Talk:Theatre/Archive 1

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Talk page one

It seems to me that the theatre building section of this page should be moved to it's own section and expanded, leaving this page to discuss only theatre as an institution, types of theatre, etc. Any thoughts? Ganymead 07:27, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Makes sense. Let's move this article to "Theatre", and then the theater building section to "Theater building" or "Theatre building". As far as the spelling is concerned, as in the recent "Grey"-move, the spelling widely used and accepted in both U.S. and Commonwealth English is "theatre". Nobbie 16:57, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The only thing I would suggest is that instead of "Theatre building" we list it as "Theatre (structure)". Ganymead 19:47, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

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What are our priorities for writing in this area? To help develop a list of the most basic topics about theater, please see theater basic topics.

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Responding to an edit comment:

'Dramaturge' seems to mean 'playwright or adapter', according to my dictionary. Does anyone know if this word is actually in common use in the theatre world, or is it a pretentious usage, along the lines of 'auteur'?

-- The Anome

Pretentious usage, I'm afraid. Playwright or author are far more down-to-earth. -- Derek Ross

A dramaturg these days is a person charged with providing scads and scads of information surrounding the play--character development stuff, events mentioned, authors life details, whatever is necessary for actors and designers

--Bruce Cooper

I am, in real actual life, a professional Dramaturge, and the current article under the topic is a strikingly accurate description of exactly what I do, so all is good. A lot of theatres these days have dramaturges on staff; but the use meaning simply "playwright" is antiquated. BarkingDoc

Theatre or Theater

My understanding of the difference between the two lies in the variance between British and N.A. spelling, as is the case of center vs. center and metre vs. meter, among many others. As far as I know, the correct, persnickety spelling of theater in the U.S. should, therefore, be 'theater'--in all instances, whether referring to a physical space or the art itself.

I have always understood that in a bid to sound 'legitimate' many American theaters have changed their spelling to conform to the British standard--because, let's face it, American theater suffers from an inferiority complex when it comes to our transatlantic neighbors' output.

I leave it to you to determine whether this distinction is worth preserving.

• The info I've found suggests that it was only Webster who wanted to spell it 'theater'. Most professionals seem to prefer 'theatre' for the art and 'theater' for the building - I've changed the article to try to reflect this.

As even the Canadians use "Theatre" rather than "Theater" and most of the articles related to this topic use the former spelling, any objections to moving this article? Mintguy 10:25 Feb 7, 2003 (UTC)

• The bottom line truth seems to be that both are correct, and I think if there is a redirect it doesn't matter much. Those in the profession theatre in America also usually use the "re" spelling. I have been told lately by many people that the meaning that is taking hold is that "Theatre" refers to the craft, and "theater" refers to the physical building. I don't have any real reference to back that up, though. BarkingDoc

• I was fixing some other links, and saw that the "theater/theatre" thing was inconsistent in the article -- sometimes within the same paragraph! Since the article's named "Theater" and the first few paragraphs used it that way, I arbitrarily changed them all to that spelling. Feel free to change it the other way if you decide otherwise. (Don't just revert, though -- I caught a few other spelling/grammatical errors.)  :) Catherine 06:20 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

• From a lot of internet discussion with American theatre professionals, I have seen a wide and quite vehement support that the correct american spelling for live theatre is "re", and that "theater" implies cinema and burlesque only, and is used with negative connotations. However, some publishers stick to their style manuals and use "er". This suggests that completely moving the article and reversing the redirect would be the preferred option. Dramatic 11:09 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

• I vote theatre. Not just because I'm British, but because it seems that is the most wideley accepted spelling. There should be a standard for the whole of wikipedia though... if this is an international encyclopaedia sureley International English would be more appropriate? Then again the time is shown as US and wikipedia is spelt US. (ricjl 14:49, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC))

I moved this article back to "theater". That's where is was before and we have a policy to respect all forms of grammatically correct English. That means we don't move one form to another and don't change spellings in articles. Otherwise I'll move sport to sports and aeroplane to airplane. --mav

• Someone already moved aeroplane to airplane. From the above discussion I get the impression that theatre is the word used by American theatre professionals.
• It looks like it was merged with Aircraft. I find the profession (re) and building (er) distinction to be an interesting way to disambiguate these two topics. --mav

"Most professionals seem to prefer 'theatre' for the art and 'theater' for the building" This is the way I have learned to use the term. My theatre professor explained this is the common usage. (We fine arts majors have to take nine credits in the subject =o) The art is always refered to as "Theatre" in the US by professionals. Even the currently listed external link on the subject varifies this. [1] Almost all respected books on the subject use theatre. This isn't a grammatical issue. I'd recommend that this either goes to Wikipedia:Requested moves or we vote here. I'm not going to start the vote, but if some takes that initiative on either recommendation, please hit my talk page. --Sketchee 19:30, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)

This article focuses on two main topics: theatre as an 'art' and theater as a 'building'. Since the former (the art of 'theatre') is much more important, I'd think it would be more appropriate to move the article to 'theatre'. Any thoughts?

(Above comment is by 202.32.53.44)

Maybe we should split the difference and put one on Theatre and the other on Theater. We'd have to add a section citing usage on the two terms on each though.--Sketchee 15:35, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

That's a interesting idea. Very interesting from a linguistical viewpoint. But would that approach be tolerated, I wonder? 202.32.3.211 08:50, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• I don't agree that theatre is regarded as equally standard American English. Despite the currency of theatre in the U.S., it is an aspirational aping of British English. Let me explain why. In general (despite some anomalies), Greek neuter nouns ending in -tron are -tre in British, -ter in American. Examples: litron/liter, metron/meter, kentron/center. If wikipedia means to use standard U.S. English (as opposed to British/Canadian English), then this should be under theater -- unless and until we are going to start using centre, etc. Wareh 20:07, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

There is no policy for Wikipedia to use U.S. English - to the contrary see Wikipedia:Spelling#National_varieties_of_English. An article American Theater ought to use "theatre" throughout. the only problem in this article is that there is still some inonsistency. (Has everyone become too timid to correct that?). Aside - I've moved your comment into chronological order. dramatic 07:03, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying this. The previous debate sure seems to have been concerned with the question of establishing a normative U.S. usage. I see from the policy you linked that this is irrelevant. Wareh 22:10, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

His link proved nothing about Wikipedia policy. That is merely a link to a list that shows examples of where British and North American spellings differ. The websites of many North American universities such as UCLA or theater programs not "programme" in North America (i.e.,Julliard) tend to use "theater". Others often use British spelling, even in America, because unlike other words where spelling variation arises, Americans have a complex about the theater--that the ideal is something that happens using British accents and British customs. Examples would be American productions of Ibsen (not a British writer) and those of many other Continental playwrights where Americans strive to speak with what they believe to be a British accent. They even go so far as to perform Shakespeare in RP or recived pronunciation, when even the majority of Brits do not now speak this way, and what's more, nor did Shakespeare himself, a fact many Brits may not be aware of, that many changes in British pronunciation changed afterShakespeare, that were preserved in America. In other words, it has been noted, even if Shakespeare were able to come back and audition in London today, because of his accent he would not be able to get a job performing his works!

Another thing to do is to check the general text written by the Wikipedia staff. They do not use "colour", "programme" or "behaviour". This is Wikipedia.com after all and not Wikipedia.co.uk. For me this idea tends to solve things. But I am sure to the Brits it will just make them angry and force them to redouble their stenuous efforts to keep watch on any who would dare edit their sacred title from "theatre" to "theater".

Now, I'm sure if you ask Wikipedia staff they will probably try as hard as possible to evade the question but then if forced claim they don't have any policy because things like this are never easy to settle in an open system such as Wikipedia is. It is also the problem of "too many cooks." Articles written by multiple authors from different countries who may or may not have many sock puppets are ripe for disputes about such issues that are not easily resolved. For example, I may vote for "theater", but then a British member may send 10 sock puppets to vote for "theatre". There is no way to confirm that a genuine consensus took place.

The distinction of using the former spelling for buildings or movies is a problem for British speakers, Julliard and other institutions use it in ways that have nothing to do with those meanings. 218.218.61.59 17:09, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

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The diff function seems to be acting up - I nearly reverted fuzhedo's revert to an earlier version still because the diff made it look as though every spelling had been changed to -er. The current mixture is in line with W policy and does point out the disagreement on the topic. dramatic 08:59, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I say theatre too for everything performing arts related. Theater is for movies (synonym for cinema). But that's my opinion.

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Drama is not a branch of theatre. Theatre is a branch of drama. I think both articles on drama and theatre should be reviewed and interlink closer.

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Although the style reference cited by Shoaler from the University of Texas says "theater", their own organization chart on the same web site has a listing under Fine Arts for "Theatre and Dance". Is this another case of "Do as I say, not as I do" or just an example of widespread confusion about which spelling is preferred?

WCFrancis 19:42, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

I think there's widespread variation. Many organizations seem to use "Theatre" in their name because they think it gives them prestige. Maybe drama departments do the same thing, because there's no consistency there either. The last two citations were both from Juilliard, which should know if anyone knows, and they weren't consistent. Shoaler 22:10, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Not that I think that Microsoft would be an authority in this (or that this even matters, but I find it amusing), but the spellcheck accepts both as correct. WCFrancis 15:47, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

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Sorry if I'm butting in, but theatre and theater are two different words and meanings. Theater is the enclosed area where the audience watches a play. Theatre is the study of the elements of theater. Just a quick correction.--Mac Simms 18:43, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

You may find it useful to make that distinction, and others may as well, but the simple fact is that each word is just a spelling variant of the other, neither has any meaning that the other does not, and that any dictionary will tell you that. - Nunh-huh 18:46, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

As a theatre graduate student I have to say that I rarely see the "er" version of the word used inside theatre circles (unless it is the name of the building). While it IS a spelling variation, I would say in the professional theatre world we tend to use the "re" ending, which I feel makes it the correct ending to use. This may just be a quibble into which I am throwing my two cents, but rarely do I see people who are of the theatre use the word "theater" instead. Liontamarin 21:02, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

There are plenty of circles and orgainzations that use "theater" as well like Julliard or UCLA. A counter-arguement to what you say would be that the term should be one recognized by the general public rather than a selected group of insiders. I think that is the audience Wikipedia attempts to address. Those in narrow circles already know about their "theatre" and are less likely to consult a general article on Wikipedia to learn about it. It is the general public on the other hand that will find this artilce most useful rather than a (partial--in the sense that not all professionals use your the spelling you do) group of insiders or elitists. 218.218.61.59 17:37, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Not redundant.

There's a note at the top: "dramatic literature (redundant, unless someone can give this a different approach than play".

I'm not much of a writer, so I can't do this, but to me Dramatic Literature encompasses the body of work that is dramatic and theatrical criticism, experimental work (such as Boal's stuff), theoretical works, and historical writing, both critical and theoretical.

Requested move to Theatre

• Theater → Theatre — As in the recent Grey-move, "theatre" is accepted in both U.S. and Commonweath English, whereas theater is an accepted spelling only in the U.S. It was suggested to split the article into "Theatre" for the art and a new article "Theatre building" for the building. Nobbie 17:06, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

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Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one sentence explanation and sign your vote with ~~~~

• Support - "Theatre" will focus on the art. The spelling is internationally recognized and in line with the spelling already used in the article. (added: this is NOT about changing the spelling of the whole article! Only the word "theatre". The article will remain written in U.S. English.) Nobbie 17:12, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose - Leave it alone Primary Author used US spelling. Philip Baird Shearer 00:41, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Support - (Oft considered proposing this myself) 'Primary author' policy mostly refers to content, not titles, AFAIK. Niteowlneils 02:15, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Support - similar votes on usenet have always opted for theatre - with good support from the US theatre community. dramatic 02:17, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Support - as far as I am aware, "theatre" is an alternative spelling throughout North America, and the only spelling elsewhere in the English-speaking world. The principle of least astonishment, and the principle that we should put articles where most international readers would expect to find them is appropriate here, jguk 10:36, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose First major contributor used "theater," and that spelling gets seven million more Google hits than "theatre." SlimVirgin 18:31, Mar 26, 2005 (UTC)
• Support --Spinboy 19:38, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Support —ExplorerCDT 08:41, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. Having worked in theater, I'm well aware that the -re spelling is common among the artists especially (less so by staff and crew), but it's a consciously "archaic" form used in the name of tradition, as with "upstage" and "green room." Industry lingo does not equate to what's acceptable in American English writing, and the original author—presumably knowledgable in the field—used the -er spelling in this relatively formal context. Retitle this article and you have to replace all occurences of the American form in that's clearly an AE-dominant article, contrary to policy. A.D.H. (t&m) 09:15, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. There are enough BE vs. AE wars brewing. People will use this move as an example, just as the much more complicated Grey move was inappropriately used here. --A D Monroe III 15:29, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Support. I'm from the U.S., an I don't see this as an AE vs. BE issue at all. Many of my friends in Theatre prefer that spelling. Jonathunder 22:58, 2005 Mar 27 (UTC)
• Support. As a theatRE person I must support the move. As well as the proposed split of structure from this article to move to it's own under "Theatre (structure)". Ganymead 00:32, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Support. From what I gather, "theatre" is not only the international spelling (for art & bldg), but also the spelling used by theatre professionals in the US for their art and "theater" for the actual structure, even though "theatre" is sometimes used in the names of some theatre bldgs in the US. – AxSkov 08:43, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Support. violet/riga (t) 14:40, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Voting closed

Discussion

Add any additional comments

Theatre is used everywhere, theater only in the U.S. In fact, in the U.S. theatre community, theatre is preferred! Not only for the art, but also for buildings (for example movie theatres). Have a close look at the following interesting (U.S.) links: [2], [3], [4], [5].
I don't like Google searches to "prove" usage of words, but searching for theatre and theater (on English websites only!) might suprise you... Nobbie 03:56, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

'Primary author' policy mostly refers to content, not titles, AFAIK. Niteowlneils 02:15, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Then explain Talk:Honour#Move to Honor and Talk:Color#Page move (not done). Sticking to what is there already reduces conflict --Philip Baird Shearer 10:34, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't think you can cite either of the above as the status quo reducing conflict. I would have supported both the above decisions. Honour for the reason that it already had the more widespread spelling, and color because that spelling is now ingrained in a number of international standards. Each case needs to be judged on its merits. And in this case, kepping the status quo is fuelling conflict. dramatic 00:17, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree, but the "theatre" case is different. "color" is wrong or at least unusual in Commonwealth English, and "honour" is wrong/quaint in U.S. English. "Theatre" is acceptable everywhere. In the MoS it says somewhere that neutral words should be chosen in reasonable/possible. Nobbie 12:14, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I guess I would say A) some of the voters interpret the MOS differently than I do (most of the section cited is talking specifically about text within the article, so, since it doesn't specifically mention article names, I don't think it was intended to cover them) and, probably more to the point, B) apparently 'requested moves' voting can be as fickle as Vfd voting. Niteowlneils 01:24, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

First major contributor used "theater," and that spelling gets seven million more Google hits than "theatre." SlimVirgin 18:31, Mar 26, 2005 (UTC)

There are plenty of cases in Wikipedia where the first major contibutor's title has been changed to a more commonly accepted title. And your Google stats are false. Take out non-english sites and the numbers are equal. After that you need to remove all references to the surgical/operation context of the word and the military term 'theater of operations' (and American coinage) dramatic 22:53, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC).

Actually we have no evidence of which spelling the first major contributor preferred, as the history of the article doesn't go back that far. Who's to say the first major contributor wasn't expanding a substub or dicdef? dramatic 08:31, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You could also search in .com domains only, which are U.S. dominated, + English only. On 42% of the pages, "theatre" is used, which is about the same percentage as for "grey". Clear evidence that both spellings are accepted in the U.S. Nobbie

Having worked in theater, I'm well aware that the -re spelling is common among the artists especially (less so by staff and crew), but it's a consciously "archaic" form used in the name of tradition, as with "upstage" and "green room." Industry lingo does not equate to what's acceptable in American English writing, and the original author—presumably knowledgable in the field—used the -er spelling in this relatively formal context. Retitle this article and you have to replace all occurences of the American form in that's clearly an AE-dominant article, contrary to policy. A.D.H. (t&m) 09:15, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)

It's true that theater is more common in U.S. English and can be considered the "usual" spelling. However, that's not the point. It a fact that theatre is an acceptable spelling in the U.S. and everywhere else, whereas theater is not acceptable outside the U.S. Therefore, theatre has a more neutral touch. And by the way, the majority of spellings in the article are theatre, so what about "replacing all occurences of the American form"?! Nobbie 09:40, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I am interested in what those people who are voting in favour of this move Theater to Theatre, think about moving the article Theater (warfare) to Theater if the first move goes ahead. It would seem to me that there would no longer be any reason not to as it is being argued that Theatre is widely used in the US to mean "art, but also for buildings". If this seems daft, then perhaps those who have voted in support of the move from theater to theatre should re-consider their vote Philip Baird Shearer 14:30, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You highlight an inconsistency, and I agree it would be best to avoid it. Wouldn't the easiest way be to move Theater (warfare) to Theatre (warfare) though? jguk 18:05, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

No Primary author. Theatre and Theater are used in specific articles on national interest lines EG: Middle East Theatre of World War II, Mediterranean Theater of Operations. Philip Baird Shearer 11:25, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Any questions regarding Theater (warfare) can best be dealt with by the old warriors out there. --Dhodges 19:04, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think the name Theater (warfare) is fine. The typical meaning of theatre is the meaning described in Theater. No matter what the spelling, both theater and theatre should refer to that article. Theater (warfare) is much more specific; including "(warfare)" in the article name makes sense. In the current article, "theatre" is used for the art and "theater" for the building. It was proposed to create a separate article for the building section, which should probably use "theater". This would lead to: an article "Theatre" on the art of theatre, an article "Theater (structure)", and "Theater (warfare)". Nobbie 02:16, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

But if you have an article called "theater" for the building then that will be wrong for all Commonwealth countries. I think that would be throwing the baby with the bathwater. What would be the redirect for Commonwealth counties "theatre (building)" it so then why not "theater (building)"? If one accepts that the primary usage for "theater" in the US is the same as "theatre" in the rest of the English speaking world there is no reason to get into such a mess. Philip Baird Shearer 11:25, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It's by no means a "mess". I noticed that theatre is used for the art section and theater for the building section in this article. That's why I suggested "Theater (stucture)" and "Theatre" for the main article that covers the art of theatre. Theater may by primary usage in the U.S. but theatre is very common as well and often even preferred. The article split into art and structure was proposed by Ganymead, it doesn't have anything to do with spelling. Nobbie 12:57, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Decision

This article has been renamed as the result of a move request. With a majority vote "Theater" has been changed to "Theatre". I will let others decide if there should be any split with something at Theater (which I would object to, personally) – please feel free to contact me if further admin assistance is required. violet/riga (t) 14:40, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Building section

I have boldly moved the theater building section to a separate article. This was originally proposed by Ganymead. I haven't changed content and spelling of the section.
Theatre can be a branch of the performing arts or a building - these are two very different concepts. Two separate articles will allow editors to focus on either the art or the building and lead to better disambiguation. In the previous version of this article, the buildling section started with: "A theater is also the building in which..." Nobbie 08:25, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The Encyclopaedia Britannia also contains two articles (art vs. architecture) Nobbie 08:27, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Design(er)

Alright, there's costume design, costume designer, but lighting designer and scenic designer redirect to lighting design and scenic design respectively. Also, sound designer (Theatre) has been requested, but there is a sound design.

As costume designer and costume design are such small stubs, ought they be merged and Sound designer (Theatre) redirected to sound design until the design process and the designer themselves both have enough information to warrant two separate articles? For consistency's sake, really. Cigarette

Although Lighting design now seems to redirect to Lighting designer! I agree that costume designer should be merged into costume design. - Sticki 19:21, 3 October 2005 (UTC) (Done it! Sticki)

Genre List

This section really needs examples. A serious Theatre or Film major knows how to talk about this without getting into copyright issues. For example listing Tommy under Rock Opera. McDogm--64.12.116.200 15:05, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Here we go again

The following assertion has reappeared in this article:

For some people in the U.S., perhaps more so among theatre professionals, "theatre" denotes a branch of the performing arts, whereas "theater" refers to the building in which performances or other entertainment is presented.

Does anyone have any citation or reference or study that shows this might be true for more than "some people"? Or examples of usage? I would like to leave it in the article if it's true, but my now-deleted links to Juilliard show that even at this august institution, there is no pattern for the use of "theater" vs. "theatre". Here they are again, for those who missed them:

• [6] - Look under Drama and see how many variations there are in spelling.
• [7] - The artform is spelled "Theater" throughout.

I see no universal or even predominant convention for selecting "theater" over "theatre" in the US except for proper nouns where one or the other has been selected. But I am open to being proved wrong. Shoaler 13:49, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

There has been more than one lengthy discussion on the newsgroup rec.arts.theatre.stagecraft in the late 1990's in which something like 70% of the professionals participating preferred "theatre". There may have been similar discussions on other r.a.t groups. This article is the first reference I've seen to explicitly separate the artform and the building. It is clear that both are used in the names of buildings. I just surveyed the U.S. white pages directory, filtering for performing arts usages of theatre/er only, and of the first 100 listed, it was 79/21 in favour of "theatre". (Most of the filtered out material was Home Theater, where usage was close to 50/50. The ratio for cinemas seemed close to that for live theatre) dramatic 19:50, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

The article now contradicts itself.

I'm removing two contradictory fragments of text from the page to here:

1. , due to the spelling reform efforts of Noah Webster,
2. Aside from this, the Oxford English Dictionary's Guide to good English points out that the -er spelling was used in English before the -re, and has been preserved in American English, whereas the latter was based on the French spelling.

I suggest that we have a duel to the death between etymologists and reinstate the winner. - My money would be on the second, which appears to have sources. dramatic 10:15, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

If only one must be reinstated, I would obviously cast my vote in favour of the second, as I myself added it and have a reliable source by which to go. But I do not think there is any more than a superficially apparent, but truly nonexistent, contradiction. I do not know all that much on the subject, but it could be that both spellings were in usage, the -re one having been imported later from French, but separate standardisations on opposite sides of the Atlantic (with the American one influenced by Noah Webster, as is stated) resulted in the later one becoming standard in the UK, whereas the other became the standard spelling in the US. I do not see any real problem with what was there, although I am not sure about the former statement being correct anyway. elvenscout742 19:36, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Spelling proposal

Hi there, I notice that in this article there is a lot of activity about spelling that could be better channeled into the subject itself. You may be interested in this proposal to put an end to the problem. Thanks. PizzaMargherita 21:45, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Translated from what?

"'Drama' (literally translated, Action, from a verbal root meaning 'I do')...." What language is it translated from? 204.16.92.129 16:07, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

"Drama" was the Late Latin word, translated from Greek.[8] 218.218.61.59 21:28, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

What is the international spelling of "theater"?

(This is a discussion about the TITLE of this article and NOT about text within the body of the article or other Wikipedia articles.)

Regarding the title of the main article about theater, I found it interesting that until corrected recently (around June 25, 2006) in the Theatre or theater? section of the article that the pro-”-re” parts even though its supporters had appeared to make up the majority of Move (of the title from -er to -re) voters here (unless they are largely sockpuppets)--so you would think no shortage of people to do research--and even after a substantial amount of time had come up with no citations to support their case. The “no citation” marker remained and a few others could easily have been applied to other dubious and unsupported “facts” that “supported” their case.

Many based their case partly on false claims of an unclear preference in the U.S. but mostly on a need to follow international usage which they had believed (without proof) to be -re. Below, then, I shall demonstrate that the dominant U.S. and international spelling are actually -er, and that therefore, applying the international standard, which seemed a common ground during the discussion and voting, that the original title of this article, Theater, should never have been tampered with in the first place, and ought to be restored once again to that previous spelling.

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The prevailing use of theater in TITLES (and generic usage) the U.S.

Some individuals have falsely tried to compare the TITLE of this article to names of theater troupes. This TITLE is not about a theater troupe. It is about the topic of theater in GENERAL. As a guide to how a GENERAL reference work ought to title an article about theater we can turn to the most reliable publications that exist and see that indeed they use the -er spelling in the TITLE of their theater sections.

At a national level, some of the -re supporters ironically were Americans professing to be "theatre practitioners". (I now suspect most of them, as demonstrated by their failure to produce a shred of empirical evidence, to have been fledgeling theater students whose professors had yet to school them the art of fact checking.) They made broad claims that were never backed up with any citations. One even went so far as to claim on the main page that in New York City that it had been somehow been made the preferred form. These spurious claims, while perhaps finding support within narrow (compared to the population at large) circles or in proper names where a non-standard usage can add marketing appeal are easily refuted by citing the -er usage of the language used by such venerable institutions and publications (and the form they use) such as America's national theater, the New York Times Theater section, the Washington Post Theater section , the Boston Globe Theater section (and note the use of theater district and not theatre district), the New York Daily News Theater section , the Chicago Tribune Theater section or the Los Angeles Times Theater section..

Further examples would be to consider the clear and unflagging policy of using -er of some of the major magazines among the largest in readership nationally like Time or Newsweek. And then there is New York Magazine which spells it’s theater section, Theater above its articles with the same spelling in the body of its reviews such as can be seen in McCarter (2006, June 12) New York Magazine calls its theater review section "The Theater Review".

Many of our “artiste” members will be surprised to learn that Village Voice calls its theater section “Theater”.. (You can simply note the spelling in the url.) And for instance, a recent Village Voice article (Feingold, 2006, June 20) about actor Alvin Epstein uses the -er spelling throughout with some examples listed below:

• “Theater History students”
• “At 81, actor-singer-mime-director Epstein is tackling one of the theater's most strenuous jobs, the title role in Shakespeare's King Lear.”
• “the resident-theater movement”
• “the national theater of the newly founded state of Israel”
• “the American theater”

Some American participants in the earlier discussion attempted to put forth the specious claim that the less common variant sometimes used by American stage actors -re was now so often used that practically no one used -er any more (perhaps those participants never read newspapers or magazines on- or off-line as well). Nothing could be further from the truth, as I have just demonstrated. Some Americans, here, including Charlie (see responses below) quite unbelievably claim never to have seen the -er spelling in the context of live drama! Apparently, Charlie had never picked up a newspaper or magazine when he lived in Los Angeles. I actually think he did but like some of the Americans here are stubbornly contrarian and simply likes arguing (rather weakly) the contrarian case, and thus I suggested, living abroad now for so many years, he might have been exercising “selective memory”. (He begged to differ, but then how else could you account for his lapse in memory? Actually, literate native speakers or highly skilled readers scan words so quickly it is highly unlikely they will pay attention in every single case to minute details such as typos or spelling variation. But that all plays into his selective use of memory. He had to have seen the words, that is to have read a magazine or newspaper in California, but was so intent on being contrarian and had so long seen it spelled differently in London that he had "convinced" himself of never having seen the spelling theater before!)

Perhaps, people now reading this will wonder at how simple it was to do a little fact checking, and how the voters failed miserably to do so. Is it any wonder then that critics like the Guardian take Wikipedia to task so harshly? . When the founder was interviewed by NPR I wondered at his hedging, unable it seemed to come to the defense of reliability of Wikipedia’s content. He himself has probably witnessed all too many a major decision, such as the choosing of a title for an article, where 3 or 4 misinformed souls doing zero fact checking impose their whims, their personal and often contrarian use of language on millions of readers. Now, I, not being from the print world myself, but a faithful Wikipedian, I had hoped to defend Wikipedia against such claims. But what I found surprised me. People like Charlie using anecdotes based on “selective memory” to argue weak contrarian cases, when it was so easy to do a search on his local newspaper and prove him wrong about what he “thought” he had experienced in Los Angeles.

(Exactly who the hell are you, mr unsigned IP address? And why don't you respond to the fact that I brought up that the largest and most important theatre building in Los Angeles is the Ahmanson Theatre? Your prejudices are sticking out all over and you cite google searches which simply demonstrate that the vast majority of .com searches for the -er term are probably cinemas, or movie theaters, as you seem to prefer. I would be far more comfortable if we know who you are, hiding behind your anonymous, if well written comments, slagging everyone else and with a seeming passion to prove your totally biased point. Well, rage on... you will only serve to continue discrediting wikipedia, just like you say everyone else is doing... Come on mr/ms anonymous, set up a user page here, expose yourself and start to get real! Charlie Richmond 00:30, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

And I guess you did not bother to read the citations at the beginning of this subsection. You give an example of a local, regional theater (the Ahmanson) which chose to give themselves a non-standard form, -re, in their name. I trumped that with about a dozen citations, including America's national theater (see above) which certainly trumps any local theater in terms of determining what is the proper usage. We can not overlook the fact that all the major newspapers in America, and the magazines with the widest circulation meant for a broad, general public like Time and Newsweek (see links above) also use the standard -er, not the non-standard. Your protesting so loudly citing a proper name only illustrates my point. That this article's title is not a proper noun so it should follow standard use for non-proper nouns which in America and internationally (see below) is clearly -er. If this article were instead for a proper noun, i.e., the name of theater building or a theater group such as in your example, only in that case do style guides recommend a free choice of spelling in which case, even Theeyehtah might even be possible. My views are not biased. In fact, they seek to remove the bias that tainted the vote in favor of moving of this article from the way was spelled from c.a. 2001-2005, as -er, to the -re that was erroneously voted in more recently. What I mean by this is that what could be more unbiased than supporting a case for -er with the most widely read magazines and newspapers, and government web sites domestically and abroad, to an American (you) who claim you have never seen the form (you most certainly have if you ever read a newspaper where you grew up) to establish the dominance of the -er form?

Google searches seeking to argue points using result counts are as everyone knows a sophomoric strategy and next to worthless. I say "next to" because they are one way to form a hypothesis, but a hypothesis is then used to aim arguments for and against at. And when we do this, what we find is that those counts are misleading. For example, too many are like your Ahmanson case and tell us about what is used name for proper name of a theater, which is useless when assessing the use of the word when it is not used as the name of a theater, but rather in its generic usage in a reference work's TITLE, that being the best analogy for titles within Wikipedia. The use in publications I cited above do tell us this, especially in the way they consistently use the -er spelling in their section TITLES. The show us how -er is used in the context of "the art of the theater" and "off-broadway theater" and may other numerous examples.

Not only for the word in question, but for other words as well, some people just have bots go around spamming the Internet countless times with advertising and other kinds of text. We are interested of human use of language, not text generated by bots. There are plenty of online publications which the public sees as reliable users of the standard language. I have given over a dozen citations in this discussion. I suggest before replying that next time you take the time to click on some of those links and see for yourself that indeed -er is the dominant spelling. That spelling conventions are by no means as unstable as you have spuriously attempted to lead us to believe, and that -er is without a doubt the dominant form.)

Some come by here and say, gee, it doesn't really matter, it's just spelling after all. But the principle of backing up your assertions with facts is also what is at stake in this process. And those several voters who failed to do this, who failed to produce any research on this point, prove the Guardian critics right about the problems with Wikipedia. For if Wikipedians can't get the facts right about the spelling and usage of a single word, how in the world can you trust them to get things right are the larger issues? To be sure there are people who produce facts as I have attempted to here. But it seems if you take a count of who has contributed facts to support what they say regarding this spelling issue, and those who rely on unsupported anecdotes and personal opinions and simply want to be "contrarian" and "get their way", the latter far outnumber the former.

Well, now that I have demonstrated that there is no toss-up between -er and -re in America, that it is not even close, and that by far the prevailing usage is -er, I will move on to show just as clearly that -er is also the prevailing international standard as well.

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The prevailing use of theater in TITLES (and generic usage) internationally

Looking at usage throughout the world, I am not sure how the ill-conceived notion that “theatre” was the "international spelling" of the word was arrived at. Perhaps it was naively based on drawing up a list of countries from the old British colonies and simply counting them. The error in this is that Wikipedia guidelines encourage us to write our articles for “most English readers" that is to take into consideration, not the language that we happen to use or prefer, but rather the language of our readership. That audience includes people who are literate in English, perhaps as a second language, but may not be from the U.K. or a former British colony.

Another misleading point is that the number of countries is irrelevant. The Wikipedia guideline encourages us to write in a way that most “speakers” of English will understand. If your article is specialized and for mainly a British speaking audience, then the use of British spellings for article titles would be appropriate. However, this theater article, is not directed, I am sure all would agree, at a country- or language-specific audience.

Those Wikipedia guidelines are quite rightly trying to point us in the direction of our audience. Not the English we ourselves might prefer to use, nor to merely a “country count” where a certain variety of English predominates. For most of the countries where British English is in dominant usage is not especially large in population while the few that are not so small are among the lowest in literacy such as Pakistan at 47.8% in the world so that the variety of English they use is a much smaller fraction of the population than for countries like China or Indonesia where the literacy rates are each nearly double that of Pakistan.

Additionally, India and Pakistan’s use of English, while it may be close to the British, is perhaps not our best litmus test for determining what is truly “international”. That is, there is a bias of their already having been British colonies with long and strong ties to Britain, so the variety of English they use comes as no surprise.

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The use of theater in China

A better test might be to see what happens when this bias is removed. Take for example, countries like mainland China (the most populated country in the world) or Indonesia (ranking No. 4, right behind the U.S.), countries with no such colonial influence.

Let’s start first with China. If “theatre” were truly the international spelling, you’d most certainly expect them to use this spelling, especially when describing the performing arts of their own nation on their official government web site.

But what we find is in that section they follow what is the same as the consensus for most American style guides. If a theatre company wants to call itself “theatre” (a subjective desire to use the lesser used variant) that is the usage they follow. On the other hand, for any other usage of the word, including the art of theater “theater” is used such as in “Chinese theater”. It comes then as no surprise that the usage of “theater” by the way far outnumbers the use of “theatre.”

Occurrences of “theater” vs. “theatre”:

Theater: 7

Theatre: 1 (in the name of a theatrical company)

For general usage of English, you will also find that the University of Peking web site similarly uses American (not British) spelling.

The university of Beijing website that you cite was coded in Microsoft Frontpage. It is just as valid for me to conclude that this implies that i) it wasn't created by professional web developers, ii) the author probably had English as a second language, and iii) their copy of Frontpage probably had the default US English dictionary installed as it is for you to conclude that this shows that all English speakers in China spell it "Theater".

The chinese government website doesn't indicate what software is driving it, but there's a very high chance that it is a US-based product, and a good chance that the spelling is American by happenstance rather than policy. Another example of cultural imperialism via default settings. dramatic 09:41, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

My computer, though made by Apple, an American company, but purcahsed abroad, happened to be preinstalled with the British version of a word processor and spellchecker. I seem to be able to write with no British spellings nevertheless. Text is input by the user regardless of the software he uses.

The pre-move spelling was -er and the people in favor of moving it to -re claimed international spelling as a cheif reason for this. So the burden is really on you to provide your proof. Government publications and web sites, and publications of record such as newspapers and magazines for the English reading general public are good indicators of what the accepted international standard is. For China, what was your original measure for asserting the -re spelling (you cited "international" spelling before.) Was it Hong Kong?

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The use of theater in Indonesia

You’ll find the same to be true at the official web site of the Indonesian government as well.

what an absolutely fascinating claim. Using that site's inbuilt search returns zero results for either spelling (it probably only searches the currently selected language). Using the site: parameter at google finds 0 results for theater and 2 results (html and pdf versions of the same content by the look of it) for theatre, both in Bahasa Indonesia.

In terms of English usage, not Bahsa, simple search for color shows 42 hits vd. only 1 for colour. I think what this tells us is that the site style-guide as witht the Chinese government site is likely one that follows American spellilngs. i maintain the observation that if there were an article about "theater" then, it would follow that spellilng.

But besides all of that, you may be missing my larger purpose. I have made a strong and convincing case that -er is indeed the dominant international. I can only present the facts and let others decide for themselves. My larger purpose was simply to discredit the notion you and some others put forth that -re was some kind of international spelling. I think that notion has been not thrown into serious doubt now. Part of my purpose was to educate, i.e., until 1700 the prevailing spelling had been -er. 210.197.240.31 02:12, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

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The use of theater in Japan

In Japan, the prevailing use of the -er spelling, theater, in section TITLES (and generic usage) can be seen in English language newspapers such as The Japan Times, as in a typical case, such as Sakate (2006, June 1) as well as in references to their traditional forms of drama (i.e., "the traditional Japanese theater known as kabuki") in the Mainichi Daily News.

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The use of theater in Europe

In all of Europe, a leading magazine of record , and the biggest weekly magazine (according to the Wikipedia article), with a circulation of around one million per week, widely read particularly in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, but also in many other countries there, such as Poland, Hungary and Turkey just to name a few, is der Spiegel. Their International online version uses the -er spelling, too, as can be seen in Blake (2006, June 8).. Here are some examples of how the generic -er spelling is used the article:

• “a new comedy now playing in a Hamburg theater
• theater productions”
• “theater aficionado”
• “theatergoers”

It seems clear then that American spelling is the international standard abroad except in the former British colonies which accounts for a smaller number of English users than the populations who use American spelling as their variety of International English, and by this I mean the spelling given as the most common usage in an American dictionary (-er), not the narrower usage of the variant (-re) preferred by some American "theater practitioners".

Magazines and newspapers use in-house syle guides in order to achieve editorial consistency. Searching a few word pairs (color/colour, traveling/travelling and so on) on the Der Spiegel website makes it quite clear that their stylistic policy is to use American spellings throughout, probably because there is more of a market for a European publication in the U.S. than in the U.K. Or it might simply be that the first editor of their international edition was American or US educated. Whatever, it is impossible to extrapolate a single magazine's stylistic choice to represent the choice of an entire nation. dramatic 09:26, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Market may explain a lot as to why -er dominates, not only in this instance, but in many examples I have cited. Whatever the reason, the fact remains that the documentation shows -er to be the dominant form. I don't kow if you realized this, but your inablity to provide counter-evidence doesn't do much to support your -re spelling argument, even though the burden to provide evidence lies squarely with you to explain the move request. Simply admitting that you do not know what everyone does perosnally ("an entire nation") isn't very convincing. I've cited my evidence based a Continental (i.e., not British, so a good candidate for an less biased "international" user of English) publisher of widest circulation and of no small repute. I stand by that and am confident in the ability of readers to draw their own conclusions. 210.197.240.31 21:59, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't normally comment on this but, what the hey. With respect to arguments about usage and the numbers game. In terms of circulation, the Times of India (circulation 13.3 million, larger than the top 50 US newspapers combined) uses "Theatre" (google search times of india theatre (and indeed theater) if you don't believe me) as it's "correct" term, so arguments about numbers in terms of usage doesn't hold water with respect to magazines.

Secondly we can dismiss India and Pakistan due to their colonial legacies. Presumably then we must ignore the Philippines, all of Central America, and China, by virtue of it's developing English usage largely through trade with the US. Anyway, the argument by population is fundamentally flawed without good stats about the prevalence of English (but I'd bet it's higher in India, colonial legacy and all that). Can I just ignore what the US currently says because when the declaration of independence was signed, the current British spelling was theater and it has "failed to evolve correctly". An international standard requires you to examine everything, not ignore inconvenient facts data. I do not know which is more prevalent, but the answer is nowhere near as clearcut for US English as this argument purports. You could try living with it, like I do with color, and labor and a whole host of others, or demanding brontosaurus be reinstated, as apatosaurus was forced on me by a group of closed insiders (I appreciate the hypocracy of posting my response having just said this, but 1) The arguement given above is not as strong as the bold suggests, 2) it's 6 a.m., 3) it allowed me to discover my spellchecker had apatosaurus prelisted)

P.S. "Der Spiegel" has a circulation of 1 million, largely in German, where "Theater" is the correct spelling, but "Le Monde" has "theatre" because it is French and so only needs to remove an accent, just as german only need decapitalize (OED Spelling) the T.81.152.228.31 (talk) 06:09, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

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Unofficial recount of the vote to move original theater article to theatre

What does this mean in terms of the “vote” on the spelling? Well, this is the current status of the vote:

ORIGINAL VOTE:

-er: 4

-re: 10

But three of the -re voters stated they preferred the international term. If we restate the vote in those terms to correct for their failing to realize that the international term was -er, the vote would look like this.

-er: 7

-re: 7

So no requisite 60% majority and thus no “move to theatre”. The title should remain “theater”.

However, dramatic and ricji, two users (with isp’s that look indicate their writings might originate from a British spelling country) taking part in the discussion but not voting. They wrote that they were also for the international term which they wrongly believed to be -re at the time. If we adjust for them and add my vote then the results would be:

-er: 10

-re: 7

I'm still in the middle of reading this post, which seems fairly sensible so far. BUT how does the addition of 2 to 7 equal 10? — President Lethe 00:53, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

I wrote "If we adjust for them and add my vote". That means the two contributors, dramatic and ricji, plus my own vote. That is an addition of 3 to 7 and thus equals 10. 218.218.61.59 01:43, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. Well, I feel silly. I really should rest to restore my brain. — President Lethe 05:09, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Now there is the question of those who voted but gave no reason (not required). One might suspect two of the three of them of being sockpuppets since no comments were given. Or that they, like three of the -re voters were “internationalists”, as after all that appears to be a major reason for the contingent supporting the move, meaning that their votes really ought to have been added to the -er side, as well. (Another reason might “because I’m a British speller” or “because I’m a theater practitioner and I like it” which are votes that if our vote is to be based on what is appropriate for all users out to be discounted). I’ll leave violet/riga’s vote out of this for the time being, but therein lies still another problem about the way the vote had been carried out. Adjusting for this the results would be:

-er: 12

-re: 5

There are in addition other contributors who happened on the scene after the vote and who spoke up who were could also be counted. Likewise, violet/riga’s vote, some would say, ought to be discounted, as this user is an administrator as well as a British speller (having been the main writer for articles that use British spelling throughout but on British topics--and our article is not merely a British topic--to begin with, who took no part in the discussions, arrives on the scene just at the moment of vote as a kind of manager of the voting and gave no reason for her vote. Her participation in discussion or reasons are not actually required, but it doesn’t help appearances and taints the process with a possible bias that she failed to do both of these. Voting procedures like this where no attempt at credibility is carried out damage reputations and do not do much to dissuade those who dismiss wikipedia as being somewhat flaky and unreliable from thinking otherwise. Discounting her vote, then, and considering the post-vote contributors the results would be:

UNOFFICIALLY REVISED VOTE:

-er: > 12

-re: 4

Is it any wonder why even after all the misguided voting and discussion (in terms of what is international) so much attention continues to be given to the spelling issue? A small minority (not even 25%) has been allowed to perpetrate an inappropriate use of the “move” process. When such a transgression is allowed to take place people lose their faith in the spirit of fairness that ought to prevail. More work on the topic itself (theater) will probably be likely, but only once this issue is fairly resolved.

And it doesn’t just end here with using “theater” for the benefit of international readers. The pro -re side has been consistently wrong about every other false argument they have made, including the ones about the history of the usage, in terms of what is traditional (it not the -re spelling as some mistakenly have written here), and about art vs. buildings. This is why they can cite no definitive sources to support any of these bogus cases. Those two arguments are akin to urban legends. They represent incorrect information repeated over time among the ignorant but with no foundation that end up being taken for fact by the unwitting.

So in addition to what is international (-er is), as time permits me to return our discussion, I shall further address the spelling issue in terms showing that 1.) linguistically, in English usage, even in England, “theater” was the more “traditional” usage; and 2.) that by excluding urban legend kinds of "citing", there is no foundation to the false notion “that -re means the art, but -er, more, the building”--in fact the documented evidence shows exactly the opposite.

And after all of this is done, one might wonder, then what would satisfy those opposed to the Move to the -re spelling, short of actually rectifying their error and restoring the original -er spelling? I might suggested some transparency be exhibited regarding the actual decision. For the reasons given in the main article bear no citations to support them, and so the actual reason out to be clarified. And I would add that perhaps violet/riga be called upon to do such a revision. It should probably go something like this:

Theatre or theater

Instead of the international spelling, "theater", the British spelling, "theatre", was in a kind of arbitrary way chosen because one of the official Wikipedia staff administrators who just happens to be a British speller and a couple of other contributors for no apparent reason (probably because that is the way they spell it, because they failed to follow up on all the claims they attempted to make with any citations) decided that that is the way they wanted to spell it in this article and its title.

Our decision continues to stand despite an unofficial recount (see talk) that resulted in less than 25% in favor of supporting the move, that is of discarding "theater" and using "theatre" instead. Now you might feel this is an unfair way to carry out voting and resulted in an inappropriate Move like the one that was made and continues to stand for grey, and you would be absolutely correct in thinking so, but that's just tough. After all, things are not always fair out there in the greater, wider world, so why would you expect it to be anything different here at Wikipedia?

I mean that is the way things stand once you adjust for the way some of those voters were mistaken about what the interactional usage is. And once I get done with the other two incorrect assumptions made by the pro -re Move voters and their like, there is bound to be an even greater disparity between bona fide reasons in support of -er, and the false and citation-less claims made by the -re supporters. 218.218.61.59 21:21, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

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Discussion for What is the international spelling of theater?

(PLEASE READ the ALL of the ABOVE (starting with "What is the international spelling of 'theater'"?)discussion thoroughly before adding your comments. There is specific evidence provided there and a clear context for this talk as well. It is not about Wikipedia guidelines in general. It is about a very specific word, theater, with a unique etymology, and a vote that was made to change the primary Wikipedia spelling in the TITLE to theatre. If you add comments randomly based only on personal experience rather than what can be supported by citing objective evidence it is like that you will be contradicted by the facts given above. So, first, read the evidence cited above. Also, if you just add facile comments like it doesn't matter or the redirect solves things, that really doesn't address the real problem and is also refuted below, as those would be reasons why the spelling move of the TITLE ought to have been moved from theater to its current spelling in the first place.)

Two things to consider: Wikipedia:Voting is evil and Wikipedia:Voting is not evil. — President Lethe 00:57, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

This whole discussion is totally ridiculous now. I think the funniest part of it is all the sloppy spelling mistakes made within the strenuous arguments (that's NOT arguments by the way!) for or against -re or -er. Really, there is a far more germane discussion going on in the Wiki writing style (spelling) article in which some extremely interesting concepts and proposals are being beat to death so much more thoroughly than the silliness going on here. I'm a former Californian turned Canadian and now living in the UK and can assert that everyone in the world is currently totally confused about how to spell Theatre/Theater and we will never come a conclusion here. I even see 'center' all over the place in Britain now and if anything, they are rapidly adopting US spelling and word usage faster than any dictionary can keep track of it. Not that it's to my liking since, in California when I grew up, I never even saw the form Theater and thought it was completely wrong. It just goes to show you that things are changing all over and poor little Wikipedia won't influence anything so just let people use whatever they want and get on with it - unless the wiser minds in the style (spelling) discussion finally adopt that great proposal to let people choose whatever regional options they want as their personal preferences. Very cool concept and very unlikely to happen. Sheesh! Charlie Richmond 21:39, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

You’d have seen it all the time if you bothered looked for it. UCLA for example uses it. As you have a theater background, you most certainly since have heard of Julliard which also uses the -er spelling. Movie theaters use it all the time and there are plenty in California. The signs you recall in your memory were the way there were, not for reasons prescribed by any dictionary, but only because some “artistes” of the stage hope to differentiate themselves by choosing another spelling in those particular cases. That’s their personal choice. It doesn’t change what the common usage is. What you may be referring to is that you saw many signs for the names of theater buildings or companies with -re, so you mistakenly thought those were not subjective choices, but the standard. That’s a common mistake on your part. We can see from your own writings that although the other conventions of your writing seem American, that you personally prefer the British or artistic -re spelling. Even for describing equipment. Your memories of California were many years ago and now seen through selective memory of an expat residing in Europe where -re is especially more often to be seen.

“It just goes to show you that things are changing all over and poor little Wikipedia won't influence anything”

Hollywood uses it, that's correct. And UCLA is tied to Hollywood. You can't say whether my memories are selective or not because you aren't me - and even though I haven't lived there for a long time I go there very frequently. Also, if you review the edit history of my page here, you will see that the last time I edited it was some time ago and at least one person has done a very major rewrite of that page, removing perceived POV bias. So most of the writing on that page is not actually mine! Sure movie theaters used and use the -er form - I was referring to the fact that 'legitimate' theatre companies used the -re form almost exclusively. The Center Theatre Group and Ahmanson Theatre are the major Theatre company and theater structures in LA and probably more prominent in their influence on live theatre in the southland than UCLA is. So I'd have to say that all these facts pretty much negate all your POV. Charlie Richmond 12:11, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Regardless of why it is used, it is used. That was the point. You have qualified your context now so it is clear that you meant only for the stage. Before, with no context, and with my being quite familiar with the area you spoke of, and knowing for a fact that generally the -er spelling is everywhere to be found there, this prompted me to comment on selective memory.

When deciding the title of this page, contributors seem to have been concerned not at just proper names of theater companies (where I might add non-standard choices can make one stand out for marketing purposes), but instead looking at standards around which to form a consensus and in that light, I believe with their usage of -er that America's national theater trumps not only your regional example, but any and all examples anyone making claims about American usage would care to give. 218.218.61.59 14:46, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

As was said in Lawrence of Arabia, “big things have small beginnings.” Closer to home, there are many examples from the Internet. As an entrepreneur you are probably familiar with the Amazon.com story. I mention this not from the point of view of business potential, however, but simply from the more general view point of how seemingly small entities, if they are leaders among their peers, can grow to have a very wide appeal in a relatively short amount of time.

Amazon.com Annual Sales:

1995: $511,000 (first full year)

2007E: $11,800,000,000

Wikipedia is not a business, but these numbers also reflect a rapid growth in users. Wikipedia usage has a similar potential. So from this point of view, Charlie, we are not speaking of small numbers. There are computers in many school rooms today. One has a responsibility present at least the title of articles in a standard way to the degree that this is possible. In this case, an international standard seems to have been the principle that drew a popular consensus. The only question that remained is to correct the misunderstand 3 or 4 of those people had about what is international. This is not simply a matter of personal choice or view point. Those individuals are welcome offer other objective evidence that supports an alternative finding.

“so just let people use whatever they want and get on with it - unless the wiser minds in the style (spelling) discussion finally adopt that great proposal to let people choose whatever regional options they want as their personal preferences. Very cool concept and very unlikely to happen. Sheesh!”

My point is that "wiser" minds don't always or even often prevail. I have demonstrated that here in the misunderstanding those "wiser" individuals had about what is "international." They never cited any references by the way.

While the proposal's concept might work within the body of an article’s text. It doesn’t do much for the way titles now stand however. You can only have one title the way things stand.

Now this could be changed. If some programmer out there (the Wikipedia programming dept. seems understaffed) thinks he can write a program that would allow personalization features that allows you to display British spellings for those who so wish.

The issue would still remain as to what the default spelling should be. If it is decided then that the International spelling should be the default then -er in this case should be that spelling. Unless someone can put forth objective (not personal or anecdotal “I was walking through the park on day and saw...”) evidence.

Strained? In what way is the proof of "theater's" international use "strained". The largest countries with in the world have been discussed with the prevailing usage of that spelling. In what way is that "strained"? Your counter argument is non-existent. Please provide some objective proof to the contrary beyond your personal taste as an expatriate who has chosen to relocate to the UK.

It is strained simply for all the reasons that those who argue for the -re form say it is strained. Conversely, the -re use is strained for all the reasons those who argue for the -er form say it is. My point is simply that both forms are found all over the world these days (and as far back as I can remember as well) so why make such a huge deal out of it? I have seen Centre Street in many cities in the US and many pretentious companies there adopting random British spellings to make themselves different. Same with US spellings by businesses and in names in the UK. The world is getting smaller every day and we are finding that all sorts of spellings are becoming commonplace everywhere now. My point is that if Wikipedia decides the proper term for a performing arts building is 'Theater' it will never make Ahmanson Theatre change its name. Or if wikipedia decides the proper British term is 'centre' then the UK firm Building Center won't change its name. If you lived in Canada, you would see that for many decades the use of both centre and center, colour and color, theater and theatre have been used completely interchangeably. People used to get worked up about it when it first started happening but have pretty much given up now and the same thing is happening in the UK - in fact the Brits are far more accepting of random spellings than the Canadians were, probably because there are such a huge number of immigrants in the UK now. Charlie Richmond 12:11, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

No, not strained at all. If anything is strained it is the argument you just made. Nobody is trying to change a name of a particular theater. That argument is a diversion from what we are discussing. Proper names are one thing. The choice of the title of this article, where only one slot exists, ought to be made according to some standard. Besides which America's national theater's use of -er ought to trump any local theater company you care to give. At the very begin of this article I demonstrate why China or Indonesia with larger populations, and a high literacy rate, are better candidates in how they choose to use English compared with a sparsely populated country with strong historical ties to England for judging how English is used in an international context.

Silly? (Another reader, probably, an -re speller himself, wrote above that my proof of what was international (-er), "seems fairly sensible" (President Lethe 00:53, 24 June 2006 (UTC)). But then you contribute no objective facts rather than vague references to other digressions about spelling not related to "theater". no objective facts rather than vague references to other digressions about spelling not related to "theater" and your limited anecdotal and personal observations. This is exactly what causes problems.

Again you miss my point. I am not arguing for one term or the other. My point is that both are becoming legitimate everywhere. You will have to eventually accede to the fact that the two spellings are used seemingly randomly and wikipedia can't dictate to the world, as much as it would like to. Just like the OED recorded in unfailing detail the usage of words in the English language, it has had to be constantly updated. But these are all well known facts. Charlie Richmond 12:11, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

My point was to set that personal baggage (yours included, i.e. that you may have seen such and such on a sign one day as you were walking through the park--this is what is truly silly, or at least not a very constructive contribution) aside and to defer to a standard. I think even the -re voters for the most part agreed on that principle.

I have rebutted this point before, but for the benefit of someone skimming this passage, I’ll comment some more here. And remember, this is about the title of this particular article, not about the text of the article, or Wikipedia in general. The rapid changes in language aren’t anything new. That still doesn’t mean we abandon the effort to rely on standards. Dictionary makers have always faced this problem. I understand how someone could make this argument for text within the body of the article, but not for the title of the article itself where there is only a single slot, that is, unless someday there could be a pop-up menu that gives you a choice to customize your view, at least when it comes to titles. You could eventually program articles according to the location of an isp, as well, and then allow that to be customizable as well. Changing situations call for all kinds of laws and rules to constantly be reviewed.

That doesn’t mean we abandon a standard. And if no standard exists, then what is the basis of the -re spellers voting in the move to -er? They did provide us with a criteria for forming a consensus however, in their leaning to vote in favor of an international standard. At the time fo the vote, they did not really know what this standard was. In their ignorance, some speculated that it might be British. However, they presented no factual evidence of this.

Subsequently, I have presented the case for -er as being both the clear American standard as well as the international standard, with not just one or two, but several clear citations. If we use this framework upon which to base our consensus then everything need not be all that arbitrary as you say. A clear decision can indeed be made. The past voting process is flawed because it should probably be one in which reasons are explored and several good reasons nominated to vote on. As things went, a number of people gave no reason, and several -re voters made uninformed votes based on a conception about international usage that they never explored, and that I have proven to be incorrect above. Three voters did never contributed a word to the discussion. One would suspect them of being sockpuppets. I've explained this in more detail above. 218.218.61.59 15:18, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

How do I say this again? I'm not arguing for one version or the other! You are! And you seem blind to my points as a result. Charlie Richmond 12:11, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

No, your point is about the body of the article, you're the one who is blind about the focus of this heading being about the title. Unless personalizatoin features are installed, there remains only one slot for a title. So saying that both can be used doesn’t change anything. And it doesn’t explain why the move was made. If both were equally interchangeable (and I have demonstrated above why they were not), You’d have to be able to explain that move. I think you are simply satisfied with the -re spelling for personal reasons, and since you can’t support the move to -re with empirical evidence, have chosen to side-step the issue and avoid the issue of the title by discussing the body of the article which is not the topic of this particular discussion. The topic is the title. What you, as an -re speller (that can be seen on your Wikipedia page as I have referenced above), is that “OK, our side won the vote, so now if anyone objects in the future, we can just say, oh, both can be used so let’s just keep things our way, OK?”. I don’t see why you didn’t realize how naive it is of you to try and deny this. it is quite easy to see through the denial.

Ohhhhhh.... Thank you for the clarification. I apologise for being blind to the topic and will try to refrain from further idiocies. I was not by any means trying to divert from the subject at hand and just didn't see the finer point here. But what is the big deal with what the title actually is on the main page since both Theatre and Theater will redirect there and google will find both. This question has undoubtedly been discussed before so I will leave things at that and still feel the title should really be somewhat irrelevant other than for people who care. Charlie Richmond 13:44, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'm glad we have had this exchange, anyway, Charlie. It has prompted me to go back and clarify that at the very beginning of this section. The vote was about the title so I had (wrongly) assumed all would realize this. But it seems that if a casually reader comes by there it is not easy to guess what has gone on earlier and precisely what aspect of a topic is being talked about. The redirect feature doesn't really solve things. If it did, then the -re side would have never requested the move from -er in the first place. A personalization feature would partly resolve things. But then what would the default spelling be? I would suggest a pop-up window that asks you what spelling you want and that the words be listed in alphabetical order.

But until such a time comes, I would suggest a consensus usage if one can be arrived at through reasonable discussion. This may be possible here since the contributors already set up a framework leaning towards international usage. There was never any debate about that. They simply assumed probably due to England's colonial past that this meant British spelling might prevail. I have demonstrated, that if this were there assumption then they were mistaken. As it is, no -re advocate ever presented any evidence to support this claim. It may be that this is because it is based on an urban legend so that when they actually go to look for proof they are stumped. Some have speculated on there someday being at least printed editions of parts of the Wikipedia so they may feel something is at stake in the titles even though it isn’t currently an issue in terms of locating something.

More importantly, many children in school are increasingly using such online sources with the Wikipedia probably high on their list. If you are in education or have kids in school this becomes a concern. Shouldn’t the Wikipedia follow some kind of standard. Should the spelling particularly in the titles be left to the arbitrary decisions of say the 3 or 4 users some of whom did not even bother to take part in the discussions and one of these being a British spelling Wikipedia staff administrator, to boot, arriving on the scene only at the last moment, having contributed nothing to the discussioin, in order to orchestrate the so-called "voting"? You can picture a child looking at the top of the page and saying to their teacher, “hey, how come it says -re?”. And they check the dictionary and wonder. I think Brits are used to going to a .com site and seeing different spellings. People from the U.S., China, and most countries, will wonder, why the British or U.S. lesser used variant -re wrongly appears as the common usage main entry in a .com reference work that purports to be either International or neutral. And they will question the credibility of the people involved. They’ll look at the Talk page and see that no one really had a good reason for making the move to -re. 218.218.61.59 14:15, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Rather than defer to some standard (international usage) or authority (the dictionary) such discussions become arbitrary comparisons of personal taste among 6 or 7 users. That's not a good way to decide things when the aim of the article is meant, not for those users, but for the general public which for Wikipedia must be in the millions.

A further point, is that of management or leadership. The lack of progress of the article and lack in contributions from those who may reject the current Move spelling -re, are no small matter. If it were, the -re spellers would simply agree to revert back to the original -er spelling. Not only this, but the subtext of the way the spelling had been explained (by a British speller) was clearly anglo-centric. It not only revealed the bias of the title but the bias of the active contributors and even the sense that non-anglophiles (some Americans are anglophiles) were not especially welcome. So what I am getting at is that the whole article risks becoming anglo-centric, i.e., not for the general public, but for anglo-centric public.

The current spelling of the title taints the article with a kind of bias since it is neither the general usage of the U.S. spelling on a .com site, nor is it the international spelling as I have demonstrated above. Therefore, in a sense it says that there are a lot of Brits or anglophiles here. Others keep out. It might not have meant that to you. But then you should ask those who opposed the move if that is what it means to them. When Wikipedia allows such transgressions and abuses such as this, it marginalizes itself from a group of all users, to a group of anglo-centric users with anglo-centric agendas, bias and points of view.

Potential for consensus exits in that several -re voters chose the principle of an using international spelling. They were simply mistaken about what that spelling was. This has now been corrected above and awaits response. If we act according to a revised vote reflecting what is truly international (I have put my case with proper citation forth above--the -re side has put forth no cases that bear citation thus far, simply personal opinions) we can arrive as group to agree upon is an international standard, then it is more likely the group together regardless of the way they personally spell the word can go forward together to concentrate on the project at hand. In principle, some individuals will say to put differences behind and move on. In reality, unless decisions about those differences can be seen to have been arrived at through a fair process many projects will lose valuable contributors and perhaps not move forward so smoothly. That is simply a reality.

Any project manager in any field can probably attest to this, that one of the greatest enemies to morale is favoritism and a lack of fairness in the way decisions are made. That is exactly what has happened here. And as to the winners of the vote, you might think it would motivate them to go on and do more for the project. But apparently it hasn't. They came out for the vote and then disappeared back into the woodwork.

Theater differs from the other discussions you mentioned for a number of important reasons. It involves the more subjective naming of so many groups and buildings and it involves a profession which has historical struggled for its place within society and (American) artists who seek to differentiate themselves from others in many ways one of which is through the alternative choices of spelling. But they are still alternatives, not the most common usage. For those Americans theater practitioners, awe of Shakespeare (even though any British linguist can tell you that American English preserved much once found in Shakespeare's pronunciation of English now lost in British English), and things European, British in particular, may loom quite large. This can cause them to focus at least in the short term too narrowly on their own usage at the expense of what is more appropriate for a reference work such as Wikipedia whose audience is the general public. But such individuals need to be reminded that though large in their minds, they are a very small group compared to the public at large which uses -er.

Another injustice that has been perpetrated is that if the spelling is not the international spelling it ought not be allowed to masquerade as if it were. Some statement of transparency should be made that it is indeed only the British spelling, and that several British spellers took it upon themselves to impose their personal spelling preference upon millions of readers. That statement should be made openly in the main article. Because otherwise what you have is are millions of -er spellers, including children (apt to be genuinely confused) who use the international spelling, coming to this site and seeing its obvious British usage, and wondering what this is doing on a .com or international site. They check their dictionaries and see that Wikipedia is using the variant, not the main entry usage and conclude that Wikipedia is in some ways not always a reliable source. Or they do nothing and get a wrong impression of what the common spelling is,or what the international spelling is.

That's probably why the governments in the U.S. (the national theater in Washington, D.C. uses "theater"), China, Indonesia, the English texts in Japan, all use a standard. With children, who are just learning about spelling, you don't want to confuse things. Governments have to be seen to set standards and behave responsibly. Some Wikipedians instead wish to ignore standards and selfishly impose their personal whims on others.

“...in Britain now and if anything, they are rapidly adopting US spelling...”

Unwittingly, you may well have contradicted yourself. Earlier, you say "little (over a million users, over a million articles, and perhaps many millions of readers-- actually no so little) Wikipedia" doesn’t matter. Yet you attest to how changes in language have happened so rapidly where you live abroad. I would submit that those rapid changes are precisely because the Wikipedia, and many other online sources, but the Wikipedia gradually become one of the major sources people turn to, in aggregate are what contributes to such newer usage offline. And that is part of globalization, and the feelings people have about seeming cosmopolitan. For “artiste’s” this used to mean using -re, and other Euro-centric conventions, but for the general public it seems to mean something different, such as in your examples, which is to employ the interactional spelling or American spelling, “center”. Plus many the search engines of many web sites do not produce results in all cases for alternative spellings. Some do, but many still don't. Entrepreneurs who wish to maximize exposure of their businesses will attempt to use International spellings more and more so that travellers and people who may not be to native to that area can locate them on the Internet and become more knowledgeable about what they do or the services they provide. Hence it comes as no surprise in England that you can report "center" now making such gains over "centre."

“...and word usage faster than any dictionary can keep track of it.”

Faster than an offline paper dictionary in the physical world. But not necessarily so much faster than an online community produced wiki. Although production on this end gets slowed when a minority of members, 6 or 7 people out of millions, are allowed to impose their reference-less personal preference on all others.

“...Not that it's to my liking,...”

Not liking something, personally, doesn’t matter, on this topic. The articles are written for the general public. Some of the contributors seem to in some respects confuse the Wikipedia for being a personal blog or a narrowly based usenet where enthusiasts on a certain topic gather to discuss a certain topic. This is not a blog. Nor is it a usenet. And they attempt to migrate those habits over to the Wikipedia. Quite to the contrary, Wikipedia is a reference source for the general public and this is why it is the language of the readership that out to be kept foremost in mind. 218.218.61.59 09:37, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not going to respond to all your other points since you basically misunderstand completely what my point was. I guess I didn't 'spell' it out adequately the first time. I didn't contradict myself at all. The fact that things are constantly changing everywhere due to globalisation/globalization is my basic point. When you address THAT point I will respond again. Perhaps. Charlie Richmond 12:11, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

[Charlie had made this and other comments before realizing that this discussion was not about general Wikipedia use within the body of an article. It is not about those things, and Charlie has since read my clarification of this point and acknowledged his misunderstanding of this. I started this discussion focused only on the title. But to make this even clearer, I have gone back, thanks to Charlie, and added further clarification. This discussion is simply about the previous move of the title of this article from its original -er spelling, as an article, to -re and how this was based my a mistaken and unexplored impression of what the international spelling was. I have given evidence that the international standard is -er, above. Please read it thoroughly before jumping in with arbitrary generic comments. There are a number of specific issues that are unique to this particular word and its etymology which you should be familiar with.]

An either/or policy, as I have said, may work for text within the body of an article. It does not give us much guidance on deciding the title which has a single slot for it, and which for the benefit of all should attempt at least to follow some standard. So in the terms of the title, at least, some kind of standard was acknowledged for this among the voters. It was an international standard. False assumptions were made about this standard and no one every followed up on what it might be. I have demonstrated that the international standard is indeed -er, contrary to the those speculating that it might be -re, as they never bothered to confirm their speculations with any proof. Please read starting from the very top of this discussion "What is the international spelling of theater?" or you will not understand the context of later comments and you will assume things that are not necessarily correct. 218.218.61.59 15:58, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Notes

So what is the common usage in the U.S.?

I did some research, sampling about 20% of the 8500 entries for a category in a yellow pages directory. (The category was movie theaters, but cross-listing meant it included lots of live theatres too. Data at My talk page.

The results:

• Live theatre: 80% of listings used re vs 20% er
• Movie theatres: 81% of listings used re vs 19% er. (the second result surprised me!)

So no matter what dictionaries and the style guides of major publications say, Theatre is an extremely common usage in the U.S. PS I'll follow up with more stats from the "Home Theater" category. dramatic 11:16, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

If you'll read my comments to Yossarian below, the second result is really not so surprising and prove the hearsay by some -re spellers in earlier discussions wrong. -re for centuries referred to the building. Those were pre-historic times before England had any theater art or theater groups to speak of and prior to Everyman (play) which signals a revival in Europe of theater culture lost during the Dark Ages.

However, I think you make a compelling case for why if we ever split the two spellings here between art and building, that -re would be the best candidate for the latter. Yellow pages give you phone numbers which are in buildings usually listing the building name in directory. Nevertheless, the Yellow Pages are a single source with only one current issue. I've given over a dozen sources including all the major newspapers, if I add the smaller ones that could be hundreds of publishers and they put out a fresh edition every day. So say 850 newspaper titles x 365 issues per year x 100 years x perhaps several instances of the word per article x 2-3 articles per issue, etc.

• -re for the use often in building names in the Yellow Pages: 1000's.
• -er for uses like "off-broadway theater", "(the art of) theater": Over 0.5 billion. (and that's only an estimate for newspapers.)

I think we can see that you're seriously outgunned. And I haven't gotten to the magazines and other genres of source material. A few thousand -re's that you find may seem to be a significant number, but it really doesn't register when compared -er, especially when you set aside the use of proper nouns, i.e., the names of buildings, as opposed to the generic use i.e., the art of theater or Japanese theater, and uses like that.

(By the way, dramatic, thanks for reverting the archive according to proper protocol. As readers can see, Jooler--who has never been part of this community anyway--and to a lesser extent, Yossarian, fall into the "I want it to be -re just because" camp, and seek to "hide" this discussion. Unwittingly, they show readers in this that they have no reasons beyond personal ones to name this article in a reference work for the general public soley according to their personal taste. So much for the "neutrality" Yossarian champions--but only champions when it is conveniet.) 210.197.240.31 20:38, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

You didn't see all the listings, so you may be excused for being completely wrong. The 're' listings were NOT all for buildings, although the majority of 'er' ones were. I visited a lot of websites in order to verify whether some entries were for live theatre or cinema, and on not one of those websites was there any distinction made between building, organisation name or the artform - they were consistent throughout.dramatic 11:17, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

The discussion above

The discussion above (I haven't read much of it) seems to have little to do with the article in question and that is after all the point of this talk page. There is little chance of this article being moved. Please take the discussion to a user talk page, and we'll clear down and archive it here. It's getting in the way. Jooler 07:00, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

It has a lot to do with the article. When viewers come and see the less common spelling at the top of the page they will wonder how it got that way and by what process-- or as I have pointed out, lack of process (a lack to explore what the international spelling was once a consensus had been formed leaning in that direction by some of the -re spellers.) Your member page's "This user dislikes American 'English" makes your comment "There is little chance of this article being moved" seem a bit suspicious. Whether or not another move happens is not the point. A purpose of the Talk page for articles according to the Wikipedia guidelines to reveal how the article itself arrived at the state readers find it. That would include reactions to that title and and how the decision was based on what is "international" as well as how this was misudnerstood at the time.

Good grief Charlie Brown! A multi-paragraph argument on the placement of the letters E and R in the word "theatre"/"theater"? This issue barely warrants a sentence! I mean, when you come down to it, it's a Greek word (corruption of θέατρον), and they didn't even use Latin letters...okay, okay, I know that's spurious, but come on. E and R? Who cares? The above is a big waste of space and should be moved to a subpage (even if someone feels the discussion needs further flogging). I reverted an anon's changes to the section in contention (in the actual article), as they touched on some rather glaring bias and simply cited this talk page as a reference (which, based on the conclusion they had it refer to, is like saying "I didn't kill that guy because I didn't kill him"). There was an interesting piece of speculation (and a proper reference) about the use of the spelling "theater" before the 18th Century, but that's just trivia...which is pretty much what the whole "Theatre or Theater?" section comes down to anyway. Suck it up people. Like Jooler said, it's unlikely to be moved, and, as I said, it's utterly insignificant. --Yossarian 12:44, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Who cares? It matters tremendously to an -re speller like Yossarian--as his actions show--despite what he says here. Obviously, it also, did to the 14 people who discussed the move from -er to -re. I am reverting the article slight alteration as he did not refute any of the above points that support the changes I made. If the pro -re side, honestly felt, "it doesn't matter" they'd never have made the move request in the first place, and Yossarian would not be tampering with additions not line with his-re POV bias in the article. The sections which begin with "Some..." and remain without citation are blatant POV by Yossarian. I suggest people wishing to make edits on the article page related to this issue follow the suggested protocol and discuss the issue here first. That would be one way of ridding the article of Yossarian's POV since the evidence is clearly against him.

What I would really expect out of people for whom spelling truly did not matter is for them to get on with the items on the to-do list for getting this article out of the B- grade cellar that it has been mired in for so long rather than busy themselves with matters which they claim are of no importance to them.

And what's more it mattered so much to jooler that even though he appears zero times on the listings for discussion on theater or as a contributor for the article itself, it is worth his coming over here to "hide" or archive the present discussion. The top of the page has a table of contents that allows you to skip down past the topics you don't want to read about, if that were really the issue. 210.197.240.31 19:59, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

The guy who didn't kill the guy because he didn't, I presume?

And the guy who claims he doesn't care about spelling, but only when spelling issues arise, does he come out of the woodwork to pipe up, which means he must care a great deal, I presume? 210.197.240.31 00:32, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually, my little "presume" thing wasn't quite fair. I really could care less as to whether the article is called Theater or Theatre, and I'm not going to engage in a debate over something as trivial as two spellings of the same bloody word. So here's the real problem: You can't be citing the article's own talk page as a reference, and then call it evidence. That's merely your conclusion in regards to a number of articles that support your point of view. Therefore, you haven't given a legitimate reference (or one that abides by Wikipedia conventions). In other words, you're refering back to yourself. Do those references constitute evidence? Some people might think so, some might not, so it's not neutral (key word here) to say that it does constitute evidence in an encyclopedia that purports neutrality. I think it's perfectly legitimate to add a citation where an independant (of Wikipedia) writer has come to that conclusion, but we're not here to endorse him/her. We say that "some people think that that's the case." So, I'm going to remove that reference and the comment about evidence for those reasons. I would also suggest you get a user account, if you don't already, because it's difficult to keep track of which series of numerals holds what opinion. --Yossarian 00:42, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

PS: I prefer the title "Guy who dances madly on the sea side with Humphrey Bogart"...well, ideally, anyway...your title is a little too prosaic.

PPS: I also spell "color" with a u. Colur. :)

Actually, the link was mainly intended to give access to legitimate evidence. You're wrong about authors not quoting themselves. It is done all the time in academia, so you obviously have no background in citation writing. It is useful to cite other sources but not a requirement. But for the benefit of readers here, I'll refer them to the writings of any British academic, take someone like Michael McCarthy for example. He and most other British researchers often quote their own works in current publications. This is nothing unusual whatsoever. For every researcher to ignore past works is simply impractical. Whether bias may exist is up to the reader, for him to go back and check the earlier writings of, say, McCarthy, and judge for themselves whether they accept what he wrote in the past or not. That's up to the reader, not an univolved spectator yourself with no background in citation writing.

As for what you call "speculation" that is more YOUR speculation. Check the OED or call your local university. British scholars will tell you the same thing. Documents from the time all reveal that the dominant spelling was indeed -er from 1347-1700. That is simply fact. I think the only thing you've displayed here is an ignorance for the history of own language.

Keeping track of a users isp # is easy. Initially you double click on it and copy and paste it into your finder and scan previous text he wrote to accertain who he is. It takes about 2-3 seconds for the normal human brain I'd guess, to do, and after a few times the number or enough it is easily memorized. In your case, I think this will be fairly easy since we are likely to be having many exchanges here in the future, you and I. Users could also register as numbers, so the account doesn't solve that much necessarily. Besides which, I think you can remember telephone numbers. It doesn't require all that much to do.

I don't really mind if the spelling is what it is now, if it weren't for the fact that something were missing. And I guess that something would be a footnote that says this spelling was voted in by a handful of persons from the U.K. plus one American drama student--something like that--because they personally liked the spellling. And they like the spelling so much that now that they realize they can't prove it to be the "international" spellling (a point raised by them originally--see posts by -re speller, dramatic, above), they'd like everyone to just tuck the term ("international") under the rug and forget about it.

Without that footnote it is simply the British spelling masquerading to be something else which it isn't. And it most certainly defies the neutrality that you seem to wave about like a flag at one moment when it suits you but you would put away very quickly when it comes to the spelling of the title. 210.197.240.31 01:27, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

(Checking his OED) Well, the chaps at Oxford must be an ignorant bunch indeed: "The earliest recorded Eng. forms, c. 1380, are theatre and teatre; from c.1550 to 1700, or later, the prevelant spelling was theater (so in dictionaries from Cawdrey to Kersey), but theatre in Holland, Milton, Dryden, Addison, Pope; Bailey 1721 has both, 'Theatre, Theater'; and between 1720 and 1750 theater was dropped in Britain, but has been retained or (?) revived in U.S...." -- The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, Volume II. Interesting. And from no less an authority than the Oxford English Dictionary, which I'm so glad you suggested I check. But I'm being snippy. Does my little quotation utterly invalidate the citations that "theater" is the earliest form (which you're saying is the fact)? Absolutely not (though, as I can't speak French, I can only check the one link). But it certainly puts some dissent out there...from the OED.

As for academia, that's the last thing Wikipedia is. And you're not a legitimate source, you're an anonymous contributer. Citing yourself constitutes original research, which is a big no-no 'round here. A list of (outside) sources is good to have, yes, but it should be on the main article, not the talk page. But I don't really know what we need it for as you've currently incorporated it, as I'm sure we could find some statistic, or some reference to the fact most Americans spell it with an -er. --Yossarian 02:15, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

PS: "My name is Yossarian and I read the Oxford English Dictionary. It's been a week since my last perusal." "Hi, Yossarian!"

Thanks, Yossarian, for checking the OED, that's a good contribution. The two sources do not necessarily contradict each other, particularly for the period between 1380 and 1550. That is they both agree, -er was the first form to be "prevalent", regardless of the precise date as to when this prevalence became established. Neither states that -re was either prevalent or dominant prior to 1700.

Your mini-OED also does not state precisely when -er, in its opinion, appears in the records. The 1550 date shows prevelance, but not first recording of that form. (the full edition may give more detail.) What this may mean is that the OED is not sure what the dominant early form was. Any student of language knows that a new form does not simply enter a language on day one and overtake the dominant form, if there even was, in fact, a dominant form up to that time. What is more likely is that -er had probably existed for quite some time along side -re, but the OED is not confident enough to mention anything about dominance of a form before then.

Students of English history will be aware that many manuscripts were lost during the times when the king had ordered the monestaries (where most of the manuscripts of the day happened to be kept) to be burned. Off-hand, I can say that this occurred somewhere probably between 1380-1550, which complicates things for the OED in that there may not be a preponderance of evidence (if any) to go on during some or much of that span.

Their staff may be in agreement as to the very first Middle English manuscript(s) that remain having either "theatre" or "teatre" but are not convinced between those two, or even other variations, "theater" as well, as to which form prevailed between 1380 and 1520 or 1550. This may not be clear to them. So hence they restrain themselves from using terms like "dominant" or "prevalance" until 1550.

If -re were simply an early form, but not really established as dominant for an acceptable period of time, it would hardly qualify as "traditional", to most people, I would think. In fact, at that time, there was not much if any drama going on on English stages. By the time "Everyman (play)" had begun to be peformed these were probably called dramas and not theater as there was not the theater culture was we know it yet in existence in those times. No proper theaters to speak of. It may have been used at first to refer to the ruins of their theaters that the Roman's had left behind in England, or to describe things from antiquity now lost, but not about the English stage and its art.

The French source I cited gives the earliest use of "théâtre" as a "building where public spectacles take place." So as we can see here and later with the use just below in England, -re spellilngs in either language first had to with the building, not the art:

1213 antiq. « bâtiment où se donnaient les spectacles publics » (Faits des Romains, éd. L. F. Flutre et K. Sneyders de Vogel, p. 734, ligne

Which means "the spectacle, the diversion, which actors offer on the stage" and the source cited is "Facts (or Deeds) of the Romans", so probably a historic work about the ancient Romans, not about European theater, of the day, which was nonexistent.

Considering the dates you gave from the OED, -er was the spelling best known to Shakespeare, off-stage, although the modern printings of his works happen to use -re. Readers here who argue that -re is more for the "art", -er for simply a building, will be confounded by the context, of course. He used the word 6 times in total and in each and every case it referred to the building and not the art, the complete opposite of what our -re proponents had been arguing many months ago here. Just as some acting students in America today and actors in Shakespeare's time, Shakespeare himself (he had every right as an artist to do so), had a personal leaning to choose -re, even though, as the OED tells us, -er was the dominant spellilng of the day, during his life (1564-1616) and for about 84 years thereafter. Most would argue that time when -er happened to prevail in England, was coincidentally, or perhaps not so coincidentally, the period of England's ascendancy and greatest glory. (By contrast, then, does that make at least the early form of -re, a decadent form, a form produced by an England in decline?) And that in this sense, and I am sure this is what many American drama students conjure in their imaginations, that is the period of tradition, the period of Shakespeare, for them. Yet, today, in their personal choice, they opt for the form of nearly a century after the death of Elizabeth I, and during time of much lesser monarchs, the names of whom most of those drama students could not even name.

Yossarian is equally anonymous. Anonymous with a non-numerical nickname. You misunderstand the concept of quoting. Quoting one's own opinion (a subjective notion with no evidence cited) is one thing, quoting a list of evidence, quite another. The most obivious source to quote would be a reference work like a dictionary. I did that above. The problem is that the American drama student (who I guess thought -re elegant), and Charlie, above, an expatriate who lives in England, keep arguing that the dictionary is dated, and that as Charlie put it, -er just doesn't exist in California. He was wrong, but that's the problem, those sorts of people, insist to others that books or even online statistics are not up-to-date. The list works well because people can consult it in real time (meaning they will change with the times, but your fact, found today will gradually become obsolete) )and judge for themselves if they trust the New York Times, Time and Newsweek, more than American expatriates like Charlie who tries to go online and set himself up as someone who knows better than the dictionary.

If you locate a statistic I can warn you advance they can also work against you. For example, the grammar you use may be correct, but it won't be applied the same correct way by everyone else. If there is a common mistake people make that will garner the higher statistic. By that measure, we'd have to judge everything you write that isn't written as the masses do to be "wrong". This is why institutions and sources exist that people turn to for standards and these are usually in the form of reference books like a dictionary or other source books with whole citations so that you can judge to see if you want that frame of reference to apply to your own context. That kind of book is called a concordance. But as I said, it will most likely give you different numbers. And one will be for what the masses use, which may include incorrect usage. And others will tell you what publishers do. Or how theater's name themselves, even, I would imagine. 210.197.240.31 04:28, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I think the problem is that English wasn't codified until late into life. Variance in Chaucer's, and later Shakespeare's, English (as well, as you mentioned, as the problem of lost texts) makes tracking down an early prevalent form pre-1500s difficult. However, the consensus among academics does seem to point to -er as being the form most widely used between the 16th Century and mid 18th. It's before that that it gets hazy, as you said, especially with the devil may care English orthography that developed after the Norman invasion. So it's hard to say what's factual and what's not, especially when the fact checkers are still arguing over it.

I admit, I spell it -re, but that's because I'm Canadian, and that's the standard I grew up with (including centre, harbour, and even organise), but I don't attach much weight to it outside of a couple of letters. I know some of my countrymen can be very political about their spelling when it comes to what they perceive as American cultural encroachment. Frankly, I don't see what the big deal is. To be honest, English really should be universally codified*, and whether that means theatre or theater is a very silly thing to worry about. I mean, this kind of stuff really does interest me as a linguist (and as a historian), but as an actor it seems irrelevant. So, on a page about the art of drama, or the buildings drama is held in, this kind of discussion feels a bit out of place. A lot of the stuff brought up here would make a very interesting separate article, discussing the linguistic history of the word (although, it might have a rather select audience, but obscurity has never been a problem on Wikipedia). That's more of what I meant when I said this was insignificant: in an article about acting, it only warrants a line or two (i.e. "Americans spell it -er, Brits/Canucks spell it -re"), but in article about the word itself, well, then we'd have something.

If this is truly a deadlocked argument, which I suspect it may be, I think a compromise is in order. It might be good for us to simply merge the current article with Drama and call said merged article, well, Drama. When the word theat** comes up, use the -er spelling in general, and the -re spelling when referring to Canadian, British, Australian, etc. stuff. Wikipedia policy is to use the local spelling when referring to something that comes from a certain country specifically (for example, a British miniseries would be called a "serial" on its own page), so that would be somewhat acceptable. But some people might not like that. As another idea, in the new Drama article, we could use "theatre" when referring to the art form, and "theater" when referring to a building. I know that's a rather tenuous modernism, but in a situation such as this, it would be a fair compromise (I've actually always thought that was a particularly dumb, pretentious, modernism, but I guess it does have its merits in situations such as this). Maybe even have some sort of note about it on the talk page/article opening. These aren't the only ideas, but I think there's way more important things to do here.

I'm sorry I seemed a bit hostile previously, but it's just that I found this whole thing a bit silly. You're right, it is a serious concern, but it just doesn't suit the purpose of this article. I think this discussion, and the above, should be moved to a subpage so it doesn't clutter things. A subpage can easily be made accessible at the top of this page, so one need not worry about hiding it. I think my ideas for compromise can be improved, but I also think compromise is the only alternative. Either way, with the current dichotomy, someone's going to be unhappy. --Yossarian 06:02, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

*I'm actually more in favour of phonetic English, so "theater" is still rather inadequate, to me. Why not just spell it thiyuhtr?

PS: Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that I wasn't anonymous. I am indeed anonymous. I hold myself to same standard. My apologies.

Drama (A rose by any other name?) seems like a good compromise actually. As I looked at some of the other drama school web sites, and at publications with their online version I noticed how they strained to avoid theater/theatre. On the heading of the page, but in the text as well. I can imagine similar debates brewed elsewhere and a policy to use "drama" instead prevailed. Theater has a unique etymology so it is unlike other changes from Webster which were new spellings that had never existed before. And it has a profession (acting) in which I can see that some prefer -re, as is their right, but as in a couple of cases above, it leads to American's with this preference making sweeping statements that -er no longer exists in California (see Charlie).

I also can see the point about eventually putting the discussion on a subpage, so long as link with a short note ("Discussion about title's spelling" or something like that) were kept on the current Talk page, as you mentioned. This will have the effect of preventing future discussion of the topic (hopefully) on the current Talk page. Otherwise, later arriving users will assume it hasn't been discussed yet. It should made obvious to them that it has been discussed and that they can easily gain access to that discussion. I don't agree with the comments said that the current discussion is like the last one before the vote. In that discussion incorrect things were said about "international" usage, and about earlier spellings. Also, you even had one American, as I said, claiming that he had never seen -er in America. That has been shown to be not true.

As for the article being about acting, I'm not really sure that is its purpose exclusively. (Isn't there an article called "acting"?)I think it might also be about directing and about design, too. And about history, as in the history of theater and its relationship to society. Something well beyond acting. But I also understand that those with a background in acting can contribute greatly to such an article and want to make clear that I would invite that as well.

I think we also touched on some interesting topics related to theater such as English history, Shakespeare and Everyman. So it wasn't only about spelling per se, but things that might interest anyone with an interest in, er, the T-word, er, drama.

The difficulty with dividing the meaning between the art and the building would be alright for a group of insiders who were writing for each other. I think that is easy to slip into to doing as on a Usenet, to forget you are really writing for a wider audience and what their standards or expectations might be, not for a small group of friends who can just agree on a personalized standard. No such difference actually exists so it would risk creating and perpetuating an urban myth, similar to Charlie trying to say that -er no longer existed in California when it most certainly does. I can see where some get the notion about buildings from. That movie theaters (buildings) don't care that much what they are called, in the sense that they're part of chain and so they just follow the standard as is in the dictionary in the U.S., I am saying, but when you are naming your very own theater company, on the other hand, that's a special occasion and you want it to be special, and if you happen to think -re is elegant or shows ties with Europe or something you're within your rights to do so.

And from what I've written just above, the author who people most associate with "tradition" Shakespeare, used -re for the building not for the art, in 6 out of the 6 times he used it in his work.

For Americans, or Chinese, Japanese, Germans, etc. who know the standard way the spelling is treated as I have described above, some who are knowledgeable about the -er spelling as used in those places, may wonder whether Wikipedia is a British site or a site that chooses alternate spellings and alternate views even on things, as opposed to being neutral. That's why I think letting people who are interested in knowing why the spelling is as it is now came to be. It actually came to be through misunderstanding. Through people who thought -re was international, but posted no evidence at all. Or who thought -re seemed traditional but could not really describe what they meant by the term. If they meant the prevailing form in Shakespeare's time, they'd be wrong.

Another way, but one that involves some programming, would be to let the page display the spelling you prefer. If you search for -er to find the article, you get an -er article. Some country sites where the slightest show of bias can be a liablity that I visited had this kind of thing in place or something just short of that. And they used different spellings depending on the context of a given document. That is easier to control when has a certain strategy in place to deal with those differences. Not so practical at Wikipedia.

Oops, I meant drama when I said acting (history, society, etc.). Sometimes I use those words interchangably when I actually just mean "drama". More later. Edit: Hmm...I didn't realize this, but there's an article about the theat** as a building: Theater (structure). Spelt with the -er. Hmm...the tenuous modernism doctrine (within Drama) is looking slightly more realistic. I dunno. It's a start. I still vote to merge this page with Drama and call it Drama. This page seems a bit superfluous, as there's already an article on the building, and the word drama is pretty much synonymous with theat** (as an art form). --Yossarian 08:52, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

This discussion is taking up FAR too much room here. I tried to archive it twice and it's been put back. I suggest we follow the example on Talk:Aluminium where there is a separate Talk:Aluminium/Spelling page, where people can argue the toss over this. Jooler 19:06, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Agreed (as I've been saying all along). The aluminum solution is good. --Yossarian 01:05, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Theatre/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

==Rating== This is B-class? An article with no citations which mostly consists of embedded lists? No, this is a start-class article. Punkmorten 15:07, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Last edited at 15:07, 16 October 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 20:52, 4 May 2016 (UTC)