Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Layout

Periods at ends of links in see-also sections

Maxeto0910 (talk · contribs) has been adding periods to the end of see-also links when the short description provided in the link happens to resemble a grammatically complete sentence. Example: the link to Immerman–Szelepcsényi theorem in Savitch's theorem, provided using {{annotated link}} to incorporate the short description of the linked article, currently "Nondeterministic space complexity classes are closed under complementation" (but significantly too long and in need of shortening). My position is that see-also entries in general, and the ones generated by annotated links in particular, are more often than not only sentence fragments, and that for consistency we should use a format for see-also sections in which the period is omitted from all entries. I don't see any guidance on this issue in MOS:SEEALSO, but this is consistent with all examples provided there, including the "Joe Shmoe" example which happens to resemble a grammatically complete sentence. Should this be addressed more explicitly there? —David Eppstein (talk) 22:39, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

In your edit summary, you wrote "As a general rule see-also links do not use periods and I see no exception for this case."

I'm just asking for that general rule because I couldn't find any guideline which states that. That's why I requested a link to a corresponding guideline in my edit summary.

The Joe Shmoe example in MOS:SEEALSO is merely a sentence fragment, as the description lacks the subject because it's obvious from the context to which it refers — "[He] made a similar achievement on April 4, 2005".

If there's no guideline regulating this Wikipedia-specific issue (yet), which it seems like, I'd argue that the general rules of the English grammar should apply, after which every complete sentence should end with a period. Maxeto0910 (talk) 23:26, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Guidance at MOS:LISTFORMAT: basically, don't mix sentences and sentence fragments in a list, but if every item is a full sentence, should end with a period / full stop. —Joeyconnick (talk) 17:50, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Are "References" sections obsolete in light of Citation lists?

Perusing the Nationalism article, I couldn't help but feel its reference section felt obsolete, in light of the much more complete citation list above it. I'm sure this applies to (probably) every article with such a section, given all citations automatically go into the citation list. In most cases, reference lists only repeat the relevant information of the citations ad tend not to be updated in line with them either. It seems they just bog articles down, with the obvious exception of when those citations are not full citations. But perhaps I'm missing some other function they provide? Yr Enw (talk) 09:21, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

That article is no good. The citation list is poor and incomplete. It lists books but not the relevant page numbers. When you have books, you either need the reference section along with cite templates, or you need to supply the page references next to the footnote references with rp templates. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 09:35, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

It looks to me like somebody began to use WP:CITESHORT but gave up partway through. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:47, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Proposed definition of 'body'

The Wikipedia:Glossary did not have an entry for the body of an article, nor is there one here at MOS:LAYOUT. The definition at MOS:LAYOUT is merely implied negatively by what it isn't; namely, it's what's left after defining everything else: i.e., it's not the lead or table of contents, and not the Appendixes or bottom matter. Of course, not all articles have a lead, table of contents, or appendixes, and anyway, a negative definition isn't appropriate for a glossary entry. So I've attempted a positive definition. Here's what I came up with:

Body – The part of an article containing detailed content about the article topic, as defined by its title, excluding the lead, if any. The body follows the lead and may be followed by optional appendix section(s). For short articles with no lead or appendixes, the body may be the entire article, with any end matter following after.

Note that MOS:BODY points to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout#Body sections, and nothing there disagrees with this definition, although it never actually defines it. I've added this definition to the Glossary just to have something, but will adjust it to conform to any consensus reached here. Your feedback would be appreciated. Mathglot (talk) 01:33, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

All good except for "appendix sections". I've not seen or used that term around here. I prefer "end matter". ~Kvng (talk) 16:02, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment. The term appendix is used in the major section heading § Standard appendices and footers at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout, and in the shortcut MOS:APPENDIX that links to it. It is also point #3 in the ordered list at § Order of article elements (a.k.a., MOS:SECTIONORDER), where "End matter" is point #4, and comes after "Appendices". Appendices is also used in other pages, such as WP:Perennial proposals. That said, I think that all three terms (appendices, bottom matter, end matter) are often understood interchangeably, and we should go with whatever most people are familiar with. Maybe we could just finesse the whole issue and not use any of them, and just end the definition with, "... and may be followed by supplementary, non-content material", or use both, and say "...appendices and end matter"? Mathglot (talk) 20:14, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

I would avoid "appendix" because to me it means a textual section appearing after the main body of a written work. We don't have those in Wikipedia articles. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:45, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Of course we do, in millions of articles. Your understanding of appendix is not how it is used in numerous locations at MOS/Layout as just linked above. The sense in which Wikipedia uses it aligns well with definitions at American Heritage, Merriam-Webster, OED^{[via TWL]} and other dictionaries. If you want to avoid the use of appendix, that would have to be a separate proposal on this page, and imho would be a steep mountain to climb, as this meaning goes back decades; even the shortcut MOS:APPENDIX goes back to 2009.

However, I don't want to get sidetracked, as this discussion is about what to write in the Glossary for the entry Body, which should merely reflect what it means here. The fact that there isn't a clear definition for it on this page, is what prompted it. I'm just looking for agreement for (or objections to) the glossary definition for body. Mathglot (talk) 21:17, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

@Mathglot, your finesse is good. I was obviously not aware that we had so many terms in play for the stuff at the end of an article. ~Kvng (talk) 14:57, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

The "supplementary, non-content material" will not solve disputes; in will probably increase them, as editors will disagree over whether the citations to reliable sources are "content". Duplicating terms ("appendices and end matter") will make editors believe that these are different things (==See also== is the appendix, and ==References==, where the endnotes are located, must be the end matter?). If we need to define this thing at all (which I doubt), we probably need to use the word appendix and link to MOS:APPENDIX for anyone who doesn't know what that bit of wikijargon means.

About the definition: I'm not sure that larger tables are always included when editors talk in "the body of the article". Sometimes "the body" seems to get used to indicate "the paragraphs of text" (as opposed to tables, long lists, or perhaps images). Also, WP:ELBODY includes the lead of the article (but not infoboxes) as "the body". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:58, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm not the one calling appendices and end matter two different things; this guideline is. "Appendices" are listed as major bullet #3 in section § Order of article elements and lists 5 items; "end matter" is bullet #4 lower down, and lists ten. As fn 6 points out, this is largely unchanged since 2003, so that's what they mean, for the last 20 years. It's not asking too much to define "body" here as well. Mathglot (talk) 07:24, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks.

About excluding the lead from the body, consider ELBODY: "With rare exceptions, external links should not be used in the body of an article." I think that if we add this definition, a wikilawyer will eventually come along to say that the lead isn't part of the body of the article, and therefore external links are fine in the lead. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:40, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Acceptable sorting orders of "Further reading" sections

I've recently sorted a couple unsorted "Further reading" sections by publication date, earliest first, but have had this sort order opposed by Skyerise over at User talk:Tollens/Archive 4#You call that sorted?. It seems to me from a reading of both MOS:FURTHER and Wikipedia:Further reading that while such sections are frequently alphabetized, sorting chronologically is also appropriate. I would think that a chronological sort order makes more sense in further reading sections.

Alphabetization is of course so that it is easier to locate a given entry in a list, which is important for a general reference section because it will be referenced by inline citations – readers will therefore be searching a general reference section for a particular entry. In the case of further reading sections, however, there is no possible way for a reader to know in advance what entries are contained in the list, because they weren't referenced in the text of the article at any point – otherwise they would belong in a general reference section. Readers are then never searching a further reading section, but instead browsing the section. As described at Wikipedia:Further reading, this allows readers to do multiple things: skip to the newest writings recommended in the section, or see how opinions expressed on the topic have changed over time. An alphabetized list allows neither, allowing only for works to be grouped by author, which is not helpful unless the authors are especially well-known (in which case yes, alphabetization is likely of more use).

Clarifying MOS:FURTHER to either explicitly allow chronological ordering, explicitly disallow it, or alternatively specify what cases the "usually" currently in the guideline does not cover, would be appreciated. Tollens (talk) 23:13, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

I of course don't mean to suggest that in either case the list should be changed from one to the other, because as a purely stylistic change doing so would violate MOS:STYLERET. I am wondering only about lists that are already unsorted and new further reading sections. Tollens (talk) 23:17, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

@Tollens: I apologize for my tone yesterday, but there must be a good reason to sort a bibliography chronologically. Normally further reading should only contain material that could be used as a reference, but simply hasn't been cited in a footnote yet. The MoS also says that further reading should be presented in the same way that the reference bibliography is presented. Alphabetic order helps facilitate the integration of a newly cited further reading item into the list of cited works.

There are sometimes good reasons to sort chronologically, particularly in showing the development of an idea say in philosophy or some other historical development: but when doing so, the date should be presented first on the line, which means all the citation should be manually reformatted to present the date first.

I suggest that the writers of WP:FURTHER did not anticipate that the reader may not have ever written a research paper in college and WP:FURTHER should be clarified that the standard alphabetic order used in nearly every academic publication is strongly preferred and then give examples of when and how different orders might be used where they are actually useful. WP:MOSLOW should also be revised to include instructions on how to order bibliographies containing works of multiple authors. Skyerise (talk) 11:28, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Word count per paragraph guidance

Is there any guidance anywhere for how long is "too long" for a paragraph in the new Vector skin or mobile view? This isn't a question about how to write better paragraphs and I'm not looking for answers about writing style. It's a question more about web accessibility. eg, now that the default skin maintains a narrower paragraph, do we hit "wall of text" problems in shorter paragraphs than before, or is that concern less relevant now? -- asilvering (talk) 18:45, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

No. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:28, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

@Graham87: Thinker78 (talk) 03:41, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

It doesn't affect screen readers. Graham87 (talk) 04:36, 29 February 2024 (UTC)