User:Wavelength/About Wikipedia/Manual of Style/Register
![]() | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
Unfortunately, the second deletion discussion occurred during my increased preoccupation by several things outside Wikipedia, and I did not examine the text of the Register as thoroughly as I should have. While I am grateful to Darkfrog24 for (his or her) help in adding discussion links to the Register, I am disappointed that questionable material has possibly been added (perhaps in good faith). The more that I examine the Register, the more that I find that the possibly bad content is entangled with the good content. The situation is similar, in some aspects, to the one described at Matthew 13 24–30. I wish that I had acted more effectively to save the Register in its original namespace, perhaps by removing some good material along with possibly bad material. Perhaps I will undertake the task of removing the questionable material at some time in the future. I do not endorse the present version.
—Wavelength (talk) 23:21, 7 February 2016 (UTC) and 23:32, 7 February 2016 (UTC) and 01:24, 13 February 2016 (UTC)
This page is a work in progress, a working draft of a supplement to the Wikipedia:Manual of Style. Its purpose is to record decisions made in discussions at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. For more details, please see the January 2010 discussion archived at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 113#Recording consensus.
This document is meant as a reference of consensus decisions on the Wikipedia Manual of Style and, when available, the reasoning behind each consensus. It is not itself a collection of guidelines, rules, or laws. Just the fact that a consensus has been recorded on this page does not mean that that consensus is a permanent and unchangeable part of Wikipedia. This register is meant only to give editors better understanding of the current state of things, which is useful both to those considering proposing changes and to those seeking to better implement the MoS as it exists.
Article titles, headings, and sections
[edit]Article titles
[edit]- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 102#Dashes in article titles? (August 2008)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 101#Should article titles conform to naming conventions? (May 2008)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108#Article Titles (May 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 110#Request for comment - dashes in article titles (October 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 31#ß proposal (search for: "ß in article titles") (August and September 2005)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 93#Links in titles (October 2007)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 53#Article titles (July 2006)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 4#On the order of names (September 2004)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 109#hyphens vs. dashes in titles (August 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 23#ß proposal (August and September 2005)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 82 (search for: "article titles") (June 2007)
Section organization
[edit]Section headings
[edit]- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 119#Blank lines around headings (January 2011)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 146#Blank lines and section headings (September 2013)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 12#Headings and Sub-Headings: Capitalization of Major Words (version of 14:10, 22 September 2010) (April and May 2005)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 55#Capitalization in Headings (version of 14:32, 22 September 2010) (August and October 2006)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108#Capitalization of words within section headings. (version of 17:12, 13 October 2010) (May 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 121#title case and sentence case (version of 07:31, 13 May 2011) (April 2011)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Headings#Capitalization (version of 07:39, 13 August 2011) (November 2006)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#A question on sentence and Title case (version of 16:18, 3 November 2012) (July 2012)
National varieties of English
[edit]- (subsections re-ordered)
Opportunities for commonality
[edit]Consistency within articles
[edit]Strong national ties to a topic
[edit]Retaining the existing variety
[edit]Capital letters
[edit]Do not use capitals for emphasis
[edit]- (new subsection)
Capitalization of "The"
[edit]- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108#Use of "The" mid-sentence (September 2009)
Titles of works
[edit]- (new subsection)
Titles of people
[edit]Religions, deities, philosophies, doctrines
[edit]Calendar items
[edit]Animals, plants, and other organisms
[edit]Celestial bodies
[edit]Compass points
[edit]- Thread retitled from "Directions and regions".
Institutions
[edit]Ligatures
[edit]- (new section)
Abbreviations
[edit]Write out both the full version and the abbreviation at first occurrence
[edit]- (new subsection)
Plural and possessive forms
[edit]- (new subsection)
Full stops and spaces
[edit]- (new subsection)
US and U.S.
[edit]- (new subsection)
Circa
[edit]- (new subsection)
Do not use unwarranted abbreviations
[edit]- (new subsection)
Do not invent abbreviations or acronyms
[edit]- (new subsection)
HTML elements
[edit]- (new subsection)
Ampersand
[edit]Bold
[edit]- Wikipedia talk:Highlighting conventions (Wikipedia:Highlighting conventions was created in 2002 and lasted until it was redirected to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting#Article title terms in 2006)
Italics
[edit]Emphasis
[edit]- (new subsection)
Titles
[edit]- (new subsection)
Words as words
[edit]- (new subsection)
Foreign words
[edit]- (new subsection)
Scientific names
[edit]- (new subsection)
Quotations in italics
[edit]- (new subjection)
Italics within quotations
[edit]- (new subsection)
Effect on nearby punctuation
[edit]- (new subsection)
Italicized links
[edit]- (new subsection)
Controlling line breaks
[edit]- Thread retitled from "Non-breaking spaces".
Technical information
[edit]- (subsection removed)
Use
[edit]- (subsection removed)
Quotations
[edit]Original wording
[edit]- Thread retitled from "Minimal change".
Point of view
[edit]- (new subsection)
Typographic conformity
[edit]- Thread retitled from "Allowable typographical changes".
Quotations within quotations
[edit]Attribution
[edit]Linking
[edit]Block quotations
[edit]Foreign-language quotations
[edit]Punctuation
[edit]Apostrophes
[edit]Quotation marks
[edit]Reasons to prefer straight quotation marks and apostrophes
[edit]- Thread retitled from "Curly or straight".
Currently there is no consensus regarding which quotation glyphs to use. Originally the rule was introduced on 10 April 2003 in [1] without any discussion on the Talk page (see [1]). The rule stated “For uniformity and to avoid complications use straight quotation marks and apostrophes”. The debate regarding the appropriateness of this rule started in [18], [19] with the conclusion that the MoS have to be changed, yet all such changes have been reverted. Since then, the issue has been revisited many times.
The reasons currently provided for using straight quotation marks are as follows:
They are easier to type in reliably, and to edit. Mostly true, excepting that users would have to turn off the “smart quotes” function when pasting text from word processors.
Mixed use interferes with some searches, such as those using the browser’s search facility (a search for Alzheimer's disease could fail to find Alzheimer’s disease and vice versa). Apostrophes figure in this part of the debate, though it is argued that they are not relevant to the discussion of quotation glyphs. Modern browsers (such as Google Chrome) are capable of understanding that ' and ’ probably mean the same thing, so they will find both the “Alzheimer's” and “Alzheimer’s” regardless of how it is typed. I has also been argued that most people already know that the safe way of searching for “Alzheimer’s disease” is to type “Alzheimer disease
”. The lack of complaints regarding other special characters such as those in “Rao–Cramér inequality”, which are even harder to search for in an older browser, has also been noted.
Furthermore, wiki markup tags (such as <ref name="xxx"/>
) will not work if curly quotation marks are used. Tags are a part of computer language. They are meant for the computer, not for the people. It is an error to use curly quotation marks to delimit strings in wiki markup, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or most other computer languages.
The arguments in favor of recommending the curly quotation glyphs are as follows:
They are typographically correct. Meaning that it is the standard of English language to use glyphs “” to denote quotations. This rule can be found in most serious manuals of styles, both for paper and electronic documents. Most Wikipedia Manuals of Styles in other languages explicitly forbid the use of straight quotation marks. See for example German, French, Russian, Italian versions.
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 100#Straight and typographers quotes
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 103#Curly quotes again
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 104#Straight vs. curly quotation marks
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108#Curly quotes again.2C II
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108#Punctuation: Quotation marks:_.E2.80.9Cregular.E2.80.9D_vs._.22straight.22
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 163#Quotation marks messing up search functions--a thing of the past? (February 2015)
Reasons to prefer double quotation marks to single quotation marks
[edit]- Thread retitled from "Single or double".
The Wikipedia MoS prefers double quotation marks to single ones because they are more discernible visually, and there is no risk of mistaking a quotation mark for an apostrophe. This rule may have been put in place as part of a split-the-difference attempt to balance British and American English punctuation practices, in which the early MoS favored British style punctuation for periods and commas with quotation marks in exchange for preferring double quotes. This deal was made under the mistaken belief that British always requires single quotation marks.
Names and titles
[edit]- (new sub-subsection)
Punctuation inside or outside
[edit]
- For a collection of posts on this issue on the MoS talk page over the years, see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/quotation and punctuation
- For a list of external sources that support this rule, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Supports/Punctuation inside or outside.
This is a partial list of major MoS discussions, as of June 2015[update], about quotation marks and closing punctuation (does not include passing mentions):
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/quotation and punctuation (much of the page, 2002–2010)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 1#Punctuation Style
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 1#Style for words as words (December 2003)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Alpha Archive 3#On quotations and punctuation marks (September 2004)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive (quotes and quote marks 2)#British punctuation in articles written in American English (with 3 subsections, August 2006)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 3#On quotations and punctuation marks (September 2004)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 4#On quotations and punctuation marks (September 2004)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 12#Quotation marks, splitting the difference (March 2005)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 32#Using commas and periods with Quotations, Song Titles, Article Titles, including in a Series (October–November 2005)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 47#Punctuating quoted passages: why British usage exclusively? (March 2006)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 50#Quotation marks (April 2006)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 67#Quotation mark caveat added (January and February 2007)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 68#Comma inside or outside quotation marks: can we clarify at WP:MoS? (February 2007)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 86#punctuation.E2.80.94interesting_link (July 2007)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 90#Commas inside quotes (July and August 2007)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 92#Logical and typesetters' punctuation (with 2 subsections, September–October 2007)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 93#Quotations and punctuation (October and November 2007)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 94#Quotation mark (with 1 subsection and 1 sub-subsection, December 2007 – January 2008)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 101#Logical quotation (May 2008)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 103#Wikipedia:Logical quotation merge proposed (September 2008)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108#WP:MOS#Quotation marks (May 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108#Punctuation, inside or outside (September 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108#Colons and semicolons with quotation marks (May–June 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 111#Quotations (December 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 113#Needed help regarding WP:Logical quotation (with 16 subsections and 1 sub-subsection, January–February 2010)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 117#Question on logical punctuation (September 2010)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 125#Logical punctuation (June–August 2011)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 126#A bunch of research and sourcing on logical and typesetters' quotation marks (October 2011)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 140#Glaring grammar error in a policy here (WP:LQ) (with 3 subsections, May 2013)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 141#Punctuation around quotation marks (June 2013)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 143##RFC: punctuation when quoting (with many subsections and an RFC, June–August 2013
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 151#Inside or outside punctuation (February 2014)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 152#Time to remove "it is used here because" from WP:LQ (February 2014)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 152#Removal of "This differs from standard U.S. convention." (followup to the immediately previous discussion, February–March 2014)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 153#Let's change WP:LQ (March 2014)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 158#Clarify MOS:LQ#LQ (with multiple subsections, May–June 2014)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 160#British quotes (on ENGVAR and quotation marks generally, July 2014)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 161#Logical quotation (September–October 2014)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 161#Illogical punctuation and footnotes (mostly about footnote formatting, November 2014)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 167#Commas and full stops (periods) inside or outside (May–June 2015)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 170#Unnecessary comma in WP:LQ example? (shifted to discussion of the rule itself, how to present it, and how to explain it, August 2015)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 169#Proposal: Clarify the difference between logical quotation and British style (September 2015)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 177#Commas at end of quotes? (December 2015)
Brackets and parentheses
[edit]Sentences and brackets
[edit]Brackets and linking
[edit]Ellipses
[edit]- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 7#Ellipses (January and February 2005)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 65#ellipsis (January 2007)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 92#"Ellipses" section, "Square brackets" para (August and October 2007)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 93#Ellipses policy unclear (October 2007)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 94#Straight vs. curly quotation marks and apostrophes (November and December 2007)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 95#Ellipses – Proposal to expand the treatment thereof (January 2008)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 100#Ellipses (June 2008)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 104#I need advice on how to start a sentence (October 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 105#Another new section under Punctuation (November 2008)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 106#Em dashes, en dashes and ellipsis (December 2008)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108#Periods and full stops (June 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 110#Ellipses and square brackets (October 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 111#Quotations (December 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 111#AWB (January 2010)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 113#Ellipsis nbsp (January 2010)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 114#Ellipsis (March 2010)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 122#Quotes (June 2011)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 126#Added examples for ellipses (November 2011)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 127#Space before ellipsis (February 2012)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 128#Leading ellipses (June 2012)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 129#Leading ellipses (June 2012)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 131#Use of with ellipses and dashes (October 2012)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 137#An edit in the provisions for ellipses (February 2013)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 135#Full point (January 2013)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 153#Ellipses after terminal punctuation (March 2014)
Commas
[edit]Serial commas
[edit]Colons
[edit]Semicolons
[edit]Semicolon before "however"
[edit]Hyphens
[edit]- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 6#Hyphens_2 (November and December 2004)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 12#What about hyphens? (March to July 2005)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 23#Proper hyphen/mdash usage? (August 2005)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 30#Hyphens (October 2005)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 82#Hyphens and dashes in the MoS (with subsections) (June and July 2007)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 88#Hyphens (July 2007)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 94#Proposal: permit non-hyphen form with units in full form, to match guidance for symbolic form (December 2007 to February 2008)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 95#Hyphen in political family names (January 2008)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 96#Hyphens (February 2008)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 96#Usage of hyphens, item two (March 2008)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 97#... If you take the hyphen seriously, you will surely go mad (March 2008)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 100#Dash or hyphen? (April 2008)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 100#Bot is being developed to convert hyphens to en dashes (May 2008)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 101#Tutorials on hyphens and dashes (July 2008)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 104#Naming conventions: hyphen is not used as a substitute for an en dash (October 2008)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 104#Hyphens, en dashes, minus signs? Oh my! (November 2008)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 106#Hyphens after -ly adverbs (rationalised section) (with subsections) (November and December 2008)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108#En dashes vs. hyphens (with subsections) (March to June 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 109#Hyphens in category names (July 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 109#Change wording on when to use hyphens (July and August 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 109#Hyphens vs. en dashes (with one subsection) (August 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 109#adverb + hyphen + past participle (September 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 110#Example for elements in conjunction and hyphens? (December 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 111#Hyphens as minus signs (December 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 113#Hyphens in reference titles (February 2010)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 114#Hyphens vs. dashes in German federal-state names (February and March 2010)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 114#Hyphen question (March 2010)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 116#Hyphens in adjectives of dates (July 2010)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 116#MoS on SOFT HYPHEN (SHY) (July 2010)
Dashes
[edit]- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/dash drafting (June and July 2011)
Punctuating a sentence (em or en dashes)
[edit]En dashes: other uses
[edit]Other dashes
[edit]Slashes
[edit]And/or
[edit]Number signs
[edit]Terminal punctuation
[edit]- (subsection removed)
Punctuation and inline citations
[edit]Citations are always placed after punctuation when they occur together. This occurs regardless of whether the citation pertains to the entire preceding paragraph, or only the preceding sentence or clause. In placing inline citations and footnote marks after periods and commas, Wikipedia follows the overwhelming majority of reputable publications. Only one publication, Nature magazine, was found to place citations before punctuation. In addition, most of the Wikipedians involved in the discussion, even the ones supporting an allow-both policy, voiced preferences for the consistency and look of post-punctuation citations.
This issue most recently came under discussion in February 2010, when one editor found a discrepancy between WP:MoS and WP:FN. WP:MoS allowed only post-punctuation citations while WP:FN allowed both post- and pre-punctuation citations. After much discussion, WP:FN was altered to allow only post-punctuation citations.
Spaces between said punctuation and the inline citations were deemed neither sightly nor necessary, by consensus on WP:MoS.
Spacing
[edit]Spaces following terminal punctuation
[edit]Consecutive punctuation marks
[edit]Punctuation and footnotes
[edit]Punctuation after formulae
[edit]Dates and time
[edit]Time of day
[edit]Days
[edit]Choice of format
[edit]Months and seasons
[edit]- (separated into "Months" and "Seasons"; see below)
Months
[edit]- (new subsection)
Seasons
[edit]- (new subsection)
Years and longer periods
[edit]Current
[edit]Numbers
[edit]Currencies
[edit]Units of measurement
[edit]Common mathematical symbols
[edit]Grammar and usage
[edit]- Thread retitled from "Grammar".
Possessives
[edit]- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108#Possessive apostrophes (April 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108#Recent changes to the "Possessives" section (August 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108#Possessives:_section_revised_after_recent_discussion (August–September 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 110#What happened to the Possessives section? (November 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 113#Defining consensus (January 2010)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 125#Possessive apostrophes, with subsections (August 2011)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 147#Paris' or Paris's (October and November 2013)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 150#Quick check: consensus on possessives (December 2013 and January 2014)
Singular nouns
[edit]- (new sub-subsection)
Plural nouns
[edit]- (new sub-subsection)
Official names
[edit]- (new sub-subsection)
Pronouns
[edit]- (new sub-subsection)
First-person pronouns
[edit]Second-person pronouns
[edit]Plurals
[edit]Verb tense
[edit]- (new subsection)
Vocabulary
[edit]Contractions
[edit]Gender-neutral language
[edit]- For a list of external sources that support this rule, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Supports/Gender-neutral language.
As of January 2010, there is no consensus either for or against the use of the singular "they" in Wikipedia. Arguments for its acceptability include its long history in English, the fact that it is common in informal speech and writing and grammatical rules that permit a plural pronoun with words such as "everyone" that do not refer to a specific subject. Arguments against its use include its informality and the grammatical impropriety of using a plural pronoun for a singular subject. Please see the articles on WP: Gender-neutral language and the singular they for more information.
The most recent discussion of the singular "they" can be found here.
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 140#Gender-specific pronouns referring to ships (May 2013)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 158#Gender-neutral language (July 2014) concerns the generic "he"
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 163#Essays: Gender-neutral language and the generic he (January 2015)
- Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 118#Appending the Manual of Style on gender-neutral language (February 2015)
- Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 118#GNL in the MoS: Clarification regarding guidance on the generic he (February 2015) concerns the generic "he"
Contested vocabulary
[edit]Instructional and presumptuous language
[edit]Subset terms
[edit]Identity
[edit]Use of "Arab" and "Arabic"
[edit]- (new sub-section)
Gender identity
[edit]- (new sub-section)
The practice of using the most recent publicly preferred pronoun and/or first name of any individual whose gender might be questioned, such as trans men and trans women, has been challenged and revisited more than once. There are many levels of opinion on this issue. Some believe in using the most recent preferred pronoun to refer to the subject throughout his or her life (current policy). Some believe in using the pronoun corresponding to the subject's gender of rearing when writing about periods before the subject's gender transition and then the preferred pronoun only when writing about periods after the subject's gender transition. Some believe that only the pronoun corresponding to the gender of rearing should be used. Still others believe that the context, such as whether the person is more notable as a man or a woman, should decide the matter. Below is a partial list of discussions of this issue as it pertains to the Wikipedia Manual of Style. Be advised that conversations from a few years ago may use now-outdated terminology.
The MoS's instructions regarding transgender individuals who are mentioned in passing in other articles (as opposed to in articles of which they are the principal subject) date to a single RfC in late 2015. The RfC was inspired by a conflict in the article space: whether to name "Bruce Jenner" or "Caitlyn Jenner" on a list of Olympic athletes. Not all of the RfC's results were clear, but the majority of participants agreed that context should play the largest role in determining whether to use one name or both and which one. The idea of requiring that the previous name be used alone in all cases was specifically rejected.
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108#Gender of gender-ambiguous_persons (February 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108#MOS:IDENTITY (August 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 122#Transsexual women (September 2011)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 149#Flaw in MOS:IDENTITY (November 2013)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 149#A suggested addition to the gender paragraph (November 2013)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 163#Addition to WP:IDENTITY (January 2015)
- Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 121#MOS:IDENTITY clarification (June 2015)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 170#Pronoun pref (August 2015)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 170#Gender identity (August 2015)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 170#What other style guides say (August 2015; cites sources)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 173#Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 121#MOS:IDENTITY clarification close (September 2015)
- Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 123#Revisiting MOS:IDENTITY in articles about transgender individuals
- Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 124#Clarifying MOS:IDENTITY in articles in which transgender individuals are mentioned in passing
Below is a partial list of discussions pertaining to other parts of MOS:IDENTITY.
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 149#MOS:IDENTITY RFC: Should the text .22When there is no dispute....22 be deleted.2C kept or changed.3F (September 2013)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 149#RFC - is Identity a style issue or a content issue.3F
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 149#Self-designation trumps reliable sources? (December 2013)
Foreign terms
[edit]Technical language
[edit]Geographical items
[edit]Images
[edit]Avoid entering textual information as images
[edit]Captions
[edit]- (previously a section)
Formatting of captions
[edit]- (previously a subsection of "Captions")
Bulleted and numbered lists
[edit]Links
[edit]Wikilinks
[edit]External links
[edit]- (previously a subsection of "Links")