Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Trademarks/Archive 17

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MOS:TMRULES

An editor (User:BarrelProof) recently removed User:SMcCandlish's addition from earlier in the year to MOS:TMRULES. This said that editors should not alter the 'spelling, punctuation or grammar of trademarks', which seems reasonable. This means that we should not add accents/umlauts if they are not already present, add full stops to abbreviations, remove symbols (eg M&S), etc. This does—in my opinion—make perfect sense. When a trademark/company name is one thing, who are we to change it. Wikipedia should be a reliable source, and to suggest to a reader that a company/trademark is one thing when it is actually another is misleading, and defeats the point of our role. Whilst the MoS is important, and its guidance should be brought into effect whenever possible, we should respect legally solid things like this (certainly company names). Therefore, I believe that this guideline is extremely important, and it should stay. I will note that I do not think things like stars are appropriate for an encyclopaedia, as they are not 'standard' keyboard symbols/characters. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 23:07, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Just so everyone knows what was removed... see this dif. :That noted... My answer to this question is that we should use whatever is typically and routinely used by independent sources. Now, that might be the trademarked name, but it might not. To give two contrasting examples:

1. Using the trademarked name: Most independent sources refer to the social networking website as "Tumblr"... thus we should do so as well. We should not "correct" it to "Tumbler". This actually has nothing to do with what the company wants, or whether the name is trademarked or not... the reason we present it as "Tumblr" is because that is how independent sources routinely present the name.
2. Not using the trademarked name: Most independent sources refer to the department store as "Macy's"... thus we do as well. We should not "correct" it to the trademarked "Macy*s". Again, this actually has nothing to do with what the company wants, or what the trademark might be... we use the apostrophe (and not the star) because that's how independent sources routinely present the name.

In other words... there is no one right answer here. I know that most MOS editors strive to create consistent rules, but this is a case where we simply can't have consistency... In fact, other than "follow the sources" I don't think we can even have a "rule". The answer to how to present a name really can't be determined by MOS... because that answer has already been determined by what independent sources outside of Wikipedia have done. Blueboar (talk) 01:08, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Caveat: "independent sources" are often media, who are not famous for their accuracy. Use common sense. Even if a majority of careless journos did call the web site "Tumbler" or the phone "Iphone", that wouldn't make them correct; the things are called tumblr (or Tumblr) and iPhone, and no amount of mistakes can change that. On the other hand, obviously (IMHO) one should "avoid using special characters that are not pronounced", as MOS:TMRULES says, hence Macy's not macy^★s. — Stanning (talk) 14:14, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

It isn't about what is "correct"... it's about what is recognizable. Blueboar (talk) 14:30, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

That's very good comment. —BarrelProof (talk) 21:05, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

I think we should include characters accessible from the keyboard. If you have to go through a separate menu, it is probably best to change it to something more common. User:SMcCandlish would probably have a heart attack if he found out that you were encouraging us to follow what journalists do! Use the common, recognisable name/TM unless it affects the 'look' of the page to seem like it is full of hieroglyphs. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 17:05, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

To the contrary, I agree with Blueboar on this (though I think I maintain a clearer line between MoS logic and WP:COMMONNAME logic). If the vast majority of mainstream news sources ignore a trademark stylization, so do we. My issues with news style are style rules for news and public relations writing which are not appropriate in an encyclopedic register. I have no issue with journalists, nor with journalism using journalism style in journalism. (WP is not journalism and not written in news style as a matter of actual policy.) So, things like the journo habit of writing "internet" when that is technically and provably incorrect actually matters here. So does "save space even at the cost of clarity" habits of newswriting, like using "9pm" and "30ft". Same goes for "get attention" tricks that news publishers use like pull quotes, all-caps or smallcaps headlines, and bombastic wording choices ("slain", "gambit", etc.). Not following news style rules and traditions has nothing to do with whether news sources are reliable for facts, including in an internal WP assessment of the WP:RECOGNIZABILITY of a name we use in an article title and for MOS:TM/MOS:CAPS/MOS:TEXT assessment of whether something stylistic about the name's presentation is essential ("iPhone", "DaimlerChrysler") in how the real word treats the name, or is just marketing we can ignore ("macy^★s", "Se7en").

PS: "accessible from the keyboard" vs "from a menu" is a double red herring. That logic would have us eliminate all diacritics and other special characters, and it's also "basic MS Windows user" thinking. People using Mac OS and various flavors of Linux can generate these characters with easily-remembered keystrokes for the common ones, and even Windows has numeric codes for them, meanwhile an array of third-party utilities provide pop-up tools to pick from a list, without having to open a new application like MS Windows's character picker, the name of which I forget). Just follow the sources on this. If high-quality sources use a character and are pretty consistent about it, we do, too. If they don't write "macy^★s", we don't either. (If expediency-driven ones do it to people's names, e.g. dropping of accent marks from the names of people who can be proven to use them, that's out the window, per WP:ABOUTSELF policy. Do not let this discussion turn into another anchor point for jingoistic "down with diacritics" cranks.)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  03:20, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

I do not think that you should be accusing other editors of jingoism ... offensive, inappropriate and totally untrue, at whomever it was aimed. It is not that easy to access the characters on Mac OS. ★ took me five clicks/taps of the keyboard. Then add superscript ... it will take forever. My point is that it is non-standard. What you said about us following the vast majority of journalists would apply to TK Maxx and TJ Hughes, I might add. 9pm and 30ft are the most common styles everywhere, they are taught in education etc. That is not about journalistic space-saving, it has just become the norm as it is seen as part of a thread, or what some would consider a noun phrase. I have got into the habit of spacing times and units, in an attempt to conform to some of the less offensive elements of NHR, but it does feel odd, and—to my surprise—people have actually picked up on it as being anomalous. Anyway, I agree that we should follow the norm, but maintain that it should be instantly-recognisable standard characterisation which is applied. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 14:10, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

The section in question was added without discussion as part of a large series of edits that also affected other content. When I noticed the addition (which took a while), I was concerned that it could easily be misinterpreted to conflict with other longstanding WP:MOS guidance and with many RM outcomes that seemed to have strong consensus, and I raised the issue on the Talk page of the editor who inserted it (SMcCandlish, who seems to be on a Wikibreak at the moment). More recently, it has started to be used to justify positions that are directly contrary to its author's own explained interpretation (an editor with a long track record of participation on such matters). After further discussion in relevant RMs and on its author's Talk page, it seems clear that this added language is not helpful, as it is sometimes being interpreted in a manner contrary to the more longstanding content of the MoS (as well as contrary to what its author intended). It shouldn't have been added, and it should be removed. I don't disagree with any of the specific examples that it provides, but its blanket-style statement of a new principle that can conflict with other longstanding MOS guidance is not appropriate for inclusion. —BarrelProof (talk) 17:20, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

It is not just about what one particular user thinks. Form your own opinions. If the guideline is useful—whether to assist his arguments or not—and sensible, it should stay. Please, also, bring examples of where it has caused problems, other than the one of which I am aware. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 19:58, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

I was indeed on a break, and am still busy. Agreed it's not about what I, in particular, think, though of course I can confirm that the misinterpretation is a misinterpretation (I think this was already obvious).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  04:01, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

Your misinterpreted addition has stimulated a necessary and sensible debate. At least we are talking about something worthwhile. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 14:16, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

I would suggest trying to use clearer wording. The advice is potentially important. While between the time I inserted that language and today, MOS:TM was also updated to include a rule to permit unusual stylization when virtually all the sources are consistent about it (which is the case with things like DaimlerChrysler and iPhone), it's still fairly common for people to misinterpret MoS's rules about plain English as somehow applying to proper names.

Let's be specific about the problem identified with the wording: It's sometimes being misinterpreted as "we must mimic logos", despite MOS:TM being clear that we do not do this. The solution would appear to be to add a sentence or even a clause reminding that we do not do this. Part of the issue here is that people not steeped in intellectual property law generally have a very dim (if any) understanding of the difference between copyright, patent, and trademark, and within the latter of graphical logo trademarks, wordmarks, servicemarks, and official corporate designations, and between asserted trademarks, registered trademarks, and strong marks, among other subtopics. This leads to a false assumption that "what I think I see in the logo is exactly what WP has to use", and we need to write around that perception problem, without getting specific about the legal minutiae.

The furthest thing from the intent of the original wording was a conflict with the provisions in MOS:TM (and MOS:CAPS, MOS:TEXT, etc.) against doing "cutesy style crap" to mimic tradmark presentation (hell, I have a reputation as an "enforcer" against doing that, much to the chagrin of many). As the included examples should have made clear, it's just to prevent people doing things like rewriting CraigsList as "Craig's List" to suit their personal notion of "correct" English or to over-apply an MoS rule.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:54, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

' "we must mimic logos" ': this can be solved by focussing on the actual trademark. These problems would not arise if editors looked into how the company writes the TM in plain text (using what I would call 'keyboard characters'). Things like HHGregg should not be changed to H. H. Gregg. The TM is hhgregg, adding caps for clarity, when it is clear that that is what people tend to do (from a simple google search, we may see this), is harmless. It does not change the style. This guideline is useful here, and asks for the implementation of common sense. Therefore, it should stay. BP, I am still waiting for your real examples ... –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 03:07, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

Generally agreed, modulo my comment above. PS, a meta-comment about this thread and many like it: things like "An editor (User:BarrelProof) recently removed User:SMcCandlish's addition ..." are unhelpful and polarizing. Every single thing on WP was written by someone; who wrote it isn't what matters, especially when the material in question has been in a major and heavily watchlisted guideline for a long time. If it has, it's part of the Wikipedia gestalt and should be addressed as such, not as a he-said-she-said matter.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  03:21, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

That was included as the other editor (BP) mentioned it, and tried to suggest that it should be removed due to the fact that you did not seek consensus to apply it. It was a way of bringing the two of you into the discussion, rather than suggesting that one editor had done something wrong. Personally, I believe that it is slightly hypocritical to remove something without discussion, just because it has inconvenienced an editor once, when justification if that is was not discussed when applied. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 13:59, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

Could we please skip the usual "You didn't discuss this" vs "Bold edits are allowed" arguments... we are discussing it now. That's what matters. It does not matter whether some bit of language is "long standing" because consensus can change. The question we need to ask is: has it changed or not?. This discussion will clarify that. Blueboar (talk) 14:13, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

Agreed that is the central question, but it does actually matter whether language is long-standing, because consensus is presumed not to have changed absent a clear showing that it has. Otherwise our entire consensus system would collapse.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:42, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

My point was that you cannot remove something because it was not discussed without having discussed it. I was responding to another editor, anyway—directly addressing their concerns.The rest of your contribution is—forgive me—incomprehensible. I do not understand what you are trying to say. There never was a consensus, if that is to what you are referring. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 14:23, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

The thing is that we already had guidance in MOS:TM and WP:TITLETM saying that we should choose among the styles used in independent reliable sources, and if independent reliable sources are consistent in the styling, then an unusual styling is acceptable. We didn't need this additional passage to say that. Aside from being apparently unnecessary, there are two things I find especially problematic about the new language: 1) It says "do not 'correct' the styling" ever, instead of just saying not to "correct" it to be different from what is found in sources. 2) It says to choose among styles when it is "marketed in more than one way with conflicting style" (emphasis added). Properly, we don't care how something is marketed. We ordinarily specifically reject the idea that marketing should affect our styling. —BarrelProof (talk) 21:05, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

The idea that we should go on what the majority of sources say is important. It is all very well changing the guideline, but editors need to understand that several factors need to be considered—the company's name/TM and whether this is readable (if it is, we should not change it); what the majority of sources (including style guides) outside of WP write; and whether there may be ambiguity caused by changing it to something other than the company's actual registered trade mark or name. I see no reason why we should alter styles away from the real name if they are easy-to-understand and supported by external sources.

I feel that we should be emphasising that we should only be altering the name or trade mark to what the MoS advises (eg MOS:INITIALS) if it is clear that the company's own style is unusual to see outside of their own branding/promotional material.

Additionally, the guidelines for the title of a page need desperate review. We cannot have a situation where we are told not to change stylisation in one guideline, but to make it 'better' in another. This leads to conflict in which MoS sections editors should be following. The same, sensible do-not-change strategy needs to be applied to titles as well. We should not be the ones to decide how to style a company's name. I will present an argument such as this at TK Maxx's talk page. We need to see some sort of consensus here first, though. In the meantime, does anyone know how to stop a closer from coming along before we know what the MoS will advise. This would result in us having to re-run the RM. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 22:24, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

Our MoS has never said to follow a mere majority of sources. Wikipedia has a house style. —BarrelProof (talk) 22:45, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

It is vital that we think about whether it is important to think about presenting accurate information, or following our own style guide. I think—and am sure you will, too—that we should be giving reliable information. People trust Wikipedia. I know that there is a reputation for us being unsourced and one person's opinion, but if someone does not know something, they come to us. Why would we want to give untrue information. It is not up to us to alter a company's name to something unseen in the real world. This defeats the point of the project: easily accessible, accurate and well-sourced information.

I understand why all names (people, that is) should keep to our MoS' guidelines. This makes complete sense. In the same say, though, the MoS actually says that we should write a name without its stylisation applied if the person has expressed a preference for something else, or if they are known in a certain way. This is things like dropping full stops for initials.

Overall, it seems to me that the counter-arguments (to following real sources/the company's own styling) presented have been based on loyalty to the MoS. This is rather vague, so it will need drastically improving in certain areas if you are going to throw that argument at us. Trade marks are not the same as names. They are well-known to 'look' a certain way. It is our duty to present something familiar to the reader. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 01:08, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

• Following some research, it is incredibly rare for style guides for any sort of publication to alter trade marks. Even the Guardian, which is well-known for its next to non-existent featuring of full stops in abbreviations, does not remove them, eg 'E.ON'. It also writes some acronyms in caps, again, something which it would not normally encourage, eg 'TED' and the 'E.ON' example given previously. Other style guides do not dare to touch trade marks and company names. They recognise that it is not up to an editor/publisher to change what is a legally-standing registration.

I concur with BarrelProof's analysis of the wording issues (at "The thing is that we already had guidance in MOS:TM and WP:TITLETM saying ..." above). However, I don't agree with the broader implication that MoS shouldn't have self-reinforcing statements in multiple pages. We have a frequent problem of people trying to WP:LAWYER around a general principle because of the section it is found in. The main cure for this is to insert the principle into multiple applicable contexts until it is absorbed as a general one.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:42, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Why should our MoS offer different advice? When even the most stuck-in-their-ways style guides do not implement their own style against a company's TM/name, it seems that it would be—forgive me—stupid to deviate from this trend. All other journalistic style guides and NHR leave them as they are, so these very well-considered guides must reflect an internal consensus not to be bigoted enough to think their own personal stylistic requirements should outweigh the company's own. When non-standard characters are 'imitating' apostrophes, full stops, etc in a trade mark (NB, not a logo), they are replaced by the character as which the company wants them to function. This eliminates any potential problems with switching typeface. I think that this seems a reasonable logic to bring into our own MoS.

Overall, it seems that we should not title a page/include in a page an altered/corrected/brought-into-our-own-style version of a TM/name. This follows what major style guides do, including those from both the UK and US. I am not going to bother quoting/citing them all—unless, of course, you will not simply take my word for it, when I will re-source everything—as I see this as no benefit. It is not something upon ourselves we should take to change such functioning branding devices. Following the example set by other stylistic guidance publications seems like the only sensible way forwards. Please inform e of any objections to this. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 19:28, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

It sounds like you are suggesting to abandon the idea of a house style for Wikipedia for company names, trademarks, and trade names in general, and accepting most of the examples of what not to do that are currently given in the guideline ("The PLAYERS Championship", "TIME", "KISS", "REALTOR", "skate.", "[ yellow tail ]", "Gulf+Western", "thirtysomething"). Yes, I do object to that, and I am rather skeptical of the idea that high-quality reliable sources have generally abandoned all attempts at establishing a house style that differs from the way "the company wants them to function". —BarrelProof (talk) 22:33, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Not at all; it is unlikely that the out-of-the-ordinary styling of these names is not carried through by the company themselves on their websites etc. If it is, we can start looking at what independent sources do. NB, I have no problem (nor do most style guides) with one playing around with caps. When adding/removing some would improve readability, I think that we should go for it. It is when one starts adding spaces and full stops, and adding non-existent apostrophes that I think we are going too far. All of the above examples can be fixed by caps (except 'Gulf+Western': there are two options here; leave it as it is because it is readable; the second is to change the '+' to an 'and', because it is clear that the company's intention was for it to be read like this): 'The Players Championship'; 'Time'; 'Kiss'; 'Relator'; 'Skate.' (yes, the full stop should stay); 'ThirtySomething'. Italics may be removed, also, as shown in these examples. Do not add or remove punctuation, unless it may be replaced by something with the same impact on the reader (replacing *s with 's, changing &s to ands, etc). We would need to write some clear guidelines, but of course it is a long way from that yet. I feel that I have not fully convinced you. I will be very happy to explain it more fully, and even draft some MoS guidelines for you to review. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 11:31, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Just a quick comment... I don't think Sb2001 is suggesting that we should abandon the idea of having a house style... what he/she is suggesting is that we should change our existing house style (substituting it with a new house style). Whether we approve of Sb's suggestion or not, we would still have a house style. Blueboar (talk) 11:59, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Completely: thank you for clarifying this User:Blueboar. This is about inserting a new, more reflective of real-world style section to the MoS. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 19:43, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

BTW... I still prefer "follow the independent sources" as our house style... but I understand what you are trying to say. Blueboar (talk) 20:54, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

I'm with BarrelProof on this material, too. The problem here is that SB is suggesting first seeing if the company is consistent in its own materials; if and only if they are not, then seeing what independent RS are doing. This is bassakwards, per WP:COMMONNAME, and MOS:TM, and WP:OFFICIALNAME, WP:INDY, etc. The one and only one consensus point in favor of such an idea is WP:ABOUTSELF, which mostly only applies to individual bios, though can also be used for objective but uncontroversial facts about an organization (e.g. date and location of founding from their own "about us" page). Even then it would be trumped by reliable sources that contradict it.

Blueboar's other-extreme proposal (i.e., replace our style guide with just "follow what the sources are doing"), however, would reduce our current loose standard of going along with an unusual stylization only if the overwhelming majority of independent RS do so, with a new of approach of going along with it even if just a slight majority do so. I'm firmly against such a change, because it would open a floodgate of "exception demands" based on cherry-picked sourcing, and thus an interminable number of "style fights" at WP:RM – probably an order of magnitude more than we have already – and elsewhere. It would also directly encourage undisclosed COI, and other PoV pushing. If all it takes to insert a marketing stylization as the WP article title and in-text usage is a few people dumping hand-selected sources in large quantities, when few other editors will GaF enough to refute them with better sourcing, we would have a serious problem. Hell, we already have this problem in many topic areas with intense camps of interest. So, it's just not a productive direction. We're way better off avoiding all stylization of names/labels that the real world does not tell us is necessary, whether it's with regard to trademarks, italics, capital letters, or whatever. There's also a general logic flaw here, one I've written about extensively: Reliable sources for facts about a topic are not the most reliable sources for how WP should best write about that or any other subject for a general audience; this is most especially true of news journalism, which has its own (fairly but not entirely internally consistent) style regime, driven by space-saving demands, expediency, and reader psychological manipulation. The reliable sources, to the extent there are any, for how WP should write for its audience are mainstream, general-audience, well-regarded style guides for a somewhat formal register, and MoS is already based on them. They also do not ape trademark stylization; it's not like we made that up.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:42, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

I think that we should certainly keep this as a 'fall-back' option. If the company itself is inconsistent, or we can find no information on their website/in their branding, we should follow sources from elsewhere. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 21:40, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

But why would Wikipedia favor what one company wants if the majority of independent sources use something different? Blueboar (talk) 23:18, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Because this could have been doctored by their style guide. If they improve readability etc of it, then yes—we should look at following their lead. The chances are that independent sources will go with what the company used, just usually turned into plain text. If not, then we should consider having the guideline say something along the lines of 'use the company's styling, unless independent sources consistently use something different' (though, slightly better written ...). I do not want to reject your idea, as I completely understand it, and like it (borderline WP:ILIKEIT!). The two cannot work together, and I happen to be more tempted towards the more official company-oriented version. That is where we require consensus. I fear nothing will happen at this rate. This is where we need an interjection from User:SMcCandlish and other MoS regulars. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 00:51, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

In striving to be an reliable source of objective information (without promotional "spin"), Wikipedia generally prefers sources of information that are independent of the topics it discusses. —BarrelProof (talk) 03:18, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

This would generally only apply if we were following the company's logo, as this is where they apply the fancy marketing. Plain text, as seen on their website, will likely remove all of this. We then have the choice of whether we do a total cleanup, eg skate. → Skate (no italics, cap start of word, remove full stop), or we keep do not alter the punctuation, eg 'Skate'. But—as I said—if independent sources tend all to have a different stylisation to as what our 'clean' version comes out, and they are all the same, we should give strong consideration to following those instead. This is possibly where a talk page discussion would be necessary. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 13:52, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

"Plain text, as seen on their website, will likely remove all of this [styling]." Except if often doesn't.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:42, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Personally, I prefer treating "cleanup" as the default option rather than only a fallback position for exceptional circumstances. I sometimes find it really irritating when I get the impression that some marketing department is using cheap typographical and naming gimmicks to try to make their product seem hip or stand out from the crowd. —BarrelProof (talk) 19:20, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

User:BarrelProof: to clarify; you would like to go with what the company does, but make it more 'readable' and remove the branding which is there to make them stand out, eg 'Skate', 'HHGregg' and 'Yellow Tail'? Or, do you mean that we should bring things into our own MoS, and guess at the topic, eg 'H. H. Gregg'? –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 20:16, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

I think we should pay more attention to independent reliable sources and our own styling guidelines than to self-published content from a topic's promoters. —BarrelProof (talk) 20:40, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Yes, we already have policies about that, so all this "change the guidelines to do something conflicting" wishful thinking is a waste of time.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:42, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

It is not about that at all. The point of this discussion is that there is no clarity in guidelines, anyway—editors do not pay attention to independent sources. 'T. J. Hughes' and 'H. H. Gregg' show more attention is given to MOS:INITIALS than external sources, of which very few (in TJH's case, none) add spaces and points.

–Sb2001 ^{talk page} 14:41, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

I know that this discussion is weeks old at this point, and I'm leery about resurrecting it. However, i just want to note that the comment that "it is incredibly rare for style guides for any sort of publication to alter trade marks" is simply untrue. In my experience, what tends to happen is that someone comes here looking to change the guideline because Wikipedia doesn't use a weird style for some brand the editor likes. Then, if you check the style that publications like the NY Times or AP use for that particular brand, it's the same one Wikipedia uses. Publications that care about matters of style really don't have a lot of interest in, say, companies that use regular English words but SHOUT them (Time Magazine, PGA Tour, and so forth). Croctotheface (talk) 13:24, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

Which is why I am suggesting that we 'strip' TMs of their eccentric branding, eg unnecessary caps, but do not try to reformat them into our own style—so do not 'correct' grammar, punctuation, etc, or add full points/apostrophes which are not already there. We seem to be about the only style guide to suggest that trade marks should be changed in any sort of drastic way: people use the MoS to argue that 'hhgregg' should by stylised as 'H. H. Gregg', which makes little sense. We could add some caps, to make it clearer ('HHGregg')—which is what most independent sources who do change it opt to do—but we should not be placing spaces and points. There needs to be a limit to what we do. There are all sorts of other examples further up the thread. BTW, do not assert that things are 'simply untrue'. Your following fragment, 'In my experience' suggests that you are not certain about what you are saying. That comment was based on the result of research.

–Sb2001 ^{talk page} 14:41, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

If you conducted a controlled, empirical study on how editors interact with this part of the MOS, I'd be very interested to see it. Beyond that, I can see why you got a little piqued at part of what I said, and I understand if your experience has been different from mine. As a general rule, I'm in favor of doing what major publications that care about style do. The concern I have with proposals that take some form of "follow the majority of sources" is that editors who would favor, say, "hhgregg" would then post a dozen links to link aggregators or sources that reprint press releases verbatim and argue that they constitute a majority. Also, the guideline is clear that we do not invent our own styles if they don't exist in publications, so there's already language in the guideline to rebut the issues you've been running into. But we do have our own style guide, and that's quite legitimate. Croctotheface (talk) 15:01, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Use of "stylized" in lead

Hello, There is a discussion over on Talk:Epyc#EPYC or Epyc? over the application of the MOS to a particular product page that might be of interest to editors here. It is over a recent edit which removed the "stylized as" from the lead. (I will leave it at that to keep this post neutral.) If additional editors who have particular expertise/interest in the MOS would contribute, that might help with the discussion. Thanks! Dbsseven (talk) 14:53, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Filibustered RM discussion

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Somehow, Talk:Tyler, The Creator#Requested move 17 October 2017 has failed to come to a numeric consensus (even if the policy one is clear), despite being relisted once already. This should not be allowed to close as "no consensus" since it would lend a false sense of controversy and inspire further re-litigation about capital letters in pop-culture topics (already too much of a source of style-related dispute as it is).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  04:12, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

SmC: come on mate, you know you need to make these notifications neutral and this isn't even close. Jenks24 (talk) 01:57, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

I did not state what the clear policy consensus was, only that one can be detected. Didn't suggest any pro or con, only that "no consensus" would be a bad result that would inspire further re-litigation. Plenty neutral. Expressing the opinion that a clear outcome being reached is important isn't advocating a particular outcome.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  02:29, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

Question about capitalization rules

I would like to ask for detailed explanation of the following part of the manual: Follow standard English text formatting and capitalization practices, even if the trademark owner considers nonstandard formatting "official", as long as this is a style already in widespread use, rather than inventing a new one.

Does it mean that capitalization of trademarks should always follow standard English capitalization rules or should the editor always search what the usage of the trademark is and then decide? Thank you! ---Jan Kameníček (talk) 18:35, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

@Jan.Kamenicek: I take it to mean that you should check reliable sources: if they follow a non-sentence case formatting, then don't invent a new capitalisation just to try to make it to fit standard formatting conventions (e.g. eBay not Ebay). That said, it's not very clear: can you suggest a better wording for this? ‑‑Yodin^T 15:33, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

I'd rather leave the wording to native speakers. However, another unclear thing is what to do with names which are not mentioned by reliable independent sources. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 17:46, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Can you give an example? Surely in order to pass WP:GNG it would have to be mentioned in multiple RSes? If it's say a product of a company, then maybe it isn't notable enough to be mentioned even in the company's article. ‑‑Yodin^T 09:42, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Indicating stylizations

Could I suggest that this section be expanded (with discussion) for further clarification on when not to include "stylized". I've noticed a trend to include this on an increasing number of articles to the point of madness -- e.g. there have been repeated attempts to add this to Netflix (that it is stylised as "NETFLIX"), which to me anyway, is out of step with common sense -- Netflix does not even use "NETFLIX" itself in normal text -- all caps appears only in its own logo. Or cases (I can't remember the exact article) with a stylised tag for an album, because on the cover, the A appeared without the lower descenders i.e. if the article was called "A" it said it was stylised as "△" even though the artist in question never used this in text -- it was quite literally just a stylised font. In normal written text, even first party sources simply used "A" (as I said I can't remember what the article was unfortunately). I know this is just the MoS for trademarks, but would anyone have any opinions on some further restriction, that (for instance) at the very least first-party sources should use this stylisation in prose for it to be relevant enough to be included? This seems like common sense to me, and the vast majority of trademarks where we include this already meet this criterion anyway, but it would help to prevent a clutter of useless information that just describes the logo, if there were some identifiable policy that precludes including "stylisation" information where it's just mimicking an image, and has never been used in prose, even by the first party. Another offender in my opinion is Visa, Inc.: while I believe Visa did formerly use all caps for their own name, they no longer do this; it's just their logo. This sort of contrasts with Mastercard -- it's former stylisation statement is correct, as Mastercard did indeed use "MasterCard" in prose. However, since they updated the logo to the current one, they have always "Mastercard" in prose, except in the logo itself. - Estoy Aquí (talk) 20:13, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Another RM to check out

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Talk:Moe (band)#Requested move 20 June 2018.
The proposal is to move the article to moe. to match the logo stylization. At issue is the interpretation of some specific wording in MOS:TMRULES, and whether this case counts as "a k.d. lang exception", or is "just another Gangsta. → Gangsta (manga) case".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:40, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Spell out advice on avoiding yet-to-be-generic trademark names?

A question raised at VPP showed that MOS:TM does not discuss the issue of generic trademarks. List of generic and genericized trademarks. It would seem that we should follow the AP Guidelines that says, when dealing with a word that may seem but is not definitively a generic trademark, we should "use a generic equivalent unless the trademark is essential to the story". EG the case at VPP involves the trademark on the word "Velcro", which is not generic regardless how many people call it that. --Masem (t) 04:20, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

We do need to address this. I've tried several times in the past at various venues here. The problem is that a whole lot of non-lawyers think they know what "generic[ized] trademark" means and they're wrong. A trademark isn't generic until a court of competent jurisdiction says it is. We're doing a legal/ethical wrong when we treat non-generic trademarks as genericized just because some people "out there" do it. Aspirin is a genericized trademark; Band-Aid, Frisbee, and Velcro are not. These terms should be redirects to articles with neutral, descriptive titles. We need to remember that WP:COMMONNAME is not one of the article title criteria at all; it's simply the default name to first test against the actual criteria and against other policy concerns. If it fails any of them, we should and do use another name.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:57, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

I agree that we need some guidance on this... but I would not use Velcro as the example. It is too close to being a generic, and using it would be confusing to the average reader. Blueboar (talk) 12:36, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Masem I understand and largely sympathize with your points, but I don't think waiting for a court ruling is a viable answer here. A company can simply and permanently avoid any court case which would issue a ruling on a de facto genericized term. Core to our public service mission is ensuring that people can easily find the article they are looking for. I expect approximately 100% of people who type in "velcro" are actually looking for the article at hook-and-loop. Some of those people won't find their way to the right article.

Regarding COMMONNAME is not one of the article title criteria, that's a wikilawyer argument. (Pardon the lawyer pun.) COMMONNAME is a core section of the Article titles policy, and it is virtually synonymous the "Recognizability" and "Naturalness" criteria.

Blueboar if we use any examples at all, I don't see how we can avoid using something like velco as an example. We don't need guidance on Aspirin or Ferrari. The entire point is guidance on how to handle cases which the common-public view as de facto generic. Alsee (talk) 14:28, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

Except it's emphatically not a wikilawyering comment; what I said about it makes it clear why, though I'll re-explain it more detail here. It's important, because confusion that COMMONNAME (a.k.a. WP:UCRN) either is one of the criteria or (I kid you not) chief among them or trumping all of them, is an exceedingly common error in WP:RM discussions, and even some (usually non-admin) closers at RM make this error, leading either to re-RMs later, or to move reviews, and other WP:DRAMA that we don't need. We have five criteria, and if at all possible, a title here must satisfy all of them, and also comply with various other policies (especially neutral point of view if it is a descriptive title of our own devising, which will often be built around the most common term). We fairly often do not use the most common name, but close second that better fits the criteria in total, but your misunderstanding of UCRN would have us never do that. The distinction matters, and it ain't wikilawyering.

We could actually avoid a lot of confusion about this, if we just rewrote UCRN to be clearer about what it is and means in relation to the criteria. But trying to get clarifications into WP:AT policy is like trying to pull teeth, from a wolverine. Regardless, we really need to do something about the "fetishization" of UCRN, because it wastes far too much editorial time, and over something that ultimately isn't very important – we have redirects and MOS:BOLDSYN for a reason. The idea that readers' heads are going to explode on contact with an article at the second or third most common name is silly; for any given case there is always some subset of readers and reader-editors for whom the global most common name is the most familiar name for them, yet they do not lose their shit over it (with very rare exception, which fall under WP:GREATWRONGS, WP:TRUTH, WP:NOT#ADVOCACY, etc.).
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:38, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

One thing in describing this issue elsewhere is that I cannot find a list from any government or similarly authoritative source from a judicial agency that affirms what markers are generic. (I would not us WP's list, nor other various lists you can find on "interesting" sites.) We might need to make a list that exists on WP:/MOS: space that has specific reference to legal cases where the mark was determined that way, to be the whitelist of terms that are okay to use, and a separate list for things that are not yet generic. --Masem (t) 17:15, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

IANAL, but I worked with intellectual property lawyers (and civil liberties ones) for about a decade and did a lot of policy and case analysis with them. I have a strong suspicion that trying to take that approach could actually create liability for WMF (of at least the "anyone can file a nuisance lawsuit, whether they'd really win or not" variety), given that a decision of genericization is going to be particular to a limited jurisdiction, and decisions can be overturned, and they can be mis-read, and [etc.] that could easily lead us to mis-report something as genericized. The safest approach is to declare a general "presume and write the safest claim" default, the way with do with BLP matters and some others. A list of genericized marks might be thousands of items long, and would basically have to be a database (at least a spreadsheet) with jurisdictions, notes about what level in the legal system the decision is at, footnotes about legal definitions, etc., etc. It would be a big OR exercise. Shouldn't we simply not claim something's a genericized trademark unless reliable sources (reliable on trademark-law matters in particular) say so?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:57, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

I think we may be getting hung up on the definition of "generic". Some are using the legal definition, but other comments here are not. Perhaps another word? Blueboar (talk) 18:08, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

I agree that discussions here are confusing the ideas, but the guideline wording need not, since we can be precise and link to stuff as needed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:41, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

Minor clarification to avoid interpretational conflict between MOS:TM and WP:TITLETM

There was a lot of wikilawyering at an WP:RM discussion recently. We seem to have a minor interpretational conflict here, but one likely to be recurrent:

• MOS:TM says, in part, "Trademarks include words ... used by ... individuals to identify themselves", which could include stage names and the like (though it doesn't say so specifically). The purpose of this inclusion is to prevent people trying to claim that so-and-so professional pseudonym isn't technically a trademark, and thus can be stylized a crazy way to mimic a logo, against what this guideline says.
• MOS:CAPS is similarly restrictive about abusing over-capitalization to mimic marketing stylization.
• WP:AT, at WP:TITLETM – which explicitly defers to MOS:TRADEMARKS as the main page on this – says "Article titles follow standard English text formatting in the case of trademarks, unless the trademarked spelling is demonstrably the most common usage in sources independent of the owner of the trademark." This is a different, less expansive (very legal) definition of trademark, meaning specifically commercial, organizational, product, and service logos and wordmarks. It is not about stagenames, monickers applied to social movements, etc. (otherwise a whole big bunch of articles would be renamed). It is, rather, the rule (already accounted for at MOS:TM and MOS:CAPS) that permits "iPod" and "eBay", which pretty much no one ever writes as "Ipod" and "Ebay" or (except at the beginning of a sentence) "IPod" and "EBay".

The AT rule was never intended as "hidden hatch" for evading MOS:TM and MOS:CAPS, to force WP editors to over-stylize stage names and other things. MOS:TM doesn't exist so that it can be ignored by "preferring" a tortured personal re-interpretation of WP:TITLETM instead. The alleged conflict between them is simply illusory. It's not even rational to try to use part of MOS:TM to reinterpret WP:TITLETM in a novel way while simultaneously claiming MOS:TM isn't applicable. But that's exactly what was attempted at RM recently (see "Extended discussion" section below), and will likely be trotted out again.

Our general interpretation of WP:COMMONAME and MOS:TM (and WP:TITLETM, which is specifically about spelling, not other style matters) is that we do not re-spell trademarks to match some sense of "better English", but we also do not do font trickery to mimic logos and otherwise engage in stylization that is not necessary for the name to be WP:RECOGNIZABLE. As in everything we do here, there's a sensible balance. Thus, we have an article about Flickr and did not respell it "Flicker", but we do not write "macy's" or "SONY" or "Alien³".

I've proposed something specific below, though am open to other ideas, and to revision of this one.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:50, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Specific proposal

Change MOS:TM's lead sentence from this:

Trademarks include words and short phrases used by organizations and individuals to identify themselves and their products and services.

To this:

Trademarks include words and short phrases used to identify legal entities and their products and services.

And then close the lead section with the following addition, including a technical footnote:

The advice in this page also applies to names and phrases used to identify individuals, movements, groups, forums, projects, events, and other non-commercial entities and their output.
[... the rest of the page content untouched ...]
==Notes==

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:50, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Comments

• Support as proposer. The confusion/gaming issue does need to be resolved. Doing it this way will be more expedient than trying to clarify the policy wording, since people are apt to argue 10× longer about policy than guideline wording, and it's more sensible to say "this guideline isn't rewriting policy" than to go rewrite the policy to better agree with the guideline's terminology.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:50, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
• I'm not sure what sort of concrete effect this would have, and therefore whether it is worth bothering with. What discussions do you think would be affected by such a change? bd2412 T 21:50, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

  See "Extended discussion" section below.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:45, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

• Support. Looks like a useful clarification and wikilawyering-nip. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:51, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose the MOS does not dictate the the WP:AT policy. This has been debated many times, and rejected many times, because AT policy defers to user in reliable sources, while the MOS is a set of style guidelines about the content of a page imposed often in debates like this where it appears only two other people have participated. It is factually incorrect to state as SMcCandlish has done that "WP:TITLETM – which explicitly defers to MOS:TRADEMARKS", what is in the policy is "Further information:". Further information is to what may be useful guidance, that may (or may not) be relevant, the policy is not "defer[ing]" to a MOS sub-page that can be changed on a whim. The place to debate any clashes and to fix any problems is on the AT talk page and then fix the section WP:TITLETM. Putting phrases in to the MOS that impinge on article titles is not the way to solve "minor interpretational conflict", instead either discuss on WT:AT adding additional wording to the AT policy, or create a naming convention to cover it (and an RfC on WT:AT to have it accepted). -- PBS (talk) 21:09, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

  @PBS: That response is mistaking the entire rationale and turning it 180 degrees. This is a discussion about WP editorial consensus resolving an interpretational dispute that is actually illusory, by adjusting some wording to be clearer. It has nothing to do with guideline text "dictating" policy text. Let me repeat: 'it's more sensible to say "this guideline isn't rewriting policy" than to go rewrite the policy to better agree with the guideline's terminology.' Your reasoning above strongly suggests you should be supporting this not opposing it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:33, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

  Additional commentary moved to the "Extended discussion" section.

• Mildly exapserated support It's annoying that we need to go into this much detail, but if we do we do. The change seems pefectly sensible on its merits, and likely to resolve such controversies in future. Tamwin (talk) 01:44, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
• I suggest this be closed as confusing/malformed/NOQUORUM/noconsensus. Other than the original poster, this currently has 2 support, 1 oppose, and 2 people (bd2412 and myself) expressing difficulty with RFC-as-posted. (2 out of 5 = 40% saying the RFC is unclear.) Note that I raised this concern just a few hours after the RFC was posted,[1] with no improvement to the confusing proposal. If I am understanding this correctly, it appears to imply that Wikipedia should disregard COMMONNAME in regards to capitalization. However we have article Charles de Gaulle (somewhere near 100% lowercase 'd' in reliable sources), and article Robert De Niro (somewhere near 100% capital 'D' in reliable sources). If I understand this correctly, this intends to resolve an in-progress article-title dispute against a COMMONNAME as it is written in 97.3% of Google News hits. I'm still trying to digest this issue. Alsee (talk) 14:21, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

  Except the "difficulties" have already been addressed, and appear to be illusory or "meta-" at best, about form not function (of the discussion). One of you asked for material in the extended discussion section to be front-loaded into the RfC, which I declined for "TL;DR" reasons. The other was a request for an example, of the kind already provided in that same material.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:03, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

• A month later, no one seems to object to clarifying that MOS:TM can't be evaded just because the entity in question isn't literally an organization or an individual, but might be a project, a duo, a social movement, a forum, or whatever. So I've implemented that part. The suggested footnote about the MoS wording versus "trademarked spelling" at WP:Article titles#Standard English and trademarks seemed to confuse two respondents, so let's leave it out and see if this by itself is sufficient. If people still can't wrap their heads around the fact that there is no WP:POLICYFORK between WP:AT and MOS:TM, then we can revisit including some kind of footnote, or doing some other kind of clarification later. No big hurry, after all.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:50, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

Extended discussion

The Kshmr case is interesting. It's not an acronym, but a stylization (in multiple ways) of "Kashmir". The problem that came up at the requested move (and now at move review) is that fans of writing "KSHMR" (the logo stylization, and also common in American entertainment journalism which often mimics logos in ways WP does not, while "Kshmr" is found in various mostly non-US and non-entertainment sources) were trying to play WP:TITLETM and MOS:TM off each other, in ways that fail basic logic. The idea was to say that MOS:TM is invalid in this case because WP:TITLETM – if and only if re-interpreted under much broader definitions and scope provided by MOS:TM! – says something more permissive [it actually doesn't] and is a policy while MOS:TM is "just a guideline". Even children understand that this kind of pseudo-reasoning doesn't work. (If Daddy says "Do what you mother tells you" generally, and you later ask whether you can get a puppy, and Daddy says "no", then you ask Mommy separately and she says "yes", Daddy's still going to be upset with you if you say "But you told me to do what Mommy says".)

While the invalidity of this "make our policypages fight each other until I get what I want" tactic is covered in the abstract at WP:GAMING, and the invalidity of "the page I like better trumps the page you cited" interpretation of what policies and guidelines are and how they relate to each other (hint: it's not a contest, and if you think they're in conflict, you're just reading them wrong) is covered at WP:POLICY, it is likely to continue happening for similar cases if we don't tighten up the wording in one or both places. The bare fact of the matter is that the average RM respondent (and RM closer for that matter), hasn't studied the interplay of these policies and guidelines in any real depth, and many of the respondents are looking for any excuse to get a WP:ILIKEIT result that suits their personal preferences.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:50, 28 May 2018 (UTC); updated with MR link: 00:47, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, I suggest you add an example at or near the top of the question. I understand you were trying to write the question in a general manner, but this runs through a rather non-trivial string of relations between policies and guidelines. It was hard to follow what the question was asking without an example to tie together the string of policy and guideline points. I think I get it now, but I feel I'd have to re-read from the start before competently commenting. Alsee (talk) 09:12, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

It's a general matter. I'm presenting the Kshmr/KSHMR dispute as a case in point. It seems to make more sense to do that in this section than dump another paragraph or two into the front matter.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:44, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

• You words "explicitly defers". -- PBS (talk) 10:50, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

  That's not a sentence, so I'm not certain what you're getting at. What I'm getting at is that WP:AT (not counting its "See also" section) has hatnotes and cross-references to MoS throughout, as the pages for more information on the style matters, in at least four places; the naming conventions guidelines and other AT supplements have dozens more. This is entirely normal and to be expected. These WP:P&G pages are all designed to work together, and they do so. The point of MoS is to centralize the style material; the point of the NC pages is to centralize the page-title-specific concerns without rehashing every style matter that could come up (and we want titles and prose to be consistent); the point of AT is the codify in formal policy the very small number of things that the community feels rise to policy level with regard to article titles due to a history of disruption in the absence of those policy line items. There seem to be about half a dozen people on Wikipedia who misperceive an Eternal Death Struggle(TM) between AT/NC and MoS, but it's just patent nonsense. There is no cabal, much less two at war with each other; the editorial pools of all these pages have extensive overlap and are not in conflict with each other. Actual conflict happens at RM, when PoV-pushing blowhards (often with a CoI) willfully misinterpret one or more of them to try to WP:GAME their way into an anti-consensus result, like over-capitalizing something to match a logo stylization. The reason we're here in this thread right now is that this happens again and again and again, but the fix is obvious. The clear solution is to tweak the wording to short-circuit this attempt at finding an exploitable loophole (which doesn't really exist, but the pursuit of which wastes a tremendous amount of our time, day after day, year after year).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:22, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

The problem is that in the case of KSHMR we can’t dismiss it as “just a logo stylization”... since the vast majority of reliable independent sources use the all capitalized version in running text when discussing the artist. Even sources that tend to avoid over capitalization use the all caps version in that case. I think this is a key distinction. It isn’t a question of Logo stylization, but of usage that is independent of that Logo.

I would apply this principle to any trademark or stage name. We don’t care what the artist uses... but we do (or should) care what independent sources use. The independent sources indicate when we should make an exception to our normally very sound MOS style guidance. Blueboar (talk) 12:50, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Yet some RS don't do it. It took me only a few seconds to find multiple examples, which I mentioned at the RM; I could have included more, but the point was made. The RM closed with a consensus against KSHMR. WT:MOSTM (nor WT:AT for that matter) isn't a place to second-guess and relitigate that. The point of this thread is to sew up a P&G wording issue that is confusing various (though a small number of) editors into repeatedly asserting some kind battle between AT (and/or a naming conventions page) and the MOS. This "policywar" is a ridiculous illusion, perceived only to those who want there to be a conflict, so they can hopefully WP:WIN it in favor of mimicry of logos. As for Kshmr, yes it's an edge case. So what? There will always be edge cases anywhere an edge exists. Another fact about edges is that isn't possible make 100% of parties 100% satisfied with exactly what cases are on one side of the edge versus the other at the end of the discussion. This is not a problem or an emergency, it's entirely normal and expected. Our system is not broken. We just have a tiny wording clarity problem to resolve so that people stop pretending desperately that it's broken in hopes of getting a fannish result that they want, if only they stamp their feet loud enough.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:54, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

What about fictional "trademarks"?

This guideline does not address use of the "TM" symbol (or others, including (R), etc.) in fictional contexts; specifically, I'm thinking of comedy groups such as the Firesign Theatre which sometimes would print this or a similar symbol over fictional "trademarks" that they created in liner notes for their records. As these are not actually legal trademarks, I would think use of the symbol is actually illegal, and certainly defeats the symbol's intended purpose of identifying legal trademarks. Therefore:

• Aren't Wikipedia editors who uncritically copy this "TM" from the liner notes into Wikipedia articles, doing something improper (and actually breaking the law)?
• Shouldn't this guideline have a section addressing non-use of the marks for bogus "trademarks" in fiction?

Please comment on what Wikipedia policy should be. JustinTime55 (talk) 18:11, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

There is no law that is broken by writing descriptive text including a "TM" symbol. The law is only broken when someone tries to actually sell a product under a non-registered name with a false indication of it being a registered name. bd2412 T 21:47, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

I apparently failed to make my question clear enough. I'm not a cop (or a lawyer); I don't care so much about whether editors are breaking the law, as I want to know what our style guideline should be in regard to this. Even if the law is wimpy in this regard, isn't the intent (spirit) of the markings being defeated by bogus use? The intent is supposed to be to tell the reader when something is intellectual property (whether "registered" or not). Should we care if Wikipedia editors uncritically copy the marks (not necessarily the registered trademark) from a comedian's liner notes? JustinTime55 (talk) 20:06, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

MoS isn't intended to cover every weird scenario. I own pretty much every English-language style guide in print, and many that are not, and have never seen any of them address this "issue", so I think it's a WP:DGaF matter. MoS only cover what we need to, to produce consistent, professional-looking, and accessible output, and to forestall tedious, repetitive, productivity-draining "style fights".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:56, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

RfC on the treatment of organizational colors

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Talk:Milwaukee Bucks#RfC for team colors

This is really beyond the Milwaukee Bucks or even sports in particular, and relevant to coverage of organizations and their house styles generally. This touches on all of: MOS:CAPS, MOS:TM, WP:NOR, WP:NPOV, and WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE, in various aspects (see the more detailed discussion below the !vote section).
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:20, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Spider-Man: Far From Home naming discussion

Additional editors are requested to discuss if the "from" in Spider-Man: Far From Home should be capitalized. The discussion is here Talk:Spider-Man: Far From Home#From or from?. The discussion seems to hinge on stylization in early promotional materials.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:39, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Discussion on fandom-based over-capitalization

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#The endless "fan-capping" problem
How are MOS:TM, etc., failing to get the point across?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:37, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

A "settled" example, id Software?

Should we include id Software as a thoroughly settled example of a trademark to always present with initial lower-case, among the likes of iPhone and eBay? Rather than get in a revert war, let's hash it out. The spelling of this has been subject to repeated WP:RM and other discussions, both at the main page and – this very week – at a side article.

• In the gaming press, id Software dominates, though Id Software occurs, as does mimicry of one of their old logos as iD Software [2]. The company is rarely mentioned outside such sources, which lean heavily toward "honoring" trademark stylizations to the letter.
• Book sources also frequently use "id" but (after weeding out false positives for ID-card-related stuff) "Id" and even "ID" also appear [3].
• Google Scholar (with more hits than we might think) shows a similar pattern [4].

Clearly id is the most common. But do we want to enshrine it in MoS as a "stop debating it forever" example, so soon after debate about it? When the line-item about this (also recently added) already has two examples that no one actually does want to debate?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:35, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

• Aside from a single space, "id Software" is in the same format (lowercase initial) as iPhone and eBay, but it demonstrates that such styling isn't limited to single-word trademarks. I don't care about a specific example, but "id Software" was the subject of a recent discussion which establishes its viability. Keep in mind that this only applies to the full name of the company "id Software" but if shortened should probably best be presented as "Id". -- Netoholic @ 16:40, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

  Why on earth would be do something that inconsistent? My main reason for raising this on the talk page is that this was just now subjected to another WP:RM dispute, and there have been multiple in the past. And it's fairly likely to happen again. It is not as settled a case as is iPhone and eBay, at all. Nor is the usage in RS as consistent. It's "pretty darned high", but for those other two it is essentially universal except sometimes at the start of a sentence (depending on the publisher's house style rules about sentences).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:53, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

• Have to say, I was wondering about this when I saw the initial addition of id as an example. Might be worth sticking to the one exception as set out at MOS:TM#Trademarks that begin with a lowercase letter for now ("the exception is trademarks that begin with a one-letter lowercase prefix pronounced as a separate letter. These are often not capitalized if the second letter is capitalized, but should otherwise follow normal capitalization rules"), rather than generalising a recent (and controversial?) rename decision (which I can't actually find... the most recent discussion at Talk:id Software seems to be a couple of people in 2016 arguing to capitalise as Id...). ‑‑Yodin^T 21:49, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

  It's Talk:List of id Software games#Requested move 28 July 2018, which is still open, though the nominator has backed out.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:53, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Inc. in article titles

What does the MOS say about usage of Inc. in article titles? (e.g. CytoViva, Inc). TeraTIX 02:10, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Hi @Teratix: check out Wikipedia:Naming conventions (companies). In this case, as there don't seem to be any other topics of the same name to disambiguate, it seems pretty clear cut that the convention would be for the article to be named CytoViva (without the "Inc."). ‑‑Yodin^T 13:55, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

@Yodin: Great, thanks! I have gone ahead and moved the page, as I don't see any reason it would be controversial. TeraTIX 14:01, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Where should generic trademarks point? (Popsicle or Ice pop?)

We need help with a move discussion currently taking place in Talk:Popsicle (brand)#Requested move 10 August 2018. When evidence exists for a generic trademark, what threshold should we as editors use to definitively determine whether to direct the trademark name to the trademark page or its generic equivalent page? Examples of both have been presented in comments and I see no guidance within WP:Trademark or Category:Redirects from brand names. Leaving the decision to an editor/survey on whether or not Wikipedia should respect a book citation over easily verified live trademark ownership seems tenuous. Lexlex (talk) 11:55, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Pronunciation pattern

The following sentence was hard to understand at first: "Not all trademarks with a pronunciation that could have fit this pattern actually do so, and should not be re-styled to conform to it (use NEdit not "nEdit", E-Trade not "eTrade"; Xbox, not "xBox")." Only after studying the links, I saw that apparently it was meant that the combination of single letter + word should only written in the iPod style if the owner choosed that style. Perhaps the sentence can be rephrased? Bever (talk) 10:57, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

• What wording would you suggest, Bever? ‑‑Yodin^T 06:06, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

• Perhaps something like this:

"Not all owners of trademarks with a similar pronunciation (a compound of a single letter and a word) use this pattern of capitalization. Names should not be re-styled to conform to it (use NEdit not "nEdit", E-Trade not "eTrade"; Xbox, not "xBox")."

Or: "Only use the exception above (for names like iPod and eBay) when necessary." Bever (talk) 19:50, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

In what way do you find the original unclear? PS: This has nothing to do with owner's rights, and we would never in a million years couch it in those terms. See WP:OFFICIALNAME and, well, the entire purpose of MOS:TM.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:09, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Clarifying that COMMONNAME is not a style policy

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Article titles#Clarifying that UCRN is not a style policy. WP:AT and the naming conventions guidelines that cover style (e.g. WP:NCCAPS) have many cross-references to MoS. This is a simple (non-rules-changing) proposal to add one to WP:UCRN to reduce confusion and verbal conflict (especially at WP:RM).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:46, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Example addition

Directly below this item

• Avoid using special characters that are not pronounced, are included purely for decoration, or simply substitute for English words or letters (e.g., "♥" used for "love", "!" used for "i") or for normal punctuation, unless a significant majority of reliable sources that are independent of the subject consistently include the special character in the subject's name. Similarly, avoid special stylization, such as superscripting or boldface, in an attempt to emulate a trademark. (See also Wikipedia:Article titles § Special characters.)
  • use: Macy's, Skate, Yellow Tail, Seven, Alien 3, Toys "R" Us

I propose adding:

• When a name is almost never written except in a particular stylized form, use that form on Wikipedia: Deadmau5, 3M, 2 Fast 2 Furious

I can't see this as controversial, so I simply implemented it with a very clear rationale: 'Adding the long-settled Deadmau5 and 3M "exceptions" (and a title-of-a-work case) – actually applications of our consistency-in-sources rule, not "exceptions" to MoS. Absence of any explicit note of this sort for this particular line-item seems to have something to do with the incorrect claims people make about MOS:TM, and their disruptive grandstanding against it at RM and other venues.)'

Someone reverted this with an edit summary that doesn't make much sense in the context: 'what's the point of this? it's just a rephrasing of what's already written and the examples and positioning are terrible.' The point of it was spelled out in detail, and its position is exactly where it should be (directly under the point it illustrates, and based carefully on the similar exceptions line immediately under the rule about camelcase. The examples are based on long-standing consensus, and were carefully selected as basically both unassailable and not over-generalizable by mistake to things that do not qualify like, say, "Ke$ha" for Kesha.

The lack of some exception examples for this specific MoS line item appears to be a direct and proximal cause of tendentious "rebellion" against MoS, denialism that it has consensus, pretense that WP:AT is a style policy and that MoS is in conflict with it, and a lot of other noisy, disruptive, soul-sucking WP:DRAMA. Too many people just do not absorb the "significant majority of reliable sources that are independent of the subject consistently include the special character" material higher up, and do not understand that consensus can and has agreed to make particular exceptions (under MoS's own rules, not via some other argument) to our MoS defaults, nor what any such exceptions might be. So just fix it. Most of MoS consists of illustrative examples instead of blathering explanation; it's damned weird that we don't have any examples in this spot, and failure to have them is causing serious problems.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:07, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

• How is 3M an exception? I don't see anything on the talkpage clarifying this, and there shouldn't be anything in the examples given that don't make it obvious why the examples are given. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 21:46, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Well, 3M applies because virtually no one in the world calls them "ThreeM", nor uses their full-length name, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company. They're near-universally "3M" in the reliable sources. The film title is always written that way because almost no one (including WP) changes titles of published works to suit their house style. That's an example that reinforces MOS:TITLES without having to explicitly cross-reference it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:43, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

A peripherally related TfD

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see: Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2018 December 4#Template:Trademark (seems to have a dubious use case on this wiki, even if it may serve some purpose on Commons). Not a style matter, but this seems to about our only trademark-specific guideline, so it seems worth a notice here, for intellectual property watchlisters.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:18, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Apostrophes: Beef 'O' Brady's

This is a restaurant chain whose name appears four different ways in independent media:

Beef 'O' Brady's (most common)

Beef O'Brady's (popularized by WP)

Beef O' Brady's (sometimes)

Beef O Brady's (sometimes)

I'd like to move the article to the most common version. The second usage occurs sometimes in other media (only 2 of the 12 refs in the article), but most recent instances of it may be from our own title, and Google's KG picking up our usage, making it the top search result.

Normally I would just propose the move, but this was previously discussed in 2011 (!) and left this way on MOS grounds, so I thought I'd ask for a sanity check here. – SJ + 13:33, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Instances from regional sources:

• Tampa Bay news
• local news
• local TV
• industry mag

Update and simplification of MOS:FRENCHCAPS proposed

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/France and French-related articles § Proposed simplification of MOS:FRENCHCAPS, which is more than a decade outdated

Also mentions some apparently conflict between MOS:FOREIGNTITLE and MOS:TM.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:07, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Examples of typographic effects or stylization

Hi all, the guideline explains "Do not attempt (with HTML, Unicode, wikimarkup, inline images, or any other method) to emulate any purely typographic effects used in titles when giving the title in Wikipedia, though an article on a work may also include a note about how it is often styled, e.g. in marketing materials". However it suggests "Alien 3 (stylized as ALIEN³)". I wonder if such "stylizations" are right according to the guideline:

• KΞiiNO (Keiino with the Greek letter Xi);
• STARGᐰTE SG·1 (Stargate SG-1 with a Canadian Aboriginal syllabic letter);
• AC⚡DC, proposed by me (AC/DC; at least it was the "correct symbol", a thunderbolt, but was rejected by page editors, although a thunderbolt cannot be trademarked in the U.S.).

What do you think about?--Carnby (talk) 20:32, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

This relates to the discussion above. In all three cases, these stylized version only appear in the logos, and are never used in running text. I would lean to not including the stylized note on any of them. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 03:00, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. I'm going to remove them.--Carnby (talk) 05:37, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

More examples of capitalized trademarks

I am adding another example of a trademark name that should be capitalized. This includes "Illumos". Somerandomuser (talk) 19:57, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

Thank you, Somerandomuser. The discussion leading up to this can be found on the Illumos talk page. --Joshua Issac (talk) 22:12, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

I think that when more notable examples are found, they should replace the "Illumos" example. Somerandomuser (talk) 00:25, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Periods and exclamations in Trademarked names

I added a bit about never including periods, exclamation points, and question marks, that appear in trademarked names and got reverted. To the person that reverted me, I would ask you to read Portugal The Man before telling me that these periods are okay. For example, a sentence about the band becomes "Portugal. The Man was originally...", essentially becoming a one-word sentence followed by a separate sentence about "The Man". Imagine reading Fun (band) if every reference to the band had a period after the word fun.

As far as breaking precedent, I'm not seeing that. The vast majority of references to Yahoo at Yahoo! do not have the exclamation point. Readability is important, and little compromises it worse than having random punctuation marks in the wrong places. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 20:15, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Isn’t this is covered by our guidance to follow the usage of reliable sources that are independent of the subject? I would think that most independent sources would omit any confusing trademark punctuation in their running text… but in the rare cases where they routinely do include it, so should we. Blueboar (talk) 11:58, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Bizarrely enough, it seems that most sources include it for Portugal the Man, including a lot of sources that do it in a way that leaves the impression that the band is called The Man. For example, here includes the headline "Portugal. The Man, St. Vincent, Grizzly Bear and More Unite for Noise For Now Benefit Shows", a headline that says that a band called The Man is playing in Portugal. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 15:49, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

We have a pretty fair standard -- follow use in reliable sources. The MOS helps us when use in reliable sources is unclear. Having a "but with this specific case no matter what you cannot follow reliable sources" does not seem helpful -- in addition to being inconsistent with precedent, given the incredible number of articles of songs, brands, bands, movies, artworks, etc, with punctuation in their names.--Yaksar (let's chat) 13:57, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Here is why it is helpful. The article on Portugal the Man includes this: "In 2009, Portugal. The Man played at Bonnaroo and also at Lollapalooza in Grant Park, Chicago." Essentially, it says that something happened in Portugal in 2009, and then says that a band called The Man played at those concerts, and neither of those statements are true. Dropping the period gives an easy-to-read and correct statement that the band played at those concerts. And there are many many other sentences in that article that are similar. Considering the nearly non-existent benefit of including the punctuation (promoting band's gimmicky styling) versus the huge benefit of dropping it (people can read the article), the choice seems clear to me. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 15:45, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

(“In 2009, Portugal.” Would be an incomplete sentence… just saying). Blueboar (talk) 16:51, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

The band definitely has a weird name! And that name is used in the majority of reliable sourcing, and is the title of the page. There are probably also people who might think "Tyler, the Creator" must be two different artists, or that "I came, I saw, I conquered" are three different topics, or that Ben & Jerry's must be two different companies, except for the fact that they are clearly used in reliable sources and are the title of the page. All of which would be prohibited under this proposed change. --Yaksar (let's chat) 16:01, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

The only example you provided that is really comparable is Tyler the Creator, who I think should be written without a comma in running text, but a comma isn't nearly as bad as a period. The Caesar quote and ice cream companies are just horrible comparisons. The Caesar example will be in quote marks most of the time, and companies include more than one person's name all the time. This is why I used Yahoo and Fun as similar examples. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 18:39, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

References

Sure, but it doesn't really matter which you'd consider comparable and which are distinct because the proposed addition would forbid us from using the correct name used in reliable sources for all of them.--Yaksar (let's chat) 23:51, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

TMSTYLE

Some of our articles such as Facebook state the stylism in the article but it can be seen by looking at the trademark owner's website (and similar) that the stylism isn't used (or at least isn't usually) outside the logo. There have been several discussions I have been involved in where this has been pointed out such as Talk:Viavi Solutions#Requested move 14 November 2018, Talk:Eurecom#Requested move 15 July 2020, Talk:L-Acoustics#Requested move 12 April 2021 and Talk:BioNumerics#Requested move 29 April 2021. My suggestion would be that MOS:TMSTYLE should be modified to say that it should only be stated if the trademark owner always (or at least normally) uses it in running text rather than just in the logos. Look no further than our logo that has WIKIPEDIA but we don't use this in running text etc and our article doesn't state "stylized as WIKIPEDIA". @Amkilpatrick, BarrelProof, and Kj cheetham: who debated this in the BioNumerics RM. My understanding is that the majority of trademark owners who only capitalize differently in the logo expect our articles to use normal capitalization but a few think the title should be so we point them to MOSTM and most of them are fine with that. I'd also point out that if we state "stylized as X" when the trademark owner doesn't use (or normally use) the stylism outside the logo not only is this not telling them anything that they can usually already see (most of such articles already include an image of the trademark) but it may suggest that the trademark owner nearly always uses it in running text. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:50, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

I just read the section again, and what you're suggesting is what this page already says. So I would be interested in what specifically you are proposing to edit. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 18:21, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

I believe he is suggesting that it doesn't make sense to say "Facebook styles itself as 'facebook'" when that style is only used in the company's logo. Facebook uses the lowercase f in its logo but otherwise uses a capital F when referring to itself [5]. Compare that to Adidas, for example, which uses the lowercase in its logo and throughout its website [6]. -- Calidum 18:42, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

That's still not specific - like, what line, what subsection, what exactly is the proposed change? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 19:52, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

@Oiyarbepsy: Calidum is correct in what I'm saying, TMSTYLE says not to note "colorization, attempts to emulate font choices, or other elaborate effects". I would suggest putting in front of that that we should only state "stylized as X" if the trademark owner generally uses this in running text, if it is generally only used in the logo it shouldn't be mentioned in the article at all. This means we have 3 types, type 1 where the stylism is used by 3rd party sources and thus can be in the article title and running text etc Yahoo! may be an example, type 2 where the stylism is used more or less consistently used by the trademark owner even in running text such as Adidas (which even has a citation though the link is dead) but it isn't used by 3rd party sources in which case in the title and running text we use the standard English formatting rules but note the stylism in the article as with Adidas and type 3 where the stylism isn't used outside the logo (and similar) meaning the trademark owner generally uses the standard English formatting in running text, in this case it shouldn't even be mentioned in the article but a picture of the trademark (which shows it) should be included if possible. Crouch, Swale (talk) 16:37, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

So something like: followed by a note, such as "(stylized as ...)" (or "(stylised as ...)" depending on the article's variety of English), with the stylized version[new footnote] and the new footnote would read "the stylized version is what the trademark owner uses in running text, not their logo. For example, Facebook's logo uses a lowercase f, but in running text, Facebook always capitalizes the F, so the capital letter should be used." Oiyarbepsy (talk) 19:55, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

Personally, I'm happy with often just omitting any explicit mention of a styling completely, as it is obvious to anyone who looks at it and not always important at all (especially simple things like all-caps or all-lowercase or whether to include dots or spaces in an abbreviation). I would also discourage fancy contortions to try to imitate logos using special characters or color or subscripting and superscripting. I think it is only necessary to talk about the styling if a lot of independent sources also follow it or if the self-published & affiliated sources use it very consistently or if independent sources discuss the styling as something they consider important to talk about. If a company uses a styling sometimes but not consistently itself, I see no need to talk about it. Also, I would often want to say "(sometimes styled as XyZ)" or "(stylized by the company as XyZ)" rather than simply "(stylized as XyZ)", if the styling is not consistently followed. I have sometimes gotten into struggles with other editors who want to use a particular styling or want the article to talk about some styling issue despite the fact that no sources discuss it and the self-published source doesn't even discuss it and there is no indication it has any importance. For example, this arises for whether certain letters are capitalized in the title of a work or whether someone's abbreviated name should include dots or spaces or not. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 19:18, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

Well I'd just add to the text the requirement that the stylism should generally be used by the trademark owner in running text and that if its generally only used in the logo (and similar) it shouldn't be stated in the article. I don't think a separate note would be needed either in the guideline or in the articles. I'd suggest using Facebook as an example that should not state "stylised as X" and Adidas as an example that should. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:48, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

I would personally be more interested in what independent sources do, and put very little weight on what is in self-published and directly affiliated material. That might result in not mentioning "adidas". —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 20:22, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure we need to go that far (though I wouldn't really oppose that) al least for now, I just think we need to remove "stylized as X" from type 3 cases such as Facebook. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:45, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

Here's an alternate proposal: If a stylizing only appears in a logo, do not include stylized as at all, since the logo will be clearly visible at the top of the page, showing how it's stylized. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 17:07, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

We shouldn't rely on images to convey information. Many people who read Wikipedia may not be loading images, or are visually impaired or otherwise relying on other aids to read Wikipedia. If the information is valid and relevant, we should say as such. Canterbury Tail talk 17:50, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Agree but if it only appears in the logo I don't think its valid or relevant to say its stylised that way. Do you think Wikipedia and Facebook should state "stylised as WIKIPEDIA" and "stylised as facebook" if the trademark owner uses the standard name everywhere else? Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:46, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

I think that would be "stylised as WikipediA", actually (although I don't suggest it). —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 14:58, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

• Wouldn’t it be simpler to just show how the name is styled using an image? I am not sure that we ever need to say “stylized as…” in our running text. Blueboar (talk) 16:26, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

I think the "stylized as facebook" can just be used when describing logo image and removed from the first sentence of the article. Somerandomuser (talk) 00:38, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

• OK everyone (apart from perhaps Canterbury Tail) seems to agree on at least requiring that if the stylism is generally only in the logo we don't need to state "stylised as" so I'll leave a note at Talk:Facebook and if no one objects I'll add this to TMSTYLE. Unlike Wikipedia logo there isn't an article on Facebook's logo but I guess it could be mentioned in the article. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:00, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

  Done. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:32, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

• Was a bit confusing as written, so I tried to tighten up a bit for clarity.--Yaksar (let's chat) 19:11, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Sentences beginning with lowercase letter

Per MOS:TMLOWER, we currently recommend editors avoid beginning sentences with lowercase trademarks. I feel that, having first been added in 2006, this recommendation is now out of date with how we use English, and how comfortable English is with these words. No doubt many editors will still avoid the formulation where they feel it isn't proper, but we no longer need to caution against it. — HTGS (talk) 09:20, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Following no objection, I have removed the advice in question. — HTGS (talk) 18:52, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Z-O-M-B-I-E-S

There is a discussion regarding Zombies (2018 film) and mention of the stylization Z-O-M-B-I-E-S in the opening sentence. Editors are invited to comment. The discussion can be found here: Talk:Zombies (2018 film)#Stylization and Hyphenating the title. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 14:25, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Trademarks vs. proper names

On 21 January 2022, I made an edit to clarify that although trademarks are ordinarily capitalized, they are not proper names in general. Linguistically speaking, my understanding is that many trademarks are not proper names. A proper name is the name of one unique specific thing, not an identifier of a category or type of things. Big Mac is an example. There can be several Big Macs on a single restaurant table. One does not generally pluralize a proper name. If a trademark name is used with an indefinite article or in plural form, it is not a proper name, but it is still capitalized. Other examples are Camaro, Tupperware, Pyrex, Charmin, Palmolive, Tylenol (brand), NyQuil, OxiClean and Oil of Olay. Terms commonly preceded by "a" or "an" or "some" are not proper names (often "the" as well). As the proper noun article says, "In English, proper names in their primary application cannot normally be modified by articles or another determiner, although some may be taken to include the article the, as in the Netherlands, the Roaring Forties, or the Rolling Stones." However, my change was reverted on 5 February 2022. The edit summary said "not 'like' proper names—they ARE proper names and that is why they are being capitalized". I disagree with that editor's assertion. Can we please discuss and resolve this? —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 08:44, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

After no response for more than 9 days, I reverted the revert. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 16:03, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Avoiding all-caps even when lowercase is not in widespread use

The following line relates to names with unorthodox capitalizations:

Follow standard English text formatting and capitalization practices, even if the trademark owner considers nonstandard formatting "official", as long as this is a style already in widespread use, rather than inventing a new one:

This does not appear to reflect actual practice when it comes to the use of all-caps. See for instance the recent unanimous opposition to “JVKE”, where other editors have pointed out that we consistently decapitalize names that nearly everyone else renders exclusively in all caps. So should we remove the widespread use requirement here, or add an exception to it for all-caps? —151.132.206.250 (talk) 20:54, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

I’ve rewritten it to distinguish between the use of all-caps that should always be ignored, and other odd formatting where widespread usage should be respected. —151.132.206.250 (talk) 16:47, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

• We need to discuss this further. The key is get across that we ignore what the trademark holder does (the "official" capitalization)... but we do take into consideration the capitalization used in sources that are independent of the trademark holder. If those independent sources widely use all caps, so should we. Blueboar (talk) 17:05, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
  • Interesting. This contradicts what other editors have said about us being very consistent in disallowing all-caps stylism. I can’t quite reconcile that. —151.132.206.250 (talk) 17:27, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

How do we style a name? Anderson Ponty Band or AndersonPonty Band

Additional input at Talk:Jon_Anderson#AndersonPonty_Band_or_Anderson_Ponty_Band would be appreciated on how to style a band name. Is it the Anderson Ponty Band, or the AndersonPonty Band? Bondegezou (talk) 07:47, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Lowercase names

I think this statement is problematic: Trademarks promoted without any capitals are capitalized like any other.

This statement is used to justify incorrectly capitalizing some names. There is a difference between a name being promoted or stylized in lowercase and a name actually being in lowercase. Compare:

• Thirtysomething — the abc.com web site uses both an initial capital letter (Thirtysomething) and all lowercase (thirtysomething). This name is stylized as lowercase thirtysomething, but that is not it's name.
• i/o (album), the 2023 Peter Gabriel album. Every official source uses lowercase i/o. That is the name.

The idea that Wikipedia editors get to decide what names are "promoted" or "stylized" is silly. Nobody is arguing that it should be IOS, MacOS, IPhone (or Ios, Macos, Iphone). We should trust creators as the ultimate source of the proper presentation of a name. When that creator is consistent, as is the case for i/o, but not Thirtysomething, we should believe them.

I propose that we modify this statement to say that we respect actual names and, when a creator/owner is inconsistent, we capitalize like any other. RoyLeban (talk) 13:03, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Nah. This rule is not anything at all to do with "Wikipedia editors get to decide". It's applying an across-the-board rule that we do not mimic stylization of logos. If we go with what you are suggesting, the obvious secondary result is that we'd start mimicking SCREAMING ALL-CAPS LOGOS too, and we're just not going to do that.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:00, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

First, I want to point out that is independent of the change you partially reverted, which I think you did in error. I'll address that in a separate section.

This is about names, not logos. I am not proposing that Wikipedia mimic the stylization of logos. Take Verizon, whose name is properly spelled this way. Their logo is VERIZON✔️, and it would be a bad idea (and silly) to use that on Wikipedia. This is about respecting names. macOS is not MacOS and merely stylized as macOS. iOS is not IOS. tvOS is not TVOS or TvOS. Etc. And compare those names with Apple and Amazon, the companies. Both companies have the names I just gave, but both companies use all lowercase in their logos — apple and amazon. Their pages properly use Apple and Amazon, not apple and amazon. Similarly, the Nike logo is famously NIKE with a swoosh, but the company name is Nike, Inc. and the page name reflects that, with a correct statement that it is stylized as NIKE (in their logo).

When a company or a creator always uses a name which is not capitalized in the traditional way, as is the case with macOS, dBase, FullWrite, xkcd, i/o, etc., Wikipedia should respect that (and frequently does). And there should not be a different rule for those names and names which happen to have all lowercase letters, which is what the sentence I think should be changed says. That makes no sense.

Finally, as for a SCREAMING ALL-CAPS NAME (not a logo!), that's a side point right now. But, yeah, BMW, GEICO, NASA, NATO, and UNICEF are all evidence that Wikipedia is already properly respecting names that are all uppercase. It seems the policy should reflect the reality. RoyLeban (talk) 11:50, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Acronyms have nothing to do with this, and are (with the rarest exceptions) presented in all-caps (unless, like scuba and radar, they have been re-parsed into the everyday language as words that most people don't realize originated as acronyms); this is governed by MOS:ABBR. Aside: what is presently macOS is not a good example of anything here, since the name of that OS has varied widely over time and has not been consistent at all, in Apple's own usage or in that in independent sources (it is has been macOS, MacOS, MacOS X, and OS X, and probably something else, too). This is a guideline, not a policy. The distinction you are trying to draw between "logos" and "names" is not consistently applicable. Yes, there are some logos that are not wordmarks, and we don't need to address them, because there is no way to represent the Nike swoosh or whatever as a text glyph, so we just don't need to worry about it. BUt the primary reason MOS:TM goes into so much detail about trademarks and capitalization is that various editors (most of them noobs, but not always) continue to try to have WP go out of its ways to mimic logos, e.g. "SONY" instead of Sony. The very reason that you find observances like "(stylized as NIKE)" in various articles is because of this fact. We don't mind indicating that a wordmark stylization exists, but we're not going to keep using it Wikipedia's own voice.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:06, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Let's ignore acronyms and uppercase letters for now, because this isn't what I'm suggesting needs to change. That said, the idea that WP:ABBR has a list of exceptions is, honestly, nuts, and is not really tenable — it is laughable. All guidelines should be clear enough without manually maintained lists of exceptions (and this guideline doesn't even have a list of exceptions).

Similarly, logos have nothing to do with this. This is about names. Ignore the fact that some editors want to put Macy*s (with a star) in text.

macOS is a side note here. But, Apple's spelling of macOS is 100% consistent. It hasn't "varied widely over time". It has changed over time. People, companies, etc. are allowed to change their names. We don't continue to call Apple, Inc. "Apple Computer, Inc." because that used to be their name. The System 7, Mac OS 8, macOS, and macOS Sonoma pages are all correctly named.

So, on to what I actually am writing about ....

First, who decides that a name is merely being "promoted" or "stylized" instead of it actually being the name? Look at bell hooks, k.d. lang, and will.i.am — all of these people have lowercase names, and Wikipedia respected that. But somebody has decided that dream hampton and dodie are merely stylizing their names (note that the source that supposedly says that dream hamptom is merely stylizing her name uses lowercase throughout, and there is no source that states that dodie is merely stylizing her name). How else would you explain this other than Wikipedia editors deciding which names are actually lowercase and which are promoted? (The same is true of trademarks, but it was much easier to come up with examples of people.)

Second, under what logic does it make any sense that names which are only lowercase letters are special? That they are different from names with mixed case? The guideline should be clear enough for all the names abcde, aBcde, abCde, aBCDE, and abcDE. If there's a good reason for this (and I don't believe there is), the guideline should state it.

For these reasons, the sentence I pointed to is problematic. As I stated above, I propose that we modify this statement to say that we respect actual names and, when a creator/owner is inconsistent, we capitalize like any other. Wikipedia won't change overnight, but properly respecting a name like macOS but not a name like i/o doesn't make sense. If you have an alternate proposal, please state what it is. RoyLeban (talk) 11:01, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Lowercase prefixes on names

I made a change to the page to reflect what is actually done on Wikipedia with respect to lowercase prefixes on names. The issue arises in part because a technical flaw in the MediaWiki software prevents a section of a URL from starting with a lowercase letter. Thus the page on macOS must be named .../MacOS, with an uppercase M. There is also the case that some people are uncomfortable with words and names that break common conventions (e.e. cummings dealt with this throughout his life).

My change read as follows:

* Trademarks that begin with a lowercase prefix. These are often not capitalized if a subsequent letter is capitalized, but should otherwise follow normal capitalization rules: • use: He said that eBay is where he bought his iMac which runs macOS Sonoma. • avoid: He said that EBay is where he bought his IMac which runs MacOS Sonoma. Not all trademarks with a pronunciation that might imply a lowercase letter at the beginning actually have such a prefix, and should not be re-styled to conform to it (use NEdit not "nEdit", E-Trade not "eTrade"; Xbox, not "xBox").

The current version of the page, after a semi-revert by @SMcCandish, is as follows:

Trademarks that begin with a one-letter lowercase prefix pronounced as a separate letter are often not capitalized if the second letter is capitalized, but should otherwise follow normal capitalization rules: • use: He said that eBay is where he bought his iPod. • avoid: He said that EBay is where he bought his IPod. Not all trademarks with a pronunciation that might imply a lowercase letter at the beginning actually do fit this pattern, and should not be re-styled to conform to it (use NEdit not "nEdit", E-Trade not "eTrade"; Xbox, not "xBox").

I made this change because the current text in the policy (and the text that existed before my change) is incorrect. It does not reflect what actually happens on Wikipedia, nor does it reflect common sense. SmCCandish wrote that my change" had potential substative impacts." I do not believe this to be true.

According to the policy as written, the pages for macOS, tvOS, and all of the related pages (e.g., there are individual pages for every version of macOS) are all wrong and should be changed, and Wikipedia should use MacOS and TvOS everywhere. As I said above, this is not what Wikipedia does, and it does not make sense, and these aren't the only names and pages. The removal of the example of macOS hides the reality, as if it doesn't exist.

I used the term "lowercase prefix" (changing from "one-letter lowercase prefix") to make my change as minimal as possible. I didn't coin the term "lowercase prefix". but I think it is ok. All of the other changes flow from this change.

I'm open to a different way of expressing this, but, for Wikipedia policies to mean something, we cannot have a policy which states something which is not true, and that is the case at the moment. RoyLeban (talk) 12:17, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Again, this is not a policy, it's a guideline. 'I used the term "lowercase prefix" (changing from "one-letter lowercase prefix") to make my change as minimal as possible" – But it would not be as miminal in effect as you think claim it would be. WP:Policy writing is hard, and for things like this you have to have a deep-seated understanding of how all these line-items across many pages inter-relate, the long history of wikilawyering over them, and what is likely to be the fallout. In this case, it would be read as permitting, even requiring, any logo/wordmark stylization in a stupidCompanyName form to be given by us in that form, even if RS generally do not go along with it, and write StupidCompanyName or Stupid Company Name. You do have a point about macOS and tvOS, but these are rare exceptions that are made because independent RS overwhelming go along with those stylizations, in those specific cases. This is quite uncommon. As with all guidelines, there are edge cases where a consensus at an article forms to make an exception based on a huge preponderance of the sourcing. Guidelines usually do not need to explicitly address that this happens (and no, that does not make them faulty, as you so stridently claim above). But we could add a line item that addressed this:

In a handful of cases, a lower-case prefix longer than one letter is used, e.g. tvOS. These are deterined on a case-by-case basis, based on a specific stylization being used in an overwhelming majority of independent sources.

I would not use macOS as an example, since it has had multiple names, and for releases that pre-date the current macOS styling, it should be referred to as MacOS, MacOS X, or OS X, as applicable to the release in question.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:25, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

PS: see also Talk:I/O (album)#Album name is i/o, not I/O. As I suspected, RoyLeban's modus operandi is forcing Wikipedia to conform to the preferred trademark stylizations of trademark holders regardless what the independent sources are doing. The editor's claim of editing "to make my change as minimal as possible" is hard to take at face value, given their forceful and repetitive argumentation to obey Peter Gabriel's supposed personal preferences. Note also the WP:BATTLEGROUND approach: "I would prefer it if you would revert your changes and restore the proper name. But, if you don't, I will.", etc. Any further changes to this guideline wording are going to need even more careful-than-usual examination for what effect they might have in enabling such "style PoV" pushing.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:25, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Please don't ascribe motives to me that I don't have. It amounts to an ad hominem attack. Yes, I discovered the problems with this policy because I came here after dealing with an editor who apparently thinks Peter Gabriel doesn't know the name of his own album and song (and, yes, in that case, a huge preponderance of the sourcing, including Peter Gabriel himself, indicates the album and song titles are not uppercase).

But this proposed change has nothing to do with i/o, because it is not a name with a lowercase prefix. This is just something I noticed while I was here.

It was not my intent for this to be an actual guideline change. My intent was to bring the guideline into line with what actually happens on Wikipedia. You claim that my new wording would cause other changes to be made. Can you find an example where a company or creator uses a name like abcDEF or abcDef exclusively (as is the case with macOS and i/o) and most reliable sources also use that casing, and Wikipedia does not respect it and has good reasons for doing so? I don't know of one.

The incontrovertible fact is that this guideline says that macOS, tvOS, etc., are wrong, with no indication as to when or how exceptions are to be made.

People are relying on this guideline and, as is the case on the i/o (album) page, are acting as if this guideline is a hard and fast rule or policy. Doing so means that macOS is wrongly cased.

When you write "These are determined on a case-by-case basis" you are essentially saying that Wikipedia editors get to decide, rather than trademark owners and creators. How does this make sense? Encyclopedias should reflect the world, not decide how the world should be.

So, first, absolutely, the guideline should not state something which is not true, and imply that macOS and tvOS are wrong. This was what I was trying to fix.

Second, the guideline should not leave decisions up to the whims of editors and, as is so often happens on Wikipedia, whoever has the most time to edit.

Finally, I believe your bias is showing when you use an example like stupidCompanyName and you use a phrase like "Peter Gabriel's supposed personal preferences." I suggest that you be more respectful. RoyLeban (talk) 11:26, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

WP:TL;DR. You've just posted two back-to-back longwinded, unconstructive tirades[7][8]. Here are the facts: Coming here from a debate that's not going your way[9], you made a more-sweeping-than-it-looks change [10] to a long-stable guideline without any attempt to establish consensus. Rather than just revert (which would have been fine), I instead attempted to meet you half-way with a combined compromise version [11], which no one else appears to have any objection to. Unsatisfied, you've gone back to re-repeating all of your original idea, "not hearing" clear explanations of why it is not workable. You've again been met with compromise wording [12], and clear explanations why parts of your more general idea still remain impractical. Instead of reasonably trying to work toward more consensus, you've gone all ranty-pants on us (and thrashing around with what looks like "argument for sport" against anything at all you think you can find to argue about in someone else's wording choices, no matter how off-topic you wander). You have not established a consensus for what you want to put in this guideline, and are probably now much further from being able to gain such a consensus than when you started.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:03, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

I made two small corrections to your change that I am confident you will be fine with. In particular, "a handful of" is an opinion unless you can back it tup with statistics, and, if we had statistics, a more exact and less loaded phrase than "handful of" would be appropriate.

I will point out that my "longwinded unconstructive tirade" reply to you was 40 words shorter than what you wrote. Calling what I wrote a tirade is, again, showing bias and a bit of incivility. Yeah, I get that you disagree. But please focus on the issues, not attacking me.

As I wrote in my change comment, what you put in the guideline is better (thanks), but I am still not happy with it. Among other things, there is no explanation why one lowercase letter is magically different than two. What is the actual difference between iOS, tvOS, and macOS? Why is iOS always ok yet tvOS and macOS require "an overwhelming majority of independent reliable sources." And why does this guideline seem to be overriding what WP:PRIMARY says about primary sources being ok for facts?

Again, I'm not trying to change anything, but I am definitely disatisfied with "determined on a case-by-case basis" at the same time that you say my statement that "Wikipedia editors get to decide" is wrong — that is what you just put in the guideline! Yeah, it now says something about looking at independent sources, but it is still a value judgement made by editors. That's never a great idea.

I don't want to change the guideline or policy. I want clarity. I want somebody creating a page for newProduct to know exactly what to do, and I don't want editors to be debating about whether x% of the independent sources they looked up is sufficient to call it newProduct, like the company does, rather than Newproduct. (And, on a related note, why are all lowercase product names magically special? There seems to be no reason for this other than some people's discomfort with such names.)

Your change is clearer, but it still not completely clear. Can we work together for clarity? RoyLeban (talk) 06:50, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

You've raised a bunch of disparate points, so this will necessarily be fairly long. The sort of case presented by tvOS is vanishingly rare on this project, but I don't object to "In some cases," though "Rarely," would be more accurate. Internal consensus discussions do not require statistical analyses of the obvious, just judgment and experience on the project (cf. WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY, WP:WIKILAWYER, WP:SATISFY). We do have a long-standing principle at MoS (see WP:MOSBLOAT for an explication) to not add line-items that do not directly address problems that are both frequently occurring and the subject of repetitive editorial strife, so even adding that line item to try to appease you was arguably a mistake on my part, since this kind of case fits neither criterion. I would not be surprised if someone reverted it, with or without your tweaks to it.

One lowercase letter is different (in statistical frequency, both of occurrence and of acceptance as a style used at WP) because it's a common convention in the naming of tech companies/products/services, which offsite sources have grown to accept. Sources are much, much less often going to go along with a stylization of the form stupidCompany where an entire word or other long string is intended by the trademark holder to be prepended, in lowercase, to some other, capitalized string. Independent sources are most often going to render it "StupidCompany" (since camelcasing is well-accepted). If this were not the case then this discussion would not be happening, many WP articles would be at different titles, and a big chunk of the guideline would read differently.

All of our style guide, like all of our other guidelines and policies, consists of judgment made by editors. Cf. WP:REVELATION. It has nothing to do with a "value", and trying to paint it that way is fallacious (specifically, argument to emotion: "It's judgment, so falsely label it a 'value judgment' to imply something bad about the other party"). There is nothing "magically" special about lower-case product names. They are simply by definition a category that presents intelligibilty issues, because they are proper names, and proper names are capitalized (in English, and many other languages), but the trademark holders want to lowercase for branding-identity reasons. If we just said "to hell with it" and lowercased them all the way the trademark holders like, then we'd be inundated with demands to "obey" every other kind of trademarking preference, starting of course with SCREAMING ALL-CAPS, the most common logo stylization there is. So, we're not going to go there and make some blanket exception for lower-case trademarks. PS: Your general desire, it seems, is to change MoS from a guideline to some kind of rigid system of absolute rules, and that's not going to fly. "I don't want editors to be debating about whether x% of the independent sources they looked up is sufficient to call it newProduct" is particularly troubling, since what you don't like is absolutely what we do. We look at source usage in the aggregate, and if it's not something like 95% in favor of the trademark stylization, then we don't use the stylization.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:57, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

A completely different idea: just nuke the lowercase section

An alternative idea to pretty much the entire above discussion would be to simply delete that whole block of line items about lower-case stuff in "Trademarks that begin with a lowercase letter", and replace it with something like the following at the end of the "General rules" section (which already leads with a "we don't [usually] lowercase a lowercased trademark" example):

In unusual cases, a trademark that diverges from these rules will be presented by Wikipedia in the stylization used by the trademark holder (usually involving lower-case prefixed letters, e.g. iPhone, tvOS, eBay, but sometimes other stylizations such as letter substitions, e.g. Deadmau5, Left4Dead). Wikipedia only makes such an exception when an overwhelming majority of independent reliable sources also do so for that specific trademark. If sources even fairly often use an unstylized rendering, then so will Wikipedia (e.g. Kesha not Ke$ha, Sony not SONY, Seven (film) not Se7en, Thirtysomething not thirtysomething).

But I'm not sure other editors would readily go along with a change that major in form (if not in effect). And it might need tweaking to avoid redundancy with examples and such ealier in the page.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:07, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

I will give this some thought. It certainly would need a bunch of wordsmithing, particularly in how exceptions are decided. And some words are loaded.

But there's a fundamental issue with conflating names and trademarks, and logos too. Yeah, I realize this is the Trademarks page, but there is no Names page or Logos page. In your examples:

• iPhone, tvOS, eBay, Deadmau5, and Left4Dead are all names (even if they are also trademarks); I don't think any of them are "stylizations"
• I think Ke$ha is a name, but I'm not sure (it might also be a trademark); it might be a stylization
• Sony is a name and it is not all uppercase (though Sony's logo is, and it's also in a specific font)
• Se7en is a stylization of Seven, as evidenced by the fact that the studio itself produced materials with the name "Seven"
• I think thirtysomething is a stylization of or a logo for Thirtysomething, but I'm not sure; perhaps it is not a good example for this reason

Properly, the statement should include something like "logos are irrelevant; Wikipedia sometimes shows logos in infoboxes and in images, but logos never affect how the name or trademark of a company is represented in text." Se7en, SONY, and the Verizon uppercase logo with checkmark are good examples. RoyLeban (talk) 01:49, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

In keeping with your "let's keep the heat down" user-talk message, please read the following in a bemused not aggressive tone; this medium lacks tonality, body-language, and other cues. None of the distinctions you are trying to draw between "names", "stylizations", "trademarks", etc. are relevant for MOS:TM purposes. They are all names, and they are all trademarks, and they are all stylized. This guideline cannot attempt to split hairs between these largely subjective categorizations (and they could be split even further, e.g. between trademarks and servicemarks which are legally different in some jurisdictions but not different at all from a style-guide perspective), because no two editors would ever agree on the definitions, the defintions are meaningless with regard to what the style guide would say to do, and it would just confuse everyone with longwinded and opaque jargon, which is the opposite of the purpose of a guideline. Every one of the examples used above is spot-on good for the purpose, because they are unmistakably examples of stylization of trademarked names that WP is not going to mimic in its own voice, and they've all been previously decided (they were not made up or chosen off-the-cuff). In short, please stop trying to make this vastly more difficult than it really needs to be, especially when you are the one who brought the issue to the table, and so far no one seems to be willing to entertain making any changes to this material other than me (and by happy coincidence no one around has more experience massaging our style guidelines without creating nasty wikilawyer loopholes and other unintended bad consequences). PS: I also have a degree in linguistics, a professional background in media law and policy, and more experience than anyone left on what is and isn't covered by our style guide, so when I say these are all names, and are all trademarks, and as far as MoS is concerned are all stylizations, please just trust me on that.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:54, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Also "in how exceptions are decided" has nothing to do with "wordsmithing" this material further. The material is describing how the exceptions are already decided, not making up a new rule about how to decide them.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:26, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Conflict between MOS:TM and WP:NCCORP

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (companies)#Use of comma and abbreviation of Incorporated. This covers more than the thread name implies, including a general need to update that guideline, which hasn't had substantive changes since 2009.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼   — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:43, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Minor consolidation merge?

Resolved

 – Clarified in situ at MOS:BIOEXCEPT, instead of merged here.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:10, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

A bit about individuals' names with unusual stylizations is buried at WP:Manual of Style/Biography#Initials, with examples like k.d. lang and CCH Pounder. I think this should be merged into MOS:TM, with a cross-reference left behind, instead of making people hunt it down over there (especially since the lang example involves stylization other than initials anwyay). MOS:TM is already providing at least one individual example, Deadmau5, anyway. So this is kind of verging on a WP:POLICYFORK, other than the advice not actually being contradictory.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:18, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Are the stylized names of people treated identically to those of organizations? I had the feeling we gave humans slightly more leeway than human inventions.

If equivalent, then sure, consolidation makes sense, but it might be nice to make it clearer that what we are addressing at this page is stylization of names, not trademark itself (an issue that I think has brought confusion itself in the past). And at that point, we could certainly speak further to titles of published works. — HTGS (talk) 04:16, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

They are treated the same, from the perspective of the general rule being applied: we don't use an unusual style like k.d. lang (which is both lowercased and with unspaced initials) or like Toys "R" Us (which has peculiar punctuation) unless a very strong majority of independent reliable sources consistently use it. But there is observably a trend (sympathy-based and strongly influenced by the rise of identity politics), to accept a lower estimated percentage of source usage (maybe 75% or so) in favor of an unusual individual name style than a corporate one (maybe 90+%). Otherwise our article title would be K. D. Lang by now, because source usage definitely is not more than about 75% using "k.d. lang", and my observations suggest that the rate of its use by independent writers, especially outside the entertainment press, is actually going down over the last decade.

I just had a month-long debate on my talk page with someone intent on seeing Wikipedia mandatorily follow the style preferred by the name owner, no matter what, corporate or otherwise; various hints strongly suggest that this person wants to conflate personal and corporate naming in a way that generates sympathy for his position by harping on personal names in particular and using them as a wedge to gain traction on corporate ones. So, I'm now skeptical about doing this micro-merge at all. It would be better to just juggle the material in MOS:BIO to not be confusingly stuck in the Initials section, and to use cross-references between the guidelines. PS: Titles of works has its own entire MoS page: MOS:TITLES, though cross-referencing to make it easier to find is probably a good idea.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 , 09:54, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

What I did instead, as part of a broader overhaul of messiness at MOS:BIO, is gather the scattered, hard-to-find, and sometimes sectionally miscategorized exception-related material there into a new section, at MOS:BIOEXCEPT, along with some additional real examples. Because the MOS:BIO material has a specific line-item about an individual subject's personal declaration and use of a name (grounded in identity politics, especially LGBT+ matters), but nothing like it is applicable to MOS:TM rules about commercial trademarks, this material basically cannot be merged here after all (or, strictly speaking, someone could try it, but the result would be very confusing, and would get reverted). I had honestly forgotten about that sentence in MOS:BIO, or I would never have suggested a merge in the first place. Clear cross-referencing is a much better solution, and has now been implemented between both guidelines at the pertinent places (plus improved cross-referencing to other guidelines like MOS:TITLES, as suggested above). PS: As for HTGS's comment about "stylization of names, not trademark itself", that should already be adequately covered by MOS:TM's lead, which makes it clear that it applies to things that are similar to trademarks even if they are not legally exactly trademarks, and this was improved upon in clarity last month.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:10, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

MOS:TMSTYLE clarification

The text in that section was getting very palimpsestuous and confused. It read (footnote elided):

In the article about a trademark, it is conventional to give the normal English spelling in the lead section, followed by a note, such as "(stylized as ...)" (or "(stylised as ...)" depending on the article's variety of English), with the stylized version (which may include simple stylization, like capitalization changes, decorative characters, or superscripting, but not colorization, attempts to emulate font choices, or other elaborate effects), then resume using an alternative that follows the usual rules of spelling and punctuation, for the remainder of the article. In other articles that mention the subject, use only the normal English spelling, not the stylization.

I've revised this to:

In the article about a trademark, give the version that follows the usual rules of spelling and punctuation, boldfaced in the lead sentence. Follow this with a note, such as "(stylized as ...)" or "(stylised as ...)", depending on the article's variety of English, with the stylization if one exists and is significantly different. It should also be in bold, and may include simple styling, like capitalization changes, decorative characters, or superscripting (but not colorization, attempts to emulate font choices, or other elaborate effects). Then resume using the normal English spelling for the remainder of the article. In other articles that mention the subject, use only the normal English spelling, not the stylization.

This patches up the following:

• Confusion of the lead section (which might be 10 paragraphs) with the lead sentence; we obviously mean the latter.
• Using a shorthand "the normal English spelling" and only explaining what this means later, intead of using the clearer wording the first time.
• Confusedly implying, with strange "an alternative" wording, that we're talking about three different versions, when of course only two are at issue.
• Failure to agree with MOS:BOLDLEAD and MOS:BOLDSYN.
• Incorrect implication that a "(stylized as ...)" is mandatory, instead of only to be used when there's a significant difference (e.g., Joe's, following MOS:CURLY, is not significantly different from Joe’s, and we need no parenthetical in the article about it).
• Pointless blather like "it is conventional to".
• Run-on construction that needed splitting up into separate sentences.
• Unnecessary parentheses.

I don't think anything about this would be controversial, but let me know if I've had a mental lapse of some kind.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:35, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

MOS:TM#Lead section

This was refactored out of a thread about MOS:BIO and MOS:TM cross-referencing or potential rule-merging, where this was not on-topic.

There are many problems with the guidance "Regardless of the page title, the lead sentence of an article on a company or other organization should normally begin with its full legal name (the current one or, if defunct, the final one)"

• Firstly there are far more many Trademarks referring to goods and services than "an article on a company or other organization"
• Secondly the lead sentence on an article might not start with the full legal name especially if there are multiple products or services under a singular topic like a product line or even the organization.
• Thirdly there are instances where "its full legal name" "the current one" or "the final one" is bad advice particularly with the ongoing discussion about Twitter. It is not currently "the current one" or even "the final one" and to the extent that it might be split there will still be a page about the historic twitter before it was acquired and transmigrated.
• This new Trademark guideline section is full of so many incorrect statements that I would feel strongly enough to revert its addition and remove it in its entirety. But I do not like edit warring and I am going to assume good faith that the editor who changed this will be willing to make further changes in order to accomodate the dilemmas that I have politely raised. Jorahm (talk) 18:11, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

@Jorahm: To run down these in the same order:

• First: Everyone knows that. There does not appear to be any recurrent confusion or disputation about how to write the lead sentence on a product or service with a trademarked name, so there is no reason for MoS to address it (see: MOS:BLOAT).
• Second: Again, this is not about products or services. To the extent that a company article might not start with the company's present legal name for some exceptional reason, that's why it says "normally". Cf. WP:P&G: "Editors should attempt to follow guidelines, though they are best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply."
  • Your side point about split articles is immaterial. If an article about a subsidiary or a former business entity that was merged exists as its own article, then the entitity that is the subject of that article is the subject. Names that only pertain to some other larger entity that owns or owned the smaller one have no bearing on how to write the name in lead sentence on the smaller entity. I'm skeptical anyone would ever possibly be confused about that.
• Third: This is again already covered by "normally". But Twitter is not about a company but a service; the company article is X Corp.. So, there is no company-legal-name issue at Twitter whatsoever. The real disputation there appears to be a WP:COMMONNAME policy question of whether and when to move the article to X (social network). It's just not an MoS matter.
• You haven't actually made a case that anything is wrong with the summary material in this section at all. You seem to be looking for (and upset not to find) a rule you can wield in an article-title dispute, and perhaps in a lead-writing dispute about how exactly to refer to a service that has changed names (completely, not just a stylization tweak or a swap of corporation-type designators). But there isn't any such MoS rule to wield, and such a matter is really going to pretty much always come down to coverage in current independent sources. Sources are what determine the WP:COMMONNAME analysis (and WP:OFFICALNAMEs don't count for much in it), meanwhile COMMONNAME determines the article title, and the article title usually tells us what to put first in the lead sentence.

What this section is actually about is ususally (not mandatorily) giving the full name of a company or other organization in the lead sentence even if the article title is shorter, just as we do with invididuals' names. It is not a "new rule" imposing anything, it's simply an observation of actual practice. E.g. PBS begins with "The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) ..." just like D. H. Lawrence begins with "David Herbert Lawrence ...", and Sony begins with "Sony Group Corporation ...", just as Bob Odenkirk begins with "Robert John Odenkirk ...". There is nothing controversial about this and it really doesn't have anything to do with product/service names.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:55, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

I have learned that people on Wikipedia throw accusations about things they themselves are doing. You asked to move Disney to The Walt Disney Company and was rejected completely by every other editor replying. Talk:The_Walt_Disney_Company#Requested_move_11_December_2023. You accuse me of being upset but you seem far more defensive about the rejection and by your own standards of evidence should we discuss whether you are are looking for a rule to wield (and upset that you could not find one) in your own discussions?

Let us just WP:AGF because it seems like we actually agree on the things that "everybody knows that" and just need to make this more clear. This is a page about all trademarks including products and services and not just corporate names so the page should reflect that. I will attempt to modify it based on the elements that you appear to agree on and let us try to find a constructive way forward. Jorahm (talk) 18:06, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, your attempt to do that actually made it read to be more about company names only, but I think the compromise version discussed below will resolve it. Disney: it was the other way around; I proposed moving the long-named article to the short name. Yes, the RM proposal was rejected; I've never said otherwise. And there is no "defensive" (or other) discussion of Disney here. You seem to be trying to spin my comments on the matter somewhere else as a means of implying something about me and about what I'm saying here, which doesn't seem to suit your "Let us just AGF" message. But whatever.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:44, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

@Jorahm: In light of revisions worked out below, it might be worth re-reviewing the original stuff above (in the same "Firstly," etc. order) to make sure this is entirely resolved:

1. The section (now named "Multiple, changed, and former names") has an opener about using in the lead sentence the full legal name of the company or other organization (which would include a subsidiary or a parent holding company with its own article, a nonprofit/not-for-profit/NGO, a university, a partnership, a state-owned enterprise, whatever; it's not limited to commercial corporations). This line-item is intentionally specific to organizations. Products/services don't have "legal names" with official corporation-type designators and other stuff we need to account for, so there is no reason to mention anything but organizations in that guideline sentence. (One of the later sentences, about former names and their lead pertinence was over-specific to entities; this has been fixed.)
2. It's hard to parse the second item you raised, but if the article is about the company, then the full-legal-name provision applies (see, e.g., Meta Platforms and its lead sentence, starting with "Meta Platforms, Inc."; this is a perfect example of using the WP:COMMONNAME as the title and as the name we use in most running text, but using the full legal company name in the lead sentence of its own article). If it's about a service then this legal-name stuff simply isn't applicable, thus the Meta Platforms service Facebook and our article on it. Even when the company was called "Facebook, Inc.", that was a separate article (since moved to the Meta Platforms one).

   A complication could theoretically arise if a service/product and the company owning it were at the same article. Exactly how to write the lead would vary on a case-by-case basis, depending on whether the focus was more on the company or on its offering (usually the latter, or there would be separate articles; companies are not generally notable simply for existing, but for what they produce/do). Even in such a case, however, the first mention of the company at an article doubling as a service-and-company article would have the full name of the company. The guideline doesn't explicitly state this. It could, with something like: When a service/product and the company producing it share an article and the lead sentence is about the former, give the full legal name of the company at first mention. But if there's no evidence anyone is confused on this point, then adding it would be WP:MOSBLOAT and we don't need to do it. It's already implicit. That is, trying to deny use of the full company at first mention simply because it was in the article's second sentence instead of first, despite the obvious intent of the MOS:TM material that the full company name is encyclopedically crucial, would be patently a bunch of ridiculous WP:WIKILAWYERing and no one would buy it. That said, the sky would not fall if we added that caveat. It's just not a good idea to add a line-item to MoS, which is already over-long and too-complicated, unless there's a proven need for it to resolve recurrent editorial strife. Cf. also WP:AJR: we do not need to add rules that address one-off brainfarts by some random individual if the community already rejects their brainfarting. :-)

3. The third part seems to have conflated several different kinds of issues. Using the Twitter example, the article is currently Twitter, and one would expect it to change some time this year, after more sources are writing "X (formerly Twitter)" or just "X" than are writing "Twitter (now X)" or just "Twitter". (It certainly doesn't help the cause of fans of the move that if you go to https://x.com or https://about.x.com they still redirect to https://twitter.com and https://about.twitter.com! The company is not anywhere near consistent with or insistent on its own branding ID change, yet.) It's a service, not a company, so the legal-name provision isn't applicable. The company article is X Corp. (the "official" name they use; in theory it could have been at X (company), but that is a disambiguation page, probably for good reason, so usurping it would be a debate, and it's easier to just use their official name, since it's also the WP:COMMONNAME anyway.) They appear as X Corp. in the lead, and this is compliant with the full-official-name guideline in TM (though in this case it coincidentally is also the page title). I can't find any reliable sources that have this company name with an additional corporation-type identifier tacked onto it, such as "Incorporated", "Inc.", "LLP", etc. Nor does its official or common name appear to be the longer "X Corporation". (One of the related holding companies, X Corp. Solutions, Inc., does have such a designator, and if it warranted its own article it would be at X Corp. Solutions and its lead would start with "X Corp. Solutions, Inc." I've raised this and other holding-company names at Talk:X Corp.) In short, there's not a problem to resolve at such articles, and the guideline isn't broken (and wasn't even before the recent tweaks, though it is clearer now than it was). Anyway, it is possible that there would be an article on the "historical Twitter", perhaps not, but that won't have any implications for any of this, since it was a service not a corporate entity.
4. (Unnumbered in your original.) There aren't any demonstrable "incorrect statements" in the guideline (before or now).

Hopefully this is all resolved.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:50, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

"Lead section" changes

I mean the section titled "Lead section", not the actual lead section of the guideline. Jorahm made undiscussed and quite substantive changes to it [13]. Rather than just revert, I applied the WP:PRESERVE principle and tried to integrate [14] what was salvageable from that edit into the material already present (including a line Jorahm deleted without any rationale). Here's a combined diff showing the before-and-after change (from original wording to new blended wording) [15]. Anyone should feel free to just revert to the previous stable version for further discussion of any such changes if the compromise attempt doesn't seem viable.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:27, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

The changes read much much better and thank you for working towards a constructive version with viable writing. I have a minor criticism which is that the section is titled "lead section" but is really just about how to cover organizations with multiple legal names. You can see it is already confusing just by how you started this thread but the essential reason why this is a little oddity is because this entire guideline page is really about trademarks in all cases which in many cases refers to products and services and not just companies or organizations. This would be easy to fix with a different title talking about companies who change their names or some other similar title for the section. Another small criticism is that the section does not properly emphasize the guidance at WP:NAMECHANGE but it at least mentions it and that is good enough I guess. Jorahm (talk) 17:51, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

@Jorahm: Poring over it after some rest, I agree that the section in question had come to cover more than lead material strictly and is focused on names of various types (not just legal ones, though). Meawhile, the MOS:TMSTYLE section also covers some lead material. And I didn't actually see a WP:NAMECHANGE ref explicitly in there, but it is clearly pertinent to cross-reference and to summarize as it applies here. And there was one line in there that was written as if only applicable to companies when it's not. I think this will resolve it all, assuming no one has some kind of objection to it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:34, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Partially capped abbreviations with multiple letters from a word

Do MOS:TM or MOS:ABBR or other MoS sections have any examples like "YAStrA" as an abbreviation for "yet another strange abbreviation"? Would the MOS prefer something like "YASTRA" or "Yastra" for that, if we assume sources are mixed? —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 18:46, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

The first example article I thought of, ExCeL London (from Exhibition Centre London) consistently uses the mixed capitalisation, looking at a random selection of independent sources cited in the article there is an approximate 50/50 split between "ExCeL" and "Excel", there were no instances of "EXCEL". The article is tagged as needing cleanup for (among other things) being written like an advert though so it's best not to treat that as definitive.

The only featured article I spotted of potential relevance is AdS/CFT correspondence but that's from anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence (so not quite the same) and it seems clear that that is the universally agreed correct capitalisation, so also of limited use to this question.

The Camel case article led me to National Novel Writing Month, which consistently uses capitalises the abbreviation as "NaNoWriMo", but so do pretty much all the sources (one of the hits on the first six pages of a google search for "nanowrimo" used it in all lowercase, everything else used the mixed case).

This is too small a sample to give a definite answer beyond use mixed capitalisation if that's what sources consistently do. Thryduulf (talk) 12:42, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

One that came to my mind is IMDb, but as far as I know, sources use that form (and that site itself dominates the search results rather than independent sources). I want to know what should happen if the sources are mixed. The topic that caused me to ask the question is ULTra (rapid transit), but I prefer to ask the more general question rather than focus on that one topic. After further digging, that one has its own specific evolution (see Talk:ULTra (rapid transit)). —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 23:02, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

I had an idea and put a list of some possibly relevant titles in my sandbox (all those in the 23 November article titles dumb that start with the letter case pattern AAaAa and contain no spaces). I've started to look through the list, most are redirects that are completely irrelevant that I'm just deleting to keep the list manageable (e.g. ASoIaF → A Song of Ice and Fire) and I've made notes on the others. So far I've not found any where the sources are inconsistent, but please feel free to use and edit that page. Thryduulf (talk) 01:40, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

@BarrelProof I've looked at some more from that list and found exactly one article that is directly relevant - FLiBe. The article consistently uses that capitalisation, but sources are mixed with "Flibe" being more common among the first few sources. I didn't find any examples of "FLIBE" or "flibe". The article is rated start class and has a cleanup tag for bare URLs so it seems unlikely this should be regarded as definitely conforming to the manual of style. Thryduulf (talk) 15:34, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

It sounds like ExCeL London is the best example so far. With the independent sources being mixed between "ExCeL" and "Excel", would Wikipedia have a preference? —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 18:17, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

My gut feeling is that where there is a clear predominance in independent reliable sources for one form we should use that, where usage is more mixed than that we should probably prefer whatever the official styling is. Where there isn't an official styling or it's unclear what it is, then treat it like we do Engvar issues - i.e. any form consistently found in reliable sources is fine, but be consistent within an article and don't change without good reason. Where usage is mixed in reliable sources or where our article differs from the official stylisation we should default to noting the multiple forms in the lead. Obviously we should not be using a form not found in reliable sources (e.g. EXCEL, FLIBE). Thryduulf (talk) 18:40, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

Y —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 00:27, 21 March 2024 (UTC)