Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style

Overcapitalization of "vol." and "no."

Presently we have text in WP:MOS that says "write volume two, number seven or Vol. 2, No. 7." This appears to conflict with common practice, and with MOS:CAPS. Under no other circumstance would we permit capitalization of a common noun simply because it's abbreviated (and "no." is an abbreviation, of Latin numero, which is not written Numero; see also "etc.", "cf.", "e.g.", and a zillion other Latinisms in English, which are uniformly lowercased). I would suggest that this be changed to "vol. 2, no. 7".

Regardless, this section should probably also be moved to MOS:NUM, and only summarized here in compressed form. MOS:NUM doesn't have anything on this, but it is the obvious place to look, and we're trying to move nit-picks out of the main MOS to the, well, nit-pick pages.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:06, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Is it true to say that most academic reference styles don't use Vol and No at all any more, but just use the order of the two numbers, typically separated by a colon or comma, to denote those? Just sayin'. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:16, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Sure, and our citation templates also do this, but this has nothing to do with usage in prose. We should not be advocating overcapitalization of abbreviations of non-proper nouns. It's just baseless and without any apparent precedent. What I think has happened here is that someone was thinking of how something like this is presented in subtitle style on a book cover or frontispiece ("My Adventures with in Elbonia, Vol. II") and has overgeneralized.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  01:42, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

I would always favour 'No' and 'Vol'. Caps seems to be well-established, and recommended by most style guides I see. I am not sure of the reasoning, though. Maybe it has something to do with their origins in titles. There is possibly an argument for dropping them (as well as the full stops!).-Sb2001 (talk) 22:22, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

I would tend to agree. If we have to use those abbreviations, I think they should be capitalised. Would also be happy to lose the full stops. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:30, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Fullstops are grammatically correct for abbreviations, and are especially useful when as in this case the abbreviations could easily be mistaken for words.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 23:42, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

JohnBlackburne: Americans seem to dot everything in sight, though there's a glacial move toward easing up on that count. Outside North America, it is usual to dot an abbreviation that doesn't end with the last letter of the expanded version, but not otherwise ("St", "Dr"). Acronyms and initialisms are now not normally dotted. I think "No." and "Vol." should be dotted in references; but conventional "22(3)" is fine if consistently used in a reference list. Tony (talk) 06:04, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Unproductive circular debate about whether evidence is needed

"I would always favour..." – on what basis? "I am not sure of the reasoning, though." Okay, so just WP:ILIKEIT. "I would tend to agree" – Okay, you also just like it and don't have a rationale? "I think they should be capitalised" – on what basis? This is not a discussion about ".", either. We all already know that some indeterminate percentage of British and Commonwealth editors prefer dropping a bunch of punctuation, and other editors from the same places disagree, while editors everywhere else disagree, so that discussion is not going to reopen or go anywhere if it did.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:42, 5 July 2017 (UTC) User:SMcCandlish: Please do not try to patronise me. I think we should avoid this discussion. It is turning aggressive, and not on my part. I will not partake in a discussion when the other editor's words and dismissive attitude affect my work in real life. Yes, they act as a distraction - they are harsh and somewhat personal. I have been thinking about what you - and other editors - have said in response to my innocent and somewhat friendly contributions all day. I cannot deal with that. I contributed here to be helpful, and add my opinion. I will refrain from partaking in your discussions in future. I will not let WP have an effect on my real emotional state. Well done. -Sb2001 (talk) 16:05, 5 July 2017 (UTC) No idea what "aggressive" stuff you're referring to. I'm not patronizing anyone, I'm simply expecting an actual rationale to be provided, not just more WP:ILIKEIT or WP:IKNOWIT.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:49, 6 July 2017 (UTC) Stanton, in your opening statement you say "This appears to conflict with common practice". I wonder could you elucidate what you mean by "common practice" here? Or perhaps there are prescriptive guidelines for usage, in such publications as The Chicago Manual of Style? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 07:31, 5 July 2017 (UTC) I mean that it is not typically done; "[not] common practice" seems pretty clear to me. :-) This is not an article and we need not provide source citations to come to consensus. But to look at a few anyway: Chicago Manual of Style has "vol." (which means Turabian and Scientific Style and Format should as well, since they follow it on such matters closely, but someone can go look if they want.) MLA Handbook has "vol." AMA Manual of Style (the medical AMA) has "vol" (its citation style eschews "." after an abbreviation in cites), except after a period (full stop), where it is necessarily "Vol". The Red Book (legal), AP Stylebook, New Century Handbook, AMA Handbook of Business Writing (the marketing AMA), and Bedford Handbook do not address this directly, but certainly do not advise capitalizing abbreviations of common nouns, and provide examples of them in lower case. ACS Style Guide uses "Vol." but only in formatted reference citations; that cite style seems to capitalize all cite elements. Publication Manual of the APA doesn't use "vol." or "Vol.", just a bold number (in formatted citations; they don't address use in running prose, but I see no evidence of support for upper-casing abbreviations of common nouns). The APA pattern is common in other academic/scientific fields' guides; the issue doesn't arise in them because they just use numbers. However, if you examine them closely, they also use "vols." to indicate multi-volume works, and this is lower-case in the instances I've found so far (e.g., in APA and in MHRA Style Guide, as well as in CMoS). All I've got time for right now.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:49, 6 July 2017 (UTC) Ah yes, those style guides again. What I meant was - what's that corpus of English usage on which you base your conclusion about "common practice"? Or is it just your own personal subjective view of common practice. You know, along the lines of WP:ILIKEIT or WP:IKNOWIT? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 07:37, 6 July 2017 (UTC) My assessment is based on style guides; I have the rules of many of them on many points memorized, and am willing to cite from them directly when others request it, as above. There's no ILIKEIT or IKNOWIT in this, and it's pretty silly for you to make that claim right after I dumped a bunch of reliable sources in your lap. Your turn: provide sources in favor of "Vol.", not inside a title or subtitle, not after a stop/period, and not just in formatted citations, but in mid-sentence in running text. Good luck.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:13, 6 July 2017 (UTC) I'm not sure that any number of prescriptive style guides, many of which may have parts simply copied from other earlier style guides, always translate into "common practice". Much in the same way that the content of the MoS guide for Wikipedia doesn't always translate into "common practice" here. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:51, 7 July 2017 (UTC) p.s. please don't dump things in my lap. Thanks. @Martinevans123: An "I'm dismissive of style guides" argument equates to "I don't have an argument" here, since what MoS says is largely based on what other style guides are doing (with priority generally in decreasing order from academic through general-audience to journalism and marketing guides). @Sb2001: You wrote: "Caps seems to be ... recommended by most style guides I see". Really? I've cited plenty that don't. I ask the same of both of you, again: Please provide sources in favor of "Vol[.]" and "No[.], not inside a title or subtitle, not after a full stop (period), and not just in formatted citations, but in mid-sentence in running text. Let's count them and compare both their number and their reputability to what I've cited already and continue to cite below.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:00, 11 July 2017 (UTC) An assertion that "style guides don't dictate real usage" equates to a "style guides don't dictate real usage" assertion. Nothing more, nothing less. By all means demonstrate the corpus of written English on which your assertion of "common practice" rests. Not what "common style guides" dictate, but what common usage demonstrates. Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) My sources trump your lack of sources and your handwaving at the sources provided. Cf. the fallacy of moving the goalposts (a.k.a. raising the bar): an argument in which the evidence presented, in response or upon demand, is dismissed and some other sort of, or greater volume of, evidence is demanded; it's a variation on shifting the burden of proof.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:58, 12 July 2017 (UTC) PS: I'm collapse-boxing this sub-thread since its continuance isn't going to be of interest to anyone but you and me, if that.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  02:37, 12 July 2017 (UTC) I'm sure this discussion might be of interest to many other editors. I've waived no hands, I've moved no goalposts, especially the bar. I suspect that if I wrote "The cat sat on the mat" you would accuse me of ignoring the sedentary habits of canines and of perpetuating the unfair mistreatment of floor-based household products. Martinevans123 (talk) 09:55, 12 July 2017 (UTC) It was of interest to me, so I read the whole thing. It seems to me that Martinevans specifically requested examples of "prescriptive guidelines for usage, in such publications as 'The Chicago Manual of Style'" and then complained, in a rather biting and unhelpful tone, that prescriptive style guides actually aren't useful after all and all we care about is popular usage when SMcCandlish did precisely as asked. If that's not moving the goalposts, I'm not sure what is. I am glad that editors with such impressive command of style guides persist notwithstanding this sort of unfair and unproductive acrimony. AgnosticAphid talk 06:07, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

• LowercaseWhat David Eppstein and Trappist said (below). And I'm all for moving as much detail from main MOS into subsidiary pages; the main MOS is grossly bloated for what ought to be its function, which is to give the high points for a newcomer who cares, but doesn't care that much. EEng 23:49, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
• Lowercase: As the first sentence of MOS:CAPS says, "Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization." Let's stick with that philosophy. It might be good to put the advice into MOS:CAPS or WP:CITE rather than (or in addition to) MOS:NUM. —BarrelProof (talk) 23:52, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
• Mixed. Capitalized when it is in the middle of a title-case title: "The Art of Computer Programming, Vol. III: Sorting and Searching", or when it's after a full stop (as used to separate things in Citation Style 1, except that CS1 doesn't use the Vol. abbreviation). Lowercase in other situations, including in the example sentence at the start of this discussion section. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:13, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

  cs1: {{cite magazine |title=Title |magazine=Magazine |volume=75 |issue=11}}

  "Title". Magazine. Vol. 75, no. 11.

  lower case numero because there isn't a terminal stop after volume number.

  cs2: {{citation |title=Title |magazine=Magazine |volume=75 |issue=11}}

  "Title", Magazine, vol. 75, no. 11

  —Trappist the monk (talk) 00:35, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Agreed it can be capitalized when used in a subtitle like "Vol. III: Sorting and Searching"; that's already covered by MOS:TITLES at least in theory if not in specifics. No objection to explicitly clarifying that.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  01:42, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

If the idea is to follow a full stop with an uppercase letter, doesn't that cs1 example break down a bit when "{{cite magazine |title=Title |magazine=Magazine |volume=75 |issue=11 |page=93}}" becomes ""Title". Magazine. Vol. 75, no. 11. p. 93."? —BarrelProof (talk) 02:30, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

MOS and MOSNUM cover the body of the article, infoboxes, etc. If you want to discuss citations, please discuss at WT:Citing sources. If you don't want to discuss citations in general, only the ones produced by Citation Style, please discuss at Help talk:Citation style 1. Jc3s5h (talk) 04:45, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

How does the example break down? We would expect "... blah blah blah. Vol. 1, blah blah blah ..." to have "Vol." because it follows "." as terminal punctuation.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  04:24, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

• Grammar point The phrases "Volume 3" or "Page 74" are proper noun phrases in English – for example, they cannot be preceded by a determiner (you say Look at Volume 3 not Look at the volume 3). The equivalent common noun phrase uses the ordinal (Look at the third volume). Traditionally, proper noun phrases are capitalized, although the modern trend seems to be to de-capitalize almost everything except proper nouns and noun phrases used purely as labels rather than for any descriptive element. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:36, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Does that point apply if we have abbreviations? And to my eye Page 74 looks stranger than Volume 3. But that's just my unsourced subjective UK opinion, of course. Martinevans123 (talk) 07:37, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

@Martinevans123: it may be an age thing (I'm British too). I was only making a grammar point. There's never been a 1:1 relationship between being grammatically a proper noun or noun phrase and being capitalized. Once there was much more capitalization (see e.g. the 1662 Prayer Book); then there was a trend to capitalize only proper nouns and noun phrases (I was taught to write "in Chapter 3" or "on Page 4" as opposed to "in this chapter" or "on the following page", and I taught the postgraduate students I supervised to do the same in their theses); now there's a trend to decapitalize further. Who am I to stand against such trends? :-) Peter coxhead (talk) 14:36, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm happy to admit that the 1662 Prayer Book was a little before my time. :-) Martinevans123 (talk) 15:33, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

That's just one philosophical approach to the meaning of "proper name" and it's highly dependent on language (some languages would use a definite article there, but it doesn't change the underlying nature of the term "vol."/"volume" or its meaning in any way). For purposes of style discussions. "proper name" and "proper noun" are essentially interchangeable. The "Mixed" argument presented by Eppstein and others is cognizant of this; the "Vol." in The Art of Computer Programming, Vol. III: Sorting and Searching should be capitalized because it's part of the title (or subtitle, more specifically), and thus part of a proper name (proper noun phrase). Lots of things do not take a definite article in English by convention, and are not capitalized, even if some philosophers want to classify them as proper names. E.g., "entry 2349499393 in my database", "See example [number] 32 in the list below", "I cracked thoracic vertebra 4" (or "I cracked vertebra T-4"), "at 6 o'clock", etc., etc. Most of these can be replaced by ordinals, at least when given numeric designations; that breaks when they aren't ("See example F in the list below"). No doubt some would write "Example F", but few would do this upper-casing to all the examples here. It's no longer conventional.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  04:24, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Digression that is mostly miscommunication

Some languages, eh? I suggest we stick to English for now. Martinevans123 (talk) 07:30, 6 July 2017 (UTC) Missed the point. If different languages treat the same construction with or without a definite article, then the presence or absence of the definite article cannot logically determine whether something is or is not a proper name, since that concept isn't language-dependent (Pacific Ocean and Stephen Hawking do not magically become common nouns in some languages, and milk and eggs don't transmogrify into proper names in any, either). You'll find article variance across many languages (e.g., "death", "life", "war", and the like as concepts, states, or processes are without an article in English, but require a definite one in many languages: der Tod, la vida, le guerre. Same goes for presence or absence of capitalization; e.g., all nouns are capitalized in German, but Katze ('cat') is not a proper name (or proper noun) in German any more than "cat" is in English. PS: Your renewed habit of stalking the MoS talk pages to pop in with sarcastic, non sequitur one-liners, to show us how clever and above it all you feel, is not helpful.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:24, 6 July 2017 (UTC) I'm sorry if you think commenting on a topic of interest to me for a page that is on my Watchlist is "stalking". I'm sorry if you think "one-liners" are in some way worthless. I'm very sorry is you feel any of my genuine observations here are "sarcastic". I certainly don't feel "clever and above it all"; perhaps you know better than me how I feel? I have avoided making any personal attacks against you and I'd respectfully request that you do the same for me. But I'm not sorry to reiterate my point that I think your observations about other languages here have rather limited value. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:45, 7 July 2017 (UTC) p.s. your reply was not helpful. Re: "I think your observations about other languages here have rather limited value" – Then you still didn't understand the point; I suppose I must have explained it poorly, but the discussion has moved past this and I don't think a re-re-explanation is needed. (As for the side matter: I'm not raising any issue with your normal engagement in these discussions, just your periodic habit of dotting them with one-liner snarky commentary that appears to be done for your own amusement and which doesn't further the discussion. These tend to come in bunches, e.g. this other recent "gadfly" comment.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:55, 9 July 2017 (UTC) You say If different languages treat the same construction with or without a definite article, then the presence or absence of the definite article cannot logically determine whether something is or is not a proper name, since that concept isn't language-dependent.. But I think your argument is fallacious, as it denies the possibility that the logic that can be applied to rules of grammatical construction can be language dependent. Just because different rules apply in other languages, these don't invalidate general rules that may apply to written English. We wouldn't expect the grammatical rules that apply to written Jaopanese, or Hindi, or Telugu, to apply to English, would we? And please don't characterise my contributions as those that one might expect from an insect in the order Diptera. Please do not feel obliged to reply. Just look for a chowrie. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:30, 10 July 2017 (UTC) Very very definitely not getting it. The very fact that grammar (broadly defined) is language-dependent is central to the problem of trying to pin a broad philosophical concept on an accident of English orthography in particular. I'm not saying anything at all about the grammatical nature of proper nouns and adjectives in English, much less applying it to other languages; we already know that this varies by language; español in Spanish itself is lower-case. Which again comes right back to the central point: if things like capitalization and use or absence of a definite article are not cross-linguistic constants, then they cannot be used to determine a cross-cultural philosophical absolute like "what really is a proper name?"  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:10, 11 July 2017 (UTC) Whether or not there is a valid notion of "proper noun" that transcends individual languages is an interesting question. But I don't see how the answer to this question informs our knowledge of how words should be capitalised in English. The way in which some specific languages use capital letters might throw light on capitalisation in English, I guess, at least from a historical perspective. But this doesn't seem to be your point. If another editor can explain your argument to me in a way I could understand I'd be more than happy to hear from them. As no-one else has taken issue with you over this point, I can only assume they don't see it as important, assuming they do understand what you mean. Martinevans123 (talk) 07:41, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

• Mixed as with David Eppstein's comments. I think the proper nouns can be used for the citation section and for the title if it is part of the title as with the Vol. 3: Sorting and Searching, but that when referring to "vol. 3, no. 15" in the text body, "volume 3, issue number 15", "part 2", or "chapter 5", it can be lower-case. This is comparable to cite episode template where they use "Season 1. Episode 15". in the citation but refer to season 1, episode 15 in the text body. With Episode, however, it's in capitals because the cite episode can be done without specifying a season number for television series that has a single season. AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 16:24, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

• Mixed: Citations, including parenthetical references, should continue to follow WP:CITESTYLE/WP:CITEVAR. I do not believe there is a compelling reason to have a policy for citations that would force capitalization in citations to go against the citation style being used (unlike WP:IBID). For example, the Bluebook citation style used by the US legal profession doesn't use a full stop until the end of a citation, but uses capitalized "No." in certain cases where the docket number of a case needs to be included, eg. "Matal v. Tam, No. 15-1293, slip op. at 5 (June 19, 2017)." As for prose, they should be capitalized as part of a title or at the start of a sentence. If used as a proper noun, except as a title or in a quote, then the word should be written, eg. "Smith's writing in volume 3 was regarded by his contemporary Johnson as 'abysmal.'" In other cases, they should be lowercase. AHeneen (talk) 17:06, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

• Update: Additional sources (UK, Australian, Canadian):

Most are in favor of "vol." and "no.", but there are a few exceptions:

.uk New Hart's Rules (2nd ed.) gives "no.", "nos.", "vol.", "vols.", with that punctuation, though it advises avoiding them entirely in reference citations. The original edition (under various titles) is consistent with this on "vol.", but eschews "no." or "No." entirely (except as part of a proper name such as a work title). It recommends the № symbol only for French. Its sections "Lower case abbreviations" and "e.g., i.e., etc." (which covers similar constructions like "viz." and "et al.") both consistently give Latin and bibliographic abbreviations in lower-case form, with points; there is no basis on which to suppose this would not apply to "no.", which is just one of numerous such cases. Fowler's (4th ed.) has no entry for either; it inconsistently uses both "vols." and "vols" on the same bibliography page (and exhibits other editing problems throughout). This edition cites New Hart's (2nd) in hundreds of entries, so a resonable presumption is that it would follow that work on these matters. Its advice on the full point is that it should be retained when ambiguity would result from dropping it (clearly the case with "no."/"No."), and that a consistent approach should be used (thus, if using "no.", then also use "nos.", "vol.", "vols."). The previous edition likewise lacks entries, but consistently uses "vols." in its own bibliography. Its advice on full points and consistency matches that of the current edition. The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors gives both "No." and "no.", plus "vols." (not "Vols.), without addressing "vol." Does not advise use of the № symbol except in French material. .au The Australian government's Style Manual for Authors, Editors and Printers uses "no.", except when the string appears in a proper name such as the title of a work (an exception all style guides would make if they bothered commenting on it). .ca Editing Canadian English by the Editors' Association of Canada uses "no." and "vol." (except where capitalization would normally occur, e.g. at the beginning of a sentence). The government publication The Canadian Style uses "vol." and "vols." but "No." and "Nos." The rationale offered for this is that "No." is a symbol. However, that applies to №, the actual numero sign. The "no." form is a normal abbreviated Latinism, of the same character as "etc." and "q.v." We similarly distinguish et ... Latin abbreviations like "etc." and "et al." from the et symbol, & (ampersand). A Canadian Writer's Reference cites the government guide as a source and follows it on most matters, including this one. Other The UPI Stylebook uses "No." No rationale is offered, and its section on abbreviations and acronyms is internally inconsistent.<ref>Cook, Bruce; Marting, Harold; Editors of the UPI (2004). The UPI Stylebook and Guide to Newswriting (4th ed.). United Press International/Capital Books. pp. 4, 117. {{cite book}}: |author3= has generic name (help) References

The combined two blocks of sourcing I've provided here (plus that done yesterday in the footnotes at Exempli gratia) indicate an overwhelming preference for "vol." and "no." (lower-case and punctuated) in professionally published material today, regardless of English variety. MoS should follow this practice; it is not just better supported in the real world, it's also more consistent with our treatment of other abbreviations and other Latinisms, and is less ambiguous (at least in the case of "no"/"No"). Style guides in favor of "No." and "Vol." are mostly one of: only addressing a particular citation format, not recent, of low to middling reputability, or some particular entity's house style. Those in favor of "No", "no", "vol", etc., are primarily the house stylesheets of particular news publishers. The main guides for writing fairly formal English – Chicago Manual and New Hart's, on which MoS is largely built – both use "no.", "nos.", "vol.", "vols."

Again, this would not lowercase either abbreviation in a) the title of a work or b) a citation in a format that capitalizes either or both. These are the concerns the Mixed comments above have in mind.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:00, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Just use №. — Jon C.^ॐ 10:21, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Related matters: dropping the dot, and MOSABBR

Some side issues: Despite MOS and WP:MOSABBR discouraging dropping of dots (points, periods, stops) from abbreviations except where utterly conventional and non-ambiguous (e.g., "Dr Smith" and "St Stephen" in British ENGVAR), I keep running into "No 1" in various articles (e.g. here). This is intolerably ambiguous, especially for users of screen readers, though it produces confusing gibberish for everyone, like "No of discs" in infoboxes [1]. Worst of all (so far): table header labeled "No" [2]. Also saw a "No total" in one of these. We need to explicitly state that No. (whether we keep that capitalized or not) must retain the dot and is not an ENGVAR matter (sourcing above demonstrates this; both New Hart's and Fowler's retain the dots).

Second, neither vol. nor no. appear at MOS:ABBR but of course should be listed, since we use them frequently. I'll wait until the discussion above concludes before adding them, so that what gets added doesn't have to be changed later.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:55, 11 July 2017 (UTC) PS: Ha ha, I rickrolled Wikipedia.

If you keep running into No 1 in various articles, why don't you try frequenting articles where there are people around? Then you wouldn't be so lonely. At Christmastime, try the No L articles. EEng 03:09, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

LOL.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  03:36, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

I do the best I can with the material available. EEng 03:40, 11 July 2017 (UTC)`

As a screen reader user, it doesn't really bother me that much that the full stop is omitted. "no." is read as no with a pause after it, rather than "number", and all educated blind people should know what "no." stands for. (IIRC the local talking book catalogue says things like "Book no. 12345".) Even without the full stop I can figure out what's meant. Yes it's less ambiguous and more correct with the full stop, but I've never thought about it before as an accessibility issue. Graham87 07:38, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Good to know, though I'm surprised that's still true today; I would think that "No."or "no.", followed by zero spaces or a single space, then a numeral or string of numerals or a spelled out number word, would be read as "number". Maybe the logic to pick it out is more complicated by false positives than I imagine. Even if so, it seem that more cases would be correct that false matches, and that this would be preferable to every case being read as the word "no". Hmm. Well, I've never tried writing a screen reader so I guess this is kind of akin to an "I am no a lawyer, but ..." musing.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  10:09, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

non-breaking space before per cent/percent

The MoS asks for a space before per cent/percent, but does not make clear whether this should be non-breaking. Do you know? –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 14:07, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Clarified [3]. Reverted myself. I must be losing my mind. EEng 16:08, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

EEng, I read the question as asking whether the space before the words "per cent" or "percent" should be non-breaking, that is, whether one should write x per cent or x{{nbsp}}per cent. (IMHO a nbsp might be a good idea.) — Stanning (talk) 17:11, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes, User:Stanning: that is exactly what I meant. Although, User:EEng: your edit was still more than worthwhile, and does prevent ambiguity. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 17:17, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

IMO, there should be a non-breaking space between a numeral and the first word of a unit or "percent/"per cent", eg. "133{{nbsp}}per cent" or "348{{nbsp}}square kilometers" but not "more than one{{nbsp}}hundred{{nbsp}}square{{nbsp}}kilometers", which is too long for no breaks (keep in mind that some users read WP articles on cell phones with small screens!). This would be consistent with MOS:NBSP (discussed below). AHeneen (talk) 18:09, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

[edit conflict] Actually, the MoS says NOT to use a space before the percent sign. Before the previous edit, it said: Write 3%, three percent, or three per cent, but not 3 % (with a space) or three %. "Percent" is American usage, and "per cent" is British usage (see § National varieties of English, above). In ranges of percentages written with an en dash, write only a single percent sign: 3–14%. AHeneen (talk) 17:14, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

OK, now that I've had some coffee... I would say regular space, not nbsp, by analogy to the fact that we code a regular space in 5 kilograms but nbsp in 5 kg. See the table at WP:Manual_of_Style/Dates_and_numbers#Unit_names_and_symbols, in the section of the table labeled Numeric values. EEng 17:30, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes - that does make sense. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 17:58, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

That page only mentions an NBSP before a unit symbol: "Use a nonbreaking space ({{nbsp}} or  ) between a number and a unit symbol, or use {{nowrap}}". MOS:NBSP says "It is desirable to prevent line breaks where breaking across lines might be confusing or awkward. ... Whether a non-breaking space is appropriate depends on context: whereas it is appropriate to use 12{{nbsp}}MB in prose, it may be counterproductive in a table (where horizontal space is precious) and unnecessary in a short parameter value in an infobox (where a break would never occur anyway)." I think usage of an NBSP before percent or per cent should follow that guideline. I don't have time right now, but talk page archives should be checked to make sure this issue hasn't been discussed before. AHeneen (talk) 18:09, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

I'd say % is analogous to a unit symbol, while per cent and percent are analogous to a unit name. Coding 15{{nbsp}}per{{nbsp}}cent creates an overlong unbreakable string. EEng 19:37, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

• Any time MoS is advising that a numeric figure be followed by a space and a something, it means a non-breaking one.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  04:02, 28 July 2017 (UTC) I was wrong on this; we only require it when what follows the number is a symbol or abbreviation (50 dB, 4:29 p.m., 1252 BCE, etc.). Using a nonbreaking space it is harmless when what follows is a regular word that is a unit or something comparable.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  06:16, 28 July 2017 (UTC) Corrected 06:18, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

I take it you feel it's reasonable to expect editors to somehow intuit that? If not, you feel it's reasonable to educate the community about that one misled editor at a time, forever? Besides, how do you know what MoS intent is?
My take on this: 1. There is little need for site-wide consistency on this. If some cases break "5 percent" and other cases don't, that's really ok. Nobody will notice except a few obsessive Wikipedia editors. We are here to serve our readers' needs, not our own. WP:CREEP. 2. Where there is disagreement in a specific case, MoS is not a substitute for discussion and consensus, the cornerstones of Wikipedia editing. ―Mandruss ☎ 04:39, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Not sure what you're on about. I am was agreeing that the page needs to be updated to say to use a nonbreaking space, not just a space. I said nothing about anyone intuiting anything, or doing anything editor by editor. There is a need for site-wide consistency on this, or we would have no nonbreaking space rules of any kind at all; we use them because it keeps the digit meaningfully grouped with what it refers to. [Correction: The rule is narrower than I remembered, and applies to symbols/abbreviations only.] If every other time you post to an MoS talk page you cannot refrain from aspersion-casting about other editors' mentalities, you need to stop posting to them (really). There is no disagreement on this; MOS:NUM applies this specific spacing style to all such cases. If you think the nonbreaking space rules are WP:CREEP, go start an RfC at WT:MOSNUM. I tend to agree, but while they are the rule, they are, and we should do it consistently.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  06:07, 28 July 2017 (UTC) Corrected 06:18, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm not taking the bait, but I would be very interested to see your evidence - on my talk page - any evidence at all - that I cast aspersions "every other time [I] post to an MoS talk page" (speaking of aspersion-casting). ―Mandruss ☎ 06:26, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm being hyperbolic about the frequency, of course. Please don't label MoS editors, and editors at articles doing MoS compliance, as "obsessive". It's a direct insult and an aspersion about their mentality. Just don't.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  06:58, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Ah, so "every other time" is your "hyperbole" for "once". Wow. Ok. Anyway, as much as I'd love to debate the point with you, it would be too tangential and distracting, as well as being pointless. My comments stand, and I wouldn't make a fuss if somebody collapsed the whole thing. ―Mandruss ☎ 07:08, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Anyway, what SM said isn't true. We don't call for an nbsp in 29 newton-meters. EEng 04:57, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

I stand corrected. I thought MOSNUM was explicit that all numeric measurements/values are followed by a nonbreaking space then the unit name or symbol or whatever; it's only symbols and abbreviations.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  06:07, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Disagreement on comma punctuation when parentheses occur in a sentence

Users Adûnâi and Dank are in disagreement with me over how MOS:COMMA should be applied.

It started when I pointed out an error (my opinion) on the Main Page, adding this remark:

Per WP:Copyedit#Punctuation, a comma is missing in "The British North America Act of July 1, 1867 (now celebrated as Canada Day) united the colonies of ... ". A comma is required after mdy dates, unless it's followed by other punctuation, for instance period/full stop at the end of sentence. Parentheses are not punctuation, and so there should be a comma after the end of the parentheses.

Adûnâi disagreed, writing:

Wouldn't it be a comma between a subject and a verb?

Dank agreed with Adûnâi:

That comma rule is overridden by comma conventions that avoid a comma both before and after those parentheses.

User Khajidha agreed with me:

What conventions are those? By what I've always been taught, User:Handsome Fella is correct.

The discussion was removed as a new day arrived.

I then contacted both editors on their talkpages, but was unable to convince them, despite pointing out the explicit "Burke and Wills" example:

• Do not be fooled by other punctuation, which can distract from the need for a comma, especially when it collides with a bracket or parenthesis, as in this example:

Incorrect:	Burke and Wills, fed by locals (on beans, fish, and ngardu) survived for a few months.
Correct:	Burke and Wills, fed by locals (on beans, fish, and ngardu), survived for a few months.

Adûnâi claimed this was "a completely unrelated example", while Dank re-iterated that "a comma separates each element and follows the last element unless followed by other punctuation", ignoring the explicit part I had pointed out: "Do not be fooled by other punctuation, which can distract from the need for a comma, especially when it collides with a bracket or parenthesis, as in this example (which appears above the "Burke and Wills" example).

Let's look at another example:

• In the article Mary Jo Kopechne, this sentence is found in the first section: "Her father, Joseph Kopechne, was an insurance salesman, and her mother, Gwen (née Jennings), was a homemaker".

In it, "and her mother, Gwen, was a homemaker" is interrupted by the parenthetical expression "(née Jennings)", resulting in the above sentence. Do Adûnâi and/or Dank mean that the comma after "Gwen" should be removed? I don't know. I have not understood how either of them explains why the comma shouldn't be there, which is why I'm starting this discussion.

Could someone please clarify this?

Thanks.

HandsomeFella (talk) 12:12, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

I completely agree with all of your examples here. But they are different than the sentences in question. On my talk page, you wrote this.

• The British North America Act of July 1, 1867[,] united the colonies of ...

In the current version of the article, there are three points which are comparable (searching by "July 1, 1867"). The third one looks like the following.

• The enactment of the British North America Act, 1867 (today called the Constitution Act, 1867), which confederated Canada, was celebrated on July 1, 1867[,] with the ringing of the bells...

I'm not sure about the comma because I haven't seen a clear example that proves it should always follow dates such as July 1, 1867.--Adûnâi (talk) 12:49, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Luckily it's in the MOS, right under the Burke Willis example. Primergrey (talk) 13:27, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Ok, it finally dawned on me what Adûnâi means. He means (I think) that "[The] British North America Act of July 1, 1867" is the subject, and that the comma in question would separate the grammatical subject from the verb (right?). Ok, I guess that could be argued – it could also be discussed – but when in a full sentence, punctuation rules still apply, in my opinion. So we still disagree. HandsomeFella (talk) 13:42, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

It would also mean that the comma is superfluous even when there's no parenthetical. I think that's wrong too. HandsomeFella (talk) 14:03, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm going to guess from the lack of response that people are happy with our understanding of the MOS guideline. Please ping me if not. - Dank (push to talk) 21:11, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Dank What MOS guideline are you referring to? If you mean what you wrote above,

That comma rule is overridden by comma conventions that avoid a comma both before and after those parentheses.

Where is this taken from? I never heard anything like this. Though I know some editors think the comma after the year in m-d-y dates is optional, traditionally it is required, and I think it often prevents confusion, so I use it, and it does belong after the parenthetical phrase. One way to avoid having to place a comma after a parenthesis (which doesn't bother me, but apparently bothers some) is to remove the parentheses around "now celebrated as Canada Day" and instead use a pair of commas or a pair of en-dashes:

• The British North America Act of July 1, 1867, now celebrated as Canada Day, united the colonies of ...

• The British North America Act of July 1, 1867 – now celebrated as Canada Day – united the colonies of ...

As an additional note, I think I was told that parentheses slow down readers who use screen readers more than other punctuation.  – Corinne (talk) 21:40, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

WP:MOS says "Dates in month–day–year format require a comma after the day, as well as after the year, unless followed by other punctuation." Agree, disagree? That word "Dates" is linked to this section at WP:MOSNUM, which gives an example: "Everyone remembers July 21, 1969 – when man first landed on the Moon". The example illustrates that that sentence from MOS is meant literally. This corresponds to what I've seen at FAC. - Dank (push to talk) 21:58, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

@Dank, Adûnâi, and HandsomeFella: The comma does not belong this time. Yes, we have a rule for "July 1, 1867, ..." with two commas (so do other style guides). Commas that serve a parenthetical purpose are always in pairs, unless replaced by:

• Terminal punctuation: "It happened on July 1, 1867."
• Other punctuation that introduces another parenthetical that pertains to the surrounding material not to the first parenthetical: "The murder happened on July 1, 1867 – the day my great-great-great-grandmother was born." The parenthetical introduced by the dash pertains to the entire subject, not to "1867".

I.e. we don't use pointless double punctuation, like a comma before a period/stop or a dash.

Much of the above has been red-herring discussion. Yes, this case differs from the guideline's and the Kopechne article's examples. The beginning of "(now celebrated as Canada Day)" is a "(" introducing another parenthetical, which applies to the subject, not to the year, so it cancels the need for a comma to balance the first one in ", 1867". Without the date, this would read "The British North America Act (now celebrated as Canada Day) united the colonies of ...", with no commas. Contrast the other examples: "her mother, Gwen (née Jennings)," has a parenthetical that applies to the material in another parenthetical (the ", Gwen ...," structure) and is part of it, all of it ultimately referring to "her mother". Without the second parenthetical, it would read "her mother, Gwen, ..." with both commas. Without the first parenthetical, it is a non-sequitur: "her mother (neé Jennings)"; makes little sense without the first name also included. "Burke and Wills, fed by locals (on beans, fish, and ngardu), survived for a few months" is essentially the same as the mother example, and would read "Burke and Willis, fed by locals, survived ..." without the second parenthetical clause, which pertains to the feeding not to B&W. Without the first parenthetical, it is again broken: "Burke and willis (on beans, fish, and ngardu) survived ...". Both are broken when their first parentheticals are removed because the second parenthetical is an internal reference to the first, not to the subject directly. [Aside: Both could be unbroken with a rewrite if information was genuinely missing: "her mother, neé Jennings, first name unknown," and "Burke and Willis survived for a few months on beans, etc., but it is not known if they locals provided this food or they gathered it themselves."] In the case at issue, the holiday name pertains to the entire subject, not to the "1867" fragment, and it works regardless what you do to it, because the parentheticals are independent of each other: "The British North America Act of July 1, 1867, united ...; and "The British North America Act (now celebrated as Canada Day) united ...".

Another way of putting it: The Canada thing could very reasonably be rewritten as "The British North America Act of July 1, 1867 – now celebrated as Canada Day – united ...". But no sane writer would do "... her mother, Gwen – neé Jennings ...", or "Burke and Wills, fed by locals – on beans, fish, and ngardu ...". They're a different kind of structure from the Canada case.

PS: Technically, the "1867" is not a parenthetical, but is conventionally formatted as one. The nature of this kind of confusion/dispute is one of the reasons (source: Garner's Modern American Usage) that another pseudo-parenthetical, the "Firstname Lastname, Jr, ..." style, has gone out of fashion, in favor of "Firstname Lastname Jr ...". It's also probably (my speculation) got something to do with why "July 1, 1867, ..." date formatting has been abandoned in most of the world, when it was neck-and-neck with "1 July 1867" style in the 19th century (source: Google N-Grams).
05:04, 28 July 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by SMcCandlish (talk • contribs)

Blogs and italics

Should the names of blogs be italicised? Most of the articles for entries on List of blogs do not have italic titles (although some do). I was about to italicise the title of a blog article but was quite surprised to find this was not the general practice. SpinningSpark 17:17, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

From MOS:ITALICTITLE:

Website titles may or may not be italicized depending on the type of site and what kind of content it features. Online magazines, newspapers, and news sites with original content should generally be italicized (Salon or HuffPost). Online encyclopedias and dictionaries should also be italicized (Scholarpedia or Merriam-Webster Online). Other types of websites should be decided on a case-by-case basis.

I think the titles of blogs should be italicized. Be sure the article is about the blog and not primarily about a company who publishes a blog of the same name. For example (I could only think of examples of websites): BuzzFeed (about the company) and Politico (also about company) versus The New York Times (about newspaper/website, as company has separate article: The New York Times Company). AHeneen (talk) 01:29, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

• Yes, they should be italicized, unless they're part of a larger work, in which case quotation marks. The same rules apply regardless of medium: major, stand-alone works get italics, minor works and sub-works get quotes. The New York Times doesn't become The New York Times or "The New York Times" if you're referring to an online article instead of one printed on dead trees. Our citation formatting templates (and various external citation style) are going to apply italics to titles of blogs as the |work= or |website= or |journal= parameter value, so deciding on your own not to use italics is going to cause a conflicting style in the same article. If you're dealing with something like a newspaper's official blog, use |work=Newspaper Title |at="Blog Title" (official blog) |title=Article title; resulting in a cite like: Persson, J. Randome (27 July 2017). "How I Survived a Vicious Salamander Attack". Newspaper Title. "Blog Title" (official blog). {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help) Publications get italics except when referred to as a business (use the company name), or a computer system (no styling, use domain name): "He writes for Salon"; "She took over as the CEO of Salon Media Group"; "The DDoS attack also affected www.salon.com for two hours." For online publications that use their domain name as their title, complete with the ".com" (or whatever), it still goes in italics when discussed as a publication rather than a legal entity or a stack of hardware. This, too, is what our cite system will do, so just deal with it and don't introduce a conflict style, please. :-) PS: Abusing parameters of the cite templates to get an alternative style (e.g. using |at= for the work title) will emit incorrect COinS metadata and is to be avoided. Anyone may revert/fix that on sight.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  05:12, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

  I think I would prefer to see the blog in the work parameter (if cited at all) since it is also a major work of many articles of content. But this is a quibble with your comment. --Izno (talk) 12:47, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Guideline on using diacritics?

I'ld like to ask if there is a guideline on using diacritics in commonly used words like naïve and café. The reason I ask is that someone just did this: [4], and I'm not sure whether that's appropriate or not. LK (talk) 08:16, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

There doesn't seem to be, since it's one of those common-sense, follow-the-sources things. We don't use anything that dictionaries label obsolescent, and that includes diacritics on foreign words fully assimilated into English and consistently used without them, and words that used to use them to indicate pronunciation (e.g., no one writes "rôle-playing games", or "they decided to coöperate", or "he's a very learnéd man" in 21st-century English). The "café" spellings is not obsolete, and preferred by many; "naîve" is getting rare. A tiny handful of words have survived assimilation and retained the diacritics almost universally, e.g. "née" and the uncommon masculine form "né" (sometimes encountered without, but I've been in genealogy circles long enough to see it usually retained, especially after the effective demise of ASCII-only e-mail by the late 1990s). Another example is "façade", which retains the cedilla so people don't think it's said "fakade". But we've lost the umlaut in the English [mis-]borrowing of "uber", and along with it the alternative German spelling "ueber", which is unrecognizable to most English speakers. The acute accents are also retained (except in very sloppy writing) in "résumé", to avoid confusion with "resume" meaning "to continue".

General rule of thumb: check some dictionaries, and use the spelling that is listed first by the majority of them. In your cases, the results are "café" but "naive". Regardless of the answer on the latter, the diacritic would be retained in non-assimilated words (e.g. naîf) and in a foreign word that has an English non-diacritic equivalent: "naîvete" but "naivety". The very existence of "naivety", "naiver", "naivest", and other derived forms, which never have the umlaut, discourages "naïve" in English. Zero dictionaries of the eight or so I checked listed "naïve" as preferred, and three did not list it at all, only "naive". All of them preferred "café" over "cafe".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  06:49, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

RfC: Red links in infoboxes

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Infoboxes#RfC: Red links in infoboxes. A WP:Permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 09:31, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Bolding components of article titles

Hello everyone, I stumbled across Special:Contributions/5.107.140.121, who has made numerous edits of this form [5]. Am I correct in reverting these, or am I missing something? @5.107.140.121:. Tazerdadog (talk) 19:12, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

I would say your reverts are correct. Blueboar (talk) 19:25, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Definitely. We have a rule about this somewhere, but I didn't find a version of it in MOS:ABBR, so I added it. People will expect that page to have every acronyms-related rule in it, and we can't figure that people are going to dig up out of some other page. I see the anon doing those "treat our readers like morons" edits has received a pack of warnings about inappropriate editing. And did at least one after the warnings, but it was a day ago and maybe too stale for action.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  06:52, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Capitalization of IUCN status

In the interest of the wider community, and by the solemn Wikipedia accord to endlessly fork around, I'd like to draw your attention to the following discussion. Regards, nagualdesign 00:13, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

We've been over this many times before. Time to add a rule about this to MOS:CAPS, since it comes up again and again; I can think of at least three previous discussion of this just in the last year or two.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  06:53, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Hmm. Its already in MOS:QUOTE, as examples under "Typographic conformity", which has been quoted in that discussion. The specialized-style fallacy is rearing its ugly head, with someone unhappily suggesting that the MoS is "bad" on this and should be changed, so he/she can continue capitalizing "Endangered". I explained why that can't happen.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:06, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

WP:NBSP

The above redirect points to a very short section here. That section seems to be missing links to where we would otherwise use non-breaking spaces (at least a reference to MOSNUM). Maybe it would be a good idea to add some pointer links? --Izno (talk) 11:56, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

MOSNUM itself keeps pointing to another page for more info on non-breaking spaces (or nonbreaking, whatever spelling you like; I note that MOSNUM is not using a consistent spelling of it, either).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  06:54, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

MOS:NUMERO

Whenever I see 'No.' or 'No' (now you have all brainwashed me into meticulously eradicating all non-MoS styles of writing), I place the {abbr|No.|number} tag on it, for clarity. I understand that both versions, ie dotted and non-dotted may seem slightly confusing. Although, I maintain that most instances of it in the UK drop the full stop (or, full point as the MoS now likes to use). My question is whether this is actually worthwhile: very few editors seem to bother doing this outside infoboxes, which makes me wonder whether I should be doing it at all. If it is advisable, why does the MoS not require editors to add the abbr tag? It is the same with circa. I always tag that if I see it (and – as much as it hurts – put the full point on the end). The MoS is, as usual, rather ambiguous on this matter. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 11:37, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

It would not be unreasonable to suggest that editors use {{abbr}} (or its HTML equivalent--perhaps we can be silent on that option) when using an abbreviation for the first time in a document, as this increases the accessibility of the abbreviation. My preference is usually to link a phrase first if the word is relevant to the topic, though. And perhaps an abbr isn't necessary when the phrases immediate context makes the definition clear (as in an infobox on a page about a taxonomic group). --Izno (talk) 12:40, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

non-breaking space after page

I recently started placing nbsps after 'p.' and before the number. It then became clear that the citation insert tool does not do this. Other editors do not, either. Is it A/ bad/something to go back to undo, B/ something which is harmless, but unnecessary or C/ something which we should all be doing? –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 11:40, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Inside a citation template, A: this corrupts the citation metadata emitted. Other places, probably B (unless we have guidance otherwise at present). --Izno (talk) 12:42, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

For the last two years I've been routinely adding a non-breaking space template {{nbsp}} after "p." (only where the line is long and might break after "p.") in references formatted with < nowiki>< ref>...< /ref>< /nowiki>, and the html non-breaking space  if the reference is in the cite ref format with curly brackets (but EEng commented recently that the template {{nbsp}} should not mess up even that kind of citation), and no one has ever said it messes up anything.  – Corinne (talk) 13:33, 28 July 2017 (UTC)