Darkfrog24 (talk | contribs) →Punctuation inside or outside: It's a little bit stiffer than a recommendation under actual use. The transition to the fourth sentence makes it look a little too much like American style is also allowed, so let's make it clearer that it's not. |
Darkfrog24 (talk | contribs) →Punctuation inside or outside: "Currently" suggests that this changes frequently and, sadly, it does not. |
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*'''For a collection of posts on this issue on the MoS talk page over the years, see [[Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/quotation and punctuation]]''' |
*'''For a collection of posts on this issue on the MoS talk page over the years, see [[Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/quotation and punctuation]]''' |
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While this is a point of frequent and heated contention on the MoS, the MoS |
While this is a point of frequent and heated contention on the MoS, the MoS requires ''British punctuation'', also known as ''logical punctuation'' (LQ) in all articles regardless of the national variety in which they are otherwise written. This style places punctuation inside the quotation marks if they are part of the quoted material and outside if they are not (similar to the way that question marks are treated in all varieties of English). This style is standard in the UK. In the US, American style (commas and periods always placed inside quotation marks) is required in almost all cases. As with spelling, there is some national crossover: American style is occasionally used in the UK, particularly in fiction writing, and British/logical has supporters in the US, though not as many. These include the American Chemical Society and many computer programmers' associations. See [[Quotation marks in English]] for more information. |
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Supporters of WP:LQ argue that it prevents the reader from misjudging whether the closing punctuation was part of the quoted material. Supporters of American style argue that it does not cause such problems under actual use, that is easier to use and learn, and that does not require access to the original material. Supporters of both styles have argued that their preferred style looks better to them. |
Supporters of WP:LQ argue that it prevents the reader from misjudging whether the closing punctuation was part of the quoted material. Supporters of American style argue that it does not cause such problems under actual use, that is easier to use and learn, and that does not require access to the original material. Supporters of both styles have argued that their preferred style looks better to them. |
Revision as of 17:14, 26 August 2015
This page is a work in progress, a working draft of a supplement to the Wikipedia:Manual of Style. Its purpose is to record decisions made in discussions at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. For more details, please see the January 2010 discussion archived at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 113#Recording consensus.
This document is meant as a reference of consensus decisions on the Wikipedia Manual of Style and, when available, the reasoning behind each consensus. It is not itself a collection of guidelines, rules, or laws. Just the fact that a consensus has been recorded on this page does not mean that that consensus is a permanent and unchangeable part of Wikipedia. This register is meant only to give editors better understanding of the current state of things, which is useful both to those considering proposing changes and to those seeking to better implement the MoS as it exists.
Article titles, headings, and sections
Article titles
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 102#Dashes in article titles?
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 101#Should article titles conform to naming conventions?
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108#Article Titles
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 110#Request for comment - dashes in article titles
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 31#ß proposal (search for: "ß in article titles")
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 93#Links in titles
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 53#Article titles
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 4#On the order of names
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 109#hyphens vs. dashes in titles
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 23#ß proposal
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 82 (search for: "article titles")
Section organization
Section headings
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 12#Headings and Sub-Headings: Capitalization of Major Words (version of 14:10, 22 September 2010) (April and May 2005)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 55#Capitalization in Headings (version of 14:32, 22 September 2010) (August and October 2006)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108#Capitalization of words within section headings. (version of 17:12, 13 October 2010) (May 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 121#title case and sentence case (version of 07:31, 13 May 2011) (April 2011)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Headings#Capitalization (version of 07:39, 13 August 2011) (November 2006)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#A question on sentence and Title case (version of 16:18, 3 November 2012) (July 2012)
National varieties of English
Consistency within articles
Strong national ties to a topic
Retaining the existing variety
Opportunities for commonality
Capital letters
Capitalization of "The"
Titles of people
Religions, deities, philosophies, doctrines
Calendar items
Animals, plants, and other organisms
Celestial bodies
Directions and regions
Institutions
Abbreviations
Ampersand
Bold
- Wikipedia talk:Highlighting conventions (Wikipedia:Highlighting conventions was created in 2002 and lasted until it was redirected to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting#Article title terms in 2006)
Italics
Non-breaking spaces
Technical information
Use
Quotations
Minimal change
Allowable typographical changes
Quotations within quotations
Attribution
Linking
Block quotations
Foreign-language quotations
Punctuation
Apostrophes
Quotation marks
Curly or straight
Currently there is no consensus regarding which quotation glyphs to use. Originally the rule was introduced on 10 April 2003 in [1] without any discussion on the Talk page (see [1]). The rule stated “For uniformity and to avoid complications use straight quotation marks and apostrophes”. The debate regarding the appropriateness of this rule started in [18], [19] with the conclusion that the MoS have to be changed, yet all such changes have been reverted. Since then the issue has been revisited many times, see [94], [100], [103], [104], [108], and [108].
The reasons currently provided for using straight quotation marks are dubious at best:
They are easier to type in reliably, and to edit. Mostly true, except the recommendation that you have to turn off the “smart quotes” when pasting the text from MS Word. But even then, sometimes people have to choose between what’s right and what’s easy…
Mixed use interferes with some searches, such as those using the browser’s search facility (a search for Alzheimer's disease could fail to find Alzheimer’s disease and vice versa). Somehow apostrophes always end up being brought into this debate. Strictly speaking this argument isn’t even relevant for the discussion of quotations glyphs, however it’s not hard to refute it either. Modern browsers (such as Google Chrome) are capable of understanding that ' and ’ probably mean the same thing, so they will find both the “Alzheimer's” and “Alzheimer’s” regardless of how you type it. For other browsers, most people already know that the safe way of searching for “Alzheimer’s disease” is to type “Alzheimer disease
”. Also note that nobody complains about other special characters such as “Rao–Cramér inequality”, which are even harder to search for in an unsophisticated browser.
Furthermore, wiki markup tags (such as <ref name="xxx"/>
) will not work if curly quotation marks are used. Tags are a part of computer language. They are meant for the computer, not for the people. It is an error to use curly quotation marks to delimit strings in wiki markup, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or most other computer languages.
The arguments in favor of recommending the curly quotation glyphs are that:
They are typographically correct. Meaning that it is the standard of English language to use glyphs “” to denote quotations. This rule can be found in most serious manuals of styles, both for paper and electronic documents. Most Wikipedia Manuals of Styles in other languages explicitly forbid the use of straight quotation marks. See for example German, French, Russian, Italian versions.
Single or double
The Wikipedia MoS prefers double quotation marks to single ones because they are more discernible visually, and there is no risk of mistaking a quotation mark for an apostrophe.
Punctuation inside or outside
- For a collection of posts on this issue on the MoS talk page over the years, see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/quotation and punctuation
While this is a point of frequent and heated contention on the MoS, the MoS requires British punctuation, also known as logical punctuation (LQ) in all articles regardless of the national variety in which they are otherwise written. This style places punctuation inside the quotation marks if they are part of the quoted material and outside if they are not (similar to the way that question marks are treated in all varieties of English). This style is standard in the UK. In the US, American style (commas and periods always placed inside quotation marks) is required in almost all cases. As with spelling, there is some national crossover: American style is occasionally used in the UK, particularly in fiction writing, and British/logical has supporters in the US, though not as many. These include the American Chemical Society and many computer programmers' associations. See Quotation marks in English for more information.
Supporters of WP:LQ argue that it prevents the reader from misjudging whether the closing punctuation was part of the quoted material. Supporters of American style argue that it does not cause such problems under actual use, that is easier to use and learn, and that does not require access to the original material. Supporters of both styles have argued that their preferred style looks better to them.
List of major MoS discussions, as of June 2015, about quotation marks and closing punctuation (does not include passing mentions):
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/quotation and punctuation (much of the page, 2002–2010)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Alpha Archive 3#On quotations and punctuation marks (September 2004)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Draft trim (November 2004)#Jallan's response (brief discussion, November 2004)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive (quotes and quote marks 2)#British punctuation in articles written in American English (with 3 subsections, August 2006)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 3#On quotations and punctuation marks (September 2004)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 4#On quotations and punctuation marks (September 2004)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 12#Quotation marks, splitting the difference (March 2005)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 32#Using commas and periods with Quotations, Song Titles, Article Titles, including in a Series (October–November 2005)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 47#Punctuating quoted passages: why British usage exclusively? (March 2006)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 50#Quotation marks (April 2006)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 67#Quotation mark caveat added (January and February 2007)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 68#Comma inside or outside quotation marks: can we clarify at WP:MoS? (February 2007)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 90#Commas inside quotes (July and August 2007)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 92#Logical and typesetters' punctuation (with 2 subsections, September–October 2007)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 93#Quotations and punctuation (October and November 2007)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 94#Quotation mark (with 1 subsection and 1 sub-subsection, December 2007 – January 2008)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 101#Logical quotation (May 2008)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 103#Wikipedia:Logical quotation merge proposed (September 2008)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108#WP:MOS#Quotation marks (May 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108#Colons and semicolons with quotation marks (May–June 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 111#Quotations (December 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 113#Needed help regarding WP:Logical quotation (with 16 subsections and 1 sub-subsection, January–February 2010)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 117#Question on logical punctuation (September 2010)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 125#Logical punctuation (June–August 2011)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 126#A bunch of research and sourcing on logical and typesetters' quotation marks (October 2011)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 140#Glaring grammar error in a policy here (WP:LQ) (with 3 subsections, May 2013)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 141#Punctuation around quotation marks (June 2013)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 143##RFC: punctuation when quoting (with many subsections and an RFC, June–August 2013
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 151#Inside or outside punctuation (February 2014)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 152#Time to remove "it is used here because" from WP:LQ (February 2014)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 152#Removal of "This differs from standard U.S. convention." (followup to the immediately previous discussion, February–March 2014)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 153#Let's change WP:LQ (failed proposal, March 2014)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 158#Clarify MOS:LQ#LQ (with multiple subsections, May–June 2014)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 160#British quotes (on ENGVAR and quotation marks generally, July 2014)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 161#Logical quotation (September–October 2014)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 161#Illogical punctuation and footnotes (mostly about footnote formatting, November 2014)
Brackets and parentheses
Sentences and brackets
Brackets and linking
Ellipses
Commas
Serial commas
Colons
Semicolons
Semicolon before "however"
Hyphens
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 6#Hyphens_2
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 12#What about hyphens?
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 23#Proper hyphen/mdash usage?
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 30#Hyphens
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 82#Hyphens and dashes in the MoS (with subsections)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 88#Hyphens
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 94#Proposal: permit non-hyphen form with units in full form, to match guidance for symbolic form
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 95#Hyphen in political family names
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 96#Hyphens
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 96#Usage of hyphens, item two
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 97#... If you take the hyphen seriously, you will surely go mad
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 100#Dash or hyphen?
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 100#Bot is being developed to convert hyphens to en dashes
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 101#Tutorials on hyphens and dashes
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 104#Naming conventions: hyphen is not used as a substitute for an en dash
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 104#Hyphens, en dashes, minus signs? Oh my!
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 106#Hyphens after -ly adverbs (rationalised section) (with subsections)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108#En dashes vs. hyphens (with subsections)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 109#Hyphens in category names
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 109#Change wording on when to use hyphens
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 109#Hyphens vs. en dashes (with subsection)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 109#adverb + hyphen + past participle
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 110#Example for elements in conjunction and hyphens?
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 111#Hyphens as minus signs
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 113#Hyphens in reference titles
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 114#Hyphens vs. dashes in German federal-state names
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 114#Hyphen question
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 116#Hyphens in adjectives of dates
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 116#MoS on SOFT HYPHEN (SHY)
Dashes
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/dash drafting (June and July 2011)
Punctuating a sentence (em or en dashes)
En dashes: other uses
Other dashes
Slashes
And/or
Number signs
Terminal punctuation
Punctuation and inline citations
Citations are always placed after punctuation when they occur together. This occurs regardless of whether the citation pertains to the entire preceding paragraph, or only the preceding sentence or clause. In placing inline citations and footnote marks after periods and commas, Wikipedia follows the overwhelming majority of reputable publications. Only one publication, Nature magazine, was found to place citations before punctuation. In addition, most of the Wikipedians involved in the discussion, even the ones supporting an allow-both policy, voiced preferences for the consistency and look of post-punctuation citations.
This issue most recently came under discussion in February 2010, when one editor found a discrepancy between WP:MoS and WP:FN. WP:MoS allowed only post-punctuation citations while WP:FN allowed both post- and pre-punctuation citations. After much discussion, WP:FN was altered to allow only post-punctuation citations.
Spaces between said punctuation and the inline citations were deemed neither sightly nor necessary, by consensus on WP:MoS.
Spacing
Spaces following terminal punctuation
Consecutive punctuation marks
Punctuation and footnotes
Punctuation after formulae
Dates and time
Time of day
Days
Choice of format
Months and seasons
Years and longer periods
Current
Numbers
Currencies
Units of measurement
Common mathematical symbols
Grammar
Possessives
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108#Possessive apostrophes (April 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108#Recent changes to the "Possessives" section (August 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 108#Possessives:_section_revised_after_recent_discussion (August–September 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 110#What happened to the Possessives section? (November 2009)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 113#Defining consensus (January 2010)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 125#Possessive apostrophes, with subsections (August 2011)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 147#Paris' or Paris's (October and November 2013)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 150#Quick check: consensus on possessives (December 2013 and January 2014)
First-person pronouns
Second-person pronouns
Plurals
Vocabulary
Contractions
Gender-neutral language
As of January 2010, there is no consensus either for or against the use of the singular "they" in Wikipedia. Arguments for its acceptability include its long history in English, the fact that it is common in informal speech and writing and grammatical rules that permit a plural pronoun with words such as "everyone" that do not refer to a specific subject. Arguments against its use include its informality and the grammatical impropriety of using a plural pronoun for a singular subject. Please see the articles on WP: Gender-neutral language and the singular they for more information.
The most recent discussion of the singular "they" can be found here.
Contested vocabulary
Instructional and presumptuous language
Subset terms
Identity
The practice of using the most recent publicly preferred pronoun and/or first name of any individual whose gender might be questioned, such as trans men and trans women, has been challenged and revisited more than once. There are many levels of opinion on this issue. Some believe in using the most recent preferred pronoun to refer to the subject throughout his or her life (current policy). Some believe in using the pronoun corresponding to the subject's gender of rearing when writing about periods before the subject's gender transition and then the preferred pronoun only when writing about periods after the subject's gender transition. Some believe that only the pronoun corresponding to the gender of rearing should be used. Still others believe that the context, such as whether the person more notable as a man or a woman, should decide the matter. Below is a partial list of discussions of this issue as it pertains to the Wikipedia Manual of Style. Be advised that conversations from a few years ago may use now-outdated terminology.
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 122#Transsexual women (September 2011)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 149#Flaw in MOS:IDENTITY (November 2013)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 149#A suggested addition to the gender paragraph (November 2013)
- Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 121#MOS:IDENTITY clarification (June 2015)
Below is a partial list of discussions pertaining to other parts of MOS:IDENTITY.
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 149#MOS:IDENTITY RFC: Should the text .22When there is no dispute....22 be deleted.2C kept or changed.3F (September 2013)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 149#RFC - is Identity a style issue or a content issue.3F
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 149#Self-designation trumps reliable sources? (December 2013)