Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Grammar

From the Village pump:

Wikipedia:WikiProject Grammar

I don't know if it would be worthwhile, but perhaps a dedicated project page for Grammar or something? I would be generally interested in having an area of the Wikipedia for the sole purpose of people checking grammar errors when it's sent for, specifically, grammar checkup and cleanup. I don't think a project page is needed for spelling, as more or less the project typo can take care of that. But as to oddly constructed sentences, I would like actual opinion, Wiki style, discussing on sentences or paragraphs and such about grammar structure. I do not claim to have extremely good grammar, but I feel that such a project is worthwhile. Project members really could improve their grammar. -- AllyUnion (talk) 07:37, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

One area that this would be particularly useful is for those articles created by Wikipedia editors whose native language is not English. There are many of them who are creating interesting and important articles, but for some of those editors, the articles that they create have grammar that needs some cleanup. Sometimes, especially for an article written by someone whose primary language is another European language such as Spanish, usually there are just some minor problems and some spell-checking that is needed. For other languages, such as Japanese or Chinese, where the the syntax is quite different from English, there are often missing articles, reversed word order, etc. It would be nice if there was a template that could be added to the article's talk page (template:grammar check, that would also add a category (category:Wikipedia grammar check) in the same way that the template:cleanup works. The grammar-check template could be added when the article is created. Once the article had been grammar-checked, then the template could be removed. [[User:GK|gK ¿?]] 10:00, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I hear the distant rumble of yet another vote on the subject of U.S. versus British/International/Other grammar. And that's after the proscriptive/descriptive debate. What most articles written by non-native speakers need is a simple proofread; trying to impose a single view grammar on Wikipedia is a dark horse of a different colour entirely. Filiocht 10:54, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

I think the template idea has potential, but probably only if there were people committed to following up on it. Maurreen 15:38, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I don't see how this is related to any English vs. English issue. Long before coming to Wikipedia I knew US English spelling was, um, "unique". Since coming to Wikipedia I have discovered that meanings of words vary far more than I ever would have guessed (EG the in some ways opposite meaning of the word "dock", or the more subtle difference in the meaning of the word "pier"), but I can't think of any grammar differences off the top of my head--"School burned down" (missing article) is incorrect grammar in any form of English, AFAIK. I would say the focus should more be just flagging articles that need grammatical help, rather than setting a rigid grammatical style/standard. Niteowlneils 17:48, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

In my opinion, I think the best course is to aim for grammar readability. As opposed to a set standard. -- AllyUnion (talk) 08:16, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

And certainly not the grammar police. Filiocht 14:26, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

Of course not. It would be a wiki style editing of the page of how to correct the page's grammar. Basically, we would use subpages (or sections) and have a discussion on what people think is grammarically incorrect, come to an agreement on a readable, grammar-correct, preferably NPOV, sentence. -- AllyUnion (talk) 07:54, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I saw your plea for help in the Village Pump (assistance). Well, I'm here! Quick background: I have a degree in Latin and a Juris Doctor, and was the Publications Editor for a law journal. I mostly agree with your comments about the primary goal of grammar editing being "readability". In the same regard, grammar editing is also about clarity and conciseness -- especially in an environment such as Wikipedia, which desires a professional image. I think the short-term goal of a project like this should be to help avoid people cringing when they try to read an article. The medium-term goal could be to provide more clarity within the individual article. The long-term goal could be to apply the Wikipedia grammar standards for all articles. I plan on editing some tagged articles as well as tagging some. Please let me know if I can be of more assistance. Zephlon 20:54, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Should I just hop into editing, or is there some sort of official process that governs participation in this project--an oath, perhaps? I currently work in a university writing center where I tutor students in grammar and punctuation, read and revise their papers, and oversee a grammar hotline service. After whipping 20 or so student papers per week into readability, I am prepared for nearly (nearly) any editing task. Whatever time I have to give to this cause will be available if needed. Also, is there a BrE/AmE preference? There are several differences in grammar and punctuation: placement of periods and commas when used with quotation marks and verb agreement with collective nouns are two issues that I have come across recently. --Smallwhitelight 20:13, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

Listings

There are many articles in Category:Wikipedia grammar check that are not listed on this page. For ease of maintenance, I would recommend dropping the listings on this page and just going by the category listings. If necessary, a bot could be used to distinguish the old from the new, but there's not that many on the list at any one time, and they can be added to Template:Opentask on a rotating alphabetical basis to make sure no individual articles stay in the category for too long. -- Beland 02:44, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, all of the articles listed have either been fixed or tagged and added to Template:Opentask. This WikiProject seems to be defunct, so I implemented my suggestion and moved the main collaboration point on listings to Category:Wikipedia articles needing copy edit. I also consolidated the project pages to be a little more useful and not quite as dusty. This project mostly only still exists as a place to ask grammar questions, though no one has done that yet. I did create a pointer from Wikipedia:How to copy-edit, so maybe traffic will pick up. It would also be a good place to propose a method for systematically identifying articles in need of copyediting, a task which I will leave to others. -- Beland 13:55, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Template merger?

Template:gcheck and Template:cleanup-copyedit seem largely redundant. The latter has a nice bounding box, the former has better instructions. Should they be merged? -- Beland 02:52, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I personally would like to see a merge. I'm actually surprised there's a template devoted specifically to grammar - most of the articles I've encountered that had grammar issues needed general copy-editing as well.

The one issue I see is that the templates automatically include the articles on the appropriate Category:Wikipedia articles needing copy edit or Category:Wikipedia grammar check pages. If we merge the two, we'll need to be sure the auto-generated pages don't end up broken. CKlunck 03:07, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

I was bold and merged the templates, taking the best from each...actually, I updated the help links to a new page specifically about copy editing. I also stopped making mention of this WikiProject, because the listings here appear to be defunct. -- Beland 13:20, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Display problems with this project page

When viewed in Mozilla 1.7.5, this project page is a little broken. Unless the page area is large enough, the horizontal yellow copyediting box overlaps with the vertical purple resources for maintenance and collaboration box. Internet Explorer gets around the problem by leaving a large gap so that the horizontal box is just below the vertical one. Is this a Mozilla bug, a wiki bug, or just a problem with the design of this page? --Open4D 15:56, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)