that the MOS is a guideline that should generally be followed except for those times (not too frequent, but not unheard of) that there's a good reason (i.e. more than IDONTLIKEIT and in compliance with editorial consensus) to ignore it, then I'm right with you.

Now, with regard to the specific proposal, I agree that we don't need to spell out every word that should not be used; after all, we've been working for the past few weeks to condense the MOS by reducing redundancy and these unnecessarily specific points. Dabomb87 (talk) 00:58, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Could it be that the MoS is a major but silent agent for minimising edit wars? Tony (talk) 01:16, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
To my mind, "guideline" means "here are some helpful but not obligatory pieces of advice" in ordinary speech. In my opinion, on Wikipedia, "guideline" should mean, "Do this unless you can get a consensus that there's a good reason not to." For example, the guideline might say that the mid-sentence "the" should not be capitalized, but the fans of the band "the Beatles" decided that it should be in the case of the name of the band (and let's assume for the sake of this example that their reasons were sound and logical), so articles on the Beatles ignore the guideline and spell the name "The Beatles."
Tony also makes an excellent point. The MoS might not have been designed to serve as a tiebreaker in the prevention of edit wars, but it probably does serve that role. Anything we do should preserve that.
SV, we might spell out a paragraph saying that this is a guideline and not hard-and-fast rules, but would people take it at face value? Right now, the culture of Wikipedia is to treat the guideline as rules. We could, of course, just use that by spelling out the exact circumstances under which the guideline should or shouldn't be followed...
We should acknowledge this as one of our options: We could always just change the name and refer to the MoS as rules openly. That, at least, might get people treating other guidelines as guidelines. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:52, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The MoS has made a major contribution to improving the standard of articles over the past few years: I see no reason to weaken its role. Tony (talk) 01:58, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The MoS is a guideline. Most editors who are not too new to Wikipedia roughly know what a guideline is, both in absolute terms and relative to policies—on one hand—and to essays—on the other hand, though some are clearly more influential than others. Adding a section explicitly saying to take anything the MOS says with a grain of salt would probably further undermine the MOS's role, as well as add to the bloat we've been fighting so hard to keep out. The authority of the guideline is clearly stated in the banner at the top, and #General principles is enought to keep most style arguments that aren't decided by MOS at bay. Dabomb87 (talk) 02:12, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Dabomb, when we say guidelines are advisory, it means editors don't have to follow them. The policy on sourcing is V, not RS. People are welcome to ignore RS, except that, most of the time when I've looked at it recently, it says the same as V, and really shouldn't exist for that reason, but that's a separate issue. Policies are regarded as mandatory, but guidelines not.
Tony, I've seen the MoS cause and resolve edit wars. It's hard to know what it does most. I do know that, whenever an MoS-related issue has come before AN/I or ArbCom, editors are advised not to arrive at articles only to make style changes, as the MoS itself as always said or implied, going back to 2002: "Writers are not expected to follow all these rules ...", or 2004 quoting the Chicago Manual of Style: "Rules and regulations such as these ... are meant for the average case, and must be applied with a certain degree of elasticity." Then in 2005 or 2006, we had a couple of ArbCom cases where the principle was upheld.
It's that elasticity that is being eroded. It is being applied as though it's policy. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 02:24, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not saying that guidelines should be treated as policies. I know that guidelines, including the MOS, are not to be enforced with an iron rod, and that flexibility and allowance for exceptions are vital principles of a guideline. What I am saying is that on the other side of the spectrum, editors sometimes (intentionally) don't follow guidelines beacause they simply don't like what it's telling them to do without providing a specific reason, common sense or otherwise, to ignore it. Since guidelines reflect (or at least are supposed to reflect) consensus, they generally should be followed. Dabomb87 (talk) 02:46, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I will add that if users are trying to wield MOS and other style/content guidelines as policy, then the problem might not rest with the MOS or any one guideline so much as a flaw in the way guidelines are viewed, and their relationship with policies. Dabomb87 (talk) 02:53, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) Guidelines often don't reflect consensus, though, because too many people edit them, and not enough people keep watch over them. It's much harder to change a policy—they're more stable and there are more eyes on them, which makes it safer to assume there's consensus.
Most people have no idea what the MoS says. I'm one of those editors who frequently ignores it, either because I don't agree with some part of it, or because it's not clear that there's any consensus for it. The business about images needing to be thumbs, and not being allowed to be on the left under third-level headings, are two recent cases in point. Wikignomes have been going around enforcing these for the last couple of years, and edit warring if anyone reverted them, yet there was no consensus for them (as you could see by the fact that they were widely ignored), and no good reason to have them in the guideline in the first place.
Every time a wikignome does something like, he undermines the MoS. A section advocating more flexibility would strengthen the MoS (if carefully worded), not weaken it. Think of it as a high-rise building in a strong wind. We need it to bend. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 03:00, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with SlimVirgin. Too many editors have defined their purpose on this wiki as the enforcement of the MOS. Furthermore, these editors constantly want to expand the set of rules that justifies their actions. Just look in the section above titled #Proposed addition to MOS:HEAD, which is motivated by a WP:LAME edit war over adding section headings to a three-paragraph article (Eurymedon vase, drama still going strong). Pcap ping 06:00, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Adding headers is being equated with vandalism. :) SlimVirgin talk|contribs 06:34, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with SlimVirgin's original comment and the subsequent posts that emphasise that MOS is a guideline, not a policy. Perhaps we need to spell out some criteria or higher-level objectives by which to judge whether MOS should be applied in full in specific cases.
I suggest as criteria: whether full application of MOS would benefit ordinary readers (as opposed to style mavens); and whether from the ordinary reader's point of view the effort would better spent on other aspects of the same article, or on other articles. --Philcha (talk) 06:14, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know about that, Philcha. In general, ordinary readers benefit from precise and correct styles, even if they cannot recognize them. A non-expert, upon viewing up a crummily edited page, can tell that there's something amateurish and sloppy about it even if he or she can't pick out all the specific mistakes. Also, consider that just because people are told to stop doing one thing doesn't mean that they switch to other parts of the article. I'm not an expert on, say, Zoroastrianism, but if I happen to be reading an article on that subject, I might duck in to correct some punctuation even if I wouldn't presume to change the content. If I were not to polish the style, then I wouldn't go off and spend my time scrubbing content; I'd do nothing to the article at all. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:51, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Avoid instruction creep has always been an important principle on WP. It advises
"For proposed new instructions, instruction creep can be avoided if all of the following hold:
"1. There is a good indication of an actual problem (as opposed to a hypothetical or a perceived problem).
"2. The proposed instructions truly solve this problem (as opposed to treating symptoms or making symbolic gestures).
"3. The instructions have few or no undesirable side effects (such as false positives, overcomplexity, or unnecessary prohibitions)."
And then an important point: "Policies and guidelines exist to document accepted practice, rather than actually dictate such. If on such a page an instruction appears which does not accurately reflect commonly accepted practice, and then this instruction gains the consensus of editors who happen to participate at the talk page in question, then the process has failed."
In other words, there is a strong descriptive element to policies and guidelines, not only prescriptive. This is one of the MoS's key problems. There are parts of it that describe only what the editors of the MoS, often going back many years, wanted people to do. Forcing editors to use only thumbnails of images, for example, was widely ignored by good editors. It had to be ignored because it made articles look silly, but it sat here for years, all efforts to get rid of it were fought, and wikignomes routinely edit warred to remove fixed image sizes. It wasn't until Tony noticed it that we finally got it out of the MoS. I'm guessing there's a lot more material like that still in it, and there are routine attempts to add even more. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 06:27, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

←"Policies and guidelines exist to document accepted practice, rather than actually dictate such." But they do end up dictating: WP:CIVIL, WP:NFC, WP:NC and many more. If there is consensus at an article to breach an aspect of the MoS, those who want to follow that course need to provide compelling reasons when another editor wants to bring the article into compliance with the MoS. Otherwise, I say to them: go to WT:MoS and argue it out there. It is, after all, part of the boiling pot that feeds into the MoS (as you pointed out WRT the section on images).

We must have a degree of centralised formatting and style—it provides cohesion, authority, even branding for WP. This is much of why the wiki mechanism works: freedom and constraint working alongside each other—sometimes in dynamic tension. When a reader chooses a WP article in a google search, they unconsciously expect to find those branding attributes. It's just like every other reputable publisher: a house style is vital to the message and the brand. It has become part of WP's business model, its public image, and we should put our energy into helping the style guides to evolve, not to removing or weakening their authority. Moreover, there is much anecdotal evidence that editors want to follow guidance. Show me an article riven with MoS breaches and a sibling article that is MoS-compliant and you'll see a much better product (if not, change MoS, don't disregard it).

When I read my Scientific American each month, I would be upset to find discrepancies in the use of images, headings, certain punctuation. I trust those surface details and they partly confirm my admiration for the deeper meanings. It is the dressing. Tony (talk) 07:47, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with a lot of what you say. But I think you overlook a few key issues:

(1) It is virtually impossible to change the MoS on certain points, because a small number of editors simply won't allow it. I'm therefore not allowed to write "organize," because some people think it's not British, when it is. I'm not allowed to write September 22 for the same reason—and that's also perfectly standard in the UK. I'm not allowed to place punctuation inside quotes, even though that's as British as ham and egg for breakfast—it's so-called logical punctuation that's the newcomer.

A group of professional editors of the kind who wrote the Scientific American style guide are not making decisions based on mistaken notions of what is and isn't British. I'm happy to go along with a guideline that is rational, even if I disagree with it, but it's infuriating to see so much of it based on misunderstandings.

(2) Other style guides don't have our "descriptive, as well as prescriptive" rule. That's peculiar to Wikipedia, and people did not agree to let the MoS be an exception. We are supposed to prescribe whatever is best practice on Wikipedia, and that's what good editors do as a matter of fact. Best practice is not what good editors would do if they were doing what the MoS editors wanted them to do back in 2004.

(3) Scientific American is a professional publication. Everyone is trained, everyone is paid, and there are professional copy editors, who are flexible when they need to be. In my own writing offwiki, I have never been dictated to about style issues the way I have been onwiki. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 08:03, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(Pohta, in a Bishonean mood, looks at this talk page and can't help but nod towards "it's infuriating to see so much of it based on misunderstandings.") Pcap ping 09:09, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I just read my previous post again, and I must apologize for sounding so shrill. :) It's just that some of this is really quite frustrating. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 09:17, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I tend to disagree with you about the impact of the MOS on Wikipedia's cohesion and branding. When people arrive at a site and see our page design and logo in the corner, they recognize that they are on Wikipedia. They probably also recognize they've arrived here when they find video game trivia in articles about staid historical figures. Nobody, however, associates logical quotation or some other technical point of punctuation with our brand and it wouldn't be harmed if articles assumed varied postures on these issues.
These rules exist, in my view, largely divorced from any calcuation of their necessity or usefulness in the context of Wikipedia. The logical quotation rule is an excellent example because it makes sense at WT:MOS - editors here feel it's a good idea so why not make it a rule? cheers all around - but little sense in the context of actually reading Wikipedia - nobody has any idea what quotation rule any given instance follows, so there's no information to be gained. The current structure of MOS encourages a conflation of two very different questions: (1) what would be an ideal house style if I were starting a publication from the ground up? and (2) what guidelines best serve Wikipedia and its readers? Christopher Parham (talk) 15:08, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It is true that guidelines are not policy. That does not mean that guidelines may be freely ignored. Both policies and guidelines are to be applied using common sense. An editor should have a good reason, beyond personal preference, for deviating from a guideline in a particular instance. According to Wikipedia's policy page on Policies and guidelines, "Wikipedia policies and guidelines are developed by the community to describe best practice, clarify principles, resolve conflicts, and otherwise further our goal of creating a free, reliable encyclopedia ..." As for their role, "Guidelines are primarily advisory. They advise on how to prevent or avoid causing problems, and on how to apply and execute policy under specific circumstances." However, guidelines are enforceable: "If an editor violates the community standards described in policies and guidelines, other editors can persuade the person to adhere to acceptable norms of conduct, over time resorting to more forceful means, such as administrator and steward actions."
Most publications strive for consistency of style and presentation, and adopt style manuals as a means to that end. Unlike Wikipedia, at most publications, most editors have no say about the publication's style manual; a small group of editors known to be good "stylists" prescribe the styles that all editors must follow. Further, while the editors who write those style "guides" try to compile the specific usages that they believe are best suited to their particular publication, in instances where alternative usages might be equally appropriate, they pick one for the sake of consistency. Wikipedians who chafe at our MOS should realize that it allows individual editors far more freedom than any other style guide on this planet. Most style guides either prescribe or prohibit the so-called serial comma, for example; our MOS leaves the choice up to the editors (but, appropriately, requires consistency within a single article). Further, those editors who do not wish to master the entire MOS should be thrilled that some of us are so deranged that we will do this grunt work for them. Finell (Talk) 16:36, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I couldn't disagree more with your last sentence. To the extent that any content contributor bothers to follow any aspect of the MOS, that's a kindness those who care about this shouldn't expect. Indeed, if you're copyediting an article, you should be thrilled that an author has released his original, legally protected content under a license that allows you to fiddle with it. The article was in all likelihood perfectly clear and understandable, and equally valuable to any reader, before it was brought into compliance with the MOS. And to your first point, we would never block or sanction someone for not following the MOS (at least not any of its technical points) w/r/t original content they were writing. (People making edits, especially small ones, to existing content are a different story.) That would simply violate our values. Perhaps this indicates that "guideline" is not quite the right status for MOS; it's not really a standard we expect all editors generally to adhere to, but rather a standard we expect the encyclopedia to aspire to as a whole and don't want anyone to actively subvert. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:19, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Guys, this is no time to get all content vs. gnoming. Both contributors and editors improve the Wikipedia reader experience and both roles should be celebrated. Finell, Chris P, if you would both join me for a brief sing-along... 19:58, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
Whoa! Christopher, where in the world did you get the idea that I don't value content? Or even that I value style (in the sense we are using that term here) as much as content? It is a given that content is king. Good editing improves the quality of content by improving its readability and communicative power, but editing can't do anything without quality content. Further, I value content editing (the kind that, say, Encyclopaedia Britannica staff editors to with the content submitted contributing "editors", who are actually authors) to improve organization, grammar, syntax, word choice, concision, etc., over style-guide conformity. But copy editing (in its limited sense) and style-guide conformity still contribute to improving the quality of Wikipedia. But I repeat, content is king. I am not aware of any editors who think otherwise. Finell (Talk) 21:31, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I can appreciate what Parham is saying, but the content of the MoS isn't the issue at hand. The problem isn't that we have an MoS in the first place—that's a good thing. The issue is that people treat the MoS as if it were rules, not as if it were a guideline. What we should be trying to establish is 1. whether or not this is a problem 2. if so, what outcome would be best and 3. how to accomplish said outcome. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:51, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Finell, your quoting that policy page above is a good example of why unstable policies or guidelines need to be ignored. That page has been under attack for a few months by a couple of editors to want to minimize the mandatory nature of the policies. To do this, they've been editing that page to equate policies with guidelines. That's the only reason there's anything about people possibly being blocked for violating a guideline. In fact, no one would be blocked for that, especially not for violating the MoS. At countless AN and AN/I discussions, and a few times at ArbCom, the principle is always upheld that no one should be edit warring to impose style changes on stable and internally consistent articles.
As Christopher said, there are a few style issues that affect our content in the sense of providing us with a strong corporate identity: page layout being the most obvious. But most of the MoS revolves around personal preferences that otherwise no one notices. Those are the issues I'm arguing should not be imposed on articles over objections. Because otherwise what we're saying is that the personal preferences of people who regularly edit the MoS matter more than the personal preferences of the writers who may disagree. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 21:50, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Is this all about internal vs external punctuation? Is it born mainly of the frustration of those who "don't like it"—that they've never been able to gain consensus to change the external rule? It seems to me that the whole of the MoS is now being denigrated because of this. Tony (talk) 03:38, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't really have anything to do with punctuation (at least not from my perspective). It has to do with instruction creep, and the way the MoS is enforced. It was never intended to be enforced rigorously like this. The point of it was to offer advice about some common errors, find compromises where possible, and offer options where not possible. Now we have a situation where it's causing a fair bit of ill feeling or it's being ignored entirely, neither of which is good for it. What I would like to see is a very professional style guide that is to some extent descriptive of what editors already do, and which is gently enforced. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 03:56, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
As there is no logical or practical reason to ban American punctuation, I would have to agree that problem seems to be that there are people who just don't like it and have imposed their preferences on the rest of us. But no, that's not why I split the section off.
It's come up again with "amongst," but it's happened before. Someone requests that a certain thing be added to the MoS, but we find that it wouldn't be best for us to do it because Wikipedians would take it too much to heart. For example, it would probably be okay to have an actual in-practice guideline advising Wikipedians to avoid words like "amongst." We've had people say, "Oh it would be all right to add this because the MoS is only a guideline." However, if we say "don't use 'amongst'" on the MoS, then people will treat it as a hard-and-fast rule, removing the word even in situations in which it would be desirable to have it remain. The result is that we don't get to add stuff like that to the MoS.
The MoS is described as a guideline, but people treat it like a set of concrete rules. I split off the conversation so we could evaluate 1. whether or not this is a problem (we could of course just keep things as they are, leaving things like "avoid 'amongst'" unwritten), 2. what the ideal role of the MoS should be and 3. how we would effect it.
As for descriptive/prescriptive, the MoS's job is to give instructions. It should be written in the imperative. The issue is how fiercely those instructions should be implemented. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:07, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Constructing an article, or individual parts, that defy the basic instructions of the MoS are doomed to failure. Browsers like Firefox increasingly have pluggable editors that automatically analyze Wikipedia articles and recommend spelling and style changes that can be enacted with one-button while reading or editing. The MoS does not necessarily have to be enforced rigorously but attempting to maintain styles against the MoS is increasingly an attempt to hold back the tides. Miami33139 (talk) 04:14, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Ignoring rubbish prescription like we had for overly until a few minutes ago is simply common sense. I fail to see what "pluggable editors" have to do with it. Maybe you plug one into your brain/Firefox and it writes "correct" English according to this MOS?! Like I wrote above a couple of times, a shocking amount of material in the MOS is based on misconceptions not supported by scholarly research or other widely used style guides. Take a look at the section on punctuation in quotes for another example. (#Never understood). Pcap ping 13:59, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, the existence/use of automated tools for wikignoming are an argument for being conservative with the prescriptions here. See below. Pcap ping 14:34, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think User:Shakescene raised a really good point above, namely that we need to carefully consider the demographics of our audience in these guidelines. You can fully expect some teenager to write a script replacing a "banned" word in all articles. I've seen editors auto-link words ignoring context for example. We already had some holy wikiwars involving automated tools over MOS issues I consider irrelevant, e.g. date linking. So, we need to be conservative with the MOS prescriptions because there's a real chance of causing WP:LAME incidents rather than preventing them. Pcap ping 14:20, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think I agree with a single thing in the previous post. Tony (talk) 14:33, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think you're confusing User:Tony1/How to improve your writing, which is a respectable enterprise, with this MOS, which is an equally respectable, but different enterprise. Pcap ping 14:39, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
What Pcap seems to be describing is that we accept that the MoS is treated as rules and therefore walk carefully when adding or removing instructions. This is one way to deal with it. But if we're going to do that, I think we should acknowledge it openly. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:12, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Some of these grammar/vocabulary prescriptions might be appropriate at MOS:BETTER, although I don't see why that page needs to be a guideline at all. What makes it different from this page? It addresses no discernible subtopic but rehashes some of the stuff here. Pcap ping 17:23, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(1) "Amongst terrorists" is hedgehog language. (2) I'm not convinced that there's anything wrong with the provision of a small amount of assistance for readers in the fields of grammar and word usage. Where is the line drawn if advice against the use of old-fashioned words such as this (with letters redundant against their modern counterparts) is expunged?Tony (talk) 01:02, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed rule

Based on the above discussion I suggest the following:

When a word has multiple variants with the same meaning but different degrees of use in major varieties of English, prefer the word variant globally accepted. For instance, opt for among instead of amongst (the latter is seldom used in American English) and thus instead of thusly (the latter is seldom used in British English).

Comments? Pcap ping 09:36, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

P.S.: I know that thusly is considered "hypercorrect" and is used mostly for ironic or comic purposes even in AE, but I don't want to make this rule longer than it strictly needs to be. Other rules (should) deal with the degree of (in)formality acceptable in Wikipedia articles. Pcap ping 09:45, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. While "among" will often be preferable to "amongst," the latter isn't incorrect and we should not ban it. We already permit editors to correct awkward or overly formal turns of phrase. That already covers "amongst." Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:04, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly Oppose: We don't need a rule for this. It's all very well to say that the MoS isn't prescriptive and proscriptive rules, and I wish it weren't, but the plain fact is that hundreds of editors and dozens of 'bots (including AWB) treat it that way. This kind of usage issue is best handled in context by the editors who would normally handle the article anyway. Perhaps, however, some kind of stand-alone list (outside the MoS) indicating words and idioms that are little-understood outside a particular country or region might be helpful to such discussions. ¶ If, however, there were such a rule, you'd have to add something about nuance, because there are many times when I'd prefer "amongst" to "among" and "overly" to "over", and many when I'd prefer the opposite. And such guidance would add more words without being sufficient. —— Shakescene (talk) 04:59, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I write articles in BE, and naturally use amongst. It has nothing to do with my "straining for formaility", and as it is entirely acceptable in AE, just less common, and guideline that implies it is incorrect in an dialect is simply wrong. Every article i write has American editors appearing to change single examples they dislike, and they almost never bother to keep the article at least consistant. The MoS should be giving no ammunition to either side, as the subject either comes down to good writing or personal preference - the former should be dealt with on talk pages oand the latter is not a MoS issue.YobMod 15:26, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I in fact practice this most of the time, but to impose it, even as a guideline, totally undercuts WP:ENGVAR, and requires all editors to have a sophisticated awareness of the varities of usage that is wholly unrealistic. Johnbod (talk) 12:24, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thusly

Since this may cause a dispute as well: both Fowler's 3rd edition and The Cambridge Guide discuss thusly only briefly, and stress its Americanness and its (original) ironic/comic purpose. M-W Usage Dictionary has nearly a page-long entry, in which they point out that even in some non-ironic instances thusly is more suitable than thus, and recommend that one should not automatically replace thusly with thus in all circumstances, but suggest that "in this way" or "as follows" should also be considered as replacements depending on context. Pcap ping 10:02, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Whatever: it sounds awful to me. I'd strike out the ly in any variety, and most professional American editors would too. I don't much like "thus", but use it in scientific/engineering text when necessary. Tony (talk) 05:56, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Heart of the matter

I suggest that we remove the words "thusly, whilst, amongst, as per," and "refute in the sense of dispute" from the section on contested vocabulary, so that the section reads like this:

Avoid words that are either overly regional or not widely accepted in the form of English in which the article is written (see National varieties of English below). Avoid straining for formality, as this suggests an insecure grasp of English. See List of English words with disputed usage, Words to avoid, and List of commonly misused English words; see also Identity and Gender-neutral language below.

Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:35, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Although it might tug a little against the pluralistic drift of what I've been saying earlier, I think that the local/national/regional idiom of an article, its subject matter or its authors is not the deciding factor (a parallel issue came up in WT:MOSNUM about units and conversions), because there's no way of telling where the readers of many articles might come from or how they use and understand English. For a very rough example, Statue of Liberty might get more overseas than American readers, Tower of London might get more overseas than British readers, and Taj Mahal might get more non-Asian than South Asian readers. So there is reason to discourage localisms or regionalisms that just aren't well-understood outside a particular geographical area. ("Amongst" or "thusly" might be unfamiliar and even odd to many, but their meaning isn't really obscure. On the other hand, "hitting it for six" or "a ball-park estimate" might draw a blank from those who have never seen [respectively] a cricket or a baseball game.) —— Shakescene (talk) 23:55, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps "hitting it for six" and "ballpark estimate" should go into the section instead of "amongst," "thusly" and their unambiguous little friends. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:25, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'd just get rid of "refute". And does this mean that a regional term can't appear, even if glossed on first appearance? Tony (talk) 02:33, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Modified text

How about this?

Avoid words and phrases that are either overly regional, not widely accepted or that give the impression of straining for formality. See List of English words with disputed usage, Words to avoid, and List of commonly misused English words; see also Identity and Gender-neutral language below. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:10, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

An idea: markup for bad examples

How's this:

  • Titles are generally nouns or noun phrases (Effects of the wild, not About the effects of the wild).

A template could be created specifically to mark up bad examples. --___A. di M. 00:32, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good: accessibility issues? I suppose they couldn't be bolded as well, could they? On my monitor, which has sharp colours, the supposedly "dark"green colour is not very dark, and the green examples are thus slightly harder to read. The red is much clearer (almost too clear), but will not be distinguishable for the 8% of males who have red–green colour blindness. Tony (talk) 02:24, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The colour can be tweaked; and I'm not proposing to use it as the sole way of distinguishing good examples from bad ones; as long as each bad example is explicitly marked as such as they are now, doing this is not going to make things worse for anybody. (They could be bolded, but then you mightn't use it for examples which do involve boldface; but anyway they're going to be rare.) I'm also thinking of adding underline to correct examples to better contrast with strike-through in bad examples, such as
  • Titles are generally nouns or noun phrases (Effects of the wild, not About the effects of the wild).
What do you think? --___A. di M. 09:55, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's better than the current system. Would you like to mark up one section as a demo? My concern now is that the struck through text is more difficult to read. However, without underlining or striking through, the addition of the red to the green would look very similar to what colour-blind people see now; that is, it would be no worse. For 96% of readers, it would be better.Tony (talk) 11:01, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I have no objection to the use of color in this way. It doesn't look as aesthetically pleasing, but it looks like it could do some good. We ought to go without the strikethrough, though. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:11, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
to me it would make no sense without the strikethrough - the red would make the examples of incorrectness more visible than the examples of correctness, and the colour-blind among us would see no difference at all. (as long as i'm here, i might as well note that i find the use of that other font for examples seriously unattractive; at the same time, that green isn't bright enough to distinguish it well from the surrounding text. so i'd be glad to see changes to the markup of good examples as well as bad examples.) Sssoul (talk) 12:44, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
They would have to be marked with "(Correct)" and "(Incorrect)" in addition to being differently colored, but the color might make a nice shorthand in addition to that. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:25, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I think we can consider the negative/positive context as satisfying the accessibility principle that colour alone should not provide the message. It does appear that people are not entirely satisfied with the green currently used. I must say that it looks to be of slightly lower resolution than the black on my monitor, although that may be an optical illusion. Pity there isn't a darker, sharper green; this is why I've bolded green-coloured text where I've used it in my tutorial exercises. Bold is probably too much here, though. Maybe a less dominating shade of red/brown might work for the negative. What is it now? Darkred?
In producing the trimmer version of the MoS, I was very pleased to have ADM's green template, despite its drawbacks. It avoids a forest of quotation marks or italics, both of which can create problems of formatting and logic. On the other hand, one has to be careful not to create a messy appearance on the page by using a font/colour/formatting that is too sharp or different. Torn between the two, we may be.
And the other quandary I remember when the green was developed ?last year was that whatever you come up with is likely to be dispalyed differently on the various monitors, browsers and platforms. Tony (talk) 14:39, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You might consider using these symbols: ✓ (CHECK MARK), ✔ (HEAVY CHECK MARK), ✗ (BALLOT X), and ✘ (HEAVY BALLOT X).
Also, you might consider using white text on a black background to indicate incorrect usage.—Wavelength (talk) 14:57, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That's a sexy idea, although I would use the particular shade of maroon found on the {{xt}} talk page. The new template could be located {{!xt}}. I say thumbs up with underlines and strikethroughs. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 15:00, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
An idea I had is to display the underline/strike-through with a brighter colour than the text itself, maybe like this:
  • Titles are generally nouns or noun phrases (✔ Effects of the wild, not ✘ About the effects of the wild).
Unfortunately, then, the strike-through goes in front of the text, making it even harder to read. Does anyone know a workaround to show the text in front of the strike? --___A. di M. 15:48, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
BTW, I think that this would eliminate the need for Georgia typeface, so that we'd not have messy numbers due to "lower-case digits". --___A. di M. 15:50, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Here's a sandbox. Maybe the font colours might be made a tad darker, and the tick before correct examples could be removed, only keeping the cross before wrong ones. --___A. di M. 16:21, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm sorry: I just loathe the ticks and crosses aesthetically, both as one reads and as one looks synoptically at the page. Tony (talk) 16:16, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • The sandbox looks very overformatted and crowded. I need sunglasses. The idea at the top of this section seemed relatively simple, but has now ballooned. I say this knowing that ADM has put considerable work into the sandbox. Tony (talk) 16:45, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just a personal observation, but to me, when text has been struckthrough it has been negated, so striking a statement that something is wrong, indicates that it is not wrong, because the statement itself is wrong... if that makes any sense. Before reading through this section, I assumed that the text in question was part of an initial proposal that had subsequently been discarded (and struck, as you often see on talk pages) as the discussion progressed. I would suggest that, as a reader of the guideline, this part of the MOS is quite clear as it currently stands, and there is potential here to confuse things. Cheers, Miremare 17:08, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Huh? I had this idea looking at my English grammar book, which also uses strike-through to show incorrect examples. It might look like we're negating that it's incorrect if the "not" were struck as well, but I don't think it can confuse anyone if it isn't... --___A. di M. 17:22, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I couldn't say whether grammar books it in examples (but I bet there are plenty that don't too), I'm just saying how it appears to me as a reader. But regarding my second point, is there a reason that this needs to be changed from how it currently is? Miremare 23:24, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • A. di M., I love what you are proposing and think there are many uses for it on Wikipedia. However, I hate that you propose to “change” an existing template. On my talk page, you wrote I've made a proposal to change the behaviour [of {{xt}} ].

    Once a template has been in use for a while, those editors who favor using it A) are typically quite pleased with exactly what they are using, and B) don’t want to see work that looks a certain way changed.

    That a template will be relatively stable is a reasonable expectation of template users. We often lock down our templates since doing so is a *pinky promise* to the community that editors will have stability in their articles. This practice encourages adoption and widespread use of templates. I think it is exceedingly bad form to make radical changes to templates that are already in use; doing so discourages the adoption of new templates. Now…

    If what you are proposing is an extension to the existing {xt} template, where additional pipes yield the results you are proposing, then that is fine; non-piped existing expressions of {xt} won’t be affected. However, if you are proposing to flat-change it’s behavior, then I strenuously object' to that way of achieving your ends.

    Again, I’m not sure exactly how you intended /now intend to implement this. However, I would suggest that the best way to get this out there for us to all try and begin using would be to create a new template, perhaps {{xtu}}. The current {xt} template, by virtue of the fact that it changes only the face and color of text, is, IMO, the perfect technique in a MOS where style advise for using “quotes”, italics, 'bolding, and underlining of text. What you propose is somewhat of a Swiss Army knife that is really a different animal and should properly be a separate template for us to use, not a “change” to an existing template.

    Frankly, since it would be a different (new) template, why don’t you just go ahead and make it? There can’t possibly any harm in your doing so. We can all give it a whirl and even try it in those sections of MOS and MOSNUM where it would be most appropriate. Greg L (talk) 17:45, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm... Yeah, making another template rather than changing the existing one would be a better idea. --___A. di M. 18:03, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I've created {{xtu}} and {{!xt}}. --___A. di M. 18:12, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Before we go ahead with anything, be advised that the MoS advises against using red and green together because people with red-green color blindness can't see the difference. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:56, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
As long as we don't rely on colour to show the difference, that's not a problem. Colour-blind readers will be able to tell incorrect examples from correct ones just like they do now. --___A. di M. 18:03, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Indeed, that’s OK. Darkfrog24, A. di M. is correct. Color is only assistive here for normal-sighted individuals. The thing to remember is that color alone—particularly red and green—must not be used to convey an important distinction, like “this is good” but “this is bad” or “GOOD/BAD”. This is prohibited under Wikipedia policy and it is never wise to do so. I remember a hydrogen sensor that used a dual-color LED, red and green, to denote “OK” and “leaking hydrogen”. Talk about “stupid.” The test lab’s director actually had red/green color blindness and he’d come to me and ask me to stare at the ceiling and tell him which sensor had triggered.

    A. di M.’s use of color is perfectly fine because the strike through and the big “X” (v.s. underlined and a checkmark) provides all the clues any of us would require, even if we had a old Classic Mac with a black & white screen. Color simply provides yet another quick clue for normal-sighted individuals to quickly distinguish “OK” and “Not OK.” This is similar to the chemistry wash bottles found in wet labs: the isopropanol wash bottle has a blue top, ethanol = orange top, methanol = green top, acetone = red top. There is a big difference between acetone and methanol (red/green). If one is color blind, you read the wording on the bottle. If you have normal color vision, you have both indicators, where color is the quicker one. To this day, whenever I think of “acetone”, I think “red.” It’s the same for cylinders of compressed hydrogen; they come in red cylinders. Oxygen (big difference) cylinders are green. Of course, both are labeled with their contents too. Color is simply assistive; same here. Greg L (talk) 18:11, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • And even without check marks or underlines, “Effects of the wild, not About the effects of the wild” would not be any worse than “Effects of the wild, not About the effects of the wild” for colour-blind readers, and it'd be better for non-colour-blind ones. --___A. di M. 18:20, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Good point. Back to the razor-sharp logical basics, I see. Greg L (talk) 18:28, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Let me try this: Write I have been properly trained in the discipline of technical writing. and not I ain’t been learned good English. (looking at it in Preview here…)

    Can you make it so the underlining and strike through doesn’t apply to both the checkmark and the X? It would also be nice if they both left a plain space after the checkmark and X before the example text starts. Greg L (talk) 18:36, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I do not feel that the strikethrough is a good idea. It makes things harder to read. Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:12, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Is this maybe just a solution in search of a problem? Are there vast numbers of editors who can't comprehend the current "correct" and "incorrect" indicators throughout the style guide? I don't find the current format difficult to understand or read; am I alone on that? The green, red, symbols, all just seem to make things more difficult to read (especially so, I fear, for those of our editors with visual impairments). I respect the enthusiasm, but I don't see the net return on investment, unless I'm just missing it entirely? user:J aka justen (talk) 19:50, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • I agree about the strikethru; it’s hard to read. Sometimes it’s quite important to scrutinize and read precisely what it is one is not supposed to do. Without the attendant change in typeface to Georgia, I’m not sure how one would setoff example text; that is, without resorting to italic text or “Putting ‘quoted’ text” in quotes, both of which screw up example text when our advise is about quoting text that itself contains quotations or is concerning italicizing. In my mind, simply writing…
…is clear enough. While I see some potential with some of these design element concepts, it’s just not falling into place for me so far. Frankly, the big red s and nice green checkmarks seems to be a trick taken from the “…For Dummies” books, where they might have an icon of a policeman blowing his whistle and holding his baton in the air placed inside a sidebar containing cautionary advise. While sorta nice, I’m not seeing the need here if it compromises being able to read something. Greg L (talk) 20:46, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, maybe you all are right. Doing all of that clutters the page. Re. "is there any problem right now": No, but I have seen strike-through used to mark incorrect examples in a grammar book and thought it was a good idea. (That book uses black text and a grey strike, so I attempted to have darker text than the strike in ✘!xt; unfortunately the strike goes in front of the text, making it even less legible. Does anyone know any way of having the text in front of the strike?) --___A. di M. 09:38, 26 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, now I've redirected {{xtu}} to {{xt}}, and made {{!xt}} identical to {{xt}} except for the colour and the cross at the beginning. Now the sandbox looks like this. --___A. di M. 09:45, 26 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think it should stay as it is for the moment. The green template is a significant improvement on what we had before; let's not ruin it with clutter. Tony (talk) 13:19, 26 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I actually came here to suggest using red for the wrong examples, only to find this thread in progress. I would suggest visually distinguishing the wrong examples may have three benefits not considered above:

(1) It may aid parsing slightly. Compare

  • Suffixes, articles and commas. Don't use ordinal suffixes or articles, or put a comma between month and year: 14 February, not 14th February or the 14th of February; October 1976, not October, 1976 or October of 1976.

with

  • Suffixes, articles and commas. Don't use ordinal suffixes or articles, or put a comma between month and year: 14 February, not 14th February or the 14th of February; October 1976, not October, 1976 or October of 1976.

This example comes from Tony's condensed MoS, but I think what I'm trying to illustrate is generally true. I found the first example slightly difficult to parse on first read; one must rely on the little dot in the semi-colon to make sense of it all. The colour makes things ever-so-slightly clearer, and a little easier for the reader.

(2) A reader can tell at a glance which example is correct. Consider an experienced editor who's momentarily forgotten whether to put a comma after the month in October 1976. In the second example, this editor can quickly scan the paragraph for the examples she is looking for and can tell immediately which is correct; she need not even read the surrounding text. This is improved usability.

(3) It makes the wrong example look wrong. Part of the way we learn to spell correctly is that incorrect spellings look unfamiliar. That's why it's a bad learn-to-spell program that displays misspelt words and asks the pupil to correct them – it jeopardises the unfamiliar look of incorrect spellings. Obviously we can't avoid showing examples of incorrect formatting, but I suspect colouring those examples red would inhibit the wrong formatting from acquiring familiarity to MoS readers.

On the specifics, I oppose using strike-through: what works in a printed manual doesn't necessarily work on a screen, and I don't think the increased difficulty of reading could be justified, even with a lighter-coloured strike appearing behind the text. I strongly oppose the check boxes. What I see is empty square boxes in Internet Explorer, and square boxes cryptically containing "2 7 1 7" in Firefox. I'm on Windows XP, IE 7 and Firefox 3.0.13, so I'm not out of date and I'm sure other users would have the same problem. But regardless, the check boxes seem to me to be unnecessary clutter. A simple colour change seems to have all the benefits without any increase in clutter.

Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 14:33, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed the cross from Example text, too; now the only difference between them is the colour and the name of the class. Does anyone disagree that "the addition of the red to the green would look very similar to what colour-blind people see now; that is, it would be no worse[; f]or 96% of readers, it would be better"? (BTW, here's the sandbox.) ___A. di M. 15:16, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal to use a separate manual of style for featured articles

See [4]. Dabomb87 (talk) 12:31, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

En-dashes in phone numbers

I just ran across 867‒5309/Jenny. I see that the thingy in the middle of the phone number is not specifically treated under hyphens or dashes. I'd like to urge using hyphens, to match with just about every other computer system out there dealing with phone numbers. Does this make sense? Thanks. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:19, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In principle that'd be a figure dash, but I fear some fonts might lack a glyph for it and some browsers might use a brain-dead replacement such as an empty box. Which character do other reliable sources in English use for that horizontal line in the number? ___A. di M. 22:10, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
AFAIK, an unspaced hyphen is used in the North American Numbering Plan. In fact, whenever an unspaced hyphen is (incorrectly) used for a date range, the iPhone automatically puts a link to dial it as a phone number. oknazevad (talk) 23:37, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The official North American Numbering Plan website uses Unicode U+002D Hyphen-Minus. --Jc3s5h (talk) 23:54, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I often dislike seeing hyphens, en-dashes and em-dashes in the wrong place, but I think the principle here has to be what's easily accessible on most people's keyboards. (I use Alt-0150 and Alt-0151 all the time, but that's not what I mean by easily-accessible, nor is the Symbols menu available under the edit box but not the search box or the average reader's address bar). I have the same attitude towards ß [German terminal "ss", or Alt-0223] and the umlauted form of anything that's also commonly written with a following "e" instead of the Umlaut [e.g. ü, or Alt-0252, for ue, as in Führer vs Fuehrer]. Anything that makes it harder to enter, find or link to the title of an article, section, category, template, or any other piece of Wikipedia should be clearly discouraged—just as the software should have been made case-insensitive, oh say, about ten years ago. See: without the conscious intention of making any kind of point, I just used both a hyphen and an em-dash. "867-5309/Jenny" is already tricky enough to enter for those who don't know the accepted convention for this dual title. What's good style for the prose of the body text can easily be less than ideal for the titles of anything that people might want to search for or link to. My apologies to those not on Windows who don't use Alt+0000, but those codes all translate to ASCII which can no doubt be pulled up some other way on your OS or browser. —— Shakescene (talk) 05:20, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have a big problem with accented characters -- while they're annoying, they're obviously correct. Hyphen vs hyphen-minusfigure-dash, otoh, just leads to confusion, IMHO.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:49, 1 October 2009 (UTC) (Random note -- I learned Alt-0243 just so I could properly greet people on Diane Duane's Young Wizards forum. :-) Dai stihó! )[reply]
For the record, Unicode U+002D Hyphen-Minus is equal to ASCII 2D, hyphen or minus or simply the character to the right of 0 (zero) and left of = (equal) on a QWERTY keyboard. They're all just a hyphen (see also ASCII#Unicode and C0 Controls and Basic Latin), which is also the typographer's standard for phone numbers, not any other special character. Sswonk (talk) 23:46, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
There also exists a U+2010 HYPHEN character, but no-one ever actually uses it because in all fonts where the hyphen and the minus sign are different (which I think includes all proportional fonts), the hyphen-minus looks like the former. ___A. di M. 09:41, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds like it's safe to change these back to keyboard-style hyphens on sight, then, huh? Is there enough consensus to put this into the MOS? --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:14, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I would think, and hope so.— Dædαlus Contribs 21:26, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it's worth the hassle (or the busybodylike intrusiveness) to correct unusual dashes within the body of an article's text, although different formattings of "867-5309" might well mean that searches for one format would miss other versions (867–5309, 867—5309, etc.) not even known about. But in titles (provided all the requirements of WP:MOVE were met), section headers, category names (if any include telephone numbers), etc., I think semi-silent correction on sight would be justified.
But, as someone who actually likes “curly quotation-marks”, I understand why "straight quotation-marks" are strongly preferred, and in some cases required, in Wikipedia: because of the limited English-language keyboard. I guess I didn't have the patience to stop the enthusiasts for hyper-correct dashes from imposing exactly the opposite requirement for hyphens and dashes: moving away from easily-found hyphens in the date ranges of article, section and category titles to en–dashes and figure-dashes. That said, it's probably a good idea to set up a very informal Request for Comments here (as a subsection of this section), so that those who want the figure-dash in telephone numbers won't feel they were unfairly sidestepped. —— Shakescene (talk) 00:38, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Request for comment - dashes in article titles

Should article titles use the standard hyphen for ease of searching, regardless of the style used within the article? SarekOfVulcan (talk) 04:11, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Is this another anti-en-dash push? There's nothing "standard" about hyphens. This matter has been resolved for article names and, more recently, for category names. Tony (talk) 04:31, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • This issue has been discussed over and over again. If a dash is used in the title, then a hyphen redirect should be created to help searching; I don't see why this issue when the original discussion concerned quite something else. Dabomb87 (talk) 13:27, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • I think the RfC should be limited to the original topic of discussion: should phone numbers have figure dashes? Dabomb87 (talk) 13:34, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • If the official numbering plan uses U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS (i.e. the hyphen found on the keyboard), so should we. Anyway, the original question was about a fictional phone number in a song title, and a few seconds' googling says that the hyphen-minus is used in that song title, too. --___A. di M. 15:25, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • NO. There shouldn't be any discrepencies between titles and main body text. That means 1-555-333-2342 is written as exactly that, and Bose–Einstein condensates is written as exactly that. This RfC is useless. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 16:10, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Formal RfC on increasing the default size for thumbnail images

It's here, with initial discussion in the section above it. This may have implications for the advice in MoS's image section. Tony (talk) 08:01, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Repainting the Great Wall of China

Any comments about this metaphorical essay about consistency between like articles? Kransky (talk) 10:46, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Cute, but I do not concur with your conclusions. It says "consistency within an article" it does not draw any distinction between articles that are part of the same Wikiproject and those that are not. If you feel it's unclear, though, then we could certainly specify that the MoS does not require consistency within a Wikiproject. Your essay also seems to imply that the person who argues for the change must be the person who carries out all of that change. Your Liang is depicted as lazy and fickle, but his actions (assuming he did finish his portion of the wall before giving up) are reasonable. Also consider that there is no real-world equivalent to the barbarian warlords. There are no negative consequences to disputes of Liang and Huang's kind. They don't show up in the articles. To the reader, a set of articles undergoing of dispute of this kind looks no worse than otherwise. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:44, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
...except that discussions about points of style that most readers are unlikely to ever notice (much less care about) detract time which could be used for useful work. ___A. di M. 12:50, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Not really. Style points are useful work. Readers notice that articles seem neat or sloppy even if that can't pick out every period, comma, dash and column alignment that makes them seem that way. Besides, people who do think style is important can continue the discussions and people who don't think so can go do something else. One could argue, "We should be doing something more useful than this" about just about anything. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:53, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Also, clarifying my earlier comment: The MoS does have a policy about whether articles in the same Wikiproject need to be consistent: they don't. This is covered under "consistency within an article but not necessarily Wikipedia as a whole." However, if this is unclear enough to confuse people, then it wouldn't cost us anything to add words specifying that Wikiprojects are covered under this principle. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:53, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(outdent) thanks for bringing this to the talk page. like Darkfrog24, i don't find the metaphor apt, nor do i agree with all the conclusions; and even as you cite ArbCom's decree about not changing stylistic points without compelling reasons, assertions like "anybody is welcome to propose new styles, for practical, aesthetic [you want to fix that typo] or other reasons" sound like you're suggesting that the ArbCom ruling can be ignored. if that's not what you mean, then you need to clarify what you do mean ... and even then, i'm not sure an essay like this needs to be listed in the "see also" section of the MoS. Sssoul (talk) 08:17, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Everyone has a right to his or her opinion, but I don't feel that this is one that the MoS should endorse. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:26, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

And/or

I find it odd that this article, which claims to reflect consensus, says that "and/or" should be avoided while the article itself uses it numerous times. It doesn't exactly roll off the tongue but I don't have a problem with it and I certainly don't see that the suggested "x or y, or both" is necessarily better.74.73.227.68 (talk) 04:07, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'd noticed that too. I think the MoS could loosen up a bit in its negative statements about and/or. And the section goes on and on and on. Unnecessary. Tony (talk) 04:33, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Concur. I actually prefer and/or than saying "X or Y (or both)". Dabomb87 (talk) 13:32, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Grammatically, using a forward slash in prose tends to not be advisable. In a series, "and [...], or both" can also provide greater clarity than the discouraged alternative, similar to the always-controversial serial comma. user:J aka justen (talk) 18:26, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I do not feel that "and/or" is in keeping with Wikipedia's encyclopedic tone. There are usually better ways to write the sentence. Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:20, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
There is no place in the English language for and/or, ever. Usually one conjunction or the other is correct or sufficient, more often or (which is non-exclusive, so it embraces and). In rare instances where both must be used, either this or that, or both is correct, even if unattractive. The problem can usually be avoided altogether by rewriting the sentence, which is the best solution. More broadly, a this/that construction is inappropriate in formal writing, in my most un-humble opinion. Finell (Talk) 19:42, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"And/or" comes, I think, from legal prose which is not of course what you want to see in most of the encyclopedia. But occasionally it's the most elegant, or least-inelegant, way of conveying the meaning. And much as some would dearly love to make "or" mean either inclusive "or" or exclusive "or", a millennium of English usage runs very strongly against them. It's not always clear that "or" is not exclusive, because as children we learn that you can have (or do) this or that, with the implicit but unspoken "but not both" usually in the background. If someone said "you can have ice cream or pie" and you wanted both, you learned to avoid disappointment (and make difficult choices if necessary) by always asking "can I have both?". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Shakescene (talk • contribs) 20:31, 3 October 2009 —— Shakescene (talk) 22:45, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Actually the phrases inclusive or and exclusive or generally refer to the truth-table versions of these things; truth-functional or is not actually a good model for these natural-language uses. If you may have ice cream or pie (but not both) is true, then you may have ice cream is true, and you may have pie is also true, so you may have ice cream XOR you may have pie is actually false. The natural-language meaning of or cannot really be captured by truth tables in classical logic, except in a few restricted cases. --Trovatore (talk) 22:36, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
In the common practice of everyday language, or is looked at as exclusive. It's the way it's used in mathematics and computer programming, and it's seeped into the standard language. That said, the construct and/or is awkward and informal, and should probably be avoided by rephrasing the sentence. Of course, as it becomes more common, it's also becomming more acceptable, so my opinion may change. oknazevad (talk) 02:06, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(Re. to Trovatore.) It depends on what you take the implicit repeated verb to be. Assuming that you may have ice cream, you may have pie, but you can't have both, "{you may have ice cream} AND {you may have pie}" is true, but "you may {{have ice cream} AND {have pie}}" is false. "You may have ice cream and pie" is usually taken to mean the latter, so by analogy I guess "you may have ice cream or pie" means "you may {{have ice cream} XOR {have pie}}". (If it meant "{you may have ice cream} OR {you may have pie}", it'd be true even if you could only have pie but you couldn't have ice cream.) --___A. di M. 11:20, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Your second reading is no longer truth-functional, and XOR usually means a truth function. That's my point — it's not really possible to discuss these various meanings of the word or via truth tables. They mean something subtler.
In the particular ice cream/pie example, it might be possible to save the XOR reading by changing from propositional logic to predicate logic, and the or would be considered a truth function at the atomic level. But most meanings of or that are alleged to be "exclusive" cannot, in any way I can see, be formalized even in predicate logic; you'd have to use relevance logic or some such. --Trovatore (talk) 19:56, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well then, it seems that we have some sort of consensus then :) Perhaps I'm just growing more accustomed to "and/or" because I hear it in spoken English more often, but of course that argument does not hold water. Dabomb87 (talk) 02:12, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If people want to use and/or, let them. If someone sees it and wants to reword, thats fine too. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 02:24, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'd stick with the "avoid." It leaves open the possibility that it, like "amongst," may be appropriate in some unusual contexts while still giving the idea that it is not usually desirable. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:48, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That's not how many people would interpret it. If you mean that (so do I), I'd keep the current wording, which makes clear that saying "A, B, or both" when it's more awkward than "A and/or B" defeats the purpose of the advice. ___A. di M. 11:20, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Or one step lighter than avoid? "... use cautiously and only where it appears to be necessary", or something like that? Then can we remove the turgid, verbose examples? Tony (talk) 12:07, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds too wordy to me. If you feel that the current phrasing isn't clear enough, just say "The term and/or for the inclusive or (as in x and/or y) is usually awkward. Writing x, y, or both is often preferable." And what "turgid, verbose examples" you're talking about? I don't think any example of "and/or" can possibly be less verbose than x and/or y. ___A. di M. 13:47, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • ADM, sure, why don't you change it? Verbose? The second and third paras are a quick way to turn off editors and give the MoS a bad name. Can't it be reduced to a simple piece of advice? Here:

The term and/or is awkward. In general, where it is important to mark an inclusive or, use x or y, or both, rather than x and/or y. For an exclusive or, use either x or y, and optionally add but not both, if it is necessary to stress the exclusivity.

Where more than two possibilities are presented, from which a combination is to be selected, it is even less desirable to use and/or. With two possibilities, at least the intention is clear; but with more than two it may not be. Instead of x, y, and/or z, use an appropriate alternative, such as one or more of x, y, and z; some or all of x, y, and z.

Sometimes or is ambiguous in another way: Wild dogs, or dingoes, inhabit this stretch of land. Are wild dogs and dingoes the same or different? For one case write: wild dogs (dingoes) inhabit ... (meaning dingoes are wild dogs); for the other case write: either wild dogs or dingoes inhabit ....

Tony (talk) 13:56, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I can't find it in my handbook but is my understanding that "wild dogs [comma] or dingoes [comma]" does mean "'wild dogs' is another word for 'dingoes.'" If so, then perhaps it is not the best example. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:31, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I learn so much from this talk page. Above: There is no place in the English language for and/or, ever. Should I infer that this is neither about nor in English? -- Hoary (talk) 15:41, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(interjecting) It is about Legalese. Legalese is not English and/or is a corruption of English and/or is not an example to which Wikipedia should aspire (sorry, no time right now to figure out the correct conjunctions and/or best sentence structure). Should you find yourself writing and/or, take a break, read from a published work by an exemplary author for at least 30 minutes, then rewrite to avoid the abomination. Finell (Talk) 21:44, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The proof of the pudding is that the MoS itself uses it in a number of places. I say let's get rid of the x, y, z stuff and just put in a mild warning that and/or can be awkward and to use it only where it is neater than alternatives. Short and sweet, please. In putting on the teacher's hat, we can end up not being read at all by the edtors we want to reach out to. Hoary's link to Language Log is highly recommended. Tony (talk) 15:59, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
the bits about inclusive and exclusive or seem to be there simply to show off those terms, and some of what's there isn't really relevant to and/or. how about:
The term and/or can be awkward or unclear, or both; consider rephrasing things to avoid overusing it. The term and/or is awkward. In general, where it is important to mark an inclusive or, use x or y, or both, rather than x and/or y. For an exclusive or, use either x or y, and optionally add but not both, if it is necessary to stress the exclusivity. Where more than two possibilities are presented, from which a combination is to be selected, it is even less desirable to use and/or. With two possibilities, at least the intention is clear; but with more than two it may not be. Instead of x, y, and/or z, use an appropriate alternative, such as one or more of x, y, and z; some or all of x, y, and z. Sometimes or is ambiguous in another way: Wild dogs, or dingoes, inhabit this stretch of land. Are wild dogs and dingoes the same or different? For one case write: wild dogs (dingoes) inhabit ... (meaning dingoes are wild dogs); for the other case write: either wild dogs or dingoes inhabit ....
Sssoul (talk) 16:33, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This gives no clue whatsoever about ways to rephrase it, and when can it be "unclear", exactly? ___A. di M. 18:05, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
smile: it's self-referential, A di M: the phrase can be awkward and/or unclear, so the way i phrased that is an example of how to rephrase it. my suggestion was meant somewhat lightheartedly - sorry! - but really the bulk of what i struck out is mighty uninformative. Sssoul (talk) 18:17, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't read the MoS in too much detail, so maybe I can give an outside opinion. I am sure that, if I was editing an article, I would rephrase any instances of "and/or" I come across, just as I would rephrase contractions, "his/her", and "if/when". I would not view any of these are true questions of editorial style, but rather questions of encyclopedic tone. In other words, I would view a sentence using "and/or" as having the same fundamental flaw as the sentence "There are plenty of unstable nilpotent groups", which I ran into earlier today. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:49, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What flaw? I understand that "plenty" might sound informal, but the most obvious replacement ("a great number of") might be interpreted as "a great finite number of", which I suspect it isn't the case (however weak my knowledge of group theory is); the only way to be rigorous would be "there are [insert cardinal number here] unstable nilpotent groups up to isomorphism", and then any layman would have no idea of what you're speaking about (if it were an infinite cardinal other than aleph-n or beth-n I wouldn't either). Sometimes deliberately vague terms are better than terms which might sound like they're precise but they aren't. --___A. di M. 18:15, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"And/or" is very technical and can be informal. As such, it can be appropriate for documents, such as the MoS, that are meant to instruct. However, it is not ideal for encyclopedia articles. In other words, "and/or" does have a place in the English language and possibly a place on the MoS, but most Wikipedia articles would be better off with more formal wording. However, because seeing "and/or" on the MoS could confuse people about whether it's preferred, I would not object to replacing it here.
As for the examples, perhaps they could stand to be reworded, but let's not remove them entirely.
As far as Language Log is concerned, remember this: It's a linguist's job to describe what people are doing, regardless of whether it is correct or not. They're like anthropologists. Anthropologists had to come up with cultural relativism so that they could set aside their preconceived notions (such as non-Christians => hellbound heathens, naked breasts => wicked seductresses) and learn about other cultures. However, that doesn't mean that the study of ethics was thrown out the window. They're simply separate pursuits. If you want to know what people are doing, ask an anthropologist, but if you want to know if a given course of action is ethical within your own moral system, ask an ethicist. If we want to know what is correct in grammar and punctuation, we're better off consulting the Chicago, MLA or Cambridge guides than Language Log. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:55, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Several mysteries there; among them, the nature of "correct grammar" (as contrasted with grammar described by linguists and not flagged with "%" or similar), and the identity of the "Cambridge guide". -- Hoary (talk) 23:19, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Cambridge, Oxford, whatever the top British one is. Wouldn't know. Not British. Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:57, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The top British what? Meanwhile, your appeal (if I understand it correctly) to the Chicago Manual of Style and the MLA Handbook for matters of grammar surprises me: although both do indeed deal with punctuation, I don't think that either deals (other than tangentially) with grammar -- aside from parts of a single, discrete, and curiously underinformed chapter by one Bryan Garner within the 15th edition of the latter. -- Hoary (talk) 00:58, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
From what I've read, most of the people on Language Log would rather mock copy editors than deal with what's correct. They are incredibly biased, almost universally dismissing any non-descriptive view of language. They even have a tag for what they call "prescriptivist poppycock." That doesn't suggest to me that they have much respect for what we're doing. While their columns are sometimes interesting, they're not dealing with the same sorts of issues that we are in the editing and improvement of this MoS. Ergo, for grammar and punctuation, we are better off using respectable style guides such as Chicago, MLA and their British counterparts than Language Log. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:20, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
As I was saying, the issue here is not really prescriptivist grammar, nor editorial style. It is simply an issue of us code-switching into a tone that is suitable for an encyclopedia. Even the most die-hard descriptivists can empathize with that. They can even describe the traits of the sort of English that we switch into, if they like. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:25, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Darkfrog, the writers of the Language Log know whereof they speak. Where prescriptivism derives from assertions about language that are wrong and known to be wrong, the result richly deserves the term "poppycock". I note that you are repeating your advice that "we" would be wise to use "respectable style guides such as Chicago, MLA and their British counterparts" not only for matters of orthography but also for grammar. Questions for you. 1: To what extent does "MLA" deal with matters of grammar? (My own copy, if I haven't yet tossed it into the trash, is several editions old.) 2: Why should readers take seriously Garner's demonstrably underinformed chapter within Chicago? 3: To what extent do the Garner-free chapters of Chicago deal with grammar? -- Hoary (talk) 01:53, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
They may know whereof they speak, but they're not speaking of things that are of use to us. They correspond to anthropologists and we need something that corresponds to ethicists. They're not trying to give an unbiased view of what is and is not correct about language; they're writing a blog geared toward a like-minded audience for fun and to blow off steam. Using the blogs of people who do not believe in prescriptivism as a source for an essentially prescriptivist document like this one is like using the blog of an anti-religion atheist or fundamentalist Christian as a source on the Koran. Sure, there might be something good in there somewhere, but in general, it's probably not our best bet. We're not their audience anyway. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:19, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
For Language Log editors' views on copy editors in general (as opposed to some of the poppycock some copy editors sometimes come up with), see also their statement "Copy editors are a blessing, and a necessity." ... added at 08:12, 5 October 2009 by Boson
Let's see... The writer refers to what copy editors do as "silly" and "superstitious." The writer claims that the copy editor about whom he is writing said things that he did not actually say, setting up straw arguments. This is biased person who doesn't want to be thought of as biased but is.
I'm not saying that Language Log is never going to be useful on Wikipedia, but for the MoS the question "Is this correct or not?" is going to keep coming up. For the answer, we're better off with a less prejudiced source. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:09, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No, Darkfrog. The writer (Pullum) carefully dismantles a "quadripartite claim" underlying a certain distinction, beloved by many prescriptivists, between contexts for "that" and which" in relative clauses (RC), and says that copyediting in accordance with this inadequately motivated distinction is superstitious, a waste of company time, and a sorry waste of the time of the particular humans who do it. Now, I think it is likely that Pullum is able to discuss RC with more expertise than could all of us together. He has also published voluminously and even when not copyedited writes at least as well as any of us. The argument of this "biased person" on RC is one that you are free to challenge; however, it looks convincing to me, and as long as it does convince, it is hard to see how copyediting in accordance with the "quadripartite claim" -- dismantled not only here but in any of several descriptive grammars -- is anything but superstitious. If the question "Is it grammatically correct to say 'Fidelio is the only opera which Beethoven completed'?" were to come up, then the answer would be yes it is (although its correctness doesn't mean it can't be stylistically improved by the the removal of the correct but superfluous "which"). However, the writers of MoS are free to turn their backs on the established facts about English and instruct would-be writers for WP to follow rules that pertain to what might reasonably be called voodoo linguistics. (Coming next, world history as illumined by the "Illuminati".) -- Hoary (talk) 14:59, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
But the writer under critique wasn't making that precise quadripartite claim in the first place. The Language Log writer added things in for the purpose of taking them apart.
Look at it this way, they picked the tag "prescriptivist poppycock," and that says something. They didn't pick a word that meant "the ones who take it too far"; they picked a word that meant "all of them." It's as if a conservative blog took an idea held by only the most extreme liberals and said "liberal poppycock" instead of "extremist radical poppycock." That same conservative blog will swear up and down that it is only reporting the truth, and that's all right because it's written for its audience and it's understood that there's a slant. The Language Log writers could have said "which-hunter poppycock" or some similar term, but they didn't. These are people who don't want to be thought of as biased, who perhaps don't even realize that they're biased, but they are. We should use their material with the same caution that we would apply to a political blog. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:14, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm lost. Are you saying that this allegedly grammatical distinction between that and which for RC is extreme prescriptivism, or that it's an example of something so extreme as to call for a word stronger than "prescriptivism"? If there is a grammatical distinction, on what might it rest other than the quadripartite claim? Do you say that nothing "prescriptivist" should ever be called "poppycock"? -- Hoary (talk) 15:27, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
What you're trying to construct is a set of guidelines that will help people write better, or avoid writing badly, or both. This is indeed not the purpose of the people who write articles for the Language Log. However, those people tend to write at least as well as does the average conscientious contributor to WP. That being so, sceptical comments on prescriptivism might merit some consideration. I don't think you'll find much support there (or here) for any idea that flabby prose should not be improved or that a pointless and confusing lack of standardization is desirable. However, you may find opposition to the notion that much of the difference between "correct" and sub-par English can be expressed as a set of near-shibboleths, reproduced more or less automatically from opuscules that your doting grandparents may have given your younger self. Happily, the MoS largely avoids lists of words and constructions; however, it does approvingly point to such pages as List of commonly misused English words, which in turn implies that (inter alia) the use of "infer" to mean "imply" is a misuse -- not a judgement that has much scholarly support. The MoS links to that list from a section titled "Contested vocabulary", whose appearance as a subsection of "Grammar" is a reminder to me of my -- or somebody else's? -- profound ignorance of the meaning of the term "grammar". Meanwhile, the punctuation section now sports a subsection ostensibly dedicated to and/or (but whose paragraph on [and-less] or suggests that it is about and/or and/or or). This starts with the assertion that The term and/or is awkward, an assertion that's far from self-evident, for which no argument or authority is provided, and which on this talk page is supported by such zany expostulations as There is no place in the English language for and/or, ever (although there demonstrably is such a place). However, if you want the MoS to descend into a laughing stock, don't let me hinder you. -- Hoary (talk) 10:13, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Meanwhile, if you're looking for an accessible British rulebook for spelling and wording, try this one. It's the guide for a respected newspaper, it's always available, it costs nothing, and its acquisition damages no tree. Incidentally, it has nothing to say about "and/or"; I infer that the Guardian has no objection to its normal uses. -- Hoary (talk) 02:12, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
My impression is that the guys and gals at LanguageLog aren't opposed to all grammar, only to the descriptive grammar which has that has with no basis on reality. For example, G. K. Pullum's February 2005 post clearly shows that he thinks that there's a linguist (James McCawley) which he does not dislike, and his March 2008 post shows that he agrees, among other things, that "which" should introduce all those supplementary relatives that have non-human head nouns, that it shouldn't be used for humans, etc. Anyway, it seems that in recent decades even prescriptive linguistics is becoming based on reality: very few grammarians would nowadays consider all "split infinitives" to be incorrect, as they have been very widely used even in the most formal prose, so stating that they are "incorrect" would be groundless. ___A. di M. 15:26, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
McCawley was the author of a substantial theoretical grammar of English (and much else that's related). Pullum is the coauthor of the largest and most highly regarded descriptive grammar of English (and much else that's related). What could "[opposition] to all grammar" mean; and whatever it might mean, how could Pullum and others be suspected of harboring or manifesting it? (Oh, and Pullum likes plenty of linguists; need this be spelled out?) -- Hoary (talk) 15:44, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If the writers on Language Log think that the distinctions between "which" and "that" have no basis in reality, then that is a point against them, not in favor. Sure, the distinction is given more weight in the U.S. than in Britain, but it is there.
Hoary, I am saying that we should take what the writers on Language Log say with a grain of salt because of the low level of respect that they hold for prescriptivism. That isn't to say that these people aren't experts in their fields or that nothing they say holds any weight, but we should take into account that 1. their profession is primarily about descriptive linguistics, which requires a certain mindset and 2. while they are writing for Language Log, they are writing for the entertainment of a like-minded audience and will phrase things accordingly. A like-minded audience wouldn't mind that the copy editor in question did not actually make all of the claims under examination, but we should take notice of it.
"Which hunter" is a term used in the article that Boson showed us. I do not happen to think paying attention to the difference between "which" and "that" with regard to restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses is extreme prescriptivism, but the Language Log writer seems to. "Which hunter" is a term that Language Log could have used instead of "prescriptivist" in its tag "prescriptivist poppycock." In choosing a term that applied to all prescriptivists and not, as they claim, only to the ones who take it too far, they are showing me that it is prescriptivism itself that they hold in low esteem. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:20, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(after edit conflict)

Replace plenty of with many, which has the additional advantage reducing the word count, which, in turn, is usually an improvement. Although widely used, a number of is vague. It should be replaced by a specific number (if known) or (that's exclusive or) a few, several, some, or (exclusive) many.
And/or should be expunged from the MoS; MoS should lead by example. Finell (Talk) 22:02, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Did it this afternoon. Now the only uses of "and/or" in the MoS are those that discuss it as a term. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:31, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent! Finell (Talk) 03:06, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm launching a competition for an alternative to the journal article title "Molecular dynamics simulations at constant pressure and/or temperature" that avoids the detestable "and/or" but is just as efficiently expressed. Any takers? (It's the target of Hoary's "demonstrably" link above.) Tony (talk) 11:19, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Titles are not prose, of course; this discussion is about the prose within articles, while journal article titles are not sentences. Still, the easiest change in this case would be to use simply "or" and explain in the abstract that the methods include the case when both are constant. I already know what the arguments against that would be, so there is no need to remind me of them. It's simply a matter of preference in that title.
Now, regardless whether and/or has a place in some English, or is used by some writers, I would argue it does not have a place in our particular English on Wikipedia, because it has the wrong tone for us. Do those who argue in favor of "and/or" feel similarly about "his/her" or "if/when" in Wikipedia articles? I would view all three of these as parallel constructions that we should avoid. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:43, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"If/when" can always be replaced with "if and when" without any change of meaning. As for "his/her", you can use "the player's" (or the equivalent replacing player with whichever common noun you need), sometimes "the", sometimes "their", and if all else fails "his or her". In some (rare, but possible) cases, there's no good way of avoiding "and/or" without possible confusion short of rewording the sentence altogether, and if the replacement sentence "sound worse" or is three times as long, that's not a Good Thing. IOW, I would discourage it when possible, but saying that "it does not have a place" sounds like throwing the baby away with the bathwater. ___A. di M. 13:00, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
What a coincidence! The example Tony found is very close to the topic of the B.Sc. thesis I'm working on right now. ___A. di M. 13:01, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This is actually a pretty good example of "and/or" as a term that can be appropriate or inappropriate depending on context. Of course we shouldn't change the title of one of our sources when quoting it directly. However, that doesn't mean that we have to import the tonal preferences of physical chemistry journals onto Wikipedia. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:12, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That title is an easy one: change and/or to or. First, the context suggests non-exclusive or. Who would be looking for, or write, an article about either constant pressure or temperature, but not both? (If the article is about fluids, pressure and temperature are related.) Second, it's a title, so brevity is at a premium. The lead sentence and abstract would clarify any doubt. What's my prize?
By the way, scientists share with lawyers (sorry) the language usage trait of thinking that wordier is more precise, or that each statement stands alone; context can provide sufficient precision.
If and when is more Legalese. Even lawyers don't use if/when. In most contexts, either word will do; in some contexts, one may sound more natural than the other. Use English! Finell (Talk) 16:11, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, scientists prize conciseness quite highly. There's an expression that scientific journals "charge by the square inch." (This is also why so many of the graphs and charts are tight and hard to read.) If a scientific journal or title has lots of words, it is because the scientist believed that all of them were necessary to get the exact meaning across. This title is a good example. It's long, but take away almost any one of the words in it and the meaning would change. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:24, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know about practices at scientific journals. Have you tried reading A New Kind of Science? It is excruciating (the writing, not the math). Most sentences begin with a warm-up and end with a clarification. Expressions like, "One may, for example ..." begin many sentences, one after another. Wolfram's preface explains that he decided to forgo the editorial process entirely so no one would interfere with his text. Big mistake!
Darkfrog, do you live on this page? I think you are risking repetitive strain injury from clicking the refresh button so often. Finell (Talk) 16:51, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, it's just what I've picked up from working in protein biochemistry labs. Thank you for your kind thoughts about the state of my wrists, but as Amy Tan would say, you need not concern yourself with that for my sake.
Consider that "scientific article" can mean more than one thing. A scientific journal article is the sort that would appear in the Journal of Biological Chemistry or the back half of Science or Nature. It will have an abstract, a methods section, a conclusion section, etc. This kind of article will be written in sciencese, which can be hard for laypeople to read. The other kind of article is the sort we'd see in Scientific American or the front half of Science or Nature. These articles are supposed to be written in proper, intelligible English. Tony seems to be working with the first kind, a journal article. "A New Kind of Science" sounds like it would be the second. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:09, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I should have linked A New Kind of Science. It's a huge book. Interesting content, horrible to read. Finell (Talk) 20:37, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Bizarre bug?

What's with the weird Turandot (ctrl-click)">Turandot (ctrl-click)"> that came up in this edit to the MoS? I try to remove it, but when I click Preview, although the preview itself looks fine, the weirdness has magically re-appeared in the edit box. Odd thing is, I've had similar text pop up in one of my own edits in the corresponding part of Tony's condensed MoS [5], which Tony subsequently removed [6], apparantly without any trouble. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 16:29, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's got something to do with previewing templates. It's a bug across all of wikipedia. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 18:16, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I thought someone must have crept in in the middle of the night and put that in the concise version of the Mos. Got up my goat that it's exclusive Win-doze speak, too. (Those of us who drive a Rolls Royce use the "command" key, not the "ctrl".) Tony (talk) 12:10, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I recall such a problem with WikiEd a couple months ago. Dabomb87 (talk) 13:23, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Use of italics when introducing a term

I'd like to propose a small addition to the italics guideline both here and in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (text formatting), under the "emphasis" heading.

The reason for my proposal is that I was confused when consulting the MoS because it only briefly mentions emphasis, and then goes on to discuss "mentions" of words (for example, to show the word or root under discussion in language articles) and refers the readers to an article page Use–mention distinction that I think needs some work.

Italics are often used in ordinary printed text when introducing a new term, especially if it is then going to be employed in later discussion in a particular way. For example, at Gloss I read:

A collection of glosses is a glossary (though glossary also means simply a collection of specialized terms with their meanings).

Now the first occurrence of "glossary" is linked and emphasised, which I agree is perfectly correct and normal use of italics, and is a use, whereas the second is a mention rather than an emphasis, and is a correct use of italics for a different reason. (The third and final use of italics I think is debatable, but it is really a matter for linguists whether it should be in italics or quotation marks or whether neither is appropriate.) I just propose making it clear in the MoS that the the first type of emphasis is valid and often useful. There must be many, many articles where this use of italics is employed in this way, albeit in a more straightforward way. According to HTML specifications [7], ideally ... should surround "the defining instance" of a term (presumably regardless of whether the term is being employed as a use, or defined as a mention), but this HTML element is rendered as italics by default.

This is my proposed addition to Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Italics (the bits in parentheses I'm not so sure about and probably should only go into the "text formatting" subpage):

Italics may also be used for emphasis where, in the course of using a term in an article, that term is being introduced or distinguished in meaning. (If the term is synonymous with the subject of the article, then it should be emboldened rather than italicised and preferably mentioned in the lead paragraph. It may be both linked and emphasised if the meaning of the technical term also has its own article corresponding exactly to the meaning in the present article. A term being introduced is very often mentioned as a word rather than used in context [see below], and if so mentioned should be italicised or quoted, but not both.)

I'm not proposing this as a prescriptive point, more as clarification that a normal use of italics in English is still likely to be used on Wikipedia. I know a short section cannot encompass all situations under which emphasis is desirable in text, but I think that given the more lengthy discussion about use-mention, it is important. I believe Wikipedia articles differ from ordinary text in that hyperlinking has often been used to show a technical term, where such terms would be in italics on paper; this means that this use of emphasis is less frequently necessary, but still useful on occasion. Here is another slightly reflexive real-world example:

Similarly the word a, an article or determiner, would look like this: [1]

(followed by a grammatical diagram). Here the first use of italics is a mention, the second is a use of the word "determiner" that is also introducing that word (explaining it to lay readers as more or less equivalent to "article" and that "a" is an example).

Opinions?

As an unrelated point, I'd suggest "Effect on nearby punctuation" and "Italicized links" should be made subheads, as they are not cases when to use italics which the preceding bold headings all refer to.

  1. ^ Pinker, Steven (1999). Words and Rules. p. 5.. Emphasis in original.

--Cedderstk 10:28, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've added a subsection at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (text formatting)#Italic_face that is the kind of thing that I hope might have been helpful to me in trying to decide the best formatting of certain words (Canadian system of soil classification is one article that prompted this). I meant to just describe normal use of italics and suggest how that most sensibly interacts with existing Wikipedia guidelines. As I say, I only suggest adding one sentence to the main MoS.
I think "Italics are used sparingly to emphasize" could be more precise in guiding contributors. I note that Fowler's suggests eight possible situations when it is helpful to put a word in italics: (a) "This word, and not the whole phrase of which it forms part, contains the point"; (b) "This word is in sharp contrast to the one you may be expecting"; (c) "These two words are in sharp contrast"; (d) "If the sentence being spoken, there would be a stress on this word"; (e) "This words wants thinking over to yield its full content"; (f) "This word is not playing its ordinary part, but is a word as such"; (g) "This is not an English word or phrase"; (h) "This word is the title of a book or newspaper...". Points (f), (g) and (h) are explicitly dealt with in their own subsections already, but general emphasis is given a disproportionately small amount of explanation. Interestingly he doesn't mention the introduction of a new term as a specific case, but it is a commonplace practice and, I think, worthy of mention. --Cedderstk 20:59, 6 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Here's another example showing that HTML sensibly distinguishes different uses of italics, as <em> (for emphasis), <cite> (for citing longer works) and <dfn> (for introducing a term). http://www.htmlquick.com/reference/tags/dfn.html#tagexamples has as an example:

A Cascade Style Sheet is a document with presentational attributes grouped in classes.

which is shown as:

A Cascade Style Sheet is a document with presentational attributes grouped in classes.

Note that this is not covered by the use–mention distinction. If the defining instance here were a mention, it might be:

The phrase Cascade Style Sheet is commonly abbreviated to CSS, and could be defined as "a document comprising classes each with attributes relating to presentation on screen or print".

And there's another good example illustrating all three distinct uses of italics in HTML at [8]. --Cedderstk 11:27, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

but not limited to

This is beginning to bug the heck out of me. I'm finding many cases where people are writing "but not limited to" after "including" as a knee jerk reaction because they have read it so often in legal documents. It's legalese, and shouldn't be in an encyclopedia. Where do we think this guideline belongs? DJ Clayworth (talk) 15:36, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Nowhere. See WP:CREEP, WP:ILIKEIT and WP:IDONTLIKEIT for why. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 15:52, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'd agree than "not limited to" is ordinarily implied by the use of the word "including", and would remove such superfluous verbiage myself in most cases. However, there would be hundreds of other superfluous expressions and I doubt most editors would ever read such a list; also it would be hard to get agreement on what is superfluous or not as it's likely to depend on context. I don't think the Manual of Style or anything in Category:Wikipedia style guidelines really talks about writing style much at all, because it is such an idiosyncratic thing and is usually taught by example.
The nearest I can see is WP:TONE: "the article should not be written using unintelligible argot, doublespeak, legalese, or jargon; it means that the English language should be used in a businesslike manner." "Businesslike" might be worth challenging: sometimes, it may need be discursive, and "business English" is not to be imitated for academic subjects. Funnily enough, the style guideline for writing style guidelines says "be clear and terse. Avoid esoteric legal terms and verbose dumbed-down language. Be both plain and concise. Clarity and terseness are not in opposition: direct and brief writing is more clear." So maybe what you want is already covered in general terms? If not, maybe write an article off your home page or suggest at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)? Just my tuppence ha'p'orth. --Cedderstk 16:51, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't make a rule about this one. Cedders is right that "including" can be construed to mean "but not limited to" most of the time, but there are going to be cases in which the readers could think that the following list was comprehensive, so there will be times when "but not limited to" will be okay. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:59, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If a writer does want to imply exclusivity or limitation of a list, Fowler's advises the replacement of "include" with "comprise". "That is" (mentioned below) is another possible way of clarifying. Although such finesse may not universally applied, I haven't seen "including but not limited to" frequently myself, so am not sure it is a big problem. By the way, who reads legal documents? --Cedderstk 09:53, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Anyone who wants to install a computer program. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:14, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
WP:MOS#Subset terms says "Do not use two subset terms", which is close enough. BTW, I would usually replace "including but not limited to" to "for example" or "such as": no-one would take "metasyntactic variables, for example foo and bar, are ..." to imply that there are no other metasyntactic variables. On the other hand, to make clear that all known elementary fermions are either quarks or electrons, I'd say something like "all known elementary fermions, that is quarks and leptons, ...". I'd leave "including" only in cases where it's unknown or completely irrelevant whether the list is complete or not. (Anyway, I agree with Headbomb's point.) ___A. di M. 19:33, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ellipses and square brackets

The current guideline states, "An ellipsis does not normally need square brackets around it, since its function is usually obvious—especially if the guidelines above are followed. Square brackets, however, may optionally be used for precision, to make it clear that the ellipsis is not itself quoted; this is usually only necessary if the quoted passage also uses three periods in it to indicate a pause or suspension." The problem with this is that the only time the reader knows the source of an ellipsis is in the unusual case where not only did the original text contain an ellipsis but also the article has introduced a second ellipsis with square brackets. The other 99% of the time the reader will see an ellipsis and not know its source. How can the distinction be important in that one case, yet unimportant the rest of the time? Would it not make more sense for the guideline to follow a convention I've seen elsewhere, namely that square brackets should always be used when the ellipsis is not itself quoted? Then the distinction is always preserved.

Proposal: Modify the guideline to say that square brackets should always be used when an ellipsis is not itself quoted. PL290 (talk) 13:53, 6 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How will the reader know that an ellipsis in square brackets is not itself part of the quote? The current instruction is quite on point to say that the function is usually obvious (the overwhelming majority of the time) and I think is satisfactory. Christopher Parham (talk) 15:40, 6 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Surely that is a truly unusual case, and one for which a convention could be found if required to indicate it. I see no need to abandon the usual distinction simply because of that. PL290 (talk) 15:57, 6 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose This would modify the normal meaning of square brackets, which normally mean something has been inserted that was not present in the original text. I would suggest instead that if all the elipses were present in the origial, "[elipses present in original]" be added at the end, or if some of them were in the original "[unbracketed elipses present in the original]" be added at the end. --Jc3s5h (talk) 15:46, 6 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

On the contrary, it would conform with the normal meaning of square brackets: the ellipsis is the "something" that's been inserted. That's just the point. PL290 (talk) 15:57, 6 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The elipsis, with no brackets, is so firmly embedded in the normal method of writing quotes that I was unable to interpret your proposal. Saying that every elipsis that was not quoted in the original material is so different from what every decent publication does that it is entirely out of the question. --Jc3s5h (talk) 17:01, 6 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Ellipses in quotes normally mean that something has been elided. There is no reason to change this because of the unusual case where the quoted material itself contains ellipses. For that unusual case, Jc3s5h's solution would be fine. Eubulides (talk) 16:16, 6 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Ian Spackman points out below that the MHRA Style Guide also suggests "[...]", but it is in the minority among style guides on this issue. The MLA style guide used to require the square brackets, but they were evidently controversial and were dropped from the 6th edition of the MLA handbook.[9] I see no need for Wikipedia to require the pedantic and apparently-somewhat-obsolescent brackets. Eubulides (talk) 16:44, 6 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support (The MHRA Style Book makes the same recommendation with the same motivation.) Ian Spackman (talk) 16:27, 6 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support. In the same vein as logical punctuation, inserting ellipses without indicating that they are not part of the original text is tampering. Strad (talk) 04:54, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose: The most important objection is that we should not adopt a guideline that makes most existing Wikipedia articles non-complaint without an extraordinarily compelling reason. As to the substance of the proposal itself (as if we were writing on a clean state, which we aren't), ellipses enclosed in brackets is unconventional and is like wearing a belt with suspenders. Most everyone knows that ellipses in a direct quotation signify omission and square brackets signify addition or change. Unless Wikipedia is quoting from a quotation in a source (a secondary quotation), there is no ambiguity: Wikipedia inserted the ellipses. When Wikipedia is quoting from a quotation, there is always ambiguity—did Wikipedia or the source we are quoting alter the original quotation?—no matter what symbolism we use. The ambiguity can be resolved with a parenthetical explanation, or, better, avoided altogether, either by quoting the primary source directly or by quoting individual snippets of secondary quotation with no omission or alteration. Finell (Talk) 02:03, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose. It's reasonable to raise this for discussion, but I think the current wording is excellent (who wrote it?). In the perfect world, editors would be able to trace back exactly who introduced the ellipsis, and the current advice leaves open the option for this to be explained in a note at the end of the quotation. But I don't think it's reasonable to force a symbolic convention that will be impractical in many cases (Eubilides) and will instantly render many quotations faulty or suspicious (Finell). Tony (talk) 02:13, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

More italics clarification and inline "see"

Is the following a fair description of current practice?

Hatnotes, one-line notes that include links to other pages, and other disambiguation and redirection templates are automatically indented and in italics if an appropriate template is used, in order to distinguish them from the text of the article proper. However, an inline "see" or "see also" instruction in the main body text should not be in italics. Such a pointer to related information that is not otherwise mentioned should also be followed directly by the relevant article name or names, on the same line, without an intervening colon or other punctuation. (See Wikipedia:Linking for more information.)

I'm thinking this might be a useful reminder to put into Wikipedia:Manual of Style (text formatting) under a new section on Wikipedia-specific use of italics. (The point about a colon arguably doesn't apply in a disambiguation page, such as International affairs, but it seems to be a sensible convention on article pages from what I've seen.) My Macmillan Encyclopedia does in fact italicise See and See also, but I wonder if that is because historically q.v. was in italics as a foreign phrase. Has this been discussed before? See also Cross-reference --Cedderstk 00:17, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I still can't find any previous discussion on this, and I've wondered about correct Wikipedia style for years. For information, a 1947 Encyclopedia Britannica consistently uses "See" and "See also" with the "also" in roman. Is the general consensus that it is unnecessary to italicise "see" as it is followed by one or more links, or that it should be distinguished as introducing metadata? It's in roman at, for example, France and Evolution. --Cedderstk 09:25, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Another question is how to style the article title itself: see November Revolution? see "November Revolution"? see November Revolution? The second one is recommended by MOS:T ("Examples of titles which are quoted: ... Entries in a longer work (dictionary, encyclopedia, etc.)"); the last one is used in the examples at WP:LINK (see Fourier series for relevant background); ___A. di M. 10:31, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The article title surely should follow the intended title of the page, so that my question becomes "See also RMS Titanic." or "See also RMS Titanic." In your example (which redirects to J/ψ meson), "November Revolution" is neither the title of an article nor of a book, therefore your third solution must apply unless I misunderstand, but my question remains "see November Revolution" or "see November Revolution". Since most traditional encyclopedias (but not Chamber's Dictionary) apparently use "see" instead of "see", if we were starting without millions of articles already written, I would argue for "see". That doesn't seem to have been the general tendency, and WP:LINK, which gives the Fourier series example, again uses roman "see", and of course "See also" section headings are also in roman. --Cedderstk 11:31, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, "November Revolution" is the title of the Wikipedia article in that context. (I consider the part between parentheses to be just a technical means to have two articles with an identical title.) ___A. di M. 15:12, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry, I realised later that I had misunderstood you. It is true that logically in "see November Revolution", we are not referring to the November Revolution as we might normally, but to the Wikipedia article entitled, or referred to as, "November Revolution"; and that in a printed citation this would be indeed be in quotation marks because it is a shorter work. Another oddity perhaps is that we usually refer to Wikipedia as a thing, rather than as Wikipedia or Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.
Printed encyclopedias do not generally seem to put their own cross-referenced articles in quotation marks, possibly for space reasons. In the Britannica they are in small caps, and in the Macmillan they are in lower-case roman, possibly on the basis that the whole cross-reference is in italics and the names of the entries are in italics within italics. There is no reason the spell out "See also the article entitled "RMS Titanic".". On the other hand, I think that the word see is used to introduce an encyclopedic cross-reference and announce that until the end of the sentence, different rules apply; one wouldn't expect chapter names to be in quotation marks in a table of contents, although we would in an introduction: (See "Further Reading" for details and references.) (I've also found examples in bold and italics in an introduction). I think it's worth considering that when a Wikipedia article is printed, hyperlinks aren't visible traits that were lost in the past may not re-evolve in an identical form (see Dollo's law)[10], so it really is desirable to distinguish cross-references and metainformation from the article contents somehow. It could be by (a) putting the first word of the cross reference (see) in italics, (b) the whole in italics (as in a hatnote), but distinguishing the article names somehow, or (c) in roman so that it blends in with the rest of the text and we can then have Traits that we lost in the past are unlikely to re-evolve identically, a rule the formalisation of which is discussed more under "Dollo's law"., but the article title or titles in quotation marks. I think (a) would be clearest to people familiar with a good printed encyclopedia, but it may be that we are stuck with the de facto situation.
I'd quite like some authority to come along and resolve how editors should style cross-references. In the meantime I will make some changes based on the proposals above, since there seems no opposition here. --Cedderstk 08:59, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(outdent) for the record, i don't understand what Cedders's edit to the MoS is trying to convey. maybe a brief example of what it's trying to talk about would be helpful. Sssoul (talk) 09:51, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for any confusion. It's to resolve an question unrelated to cross-references. I proposed it above at #Use of italics when introducing a term, and put examples and discussion there and in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (text formatting)#Emphasis. It makes the guideline for this particular usage, which I don't think would necessarily be represented as stress in speech, much clearer to me. It is common both in Wikipedia and in any number of technical or academic works, but is neither pure emphasis nor a use–mention distinction. If the longer explanation makes sense to you, and you can encapsulate it more clearly (or find a really clear example to include), please do, and if needed discuss in the section above. --Cedderstk 10:44, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I hope it's clearer now, and I've added an example that at least has the merit of clearly being a use rather than a mention. For more details see #Use of italics when introducing a term above. --Cedderstk 16:57, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

When to use talk page language templates

There are several language templates that are used to mark what variety of English the article is written in. When I added some US-English templates to anime and manga-related articles, which are mainly written in American English, an editor reverted and said that these templates should only be used in instances where there are conflicts between editors regarding which variety of English to use. A talk page discussion occurred here User_talk:TheFarix#US_English_templates where some other editors said that they felt the templates were not necessary, but they differed in proposed solutions and the details. One editor felt that the US-English template should be deleted, but that other language templates should stay. Another user feels that in general language templates should only be used when there are actual conflicts regarding the variety of English. I looked at the documentation and could not find anything which instructs "only add this template at this time" WhisperToMe (talk) 17:24, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't thought this through—sez he semi-alliteratively—, but my first-blush reaction is that they wouldn't be necessary unless a conflict came up or was foreseeable, although perhaps they could be useful. I spent part of my school years in England and part in the U.S., so my own style varies and I can't always remember which style is which for a particular word. Where one country's spelling seems clearer (e.g., U.S. judgement or Br. practise), I tend to use that one, regardless of my other spellings. And, while I'm no expert, I think that some people outside both the U.S. and the U.K. probably fall somewhere in between, e.g. Canadians. ¶ On the other hand, while the American, British and Canadian editors of War of 1812, a subject that equally concerns both sides of the Atlantic and both sides of the 49th Parallel, long ago decided to follow the British style of the first major editor, the existing British spelling and punctuation occasionally gets "corrected" by a passing American reader. In that case, perhaps a tag (which I didn't know about) would be useful.—— Shakescene (talk) 05:23, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Any rules for when one of these templates can appropriately be used would, in my mind, be a case of WP:CREEP. And I kind of have a problem with the very premise that the templates should only be used in instances where there are conflicts between editors regarding which variety of English to use -- if someone objects to the use of a template, then either there is an underlying conflict over the variety of English (in which case the use of template consistent with the eventual consensus is perfectly valid) or there is no conflict over the variety of English, in which case then I can't fathom why the heck someone would have a problem with the use of the template. If a template has been applied incorrectly, then fix it, just as one would fix the use of "color" in Calgary or "press-up" in United States Marine Corps.

Just to add -- I like these templates. While one doesn't necessarily always notice them on the talk page of any given article one edits, one does end up noticing them used on various articles over time. For novice editors in particular, they serve as a good reminder/advisement that there are many different varieties of English, and that they need not always "correct" the spelling of some words. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 19:59, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Let me switch a little closer to neutral, here, as I hadn't noticed these templates are for the talk page, where they'd be more helpful and less intrusive. (On the other hand that means they'd be less useful in stopping drive-by "correctors" who rarely see the Talk Page.) As for color in Calgary, I think that Canadians use both spellings; Maclean's decided to switch to U.S. spelling and usage about a decade ago, although I see that the Canadian Labour Congress (unlike the Australian Labor Party) still uses the "u". —— Shakescene (talk) 21:54, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The use of the "u" is by far the preferred use in Canada, is used by all the media, and is the standard on Canada-related articles on Wikipedia. Maclean's does not use U.S. spellings. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 00:55, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The user who objected to the template had no issue with the variety of English itself. He felt that the template was pointless. WhisperToMe (talk) 00:18, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Shakescene, isn't it "judgment" in AmEng, not "judgement"? And BrEng may accept both ... "Australian LabOR Party" was a branding exercise successfully promoted by those in the party who wanted to loosen ties with organised labour. It's an outlier. My feelings are that (1) too much can be made of which variety of English is used, (2) I don't like the potential dys-unifying effects of harping on it, (3) the differences between individuals' writing styles within a variety tend to be more significant than the differences between the varieties, and (4) yes, it would be good for house-cleaning, but it might put off some potential contributors who think "eeeuw, I'd better not edit this one, since I don't know how to write in BrEng". On balance, I'd prefer not to make a song and dance. A polite invisible note at the top of the edit box is enough, isn't it, if it is seen as important by the editors of a particular article? Tony (talk) 02:22, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think you're right about judgement. I think both spellings are used on both sides of the Atlantic, but judgement, which Fowler and I both prefer, is perhaps used more in Britain than in the States. Just shows how murky some of these alleged national differences have become. If what Tony suggests is possible, that would be probably the best solution: just to let potential editors know (in the occasional case when it's thought important enough) what convention is being followed, and to let them know that what might look like spelling or punctuation errors might in fact be agreed national preferences. —— Shakescene (talk) 05:44, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure what the material difference is between one of these templates and a "polite" note at the top of the edit box. People are going to use the templates where they think they are helpful, or they'll use another means if they prefer to do so, and it's really up to the editors working on any particular article to decide the best way to approach the issue of varieties of English. I don't think that trying to come up with an across-the-board approach is particularly worthwhile. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 13:20, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Conversion of competition distances in sporting events

In sporting events for specific competition distances like 100 m in athletics, 100 m freestyle in swimming, 50 km in cross country skiing, of K-1 1000 m in canoe sprint, should these distances be converted into imperial units? Chris (talk) 15:32, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say generally not, since it's effectively the name and definition of the event. Surely the purpose of MOS:CONVERSIONS is clarity, and while I'd quite like hectares converted to acres, anyone can roughly convert the length of a 100 m race, and it's an internationally known event. MOS:CONVERSIONS does say in some cases you can "link the first occurrence of each unit but not give a conversion every time it occurs", which sounds best. Adding conversions would IMHO clutter a page awkwardly as well as possibly confusing about the title of the event. --Cedderstk 18:51, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Chris (talk) 20:25, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'd prefer to see conversions to ease comparison, since miles are so firmly embedded in horse racing and the four-minute mile among other events, while historically many U.S. and Commonwealth events were in feet, yards, furlongs and miles. Even though I think few people measure baseball hits in meters rather than yards, I still added metric conversions wherever I reasonably could to Yankee Stadium (1923) and Yankee Stadium. (I also try to give conversions of hectares or acres to square yards or square miles, since "acre" doesn't mean much to me as a city boy.) It wouldn't be necessary to convert every appearance of 100 meters (or simple mentally-computable multiples like 50 m or 200 m) within an article, but some indicator early on would be very helpful. —— Shakescene (talk) 20:36, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with User:Shakescene. I've grown up with the metric system and wouldn't know a furlong if I fell on it! A "once off" conversion for the sake of clarifying the concept for as many readers as possible is a good idea. Roger (talk) 20:57, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It depends on context. For something like List of Olympic medalists in athletics (men), there's no point to adding "(109 yards)" after the "100 meters" in its discussion of sprints. Even the 100 meters article never mentions 109 yards, and that's OK too. Conversely, when talking about a marathon (42.195 km or 267⁄32 mi) or the Belmont Stakes (1.5 mi or 2.4 km) both units should be mentioned. Eubulides (talk) 22:48, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think that putting a conversion somewhere would still be useful. The running, swimming and skating records in my 1900 Whitaker's Almanack (U.K.) are almost all in Imperial units (Britain's 100-yard dash record was 9 4/5 sec. for amateurs and 9 2/5 for pros). In my U.S. World Almanacs for 1929 and 1943 (Johnny Weissmuller swam the 100-yard freestyle in 51 sec. in 1927), and in my 1975 Information Please Almanac (Mary Decker ran 880 yards = 4 furlongs = 1/2 mile in 2 min., 5.2 sec., in 1974) , the distances are almost equally metric and Imperial/U.S. customary. So I'd think that anyone who'd like to make rough comparisons with today's far-more-prevalent metric distances would appreciate being able to do so in as few steps as possible. —— Shakescene (talk) 00:36, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Conversions should be included early on, as there really is no fully universal measurement system is sports. Conversions should be included to help those who are metric-minded understand US/Imperial units, and the other way, as well. My reaction to some of the above comments is that some don't understand that the 100 meters may as well be 100 glorfs to some readers. Converting to a comparable unit that'd be understood in a sports context (such as yards, which are quite often used in various sports, even in countries that are otherwise metric) is never a bad thing.oknazevad (talk) 03:06, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
A large number of sporting articles ignore the above comments, and simply say "100 meter dash" without converting meters into yards or glorfs or whatever. Modifying these articles to also mention yards would help almost nobody (every schoolchild even in the U.S. knows what meters are: they've seen Olympics coverage) and would put unnecessary glop in the article, this hurting almost everybody. This case is an easy call: just say "100 meters" and go on to the next topic. Other cases may be more difficult, of course, and it is often appropriate to include both sets of measurements at least once. Eubulides (talk) 05:01, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Have we determined in which type of article this conversion is proposed? I see no objection to the article 100 metres saying "The 100 metre (109 yard) sprint is the shortest race in international athletics events...". I hope no-one is suggesting that Usain Bolt's article should read "He is the world record holder over 100, 150 and 200 metres (109, 164 and 218 yards)..." OK in description if pitch measurements (although for a specific stadium, ENGVAR will dictate one scale or other), articles defining the sport; not in articles about individual sportsmen, or specific events. So it would be fine to describe a cricket pitch as being 22 yards (23.8 metres) in the article Cricket, but daft to say, in describing a specific Ashes match, that Abe Atsman was run out by Oz Fielder with a throw of 65 yards (70.9 metres). In the rather unusual of horse racing, which has a vocabulary pertaining to distance virtually unused outside that sport, perhaps the word furlong should be linked so that it can be defined/converted for those who need it, and not be intrusive to those who don't. Lets avoid the type of over-conversion that led to a Times sub editor a few years ago rendering a headline that said something like Minister posits oil price as $64,000 (£47,300) question. Kevin McE (talk) 08:02, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I just finished adding a conversion table at the end, where it should be no distraction, of List of Olympic medalists in athletics (men) and List of Olympic medalists in athletics (women). (I did add mile conversions to the former's list of changing Marathon distances in the early Olympics.) The articles on 100 yard dash and 100 metres already have adequate conversions near their starts. —— Shakescene (talk) 09:35, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Quotations-1

The "Quotations" section of this article leaves some confusion. It states quotations that are more than four lines or more than one paragraph should be made into blockquotes. Then it gives examples of blockquotes with one one paragraph and less than four lines. I think blockquote can be useful even for a one sentence quote and know that many indented (blockquotes) in WP do not follow this MOS rule. So what should be a good rule? Hmains (talk) 22:41, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

All style guides I know of prescribe blocking only for quotations of a certain minimum length, although guides vary as to what that minimum is. Four lines is within the range of other guides, and seems about right to me. None that I am aware of is as short as one or two lines, and I see no reason to block anything that short. I question the "one paragraph" part of MOS's guideline, since a paragraph can (although rarely) be shorter than one line. Certainly MOS's examples should conform to the guideline. Finell (Talk) 23:46, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Quotations-2

The use of <blockquote>, {{quote}}, {{quotation}} and {{cquote}} are mentioned, but there are no guidelines for their use. As such, editors are free to use any of these for any reason mixed into any single article or single section of an article. Do we really want {{cquote}}s (scare quotes) all over articles or simply mixed in with non-scare blockquotes in the same article--all based on the latest editor's choice? {{Quotation}} results in the quote in a non-white color background and surrounded by a box. This looks nice. Should it be used in preference to <blockquote> or {{quote}} because I think it looks nice? Others might disagree and so the article gets switched back and forth. Could some quidelines be written on all this?

Also, the use of the colon (:) as the first character of a paragraph to indent the paragraph and thus make it look like a blockquote is not discussed. Is it perfectly ok to use (:) or not even ok to use (:) for this purpose? Hmains (talk) 23:00, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The templates mentioned in the MOS guideline on quotations have documentation that discusses their usage. However, it would be a good idea to discuss the usage in MOS. The gist is that pull quotes with distinctive formatting, which is what some of the templates do, should be used very sparingly. Using a colon is not appropriate to block quotations. According to all the style guides I am aware of, or at least remember, blocked quotations are indented on both sides; the colon only indents the left margin. I glad that you care about these things. Welcome to the MOS! You will meet others here who share this interest. Finell (Talk) 00:04, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
While I agree that it would be helpful to standardize the format used for quoted passages, I should note the term "scare quotes" has an entirely different meaning than the one you are using. — CharlotteWebb 14:14, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Internal Links In Lists

Compare this old version to my edited version - it is counter-intuitive for the reader to have to search back through the list for the only linked instance of a band's name, and it looks 'incomplete' with many unlinked artists... The justification for not linking subsequent instances of notable terms in main article text is that it hampers readability, but I believe that in lists like these, it does the opposite. Perhaps there should be an exception made in WP:MOS#Links for lists?  :) Also, is there a native way to link to old versions of articles? I couldn't find a help page addressing that particular need.  • Gliktch •  (Talk)  10:29, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that this is a good idea. The "generally link first occurrence only" guideline at WP:Linking#Repeated_links already makes just such an exception for tables, saying, "each row should be able to stand on its own". PL290 (talk) 13:32, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This is particularly true for sortable tables where the "first occurrence" might not sit still. One could conceivably add a "sortable lists" feature to the interface based on some arbitrary but predictable criteria. — CharlotteWebb 14:11, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Green text

The MOS pages use some kind of green-letter format for example text whether correct or incorrect. Would it be helpful to use a different color (red perhaps) for "bad" examples? Maybe something like:

Incorrect: October, 1976; October of 1976
Correct: October 1976

Obviously we wouldn't rely exclusively on this because some people are color-blind, but I think everyone else would be able to find answers a bit more quickly this way. — CharlotteWebb 14:28, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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