→Alt + 0150 for en dashes on Windows: message from GF Handel |
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::Or if you have FF, get the abcTajpu addon and customize it. (I set --[insert] to output –.) — [[User:Kwamikagami|kwami]] ([[User talk:Kwamikagami|talk]]) 09:29, 31 January 2011 (UTC) |
::Or if you have FF, get the abcTajpu addon and customize it. (I set --[insert] to output –.) — [[User:Kwamikagami|kwami]] ([[User talk:Kwamikagami|talk]]) 09:29, 31 January 2011 (UTC) |
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:::Or use the dash-button just below the edit-box. The way we do for a host of characters and syntaxes. [[User:Tony1|<font color="darkgreen">'''Tony'''</font >]] [[User talk:Tony1|<font color="darkgreen">(talk)</font >]] 14:39, 31 January 2011 (UTC) |
:::Or use the dash-button just below the edit-box. The way we do for a host of characters and syntaxes. [[User:Tony1|<font color="darkgreen">'''Tony'''</font >]] [[User talk:Tony1|<font color="darkgreen">(talk)</font >]] 14:39, 31 January 2011 (UTC) |
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[[User:GF Handel]] sent me this comment, which I am posting below: |
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{{cquote|Have a look at [http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/accents/codealt.html this page], which has a "how to" section. If the ALT codes don't work, check the following: |
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*Make sure the Num Lock light is on. Find the Num Lock key and press it a few times to see the behaviour of the little Num Lock light on the keyboard (the light must be on for ALT key codes to work). |
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*Press and hold down the ALT key while pressing the four digit keys (one at a time). After pressing all four digits, release the ALT key. It is the releasing of the ALT key that inserts the requested character. Use the ALT key to the left of the space bar (not the one to the right of the space bar). |
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*You must use the numeric key pad to press the number digits (not the horizontal row of numbers above the letters on the keyboard). |
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*ALT key codes are not just for em and en dashes. Any character can be entered using the the ALT key and the appropriate four digits. In theory I could have typed this entire email just by using the ALT key and the numeric key pad. Of course, that would be a little ridiculous, and in practice the ALT codes are only used for the common "unusual" characters. For example, to write "café" properly (with the acute mark), I used ALT 0233.}} |
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[[User:Tony1|<font color="darkgreen">'''Tony'''</font >]] [[User talk:Tony1|<font color="darkgreen">(talk)</font >]] 02:41, 1 February 2011 (UTC) |
Revision as of 02:41, 1 February 2011
Manual of Style | ||||||||||
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"MOS:"
There's a discussion about whether non-Manual of Style pages should use shortcuts prefixed with "MOS:" over at Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2011_January_8#MOS:ALT. Any comments would be appreciated. Thanks! Mhiji
Growing abuse of WP:DASH out-of-context and as if Holy Writ
There has been an annoying spread of the abuse of what it is claimed WP:DASH says, and the defenders of replacing virtually every hyphen in Wikipedia with dashes makes it sound like this is mandatory and all kinds of silly arguments are made to defend mis-applications about it. Current RMs on Talk:Poland-Lithuania and Talk:Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District and an unfiled one about Greco-Turkish Wars on WP:RM (no template has been placed on Talk:Greco-Turkish War (er, looking again, taht was Greco-Persian Wars, same argument applies) all make the "dash here, dash there, hyphens nowhere" argument, which claims to be about "typography" and "style" being more important than the sources - and wantonly ignoring what WP:ENDASH actually says, which is:
- An en dash is not used for a hyphenated name (Lennard-Jones potential, named after John Lennard-Jones) or an element that lacks lexical independence (the prefix Sino- in Sino-Japanese trade).
The section needs clarification so that geographic hyphenated names, and other names of that kind, do not go so breezily dismissed as being left up to the imposition of Wikipedia's "style" in defiance of what the rest of the world (the real world) uses. I dispute many of the sweeping conventions/declarations of WP:DASH which, though consensus long ago at some point, are not immutable and deserve revisition, per the fifth pillar of WP:CCC (I think that's it) about consensus being adaptable and changeable. In this case it doesn't have to be, as both WP:HYPHEN and WP:ENDASH have more than enough of them to invalidate any suggestion that the dash is mandatory; those fanatical about this continue to deny that names such as Poland-Lithuania are actual names, and want to claim they are made of independent elements (on that premise, so are "Lennard" and "Jones" in Lennard-Jones, the name-example used in ENDASH). WP:HYPHEN needs expansion, WP:ENDASH needs emendation and clarification and more examples, and the wanton arrogance of teh "typography is more important than the sources" crowd needs to be slapped down.Skookum1 (talk) 21:09, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
- I don't see a problem with the current guidelines. If editors are placing dashes where none should be WP:TROUT them. As you yourself said, the problem is that some editors are ignoring the explicit statements of WP:ENDASH not to do this, so the problem lies with the editors, and not the MOS here. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 01:24, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
Noted, but I think some emendation/expansion/clarification is needed, so that no one will construe (again) geographic hyphenated names as not being the same as hyphenated personal names, which they utterly are. It's not just that said editors are ignoring the whole of DASH/HYPHEN sections, they're wildly misinterpreting them and also interpolating and extrapolating off them some kind of absolutism-of-the-dash, while invoking MOS very loudly to justify their own....er, judgments; how to rein that in I don't know, other than to hope for better education methods in our schools....the comment in ENDASH about prefixes with no lexical indepedence, as with Sino- in Sino-Tibetan, as one of the dash-pushing editors is maintaining that the adjectival form Polish-Lithuanian shouldn't be a hyphen, even though the root term Poland-Lithuania is (or should be, which is the subject of that RM); so it's not jsut "lexical independence" which mandates a hyphen, but also adjectival forms and adjectival auxiliaries.....I read all three sections (HYPHEN, ENDASH and EMDASH) and quite frankly found them very vague in spots, and mutually conflicting sometimes too. The passage about the use of hyphens needing to be flexible and requiring some subtlety should be highlighted, at least - it's a key component, something like the infamous notwithstanding clause in the Canadian constitution, which is the back door out of anything a government wants to pull that the Charter ordinarly wouldn't allow - but there's also items in DASH which say "optional" which are being invoked, loudly, as if Doctrines From On High (but without the "optional" bit).....I"m not asking for sweeping revisions here, just clarity and more examples, as with geographic names using hyphens, and maybe a point-clause numbering system for line-quotes when you need to beat someone on the head about what they want MOS to say, even if it doesn't actually say it. I think there's been a lot of misapplication of the DASH in recent months, and there should be some kind of review investigating all the inappopriate changes, to titles, to categories, and to article content; similarly there's been a lot of misapplication of the lower-case-second-word "rule" too, often with embarrassing or just inane results ("Columbia river", "Fraser river", the "Persian wars" etc)...it's almost like someone has geared a bot to look for all two-capped combination terms and make the second one a lower-case without discretion or reference to the actuality of their proper name-hood. Lots of knee-jerk application of MOS, it seems, by people who don't really understand it....I'm also tired of hearing that MOS out-trumps sources, though that doesn't seem to come from anybody who actually wrote MOS or works on it at present.....Skookum1 (talk) 05:02, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
- WP:HYPHEN ends with "Hyphenation involves many subtleties that cannot be covered here ..." so I'm not surprised to hear that the usual style wars that the Manual of Style was supposed to prevent can continue unabated, with both sides thinking the MOS is on their own side. But I'm pretty sure that an MOS consensus would agree that "Polish-Lithuanian" isn't a "lexical independence" issue, that "Nordrhein-Westfalen" and "Austria-Hungary" should be hyphenated, and "Polish–Lithuanian border" needs a dash – but even I'm not sure about "Polish-Lithuanian union". As for whether the MOS out-trumps sources, in either case this is a better page to debate the issue than Talk:Poland–Lithuania, because there is hope of resolving disputes concerning several articles, all in the same centralized place. Either that, or admit that we can't state rules about dashes that Wikipedia editors can understand, and just eliminate rules we can't explain. Art LaPella (talk) 06:17, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
The Polish-Lithuanian union and Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth are both referred to historically as "Poland-Lithuania"; the distinctions are wiki-titles to distinguish between two different political structures (of the same country) only and should reflect the source term, which is never "dash-ized". See Austria-Hungary for its official names; the convention remains hyphenated in English, and always has been, and always should be. Also, because of teh lnkage in referenc to a single country, whether "Polish-" or "Poland-" in reference to this country, these are NOT "lexically indepedent uses" because in those forms they are only' used in relation to the union/commonwealth with Lithuania.Skookum1 (talk) 06:28, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
- WP:TLDR. Could you provide a brief summary of your posts and put these ones under a collapsible banner? Tony (talk) 07:32, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
- He's saying Poland-Lithuania has a hyphen, not an en dash, because "Poland" and "Lithuania" lack lexical independence. Between the lines, however, I think he just wants to win his fight at Talk:Poland–Lithuania#Requested_move. Ozob (talk) 11:58, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
- Actually, this started back at Talk:Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District, and ultimately at items in (the subcats of) Category:Regional districts of British Columbia, where the dash was inappropriately tossed willy-nilly (by a speedy CfD no less, undiscussed) on names which are NEVER spelled with a dash. Asking me for a "brief summary" will cause quite a few chuckles for those familiar with my verbal style; short-winded I'm not. ENDASH is very clear, and that's the point - hyphenated names of any kind do not take the dash, and should have the hyphen. Period. As with normal English everywhere outside Wikipedia, except for a few rare sources.....Wikipedia's job is not to change the English language, but evidently there are lots of people around here who are intent on doing so....Skookum1 (talk) 21:33, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
- Agreed with Art. I'm copyediting Manhattan Project at the moment, and I would be really, really grateful if no one picks a fight over Einstein-Szilárd letter. That page is titled with a dash, and since this is Wikipedia, I won't even try to win that fight, because most Wikipedians haven't heard of the Einstein-Szilárd letter; they imagine that it's some letter involving both, so it should have a dash. No, it's not a letter involving both, it's the letter involving both, hyphenated without exception in the sources, because that's the name of the letter. My belief is that it's ironic that Wikipedians, of all people, are trying to get the world to do things our way rather than following the sources. - Dank (push to talk) 14:22, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
- Well, not actually without exception; some books do use the en dash: like this one. I don't think that Einstein-Szilárd letter is a proper name of an entity (if it were, letter would be capitalized, too); rather, it's a descriptive term involving two persons, not someone named Einstein-Szilárd. Dicklyon (talk) 16:52, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
- Well crap, there's one influential dictionary out of line with the others ... Merriam-Webster (note the hyphen!) uses an en-dash in for instance "Bose–Einstein". Grrr, why can't they be consistent with their own name, and with other American dictionaries? This isn't supported by for instance Webster's New World or Chicago (in which the very few examples all use hyphens for a well-known thing that's a compound word, such as "Spanish-American War" at 8.112). Your example btw doesn't do much for me, it's published by "An Independent Publisher for the 21st Century" ... independent, and cheap, too. On your second point, "letter" doesn't need a capital letter, any more than "the New York subway system" needs initial capital letters, to refer to one well-known thing (although in fact, I'm pretty sure I've seen "Letter" capitalized). I'm sympathetic to Art's position: if the rules are so complicated that even dictionaries aren't consistent, what chance do we have of being consistent? - Dank (push to talk) 18:00, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
- IMO "Spanish-American War", like other similar terms (Greco-Turkish War, Greco-Persian Wars) should also not have had a dash imposed upon it, as per normal English convention (everywhere, virtually, other than Wikipedia); because of the unitary nature of what's meant, there is no "lexical independence" or "disjuncture" justifying the use of the dash, which looks unsightly and out-of-place on that article; the function of the "Greco-" and that of "Spanish-" in the respective terms is identical.Skookum1 (talk) 22:12, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
- Just as an FYI, New York City Subway is capitalized as a proper noun. And that's sourced to the current subway map on my wall. oknazevad (talk) 20:55, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
- Well crap, there's one influential dictionary out of line with the others ... Merriam-Webster (note the hyphen!) uses an en-dash in for instance "Bose–Einstein". Grrr, why can't they be consistent with their own name, and with other American dictionaries? This isn't supported by for instance Webster's New World or Chicago (in which the very few examples all use hyphens for a well-known thing that's a compound word, such as "Spanish-American War" at 8.112). Your example btw doesn't do much for me, it's published by "An Independent Publisher for the 21st Century" ... independent, and cheap, too. On your second point, "letter" doesn't need a capital letter, any more than "the New York subway system" needs initial capital letters, to refer to one well-known thing (although in fact, I'm pretty sure I've seen "Letter" capitalized). I'm sympathetic to Art's position: if the rules are so complicated that even dictionaries aren't consistent, what chance do we have of being consistent? - Dank (push to talk) 18:00, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
- Well, not actually without exception; some books do use the en dash: like this one. I don't think that Einstein-Szilárd letter is a proper name of an entity (if it were, letter would be capitalized, too); rather, it's a descriptive term involving two persons, not someone named Einstein-Szilárd. Dicklyon (talk) 16:52, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
- He's saying Poland-Lithuania has a hyphen, not an en dash, because "Poland" and "Lithuania" lack lexical independence. Between the lines, however, I think he just wants to win his fight at Talk:Poland–Lithuania#Requested_move. Ozob (talk) 11:58, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
- WP:TLDR. Could you provide a brief summary of your posts and put these ones under a collapsible banner? Tony (talk) 07:32, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
- You mean in the map title? In books, other than in titles, "New York City subway" is almost never capitalized. A map title hardly suggests otherwise. Why is this being interpreted as a proper name? I thought the policy was to interpret things as proper names only if they are "almost always" capitalized in sentences in reliable sources. This one fails that. If it were a proper name, wouldn't mta.info mention it at least once on their site, other than in a title? Dicklyon (talk) 01:35, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
- This is precisely what I'm talking about. I'm looking directly at the official map (which I geekily keep on my wall). Sure as hell, the "S" is capitalized. "New York City Subway" is a proper noun, just like "London Underground", "Washington Metro", "Paris Metro", "Bay Area Rapid Transit" and others. Just because it's commonly misused doesn't change that. oknazevad (talk) 02:56, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
- I understood that to be your opinion. As I was trying to point out, capitalization in a title doesn't really tell you much. I agree that widespread error should not dissuade of from doing the right thing, which is why I use the en dash where it is propertly prescribed. But in this case, I don't see what makes you interpret "New York City Subway" as a proper name, when there's little evidence for that usage in sources, and no use of it on the operator's official site, other than in titles like on your map. The London Underground is a completely different story; everywhere I find it in books is capitalized. Dicklyon (talk) 03:44, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
- And "the New York subway system" isn't, per the first four hits on "the New York subway system" that actually say "subway system", not in a title. I was illustrating the point with a name that wasn't generally used as a proper name, but clear nevertheless. - Dank (push to talk) 22:00, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
- I just wanted to head off any attempt to move the article from it's current title. Not that you'd do such, but others might misinterpret this conversation. oknazevad (talk) 23:28, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
- I second that, my goal isn't to provoke a fight, only to explain my copyediting choices, which are restricted to a limited number of articles at A-class and FAC.
- I just wanted to head off any attempt to move the article from it's current title. Not that you'd do such, but others might misinterpret this conversation. oknazevad (talk) 23:28, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
- And "the New York subway system" isn't, per the first four hits on "the New York subway system" that actually say "subway system", not in a title. I was illustrating the point with a name that wasn't generally used as a proper name, but clear nevertheless. - Dank (push to talk) 22:00, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
- Surely the simple answer is to forget the en-dash altogether in WP names, e.g. page names, category names, template names etc. It just causes more trouble than it's worth, in that it requires redirects so that 'incorrectly-named' objects can be found, requires bots to go crawling about WP changing names etc etc etc. Why this misdirected perfectionism at the expense of usability and IT resources? Why should WP be governed by arcane rules developed for print media? If someone wants to use WP material for printed work, let him/her apply the changes. Let's keep it simple. --TraceyR (talk) 20:23, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
- I think this is a good example where we realize that Wikipedia is a work in progress and will never be perfect. There are editors who probably don't know or care about dashes, and will use hyphens. There are also editors who do care, and will quietly go about fixing them. If there's no harm in using hyphens for everything, there's also no harm (and probably at least a little benefit) in changing hyphens to en dashes, minus sign, or em dashes where necessary. As long as we have the MOS, we will have WikiGnomes willing to fix dashes, and that's fine. I don't think that the friction between the two camps is necessary. Dabomb87 (talk) 22:57, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
- The point is not that people don't know about the en-dash, it's that they know but cannot see the point of complicating things. It's sad that people will devote their free time to adding a pixel or two to every hyphen to satisfy some pedantic need. It wastes so much time and effort for no appreciable gain. --TraceyR (talk) 07:04, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
- I think this is a good example where we realize that Wikipedia is a work in progress and will never be perfect. There are editors who probably don't know or care about dashes, and will use hyphens. There are also editors who do care, and will quietly go about fixing them. If there's no harm in using hyphens for everything, there's also no harm (and probably at least a little benefit) in changing hyphens to en dashes, minus sign, or em dashes where necessary. As long as we have the MOS, we will have WikiGnomes willing to fix dashes, and that's fine. I don't think that the friction between the two camps is necessary. Dabomb87 (talk) 22:57, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
- If there isn't a button for it on my standard qwerty "101" keyboard I am not going to bother with it. As far as I can see there is no difference between the "-" which is the dash/hyphen/minus/whatever above the "P" and this one, "-" on the numeric keypad above the "+". Those are the only dash/hypen/minus/whatever keys on this keyboard. I have absolutely zero interest in counting pixels. How does one produce en and em dashes anyway? Don't bother answering, I don't really care. Roger (talk) 21:22, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
- I don't have a snappy answer for that. Some wikiprojects (such as WP:MILHIST) are blessed with people like AustralianRupert and Ian Rose who do parts of your copyediting "for free" after you push the article up the review ladder, so people who haven't digested all of Turabian or Chicago (for American English) don't need to worry too much about that stuff. I'm still hoping the Foundation employs copy editors (other than me!) some day; I think that would ease friction on Wikipedia, in both senses. - Dank (push to talk) 22:13, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
- Nor do I, but User:GregU/dashes.js is very handy for editors who don't want to spend time clicking on the en dash symbol below the edit summary box, typing in
–
or using the appropriate keyboard shortcut. Dabomb87 (talk) 22:50, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
- Nor do I, but User:GregU/dashes.js is very handy for editors who don't want to spend time clicking on the en dash symbol below the edit summary box, typing in
- I don't have a snappy answer for that. Some wikiprojects (such as WP:MILHIST) are blessed with people like AustralianRupert and Ian Rose who do parts of your copyediting "for free" after you push the article up the review ladder, so people who haven't digested all of Turabian or Chicago (for American English) don't need to worry too much about that stuff. I'm still hoping the Foundation employs copy editors (other than me!) some day; I think that would ease friction on Wikipedia, in both senses. - Dank (push to talk) 22:13, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
- If there isn't a button for it on my standard qwerty "101" keyboard I am not going to bother with it. As far as I can see there is no difference between the "-" which is the dash/hyphen/minus/whatever above the "P" and this one, "-" on the numeric keypad above the "+". Those are the only dash/hypen/minus/whatever keys on this keyboard. I have absolutely zero interest in counting pixels. How does one produce en and em dashes anyway? Don't bother answering, I don't really care. Roger (talk) 21:22, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
- Roger, the point of the en dash is to make life easier for the reader, not for the writer, by signaling the meaning. In Bose–Einstein condensate, you can see at a glance that it's named after two guys, not someone named Bose-Einstein; the dash separates more, while the hyphen connects more strongly, affeting how the words are pronounced, even. Unfortunately, with all the people who grew up doing text on Windows (or on Mac ignoring the option key), as opposed to with TeX or some other real typesetting system, these conventions have been too much ignored in recent decades. It's a sad fact, but not one that the wikipedia consensus has decided to give up on. Dicklyon (talk) 23:02, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
Growing abuse of WP:DASH out-of-context and as if Holy Writ (part 2)
[undent] Blame it on Windows, then, blame it on Windows users, that they didn't have the capacity to write with your newfangled way of doing things. Pity me, I was raised on an Underwood in the age of mechanical typewriters, and have used everything from telex to wordprocessing typewriters to the various electrics; had a slick portable my DAd owned, kinda space age '50s design, and our school had the old big black ones with the cash-register type keys. Not a friggin' dash on any one of them, only the hyphen and underline. Where do you get off talking like your way is better becaues Mac can along and improved things and made useless things possible? Wikipedia should be about ease-of-entry, and the MOS not overcompliated with unnecssary special characters; the same reason news copy and magazine copy isn't (unless "arty" designed). Wikipedia should be about enabling content, not fussing with design at the expense of people actually able and willing to add content meaningfully. The amount of energy going into this nonsense is really, really discouraging; the suggestion that technology is improving the way we write language, and that we have to get used to it and embrace it, is utter arrogant hogwash and all from a minority faction....the mainstream is the mainstream, typing has been typing for a hundred years before Wikipedia came along; Wikipedia should be part of it, not try to change it or tell experienced tpyists "you're doing things wrong, this is for publication and all these normal hyphen places are not acceptable because we say so". "We" being a handful of design-obsessed people, who don't have enough experience with content - or with typing - to be relevant in dicsussions of how to spell (or typeset) historical names, or dictate changes to historical conventions, some centuries-old. YOu haven't improved anything, you've unnecessarily complicated things for those of us actually interested in what the content is about. All because you have a Mac keyboard and want to sniff your nose at the rest of us for not keeping up with you??? Gimme a break. Technology should not wantonly redesign langauge as its own justification; nobody appionted you to write new spelling rules, or come up with a typographic system you're mis-using MOS to apply.....WP:KISS. Making things tougher for writers, instead of more encouraging, is the wrong way to go; dissing them because they were raised on Windows machines, or in my case, ancient typewriters....not hearing you, and dno't think much of what you're saying.Skookum1 (talk) 04:49, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
- I need to stay on Tony's good side and keep racking up the supports, but...if I could take the whole ndhash silliness and trade it for some better writing and content and organization would do that in a heartbeat. Look around the wiki. There are a gazillion articles with poor organization at every level of heirarchy. Putting like with like and making it simple for readers to follow article though threads would mean a lot more than some hyphen or ndash (honestly, I STILL can't SEE the difference). Just give me a non-breaking hyphen and I will be ducky.TCO (talk) 05:00, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
- That's the other problem that Microsoft seems to have foisted on us: default fonts where the en dash is as short of the hyphen. On my Mac, it's general significantly longer. Some sources say it's traditionally half the length of an em dash, which worked OK when the em dash was real long, but in my experience (in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s mostly), the en dash was generally signficantly longer than half the em dash, as it still is in the default fonts I use on my Mac. The difference is glaringly obvious. Dicklyon (talk) 05:48, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
- I'm all for simplicity, and I wouldn't think of blaming the user for not knowing or caring about typography. I do blame Microsoft for not making it easy, but that's just an irrelevant aside, I admit. For wikipedia users, there never is, and never should be, any requirement to enter an en dash; a hyphen will do just fine. But when other editors who care come along and upgrade the typography accoring to the MOS, I don't think it's a good idea to fight them. It's good to push back when they're wrong, of course, as I may have been on the Poland-Lithuania thing. But to use arguments about en dash being a nuisance as an excuse to interfere with those who care seems just very odd. You can always just type a hyphen; keep saying that to yourself, instead of calling those who support the MOS "pedantic" and such. Dicklyon (talk) 07:29, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
- I'm not calling "those who support the MOS" pedantic, just those who are "overly concerned with formalism and precision" (definition of Pedant, from our own WP article, my italics). The point has been made a couple of times that inflexibly insisting on the en-dash in certain contexts (including article names, section headers, category names etc) makes life difficult for the average user and editor, generates redlinks (and requires bots to sort them out) and thereby wastes WP resources. --TraceyR (talk) 14:56, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
- Article names? I thought redirects like Michelson-Morley experiment handled that problem. Section headers? Well, yeah, if you don't add an anchor with the hyphenated name, when you change the section name hyphen to a dash. Category names? I can't imagine changing them unless I were bored enough to change all of the category's members – which I'm not (to my knowledge, categories are used seldom by editors and never by readers). Should I be writing articles instead? Well no, my text is quickly rewritten or removed. Art LaPella (talk) 21:12, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
- I'm not calling "those who support the MOS" pedantic, just those who are "overly concerned with formalism and precision" (definition of Pedant, from our own WP article, my italics). The point has been made a couple of times that inflexibly insisting on the en-dash in certain contexts (including article names, section headers, category names etc) makes life difficult for the average user and editor, generates redlinks (and requires bots to sort them out) and thereby wastes WP resources. --TraceyR (talk) 14:56, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
- Others can well imagine changing thousands of category names: 2,304 aviation-related names were supposed to be changed recently ([have a look here]). That's the sort of misdirected effort that this discussion is about - Growing abuse of WP:DASH out-of-context and as if Holy Writ (as far as I know, it hasn't been added to the accepted canon yet). --TraceyR (talk) 00:09, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
- OK, I read all that, and to me it doesn't sound like a big deal either way. The biggest objections are apparently handled by category redirects (which I was unaware of), and bots that automatically correct hyphens to dashes, thus relieving the need for humans to type dashes. Art LaPella (talk) 01:12, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
- A few months ago, I changed many category names, and revised their member articles accordingly. I was not motivated by boredom (there are many things to be done, on Wikipedia and elsewhere), but I wanted to correct a problem.
- Also, I use categories, both as an editor and as a reader.
- —Wavelength (talk) 01:53, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
- I know this is off-topic, but since you brought it up: could you elaborate on how you use categories? The readers I talked to confused categories with references, so I concluded only insiders would even understand them, never mind actually use them. Art LaPella (talk) 02:35, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
- I use them to find articles, sometimes from other articles and sometimes not. The Main Page has links to major categories in the upper right-hand corner, so evidently they are intended to be available for use by everyone.
- —Wavelength (talk) 02:48, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
- Or more statistically using http://stats.grok.se, a typical Main Page portal like Portal:Mathematics got about 100,197 hits in December (compare to the rest of the page), and all its categories totaled only 26,154 hits. Category:Publicly funded schools in Hawaii got 20. Art LaPella (talk) 05:05, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
- I know this is off-topic, but since you brought it up: could you elaborate on how you use categories? The readers I talked to confused categories with references, so I concluded only insiders would even understand them, never mind actually use them. Art LaPella (talk) 02:35, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
- Others can well imagine changing thousands of category names: 2,304 aviation-related names were supposed to be changed recently ([have a look here]). That's the sort of misdirected effort that this discussion is about - Growing abuse of WP:DASH out-of-context and as if Holy Writ (as far as I know, it hasn't been added to the accepted canon yet). --TraceyR (talk) 00:09, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
- I do care, sometimes very much in my amateur way, about typography and letter-forms (including punctuation). Were I laying out a Wikipedia page for print (and had I the competence), I'd prefer to carefully match the dash or hyphen to the purpose and use curly opening and closing quotation-marks, as I normally prefer to do when writing or editing text within the body of an article on line. However, article titles, section headers and wikilinks are another matter. Not only the keyboard (which as noted above has been stripped down ever since typewriters tried to economize on cost, size and machinery, and since teletypewriters were based on Morse Code) but the Internet itself is based on stripped-down character sets . And the URL's that use even simple punctuation-marks like ?, let alone those for ‘, ’, “, ”, –, —, etc. look like gibberish to the uninitiated. This means that reading or writing out the URL on one's address bar for a Wikipedia article whose title includes curly quotation-marks or extended dashes (en-dash, em-dash & hyphen-dash) is too daunting for most people (including me). This can be, it's true, greatly abated by the use of redirects from versions using only hyphens and straight-quotes, but those simplified versions don't always work with derivative forms and secondary wikilinks, such as Redirected-title#Section header (1900-1950) and Talk:Redirected-title#Section header (1900-1950), if the original title uses em and en dashes (Article—title#Section header (1900–50) and Talk:Article—title#Section header (1900–1950). —— Shakescene (talk) 08:24, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
- After poking around a little more, I'm changing my position and supporting an en-dash over a hyphen between most proper names, even though most of the sources, guides and dictionaries are against us to some degree. Even the Chicago editors support not taking their own dash advice too seriously, and their favorite dictionary, Merriam-Webster, disagrees with them on for instance "Bose–Einstein". I think the main point is that very, very few readers care or even notice the difference, which strengthens the argument that this is a matter of appearance that we can choose by consensus without causing any great harm. I think we're all agreed that whatever the rules are, they need to be dead simple ... there's no chance of getting even the fussiest Wikipedians (such as me) to memorize Chicago's labyrinthine dash rules, or care. It still seems to me that, in popular writing, dashes and hyphens continue to wither a little every year, and if the trend continues, I wouldn't be shocked if we decide to give up on dashes between words entirely in 10 years. But today is not that day. - Dank (push to talk) 16:23, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
- I do care, sometimes very much in my amateur way, about typography and letter-forms (including punctuation). Were I laying out a Wikipedia page for print (and had I the competence), I'd prefer to carefully match the dash or hyphen to the purpose and use curly opening and closing quotation-marks, as I normally prefer to do when writing or editing text within the body of an article on line. However, article titles, section headers and wikilinks are another matter. Not only the keyboard (which as noted above has been stripped down ever since typewriters tried to economize on cost, size and machinery, and since teletypewriters were based on Morse Code) but the Internet itself is based on stripped-down character sets . And the URL's that use even simple punctuation-marks like ?, let alone those for ‘, ’, “, ”, –, —, etc. look like gibberish to the uninitiated. This means that reading or writing out the URL on one's address bar for a Wikipedia article whose title includes curly quotation-marks or extended dashes (en-dash, em-dash & hyphen-dash) is too daunting for most people (including me). This can be, it's true, greatly abated by the use of redirects from versions using only hyphens and straight-quotes, but those simplified versions don't always work with derivative forms and secondary wikilinks, such as Redirected-title#Section header (1900-1950) and Talk:Redirected-title#Section header (1900-1950), if the original title uses em and en dashes (Article—title#Section header (1900–50) and Talk:Article—title#Section header (1900–1950). —— Shakescene (talk) 08:24, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
- I think you go too far in asking for the rules to be "dead simple", or in always putting en dash between names. Editors are usually able to sort out what's right and just do it (this conversation being a prominent counter-example, I realize). I think the MOS as stated is fine, and seldom causes conflict. When there's conflict, like in Poland-Lithuania, it's mostly due to genuine differences of interpretation of the underlying facts. It will work out. Dicklyon (talk) 21:38, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
- I meant that's the reason I'm okay with the current MOS, because it's got "dead simple" in its favor. - Dank (push to talk) 21:53, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
- Well, as long as people would take it at face value and not engage in hyperflating it to mean things that it doesn't; such as the above quibble that Poland-Lithuania, though a conventional hyphenated name liks any personal or other placename, is actually made of two indepedent elements as so must take a dash; "must" is a pretty heavy word when something so obviously and famously a name can be subdivided and re-parsed by someone more interested in typographical conventions he'd like to see become standard over actual usage and long-standing history and historical convention. MOS needs amendment for geographic names, only a personal name is given as an example I also think the dash has been incorrectly applied on items like-war names - why is the hyphen to be used, as required, on Greco-Persian Wars, but the dash "must" be used on Spanish-American War, simply because the argument is made (but not, to me, valid) that "Spanish" and "American" are "lexically independent" when in that context "Spanish-American War" they're most decidedly not; really only another hyphenated name. And I utterly reject this nonsense about expecting people to change spelling conventions because technology has made it possible to change everything around; that's not Wikipedia's job and clearly any pretense that "the Wikipedia consensus" is not settled either way is bunk; there was never consensus to blanket-apply the dash as if it were god, and teh arguments being used to fight restoring hyphens when they are out-of-place and clearly against MOS are utterly specious and rather ridiculous. Wikipedia - "wiki" means "fast/quick" - should not be about making the creation/entry of articles or anything more complicated....saying it's OK to take the time to go to the special characters tempalte below the edit window, and back up to continue editing, is sa time-wasting bore and shouldn't be made necessary just because somebody "wants to improve the appearance of Wikipedia". You're making things hardeer for people to contribute, not easier, and that should be an axiom in MOS; keep it simple stupid, remember not everybody loves "new technology" or has a Mac, and get a grip - ordinary people have a hard enough time figuring out how to contribute properly; making it harder by insisting they learn not just a new way of typing, but a whole slew of new, invented and "consensus"-imposed ways of typing very old words/names, is just elititism and, given the way bots have been used to do that, as also with the lower-case issue, takes the human element out of the creation/modification of text, without human discretion and underlying knowledge and "subtleties", and places it just not in the hands of machines, but machine-like thinking...Skookum1 (talk) 23:27, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
- I meant that's the reason I'm okay with the current MOS, because it's got "dead simple" in its favor. - Dank (push to talk) 21:53, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
- I think you go too far in asking for the rules to be "dead simple", or in always putting en dash between names. Editors are usually able to sort out what's right and just do it (this conversation being a prominent counter-example, I realize). I think the MOS as stated is fine, and seldom causes conflict. When there's conflict, like in Poland-Lithuania, it's mostly due to genuine differences of interpretation of the underlying facts. It will work out. Dicklyon (talk) 21:38, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
Proposal to stop these replacements against the naming policy
Could we simply add, under "En dashes in page names", that "When naming an article, an en dash is not used as a substitute for a hyphen that properly belongs in the title according to the naming policy."? There is already a similar sentence for preventing useless removals of dashes from places where they rightfully belong. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:49, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
- Because of the nature of people claiming they have a right to interpret facts, i.e. to vary from the sources
- "because Wikipedia has its own style", I think it's necessary to be specific on certain categories of names. So beyond the family-name already given as an example, there should be "other examples of hyphenated names are those of countries (Poland-Lithuania), states and other country-subdivisions (North Rhine-Westphalia, Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District), town and neighbourhood names (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Grandview-Woodlands), and personal names (Anne-Marie). Names conventionally hyphenated in the preponderance of sources should be hyphenated also in Wikipedia.
- There's also the issue consistency of usage within certain types of article titles (e.g. wars, such as the Greco-Persian Wars and Spanish-American War and Brazil-Argentina War, Spokane-Couer d'Alene-Palouse War should be consistently hyphenated despite any interpretations that any of the terms forming it are "lexically independent" (which in those formations are not." No doubt someone will refuse to read that as "too long" or "too wordy", but those are also the people who don't seem to actually read what MOS says anyway...there should also be rider, if not already in MOS, that local MOS' override any "globalizing"/homogenizing imposition of external MOS precedents; for example CANMOS and its PPAP subproject (political parties and politicians) has a convention, already in use by Elections Canada and in my province's case, Elections BC, such that federal electoral districts use a dash, provincial ones use a hyphen - both backed up by sources, and not open to interpretation or imposition by someone in the UK or USA or Upper Volta.Skookum1 (talk) 21:51, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
- As for any complaints that "TLDR", might I suggest a corresponding, and somewhat telling, alternate: "Big words, didn't understand" (WP:BWDU..also WP:Wikipedia does not exist separately from the rest of the world.Skookum1 (talk) 21:51, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
- One detail that I think may have been consistently misunderstood: "Spanish" and "Brazil" are lexically independent because they are words. "Sino-" and "Greco-" aren't, because they are prefixes. WP:ENDASH uses the concept only as a reason for hyphens (not dashes) in the case of no lexical independence. Also, note that WP:ENDASH already uses the name "Lennard-Jones" and now uses the nation "Guinea-Bissau" as examples where hyphens should be used. Art LaPella (talk) 02:03, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
- CONTEXT is more important than seat-of-the-pants syntactical analysis based on the form of lexemes. Tell me the difference in context, please, between Brazil-Argentina War and Greco-Turkish War? There isn't any. Except for in Wikipedia, where style-happy mavens have (spuriously) established a difference based only on the forms of the words involved, and which in all other sources are hyphenated. And also to the point, that capital-W on "Wars" establishes these whole phrases as proper nouns, as names, and as such, containing hyphens, they are hyphenated names. I see no bloody good reason at all to say "wars using these word-forms must take a dash, wars using this other word form can have a hyphen". The only reason given is that MOS says so, but MOS obviously isn't perfect and has no relationship to consistency, and has shown itself all too well how readily it justifies departing from the sources and interpreting things as "typographical issues" when really they're long-standing conventions in the English language. Consistency - ever heard of that? How is the relationship between the two entities different, given the claim that dashes indicate lexical separation - such that Brazil-Argentina War is supposed to be dashed, while Brazilian-Argentinian War "can" have a hyphen, even when both refer to the same war?? No doubt next I'll be hearing that all those "war" words shoudl be lower-cased "because MOS says so"....that'd also be a way to take away their status as COMMONNAMEs and deconstruct them to keep the dashifiers happy. Were the changes to war articles ever put by MILHIST, or were all these, too, done by "speedy renames" because they supposedly make sense/are uncontroversial. MOS is only supposed to be an option, and it's not mandatory; but even HYPHEN has passages in it, to complement those in ENDASH, which indicate that human discretion ("subtlety", something a machine-mind isn't capable of, or humans who think like machines) should determine when a hyphen is justified. Consistency isn't very subtle at all, and teh result of mis-applying MOSDASH in the incredibly blind and unthinking way it has been is that consistency as well as common sense have been thrown out the window - then defended, somewhat viciously, to prevent things from being corrected, or for consistency to be re-established. Franco-Prussian War vs Spanish-American War (the latter shouldn't have a dash, even by dashifier standards, also Greco-Persian Wars were similarly changed in spite of ENDASH - and now "certain people" are claiming that there are no articles with dash problems, that everything's just bloody fine. And it's bloody not.Skookum1 (talk) 19:24, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
- That comment appears to be addressed to me. But I have repeatedly stated that I was explaining the guideline, not defending it. If I could write the guideline as dictator, it would be limited to forbidding complaining about the same dash/hyphen/minus sign more than once or twice. Art LaPella (talk) 21:29, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
- Well, if people would listen the first time it wouldn't be necessary to repeat them when asked, again, for examples; burying obvious facts and source-terms beneath tonnage of syntactical-argument tangents, none based in the sources, requires hitting the same nail over and over again, to keep it from getting bent, or buried, in the tide of irrelevance invoked to defend the misapplication of MOS and even more the avoidance of teh relevance of sources.Skookum1 (talk) 09:17, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- That comment appears to be addressed to me. But I have repeatedly stated that I was explaining the guideline, not defending it. If I could write the guideline as dictator, it would be limited to forbidding complaining about the same dash/hyphen/minus sign more than once or twice. Art LaPella (talk) 21:29, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
- CONTEXT is more important than seat-of-the-pants syntactical analysis based on the form of lexemes. Tell me the difference in context, please, between Brazil-Argentina War and Greco-Turkish War? There isn't any. Except for in Wikipedia, where style-happy mavens have (spuriously) established a difference based only on the forms of the words involved, and which in all other sources are hyphenated. And also to the point, that capital-W on "Wars" establishes these whole phrases as proper nouns, as names, and as such, containing hyphens, they are hyphenated names. I see no bloody good reason at all to say "wars using these word-forms must take a dash, wars using this other word form can have a hyphen". The only reason given is that MOS says so, but MOS obviously isn't perfect and has no relationship to consistency, and has shown itself all too well how readily it justifies departing from the sources and interpreting things as "typographical issues" when really they're long-standing conventions in the English language. Consistency - ever heard of that? How is the relationship between the two entities different, given the claim that dashes indicate lexical separation - such that Brazil-Argentina War is supposed to be dashed, while Brazilian-Argentinian War "can" have a hyphen, even when both refer to the same war?? No doubt next I'll be hearing that all those "war" words shoudl be lower-cased "because MOS says so"....that'd also be a way to take away their status as COMMONNAMEs and deconstruct them to keep the dashifiers happy. Were the changes to war articles ever put by MILHIST, or were all these, too, done by "speedy renames" because they supposedly make sense/are uncontroversial. MOS is only supposed to be an option, and it's not mandatory; but even HYPHEN has passages in it, to complement those in ENDASH, which indicate that human discretion ("subtlety", something a machine-mind isn't capable of, or humans who think like machines) should determine when a hyphen is justified. Consistency isn't very subtle at all, and teh result of mis-applying MOSDASH in the incredibly blind and unthinking way it has been is that consistency as well as common sense have been thrown out the window - then defended, somewhat viciously, to prevent things from being corrected, or for consistency to be re-established. Franco-Prussian War vs Spanish-American War (the latter shouldn't have a dash, even by dashifier standards, also Greco-Persian Wars were similarly changed in spite of ENDASH - and now "certain people" are claiming that there are no articles with dash problems, that everything's just bloody fine. And it's bloody not.Skookum1 (talk) 19:24, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
- One detail that I think may have been consistently misunderstood: "Spanish" and "Brazil" are lexically independent because they are words. "Sino-" and "Greco-" aren't, because they are prefixes. WP:ENDASH uses the concept only as a reason for hyphens (not dashes) in the case of no lexical independence. Also, note that WP:ENDASH already uses the name "Lennard-Jones" and now uses the nation "Guinea-Bissau" as examples where hyphens should be used. Art LaPella (talk) 02:03, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
- That is correct, Art. I believe Skookum has misunderstood, or at least overextended the meaning of what it says there about lexically non-independent terms requiring the hyphen usage. Good Ol’factory (talk) 02:52, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
- I haven't misunderstood anything; what I think is the vagueness of MOSDASH has allowed to many interpretive renderings (=OR).....why should Greco-Turkish War be hyphenated, as per MOS, but another war isn't just because the word forms can be argued to be "lexically independent". Add on that capital-W "War" and the whole thing is a name, and is therefore a hyphenated name, i.e. a proper name including a hyphenated construction, so the "hyphenated name argument should apply even on Brazil-Argentina War, where the context is exactly the same as Greco-Turkish War....the Greece-Turkey War, if you will....the zeal with which people have sought to do away with hyphens where the real world still, and will always use them (except for people foolishly using Wikipedia as a source) is utterly amazing to me; the nit-picking, the wheedling, the playing with definitions, the obfuscation, the refusal to admit that what MOSDASH already said wasn't enough, even though it was, and the rush to change everything without real discussion on a case-by-case basis. There's no reason why one war-name uses a hyphen but in Wikipedia, and Wikipedia only, another war-name uses a dash "because MOS says so and it's carved in stone". I submit that neither is the case; a fully capitalized proper name is a proper name, no matter the jejune syntactical arguments trying to deconstruct it to justify the imposition of the dash - in defiance of sources, and of COMMONNAME. Consistency is also an issue here; there should be standards within each topic area ,e.g these wars, just as in MOSCANADA there is a standard for dashes in federal election districts and hyphens in provincial ones (both per the proper sources, the federal and provincial electoral office websites, and also accompanying legislation/government documentation). Did anyone consult MILHIST before fudging unsighly dashes in to war-names? Does consistency not matter in Wikipedia, and only particularists who deconstruct everything to push their favourite "style" or "typographical" issue, irrespective of sources and common usage are to get their way?Skookum1 (talk) 23:15, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
- You raised a long list of issues I didn't discuss. But do we agree that in the existing guideline, "lexically independent" means examples like "Brazil (insert favorite punctuation here) Argentina War" but not "Greco-Turkish War"? If we can agree on what the rule means, then we (meaning others, not me personally) can meaningfully discuss whether to change it. Art LaPella (talk) 02:16, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
- WHAT "rule"?? "MOS is a guideline....with exceptions it says point-blank in its lede box. Turning a guideline, an optional guideline as is also noted in many places, into a "RULE" is part of the problem here; and when teh "rule" is at odds with convention used in normal English, then MOS has a problem and no amount of saying "MOS is fine, it's people that are the the problem" will not solve that. Treating it as a rule, and defending it tooth and nail even when it's shown (as in this example about proper names of wars) that it fails the test of "usability" and "context" and insisting it's a RULE just ain't right, and you can patronize me again for having to point this out again, if you want. It doesn't change the point. Why should a war between Greece and Turkey have a different "punctuation" (=spelling usage) than a war between Brazil and Argentina? "Because MOS says so just doesn't cut it".Skookum1 (talk) 09:28, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- Although the definition of "rule" is "A regulation, law, guideline", you are basically correct that "MOS is a guideline" and of course WP:EXCEPTIONS should be expected. And of course I haven't defended that rule/guideline/text/whatever word you want to use. Art LaPella (talk) 04:15, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- WHAT "rule"?? "MOS is a guideline....with exceptions it says point-blank in its lede box. Turning a guideline, an optional guideline as is also noted in many places, into a "RULE" is part of the problem here; and when teh "rule" is at odds with convention used in normal English, then MOS has a problem and no amount of saying "MOS is fine, it's people that are the the problem" will not solve that. Treating it as a rule, and defending it tooth and nail even when it's shown (as in this example about proper names of wars) that it fails the test of "usability" and "context" and insisting it's a RULE just ain't right, and you can patronize me again for having to point this out again, if you want. It doesn't change the point. Why should a war between Greece and Turkey have a different "punctuation" (=spelling usage) than a war between Brazil and Argentina? "Because MOS says so just doesn't cut it".Skookum1 (talk) 09:28, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- No, Brazil–Argentina War should be dashed because it's a war between two distinct entities. Greco-Roman Wars is hyphenated between it's an adjectival phrase. It is not a war between Greco and Roman. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 17:47, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
- Your piped links to Greco Pizza Restaurant and Roman, Bulgaria are "cute" but utterly childish; clearly a war between
RomeItaly and Greece; just as Greco-Persian Wars refers to wars between the states of Greece and imperial Persia. Don't you get it?? Making ad hominem comparisons that have nothing to do with history, and using jejune links to "prove" your point, does nothing at all except demonstrate the lengths that supporters of using dashes everywhere will go to dig their heels in against reality. Sino-Japanese War is also a war between distinct entities, for pity's sake.....Skookum1 (talk) 19:45, 28 January 2011 (UTC) is all over posts such as this one.Skookum1 (talk) 09:17, 29 January 2011 (UTC)- the Greco-Roman War was a war between Italy and Greece (actually it was Italy invading Greece, styling itself as New Rome under Mussolini). As above re the Greco-Turkish War vs the what-if Argentina-Brazil War, why should the one context connecting (connecting) two opponents have a dash, and the other have a hyphen?? "Because MOS says so". Maybe MOS should say something different, then, and not be prey to syntax-abuse of the kind repeatedly being pulled around here to take two apples and declare that one is actually an orange.Skookum1 (talk) 09:28, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- I suggest you learn what ad hominem actually means before accusing me of it. The point is that the Greco-Roman War is not a war between "Greco" and "Roman", so it is not dash but hyphenated. Likewise for a hypothetical "Brazilian-Argentinian war", it is not a war between "Brazilian" and "Argentinian" so it is not dashed, although "Brazil–Argentina war" would be. Now I suggest you tone it down a bit because you're starting to get on a lot of people's nerves. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 20:08, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- the Greco-Roman War was a war between Italy and Greece (actually it was Italy invading Greece, styling itself as New Rome under Mussolini). As above re the Greco-Turkish War vs the what-if Argentina-Brazil War, why should the one context connecting (connecting) two opponents have a dash, and the other have a hyphen?? "Because MOS says so". Maybe MOS should say something different, then, and not be prey to syntax-abuse of the kind repeatedly being pulled around here to take two apples and declare that one is actually an orange.Skookum1 (talk) 09:28, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- Your piped links to Greco Pizza Restaurant and Roman, Bulgaria are "cute" but utterly childish; clearly a war between
- That's an argument that WP:DASH is right because WP:DASH is right. Usage, as often, does not support this; actually looking for "Brazil–Argentina War" turns up ten results, from which two conclusions follow:
- Since eight of them are not even about the subject of the article, and the other two say "a Brazil-Argentina war", a generic term, the article has invented a proper name that doesn't exist. In the rest of Wikipedia, we call that Original Research.
- Despite the search term including a dash, every single one of these (in the scanned original) appears to include a hyphen.
- Therefore the most that can be supported is that "Brazil-Argentina War" ought, in theory, to have a dash, depsite the fact that those writers who have discussed a hypothetical war don't spell it that way; if the name of the actual war is "Argentine-Brazilian War," which would be idiomatic, then the parallellism to "Greco-Roman" is quite close. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:19, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
- You raised a long list of issues I didn't discuss. But do we agree that in the existing guideline, "lexically independent" means examples like "Brazil (insert favorite punctuation here) Argentina War" but not "Greco-Turkish War"? If we can agree on what the rule means, then we (meaning others, not me personally) can meaningfully discuss whether to change it. Art LaPella (talk) 02:16, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
- I haven't misunderstood anything; what I think is the vagueness of MOSDASH has allowed to many interpretive renderings (=OR).....why should Greco-Turkish War be hyphenated, as per MOS, but another war isn't just because the word forms can be argued to be "lexically independent". Add on that capital-W "War" and the whole thing is a name, and is therefore a hyphenated name, i.e. a proper name including a hyphenated construction, so the "hyphenated name argument should apply even on Brazil-Argentina War, where the context is exactly the same as Greco-Turkish War....the Greece-Turkey War, if you will....the zeal with which people have sought to do away with hyphens where the real world still, and will always use them (except for people foolishly using Wikipedia as a source) is utterly amazing to me; the nit-picking, the wheedling, the playing with definitions, the obfuscation, the refusal to admit that what MOSDASH already said wasn't enough, even though it was, and the rush to change everything without real discussion on a case-by-case basis. There's no reason why one war-name uses a hyphen but in Wikipedia, and Wikipedia only, another war-name uses a dash "because MOS says so and it's carved in stone". I submit that neither is the case; a fully capitalized proper name is a proper name, no matter the jejune syntactical arguments trying to deconstruct it to justify the imposition of the dash - in defiance of sources, and of COMMONNAME. Consistency is also an issue here; there should be standards within each topic area ,e.g these wars, just as in MOSCANADA there is a standard for dashes in federal election districts and hyphens in provincial ones (both per the proper sources, the federal and provincial electoral office websites, and also accompanying legislation/government documentation). Did anyone consult MILHIST before fudging unsighly dashes in to war-names? Does consistency not matter in Wikipedia, and only particularists who deconstruct everything to push their favourite "style" or "typographical" issue, irrespective of sources and common usage are to get their way?Skookum1 (talk) 23:15, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
- That is correct, Art. I believe Skookum has misunderstood, or at least overextended the meaning of what it says there about lexically non-independent terms requiring the hyphen usage. Good Ol’factory (talk) 02:52, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
Another very-irresponsible mis-application of the dash, in another context, is the Spokane – Coeur d'Alene – Paloos War, which was wrongly dashified (with spaces, no less, which is totally beyond any convention or utility except somebody's idea of "typographical improvement"). It was not a war between the Spokan people, Coeur d'Alene people and Palus people, it was an alliance, so the dash gives a totally wrong context to the name, and is also at complete variance to all authoritative sources. There's no adjectival or "lexically dependent" forms for "Spokanian", "Couer d'Alenian" and "Palusian" - except maybe in those languages - and in many other cases the noun form of a name may be the same as the adjectival form. Distinguishing between Spanish-American War or Mexican-American War and any conceivable variants e.g. Spain-America War would be the same context and should have the same spelling (I maintain, strongly, that use of hyphens especially in proper names, is "spelling" and has nothing to do with "typographical style"). Consistency should be de rigeur.....and the utterly specious arguments that Guinea-Bissau is OK, but Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District is an "and/to" construction (when it's not) is just so much wikipedian bunkum.Skookum1 (talk) 19:45, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
- Conducting a vendetta against the MoS guideline is doing no one a service—least of all our readers. You moved:
- "Spokane – Coeur d'Alene – Palouse War"
to
- "Spokane-Coeur d'Alene-Palouse War".
The en dash conveys relationships, too, such as "Japan–Australia Free Trade Agreement". Tony (talk) 10:48, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
Adjectival forms of hyphenated names should be hyphenated
The, to me, very crazy argument that while Poland-Lithuania, it is finally being conceded, is a hyphenated name and should be re-hyphenated, the same resistant, obstructive people who speedy-changed titles without adequate discussion are insisting that the adjectival forms of such names should remained dashes; this is absurd; the new addition to ENDASH should have a corollary phrase added "adjectival forms of hyphenated names are to be hyphenated". Polish-Lithuanian Army (if that even exists....yet), Polish-Lithuanian union, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth are all clearly derived from Poland-Lithuania, any argument that they should be spelled with different characters than the parent term might be some kind of principle in MOS, but if it is, then MOS needs changing (and is not carved in stone).Skookum1 (talk) 23:15, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
There are two key points here:
- this page and its subsections are not intended to determine article titles; that's WP:TITLE.
- MOS is intended, at most, to choose between actually existing English usages. It is not intended to devise our own, which will be imposed against the usage of reliable sources.
I have included both, in the hope that common sense will be uncontroversial. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:06, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
- This exact reversion claims, in edit summary, that the previous text is confusting. As far as I know, it is universally agreed that this page is not WP:TITLE, and the claim that they have distinct fields of application is uncontroversial. I invite the application of WP:BRD, but that requires actual discussion. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:35, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
- BRD sounds like a damn good idea; revert to the original titles, and original style, and then let the dash-advocates face due process to try and get their name-changes - their language-changes/original analysis - on each case. Septentrionalis, you are one of the few other than me here who shows respect for the sources, vs the imposition of the dash as fait accompli, and reversion to correct forms having to be argued against total obstinacy and endless ad absurdum arguments against obvious facts, i.e. the sources and long-standing conventions. "We don't like this kind of apostrophe, we want people to use this other one" - not as a choice, but as not even a demand, but something just gone and done and "we know better" is the response? Know better about what? Not about the sources, not about the subjects of the names/words/phrases affected. This is a matter of both titles and article-content, this dash-nonsense, and it never should have happened; as in a response to Ckatz on my talkpage, the other much more necessary work on content t hat people like myself could do if they weren't constantly having to trip over, and try to get fixed, things done by uninformed and very often misunderstood, or as I have seen, misrrepresntative citations of MOS (and with no apparent respect for TITLE, or even what MOSDASH really says. It's all obvious, especially when backed up by someone going "uh, that should be hyphenated", and then have hte Holy Writ of MOS thrown at them like this was some kind of dictatorship. As below, I'm so frustrated - and now insulted by specific things targeted against me to the point of anger - anger because of all the more useful things intelligent people could be doing here. A consensus arrived at by fools is exactly what it is; but a consensus which clearly doesn't exist shouldn't be used to override common sense, the sources, or to be wiki-lawyered into misrepresentation - "bogus claims", indeed; the bogus claim is that MOS mandated all these hyphen-dash changes (which it doesn't), the other bogus claim is that this is irreversible and people better smarten up and learn how to do "the new typographY' as dictated by a handful of style-happy Wikipedians. Not all Wikipedians, just those who dig in their heels on this one issue, and want to apply it as a blanket policy, when that's unsupported, and contrary to sources. As you note, dashes should be options, they are not rules, and sources override anything some pompous Wiki-scribe might want to dictate to the rest of the universe. Wikipedia should reflect reality, it should not try to change it, or re-write it. Or, for that matter, re-typeset it.....Skookum1 (talk) 07:57, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
- Yes, MOS has always been a piece of trash, where the half-educated revert-war to impose their favorite reforms on the English language. It is much better ignored; but it may be worth occasionally trying to fix it; now may be one of the times when there is a consensus of editors of good will. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:59, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
- BRD sounds like a damn good idea; revert to the original titles, and original style, and then let the dash-advocates face due process to try and get their name-changes - their language-changes/original analysis - on each case. Septentrionalis, you are one of the few other than me here who shows respect for the sources, vs the imposition of the dash as fait accompli, and reversion to correct forms having to be argued against total obstinacy and endless ad absurdum arguments against obvious facts, i.e. the sources and long-standing conventions. "We don't like this kind of apostrophe, we want people to use this other one" - not as a choice, but as not even a demand, but something just gone and done and "we know better" is the response? Know better about what? Not about the sources, not about the subjects of the names/words/phrases affected. This is a matter of both titles and article-content, this dash-nonsense, and it never should have happened; as in a response to Ckatz on my talkpage, the other much more necessary work on content t hat people like myself could do if they weren't constantly having to trip over, and try to get fixed, things done by uninformed and very often misunderstood, or as I have seen, misrrepresntative citations of MOS (and with no apparent respect for TITLE, or even what MOSDASH really says. It's all obvious, especially when backed up by someone going "uh, that should be hyphenated", and then have hte Holy Writ of MOS thrown at them like this was some kind of dictatorship. As below, I'm so frustrated - and now insulted by specific things targeted against me to the point of anger - anger because of all the more useful things intelligent people could be doing here. A consensus arrived at by fools is exactly what it is; but a consensus which clearly doesn't exist shouldn't be used to override common sense, the sources, or to be wiki-lawyered into misrepresentation - "bogus claims", indeed; the bogus claim is that MOS mandated all these hyphen-dash changes (which it doesn't), the other bogus claim is that this is irreversible and people better smarten up and learn how to do "the new typographY' as dictated by a handful of style-happy Wikipedians. Not all Wikipedians, just those who dig in their heels on this one issue, and want to apply it as a blanket policy, when that's unsupported, and contrary to sources. As you note, dashes should be options, they are not rules, and sources override anything some pompous Wiki-scribe might want to dictate to the rest of the universe. Wikipedia should reflect reality, it should not try to change it, or re-write it. Or, for that matter, re-typeset it.....Skookum1 (talk) 07:57, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
- Regardless of who wins this debate, we should avoid contradictions. Contradictions are my favorite nag; you can argue all day whether it should be this way or that way, but I know it can't be both simultaneously. The current version contradicts the En dashes in page names paragraph just below it. Specifically, "This page does not cover article titles" contradicts "When naming an article, a hyphen is not used as a substitute for an en dash that properly belongs in the title, for example in Eye–hand span." Art LaPella (talk) 02:39, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
- I agree that there must not be a contradiction. We have had at least one IT expert here say that this argument for trashy "typewriter" punctuation in article names is bunkum. I am wondering why file titles, in the current version of the MoS, are so precarious that they can't even take a common en dash. Is this the result of similar bunkum put about by the hate-dashes league, or do we need to file a bugzilla request to move on from the 1970s in this respect? Tony (talk) 02:59, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
- Heaven forfend that MOS should have a contradiction! Half this energy put to seeing that it doesn't prescribe forms that are so unidiomatic that they make Wikipedia look illiterate would do much more good. Actually describing English would also remove most of the occasions for contradiction; but it's much more fun - if rather more harmful to the encyclopedia - to compile the Wikipedia Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:34, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
- Actually, it says "Dashes should never be used in the filenames of images", such as File:Football Formation - 4-2-4.png. By our rules, at least the first hyphen should be a dash, but that would only make it harder for editors to encode the file without a redlink. There would be no benefit to readers because they don't see the file name. I think that is the reason, not a software problem. Art LaPella (talk) 05:24, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
- Yeah, so far WP:TITLE only specifies that "A redirect from a hyphenated version should be created where a dash is present in a title." Until we move the advice that "When naming an article, a hyphen is not used as a substitute for an en dash that properly belongs in the title" we shouldn't take it out and point people there where it isn't. Dicklyon (talk) 04:20, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
- When usage requires a dash, titles should have one. But ENDASH certainly does not describe usage exactly; at best, it is a handful of usually correct rules which will serve a hard-pressed reporter who is uncertain of idiom and can't be bothered to check what English actually does; at worst, it is a handful of incorrect rules. In either case, it should be ignored when it is wrong. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:59, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
- You know I disagree, but fortunately you aren't ignoring it; you're here arguing. That's more than I can say for those who insist the rest of the world is wrong, and that no mechanism for forming a consensus, or even providing sources, is necessary. Art LaPella (talk) 22:23, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
- When usage requires a dash, titles should have one. But ENDASH certainly does not describe usage exactly; at best, it is a handful of usually correct rules which will serve a hard-pressed reporter who is uncertain of idiom and can't be bothered to check what English actually does; at worst, it is a handful of incorrect rules. In either case, it should be ignored when it is wrong. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:59, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
- I agree that there must not be a contradiction. We have had at least one IT expert here say that this argument for trashy "typewriter" punctuation in article names is bunkum. I am wondering why file titles, in the current version of the MoS, are so precarious that they can't even take a common en dash. Is this the result of similar bunkum put about by the hate-dashes league, or do we need to file a bugzilla request to move on from the 1970s in this respect? Tony (talk) 02:59, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
- There seems to be a lot of hacking around on the MOS in response to what sounds like a very bogus claim by Skookum1 that people are pushing inappropriate uses of the en dash. Where is the evidence for the problem, before we start hacking a solution? What "resistant, obstructive people" is he referring to? On what articles? Dicklyon (talk) 04:22, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
- That's an outright lie, or you're just blind or stupid and in heavy denial; just as you have misrepresented and lied about what is in MOS, you have lied and misrepresented what I have pointed out; here's the facts:
- a dash was inappropriately placed in [[Poland-Lithuania
- dashes were inappropiately placed on scores of hyphenated names in Canada, including neighbourhoods and regional districts and no doubt other things I haven't found yet, which all have hyphenated names and never, anywhere, never until this pack of dash-whackers came along has anyone ever spelled them with a dash, or siad anything stupid like teh authors of the legislation and websites about them were "lazy".
- dashes were inappropriately placed on Greco-Persian Wars and other like articles, which even have the "not lexically independent" prefix, and on similar articles. Theres' lost of examples out there, I run into them all the time, grimacing when I saw them, but getting riled at teh asinine arguments against restoring well-known BC names back to their proper forms and being overridden by people who nothing about the place, and don't care anything but for their machine-brain-driven assertion taht typography is more important than normal spelling/typing conventions, and that they have a right to make any change they want even if someone from the place objects that it's incorrect. Give your collective heads a frigging shake - and Dicklyon you have wantonly lied about me just now, or are so stupidly vain you think you're actually right and aren't capable of admitting you were wrong. Don't bitch about a personal attack when you say shit like that about someone who knows the subject matter like you never will. You're the one making the personal attack with CRAP like that; it's pretty f'ing clear that these are hyphenated names, but you - who don't have any connection to them whatsoever, or knowledge of what they are, or how those names came about - have decided that not only what you say goes, but those are fully proper applications of MOS which they are most explicltly NOT. I demand a retraction, and an admission that articles have been changed without proper proce3dure on the one hand, and by, if in AGF, a completely mistaken understandign of what MOS says. What MOS says, has always said....and where's this accusation of hacking coming from? Is that directed at me? Another unwarranted allegation, like your lies about me above, and your ongoing obstinate lies about what MOS says, when it doesn't. You want to interpolate every stray word to fit your justification for spreading the use of the dash, even challenging that "hyphenated name" wasn't specific enough; no, duh, because it meant all hyphenated names. Any admin reading this who goes "Oh, Skookum1 is out of line" had better understand the depth of the insult and thte mirepresentation that Dicklyon has just pulled, and similar turning-things-on-their-heads early on in this. yes, buddy, you're an obstructionist, a contrarian, someone defending his own bailiwick using absurdity and stubbornness. Maybe you cut out 75% of your brain, that's why you can't stand things longer than the short, punchy lies you tell and teh absurdity of argument and denial that is your staple fare here.
- IN ALL CASES MOS or DASH was cited for the change, either just blankly or with spurious claims that some constructions were "and/to" constructions which they aren't - made by people who nothing about those places, or in the Poland-Lithuania case by someone who knew nothing at-all about that once-largest of European states, and wants to rant on about typography and how other people should step up to modern technology yadayadayada. If no names were changed inappropriately, why the f**k are there so many hyphenated names that are now dashed names, but should have remained hyphenated names, and about which you shouldn't be arguing about preventing them from returning to their proper form. Yes, you are an obstructionist, and evidently deserve the first part of your username all too fittingly.Skookum1 (talk) 07:24, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
- That's an outright lie, or you're just blind or stupid and in heavy denial; just as you have misrepresented and lied about what is in MOS, you have lied and misrepresented what I have pointed out; here's the facts:
- Ha, Ha! Now who's being a WP:Dick? I'm not sure what I've done to get you thinking that I'm obstructionist, or that I lie, or whatever. But since you won't even answer what's behind your original complaint, I don't expect any clarification here, either. I did try to help with your flailing by putting a clarification into the MOS that hyphenated place names shouldn't be changed to dashes, based on the Poland-Lithuania example. I agree that some of that did happen, but now you're saying "the same resistant, obstructive people who speedy-changed titles without adequate discussion are insisting that the adjectival forms of such names should remained dashes," without saying who or what you mean. I don't think people should get worked up or change the MOS in response to such generalities without consider first some specifics. And I assume that these changes you're talking about were made in good faith. Dicklyon (talk) 23:51, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
- Dick, I can't see the conflict between MOS and TITLE. But it would be helpful for editors if the MOS requirement appeared also in TITLE. Art, I don't really see why it is "harder for editors" to observe normal typographical conventions, whether readers see them or not. I personally find it slightly harder to parse image titles—which are often fiddly and whose often-binary structure is plainer with the correct dash.
- I don't see a conflict either; but there was one transiently when it said to see TITLE, but the removed info hadn't bee put there; I just reverted back to the stable state, so people can think about what if any change is needed. I'm not sure what you're saying on image titles; I'm happy with tolerating whatever people do there. Dicklyon (talk) 07:16, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
- "harder for editors" means only that many editors don't know any of the methods for entering a dash, because it isn't on their keyboard. Other editors won't even notice that it isn't a hyphen. It's easy to say they can at least copy and paste, but that unexpected requirement would probably make at least 10% of all editors give up, because they didn't think of it. That seems like a more significant obstacle than the 0.1% of editors who will parse a title more easily because they are expecting a dash, which is a rule I never even encountered before I edited Wikipedia. Anyway, that's my interpretation of an existing guideline; whoever wrote it would be a better explainer of his reasoning. Art LaPella (talk) 07:19, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
- Dick, I can't see the conflict between MOS and TITLE. But it would be helpful for editors if the MOS requirement appeared also in TITLE. Art, I don't really see why it is "harder for editors" to observe normal typographical conventions, whether readers see them or not. I personally find it slightly harder to parse image titles—which are often fiddly and whose often-binary structure is plainer with the correct dash.
I was warned by a certain admin that WTMOS is a snakepit. Now I see why...and who. No logic prevails here, just typographical inanity and defense of the indefensible, and people pulling shit as faits accomplis that weren't even what MOS said, and then arguing away anyone who wants those WRONG CHANGES returned to their proper state - with stupid, childish, ill-informed sophomoric arguments and lexical analysis of terms they don't even friggin' understand. You claim to have consensus on what MOS means, but as long as you keep sayhing it says things it doesn't, you might as well burn this whole place; because if you don't listen to input, your "consensus" is just a club, and disconnected from reality. I think you're deliberately irritating, DickLyon, and McLarrister, too, I think you do this just to feel powerful and creative, to make big decisions affecting places and people you dno['t know anything about, and then being smug and difficult point-pickers when it's pointed out you're wrong. And you're wrong. About Poland-Lithuania, about the Alberni-Clayoquot Regional Dietrict, about Grandview-Woodland; and you're wrong, also, in presuming to tell people they better catch up to typographically more enlightened people like yourself. What a load of friggin' crap. This ain't over, I'm finding somewhere upstairs to take it; did you just say that, Dicklyon, to provoke me to try and get me banned and out of the way? Join me in hell, baby, it's a long ways down and I've been there before, I know my way around.....instead of going "oh, you mean those names are always hyphenated?" as you should have, you've opened up a bigger can of worms than just the one you and your friends live in.....I'm tired of this shit; there's no way some typography-obsessed nerd in another country has the right to say "Alberni-Clayoquot sin't a hyphenated name" and override the input of people actually from the province/country it's in. Go stuff yourself, kid....Skookum1 (talk) 07:32, 27 January 2011 (UTC) And my edit count would be a LOT frickin' lower if I didn't have to put out stupid-idiot fires like this one all the time, and could jsut write history etc articles and fix geography etc, which is what I came to Wikipedia for. Not to ahve to argue with some typographical fanatics about their over-reach and overweeing power. Getting me blocked for repsonding to DickLyon's deciding to provoke me as much as possible - all this delay about what is obviously correct ("hyphenated names are hyphenated names") is insane; it's insane, I'm not. but I sure am pissed off at being angered like this in such a stupid, stupid, stupid way - you claimed the opposite of what was true, Dicklyon, with articles under discussion of the very kind you claim don't exist. You must like being an asshole, I think.....Skookum1 (talk) 07:36, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
- Please do find "somewhere upstairs to take it", such as WP:WQA. They will give you a new perspective on the civility policy. And I say that as someone who wouldn't really miss the WP:DASH guideline if it disappeared altogether. Art LaPella (talk) 22:18, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
- I'd say to add the dash character to Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(technical_restrictions)#Other_problematic_characters and WP:TITLE#Special_characters, then we can make the change here. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:12, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
- Actually, less than that is needed; we don't count being a non-keyboard character in Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(technical_restrictions) and WP:TITLE already mentions dashes; what we need to do is what WP:TITLE already does in several places: say our titles should follow reliable (English, secondary) sources over this too. Then the requirement of redirects when the sources use a dash will fall into place. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:34, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
- I'd say to add the dash character to Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(technical_restrictions)#Other_problematic_characters and WP:TITLE#Special_characters, then we can make the change here. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:12, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
Geobox|Settlement, name field
Per above, we've agreed that "Official name" should be a city's official name rather than a shortened or common version. During the discussion, Oknazevad suggested we use the article's name for the "name" field, so I thought it useful to start a new thread for that discussion. I'd be interested in hearing from any dedicated geographers, but given that the "name" field also serves as the title for the info box, I believe Oknazevad's recommendation makes good sense and that any exceptions to this would need to be justified and discussed prior to implementation on a per-article basis. Rklawton (talk) 04:29, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
- Well, it's obvious that I support the idea, being that it was my idea. But just making it official for polling purposes. oknazevad (talk) 04:56, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
- Infoboxes have their use but can also get kinda cruddy with a lot of duplication of info. Maybe cut all the name stuff? Love the horn tooting thing on caps and could you do something about the darned species capitalizers (main center of herecy is the birders). Following their language reform land grab, I would need to start referring to Virginia Ham and even cutting it with a Chef's Knife. ;) TCO (talk) 09:26, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
- Agree with TCO here in that cutting a lot of the stuff from the infobox is probably an easy way to avoid the issue and save time :P Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 19:17, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
- Infoboxes have their use but can also get kinda cruddy with a lot of duplication of info. Maybe cut all the name stuff? Love the horn tooting thing on caps and could you do something about the darned species capitalizers (main center of herecy is the birders). Following their language reform land grab, I would need to start referring to Virginia Ham and even cutting it with a Chef's Knife. ;) TCO (talk) 09:26, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
- Duplication of information is not a problem. An infobox is a convenient device for a quick overview of basic information. Even an infobox that occupies one half of a page is not a problem.
- —Wavelength (talk) 19:57, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
- I agree that duplication of information (i.e. putting information in info boxes that also appears in the article) isn't a problem. In fact, these boxes with their defined fields makes it easier for bots of various sorts to grab and reuse this structured data thereby rendering Wikipedia even more useful. Rklawton (talk) 20:55, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
- Wavelength, I take a more uncompromising view: infoboxes are mostly a blight on WP. The duplication of information is just one reason. I wonder who actually reads them? What is wrong with the article text? Tony (talk) 15:22, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
- I consulted "Blight" and wikt:blight, which says "(by extension) anything that impedes growth or development or spoils any other aspect of life". How are infoboxes a blight? I read them, or parts of them. The article text can be informative, but an infobox is more convenient for quick reference. For example, if I want to find out the area and population of a country, I can find out faster and more easily from an infobox than from the main text of an article.
- —Wavelength (talk) 16:45, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
- Or the mass of Enceladus (moon), the CEO of IBM, the atomic mass of carbon, ... Art LaPella (talk) 19:43, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
- And please don't overlook my bot argument. Infoboxes put some structure into our data which makes it more useful for a wider variety of purposes. Rklawton (talk) 18:34, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
- It's not an all or nothing. I do think they have their uses for quick info and have warmed to them a bit more (even things like species synonyms) as I found myself using them. But at least a consideration over a field like the common name. Do we need it in two different parts of the infobox (title and field)? I mean it's already got high prominence and close positioning as the article title and with usage in the first sentence of the article. I'm not even arguing against the use of the field. Haven't thought enough about it. Just that it's worth thinking about.TCO (talk) 00:33, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
- I have no objection to removing "common name" for the reasons you noted. Rklawton (talk) 02:21, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
- Yes, it is needed in the infobox; not least since it's required for the emitted microformat. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 15:11, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
- I have no objection to removing "common name" for the reasons you noted. Rklawton (talk) 02:21, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
- Ah bot's. The perfect argument for not putting information into infoboxes is so a bot can use it. I have been working my way through one tree focusing on the year in categories. While I'm not keeping score, I would say that 5-10% of the years listed in the infobox are incorrect. Seems some editors have a primal need to add an actual date to articles in multiple ways. I have found some years being totally unsupported by the article text, a year being pulled out from somewhere in a range, unknown but suspected ranges converted to a specific year and clearly garbage. I suspect, but can't prove that most of the categories I'm dealing with were added by script assisted editing, bot or editor assisted, working from the infobox. To be fair, I have made a few errors myself, for far fewer then what has been corrected. So rather then argue where the data is best presented, I would rather see an effort in correcting and sourcing the data we have. Oh, on the subject at hand, as long the box does not get too long, I think it is needed to give a quick overview of standard overview of common information. Like the official name of a settlement which is not always easy to work into the article text and is probably not needed in the text portion. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:53, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
- It's not an all or nothing. I do think they have their uses for quick info and have warmed to them a bit more (even things like species synonyms) as I found myself using them. But at least a consideration over a field like the common name. Do we need it in two different parts of the infobox (title and field)? I mean it's already got high prominence and close positioning as the article title and with usage in the first sentence of the article. I'm not even arguing against the use of the field. Haven't thought enough about it. Just that it's worth thinking about.TCO (talk) 00:33, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
- Tony, if you don't read or use them, then you can adjust your local CSS to hide them. But please don't assume others don't read, use or even need them. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 15:11, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
- Wavelength, I take a more uncompromising view: infoboxes are mostly a blight on WP. The duplication of information is just one reason. I wonder who actually reads them? What is wrong with the article text? Tony (talk) 15:22, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
- I agree that duplication of information (i.e. putting information in info boxes that also appears in the article) isn't a problem. In fact, these boxes with their defined fields makes it easier for bots of various sorts to grab and reuse this structured data thereby rendering Wikipedia even more useful. Rklawton (talk) 20:55, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
- Support I support the existence of infoboxes, I read them all the time. I'd add example, but they are largely duplicative of the reasons listed above. Speaking of duplicative, remember that the information in info boxes is intended to be duplicative. I support retention of the common name field, even though it will (normally) be duplicative of the title. I don't know how useful the official name field is, but if it is marginally useful, this is exactly where Wikipedia can shine. (If, for some reason, I needed the official name of a dozen cities, I could slog through a dozen websites and find it eventually in a dozen different places, or know that it is on every WP infobox.I know which I'd prefer.)--SPhilbrickT 20:36, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
- I'm in favor of infoboxes. But I agree that bots do need to be considered and I hadn't til mentioned here.
- Nevertheless, an infobox makes the material "look important" IMO. I take an article much more seriously, however undeserved, if it has an infobox, than "naked," without. It looks "neglected" somehow. Like pictures. Raw text needs something for balance. Notice, too that your websites and newspapers (USA Today, for example) all have "box" information in them with statistical summaries. I suspect these are the most read articles.
- There has been too little discussion, and when we've had it, against template "burying" of info. For example, a guru might describe a template with an infobox with correct info in it, then invoke the template in the article. Only serious editors will bother editing the template to change the data.
- Probably ought to do the same to census data - put it in a template so vandals won't monkey with it, but that's another subject. Student7 (talk) 18:47, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
- I despise the entire concept of using bots to write articles (or generate info boxes)... they can be useful when it comes to searching for information to be incorporated into articles, but a human is needed to ensure that the information is actually accurate and appropriate. Blueboar (talk) 20:00, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
- I don't have any background with bot supplying information. I would assume that the infoboxes were first filled in, then the dates changed in the article but not the infoboxes. The same problem with maintaining data in two places. The same happens when leads change; they don't match the body of the text. So I guess I am forced to agree that info boxes can cause/result in maintenance problems. Student7 (talk) 22:54, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
- I support the inclusion of info boxes and the use of the "official name" field to specify the official/legal name of the city (I appreciate the argument that "City of Sometown" technically refers to only the government of the city and not the geographical place, but I think that form is used sufficiently to refer to the place to not be an issue).
However, I have to ask why the (plain/common) Name field should include the state - the state is not part of the name of a city - it is descriptive information that helps us identify which city of that name it is (assuming there are multiple cities with that name, which there often are), and helps us understand where it is, but what does any of that have to do with the name? If you ask an American where he or she is from, they are likely to answer in the City, State format, but that's because they are identifying where geographically they are from, not the name of the place where they are from. Ask the same person instead, "what is the name of the city you are from?", and see what you get. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:23, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
Didn't vs Did not
Given that the Manual of Style has a line on just about everything, I was wondering if there was one on this? I was very surprised to check my watchlist and find half a dozen edits such as this. Thanks in advance, —WFC— 20:01, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
Doesn'tDoes not WP:CONTRACTION cover it?--SPhilbrickT 20:39, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
- If that's so, why do native speakers tend to find an error in sentences like this: "Why did not he go?" Chrisrus (talk) 21:33, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
- Some informalities are so idiomatic that you can't do without them. They seldom come up in writing, though; if you encounter something like that, other than in a quote, find a good fix. Dicklyon (talk) 21:37, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
- FTR, I know that "Does not WP:CONTRACTION cover it?" is poor English and would have been better as "Does WP:CONTRACTION not cover it?". However, that would have reduced the visual effect, and I was more interested in a rare chance to look clever than a chance to be grammatically correct. It is mildly interesting that the proper placement of "not" sometimes follows the verb, sometimes not. "I didn't have sex with that woman" <->"I did not have sex with that woman." but " Why don't you fix this" <-> "Why do you not fix this?" Is it questions versus statements? I suspect if the straightforward fix sounds awkward, it may be a red flag that a more substantive rewrite is warranted.--SPhilbrickT 22:07, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
- And the edit which began this discussion is an example. Did not is no help while the passage has two cliches and a mindless repetition ; I have edited to at least improve matters. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:21, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
- FTR, I know that "Does not WP:CONTRACTION cover it?" is poor English and would have been better as "Does WP:CONTRACTION not cover it?". However, that would have reduced the visual effect, and I was more interested in a rare chance to look clever than a chance to be grammatically correct. It is mildly interesting that the proper placement of "not" sometimes follows the verb, sometimes not. "I didn't have sex with that woman" <->"I did not have sex with that woman." but " Why don't you fix this" <-> "Why do you not fix this?" Is it questions versus statements? I suspect if the straightforward fix sounds awkward, it may be a red flag that a more substantive rewrite is warranted.--SPhilbrickT 22:07, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
- If that's so, why do native speakers tend to find an error in sentences like this: "Why did not he go?" Chrisrus (talk) 21:33, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
Negative questions without contrations
- Why do not you always take an umbrella?
- Why do you not always take an umbrella?
- Why do you always not take an umbella?Chrisrus (talk) 22:17, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
- Sentence 2 and 3 do not say the same thing. I see sentence 2 as making the same claim as sentence 1, but in a grammatically preferable way.--SPhilbrickT 22:11, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
- It occurs to me that the nature of Wikipedia is that there are unlikely to be many questions, outside of direct quotes. Am I wrong (and I should already clarify, I mean main space, not talk space.)--SPhilbrickT 22:14, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
- No, I think you're right. I wouldn't want to put a blanket ban on questions in mainspace, but I can't imagine a good reason for them. There's an expository style that asks a question and then answers it, but I think that style is too chatty for an encyclopedia. --Trovatore (talk) 22:16, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
- Yes, that occurs to me, too, that negative questions (and questions in general) are not likely to be used in an encyclopedia. It is interesting, though. I'd say that if one wanted the meaning of the second question, as opposed to the third, one might say it without a contraction, but I don't think English-speaking people do, for some reason; at least not very often or not anymore. There appears to be an unwritten rule that contrations are the proper way to ask a negative question. Let me play some more:
- No, I think you're right. I wouldn't want to put a blanket ban on questions in mainspace, but I can't imagine a good reason for them. There's an expository style that asks a question and then answers it, but I think that style is too chatty for an encyclopedia. --Trovatore (talk) 22:16, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
- It occurs to me that the nature of Wikipedia is that there are unlikely to be many questions, outside of direct quotes. Am I wrong (and I should already clarify, I mean main space, not talk space.)--SPhilbrickT 22:14, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
- Is not she probably coming?
- Is she not probably coming?
I think you'll agree that these have different meanings (not modifies a different word), and that #1, though it breaks no rule that I've ever heard of or seen written, is, if not just plain wrong, pretty strange and just not the way English is spoken. It would be best to use a contraction in the first case. Chrisrus (talk) 22:29, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
The situations in which contracted forms are natural are rarely useful to the encyclopedia; we ask very few questions - and we normally use a formal register, in which he didn't come is unidiomatic. But there are exceptions to both generalizations; there should be more: much of our worst writing comes from a failed attempt at a high register. When they arise, ignore all rules (that's policy); that's why WP:CONTRACTIONS is phrased as it is, with generally.
If you find that's why in an article, consider recasting the sentence; but don't just substitute that is why, which makes Wikipedia look stupid - and will, for most anglophones, make it harder to read. Even if they don't realize why, they will stumble over the failure of idiom and look around for what's wrong, and why this strangeness has arisen. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:15, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
- Not usually. "That's why", 6,380,000 Google Books hits. "That is why", 3,800,000 Google Books hits. Art LaPella (talk) 02:27, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
Bird names
The blanket claim that "bird names are capitalized" is not my understanding. AIUI Bald Eagle is indeed capitalized, but eagle is sentence case. --Trovatore (talk) 22:48, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
- I thought that herecy was only restricted to their project article pages (where the birders write the articles and won the policy war). But if I mention the bald eagle in an article about the United States, I could follow the normal practice...of oh...the NYT and pretty much normal published media as well as style guides and the such. ;-) TCO (talk) 00:04, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
- I was going by Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(capital_letters)#Animals.2C_plants.2C_and_other_organisms. If that's not right, feel free to take it out. Dicklyon (talk) 03:47, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
- Right, this is what it says:
- title case for common names of species throughout, and lower case for common names of groups of species (the Golden Eagle is a relatively large eagle; see WP:BIRDS)
- so if we're following that here, then first of all it's not just birds, and secondly we have to distinguish between species and groups of species. Personally I'm not sure the latter description is quite the correct one; if an individual species had a common name that was just one word, for example, we still wouldn't want to capitalize it IMO. --Trovatore (talk) 04:00, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
- Right, this is what it says:
- I read somewhere. Going to look. But think. Since each animal project (birds, reptiles, rodents, etc.) kinda sets policy for their articles, it would not make sense to say capitalize birds everywhere. they will want it. (They want me to capitalize the H in Virginia Ham. And the C and K in Chef's Knife.) But it won't make sense. If I'm doing an article on a rat and talk about predation in article by birds, I can't capitalize the "Bald Eagle", but not the r in "Norwegien rat" as then I lose in article consistency on the style. Let me go dig where I read this.TCO (talk) 03:55, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
- I was going by Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(capital_letters)#Animals.2C_plants.2C_and_other_organisms. If that's not right, feel free to take it out. Dicklyon (talk) 03:47, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
- Animal Project has a good discussion here and makes the point that each animal project should decide and then that style should be consistent throughout the article. I mean if the birders stick their newfangled capitalization in other species articles, do they want to have to refer to rodents and MOST animals which are not doing the birder thing, in the sentence case within their articles? Also see this draft guideline (see the table with remarks field. TCO (talk) 04:14, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
- Lower case should be used in contexts outside of ornithology. Inside ornithology group names are sentence case. So use eagle and not Eagle. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 20:53, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
- I generally support lower case for species names. We write for a general audience. We should use general-audience rules. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:25, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
- My understanding is that species names are generally considered proper names; just as we write "John Smith" or "the Louvre" or "Existentialism", so we write "Bald Eagle" and "Homo sapiens". Ozob (talk) 21:11, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
- Not generally; for one thing, it is possible for individual members of a species to have proper names (even if they are only Specimen A), but it is used, unlike many professional distortions of the language, outside narrowly technical writing. (Great Northern, by Arthur Ransome, is by a birder - but not for them; and he capitalizes.) On the other hand this is a bird book - and it doesn't. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:57, 26 January 2011 (UTC) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:54, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
- I'm confused and would like clear directions. Tony (talk) 08:51, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
- The smallest change that would follow actual usage is to say that bird names are capitalized in articles about birds (or about fauna). Actual usage varies: in general, bird books capitalize, general writing does not - but there are exceptions both ways; Google scholar suggests that some, but not all, twenty-first century ornithology also capitalizes. Saying that in MOS stands a chance of helping actual editors make informed decisions; I realize that this has rarely been a goal of this page, but it is never too late to mend. (In practice, editors who want to cap should feel free to do so; but their preference is not so widespread in the corpus that it should be imposed on articles on, say, flags.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:58, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
- I'm confused and would like clear directions. Tony (talk) 08:51, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
- Not generally; for one thing, it is possible for individual members of a species to have proper names (even if they are only Specimen A), but it is used, unlike many professional distortions of the language, outside narrowly technical writing. (Great Northern, by Arthur Ransome, is by a birder - but not for them; and he capitalizes.) On the other hand this is a bird book - and it doesn't. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:57, 26 January 2011 (UTC) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:54, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
- The parallel should be between "Haliaeetus leucocephalus" and "Homo sapiens" or between "bald eagle" and "human being", not between "Homo sapiens" and "bald eagle".[1] 137.43.105.17 (talk) 12:30, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
- My understanding is that species names are generally considered proper names; just as we write "John Smith" or "the Louvre" or "Existentialism", so we write "Bald Eagle" and "Homo sapiens". Ozob (talk) 21:11, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
Text annotations in images
Spawned from Wikipedia:Help desk#Image is annotated in Spanish, the current guideline at Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Avoid entering textual information as images seems to be talking about use of "an image of text" rather than "the text itself" (for example, exported from Word or other formatting system). Should it be extended to include text-annotations in a graphics image (labels or details on a diagram)? For example, Wikipedia:Manual of Style (chemistry)/Structure drawing#General states "Do not include English text in images: this prevents their reuse in other languages." DMacks (talk) 09:22, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
- No. If someone chooses to produce a text free diagram as a template, fine. But not required. And in any case to use some flow diagram, chart, map, biological drawing, etc. words are needed and normal. That guideline is NOT saying "don't lable the axes for a Cartesian correlation chart". What they are saying is don't slap a bunch of text like a paragraph down as an image. Like making a textbox be an image. Or even the regular article text.TCO (talk) 09:58, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
- I'm aware what it's saying, I'm trying to improve reusability/accessibility, and the given section was the closest general guideline I could find. In that light, is it not even worth a "you may want to...to allow the same image to be used in multiple languages"? The chemistry guideline is part of the MOS already, and is indeed a highly technical field with all sorts of diagrams, etc. Obviously a word or two on an axis would be reasonable. But (as with the help-desk question that started this), a diagram could have lettered or numbered pointers, resolved via a key in caption or body-text rather than as single-language text in the image itself. DMacks (talk) 12:03, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
- I always understand what you want. I disagree with it. I want what helps the immediate reader most. Having to perform an extra step of coding/translating (so that it makes it easier for figure drawers to do less work) versus having the immediate text right where the reader would want it. Do you see NYT, National Geographic or anyone else doing what you want? No...because they want to put the best work product in front of their reader. You will never get consensus to kludge up all the English langauge diagrams to make it less work for people in other lands to make local versions. And I think that diagram in Spanish was just fine and it would be a pain in the ass to have to go refer to a list of comments somewhere. Defeats having an efficient image to process viewing.TCO (talk) 17:15, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
- Now if someone uploaded the "base" so that anyone else could put comments on it in local languages, that might be useful. Even here, though I would hesitate to make it harder for our writers to make figures for our readers. After all, people on the other end can go in photoshop or Corel or whatever graphics program and just clip the old text and add new.TCO (talk) 17:20, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
- We often use the same base diagrams, but usually copies are ported to the relevant language. I can think of articles (like one on a battle) where the locations and coordinates of skirmishes are overlaid on a basic map, but in general this is far more hassle than generating a one-off image. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 17:23, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
- Now if someone uploaded the "base" so that anyone else could put comments on it in local languages, that might be useful. Even here, though I would hesitate to make it harder for our writers to make figures for our readers. After all, people on the other end can go in photoshop or Corel or whatever graphics program and just clip the old text and add new.TCO (talk) 17:20, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
What if we hired some editors for this magazine?
When you look at WP it has huge traffic. I'm sure we must have some paid employees who work on the servers and such. What if we got some paid editors? It's just money. Money can be located. This thing is a frigging Google H-bomb. It justifies that. And having some editors would not mean that all the work gets done. There's so much to do, even on the policy front, that there would still be a place for all the circular arguments and such. But the project is big enough to "deserve" the expenditure. And I feel for what Tony said about wanting direction. And this is not to say it would be Nirvana...but it would help and would move us to getting work done (article content written and prose completed) vice the never-ending wonk-battles.
Obviously, you need to pick someone who has both "skills" as well as sympathy for the crazy thing that we have here and a willingness to work in the New Media world. But there are people in those two intersecting circls of a Venn diagram. Just run the search and make it happen. Would be fun to think about bringing in some Michael Wolfe (maybe not, he seems a prima donna). But we could raid Britannica or NYT or National Geographic or what have you. And it's not about our having some ghetto resentment of the establishment, but just about getting the job done (and the job done is finished work product for people to read...never forget the silent majority that reads WP, but does not contribute and definitely does not come to MOS to debate dashes and curly-Qs, etc.
I would start with 3 hires: a head editor, a "copy editor" (he would mostly work on style policy, not actualy copyediting), and a featured content editor (FA, FP, GA, DYK, all that crap). This has to have been thought of. But why not some attention on the content as opposed to the servers? Or as opposed to the whole structure around conduct (going from admins to arbs to I guess the board of wikimedia)? TCO (talk) 13:10, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
- The difference is there are editorial teams for the output of just a magazine, while Wikipedia is adding hundreds if not thousands of new articles a day and still needs to work on the old ones. Secondly, the Wikimedia Foundation is not a content provider but a service provider; if they assumed editorial control they'd be liable for all the possible libel or errors on any page. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 15:31, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
- Does WP deserve it? Yes. Would it be practical? Probably not. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:33, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
Are article titles within the scope of this guideline?
- When naming an article, a hyphen is not used as a substitute for an en dash that properly belongs in the title, for example in Eye–hand span. However, editors should provide a redirect page to such an article, using a hyphen in place of the en dash (Eye-hand span), to allow the name to be typed easily when searching Wikipedia. See also Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision). The names of a page and its associated talk page should match exactly.
Should this guideline be discussing article titles at all? We haver a policy on the subject on WP:TITLE#Special_characters, which already says much of this (have redirects from the hyphened form) rather less verbosely. Where they agree, this is unnecessary; where they disagree, it is excrescent.
In addition, the guidance here on which to use is use dashes when dashes are proper. I'm underwhelmed with this. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:47, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
- I agree that the previous text was poor, so I have substituted a much shorter text. It says basically the same thing—use dashes when dashes are proper—but with fewer words.
- Directions on article titles in section 2 of the MOS (which essentially repeats part of WT:AT), in the section on quotation characters, in the section on hyphens (repeating the guidance from the section on en dashes), in WP:COMMONALITY and MOS:IDENTITY, and in the section on foreign terms. I would not be opposed to removing some of these. However if we go that route I think we should be consistent and remove all the references outside section 2, not just some of them. Ozob (talk) 03:12, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
- I'd be reasonably happy with that. Let me get back to you after seeing what's in WP:TITLE. Comments? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:27, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
- Yes, article titles are within the ambit of the MoS. Otherwise there is no coordination between the style of titles and the style of all other article text; that would be unacceptable. Tony (talk) 09:05, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
- Nice piece of empire-building. The opposite is clear from the date-delinking case; - especially since it mskes this guideline inconsistent with a policy - and (what seems to be more important to Tony) with itself; see Section 2. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:22, 28 January 2011 (UTC)\
- Yes, article titles are within the ambit of the MoS. Otherwise there is no coordination between the style of titles and the style of all other article text; that would be unacceptable. Tony (talk) 09:05, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
- I'd be reasonably happy with that. Let me get back to you after seeing what's in WP:TITLE. Comments? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:27, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
Since Tony is the only proponent of the audacious view that this guideline overrules policy; and in the process rewrites English, the majority text should be restored with a tag. If this revert war continues, I will dispute the status of this semi-literate waste of electrons as a guideline. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:08, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
Following the sources
But all this could be obviated if WP:DASH were to include WP:MOSFOLLOW. DASH is at best a set of reasonable guidelines for punctuation (some of its provisions may be somewhat less than that), but it is not intended to be an exact account of English punctuation, which is bent by innumerable crossing idioms. If it said, at the beginning, something like The following are guides to what English usage usually is; if in doubt, follow the punctuation of reliable English secondary sources on the subject, we would avoid undiomatic forms both in text and in titles. We don't have to make editors try to figure out what English ought to be; they should look at what English is.
If there are two actually contesting forms in reliable sources, there is nothing wrong with leaning to regularity as a tie-breaker; I would appreciate suggestions on how to phrase that. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:43, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
- Finally, someone making sense in this hyphen vs dash war. I agree that the MOS guidelines at the moment should be altered to say that there are exceptions to the rule. The problem is, however, that websites rarely, if ever, use un-spaced en-dashes, even if we would consider it appropriate in a particular situation. I've not seen un-sapced en-dashes outside of Wikipedia. McLerristarr | Mclay1 15:36, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
- Thanks; this is one reason to use reliable secondary sources: for websites, this would be those which are professional publications and those which reproduce images of printed books. (Perhaps we should add to WP:MOSFOLLOW a warning against OCR?) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:49, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
- Let's see if do what the sources do provokes dispute; if so, let's remove the entire useless section. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:18, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
- Mr Anderson, that has been your attitude to the entire MoS for some years. You have never gained support for watering down the status of the style guideline, so I doubt whether you will now (the e.c. above and one or two others excepted). It is a pity you are persisting, since your contributions here are often good. I do not wish to go around in circles yet again as we did for some years until June 2009. It turns off good contributors to the style guides. My time-budget for this kind of thing has just been exhausted, and I don't want to have to put dozens of hours again into what will turn out to be a negative debate; please be supportive of the MoS. When you feel a change should be made but it meets opposition, you really need to gain consensus for it here first. Tony (talk) 15:41, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
- Yes, this is the attitude of most Wikipedians to MOS as it presently exists, which is why it is so widely ignored and despised. I differ in that I think it can be fixed, even without banning the handful of enthusiasts that would like to invent and impose on Wikipedia a new reformed version of the English language; those of us who actually write the encyclopedia prefer to communicate in English as she is - which is what readers will understand.
- But aside from Tony's personalities, he has a point, even if few people agree with it. He believes that this waste of unread and unconsensus provisions is binding on Wikipedia as a whole, even when they disagree with policy - and with the practice which produces policy. Disagreement with this he calls "watering down" the status of the guideline (Tony, see WP:Policies and guidelines for what the status of a guideline really is).
- Does anybody else agree with Tony, or is he the only Secret Master of Wikipedia? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:55, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
- I support the existence of a Manual of Style; I support a Manual of Style which represents the consensus of Wikipedians in general, and describes the English language. This page has been improving, but it is not yet either. It would be much more useful - and much less contentious - if it were. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:59, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
Style of putting Quotes in citations; it may help readers skip, or quickly check, source content
I propose adding to MOS aand/or RS the following –
“Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, and is often viewed with mistrust. Wikipedia responds to this by requiring reliable sources. Users can then always check the content of an article by reading the source provided in the reference list. It is helpful to the reader to include a very brief quote from the source in the ref, so the reader can quickly find where the content came from in the source.”
Please comment. HkFnsNGA (talk)
- That belongs in WP:No Original Research, where it may actually be a useful condensation; this is the Manual of Style, where we argue over hyphens. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:32, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
- It probably belongs in citations (although I think MOS should take over citations). On the content, I had to deal with this at an FA and have a slight tweak desired. I often use quotes in citation, they are very punchy sometimes. they give extra info. they give a flavor. They drive home the proof. But I don't do it to help locate info. I do it for extra effect. I had a reviewer want me to add "See sentence starting at..." before all my quotes, but my intention was pretty far from locational. I believe the citation was sufficient. Plus the quote was the most important part but not the "starting part". Plus I had a couple that started mid sentence. So I love the practice. But I don't do it for location. See Painted turtle. TCO (talk) 20:44, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
- I will start a talk page section at WP:RS And WP:OR, per your suggestions. (What does "FA" abbreviate? Is there a dictionary of WP:abbreviations for relative newbies to them?) I had similar experiences to yours, which is why I thought of it, and with your additional "punch" motivations, beyond just to be helpful. HkFnsNGA (talk) 23:15, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
- "FA"=Wikipedia:Featured article. Dictionary of WP:abbreviations=Wikipedia:Wikipedia abbreviations or Wikipedia:Glossary. Art LaPella (talk) 05:56, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- I will start a talk page section at WP:RS And WP:OR, per your suggestions. (What does "FA" abbreviate? Is there a dictionary of WP:abbreviations for relative newbies to them?) I had similar experiences to yours, which is why I thought of it, and with your additional "punch" motivations, beyond just to be helpful. HkFnsNGA (talk) 23:15, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
- Were this proposed in a relevant policy (and I oppose MOS taking over anything actually important), I would comment that a brief quotation is often misleading, and this provision would certainly be abused; often a sentence in WP summarizes a page; also, anything that makes citation more difficult had better be clearly worth the slower citation rate it will produce. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:32, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
- Yes, there is a possibility for non-WP:GoodFaith abusing this, but it is also helpful in finding information in large sources, and for detecting such abuse. I agree this discussion could also take place in other talk pages, and I will start it there. HkFnsNGA (talk) 23:13, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
- The solution to that is giving page numbers, which is required by WP:V. For sources which don't have page numbers, text tags may be a good idea; but we source other things than web pages, and even for them, long unpaginated pages are not universal. Therefore no universal rule for a local problem. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:18, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- I have found that when I find abbreviated quotes in a ref, I have always been thankful. I assume good faith in editors, and that their edits were not some kind of bad faith trick. I have found that the page numbers often do not have what is claimed to be in them... hmmm, but when there is a brief quote, it has always been accurate. Tricksters thrive on vagueness. HkFnsNGA (talk) 00:56, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- The solution to that is giving page numbers, which is required by WP:V. For sources which don't have page numbers, text tags may be a good idea; but we source other things than web pages, and even for them, long unpaginated pages are not universal. Therefore no universal rule for a local problem. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:18, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- Yes, there is a possibility for non-WP:GoodFaith abusing this, but it is also helpful in finding information in large sources, and for detecting such abuse. I agree this discussion could also take place in other talk pages, and I will start it there. HkFnsNGA (talk) 23:13, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
Here is a proposal for the style of writing refs as to whether or not to use quotes, which incorporates the above comments -
“Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, and is often viewed with mistrust. Wikipedia responds to this by requiring reliable sources. Users can then always check the content of an article by reading the source provided in the reference list. It is critically helpful to include page numbers from which article content specifically came from. It is also helpful to some readers to include a very brief quote from the source in the ref, so the reader can quickly find where the content came from in the source. This can also add 'punch' by giving extra info, flavor, or in driving home the proof. However some editors find that a brief quotation is often misleading, and using them might be abused by some editors. ”
HkFnsNGA (talk) 16:42, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- I removed this because it belongs on WP:CITE or WP:V. I would oppose it because adding endless quotations to footnotes is misused by people strongly pushing a POV. They'll add a contentious sentence to the article, followed by 10 refs with a couple of quotations in each ref so the article is overwhelmed. I wouldn't want to see anything that encouraged that practice, so if a section like this were to be added elsewhere it would have to be worded carefully.
- At the moment V says in a footnote: "When there is dispute about whether a piece of text is fully supported by a given source, direct quotes and other relevant details from the source should be provided to other editors as a courtesy." But that could be done on the talk page. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 01:04, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- I find quotations helpful, particularly if one does not have access to a source. Jayjg (talk) 02:02, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- I find quotations helpful for long unpaginated electronic sources as the functional equivalent of a page number. Jc3s5h (talk) 02:06, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- I actually disapprove of including quotes in sources. Perhaps this is due to the topic areas where I tend to edit... but my experience has been that when a quote is included in a citation, someone is probably selectively quoting, taking the quoted words out of context. I see quoting in the citation as a red flag for potential POV pushing. Context often requires pointing the reader to long passages of a source... more than just the phrase or sentence that we have room for in a citation.
- All that said... I agree with Slim Virgin... this is the wrong place to discuss this... it belongs at WP:CITE Blueboar (talk)
- I find quotations helpful for long unpaginated electronic sources as the functional equivalent of a page number. Jc3s5h (talk) 02:06, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
Please read Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Footnoted quotes, a 2008 case which held, "In the absence of unambiguous guidance in the Manual of style and in Wikipedia:Footnotes covering the content of footnotes, the question of what material – such as quotes – should or should not appear in footnotes is substantially a legitimate disagreement over content. Editors who systematically produce articles which contradict style guidance should expect others to bring their articles into line, but style guidance should be decided by consensus after wide consultation." Racepacket (talk) 05:43, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- I have two issues with the quotes. One is that they clunk up the text of the citations. Maybe I'm old school, but when I was learning how to write research papers in the 1990s, the bibliography page of the paper was streamlined and to the point. It gave the information necessary for someone to find the specific source if they wished to verify the content of the paper, but no more. Second is that how much text needs to be quoted to verify the information attributed to the source? Depending on how much it is, we could be running afoul of fair-use criteria that specify to use the least amount of copyrighted content necessary to illustrate the point. Even if it is only a few lines each, that could still add up to a lot. Passing the quotations over to a section of the talk page though is problematic, because non-free content is not supposed to be used outside of mainspace. In a few cases where I've felt it necessary, I've used <!--HTML comments --> to include a single sentence hidden in the footnote. Imzadi 1979 → 08:11, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
Proposed replacement text for WP:CONTRACTIONS section
Current text: "In general, the use of contractions—such as don't, can't, won't, they'd, should've, it's—is informal and should be avoided."
Proposed replacement text: "In general, the pointed avoidance of contractions—such as don't, can't, won't, they'd, should've, it's—is stilted and should be avoided. It was a traditional rule of formal versus informal writing in the pre-Internet era, and nowadays it seems stodgy and outdated to most readers under 40."
No, I don't expect the people who read this page to accept this change anytime soon—not now, nor this year, nor this decade. Yes, it needed to be said anyway. No, it doesn't present any actual problems to EFL readers or readers who are machines. Yes, it will eventually happen. Till then, I remain, — ¾-10 23:33, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
- There's a middle ground. Add the pointed avoidance of contractions is stilted and also should be avoided. The harm is the pointedness, not the use of cannot and so on. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:15, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- informal English is informal English and WP is not the place for it. Hmains (talk) 04:32, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose – Those contractions are written forms of a way of quickly saying two words. We should not write an encyclopaedia in colloquial speaking language. It would be like replacing "the" with "t'" on pages about Yorkshire and replacing "afternoon" with "arvo" for Australian pages. McLerristarr | Mclay1 05:39, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
The Campaign Against Real English?
This edit summary genuinely shocks me; the claim that do as [reliable English] sources do is a serious change of guidance for any section of this page should disqualify that section for z guideline on the English Wikipedia; the claim that such a position is consensus of Wikipedia (not of some clique of rule-makers) is an evident falsehood; if it were consensus, it would not be controversial – as WP:DASH evodently is.
I hope, however, that there is some other explanation that the assertion that MOS attempts to provide rules which are not supported by the usage of actual English beyond Wikipedia. Wikipedia editors (at least most of the time ;}) write real English, not MOSese; more importantly, our readers read the language actually found in published sources – not some artificial construct. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:35, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
What is WP:DASH? The top of this section links to an edit summary claiming that it has nothing to do with how English is actually written outside Wikipedia; I don't believe it. The top of this page links to a long and acrimonious discussion provoked by a claim that it is binding on article titles even when the result is almost unheard of in English (demonstrating in the process that the meaning of these innumerable bullet points isn't the same for everybody). I think this violates our article title policy, and I still don't believe it. What do other people think? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:24, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
There seem to me three possibilities about WP:DASH:
- that the true rule here is in fact: write English; use dashes and hyphens as well-proofread English sources do, the sort of sources that are also fact-checked, and therefore reliable, and that the many bullet-points here are guidelines, more or less accurate, towards what good English writing does. In this case, we should say so - and make sure, by sourcing our rules and consulting well-printed texts, that they are approximately what English does.
- That ehese are Commandments to be followed, whatever English may do. If so, they produce bad, unidiomatic, writing whenever they differ from English usage and are harmful to the encyclopedia.
- That they should have no weight at all, which is how most editors seems to regard this entire page.
1 I believe #1. Let's have other views. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:52, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
I also believe #1. The complaint was about changing from the simple style statement "a hyphen is not used as a substitute for an en dash that properly belongs in the title" to a statement that tried to provide guidance on making the decision about whether an en dash properly belongs: "use dashes when the sources do". The edit summary said "That would be quite a change from the current consensus", which it is, since the MOS until now doesn't attempt to give much guidance there (at least not in this section), and because it is an attempt to turn a decision over to the often erratic results of the styles of others rather than leaving it more up to WP style. My own interpretation is this: if I think that an en dash belongs in a title, and it currently has a hyphen, I might move it, but only if I first find and cite a source that does it that way. I don't require a preponderance, or a majority, or even a large number of sources doing it that way, because most sources aren't curated well enough to bother to respect the value of indicating meaning via punctuation, which is what the style guide says elsewhere we try to do with en dashes, using them to indicate a different kind of connection than hyphens indicate. But I do need at least one source to back up my opinion before I'll do it; I might be tempted to change "Springer-Verlag" to "Springer–Verlag" if I were ignorant of the real meaning of this German-derived name, but hopefully when looking at sources I'd find out that that would be wrong, and I'd leave it alone. Those of us who have been brought up on a combination of good grammar and good typography find the hyphen offensive when it indicates the wrong meaning by being used where the en dash belongs; and vice-versa. But it's not always obvious, so cases need to be looked at by editors who get the point and are willing to make decisions without the emotional baggage of dashphobia or dashphilia. Dicklyon (talk) 02:51, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- You omit, I think, the reason you aren't tempted: Those who have spent time with the Yellow Peril know what looks right; this applies on and off Wikipedia. This doesn't need copy-editing; most people who write of Springer-Verlag spell it right to begin with (just as they aren't tempted to use a dash in copy-edit), and copy-editing improves that. That's why do what sources do works. What WP:DASH produces is a mass of junior editors who are emending WP in fields they don't know, and feel no reason to check usage at all. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:11, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- Among those who invoke DASH without knowing the fields they are emending are many in this present company, either in actual title/article changes or in opposition to reverting to hyphens when the sources dictate that's what should be there (WP:MOSFOLLOW is one of those non-cherrypicked bits of MOS that a lot of people here have openly dismissed, rather repetitively too - "Wikipedia has its own style and doesn't need to follow the sources", for example). As for this arrogance: "I don't require a preponderance, or a majority, or even a large number of sources doing it that way, because most sources aren't curated well enough to bother to respect the value of indicating meaning via punctuation," In other words, you're fine with cherrypicking sources (a sole source, or a handful) that support your adjudgment of what the "meaning" of a construction is, i.e. that this or that should have a dash even though a preponderance of sources (in the case of regional districts all sources) have the hyphen, and you are incredibly arrogant to suggest that sources that "aren't curated well" are inferior to your own judgement, even though you've done this to articles in fields you very pointedly don't know anything about (and don't care to either, it seems). How can you judge meaning, or claim to, when it's clear from things you've taken positions that deconstruct meaning, without considering context or even accepting standard convention because, well, "you know better". You're not consensus, though you're pretending you are. Maybe the rest of the world knows things you just do not, has that occurred to you?Skookum1 (talk) 06:25, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- You omit, I think, the reason you aren't tempted: Those who have spent time with the Yellow Peril know what looks right; this applies on and off Wikipedia. This doesn't need copy-editing; most people who write of Springer-Verlag spell it right to begin with (just as they aren't tempted to use a dash in copy-edit), and copy-editing improves that. That's why do what sources do works. What WP:DASH produces is a mass of junior editors who are emending WP in fields they don't know, and feel no reason to check usage at all. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:11, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- I hope you don't mean me, but I'd like to know who you do mean when you say "Among those who invoke DASH without knowing the fields they are emending are many in this present company". If people have done that, they do deserve to be criticized; but this kind of blanket smear doesn't help. Say what you mean, backed up by pointers to the facts, or you're just making noise. Dicklyon (talk) 07:09, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
See Talk:Alberni–Clayoquot_Regional_District#Requested_move re TheTom, McLay and Skinsmoke's comments, and refer back to the arduous Poland-Lithuania RM for many of the same uninformed pronouncements that this is two separate entities so must be dashed, plus other rationalizations why the sources don't matter and what matters is style and "typographical" technology over content (many of your own posts were about that, very repetitively and you also, it seems to me, said that the prevailing usages in the sources weren't important and coudl be discounted; just as you have done so immediately above). The Canadian placenames were changed by User:Arctic.gnome and User:Renata3 (the latter took part in Poland-Lithuania, as I recall) citing the mis-taken "and/to" concept that these are just linked items, and not unique placenames referring to unique places/concepts (which they are). You nkow all this already, and you know what I was referring to; yet you ask me to back it up with "facts"....but the facts are that the sources ARE the sources, and Wikipedia is not a source (and MOS even less so).Skookum1 (talk) 07:19, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- TheTom and Skinsmoke don't seem to be among the "present company", and McLay has only made a few moderate and sensible comments, so I still don't understand your ranting about imagined "uninformed pronouncements". And I hadn't looked at that other discussion, but I see now that you're having trouble there. I can see why it's an interesting case, but don't see why it needs to be turned into an MOS problem. Dicklyon (talk) 07:43, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- The MoS absolutely does demand usage that is not supported by a majority of sources, that contradicts English usage and that was imposed by revisionist rule-makers rather than taken from either Wikipedia usage or general English: WP:LP. However, none of this means that there isn't a Wikipedia consensus for this or any other given rule unless "Wikipedia consensus" is not defined as a significant preponderance of contributors to discussions about said rule.
- As for using reliable sources? I've worked with too many scientific journals. Sources that are reliable for facts do not always get their grammar, punctuation and word usage right. We should use fact-reliable sources for facts and usage-reliable sources for usage. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:51, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- Do they get their usage wrong? Of course they do; that's why finding a single exemplar of something is not enough. Do they get it wrong on half the words? Very few of them are anywhere close, even in the present post-copyediting environment. But think about the result; even if there is a significant amount of noise, a supermajority of sources will still be right on any given word or punctuation choice. (In those cases where a majority is consistently and jointly wrong, we eventually say the language has changed - as in mob for mobile vulgus - and they are then right.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:51, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- Then we would have to specifically require that people look at a supermajority of sources, both on and off of the Internet. Usually, "use the sources" means "one reliable source will do," and when using sources for facts that is indeed sufficient. We must be clear that using sources in this way is not the same thing as using sources through the rest of Wikipedia. Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:50, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- No more than pollsters have to poll a supermajority of the voters. It requires only a sufficient sample to be reasonably sure that there is a supermajority of sources do it one way or the others. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:33, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- But that sample must not be skewed, as an Internet-only sample would be likely to be. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:08, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- Supermajority is irrelvant here. We have a manual of "style"; different sources have different typographic styles. The point of consulting sources is to verify that at least some of them that have a compatible typographic style has made the same interpretation of the structure/meaning of the compound term in question. The ones that always use hyphens have no bearing on the question, and those are the majority. Dicklyon (talk) 22:01, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- This is a claim that this guideline, unsourced as it is, can mandate any style it pleases, as long as some editor thinks it can be found somewhere in the corpus of English writing - whether most English readers boggle at it or not. That violates a core policy of this English Wikipedia: that it be in comprehensible English.
- No more than pollsters have to poll a supermajority of the voters. It requires only a sufficient sample to be reasonably sure that there is a supermajority of sources do it one way or the others. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:33, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- Then we would have to specifically require that people look at a supermajority of sources, both on and off of the Internet. Usually, "use the sources" means "one reliable source will do," and when using sources for facts that is indeed sufficient. We must be clear that using sources in this way is not the same thing as using sources through the rest of Wikipedia. Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:50, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- Do they get their usage wrong? Of course they do; that's why finding a single exemplar of something is not enough. Do they get it wrong on half the words? Very few of them are anywhere close, even in the present post-copyediting environment. But think about the result; even if there is a significant amount of noise, a supermajority of sources will still be right on any given word or punctuation choice. (In those cases where a majority is consistently and jointly wrong, we eventually say the language has changed - as in mob for mobile vulgus - and they are then right.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:51, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- Does anybody else agree with this? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:31, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
So, the question is this: If MOS, as Dicklyon suggests, isn't based on what English does, what is it based on? Not on style manuals: it cites none, and they are in turn ultimately based on usage. If it is based the Original Research of some Wikipedians - as his answer would suggest, why should we keep it? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:31, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- I don't recall making that suggestion, but yes, it's sort of the case that "what English does" and good style for publication of English are largely orthogonal. We should keep the style guide because it has evolved through a consensus process; changing it hugely would be very disruptive, so we need to change it only when we have consensus to do so. Dicklyon (talk) 22:37, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- I do not agree that the MoS should mandate whatever styles a preponderance of the contributors to these discussions please. Neither do I believe that we should look around and make educated guesses about what we think English users are doing (or about to do). I believe we should follow established style guides. Yes, these guides may be based on what English users are doing, but their professional investigations are more likely to be accurate (and unbiased) than anything we could do ourselves. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:08, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- If MOS were doing that, it would cite the style guides; it doesn't. Most of these provisions are sheer Original Research; changing to what style guides recommend - and giving due weight to each where they disagree - would be a enormous first step.
- There are also two problems with style guides.
- Most of them make choices for reasons which are not ours; chiefly that they are only intended for one natioual dialect. CMS recommends -ize with the same certitude of all its other recommendations; should we dredge that out and bind Britiish editors with it?
- All of them are intended for people in a hurry, for whom some choice is better than none, even if the other would be just as good. We have no deadline - and we harm Wikipedia by insisting on one arbitrary choice when neither we nor the style guide have a reason; we harm it doubly when - as does happen - the style-guide's rule of thumb is simply unidiomatic for some particular construction. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:15, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- It would be wonderful if the MoS cited its sources. We should not bind British editors to the Oxford spelling but continue to employ ENGVAR. My personal preference is to allow editors their freedom within correct English. Because British English includes both -ize and -ise (and double and single quotation marks), I'd go with intra-article consistency but otherwise let people do what they want.
- Our purpose here is to provide good guidance for general-audience pieces. That would put is in accordance with most style guides most of the time. If there were a specific instance here or there in which most style guides' advice would not be appropriate to Wikipedia, we could deal with that on a case-by-case basis. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:11, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- Do try to keep in mind that there are many more than just two varieties of English. Roger (talk) 22:41, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- Of course, but the question was about British editors and -ize, so that's how I answered it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:24, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- I'm not aware of those. I pretty much assume that WP:ENGVAR with more than 2 varieties would be impractical, even though it does allude to variants of British English. What varieties are you suggesting that we need to keep in mind? I don't think the article on dialects that you linked is relevant. Dicklyon (talk) 23:01, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- Actually, there are lots of articles on Wikipedia that are written in other varieties of English, such as Irish and South African. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:24, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- I'm not sure I'd recognize one of those. Can you point out an example, or say how those varieties differ, roughly? Dicklyon (talk) 04:01, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- Example? Caster Semenya for South African. How they differ? I don't know. The point is that ENGVAR, when used correctly, gives proper respect to all varieties of English. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:30, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- I'm not sure I'd recognize one of those. Can you point out an example, or say how those varieties differ, roughly? Dicklyon (talk) 04:01, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- Example sentence for standard English as it is written in the land of the Desis: "Public sector lender Central Bank of India today reported a 31.68 per cent increase in its net profit to Rs 403.52 crore for the quarter ended December 31, 2010." [2] From The Economic Times. Hans Adler 12:53, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- Actually, there are lots of articles on Wikipedia that are written in other varieties of English, such as Irish and South African. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:24, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- Do try to keep in mind that there are many more than just two varieties of English. Roger (talk) 22:41, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- There are also two problems with style guides.
Are we in for months of instability?
Mr Anderson, an editor whose specialisations in the classics and mathematics I admire, has suddenly taken to making substantive changes to the MoS without consensus. Above, he has reprimanded User:Ozob for an edit-summary to a reversion of one of these changes earlier today. Editors need a stable MoS, and changes to it, unless everyone here agrees—not just one or two people where there's also disagreement—need to be discussed on this page. Consideration should sometimes be given to advertising the discussion more widely to involve the community.
- That depends on you. I came here, observed that there was a long-standing discussion, easily remediable by admitting at a single point that the purpose of the Manual of Style was to help editors write English - that is to say, actually existing English.
- But those who value stability should also consider that a guideline which cannot be changed because it is policed by revert-warriors loses all claim to consensus - and with it all claim to authority. The reason to believe that most articles, most guidelines, most policies are consensus is that anybody is free to change them, and they have, by progressive changes, arrived at a point where nobody wants to. That's what WP:Consensus means; that everybody can tolerate the present state.
- If a guideline is frozen - hy protection or by other means - this argument no longer holds. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:07, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
I ask that the normal protocols be observed on this important page. There seems to be a spiralling element in which disagreement to change is met by a bulldozer. We need to treat each other more kindly and maintain peaceful discussion. \
- You don't understand what normal protocols are. Normal protocols are to edit collaboratively; when a change is suggested and argued for, to try to find language that will suit all parties. (For example, if you want generally at the beginning of the sentence below, fine; I thought it smoother where it is.) You have reverted three times without discussion, and only now start a tirade. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:11, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
Contractions, again
In yet another example, this:
- In general, the use of contractions—such as don't, can't, won't, they'd, should've, it's—is informal and should be avoided.
has been changed to this:
- The use of contractions—such as don't, can't, won't, they'd, should've, it's—is informal and should generally be avoided; on the other hand, the pointed avoidance of contractions is stilted and also should be avoided.
I'd have thought "In general" was enough leeway for common sense to be applied in particular instances. "On the other hand" isn't a particularly thrilling phrase for a style guide. Can we have examples of where "the pointed avoideance of contractions is stilted and also should be avoided"? Otherwise, it seems to be bloat. What will new editors make of it? I'm struggling with it myself. Tony (talk) 01:56, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- This should have been placed at #Proposed replacement text for WP:CONTRACTIONS section. The coy avoidance of contraction, when it is idiomatic, can be stilted, can't it? Or should this encyclopedia use can it not?
- Much of the bad writing here is due to editors attempting Victorian school-room prose, because they think it necessary for an encyclopedia. You've read Fowler; you know how his contemporary reporters did when they tried writing on stilts. Let's not encourage newbies in this bad habit. Or do we need Let us not? For Heaven his sake, why? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:19, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- Again, consider this paragraph, ridden with cliche and pointless repetition, in the register of a bibulous sportscaster:
- Godfrey signed a one year contract with Hampton & Richmond Borough in August 2004, but didn't make his first appearance until October that year due to injury. His debut was a home match against Windsor & Eton in the Isthmian League Premier Division, where he came off the bench to score the winner in a 2–1 victory for his new club.
- Soem editor "corrected" didn't, leaving the rest of it alone, and went his way rejoicing. That does nothing to the real horrors, makes the sentence somewhat less natural, and doubtless gives the good soul a feeling of being useful to Wikipedia. That's what one-sided guidance produces. May he be happy; but has the guidance helped Wikipedia any? How? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:47, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- I don't see anything wrong with that paragraph including the contraction. But since I know WP:CONTRACTION, I too would have changed that word. If WP:CONTRACTION changes to "Only remove contractions when you can guess that we want you to", I will simply ignore contractions, and tell my AWB software to do the same. Art LaPella (talk) 06:15, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- Please do. When the contraction was taken out without fixing the paragraph, that made very bad writing slightly worse by changing register pointlessly. You didn't do it, but the fewer who do the better. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:30, 29 January 2011 (UTC).
- Sure, as soon as your change to WP:CONTRACTION remains unreverted; how else do I know what the consensus is? Art LaPella (talk) 05:27, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- This section should make plain that the present text isn't consenus. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:01, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- Then change it again. Would you prefer we ignore every guideline that has been debated in the archives? Art LaPella (talk) 19:25, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- The problem is that every bullet-point of MOS is - in effect - a separate guideline. Most of them have been protested in the past; the response is usually not a demonstration of consensus, but one or two editors claiming consensus (with no evidence) and revert-warring. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:07, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- I basically agree that style Nazis are a problem on this page. But style Nazis throughout Wikipedia who don't bother with this page, or with any other form of consensus, are a bigger problem. So what's the alternative? Art LaPella (talk) 01:54, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
- The problem is that every bullet-point of MOS is - in effect - a separate guideline. Most of them have been protested in the past; the response is usually not a demonstration of consensus, but one or two editors claiming consensus (with no evidence) and revert-warring. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:07, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- Then change it again. Would you prefer we ignore every guideline that has been debated in the archives? Art LaPella (talk) 19:25, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- This section should make plain that the present text isn't consenus. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:01, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- Sure, as soon as your change to WP:CONTRACTION remains unreverted; how else do I know what the consensus is? Art LaPella (talk) 05:27, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- Please do. When the contraction was taken out without fixing the paragraph, that made very bad writing slightly worse by changing register pointlessly. You didn't do it, but the fewer who do the better. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:30, 29 January 2011 (UTC).
- I don't see anything wrong with that paragraph including the contraction. But since I know WP:CONTRACTION, I too would have changed that word. If WP:CONTRACTION changes to "Only remove contractions when you can guess that we want you to", I will simply ignore contractions, and tell my AWB software to do the same. Art LaPella (talk) 06:15, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
It seems like an OK situation of WP:BRD to me. The revert was absolutely appropriate, as is this discussion; and the bold change was OK, too, but then don't rag on the reverters. I made a bold change myself to the page recently, and nobody complained (I was surprised); so it depends on what the consensus is, right? Dicklyon (talk) 02:55, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- One problem is that is the first sign of discussion by the reverter; the other and more serious problem is reversion of edits with which the reverter doesn't disagree just on principle. This destroys all possibility of reaching general agreement; the actual text may be supported by nobody (except presumably whoever wrote it, and she may have left) - and still it stays as "consensus". Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:32, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- For example, this edit made with the edit summary this change has not been fully discussed; one can assume the text is correct and the example is in error. One may indeed presume that the reverter has never heard the old joke: "when you ass-u-me, you make an ass out of u and me" ;-} but the edit was made after discussion at WT:MOSNUM, to straighten out sn inconsistency by which Tony was desperately worried. Now I don't really care; I intend to ignore this page and its whole Mass of Stupidities whatever asinine (as it were) rule it lays down on the subject. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:46, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- I would like to establish something: Wikipedia does not require people to get permission before making controversial edits. It only requires people to enter into discussions after their changes are reverted. Here on the MoS, we've developed a custom of discussing things first, and it's served us well, but it's not as though Anderson broke any rules.
- However, now that it is clear that said changes are controversial, I would ask that Anderson make a habit of discussing any rule-changing edits on the page first. It's just nice to do. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:55, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- Darkfrog puts it nicely. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 19:13, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- I agree that it's annoying when editors remove contractions. Doing so often requires that the sentence be rewritten, because there are cases where "don't" is fine, but "do not" looks silly. I hope the reference above to software doesn't mean there's a bot going around doing this. If there is, I hope Art will consider putting a stop to that.
- As for being bold on policies and guidelines, it's okay when improving the writing, but substantive changes are best discussed first. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 01:21, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- The only reference above to "software" I could find was "AWB software". AWB is not a bot; it lets me look at each change before I accept it. In the case of WP:CONTRACTION, I don't remember ever rejecting a change AWB presents (that is, from a contraction to an uncontracted form) just because it sounds wrong, because I have never encountered such a contraction in a real article. I reject changes to contractions in titles and quotes. I believe that is consistent with the consensus as reflected by the current language of WP:CONTRACTION, unless your proposed change is accepted. Art LaPella (talk) 06:24, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- Thank you very much. I propose the following language to deal with the problem:
- The use of contractions—such as don't, can't, won't, they'd, should've, it's—is informal and should generally be avoided; on the other hand, the pointed avoidance of contractions is stilted and also should be avoided.
- As for being bold on policies and guidelines, it's okay when improving the writing, but substantive changes are best discussed first. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 01:21, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- Anything which conveys a similar caution will be equally acceptable. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:38, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- Personally I don't see anything wrong with contractions, so I'd suggest telling people they're fine. If we want to retain the general caution, we could write something like: "The use of contractions—such as don't, can't, won't, they'd, should've, it's—is informal and should generally be avoided, but whether they are appropriate depends on context, and editors should not remove them without good reason." SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 03:50, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- I'm fine with that. Is there objection to this proposal? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:20, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- Personally I don't see anything wrong with contractions, so I'd suggest telling people they're fine. If we want to retain the general caution, we could write something like: "The use of contractions—such as don't, can't, won't, they'd, should've, it's—is informal and should generally be avoided, but whether they are appropriate depends on context, and editors should not remove them without good reason." SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 03:50, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- And where is that written? :) SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 09:05, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- More such words to invite editor conflict. Which two or more editors will be able to agree on its face what is a appropriate context for a contradiction: "appropriate depends on context". And what is "good reason" to two or more unhappy editors who always believe they are absolutely right and anyone who disagrees is absolutely wrong. Just look at routine editing here: whenever there is an opening for conflict, it is taken. Either WP is opened for any type of informal English or it is not. And it is a very slippery slope. This is an Encyclopedia, not a place for pandering to popular culture, nor Google stats, and not anything else that would make our school English teachers outraged. Hmains (talk) 04:42, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- Contractions are prominent hallmarks of oral English and informal written English. I'm yet to see an example in which "it is" should be replaced by "it's" in WP text (aside from quotations, of course), and why is it "stilted" to use "do not" in an encyclopedic register? Tony (talk) 09:13, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- The Britannica disagrees; for example, they phrase rhetorical questions: Shapley’s work caused astronomers to ask themselves certain questions: How could the existing stellar data be so wrong? Why couldn’t they see something in Sagittarius, the proposed galactic centre, 30,000 light-years away? as English actually phrases questions; substituting Why could they not would make the reader stumble - because it's not idiom; it's writing on stilts.
- To impose such writing on Wikipedia is to disrupt the encyclopedia to make a point - and make the encyclopedia measurably worse.
- It is also Original Research - since, as Slim Virgin points out, you have no source for this; you and Hmains have made it up. (The more measured claim in the text is equally unsourced; but as advice, it may halp - and it may also encourage semi-literate editors to make bad writing worse, as with the example in the top of the section.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:24, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm just waiting (w8ng?) for the moment when someone argues that text-speak is their "national variety of English". Blueboar (talk) 16:10, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- I wouldn't worry. Ebonics actually had some merit to it, and it didn't last. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:58, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- Hi Tony, it's not that "do not" is invariably stilted. It's that a sentence written to flow well with "didn't" may not flow well when it's replaced with "do not". Had the writer known his "didn't" would be removed, he might have chosen to write the sentence differently. I can't give an example because I've not kept note of them, but I've seen awkwardness introduced several times by editors going around changing other people's writing with a "one size fits all" approach. That's the thing that causes the problems, and the MoS makes clear no one should be doing it, so I think it's worth stressing it here regarding contractions.
- Perhaps we could leave the sentence as it is, but refer editors back to the section that advises against editors changing from one style to another without good reason. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 02:22, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- I dislike the 'without good reason' proviso. I often do change instances of "don't" or "couldn't" to "do not" and "could not" when I come across them, and I agree that often stylistic rewriting of the phrases are unavoidable. By all means, the guideline may recommend to editors to rewrite for flow to accompany such removals, but by insisting that simply removal of contractions (except within quotes) should not be done "without good reason" is going a bit far. It enforces the perception that contractions somehow have a right to unhindered existence above the uncontracted forms, and may lead to edit warring of an element where I know of no such conflicts. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 02:48, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- Agreed. There's nothing special about contractions warranting an implication that they're off-limits from (or less subject to) normal copyediting. —David Levy 03:19, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- I dislike the 'without good reason' proviso. I often do change instances of "don't" or "couldn't" to "do not" and "could not" when I come across them, and I agree that often stylistic rewriting of the phrases are unavoidable. By all means, the guideline may recommend to editors to rewrite for flow to accompany such removals, but by insisting that simply removal of contractions (except within quotes) should not be done "without good reason" is going a bit far. It enforces the perception that contractions somehow have a right to unhindered existence above the uncontracted forms, and may lead to edit warring of an element where I know of no such conflicts. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 02:48, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- Perhaps we could leave the sentence as it is, but refer editors back to the section that advises against editors changing from one style to another without good reason. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 02:22, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- There is something special about them if there's a bot going around replacing them. It's that kind of blind replacement that it would be helpful to warn against.SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 16:59, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- I agree that blind replacement is a bad idea, but it's my understanding that no such bot has been deployed. —David Levy 18:40, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- The problem (see the example at the top of this subsection, beginning with Godfrey) is that some editors go around behaving like bots. One took out the contraction in the example, and left the rest of it alone. This failed to fix the paragraph, and probebly added an increment of atrocity. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:01, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- Again, I agree that blind replacement (irrespective of the mechanism behind it) is a bad idea, and others appear to agree as well.
- I already have addressed that specific example below, and I remain baffled as to how the change in question "added an increment of atrocity" and why you choose to mock an editor for failing to correct unrelated flaws. —David Levy 20:39, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- The problem (see the example at the top of this subsection, beginning with Godfrey) is that some editors go around behaving like bots. One took out the contraction in the example, and left the rest of it alone. This failed to fix the paragraph, and probebly added an increment of atrocity. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:01, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- I agree that blind replacement is a bad idea, but it's my understanding that no such bot has been deployed. —David Levy 18:40, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
I agree that we shouldn't blindly replace contractions with potentially stilted wording, but it often is possible to simply recast a sentence in a manner that eliminates the issue entirely.
In the case of "Why couldn't they see something in Sagittarius...", it's true that "Why could they not see something in Sagittarius..." is awkward, but alternative options (such as "Why did they see nothing in Sagittarius..." and "Why was nothing found in Sagittarius...") exist.
Of course, apart from quotations (which obviously shouldn't be modified in that manner), Wikipedia is unlikely to contain this style of prose in the first place.
I don't understand Pmanderson's earlier example, as I see absolutely nothing unnatural about the wording "...did not make his first appearance...". I agree that the paragraph contains unrelated flaws, but I find it rather unfair and distasteful to mock an editor for failing to address them (as though this was an either-or proposition in which the change from "didn't" to "did not" was performed instead). —David Levy 03:19, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- Slim, I have no objection to the avoidance of contortions in WP article text just to achieve a stylistic recommendation (or insistence). It is always open to an editor who objects to the spelling out of a contraction by another editor to invoke the "use common sense" principle, which, if not accepted, could be debated on the talk page or even brought here for comment. But it does worry me that a few academic journals do allow contractions—not too many contractions, in scope (never "would've", of course) and in density in the text. These journals tend to be not very authoritative, I must say. We should beware risking difficulty in countering a group of editors who went around adding contractions (in good faith) to make the text more "friendly" in tone. In 20 or 30 years' time, maybe English will have changed enough to loosen up on this; but I don't think it has yet, at least, not in the most authoritative sources whose tone we need to emulate. Just my thoughts, and I think your and Mr Anderson's concern have been noted by everyone here, and that it's made us think carefully about the issue.
On that, let me comment on Mr Anderson's example above from Brittanica": "Shapley’s work caused astronomers to ask themselves certain questions: How could the existing stellar data be so wrong? Why couldn’t they see something in Sagittarius, the proposed galactic centre, 30,000 light-years away?" I do believe this tone is not encouraged in WP articles. It comes perilously close to POV in the relationship it assumes with the readers. If authoritative sources reacted in this way, it should be expressed as such, not as though it's WP's opinion. Have I got this right? Tony (talk) 14:36, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- We're not an academic journal, though. We're a new kind of thing, and we make up our own rules. If editors want to use contractions, I truly see no reason to stop them. What we want is good writing. Using or not using contractions won't change the quality of the writing, but swapping them willy nilly might. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 17:04, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- There appears to be agreement that contractions shouldn't be blindly replaced (because doing so might result in stilted wording). But there also is consensus that contractions reflect an informal tone not typically used in our encyclopedia (apart from quotations) and generally should be avoided. (As with any other style convention, exceptions may arise.)
- Indeed, we determine our own rules, and this one is longstanding. Much of the Manual of Style's text is fairly arbitrary, recommending one convention over another of comparable validity (based upon outside usage) because this eliminates needless inconsistency and argumentation.
- In this instance, the rule isn't arbitrary, as there is a legitimate (albeit not universally applied) distinction. I'm sure that some editors want to use contractions, but others don't, and the last thing that we need is another source of edit wars. Unlike national English varieties (as an example), there is no compelling need for multiple styles to coexist. —David Levy 18:40, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- One who has had little exposure to refined English is more likely to consider the avoidance of contractions to be stilted, whereas one who has spent much time in studying educational works by professional writers using refined English is more likely to accept easily the avoidance of contractions.
- —Wavelength (talk) 21:07, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
Mild disagree: (Let me "pre-caveat": The last thing in the world (World?) I want to do is run around her fixing people's contractions or cripes edit-warring them. That said I wrote Ph.D. thesis and several peer-reviewed science papers without contractions (searching to fix all) and I never felt the "shackles" as heavy on me, or that the writing was strange afterwards.TCO (talk) 22:30, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- And they weren't (ha) stuffy papers either. The idea that sounding sciencey or being unreadable makes you better is routinely contradicted in any how to write a science paper article (although Wiki needs to read those more). They all say to avoid over-nominalizing and the like. That said, they are not as chatty as some good old talk page battlin".TCO (talk) 22:45, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
When writing articles, we need to code-switch into an "encyclopedic" tone. That changes most people's writing considerably. In particular, the prose in our articles shouldn't use contractions, because that makes it sound too informal. But people like me can use contractions on talk pages if they want to. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:24, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
Page is getting hard and discouraging to follow
I just put the page on unwatch, even though I care about the MOS and enjoy talking style nuances with the best of the best here. But it's a total buzzkill to see these moth-flying-into-flame debates the last day or so. Heck, I don't like the dashes either, but let's roll with it. Let's have a system and use it. Having no style guide (or some sort of jury nullification) would be worse than one with a couple tiny debatable issues. This place needs better content, better writing. There's plenty of work to be done that has nothing do to with dashes. This is supposed to be fun, but following this page last day has been unfun. TCO (talk) 06:16, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- You should do what I do and just skim. I only read the posts in a heated thread if I think there's something I want to say. Ozob (talk) 14:38, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- Or... you could do what most editors do... just get on with writing and editing articles and completely ignore all the battles that rage here as being irrelevant to that goal. (I am not saying that the entire MOS is irrelevant, although I am sure many editors would say it is.... but the nit-picky debates on this page often are.) Blueboar (talk) 02:15, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- The problem with that is twofold:
- Only a couple of provisions of MOS are consensus. (Something that is not in practice open for anyone to edit, whether by protection or by revert-warring, has no claim to be consensus just because the frozen page has not been changed.)
- Bots (and editors acting like bots) spread the non-consensus, unEnglish, idiom that a handful of well-meaning language reformers has written all over Wikipedia, making articles look semi-literate. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:43, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- The problem with that is twofold:
- Or... you could do what most editors do... just get on with writing and editing articles and completely ignore all the battles that rage here as being irrelevant to that goal. (I am not saying that the entire MOS is irrelevant, although I am sure many editors would say it is.... but the nit-picky debates on this page often are.) Blueboar (talk) 02:15, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- I am frustrated as well. The answers above are good.
- I wish that once editors realize they are in conflict, that they would answer every other day so that a) we wouldn't have to read a ping-pong match essentially stating the same arguments over and over, and b) that warring editors would have time to rethink their arguments and actually arrive at a reasonable compromise instead of trying to "win" the argument.
- I wish we could have a "FAQ" above that might say this, but I would not look forward to the months of discussion that it would take to insert one! :) Student7 (talk) 14:11, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- (sigh) But that only works when people are willing to compromise. Some people can be shown source after source and still think they're right and the other side is wrong. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:44, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
En dashes and RS's
I've moved several articles with disjunctive names to titles with en dashes per MOS:ENDASH, only to have them reverted because WP:RSs use hyphens. What is our policy here? I would expect that we do not need to follow RS's in this any more than we do other orthographic or stylistic conventions, but some editors get quite irate at any divergence from their sources.
Most of the time, for me this involves language families. For example, a large number of families are named after two languages or groups, such as the Amto-Musan languages (= Amto + Musan) and the Kwomtari-Fas languages (= Kwomtari + Fas). Since they are disjunctive, these should have en dashes, despite being "proper names", correct?
In other cases the elements themselves have spaces or hyphens. One of the most important is Trans-New Guinea languages. En dash despite trans- being a prefix, correct? Others are the Left May–Kwomtari languages, Ramu–Lower Sepik languages, Yele–West New Britain languages, and Reefs–Santa Cruz languages, which have not (yet) been reverted. However, since these are both disjunctive and contain spaces, should there be spacing on either side of the dashes?
Then, if our sources (many written on a typewriter!) use hyphens, do we need to follow that practice per WP:RS, or are orthographic conventions independent of sourcing? (For TNG, I've found sources with "Trans New Guinea" and "Trans–New Guinea", but the clear majority have "Trans-New Guinea".)
A non-linguistic example is the Spokane–Coeur d'Alene–Paloos War. There was recently an edit war over this. I restored it to the stable 2008 title with en dashes, but since 2009 it had been stable with spaces as well. One of the arguments for moving this back to hyphens was that the Spokane, Coeur d'Alene, and Paloos were not fighting each other, but were allies (AFAIK an overly literal reading of "disjunction"); another was that "War" is capitalized, and therefore a proper name, and proper names require hyphens.
A critical test case would be Niger-Congo languages. It seems disjunctive, being the languages which range from the Niger to the Congo rivers. Yet I can find no sources which use en dashes; even the refs which had "Trans New Guinea" and "Trans–New Guinea" use a plain hyphen for "Niger-Congo". Is this not truly disjunctive, because the family is not composed of "Niger languages" + "Congo languages", but is simply named after its geographic extremes, much like Indo-European? Should we only use en dashes for families such as Amto–Musan, which are named after two disjunctive groups of languages? or should we use "Niger–Congo" despite that usage being unattested in the (voluminous) lit? or do we defer to sourcing despite the MoS?
It would be nice if less straightforward examples such as these could be spelled out in the guide, as fights like these crop up over and over. — kwami (talk) 20:31, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- In the case of the Spokane–Coeur d'Alene–Paloos War, I don't find any sources with either en dashes or hyphens, or such a compound title at all. If we're making up a descriptive title, en dashes make sense. But then why capitalize "War" like it's part of a proper name? One really needs to decide what this title is. Let me restate my point from before: it's a good idea to have some source using an en dash to confirm your interpretation of the meaning and structure of a compound; but it's not a good idea to follow the majority, as that would mean giving up on en dashes entirely and reverting to typewriter and MS-Word typography. On things like Reef-Santa Cruz, I find the hyphen particularly offensive, but I have to admit it is found non uncommonly in RSs. But then some sources use a slash as in Reef/Santa Cruz, to avoid the confusion caused by the hyphen, and some use an unspaced en dash, as here. Some style guides, including ours, suggest a spaced en dash in this context, but it's not so common; the en dash is enough to signal the intended structure, at least partly. Dicklyon (talk) 20:45, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- Thanks. I added the critical Niger-Congo example after your answer, so would appreciate any insight you have on that as well.
- As for the war, does it matter whether it's a "proper" name or not? I read the exception as being things like surnames, country names, ethnic names, and the like, not noun phrases being used as names for events etc. In other words, should capitalizing "War" make any difference to whether we use hyphens or dashes? After all, we speak of the "Argentine–Brazilian War"—that doesn't need to be changed back to a hyphen just because "War" is capitalized, does it? — kwami (talk) 21:07, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- En dash in Niger–Congo languages is not unprecedented; if you search in Google scholar, you can the "find" with the en dash and get this one and this one. They're harder to find in books, since the OCR doesn't usually distinguish them. I'd say it's a tough call; if people feel that the hyphen is the overwhelmingly accepted version, I wouldn't fight it; but the en dash seems more logical and does have precedent in reliable sources. As to whether "proper" is relevant, perhaps not; but if there's evidence that a proper name is really intended to have a hyphen, then I wouldn't mess with it; for non-proper terms, you won't have that kind of argument against using logical typography. In this case, it looks like "War" might have been capitalized to make the title look like a proper name, possibly to support some way of punctuating it (but I haven't looked at the history, and a more likely explanation is that people just tend to over-capitalize). Dicklyon (talk) 21:28, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- But why should it not have a hyphen, when Franco-Prussian War and Austro-Prussian War do (or should, if they don't at this point)? The relationship between combatants is the same, i.e. the lexical relationship; being joined in conflict is being joined, not "disjuncted".Skookum1 (talk) 21:31, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- A name is a name is a name is a name, and fully-capitalized name-phrases are proper nouns, and hyphenated names are hyphenated names. Period. In the case of the Sp-Cd'A-Pl War I haven't looked to see who created it yet (moving today) but originally I believe it was titled Couer d'Alene War and the Spokane War and Palouse War are used separately, though in the context of the same flow of events; it may be well that this title is entirely OR and not supported by sources; I'll find teh author/mover later and take it up at {{NorthAmNative}} as this is really a "NativeMOS" issue (there are various conventions in NorthAmNative that predicate a special MOS for them, e.g. the use of native names for peoples is now preferred in BC, partly because the usual English names are misnomers, e.g. Nuu-chah-nulth vs Nootka, Kwakwaka'wakw vs Kwakiutl and partly for, um, political reasons (=nativePOV can be a hot-button issue, best to respect it - if we want native contributors to take part in Wikipedia, that is, which we should)...Palus people vs Palouse (which in Wiki is the anglicization shared by both the people and the landform/region), Secwepemc vs Shuswap Nation Tribal Council/Northern Shuswap Tribal Council, Skwxwu7mesh vs Squamish Nation (the latter in each case are modern governmental bodies)...with the anglicization generally in use for the language, e.g. Lillooet language vs St'at'imcets..as far as this war goes, the same series of events bound together by a common name is very much a white perspective, as though there was an alliance (between all NW peoples, pretty much) from the native view these were three separate wars against the same set of troops....I'm gonna read Bancroft and certain other sources later tonight....and again submit this dash/hyphen issue in this case may be moot, given that the title itself, and the combined article, may well be OR, as it seems to be. I'm concerned that in cases like Gitxsan-Wet'su-we'ten Confederacy, though that's a redirect and not a title, or Carrier-Chilcotin Tribal Council, that MOS-ites will dictate that those names must appear as dashes...without actually knowing anything about what they are, or caring what the source-government itself uses and prefers....Skookum1 (talk) 21:31, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- If a name is a name is a name, then we should not capitalize proper names. If you want to go by typographic tradition, then we should go by that, whatever it is. It seems that your argument changes depending on what's convenient, but that's no way to organize an encyclopedia. — kwami (talk) 21:58, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- En dash in Niger–Congo languages is not unprecedented; if you search in Google scholar, you can the "find" with the en dash and get this one and this one. They're harder to find in books, since the OCR doesn't usually distinguish them. I'd say it's a tough call; if people feel that the hyphen is the overwhelmingly accepted version, I wouldn't fight it; but the en dash seems more logical and does have precedent in reliable sources. As to whether "proper" is relevant, perhaps not; but if there's evidence that a proper name is really intended to have a hyphen, then I wouldn't mess with it; for non-proper terms, you won't have that kind of argument against using logical typography. In this case, it looks like "War" might have been capitalized to make the title look like a proper name, possibly to support some way of punctuating it (but I haven't looked at the history, and a more likely explanation is that people just tend to over-capitalize). Dicklyon (talk) 21:28, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- Carrier-Chilcotin Tribal Council is not a useful case to consider, since their own web site uses a space, and the article is unsourced. I don't see how you think the MOS says it must use an en dash. Dicklyon (talk) 18:04, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
Back to the NC question: is there any reason why a name based on extremes which are not themselves units should be treated differently than a name based on genuine units? That is, any reason why "Niger-Congo" (= in the expanse from the Niger to the Congo) should be handled differently than "Tai-Kadai" (= a group consisting of the Tai languages and the Kadai languages)? Per Skookum's objections, do we have a source with a clear definition of what "disjunction" means, since he's arguing that Michelson–Morley experiment is conjunctive rather than disjunctive? Or is "disjunction" a misnomer here?
Or, perhaps, is a name based on two people, such as the Michelson–Morley experiment, en-dashed to distinguish it from a name based on a single person with a hyphenated name, such as the Lennard-Jones potential? In other words, should this convention be specifically for compounds of surnames? — kwami (talk) 21:58, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- I don't know what conjuctive and disjunctive mean here, but it's clear that in the case of names, then en dash is to indicate two people, as opposed to one with hyphenated surname. A similar convention seems to be used in analogous situations in many sources. Dicklyon (talk) 22:20, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- Conjunctive would mean "and" or "with", whereas disjunctive would mean "but" or "against". Skookum was arguing that the name of the war should not have en dashes because the named peoples were allies and therefore in a union, which was a conjunction, and that an en dash indicating disjunction would mean that they were enemies. I think that mistakes the semantics of the relationship for the grammar of the name for the relationship, regardless of whether en dashes indicate "disjunction" or not.
- But it is clearly not disjunction as Skookum is reading our guideline. Here is the guideline from the Atlantic Monthly, 1921 (which also counters Skookum's argument that this is a newfangled convention based solely on the ability of modern word processors to handle en dashes, violating long-standing tradition):
- The en-dash ... may stand for the word "and" or "to" in such phrases as "the Radical–Unionist Coalition," "the Boston–Hartford Air Line"; "the period of Republican supremacy, 1860–84"; "pp. 224–30." It is necessary to be on one's guard against the use of the en-dash instead of "to," in connection with "from"—a surprisingly common error.
- The Civil War lasted from 1861–'65.
- This dash is used also instead of a hyphen in lines consisting of capital letters.
- —Text, type and style: a compendium of Atlantic usage (1921:125)
- The en-dash ... may stand for the word "and" or "to" in such phrases as "the Radical–Unionist Coalition," "the Boston–Hartford Air Line"; "the period of Republican supremacy, 1860–84"; "pp. 224–30." It is necessary to be on one's guard against the use of the en-dash instead of "to," in connection with "from"—a surprisingly common error.
- "Radical–Unionist Coalition" is a perfect analogue to the war. "Boston–Hartford Air Line" would seem to be pretty close to "Niger–Congo languages".
- (The counter example is meant to show that [from X] [to Y] is not a conjunction of X and Y the way the Republican supremacy example is.)
- In case anyone thinks this is dated, we have Webster's New World punctuation (2005:122), which, after giving number-range examples, says,
- The en dash may also connect two words when to or and is implied. The two words connected in this way for a single expression that precedes and describes another word. The same function is often performed by a hyphen, but the en dash is used when the two elements are equal in importance and may be reversed whithout altering the meaning.
- (examples: teacher–student relationship, Portland–Yarmouth ferry, New York–Boston match)
- The en dash connects two names (again, of equal importance) when two people are referred to. The en dash contrasts with the hyphen, which may separate parts of one name.
- Now, I'm finding the use of the en dash to join compounds of compounds (open or hyphenated) or to prefix such compounds all over the place, even in elementary guides, but conjunctive en dashes only in more professional or in-depth guides. So "Trans–New Guinea" is supported by more style guides than "Niger–Congo". — kwami (talk) 23:16, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
- Right. This book says "Many writers use a hyphen where those in the publishing world would use an en dash," and suggests that the choice of an en dash is more about simple readability than about meaning. They don't talk about names, just other uses, including compounds of spaced or hyphenated terms. It remains unclear to me the extent to which the convention with pairs of person names is more widely applied. It's not so uncommon to see en dashes used that way, but I don't find guides that specifically call it out. I had always learned the name thing as an important part of conveying meaning, I suppose the disjunction/conjunction difference: the hyphen binds strongly, while the en dash suggests a separate-but-equal relationship. Dicklyon (talk) 00:37, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- Also, from The copyeditor's handbook (UC Press, 2000:109),
- In compound adjectives formed by attaching a prefix to a hyphenated element, however, a hyphen is used (that is, "post–World War II economic recovery" with an en dash, but "non-English-speaking air traffic controllers" and "semi-labor-intensive industries" with only hyphens) — kwami (talk) 01:56, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- Right. This book says "Many writers use a hyphen where those in the publishing world would use an en dash," and suggests that the choice of an en dash is more about simple readability than about meaning. They don't talk about names, just other uses, including compounds of spaced or hyphenated terms. It remains unclear to me the extent to which the convention with pairs of person names is more widely applied. It's not so uncommon to see en dashes used that way, but I don't find guides that specifically call it out. I had always learned the name thing as an important part of conveying meaning, I suppose the disjunction/conjunction difference: the hyphen binds strongly, while the en dash suggests a separate-but-equal relationship. Dicklyon (talk) 00:37, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
Are there any objections to these reverted edits? They are clarifications, the removal of the incorrectly used word 'disjunction', which has already created problems, and a fifth use of the en dash (a variant of the hyphen in all-cap text) which I've seen in two sources now. — kwami (talk) 10:51, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- To take one change, where is the other source for the idea of replacing hyphens with em dashes in upper-case text, apart from the "Modern style" (1919) ref? Do you mean "NON—LINEAR DRIVER", like that? WP text is not normally all-caps, anyway? Tony (talk) 10:57, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- Not em dashes, en dashes. In my last response on your talk page I gave you an example from the Chicago manual of style. I forget what the first source I found it in was. Of course, we don't normally write in all caps in WP, but it doesn't hurt to include that convention. — kwami (talk) 11:41, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- Tony, the example was capital letters, not upper case text. The example means things like this: "The song's structure is A–B–A–C–A–B" or "The sequence of notes is G–F–E–E–B♭".
- — Preceding unsigned comment added by Binksternet (talk • contribs) 16:12, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- I believe this example is a special case of the rule on lists; however, it should clearly be unspaced (as in A–B–A) and not spaced as the MOS currently requires (A – B – A). Consequently I have removed the spacing requirement and have updated the spacing directions. Ozob (talk) 23:05, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- I see that Dicklyon has already reverted me on the grounds that A–B–A is not a list. I am left wondering what it is. Ozob (talk) 23:12, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- In the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition (2003), the sequence of musical notes is separated by unspaced en dashes, as is a sequence of harmonic progressions: I–IV–V–I. It says a chord (simultaneously sounded notes) is given spaced plus signs: C + E + G. Chicago isn't the be-all or end-all of style guides but it is certainly one of the top five. Binksternet (talk) 23:59, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- I noticed that the Music project did not have a MOS guide for recurring themes (ABACAB) or sequences of notes (G–F–E–E–B♭) so I added two relevant questions at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (music). We'll see what the musicians say. Binksternet (talk) 01:27, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- In the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition (2003), the sequence of musical notes is separated by unspaced en dashes, as is a sequence of harmonic progressions: I–IV–V–I. It says a chord (simultaneously sounded notes) is given spaced plus signs: C + E + G. Chicago isn't the be-all or end-all of style guides but it is certainly one of the top five. Binksternet (talk) 23:59, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- I see that Dicklyon has already reverted me on the grounds that A–B–A is not a list. I am left wondering what it is. Ozob (talk) 23:12, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- I believe this example is a special case of the rule on lists; however, it should clearly be unspaced (as in A–B–A) and not spaced as the MOS currently requires (A – B – A). Consequently I have removed the spacing requirement and have updated the spacing directions. Ozob (talk) 23:05, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- To take one change, where is the other source for the idea of replacing hyphens with em dashes in upper-case text, apart from the "Modern style" (1919) ref? Do you mean "NON—LINEAR DRIVER", like that? WP text is not normally all-caps, anyway? Tony (talk) 10:57, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- You can call that sequence a list if you like, but it's clearly not what that advise was talking about, where the example clarified that what they meant by separating items in a list was separation of an introductory element and a following element; probably it should be said better, but not thrown out as your edit did. Dicklyon (talk) 03:58, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- I disagree. I think that the example is not a good explanation of the text, not the other way around. I also think that A–B–A is clearly a list, as is C–E–G or G–F–E–E–B♭. One can even interpret the "and" type of en dash as a list; for example, one might write, "The paper of Hoste–Ocneanu–Millett–Freyd–Lickorish–Yetter introduced the HOMFLY polynomial into knot theory", which means just the same as "The paper of Hoste, Ocneanu, Millett, Freyd, Lickorish, and Yetter introduced the HOMFLY polynomial into knot theory". The former is also consistent with the common practice of putting an en dash between names of authors or joint discoverers, as in "the work of Eilenberg–Mac Lane" or "the Seifert–van Kampen theorem".
- I have reverted your reversion. If you wish to revert, please also remove the spacing direction below so that the MoS is consistent. Ozob (talk) 12:20, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- You can call that sequence a list if you like, but it's clearly not what that advise was talking about, where the example clarified that what they meant by separating items in a list was separation of an introductory element and a following element; probably it should be said better, but not thrown out as your edit did. Dicklyon (talk) 03:58, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- Where did Chicago dredge up "C + E + G"? That is weird. C–E–G is the normal practice. Tony (talk) 09:49, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- A list? It's a set of univariate relationships, a sequence. Just like Auckland–Durban–London flight. In the loosest sense, yes, it's a list ("A–B–A" etc). But I'm certain the sentence you just removed refers to lined/bulleted lists of album tracks, and personnel. Such as this. Tony (talk) 12:32, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- Well, the spacing of those en dashes doesn't change under my suggestion, since every bullet point contains an item with a space. But without my suggestion, A–B–A is forbidden. So I don't see how it could be objectionable. Ozob (talk) 12:38, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- Sure, it needed attention. But the sentence was added, I think, after complaints emanating from FAC about messy practices in such lists of tracks and personnel. They wanted centralised guidance. As long as it's clear enough that we don't have brushfires in the articles for want of guidance. Tony (talk) 12:44, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- Well, the spacing of those en dashes doesn't change under my suggestion, since every bullet point contains an item with a space. But without my suggestion, A–B–A is forbidden. So I don't see how it could be objectionable. Ozob (talk) 12:38, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
Irony - concise
When I first came to MOS, I found it so long that I did not read it. The style of the article should be to have the most common things an editor is likely to need easily picked out at the outset, with minutiae left to sections and subsections. It is ironic that the manual of style would have stylistic problems likely to scare off a typical editor, whose concern is likely just a quick overview. Perhaps a new article should be created, "Concise essentials of MOS". HkFnsNGA (talk) 03:10, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- How about this:
- Write English.
- To find out how to spell and punctuate a given subject, follow carefully edited, reliable English sources; if they do the same thing, do what they do. See also [the list of style guides.
- Where national varieties of English differ, don't edit war over it. If there are choices which every national variety will understand, consider using them. If not, and there are strong national ties to the subject of the article, write in that national variety (the article will be anyway.
- Do we need anything else? Does the bulk of Wikipedia editors agree on anything else? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:49, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- When it comes to style, do the best you can, but don't let stylistic minutiae bog you down. Another editor will come along later and tidy up after you. Blueboar (talk) 04:01, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- Let's take out the last sentence. That's what I object to: a Wiki-gnome coming along and "tidying" into something that may be MOS-compliant (about 10% of the time it isn't even that) but which isn't English. Septentrionalis PMAnderson
- When it comes to style, do the best you can, but don't let stylistic minutiae bog you down. Another editor will come along later and tidy up after you. Blueboar (talk) 04:01, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
I was actually serious in suggesting creating a short, but useful, "Intro to MOS". HkFnsNGA (talk) 05:46, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- I think it would be useful to have such a summary in the lede. After all, according to our MoS, a lede is supposed to summarize the article!
- It is a bit odd that we have numerous shortcuts for separate sections. However, it's much easier to navigate if we keep this as one article. Should we add Sep's suggested summary to the lede? — kwami (talk) 08:27, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
Slight rewording (to be edited as y'all see fit):
For those of you who are just getting started, the main points are as follows:
- Write in English.
- To find out how to spell and punctuate a given subject, follow carefully edited, reliable English sources; if they do the same thing, do what they do. See also the [recommended style guides].1
- To find out how to lay out and organize an article, compare our [featured articles].
- Where national varieties of English differ, be consistent, but don't edit war over it. If there are choices which every national variety will understand, give them priority. If not, and there are strong national ties to the subject of the article, write in that national variety.
1IMO we shouldn't suggest the full list of style guides. Some of the most popular are absolute garbage, telling you to avoid all sorts of things that even the style guides themselves do (see #10). — kwami (talk) 08:41, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- The list of style guides (there are only nine) would be useful if it were a separate page, as the original post suggests; as a section of MOS either silence or an internal link would be fine. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:56, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- This would be a hindrance to editors, not a help. Tony (talk) 09:09, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- What would be a hindrance? Creating a lede for the MoS? — kwami (talk) 09:58, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- In addition to the already large "General principles" section at the top—yes, I think so. Tony (talk) 10:54, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- Yeah, maybe you're right. There are two things I'd add, though: a link to our list of featured articles (they're a great source for formatting and coding ideas which are not covered here), and Sep's line "If there are choices which every national variety will understand, give them priority." Although this may seem obvious, it can lead to some rather irate arguments. For example, the US is the only country to have sent people to the Moon, so articles on the Moon, or at least the Apollo missions, should use imperial rather than metric units. Or the Ganges River is mostly in India, and most Indians call it the Ganga when writing in English, so we should use that name despite it not being widely recognized outside India. (It's also the CommonName if we count 1 billion Indians.) Or articles on Russian or Arab history should not use the Gregorian calendar for dating. Etc. As silly as these may sound, it's hard to argue against them when the MoS says to use local English for regional topics. IMO 'prioritize international forms' should be made explicit up front, but it could go into General Principals as easily as the lede. — kwami (talk) 12:11, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- First... STOP...Let's NOT reopen the Ganga/Ganges debates here. Second... My take on this is that the MOS should not even discuss the issue of names... that issue is so controversial, and each debate is so dependent on specifics that have noting to do with other debates, that to give realistic advice we would need an entirely separate guideline. It simply isn't an issue that can be summed up in a short paragraph in a broad MOS. Blueboar (talk) 13:58, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- I'm not asking us to address names. Only that international norms in wording take precedence. That's already established ('fixed-wing aircraft', metric system, IPA, Gregorian calendar, binomial nomenclature, etc.), but IMO it should be given more visibility. — kwami (talk) 14:55, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- International norms in wording should not be included in the brief version; it's not something we all agree on. Some of Kwami's examples are not instances; others are our hottest points of controversy Whether there is enough consensus to retain them somewhere in MOS is a different question; often there is - but a summary should be what is virtually unanimous. To be specific:
- fixed-wing aircraft is a title - and it's moderately controversial
- The metric system is another of our points of perennial disagreement.
- So is IPA. Many applications of it are actually harmful, since it is sensitive enough to register the difference between national accents - and then picks one; usually because the IPA enthusiast is picking from a dictionary which records his national dialect and doesn't realize there are others. An example of this is the good soul who wanted to replace "pronounce pi like pie" with IPA. In both British and General American (and I presume Australian) the first sentence is true - but there are two different IPA transcriptions involved; he wanted to place one of them. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:49, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- The Gregorian calendar is not an international/local issue. No anglophone country has used the Julian calendar since 1752.
- Linnaean nomenclature is used everywhere, like the Gregorian calendar. But prefering it to vernacular names is another of our perennial points of controversy. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:49, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- Do we really have any halfway decent article that uses imperial units but not metric, unless the units themselves are explicitly relevant? Really?
- The IPA on WP does not register differences between dialects. Replacing "pronounce pi like pie" with "pronounce pi as /ˈpaɪ/" makes no difference whatsoever in that regard: it's just as true in US, UK, Oz, and NZ English, because our IPA convention was designed to be international. The primary issue is one of accessibility, since Usonians especially are poorly educated in this area.
- Yes, but they did use Julian prior to 1752. That's relevant to a large number of articles.
- And those articles are written in Julian (with an explanation for the ill-prepared reader). See WP:MOSDATE. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:37, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- Vernacular names are fine if they're widely understood. There's no problem with cat. But robin is ambiguous, so we make it a dab page. That is precisely my point: If there were a bird that only occurred in my country, and we called it a "robin", in would be inappropriate to use the local name when that would be confusing to everyone else. International needs to trump local in such cases.
- Depends on the article. If George Washington saw an (American) robin before one of his battles, we should call it a robin; that's ENGVAR. Link so the European reader can follow; but neither the American nor the European will be helped by writing Turdus migratorius instead. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:50, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- But Sep, you're the one who said we should include this, so why are arguing against it now that I'm backing you up? — kwami (talk) 16:07, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- I thank you for the support on the general principle. But you have diverged into something which I seriously doubt is supported by the consensus of Wikipedia editors - any more that most of MOS is. Rein international back to what WP:ENGVAR says and we can go forward. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:33, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- All I changed was "consider using them" to "give them priority". I thought the stronger wording was called for: IMO the international forms should be the default, not used only when there is an overriding reason to use something more local, such as in your robin example. — kwami (talk) 17:02, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- I have tweaked it out. That's an invitation to disaster; it will be read - you yourself read it - as much stronger than it is. The metric system is not understood in every national variety of English; if it were, it would not be anywhere near as controversial as it is. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:22, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- I thank you for the support on the general principle. But you have diverged into something which I seriously doubt is supported by the consensus of Wikipedia editors - any more that most of MOS is. Rein international back to what WP:ENGVAR says and we can go forward. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:33, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- First... STOP...Let's NOT reopen the Ganga/Ganges debates here. Second... My take on this is that the MOS should not even discuss the issue of names... that issue is so controversial, and each debate is so dependent on specifics that have noting to do with other debates, that to give realistic advice we would need an entirely separate guideline. It simply isn't an issue that can be summed up in a short paragraph in a broad MOS. Blueboar (talk) 13:58, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- Yeah, maybe you're right. There are two things I'd add, though: a link to our list of featured articles (they're a great source for formatting and coding ideas which are not covered here), and Sep's line "If there are choices which every national variety will understand, give them priority." Although this may seem obvious, it can lead to some rather irate arguments. For example, the US is the only country to have sent people to the Moon, so articles on the Moon, or at least the Apollo missions, should use imperial rather than metric units. Or the Ganges River is mostly in India, and most Indians call it the Ganga when writing in English, so we should use that name despite it not being widely recognized outside India. (It's also the CommonName if we count 1 billion Indians.) Or articles on Russian or Arab history should not use the Gregorian calendar for dating. Etc. As silly as these may sound, it's hard to argue against them when the MoS says to use local English for regional topics. IMO 'prioritize international forms' should be made explicit up front, but it could go into General Principals as easily as the lede. — kwami (talk) 12:11, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- In addition to the already large "General principles" section at the top—yes, I think so. Tony (talk) 10:54, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- What would be a hindrance? Creating a lede for the MoS? — kwami (talk) 09:58, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
Getting back on topic, MOS violates itself, multiply, and WP:GF, in that -
- (1) A lede should sum up the entire article, and the MOS lede does not. So MOS contradicts itself.
- (2) By contradicting itself, "internal consitency" is violated. So MOS contradicts itself again.
- (3) Intrenal consistency violation is classical Bad faith self delusion.
- (4) By being in bad faith, MOS violates WP:GF.
- (5) By violating other guidelines or policies, which should not happen under MOS, MOS again lacks internal consistency, so again violates itself.
- (6) This violation of itself is then is in bad faith, so again violates WP:GF, creating an infinite loop. HkFnsNGA (talk) 16:00, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- Concerning 1), the MOS is not an article, so there is no contradiction. The rest of the stuff is complete non-sequitur. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 12:44, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
Proposal
Say something like this as a lead, with links where appropriate to the General Principles and ENGVAR.
- Write in English.
- When it comes to style, do the best you can, but don't let stylistic minutiae bog you down. [from Blueboar; link to IAR]
- To find how to spell and punctuate a given subject, follow carefully edited, reliable English sources; if they do the same thing, do what they do. [Possibly a link to See also for the style guides]
- To find out how to lay out and organize an article, compare our [featured articles].
- Be consitstent within articles; don't use two different styles on the same issue in the same article. Where national varieties of English differ, don't edit war over it. If there are choices which every national variety will understand, they are often desirable. If not, and there are strong national ties to the subject of the article, write in that national variety.
I've tweaked the layout and added Blueboar's sentence as something WPians agree on.I have also tweaked the internationalism sentence, but we can discuss exactly what that should say - if anything - after discussion of the general idea. Also enlarged the involcation of WP:CONSISTENCY. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:43, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- Add - "Write in English. If possible, use simple sentences and plain English that a layperson can understand." HkFnsNGA (talk) 17:46, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- Forgive me, but telling visitors they should "write in English" might result in irritating them. And while all of us are for writing in plain language, as simple as possible grammatically and lexically for the context, it's notoriously hard to define what this is globally. "Write in plain English" might be worth including, but won't it fit into one of the existing "Principles"? BTW, the issue of writing only for the layperson has been hotly contested and remained unresolved in the debate I remember. To start with, it would render untenable a lot of articles on mathematics and physics. And does it apply equally to daughter articles? And daughter articles of daughter articles? I think one of the brilliant aspects of WP's structure is its ability to use "summary" style in topics of ever narrower scope. Summary, then, is a relative term. This clearly applies to the readership in technical and scientific topics, where one would expect to address experts in some articles, both in terms of scope and the linguistic register. Do people agree? Tony (talk) 10:53, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- Yes. It's good style to avoid excess jargon, especially in introductory level articles. But the more specialized the article, the more specialized the language is going to be, and there often isn't much we can do about that. — kwami (talk) 11:41, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- It works because every reader can choose where in the breadth–narrowness chain they are prepared to visit. Choose "Wagner" and you'll get something that is broadly accessible; choose "Wagner's style", less so. Drill down to "Wagner's use of chromatic harmony" and you'd be a nuisance to complain about inaccessibility to all but the experts. Tony (talk) 12:40, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- Yes. It's good style to avoid excess jargon, especially in introductory level articles. But the more specialized the article, the more specialized the language is going to be, and there often isn't much we can do about that. — kwami (talk) 11:41, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- Forgive me, but telling visitors they should "write in English" might result in irritating them. And while all of us are for writing in plain language, as simple as possible grammatically and lexically for the context, it's notoriously hard to define what this is globally. "Write in plain English" might be worth including, but won't it fit into one of the existing "Principles"? BTW, the issue of writing only for the layperson has been hotly contested and remained unresolved in the debate I remember. To start with, it would render untenable a lot of articles on mathematics and physics. And does it apply equally to daughter articles? And daughter articles of daughter articles? I think one of the brilliant aspects of WP's structure is its ability to use "summary" style in topics of ever narrower scope. Summary, then, is a relative term. This clearly applies to the readership in technical and scientific topics, where one would expect to address experts in some articles, both in terms of scope and the linguistic register. Do people agree? Tony (talk) 10:53, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- Add - "Write in English. If possible, use simple sentences and plain English that a layperson can understand." HkFnsNGA (talk) 17:46, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
Telling visitors not to write in English, as much of this page does, irritates me. If the function of this page is not advice on how to write English, why is it here? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:54, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
Style to avoid accusation of original research or synthesis
Proposed content, please comment -
"Policies on not doing original research include that synthesizing material from a variety of sources into a single sentence is original research. Sometimes an editor may initially find it stylistically better to include material from two sources in a single sentence because they go so well together. This can lead other editors to make accusations of synthesis. To avoided the accusation, break the material into two shorter sentences, each with its own citation."
- Does not belong here. Try WP:CITE.
- Substantively, this is undesirable. Nothing prevents a footnote from occuring in the middle of a sentence, or explaining, with each source, what part of the sentence is so sourced. If the resulr is better written as a combined sentence, it ought to be; if not, it should be divided, whatever the citation. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:04, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- I fully agree "it out to be". But there is a reality of other WP editors who might not agree (perhaps just to have something to do) to deal with. I was suggesting that at WP, there may be a good reason to use bad style in order to avoid getting content being deleted repeatedly. MOS only talks about what is good style, and says nothing about when it may be useful to use bad style. HkFnsNGA (talk)
- No. We are not editing to evade vandals; we are editing for readers. You want WP:Dispute resolution - although continued reversions by a single editor discussed at our policy on edit warring and continued reversion - which you will want to avoid yourself. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:43, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- It is an anti-style, not to avoid vandals, but to WP:Civility avoid WP:Synth-sticklers and nit pickers deleting content by suggesting a stylistic change to only the slightly worse. (User:Septen..., I noticed someone in a talk section above accused you of being a "mathematician". I have been disparaged by others using that offensive descriptor, too.) HkFnsNGA (talk) 19:45, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- But I am a mathematician. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:39, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- I am a retired mathematician. Mathematicians are like fashion models, over the hill at the age of 30 or so. A mathematician is not connected to reality, like physicists are. A retired mathematician is even less than not connected to reality. An engineer is like a stupid experimental physicist, an experimental physicist is like a stupid theoretical physicist, and a theoretical physicist is like a stupid mathematician. But "Stupid" is redundant in "stupid mathematician". So everyone is like a mathematician... except retired mathematicians. HkFnsNGA (talk) 22:04, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- You should consider Poincare and Coxeter, not Abel and Hardy. Why retire from being a mathematician - as opposed to teaching? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:07, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- I left Stanford after 11 years and joined a circus (no kidding), then made alot of money, then did celebrity stuff. A better question than your "why", is how to stop being a mathematician. I also tried to be an antiintellectual, and called myself a pseudoantiintellectual, because a pseudoantiintellectual is a person with pretentions to antiintellectuality, but comes up with words like "pseudoantiintellectuality". PPdd (talk) 03:13, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- http://xkcd.com/447/ A. di M. (talk) 02:28, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
- You should consider Poincare and Coxeter, not Abel and Hardy. Why retire from being a mathematician - as opposed to teaching? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:07, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- http://xkcd.com/435/ A. di M. (talk) 02:28, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
- I am a retired mathematician. Mathematicians are like fashion models, over the hill at the age of 30 or so. A mathematician is not connected to reality, like physicists are. A retired mathematician is even less than not connected to reality. An engineer is like a stupid experimental physicist, an experimental physicist is like a stupid theoretical physicist, and a theoretical physicist is like a stupid mathematician. But "Stupid" is redundant in "stupid mathematician". So everyone is like a mathematician... except retired mathematicians. HkFnsNGA (talk) 22:04, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- But I am a mathematician. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:39, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- It is an anti-style, not to avoid vandals, but to WP:Civility avoid WP:Synth-sticklers and nit pickers deleting content by suggesting a stylistic change to only the slightly worse. (User:Septen..., I noticed someone in a talk section above accused you of being a "mathematician". I have been disparaged by others using that offensive descriptor, too.) HkFnsNGA (talk) 19:45, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- No. We are not editing to evade vandals; we are editing for readers. You want WP:Dispute resolution - although continued reversions by a single editor discussed at our policy on edit warring and continued reversion - which you will want to avoid yourself. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:43, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
- I fully agree "it out to be". But there is a reality of other WP editors who might not agree (perhaps just to have something to do) to deal with. I was suggesting that at WP, there may be a good reason to use bad style in order to avoid getting content being deleted repeatedly. MOS only talks about what is good style, and says nothing about when it may be useful to use bad style. HkFnsNGA (talk)
- WPian goes from the Stanford mathematics department to being the bearded lady at a circus? Now that is good copy for the next edition of The Signpost. Please tell more. Tony (talk) 08:33, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- We didn't have a bearded lady. We had a titted man (naturally so, DD) who played an accordian and rode a penny farthing; a guy with very large privates, but only one sword swallower (a male, but the show must go on!); a brother and sister love act that showed how to use a condom in which, during unprotected sex, the sister unwrapped a condom and put it in her mouth and kissed her brother (who had just demonstrated how to fix a loose screw in his head by sticking a screwdriver all the way up his nose into his sinus cavity and turning the screwdriver) and the condom came blowing up like a balloon out his nose; a rubber boy so flexible he could perform oral sex while having intercourse with a volunteer from the audience; a guy who could stick a spike through his arm with barely any blood; and some actually outrageous or gross stuff I won't describe. I last worked as a substitute teacher for the travelling clown class of Cirque du Solei teaching "Native American Clown", through a trick whereby I took over the class when the teacher was ill and I misdirected the real substitute (who spoke barely any English and was from out of town) as to where the location of the classroom was (I improvised the whole class; I am part Apache Indian, so anything I made up was "native american clown", but I failed to tell the class this fact). Are we getting off topic for this section? PPdd (talk) 14:39, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
centuries: numbers versus words
This subject is being discussed at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#MOS vs. MOSNUM on centuries. Hmains (talk) 19:36, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
Alt + 0150 for en dashes on Windows
This has been raised on my talk page—something I've been meaning to ask here for some time after ?User:Headbomb, was it, confirmed age-old advice only a month or two ago, here, that this instantly yields an en dash. I would love to know how this can work. I ask clients who have Windows to do it, and they say ... errr ... won't work. Is it a fiction, I wonder? :-) Tony (talk) 02:43, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- It does work. However, many new keyboards (especially gaming keyboards) have unassigned keys to which one can assign macros. I have two such keys with recorded macros for Alt+0150 (en dash) and Alt+0151 (em dash) respectively. I don't like having a Windows PC, incidentally. --Andy Walsh (talk) 02:55, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- I tried it myself on my father's Windows machine. Nothing. Is there a trick to it? Tony (talk) 02:58, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- Doesn't work for me either. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:59, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- You have to hold down ALT the entire time, and the dash will not appear until you release it. It must also be done on a number pad with numlock engaged. Integrated laptop number pads (where the number pad is in the midst of all the keys) don't work unless you also have function depressed. --Andy Walsh (talk) 03:06, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- I just tried it and can't get it to work either. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 03:08, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- This is what I get with keypad and numlock []:nothing. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:21, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- I got it in my laptop "–", but I had to press Fn+F11 to switch to numeric keypad, then hunt down the numbers that are in unfamiliar places in small print, and then press Fn+11 again to switch the keypad function off. Cue several times where I pressed the regular numbers instead, producing no characters and making me scratch my head for a couple minutes.
- This is what I get with keypad and numlock []:nothing. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:21, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- I just tried it and can't get it to work either. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 03:08, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- You have to hold down ALT the entire time, and the dash will not appear until you release it. It must also be done on a number pad with numlock engaged. Integrated laptop number pads (where the number pad is in the midst of all the keys) don't work unless you also have function depressed. --Andy Walsh (talk) 03:06, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- Doesn't work for me either. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:59, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- I tried it myself on my father's Windows machine. Nothing. Is there a trick to it? Tony (talk) 02:58, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- I would say that this is a bit beyond the average computer-typing skill, at least in laptops. Idem for setting up keyboard macros, or for remembering by hearth the correct numbers. Really not something that we can expect from random people who just want to type stuff in a wikipedia article they just found. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:44, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- Dash#Electronic usage (permanent link here) says: "On Microsoft Windows, an en dash may be entered as Alt+0150 (where the digits are typed on the numeric keypad while holding down the Alt key)." (The present text has a dangling modifier.)
- —Wavelength (talk) 03:22, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
If you don't know how to type an en dash, don't worry. You'll never need to. Just enter a hyphen, and if it matters someone who cares will fix it. Or if you use the standard editor, use the "Wiki markup Insert:" feature below where it's the first character. Or get a Mac. Dicklyon (talk) 03:52, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- See also Character Map and Windows Alt Key Codes.
- —Wavelength (talk) 04:23, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
- Or just copy and paste this: – Art LaPella (talk) 04:26, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
User:GF Handel sent me this comment, which I am posting below:
“ | Have a look at this page, which has a "how to" section. If the ALT codes don't work, check the following:
|
” |