Jump to content

Talk:Boys Like Girls

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

the song

[edit]

The song "The Great Escape"'s link leads to another song with the same name.

Genre

[edit]

they are radio friendly, pop-ish rock band with indipendent and unique music style with alternative feel ---> pop-rock,indie,alternative rock they have nothing to do with pop-punk or emocore, no matter they have been influenced by some emo/pop-rock bands like jimmy eat world. Xr 1 20:07, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The whole section about their style needs to be changed or deleted. Their sound is not that different from other bands to require a section like that.-alex —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.185.209.96 (talk) 06:15, 18 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]


I don't understand why emo isn't under the genre list. If they are "a self declared emo band" and they have "various emo and pop-punk influences" then why isn't emo under their genre? Razorblade666 18:45, 15 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]


They are emo. its pretty obvious if u listen to them. look at the lyrics for Broken Man,"I want to swallow these pills to get to sleep","But I guess you were better off without me"," But I will stand a broken man" thats pretty emo. I don't get why people always think its a bad thing to be emo —Preceding unsigned comment added by Iandrummer204 (talk • contribs) 02:28, 2 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

why don't we just stick with the genres that their myspace says? i guess they know what genre they are, they say Alternative, Pop Rock and Emo. Even though they do sound a little pop punky too. Matt 2601 atl (talk) 14:38, 27 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

They might sound a bit pop punky but they have yet to call themselves that. Caden S (talk) 18:03, 28 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If they were emo wouldn't they be dead? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.214.77.65 (talk) 00:09, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure about your "dead" statement but they do classify themselves as part of the emo genre. Caden S (talk) 04:01, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm one of the biggest fans of this band. About the genre in the 1st album they came up as an Indie Rock band with some emo songs such as "Broken Man". After that their songs took a new way and started to sound little Pop Rock. At the end the band can be listed into two genres "Alternative Rock" and "Pop Rock". Zizo1990 (talk) 22:09, 21 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

References

[edit]

Is there a reason we have at least 14 references in this article and they don't lead anywhere? Looking back at the history it appears they used to link to something but someone has deleted them all. Perhaps someone could fix that? --BHC 08:27, 18 September 2007 (UTC)\!!!!!!!!!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by XOchelseyXO (talk • contribs) 15:15, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

They are not emo

[edit]

They are not emo, if you go to the article on emo it is a type of hardcore punk and they are pop-punk. hardcore punk is heavy fast and has your average punk lyrics. So emo is the same thing just emo lyrics. They sing about falling in love not wishing their wrists were bleeding. I will not lie they have emo lyrics in one song but the style of how they play it is not emo.... the only true emo band is my chemical romance and they deny the whole thing.


p.s. I like boys like girls, im just saying there not emo —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.248.244.189 (talk) 01:41, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The article does not say that the band is emo. The infobox does not show this either. Caden S (talk) 16:52, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

ya the articale says their emo and wiki is stupid if keeps it like that —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.226.74.247 (talk) 20:24, 15 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to know where was that article about The plane crash that killed them. I have been trying to look for it and i can not find it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kcastro27 (talk • contribs) 19:18, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

wtf, they're not dead. Wtf are you talking about?72.72.215.178 (talk) 20:56, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

They are emo. Go to their myspace (myspace.com/boyslikegirls) and one of their genres is emo. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Qwertluis (talk • contribs) 23:05, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Geez please Louise, they are influenced, or inspired, by emo, just as much as they are influenced/inspired by alternative, indie and pop punk. Nobody claims they are 100% emo. If you don't like non-emo bands to be influenced by emo-bands that's a personal matter, not an encylopediatic one. -- 78.34.40.254 (talk) 13:04, 6 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Think about this: 1. My band's myspace page says that we are pop punk/zouk/folk, I don't know what zouk is, and avoid pop punk as much as humanly possible.

2. You can say, and even believe you are a pterodactyl, but you are NOT a pterodactly.

3. A reliable website can contain an article written by someone who has absolutely no idea what the underground genre really sounds like. Do you think John Lenon knows what emo really is?

Here are some notable REAL emo bands:

-Cap'n Jazz -Rites of Spring -Frodus -Heroine -Sleepytime Trio

Here are some bands that are NOT emo:

-Fall Out Boy -My Chemical Romance -Panic! At the Disco -Weezer -Jimmy Eat World -At the Drive In -Dashboard Confessional

Which category do Boys Like Girls belong in? 

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.222.232.134 (talk) 20:18, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Which image to use

[edit]

We need to gauge consensus on which image will be used in the lead. The image that is not used in the lead, can be placed elsewhere in the article. The options are this (Image A) or this (Image B). Let's keep this civil folks. — R2 11:20, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It makes more sense to show the entire band as the main image, don'cha think? Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 16:12, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Bugs. Let's remember this article is about the rock group Boys Like Girls. It's not an article on Martin Johnson who's the singer. I believe Image A is the best choice for the main page. It's better quality, has better lighting and has two members of the band in it. Image B, I'm sorry to say is awful. Caden S (talk) 21:17, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The current picture is over exposed and grainy and has only one hundredth of the resolution of the other picture. While a high quality image of all four band members would be ideal, it is best to go with the one good image that wikipedia does have

Anybody have one with the whole band???? =] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.255.245.1 (talk) 21:57, 10 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's best to get a new, recent picture of the whole band? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.255.1.164 (talk) 08:38, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Might I suggest this photo: Boys Like Girls
A google search produced that picture. But it's also 1 of the photos from their "Official Boys Like Girls Photos" album on their Facebook
It does show all members clearly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ausher8 (talk • contribs) 07:33, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Improperly Formatted Table

[edit]

Hi. Someone improperly closed a table, making it difficult to read the studio albums. I fixed the issue. I also accidentally signed the page. That error has been corrected.

Silvarus (talk) 23:37, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Clean Up June 2009

[edit]

I've made some major edits to the article structure, mostly based on the Switchfoot article (which is a good article). Hope it's okay with everyone. Andrew Duffell (talk) 21:54, 15 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've continued the clean up, and I'm now happy with the introduction. It contains just what is needed to introduce the article, and any further detail can be written into the main body of the article.
I'm going to continue to work through tidying up the article as and when I have time, but any help would be appreciated. I think all the information is there, but it just needs structuring better from its piecemeal form.
Andrew Duffell (talk) 14:30, 16 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The introduction is better. I also like all of the edits you've made so far. You did a really good clean up job overall. It looks good. The article seems to flow better now. Caden cool 12:34, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

New Info

[edit]

The band is going to perform at "The View" show on the 22Th of December. This information must be added. Zizo1990 (talk) 22:18, 21 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Can somebody verify this piece of information? "The song is about Johnson's previous relationship with his long time lady friend, Molly" - regarding the song Two Is Better Than One. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.255.1.132 (talk) 08:39, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

About the Introduction

[edit]

It says in the introduction " Recently, on November 17th, 2011 at 5:17 AM, Martin Johnson tweeted "...#boyslikegirlsisdone", revealing that the band the group announced an indefinite hiatus asserting that it has not broken up, rather that the members are taking a rest and engaging in various side projects."

but in the section "2011-Present: Departure of band's bassist & upcoming third studio album" it has this statement ""In November 2011, Martin tweeted he will post a video update the following day, which was later accompanied by a second tweet "...#boyslikegirlsisback". It was later revealed that the band would be commencing the preparation of the upcoming third studio album in the frontman's place back at Los Angeles. On November 19, 2011, another video update from the official Boys Like Girls YouTube channel was uploaded, confirming that Boys Like Girls is currently recording a new album""

So these two statements are contradictory because they cannot announce their hiatus and and retrn to work for a studio album within days of each other. Faceestrella (talk) 12:46, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to one external link on Boys Like Girls. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add {{cbignore}} after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add {{nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}} to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

checkY An editor has reviewed this edit and fixed any errors that were found.

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 09:37, 17 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

LANGVAR edit war

[edit]

@Peter Dzubay: I stand corrected. This is not a WP:LANGVAR issue at all. See American English band articles (Talking Heads, E Street Band, 10,000 Maniacs) and British English band articles (The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Queen (band)) and others ( U2, Midnight Oil, Crowded House, The Band). So why are you insisting that bands of people, this article does fall under WP:BLP after all, should have impersonal pronouns (it, etc.) rather than treated as a collection of people (they, etc.): https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Boys_Like_Girls&type=revision&diff=719612771&oldid=719603547? A self revert is in order and discussion should ensue, or does this discussion have to be brought to a wider audience? 208.81.212.224 (talk) 20:06, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • The issue isn't of the usage of impersonal pronouns but rather plural pronouns. When referring to one singular unit, the pronouns that refer to it must also be singular. In American dialect, when stating that one group is doing something, it is grammatically correct to then refer to that group as a singular unit. If 'Boys Like Girls' is treated as a singular noun, the pronouns that refer to the group must also be singular. The first sentence of the article states, "Boys Like Girls is an American pop rock band"; the use of "is" in this sentence defines the term as singular, thus 'they', 'them', and 'their' cannot refer to the band as those pronouns are plural. In other articles, such as Busted or Stray Cats, the introductory sentence refers the band using "are" or "were", which defines them as plural, so, per Wikipedia guidelines, throughout the rest of the article the bands are treated as plural units (saying things like "their album" or "the band were"). ~Peter Dzubay (talk) 22:22, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Ah. I see. I'll take it to a larger community since all of the examples are one singular unit and they use plural pronouns. Sorry you disagree. 208.81.212.224 (talk) 00:00, 11 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The two examples that I provided were British bands, and per Wikipedia guidelines, using plural pronouns is acceptable as that is what is common in British dialect. With American dialect, singular units take on singular pronouns- look at the articles for musical groups such as Green Day, Fall Out Boy, or Relient K if you would like to see article's written about American bands that refer to each group as one unit. ~Peter Dzubay (talk) 01:46, 11 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The ENGVAR issue is that British English uses plural verbs with singular subjects when those subjects are understood to represent a plural entity. American English matches the number of the verb to the number of the subject. Which means that, even in American English, if the band name is plural, the verb is also plural. The Stray Cats, who were American, were a band, but the Brian Setzer Orchestra is a band. The Doobie Brothers, also American, are a band, but the Allman Brothers Band is one. The difficulty with Boys Like Girls is that it sort of looks like a plural noun. It's not, it's a sentence used as a brand name. Each member of the Stray Cats could be considered a Stray Cat, but each member of Boys Like Girls is not a Boys Like Girl. So "Boys Like Girls" shouuld be treated as a singular subject and take a singular verb. --Nicknack009 (talk) 07:48, 11 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Nicknack009: But he is not changing verbs to be in agreement with the singular or plural, he is changing pronouns. So "they" is changed to "that it", "they were" to "the group was", "The group later changed their name" to "The group later changed its name" (emphasis mine). Bands are people. Bands are not objects. It doesn't matter whether they are British, American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealanders, Iranian, North Korean or Afghani. So despite what Peter Dzubay, it is about the use of impersonal pronouns because that is the change that he, not it, made. There is no change of verb tense at all. 208.81.212.224 (talk) 17:09, 11 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Both "they" and "their" are plural pronouns, and in my edit, there were times that I referred to the band members and referred to them as "them" or "they". When talking about the band as a singular unit, however, it is only one object in American dialect. Using "they" and "their" when referring the group is the equivalent of saying "the band are", which is only accepted in in British dialect. ~Peter Dzubay (talk) 18:33, 11 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
This is how American English treats collective names. For example, here's an article from the Wall Street Journal about Leicester City Football Club. It starts "When the English soccer season kicked off last fall, Leicester City was considered so hopeless that bookmakers put its odds of a title at 1 in 5,000." (emphasis added). Football teams, like bands, are not objects, and in British English are usually treated as plural, so a British newspaper would say "their odds of a title". But Americans don't. They use a singular verb, and the pronoun "it" (when they refer to the team as "the Foxes" they use a plural verb and "they"). I'm a speaker of British English and I find it awkward, but the American usage is well-known and not controversial in the slightest, so our anonymous friend really should leave it alone. --Nicknack009 (talk) 20:16, 11 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
But football team articles are not considered biographies of living people, while band articles are. Walter Görlitz (talk) 05:24, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Not true. WP:BLP entirely applies to a team article with regard living members. BLP does not apply at all the band the members of which are all dead, e.g. The Andrews Sisters of "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" fame.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:57, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
No one has ever presented any convincing evidence that this is a WP:ENGVAR matter. For at least five years, I've seem people claim it is and then fail to prove it. At most, there's a slight favoritism for one style in one dialect vs. the other. It absolutely is not some kind of "rule" in any dialect, nor in any particular genre or register of English (the closest is probably a vague and hardly universal quasi-convention to treat teams in the plural in sports journalism). This holds for bands, sports teams, research teams, etc. What is discernible is that collectives of this sort are referred to with plural pronouns when "the human element" is under discussion, and with singular when treated as a business or legal entity or property, or as a social phenomenon. If a collective entity is strictly a business, a government agency/ministry/department, or a nonprofit organization (NGO), it is more apt to be treated as singular. The form of the name also has some effect on the treatment. Something that sounds plural (Morris Day and the Time, the Kingsmen, the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Weathermen) is more apt to be treated plural, by influence from broadcast journalism where it will be spoken aloud. By the same token, something with a singular-sounding name (Black Sabbath, The Colourist, the Miami Heat, the Ministry of Defence) is more likely to draw singular treatment. Don't make it more complicated than it has to be. There is no International Agency of English-language Policing, and no iron-clad rule for things like this. Write it the way that seems most natural, not the way that whatever pundit you like most demands that you write it. WP has no need for external punditry, and all off-WP style guides conflict with each other on virtually everything. If WP's own Manual of Style leaves a common matter open, it's almost always because we're leaving it intentionally up to editorial discretion on an article-by-article basis, because it doesn't matter, and conflict about it isn't frequent enough to demand that we have an arbitrary rule to stop the fighting. So stop fighting, and don't make us make an arbitrary rule, which will necessarily leave a large number of people unsatisfied. If a construction is clear and adequate, don't change it, other than for consistency with the rest of the article.

PS: The case of "Boys Like Girls" is not a simple one. The words suggest plural, but the phrase as a whole is a singular statement. Except it's also a two-way pun, a triple entendre, suggesting both "boys who are similar to girls" (a plural construction), as well as the notion "As with girls, thus with boys" (another singular unit).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:57, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • I agree with what SMcCandlish is saying in regards to treating entities as plural when referring to the members and singular when considered a unit. However, similar discussions, such as this one, have taken place that suggest that the issue does pertain to dialect as British English tends to favor plural treatment of bands over American English in general, as is stated in the Wikipedia guidelines regarding plural nouns. In the edit that started this discussion, I used a combination of both singular and plural pronouns depending on the context, which seems to be what SMcCandlish is suggesting. ~Peter Dzubay (talk) 01:42, 4 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Peter Dzubay: I've been in several of those discussions, and observed others after the fact. People keep asserting it's an ENGVAR matter and using cherry-picked journalism examples to try to "prove" it, but there's no reliable evidence for this. It's patent original research and nationalistic chest-beating, or ore often than not "I wanna spell, capitalize, pluralize, and punctuate the way I like or else, and I'm going to make up nationalist assertions as an excuse to get what I want." There are well-documented differences between British/Commonwealth English and North American English (there are several entire vernacular-audience books about it, as well as lots of linguistic journal material on the details), and between subdialects within those categories. This isn't one of them. There may be a slight trend in one direction on one side of the Pond vs. the other, but there is no consistent set of rules on this, even in US and UK journalism. And WP would be unlikely to care even if there were, if this difference were not codified in mainstream style guides and also reflected in academic books and journal publishing, per WP:NOT#NEWS (WP is not written in news style and has borrowed very nearly nothing from journalistic writing. It makes much more sense at Wikipedia to have a consistent rule, based on logic and clarity, not competing pseudo-rules based on flag-waving and personal idiolects. PS: One of the down-sides of MoS being broken up over multiple pages is that they have to be independently watchlisted, and consequently some things that don't entirely make sense sometimes get pushed into some of the subpages until problems arise and the poorly thought-out material gets adjusted or excised.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:09, 4 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Some news-results sourcing, and conclusions and recommendations based on it

[edit]

Evidence it's not a WP:ENGVAR matter: Here's Google News searches of first American-biased sources, followed by British-biased results for the same search terms (except for the American sports material, swapping in a British team instead), generally favoring the treatment of teams and bands as plural, though at least historically, bands with singular names have often been written about in the singular, and usage also varies by context. We also know that corporations and the like are usually given in the singular. (Note: These searches cannot force returns strictly from US or UK publishers, just lean the results one way versus the other. One can do a general Google search limited to US vs. UK sites, to an extent, but it will return mostly unreliable sources like blogs and forums).

Sports teams, in current news sources: Try Gnews US search for "San Francisco Giants is" -wikipedia -wiki [1]; virtually every hit is for something else, like "<player name> of the San Francisco Giants is ...", "<player name>'s former team, the San Francisco Giants, is ...", etc., not something like "The San Francisco Giants is playing against ...". Now use "are" instead of "is" [2]; almost all hits are for the constructions expected: "The San Francisco giants are struggling ...", "If the San Francisco Giants are to continue their ...". Try the same sort of search for Manchester United, and constrain the results to the UK version of Google News: "is" again loses badly to "are" (worse than it looks because of the false-positive skew). You can do the same kind of search on various other team names with the same result.

Band names, in current news sources: If you do searches like this on band names, you find that those with singular-sounding names get singular treatment fairly often (with "is") [3] (UK: [4]), [5] (UK: [6]), etc. (but with lots of false positives as in the Giants example). However, plural is usually the majority usage in modern sources despite the form of such names [7] (UK: [8]), [9] {UK, about even until seeing way more false positive for "is" than for "are": [10]), etc. Those with plural-looking names get plural treatment most frequently. This is best tested with bands that have long histories, cannot be confused with something other than the band (thus, The Cure or Foreigner won't do), and which are presently charting, currently touring, or have announced upcoming tours, and are actual bands, not things like "Kenny McChesney" or "Calvin Harris & Rihanna". Google News won't produce many modern hits for defunct bands, and I'm not sure style is going to be reliably determinable for brand-new "one-hit wonders" who also don't have much RS coverage anyway, plus many have weird character substitutions and other quirks in their names, which interfere with search-result accuracy (even using "Panic! at the Disco" is pretty iffy).

In a few cases, the numbers seem fairly close between "is" [11] (UK: [12]) and "are" [13] (UK: [14]), until you see just how many of the "is" hits are false positives ("'An Evening with Huey Lewis and the News' is included with ...", "The opening scene, set to 'Power of Love' by Huey Lewis and the News, is ...", etc.), and how few of the "are" hits are mistakes. In other cases, like Pet Shop Boys, the "is" usage [15] is utterly dwarfed by the "are" usage [16].

Any name ending explicitly in "Band" or "Group" or the like automatically leans toward singular usage strongly [17], because of the type of name (it is self-referentially reinforcing that it is a singular unit). Here, the "are" cases [18] are the ones with lots of false positives, e.g. "fans of the Dave Matthews Band are ...". The same can also happen, to a lesser extent, with names that sound like a single person's name or nickname, as in Steely Dan ("is" leads against "are"). Plural-looking names without a leading "The" (e.g. Guns N' Roses) may seem to break even ("is" vs. "are", until you remember that most false positives are in the "is" results. The results are not entirely consistently in favor of plural treatment, especially if the band name is a phrase that doesn't intrinsically sound like a band, e.g. 3 Doors Down ("is" beats out "are", even accounting for the false-positive skew.

Band names, in historical N-gram corpora: N-grams can, tentatively, be useful for historical comparison, but the data has too many obvious gaps in it, producing zero returns for phrases that we know for a fact (e.g. from matching Google News searches) are frequently used by reliable sources; among those producing no returns at all from Ngrams are "Led Zeppelin was" (but plenty for "were" [which dominates], "is", and "are"), "Fleetwood Mac are" (but plenty for "was" [which dominates], "is" and "were"), and many others, that readily turn up in the GNews searches. On the up-side, the publishers in this case can be constrained to US vs. UK. And while, as noted above, there are always false positives, these are much fewer in Ngram searches because it only returns hits for contiguous phrases unbroken by punctuation. At any rate, to the extent the data is usable, is suggests that over the course of the last few generations, the predominant pattern across English usage has been to lean toward treating plural band names with plural grammatical constructions and vice versa, but with plenty of overlap.

  • The Beatles: dominated by "were" and "are" (plural) – total, US, UK (same result with a lower-case "the" – total, US, UK)
  • The Rolling Stones: dominated by "were" and "are" (plural) – total, US, UK (same with lower-case "the" – total, US, UK)
  • Led Zeppelin: split between by "was" and "were" (past tense, with singular "was" in the lead in that "section") over "is" and "are" (present, with singular "is" in the lead there) – total, US, UK.
  • Jefferson Airplane: dominated by "was" and secondarily by "is", with the same pattern as Led Zeppelin – total, US. Except in British sources, both "was" and "were" are found, but not "is" or "are" – [19]. While this is evidence of a data gap, what data we get is consistent with the US data (singular beats plural).

This pattern is nowhere near absolute, however:

  • Pink Floyd: conflicting results – US: "was" and "is" (singular) lead against both "were" and "are", with the past tense being more common in each group [20]. However, in the British results, "were" leads "was" despite the singular form of the band name (and past leads present), yet this reverses to "is" beating "are" in present tense [21]. In all sources total, the leading-to-losing order is "was", "were", "is", and "are" [22], which matches neither the US nor the UK pattern, but is a mish-mash of both, commingled with Australian, Canadian, etc., results, which we cannot view separately.

Conclusions: There is no rule, literally, in theory, or in practice. Usage leans toward plural generally, but this trend is much stronger for band names that sound plural, and may sometimes even be reversed for singular-sounding names, though this result is not at all consistent, and is more apparent in half-century-wide Google Books N-gram searches (which have very weak and gappy corpora for this sort of material, and thus verge on unreliable) than in modern news searches (also imperfect, due to a higher false-positive rate from ignoring punctuation, but this is easy to detect just by looking). The discrepancy demonstrates that the singular practice for singular-ish names is declining (probably because of arguments within publishers that mirror the recurrent one within Wikipedia). There is no ENGVAR matter; usage is not consistently different between US and UK treatment, and there is only very weak and circumstantial evidence of any alleged preference for always-singular treatment in American sources, and much evidence that directly contradicts this idea; to the extent there may be any slight trend in this direction, it is weak and growing weaker by the year, and certainly falls far short of ENGVAR's "strong national tie".

Recommendation: If MoS were to address this directly, it should say essentially this, in shorter wording: When writing about a band, team, organization, or other collective entity, use formulations that sound the most correct grammatically when spoken aloud, as a general default. However, prefer plural constructions when approaching the entity as people living lives, making public appearances, and doing other things that draw attention to members as individuals. Prefer singular forms when approaching the organization as an unitary business entity, legal property, or a socio-cultural phenomenon. Following the majority of modern sources, it is most common to use the singular for corporations, nonprofits/NGOs, major laboratories, governmental bodies, political parties, and social movements, due to the nature of their organization and of the actions that make them notable; teams, bands, performance troupes, field research teams, and other smaller-scale collaborations take the plural by default, unless their name strongly suggests the singular, or they are being considered explicitly as a unit (e.g., the group sued its [not their] record label). Unless someone can strongly refute what I've researched and reasoned so far, without cherry-picking, I will probably propose an amendment of this sort to MOS:BIO. People really need to stop fighting about this. Especially stop waving bogus nationalistic flags above the issue; that vitality-sucking nonsense needs a stake though its heart right now. This is perennial, lame drama, and it's just tiresome. Noise like this is precisely why so many Wikipedians get sick of, even angry about, style disputes and the time and productivity they waste.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  14:08, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Boys Like Girls. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{Sourcecheck}}).

checkY An editor has reviewed this edit and fixed any errors that were found.

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 21:54, 26 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Boys Like Girls. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{Sourcecheck}}).

checkY An editor has reviewed this edit and fixed any errors that were found.

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 23:22, 6 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Boys Like Girls. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

checkY The help request has been answered. To reactivate, replace "helped" with your help request.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 05:13, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 4 external links on Boys Like Girls. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 07:24, 24 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Retrieved from "https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Talk:Boys_Like_Girls&oldid=1257297945"