Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography

Common name, birth name and post-nominal initials

I noticed an editor making a excellent job of cleaning up bios to conform with the MOS. In one case Mark Evaloarjuk, I notice that the style guide does not give any information as to the correct format. Is the current opening correct, with the exception that "nee" should be "ne", or should it be '''Mark Evaloarjuk''' (né '''Evaluarjuk'''), [[Order of Canada|CM]] (died [[July 3]], [[2002]] By the way would it be possible to rewrite Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies)#Maiden names so that it applied to both women and men?

Inclusion of future job positions in infobox, list, etc.

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

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Should future job positions be described in the infobox, lists of people with that job, succession boxes, and so forth? Or should they only be described in article prose?

Background:

• Talk:Charles J. Chaput#The info box.
• Talk:Samuel J. Aquila#Appointment to new diocese
• Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Catholicism/Archive_2012#Episcopal appointments and WP:CRYSTAL
• Talk:Salvatore J. Cordileone#Bishop of Oakland until his installation date
• Talk:Mario Poli#Catholic bishops do not change their see until installation
• Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive847#WP:CRYSTAL_and_appointment_of_Catholic_bishops

This dispute has to do with the appointment of Catholic bishops, but I am seeking a wider consensus, because in over three years none has been reached, and there has been no central place to discuss it exhaustively.

In a nutshell, the problem is that appointments of bishops makes big news, and installation is not so newsworthy. But bishops retain their previous post and do not assume responsibilities of the new job upon appointment, but upon installation. So what we have is everyone changing the infobox, lists of bishops, succession boxes, and other things to indicate that new bishop has assumed his post when he has not yet done so. Contrast this with the way it is done by WP:ACTOR. An actor takes a job starring in a film, and this can be described in the article, but not placed in the filmography until the film begins principal photography. Contrast this with the President of the United States. Barack Obama was elected first in November, 2008 but did not assume his duties until the Inauguration of January, 2009. I have verified that the infoboxes were not changed, some lists were updated but it was made abundantly clear with italics and so forth that he was President-elect and not yet President.

So I am asking for consistency, please. Either change the way everything else is done or change the way episcopal appointments are handled to have it line up with the way we already do everything else. Thank you for your consideration. Elizium23 (talk) 18:03, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

A couple of thoughts from my experiences. I have been through a couple of interregnums of bishops and they are not as black and white as you make them out to be. First of all bishops rarely succeed each other the way presidents do. Presidential succession is instantaneous, more like a monarch, than a bishop. We know who will become president should the president become permanently incapacitated or after the Electoral College has met. While I have not done a comprehensive study on this, there are numerous presidential and constitutional scholars (and others) who say a person becomes president at a particular point in time and not when the oath of office is administered. In other words, LBJ took over the presidency when JFK died not when the oath was administered on board Air Force One. This also came up last year when the constitutional Inauguration Day fell on Sunday. There were many who said Obama did not need to swear the oath twice (the formal inauguration ceremony is traditionally not held on Sunday) because he automatically becomes president at noon on January 20th regardless of when the oath of office is administered. They held the swearing-in ceremony at the prescribed time in the White Hose just in case. I realize all this is debatable, but my larger point is that there is a particular point in time when a person becomes president regardless of the circumstances and ceremony. The only time that happens with a Catholic bishop is when there is a coadjutor bishop with the right to succession. While there is no prescribed date or time, the coadjutor automatically takes over the see when the previous bishop dies or when his resignation is accepted by the pope. There is also no installation ceremony. A coadjutor bishop is welcomed, but not installed. (Of course, he is also ordained a bishop at that time if not already a bishop.)

Most episcopal successions do not happen that way. The previous bishop either dies, is appointed to a different position, his resignation is accepted, or he is declared incompetent for any one (or more) of a variety of reasons. This results in an interregnum which lasts for an undeterminable amount of time until a successor is named and put in place. (Although since John Paul II resignations are generally not accepted until a successor has been named so the interregnum is of a determined length of time in that instance.) Once a bishop is named to a diocese, and it is publically announced, he is by and large in charge. He is regularly consulted as to decisions that have to be made although most decisions can be delayed until he is installed and can give his undivided attention to the matters of the diocese. Some decisions he, or anyone else, are forbidden to make by canon and/or civil law until he is installed. This is more common sense than anything. Bishops who are corporate souls tend to take over that responsibility before their ceremonial installation. It could be a difference in time of several minutes to about a day, but generally not longer than that so there is not a huge time difference. Priests who are named bishop may also start wearing certain elements of episcopal attire such as the zucchetto and I believe the pectoral cross. However, they cannot wear the mitre, the ring or carry a crosier unless they are abbots. So while they may not formally be a bishop, or yet installed depending on the circumstances, they are acting the part. The Rite of Ordination of a Bishop, or the Rite of Installation, should not be viewed as a magic act either- now you aren't now you are.

All this is a process. It is a bit like the Eucharist Prayer. The western church feels the need to determine the exact moment the bread and wine are transformed, namely the Institution Narrative, while the eastern church (and the orthodox) view the whole prayer as consecratory and they don't want to single out an exact moment. That's part of the reason why I say it's not as black and white. It is also instructive that the Diocese of Wichita claims James O'Reilly as its first bishop even though he died before he was consecrated. He is placed at the head of the list on the diocesan Wikipedia page as well.

In many cases there are differences between dioceses and those called to be bishop and the particular circumstances of their appointment. It's also important to note that the Roman mindset tends to be less legalistic in these matters than the American mindset. In general, Toledo, Ohio is no longer considered an open see because Pope Francis named Bishop Daniel Thomas as its bishop this week.

Wikipedia is a resource and not a legal document. I don't think its necessary to get tied up in the minutia, especially when the minutia is firmly in the grey areas and not in the black and white. If someone is announced as the new bishop of a diocese I believe he can be listed as such and placed in an infobox with the appropriate notation of his status. All of this can be easily changed on the day of his ordination and/or installation. God knows why, but I generally follow these things and, all things being equal, can make the necessary changes in a reasonable amount of time. I suspect a few others are the same. That's the beauty of this resource. Doing so is not so much the crystal ball-gazing that you accuse others of doing. These things are already determined and the process of becoming the diocesan bishop has begun before anyone even thinks of editing a Wikipedia page. (I guess that was more than a couple of thoughts.) Farragutful (talk) 19:24, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

There are legitimate technical issues about when a bishop become the bishop - but I prefer to look at things from a casual user's perspective. I can easily understand how someone can hear a passing reference to a bishop change in their local area and then consult Wikipedia for more information. In the case of a newly named bishop, that means, imo, the information regarding the recent change should be prominent in the article. The exact wording and format can be discussed, but information on the change should be added as soon as possible.Dcheney (talk) 04:27, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Of course the information should be prominent in the prose, I am not disputing that. The fact is that many, many other WP:BLPs do not put future jobs in infoboxes, lists, etc. and this bishops case is an outlier. I'm asking for consistency or some explanation and consensus about why it simply must be done differently. Elizium23 (talk) 00:43, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

• We can take the lead from how sources discuss these things. If it's really the case that there's extensive coverage of appointments rather than installations, then appointments deserve mention in articles - and in infoboxes too. bobrayner (talk) 17:13, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Of course appointments must be mentioned in articles. There's no dispute about that. Now, how can we mention future events in infoboxes without cluttering and confusing them? This article is an example of my work after the last ANI thread regarding this dispute. As you can see it is cluttered and silly-looking with both present and future jobs in the infobox. I feel it is pretty much stupid to do it this way but that was the suggestion. Are you supporting that proposal? How would you change that particular article? Elizium23 (talk) 00:41, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

I am sorry. I did not mean to characterize the proposals here as silly or stupid. I should clarify what I mean by this. The current status quo is to strip out all the old information and put the new in. This is deleting sourced, verifiable and true information and replacing it with factual errors. This is what must be stopped without question. Now if the proposal can be made to modify the infoboxes, so that the current and future information can coexist there, that is something I can support, with reservations. I have reservations only because it isn't really done anywhere else on Wikipedia. I am not sure why Catholic bishops have to be special-cased. But anyway, I will go ahead and modify the relevant infobox template(s) with future job fields and we can see how that works out as more appointments roll in. Agreed? Elizium23 (talk) 01:07, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

His Eminence Manual of Style/Biography
Cardinal Archbishop of Berlin (installed) Cardinal Archbishop of Cologne (appointed)

• Comment My understanding of the subject is somewhat limited, but I'd like to point out that when we state that a new bishop was appointed, we're not referring to "future events," we're referring to a past event, i.e. the bishop's appointment, and I believe that such an appointment is indeed important enough to warrant its inclusion into all relevant infoboxes. On a similar note, the word "future" as used in the Christian leader infobox in the article discussed at AN/I rubs me the wrong way as it implies we know for a fact the appointee will assume office. I'd suggest replacing current/future with installed/appointed. Iaritmioawp (talk) 04:40, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

• I believe this solves the RfC. —JOHNMOORofMOORLAND (talk) 10:50, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

• Rejecting this proposal. It is indeed a future event, as an appointment does not confer the rights and obligations of a particular office. Only installation does that; it is a future job and the labeling of "(installed)" and "(appointed)" only serves to increase confusion among a readership who is mostly ignorant of the particulars (as can be demonstrated by all the editors themselves who are ignorant) so I am afraid I will have to stick to (future) and (current) in my proposal. Elizium23 (talk) 03:02, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

Oversimplification lends itself not to clarification but to obfuscation. The word "future" as used in the infobox is confusing to the reader as it does not report the present state of events but rather speculates on what is to come. Using the word "appointed" solves that problem. When we update an article to say that a new bishop was appointed, we do it after and not prior to the appointment. Therefore, the information we add pertains to a past event. That the office is not to be assumed by the appointee until his installation is immaterial. Once a bishop has been appointed, the appropriate title followed by the "appointed" label should be incorporated into all relevant infoboxes. If the appointment is subsequently cancelled, the label should be removed together with its corresponding title. If the appointment is not cancelled and the bishop assumes the office for which he was appointed, the label should then either be adjusted to say "installed" or simply removed as it's now superfluous. The problem of the term "appointed" being potentially unclear can be addressed by piping it to the article detailing the appointment process. Iaritmioawp (talk) 17:17, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

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

Place of Birth

In some countries, the place of birth in the ID record is cited as the town in which hospital where the birth took place is located, (sometimes because in the village of the parents maybe there's no hospital), despite such person may have never lived there or has no conection to that place... If I'm not wrong, in some countries, in the official ID documents, the place of "first residence" of the parents is the one appearing... How should this be listed in the Articles?--Maku17 (talk) 12:17, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Full names in running text and templates

Should we use full names instead of plain/common names in running text and templates? For example, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt instead of Eleanor Roosevelt, Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger instead of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Edward Moore Kennedy instead of Ted Kennedy, etc. The answer seems quite obvious and straightforward to me, but there seems to be a disagreement at Template talk:Kennedy family tree#Middle names. Surtsicna (talk) 11:26, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

RfC: Comma before Jr. or Sr.

Should the guideline about the use of a comma before Jr. or Sr. be modified to proposed language? ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 19:18, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Proposed language:

• If the subject's preference can be established, use it.

• If a subject's preference cannot be established, look at the form used by the subject's biographers. Use only authors who are known for serious, well-researched biography, such as Stephen Ambrose or Doris Kearns Goodwin. Other authors, news items, etc. should not be considered.

• If neither a subject preference nor a biographer preference can be discerned, default to no comma.

Introduction:

I asked for clarification of this guideline one week ago, on the BLP noticeboard, but there has been little on-topic participation. Please read that relatively short discussion before participating in this RfC, as it provides relevant background. In particular, note that the guideline's current language differs slightly from the original language.

The first response to my request for clarification was a dismissive assertion that I was "creating a problem out of thin air" and failing to apply common sense. I view that as closer to I just don't like it than an actual argument. I believe that any guideline worth having in the first place is worth making clear. I also feel that the presence or absence of a comma in a person's name—particularly in the title of an article—is almost as important as the spelling of that name (and it wouldn't be much of a stretch to call it part of the spelling). If you disagree, please stop reading here, with my apologies for wasting your time.

As for the language of the proposed change, I feel that more "casual" authors should not be given any consideration as to the presence of absence of the comma. These authors are far less likely to attend to such details, partly because they are not expected to do so. In many cases, this is the only book they have ever written or will ever write; they simply have some inside knowledge of the subject and wish to sell it. A serious biographer, on the other hand, is more likely to have access to the subject's personal writings, etc., and will take more care when it comes to the details. If a subject has no serious biographers, and it cannot be determined that the subject had a preference one way or the other, I believe it's better to use the house default than to look at casual authors.

One might suggest changing the guideline to simply defer to WP:COMMONNAME. That would be problematic since it would open it up to a much wider range of sources, "reliable English-language sources". That usually requires the use of search engines (such as Google News Archive search) to determine the most common usage, and search engines ignore punctuation.

As for the house default, no comma, that is not within the scope of this RfC (nor prerequisite to it), so please save that for another discussion. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 19:19, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

RfC survey: Comma before Jr. or Sr.

• Oppose - I see no reason to make it more restrictive than it already is, which is a default to no comma barring sources telling us differently. I suppose we could make the current sentence "preference of the subject or <reliable> sources", but that's as far as I would go. Otherwise we just wind up arguing about who is actually a "serious" biographer. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:48, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
• Support - though I personally think having a comma before Jr./Sr. as default would be better. Eman235/talk 22:00, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose — usage as per common name in reliable sources and/or per explicit and consistent self-preference OK (that's always understood, does not need to be mentioned separately for every topic), but besides that: best to keep the default to "with comma" in all other cases (as it is now, I see no reason to change that). So, no need for this proposed update. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:23, 1 November 2014 (UTC)
• Support in principle, but ought to be sayable in fewer words and with less alteration to the present text, and following resolution of the question of what default we have actually adopted (see discussion below). This is basically a question of style, and it looks a bit poor if we introduce random variation in our style just to reflect the accidental differences between the styles used by the different sources we happen to have available about different people. W. P. Uzer (talk) 08:36, 1 November 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose Per Fyunck and Francis Schonken. Rationalobserver (talk) 19:26, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose Per Fyunck and Francis Schonken. Restricting this to "serious" biographers just seems to be asking for arguments and wasted energy. If the subject's preference is known use that; if the subject's preference isn't known, follow the consensus of reliable sources; if there is no consensus among reliable sources then use Wikipedia's default (whatever that is, and I don't particularly care either way). Thryduulf (talk) 01:07, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

RfC threaded discussion: Comma before Jr. or Sr.

• Comment see WP:NCP#Disambiguating — don't change WP:MOSBIO without checking (and if needed: updating) its consequences to the naming convention. I left a note about this current RfC at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people)#Jr/Sr convention in WP:NCP#Disambiguating --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:23, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

There seems to be a problem here anyway, since the page you linked to appears to make the comma the default, whereas this page makes no comma the default. Unless I'm misreading something, it seems this is a problem more in need of discussion than the one above. W. P. Uzer (talk) 08:40, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

"Do not place a comma unless" means the default is no comma. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 08:52, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Exactly. But click the first link that Francis gave, and it says "In the case of Senior/Junior, the preferred format is with ", Sr." or ", Jr." written after the name." Which implies that the default is comma - the reverse of what this page says. W. P. Uzer (talk) 09:33, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

I didn't realize you were replying to Francis, and thanks for fixing your indent. My read is that WP:NCP#Disambiguating needs to be updated as per the default, but it doesn't define the default. Most likely, whoever wrote it simply wasn't aware that a default was defined anywhere, and assumed that the comma was more appropriate because it's the more traditional form. It needs fixing, but it's not prerequisite to this RfC, and I would dearly love to avoid that tangent here. The default, if someone wishes to challenge it, is an RfC unto itself. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 09:50, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Well, if we have two supposedly authoritative pages with contradictory information, there's no way of telling which is the real default and which is the one that needs to be brought into line. Francis (in his vote) now seems to be saying that the default is with comma. There seems little point in discussing fine detail of how aggressively the default is to be applied, when there is such fundamental confusion as to what the default even is. W. P. Uzer (talk) 10:16, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Wonderful. So we'll have an RfC to establish where the default is defined, followed by an RfC to decide what that default should be. And then we can retry this RfC? No, I don't think the default is relevant to the criteria for when to apply it. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 10:25, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Anyway, WP:NCP#Disambiguating refers to the comma incidentally, in the context of disambiguating a Jr. and a Sr. The guideline, in contrast, is specifically about this comma, and nothing else. It's clear enough which has the stronger authoritative claim. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 10:42, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

You'd have to go back to see what the basis is for the two contradicting statements. If there was significant discussion on the matter before, then the consensus resulting from that discussion should determine what's authoritative. Basically the problem is that there are way too many Wikipedia guidelines, they are not well organized, and they seem to have been created and edited largely on an ad hoc basis. W. P. Uzer (talk) 10:51, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Granted. And we need to find a way to make small incremental improvements to guidelines despite that mess. To my knowledge, there's not a lot of traction for the idea of rewriting and reorganizing all guidelines beginning now. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 11:06, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

• Comment - <per your oppose> @Fyunck(click): True, but don't we make judgment calls like that all the time as editors? For example, what is actually a "reliable source"? ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 01:45, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Of course, but it's done by consensus of the article in question. We don't hamstring ourselves right out the gate. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:15, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not following your reasoning. Any decision process that is used for "reliable source" could also be applied to "serious biographer". There would be no more hamstringing than we already have for "reliable source". The question is how high you want the bar for this comma, and accepting any old authors' random treatments—including news articles, per the current language—is a pretty low bar. As I said, very few of these authors give a moment's consideration to the appropriateness of the comma for this subject. They simply write what seems right to them, as with any other punctuation, and their personal preferences should not be input to our decision. We might as well conduct a survey of all authors' personal preferences and apply the result across the board. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 06:54, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't think reliable sources should be narrowed to serious biographers. If 1000 semi-serious biographers spell it one way, and two serious biographers spell it another, I'll go with the 1000 semi-serious guys every time. And to ban news articles is not to my taste either. This is a guideline that has to cover a 100,000 different types of articles... the bar should be low. Individual projects can also help handle the intricacies in their own areas of expertise. But really shouldn't any discussion be talked about below? Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:51, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

I had the same thought, but didn't know how to respond to your !vote any other way. Feel free to refactor as you see fit, as far as I'm concerned. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 08:32, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

• Comment: Without prejudice to whether comma or no-comma should be the rule, if a comma is placed before "Jr." or "Sr.", a comma must also be placed after unless followed by other punctuation, as this would be treated similarly to the year in MDY-format dates or city–state/city–country descriptions (see MOS:COMMA). For example, Sammy Davis, Jr., was a member of the Rat Pack; not Sammy Davis, Jr. was a member of the Rat Pack. This ought to be mentioned here to avoid confusion and to promote proper usage where it arises. —sroc 💬 11:37, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

See, for example:

• Chicago Manual of Style – Jr., Sr., III
• English Rules – Comma with Jr. or III
• Grammar Book – Commas (see Rule 8)

—sroc 💬 11:49, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

• Comment: Whether to format "Jr." and "Sr." suffixes with or without commas is a style issue; why should the subject's preference enter into it? In my view, there ought to be a house style either: (1) always to include it (the traditional format); or (2) never to include it (the contemporary trend); or (3) to include or omit it at the discretion of the first main contributor of an article provided that each article is internally consistent. Pandering to subjects' preferences may lead to inconsistency within articles where some people are named with the commas and others without, quite apart from disagreements about whether other sources are sufficiently authoritative enough to lend support for a preference one way or the other. —sroc 💬 11:58, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Categorization by ethnicity

What are the criteria for categorizing someone as belonging to a certain ethnicity? The particular case I have in mind is Dmitri Borgmann; all reliable sources agree that he was born and spent his early life in Germany, and the only other statement in reliable sources concerning his ethnicity is that "he fled with his parents to Chicago in 1936 when they feared that the Nazis would uncover his mother's Jewish ancestry". This rather strongly implies that of his two parents, it was only his mother who had any Jewish ancestry, but doesn't say one way or another how much Jewish ancestry she had. Under the Nuremberg laws which Lisa Borgmann was presumably trying to escape, people were persecuted for having as little as one quarter Jewish ancestry. This means Dmitri could have been as much as one half Jewish or little as one eighth Jewish. Is this somewhat uncertain information sufficient to put him in "Jewish" categories here, such as Category:German Jews and Category:Jewish American writers? Again, the statement that his mother was at least partly Jewish seems to be the all the information we have; nowhere in third-party sources is Borgmann himself ever referred to as a "Jewish writer", nor did he ever identify himself as such in his own writings.

Note that my question concerns only the ethnic aspect of the categorization. There is no question that Borgmann did not practice the Judaic religion; sources attest that he was raised Lutheran and later became the head of an independent church. —Psychonaut (talk) 08:16, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

As with all categories, they have to be defining. If no reliable sources use that attribute, and if a subject doesn't self-identify as such, such categories should not be applied. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:16, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Without having reviewed discussions to see what specific categories are being disputed, it seems that fleeing one's country of birth because of fear for your life could be seen as defining. Why wouldn't Category:German Jews who emigrated to the United States to escape Nazism be appropriate? 2600:1006:B112:2B66:5AD:4287:E314:1B02 (talk) 15:57, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

There are no discussions to review, because nothing is being disputed at this time. This is just a query about what our guidelines say about categorizations. I have no idea whether Category:German Jews who emigrated to the United States to escape Nazism would be appropriate for Borgmann, or even for his mother (were she notable in her own right)—certainly not everyone who the Nazis persecuted as Jewish considered themselves to be Jewish. Is there any further guidance on this? —Psychonaut (talk) 20:15, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

@2600:1006:B112:2B66:5AD:4287:E314:1B02: I don't see how a 6-year-old being taken to the US could lead to the categorisation you describe – certainly for his parents, but not for the child. If that person throughout his life never self-identifies as a Jew, I don't see why he should be so categorised. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:44, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Re. "...what our guidelines say about categorizations": the guidelines you're looking for would probably be WP:COP#N, and more specifically WP:EGRS. Also WP:DEFINING might come in handy to get a grasp on what guidelines say in this respect. & excellently summarized by Michael. --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:13, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

I agree too. In fact I think categories like Category:German Jews who emigrated to the United States to escape Nazism serve little purpose except as a source of arguments. If editors are going to bother maintaining such a category, then with only a little extra effort they could maintain a proper list, with information as to what these people are notable for, when they lived, why they might or might not be considered to belong in the group, and so on. W. P. Uzer (talk) 11:49, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Use of surname alone and repetition of full name

In the first paragraph following the lead paragraphs, some users are fond of repeating the subject's full name, rather than just using the surname at that point. So we might have a lead paragraph, and then in the section entitled "Early life", it will say something like, "FIRSTNAME MIDDLENAME SURNAME was born in CITY on January 1, 1901 to parents FATHER and MOTHER SURNAME. ...".

Is there any consensus or ideas on what is appropriate here? (My reading of WP:SURNAME is that we should just use the surname, because this situation is not one of the exceptions listed.) Sorry, I don't know if this has been discussed before. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 03:26, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

I would prefer repeating the full name. The lead section is meant to be a summary of the main text, so the name should be given in full when it first occurs in the main text. Setting out the name in full may also be helpful if the lead section is quite long and separated from the main text by a similarly lengthy table of contents. Finally, it may seem a little odd to have a sentence like "Smith was the son of John and Mary Smith" (compare "Peter John Smith was the son of John and Mary Smith"). — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 07:29, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

I was the editor who made the edit in question that led to User:Good Olfactory bringing this up. Like User:Jacklee, I also prefer repeating the name at the beginning of the body of the article, and some searching proved that this is indeed a fairly universal practice in FAs and GAs on individuals. However, Good Olfactory correctly pointed out to me that this policy page does not actually mention any such repetition at all, and so I would like to join him in asking 1) if this has ever come up before, and 2) if other editors would chime in with their opinions.  White Whirlwind  咨  02:11, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't know whether this has been discussed before, but I agree that the full name should be reiterated at the beginning of the main text of a long article (e.g., "Early life" section). —sroc 💬 03:31, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Good grief, no. No reason whatsoever to repeat the full name. It looks extremely weird, almost childish in fact. It reminds me of individuals, especially those trying to sell you something, who insist on repeating your name every couple of sentences when speaking to you. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:25, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

RfC on Template:Infobox person

This message is to notify you that there is an RfC ongoing on whether to add pronunciation info to {{Infobox person}}, a discussion which may be relevant to watchers of this page. Your comments on the matter are appreciated. The discussion can be found here. Thanks! 0x0077BE ^{(talk · contrib)} 17:26, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Linking also the title if it belongs to the pagename?

Take a look at this edit. Is there a rule about "how to link a biography with a title at the beginning of the pagename"? I mean, how should I link "Pope Gregory VII"? In my opinion, if the community is using that pagename (after long discussions), it is probably a good way to refer to him. So I guess it's adeguate to link that biography writing [[Pope Gregory VII]]. Is there a good reason to write instead Pope [[Pope Gregory VII|Gregory VII]]? Please note: I don't want to discuss about the naming conventions, it's about linking the whole pagename even if there is a title at the beginning. And what about Queen Victoria? And Mother Theresa? Usually unnecessary piping should be avoided. -- Basilicofresco (msg) 00:31, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

The rationale is given in the edit summary of the edit you refer - it sounds reasonable to me. We probably want to be consistent within a given page (as to whether titles are included in the link). If we write ...King Henry VIII..., we want to be writing ...Pope Gregory VII... If the pagenames don't follow a consistent style (and often they don't) then a policy of linktext=pagename is not going to be optimal. W. P. Uzer (talk) 20:12, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Comma after "Jr.", "Sr.", etc.?

An editor made this edit which I've rolled back pending discussion and consensus.

The gist of the editors point is is: as we know, the usual form is not include a comma before "Jr." in a name, so that the normal form is Sammy Davis Jr. was a member of the Rat Pack.

But if, for some reason, either Mr Davis or the preponderance of sources regarding Mr Davis went out of their way to style his name as "Sammy Davis, Jr." (with a comma between "Davis" and "Jr.") then.... speaking for myself, I don't think we should pay very much attention to either the subject's wishes or the preponderance of sources for issues of typography on this level of detail. As a practical matter we do use non-stylebook typography for some cases (k. d. laing, eBay) and not for others (Macy's rather than Macy*s)... but for "Jr.", for some unaccountable reason, some person wrote into the rule that we do, probably years ago, and so it is what it is.

So anyway, it is what it is, and what the editor has proposed is that we should add material to the effect that, in cases like this, our proper form is

• Sammy Davis, Jr., was a member of the Rat Pack

and not

• Sammy Davis, Jr. was a member of the Rat Pack

Why? This doesn't follow at all. It is true that we have a problem if Mr Davis or most of his sources choose to use this nonstandard format (since we have chosen to bind ourselves to following that), and there's no perfect solution to that problem. However, presenting "Jr." as a comma-delimited phrase -- essentially similar to writing "Sammy Davis (Jr.) was a member of the Rat Pack" -- is not prima facie better than treating "Sammy Davis, Jr." as a unitary name which happens to have the oddity of having a comma embedded within it.

I am very much not in favor or editors making changes to any of our rules, regardless of merit, without a thorough discussion and acceptance. So the place to begin making the case that this is an improvement is here. Herostratus (talk) 14:14, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Firstly, why did you revert my unrelated edit to avoid the apocryphal text about royal names which contains mismatched parentheses, as noted in my edit summary?

Secondly, as I noted above before making the change (and references in the edit summary), style guides (including CMOS) confirm that a comma must follow designations such as "Jr." if one also precedes it, in the same way that a comma follows a year in month–day–year format and after city–state and city–country combinations, two rules which are well accepted by MOS yet often flouted. I happen to agree with you, as I wrote above, that individual subjects and sources should not dictate the formats adopted on Wikipedia and it would be preferable for us to adopt a uniform house style, and that remains under discussion; but as it stands, the clarification that I added regarding commas is beneficial in guiding editors to use correct formatting if the commas are used at all. —sroc 💬 23:44, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

My view (and this is really nothing more than a personal taste) is that the effect is better with as few commas as possible - and that if a comma before is going to be felt to necessitate a comma after (which I don't feel it does) then that's all the more reason to avoid using the commas before. W. P. Uzer (talk) 11:21, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

As noted above, style guides call for matching commas before and after if they are used. (It's not about our "taste" or what we "feel".) —sroc 💬 12:47, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

References

*Chicago Manual of Style—Jr., Sr., III: Q. John Smith Jr. or John Smith, Jr.? John Smith III or John Smith, III? A. Traditionally, it would be John Smith, Jr., and John Smith III. But beginning with the fourteenth edition of The Chicago Manual of Style (1993), the recommendation is to use no commas in either case (see paragraph 6.47 of the sixteenth edition): John Smith Jr. But please note that within text, if you decide to use the more traditional comma before Jr. or Sr., the function of the comma is to set off these abbreviations, so an additional comma is needed after the abbreviation if the sentence continues (as in my first sentence above). National Geographic Style Manual—Jr., Sr., III: Jr. and Sr. are preceded and followed by comma in full name: John M. Fahey, Jr. (left), went to... but John Jr. hurried... Grammar Book—Commas: Rule 8. Traditionally, if a person's name is followed by Sr. or Jr., a comma follows the last name: Martin Luther King, Jr. This comma is no longer considered mandatory. However, if a comma does precede Sr. or Jr., another comma must follow the entire name when it appears midsentence. Correct: Al Mooney Sr. is here. Correct: Al Mooney, Sr., is here. Incorrect: Al Mooney, Sr. is here. Daily Grammar—Lesson 341: Use a comma or commas to sett off the abbreviations Jr., Sr., and Esq. Example: Carl Harris, Jr., is here now. Answers—Is there a comma after Jr or Sr?: A comma would be used both before and after then designations of "Jr." or "Sr.," as long as the sentence continues. If the designation is at the end of the sentence, then a comma is used only before it. For example: John James, Sr., was well regarded in the community. However, the community had no use for John James, Jr. Knox News—Grammar gremlins: Style for "Jr." and "Sr." varies: Sometimes the simplest point can cause us a problem when writing. For example, should "Jr." or "Sr." in a name be preceded by a comma? Some stylebooks say no, others say yes, but the "nos" outnumber the "yeses." However, those that specify no comma say you should follow the person's preference if you know it. A point to remember is, if you use a comma before either of these designations, you must use one after it.

—sroc 💬 13:16, 8 December 2014 (UTC)