Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Text formatting

Exceptions to MOS:FONTFAMILY?

I posted a note referring to MOS:FONTFAMILY at Template talk:Adjacent stations. I would welcome any feedback there. I don't see exceptions to MOS:FONTFAMILY in our guidelines, but I've been around long enough to know that there are sometimes practices that contradict guidelines. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:45, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

MOS:BOLDREDIRECT from a disambiguation page?

So MOS:BOLDREDIRECT already fairly strongly states we should be bolding terms from redirects. Is there any reason this shouldn't apply when coming from a disambiguation page where the target article is about something different than the dab-page link suggests, and is perhaps a link to a subsection? My gut says yes, just wondering if a) I'm right, and b) if we shouldn't add something to this to make it clear it's not just for redirects. —Locke Cole • t • c 06:33, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

It's specified for biographies at MOS:BOLDNICK:

Common nicknames, aliases, and variants are usually given in boldface in the lead, especially if they redirect to the article, or are found on a disambiguation page or hatnote and link from those other names to the article.

—Bagumba (talk) 11:22, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

Hmm, good catch. My use wouldn't be in the lead but to a subsection. Specifically looking at Colin Gray → 2024 Apalachee High School shooting § Accused and bolding Colin Gray. I suppose WP:PLA would be a fair reason to bold it just on the general principle of making it easier for the reader to scan the target section and quickly see that they arrived at the right spot? —Locke Cole • t • c 11:47, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

When the redirect term can be reasonably mentioned in the lead, I feel targeting to the top of the article is preferrable, as it provides the reader an accessible overview, instead of being dropped in the middle of a page without context. Readers wanting to skim can use the table of contents to navigate. —Bagumba (talk) 11:52, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

The placement is definitely something up for debate, I was more or less trying to nail down whether or not the name should be bolded wherever the reader ends up after following the dab-page link. —Locke Cole • t • c 14:57, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

"As a rule of thumb, do not italicize words that appear in multiple major English dictionaries."

I'm a little uneasy by this new-ish recommendation. Perhaps In most cases, might be better? The current phrasing is a marked improvement from the previous one, but it is also problematic because dictionaries sometimes include non-English terms that would clearly be unfamiliar to the general reader. The Chicago Manual of Style (18th ed.) rightly notes: [m]ost terms listed in Merriam-Webster will not need italics; however, not all words listed there will be familiar to readers, so editorial discretion may be required.

With regard to words that shouldn't be italicized (CMS lists the examples of croissant, banh mi, pasha, Weltanschauung, kaiser, obscure, recherché, bourgeoisie, telenovela, anime, eros, agape, and mise en scène), they all follow this criterion well. However, some words that should be italicized also fit this criterion.

I just think the recommendation should allow for more discretion over what words should be italicized. Words like épater le bourgeois (Merriam-Webster), Gastarbeiter (OED, Collins), Gleichschaltung (OED, Collins, Merriam-Webster), hygge (Merriam-Webster, Cambridge, OED), etc. are all listed in major English dictionaries, but I think not italicizing these words would go against the purpose of italicization, which is to provide additional context to terms that are likely unfamiliar to the reader. ~ F4U (talk • they/it) 16:36, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

References

I have no opinion on the bulk of your post. But, umm, not so new...

The first instance of the recommendation that I found in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting was added at this edit 25 September 2006.

"If looking for a good rule of thumb, do not italicize words that appear in an English language dictionary."

But, that text came from Wikipedia:Manual of Style. The earliest version of the recommendation that I found in Wikipedia:Manual of Style was added at this edit 13 April 2005. Yeah, 19 years ago, so not so new.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:54, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Huh, I guess the do not italicize words that appear unitalicized in multiple major English dictionaries recommendation was the new one. Not quite sure when that got added, but I'm glad that's not the recommendation anymore. ~ F4U (talk • they/it) 20:53, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

The fact that the wording specifically includes "in multiple major English dicitionaries" is precisely to work around the "dictionaries sometimes include non-English terms that would clearly be unfamiliar to the general reader" [and might not italicize them] problem. I.e., we are not depending on any particular dictionary (unlike Chicago Manual of Style which has gone to bed with Merriam-Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary); rather, we're saying to review a bunch of major dictionaries when in doubt. A list of online ones can be found at WP:ENGLANG#Online tools, including meta-search forms that will search a bunch at once. You'll end up with a result that, e.g., soto voce will be italicized across a majority of them, but a more assimiliated loan-word or loan-phrase like per cent will not be. There is nothing broken about this, and the long-standing advice is entirely sound.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:22, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Color compatibility for dark mode

MOS:NAVBOXCOLOR allows navboxes to have "on-brand" color for their subjects, such as the colors of a team, university, or country. Since this guideline was written, dark mode has become much more widely used. What should happen to accommodate this, and most importantly, to prevent unreadably low contrast between text and background color? Should all the colors in such templates be forced to the "on brand" colors even in dark mode, or should we switch these templates to the standard colors which smoothly transition to dark mode? Another possibility is to allow the "on-brand" colors to be inverted; though this will be readable, it will not be "on-brand" and often ends up rather ugly. -- Beland (talk) 23:18, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Since no one seems to have any strong opinions about this, I added an item to this section of the MOS just pointing out that content needs to be readable in dark mode, and laying out both of these options (in addition to the option of removing custom colors). -- Beland (talk) 16:37, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Titles in non-Latin scripts

The question of italics for titles of major works in non-Latin scripts has come up before, for example Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Text formatting/Archive 6#More clarity may be needed re titles of works in foreign languages, a discussion that concluded 20 June 2018. What we say now is almost identical to the revision of 08:20, 20 June 2018 (UTC) by SMcCandlish. My own preference would be to limit italics to scripts based on Latin, Greek and Cyrillic only. If we adopt such a rule, it makes it very easy to state the rule and very easy for editors to understand and comply. If we want to add a short list of other scripts where English italics rules would apply, it should be easy to name them. I think such a list would be very short and we should state it here for the benefit of our editors. However, if the list is long, we should then link to something like Wikipedia:List of scripts that should or should not be italicized – I'm not sure exactly what to call such a page. I came to this Manual of Style page for help while editing (carefully and tediously) List of names of Asian cities in different languages. In my edit, I removed italics from Bengali–Assamese, Hindi, Marathi, Malayalam, Tamil, Arabic–Persian, Korean, Japanese, and Armenian, scripts that were occasionally but usually not italicized. —Anomalocaris (talk) 21:49, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

The intent of the guidelines and the language templates that support them is to not italicize non-Latin-based scripts, with regard to italicizing titles of works, or material that is not English being italicized simply because it is non-English, or other reasons for italicization. Some scripts don't even support italicization in the first place. We have no need to italicize Greek or Cyrillic, even, because them being non-Latin scripts is already sufficient distinction from the surrounding material. If there were some sea-change of opinion on this, I could see permitting italicization of Greek and Cyrillic for titles of major works, but we really have little if any reason to do it otherwise (except where this happens incidentally, e.g. the <em>...</em> element and our {{em}} wrapper for it would, in most browsers, produce italicized visual output, though this is subject to user stylesheet whim, and even to CSS in unusual Wikipedia skins).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:15, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

I would like to italicize Cyrillic, in references to academic publications, because the italic is not used as "distinction from the surrounding material", as you phrase it, but to convey meaningful information to the reader of the citation: when we cite a chapter in a book, or an article in a journal, we leave the chapter or article name upright but we italicize the book or journal name. In parallel citations that are to a book only, we italicize the book. In parallel citations that are to a web page or other smaller item, we leave the name upright. Looking at citations formatted in this way, a reader can tell what type of thing is being cited. This information is visible even in Greek or Cyrillic scripts to readers unfamiliar with those scripts, because of those scripts' resemblance to Roman. The prohibition on italicizing them, in this context, makes no sense.

For mathematical formulas (often using Greek, much less frequently Cyrillic) we should use standard mathematical formatting, which (I imagine for historical reasons) is often upright for Greek capitals as in the $\Gamma$ in Gamma function but italic/slanted for lowercase as in the $\varphi$ in golden ratio. Here, a prohibition against italicization makes even less sense. I'm not even sure it's possible in Wikimedia's limited version of LaTeX mathematics formatting to get an upright $\varphi$ inside <math> </math> markup. But when emulating the same markup using {{math}}, italic is necessary: we want φ, not φ. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:39, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

LGBTQ

It looks like editors have italicized LGBTQ throughout that article per MOS:WORDSASWORDS. Is that correct? I'm thinking that reading of the guideline would lead to a whole host of other articles with italicized words, but I'm also suspecting that I'm missing something. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 17:02, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

It's not throughout the article; take a look at the criticism section. This looks like an appropriate application of WORDSASWORDS, where it's italicized when referring to the initialism. DonIago (talk) 13:49, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

A quick skim through a sampling of articles in Category:English words suggest we're being reasonably consistent in use of italics. I see the occasional double-quotes. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 13:57, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks both! I've learned something today. Appreciate it. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 15:24, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

No problem! It's probably good to hold on to some skepticism of WORDSASWORDS articles, since we are WP:NOTADICTIONARY, but there are some exceptions. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 16:16, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

@Firefangledfeathers: Oh certainly. In this case, I was a bit flummoxed by the italics applying to an acronym, as I didn't think that was a thing and Category:Acronyms didn't have much. But as MOS is being correctly applied, I'm not going to mess with it! Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 16:38, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

Boldface - organisms

Hello there. MOS:LEAD states under Organisms that "When a common (vernacular) name is used as the article title, the boldfaced common name is followed by the italic boldfaced scientific name in round parentheses in the first sentence of the lead." This article (WP:MOSTEXT) has a section on Bold (MOS:BOLD) that does not include this advice. I suggest that there is value in including the sentence from MOS:LEAD under the Bold section titled Other uses (MOS:BOLD#OTHER). It would be helpful to new users if all of the BOLD information could be found largely in the one place. What are the views of other editors, please? 14.2.206.29 (talk) 03:56, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

MOS:BOLD already says: "Boldface is often applied to the first occurrence of the article's title word or phrase in the lead." That should by sufficient here – anyone who wants to know the details can easily follow the wikilink. Gawaon (talk) 08:06, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

This is MOS:BOLDFACE - everything that an editor should need to know about the use of bold face should be found in this one policy, of which some of its details can be reflected in other WP policies, and not the other way around. WP should be making its major policies easy to follow, and not require editors to go hunting on links elsewhere to find one phrase somewhere in another policy document that they may not be aware of, especially when the link provided at MOS:BOLDFACE does not take you to the section on organisms. How hard is it to get something so simple included on the page? 14.2.206.29 (talk) 21:39, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

So here we are a week later. No change. I will assume that my simple request for some WP:POL clarity has come to naught. 14.2.199.154 (talk) 08:49, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

For what it's worth, there's a search box at the top of each MOS page where you could search for "boldface". I think our present situational structure is much superior than grouping guidelines more by surface-level commonalities. Remsense ‥ 论 08:54, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Is using SMALLFONT on lists of references compulsory?

In an edit summary here, an editor claims that using small font (i.e 90%) is mandatory for all references, including lists of references, and therefore using refbegin and refend templates is compulsory - is this correct? It produces very small text which isn't easy to read.Nigel Ish (talk) 23:27, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

The present wording of MOS:SMALLFONT, plus footnote, is rather clear: The general font size for reference sections is 90% of the page's default. It is a guideline, i.e. a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though occasional exceptions may apply. I do not see any exception that would apply here. Remsense ‥ 论 23:34, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

90% text is absolutely tiny on Monobook - this is bordering on an accessibility issue - we should not be intentionally making articles harder to read.Nigel Ish (talk) 23:51, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

You could suggest the base font size for the skin be increased, perhaps? Remsense ‥ 论 23:53, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

Also, if personal assistance in making it easier for you read would be helpful for the time being, let me know. Remsense ‥ 论 23:55, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

Italics for unknown names

I would appreciate input about the use of italic type for "unidentified person" and "unidentified male" at List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States, December 2024. Thanks! --Magnolia677 (talk) 15:58, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 27 December 2024

This page contains multiple instances of the useless phrases "note that" and "please note". These should all be removed, as they add no information to their respective sentences. 2605:A601:A0A4:2700:D078:87F1:E5A0:A451 (talk) 06:25, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

 Not done: the MoS does not need to take its own advice. In educational settings, those phrases can indeed be used to draw particular emphasis to passages, even if they are misplaced in encyclopedic writing. Remsense ‥ 论 06:28, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm asking not because the MOS needs to take its own advice, but because it improves the writing. If you need to emphasize something, emphasize it, don't just ask the reader to note it: The entirety of the text is information for the reader to note. Furthermore, which items with that wording do you think require emphasis above and beyond the rest of the paragraphs they're in? To me, none of those sentences seems more especially noteworthy than the surrounding text. 2605:A601:A0A4:2700:D078:87F1:E5A0:A451 (talk) 06:36, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

I think it's fine, but wouldn't object if someone else agrees. Remsense ‥ 论 06:37, 28 December 2024 (UTC)