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"Naming articles about ship classes" needs consensus or clarification re: SUFFIXDASH

TL;DR: Current wording of § Naming articles about ship classes is ambiguous and conflicts with WP:TITLE and MOS:SUFFIXDASH with regards to ship classes with multiple space- or hypen-separated words (e.g., "Arleigh Burke–class destroyer"). The last statement of the section, "In article titles and in article text, use a hyphen; do not use an en dash (–) or em dash (—)", has been interpreted to explicitly contradict MOS:SUFFIXDASH for multi-word ship class article titles.

Details: the top of § Naming articles about ship classes states, "Articles about a ship class should follow standard Wikipedia naming conventions". In cases of article titles that need to use en-dashes (such as Bose–Einstein condensate), a redirect named with ASCII hyphens exists to point to the typographically-correct article title (per WP:TITLESPECIALCHARACTERS).

In cases such as "Arleigh Burke–class destroyer", "APc-1–class transport", etc., the word "class" should be preceded by an en-dash (MOS:SUFFIXDASH) rather than a hyphen, because it modifies a compound term of words themselves separated by spaces or hyphens. But the wording of the section as it currently stands has been used as erroneous justification to perform renames, moving the en-dash–named article titles into redirects pointing to the hyphen-only–named articles (e.g.: Arleigh Burke–class destroyer → Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, General-Admiral–class cruiser → General-Admiral-class cruiser, and a very few other cases).

Without clarification of this section of WP:NC-SHIPS, the problem is that in general article text, the first (linked) mention of, say, Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, shouldn't have a hyphen, but all other non-linked uses, per MOS:SUFFIXDASH, should be "Arleigh Burke–class destroyer" (with en-dash).

Motivation: I seek this clarification in order to rename ~620 articles (User:Sbb/Ship classes to rename) (give or take a couple errors, probably) to use "–class" consistent with MOS:SUFFIXDASH.

(This subject was partially debated in 2011 as part of the larger wholesale "-class" vs. "–class" discussion.)  — sbb (talk) 23:38, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

But neither “class” or name of the class is a suffix or prefix; they’re both components of a compound adjective in the “X-class [ship type]” construction. That’s why we don’t use endashes. Parsecboy (talk) 00:07, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

I disagree. The example at MOS:SUFFIXDASH, "Turks and Caicos–based company", seems pretty analogous. When followed by ship type, "-class" makes the combination an adjective, and thus "-class" acts as a suffix to answer, "what type (or class) of ship? A <name>-class ship".  — sbb (talk) 00:19, 10 September 2021 (UTC) Edit: Arg, I should say, "<name>" acts as an adjectival prefix to "class". My bad. – sbb

Sorry, to be clear, I'm not talking about in all cases. Only when <name> is already multi-word, either hyphen- or space-separated. The dash in front of "class" gets promoted from hyphen to en-dash to further separate "-class" from one of the words in <name>. For instance, the en-dash clearly distinguishes between these two:

• Canadian River-class destroyer – a (hypothetical) destroyer of the River class, employed by the Canadian Royal Navy (c.f, French Flower-class corvettes, American Flower-class corvettes); and
• Canadian River–class destroyer – a class of destroyers all named after Canadian rivers.

The en-dash is semantically meaningful.  — sbb (talk) 00:28, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

The en-dash and hyphen are visually the same as far as majority of readers are concerned. If the distinction is important it should be stressed in the wording of the text rather than relying on a subtle difference in a length of a short line. The mere act of linking may make it clear: Canadian River-class destroyer vs Canadian River-class destroyer (or even "River-class destroyers in Canadian service"). How do screen readers handle the semantic precision of an en-dash? GraemeLeggett (talk) 20:01, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Will the non-hyphen dashes still leave the articles readily searchable? I find the hyphen is a very useful disambiguator in the search box, usually leading me right to the class article. I do not feel like memorizing and having to enter two or three ASCII codes to achieve the same result. RobDuch (talk·contribs) 23:17, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

All the articles would have to moved, but would leave behind redirects so the hyphen in search would still work. (I presume there are similar articles in other projects in the same position though without such a large number of "-class" articles). GraemeLeggett (talk) 07:36, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Correct. The existing hyphenated article versions would be left as redirects, rcat'd with {{R from move}} and {{R from ASCII-only}}. See for instance For instance, the redirect page Bose-Einstein condensate.  — sbb (talk) 20:48, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

re: I presume there are similar articles in other projects in the same position though without such a large number of "-class" articles – There are ~816 articles with 2 or more words separated by space or hyphen, followed by '-class'. Of those, besides ship-class articles, the biggest groups are classes of locomotives (~40), and "... first-class [cricket-related term]" (~50). The remaining 725 articles are all ship classes, but ~100 of them shouldn't be en-dash separated, such as several "List of <name>-class <ships>", most of the "<country> <name>-class <ships>" ("British B-class submarine", etc.).

So this is pretty much a ships-only thing, as a large group of any mention, I believe.  — sbb (talk) 22:30, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

When I use WP's search box, it appears the search treats en- (and even em-) dashes the same as hyphens. For instance, searching "Arleigh Burke-class", "Arleigh Burke–class", and "Arleigh Burke—class" all return 637 hits when I wrote this.  — sbb (talk) 22:00, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

The en-dash and hyphen are visually the same as far as majority of readers are concerned. Is that so? Are you saying that the majority of readers don't notice (and/or couldn't care less) about the difference? That is not a good argument for against an action, IMO. Consistent typography and grammar is exactly what a MOS is for, to present a more polished product to the reader. The majority of readers don't read or ever see the majority of articles on WP, yet we still strive to always build a more-complete encyclopedia.  — sbb (talk) 20:09, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

• Does this mean that {{Sclass-}} will become {{Sclass–}}? Mjroots (talk) 05:09, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Technically yes. That template would need reworking lest you have en-dashed article names but the thousands of times the ship class was mentioned in articles would all be hyphenated (what a merry wheeze that would have been). The template would have to be able to determine if the 'promotion' to en-dash was warranted in each case - an interesting programming issue that I wouldn't care to be involved in. GraemeLeggett (talk) 07:43, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Actually, {{sclass-}} and {{sclass2-}} are deprecated in favor of {{sclass}} and {{sclass2}}. The simple fix for those templates, if this proposal succeeds, is the creation of {{sclass dash}} and {{sclass2 dash}} which puts the burden on editors to choose the correct template. More difficult is a rewrite that does-the-right-thing when given a whitespace-, endash-, emdash-, or hyphen-separated class name.

The ship infobox code will also need to be modified to recognize the endash in the 'new' titles so that the display-name formatting does-the-right-thing.

Has there been any demonstration of reader confusion or frustration because multi-word space- or hyphen-separated ship-class article titles don't use an endash?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:08, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: I though it was {{Sclass}} that had been deprecated. When you tried you use it there was an error message. Pretty sure I wasn't imagining it. Mjroots (talk) 13:15, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships/Archive 64 § sclass- and sclass2-. Occasionally, entries pop-up on my watchlist where the edit summaries indicate that there is at least one editor who is converting {{sclass-}} and {{sclass2-}} to {{sclass}} and {{sclass2}}.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:36, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Now that {{sclass-}} and {{sclass2-}} are deprecated, if the suggestion to use en-dashes for multiword ship class article titles is adopted, I'd further suggest that they be used as a shorthand for the em-dashed version. If that were done, it would certainly have to wait until all of their current usages were expunged from use. Currently, there's only ~2200 uses of {{sclass2-}} in mainspace articles, but at least 10 times that many uses of {{sclass-}}.  — sbb (talk) 20:53, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Pointless busywork. You are just ensuring that ship class article titles are inconsistent for poorly explained reasons which have no relevance in the real world. Enforcing this rule will ensure that large numbers of articles will be at the wrong titles, and will undoubtedly introduce introduce redlinks because people don't set up the correct redlinks. This is of no benefit to the reader or the editor.Nigel Ish (talk) 09:00, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Agree 100%. Carlstak (talk) 14:11, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Okay, but then would you agree that there's still a need for clarification, to explicitly state that ship-class article name do not follow MOS:SUFFIXDASH/PREFIXDASH? That is, the article title (and all text references in other articles) to APc-1-class transport shall have only hyphens? The status quo is ambiguous, and needs to be clarified, IMO. Clearly, I prefer the en-dash route, but I'm arguing for clarification above all else.  — sbb (talk) 20:05, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

You wrote "I seek this clarification in order to rename ~620 articles". You didn't suggest "or the naming convention should be amended to say Don't Use En-dashes". GraemeLeggett (talk) 07:04, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Fine. I'm perfectly willing to admit I didn't put my best foot forward on opening the discussion. I came to a conclusion, and came here seeking discussion and support. Do you, or do you not, agree that clarification of some sort needs to be made? How do I go back and change or amend what I said, without being revisionist and confusing the entire discussion? You can be right all you want. But please, let's look at the bigger picture: do you think there needs to be clarification?  — sbb (talk) 08:49, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Let me approach this somewhat obliquely. The reason I thought there was an en-dash issue with multiword ship class article names was because somebody made an edit to an article, changing (I believe, if I recall correctly) article text (not a link to an article) "South Carolina-class battleship" to "South Carolina–class battleship", citing MOS:SUFFIXDASH. I thought about it for awhile, and ultimately led me to open this discussion because of the consequence. If that editor was correct in their edit, shouldn't article titles also conform? That's my thought process.

In article text (ignoring article titles for the moment), shouldn't the following all have "class" be en-dash separated? If not, what makes "-class" special, that a multiword proper-name-as-prefix shouldn't be separated from the noun it modifies (class) with en-dash, in accordance with MOS:PREFIXDASH? Or perhaps the question might be asked differently, if one were to go edit all such instances, perhaps including pipe linking existing articles, to be in accordance with MOS, should those edits be reverted?

1. Arleigh Burke-class destroyer *
2. APc-1-class transport *
3. 3200 hp-class tug
4. 3200-horsepower class tug
5. 5-series-class fast attack craft
6. Steel Electric-class ferry

Assuming those should be en-dash separated, why then would the article titles not be changed to match?

* It was suggested in the 2011 debate that the italics in Arleigh Burke, etc., served to set off the typsetting sufficiently to not require en-dash separation with "class". I don't agree with that, but I definitely want to be corrected if I'm wrong. I've looked quite a bit, I don't see anything in MOS stating or alluding to that. But I wanted to acknowledge the point and possible exemption from what I'm arguing for.  — sbb (talk) 09:35, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

I think for the average reader, the italic text will set off the name far better than a few pixels' difference in the length of a horizontal line. Which is to say, changing hundreds of articles (and thousands of links) to use a dash instead of a hyphen seems redundant and a waste of time. Parsecboy (talk) 10:54, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

I appreciate the opinion re: italics setting off the distinction as opposed to a en-dash, but, assuming I'm correct (for the sake of the debate), the difficulty/hassle of a change has no bearing on whether or not MOS is conformed with.  — sbb (talk) 16:18, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

What a storm in a teacup! The hyphen is correct, as is it co-joining a compound modifier. There is no suffix or prefix here. Honestly... Shem (talk) 12:25, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Shem has hit it exactly on the head. No suffixes or prefixes are involved here just compound adjectives.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 13:33, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Yawn. Leave it as it is Lyndaship (talk) 12:52, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Except, the phrase includes a space or a dash. This is no different from "Turks and Caicos–based company" or "Rogers and Hammerstein–esque musical number".  — sbb (talk) 16:22, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Thank you everybody for your (probably dwindling) patience. Clearly, there is no support for this, and that I am seeing an issue that nobody else is. While I still don't understand why this isn't a MOS contradiction, I accept that I have gained zero traction for this. Again, thanks for engaging, it is appreciated. =)  — sbb (talk) 17:45, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

@Sbb: I think one way to look at this is, while this may be MOS issue in need of correction, it's not a pressing one. Surely there are more important matters across the project to attend to, and to direct all this time and effort to. (jmho) This is not to say that your desire to help improve this site's content is not appreciated, because it is. Cheers. - wolf 23:10, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

@Thewolfchild: Thank you, that's kind and diplomatic, but not really helpful. If it's a MOS issue that needs correcting, it doesn't matter if it's low-priority. I'm not really a fan of Surely there are more pressing matters across the project to attend to line of reasoning. There are plenty of low-priority long-term "never 100% correct" MOS issues to fix in articles. Some people like to bring articles to FA status, some like to buff their "new article" stats. I'm a gnome, I like doing tedious consistency fixes as much as possible. So if it's a MOS issue that needs fixing, I'd like support on it. I'll be happy to drive the bus to propose clarification to the MOS(es) if needed, and start working on the affected articles.

But that doesn't appear to be the case. The respondents here either don't think it's a MOS inconsistency at all (i.e., they completely disagree with me), or aren't convinced to take an opinion that it is an issue. That's fine. I was of the impression that an issue needed to be addressed, and I was/am willing to do it. But I'm clearly reading the situation wrong, and it's me who needs calibration, not the MOS, at least as far as this consensus matter is concerned. I still don't understand why others don't agree, but I accept the WP consensus way.

Again, thanks for reaching out. It's kind of you. But I would rather a clear "yes, it's an issue", even if it's followed with "but I don't care enough either way to have it fixed".  — sbb (talk) 01:31, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

At least some of those who disagree with you, including me, don't agree that this is a prefix/suffix issue at all. "Class" and the name of the class are both nouns, they aren't a prefix or suffix. Parsecboy (talk) 11:57, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

But you understand that nouns, even proper nouns, can act as an adjective-like prefix to combine with words like 'class', 'grade', 'type', or 'level' to form a compound modifier, that together act as an adjective when placed in front of nouns like 'carrier', 'destroyer', etc.

The example "Turks and Caico–based company" comes straight from the MOS. People could exhibit Star Wars–grade fandom. Or a movie might have Avengers: Endgame–level fanservice. Yes, the last two are somewhat tortured examples, and they could just as easily be reworded. But they are also sensical and valid English constructs, and fall into the same prefix/suffix en-dash–requiring rule, just like I believe Arleigh Burke–class destroyer does.

I don't misunderstand that you don't see a suffix/prefix issue at all; I get that. And my reasoning I've put forth clearly hasn't swayed anybody. So either I'm correct but in a minority of 1 and incapable of persuading others, or I'm just wrong. Either way, I see no need to continue seeking consensus here, when in fact the (anti-) opposite consensus has been achieved (or perhaps better put, already existed). Thanks for the conversation. Truly. Happy editing.  — sbb (talk) 15:40, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia would have been much better off if we'd just outlawed the N-dash in the very beginning. Hyphens Forever! BilCat (talk) 23:05, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

The use of "she/her" pronouns for ships

She/her pronouns used on ships, in my honest opinion, feel archaic and out-of-place. To people who are not ship enthusiasts, it is probably their feeling as well.

Additionally, it's possible that this usage is misogynistic and a subtle factor driving women away from Wikipedia. She/her pronouns were historically used to refer to ships and other personal items in order to emphasize that the ship was the owner's property that he took care of (carrying connotations of objectified beauty as well) similar to how women were viewed by their husbands. Even without this context explicitly stated, using "she/her" to refer to property, especially in the formal tone of Wikipedia, probably carries these underlying implications.

PBZE (talk) 05:48, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

There is an ongoing discussion of this matter at WP:MOS - Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#"She" for ships - please keep the discussion in one place.Nigel Ish (talk) 09:03, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

I didn't realize that. Thanks PBZE (talk) 15:34, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

That discussion (RfC actually) was closed on 11 April 2022. The close was challenged at AN, and it was quickly determined that the RfC was a "no-consensus". The RfC close was amended as such, (though the RfC hasn't been archived yet, it's likely heading to archive page 224 or 225). The review was closed on 13 April 2022 and can be found at WP:AN/Archive342#Close review - "She" for ships. Hope this helps. - wolf 07:29, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

How would you disambiguate articles in this situation?

I just came across a series of three articles on three ships, all three have the same name, all three were built in the same year, and all three were built in the same city. At the moment the articles are titled Sir Francis N. Burton (1825 ship (1)), Sir Francis N. Burton (1825 ship (2)) and Sir Francis Burton (1825 ship (3)). I don't think the "assigning them a sequence of numbers in a nested disambiguator" setup is very good, it doesn't really tell you anything that would let you disambiguate the three ships. How would you disambiguate them in this case? Date by which they were wrecked? 192.76.8.78 (talk) 11:37, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

Good point. How about by life span, i.e., Sir Francis Burton (1825–1826 ship), and the like? Acad Ronin (talk) 15:03, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

That was my first thought too, it disambiguates the articles in a way that makes it clear which boat each article is on, but I'm not an expert on ship naming conventions so it's probably best to wait until someone more familiar with the guidelines comments. 192.76.8.78 (talk) 15:33, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

QENS

Is "QENS" an accepted ship prefix for ships of the Qatari Emiri Navy? It's not listed in the Ship prefix article, but is used in the titles of several QEN ship articles, including QENS Al Fulk (L141) and QENS Al Zubarah (F101). Thanks. BilCat (talk) 21:09, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

It is according to Jane's Fighting Ships 2015–2016 (p. 662).Nigel Ish (talk) 21:17, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Definite article with the ship's name

I saw the thread at the top about the use of definite articles, but gained no clarity from it at all and I found little in the conventions guideline that clarified matters either. What is the general advice on whether to use a definite article or not, given that in BrEng is is more common to use "the" in good English than to avoid it. Is there a standing consensus or guideline on whether to use or avoid, or is it left more open than that? Thanks - SchroCat (talk) 16:58, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

I don't think there's a consensus and that's why the naming convention has adopted the "not needed, but not technically wrong either" approach. Sometimes it may sound okay ("It's the Enterprise"), but in most cases it feels unnecessary and even excessive in a Wikipedia article. Personally I only use it if there are words between the article and the ship's name (e.g. "...unlike the diesel-electric icebreaker Viktor Chernomyrdin..." or "...unlike Viktor Chernomyrdin..." but not "..unlike the Viktor Chernomyrdin.."). Tupsumato (talk) 17:19, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

That's more or less it - use it if you want, or don't. FWIW, I follow the same practice Tupsumato describes. Parsecboy (talk) 17:29, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Excellent - thank you both. That seems a sensible path to follow, so I'll follow suit. Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 17:41, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

One other minor point to make: when I refer to a ship class, I'd use the definite article, so for example, "...the Sachsen class" since in this case, "class" is the noun and the ship name is just an adjective. Parsecboy (talk) 17:49, 30 August 2023 (UTC)