Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 50

This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:Manual of Style. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 45

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Archive 48

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Is there a rule for naming places outside the U.S. using the form "Venice, Italy" ?

I often see places outside the U.S. mentioned as e.g. "Venice, Italy" or "Paris, France". I am aware that this usage is perfectly correct within the U.S., but as far as I know it is not used anywhere else. When used for, say, European places, it strikes the reader as comical at best, but often even as silly or slightly insulting. Sorry for explaining the obvious, but somebody who uses that form might be perceived as perhaps a little illiterate or provincial, as one would generally expect people to know that Venice is in Italy, Paris is in France, etc.; also, what is appropriate for a country with fifty individual states and probably a similar number of places named "Jefferson" is not appropriate for a sovereign nation with a capital named "Paris" or a world-famous city named "Venezia". In short, most readers would be annoyed to find that usage in an encyclopedia. Do we have a policy, recommendation or similar for this? 145.254.36.150 15:21, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I think that the general rule-of-thumb is not to add the region/country for places outside of USA and Canada unless it is necessary for disambiguation. However, within USA, and possibly Canada, a placename is often felt to be incomplete without this added information. --Gareth Hughes 16:15, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Most stylebooks (such as the AP Stylebook) contain a list of major cities that can stand alone in datelines, such as London or Tokyo; you will not usually find "Paris, France" in an AP news report. Stylebooks are usually written with a nation-specific audience in mind, but there are obviously a lot of places that do not require clarification. Disambiguation is important, of course, but I would suspect that the "New York" on the east coast of the USA would never need a modifier to distinguish it from the area of the same name in North Tyneside (which, conversely, would need to be explained). However, locations other than major cities will generally need a country reference after them. ProhibitOnions 12:24, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Isn't it simple enough? As ProhibitOnions indicates; what needs disambiguation, disambiguate; & what doesn't, don't. What's the deal with inside verses outside the US? Wikipedia is not, as far as I'm aware, by Americans & for Americans. Jimp 00:31, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

The United States has a fairly regular scheme of state, county, and local governments, and many recurring placenames. For those reasons it makes sense to have a consistent style for cities in the U.S. -Will Beback 00:42, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Then we'll often find that we need to disambiguate. I see your point, however, as ProhibitOnions points out, no qualifier should be required for a place like New York. Nor, I'd argue, need anything be added to such well-known place names as Boston, Chicago, Ottowa, etc. Instead of prescribing one style for U.S. (or U.S. & Canadian) place names and another style for other place names, why not recomend disambiguation if and only if necessary? Jimp 03:36, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

As long as people link to the correct city, I don't think disambiguation in the text is necessary. It also becomes very complicated in historical contexts, when a city has belonged to different countries at different times. Avoiding to force editors to specify the country name could help to avoid edit wars (look at Gdansk and Frombork or Copernicus if you want a taste of the German-Polish edit wars over names and the status of Royal Prussia). Kusma (討論) 03:56, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

This issue has been repeatedly debated (and voted on) numerous times within the past two years at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (city names). Last time I checked, the consensus was to remain with the American convention of using city, state, because (1) this is how Americans (like me) are accustomed to referring to distant cities; (2) we already have about 30,000 articles whose titles are in this format; and (3) it minimizes silly debates about which Portland is more important. The problem is that there are literally hundreds of small and midsize cities in the United States that happen to share the same name. There are also thousands of neighborhoods whose name happens to be the name of some city somewhere. --Coolcaesar 03:58, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Sorry to have quoted New York as an example; the City, State convention is perfectly fine for the U.S., including its cities that might otherwise stand alone in datelines, as there are no duplications if we use it; there are redirects in most cases from the city names by themselves. As has been mentioned, there has already been a lot of discussion on this issue, and the question raised pertained to cities outside the U.S. ProhibitOnions 10:08, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

(heavy sigh) This is a tired topic, not appropriate to this MoS. Instead, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places), Wikipedia:Naming conventions (city names), and Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context: "Go for the more specific reference. Instead of linking individual words...." If the context is the word "Venice" followed by the word "Italy", then link to Venice, Italy.

--William Allen Simpson 17:19, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Or to Venice, Italy... Rich Farmbrough 00:50 30 April 2006 (UTC).

Right-facing portraits

It says under the Pictures section that most pictures should be on the right of the page near the top, except for right-facing portraits of people. Is it acceptable to flip a right-facing portrait instead of putting it on the left?

Cdmarcus 00:08, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Not if they're wearing a written-on T-shirt. Unless it says "AMBULANCE", in which case it's acceptable, but only if it's all uppercase. I think we should put this in the MoS. PizzaMargherita 01:03, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

I assume "POLICE" and "FIRE DEPARTMENT" will also be acceptable. But what about pictures of that infamous mirror-writer, Leonardo da Vinci, in his favourite T-shirt? -- Puffball 10:02, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I've never seen a police car with "POLICE" written in mirror-script on the front of the car, like an ambulance has. :D In all seriousness, I don't think I'd see any problem with flipping a right-facing portrait, myself. Kylu t 04:28, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

The problem is if the image is copyrighted and being used under the fair use doctrine. These should not be modified for any reason and flipping it would be a modification. If it's public domain it would be ok. Rossrs 22:38, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

IF you flip it it beomes copyleft. Rich Farmbrough 21:11 15 June 2006 (UTC).

How about this shirt? Ewlyahoocom 00:31, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

It's not acceptable, because most peoples' faces are asymmetrical and a left-right flip is a nontrivial modification. Not quite as bad as painting on a moustache, but still a distortion of reality. It's almost a joke about actresses insisting on being photographed from their "good side" but they really do, and with good reason. It even goes deeper than that: if you take a picture of someone half-smiling and half-frowning--either a real picture or a schematic smiley/frowney face--and present the picture in both orientations, one of them looks much smilier than the other. Dpbsmith (talk) 02:06, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Many images of people are paintings. It's bad enough that painters and dates are generally ignored, but... well, try flipping the Mona Lisa, for an impression of the effect... In general, consider that any painting is likely to be more familiar to other readers of Wikipedia than it is to you. --Wetman 00:36, 24 June 2006 (UTC)--Wetman 00:36, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Long Line at top of article

I was wondering if anyone had any comment or ideas about the usage of a "long line" at the top of articles. More discussion can be seen at Talk:The_City_of_God#Long-Line_at_top_of_article, and an example can be seen Example (the long line separating the Lead Section from the Dab notice). Thanks for any thoughts or ideas. --Stbalbach 15:53, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

4-dash line breaks?

The MoS seems to say nothing about 4-dash line breaks.

"----" appears as:

Is there anything anywhere that talks about the proper usage of the "4-dash line break"? I'm seeing it used haphazardly by a few editors according to personal taste who claim there is no MoS guidance. --Stbalbach 15:18, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

BTW, it's called a horizontal rule. You may well be correct that the MoS is silent on its usage. There are mentions at Wikipedia:Section#Horizontal dividing line and Wikipedia:Guide to layout#Horizontal dividing line. In general, I find them little used, except occasionally on multi-stub disambiguation pages, where there may be very short entries on several things that happen to share the same name but don't warrant a separate article for each. older ≠ wiser 15:33, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I also found mention of it in Wikipedia:Hatnotes. I find them little used also, but there is one prolific editor who is adding them in "hotnotes" to separate the lead section from the hatnote. So I had to track down the rules on this. See previous comment above about City of God. --Stbalbach 15:37, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I think it looks better with the line. :-) If people like it, they should be fighting for it to be added to the templates, though, not adding it to an individual article. — Omegatron 19:53, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I was told that it couldn't be added to the template because there are so many articles in which the template is used more than once; including the line makes a mess in such cases, so it needs to be added manually. (I'm the "prolific editor", by the way.) --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 20:51, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Then people should be fighting to have it added to the MoS, not applied inconsistently to articles according to idiosyncratic preferences. — Saxifrage ✎ 21:11, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I suppose that if you're keen on fighting, then yes. I'm not, and this didn't seem important enough to warrant a fight until Stbalbach started insisting on removing the line claiming that it was wrong, and citing the MoS (he's still insisting or removing it, despite the discussion that he opened being young and so far inconclusive). The MoS isn't a maximally complete set of "rules"; it doesn't say, in effect: "If it's not specifically sanctioned here, you mustn't do it".

Note that there's a parallel discussion at Wikipedia talk:Guide to layout, by the way; an injunction against the line was added to that project page a few days ago, with no discussion. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 11:15, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Being willing to fight it on one page and unwilling to fight it in general is a stand that is pretty hard to justify. Regardless, I'd still say that it's inconsistent and there's no consensus to do so. Revert-warring to keep in an inconsistent style that has no consensus support elsewhere doesn't really advance the encyclopedia at all. I mean, I know he's revert-warring too, but there's at least precedent for leaving it out. If the consensus were the other way I'd be arguing for it, but it's not. — Saxifrage ✎ 22:39, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not entirely certain why you feel that this needs to be confrontational, nor why "revert-warring" is an issue; I'm discussing the issue here and at three other places, not revert-warring. As for consistency, the line can be found on many articles (those who object to it never seem to have seen it anywhere but the article at hand, for some reason). --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 19:52, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

About "years ago" and dates

Ive only posted comments in the 'talk' of an article once before, but I've noticed that many articles will say 'such and such happenned 400 years ago' or '40 years ago', or 'of the last 50 years'. all these phrases will date and need to be edited again later- if this is already in the manual of style sorry, i couldnt find it and thought it would be worth mentioning.

I agree, if it's not there already we should explicitly say that absolute time references should be preferred to relative ones. PizzaMargherita 21:38, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Reminds me of the museum attendant who informed a visitor that a vase was 3,507 years old. "That's a very precise date" she excaimed. "Well, when I arrived I was told that it was 3,500 years old, and I've been here seven years." --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 22:31, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

On the other hand, "Dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago." won't have to be editted for a while. P'haps relative time reference could be allowed for with a minimum precision of say one thousand years. Jimp 16:03, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Saying that something happened in 1945 in an article is much better than saying it happened 61 years ago, as that would have to be changed every year. Helicoptor 17:18, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Quotation marks

Why is it that my English grammar book says that commas and periods always go within the quotation marks, but the MoS says to "include the punctuation mark inside the quotation marks only if the sense of the punctuation mark is part of the quotation"? My grammar book says that rule applies to question marks, but never to periods or commas. ⇒ JarlaxleArtemis 06:43, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Your "English grammar book" is actually an "American grammar book". Wikipedia follows its own compromise position between American usage and British usage. This has already been debated at length and decided upon. -Will Beback 06:51, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

To make it clearer: The compromise is that we allow American English usage in articles purely about American subjects (for example, U.S. state or San Francisco), where it would look odd, especially to Americans (about 2/3 of all native English speakers), to use non-American punctuation---but then use the Commonwealth English/British English usage everywhere else. --Coolcaesar 19:11, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Uh, really? Where are you getting that? I thought Wikipedia had a uniform style of commas outside the quotes. In fact, I just checked San Francisco, and it does its commas outside the quotes. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 19:32, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, in the case of San Francisco, that's because we get British/Commonwealth newbies all the time who keep introducing Britishisms like "practise", "lorry", or "petrol" into American articles where "practice," "truck," and "gasoline" are more appropriate. Please see Section 13 of the main MoS article, "National varieties," which states: "If an article's subject has a strong tie to a specific region/dialect, it should use that dialect." If you trace back through the article history, you'll see that this statement has been in the MoS in one form or another for about a year, and directly evolved out of a much older statement in the "Usage and spelling" section. --Coolcaesar 20:06, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

WP always adopts the logical quotation style, which is not British, and not even non-American, but logical. It is not a compromise. It is not dependent on the nature of the article. It has nothing to do with the botched rules for national varieties.

This has been discussed so many times it should be considered vandalism to discuss it any further (joking). The last one was less than one month ago. Thanks. PizzaMargherita 20:13, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

It seems somewhat disingenuous for us to describe the decision about quotation marks as a "compromise" or a "splitting of the difference" (and not just for the reasons cited by PizzaMargherita). British usage hardly demands single quotation marks where American usage would demand double. More importantly, I don't see why this can't be another matter that is decided the way spelling is decided: be consistent with whatever the first nonstub version used was, and use the style of quoting favored by the region about which one is writing. Maybe this has been discussed a lot, but that doesn't mean the decision didn't manifest anti-US bias, and thus can never be reviewed. A true compromise would allow people to use the style that makes sense for them (unless they're writing about a topic whose "region-ness" would demand something else). --Cultural Freedom talk 2006-06-29 14:35 (UTC) P.S. And why is the default date format produced by ~~~~ British? Why not a more "logical" form (see one line up), combined with the default of UTC (which is European, if widely accepted elsewhere)? That would be some sort of "compromise," oui?

Explicit cross-references

The MOS formerly recommended to bold a wikilink to form an "explicit cross-reference", moving a see-also link into the text. That recommendation seems to have been removed recently. Was that discussed deliberately or did it just happen as part of shortening the section about "See also"? -- The Photon 04:20, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I just found the discussion, in Archive 38. The reasoning seems to be that nobody used explicit cross-references (except me, I guess). -- The Photon 04:26, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Formatting audio template

There's a discussion on the {{audio}} talk page about whether it's appropriate to link to an audio file from the bold reiteration of the title. --Muchness 22:22, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Left-images and confusing text

The page says: Articles with a single picture are encouraged to have that picture at the top of the article, right-aligned, but this is not a hard-and-fast rule. Portraits with the head looking to the right should be left-aligned (looking into the article).

Splitting that in two, I get:

Articles with a single picture are encouraged to have that picture at the top of the article, right-aligned
Portraits with the head looking to the right should be left-aligned (looking into the article).

Which takes precedence?

IMO, the right-facing portraits also belong on the right, since the auto-TOC, etc. make them look strange on the left. This isn't an issue with a newspaper, so I don't believe the same rules apply here.

If I was to reword it... Articles are encouraged to have pictures at the top of the article, right-aligned, but this is not a hard-and-fast rule. When using multiple images in the same article, they can be staggered left-and-right (Example: Platypus). Articles should attempt to maintain the majority of images in right-alignment (Example: Race). Portraits with the head looking to the right can be left-aligned (looking into the article) when this doesn't interfere with navigation or other elements.

What do you think? --Kickstart70-T-C 00:13, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I seem to recall asking something similar, though I can't find it in the archives but the other notable exceptions are when the person in the picture has:

* Distinguishing characteristics whose position is well-known or defined (such as Mikhail Gorbachev, who has a trademarked forehead birthmark. Yes, really.)

* Wording or verbiage which would obviously appear backwards and/or nonsensical in reverse (Ball caps, T-shirt slogans)

* Position-based stylistic or uniform issues (The "fruit salad" on a US military uniform, for instance)

In such cases, it might be more appropriate to not reverse the portrait. Hope that helps!

~Kylu (u|t) 06:27, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

He wasn't asking about reversing the picture, just having the right-facing portraits be right-aligned (facing away from the article) in cases where it is necessary to avoid collisions with navigation elements. That said, as you have implied, reversing the picture is one option. However, I think the above rewording is good and would support it. — Saxifrage ✎ 08:47, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Why not move the TOC to the right in that case, using {{TOCright}} at the end of the introduction? An article with the portrait looking off the page does look decidedly odd. --TreyHarris 08:55, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

It's never seemed odd to me but, hey, thanks for introducing me to that template! — Saxifrage ✎ 11:36, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Sentences ending with abbreviations

I'm sure I asked this before. Do we have a house style for sentences ending with things like U.S.? For example, e.g.. I have certainly seen two stops after etc.. I know some style manuals say use only one stop. Rich Farmbrough 01:06 30 April 2006 (UTC).

All three of my style manuals, Oxford, Chicago, and MLA, recommend one full stop/period for abbreviations which end a sentence. For example, Oxford Style Manual (2003), 5.6: "The full point is used in many abbreviated forms. If the full point of an abbreviation closes the sentence, there is no second point." —Wayward ^Talk 11:13, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

OK That's interesting. I rather prefer the reverse, but I'll go with that. Rich Farmbrough 15:18 30 April 2006 (UTC).

Full stops in captions and bulleted items

Hi there. According to the MoS, "if the caption is a single sentence or a sentence fragment, it does not get a period at the end". However, if there is more than one image, like in vegetable, this means that we end up with an inconsistent style. Consistency on the other hand is enforced in case of bullet points. Any thoughts? Thanks. PizzaMargherita 10:40, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

If I had my druthers, I would reword it thus: "If a caption consists of a sentence fragment, it does not require a closing period. If a caption consists of a complete sentence, or consists of a fragment followed by one or more complete sentences, then each element ends with a period. In an article in which most captions consist of complete sentences, even incomplete sentences may use periods for consistency." —Wayward ^Talk 11:36, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Punctuation in complete sentences that include several bullet items

May I suggest the following alteration to WP:MoS#Bulleted_items:

If all bullet items in a list contain alternative continuations of a single sentence that started in the preceding paragraph, then each bullet item may start without capitalizing the first word and may finish in such punctuation as is necessary to preserve correct punctuation for the overall sentence. This is usually

a semicolon or comma after each but the last item;
a full-stop after the last item if the sentence ends there.

This well-established rule ensures that the sentence remains intact with all its punctuation even if the bullet points were not there, thereby not only visually preserving the integrity of the entire sentence and therefore making parsing it easier, but also making life simpler for voice synthesizers and braille-terminal users, which can then simply ignore bullets entirely. Incorporating this common typographic practice into the MoS would avoid inappropriate edits such as [1] , which simply destroy a sentence. Bullet points should – in my opinion – be optional graphic layout that should not interfere with the punctuation of sentences that they might split up. Markus Kuhn 10:50, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Many bulleted lists are just what it says: a list. There may be an introductory sentence ending in a colon. That does not make the whole list one sentence. Trailing commas and words like and/or with a period after the last bullet are in my opinion just clutter and do not contribute to a clear view on the list. So I am not for prescribing that style.

Here is a bad looking list of items:

first list item,
next lits item or
last list item.

Here is a good looking list of items:

first list item
next list item
last list item

−Woodstone 19:58, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

National varieties of English

Having already spoken my mind many times over the effectiveness of the current guidelines, I won't repeat myself here.

What I would like to point out instead is that the material IMHO is badly organised. For example, the rules are in the WP:MoS, which points to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (spelling). However, in the latter page, one does not find, as one might expect, the rules. (Don't get me wrong, this is a good thing. It's bad enough that there are already two copies of the rules within the MoS section. But I digress.) What one finds at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (spelling), instead, is basically a list of spellings as a "handy referemce for editors", with massive overlappings with the article American and British English spelling differences. This latter article would do with some copy editing, but I think is clearly superior to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (spelling).

Therefore what I propose we do is to:

Merge Wikipedia:Manual of Style (spelling) to American and British English spelling differences
Move the rules to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (spelling) and leave only a reference in WP:MoS
In Wikipedia:Manual of Style (spelling), refer to American and British English spelling differences

Any thoughts? PizzaMargherita 08:23, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

You are right! We have a mess on our hands. I would support your proposal. Good thinking! --Cultural Freedom talk 2006-07-11 19:07 (UTC)

A suggestion

Where there are two possibilities, one being of a national variety of English and the other being international, the international should be used wherever possible. For example: "named after" is correct worldwide, whereas "named for" is only acceptable in American English. Therefore I think "named after" should be used wherever possible, even when in an article that uses American English. While it is necessary to chose one form of English for an article, it should be kept in mind that the article will be read internationally, regardless of the subject matter. Damiancorrigan 11:20, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

There is no such thing as "international" English, so this suggestion won't work. Most of the people who use the term "International English" to mean non-American English are, as far as I can tell, orthographic anti-Americans who want people to think Americans are the odd man out, in order to sway gullible non-native speakers that non-American English is in some way better. (I'm not saying you're one of these people, though! I don't know you.) In fact, there are many, many different versions of English. None is "normative" in any appreciable way, and none is, in any simple way, "international." Good thinking, though, otherwise. Best, Cultural Freedom talk 2006-07-11 19:04 (UTC)

No, no, no, that's great thinking! I'll agree that there's no International English, but there are several words in English that are common to all dialects. For example, where I go to college, the term kittycorner is what people commonly use to mean diagonal. It confused me the first time that I heard it spoken. However, despite what they might colloquially use in conversation, diagonal is understood universally. The problem in utilising the colloquial form in an article is that it wouldn't be understood by the general audience. Woudn't it make sense to use international forms over the coloquial forms in Wikipedia when international forms exist? — D. Wo. 19:49, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

EU

I hesitate to open this can of worms, but there was a discussion some months ago of the question of what variety of English to use in the context of articles relevant to European Union countries. There was a strong faction arguing that British English should apply, and Id thought that that was the final consensus, but I may have been wrong. As there's no mention of it in the MoS (so far as I can tell), does that mean that no consensus was reached? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 11:14, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I fully support that articles related to the European region should use the European (c.q. British) variant of English. There are two sentences in the guide that are close to what you propose:

"If an article's subject has a strong tie to a specific region/dialect, it should use that dialect."
"Article on European Union institutions: British, Irish and Maltese English usage and spelling "

How do you propose to reinforce this? −Woodstone 11:57, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

What if the article is related to an American institution in a European country. Does that not call for a change in the dialect that is used?--Eva ^db 07:39, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Replace the word "institutions" with "subjects" or "countries"? Rich Farmbrough 12:50 1 May 2006 (UTC).

It seems quite reasonable to me to use British spellings in EU-related articles. — Knowledge Seeker দ 08:10, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

But what of articles that refer to American institutions that take up residence in the EU while still retaining their American character?--Eva ^db 10:40, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

You mean like the Barcelona Dragons? jnestorius^(talk) 10:51, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

There is a strong case that in addition to e.g. use Canadian English on Canadian topics, American English on American Topics etc, it should be use British, Irish and Maltese English on topics relating to European Union member states, logic behind this being that British English is one of the 3 working languages of the EU and therefore the closest there is to an approved version. There is a question bigger than how to treat European spellings, for instance, which version of English should we be using on British Embassy in Washington, D.C.? Ian3055 22:47, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

With regard to Evadb's question (and the last part of Ian3055's), I'd say that an article on a U.S. institution should be wholly in U.S. English, wherever that institution is based; an article on a place in an EU country should be wholly in British, etc., English — it shouldn't switch forms to talk about a U.S. institution based in the place, nor should it use U.S. English just because a U.S. institution is a prominent feature of the place. (and the same, mutatis mutandis, for places in the U.S. and non U.S. institutions.) --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 08:21, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

The Manual of Style indeed says: "Article on European Union institutions: British, Irish and Maltese English usage and spelling". To me, that indicates that the Manual of Style does not prefer one dialect of English over the other when continental Europe is concerned. Aecis ^Apple ^knocker ^Flophouse 23:26, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

That is exactly what I'm arguing for, the EU institutions use British, Irish and Maltese so as English is one of the working languages of the EU it is as such the closest thing there is to an approved version for articles relating to EU members. Ian3055 23:35, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

But which English of the three should it then be? British English, Irish English or Maltese English? Aecis ^Apple ^knocker ^Flophouse 00:02, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

MoS doesnt prefer one dialect over another, but prefers one of the three over any other, what I'm suggesting is that we make that apply to articles relating to EU member states rather than just institutions. Ian3055 10:17, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

As a eurosceptic, I don't know if I'm really fond of the thought of using the EU as a guideline for member states ;) Aecis ^Apple ^knocker ^Flophouse 08:36, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

By this reasoning, every article on Western Hemisphere articles should only be in American English, since the US is a member of the OAS and the only exception would be for Canada, since they aren't a member. And all Japanese articles should be in American English, since they're taught American English. Ditto for every other part of the world except those which were British colonies, for the same reason. User:Zoe|^(talk) 02:11, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps. My understanding is that the EU has much more day to day effect than the OAS, eg produces primary legislation, has a directly elected parliament and citizens of member states also have EU citizenship. I dont think the version of English taught should enter into the equation. In the end all I was raising was the point that the EU has a specific version of English as one of its official languages, so should we use that? If there is no agreement on changing it then fine, it just struck me that it is an official language and that we usually respect that. Ian3055 10:17, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Canada has been a member of the OAS since 1990. Several other members of the OAS are English-speaking states that are former British colonies and therefore likely use British ENglish or a local variant. Ground Zero | t 10:26, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

As has been made clear, the issue isn't what variety of English happens to be more commonly taught in schools, but whether one variety of English has official status.
U.S. English is not the only variety taught in Japanese schools and Universities; as I've taught English to a number of Japanes teachers of English, as well as to many ordinary Japanese students, I'm in a reasonable position to testify to this. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 21:43, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

This discussion might be more productive if it were based on a couple more facts.

The issue is not -- at least not according to policy and the principles on which policy currently is based, principles I hope never change -- which variety of English has "official status". Some "official" (or officials) shouldn't be able to dictate how millions upon millions of people spell. More importantly --
EU countries vary vastly in the form of English they prefer. Having one policy about the form of English to be used for the whole of the EU region makes no sense, and is a recipe for more spelling wars. Take Sweden (where I live) for example. After World War II, Swedes slowly starting moving towards American English. By the late 1960s, most Swedes (esp. academics) were using American spelling. During the Vietnam War, they started moving back towards British spelling. When Jimmy Carter was elected president of the U.S, and the British were torturing Irishmen, Swedes started moving back towards American spelling, with Bush/Blair and the Iraq war (as with Reagan/Thatcher), they're moving back to, well, Swedish... :) (This all sounds weird, but I've researched it extensively.) That's just Sweden. With each European country, the preferences will vary. (Though with Eastern European countries, the preference for American English has been consistently strong.)

Ultimately, PizzaMargherita's brilliant "dialect tag" proposal is the best way to deal with the spelling problem, in my view. (See: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (spelling) Hyperborean 20:40, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Headers

Currently it says "avoid overuse of headers". Anybody who is overusing headers would not interpret what they are doing as "overuse". Can we make it more explicit? For example, if a short or even stub article has two or three headers, it creates sections containing only one or two sentences, so in these cases the flow of the article is broken. I would like to be able to fix some of these articles and confidently refer back to MoS in my edit summary. Example of one of these articles is Elinor Fair (prior to this edit). I also think something like Helen Ferguson is incorrect because it has a one sentence lead, and then the entire article is written under one header. I think a very short article such as this would be better with no headers (except for the "external link"). Any opinions or suggestions? Thanks Rossrs 22:33, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Capitalization in novels

I think that the rule for capitalization might need to include a section for standards in capitalization in novels. It specifies that mythical creatures should be capitalized when viewed as a separate race or species; however, could this same rule be applied to "normal" nouns that are used as proper nouns? For example, the White Rabbit in Alice and Wonderland, or any of the Animals in Wicked (by Gregory Maguire). I would assume that this could be added easily in, but I would like to get an opinion first. Keakealani 09:42, 3 May 2006

Registered names and trademarks

There is a discussion ongoing at Talk:MMR vaccine about whether some of the MMR vaccine products such as Mumpsvax, etc. should have the ® symbol associated with it or not. I argue that they should not, primarily for stylistic and aesthetic rasons. For example, the pages for Coca-Cola and Pepsi or Tylenol do not include registered trademarks for these products. Furthermore, when these drugs are referenced in the academic literature, these registered trademark symbols do not appear. I was wondering if other editors had a feeling about this. Andrew73 01:53, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Refer to person by surname or given name?

I can't find in the style guidelines whether people should be referred to by their given name or by their surname. For instance, in a paragraph about the actor who played the 4th Doctor Who, Tom Baker, I find: Baker was born in Liverpool. His father, John Stewart Baker, was a sailor who was rarely at home, resulting in Tom being raised largely by his mother. Here are some possible rules:

Always last name. (As in the Antonin Scalia article.
Always first name (As in the Clarence Ashley article
Always last name unless a person is commonly known by only their first name (So an article about Cher wouldn't refer to her as Sarkisian.) (Which it doesn't)
Like the previous one, but a little more relaxed, so that Michael Jordan might be referred to as 'Michael' also, in order to diminish repetition in the articles. (Which it is)
Anything goes.
Anything goes as long as articles are internally consistent.
Some other policy which I didn't find because I didn't look hard enough or smart enough.

Anyone care to make me a better editor? Juneappal 02:50, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd normally stick with your third rule. But in your example, two different Bakers are referred to, so it avoids confusion to distinguish Tom from John Stewart when he is mentioned second in the sentence. -- The Photon 05:04, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

True enough in the Baker example, but there are many others that seem use it for reasons other than clarity. See Clive Owen (2nd Par.), Charles Barkley (2nd par of 76ers section) and Larry Bird (2nd trivia entry). In order to find these three examples, I looked at 5 bios - Bill Clinton and Patrick Ewing did not get first name treatment. Juneappal 05:43, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Since the MoS is generally designed to give Wikipedia the gravitas of somewhat formal writing, I'd say the recommendation ought to be:

When referring to a person on second or later mention and using the full name is awkward, use that person's surname.

Exceptions:

The person is commonly known by only their given name, such as Cher
If more than one person in the context has that surname, use given names or given names plus surnames as necessary to avoid confusion.
If person is not an actual person but a fictional character, then use the character's given name unless the character is most commonly known by their surname.

There may be some other exceptions I'm not thinking of, but this seems like a start. Nohat 05:58, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Looks good to me. I support adding this guideline to the MoS. --Muchness 06:25, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Links to places

User:William Allen Simpson has twice added the comment link to "Rome, Italy" rather than "[[Rome, Italy|Rome]], [[Italy]]" to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links), which is, as far as I can tell, the reverse of what has generally been considered best practice, i.e. "Rome, Italy" is more useful than "Rome, Italy" as it gives the option of 2 links, and if someone clicks on "Italy" they expect to go to the Italy article.

I can see no consensus for the change, I mentioned it on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (links) but got little response, it is also the reverse of what is suggested on Wikipedia:WikiProject Location Format, and although there is a little disagreement on that projects talk page (about half agree), there is certainly no consensus about which way is better, and certianly no mention of it being a guideline.

Please let me know what you think, as if this change does have consensus then it will mean thousands of articles will be liable to change. Martin 09:28, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

The [[Rome, Italy]] style of linking is necessary on disambiguation pages, because dab pages exist to help the reader navigate to specific articles. For articles, there is no consensus as you say, so I think we should avoid recommending one style as the preferred format until the issue is definitively resolved. I suppose a compromise paragraph addressing this dispute may be appropriate for WP:MoS-L in the meantime; something like:

===Location===

When linking to locations, either of these formats is appropriate:

[[Rome, Italy]]
[[Rome, Italy|Rome]], [[Italy]]

Some editors prefer the first style, because it links directly to the most relevant location and avoids overlinking; other editors prefer the second style, because it provides the reader with more context. There is currently no consensus on which format is preferred, so either is acceptable. Use only the first format on disambiguation pages.

--Muchness 13:22, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I strongly support style 2 ([[Rome, Italy|Rome]], [[Italy]] --> Rome, Italy) everywhere except dab pages where the current guide for unpiped links demands (erroneously, IMNSHO) style 1 ([[Rome, Italy]] --> Rome, Italy).

Atlant 13:47, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I personally prefer it too, but I agree with Muchness that it should just simply not be a style guideline (and that it is necessary on disambig pages). Martin 14:10, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I prefer style 2, and almost everyone I've seen express a preference (perhaps as many as four or five editors - gasp!) does too. Dab pages may be another kettle of fish, but maybe not. In the example given some options might be:

[[Rome, Italy]]
[[Rome|Rome, Italy]]
[[Rome]] in Italy
[[Rome]], [[Italy]]
[[Rome]] in [[Italy]]

(Note that the rticle about "Rome, Italy" actully sits at "Rome".)

I can't immediately see (despite the current dab MoS) that any of these are a disaster becasue

The assumption that someone visiting a dab page will not want to go to a related page seems unwarrented.
In all the examples above it is quite clear which link will (should) take the user to a page about the city of Rome in Italy.

Rich Farmbrough 23:13 5 May 2006 (UTC).

I agree that it should not have been changed, and that Muchness option 2 with two links rather than one should be the defined standard (outside of disambiguation pages). Noisy | Talk 07:03, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

The same user recently also changed the names of the Polish voivodships to coinages of his own (such as "Voivodship lubuskie" for Lubusz Voivodship), which he claimed were "official government titles" without providing any credible proof of this (his sole evidence consisted of two documents on a geography website that he'd evidently misread). He was then rather incivil on his talk page and elsewhere, accusing everyone else of original research. ProhibitOnions ^(T) 09:34, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Can we back up a second? Before deciding whether "Rome, Italy" should have one wikilink or two we need to decide whether "Rome, Italy" is appropriate at all. It smacks of U.S. journalism... "not that there's anything wrong with that..." but in an encyclopedia, it looks very ugly to me (and, I suspect, most non-Americans and some Americans). I would strongly favour "Rome". The minority who really don't know what country it's in can then click the link. Of course, for less well-known places, country will be useful. (Also in something like "Rome, Iowa was named after Rome in Italy".) Where the "well-known" cutoff would be is debatable, but I would hope it would be somewhere less famous than Rome. This is a distinct issue from whether to link country as well as city (though of course you can't link the country if it's not there). It's also a separate issue from whether to name a city article with the country, where established convention says "not unless needed for disambig". This is purely a prose style issue. The only current policy I can see that seems vaguely relevant is Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#National_varieties_of_English. jnestorius^(talk) 14:50, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

We are not deciding which method of linking is preferable, rather, just that the MOS should not dictate which way we should use at all when there is little agreement about it. Martin 14:54, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Capitalizing surnames of foreign people, or not?

In English writings originating from non-English cultures (e.g. English newspapers in China), the family name is often written with all capital letters to avoid being mistaken as a middle name, e.g. Laurence Yee-ming Kwong or using small capitals, as Laurence [[KWONG Yee-ming or with a comma, as AKUTAGAWA, Ryunosuke to make clear which name is the family name. Such practice is particularly common in mass-media reporting international events like the Olympic Games. The CIA World Factbook stated that "The Factbook capitalizes the surname or family name of individuals for the convenience of [their] users who are faced with a world of different cultures and naming conventions." For example, Leslie Cheung Kwok Wing might be mistaken as Mr. Wing by readers unaware of Chinese naming conventions.

I found this in the article Family name in Wikipedia itself, and it will be useful for most readers of Wikipedia, though I think hardly anyone do their edits after this fashion currently. What do you think about it, everyone? --219.107.178.22 23:25, 5 May 2006 (UTC) "darksider"

Serial comma

I would prefer that wikipedia had a slight preference one way or the other on this. An 'if you can't decide, use this' policy. KalevTait 00:05, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Place names disambiguation

In the cases where we need disambiguation of location names, which happens lots of times, for example, in Portuguese parish names (because they are named after the same Saint or something like that) which of the following rules shall we use?

Parish, Municipality
Parish (Municipality)

The Manual says nothing (I think) and I wanted to create a standard. The Portuguese wikipedia mainly uses the second — Parish (Municipality). Would you say something? Thanks! Afonso Silva 17:03, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

You looking in the wrong place. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places). Rmhermen 19:34, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh, sorry. Thanks! Afonso Silva 10:02, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

FYI: Quotations should not contain wikilinks proposal

A proposal relating to this policy has been created at Wikipedia:Quotations should not contain wikilinks, please discuss on that proposal's discussion page. Hollow are the Ori 23:16, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

PDF icon in external links

Hi all. I've seen some external links with a pdf icon next to them warning readers that the link takes them to a pdf file. But I can't for the life of me find an example of this now when I need it. Can someone point me in the right direction? Thanks! Monkeyman^(talk) 00:04, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Maybe {{PDFlink}} is what you're looking for? —Veyklevar 01:28, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Many thanks. That's what I was looking for.

Monkeyman^(talk) 01:35, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

See also MediaWiki_talk:Common.css#Similar_for_PDF_files.3F for various ways to display them next to all PDF files, if your browser supports it. — Omegatron 02:09, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Consistency

We've debated at great length at Roman Catholic Church whether the article should be called that or Catholic Church; concensus was for Roman Catholic Church as "Catholic Church" was considered ambiguous, but "Catholic Church" is still used widely used elsewhere in Wikipedia. Is there any rule or guideline on whether the article name should always be used in other articles referring to the same subject? Or is the only way to ensure consistency to propose a specific rule stating that that body should always be known by a particular name? TSP 17:49, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Manual of style

I just came across this article and noticed the title, Manual of Style. Should it not be Manual of style? I fail to see how the word "Style" is anything other than an ordinary noun, and as such should not be capitalized.

-- Andreas Blixt 19:08, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Like the books Manual of Style. Skinnyweed 19:18, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Still, this is not about a book called Manual of Style (and the general term for such a book would be "style manual"), but rather a Wikipedia article. And the "rule" for Wikipedia article names states that all words other than words always written in uppercase or the first word of the article name should be in lower case. However, this is but a trivial nuisance so I will not argue it further.

-- Andreas Blixt 19:25, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Andreas. PizzaMargherita 19:56, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Surely it's a proper noun - the title refers to Wikipedia's Manual of Style, rather than to a manual of style in the generic; and should therefore be capitalised as a name?

This is a bit of a peculiar discussion, because it's considering the Manual of Style almost as if it were a Wikipedia article about itself, then trying to apply Wikipedia's naming conventions for articles to it. The fact is that this isn't a Wikipedia article - it's a guide published by Wikipedia for the use of Wikipedians, therefore is entitled to a proper noun title, just as book titles are proper nouns. TSP 21:49, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I concur with TSP. --Coolcaesar 23:24, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it's not "a" manual of style, it's "the" Manual of Style. Ewlyahoocom 13:57, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

So far as I can tell, the MoS obeys to all other guidelines it explains. Why not this one? PizzaMargherita 07:09, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

This has come up before. I don't think that it can seriously be argued that the title is correct; first, though, it's not very pressing as it's not in article space, and secondly, it's usually argued that changing it would be extremely disruptive, given the huge number of pages that link here. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 10:54, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with the first point. The fact that this is the manual of style makes it all the more pressing to adhere to its own guidelines else the inconsistency would confuse editors. I can't see why this guideline should be an exception.

As for the second point, doesn't it amount to move the page and create a redirect? PizzaMargherita 11:27, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, I have just seriously argued it, so if you don't think it can be seriously argued, you should find my points easy to refute. This page does not follow all the rest of its own guidelines, and it would be absurd for it to do so. For example, references to Wikipedia are normally banned; clearly this page has many. Similarly, addressing the reader directly is usually bad style; this page does it throughout.

Further, this page does not, in fact, breach its own rules. Where article titles are proper nouns, they are capitalised as such. The title of this article is a proper noun - it is the title of a publication (itself) - so uses title, not sentence rules of capitalisation, just as The Catcher in the Rye should not be moved to The catcher in the rye. It would, in fact, be in breach of its own rules to move it.

This is a set of instructions on creating a good Wikipedia article; it is not, itself, a Wikipedia article. You will only get hopelessly confused if you try to apply its own rules to itself as if it were. TSP 13:12, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Original spellings should take precedent

In situations where there are national variations in spellings (tyically International (British) English vs. US English), the original spelling should be used. For example, "night" is the original spelling, "nite" is a new US variation. Before US citizens complain, note that it works both ways. "Realize" is the original spelling, even found in British dictionaries, although British school children learn to spell it with an "s".

The "nite" variation is a stylized version of "night" and hasn't been adopted in mainstream American English. Andrew73 22:26, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with the notion that the English Wikipedia should become a hopeless jumble of dialects so that it is written in a dialect that exists nowhere and satisfies no one. The current policy of dialect consistency on an article-by-article basis is awkward but works fine. We have already debated this issue many, many times and the consensus is to maintain the policy of keeping articles in the dialect in which they were originally written, with the exception that geographically-related things should be written in the dialect appropriate for the area of the world to which they are related. There is of course a separate related issue involving quotation marks, but I am currently biding my time before opening up the whole can of worms over that issue again. --Coolcaesar 22:35, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. — Saxifrage ✎ 22:41, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

"Original" spelling? How far back are you going to go? Middle English? Old English? Old German? Proto-Indo-European language? Ewlyahoocom

SI/Imperial measurements

There is no consistancy concerning the use of SI and Imperial units on Wikipedia. This can be a problem for some readers. As a British reader, I find it hard to picture Imperial measurements (such as feet, inches etc) and particularly weighs. I expect most US citizens would not know how much 1 litre is, or how heavy 2 kilos is.

I would suggest that the rule should be similar to the rule on English variations, except that where possible both units should be given. So, in an article about the French TGV train, speeds would be given as xxKm/hour (xxM/hour). For a US aircraft, the thrust might be given as xxlbs (xxKg). Only good old Blighty represents a problem here, where we are stuck half way between the two. Road signs usually list distances in miles, excpet short distances which are in meters. At school, only metric measurements are taught, but milk is bought in 2.2 litre (1 pint) cartons. Here, the most common British use would be used, for example xx acres (xx hectares).

--Mojo-chan 22:30, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I would go even further. Even in America, most measurements in technical fields are done in SI units. Except for a few units that are common in daily life (distance, speed, land area, liquid volume, weight), I don't see any need to provide the imperial units at all. For the output power of a laser, give it in watts. No conversion to btu, horsepower, or other unit is needed. For the thrust of an airplane engine, give it in newtons (or whatever is used in that field). Don't worry about using pounds, on the belief that that is more comprehensible to a less technically-educated reader -- the article on newtons should give some representative measurements to provide a sense of scale.

--The Photon 23:50, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Totally agree. The Imperial system has been made illegal a long time ago. If some countries don't want to comply (and it's not just America) it's not our problem. As The Photon points out, the conversion table is right there. Obvioius idiomatic exceptions apply, like mentioning "a pint of beer" in an article about British pubs. I could possibly tolerate (just) optional Imperial measurements in brackets only for relevant articles. Or we can make a template that converts on hover, but to which unit? PizzaMargherita 05:38, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Imperial measurements are definitely not "illegal", indeed are preferred, for a significant number of our readers. We're not here to proselytize for any particular measurement system, any more than our goal is to press a political viewpoint. The test should be service to the readers. That will often require giving an Imperial unit, even in an article about a country that uses SI exclusively.

I have no objection to giving parallel units, although in a very few cases it might be inappropriate. For example, if we quoted the Native American saying, "Don’t judge another man until you have walked a mile in his moccasins," inserting "1.609 km" would be a pedantic distraction. By the same token, there would be some circumstances in which including the Imperial unit would add nothing.

Mojo-chan's comment above illustrates the continuing need for parallel units in many contexts. People make mistakes. I don't think that 2.2 litres is equal to a pint. Giving both measurements will help catch or prevent such conversion errors. JamesMLane t c 08:06, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree with JamesMLane and Mojo-chan. I suggest that S.I. units be the preferred standard, but for non-S.I. units to be parenthetically stated where the author believes this to be necessary, with no holy edit-war removing non-S.I. units wholesale. Quotations and idioms should be left in whatever units were originally used. Oh - and this British reader, being above a certain age, can easily picture feet and inches but dislikes using metres and centimetres. Mojo-chan doesn't speak for all 'Brits'. :-) WLD 08:41, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

A lot of clever people around the world one day gathered and decided that SI is how stuff is to be measured. It's a global standard. It's the only global standard out there for units of measurements. If we start converting litres to pints (in all articles? no way!) then people start whinging: "But that's the pint as defined in this and that country, in my country a pint is 1.0034124 times bigger." "I want it converted to Nigerian tablespoons as well." "My grandad used to measure volume of milk in bildeerks." Et cetera. Wikipedia should be neutral, and this is one of the few occasions where we can be.

The point on idiomatic expressions and other obvious exceptions is agreed. PizzaMargherita 08:49, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I didn't suggest converting all articles. If I implied this, I apologise. I suggested that S.I. be preferred - not mandated. In addition, there seems to be a convention that generally leaves things as the article's first author chose - US/non-US english; BC/AD or BCE/CE - this effectively avoids edit wars. If someone uses pints, for example, then parenthetically adding the S.I. units would seem to be good practice. Mandating the use solely of S.I. units with a small number of exceptions will simply generate argument - I believe the better way is to prefer the use of S.I. units, and (possibly) mandate that non-S.I. units have the conversion in S.I. units included parenthetically. Conversions would need to take into account the differing sizes of the US and UK gallons and fluid ounces, obviously - which is a point not always fully appreciated. I believe that encouraging people to write in their natural idiom will tend to generate better and more articles, rather than forcing people into the straightjacket of unfamiliar usage. WLD 10:31, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

This is the English-language Wikipedia, so we don't need to include conversions to units that have no substantial usage among speakers of English. Yes, we may have some readers who are most comfortable with Nigerian tablespoons or bildeerks or whatnot; we certainly have many readers who understand only litres, and many who understand only quarts. It's a difference in degree so great as to be a difference in kind.

You say neutrality demands that we use only SI units, even though millions of our readers don't understand them? It would be neutral for us to publish the whole encyclopedia in Linear B. That would avoid the color-colour problem, too. I'm afraid I just don't see why neutrality should require that we make it somewhat harder for so many readers to find out that the Arc de Triomphe is 165 feet high. (PizzaMargherita, I take it that you'd like to see that informative parenthetical removed from the Arc de Triomphe article. If I've misunderstood you, my apologies.) JamesMLane t c 05:40, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

"there seems to be a convention that generally leaves things as the article's first author chose - US/non-US english; BC/AD or BCE/CE - this effectively avoids edit wars"—I wouldn't say it's effective, have you seen the color article? It's an attempt to get around the problem without actually solving it. It's also very ineffective at having a consistent and professional Wikipedia.

"Conversions would need to take into account the differing sizes of the US and UK gallons and fluid ounces"—Precisely my point. Which ones do we use? PizzaMargherita 11:29, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I completely the support the mandatory addition of SI units, but inclusion of the units in which the source is written is important. Partly for the benefit of readers from the same culture of the source, but partly for verification – I mean, I don't want to rely on units converted by the person who thinks 1 pint = 2.2 litres! (Confused with 1 kg = 2.2 pounds?) JackyR 14:12, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Uhm... I was mainly concerned with systemic bias here, but I recognise that I've probably been carried away. Anyway where both measures are reported, I think that the superiority of SI should be recognised by putting Imperial in parenthesis rather than vice versa. PizzaMargherita 08:28, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I absolutely agree. Martin 09:05, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

" As a British reader, I find it hard to picture Imperial measurements (such as feet, inches etc) and particularly weighs" Is that a wind up? If you drive a car in Britian how do you know if you are breaking the speed limit? Just about every ruler sold in Britain comes with 12 inches as well as 30cm on it. If one buys a set of scales to weigh oneself the come in kilos and stones. If you go into a pub they sell beer in half pints or pints, but shorts at 250ml or some other ml measure. An imperial ton is nearly exactly the same as a tonne and a hundredweight is nearly the same as 50 kg. In Britain Football (soccer) pitches are usually quoted in feet and yards while rugby union pitches are in metres. How long is a Cricket pitch? I bet not one in a thousand in Britain could tell you the size of the thing in metres. TVs and VDUs are sold on the diagonal width measured in inches. So I do not know how as British reader you find it hard to picture Imperial measurements. One of the big advantages of growing up in Britain is that for more than 30 years the schools have been using the metric system and the every day world the imperial system, so Britons are lucky because they can usually work in both systems. It is not as if the metric system is particularly scientific, taking the 1/4 of an arbitrary circumference around the world and getting it wrong is not exactly the basis of a true scientific system! At least a nautical mile has some merit to it.

As to the measurements to use. It depends on the article, and like national spellings a bit of common sense is needed. It would be silly to put the metric measurements first in the Cricket pitch article and silly to put the imperial measurements first in a Rugby union pitch article. I'll leave it to the reader to decide if the football pitch article makes sense, given the laws of football ;-) --Philip Baird Shearer 18:53, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

We should be sensible. Anything science related should be in SI, anything else should be in whatever people decide on the page. I'm from the UK, and I still use feet/inches, pints. I'm 22. "I think that the superiority of SI should be recognised by putting Imperial in parenthesis rather than vice versa." — completely disagree, its absurd to say that one system of measurements is "superior" to another. The decision should be worked out on article talk pages, but I would strongly object to a blanket policy of having Imperial or US Standard in parentheses accross the board. - FrancisTyers 22:42, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

"its absurd to say that one system of measurements is "superior" to another"—It's not absurd if it's the one and only global standard system. And to who said that the Imperial system is not illegal, go ask the greengrocer who was arrested a few years ago because he refused to display the prices in SI (forgot the details). PizzaMargherita 21:15, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

No, it is absurd. - FrancisTyers 10:01, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Can't argue with such detailed rationale. PizzaMargherita 11:27, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

6.2 Billion people on earth use SI. In order to maintain consistency:

articles shold be written: 12,345,678.901 SI written in full (12,345.678 local unit, abbreviated).

How hard is that? No confusion. No question. No figuring which unit goes outside the parentheses and which is converted. Google has a very efficient calculator.. anyone with firefox can type "Alt+d google 52 statute miles in kilometers" and they have an accurate conversion. drumguy 8800 - speak 20:45, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Since this is not a print encylopædia and can be somewhat dynamic in presentation, why not do something similar to how do we math equations or (to some extent) IPA, etc. Make a markup similar to {{measurement:10,kg}}. Then according to a user preference, it could be shown in either imperial, metric, etc. Then authors can write in their favourite units, and it will automagically be converted.

Thats a splendid idea. - FrancisTyers 11:43, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Although I'm all in favour of using preferences to automate rendering when that is possible, I think in this instance it's very hard to do it, as editors would have to explicitly specify which units to use in the Imperial/nonstandard systems. Having said that, I reserve the right to be convinced otherwise if you come up with a good proposal. PizzaMargherita 05:45, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Agree with Pizza. Wikipedia should explicitly prefer metric units; customary units aren't universal and can lead to confusion (pint, ton, etc.). And no, it's not absurd to label metric "superior" to the customary mishmash. Add a conversion if you must, and by all means use these units on those occasions they are the primary ones (yards in American football, pipe diameters in inches). Otherwise stick to SI. ProhibitOnions ^(T) 11:41, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

ProhibitOnions, you just said something that I completely agree with, "by all means use these units on those occasions they are the primary ones (yards in American football, pipe diameters in inches)", I wouldn't suggest using imperial/standard for scientific topics, as I wouldn't suggest using SI for discussing measurements in European folklore. The measurement should be suited to the article and should be arrived at through consensus on the talk page, not through arbitrary policy. While you may be convinced that one system of measurements is "objectively superior", I would have to disagree, your argument that "everyone uses it" or "it is a global standard" is irrelevant. The fact that it is a standard does not immediately make it "the best", there are plenty of standards that really suck. I'm not saying metric sucks as I don't make value judgements on systems of measurement, in some cases I use metric, in some cases I use imperial. Simple. - FrancisTyers 11:43, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Francis, in case you are quoting me, please note that SI is not just a global standard. It is the only global standard for units of measurements. I fail to see how this can be irrelevant to this discussion, but you are entitled to your opinion. PizzaMargherita 12:28, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

So you're saying an imperial pint has a different measurement in Ireland to it has in England, or a yard is less in India? The standard is global, but it is not globally used. Just because something is globally used does not make it "objectively superior". - FrancisTyers 12:32, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

You know very well what I'm saying. An Imperial pint is not a global standard for the same reasons why a US pint (dry or wet) is not, by any stretch of imagination. A PizzaPint (PP) measures the same capacity (765.6223734387 litres) in any country. Does it make it a global standard? PizzaMargherita 14:56, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Do you have a source for that? - FrancisTyers 15:02, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

In your post above you are basically saying that if a standard is not global, then it follows that it has a different measurement in different countries. If we reverse the implication, we obtain: if a standard has the same measurement in all countries, it must be global. In the following post I provide counterexamples (US pints and PizzaPint) that prove the implication false. Reliable sources have nothing to do with this reasoning, but I can certainly provide sources for the existence of US pints. I challenge you to write in the WP article about US customary units that that is a global standard. PizzaMargherita 15:41, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

No, what I'm saying is that your "PizzaPint" argument is a non-argument because it isn't a standard. US pints and Imperial pints are standards. I'm aware of the difference between a US pint and an Imperial pint, but it does not follow that each measurement is not global. - FrancisTyers 15:58, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok, you win, US pints are a global standard. Please update the WP article because nobody apart from you seems to be aware of that. Oh, and since you mention it, don't forget to include reliable sources in that edit. PizzaMargherita 16:14, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

[FX]Takes off 'Assume Good Faith' hat[/FX] I think PizzaMargherita may be trolling. I see no evidence that he/she is attempting to achieve consensus - rather, to me it seems apparent that PM is sticking rather obdurately to one position and being somewhat disparaging of other points of view. I can well understand that PM may have a strong opinion on this matter, but I don't think PM's debating style is conducive to achieving consensus.[FX]Replaces 'Assume Good Faith' hat and dons asbestos underwear while waiting to be accused of an ad hominem attack.[/FX] WLD 17:42, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Your attack is biased and gratuitous and yes, it is an ad hominem. The fact that your rhetoric recognises that doesn't make it any less so.

I have a right to defend my opinion without being accused of trolling. Even if I were, your comments on my debating style are "not conductive to the public good" either.

However I recognise that mantaining (and obdurately so) that the US units are a global standard is self-ridiculing and doesn't need any more disparaging. PizzaMargherita 20:59, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Titles

I just read the section on titles, and found it rather confusing. At first glance, king of france and french king have the same meaning, just different construction forms, so why would the capitalisation be different? I read the referencces adjacent, and noted that the Guardian recommends the King of and a king of, and further more recommends that only the first reference to King should use capitalisation, thereafter it should be lower case. The distinction they make is a generic job (a...) does not get a capital, but a title of a specific holder (the...) does. So furthermore it should be the French King, or possibly the french King? How does the adjective french deserve a capital if the noun it is is describing, king, does not. I reckon the example Louis XVI was the French king should read Louis XVI was the french King (but only at first mention). Perhaps the issue is not that this form of words is explaining what his job title was, but that if it is capitalised in the way suggested in the style article, then the capitalisation implies the words are being used as job title. Whereas if used as I have suggested, then capitalisation is implying that this is his title. The meaning changes according to the capitalisation used, so the example here is actually confusing two different cases. Sandpiper 09:33, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

You may find some more discussion at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles) or it's Talk page. Although that page is more about the naming of the article, its editors may have spent more time thinking about the issue you raise here. Ewlyahoocom 10:21, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

It is quite simple.

King of France is a title, just like President of the United States, hence capitalised. The Guardian correctly makes that point. "the King of . . ." is a king's title.
French king is not a title, merely a mention of a king who was French. For the same reason, we write American president. That isn't his actual title, merely a generic term.
french king is grammatically incorrect. French is always capitalised, as is American, British, Russian etc. It is all standard English usage. FearÉIREANN\^{^(caint) 22:43, 17 May 2006 (UTC)}

I posed a question about the corresponding section on the Manual of Style (capital letters) page. (Say, why is it duplicated?) As far as I can tell, neither cited style manual supports Wikipedia’s guidelines. --Rob Kennedy 05:57, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Elipses

There is no reference to the use of elipses such as ... or [...] within quotations from another work. This would come up often, and I feel it would be appropriate to render a specific decision on how they are to be used. For example. To quote FDR's December 8 1941 pearl harbor speech as an example. Int he following quote: "Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his colleagues delivered to the Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. While this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or armed attack. " It might me more appropriate to simply to include the bolded items depending on the context, and in the interest of brevity. But there are several ways it could be done. It could be done "one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his colleagues delivered to the Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. [...] it contained no threat or hint of war or armed attack." However, elipses without brackets may be used depending on which writing style one subscribes to, or personal preference. Also, whether or not to use elipses if something at either the very beginning or the very end of a sentence is omitted would also be of concern. To avoid accusations attempting to bend facts it may be important to establish a guideline or policy on this to be included in the MOS. Any thoughts? --Oni Ookami Alfador^Talk|@ 20:38, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Currency

The manual of style is clear that it doesn't want multiple currencies listed. However, I cannot see anything about how a single currency should be written. For example I have seen £xxx and xxx pounds. Sometimes "£" or "pounds" will link to the relevant article and sometimes there is no link. Is there a standard / should there be a standard?

I think £3000 or $2000 is the best way. Simply putting 2000 dollars or 2000 dollars could lead to confusion.. for instance, if we're talking about Australians trading with Americans, or even Canadians, what are we to assume? A lot of times when that happens, people put $2000 (AUD).. drumguy 8800 - speak 22:36, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Looking around I have also seen GBP or USD which does give the full information about the currency, but I am not sure that this method would be obvious for other countries currencies. I quite like the £ approach.--MarkS 12:39, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I have found that Wikipedia:Manual of style (dates and numbers) already covers this so I have added a link in. --MarkS 06:23, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Transliteration convention

As an attempt to improve consistency in the transliteration of words written in non-latin script, as described in Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Loan words, I propose a policy favouring one convention for each script.

In particular, I would like a specified style convention on the Romanization of Russian. I would not reccomend BGN/PCGN due to ambiguity between й and ы. I would rather propose the UN convention, as it is not ambiguous, and only uses simple, well-know diatrics. GOST is a good diatric-free alternative, while ISO/R 9:1968 may also be discouraged due to a Germanic transliteration of х with ch. --GSchjetne 08:08, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Romanization of Russian. Circeus 00:17, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

ALL CAPS

There used to be a style guide on ALL CAPS, that was easy to find. But then is was tagged as proposal, and subsequently all the links to it were removed.

Which is a shame, becuase it's a reasonable style guide, and it shouldn't sink into oblivion. So here's the link: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (ALL CAPS)

I would like to know what to do with this, what needs to be done before it will be "official enough", where in the MoS to put it when it is, etc. Shinobu 12:28, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

you have my vote for yes. this should go into the manual of style. It's basic sense, but you still see it violated all the time. Irritating, and this would help clear it up. -Monk of the highest order 04:56, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Overriding font-family

There seems to be a rash of customized font-family settings cropping up, especially in some templates. In my opinion, this is a mistake that needs to be prevented. Anyone who uses a different stylesheet than the particular editor who set those fonts will find that the text so marked stands out like a sore thumb. For now, they probably match the default style pretty well, but anyone who has changed it via preferences or with a custom stylesheet sees awful-looking pages. And if Wikipedia as a whole should ever decide to change the default font family, suddenly they would stand out to nearly all visitors.

I'd like to propose a policy that the font-family should never be changed in articles or in templates, unless absolutely necessary, such as when certain characters only exist in a particular font. And even then, it would probably be better to use images. The only place that the font family should be changed is in stylesheets. --Yath 09:46, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Completely agree. Same for font colour and font size. PizzaMargherita 10:09, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

This isn't getting a lot of attention at the moment, so I'm linking it from Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Style_issues. I believe that hardcoding a font family is an error, but one that people are going to make and might even stand by unless there's a rule against it. Take for example Template:Infobox Country, which makes many a country's article (Turkey) look very odd to anyone who tries to customize Wikipedia's appearance.

Note: I decided to take the matter up here, rather than at Template talk:Infobox Country, because it wouldn't do much good to have a big discussion there, only to repeat the process with the next template that someone decides to do this on. It's better to get a policy instituted than to address the problem piecemeal. --Yath 14:33, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree with this as well. Perhaps list this at Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Policies? -- Rick Block (talk) 02:28, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

If there ever is a "vote" or something on this, strike me up as "support". I hate it when various fonts are mixed. The only excuse could be when the default font won't render a certain character and the browser doesn't know what to do. Even then, it should be overridable. Shinobu 12:55, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

redirect

This article says:

If curved quotation marks or apostrophes appear in article titles, ensure that there is a redirect with straight glyphs.

What does that mean? How do I do it? --Mikeblas 13:47, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Redirects.–RHolton ≡– 02:44, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

ship classes named after letters

I am of the opinion that, for Royal Navy ship classes named after letters (For instance, Template:List of destroyer classes of the Royal Navy), quotation marks should be used around the identifying letter when referring to the particular class in the article. For instance in the article L and M class destroyer, I feel it should read "L" class destroyer, not L class destroyer, (or "L class" destroyer) likewise "M" not M later on in the text. My reasoning is;

this is the way it is done in the relevant and authoratative literature.
the reader instantly knows that a ship class is being referred to, my contributions frequently crossreference to many other classes of ship to highlight differences and similarities.
it makes the article scan better. A lone letter in the copy looks out of place to my eye.

However, I have been informed by User:Gdr on talk page User_talk:Gdr#removing_italicisation_on_ship_classes that there is a convention that there is no need for quotation around the letter. Is this an official convention? Does the MoS have any policy on this (I couldn't find anything myself). Gdr's reasoning seems to be "that's the way it has been done up until now, so it must be correct". I would appreciate any official input on this as I feel my opinions are being ignored by User:Gdr. Emoscopes ^Talk 20:51, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

You will probably have better luck asking at Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships or Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships). Rmhermen 02:03, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Writing about fiction

Please consider this proposed addition to the Manual of Style: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (writing about fiction)--ragesoss 22:49, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

AGREED! This thing needs to be put into action, dagnabbit! Too often do I see pages like List of Neopets or Skein (comics) which have entire fahoolajin stories and backgrounds of a fictional character when it's entirely necessary and unencyclopedic. This is an encyclopedia! Not a gaming or comic book magazine. Just as wikipedia isn't the place for recipes (perhaps a cookbook on wikibooks might be the place for that), wikipedia isn't the place for indepth fictional story-telling, whether it is one's own or the creation of another. Simple description of a work of fiction, perhaps some of its basic premises, and the work's relation to the real world (author, creation, publication, criticism, etc.) are acceptable. But going deeply into the story is somewhat innapropriate. Perhaps this information could be transferred to another wiki before removal here, but either way, articles which speak about a fictional universe from the inside are messy and problematic, and this article would clean them up. -Monk of the highest order 04:54, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikilinks to sections allowed or discouraged ?

I wonder if it is accepted or discouraged to make wikilinks to individual sections on a page like Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Wikilinking, see my edit of wikilink to spy hopping which does not have a page of its own, and maybe it should, but nevermind, is it acceptable to do wikilinking like that in articles? I do not think I have seen it in any other article and I would guess that it would be a bit controversial. Comments? Stefan 13:11, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

They're likely to break if someone changes the text of the section heading in the article being linked to, but I can't imagine why that would be any worse than simply a link to the entire article. Kirill Lokshin 13:28, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

If editors want to link to a section, they have to be aware that sooner or later that link is likely to break, and therefore the link's falling back to the article (as opposed to the section) should not be surprising for the editor, nor traumatic for the reader. PizzaMargherita 16:15, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

OK thanks, I can live with the trauma :-), I keep the link! Stefan 00:03, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

One thing you can do is make the link look better so it can be read as plain English and convert Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Wikilinking to [[Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Wikilinking|Manual of Style: Wikilinking]] so that it appears inline as: Manual of Style: Wikilinking --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 18:05, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Articles referring to themselves

I thought I'd read, but now can't find, an MoS line regarding sentences like "This article will show..." I know it's generally frowned upon, but I was wondering if we have a specific spot addressing it. Marskell 17:48, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Avoid self-references addresses this to an extent. --Muchness 18:05, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

On second thought, WP:SELF is about referencing Wikipedia rather than the article in question. --Muchness 18:11, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I'd thought about that. If it's not here explicitly, should it be added? Marskell 18:14, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

There are cases when these sentences are necessary (e.g., disambiguation hatnotes: This article is about ... For ... see ...), so we should take that into account if we're adding a guideline. --Muchness 18:14, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I would have thought that "This article will show..." would also fall foul of No Original Research. Wikipedia should only report that which has already been shown. TSP 12:15, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Although no one can stop Wikipedia from showing again that wich has already been shown. For example a lot of articles on geometry and mathematics contain short proofs, and there's nothing wrong with that. Still, I think starting an article (that is, the main lead, as opposed to any hatnotes) with "This article..." is very bad style. Shinobu 16:23, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

American English?

As Wikipedia itself states, American English is an invention of Noah Webster. Forcing American spelling of English is yet another example of American cultural imperialism. In wikipedia we should be using standard English spelling, i.e. Commonwealth English and I urge all like minded individuals to join me lest we be stuck using the mangled form known as 'American English.' Use the correct spelling please. Colour has a 'u' in it for example. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.209.176.44 (talk • contribs)

Wikipedia policy is to defer to common usage. At present, American English speakers are the single largest group of native English language speakers, as opposed to non-native speakers, whose versions are more like a kind of pidgin as is often seen with Indian English and the rest of the other Asian Englishes. Furthermore, the English Wikipedia itself is hosted in the United States.

I suspect you resent the fact that the huge population of the United States (approaching 300 million) means that it generates more intellectual and cultural output in its dialect (including Wikipedia itself) than any other English dialect group. Well, that's your problem. --Coolcaesar 15:19, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

"As Wikipedia itself states?" Remember, we still have a long way to go in making Wikipedia accurate.... Anyway, a couple corrections: 1) The very notion of "American cultural imperialism" is hardly NPOV. 2) There is no such thing as (some sort of global) "standard English spelling". 3) American English is only partly an invention of Ben Franklin and Noah Webster. It is also an invention of spelling reformers in England (who, after the American Revolution, decided to "go Norman"). Moreover, many of the spellings chosen by Noah Webster were used by Shakespeare until the Norman upperclass told him to use French spellings -- the Normans always looked down upon the Germanic roots of English culture. (Look at the first folios; he used color and center -- though there are two instances of centre, interestingly.) 4) British English is at least as much an invention of Samuel Johnson (a francophile) as American English is of Noah Webster.

Wikipedia has a fairly good policy about spelling: go with the original spelling used in the first substantial (überstub) version of the article, unless the article is about a topic with clear ties to a particular region that has a preferred spelling system, in which case, use that system. The English shouldn't force their spelling on everyone; nor should Americans or Australians. Hyperborean 16:22, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

I'd say we're giving way too much attention to an anon's remark that was almost certainly intended to provoke.–RHolton ≡– 16:26, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

I wonder how much time and effort is wasted changing spelling to one form of English or another, and then reverting? I do a bit myself! It is one of the most frustrating aspects of Wikipedia that contentious words like colour/color and center/centre can't be tagged in a similar fashion to dates, so that a user preference could then be set to output the words in the user's preferred English variety. Is no-one working on a technical solution to this BIG problem? Maybe the English language version of Wikipedia should fork into English-variety-specific versions - has this ever been considered? It would certainly prevent a lot of ill-feeling, but I expect it could almost double the filespace requirement. Arcturus 22:16, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I think the software should automatically convert wrong forms to right ones, depending on the user preferences concerning wrong and right. That way, the software could internally just store the shortest form and it wouldn't cost any extra diskspace. Shinobu 16:28, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

UK-US treaties

ON 2006-02-01, Robert McClenon added the following:

The English texts of treaties that are signed by both the United Kingdom and the United States use British English usage and spelling out of respect for the seniority of the United Kingdom as the mother country of the English language. American editors should consider showing the same courtesy as their government does.

(which was then, thankfully, toned down a bit).

Out of curiosity, I looked into this, and can find no evidence that it's true. Indeed, it appears that there is no rule about which is better. So perhaps the UK and the US are wiser than Robert McClenon, and simply vary which dialectic they use when communicating with each other.... In any event, without evidence, this line should not be in the Style Guide. Hyperborean 08:09, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I concur. McClenon is incorrect and therefore the line should go. --Coolcaesar 08:14, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

McClenon is correct! International Treaties usually use British English usage and spelling. But I agree that this should not be part of the MoS. SpNeo 18:30, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

1) We were talking about treaties signed by the US and the UK, not international treaties. 2) What is your evidence that international treaties use British English usage and spelling? I just spent a few minutes looking on the Web for various treaties, and found two that involved the US and at least one other country. One used American spelling and usage (ANZUS), one used mostly American usage and spelling [2] (hard to tell , though, precisely because the treaty is old). It appears your are incorrect. So what is the evidence for your claim? Thanks in advance for your reply, Cultural Freedom talk 2006-07-11 18:40 (UTC)

RFC on Capitalis/zation

JA: What should be routine copyediting of a large class of WP articles is now on hold due to insufficiently directiveWP:MOS guidelines on capitalization of phrases that are not proper nouns, not if you can read and comprehend a dictionary definition of "proper noun", but that happen to preserve through various and sundry twists of fate a place dear to the hearts of their devoted communities of worship. No, that's not a neuter statement. But it would help if some community attention could be drawn to the RFC placed here and being discussed here. Gratia in futuro, Jon Awbrey 13:34, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Quotation marks for no reason

I thought I read that quotation marks around a phrase such as "activity zones" should be eliminated if quotation marks are not quoting anything. Sometimes people use quotation marks for a figure of speech, or for emphasis -- acutally I don't know why they are using them.

I can't find any mention in the Manual of Style or related sections on this issue.

Does anyone know if there is a policy regarding this? KarenAnn 18:46, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Have you seen Manual of Style (Quotation marks)? I hope that this helps. -- Alias Flood 20:04, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes. It only talks about actual quotations -- where to put punctuation, etc. It doesn't say anything about quotation marks around words that are not quotations. But I swear I read it somewhere, but where? KarenAnn 22:33, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

"Scare quotes", they're usually called. There's something about them in the proposed Wikipedia:Manual of Style (emphasis); or use common sense: they're awful, and good writing uses them sparingly if at all. (Ironically, I just used some in one of my most recent edits. Hmm. Hypocrite!) —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 22:41, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! That's what I was looking for. I knew I saw that somewhere. I'm always removing them. I wanted to have some justification in case anyone complained. KarenAnn 00:14, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Even worse is the use of quotes for emphasis, as in "great new deal!" This is incorrect writing but is frequently encountered in phone books, classifieds, and other cheap advertising like that. I've argued before that the wiki markup for italics only encourages this error. Deco 03:30, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Side-box template?

Is there somewhere a standard side-box template?

Like floating an image to the left or right, but containing wikitext instead of an image? Shinobu 16:53, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

You can do this using div tags. It's a bit tricky. See an example at spell checker. Deco 03:32, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Try a table with class infobox.

{| class="infobox" width="25%"
|text text text text text text text text text textxt text text text text
|}

−Woodstone 16:59, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Hm. It strikes me that the margins are very small. I was looking for something more suitable for containing a real piece of text, like a quotation or somethin similar. If that doesn't exist, I could make a template based on the code above. Shinobu 12:48, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

"Concerned a British topic."

The guidelines say "it would only be acceptable to change from American spelling to British spelling if the article concerned a British topic." However, this should also apply to commonwealth topics, for example things about Hong Kong, commonwealth places and other places that uses British English. If only Britain is specified, it would be uneven to commonwealth-spelling articles. --D e ryc k C. 03:25, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Technically, the sentence is correct as written. There is only one condition under which it is acceptable to change from American spelling to British: when the article concerns a British topic. Likewise, there is only one condition under which it is acceptable to change from British spelling to American: when the article concerns an American topic. If the article concerns an Australian topic, it would be acceptable to switch from American spelling to Australian (or from Canadian spelling to Australian, etc.). If the article concerns Hong Kong, it would be acceptable to switch to the Hong Kong dialect of English. Remember: The British Empire doesn't exist anymore. Each former colony has its own variant of English, even if some of these variants are very similiar to British English. Best, Cultural Freedom talk 2006-06-30 12:34 (UTC)

Why do some articles use italics in the title?

Some articles use italics for the title words. Compare the first sentence of Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I with that of Global warming. The Main page always looks odd because of this inconsistency. Why is this? bobblewik 19:00, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

WP:STYLE says to italicize the titles of books, TV series, films, and albums/CDs. I can't remember what the rule is for paintings. I believe it needs quotation marks. The painting example may not be the best, but if the first words of an article are the title of one of the things mentioned above, it's perfectly correct and expected to italicize them. 23skidoo 19:15, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Aha. How bizarre. Thanks for the explanation.

That guideline is not applied universally. On today's Main page the album 'Do You Love Me' is non-italic and I see many other examples. bobblewik 19:40, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

In this particular case, Do You Love Me is a single not an album, so it is correctly not italicized. But it is not at all surprising that such a confusing bit of formatting arcana is not always applied consistently. older ≠ wiser 19:53, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Discussion moved from Village pump (policy). Does anybody else agree with me and older ≠ wiser that this is confusing and inconsistent? bobblewik 14:50, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

It may very well be confusing and inconsistent; but it is also a widely-accepted rule of formal English writing. Take it up with the MLA and their ilk if you want it changed ;-) Kirill Lokshin 14:55, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

It's not that confusing. Independently-published items (like books, journals, TV series and albums) get distinct typographical treatment (typically by italics); titled sub-parts of them (chapters, articles, episodes and songs) typically are in quotes or just plain roman text. This is pretty standard in most style guides and academic bibliographies. · rodii · 15:14, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

That doesn't really explain why singles don't get italics....Stevage 15:17, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

True. The MOS take on it is that "short" works get quotes, longer ones get italics. Comparatively, it's obvious which is the "short" item in the album/song pair, and so songs always get quotes for consistency's sake. Another take on it is that singles per se traditionally didn't have titles at all--only the two songs on them did, and there were almost always two. Nowadays singles are often just one song, so we're dealing with a fossilized convention. OK, I will admit it's inconsistent, but it's not that confusing, and the conventions are very clearly laid out in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (italics). That's what style manuals are for, after all. · rodii · 15:42, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

I could not find a general reference to italics and length of work. Can you say where it is? There is a specific statement that long poems get italics. Not only is it a weird way of dividing up typography but it does not give any definition of 'long poem'. bobblewik 18:24, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

That page is only a proposal. The actual style guide on this point is Wikipedia:Manual of Style (titles). Henry ^Flower 19:12, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Oops, yeah. Of course, the language is almost identical in either on this point: "Italics are generally used for titles of longer works. Titles of shorter works, such as the following, should be enclosed in double quotation marks..." · rodii · 20:28, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Ah, the guidance is badly written. That comment about the use of italics is not in the italics section. That is easy to correct.

But the inconsistency still makes no sense to me and others. Non-italics are fine. It seems that the guidance also regards them as fine for most cases. If they are good for 'short works', then they must be good for 'long works'. I propose that this guidance be removed. bobblewik 09:56, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

But our readers—who have no interest in our in-house MoS—expect italics. It's my opinion that we shouldn't bugger around with perfectly standard rules of English usage for trivial reasons. Kirill Lokshin 12:37, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Seconded. This is standard practice, inside and outside Wikipedia. · rodii · 15:45, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Those are two unsupported assertions:

Kirill, you and I do not know what readers expect.
Rodii, you and I do not know what is 'standard' in English.

Let us look at a practical problem with the guidance: If I write an article about two poems, one poem of 10 lines and one poem of 5000 lines, do I use italics for them both? bobblewik 20:01, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

plural with music bands

See this string of edits.

I think this person's trolling but before I start reverting (he/she has done this several time), I'd like to check with some knowledgeable native speakers of English. Do we say "The Eagles is a group" or "The Eagles are a group". The consensus among editors, which I agree with, is to say "is", but this anonymous user keeps fighting about it. Tony 15:01, 29 June 2006 (UTC)