Thee Midniters

See also
Wikipedia talk:Writing better articles
Wikipedia talk:Article titles
Wikipedia talk:Quotations
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/quotation and punctuation

simpler version of the style guide

Hi, couldn't there be a simpler version of this? Its enough to turn off new editors. Jacq9 (talk) 10:16, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Hiya Jacq9. On almost all talk pages, new comments should go at the end. If all this stuff is confusing, don't read it. Professional writers often divide up the job between people who gather information and organize it and write it down, and other people who worry about a lot of details that the writers don't care about. I see that you haven't had a chance to do much writing of your own on Wikipedia yet. Pick a topic, look at what some other people have written about it, and then write something that we don't already have here. Don't worry about complying with any rules. It's probably a good idea to create it as a subdirectory of your userspace, say "User:Jacq9/Sandbox", otherwise it might get deleted for various reasons. Then let us know, and I'll have a look, and you can decide if my copyediting makes your article better or worse. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 18:55, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Gobbledygook about dashes, quotes, etc.

Until such time as standard computer keyboards are equipped with separate buttons for each variety of dash and quote mark, 99.9999% of WP editors will continue to ignore the guidelines. For a person to even be aware of the existence of the different dashes, quotes etc. marks one as some kind of "super geek" but to actually care about it - well thats almost a type of obsessive compulsive disorder. <this is a joke, ok> Roger (talk) 07:06, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Good point, but that argument works from the other direction, too: people don't care much about these issues, and there's not a lot of wikignomery to fix these things, we usually wait til higher-level review processes before it even gets on anyone's radar screen. The style guidelines don't seem to be causing too much harm on this, except that people regularly drop by to use them as evidence that we're out of touch. It's okay; self-importance needs to be punctured from time to time. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 14:43, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

This causes little harm only because the automatic wikignomery has been largely suppressed at higher levels as well, so it is a random hazard to such nominations instead of a fixed barrier. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:39, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Meh. I'm getting a little tired of the "it's hard and geeky and most editors don't do it" rationale for trying to delete something from MOS. It comes up again and again and again. If you don't like some bit of advice in MOS, then just ignore it if it is preventing you from improving the encyclopedia. Some geeky gnome like me or a FARC reviewer or whoever will catch it later, and if no one does catch it, the the sky will not fall down. If we actually accepted this laziness rationale, we might as well delete all of MOS, since some large subset of editors don't understand, don't like, can't do, or won't do every single piece of advice in it, even basic things like capitalizing the beginnings of sentences. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:22, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I cannot disagree more. If it's hard and geeky and most editors don't do it, there is no consensus it should be done. FARC is a disaster area because of reasoning like this; failing an article because some reviewer catches on some provision here put in by a half-educated language-reform crank is no service to Wikipedia.

In short, I agree that most of MOS should be deleted, and I thank S McCandlish - I really do - for stating so clearly why. (Part of it, like capitalizing the first letter of sentences, does have genuine consensus; but, by the same token, how often is it cited? We could delete it as unused.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:00, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

That's a FARC problem, not a MOS problem. It's not MOS's fault that some FARC reviewers cannot get it through their heads that it is just a guideline. If potential FAs are being rejected, or extant FAs are losing FA status because someone added curly quotes or didn't use logical quotation or hyphenated something instead of en-dashed it, then WP:FA* needs their collective head examined. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:55, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

And I really thank you for making it clear that you truly are the style anarchist we've been suspecting all this time. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:55, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm sure much of it could go without any real loss. Can I nominate the section with "The wallaby is small" as first against the wall? Stuff that's "geeky and hard and most editors don't do" also sounds like it could really do with some review. Haukur (talk) 10:04, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

i absolutely condemn such behaviour mr mccandlish Waltham, The Duke of 02:06, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I have no idea what that is in reference to, other than maybe being a joke about failing to capitalize. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:55, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Insofar as this is related to dashes, I'd be quite happy for MOS:DASH to be thrown out of an airlock in favour of using minus everywhere, with a possible request for double-minus to be wikified automatically into an em dash if absolutely required. But I don't think it's likely that this would gather support at this stage. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 10:25, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Minus is a completely different character, also not found on most keyboards (−). I think you meant the hyphen (-). They look the same in some fonts (like the one I'm editing in right now), but radically different in others (like the one that I read WP articles in). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:55, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Gentlemen ... again, please. When a dedicated and intelligent Wikipedian is convinced, for a long time, that there's something wrong, there is almost always something interesting behind what they're saying. If you want to explore who's lazy and who's bossy at WP:Third opinion, I'll be happy to listen in and give feedback. But those are not suitable questions for WT:MOS, and long and contentious, or short and personal, material detracts from the mission here as a noticeboard and a help page. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 17:41, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Tens of thousands of editors have thoughtfully edited thousands of articles for consistent orthography and professional-quality typography. It can't credibly be argued that there is consensus to reduce these articles down to typescript, or to wipe out all of the guidance on these subjects (yes, it would be great if wikitext expansion could handle some of this, but that's not for the MOS). So are you all just sharing your pet peeves, or seriously proposing some kind of concrete improvement to the Manual of Style? —Michael Z. 2008-09-23 18:06 z

From my point of view, MoS is stable and well-implemented by most conscientious editors. What happens is some people are extremely wedded to their personal style preferences (curly quotes, terminal punctuation inside quotation marks even when they don't have anything to do with the quoted material, using hyphens for all "dash" functions, over- or under-use of commas, using SI symbols like KiB, forcing metrics first [or only] even in US-related articles, etc., etc. - there are probably 100+ such bugbears), and will (see archives for the proof) fight and bicker sometimes for years about these pet peeves. From what I can see, several of them simply will not stop, ever, until they get what they want. I for one, and there are self-evidently others, don't intend to give them what they want unless and until they provide compelling, objective reasons for such changes that outweigh the reasons against them. So, we are stuck with perennial ranting about these obsessive nitpicks. <shrug> Oh well. Life goes on, and MOS has been doing just fine inspite of this constant level of noise with very little signal coming from some quarters. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:55, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I've heard of a website, far away in a distant land, called "MoS Review"...

:-D Waltham, The Duke of 19:26, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Draft MOS subpage on glossaries

Resolved

 – Just an FYI; further discussion at WT:MOSGLOSS.

I'm glad the glossary thread above came up, because I'd actually already been giving this a lot of thought. I wrote it all up at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (glossaries) (which is tagged and categorized as a proposal, not as a style guideline).

Please have a look at it. I believe that it covers all the bases that it needs to, and is both guiding in general and flexible where it needs to be. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:39, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I oppose this page absolutely. A lot of doctrinaire prescriptions, few of them supported by English usage. I have no objection to S McCandlish having a demonstration page; but it should be in his userspace. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:36, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm unsure until it's all explained clearly, perhaps with an example. Is it aimed at non-experts? If so, I think Stanton is overestimating most people's ability to follow computerese. Anderson, can you definitely assert that there's no need for this advice? Why not? Tony (talk) 04:18, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I think, with some patience, it may be recastable. I don't think we should require structured glossaries; but there is a case for using them. I will see if it can be restated in that fashion. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:32, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

• One reason you're having trouble is that the original form was almost as readable as a technical manual. Enough for now; the rest of the page can wait for my headache to subside; it defined the (really quite simple) tools being used three separate times, and I think there's a fourth lurking below. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:56, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not good with semantic content, MediaWiki (is it MediaWikia now? Ugh), etc. This allowed me to wriggle out of having to deal with it. I think the question is whether we'd like to see that markup in all FAs (which I would have no problem with, it's not something that comes up often and we've easily got the personnel at FAC to handle it when it does), or in every article in say 0.7; if the latter, then we'll need to try to sell that and see how it goes over. I have a guess, but I don't like to prejudice experiments by guessing. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 17:23, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Block him! Block him indefinitely—he dares imply that Wikia is not completely independent from the Wikimedia Foundation, and incur the wrath of God. Waltham, The Duke of 18:07, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Ohnoes ... and just when I was escaping my disreputable past on Wikia. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:21, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

McCandlish's new system substitutes three templates for our existing method of formating glossaries. {{gloss}} and {{glossend}} have no effect on displayed text at all, they add a classifying tag; {{term}} bolds (and classifies), but appears to be rather easy to break if combined with other formatting. Both slightly complicate edit space.

I have no particular desire to use them, but I have no objection if S McCandlish or anybody else does; therefore documenting their existence is harmless. I am rewriting in that spirit.

Insisting at them at FAC (or rather FLC) would be another hoop to jump through, and I see no profit to the encyclopedia. If the semantic web evolves beyond vaporware, we can reconsider. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:32, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Isn't there a guideline somewhere, maybe languishing in disrepute, that says "if someone reading Wikipedia can't see a difference, it's not that important"? I have a vague memory of this. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:02, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

If there is, it should remain in disrepute. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:00, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't insist on it in FAs; MediaWiki is too hosed on too many levels for that to be practical. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:00, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Dashes et al. and company names, film titles, etc.

It is a rather general issue. I can't say I've looked too hard, but I don't think there is any guideline specifically mentioning a different treatment of copyrighted names like Hanna-Barbera, which according to our naming conventions should have an en dash, but which nevertheless are not only known by their hyphenated (or otherwise) version but are actually legally protected in this form. I suppose we are to retain them in their original form (and thus an album title with a year range would keep its hyphen), but I'm not sure of what others think about this and whether there is any guidance on the subject. Waltham, The Duke of 02:15, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I doubt that Hanna-Barbera's trademark protects the name with a hyphen, but not with an en dash. This is a matter of typographic style, and not legal name. —Michael Z. 2008-09-23 03:17 z

And which typographic style do most people use, and see? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:43, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Hanna-Barbera should have a hyphen, whether a trademark or not, unless the company itself uses an en dash (which would be eccentric). BTW, Anderson, most people use and see redundant wording—doesn't mean we should. Tony (talk) 04:16, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

That was unexpected. Hanna and Barbera are different surnames; why use a hyphen and not an en dash? Waltham, The Duke of 13:07, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

The glyph chosen in a particular context is a matter of style, and doesn't change the substance of the name. Its choice can be a matter of a typist using the only ‘dash’ character he knows how to type on his keyboard, or of a typographer going by a house style for hyphenated names, or of a poster illustrator choosing a 2/3-em dash as having the best proportion for careful setting in a particular display typeface.

This one is a slightly unusual case, because it doesn't neatly fit perfectly into the established cases for hyphens and dashes. One might choose a hyphen for a single hyphenated last name, but this isn't that. One might choose an en dash to represent the equal relationship of two entities, much as this is standard in examples like New York–London flight (see en dash). But then one might decide to follow the Chicago Manual's still more specific rules, and use a hyphen here anyway.

Since there is no definitively correct choice here, I would stick with the simpler hyphen, at least until we formulate more specific rules. —Michael Z. 2008-09-23 16:47 z

Duke (and others): the simplified rule works here (as it usually does): Hanna-Barbera is one thing, not two things. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 17:18, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

First of all, a correction: it's New York – London flight; the unspaced en dash hints at a new flight between York and London (rather unlikely—the nearest you can get is Manchester).

Now, to the point. As far as the specific example is concerned, I'm not sure the simplified rule applies: following the same logic, the aforementioned flight is one thing, not two. It matters that it joins in its name two distinct entities (the two cities), as does Hanna-Barbera (Hanna and Barbera). I am not saying that we should use an en dash, but that this case is not as easily pigeon-holed as most others are. Actually, now that I'm looking at the article, I see that the proper name of the company is Hanna-Barbera Productions, which looks like a pretty clear case of en dash over hyphen. Does the exclusion of Productions make a difference? (shrugs)

In any case, let's keep our perspective. This is meant to be a general discussion about things like Slay Tracks (1933–1969) (the article of which used to have a hyphen, though I now see is fully updated throughout, dash-wise). Michael supports conversion, P. M. Anderson seems to be against, and I am on the fence. Waltham, The Duke of 19:10, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

[I did mean a flight from New York to London, and only after I saved the above did I find the identical example at en dash—sorry I didn't realize that's impossible. Let's say New York–Washington train. En dashes are generally used to represent “A to B” or “A and B” entities, while hyphens often represent a single compound AB. —Michael Z. 2008-09-23 19:26 z]

Actually, I'd still go with the simplified rule at FAC (but I wouldn't pay much attention in a C-rated article), I like: Egypt–Sudan relations (because "relations" implies a connection between two different things), but Egypt-Sudan office (because "office" doesn't imply anything going on between Egypt and Sudan, it's just one thing, an office that handles affairs for Egypt and Sudan.) - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:33, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I'd go with the hyphen in this case, since it's a name for a business entity. They could have chozen SD-Quizzlpoop, or M-Narglegle, or whatever. That the "symbols" in the name are representative of real people is neither here nor there. The name sounded out-loud is "Hanna Barbera", not "Hanna to Barbera", "Hanna and Barbera", etc. "New York–Washington train" is usually "New York to Washington train" (albeit some newscasters actually don't sound out anything for such uses of en-dashes; I have heard them say things like "US China relations". It makes me want to ask, "Is US China anywhere near the US Virgin Islands?"). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:08, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Excellent point ... often it's best to write it out without an en dash. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:03, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

It's an interesting rule of thumb. All right, thanks for the comments, everyone. Waltham, The Duke of 02:22, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Image Placement

The question of the proper placement of images has arisen in a MEDCAB case (Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2008-09-15 Monarchy of Canada), which has been closed without being fully resolved.

The dispute hinges on the fact that MOS is pretty non-prescriptive on images, and that WP:PIC doesn't explicitly say one way or another.

In summary;

One editor believes that having left-aligned images span sections is a really bad thing, and that where we are using left aligned images (because we have an infobox in the right column), we should use {{clearleft}} to ensure that the image stays associated with the relevant section.

The other editor believes that white space is a huge issue, and that we should allow images to span sections so as to get rid of white space.

The nearest to guidance that I can find is WP:PIC, which depracates {{clear}} as a last resort, because it introduces white space.

The two editors see this advice in a different light.

The first sees that introducing white space is a last resort, but that the very fact that it is mentioned as a tactic of last resort means that it is to be preferred to images spanning sections.

The second hangs his hat on the fact that there is nothing explicitly prohibiting images spanning sections, and that the depracation of white space is of prime importance.

I have suggested to both that WP:MOS needs to reflect a definitive position here. Mayalld (talk) 12:22, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

This does seem to be a recurring issue. Kaldari (talk) 18:02, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Why can't an image span sections as a last resort? If it were trivial to avoid, I would commend doing so; but clearly it isn't. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:35, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't know image policy, but I know that WP:ACCESS says "Note also that the image should be inside the section it belongs to", because many people use screen readers, including people who listen to Wikipedia while they drive, and people with poor or no vision. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:06, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Lots of incompetent screen reader manufacturers out there, aren't there? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:28, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

They're getting better. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:44, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

To pick up on an earlier point. It is trivial to stop images spanning sections. {{clear}} (or where there is an infobox that spans sections on the right {{clearleft}}) will do the job very easily. The price to be paid is white space, particularly on higher resolution screens. Whilst I (marginally) believe that the current guidelines come down on the side of "white space is better than image spanning", and am on the fence (tending towards agreement with that position) about what the guidance should be, I am firmly off the fence that we need some definitive guidelines here. Mayalld (talk) 19:59, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Count me firmly on the anti-white-space side of the fence (though it's often hard to know what you're getting, given that different screen resolutions will produce different displays from the one you're looking at). --Kotniski (talk) 09:29, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Meh. I generally go for white space up to a point over spanning headings. I dislike the spanning usually, but in a handful of cases I've run across I think it actually can work well. Also, image size plays a factor here. If the non-spanning solution is creating lots of whitespace, this usually means either a) the image is being displayed too large, and/or b) the preceding section to which it is attached is too small. In the first case, making the pic smaller will help, while the second, merging the material into a more general section, or developing the material further, should provide plenty of room for the image. If none of these are really an option (see Billiard ball#Carom billiards), the whitespace is a small price to pay. However, I'm skeptical about MOS going too far here; there may sometimes be good reason to span a heading, while in other cases there may be good reason to not do so even at the expense of considerable amounts of whitespace (e.g. if the heading is a very important one). Shouldn't this just be up to editorial discretion and consensus, like copy editing? PS: I don't think there are any accessibility issues here; the image is in the same place, and {{clear}} and other templates that use the clear HTML or CSS functions are only affecting visual display to the best of my knowledge. Anyway, the fact that a slapfest about this has gone to mediation seems silly to me. Just restructure to article to get around the problem if it's going to be that problematic for someone! — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:21, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Gaps in large numbers

Resolved

 – Wrong venue; see WT:MOSNUM instead. Short answer: Use the template.

I've noticed that some editors like to insert (&nbsp;) gaps in large numbers every three digits. Some view this as providing easier reading, and apparently it is an ISO standard of some type. (For example: Electric charge = 1.602 176 487 (40) C.) I also see this format used in some scientific papers and publications.

Wikipedia:MoS#Large_numbers is specific about using commas in the integral part, but it is pretty quiet about what to do with the fractional part. Could some information be provided in the MoS about the proper format for the fraction? That would help clarify the standard format for decimal numbers. Thank you.—RJH (talk) 17:37, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I think the proper place to discuss this is [[Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). It has been discussed there in the past, but no consensus was reached.

• • Some wanted to use spaces both to the right and left of the decimal point.
  • Some objected to using spaces at all.
  • everyone objected to using commas to the right of the decimal point.
  • One editor went so far as to create a template to place commas to the left of the decimal and the appearance of spaces to the right, but if I recall correctly, the tempate didn't handle some tricky cases correctly, so was never adopted.
  • Among those who accepted the appearance of spaces, there were a variety of views about what kind of spaces should be used, or if a special style should be used that created small visual gaps without any actual space characters.

--Gerry Ashton (talk) 18:15, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Space characters within numbers are bad. If there is a way to do this without using spaces, go for it, otherwise, I would recommend against it. Kaldari (talk) 18:20, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

The template {{val}} handles the formatting of numbers. It produces thin spaces by using margins. Cut/paste a number to another application (e.g. excel) produces good numbers (without spaces). However, because there are no string handling functions in wiki templates, it works by arithmetic, which sometimes produces rounding errors and misses trailing zeros in the fractional part. −Woodstone (talk) 19:29, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Not really much of a problem. Try it. If it fails, do it manually, using the same CSS that the template was using. Thank you, please drive through. PS: This is the same trick that the {{' "}} and related templates use. The "space" is visual only. Any insertion of actual space characters should be reverted on sight and their inserter pointed to that template, since doing so is falsifying the data and making the content non-portable. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:29, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Well it would be nice if numbers could be auto-formatted in a manner similar to dates, allowing localization. English WP needs more localization anyway.—RJH (talk) 21:58, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Autoformatting of date sucks, for many reasons. Are you being sarcastic? Also, there is no English-language number formatting differences by region, only by field of study. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 22:02, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Nope I am not being the least bit sarcastic, and I don't have a negative view of the date autoformatting. Sorry if you read that into my message. If the number formats depend on the field of study, then perhaps we should do the same as for units: use the format convention for that scientific field.—RJH (talk) 16:23, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

The ISO standard is ISO 31-0, we even have an article on it! I cannot for the life of me see why people object to the use of spaces (they should be thin spaces, but most browsers cannot handle these correctly for the time being). Using non-breaking spaces is largely preferably (for aesthetic and accessibility reasons) than setting these numbers in TeX, as I have seen on some articles. Is there likely to be any use of this style outside of physical science articles? Physchim62 (talk) 16:44, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

The objection is, of course, the obvious one that the spaces do not belong there; there are not part of the numbers, and they make the numbers useless to readers attempting to actually do something with them (paste them into another document or app). The CSS way of doing it, via the template mentioned above, does not have this problem. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:29, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

There is a common perception that mankind has not yet colonized any other planets, but this is perception plainly wrong. The ISO committees, the designers of computer keyboards, the writers of computer operating systems, and the writers of arithmetic-intensive software all live on different planets, and communication between the planets is obviously very difficult. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 17:41, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I think we should have at least the option of following ISO conventions, for example in astronomical and physical tables where numbers are likely to involve long strings after the decimal place. We could easily advise that such conventions are not appropriate for prose. kwami (talk) 01:17, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

We do; see template mentioned above. Insertion of actual space characters, however, is just too problematic. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:29, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Revert war

There should not be extended revert warring on the MoS. It reflects badly on everyone connected with the MoS, and on everything within it. Claims of consensus need to be backed up in some way. I have not seen anyone point to evidence of consensus regarding typewriter vs typographical quote marks --JimWae (talk) 19:34, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

See archives. This has come up plenty of times before. Short version: Curly quotes are problematic. Straight ones aren't. Some people love curly quotes and keep dredging the discussion up again and trying make MOS love them too, yet cannot (or at least have not) addressed the problems with them. Agreed that the editwarring is ugly, but I have to observe that this is what happens when someone makes controversial changes to stable guidelines and then keeps making them after multiple parties object, and then does so again under false claims of consensus for such changes. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:32, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Image Placement, part the second

Per the section above, Mayalld proposed the following guidelines in the MedCab case. I would like to ask whether the experts on MOS feel that these guidelines accurately reflect the current state of MOS, policies, guidelines, and thoughts on the matter. And if they do not accurately reflect the current state, should they?

Principles

1. Left aligned images should not be used immediately at the start of a section.
2. Left and right aligned images directly opposite each other tend to distract the reader and should be avoided (staggered left/right images that overlap are OK).
3. Image stacking that overlaps into the following section on any brower (not just the browser used by the editor) is to be avoided at all costs.
4. The gallery feature is available where there are many images that should be included.
5. White space is unwelcome, and we should avoid it if possible (but not at the expense of allowing an image stack to invade the next section).

Guidelines

In these guidelines, the likelihood of an event should be taken by reference to a 1024x768 screen resolution.

1. Any decorative images should be culled.
2. Where there is scope to do so, text should be expanded to increase the scope to add images.
3. Where there is scope to do so, additional paragraph breaks can be inserted to both expand the text size without introducing white space, and bring forward the first opportunity for a left-aligned image. This measure should not involve the introduction of arbitrary paragraph breaks.
4. Unless there is a risk that an infobox will encroach in the right column, the first image in a section should be placed at the head of the section, right aligned.
5. The next image (or first image if the infobox encroaches) should be placed at the start of the second paragraph in a section, left aligned.
6. Subsequent images should be placed alternately left and right (infobox permitting). If an infobox is likely to encroach into a section, we should only add left aligned images every other paragraph until the text will have passed the foot of the infobox.
7. Where this is still likely to cause image stacking into the next section, images should be prioritised, and the lower priority images placed in a gallery at the foot of the section.
8. Other than cases where the infobox is likely to go right through a section, sections where there is a risk of image stack may be closed with {{clear}} to ensure that even on odd broswers we don't get image stack.
9. Where an infobox is likely to go right through a section, and we are using only left-aligned images, we should use {{clearleft}} rather than {{clear}}.

That's all, really. Thank you Prince of Canada ^{t | c} 20:43, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I just asked a related question at WT:MOSCO#Images; feel free to respond either place. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 21:02, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Moved here from WT:MOSCO:

Notification

• Style guide(s) concerned: WP:ACCESS and MOS:IMAGE
• Action proposed: Delete one of the WP:ACCESS sentences.
• Brief reasons for proposal (link to any relevant discussions, if helpful):
  • Something has to give, I think. WP:ACCESS says "Do not place left-aligned images directly below second-level (===) headings, as this can disconnect the heading from the text it precedes, when read with larger fonts. Instead, either right-align the image, remove it, or move it to another relevant location.", and also says:
  • "As explained above for the lead section, each section should have a specific structure:

<!-- CORRECT CODE -->
== Foo bars ==

{{main|Foo bar}}
{{cleanup-section}}

[[Image:...|Typical Foo bar]]

A '''foo bar''' ...

• • MOS:IMAGE says "Avoid sandwiching text between two images facing each other." WP:ACCESS seems to be suggesting that the first image should always go before any text in a section; it's definitely suggesting that for lead sections. In general, it's impossible to follow that rigid placement guideline and also never have text between a left and right image, because an image may drop down from the previous section (unless you're willing to introduce a lot of white space, but I don't think that looks encyclopedic, unless there's no other choice.) - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 21:10, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

WP:TLDR. We have several (sometimes competing) image requirements. When all requirements can't be met simultaneously, I prioritize them as follows:

1. WP:ACCESS must be met, otherwise we make our readers who use screen readers miserable. This means watch the order of items in sections, no left-aligned images under third-level headings, images within sections not above them, and captions on all images.
2. No images looking off the text and no text squeeze between images, per WP:MOS#Images. Do these whenever possible, and they are almost always possible.
3. Left-right alternating is purely cosmetic, last priority, do when possible, bt don't sacrifice No. 1 or No. 2.

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:17, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

WP:ACCESS seems to be suggesting that the first image should always go before any text in a section ... No it doesn't. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:22, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

My reading is that it does suggest that, based on the verbiage "should have a specific structure" and a demonstration of that structure. Can you comment on "Unless there is a risk that an infobox will encroach in the right column, the first image in a section should be placed at the head of the section, right aligned."? Prince of Canada ^{t | c} 21:24, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

There are only two key points to be resolved here, as I see it: 1) whether or not the first image in a section must be right-aligned; and 2) whether or not any image or infobox may span a section divider. Dank55 has already picked up on 1, which, in more detail, seems to centre, first, around how literally the WP:ACCESS example is taken, and then about how that affects and/or conflicts with other guidelines. 2 is another matter which I can't find any guideline on; the only associated words I came across on the subject are a discouragement of forcing breaks and creating white-space. I think the aversion to images crossing section headers is unique to User:PrinceOfCanada; indeed, it seems to become even more a matter of personal tastes when one takes into consideration his further breaking down of this no-crossing-"policy" to differentiate between crossing images that "cause formatting issues" and those that don't, disallowing the former but allowing the latter. Of course, what the formatting issues are is unclear and possibly only related to personal opinions; I say that because the articles this dispute has touched remained undisturbed in this matter until PrinceOfCanada came along. --G2bambino (talk) 21:33, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Allow me to correct the various lies and misrepresentations above.

• As I have repeatedly made clear, my aversion to images crossing section headers is as follows: left-aligned images crossing section headers can produce unsightly subsequent sections if the image stacks below; the headers can be 'pushed' to the right, depending on browser resolution, thus disconnecting the header from the text below.
• As I have likewise made clear on multiple occasions, right-aligned images which cross section headers are only a problem if they can cause image stack in subsequent sections, which is very specifically deprecated by guidelines.

Representing either of my positions as 'unclear' is a lie, and you know it, given how many times I have stated my position, as above. Please stop doing this. Prince of Canada ^{t | c} 21:44, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I should remind you that an opinion - and one clearly expressed as such - is neither a misrepresentation, nor a lie. Regardless, those of your points that aren't already moot don't contradict mine. --G2bambino (talk) 22:27, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Saying that the formatting issues are unclear is a lie, when I have made it abundantly clear to you precisely what those issues are. You know it, I know it, now stop it so that we may actually have a productive discussion without your derails. Prince of Canada ^{t | c} 22:32, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Do not accuse me of lying about my own perceptions. You may hold suspicions or theories, if you like, but you do not know what I see or think. I am entitled to my opinion, and I expressed it. And those are my last words on this particular issue, as the only attempts at derailment here are those to bring this discussion off into the realms of imagined attacks and baseless accusations. --G2bambino (talk) 22:50, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Moving on to adult topics, is there anyone else who would like to comment on the guidelines as outlined by User:Mayalld, specifically point #4? That's the major sticking issue. Prince of Canada ^{t | c} 22:55, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm having a hard time understanding 1) why an unrelated MedCab is trying to rewrite guidelines (that's done here) without 2) even consulting our readers who use screen readers at WP:ACCESS. On the other hand, I'd hate to see the ACCESS talk page burdened with this kind of verbosity. I've not yet found a situation that can't be resolved by prioritizing conflicting image concerns as I stated above, and there seems to be some over literal interpretation of the image guidelines, so I don't see what the problem is, and will oppose any change until someone can state it in something less than a book chapter. Is there a POV issue going on about images in some article at MEDCAB? That's what is usually behind these kinds of wonky concerns. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:29, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Graham (an expert on Wikipedia screen readers) and I exchanged some ideas on our talk pages last night. He feels strongly that the first image link for a section heading should not be just above the section heading. The problem is, people do this, a lot, when the total vertical length of images is greater than the total vertical length of section text. I've asked a template person for a fix. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 11:48, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Just to clarify on the MEDCAB issue. I was the mediator there, and the "guidelines" are an attempt to reach a compromise, within the bounds of the currently very sparse guidance provided by MoS on the point, that two parties with very divergent and incompatible views of what the guidelines mean might agree upon as a fair interpretation of MoS (we were attempting, not to rewrite the guidelines, but to seek to interpret them, and reach an agreement on a way of working that would ensure we didn't end up with disputes. Sadly, agreement was not reached. As such, I brought this here, with the objective of getting more input from people with a better handle on MoS than I do, to consider whether things might be easier if the guidelines were more detailed. As SandyGeorgia says, discussions on setting new policy belong here! Mayalld (talk) 20:12, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

It seems that the main issue is the one that Dan and Sandy disagree on; namely, whether or not the first image should always go before any text in a section. What is the reality on that matter? As I see it, the WP:ACCESS code example is just an illustration of where to put an image if it does come before all text; i.e. after the header and first links, but before the text itself. --G2bambino (talk) 05:02, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't disagree with anything Sandy said above. The only problem left over for me is a problem I have with the devs (as usual). Anyone looking at an image that is entirely contained in one section would assume the image belongs with that section, wouldn't they? Including images that start on the same line as the heading ... but to get that effect, you have to put the image link just before the heading, and the devs in their wisdom have put these images in the previous section, which makes it harder for everyone, blind or not, because then you have to click the section above if you want to edit that image. The makers of screen readers haven't compensated for this problem (yet), which they could easily do by reading the heading before the image. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 14:07, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh, sorry. From Sandy's response to your statement it seemed like there was disagreement on whether or not the first image should always go before any text in a section. That same question seems to be the crux of the disagreement that led to the start of this discussion. But, to be more clear, there's no confusion about placing an image for one section in the preceeding section; everyone seems to accept that as verbotten. Where the vaguery lies is in the legitimacy of having a left-aligned image as the first image in a section (at least one paragraph in, as per MOS). Or, in other words, must the first image in a section always be right-aligned and come between the header and the text? One user seems to think the latter is true, while another user thinks the former is perfectly allowable. --G2bambino (talk) 20:51, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Do not place left-aligned images directly below subsection-level (=== or greater) headings, as this can disconnect the heading from the text it precedes. This can often be avoided by shifting left-aligned images down a paragraph or two. What does this mean?

1. Text can indeed be placed between headings and images.
2. In level-two headings (==), images can be placed on the left.

For those who've missed it. :-) Waltham, The Duke of 22:52, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

That's not my reading, given that the exact same issue occurs whether it's H2, H3, etc etc etc. Prince of Canada ^{t | c} 22:53, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

What issue in specific? The apparent disconnect of a section's text from its heading is a problem with left alignment of images directly below the heading, but level-two headings have a line running the width of the page, providing some "connection". And since level-two sections are the building blocks of articles, and generally larger than the rest (and not necessarily subdivided), I'd expect images thus positioned not to straddle other sections as often as in smaller, lower-level (or higher-level?) sections. Waltham, The Duke of 23:03, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the disconnect. I don't see the line as fixing that issue, is what I'm saying. Prince of Canada ^{t | c} 23:05, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Fooey on all of this. Billiard ball uses left-aligned images right after headings several times, and it works out just fine. Putting them all to the right does not work, as there are more images than will fit, and there is not enough text in some of these places to move the left aligned image a paragraph or two later (what paragraph or two later?). Tempest in a tea pot, as far as I'm concerned, this MedCab case. Important: I think MOS needs to stick to a) Matters of writing and coding style that have some impact on readabilty, usability, accessibility, editability, consistency, and reusability, primarily; b) layout issues that have something to do with those concerns (use of headings, where hatnotes go, images having captions, tabular data being in actual tables, etc.); and pretty much stop there. "Style" has many meanings, but "layout aesthetics" need not, and in my book should not, be a part of the definition here. It's a subjective can of worms, there are way too many worms wriggling around here already that this person or the other can work themselves up into a froth about. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:42, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. My sentiments exactly. --G2bambino (talk) 05:19, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Née

How should this be used? For example, on Alison Ratcliffe I've used it in this fashion but it looks a bit odd, seeing as how she didn't use that name when she started the career for which she's notable. I don't really see any hard-and-fast rules about this anywhere. Anyone? Regards, AllynJ (talk | contribs) 22:51, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies) recommends "born". - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 23:07, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually it looks like they recommend "née". Are you looking at the maiden names section? Kaldari (talk) 23:16, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Wow, I saw something that was totally not there. Yes, they recommend either "née" or parentheses, such as Lucy (Payne) Washington. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 00:10, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

That is what they recommend formaiden names, but it seems a bit twee....Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:41, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

For reaching the widest readership, I like the parentheses. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 03:02, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, when she played she wasn't Alison Littlefair, so under the section that says:

But in all cases, a woman should be called by the name she is most widely known under.

I've just put it to her best known name. It's not entirely clear, and the example given isn't the best, but I think that's what it means. Regards, AllynJ (talk | contribs) 23:20, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

See Babe Zaharias for one way of dealing with this issue. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:05, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Updates

Guys, I'm sorry, I won't have time to do a set of updates before Oct 1. If there's something scary going on that you'd like for people to address before Oct 1 when the updates are done, please let us know here. Anyone who wants to do some early updates is more than welcome. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:57, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, what are you talking about? Kaldari (talk) 20:02, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

"WP:UPDATES" will solve all your questions. Ok, maybe just this one. Waltham, The Duke of 21:34, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm doing the monthly updates again for CAT:GEN, which is a subset of the style guidelines. Reaction has been positive these past few months, and since successful projects in userspace tend to migrate to WP-space, I've created a page WP:Update for these monthly updates. (Tony1 has been doing a fine job in previous months combining my stuff with his stuff and making the results available in his userspace and through the Signpost, and I hope he'll continue to find my work useful.) I'm thinking that the page could be used by anyone for monthly updates of any set of guideline or policy pages, or for linking to other sets of updates, in or out of userspace; of course, now that it's in WP-space, it's not my call how the page gets used. On analogy to WP:ATT (a kind of summary of WP:V and WP:OR), which got labeled as an essay after a lot of discussion, I've labeled the page an essay for now. Any thoughts about how to use a page like this? - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 16:32, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

P.S. I try to avoid making edits just before I do the summary, to avoid the perception of "getting in the last word". But I'm not above making an edit if I see something that's new on a page that I can't find any discussion or support for. The only edit I made today in WP:MOS was removing WP:Build the web as a "see also"; see WT:Manual_of_Style_(links)#WP:Build the web. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 17:36, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Scrolling (hiding)

I have used hiding as a way of listing boring facts in an article: list of mayors of Midville or whatever. I assume the policy tells me that my only recourse is to fork a separate list. (I know. There are pedants who don't want it at all, but it is legitimate history). The forked article, of course, becomes an instant orphan. I'd appreciate suggestions (again, I know someone will have a policy telling me I can't have such a list. But generally there is yet another policy telling me I can. Don't make me look for it! :). Student7 (talk) 22:38, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

There's a lot of brouhaha on just this subject over at Wikipedia:Notability/RFC:compromise. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 17:50, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Table border styles

Is there an established style standard for table borders? The closest I can see is Simple tabulation, which is uninformative. As a random example, the first table in this article has a "fancy" border. My own first impression is that it is over-ornamented and adds to my toner usage should I choose to print, but that's only me. Has this issue been discussed before? Franamax (talk) 02:36, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not good with table issues. Maybe ask on a more table-related guideline page? - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 17:46, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Looking quickly through WP:FL, I see a lot of tables with row shading, but none with thicker borders. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 21:43, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

WP:ICONS addresses iconic cruft for decorative purposes. Is there anything more general? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:43, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

European English?

In the section on national varieties of English, "European English" is listed as a choice of variety for an article on EU institutions. It looks like this was added in about August.

For one thing, the page on this so-called European English has a quote from an official translation office of the EU, saying that 'EU English' should not be taken as being any different from UK/Irish English, called 'real English', undercutting any idea that European English is something different. But for the sake of argument, let us assume that it were distinct in some way.

The principle of following the style choices of an international body when writing about it is completely at odds with the rationale for the "strong ties to a country" rule. Subjects that are most likely to attract the interest of, and be edited by, people speaking a particular kind of English should be in that kind of English, for the convenience of those readers and, to a lesser extent, that of editors.

The point of the rule is not to be able to point to an official body and say, "they made this choice, so we'll make the same one." Decisions made by bodies like that may have to do with issues of political clout of certain countries, and many other issues that are completely irrelevant to the style choices of Wikipedia. Establishing such a principle would be undesirable.

The UN, for example, has made certain spelling choices. But is the public most interested in an article on the United Nations any more likely to prefer -ize spellings and -our spellings than the one interested in nuclear physics?

Occasionally, people have expressed the view here that articles on, say, purely French topics, should use British spelling, because when the French government does produce documents in English, that's the spelling they use. Frankly, this is the kind of absurdity that I'm afraid listing "European English" here will lead to.

Let's stick to the raison d'être of the "strong tie" rule. 67.150.244.228 (talk) 23:29, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Maybe we should replace that with "(British or Irish English, as these are the spellings that the institutions use themselves)" Physchim62 (talk) 00:09, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I think 67's point is that that is not in fact an adequate rationale for using British or Irish English in these articles. I agree with 67 on this point. There is no strong national tie in these cases, so the original variety of English used in the article is what should control. --Trovatore (talk) 00:16, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I think that, so long as it is restricted to articles about EU institutions (or similar, such as EU directives), there is a national tie. There is absolutely no link to areas which don't use British/Irish spelling but a substantial link to areas which do. Such a guideline also relieves the risk of having quotations in one form of English and article text in another; something which can't always be avoided but should be avoided if possible. Physchim62 (talk) 00:40, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Hmm -- I don't like it. It could too easily be seized on by those who think any European topics should be written about in British English. If it could really be kept restricted to official actions of the supra-national government in Brussels, rather than the areas under the jurisdiction of that government, then your points do make a certain amount of sense. But that strikes me as difficult. --Trovatore (talk) 00:50, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

There you're just putting up an Aunt Sally to knock down. I don't see how a guideline for EU institutions has anything to do with our articles on, for example villages in Slovakia. Physchim62 (talk) 01:16, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

It's not a matter of "strong national ties" (the EU is not a nation—not that I really believe in nations, but still, the EU is obviously not one). Its appearance in the section about strong national ties is an invitation to overgeneralize, to treat the EU as a national entity, and thus to write on topics specific to EU territory in British English, the same way you'd write about Manitoba in Canadian English. A separate section for EU institutions, clearly making the distinction, would be less objectionable from this point of view, but too specific for the guideline at hand. It might reasonbly be dealt with at the specific style pages for WP:EU, but not as an example of a "strong national tie". --Trovatore (talk) 01:35, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

What I mean is that we should not refer to purely formal criteria like the language of official documents in the EU, when what matters is the audience of the article.

Just to clarify, I don't disagree that EU institutions are a Britain/Ireland-related topic. Decisions made by European authorities have special relevance to the lives of Britons and Irish people that they do not to Americans and Australians.

My point is, I think that the spelling and grammar conventions of the official documents of the EU should be considered totally irrelevant. Doing otherwise might set a precedent with negative consequences, by establishing the principle that the variety of English used in the official documents of some organization is relevant when writing about that organization. 67.150.253.238 (talk) 01:38, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree that Wikipedia articles about the EU shouldn't follow the EU style manual. However, we should use British English for articles about the EU administration for the same reasons: because it's native to English-speakers in the EU, and American English is not. Of course articles about things that happen to be in the EU, like Slovakian villages, can use any form of English.

By the way, whether you agree with me or not, let's just remove the so-called “European English” from the guideline since that makes it less silly without changing its substance. —Michael Z. 2008-10-02 02:45 z

I don't think any of us are really that far apart. I'm certainly not on any crusade to rewrite European Parliament in American English. I just think the EU stuff is a bad example to give in that section because, while it applies to a narrow set of articles, it could easily be misinterpreted as quite broad. And precisely because its scope is so narrow, I'm also not in favor of calling it out as a special exception. Let the WikiProject plus common sense handle it.

Oh, by the way, 67's point about the irrelevance of the official choices of an organization we're writing about is also an excellent one. --Trovatore (talk) 03:14, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

You're right, this is very specific, and can be handled by common sense. I would support removing the EU example from the guideline altogether. —Michael Z. 2008-10-02 04:00 z

I'm neutral on whether to leave in the example about EU institutions. What I'd really like is for the mention of European English to be removed. 67.150.246.138 (talk) 04:38, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't see any evidence that there is any such thing at all as "European English" for any purposes that MOS cares about. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:03, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

A duo ... singlular or plural?

The opening line of the Godley & Creme article has been changed from "Godley & Creme was a duo of English pop musicians..." to "Godley & Creme were a duo of English pop musicians". I don't see any reference to a style for this. A similar debate goes on with bands, as in "10cc was" or "10cc were". Any preferences and ought this to be included in the style guide? Grimhim (talk) 13:16, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

After reading this several times, including after a break, every time I see "Godley & Creme was", I cringe. I don't have that reaction to "Ben & Jerry's is", though, probably because the company is a single legal "person" acting as a faceless unit. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:54, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

AFAIK, "the duo are" (and similar constructions) is idiomatic English and was the standard a thousand years ago. When people started to think about grammar, some decided that this was incorrect. Consequently, "the duo is" became more and more popular. I will look the topic up in Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage to see what it says about current usage. But I expect it to say that it's up to the discretion of the writer. I think in practice the best choice depends both on the noun and the verb. Try searching for "while the band was" / "while the band were" / "while the police was" / "while the police were" to see what I mean. --Hans Adler (talk) 14:44, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

My feeling (based partly, I seem to recollect, on Fowler's attitude) is that you can use either, preferring "are" if their individual names are in the vicinity or if otherwise you want to stress the composite nature of the beast, or as a default if you wish, and using "is" if you want to stress the oneness, wholeness of the duo. But others may take issue with this. Tony (talk) 14:52, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Just as a matter of curiosity, isn't there a difference between (at least) American and British English usage here? I have the feeling that Brits use the collective plural, as in "the police were" or "the team were", more often than Americans, but I may be wrong. Oliphaunt (talk) 16:03, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

"Those commentators who mention British-American differences agree in general that singular verbs are more common in American English and plural verbs more common in British English. Beyond this generality it can be unsafe to venture; […]." (From the above mentioned source.) So it looks like 1) you are right, and 2) that's just about the full extent of what is worth saying about AE/BE differences. --Hans Adler (talk) 17:34, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

The music project has its own guidelines on this, which basically say that for articles on British subjects the plural should be used for group forms because it's used universally in the BrE press. FWIW I consider the singular for groups to be unworkable (as well as making me want to chew tinfoil) because it demands that the pronoun to be used exclusively is "it" rather than "they" and this almost always leads to weird constructions at some point. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 07:51, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, I think those guidelines are sensible, in the spirit of WP:ENGVAR, but I can't agree with your FWIW. The Miami Dolphins play football whereas the Miami Heat plays basketball, but for either team you'd ask are they playing at home? and certainly not *is it playing at home?.

Oh, by the way, ...demands that the pronoun to be used exclusively be "it"... :-) --Trovatore (talk) 08:11, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Exactly. You'd treat "Miami Heat" as a singular entity in some cases and as a plural in others. Potentially, this could happen in the same sentence. This quirk of the US dialect has the same effect on my central nervous system as getting fillings does (no offense). Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 11:09, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I would never say something like "Miami Heat plays basketball" in reference to a team or other group, unless it were of a faceless corporate character, in which case I'm talking about the business entity as a legal "person", not about the team of people who make it up. "Microsoft puts out crap software", etc. Colloquial uses like "Black Sabbath rawks!" notwithstanding, "Sonic Youth make delightfully noisy albums", "Led Zeppelin were a great band", but "the ACLU brings some great cases to trial, and a few stupid ones from time to time" - treating the ACLU but not the performers as a legal "person". — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:18, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh, come on, are you serious? The Heat plays basketball because heat is a singular noun (more precisely, a mass noun construed as singular). It's really just that simple; none of the stuff about team unity comes into it at all. --Trovatore (talk) 08:21, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Dead serious. "Black Sabbath were heavy metal pioneers." "Voivod were way heavier than Sabbath." "Nirvana are timeless, and we'll still be listening to them, as 'classic rock', in 20 years." "Rush are my all-time favorite." Etc., etc., etc. I can't think of any other sports teams off the top of my head that use the singular, so I'm sort of stuck with music examples, where singular names are really common. Some other examples from slang, including a very, very on-point one: Two ways (in badly aging slang) to warn of an impending police raid are "the heat are coming" and "the fuzz are coming". Some dope dealers probably would have said "the heat is coming", of course, but that's neither here nor there. The local minor league team around here are the Isotopes. If for some reason they changed their name to the Radiation, I, and I think most people, would say "the Radiation are playing against the Wildcats on Tuesday", not "The Radiation is..." I think you are simply having trouble separating the underlying word from its use in this context, which is out of its normal context (not unlike the definite article following a possessive in "Stephen King's The Shining"). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)›

S, on your userpage you claim to speak American English, but this is not the first time I have had cause to suspect that you have a version of it somehow corrupted by the Redcoats. Next I'll have to remind you to use the subjunctive in jussive constructions.

The verb agrees with the syntactic grammatical number of the subject, not with some semantic extrapolation of what the subject means. Rush really is a pretty good band (or perhaps was; not sure if they're still around), and Primus sucks (certainly not suck). Sonny & Cher were charming though perhaps not musically brilliant, Jefferson Airplane was enjoyable, The Bobs are still my favorite new wave a cappella group. This is normal American usage. --Trovatore (talk) 18:01, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, under "agreement: organizations considered as collective nouns", says you are wrong. They cite Quirk et al: "A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language" (Longman) and Copperud: "American Usage: The Consensus", who both agree with you for organizations. But they say: "Copperud is too dogmatic. Our evidence shows that names of companies and other organizations function like other collective nouns, being sometimes singular and sometimes plural. […] And like other collective nouns, organizations sometimes appear with a singular verb but a plural pronoun in reference." The entry "collective nouns" has two particular cases where the difference between AE and BE is more or less as you describe: The word family is typically (but not always) plural in BE, and typically (but not always – quoted exceptions are from F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925, Time 1951, and NY Times Book Review 1984) singular in AE. Similarly for sports teams named after a city or country. Perhaps you have become the victim of a prescriptivist teacher at school? --Hans Adler (talk) 19:59, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure you're wrong there as regards common use in the US; only a very few enlightened sources in the States use the plural consistently for teams and bands, with most falling into a diabolical mishmash of singular and plural ("Black Sabbath is playing tonight… they are awesome!"). Anyway, fortunately this doesn't matter in this case as the subject matter is (are, heh) British. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 11:06, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Your "diabolical mishmash" is my "normal feature of the English language", that I learned by reading English classics. --Hans Adler (talk) 20:01, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Out of interest, which English classics were in the habit of referring to bands and sports groups in the singular? Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 11:20, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Good response! Personally I am not interested in bands and sport groups at all, so I was just referring to what I consider to be standard practice (in the sense that you can do it in normal edited prose) for collective nouns in general. It's hard to find data on such usage by just looking through a book. (Collective nouns don't appear so often, and one may not even notice a good example when reading it.) So here is an example from MWDEU: "... no example of a nation that has preserved their words and phrases from mutability" (Samuel Johnson 1755, preface to his dictionary). I am sure there are plenty of other examples around, but I also know how treacherous such feelings are. --Hans Adler (talk) 13:50, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

UK English generally uses the singular for entities significantly larger than a team or band as well - in the same tabloids which use the plural exclusively for sports teams on the back pages, a team will be referred to in the singular if mentioned in the Business section (where it can reasonably inferred that the subject is a public company as opposed to a squad of players). Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 14:48, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Isn't there a bands guideline somewhere? If so, whatever is recommended there should be done with duos as well. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:12, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

In American English, though this kind of thing would be plural in most cases, one could certainly imagine the name of a duo coming to represent a sort of inseparable entity calling for the singular. This could potentially vary by band. If this were an American band, one would have to look at what the sources said. But I imagine that "Godley and Creme" would always be treated as plural by British speakers, which is what counts here. Since Britons say things like "Liverpool are" when they're talking about soccer, it's hard to imagine them saying "Godley and Creme is." 67.150.246.38 (talk) 09:42, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

An increasingly iconic local band in NE Albuquerque, Donahoe and Grimes (no they aren't notable enough for an article; they're just a locally popular all-acoustic cover band), as an example. The Meetup.com notice I got about their latest show said "Donahoe and Grimes are playing at the Dragon Horn Tavern on [whatever the date was, I don't remember]", not "is" (emphasis added). Everywhere I look for some examples, group or duo, I see "are", not "is". I'm having a hard time finding any "is" (or otherwise singular) cases at all outside of blogs, webboards and other bastions of no English prose style at all. :-/ The Who were. Social Distorion are. And so on. Again, sorry these are all musical examples; sports teams with names like this seem to be really, really rare. I.e., I'm not finding solid evidence of "is" being an Americanism in constructions like this. I think the ENGVAR bit is simply a red herring. Brits say "Liverpool are playing Manchester next" week, Americans say "the Heat are playing the Timberwolves next week." I see no evidence to contrary as a general matter. The article itself says "The Miami Heat ... are a professional basketball team..." (emphasis added).— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:41, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Of course you'd say Donahoe and Grimes are playing. Note the word and. That makes it plural. You're absolutely wrong about how most Americans talk about Rush and Black Sabbath. It's frankly bizarre that you would continue to make this claim. --Trovatore (talk) 09:29, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Here's a sample: Canadian band "Rush is" site:-uk gets 11400 ghits, Canadian band "Rush are" site:-uk gets 1670. --Trovatore (talk) 09:37, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

• Try the "Phrase checker": "Rush is" yields 5.68M hits; "Rush are" yields 0.36M. Tony (talk) 09:46, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Add a ‘which’ versus ‘that’ section

Resolved

 – Not a MoS matter, and no consensus on usage anyway.

I seriously think the MoS needs a which-versus-that section. Far too many otherwise-good contributors use ‘which’ or ‘that’ incorrectly (particularly ‘which’). Misuse can be incredibly confusing to those familiar with the difference and incredibly ambiguous to those who aren’t.

Dmyersturnbull (talk) 22:38, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

What do you suggest? You are presumably one of those people who believe that "which" should not be used in cases where "that" can be? I've seen opinions divided on this matter, so it may not be possible to reach agreement here either.--Kotniski (talk) 08:23, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

No way. The MOS is not about prescriptive grammar; please note that it no where has any sections like this – passive voice, split infinitives, sentence-ending prepositions, run-on sentences, or any other grammar issue not related to WP concerns of readability, usability, accessibility, editability, portablility. WP assumes that its editors already know who to write English prose properly. If they don't, they will not have a very good time here and will eventually go away to finish school, and come back someday we hope. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:22, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

"readability, usability, accessibility, editability, portablility": that's brilliant, I am so going to quote that. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 01:18, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I said it again in a thread higher up the page with another point or two, I think. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:24, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Here is a summary of what Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage says about which versus that:

That was prevalent in early Middle English, which began to be used in the 14th century. "By the early 17th century, which and that were being used pretty much interchangeably." They have quotations from Shakespeare and the King Jame Bible (1611 version), e.g. "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's." Apparently that fell into disuse in late 17th century literary English and reappeared in the early 18th century, against some opposition. This episode weakened the use of that in non-restrictive senses, and recently it has become unusual.

Which has never been weakened in either the restrictive or the non-restrictive use; some people try to prescribe the restrictive use, presumably because they want a clear and simple rule: "Use which in this type of situation, and that in that type of situation." But many of these presriptivists don't even follow their own rule, because it's plain wrong. Even Fowler admitted it's not a general rule:

"... if writers would agree to regard that as the defining relative pronoun, & which as the non-defining, there would be much gain both in lucidity & in ease. Some there are who follow this principle now; but it would be idle to pretend that it is the practice of "our most idiomatic writers."

E.g. Strunk and White recommend "which-hunting" (i.e. replacing it by that in restrictive cases), but White himself used restrictive which: "... the premature expiration of a pig is, I soon discovered, a departure which the community marks solemnly on its calendar." ("Death of a pig")

75 % of which in edited prose introduce restrictive clauses; 25 % non-restrictive clauses. --Hans Adler (talk) 09:10, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Although the two words’ usage conflicts, the rule is of general consensus.

Even Fowler admitted it's not a general rule:

"... if writers would agree to regard that as the defining relative pronoun, & which as the non-defining, there would be much gain both in lucidity & in ease. Some there are who follow this principle now; but it would be idle to pretend that it is the practice of "our most idiomatic writers."

Fowler was remarking on the rule’s use; he does not dispute the rule itself. Indeed, it seems he is criticizing the rule’s lack of followers, which would “gain in both lucidity and in ease”—that’s a good thing.

E.g. Strunk and White recommend "which-hunting" (i.e. replacing it by that in restrictive cases), but White himself used restrictive which: "... the premature expiration of a pig is, I soon discovered, a departure which the community marks solemnly on its calendar." ("Death of a pig")

E.B. White isn’t contesting the rule itself; he’s simply not following it. The Elements of Style still clearly outlines the difference:

“That is the defining, or restrictive pronoun, which the nondefining, or nonrestrictive.”

Ultimately, following a consistent guideline will reduce ambiguity, follow an established English rule upheld by authoritative experts, and introduce zero negative side-effects. The EoS agrees:

“But it would be a convenience to all if these two pronouns were used with precision.” (page 53 on edition 3)

In general, I’m wondering if ambiguity is under-addressed in Wikipedia.

“All homes which were for sale in the Rannersdorf community in Schwechat caught fire.”

Did every home in Rannersdorf catch fire, all of which were for sale? Or did every home that was for sale in Rannersdorf catch fire? I’m starting to agree with SMcCandlish that it doesn’t belong in the the MoS, but not because it’s prescriptive grammar.

I think that, whether or not it’s appropriate for the MoS, it’s important and should (perhaps) be mentioned somewhere. I apologize if my rebuttal seemed terse.

Dmyersturnbull (talk) 03:22, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:External links is no longer marked as part of the Manual of Style

Wikipedia:External links (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as part of the Manual of Style. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 18:52, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

And it's back to being tagged as a style guideline again. I kinda have to side with the de-MOSing, as it is principally a content guideline. What little it says about style can be merged into the MOS where we discuss standard article sections. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:36, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I have always agreed that WP:EL has nothing to do with style guidelines ... that's what WP:Footnotes and WP:Layout are for ... but there's been a practical reason (up til recently) to keep it in the same category (the style cat) as those two, and also the same as WP:CITE and WP:Wikimedia sister projects: the same edit warriors tend to hop from one page to the next, and it's so much easier to know how to deal with them if you see it coming. (I'm not talking about newbies or confused people, I'm talking about people who are suggesting for the 100th time that we rename all our endsections, for instance.) But these days, there's less trouble to deal with, and we've got enough eyes on all those pages that I don't think it would cause any trouble if we put WP:EL in a more suitable cat, such as Category:Wikipedia content guidelines or Category:Wikipedia editing guidelines. I think there's a possible advantage to moving WP:CITE to a different cat, too ... it copies more than half its material from other pages, so it's a pain to maintain. We could probably operate with no problem from WP:Footnotes and WP:Layout, and just point to the helpful sections in WP:CITE from there ... but I don't want to push that solution if it's not popular, because Sandy and lots of article reviewers like to rely on WP:CITE. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 01:12, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I can see that, but do tend to think it should be moved. Until then (if we need to discuss it further) it should also be categorized in one or both of those other categories, shouldn't it? If forget if the one is a subset of the other... Why would Sandy, et al., stop relying on WP:CITE just because it was moved from one guideline cat. to another? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:22, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

They're not subsets or subcats; they're largely nonintersecting. Either is about as good as the other for WP:EL. This may be personal bias, but I think the larger issue is whether we throw WP:Layout and WP:Footnotes into CAT:GEN; I didn't want to do that if EL and CITE were going to squeeze through the door after them. So, it would be great if EL and CITE weren't in the cat. Be bold, Stanton! - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:03, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Wait...I just skimmed EL and CITE, and those pages are looking pretty nice. They've had a lot of recent work. I'll come back and read them more carefully in a couple of days. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 02:30, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Identity dispute (redux)

I'm bringing this out of the archives:

I took a wikibreak before my previous dispute on this matter got resolved, so I'm brining it up again. The present wording on the handling of transgendered persons is, well, nuts. It's totally unworkable and will do nothing but confuse readers or make them think that WP editors are all smoking dope. At the very least, it will lead to "typo fix" editwarring and rancorous debate (this already happening) on article after article after article.

John Emile Smith (born Jane Emily Smith, January 1, 2001, in Hoboken, New York) ... He attended the St. Mary's School for Girls, and..."

See the problem? It is completely irrational to use the transgendered pronoun outside the scope of the transgendered portion of the article subject's life.

NB: I'm fully supportive of using the transgendered pronoun for the transgendered life phase, provided there is reasonable evidence it is what is/was favored by the subject. That caveat is more important than it sounds. When I lived in San Francisco, I met plenty of TGs, and not one but two of them (both M-to-F) went by "he", on the basis that until they got their sex-change surgery they didn't feel right using "she". While not a common attitude, it exists, and automatically applying "she"/"her"/"hers" to the M-to-F (or vice versa) transgendered, without sources, is both POV-pushing and original research.

PS: See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (identity) for a proposal that still needs a lot of work. I've cleaned it up some, but it still really reeks of self-consciously hipsterish "p.-c."

— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:43, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Barring any objections that are genuinely substantive and justified, I intend to change the section in question to make some kind of actual sense. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:33, 3 October 2008 (UTC) Updated: 08:37, 3 October 2008 (UTC) Updated: 06:12, 4 October 2008 (UTC) to correct "Jane" for "John" error; the intended example was a born-female now-male-identifying person who (naturally) attended a girls' school in youth.

Obviously, "he was Jane, he attended the school for girls" by itself doesn't make sense. But I can see two other arguments that I could also buy: this shouldn't be in a naming convention or style guidelines page (for comparison, it looks like we're finally going to stop deciding what kinds of people are terrorists on a style guidelines page), or the person had a male brain in a female body, in which case the discomfort the reader feels at seeing that the phrase "he was in a girl's school" can't be entirely avoided, since it isn't any worse than the discomfort he felt at the time (although obviously rewording would be needed). I'll ask around. (I'm not expressing a position; I'm saying there are several plausible positions, so let's let everyone have their say.) - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 12:30, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Perfectly fine. I want to point out that twice I have "let people have their say" and they haven't bothered. If they'll finally bother now, then I'm getting what I came for. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:12, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I think there's a civility problem here. Let's try not to call others' decisions "irrational" or "dope-smoking", and let's try not to assume that just because you have some transsexual friends, that you are an expert on what trans people prefer. Personally, I think the most workable solution is to use a person's currently preferred pronoun for all phases of their life. It's the least likely to be disrespectful; although there are trans people who might be offended if you used their currently preferred pronoun to describe their early life, those individuals can be handled case-by-case, and it is far more likely for a trans person to take issue with the use of their non-preferred pronoun to describe their lives at any stage -- and justifiably so, IMO.

This isn't about so-called political correctness. It's about treating human beings with respect. It's also about not committing libel, but I think that ultimately comes down to respect too.

I don't intend to take part in the editing on this matter; I'm just trying to issue a request for empathy here. SparsityProblem (talk) 20:28, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

First off, please stop misquoting me. I said that some readers are likely to think we are dope-smoking, if we do irrational things. I stand by the term irrational. I'm sorry that some people feel that it's some kind of insult, like "asshole" or whatever, but its an honest appraisal of whether reason and critical thinking are being applied (and I find that on this particular matter they largely have not). Further, I never said that I was an expert on TG matter; that is a straw man. I used the example from my own experience to disprove an assumption. I will assume that you are aware of this technique and its very broad validity, and thus not comment further on that.

It is not WP's job to be maximally "respectful" to article subjects. If you want that encyclopedia, then go to Wikinfo, where that is an actual policy. Our job is to be maximally helpful to our readership, which includes not confusing them with weird, overly-p.c. gibberish.

All this "preferred pronoun" stuff has simply gone too far. I'm already more-than-conceding – actually advocating – that we use the preferred pronouns when it makes sense to do so. When there are good reasons to think that in particular blocks of text it would not, then we should obviously not do so. There is no lack of empathy on my part.

Libel has nothing to do with this. See Libel. Completely unrelated legal concept.

— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:12, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

PS: If you were attempting to imply by your "not an expert" comment that I simply don't know what I'm talking about at all and have no experience with TG people, you are really, really mistaken. I'm somewhat doubting that was the implication, but I'll say this just in case. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:18, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I see the page you're referring to is a proposed guideline, SMcCandlish. My feeling is that we don't need a new guideline on this particular subject. I'd be in favor of removing the short paragraph at WP:MOS#Identity on transgendered people, and adding a reference in the first paragraph of that section to WP:BLP#Using the subject as a self-published source (policy, not a guideline), where people can read the 6 numbered points which have been carefully crafted over hundreds of thousands of talk page messages to reflect when we should and shouldn't adopt the subject's point of view on BLP issues. As a side note, WP:BLP#Presumption in favor of privacy and WP:BLP#Basic human dignity are also worth reading. (Although BLP is specifically for biographical material about living persons, I think on this issue I'd apply the advice to the deceased as well.) - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 21:43, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree we don't need another new guideline on the topic; I pointed to it as an afterthought. My principal concern here is making what MOS proper says on the topic be rational and non-confusing for our readers. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:12, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I respectfully disagree about removing the short paragraph on trans people. I think this is a situation where the general principles of respect and human dignity tend to get overridden by individuals' unfamiliarity with and confusion about trans issues, and it doesn't hurt to make it explicit that trans people deserve the same respect as everyone else. We don't have to remind anybody to refer to cissexual men (that is, men whose internal sense of self is male as well as having been assigned male at birth) using the pronouns "he", "him" and "his"; unfortunately, referring to transsexual men (that is, men whose internal sense of self is male but who were not assigned male at birth) with the same pronoun set is still something that requires as much explicit reminding as we can give. SparsityProblem (talk) 22:22, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Huh? No one said anything about deleting the entire section. And, no, we don't need to "remind" everyone of something that people either agree with or don't, any more than we need to "remind" our readers and editors to vote Republican or to believe in global warming as advanced by Al Gore. Wikipedia is not a soapbox. Again: I'm not advocating at all that born-female persons who identify as male be consistently referred to as "she", only when it makes clear objective sense to do so and whenit will reduce reader confusion. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:12, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't see any problem with the current wording. The example you created "Jane Emily Smith was born January 1, 2001, in Hoboken New York. He attended the St. Mary's School for Girls, and..." does not fit the current guidelines at all. #1) If Jane Emily Smith has transitioned to being a man, he will certainly no longer be named "Jane" and the guidelines say "preference of name and pronoun should be adopted". #2) The guideline also specifically states to "avoid confusing or seemingly logically impossible text that could result from pronoun usage", which your example doesn't do. An example which actually conforms to the current guidelines would be: "John Jakob Smith was born January 1, 2001, in Hoboken New York. Smith attended the St. Mary's School for Girls, and...", which is perfectly acceptable (as the article will certainly mention the person's transgenderness to explain the discrepancy. Do you have any actual examples of this guideline causing problems in specific articles? Kaldari (talk) 22:25, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

1. 1) Right; that was a simple error on my part. I've corrected it to "John" in the example.
2. 2) The guideline says that because I made it say that. It simply doesn't go far enough yet, because it isn't possible to avoid confusing language in many cases if we "must" always use the currently preferred gender, regardless what phase of someone's life we are talking about. I also want to add here that there seems to be a general presumption in the background of much of what has been said on this topic that TG people are simply born that way and "are" that way, from day one, when this is clearly not the case. Some are, and some are not, with the vast majority of TG people making the TG transition in their adulthood. This alone is a strong reason not to use the TG gender when discussing pre-TG aspects of the subject's life. Specific examples: Not right off hand, as I have simply fixed them when I encountered them and moved on. I don't keep a log of this stuff. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:12, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't have an example of the guideline causing problems, but I feel I don't need one; the problem is that the guideline attempts to override policy. The issue of when to go with what the subject has written about themselves, compared with what can or can't be found in reliable sources, is multi-faceted and quite subtle, and spelled out at WP:BLP. The fact that I haven't gone through WP:MOS carefully and noticed this before is just my slackness. Sparsity, I think that in a large majority of cases, the 3 links I gave at WP:BLP will support what you want. If you find yourself going up against edit-warriors and it's just too depressing, there are plenty of folks at WP:GAY (including me) who you can call on for help, as you know. I haven't kept up with the talk at WP:BLP lately; perhaps you can get some change in the language there. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 22:32, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

P.S. This doesn't count as an "argument", but I've talked with 2 very wise people at WP:GAY about this today. I don't think I'm out on a limb here, despite the current text in WP:MOS. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 22:41, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

P.P.S. You make a good point, Kaldari, that "avoid confusing or seemingly logically impossible text that could result from pronoun usage" isn't at BLP. However, let's ask Sparsity if he wants to see that language in a bare form at WP:MOS; I'm concerned that, without guidance from BLP, it might produce exactly the results he doesn't want to see. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 22:47, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand how this conflicts with any policies. We use people's most recent names whether they are transgender or not. (See Miley Cyrus.) Can someone please provide a realistic example? Kaldari (talk) 22:59, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Whatever conflicts there may or may not be, this sounds like the direction we need to go in: Examine all relevant policies and guidelines, and bring them into synch, with discussion of the underlying rationales as necessary. My goal here is not to pick a fight, it's to fix guideline problems. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:12, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I like the suggestion given by Dev920 (talk · contribs): if you state in the lead that this person is a notable transgender person the issue of gender-specific pronouns is solved somewhat in the lead. From the text of the article, however, I would state that Female name was born as male name and attended all-male school... --Moni3 (talk) 22:54, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

And I am disputing that, if for no other reasons than a) many links go to sections of articles not the top, and b) many readers look at the table of contents in an article and jump to what they came for, without reading the lead. I also want to point out that putting it prominently in the lead may violate WP:UNDUE. This is also discussed by someone else below. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:12, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

←Here's about half of the text from Renée Richards, starting from the top:

Renée Richards (born Richard Raskind August 19,1934, in New York City) is an ophthalmologist, professional tennis player, and transwoman. In 1975, she underwent sex reassignment surgery.

She is most known for initially being denied entry into the 1976 U.S. Open by the United States Tennis Association, citing an unprecedented women-born-women policy. She disputed the ban, and the New York Supreme Court ruled in her favor in 1977. This was a landmark decision in favour of transsexual rights.

Early life

Raskind moved to Forest Hills at age 6 and was ranked among the top-10 Eastern and national juniors in the late 1940s and early ‘50s. He was captain of his high school tennis team at the Horace Mann School in New York City, and at 15 he won the the Eastern Private Schools Interscholastic singles title.

Raskind went to Yale and played on the men's tennis team there, playing first singles and captaining the team in 1954.

After Yale, Raskind went to medical school at the University of Rochester, then served in the Navy as a Lieutenant Commander. He pursued a career as an eye surgeon, specializing in strabismus (eye misalignment).

He reached the final of the men's national 35-and-over championships in 1972. [1]

Becoming legally female

In the mid-1960s Raskind traveled in Europe dressed as a woman, intending to see Dr. Georges Burou, a famous gynecological surgeon at Clinique Parc in Casablanca. However, he changed his mind and returned to New York, where he married and fathered one son. As stated earlier, however, a second attempt in 1975 (after being referred to surgeon Roberto C. Granato, Sr. by Harry Benjamin) was successful and Raskind went on to become legally female.

Okay, how do you guys want to rewrite that? - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 23:21, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't! That's my entire point. The material reads precisely as it should. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:12, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I'd prefer not to use Renee Richards as an example, since she (does she still prefer female pronouns? I don't know) has more or less renounced her transsexuality. But for the sake of argument: Personally, I think the most consistent, respectful solution is to use the subject's current name and current pronouns throughout the article. Since the article states up front that she transitioned and her former name was (whatever), I see no problem with using the correct name and pronouns throughout the article, unless the subject has explicitly stated a preference to the contrary. SparsityProblem (talk) 00:14, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Not relevant. The renunciation bit is about the specifics of Richards in reality, not this text as an example; it could have been completely made-up text and would still serve as the kind of example we need to look at. :-) As noted above, "respectfulness" is not one of WP's goals, the principle goal of which is presenting accurate information in an easily digestible form to our readers. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:12, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

It is a trivial exercise to apply the guidelines to this example in a way that makes sense and is coherent:

Renée Richards (born Richard Raskind August 19,1934, in New York City) is an ophthalmologist, professional tennis player, and transwoman. In 1975, Richards underwent sex reassignment surgery.

She is most known for initially being denied entry into the 1976 U.S. Open by the United States Tennis Association, citing an unprecedented women-born-women policy. She disputed the ban, and the New York Supreme Court ruled in her favor in 1977. This was a landmark decision in favour of transsexual rights.

Early life

Raskind moved to Forest Hills at age 6 and was ranked among the top-10 Eastern and national juniors in the late 1940s and early ‘50s. She was captain of the school tennis team at the Horace Mann School in New York City, and at 15 won the the Eastern Private Schools Interscholastic singles title.

Raskind went to Yale and played on the men's tennis team there, playing first singles and captaining the team in 1954.

After Yale, Raskind went to medical school at the University of Rochester, then served in the Navy as a Lieutenant Commander. She pursued a career as an eye surgeon, specializing in strabismus (eye misalignment).

Raskind reached the final of the men's national 35-and-over championships in 1972. [2]

Becoming legally female

In the mid-1960s Raskind traveled in Europe dressed as a woman, intending to see Dr. Georges Burou, a famous gynecological surgeon at Clinique Parc in Casablanca. However, she changed her mind and returned to New York, where she married and had a son (or "started a family"). As stated earlier, however, a second attempt in 1975 (after being referred to surgeon Roberto C. Granato, Sr. by Harry Benjamin) was successful and Raskind went on to become legally female.

Is there anything wrong with the version above? Kaldari (talk) 00:44, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

(Before I get to the argument, let me insert that I am very sympathetic to the needs of most transgendered people not to have to deal with this issue all the time ... it triggers old pain, for some, and it's completely unhelpful. I am confident enough in the WPian community that I'm sure that we'll get to some kind of solution. But we sure as heck can't use WP:MOS as our weapon to solve this problem, that's way underpowered ... we'll have to make an argument at WP:BLP I think, and before we do that, we have to understand the problem, how the problem relates to current policy, and explore the boundary cases. I would be happy to move this argument to WT:GAY and then to WT:BLP as soon as we are done here.)

Okay, having said that: I can think of 4 potential policy problems: OR, POV (the two points SMcCandlish was making, so I'll let him make them), lack of portability outside Wikipedia (how many people importing this will say that "she had a son with her wife"?), and lack of portability inside Wikipedia. Sure, she may well have had a self-perception as a female all along, although this particular transgendered person doesn't say that; but what was the perception of her son, husband, fellow athletes, coworkers, etc? What if they want to refer to her as "he" in their own biographies, if that was their perception? And what Wikipedia policy lets us change the pronouns as we move material from one article to the next? There may be other policy problems; those are the 4 I can think of. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 01:57, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

OR -- why is that a problem? If we are referring to Alice as "she", we have a published source that says or implies she prefers that pronoun now. The choice to use a different pronoun to refer to Alice in the past, if not backed up by a specific reliable source, would be OR.

POV -- I think SMcCandlish's claims in that department lack merit, and if what I've said already hasn't convinced any readers of that, I don't think I can convince them.

Lack of portability outside WP -- we don't expect that every math article on WP will be understandable by non-mathematicians, nor do we expect that every article about a trans person on WP will be understandable by a person who is completely unfamiliar with trans basics. One easy solution is to create a template that editors can include in biographies of trans folks that explains WP's policy on pronouns, whatever that policy ends up being.

Lack of portability inside WP -- I don't see the issue here. We respect self-identification; if there was an article about Richards's son, we would not be obligated to use her son's choice of pronouns in referring to Richards. Self-identification ends at the boundary between self and other. I get to have my preferences for what I call myself respected, but I don't get to complain that you're disrespecting me if you don't respect my choice to call you "Sparky". SparsityProblem (talk) 02:17, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

By the way, I hope I don't come off sounding like I don't think your concerns are serious, because there are. Yes, there are some problems here without obvious solutions. But in my opinion, respecting current self-identification in the absence of reliable sources to the contrary is the solution that has the best mix of simplicity, consistency, and respect. SparsityProblem (talk) 02:28, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

• Comment I'm not quite following this whole thread but I did want to chime in a bit. First off people are not transgendered, language can be but not people. I agree that notable accomplishments as the former gender are trickier and generally we should avoid the usage of gender-specific words when someone no longer identifies as that gender. In Richards' case, removing and rewording to mitigate her former maleness - so take out any extra he and his. Many folks who transition change their entire lives to distance themselves from what may be loosely termed a difficult period. Similar to LGB people, however, their gender identity may or may not play a significant role. I would treat similar to LGB people that we avoid putting "_____ is a lesbian actress" as the lede sentence. Instead "____ is a British actress" and put the information in the lede (or elsewhere) according to due weight. I'm happy to help on a case by case basis as well. -- Banjeboi 03:15, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Sparsity, the template you're suggesting might have a problem with the no disclaimers policy; but maybe a footnote is the way to go. Benji, MWOS says both with and without -ed are okay, but I believe you're right, I've heard "transgender" more often. Yes, agreed, the problem cases are the ones where there's notability before declaring the new gender. I'm waiting for SMcCandlish to weigh in here since this is his baby (if you want to, Stanton). - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 03:25, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

What DanK said is pretty much it. I'll add a few points: POV is a clear problem – I realize that many editors here are from cosmopolitan environments, but your views (and mine) on TG people are not shared by the majority of our readers; rubbing their nose in it for TG-sensitivity reasons is a POV pushing excercise and clear soapboxing. I like the fact that we have a consensus to prefer expressed gender identity for the person as they have expressed it, but this logically cannot apply to period before they expressed it, and using it anyway amounts to WP making an assertion that gender identity is innate at birth, something that people on every side of the issue can reasonable agree or disagree with, in general or on a case by case basis, because the science on this is simply unsettled.

"She was captain of the school tennis team" is outright falsification of the facts, unless and until we have verifiability in reliable sources that this article subject was self-identifying as female, and accepted as such by the institution in question, at that period. It will also grossly confuse readers into thinking precisely that. A clear example is "at 15 she won the the Eastern Private Schools Interscholastic singles title", which strongly implies to the reader that it was the girls' division, when of course it was not. It would not be OR to use "he" for events before the sourced date that the subject started using "she" or publicly identifying as female, since there are only two genders in our language. Likewise, we don't need a source for the fact that a 45 year old man was living in 1925 if we have a source that he died in 1926. If we know that Jane Smith was born Jane Jones and took "Smith" when she married at age 26, we do not need another source that she was using Jane Jones before then.

"She had a son with her wife" (not part of the Richards material, but under discussion more broadly) directly violates even the wishy-washy wording in the guideline as it stands now, but I have seen and fixed constructions precisely like this several times. The fact that I had to – the fact that "TG respect" activists are making boneheaded edits like this – is the only reason I ever even looked at this passage, and the only reason I've tried to improve and brought up this matter here for resolution. I honestly do have many things that would otherwise be far more important for me to be doing on WP, but holes in guidelines that directly result in useless or worse-than-useless text in our articles tend to trump just about everything for me.

I also want to bring up the handling of names here (and this is quite important to the debate as whole): Such an article should not say "Richards" throughout, and note that this one does not, using "Raskind" where appropriate (as we also do with maiden names; see Babe Zaharias for a clear case - she was notable long before she took that surname). Gender identity is directly comparable and analogous, as would be religion or other any other changeable characteristic.

Anyway, I want to echo what I said in a smaller reply above: I think that we may well have a bigger fish for frying here, and need to examine both WP:BLP and WP:GAY and get a rede on how to synch them. I'm willing to leave the extant MOS text alone (at least it has the "don't use confusing constructions" clause I inserted, and that may be enough for now, but that clause is in direct guideline self-contradiction with the demand to always use the currently- or last-preferred pronoun), until this three-way synchronization is done. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:12, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I broadly agree with the view that being "respectful" is not a pillar of Wikipedia, whereas being encyclopedic and neutral are. Compromise is sometimes necessary when there are WP:BLP concerns, but not all transgender people are living persons.

However, a style guideline is definitely not the place to address this issue. Indeed, the very fact that WP:BLP is relevant here shows this is not a matter of style. It is ludicrous that the MOS at the moment has more to say about transgender identity than gender-neutral language. The latter paragraph makes no prescription, but invites editors to consider the matter and links to further advice. Similarly, the paragraph on transgender identity should simply raise the issue, directing editors to relevant policy at WP:BLP and further advice at WP:LGBT. Geometry guy 09:59, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Respect may not be codified in WP policy, but I would hope that editors, as humans over the age of ten, see the value of being respectful whether or not anyone tells them they have to be. For example, pointing out that Larry Craig picked up men in bathrooms is, of course, true, although he might feel disrespected by it. And it's worth mentioning because it's true. Pronouns are basically arbitrary; respecting individuals' preferences on the matter resolves that arbitrary choice in the way that does the least harm. Finally, I'm likely to avoid the rest of this discussion given that words like "boneheaded" and accusations against good-faith editors of POV-pushing are being thrown around by SMcCandlish accompanied by insistence that his own opinion is objective and that others' opinions are politically correct activist POV. I hope that if anyone else reading this agrees with what I have said so far, they will take up the torch. SparsityProblem (talk) 17:08, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, this is a substantive problem, and let's keep the volume down. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:11, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Okay. Obviously anyone can weigh in here, but we've got a thread going at WT:GAY, and I'll keep working over there for a while, with the idea of heading to WP:BLP with whatever we come up with. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 13:41, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

What has happened to the auto-archiving facility?

Dank? Tony (talk) 09:58, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm thinking the small additions to the very long section on quotations are making it hang around past its sell-by date; I'll manually archive it. On that note: thank you, Greg L and Sswonk, for being willing to negotiate on curly quotes (see their talk pages). For now, more or less everyone is on board with straight-quotes-only. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 13:08, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (law enforcement agency categories) has been marked as part of the Manual of Style

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (law enforcement agency categories) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as part of the Manual of Style. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 18:52, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

No it hasn't. Bad Veblenbot! I'll talk with Carl. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 20:53, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

VeblenBot is sending out this notice for any change to the naming conventions; I'm thinking notice at the Pump about a change to guideline status would be sufficient; shall I ask Carl to change the notification? - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:26, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

I can very easily change the list of categories that are announced here. Just let me know what you want. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:43, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Will do, Carl. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 04:58, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Anyone want to weigh in? Are we agreed that we don't want WT:MOS and WP:VPP to be getting a notice saying that "X (naming convention) has been marked as part of the Manual of Style"? - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 12:55, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I think so. I'm not entirely sure about the relation between naming conventions and the Manual of Style. However, I do think that it might be useful to have notices left at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions, specifically tagged "as part of the naming conventions". It is a big family of pages, after all, and it needs supervision. Waltham, The Duke of 17:24, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Excellent idea. All in favor? - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 18:41, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Hm, no response yet. Should I bring my sock-puppets? :-D

I suppose the "all in favour?" part has to do with stopping the notifications here and not with starting them over at Naming conventions. We'll need a consensus there for that. Waltham, The Duke of 02:47, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Carl doesn't have time right away to rewrite the bot to notify Naming Conventions, anyway. I believe notification of Naming Conventions conversions are now back to WP:VPP. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 05:29, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

• Support. Tony (talk) 13:38, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Avoid statements that will date quickly has been marked as part of the Manual of Style

Wikipedia:Avoid statements that will date quickly (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as part of the Manual of Style. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 18:52, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

See discussion at that talk page. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 20:50, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Possessive

Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Possessives does not stipulate whether or not the possessive form of a singular noun ending in s should end in a single apostrophe, or "apostrophe s" as in esophagus' or esophagus's respectively. — pd_THOR ^{| =/\=} | 18:53, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

American style guides disagree with each other and with style guides of other countries. Roughly speaking, either is okay, as long as you're consistent in an article. Last discussion was at WT:Manual of Style/Archive 102#Possessives. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 20:39, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

P.S. There aren't many people who would mind if you always go with 's after a singular noun ending in a sibilant sound, or always go with ', or go with ' after two back-to-back sibilant sounds (Kansas') but 's after just one (NYTM recommends this at "Possessives"), or go with just ' for ancient proper names (Moses'). I have a hard time getting fussy about this when style guides are all over the place. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 13:13, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Kee-doke, thanks—especially for the archive! — pd_THOR ^{| =/\=} | 02:01, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. I consistently use 's no matter what, and as far I have noticed I've never been reverted on it, even when changing extant text (e.g. Jones' to Jones's). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:06, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

For my own aesthetic purposes, the s's just drives me up the wall. The s' looks much more svelte and concise (and following: efficient and logical) than the duplication. — pd_THOR ^{| =/\=} | 02:01, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Inserting dashes into articles

Someone please refresh me. Are we supposed to type &ndash;, or the actual en-dash, "–"? WP includes the dash in the drop down selector underneath the edit summary bar, and User:Cameltrader#Advisor.js converts the code to the actual dash, but AWB from what I remember does the opposite. What's right? Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 00:00, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I haven't heard of wheelwarring bots before, that's a hoot. SMcCandlish and others argue that when the text is exported from Wikipedia, the only way to know that it will be read correctly is if we write &ndash;. They also argue that it can be a little tedious to copyedit the "–", because the hyphen and en-dash look the same in the edit window for most people, so you have to check the text window. Others argue that the dash available as the first character on the edit bar is less intrusive when you're reading in the edit window. My eyes are old, so I prefer the second argument. I also think that a lot of people who export our text won't care much about en-dashes vs. hyphens, and if they do care, they'll probably find a way to get it right. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 01:28, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure AWB converts from the code to the single character. --NE2 02:43, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

That's not what I argued (though it is an additional valid point); I argued that in WP edit windows that "–" is for many readers, either because of their eyesight, their font, or both, indistinguishable from "-", and that the only way to be sure that the en-dash is being used is to use the character entity code for it. I convert them to entity codes whenever I see them, for this reason. I think the MOS should mention this and recommend the code while not forbidding the Unicode character (which is, of course, right there in the "Insert" tools below the edit window, so forbidding it would confuse editors). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:17, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Hmm.. if it's not AWB, then it's some other program. I can't think where right now, but I have seen it happen. Damn my memory! So if we see &ndash;, that's okay, and if we see "–", that's okay too, as long as the article consistently uses one or the other? Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 05:12, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

No, no, consistency for once is not actually an issue at all. They are the same character, just two different ways to tell the browser to show that character. Either is okay, the longer code is preferable from a coding and editing point of view, not a style one, because it gives us certainty that the proper character is being used. Style-wise, they are precisely identical. (Yes, I realize that was redundant; just making it "extra clear" :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:16, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

• The war of the bots! Will they growl and snarl at each other? The advantage of the gobbledygook version is that it's plain to all in edit-mode; the stupids who designed the font, whatever it is, made en dashes look exactly like hyphens, although em dashes are nicely distinguished ... let's go figure. The disadvantage is that the gobbledy is a nuisance to type and ugly to look at. I use the plain dash, I'm afraid. Tony (talk) 05:55, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Nuissance to type is a valid issue, and why I don't advocate that MOS mandate it (it should mention why it is better from a coding perspective, though – it's actually significant that editors often cannot tell that the correct character is there), but ugliness isn't, since source code is always ugly from a display perspective, even when it is elegant! Heh. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:24, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

And it should also mention that a line with multiple &ndash;es can be hard to read in edit space, and so hard to edit. (Our source code is often no uglier than plain-text; often it is plain-text.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:51, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

It's not any harder to read or edit than anything else we add in source code, like tables, templates, and images; considerably less so in many cases. PS: You don't have to do <nowiki>&amp;ndash;</nowiki> to show that code; just – will do the trick. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:56, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

The edit history will show that I began with <nowiki>&ndash;</nowiki>, which does not work. I then made the minimal alteration; if your sense of elegance forbids the redundant code, feel free to alter my post. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:38, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

The only time Wikipedia source code is plain text for very long is when no markup of any kind has been done on it, in which case it will probably be slapped witih {{Wikify}} and is also highly likely to be a copyvio pasted in from some other site. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:58, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

That is true for articles as a whole; but most sentences have no wikification, per Tony's arguments. (I think he takes them further than we need to, but there is no question that a sea of blue is not what we want.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:38, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

So is there a concensus here to use the actual glyphs rather than coding (&ndash; and &mdash;)? Can this be written into the MOS, or is it just a recommendation? Jappalang (talk) 01:44, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

I do agree with Anderson that the gobbledy option is harder to read in edit-mode. Tony (talk) 02:09, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

If it is written into MOS, it really should be phrased as a recommendation; there may be places where we will want to be excruciatingly clear (but they will be rare). I don't see that we need to write it in, unless somebody is being uncivil about an imaginary rule requiring &endash;. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:46, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Mr Anderson's italicisation of if. I don't see the difference in formats as a problem, and both sides have their arguments. Personally, I usually change dashes into the Unicode version. That doesn't mean I'd like a preference stated in the Manual, however. Waltham, The Duke of 03:00, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I use the GNOME Character Palette to insert Unicode entities but I’d be happy to start using the named entities &mdash; and &ndash; if it’s easier for other editors to read. It looks like MediaWiki converts the named entities to their Unicode equivalents during parse, which eliminates the problem of browser display of named entities.Dmyersturnbull (talk) 07:32, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

The &mdash; and &ndash; are harder to read; they're easier to tell apart from each other. Which is more important is a judgment call. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 13:57, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Expanding CAT:GEN by 4

I just skimmed WP:CITE, WP:EL, WP:Footnotes and WP:Layout. I'm really impressed ... a significant improvement from 3 months ago, and so many active editors! Does anyone object to throwing these 4 pages into CAT:GEN? I'll include them in this month's WP:Update if there's no objection. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 04:13, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Update to the update: WP:Layout looks ready; there's ongoing controversy over Wikimedia projects, but the page is mature. For the other pages, I'd like to start some discussions on the talk pages and put off doing an update for a month. WP:CITE has a lot of stuff borrowed from other pages; maybe we can get either less duplication or more transclusion. WP:EL has a very long list that might be shortened. WP:Footnotes has a lot of CSS stuff and a couple of other problems. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 13:51, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Why is "CSS stuff" a problem? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:51, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Dan, I can't get a grip on what you're talking about. Tony (talk) 00:18, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Stanton, we should absolutely discuss CSS stuff on some pages, but some readers will stop reading if they're looking at stuff that looks like programming code to them. I'd like to keep code out of Category:General style guidelines when possible, but there are 91 pages in Category:Wikipedia style guidelines, and I don't see any reason to keep stuff that looks like code out of all 91 pages, if you think it's helpful. Tony, that's not an actionable oppose :) What's your question? There's a cat called General style guidelines with 25 pages that's been around for 5 months now, and a variety of people, including the Duke, find it useful for dividing the style pages into pages that apply to all articles vs. pages that apply to specific wikiprojects or specific kinds of pages. There are admission standards; I'm going to start some conversations on the talk pages of EL, FOOTNOTE and CITE this month to see if we can make the pages a little tighter and therefore a little easier to maintain; I mentioned the general issues above. If we can do that, then I'll throw them in the cat and do the monthly updates for them every month. Btw, everyone, this month's WP:UPDATE for the general style guidelines is ready. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 02:43, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh, wait, maybe you were asking about my objections. Long lists of examples of things that do work and don't work, such as we have at WP:EL, are an open invitation for everyone to come by and add their favorite examples. Even when we have one example, people will sometimes take that as an invitation to swap in their favorite example (as happened IMO recently at WP:MOSCAPS, see talk), so I will take an axe to even a single example when it doesn't seem to add much. FOOTNOTE includes an implied warning to be on the lookout for SEWilco's bot; that's silly, the relevant bot is RefBot, which has hardly run at all in 3 years. FOOTNOTE also has too much CSS for my taste. A little more than half the information at CITE is duplicated at other pages, which makes it a pain to maintain; I'd like to discuss either transcluding material or perhaps doing without some of it. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 04:55, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

That all sounds reasonable to me, as long as "the CSS stuff" has somewhere to live. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:35, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Apostrophes are not quotation marks

The paragraph referencing the Korsakoff’s syndrome in Quotation marks has nothing to do with quotation marks. I am going to remove it as irrelevant. --Yecril (talk) 09:21, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

It is relevant, but the name of the section should be changed to "Quotation marks and apostrophes", or else the curly v. straight stuff should be separated out into a separate section. Or something like that.--Kotniski (talk) 09:33, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

The name of the section cannot be changed because it belongs to Project:Manual of Style#Punctuation and the apostrophe in Korsakoff’s syndrome is not punctuation. --Yecril (talk) 12:04, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

According to normal definitions of punctuation (in English) most certainly are punctuation. Other languages than English may have other conventions, though. --Hans Adler (talk) 12:21, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Of course the section name can be changed; we need merely rewrite the redirect. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:48, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

What is most certainly punctuation? Your statement is missing a subject. --Yecril (talk) 13:19, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

See the first sentence of apostrophe. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:11, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Likewise, the NOAD defines the apostrophe as a punctuation mark. It just happens to be a word character, and not sentence punctuation. —Michael Z. 2008-10-06 16:57 z

Proposal to merge CONTEXT and BUILD into MOSLINK

Some people think it's absurd that our poor editors have to go to multiple locations to learn about linking. There's now a proposal here to merge the first two into WP:MOSLINK. Your input is welcome. Tony (talk) 12:29, 6 October 2008 (UTC) --HighKing (talk) 16:04, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

En dash spacing question on year ranges

When writing a range of years, do you write it with spaces between the year and the dash (1787 – 1896) or without spaces (1787–1896)? Dabomb87 (talk) 01:59, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

No—it's much harder to read that way. Use a spaced en dash only if there's one or more internal spaces within one or both items (August 23–25, 1981; August 23 – October 13, 1981, where in the first example the items are 23 and 25, and in the second example include the names of the months, with internal spaces). Tony (talk) 02:13, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:MOS#Images question

What do we do when the demands listed by this section conflict? I am trying to alternate left and right on antbird, which looks much much better than all down the right, but I had someone move my imgaes mostly to the right because I also can't "place left-aligned images directly below subsection-level" (see the image at Antbird#feeding) If I push it down a paragraph the image displaces the section heading for mixed species feeding flocks. How important is the "just below section heading" rule? Can I ignore it if it makes the article look better? Sabine's Sunbird talk 21:03, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, as with any rule; but I don't think the article will look better with an image just below a subsection heading (I presume you've seen what it looks like - it separates the heading from the text in a rather strange way). For me that's worse than having non-alternated images. (Doesn't matter with section headings, as the ruled line makes the layout acceptable.)--Kotniski (talk) 09:57, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

This clearly depends on what skin you are using; in Classic, subsections and sections differ only in size. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:56, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

These skins seem about as stupid an idea as personalized date formatting. Since pretty well all our readers see the same skin, why create extra problems by trying to make people edit for various skins simultaneously? In any case style recommendations should be based on what works in the skin that is displayed to the public (but not neglecting accessibility issues, as pointed out below).--Kotniski (talk) 16:15, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

It's not much of an extra problem though, is it? Apply 'under === headings' to 'under all headings', and the whole thing takes care of itself, and is applicable across all skins. Prince of Canada ^{t | c} 16:18, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

No, I was just seizing the opportunity to have a general moan about skinning. But are you suggesting now that left-aligned images shouldn't appear just below any heading? Because it never seemed to be a problem with the main section headings.--Kotniski (talk) 16:22, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

I've always felt that way, actually. Based on what Septentrionalis said about how different skins behave, it turns out my personal aesthetic sense might actually have a point. (And, well, seizing my own chance to have a bit of a moan I suppose :) ) Prince of Canada ^{t | c} 16:24, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Last I checked the no-left-align rule for level 3 and below was because that arrangement confused screen readers, so breaking it is a no-no. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 15:06, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, I had a look and I can honestly say I had never noticed it before. Just how stupid are our readers that they can't make that little jump? Would someone liable to be confused by something like that even care about antbirds anyway? Sabine's Sunbird talk 18:01, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Please note the word "screen" before "reader" in Chris' comment. I agree that screen readers won't care about antbirds, but maybe the people who have to use them do? ;-) --Hans Adler (talk) 18:37, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh.... what's a screen reader again? Is there anything I can do? I mean, I took some time picking out the best images that show different behaviours and points but now they are all jumbled up on the side and in some cases not even aligned with their respective sections anymore. Not to mention that it simply looks ugly having most of them down the right. Sabine's Sunbird talk 18:58, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

It looks to me like they are aligned perfectly within their sections. Are you using an exceptionally large screen resolution? Prince of Canada ^{t | c} 19:02, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

The immaculate antbird should be in the ant-follower section, I see that it gets pushed back in place when I make my browser smaller (I am blessed with a big screen). I guess most people don't have that problem, so I guess I'm just moaning.... Sabine's Sunbird talk 19:12, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Facial hair is required for administratorship has been marked as part of the Manual of Style

Wikipedia:Facial hair is required for administratorship (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as part of the Manual of Style. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 18:52, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Erm, this appears to have been addressed. Waltham, The Duke of 02:13, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

yeah, I took care of that when I saw this bot notice. don't blame the poor bot; the poor thing isn't too smart. --Ludwigs2 02:37, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I need advice on how to start a sentence

Consider that I'm quoting the quote below.

"And also there was a sort of unspoken rule about not having drinking on television as a source of comedy. So, of course, we went right for it."

Which is the correct format?

A: "...[T]here was a sort of unspoken rule about not having drinking on television as a source of comedy. So, of course, we went right for it."

B: "there was a sort of unspoken rule about not having drinking on television as a source of comedy. So, of course, we went right for it."

Thank you.Tj terrorible1 (talk) 19:15, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

A is the grammatically correct version. B wouldn't be horrible, though (since the 'also' is a throwaway term, you're not really miscontextualizing the statement by omitting it). --Ludwigs2 19:36, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

The APA Publication Manual (5th ed.) on page 119 says "the first letter of the forst word in a quotation may be changed to an uppercase or lowercase letter." Later on the same page it says "do not use ellipsis points at the beginning or end of any quotation unless, to prevent misinterpretation, you need to emphasize that the quotation begins or ends in midsentence."

I can't really say what the correct format would be until I see it how you intend to put it in your context. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 20:00, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

AP Stylebook agrees on both counts, and thank you for bringing this up, Gerry, this is something I have to keep repeating. Also, this (lowercasing or uppercasing the first letter in the quote because it now does or doesn't begin a sentence) is one thing we don't require brackets for to show a difference from the original quote. (The only other two things that can show up inside quotation marks without using brackets to show that you're messing with the material are ellipses and toggling between single and double quotes.) - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 20:16, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm surprised we don't. It's rather more likely to affect the meaning than the punctuation at the end of the quote, on which we are fanatically determined. (Ellipses are a sign, although an ambiguous one, that we are messing with the quote; we should probably recommend "ellipses in the original" when they are.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:29, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

• Hmmm ... the double mirrors make my head spin: who knows whether the original had [...] the ellipsis at all, and whether, if so, square brackets were used or added by WP? I think that's what Anderson is rightly cautioning as "ambiguous"; it's an inherent problem in the use of ellipsis symbols. I don't think there's a simple answer. On the cap vs lower case, I'm pretty sure MOS says you can use lower case in this instance. I don't understand the quoted statement—was it intended to be heavily ironic? Can you link to the context? Tony (talk) 03:46, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to deprecate and remove images that say 'this is not an image please add one'

I see lots of pictures that say "Replace this image". For example see in Ann Robinson. There is nothing in the images section of the MOS about them. I propose the following text:

• Articles should not contain images/text stating that there is no image and/or whose purpose is to invite editors to add an image. If such images are present, they should be deleted. This applies to "Replace this image male.svg" or "Replace this image female.svg"

Votes

Support

• Support. Proposer Lightmouse (talk) 06:45, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
• Strong support—They look dreadful in their grey complexity; they make the article look perpetually unfinished; they push the assumption that an article can't be good unless it has an image; there are better ways of encouraging WPians to locate suitable images than defiling the very top of an article. I can see why the practice was started in good faith, but in retrospect it looks like a bad misjudgement. Such encouragement should be an important role of WikiProjects. Tony (talk) 13:35, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
• Support. They look bad, push useful information further down the screen, and if anything probably encourage people to upload non-free images (people who know about Wikipedia's image use policy are also intelligent enough to know that an article doesn't have an image, and what to do about it, without being told). And the idea that we should discourage adding these things but not allow the removal existing ones is thinking at its muddledest.--Kotniski (talk) 15:05, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
• Support removal because new editors often imitate existing style rather than consulting the MOS, and also I think most if not all editors of a website know that an image improves a biography, so these placeholders are not useful. Darkspots (talk) 16:08, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

• It doesn't occur to them them that it is people like them who provide photos and they don't know how to upload/add them.Genisock2 (talk) 16:10, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Oppose

• Oppose as proposed. No need to make tens of thousands of unnecessary edits just to remove these, and I they might actually prompt users to upload the images as intended (off the cuff unqualified statement). –xeno (talk) 12:26, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose Consensus was not to mass remove them, just to discourage future use, no need to make all these edits. MBisanz ^talk 12:36, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose per xeno. Users might see a lack of an image as an agreement not to have one; an explicit "hey, you there, put a proper picture here!" encourages additions. Prince of Canada ^{t | c} 12:40, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Or worse, they will claim "fair use". — CharlotteWebb 12:52, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose. Absolutely not - the last thing we need is to take a wishy-washy statement about "some people don't like using these" and transform it into a blanket ban. Doing this would not help the encyclopedia one whit. Shimgray | talk | 12:53, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose - I don't like the look of them, but they fulfill a useful role. -- Mvuijlst (talk) 12:58, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

• Placeholders have been independently invented by a number of groups (:No_Photo_Available.svg for example) which suggest a common need and a fair degree of acceptance.Genisock2 (talk) 13:01, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose - They encourage image submission, which we want, and they don't exactly trash the aesthetic either. Why delete them? I don't think the MOS debate about whether they should be used was publicized widely enough, I'd like to see that misguided change reversed. Avruch ^T 13:24, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose per Avrunch. I'd also note that Wikipedia:Wikipedia is a work in progress and we shouldn't pretend that it isn't. Perhaps people can come up with placeholder images that look prettier, but I'm sure that their existence has encouraged image submission (certainly, it's logical that it should have). LondonStatto (talk) 14:17, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose: I still think we should be using these templates — but that is a different discussion — I don't see any reason to go around removing them, no. - Rjd0060 (talk) 14:28, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose: as has been said above, Wikipedia:Wikipedia is a work in progress, and building the encyclopedia (which is actually the core goal of this entire project) is a much more important goal than making half-finished articles look pretty. -- The Anome (talk) 14:30, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose: As long as we encourage readers to become editors through cleanup templates on the main article (as opposed to talk), then we should be asking for help whenever we can. --MASEM 15:09, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

• So would you support a message displayed automatically at the top of all articles, saying something like "YOU can improve this article by adding sourced relevant information or free images". It would be less intrusive than these placeholder images, and not be limited to one specific type of "help" on one specific type of article.--Kotniski (talk) 15:31, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

• No, that would not be specific enough to be useful, and would still require a large number of edits to alter the current situation. Leaving it the way it is with images in infoboxes (where a free image will go) is fine. MBisanz ^talk 15:33, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

• So why that specific request for help? Why is it so likely that readers will have free pictures of people? Or why is it so important that we request those but not other types of image or information? And getting rid of the existing placeholders doesn't necessarily require large numbers of edits (even if you consider that a problem) - it could be done at the same time as bots perform other cleanup.--Kotniski (talk) 15:39, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Comments

These images increase the download burden, clutter up the page and are 'under construction' artifacts. Lightmouse (talk) 06:45, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

• See past discussions on this here & here. –xeno (talk) 12:33, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I could not find the section in the MOS where it discourages future use. Where is it? Lightmouse (talk) 12:41, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

You should perhaps drop by Chris Cunningham's talk page and ask him directly, he's the one that said that. I could not find anything either. –xeno (talk) 13:02, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Proposal: War on Parentheses

I've come to feel that there are too many parenthesized statements in Wikipedia. In particular, there are too many attempts to add details by cramming parenthesized clauses into the middle of a sentence. Consider, for example, this sentence from Apollo Lunar Module:

In April 1970, the lunar module Aquarius played an unexpected role in saving the lives of the three astronauts of the Apollo 13 mission (Commander James A. Lovell Jr., CSM pilot John L. Swigert Jr., and LM pilot Fred W. Haise Jr.), after an electrical short circuit caused an oxygen tank in that mission's service module to explode.

In that case I would argue that the crew listing of Apollo 13 is unnecessary and just clutters the sentence. In other situations the parens are used to cram in disagreements or modifications of the rest of the sentence:

After the accident, the LM's systems, designed to support two astronauts for 45 hours, were shown to have actually supported three astronauts for 90 hours (at a much lower output than designed, it must be admitted).

Often the parens are part of a run-on sentence:

Like the LM, it has both descent and ascent modules (the latter to house the crew), but unlike the LM, it will incorporate improved computer systems, laser ranging and radar tracking systems for landing, waste-management systems, and an airlock for the crew, eliminating the need to depressurize the entire cockpit and reducing lunar dust tracked into the cabin to a minimum (a problem highly associated with the last three Apollo missions, when crews went into the lunar highlands).

I'm not saying that there is no need for parenning. Acronyms and very short clarifications are obvious examples of appropriate parenning.

I propose that the style manual's section on parentheses urge Wikipedians to avoid cramming parenned details into sentences. The style should also discourage the use of run-on sentences. I also propose that Wikipedians begin a War on Parentheses to edit out unnecessary parenning.

SnappingTurtle (talk) 15:03, 10 October 2008 (UTC)